Iran: A militaristic state, vested in a clerical robe

The Death of the Republic – Tehran Bureau

The Death of the Republic and the Rise of a Militarized Islamic State in Iran

By RASOOL NAFISI 6 July 2009

[TEHRAN BUREAU] Comment The momentous June presidential election in Iran and its bloody aftermath will probably be remembered as a turning point in the life of this strange republic. The true face of the state, so meticulously hidden beneath a confusing veneer of “Islamic democracy,” surfaced in its true form—something conveniently forgotten after eight years of reformist rule.

Putting aside any pretense to civility or an electoral system, the Islamists adhered to what they know best: brutality. The June 12 aftermath dealt a major blow to the hope for a realignment of Islam and a representative state. In lieu of a hybrid Islamic Republic, a militarized regime emerged in earnest, a regime that had been taking shape since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his mark in the 2005 elections, and which is now embodied by a coalition of actors including Ahmadinejad, supreme leader Ali Khamenei, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC).

Many scholars continue to wonder about the nature of the regime. The question is not whether it is some form of indigenous democracy as was purported, but instead, what is the role and influence of the clergy? In other words, is Iran still a clerical state? If not, what is the dosage of clerical power in the mix of this rather militaristic state?

The Islamic Republic has been in a state of metamorphosis over the past four years. In fact the state was never purely clerical. The war with Iraq during the 1980’s changed and twisted it at its onset. Symbolically, the post-revolution clergy carried rifles when leading Friday prayers. The merger of the military/security man and the clergy was intensified when clerics were dispatched to the war fronts, and became ideological commissars of the new regime. They inspired soldiers with recitations of the pain and sufferings of the martyred imams. In the meantime, they spied on officers and tried to convert them to the new politicized Islam. So what happened, in reality, was the conversion of the clergy to a military-security ethos, not the other way around.

Clerics such as Khamenei, Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani and Hassan Lahooti were among the first cadres put in charge of military personnel and commissioned by Ayatollah Khomeini to create the IRGC, a security apparatus designed to run parallel to the state’s army, navy and air force. Khamenei quickly learned where the center of the state’s gravity rests, and consequently, never left the security forces. Today Khamenei is the consummate security-military cleric. As the commander in chief, Khamenei probably knows more about military and security issues than about traditional Figh and Shi’ite narratives. A militaristic state, vested in a clerical robe, and aided and abetted by uncountable Basij militia, extends its tentacles to all corners of society.

Never mind that the state can rapidly resume its “Islamic” façade whenever the need arises. Clad in burial shroud, scores of Qum seminary students are always ready to parade around vigilantly in order to demonstrate their readiness to fend off the enemies of Islam, while underscoring their belief in the sanctity of the regime at the same time.

The June election and the ensuing bloodbath served the purpose of bringing the regime’s regressive aspect to light. And it does not look good. By conducting more than twenty national elections in the past thirty years, the Islamic republic trained people in the ways of democracy. The June uprising was squarely a national call for more democracy, imbued by two months of real campaigning and six televised debates. To have curtailed the process would help neither the nation nor the state. But it was bound to happen. In all likelihood the new militarized regime will find no benefit in continuing the democracy game and it will in turn rely almost exclusively upon the traditional forms of hereditary republicanism, one that is more similar to the Syrian and North Korean models.

At the same time, it is unlikely that urbanites will place their bets on another election. In fact, it may be the very intent of the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad-IRGC cabal to do away with the un-doable all together, and to assert the “Islamic state” prima facie.

The Islamic state so cherished by the likes of Ayatollah Messbah-Yazdi has now materialized. Messbah-Yazdi’s close follower, Ahmadinejad, celebrated the end of the Islamic Republic with the following words in a meeting with the employees of the Judiciary in late June: “Communism, liberalism and democracy are all dead; it is high time for [the rise of an] Islamic State.” What he did not spell out was this: The Islamic State wears boots and parades in military fatigue.

I take Mir Hossein Mousavi at his word when he announced he was coming out of political isolation because he was alarmed by the events threatening the essence of the Islamic Republic. As a romantic revolutionary still loyal to the outlandish ideals of his master Al Shariati for a “just Islamic government,” he bemoans what he perceives as a total departure from those ideals. Large segments of the clerical establishment apparently felt the same way when they came out against the election results. They are all rightfully anxious about what seems to be the end of clerical hegemony as they know it. The clerical rupture that followed the June events is quite telling. The entire body of the moderate clerics militated against what they felt was a mortal blow to Islamic republicanism.

Sensing the death knell of the clerical state, even hardline Ayatollahs such as Nasser Makarem-Shirazi distanced themselves from the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad-IRGC coalition. Breaking his mysterious silence, the quintessential dealmaker Ayatollah Hashemi-Rafsanjani summarized the worries of those who feel betrayed: ”Today no clear conscience can accept what is going on in the country.”

The republican wing of the Islamic state was clipped on June 12 proper. What ensued were several desperate attempts at rebellion, incited by urbanites who were no longer blind to republican claims of the Islamic state. To lead their cause, they chose anguished clerics and romantic revolutionaries who were equally distraught. The new regime on the other hand pursued the trodden path of dictatorships, past and present, disrupting communications at the national level and raising the level of intimidation by brute force. The Chief of the Judiciary ordered all regions to clamp down on homeowners’ television receptors and internet “abusers.”

Prosecutor General Dorri-Najafabadi promised to teach the demonstrators in detention “a lesson they will never forget.” The lesson was indeed well rehearsed, and well received: It is the end of a great experiment, one intended to mix Islam and representative government. But the Sunday July 5 speech of Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the IRGC summarized the situation rather well. He clearly stated that the Guards are in charge of the country now. And accordingly, this had led to “a revival of the revolution and clarification of the value positions of the establishment at home and abroad.” He went on: “These events put us in a new stage of the revolution and political struggles, and all of us must fully comprehend its dimensions.”

To the romantic this is a tragedy, but to a detached observer it is just another romantic tantalization in the line of many in the twentieth century which was doomed to fail from its inception.

rnafisi@rnafisi.com