The Iranian people have been fighting for their rights and freedoms for more than one and a half century. While they have made some headway in this direction, their struggles have met serious obstacles, especially after the collapse of monarchy in 1906 and the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979. Although this transition took place through a popular revolution, it failed in deep ways, somehow reversing the course of history.
The present essay seeks to explain this peculiar turn of events in terms of a set of “cooptations” that have undermined the Iranian aspiration for peace, liberty, and prosperity. To that end, we need to step back and take a short detour into modern history.
Monarchs and Mullahs
Inspired by the French revolution of 1789 and the Enlightenment writers such as Voltaire and Montesquieu, in the 1800s a number of intellectuals in Iran adopted a secular worldview, advocating for liberty, rule of law, and an end to the power of absolute monarchs. In pursuing these goals, they faced two key detractors: the defendants of the ancien regime and reactionary Shiite clergy. While the resistance of the first group against change is understandable and known to Iranians and the outside world, the opposition of the second group is less recognized because it is more complex and convoluted.
The complexity has to do with the fact that the Shiite clergy has historically positioned itself in an oppositional role against the rule of the monarchs, while at the same time benefiting from their largesse. This ambivalent position toward power has enabled the mullahs to historically manipulate situations in their own favor, portraying themselves as people’s advocates and mobilizing them against monarchs whenever their agenda called for it. As a matter of fact, however, in the majority of such circumstances it was rivalry over power with monarchs that drove their actions, not their advocacy for people. The political history of Iran, especially in the last three hundred years, should be understood through this lens.
The introduction of Western liberal ideas in the 18th century injected a new parameter into this traditional equation of power, launching onto the scene a new force in the form of the public intellectual. Faced with this force, the clergy perceived it, correctly, as a threat to its entrenched power, with the majority of its ranks taking a strong oppositional stance against intellectuals as corrupting agents of Western (Christian) influence on the Iranian society. In particular, the secular rule of law promoted by these intellectuals was seen as a direct threat to the clergy’s hold on judicial power based on the laws of Shariah. In the opposite direction, clergy’s opposition pushed some intellectuals to “adjust” their secular views, presenting them in religious garb to the public and their other audiences, in the hope of ameliorating clerical opposition and attaining popular trust.
This compromising attitude sometimes took bizarre forms, to the point where “freedom” was interpreted by some 19th century writers and commentators as the right to carry out religious moral policing of people’s behavior (amr-e be maroof). In the 20th century, the compromise took on a different form, especially in the writings and provocations of religious intellectuals such as Ali Shariati — a Sorbonne-educated social theorist, who borrowed Marxist ideas of class struggle, combined them with existentialist ideas of Jean-Paul Sartre, and cast them in the eschatological language of Shiite martyrdom. The outcome was an eclectic amalgam which was neither Marxist nor existentialist, but it had the mobilizing power of an intellectual earthquake among many Iranian youth of the 1960s-70s. The clerics, shrewd as always, found in these ideas a potential rival but also a source of social mobilization that can be brought in line in due course. In this way, a double cooptation took place, where Western liberal ideas were borrowed and translated into religious language by intellectuals, whose ideas were in turn hijacked by canny clerics to their own benefit.
Jurists and Imperialists
These tensions came to a climax during the Constitutional Revolution of the early 20th century, where prominent members of the clergy took an adamant stance against the abolition of absolute monarchy. Their attempts failed, leading to a decree in 1906 for the implementation of a new constitution with provisions for an elected body, the establishment of a secular judicial system, and reforms in favor of individuals rights and liberties. In the process, however, a few of these figures came up with an alternative on the basis of the authority of the Faqih, the Islamic jurist, over political affairs. The very idea of the Jurist Rule (velayat-e faqih), which forms the political foundation of the Islamic Republic, was the brainchild of these clerics. It was in that same light that their successors opposed tentative plans in 1920s by the emerging strongman Reza Khan to abolish monarchy and establish a republican system in Iran on the model of Turkey. Many decades later, however, the idea of the Jurist Rule was adopted by Khomeini, giving rise to the Islamic Republic.
The broad-based opposition that brought Khomeini to power in 1979 included groups from all over the political spectrum — from Western-oriented liberals to Soviet-oriented Marxists, and from radical guerilla fighters to reform-minded jurists. In the process, clerics led by Khomeini gained the upper hand, partly because of their grassroot mobilization through mosques and partly because of financial support from tradition bazaar merchants. At the end, the implicit support of Western powers under the Brzezinski Doctrine of the Green Belt against the Soviet Union, tilted the balance in favor of Khomeini, giving him a sanctuary and a public forum in the suburbs of Paris. Once in power, he broke up with his former allies, suppressing demands for women rights, free press, and liberal freedoms, putting his opponents in jail or in front of firing squads. The invasion of Iran by Saddam Hossein — again with implicit support from Western powers, who had grown wary of Khomeini’s rhetoric against Israel and his regional ambitions — added fuel to the oppressive fires set up by the new regime.
In a sense, therefore, the emergence of the Islamic regime in Iran and its extreme turn to the right can be considered the outcome of the convergence of three historical trends: (i) domestically, internal tensions among political factions that led to the violent crackdown by the new regime of its former allies, including some Islamic groups; (ii) regional rivalries and old animosities flared up by the aggressive politics of Saddam Hussein; and (iii) the global environment of the Cold War, especially the anti-Soviet policies of the U.S., who perceived as a friend any enemy of the enemy, even if it was a fundamentalist regime such as the Islamic Republic. The cumulative effect of these trends was the total annihilation of revolutionary ideals of freedom, equity, and justice that had aligned people against the former monarchical regime. It is still sometimes debated whether Khomeini deceived both his former allies and the Western powers about his real intentions or the turn of events pushed him in that direction. While historical and anecdotal evidence increasingly support the former scenario — that he deceptively maneuvered his way into power — what really matters is that a momentous popular revolution was literally hijacked by a group of reactionary, narrow-minded, religious fanatics, ultimately reversing the course of history in Iran.
The Beginning of the End
More than four decades later, the outcome of this downward spiral has been nothing but loss of freedoms, autocratic rule, growing poverty, rampant corruption, environmental degradation, gender discrimination, ethnic suppression, widespread prostitution, and moral despair in the country, along with regional friction, international tension, and disrepute around the globe for Iranians and their ancient culture. Protests against these social ills and catastrophes continued in different shapes throughout these decades, but they have met with cruel punishment, imprisonment, execution, assassination, and terror inside and outside the country. This spiral seems to be finally coming to an end through the uprisings of 2022 and 2023, which look like the beginning of the end of the Islamic Republic.
Triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish girl visiting the capital Tehran, in the hands of the so-called morality police, this uprising quickly grew into a huge movement including women, students, ethnic minorities, teachers, workers, and even high-school and middle-school children, with a very active support from foreign artists, intellectuals, and politicians, as well as the millions of Iranians who live outside the country. For the first time in decades, the streets of Europe, North America, Australia, and other parts of the globe witnessed the powerful presence of Iranians rallying in the thousands, protesting the atrocities of the Islamic regime in assertive and creative forms. In an ironic twist, people who were considered disposable to the outside world, forced directly or indirectly to leave the country, came back to haunt the regime in scores that were hitherto invisible.
Early on, the speed and intensity of the uprising shocked the Islamic regime into disarray and confusion, prompting Western powers to reevaluate their relationship with it. A few months later, with more than five hundred protestors (including 60 children) dead, thousands injured and imprisoned, and four innocent young men sentenced to death and hanged, it seems that the regime has taken partial control of the scene, asserting itself as a stable power domestically and internationally. That, however, is only a surface phenomenon, with the fires of a revolution burning underneath with relentless ferociousness. The question facing us now is whether or not there is a risk of yet another cooptation and hijacking of a popular movement. If so, where does such risk come from?
Women, Life, Freedom
To address this question, we need to situate the current movement in its historical context, starting with its main slogan, “Women, Life, Liberty.” As codified in these words, the unfolding revolution in Iran immediately interrupts a historical pattern — namely, the presence, even dominance, of Shiite Islam as an alternative. For the first time in centuries, young men and women recognize political Islam as the source of problems rather than the source of a solution to social predicaments. This shift is evident not only in the slogans but also in actions such as turban flipping (ammameh parani) as a symbolic gesture against the dominant ideology. The harm that the Islamic regime has done to the sanctity of religious institutions in the public eye seems to be historically irredeemable at this point. No secular movement could have shaken the belief system of the young generation as Islamic rule itself has brought about. Four decades of ongoing abuse of public resources for the benefit of the ruling clergy and their allies has now come to light, revealing their ostensible claim to piety.
This is a shift of a historical magnitude, whose significance cannot be overstated. To use an athletic analogy, in the same manner that one would retreat in order to jump over a creek, it is as if four decades ago the Iranian society stepped back in order to leap over a major obstacle called political Islam. This shift suggests that political religion is not going to be a major concern for cooptation going forward — at least not in the foreseeable future. In other words, political religion cannot hijack the current moment as it has in the past, but there are other sources of risk that should be taken seriously. Other than the minor possibility of the continued oppression of the current regime, I would like to highlight three other possibilities here: faux feminism-liberalism, monarchism-fascism, and faux radicalism.
Feminism, Fascism, Radicalism
Women, unquestionably, are at the forefront of the current movement. Doubly oppressed under the Islamic law and a patriarchal tradition, they are demanding their rights based on the unrecognized historical role in the flourishing of Persian culture. Common outside misperceptions notwithstanding, women have played a key role in political and cultural life of the Iranian society, especially in modern times. As artists, poets, writers, activists, athletes, administrators, … they have had a visible presence on the scene. With their calcitrant resistance against the Islamic regime in the last four decades, they have shown that they can fight for their own rights. The last thing they need, therefore, is for the white (Western) men or women to act as their saviors. Their version of feminism goes beyond liberal feminism that seeks to attain equal status for women in a capitalist social order with its attendant disparities along class, ethnic, educational lines. Theirs is a radical, intersectional feminism that can provide a model for the rest of the region, the broader Islamic world, and perhaps the whole globe.
What is true of women’s status is equally true of the broader society. Historically, as described above, the power dynamics in Iran has been driven by two dominant players — monarchs and mullahs. This cycle needs to be broken for good. With clergy rule being challenged in the current uprising, the monarchist system is reemerging on the scene as a viable alternative, with its proponents pushing their agenda through the figure of Reza Pahlavi, heir to the last monarchy. While he himself claims not to have any political ambitions in the long run, the behavior of a discernible group of monarchists suggests otherwise, raising valid concerns among some observers about the potential rise of fascism in a post-Islamic Iran. The experience of the Arab Spring, especially in Egypt, gives credence to such concerns.
Western powers, especially the U.S., have a great role to play in this respect. Recent history, not only in Egypt, Iraq, and Libya, but in Iran itself portrays a largely negative image where popular struggles for liberty were undermined by foreign intervention, with hundreds of thousands of innocent lives sacrificed at the altar of corporate profit and the agendas of the military-industrial complex. The dark reality of global real politic hardly lives up to the liberatory rhetoric of Western powers. In fact, this sad record is one of the reasons the Islamic Republic has survived this long, portraying itself as the savior of Muslims against Western intervention, as well as the apartheid system of Israel and autocratic regimes in Saudi Arabia and UAE. The future of a liberated Iran, and of the region, cannot be a repetition of this history.
This, finally, takes us to the last source of concern for the future of Iran. The combination of the above issues creates fertile ground for the cultivation of a faux radicalism that might aspire to unsettle the status quo through unfettered measures. Such an approach can take the ethnic, cultural, or political forms, or a combination thereof. Given the practical challenges that a liberated Iran will be facing with respect to the economy, environment, political stability, and regional rivalry, this kind of radicalism would stand little chance of bringing about the peace, liberty, and prosperity that the current uprising aspires to accomplish. What we need is a measured radicalism that would surpass traditional alternatives but that would at the same time be capable of providing practical alternatives grounded in the socio-historical, political, and cultural realities of Iran.
Our brief survey of the Iranian struggle of human rights and liberties shows the vulnerabilities of these struggles to various types of cooptation. One could only hope that novel forms of cooptation will not undermine the current uprising. All revolutions are alike, to paraphrase Tolstoy; each failed revolution fails in its own way. I would like to think that the young generation of men and women in Iran have learned enough from history not to allow their revolution to fail.