The Islamic Republic and the World

Maryam Panah

Description

Iran is now in the eye of the storm. As events in Iraq deteriorate, a US invasion of Iran looms as a real threat.



This book provides a detailed analysis of Iran's recent history, and in particular how the country has been shaped by the 1979 revolution. It is often forgotten that modern Iran is a revolutionary republic that arose out of the overthrow of the old, secular and very pro-western regime. Since the revolution, this has been replaced by an Islamic State.



Maryam Panah explores the Iranian revolution in its international context, and examines the different forces at play within the country, and how these conflicting political interests continue to mould the country today and shape its external relations.
Introduction

1. The Iranian Revolution In International Context - A Theoretical Perspective

2. The Iranian Revolution - Internal And External

3. Causes

4. Populism And The Revolution - Domestic And International Impact

5. International Containment Of The Islamic Republic

6. Populism, War And The State

7. State Crisis And Change

8. Reform And Reaction

9. Revolutionary Foreign Policy And International

10. Tension

Conclusion

Index

Sujets

• Islam
• Iran
• Revolution
• Revolutionary
• Revolutions
• HISTORY
• Social Science
• Islamic Studies

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 septembre 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849643481
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Islamic Republic and the World

Global Dimensions of the Iranian Revolution

Maryam Panah

Pluto Press London  Ann Arbor, MI

First published 2007 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106

www.plutobooks.com

Copyright © Maryam Panah 2007

The right of Maryam Panah to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Hardback ISBN13 978 0 7453 2622 1 ISBN10 0 7453 2622 6

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Curran Publishing Services, Norwich Printed and bound in India.

Dedicated to my children, Leyla and Kilian.

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Contents

Chronology Acknowledgements

Introduction

The Iranian Revolution in international context: a theoretical perspective A theoretical framework: causes and consequences Revolution and the Islamic Republic: an analysis

The Iranian Revolution: internal and external causes Historical legacy of foreign influence in Iran Socioeconomic development and structural change The revolutionary coalition Evolution of a revolutionary discourse: international influences

Populism and the Revolution: domestic and international impact Populism and ‘Khomeinism’ The revolutionary centrifuge: a fragmenting coalition Khomeinism: nationalism, antiimperialism, universalism Khomeinism’s decisive moment: 1979–80 The domestic consequences International consequences Export of revolution: Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and the Gulf

International containment of the Islamic Republic After the hostage crisis The Iraqi response: onset of the Iran–Iraq war Regional policies of containment: the Gulf states and beyond The United States and the West: policy in the 1980s Exporting revolution: a unique failure

Populism, war and the state ‘War populism’ and revolutionary images of the international system Popular mobilisation and war contributions War, populism and repression

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ix xi

1

4 6 13

16 16 21 28

32

42 42 44 47 51 57 65 69

76 76 80

82 86 93

97

97 101 104

6.

7.

8.

9.

C O N T E N T S

Development of the instruments of state coercion Abasement of ‘social populism’ Social basis of the war

State crisis and change State, revolution and class: a theoretical explanation The critical conjuncture: external and internal pressure and the economy The end of an era? The important concept of ‘maslehat’

Reform and reaction 1990–2005 The reform years The conservative backlash

Revolutionary foreign policy and international tension Revolutionary continuity: Islamic universalism Military and security strategy International tension

Conclusion

Notes Index

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106 111 114

118 119

122 128

131 133 139

148 148 156 158

163

168 204

Chronology of key events since the Second World War

1941

1943 1951

1953

1957 1959

1960 1963

1964

1965

1978

1979

1980

1981

1983 1988

1989

Occupation of Iran by Britain and Russia. Deposition of Reza Shah in favour of his son, Mohammad Reza. Iranian Communist Party founded. Deployment of US missions in Iran. Mohammad Mosaddeq becomes Prime Minister. Parliament votes to nationalise Britishdominated Anglo Iranian Oil Company. Mosaddeq overthrown in coup engineered by US and British intelligence. Shah assumes autocratic control. SAVAK secret police agency established. Signature of bilateral defence agreement between United States and Iran. Confederation of Iranian Students in Europe established. Launch of shah’s ‘White revolution’ – programme of land reform and socioeconomic modernisation. Khomeini’s historic speech against granting of capitulatory rights to United States leads to his later exile. MojahedineKhalq(MKO) guerrilla organisation established. Riots, strikes and mass demonstrations against shah escalate. Shah exiled (January); Khomeini returns to Iran (February); Islamic Republic of Iran proclaimed following referendum (April); 52 Americans taken hostage in US embassy. New government established and launches nationalisation programme. Invasion of Iran by neighbouring Iraq (September). Dismissal of first Iranian president, Bani Sadr, repression of MKO and other leftist organisations. Communist Party of Iran (Tudeh) banned. Shooting down of Iran Air passenger plane byUSS Vincennes. Iran accepts ceasefire to end eightyear war with Iraq. Khomeini dies and is succeeded by Khamenei. Rafsanjani becomes president.

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1996

1997

1999

2000

2001 2002

2003 2004

2005

C H R O N O L O G Y

New trade and investment sanctions imposed by United States on Iran. Khatami becomes president following landslide election victory. Prodemocracy student demonstrations crushed by regime. Reformists gain majority in parliament. Judiciary imposes tighter limits on freedom of press. Khatami reelected president for second term. US President Bush describes Iran as part of the ‘axis of evil’. Work commences by Russia on construction of Iranian nuclear reactor in Bushehr. Demonstrations against regime repressed. Conservatives regain control of parliament. Iran comes under pressure from IAEA to suspend uranium enrichment. Conservative Mayor of Tehran, Ahmadinejad, elected president. Stand off between Iran and US on nuclear issue.

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Acknowledgements

I am first and foremost indebted to Fred Halliday, my PhD supervisor, for inspiring me to study revolutions – and the Iranian case in partic ular – in an international context. The ideas behind the book developed further through numerous discussions with graduate participants of the modernity and historical materialism seminars at the Department for International Relations, LSE. The manuscript benefited from the insights of Nikki Keddie during my brief stay at UCLA and the comments of my examiners Sami Zubaida and Hazel Smith. It goes without saying that weaknesses and deficiencies in the text remain mine alone. I am grateful to the Pluto editorial and production teams, and in particular to my editor Chris Carr at Curran Publishing Services, for their speed and efficiency in the race to ensure the manuscript was completed before the arrival of our son in April 2007! Finally, special thanks go to my mother for her help and support over the years and, of course, to Benno for his comments from the very start and his persistent encouragement and motivation to return to and complete this project.

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Maryam Panah May 2007

Introduction

Over a quarter of a century after the Revolution of 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran continues to challenge policymakers and scholars alike. The outbreak of the Revolution attracted the attention of state leaders, policy analysts, commentators and social activists globally. The Islamic turn of this ostensibly modern revolution confounded almost all. Its ‘antiimperialist’ proclamations, its antiWestern slogans, the pictures of burning US flags and the taking of hostages were cause for consternation, while the Islamic Republic’s policy of ‘exporting revolution’ stimulated a range of hostile responses from policy makers in the region and beyond. The recent escalation of tension throughout the Middle East has again thrust Iran into the centrestage in a pivotal role. Domestically, meanwhile, the election in 2005 of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the previ ously littleknown hardliner and conservative presidential candidate, took the world by surprise. Here was a new Iranian president who, in contrast to his reformist predecessor, ratcheted up the revolutionary rhetoric against US imperialism, who called for Israel to be ‘wiped off the map’, and who vehemently asserted Iran’s right to the develop ment of nuclear capabilities in the face of international condemnation. The election ended a long period which some had seen as an Iranian ‘Thermidor’, the onset of which had come with the end of the Iran–Iraq war of the 1980s and with the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989. It signalled the end of the precarious reform and reconciliation attempted by the Khatami governments since 1997. Shortly after his election, Ahmadinejad pronounced that Iran remained not just a regional force to be reckoned with, but also an Islamic revolutionary state which continued to challenge the prevailing international order. How and why did this resurgent revolutionary populism emerge in 2005? Why is it that after almost three decades, Iran has not, as many expected, consolidated the reform process initiated in the 1990s, but has reasserted the militancy and rhetoric of its early revolutionary years? The key to understanding the ‘Ahmadinejad phenomenon’ lies in the history of the Iranian Revolution and the early formation of the Islamic Republic. It lies particularly in the early postrevolutionary period – the decade of the 1980s – and the revolutionary rhetoric of the Ayatollah Khomeini in which Ahmadinejad and his generation were schooled. It was also during this period that the institutional structures of the postrevolutionary state were established. Thus, not only does Ahmadinejad’s language mirror the nationalist, antiimperialist and Islamic universalist populism of Khomeini in the 1980s, but the origins

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T H E I S L A M I C R E P U B L I C A N D T H E W O R L D

of the current state apparatus on which he relies, with all its contradic tions and peculiarities, can be found in the 1980s and, in particular, in the war years. It was during that decade that thePasdaran(Islamic Revolutionary Guards), and thebasij(mobilisation militia) forces – of which not coincidentally Ahmadinejad was an active member – were formed. It was in the early 1980s when the first Revolutionary Guards were dispatched to Lebanon to form the Hezbollah. It was during the same decade that the Islamic Republic’s state and parastatal institu tions were consolidated in the hands of a religious minority who remain in control of the means of distribution, production and coercion and who are able to wield power and obstruct attempts at true reform. To see Ahmadinejad merely as a face of ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ in the region is crude and simplistic. He is, rather, to be situated in a contradictory process of postrevolutionary state building and ideology formation in Iran. To explain Iran’s current political order, we must understand not only the revolutionary movement of 1979 – its social bases, discourse and rhetoric – but importantly also the formation of the postrevolutionary state during the 1980s, a period marked more than any event by the long Iran–Iraq war. The Islamic Republic is, in this sense, not just a postrevo lutionary state. It is a state formed both by revolution and by war, and the resurgence of militancy since the 2005 election is a manifestation of a 25yearlong contradictory process of postrevolutionary and postwar state formation. This book deals primarily with the emergence of an Islamic state subsequent to the outbreak of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, its conse quences for the global order and the consequences of global responses to it. Chapter 1 sets out a brief theoretical context on states and revolu tions, and the framework for the narrative analysis of the subsequent chapters. Chapter 2 provides an account of how international develop ments and the policies of foreign powers shaped Iranian politics in the decades before the Revolution. It considers the impact of socio economic changes during the prerevolutionary period on various social groups, and the consequent impact on the formation of a revolu tionary coalition. In this sense, this chapter shows that the Iranian Revolution was very much amodernsocial revolution. However, the Iranian revolutionary movement also displayed its own specificity and it is at the nexus of the more general impact of global social processes and the particular and specific conditions of the Iranian social forma tion that we should seek the emergence of the Revolution. Chapter 3 then develops the theme of specificity as it pertains to the evolution of the rhetoric and ideology of the Revolution. It explains the transformation from modern social revolution to Islamic state by analysing the emergence of ‘Khomeinism’ – Ayatollah Khomeini’s

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