Iran in the 21st Century

Politics, Economics & Conflict

Homa Katouzian, Hossein Shahidi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134077595
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Economics

Iran is an ancient country, an oil-exporting economy and an Islamic Republic. It experienced two full-scale revolutions in the twentieth century, the latter of which had large and important regional and international consequences, including an eight-year war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And now in the twenty-first century, it confronts issues and experiences problems which have important implications for its future development and external relations.

Featuring outstanding contributions from leading sociologists, social anthropologists, political scientists and economists in the field of Iranian studies, this book is the first to examine Iran and its position in the contemporary world.

In developing this argument, topics examined include:

• social developments in the country including gender relations
• contemporary politics
• international relations
• relations with the US and Israel
• nuclear weapons and energy programmes
• oil and the development of the economy.

1 Introduction

Iran in the 21st century – politics, economics and conflict

Homa Katouzian and Hossein Shahidi

Iran has emerged from the 20th century having experienced two massive revolutions, two world wars, a movement for independence and democracy which began with the nationalization of Iranian oil and ended with the coup d’etat of August 1953, and a long war with Iraq. In the meantime the Qajar monarchy gave way to the Pahlavi dynasty, and the latter to an Islamic Republic.

A century ago the Constitutional Revolution aimed at the establishment of government based in law in place of Iran’s traditional arbitrary rule (estebdad), and ended up with a constitution which promised not only lawful but also democratic government. Virtually the entire urban society rose up against the state, including landlords, merchants, the ulama and the common people, the peasantry not having an independent presence in the Revolution. No social class resisted the Revolution, and the small number of ulama who advocated Islamic government (mashru’eh) did not manage to attract a sizable public following.

Yet the Revolution’s triumph in 1909 led to growing chaos rather than law, order and democratic government, for chaos had been the traditional Iranian society’s response to the fall of the state. The intrusion of World War I and the warring forces into the country worsened the state of chaos but it was not its cause; nor did the end of the war result in a normal state either in politics or in society. Chaos was not only in the provinces but more effectively in the capital, in the centre of politics, in the parliament, in the government, in the press and in the streets. The 1919 Anglo-Iranian Agreement was intended to bring stability to the country and prepare the ground for modernization within the framework of constitutional monarchy. But Iranians saw this as a British attempt to turn Iran into a protectorate and their solid opposition prevented its application and implementation.

All roads to the normal functioning of constitutional government having thus been blocked, the country’s choices were either disintegration – as had happened many times in its long history – or a strong government which would stamp out chaos and impose order and discipline. This was achieved by the 1921 coup which brought Reza Khan to power with some help from British military officers and diplomats on the ground, although the British government had had no previous knowledge of it. The relative security and stability which this brought within a couple of years was appreciated by a growing number of propertied and modern social classes who provided the principal base and legitimacy for Reza Khan’s successful bid in 1925 to abolish the Qajars and establish his own monarchy in 1926. Even the ulama acquiesced in the establishment of the Pahlavi regime.

It was in the first decade of Reza Khan/Reza Shah’s rule, 1921–1931, when the chaos was stamped out everywhere and the foundations for modern industry and public institutions were laid. This was a decade of growing dictatorship, but in the decade which followed, government reverted back to the traditional Iranian arbitrary rule in a modern guise. By the time the Allied troops entered Iran in 1941, there was little political legitimacy and social base left for the Shah, the landlords having been alienated because of encroachments on their property and the elimination of their political influence; merchants, also for the same reasons as well as the government’s strong étatist policies; the ulama, for attacks on religious culture and institutions; ministers and the civil service, for having no executive power at all; and modern intellectuals, for the absence of freedom and human rights.

The abdication of Reza Shah did not result in democracy but once again in chaos in the centre as well as in the provinces, in line with Iran’s age-old traditions. At one stage riots were organized by the royal court and leading establishment politicians during which the prime minister’s own house was ransacked and looted. There were revolts in Azerbaijan, Fars and elsewhere. The Tudeh party at first attracted many young and younger modern Iranians who longed for democratic government, but its approval of the revolt in Azerbaijan under pressure from the Soviet Union lost it much support. And later, when it became an orthodox Stalinist party, it lost its popular base despite enjoying a strong militant membership.

It was the movement for the nationalization of Iranian oil led by the National Front which attracted the Tudeh’s erstwhile popular base and more. It began in the late1940s following an official attempt to extract from the Anglo–Iranian Oil Company concessions to rectify the 1933 oil agreement. This agreement was highly unpopular and the strongest reason why most Iranians believed, although unfairly, that Reza Shah had been a British agent. The nationalization of Iranian oil quickly became symbolic for a campaign to rid the country of British interference in its politics, the adoption of a non-aligned foreign policy and the promotion of democratic government.

Thus Iranian politics was made up of three opposing tendencies: the Tudeh party which depended on the Soviet Union and favoured a totalitarian regime; the Shah and conservatives who wanted a strong regime and sought Western support; and Mosaddeq and the popular movement who believed in parliamentary democracy and non-alignment. But the situation was far from stable since the conservatives and Tudeh were both busy trying to eliminate their other two rivals, and Mosaddeq’s government did not try hard enough to check rebellious and chaotic activities. On the other hand, the failure to settle the oil dispute with Britain and the loss of oil revenues resulting from the international boycott of Iranian oil led to the deterioration of the economic and political situation. Eventually the American and British governments managed to organize and enable Mosaddeq’s conservative opponents to stage the coup d’etat of August 1953.

The decade 1953–1963 was a period of growing dictatorship somewhat comparable to the first decade of Reza Shah’s rule, although its last three years witnessed a power struggle from which Mohammad Reza Shah emerged triumphant. In 1955 the Shah dismissed General Zahedi’s loyal government in a bid to strengthen his own personal rule, but until 1960 the parliament still had a certain amount of independence, although it was dominated by the landlords, and its members had to have the Shah’s approval. In the meantime, the Consortium oil agreement and American foreign aid returned the flow of foreign exchange which enabled the Plan Organization to implement the second Five Year Plan, but corruption and the ‘open doors’ foreign trade policy led to the economic crisis of 1960.

Ali Amini’s loyal government of 1961–1962 intended to reduce the Shah’s executive powers, curb corruption and implement a land-reform programme. It had America’s blessing and managed to make a beginning with land reform, but the combined opposition of the Shah, the second National Front and the Tudeh party forced it to resign. The fall of Amini considerably strengthened the Shah who in January 1963 put a six-point social and economic reform programme, described as the White Revolution, that included land reform and women’s suffrage to referendum. The landlords felt unhappy for loss of economic as well as social power, the ulama were alienated for the same reasons as well as the Westernizing trends, and the urban public was restless owing to lack of freedom and political participation. The result was the revolt of June 1963 led by Ayatollah Khomeini; the revolt was suppressed, and the Ayatollah was later exiled to Turkey and eventually Iraq.

From the mid-1960s until the late 1970s power was concentrated entirely in the Shah’s hands rather like the second decade of his father’s rule. The growth and then explosion of the oil revenues greatly strengthened the state vis-à-vis the public as well as foreign powers. There was a high growth rate throughout the period although differences in income and welfare increased both between town and country and within the urban sector itself. The total absence of freedom and participation coupled with Western, especially American, support for the Shah convinced the public that he was no more than a puppet who was implementing the policies of imperialism. This led to very strong feelings against both the Shah and the West even in the upper classes of society. Therefore, when in 1977 a limited degree of freedom was allowed, largely in response to criticisms from the West, there was a massive revolt which ended in the fall of the state in February 1979.

Just like the Constitutional Revolution and the traditional Iranian revolts before it, the 1979 Revolution was a revolt of the society against the state. No social class or political party defended the regime, and towards the end, men and women of the highest orders of society joined the massive demonstrations against it. Islamic, traditional and modern, liberal, democratic and Marxist–Leninist, they were bound together only by the objective of removing the Shah and bringing down the state. It was therefore natural that in the chaos that followed the declaration of the Islamic Republic, not only various political parties and trends, but also various social classes and groups should come into conflict with one another over what was to replace the fallen regime. The result was extensive as well as intensive civil conflict, the monopolization of political power by the Islamists of the Revolution and the widespread emigration of the persecuted and disenchanted.

The war with Iraq which was started by Saddam Hussein in 1980 was a double-edged sword. It led to great human sacrifice, physical destruction and financial losses, but it also helped consolidate the new Islamic regime – led by Ayatollah Khomeini representing velayat-e faqih or guardianship of the jurisconsult – to the exclusion of all other political tendencies. Ayatollah Khomeini’s death in 1989, a year after ceasefire with Iraq, was followed by the succession of Ayatollah Khameneh’i to spiritual leadership, a period of reconstruction under President Rafsanjani, and the emergence of conflict within the ranks of the Islamists themselves. All being Islamists, the President represented the pragmatic tendency; the Assembly of Experts and the Council of Guardians of the Constitution symbolized the conservatives; while the radical fundamentalists and the revisionist reformists stood at either end of the spectrum.

Mohammad Khatami’s surprise election as president in 1997 led to an upsurge of reformist activity. There was more freedom of expression, greater observance of legal processes, higher regard for human rights, less cultural pressure on women, and a certain amount of normalization in regional and foreign relations. Yet the eight years of Khatami’s presidency saw the consolidation of anti-reformist factions, the slowdown of the pace of reform, the division of reformists into various tendencies and the loss of the early optimism for political reform and development. Finally, there appeared to be almost a complete reversal of the reformist trends with the shock electoral victory in 2005 of President Ahmadinejad who was close to the radical fundamentalist tendencies.

Such was the background in brief of Iranian history, politics and society when Iran arrived at the 21st century. In the domestic sphere, the country faces conflicts over national identity and ethnic minorities, democracy and human rights, personal and political freedoms, women’s rights, youth culture, full employment, the economy and the use of the oil revenues, and the widening gap between rich and poor. Regarding external affairs, there are more or less severe problems both in regional and in global relations, headed by the ongoing conflict with the West over Iran’s nuclear energy programme.

The question of national identity or what makes an Iranian has been a source of conflict, disagreement and tension since the 1920s. In her chapter, ‘Crafting a national identity amidst contentious politics in contemporary Iran’, Farideh Farhi argues that in the past century Iranians have been energetically vacillating between extremes of contentious Islamism and secularism, pre-Islamic and Islamic imagination, and avid anti-imperialism and absorption in global trends, leaving them with ‘tired bodies and souls’. According to Farhi, the latest phase of this experience is the Iranians’ disappointment with the reform process that emerged in the Islamic Republic, and which led them to find ‘solace in their private homes and selves’. They were not helped by ‘platitudinous’ efforts to forge a ‘Janus-faced national identity as children of both Cyrus the Great and Mohammad’. This is a direct reference to the Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi, who, according to Farhi, was declared by the ‘sanguine Norwegian guardians of global political correctness’ as an example of the possibility of being acceptable as a Muslim, a democrat, a liberated (wo)man, a proud Iranian with pre-Islamic heritage, and at peace with the world, all at the same time.

Farhi sets herself the task of answering a set of questions: Can the ‘mantra’ exemplified by the Ebadi case be believed by those who are meant to be the ‘carriers of these multiple identities’? Can the Iranian body-politic survive, with its ‘habitual self-mutilation through the expunging of substantial parts of itself ’? Have Iranians ‘lost yet another opportunity for a story/narrative’ that makes them feel good about themselves as a collectivity? Is ‘the bipolar pull of extremes’ their story, as well as their fate?

Farhi maintains that Iran cannot achieve social and political cohesion and stability ‘without a narrative that connects, at least loosely, all sectors of the society to a somewhat commonly acceptable recent history’; that there needs to be an understanding of the century-long tension between ‘autocratic/theocratic/arbitrary rule and democracy/chaos, and Iran’s relationship to the outside world’; and that this tension needs to be resolved gradually.

She points out that the national/ethnic question has become more complicated in the Islamic Republic, with the ‘two conflicting and incompatible conceptions of sovereignty, authority and legitimacy that exist in the Islamic constitution’, and laws that allow ‘arbitrary clerical rule and fail to protect basic freedoms’. These factors have created common ground among those seeking political reform and those seeking equitable laws for ethnic and religious minorities, including the Sunni Muslims. Externally, ‘engagement with the world and promotion of democracy at home have become inextricably linked in the Iranian political discourse’.

Hamid Ahmadi discusses the foreign policy implications of the Iranian–Islamic duality in his chapter, ‘The dilemma of national interest in the Islamic Republic of Iran’. Ahmadi argues that the concept and practice of national interest in contemporary Iran has been affected by the supra-national outlook of the Islamic Republic’s constitution and the structural dualism embedded in its political system. According to Ahmadi, the Islamic Republic’s Constitution gives more weight to concern for the Islamic world in Iran’s foreign policy, and can therefore be considered more as an Islamic internationalist charter than a document which delineates the guidelines for a foreign policy based on the national interest of a nation-state. The state structure, for its part, includes two conflicting components: the traditional Islamic system of velayat-e faqih, and the modern presidential system.

Ahmadi identifies three approaches to foreign policy under the Islamic Republic: ‘rejecting the whole concept of national interest as an anti-Islamic notion’; ‘justifying the idealistic foreign policy of the Islamic Republic as one which serves Iran’s national interest’; or reducing national interest to a combination of the necessity of pursuing a realist foreign policy and ‘the importance of maintaining the Islamic nature and values of the system’. The practical result has been a cycle of rise and fall of realism, pursued ‘somehow’ by the Foreign Ministry, and idealism promoted by the traditional power structure. The conflict, argues Ahmadi, was best exemplified in the controversies over Salman Rushdie in 1989 and the opposition to US–Iran rapprochement in 2001, and will not be resolved as long as the structural dualism exists.

In the chapter that follows, ‘From multilingual empire to contested modern state’, Touraj Atabaki further discusses the issues arising from the multi–ethnic nature of the Iranian society. Atabaki points out that six changes of the Iranian capital between 1500 and 1800 CE – Tabriz, Qazvin, Isfahan, Mashhad, Shiraz and Tehran – each brought about because of the assumption of power by a different ethnic community, and policies of forced resettlement and sedentarization of large nomadic tribes, have resulted in metropolitan centres with ethnically and religiously mixed populations. Although conflicts among these communities have not been uncommon, says Atabaki, ‘not a single city has ever disintegrated because of ethnic or religious diversity. ’

In more recent times, centralization of state power, further forced migration and resettlement of nomadic tribes, and rapid urbanization and industrialization have caused ‘more ethnic dislocation’, in particular creating large concentrations of Azerbaijanis in Tehran and many other big cities, ‘dominating the local economy’. At the same time, the expansion of education and communication has contributed to a more homogeneous culture. Movements for varied degrees of autonomy for the country’s ethnic minorities have been defeated, especially the ones among Iran’s largest non-Persian speaking communities, the Azerbaijanis and the Kurds. Atabaki reviews the rise and fall of the idea of Iranian Azerbaijan joining the Republic of Azerbaijan after the disintegration of the Soviet Union and concludes that while Iran has so far avoided the fate of the Ottoman, Russian and Soviet empires, the fate of its ethnic composition and its territorial integrity may depend, more than on any other factor, on the introduction of reforms in the country’s political structure.

Mahmoud Sadri and Ahmad Sadri, writing about ‘Three faces of dissent’ in contemporary Iran, examine two by-products of rapid urbanization and industrialization: the emergence of ‘expressive and traditionalist discourses of dissent’, as distinct from the ‘cognitive face’ that is ‘produced and disseminated, for the most part, by professional intellectuals: university professors, authors, journalists, and the clergy’. They argue that the expressive discourse ‘usually takes immediate (e.g. audio-visual, demonstrative) forms with amorphous and intractable practitioners, who pose an immediate – even if ephemeral – threat to social order’. They describe one example of such discourse as found in the graffiti by Tehran youth groups who call themselves Rap or Heavy Metal – not always closely related to the Western concepts of the two terms – and are known by their Western hair and clothing styles. The two groups are confronted by the Basij, or mobilization, youth groups affiliated to the Revolutionary Guards.

According to the authors, one manifestation of the traditionalist discourse of dissent is in ‘the heterodox mass religiosity of Persianate Shi’i Islam that continues to defy the yoke of official interpretation’. Examples include two religious sites dating back to the days before the Islamic Revolution: Jamkaran, in the vicinity of Qom, which received its mythical status through a dream in the middle of the 20th century, and Astaneh Ashrafieh, a popular mausoleum on the Caspian coast. These sites have been approved by the Islamic Republic and are provided with urban and transport services.

However, the government does not appear to favour the establishment of new holy sites, such as one that became the base of a spontaneous cult in the industrial city of Mobarakeh, Isfahan province, in 1993, when a housewife ‘witnessed blood that she took to be that of Imam Hossein (Prophet Mohammad’s grandson) bubble from underneath a brick on her earthen oven’. The cult was soon suppressed and its shrine demolished by the security forces. The authors explain the popularity of the cult by highlighting the growth of a community of impoverished immigrant workers facing alienation, humiliation and despair who live near Mobarakeh and are barred from fully participating in civic celebrations in the city, including mourning processions marking Imam Hossein’s martyrdom. As for the reason behind the suppression of the cult, the authors argue that while such manifestations of mass religiosity would have been ignored by the secular, pre-Revolution regime, for a government based on religion they present ‘a drain on scarce resources of legitimacy’.

Given the legal and social inequalities between men and women in Iran, women have been in the forefront of issues facing the Islamic Republic. The development of gender relationships in Iran since the 1979 Revolution is examined by Azadeh Kian-Thiébaut in her chapter, ‘From motherhood to equal rights advocates: the weakening of patriarchal order’. She argues that while the Islamic Republic’s legal system deprived women of their civil rights and institutionalized gender inequality, it also created an incentive for women to devise new strategies against traditionalist values and divine justifications for segregation policies. These included increased participation in the public sphere in spite of the patriarchal system and gender inequality, and questioning the patriarchal family founded on gendered roles and male domination, resulting in the weakening of patriarchal order and male domination in both public and private spheres.

Kian-Thiébaut further argues that women also refute patriarchal logic by establishing a new relationship with their children that is no longer founded on authority but on dialogue and persuasion. According to Kian-Thiébaut, youths’ individualization, their resistance against totalitarian thought and forced Islamization, their aspiration to modernity and their demands for all-out social, political and cultural change are outcomes of a permissive type of education and new educational values adopted by their parents, especially their mothers. The stake is to construct a new relationship with the political power that would account for the profound changes that have occurred within the family institution.

The most important single issue facing Iran in its external relations is the continuation of the cold war between the United States and the Islamic Republic. In ‘Iran and the US in the shadow of 9/11 – Persia and the Persian question revisited’, Ali Ansari presents an analysis of ‘the dialectical nature of US–Iran relations’, especially following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US and President Bush’s State of the Union address in January 2002, in which he classified Iran as a member of the ‘Axis of Evil’. Ansari argues that the 9/11 events fundamentally altered the nature of US foreign policymaking, ‘away from the bureaucratic rationality of the past and towards a charismatic justification with a revolutionary message’. During the same period Iran was following the opposite course, with a tendency for ‘a routinization of the revolution, and more towards rationalization and the international order’. As a result, Iranian policy makers, steeped in American international relatio...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Crafting a National Identity Amidst Contentious Politics in Contemporary Iran
• 3 The Dilemma of National Interest in the Islamic Republic of Iran
• 4 From Multilingual Empire to Contested Modern State
• 5 Three Faces of Dissent
• 6 From Motherhood to Equal Rights Advocates
• 7 Iran and the United States in the Shadow of 9/11
• 8 A Look to the North
• 9 Israeli–Iranian Relations Assessed
• 10 Nuclear Policy and International Relations
• 11 A Case for Sustainable Development of Nuclear Energy and a Brief Account of Iran’s Nuclear Programme
• 12 Managing Oil Resources and Economic Diversification in Iran
• 13 Capital Accumulation, Financial Market Reform and Growth in Iran
• 14 Human Resources in Iran
• 15 The Significance of Economic History, and the Fundamental Features of the Economic History of Iran