[R-G] Azmi Bishara's Notes on Iran

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/bishara260609.html>
Iran: An Alternative Reading
by Azmi Bishara

Iran does not just have an authoritarian system of government, it has
a totalitarian one.  It is powerful, highly centralised, with
sophisticated administrative and control systems, and it applies an
ideology that claims to have answers for everything and that seeks to
permeate all aspects of life.  Instead of a political party and youth
organisations, it relies on mass organisations, such as the Basij,
that blend security with ideology and even with the benefit of broad
sectors of the populace.  It also depends on a broad and
well-organised network of mullahs and on a politicised security agency
and Revolutionary Guard.  However, it differs from other totalitarian
systems in two definitive ways.

Firstly, no other totalitarian system has incorporated such a high
degree constitutionally codified democratic competition in the ruling
order and in its ideology.  Political competition is systematised in
the form of regularly held elections in which rivals espouse different
platforms within the framework of the agreed upon rules of the game,
just as do political parties within capitalist frameworks.  The
difference between Democrats and Republicans in the US is not much
greater than that between reformists and conservatives in Iran.  Of
course, these trends in Iran are not actual political parties, but
then neither are the Republicans and Democrats, at least not in the
conventional European sense.  They are more in the nature of electoral
leagues.

The second difference between Iranian totalitarianism and other
totalitarian systems is that the official ideology that permeates
institutions of government, the public sphere and the educational and
other formative systems as the primary definer of identity and shaper
of moral and ethical conduct is a real religion embraced by the vast
majority of the people.  It is not an atheist or secular religion,
such as is officially espoused in communist or fascist systems and
which is only believed by a clique of apparatchiks whose faith quickly
becomes a form of vested interest and is rarely passed on to their
children.  In Iran a religious doctrine is the state ideology, the
clerical hierarchy defines and anchors the state hierarchy, and the
lower echelons of the clergy are the intermediaries between the people
and the ruling ideology.

These important distinctions are what give the Iranian system a
dynamism and vitality that did not exist in Europe's communist or
fascist totalitarian systems, even though this system emerged in an
"oriental" society that was less technologically advanced than the
European ones and coalesced outside the context of European modernism
and modernisation that the other systems drew on.

China's ruling party, even in its most open and relaxed phase,
sanctions far less political diversity than we have seen in Iran, not
only in the form of systematised political rivalries but also in the
form of sometimes brutal criticism of the regime, the president and
the government.  Such tolerance of political diversity was also
unheard of in the former Soviet Union and in other totalitarian
systems.  Looking at Iran from the perspective of its degree of
democratic competition, tolerance of criticism and peaceful rotation
of authority in accordance with set rules, it is much closer to the
pluralistic democracies in the West than to a dictatorial regime.  On
the other hand, its imposition of an all encompassing ideology, and
its attempt to use this to control all aspects of people's public and
personal lives, sets it radically apart from Western societies where
people's personal lives are regulated through the permeation of market
mechanisms into the private individual realm and the permeation of the
media into family life.  There is an imposed ideology in the US, often
referred to as the "American way of life," but it leaves broad scope
for the private sphere and individual freedoms, including the freedom
of religion, even if it strongly influences this sphere through
consumer market mechanisms and the media, which sometimes pose
challenges to individual freedom.  There is no point here in bringing
up the scope of individual or democratic freedoms in Arab
authoritarian regimes, dynastic and nepotistic systems incapable of
producing either a totalitarian or democratic order, apart from to
note the malicious glee some Arabs are displaying in response to
events in Iran rather than examining what is happening in their own
countries which, one would think, they might suppose more important.

The reformist uprising has arisen within the framework of the Iranian
establishment and the accepted rules and principles of the Islamic
Republic.  The criticisms levelled at the regime on the part of a
broad swath of youth who have joined the reformists, especially those
from middle class backgrounds who are more in contact with the rest of
the world, are reminiscent of the grievances aired by the young in
Eastern Europe, who held that their regimes deprived them of their
individual and personal freedoms, the freedom to choose their way of
life and the Western consumer lifestyle.  Of course, as usual, some of
these claims are true, others are spread by Western media and some
stem from general discontent and a search for new meaning in the modes
of political expression.

While not dismissing or belittling such criticism, it is important to
bear in mind that these people are not the majority of young people
but rather the majority of young people from a particular class.  Iran
is not a socialist system: there are distinct class gaps, as well as
strong intersections between wealth and power, between power and
position in the clerical hierarchy, and between wealth and position in
the clerical hierarchy (with instances of convergence of power,
position and wealth in one and the same person).  Differing
intersections work to create diverse political and intellectual trends
and moods.  Most of the youth from the poor sectors of society support
Ahmadinejad, just as the poor support Chavez in Venezuela.  Remember
that Ahmadinejad's in 2005 was a protest vote, mostly on the part of
the young, against corrupt conservatives, not just against the
reformists.  Remember, too, that some reformists are people of
principle, fighters for their beliefs, whether or not they took part
in the revolution, whereas others in the reformist camp are combining
their defence of freedoms with the defence of corruption.  (The Arab
world abounds in people who combine the defence of economic privileges
with the defence of civil liberties.  They make up the class of
neo-liberals that is distinguished by being neither liberal nor
democratic).

The mood among those who think that their votes carry more weight
qualitatively than the numerically greater votes of the poor, and who
may actually believe that they represent the majority because they
form the majority in their own parts of town even if they are the
minority in the country, has an arrogant, classist edge.  Obviously,
it is not a very democratic attitude because as sincerely leftist as
it may appear, its liberalness is offset by its underlying elitism.
We have met this mood on many occasions.  Out of sympathy for the
young involved in protest politics some intellectuals (I refer to
myself, here, at least) have softened in their duty towards the young.
 Several years ago in a certain Arab capital, tens of thousands of
young people took to the streets chanting slogans for democracy and
against sectarianism, at which point intellectual gurus lured them
into cheering militia leaders, sectarian chiefs and war criminals as
though they were cultural heroes because they were "with us" and
"against them".  Soon the kids were swept up into racist outpourings
against other sects as they all recoiled into their own sectarian
mindsets, in spite of the jeans, the long hair, headbands, and all the
other trappings of open-minded progressives that attracted newspapers
run by middle aged editors nostalgic for their own student activist
days.  The intellectual must keep a critical distance if he is to
perform his duty towards the young and encourage them towards critical
liberationist outlooks and open their eyes to prejudice, myth,
illusion and other reactionary traps.

If you want to criticise the electoral system in Iran you should look
first at the Guardian Council and the numerous conditions it insists
candidates must meet in order to ensure their commitment to the
principles of the Islamic Republic.  You should also consider the
constitutional amendments of 1989 which abolished the position of
prime minister and gave his powers to the president, only to transfer
presidential powers to the supreme guide, who thus combined temporal
powers with spiritual and juridical authority, a metamorphosis of the
concept of clerical rule.  Now that is a subject to submit to the
critical lens and it merits criticism.  But this is not where the
candidates were coming from.  All the political parties, leaders and
forces that entered the elections accepted, or claimed to accept, the
ground rules.  And it is foolish to leap from criticising the ground
rules to claiming that the last elections were rigged, unlike the nine
presidential elections that preceded it.

Since the 2005 elections the Iranian reform movement has grown weaker
and more fragmented, not stronger.  The results it obtained came as a
surprise to those who know Iran.  How could it have resurfaced from
the ashes so powerfully after its disintegration in the Khatami era
and the repression of its remnants in the universities and elsewhere
afterwards?  Certainly the recent elections put it back on the map,
though not as it once stood, but rather as an ally of a broad spectrum
of conservatives.  The expectations regarding the power of the reform
trend were not founded upon public opinion polls, they were created by
the Western and non-Western media opposed to Ahmadinejad, who has
ruffled so many feathers at international conferences and diplomatic
salons.  Ahmadinejad's populist rhetoric has come as a boon to racist
Western policies towards the Arabs, Muslims and easterners in general.
 The certificate of exoneration he has handed Europe for the holocaust
is catastrophic in every sense.  But Ahmadinejad has also shocked the
West with a set of correct principles that challenge the colonialist
legacy and that are rarely uttered now that everyone has been tamed to
the axioms of Western racist arrogance.

Ahmadinejad is less a representative of Iranian conservatives than a
rebel against them from within their own establishment.  He has lashed
out against them, including corrupt clergy, using the principles of
the Islamic revolution as his weapons.  He is a conservative of the
fundamentalist stripe and wants to restore the revolution to its
youthful vigour and gleam.  He probably reminds Mousavi of his own
youth.  This is why his populist rhetoric is more powerful than the
reformists' rhetoric.  He harks back to Khomeini, and his personal
austerity appeals to the broad masses of the poor.  He distributes oil
revenues among the poor and reaches out to them as a way to compensate
for the failure of his economic policies, and his personal probity
makes up for his failure to seriously fight corruption.  His foreign
policies succeeded in reviving national pride by making Iran a central
player in the international arena after Iran's international weight
had taken a plunge when Khatami (a true reformist) had begun to soften
towards the West.

There were no supporters of any Arab regime or any fundamentalist
movement in the Arab world among the protesters who took to the
streets in Tehran.  Therefore, the thrill that overcame some of our
Arab brothers had less to do with political ideology than with a kind
of malicious glee.  The possible alternatives in Iran are:

    * A financially corrupt ruling elite, epitomised by Rafsanjani,
that is more pragmatic in international affairs and against which
Ahmadinejad rebelled in the last elections.

    * A reformist-conservative alliance within the framework of the
ruling establishment under which corrupt conservatives would rely on
such figures as Mousavi and Khatami in order to regain popularity and
weaken the hold of the supreme guide.  This alliance would be more
pragmatic in its foreign relations, head towards dialogue with the new
US administration, and strike up an accommodation with the West in
exchange for international recognition of the Islamic Republic and its
regional role.  (Incidentally, for the purpose of the alliance, the
conservatives would concede to some of the reformists' demands, but as
is the rule in the storm-tossed seas of transitional periods in
revolutionary orders, this will prove an ephemeral phase after which
the reformists will once again lose the initiative).

    * The third alternative I will call metaphorically the "Western"
one.  The overthrow of the entire order, along the lines of what
happened in Eastern Europe, is what broad segments of the illegal
opposition inside Iran and abroad are praying for.  For the young men
and women from well-to-do north Tehran this alternative has been
packaged as liberal civil rights, consumerist lifestyle, freedom in
how to act and dress, and other such notions that attract young
people, that even attracted the sons and daughters of the apparatchiks
in Russia and Eastern Europe.  The majority of middle and upper class
youth did not so much vote for Mousavi as they voted against
Ahmadinejad.  Still, in Iran, this third alternative will have to pass
through the second one first.  Unlike the communist regimes the regime
in Iran will not collapse in one go.

The Iranian regime will survive the current crisis using the
instruments mentioned earlier.  However, it will have to address an
important question.  Will it heed the lessons from this experience,
seize the reform banners from the corrupt and ally with the reformist
left against the pseudo reformist right?  Or will it rely on
repression alone, justifying this on the grounds of Western meddling?
The last option is a recipe for future and, perhaps, more intense and
tragic turmoil.
Azmi Bishara is a Palestinian holding an Israeli citizenship.  Former
Knesset member, he was compelled to leave Israel due to political
persecution.  He is still the leader of Balad.  This article was first
published by Al-Ahram Weekly No. 953 (25 June - 1 July 2009); it is
reproduced here for educational purposes.

In Arabic:
<http://www.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D482DEDA-8E9F-4984-9AEE-D1D387236DD3.htm>