0
0
Country Reports: The Islamic Republic of Iran
The Islamic Republic of Iran came into existence following the 1979 revolution. The politics, perspective, and personality of Ayatollah Khomeini — Khomeinism — became the dominant discourse of post-revolutionary Iran. However, Khomeinism was one among many sociopolitical forces of the revolution. Pre-revolutionary Iran never experienced a homogeneous Islamist political culture. Diverse ideological discourses within the alliance led to the 1979 revolution. The first three Islamic discourses were Khomeinism, ʿAlī Sharīʿatī’s Islamic-left ideology, and Mehdi Bazargan’s liberal-democratic Islam. The fourth discourse was that of the socialist guerrilla groups, with Islamic mujāhidīn and Marxist fidāʾī variants; the fifth was that of secular constitutionalism, with the pro-Mossadegh nationalist and the Marxist Tudeh varieties. Nonetheless, Khomeinism has dominated post-revolutionary Iran.
One Regime And Five Republics
After the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini established a new regime called the Islamic Republic of Iran, which transformed Iran from a monarchy into a republic, but the regime he founded was a complex mixture of Islamic clericalism and secular republicanism. He created a hybrid regime that has undergone five consecutive phases —five republics — that simultaneously combined elements of totalitarian, authoritarian, and democratic politics (Chehabi, 2000, pp. 48–70). Each republic presented a different face of Khomeinism.
The First Republic (1979–1989)
In the aftermath of the revolution, a division among the Islamists, nationalists of secular thinking, and various groups on the secular Left became visible. Each group held different opinions on the future of post-revolutionary politics. For Khomeini, the leader of the revolution, Iran’s government could only be an Islamic republic, but the nature of this republic remained undefined. Khomeini moved to implement his theory of vilāyat-i faqīh (guardianship of the jurist), merging clericalism and republicanism. Hence, both concepts were redefined.
Khomeini’s theory of vilāyat-i faqīh, which was developed through a series of lectures in Najaf in the early 1970s, challenged the conventional Shīʿī doctrine of the imamate, which states that the legitimate leadership of the Muslim community belongs to the Prophet and his twelve successors, the Shīʿī imams. He redefined the role of clergy, suggesting that in Islam there is no distinction between temporal and religious power. He rejected the prevalent notion that the jurists’ task should be limited to understanding and interpreting the Sharīʿa, but rather stipulated that their duty is to implement the law. The role of the imam, he suggested, “should be represented by a faqīh, as the sole holder of legitimate authority” (Khomeini, 1978, pp. 28–40, 77–79, quoted in Bashiriyeh, 1983, pp. 62–63). Khomeini’s definition of politics was an individual’s conformity to the Sharīʿa. For Khomeini, the structure of authority was divine, and the state was instrumental in the implementation of the Sharīʿa. He proposed the novel idea that “our duty to preserve Islam” by establishing an Islamic government “is one of the most important obligations incumbent upon us; it is more necessary even than prayer and fasting” (Algar, 1981, p. 75). He suggested the task of creating an Islamic government justified on the basis of the “secondary ordinances” (aḥkām-i sānaviyeh), where the “primary ordinances,” that is, Sharīʿa law, are silent or non-explicit (ibid., p. 124). The Sharīʿa law cannot be fully implemented without an Islamic state; Islamic government is the only legitimate tool to put the Islamic rules into practice. The just vali-ye faqīh is the only qualified ruler to undertake this task after the Prophet and imams.
Khomeini also redefined the concept of republicanism in accordance with clerical rule. The people’s participation in politics, or republicanism, resembled for Khomeini the traditional Islamic concept of bayʿah, meaning the vote of allegiance to authority. According to one view, for Khomeini, the vali-ye faqīh derives his popularity from the people, but his legitimacy is divine. Another interpretation suggests that both popularity and legitimacy of the vali-ye faqīh derive from the people. Khomeini combined his theory of vilāyat-i faqīh with the republican institutions inherited from the Iranian Constitution of 1906. The republican institutions are subordinated to the rule of the vali-ye faqīh. The Majlis (parliament) in the Iranian state must share legislative authority with the Guardian Council, whose jurist members are appointed by the vali-ye faqīh. Constitutionally, in the absence of the Guardian Council, the Majlis is devoid of authority. The Majlis must also share its legislative authority with the Expediency Council, whose chair and most members are appointed by the vali-ye faqīh. Similarly, the president in the Islamic republic is ranked next to the vali-ye faqīh. Furthermore, the vali-ye faqīh holds many institutional “extended arms,” ranging from the powerful Revolutionary Foundations to the parallel institutions accountable not to the republican institutions but to the vali-ye faqīh.
Incorporating the theory of the vilāyat-i faqīh into state institutions required time and experience. Khomeini appointed Mehdi Bazargan, a moderate Muslim technocrat, to head the interim government. Bazargan reluctantly accepted Khomeini’s offer, hoping “he would be able to influence the new regime from within” (Chehabi, 1995, p. 135). In Paris, Khomeini said “the ʿulamāʾ themselves will not hold power in the government,” but instead “exercise supervision over those who govern and give them guidance” (Schirazi, 1997, p. 24). But by the end of 1979, Iran had a quasi-theocratic constitution, and by the summer of 1981, Khomeini’s theory was in practice. After the fall of Bazargan’s government in November 1979 and the dismissal of President Bani Sadr in June 1981, the regime shut down all political parties and arrested, executed, or jailed the opposition. There were 600 opposition figures executed by 1 September, 700 by October, and 2,500 by December 1981 (Abrahamian, 1989, p. 220). The first clerical president and the Islamic republic’s third president was ʿAlī Khameneʾi, then secretary general of the Islamic Republican Party and the future successor of Ayatollah Khomeini as vali-ye faqīh.
The Islamic republic turned into a “clerical oligarchy,” a polity with the repressive apparatus of ideological, military, and economic control. The state not only kept the shah’s military and police structures but created new revolutionary institutions to expand its control: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with some 100,000 members, the Basīji with over 300,000 armed men, a number of Islamic Associations in public administrations, universities, and workplaces, and formal and informal organized gangs called Hizbollah groups (Rahnema and Moghissi. 2001, p. 2).
The state under Ayatollah Khomeini’s leadership was a mishmash of totalitarianism, authoritarianism, and semi-democracy. Khomeini’s religious and revolutionary charisma, the revolutionary fever, the boost in global oil price (to $50 per barrel), and the Iraq- Iran war (1980–1988) were all instrumental in mobilizing the masses and consolidating a revolutionary, populist, and semi-totalitarian polity in the first republic. Yet the results were far from what Ayatollah Khomeini had intended. The decentralization of Islamic faith and relative diversity of opinion, together with pragmatism and the elite factional politics, contributed to the development of limited pluralism in the Iranian state and overruled the success of totalitarian tendencies (Chehabi, 2000, pp. 56–59).
By 1981, the state succeeded in eliminating and dismantling most of the opposition, including Muslim and secular-leftist groups such as the People’s Mujāhidīn Organization (MKO), the Organization of Iranian People’s Fidāʾī Guerrillas (Minority), the Worker’s Path Organization (Rāh-i Kārgar), and a number of pro–ʿAlī Sharīʿatī groups, such as the Ideals of Dispossessed (Armān-i Mostazʿafin) and the Irshad Association. In less than six months, thousands of opponents were executed, imprisoned, or had fled. In 1983, the Islamic republic eliminated the Tudeh Party and other non-militant Marxists such as the Organization of Iranian People’s Fidāʾī (Majority), who had supported the regime’s reign of terror against the liberals, progressive Muslims, and the militant leftists. The regime’s anti-imperialist rhetoric, the hostage crisis involving American embassy personnel, the Iran–Iraq War, and the legacy of Third Worldism contributed to the confusion of some of the opposition about the nature of the state.
Sectarianism severely weakened the institutional power of the opposition, because of “confusions and disagreements over the issue of the nature of clerics and fought the liberals.
The legacy of the Iran–Iraq War was contradictory. The war provided Khomeini with a historic opportunity to consolidate his vision of the revolution and eliminate or neutralize the state’s rivals and enemies, and yet the war changed relations between the state and society as it simultaneously created a mass society 1987, it became “too clear that the regime’s emphasis on Islam, war, revolutionary discourse, and the persona of Khomeini were insufficient for governing Iran” (Moslem, 2002, p. 72). The crisis in the economy, the frustration and alienation in society, and the systematic deadlock and ideological factionalism in politics alarmed the regime, pushing the state to take some initiatives for change. The change was aimed at the institutionalization of the vilāyat-i faqīh and made Khomeini into an absolute (mutlaqeh) vali-ye faqīh. Three issues exemplified this transformation:
- The Absolute Rule Of The State Over Religion
The nature of the Islamic state brought to the fore divisions within the Khomeinist camp. The conservative or traditional Right, backed by the bāzārī merchants and the orthodox clergy, held a conservative position on the nature of the Islamic state and “wanted strict implementation of Sharīʿa in the sociocultural spheres.” The Society of Combatant Clergy (Jāmeʿeh Rūhānīyat-i Mubāriz) and the Allied Islamic Society (Jamʿīyāt-i Moʾtalefeh-i Islami) supported the conservative Khomeinists. The revolutionary elites, by contrast, “supported state-sponsored redistributive and egalitarian policies.” The Mujāhidīn of the Islamic Revolution Organization (Sāzmān-i Mujāhidīn-i Enghilāb-i Islami) and the Society of Combatant Clerics (Majmaʿ-i Rūhāniyūn-i Mubāriz) supported the revolutionary Khomeinists. The central committee of the Islamic Republican Party, until its dissolution in 1986, II was more inclined to the revolutionary Khomeinists and less to the conservatives. They believed that primary Islamic ordinances (aḥkām-i awaliyeh), derived from the two Islamic sources of the Qurʾān and the Tradition of the Prophet (the Sunna) were insufficient and therefore Muslims living in modern times needed to issue secondary ordinances (aḥkām-i sānaviyeh) (Moslem, 2002, pp. 47–49). Ayatollah Khomeini trusted both factions, but by 1987, his policy of “dual containment” was no longer effective, given the ever-increasing disagreements over economic, sociocultural, and military policies between the two factions (Moslem, 2002. p. 65). From December 1987 until his death in June 1989, Khomeini issued various decrees to clarify his sociopolitical positions and sided with the revolutionary camp. Khomeini also created the Expediency Council (Majmaʿ-i Tashkhīs-i Maṣliḥat-i Niẓām), an institutional mediator between the two Khomeinist camps in the Majlis and the Guardian Council, paving the way for further institutionalization of the vilāyat-i faqīh. In January 1988, he made clear that “the state that is a part of the absolute vice-regency of the Prophet of God is one of the primary injunctions of Islam and has priority over all other secondary injunctions, even prayers, fasting and hajj. The government is empowered to unilaterally revoke any sharia agreement” (Ettelaʾat, 1988, quoted in Moslem, 2002, p. 74). Khomeini provided the state “with the authority not only to intervene in the economy but the right to use its discretion to suspend even the pillars of Islam” (Moslem, 2002, p. 74).
- The “Poisoned Chalice” of Peace
Ayatollah Khomeini accepted the ceasefire in the Iran–Iraq War in the summer of 1988. He subsequently expressed his “absolute” authority in three specific events. First, following the end of the war, the People’s Mujāhidīn Organization, the opposition group based in Iraq, launched a military attack against Iran. The regime’s response was harsh: the Mujāhidīn’s forces were massacred on the battlefronts and several thousand jailed political opponents were executed in the prisons (Abrahamian, 1999). Second, Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie’s novel Satanic Verses created tension between Iran and the West. Third, after a decision made by the Assembly of Experts in 1985, Khomeini’s loyal student, Ayatollah Ḥusayn-ʿAlī Muntazirī, was expected to succeed him. Muntazirī was the only high-ranking cleric who supported Khomeini’s theory of vilāyat-i faqīh and contributed to its institutionalization. However, Muntazirī frequently criticized the violation of human rights by the regime. He challenged the regime’s new reign of terror in the summer and autumn of 1988. Consequently, Khomeini asked him to resign and ordered the Assembly of Experts to meet and make a decision on the future leadership of the republic. The purge of the only ayatollah loyal to the doctrine of the vilāyat-i faqīh set the stage for the revision and the redefinition of this core institution.
- The Succession
The 1979 constitution was explicit on the theological qualifications of the vali-ye faqīh, indicating that only one among the grand ayatollahs, as the prominent marjʿa-e taqlīd, or “source of imitation,” could hold the office. None among the grand ayatollahs was sympathetic to Khomeini’s theory ofvilāyat-i faqīh. Moreover, the leading grand ayatollahs lacked the personal charisma or political qualifications required for the office. However, a number of middle-ranking clerics accepted Khomeini’s theory and held the necessary political requirements. The pragmatic solution was to revise the constitution to save the state.
The 1989 constitution expanded the power of the faqīh by transferring the president’s task of coordinating the three branches of government to the office of the vilāyat-i faqīh. It made explicit that the vali-ye faqīh holds an “absolute” power by adding the phrase mutlaqeh to Articles 107–110, defining his absolute authority. Article 109 of the amended constitution separated the position of themarjʿa from that of the faqīh, setting the stage for the selection of a new vali-ye faqīh who could be a middle-ranking cleric. The vali-ye faqīh no longer needed to hold the religious qualification of the marjʿa-e taqlīd. Khomeini’s priority for the interests of the state led him to revise his own theory of vilāyat-i faqīh. Khomeini died on 3 June 1989, and the Assembly of Experts appointed ʿAlī Khameneʾi as the new leader of the Islamic republic.
The Second Republic (1989–1997)
His lack of personal charisma and clerical credentials caused Sayyed ʿAlī Khameneʾi to be perceived at most as one among equals. Unlike Khomeini, who depended on his own charismatic authority, Khameneʾi depended on his conservative peers. Having been concerned about the leader’s lack of charismatic authority, the clerical oligarchy emphasized an absolutist version of the vilāyat-i faqīh, suggesting a complete and full obedience to the faqīh, or “melting into the vilāyat” (zob-e dar vilāyat).
As president of the second republic, ʿAlī Akbar Hāshimī Rafsanjānī initiated a neo-liberal policy of reconstruction (sāzandegi) to resolve the state’s sociopolitical crisis. However, the politics of sāzandegi weakened the social base of the regime, escalated elite factionalism, and forced the regime to open up public space and allow a limited degree of sociopolitical liberalization. The politics of sāzandegi, “neo-liberal Khomeinism,” prioritized economic development over political development. The policy was far from a success because Iran in the mid-1990s was experiencing a growing socio-ideological disenchantment. The youth in particular were politically disappointed and economically dissatisfied. By the 1990s, Iran was grappling with the consequences of demographic changes of a population, 70 percent of which was under thirty. Rapid urbanization, the expansion of higher education, and the need for employment of women were among the structural factors pushing for change. Moreover, civil society managed to challenge the repressive intentions of the state by resisting the clerical cultural codes. Youth and women brought the public sphere into their private lives by watching forbidden shows and openly discussing sociopolitical taboos. The state, in sum, had failed to create the individual or the society that the revolution had promised. The unintended consequences of the Khomeinist state was to empower and enlighten the public and undermine the intellectual foundations of the state.
Independent intellectuals managed to publish some journals such as Iran -Farda, Goftego, and Kiyan. Religious and secular intellectuals posed serious challenges to the ideological foundations of Khomeinism. Abdolkarim Soroush challenged authoritarian religious thinking: Clerics, like other “professional groups,” hold a corporate identity, “a collective identity and shared interest,” and thus possess no divine authority (Soroush, 1995, quoted in Brumberg, 2001, p. 205). The rule of the vali-ye faqīh, Mojtahed Shabestari argued, is not divine and thus has to be subjected to democratic procedures. Ayatollah Muntazirī came up with a more accountable interpretation. The vali-ye faqīh“envisaged in the constitution has his duties and responsibilities clearly defined. His main responsibility is to supervise” (Muntazirī, 1997, quoted in Brumberg, 2001, p. 238).
The devastating eight-year Iran –Iraq war with no clear victory, the decline of the global oil price ($10 or less per barrel), the end of the revolutionary fever, the rise of a new generation, and the failure of the state to meet their demands all contributed to the crisis of legitimacy in the second republic. By the late 1990s, the division among the elites was a fact, providing much opportunity for the unexpected victory of the reformist presidential candidate Muḥammad Khātamī.
The Third Republic (1997–2005)
If Ayatollah Khomeini’s death and the end of the Iraq– Iran War terminated the first republic, the explosive demands for greater pluralism and freedom put an end to the second. The unexpected presidential election of Muḥammad Khātamī, a moderate, reformist cleric, on 23 May 1997, marked the beginning of the third republic. Khātamī became the candidate for change and received the people’s protest vote, making him a “Cinderella candidate” (Milani, 2001, p. 29) and eventually an “accidental president” of the Islamic republic (Bakhash, 2003, p. 119).
The reformist republic stood on three intellectual pillars: Islamic constitutionalism, the promotion of civil society, and Islamic democracy. All three were bound to the legacy of Khomeinism, which created a limited and inchoate subjectivity never independent of the vali-yefaqīh.
The reform movement under Khātamī suffered largely from an ineffective presidency. Khātamī was neither an extension of the will of the political establishment nor an opposition to the establishment. He belonged to the establishment and yet was determined to reform it without harming it. As a result, he remained in a difficult and paradoxical position, making him marginal for both the state and the reform movement. Moreover, the reformists lacked the strong, grassroots, and inclusive organizations required for a successful public mobilization. In addition to the domestic factors, international politics proved detrimental to the success of the reformists. Khātamī’s idea of “dialogue between civilizations” gained recognition by the United Nations, which declared the year 2001 the official year of dialogue between civilizations. Khātamī’s UN speech “raised hopes for a détente” with the United States, but President Bush’s “axis of evil” speech in 2002 increased speculation that the United States was bent on regime change in both Iraq and Iran. Bush’s speech shocked the reformists, provided a pretext to Iran ‘s hard-liners to raise the flag of national security, and persuaded some reformers “to put their hopes on the back burner waiting for better days” (Abrahamian, 2004, pp. 93–94).
The electorate cast their vote for Khātamī’s democratic reform twice, in the 1997 and 2001 presidential elections. They also voted overwhelmingly for the reformers in the municipal elections of 1999 and the parliamentary elections of 2000. Incapable of meeting the public demands and unable to deal with the counter-reform forces, reformists in power began to lose public support in three major elections: the February 2003 second municipal elections, the February 2004 seventh parliamentary elections, and eventually the June 2005 ninth presidential elections. The reformist republic gave birth to a republic of hard-liner conservatives, the fourth republic of post-revolutionary Iran.
The Fourth Republic (2005–2013)
The 2005 presidential election marked a new era in the Khomeinist state: neoconservative Khomeinism. The president of Iran fourth republic (2005–2013), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was a product of the state-security apparatus, the office of the vilāyat-i faqīh, and Iran ‘s neoconservatives. Sadeq Mahsouli, former minister of welfare under Ahmadinejad, and Mohammad-reza Rahimi, Ahmadinejad’s vice president, among others, were members of the new oligarchy. The former was a billionaire real estate broker and the latter was another billionaire benefiting from exclusive political rents. The populist slogans in the fourth republic were instrumental in serving their pragmatist purpose, that is, to replace the old oligarchy with a new one and to establish a populist, centralized state backed by the lower classes and sponsored by petro-dollars.
With the rise of Iran ‘s neoconservatives to power, the Islamic republic’s social base may have shifted from the coalition of the mullah-merchant to that of the revolutionary security and military forces. The conservatives, in spite of their internal conflicts, gained complete control of the state, and the absolute rule of the vali-ye faqīh Khameneʾi seemed at hand. However, for the first time in the Islamic republic, the public and the reformist elites openly challenged the authority and legitimacy of the vali-ye faqīh in the popular democratic Green Movement in 2009.
The Fifth Republic (2013)
In the presidential elections on 14 June 2013, Hassan Rouhāni was elected as the seventh president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. His four-year term, which started on 3 August 2013, brought to an end Iran ‘s fourth republic (Ahmadinejad’s presidency) and began Iran’s fifth republic.
Rouhāni is not a reformist. He is close to vali-ye faqīh Khameneʾi and the traditional conservatives. However, he is also close to Hāshimī Rafsanjānī, the pragmatist president of the second republic. In his presidential campaign, Rouhāni openly challenged domestic and foreign policies of Ahmadinejd. He promised to pull Iran back from the brink of the negative economic growth, political repression, and international sanctions. Muḥammad Khātamī, the reformist president of the third republic, supported Rouhāni’s plan for change. The electorate cast their vote for his campaign slogans of “moderation” (e’tedāl), “hope” (omid), and “wisdom” (tadbīr). It remains to be seen whether he is competent to normalize Iran ‘s relations with its neighbors and the West, resolve the nuclear issue, push back the rising power of the state-security apparatus in the economy and politics, fix the economy, ease the political repression, and release the political prisoners, including the public figures of the Green Movement.
The Green Movement
The Green Movement formed in the wake of the disputed June 2009 presidential election. The incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed victory in the election, and the vali-ye faqīh Khameneʾi endorsed these results. However, the reformist candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister, and Mehdi Karroubi, former speaker of the Majlis, challenged them. Grand Ayatollah Muntazirī gave his blessing to the movement. Millions of people from religious and secular backgrounds demonstrated in the streets. They chanted Ra’ye man kojāst? (Where is my vote?), waving green banners, the color Mousavi used for his campaign. Pro-government forces attacked the peaceful demonstrations and killed, jailed, and tortured many demonstrators.
The Green Movement is the latest chapter in the Iranian people’s long quest for freedom and social justice. It marks a turn in the country’s politics to a still-emerging post-Islamist phase.
Post-Islamism
Similar to Islamism, post-Islamism accepts public religion. Contrary to Islamism, it rejects the concept of Islamic state. While religion might play a constructive role in civil war) society, the state should be a secular entity, no matter who the statesman is. The Islamic state in theory is an oxymoron; in practice, it is no less than a clerical oligarchy, a leviathan that protects the interests of the ruling class. Hence, the concept of the Islamic state marks a distinction between post-Islamism and Islamism, including moderate Islamism.
Today’s Iran is on the brink of a post-Islamist turn, as the first post-Islamist civil society in the Middle East is in the making. Post-Islamism in Iran maybe divided into three main intellectual trends: semi-post-Islamism represented by reformists such as Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, Muḥammad Khātamī, and Ayatollah Muntazirī; liberal post-Islamism represented by Abdolkarim Soroush, Mohammad Mojtahed-Shabestari, and Mostafa Malekian, among others; and neo-Sharīʿatī discourse represented by ʿAlī Sharīʿatī’s family, Reza Alijani and Taqi Rahmani (Mahdavi, 2011). The scope and intensity of the discursive changes toward post-Islamism are evident in the statements of public figures of the Green Movement. Although Mousavi still believes in the doctrine of vilāyat-i faqīh, he has gradually moved toward greater recognition of pluralism in the nation, claiming that his position is one among many other secular and Islamic voices in the Green Movement (Mousavi, 2010). In his statement known as a working draft of the “Covenant of the Green Movement,” Mousavi advocates the separation of “religious institutions and clergymen from the state,” although he acknowledges the “presence” of religion in the future of Iran. He “opposes the use of religion as an instrument and coercing people into an ideology.” People want nothing short of “popular sovereignty.” Similarly, Mehdi Karroubi questions the authority of the vali-ye faqīh Khameneʾi. In his last public speech in support of the Green Movement, Ayatollah Muntazirī boldly argued that this regime is neither Islamic nor a republic; it is a mere dictatorship (Montazeri, 2010). The Green Movement, in sum, signifies a radical epistemic shift in Iran’s political culture toward celebrating pluralism, coexistence of religious and secular agents, and embracing nonviolence.
Many of the reformist Khomeinists, those who accompanied Khomeini on his return to Iran from France, are now in open revolt. Khameneʾi and his cronies, they believe, have betrayed Khomeni’s legacy. The reformist Khomeinists seek a peaceful transformation within the Khomeinist system. On the other hand, the political spectrum of the Green Movement is both broader and more radical than the reformist discourse. In addition to the quest for free elections and civil rights, it seems that Khomeini’s legacy of the absolute vilāyat-i faqīh is no longer acceptable to the public. Iran seems to be inching toward the post-Khomeinism era.
Country Reports: The Islamic Republic Of Iran
907 – 002
Home
Last Updated: 05/2022
See COPYRIGHT information below.
