The political system created in the wake of the 1979 revolution has puzzled political experts and lay observers alike. In the first two decades of the Islamic Republic, analysts had struggled with finding a proper definition of the Iranian polity. A perusal of the substantial literature on the subject indicates that the definitions range from Islamofascism to democratic theocracy. Compared to the voluminous discourse on such definitions, there was little effort to understand the organizational structure of the new polity.
As a rule, state epistemology conceptualizes states as hierarchical structures, akin to a pyramid. In a hierarchical structure, a higher level indicates a greater measure of power and control over the lower levels. In a democracy, the executive and legislative branches occupy the apex; in a dictatorship, a single dictator or a small oligarchy wields absolute power. Either way, the chain of authority extends from top to bottom.
There have been only a few exceptions to this rule. In the dual state party system of the former Soviet Union , the hierarchical structure of the state nominally coexisted with the hierarchical structure of the party. In practice, however, the Communist Party hierarchy dominated its state counterpart. So much so that the Politburo, which elected the General Secretary, was the de facto pinnacle of the pyramid and the Secretary-General served as the head of state, the premier. This arrangement created occasional tension between the stateâs organs such as the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union and the parastatal party bureaucracy. If anything, in Nazi Germany the state party duality was even more skewed toward the party that reigned supreme. In both cases, it was the partyâs chain of authority that dominated the entire political system.
There is little doubt that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founding father of the Islamic Republic and its first Supreme Leader , wanted to create a theocratic totalitarian state with clear authority lines. In his original 1941 treatise, Kashf al-Asrar (The Discovery of Secrets) and his 1975 opus Velayat-e Faqih, Khomeini advocated a numinous authority systemâthe divine rule by a religious guardian. A religious leader was necessary to turn the country into a ârepublic of virtue,â where people, flawed by nature, could be perfected and achieve salvation. Khomeini insisted that only a strict religious theocracy could block the harmful secular messages and support Sharia-compatible behavior.1
But other leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Party that guided the Khomenist movement understood that those who had rebelled against the Shah in the name of democracy would not embrace another dictatorship. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a close associate of Khomeini, urged to adopt a mixed system with divided legitimacy as defined by Max Weber. Part of the legitimacy is numinous, derived from the right of the God-anointed guardian, and part is legal-rational legitimacy that is reflective of the will of the people. In modern democracies, citizens express their will in periodic elections, but the electoral process in Iran is quite peculiar.
The Iranian president and the parliament, the Majlis , are ostensibly elected by a popular ballot. In practice, the Guardian Council, an appointed 12-member body of six faqihs and six jurors, exercises considerable control over the democratic process. The Council approves candidates for the presidency and the Majlis , and has the final say over its legislative output. Although considerably circumscribed, the elected officials preside over the statist part of the Islamic Republic, which includes the state bureaucracy, the budget, and the regular military, the Artesh, and other state institutions.2
But Khomeini and his aides understood that a statist structure could not protect their cherished revolution, a task that fell to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), commonly known as the Revolutionary Guards. Established in May 1979, Article 150 of the Constitution described the Guards as âguardian of the Revolution and its achievements.â Indeed, the IRGC took this mandate very seriously. In the words of one of its commanders, the Guards âpossessed the moral essence of the revolution.â The Basij (SÄzmÄn-e Basij-e Mostazafin), the Organization for the Mobilization of the Oppressed, was a voluntary militia in the Iran âIraq war and subsequently incorporated into the Guards. After the end of the war, the Basij took a leading role in overseeing internal security, policing morals, and the suppression of dissidents.3
For all his moral authority, Ayatollah Khomeiniâs Trotskyite idea of a âpermanent revolution,â proved controversial. In a programmatic speech in February 1979, Khomeini announced his determination to export the revolution to neighboring, mostly Sunni countries and beyond. Radical ârevolutionary exportersâ associated with Ayatollah Ali Montazeri and his son Mohammad were eager to follow Khomeiniâs mandate. But their freelancing ventures in several neighboring countries alarmed the then Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati, who urged a more disciplined approach. Ayatollah Rafsanjani, the budding pragmatist among the ideologues in Khomeiniâs entourage, was also concerned. After some organizational iteration, the consolidated Office of Liberation Movement (OLM) joined the Foreign Ministry.
From the very beginning, the IRGC demanded and received a large measure of autonomy from the state. Towards the end of the IranâIraq War, the regimeâs leaders realized the importance of reconstructing the country and maintaining domestic stability, notably by creating economic opportunities for Guards veterans. Rafsanjani facilitated the Guardsâ involvement in economic activities, and his privatization policy helped them to take control of several confiscated state companies. In 1989, the IRGC founded Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters (Gharargah Sazandegie KhÄtam al-AnbiyÄ), a company that subsequently branched out into industrial, agricultural, mining, road construction, transportation, and import and export sectors. When Ayatollah Ali Khamenei succeeded Khomeini as Supreme Leader in 1989, he insisted that the Revolutionary Guards should have priority in buying stock in the newly privatized companies, and he also exempted them from taxation.4
When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power as president on a hardline ticket in 2005, his government dramatically increased support for the Revolutionary Guards. More than half of his cabinet members were either Guards veterans or people with ongoing ties to the organization. The Revolutionary Guards were awarded hundreds of no-bid government contracts and billions of dollars for construction and energy programs. To mask its extensive hold on the economy, the IRGC established hundreds of seeming private companies, which were run by a network of connected veterans. Unlike a traditional centrally administered organization, the IRGC economic enterprise was akin to a âpyramid ownership structure,â where the original company acquired a new company by buying their shares or appointing members of the board, a process repeated numerous times as more companies joined the network.
Two larger foundations, Bonyad Mostazafan (Foundation of the Oppressed or the Mostazafan Foundation) and the Bonyad Shahid va Omur-e Janbazan (Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs), and several smaller ones cemented the parastatal domain. The foundations commanded enormous wealth, most of it from former the Pahlavi Foundation and the confiscated property of wealthy Iranians who fled after the revolution. In addition to their charitable functions, the foundations have operated a network of businesses, some with connections to the Revolutionary Guards. For instance, the Bonyad Shahid Foundation has a strong link to the Revolutionary Guards; it has recently appointed the former Guardâs Air Force commander Hossein Dehghan as president.5 Bonyad Shahid has large industrial ventures, including the Industrial Development and Renovation Organization of Iran, known as IDRO Group, was established in 1967 during the Shahâs rule.
While the state structure had evolved a semblance of hierarchy, the parastatal domain has continued to be quite chaotic, especially in the initial post-revolution period. In battling for ideological influence, power, and resources, the parastatals not only impeded good governance but made governing difficult altogether. Rafsanjani, who emerged as a key player in the new regime, had soon realized the danger of out of control parastatals. He tried to pressure the Revolutionary Guards to merge with the Artesh, a move that the commanders rejected out of hand. Rafsanjani was more successful with the Basij , which was ordered to join the Revolutionary Guards in following a brutal purge; the OLM was forced out from the Foreign Ministry and merged with the Quds Force (QF), the foreign operation branch of the IRGC. Still, the intense rivalry within and among the parastatals took decades to subside. A 2009 Rand study c...