{"id":77557,"date":"2023-01-19T06:00:18","date_gmt":"2023-01-18T19:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=77557"},"modified":"2023-01-18T19:01:43","modified_gmt":"2023-01-18T08:01:43","slug":"irans-protests-go-back-to-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/irans-protests-go-back-to-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran\u2019s protests go back to the future"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

The public unrest that has gripped Iran since September, spearheaded by women, is essentially about the very objectives that the instigators of the 1978\u201379 Iranian revolution sought but failed to achieve\u2014a pro-democracy transformation of the country. They and their movement were derailed by the Shia religious establishment, which was better organised than they were. It seized the leadership of the revolution and established a unique theocratic system of governance. The latest wave of protests basically wants to return to the unfinished goals of that revolution. But can it succeed?<\/p>\n

The revolution of nearly 44 years ago that toppled the pro-Western monarchy of Mohammad Reza Shah was originally instigated by his intellectual, professional and political opponents, with the explicit goal of turning Iran into a constitutional monarchy. The Iranians had attempted to achieve this goal twice before but failed.<\/p>\n

The first attempt was in the early 20th century, when a constitutional movement sought to limit the powers of the traditional monarchy but was ultimately aborted by the Shah\u2019s father, Reza Khan Pahlavi, who seized power through a coup in 1921 and within five years established his own dynastic rule.<\/p>\n

The second came in the middle of the 20th century following a period of quasi-democracy and the Anglo-Soviet occupation during World War II. The attempt was led by the reformist Mohammad Mossadegh, who commanded a majority in the Iranian parliament, but was aborted by a CIA-backed coup in favour of the Shah in 1953.<\/p>\n

While the Shah was widely viewed as a US \u2018stooge\u2019 at home and in the region, Iran rapidly drifted into the American orbit, forming a critical pillar of\u00a0Pax Americana\u00a0in the Middle East. The monarch could never overcome the indignity of being the first in the 2,500 years of dynastic rule in Iran to be re-throned by a foreign power.<\/p>\n

The backlash came 25 years down the line. Public uprisings against the Shah\u2019s rule started with pro-democracy aims similar to those of the two previous attempts. However, they evolved as a rainbow movement lacking a unifying leadership, organisational strength and a common platform beyond being anti-Shah. The only group that had managed to survive the Shah\u2019s repression was the Shia religious establishment (ruhaniyat<\/em>), which had gained pervasive sway in the society with an interventionist role in politics since Iran\u2019s forceful transition into a bastion of Shia Islam from the early 16th century.<\/p>\n

While initially lurking in the background and fuelling the unrest, some elements of this clerical stratum pushed an agenda that was in stark contrast to that of the secularists and semi-secularists on the opposition spectrum. The core members of this group (who included the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) harboured a goal of Shia Islamic transformation of Iran. Leading them was the chief religious-political critic of the Shah and his alliance with the US, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had been banished into exile, mostly in Iraq, for 13 years.<\/p>\n

Khomeini and his followers were able to capture the leadership of the revolution and homogenise it. The general expectation on the part of non-ruhaniyat<\/em>\u00a0protestors was that they would ultimately succeed in their broad pro-democracy objectives. Yet, once the Shah was forced to leave for exile in January 1979, Khomeini returned to a tumultuous welcome to shape Iran according to his vision of Shia Islam. He dichotomised the world between oppressors (mustakbareen<\/em>) and oppressed (mustazafeen<\/em>) and called for the empowerment of the latter. He declared Iran an Islamic republic, scorned the US as a hegemonic power and Israel as an occupier of the holy site of Islam (Jerusalem), and called for the export of the Iranian revolution into the predominantly Sunni Arab countries, except Iraq, where the Shia majority had been suppressed by Saddam Hussein\u2019s Sunni minority-dominated dictatorship.<\/p>\n

Khomeini and his devotees dismantled all the vestiges of monarchical rule and engaged in Islamisation of Iran\u2019s internal and external settings at the cost of thousands of lives. They established a unique two-tier system of\u00a0velayat-e faqhi<\/em>, or guardianship of the supreme jurist governance: one embodying the sovereignty of God, symbolised in his position as the supreme leader with enormous divine and constitutional powers; and the other representing the sovereignty of the people in the form of an elected presidency and national assembly but in subordination to the first tier. All forms of organised and individual dissent and viable political alternatives were declared un-Islamic and therefore liable to punishment.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Khomeini wanted not only an Islamic Iran but a strong and modern Islamic state capable of dealing decisively with any internal or external threats. He pursued a\u00a0jihadi<\/em>\u00a0(combative) and\u00a0ijtihadi<\/em>\u00a0(reformist and pragmatic) approach. After his death in 1989, his successor, Khamenei, followed his late master\u2019s legacy with as much divine and constitutional power, and ruled with an iron fist, showing what he has called \u2018heroic flexibility\u2019 only when absolutely necessary for the regime\u2019s survival. On this basis he endorsed the 2015 multilateral Iran nuclear agreement (officially, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), which has now become virtually defunct.<\/p>\n

Under his leadership, Iran has grown as a critical player in regional affairs and on the world stage. The security of the Islamic regime\u2014and, for that matter, of Iran\u2014has been intimately linked with Tehran\u2019s construction of a regional security complex, enabling it to secure a strong leverage of influence in the Levant and Yemen, to the profound irritation of the US and Iran\u2019s regional rivals, Israel and Saudi Arabia in particular. In addition, to counter US and allied pressure\u2014whether over Iran\u2019s nuclear program or alleged human rights violations and unsavoury regional activities\u2014Khamenei has found it expedient to tilt Iran irrevocably towards Russia and China, including siding with Russia in President Vladimir Putin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

While shaken by the unrest, the regime has hit back with usual defiance. Some 500 protestors have reportedly been killed and many more injured. Close to 20,000 have been detained, a couple of dozen of whom have been sentenced to death. Four have already been hanged with more to come on charges of\u00a0moharebeh<\/em>\u00a0(\u2018waging war against God\u2019) or\u00a0Ifsad fil ardh<\/em>\u00a0(\u2018corruption on earth\u2019). Dozens of security personnel have also lost their lives.<\/p>\n

The problem confronting the current wave of protesters is what derailed the pro-democracy agenda of their predecessors: a lack of a strong and united leadership and organisational structure as well as wider community support. As long as this remains the case, Khamenei\u2019s description of the regime as a \u2018mighty tree\u2019 that no one should dare to think of uprooting may hold for some time, given his regime\u2019s willingness to fight for its longevity at all costs. Concurrently, the public demands for better political, economic and social living conditions; an end to poor governance and malpractices as well as security involvement in several regional countries; and a foreign policy free of US sanctions and international isolation are unlikely to dissipate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The public unrest that has gripped Iran since September, spearheaded by women, is essentially about the very objectives that the instigators of the 1978\u201379 Iranian revolution sought but failed to achieve\u2014a pro-democracy transformation of the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":973,"featured_media":77560,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[106,247,420,218,1371],"class_list":["post-77557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-democracy","tag-iran","tag-islam","tag-middle-east","tag-religion"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIran\u2019s protests go back to the future | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/irans-protests-go-back-to-the-future\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Iran\u2019s protests go back to the future | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The public unrest that has gripped Iran since September, spearheaded by women, is essentially about the very objectives that the instigators of the 1978\u201379 Iranian revolution sought but failed to achieve\u2014a pro-democracy transformation of the ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/irans-protests-go-back-to-the-future\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-01-18T19:00:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-01-18T08:01:43+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/GettyImages-1243649889.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"766\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Amin Saikal\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Amin Saikal\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\",\"name\":\"The Strategist\",\"description\":\"ASPI's analysis and commentary site\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/irans-protests-go-back-to-the-future\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/GettyImages-1243649889.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/GettyImages-1243649889.jpg\",\"width\":1024,\"height\":766,\"caption\":\"TEHRAN, IRAN - OCTOBER 01: (EDITORS NOTE: Image taken with mobile phone camera.) 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