Lecture given at a conference on Iran, Exeter University, on 7th October 2009
Iran is a medium-sized developing country, not at all in the league of great world powers. Nevertheless, the amount of attention that it receives is completely out of proportion to its political, military or economic importance. After the US election, there was probably no other election that attracted so much attention from the world media as the last Iranian election. Thousands of foreign journalists from all the major news media went to Tehran to cover the election. Last week, the representatives of five world powers, permanent members of the Security Council and Germany met with the Iranian nuclear negotiator. In addition to those multilateral talks, there have been some bilateral talks going on between Iran and the United States. There are a few reasons why Iran attracts so much attention in the world.
The first reason is Iran’s long history. Among all the countries of the world, Iran is unique in the length of its power and the continuity of its national identity. From the 7th century BC, with the rise of the Medes, to the 7th century AD with the invasion of the Arabs and the imposition of Islam, Iran was an empire (with a short interregnum after Alexander’s invasion) covering the entire Middle East and beyond. Even after the Islamic conquests, many mighty empires arose in Iran, challenging the Islamic Caliphate, right up to the middle of the 18th century. So, in its 3,000-year history, Iran has vied with the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the Greek, the Roman, the Byzantine, the Arab and the Ottoman empires. No other country can boast such a long history of continuous military and political power and a sense of national identity.
The second reason for Iran’s importance is its geopolitical position. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the concept of geopolitics was regarded very seriously by great powers. G.N. (later Lord) Curzon, viceroy of India and British foreign secretary, showed a special interest in Iran (as evidenced by his monumental two-volume book Persia and the Persian Question published in 1892). Speaking about Persia and Afghanistan in 1898, he said: “To me, I confess, [countries] are pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a game for dominion of the world.”
The British geopolitician Halford John Mackinder (1861-1947) was a fellow of Christ Church and later became a reader in Geography at Oxford. He was also the founder of Reading University and the London School of Economics. In 1904, Mackinder gave a paper on “The Geographical Pivot of History” at the Royal Geographical Society, in which he formulated his very influential “Heartland Theory”. This is often considered the founding moment of Geopolitics as a field of study. In an essay written in 1905, he warned British strategists about preventing Eurasian unification:
“What if the Great Continent, the whole World-Island [Africa and Eurasia] or a large part of it [e.g., Russia, China, Persia, and India] were at some future time to become a single and united base of sea power? Would not the other insular bases [e.g., Britain, the U.S., and Japan] be outbuilt [sic] as regards [to] ships and outmanned as regards [to] seamen?”[1]
A version of this theory seems to be behind the thinking of many political pundits today. The fear in the twenty-first Century is the unification of Russia, China, India, and Iran, something which has already started between China, Russia and some Central Asian countries with the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO), with Iran as an observer. Today is the eighth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, and the problems there are still continuing and indeed getting worse. Pakistan too has been destabilised, and after a large number of terrorist activities and the attacks on the Swat Valley, Pakistan is now going to attack South Waziristan. All these activities, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central Asia and elsewhere, could be an aspect of the perennial rivalry between the West and the emerging powers of China, India, Iran and Russia.
The third reason is that Iran forms the hub of the biggest oil and gas resources in the world. Iran straddles the entire northern tier of the Persian Gulf and part of the Indian Ocean, where nearly 70 per cent of the entire oil reserves are situated. She is also the second most powerful country in the Caspian Sea area, with vast oil and gas deposits both in the Caspian Sea and in the littoral countries, especially Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, not only has the United States pushed deeper into Eastern European allies of the former Soviet Union, but US interest in Central Asia has also grown significantly. The inroads into Central Asian countries, which both Russia and China consider as their backyard, have alarmed both countries. With the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the United States is keeping an eye on Central Asia, China, Iran and Pakistan, as well as trying to secure the vast gas and oil deposits of Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan in its competition with China and India. The recent successful visit of the Indian prime minister to China after so many years of hostility was another sign of rapprochement between the two Asian giants, perhaps as a counterbalance to US power.
The global struggle for oil and gas pipelines has already given rise to the Nabucco, Nord Stream, South Stream and many other pipeline projects. These various projects are reflections of intense rivalry between the United States, Europe, Russia, China and India over the Middle Eastern and Central Asian oil and gas deposits. All these projects are part of the growing thirst for energy and the desire to control the vast resources of the Middle East and Central Asia, something that is sometimes referred to as “Pipelineistan”.
The fourth reason for Iran’s importance is its own vast deposits of oil and gas. Iran has the second-largest oil deposits after Saudi Arabia and the second-largest gas deposits after Russia. Iran and Saudi Arabia possess over a third of known oil deposits, and Iran and Russia control nearly half of all gas deposits globally. Iran possesses more than 10 per cent of the world’s oil and nearly 18 per cent of the proven gas resources of the world.
The fifth and perhaps the most urgent reason for the West’s hostility to Iran is that it serves as a symbol of Islamic fundamentalism, at least of the Shi’i variety. Since the victory of the Islamic Revolution, Iran has portrayed itself as the standard-bearer of Islam and the oppressed against what Ayatollah Khomeini called “world arrogance”. His slogan of “neither East nor West” was a symbol of militant independence and a rejection of both superpowers. Since then, Iran has continued to be a thorn in America’s side and is regarded as a representative of anti-Western and anti-Israeli resistance in the name of religion. Iran’s nuclear programme – like Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction – has provided a good excuse for the West to use as a means of opposing and demonising its rather unpleasant and anti-Western regime.
The sixth reason for Iran’s significance is the political activism of its people and the struggle for freedom and independence, almost unique in the entire Middle East. In the past century alone, Iranians have staged four major movements or revolutions for freedom and independence.
A- First, they surged briefly towards the end of the 19th century, when Iran sought independence from British and Russian political and economic domination, symbolised by the popular Tobacco Protest of 1891-92, which forced the Qajar monarch to cancel his grant of a 50-year tobacco concession to a British company. That movement, led by Ayatollah Mirza Shirazi, the leading Shi’a cleric of the time, gave the people the first sign of victory against a despotic regime.
B- The desire for domestic freedom, linked with democracy, deepened as a result of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1906-11), which gave Iran its first parliament, the Majlis. The parliament placed limits on the monarch’s previously unfettered powers. It established regular elections for the Majlis, which was given considerable powers to control government policies, and for the first time made the people “citizens”, rather than “subjects” to kings. Unfortunately, the outbreak of the First World War and also the machinations of foreign powers to dominate Iran, especially after the discovery of oil in 1909, put an end to people’s democratic gains.
C- The freedom movement widened with the Iranian nationalist uprising led by Dr Mohammad Mosaddeq, the first democratically elected leader in Iran’s history. Mosaddeq and other nationalist leaders tried to curtail the Shah’s unconstitutional rule and wrest control of Iran’s oil industry from the British. But the coup against Mosaddeq’s government, led by the CIA and the British intelligence MI6, ended that effort in 1953.
D- The 1979 Iranian Revolution spoke both to freedom and to the political independence of Iran. It aimed to end foreign domination and the dictatorship of Reza Shah and Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, whom the revolutionaries regarded as serving the interests of foreign powers and, in the case of Mohammad Reza Shah, mainly America.
The revolution was initially very popular and basically democratic, but in order to achieve mass support, the revolutionaries turned to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who lived abroad and had a greater ability to oppose the Shah and give voice to people’s demands. The slogans of the revolution were “freedom, independence and social justice”.
People had a clear understanding of what those slogans meant. They wanted to have political freedom at home, achieve independence from foreign domination and bridge the huge gap between the rich and the poor. However, when Khomeini consolidated his power, he began to change the meaning of those slogans. “Azadi”, freedom, was changed to Azadegi, spiritual emancipation and freedom from carnal desires. Independence became a rejection of anything foreign and a symbol of isolationism and paranoia. Social justice was changed to the Islamic Republic.
At the heart of Ayatollah Khomeini’s idea of the Islamic Republic was the theory of Velayat-e Faqih (the Guardianship of Jurisprudent, the leading Islamic scholar). Ayatollah Khomeini put forward a completely new concept known as “Velayat-e Faqih”, which basically meant the rule of the faqih or senior clergy. In a series of lectures, which were subsequently published in a book.[2] Ayatollah Khomeini formulated his ideas about an Islamic government based on the rule of the leading cleric. Ayatollah Khomeini argued that Prophet Muhammad did not merely promulgate laws, but was also an executor of the law and acted in the capacity of a ruler. Therefore, in the absence of the Prophet and the Shi’i Imams, the clerics who are experts in Islamic law must assume the role of the leadership of the community.
Not only was this concept alien to the majority of Sunni sects, but it did not have a precedent among the Shi’is either. In fact, with his theory about the illegitimacy of non-clerical governments, Ayatollah Khomeini condemned the entire history of Islam during the past 1,400 years, because after the death of the Prophet Muhammad and the short-lived government of Imam Ali, the fourth caliph, Muslim countries have never been ruled by the Imams or clerics.
In fact, with the rise of various governments (most of them Iranian or Turkish) in Islamic lands, the Shari’a was replaced with non-religious laws enacted by various kings, with a veneer of Islamic legitimacy. Throughout Islamic history, there has been a distinction between “Shar’i” (Shari’a-based) and “Urfi” (customary) law, with the former dealing mainly with the private affairs of the people and the customary law being the dominant law of the land.
An issue which has not been explored sufficiently is the question of the succession of the Imams and why they had Nuwwab, representatives or deputies. If one looks at the dates of birth and death of the last few Imams, one comes across a very fascinating point, namely that the last Imams were children when they succeeded their fathers and became Imams. Here are the dates of births and deaths of the last four Imams and when they assumed their Imamate:
NAME BIRTH DEATH AGE WHEN IMAM AGE AT DEATH
9- Muhammad at-Taqi 195/810 220/835 7 25
10- ‘Ali al-Hadi [an-Naqi] 212/827 254/868 8 41
11-Hasan al-‘Askari 231/845 260/873 22 28
12-Muhammad al-Mahdi 255/868 Hidden 5 75 (?)
One can see that the 9th and 10th Imams were children when they assumed the Imamate and also died relatively young, and the eleventh Imam was only 22 when he assumed the post and died six years later. Many believe that the eleventh Imam, Hasan al-‘Askari, had no children when he died, but a story developed that he had a five-year-old son, called Muhammad al-Mahdi, who had been kept out of the public gaze for his protection.
For nearly seventy years, the “Hidden Imam” was represented by four “Nuwwab” (deputies or representatives), but with the death of the last deputy when the last Imam should have been nearly seventy years old, people demanded to see him. It was at this time that it was announced that the period of the Minor Occultation (Gheybat al-Sughra) had ended and the period of Major Occultation (Gheybat al-Kubra) had started. It was said that the last Imam had gone into long-term hiding and would remain hidden until he reappears in the “Last Days” to establish the reign of justice.
Therefore, the whole issue of the Hidden Imam and the need for his vicegerents in his absence is a concept that must be taken with a pinch of salt. Throughout his discourse, Khomeini rejected the vision of legislation by humans because, according to him, in the final analysis, true consciousness and justice are not within the human realm; man has no right to “forge” legislation. He even specified that “in Islamic government, instead of a legislative assembly which constitutes one of the branches of the government, there is a programming assembly that draws up programs for different ministers … in the light of the laws of Islam.”[3] Khomeini’s doctrine of the guardianship of the jurist (Velayat-e Faqih) in effect rejects the notion of popular sovereignty and participatory democracy. Indeed, Khomeini had stated that: “The custodian [Vali] of the nation, concerning duty and position, is no different from the custodian of the minors.”[4]
After the establishment of the Islamic Republic, the concept of “Velayat-e Faqih” was incorporated in the new Constitution and has formed the basis of the government in Iran ever since. In fact, if anything, in the revised constitution that was amended after Ayatollah Khomeini’s death on 3 June 1989, the powers of the spiritual leader have been increased. The present supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i, is in overall charge of all three powers. He confirms the mandate of the president, appoints the head of the judiciary, six clerical members of the Guardian Council, the Friday Imams of the main cities, the head of the Broadcasting Organisation, and as the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces he is in overall charge of the armed forces, the security forces, and the police. He wields a power that is much greater than that of the elected president. In theory, his powers are much more extensive than the late shah’s powers were under the old Iranian Constitution.
Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, Khomeini’s chosen successor until he fell out with him during the last few months of his life, not only challenged Khamene’i’s credentials but also stressed that it was never intended that the leader would be unaccountable and above the law. The original constitution stipulated that the leader must be chosen through general popular recognition of his outstanding merit. As Montazeri emphasises:
“It is certain that the legitimacy of this post is acquired through popular election. In reality, there is a social contract between the people and the Leader, and the Constitution was drafted on that basis. Accordingly, his term may be limited and temporary, like that of the president or a member of parliament. And given that the Leader is accorded responsibility by the people, he is not infallible. He must accept criticism and be responsible for his actions.”[5]
Despite his earlier enthusiasm for the concept of Velayat-e Faqih, Montazeri’s later statements sound almost democratic. In a rare interview with the French Communist Party newspaper, L’Humanité, in his written replies to questions put to him by fax, he wrote: “The concentration of powers in the hands of a single person is not accepted and must not be accepted.”[6] He added: “The separation of powers is a progressive and reasonable principle and is not in contradiction with a religious government.” He continued: “The legitimacy of the religious government resides in the people — without the people, it has none.”
Montazeri warned that as Khamene’i was not chosen by the people and was not answerable to them, the Iranian system’s popularity was threatened. “If the leadership does not change its behaviour radically, there is no future for the religious government,” he said.
After the Islamic revolution, the left and the right began to fight, and the revolution ate its children. The Mojahedin-e Khalq, the Feda’iyan-e Khalq, the Komeleh, and the Tudeh Party were crushed. Then came the turn of the insiders. First Qotbzadeh, who flew to Tehran with Khomeini, was executed on charges of wanting to stage a coup against the regime. The first president, Bani-Sadr, was impeached and deposed. In 1989, when the Mojahedin joined Saddam’s army to attack Iran, Khomeini ordered all Mojahedin prisoners, young men and women, to be executed en masse. Between 2000 – 8000 were killed.
Then, after Khomeini’s death, the regime began to be divided into four main groups:
A- The religious conservatives, which is represented by Ali Akbar Nateq-Nuri (former Majlis speaker and presidential candidate) and Mohammad Reza Mahdavi-Kani (a former prime minister and leading cleric).
B- The pragmatists, which is represented by Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani (the former two-term president and two-term Majlis speaker and present chairman of the Assembly of Experts and of the Expediency Council).
C- The reformers, represented by Mohammad Khatami (former two-term president), Mehdi Karrubi (former two-term Majlis speaker) and Mir Hossein Musavi (prime minister for eight years during the Iran-Iraq War under Ayatollah Khomeini).
D- The Hezbollahis, or religious radicals represented by Mahmud Ahmadinezhad and his clerical mentor Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi.
In the recent election, Mohsen Reza’i (the former commander of the Revolutionary Guards Corps) was the representative of religious conservatives, Musavi and Karrubi were the representatives of the reformists, and Ahmadinezhad was the representative of the militants and Hezbollahis.
After the 12 June election, the country saw massive demonstrations, unprecedented since the beginning of the revolution. The marches numbering in millions chanted “No to Taliban, in Kabul or in Tehran”. In a show of solidarity with one another, they chanted: “Natarsim, natarsim, ma hameh ba hamasim” (let’s not be afraid, we are all together). Other slogans they chanted were: “Death to the Dictator” and “nasro min allah va fathon gharib, marg bar in dowlat-e mardom farib” (with God’s help victory is nigh, death to this cheating, lying government), and ‘Where is my vote?”
The demonstrations were brutally suppressed, thousands were arrested, at least 72 were killed, but the government has not been able to crush the opposition. At the beginning of the academic year in October, Ahmadinezhad was due to inaugurate the new academic year by speaking at Tehran University, but he had to cancel his speech due to large demonstrations by students. There have been other demonstrations in other universities, and they continue right to the present time.
The open defiance by thousands of opposition supporters around Friday prayers at Tehran University on 17 July 2009 is an indication of the heaving anger among the masses. The gathering heard a call by the former president and influential figure Hashemi Rafsanjani for those arrested in the protests to be released. When the organisers of the prayers began to chant their normal slogans of Death to America, the crowds chanted Death to the Dictator, Death to Russia and Death to China.
This show of defiance was once again seen on Quds Day celebrations on 18 September when millions poured into the streets allegedly to celebrate the day of solidarity with the Palestinians, but their chant was “na ghazza, na lobnan, janam feda-ye Iran” (Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, I sacrifice my life for Iran), or “Felestin ra raha kon, Fekri be haal-e ma kon” (Leave Palestine alone, think about us first), or “Iran shodeh Felestin, Mardom Chera neshestin” (Iran has become another Palestine, people why are you keeping quiet?)
The post-election demonstrations were completely homegrown. After all, the Israelis and the American neo-conservatives preferred Ahmadinezhad to win, because they could demonise him more easily. “Just because Moussavi is called a moderate or a reformist doesn’t mean he’s a nice guy. After all, he was approved by the Islamic leadership,” says Ephraim Inbar, director of the Begin Sadat Centre at Bar Ilan University. “If we have Ahmadinejad, we know where we stand. If we have Moussavi, we have a serpent with a nice image.”[7]
Mossad Chief Meir Dagan, Israel’s top spy, told a panel of Israeli lawmakers: “If the reformist candidate Mousavi had won, Israel would have had a more serious problem, because it would need to explain to the world the danger of the Iranian threat.”[8]
The battle is on three fronts. The first front is inside the system. The election was within the system, and the candidates were approved by the regime.
The second front is outside the regime and involves foreign and domestic opposition that does not want the present Islamic regime.
The third front is the foreign front, which has its own interests and for them, an election is only a means to achieve a goal, namely, to weaken and dominate Iran.
Yet, just as by the 1980s, millions of citizens in Eastern and Central Europe were expressing their dissatisfaction in terms beyond reformist communism, so the Iranian demonstrators of June 2009 were articulating a programme that was also larger and more international than that of their predecessors. The revolution was born of the increased Iranian awareness of the outside world produced by education, the internet and the very real pluralism of information and opinion that, for all its repression, the Islamic Republic has permitted.
Their main rallying cry was (and is) at once contemporary and full of historical resonance that derives from Iran’s constitutional revolution of 1906. What they demand, and what the opposition presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi has reiterated in his statements since the demonstrations, is a broad range of freedoms: of expression, of social behaviour, of the media.
The demonstrators represented
* A particular revulsion with the corruption, lies, and deceits of the mullahs
* They showed their revulsion at the lack of freedom and democracy
* They showed their revulsion with the political direction, the chauvinism, the provocative and ignorant policies of Ahmadinezhad
* They showed their opposition to the economic failures of Ahmadinejad’s government and his false slogans
* Above all, they showed their utter revulsion with the life-negating, joyless, puritanical message of obscurantist mullahs
In his letter to Montazeri, Musavi expresses three fears. His first concern is that, faced with the brutal methods adopted by Khamene’i and the revolution guards, the Green Movement would become more radical and move towards violence. The other concern is that it would be hijacked by the opposition abroad and be taken towards a direction that the domestic Iranians do not intend. The third concern is that it might destabilise the country and turn it into another Iraq and Afghanistan. The other concern that many secularists have is that even if Musavi and Karrubi are allowed to form some sort of a weak government and be faced with the opposition of the hardliners, as Khatami’s government was, then what?
The authorities claim that reformers intend to bring about a “velvet revolution” or, as they call it, “soft toppling”, supported by and engineered from abroad. They don’t realise that democracy precisely means the soft overthrow of the ruling regime and replacing it with a popular government desired by the people.
Ahmadinezhad’s government has been moving towards military, political and religious monopolisation of the country. He has initiated a policy of the patronage of the guards and the Basij and is moving the country towards militarism. He has championed the extremist views of Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, the Hojjatiyyeh and other hard-right clerics who believe that the government’s legitimacy is derived from Islam and from Velayat-e Faqih, not from the popular vote. Ahmadinezhad has also initiated a policy of patronage of cronies in the form of an economic Mafia and has created a form of a Ba’thist clique. He has also been speaking to friends about the possibility of extending presidential terms and remaining in power for a long time to come.
New York Times journalist Roger Cohen spent many months in Iran before and just after the presidential election. He was deeply touched by the country and the people. He wrote: “We journalists are supposed to move on. Most of the time, like insatiable voyeurs, we do. But once a decade or so, we get undone, as if in love, and [9]our subject has its revenge, turning the tables and refusing to let us be.” He further said that Iran was “a land of poets who knew how to marry the sacred and the sensuous and always laughed at the idea of a truth so absolute it would not accommodate contradiction.”
Throughout history, Iranians have been individualistic, fun-loving and averse to fanaticism. Persian literature manifests the sense of joy with life and the mystical aspects of religion. These people will not easily give in to fanatical doctrines and dictatorial regimes. People throughout the world must realise that the post-election demonstrations in Iran have been home-grown and genuine, and they must help the people to achieve greater freedom and democracy and to play their rightful role in the international community.
Notes
[1] Halford John Mackinder, Chap. 3 (The Seaman’s Point of View), in Democratic Ideals and Reality (London, U.K.: Constables and Company Ltd., 1919), p.91
[2] For a translation of some of Ayatollah Khomeini’s writings, see: Imam Khomeini, Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations, translated and annotated by Hamid Algar (KPI Ltd., London, 1985).
[3] Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Islamic Revolution.
[4] Ibid
[5] Hossein Ali Montazeri, Dirasat fi Vilayat al-Faqih va fiqh al-Dowlat al-Islamiyya [Lessons on Velayat-e faqih and religious views concerning Islamic government]. These lessons were taught between 1363 and 1368 [1984-1989] at Qom religious seminary.
[6] These and subsequent quotations come from Ayatollah Montazeri’s interview with L’Humanité, as quoted by AP, 18 July 2001.
[7] Gil Ronen, “Is Mousavi Worse for Israel?”, Israel National News, June 25, 2009 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/132030
[8] Jeffrey Goldberg, “Mossad Head: Ahmadinejad Good for Israel”, The Atlantic, June 16, 2009 https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2009/06/mossad-head-ahmadinejad-good-for-israel/19531/
[9] Roger Cohen, “A Journalist’s Actual Responsibility”, New York Times, 5 July 2009
F Jahanpour 