The Islamic Republic of Iran poses a unique challenge to world public opinion and the international community, especially since the election of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad as president.
Yet it should be remembered that the Islamists came to power in the wake of the authoritarian regime (the shah) whose main domestic characteristic was its attempt to create a faux-Western monarchy, deracinated from the Muslim ingredients of the country’s history and harking back to an imperial pagan tradition alien to contemporary Iranian society. The shah’s decision to abolish the Muslim calendar in favor of an invented one dating to the accession of King Cyrus (a pagan, to boot) is just one example of the cultural counterrevolution associated with the Pahlavi dynasty. Many of its symbols (including changing the country’s name to “Iran,” with its “Aryan” connotations) owe much to European integralist ideologies of the 1930s.
To imagine that there is, at the moment, a democratic alternative in Iran is a hallucination much like the belief that there were democratic forces in Iraq, just waiting to be liberated from Saddam’s shackles.
The Islamic revolution, while obviously not democratic, had deep popular roots in those sectors of Iranian society that were not linked to the narrow, westernized elites of Tehran. Surprising as it may sound to western ears, the constitution of the Islamic Republic tried to fashion a balance of power between the supreme leader, the Council of Guardians, the presidency, and the Parliament. The fact that presidential and parliamentary elections are contested (even if it is clear that the last ones were rigged) suggests an important element of representation. Women, for instance, have the right to vote (and helped to elect Mohammad Khatami twice). The system offers potential for change, even if former president Khatami failed to make use of it when he was in office. A relatively vibrant civil society—expressing itself among students and journalists—suggests a basic difference between Iranian society, blessed with the rich layers of Persian history, and the much more conformist and militarized Arab societies.
One should recall that Iran accelerated its nuclear research after it was attacked, and ultimately defeated, by Saddam in the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s. With some justification, Iran viewed itself as the victim, and the fact that Saddam was then supported by the United States reinforced greatly in the Iranian collective psyche an image of America as arch-enemy. This lent itself to the regime’s fundamentalist ideology. Here was a beleaguered, God-fearing Islamic republic fighting against the Western, godless juggernaut.
The regime’s revolutionary zeal dimmed over the years, and the idea of exporting the Islamic revolution was replaced, if one may use the analogy with Stalin, with an “Islam in One Country” ideology. The Islamic Republic reached Thermidor.
This has changed with the election of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. Even if one views Khatami’s call for a dialogue between civilizations as a mere tactic, it did allow for some internal pluralism; fundamentalist views about Israel were not changed, but became more marginal. Ahmedinejad’s messianic version of Twelver Shia ideology revived the revolution’s radical élan. Ahmedinejad positioned himself as the ecumenical leader of a militant Islamic umma and gained a standing among Sunni Muslims, which overcame Iran’s minority Shia position. He has radicalized the public stance of Iran’s regime by relinquishing the dialogical language of Khatami, calling repeatedly for the elimination of Israel, denying the Holocaust, and making nuclear development into an issue of national pride and inherent right.
Iran lied consistently to the International Atomic Energy Agency during Khatami’s presidency as well. Then, however, it was an issue of diplomacy and realpolitik: Ahmedinejad has succeeded in making it an issue of national identity, transcending Islamic politics.
What is to be done? U.S. failure in Iraq makes even modest justifications for the war there sound hollow, but the basic premise was correct. An oppressive regime that uses poison gas internally and externally, attacks its neighbors and threatens others, and is ambivalent—at best—about weapons of mass destruction, should be challenged by the international community and, if necessary, toppled.
The same applies to Iran. Its political regime, unpalatable as it may be, is its internal affair. But there are certain ideologies, totalitarian in outlook and with universal aspirations, that spill immanently into external affairs. This is, at the moment, the case with Iran’s messianic fundamentalism, and it is expressed in threats to wipe off the map a UN member state, in denying the Holocaust (a universal, not only a Jewish concern), and in moving toward nuclear capabilities. All this calls for a robust international response.
Does this mean military action? Not necessarily. If the UN works as it should, there is a world of options between using force and maintaining the illusion that whatever happens in Iran is “an internal affair.’” In the 1930s, the world community failed dismally; in Iraq, recently, the United States botched a good case. One hopes that some lessons have been learned.
Shlomo Avineri teaches political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He recently edited, with Zeev Sternhell, Europe’s Century of Discontent: The Legacies of Fascism, Nazism and Communism (The Magnes Press, Jerusalem).
Read other responses: Michael W. Doyle, Yitzhak Nakash, Suzanne Nossel, Anne-Marie Slaughter.
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