The conservatives’ victory in Iran’s parliamentary polls this month exposed a state secret and defied a common perception that the Islamic republic is on the cusp of an internal rebellion.
A low voter turnout by Iranian standards (about half of those eligible voted) and the resignation of more than a third of the sitting parliamentarians in protest of the state’s decision to ban thousands of candidates from running have created the greatest political stalemate in more than a decade. As a result, the election has allowed hard-line clerics to take complete control of the state, stifling a limited but persistent opposition movement.
But the true struggle in Iran is not a political battle between reformers seeking pluralism and hard-line clerics advancing despotism. It is Iran’s inability to deliver on the promise of the 1979 Islamic Revolution–to create an Islamic state that also functions as a republic. This was the source of revolutionary Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s widespread appeal, which once reached well beyond the borders of Shiite Iran and energized the broader world of the Sunni Islam.
The decision by the Guardian Council, 12 hard-line clerics and jurists charged with ensuring that all laws in Iran are compatible with Islamic teaching, to ban 2,000 perceived pro-reformist rivals from running in the election killed any hope that public opinion would play a role in Iranian politics. For these clerics, public opinion, embodied in an elected parliament opposed to their rule, is ultimately a religious threat–not a political one.
A new progressive parliament–like the last one that was dominated by deputies generally sympathetic to the reform movement–would likely try to free the state-controlled news media, lift social restrictions on young Iranians and lay the groundwork for free elections. In the eyes of hard-line clerics, all of these possibilities mean Islam would take a back seat to the demands of a modern society.
Monitoring of behavior
In their view, freedom of expression in the news media or in the public sphere should not be the absolute right of the people in an Islamic state. They believe social behavior should be monitored, lest young people succumb to Western decadence that could lead them to stray from their faith. Twenty-five years after the promise of an Islamic republic, the clerics running the state have clearly abandoned that vision and decided they have no choice: Between a state ruled by God or one ruled by the people, they have chosen the former.
Moreover, they are determined that they alone have the right to interpret and enforce God’s will. This is their primary difference with modernists in Iran, who believe that the faithful should have the right to interpret religion in ways best suited to their lives.
When challenged about their decision, the conservatives often rely on the anti-American rhetoric that has formed the basis of their revolutionary ideology since 1979. To allow flexibility in the system, they argue, is to become vulnerable to the “enemies” plotting the regime’s demise.
In defense of the low voter turnout and the way the election was handled, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the successor to Khomeini as the supreme clerical leader who has final say over all state affairs, said: “The losers in this election are the United States, Israeli Zionists and the country’s enemies.”
Power motive?
Cynics argue that it is not religion that motivates conservative clerics but rather a raw desire for political and economic power. And there is some truth to the “millionaire mullah” theory. Some of the most influential politicians and clerics have a monopoly over state industries, ranging from Iran’s lucrative pistachio and caviar exports to control over billions in property and businesses once owned by the deposed shah and his inner circle.
But this thirst for money and power among a few elites has been allowed to thrive only because of the basic belief among the majority of clerics: To give people too much say is to place the religious state at risk of extinction.
It is this fear that underlies the failure of the reform movement led by President Mohammad Khatami, once a hugely popular leader who is now reviled by the same Iranians who used to support him. Since his election in 1997, Khatami has been unwilling to challenge this absolutist vision.
Even his own brother, a parliamentary deputy whom the Guardian Council banned from running for re-election, publicly criticizes the president–behavior considered taboo in Iran. Mohammad Reza Khatami says the reform movement failed to establish free elections because his brother was unwilling to confront the unelected, hard-line clerics in a serious way.
The result was a divided and indecisive movement with a leader whose legitimacy has evaporated. Since 2000, President Khatami has threatened to resign unless the Guardian Council stopped vetoing progressive legislation passed by the reformist-dominated parliament.
But time and time again, when the Guardian Council ignored parliament, Khatami remained in office. His brother says publicly that the conservatives should “save themselves from being overthrown.” But it is doubtful that he believes his own warnings. As early as 2001, President Khatami said fundamental reform that could lead to a democratic system would likely take a generation.
The lessons
So what lessons can be learned from Iran’s failed experiment to run an Islamic state that is also a republic?
Some pundits and academics use Iran’s failure to support their claim that Islam is inherently incompatible with democracy. By contrast, those who have argued that Iran is on the brink of a popular rebellion that will bring about a democratic system argue that Iranian society is not anti-clerical but anti-Islamic, that the regime is fragile and that there are more prospects for democracy in Iran than anywhere in the Middle East.
Both of these theories are flawed. For many Islamic societies, from Egypt to Turkey and even Iraq, Iran’s failure has been a great lesson.
Clerics in all of these countries say they have no desire to emulate Iran’s system of government. Specifically, they believe that unelected clerics should not have a direct role in running a state. Rather, they are searching for ways to create democratic systems that also take Islamic culture and tradition into account.
In 1997, it seemed Iran was at the forefront of this struggle to make Islam compatible with democracy. But centuries of authoritarian rule in Persian history have left Iranians without a road map or even political and cultural instincts that could move them in that direction. Part of the reform movement’s failure certainly can be attributed to its authoritarian behavior. Student leaders on university campuses, for example, who once supported Khatami in the late 1990s and then began to criticize his presidency were threatened and silenced by the very reformers who say they are seeking pluralism.
Still, there is a growing social movement for fundamental change evolving in Iran despite the deeds of the hard-liners. How long this movement will take to effectively challenge current clerical rule is anyone’s guess. In the meantime, Iran will certainly be influenced by the experiences of other Islamic countries facing the same theological question Iran first encountered when it aimed to be a state ruled by God and man.
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Geneive Abdo, who spent three years as a correspondent in Iran, is the Tribune’s religion writer.
