Mondoweiss
Iran is no longer a theocratic juggernaut, even if Trump and friends want
you to see it that way
(((James North))) on June 22, 2017 6 Comments
Bahareh Hedayat, women's rights activist who was imprisoned
For nearly 40 years now, Iran has been feared and hated as a Puritanical
theocracy. In America and elsewhere, the prevailing image is of an austere
regime, led by fanatical mullahs who are backed by masses of the Muslim
faithful ready to die to defend it.
This picture, which was always at least somewhat inaccurate, is now
profoundly wrong. The results in the recent presidential election in May are
another sign that Iran is actually riddled with corruption, that the
governing clerical elite is continuing to lose popular support, and that a
growing number of Iranians, quite possibly already a majority, are no
different than people elsewhere in wanting a government that respects human
rights.
This picture of Iran in 2017 should raise doubts about U.S. policy in the
region, which under Donald Trump is now aligned completely with Israel's:
Iran is supposedly unified, powerful and expanding, so it must be confronted
everywhere. A sober look should also further discredit the Orientalist
analysis of the Middle East, and its corollary, the Clash of Civilizations
theory. Iran also reminds us of a universal human truth; wherever you have
religion, you will also sooner or later find religious hypocrisy.
One of the best reports appeared in the May 16 Financial Times, ("Election
Exposes Iran's Deep Divisions," unfortunately behind a paywall). Najmeh
Bozorgmehr's long article explained that the relaxation of international
sanctions after the 2016 Iran nuclear deal did not end economic stagnation.
Youth unemployment is at least 26 percent, probably much higher, and a third
of the country is living in "absolute poverty." This is not the profile of a
nation that is a plausible threat to conquer the rest of the Middle East.
Corruption in Iran is becoming more glaring. Bozorgmehr reports that the
elite Revolutionary Guards, long regarded as the pious shock troops of the
theocracy, in fact have more earthly reasons for their loyalty; they control
a business empire that is worth $100 billion.
One Iranian official told Bozorgmehr why new high-class apartments are
rising in Tehran instead of the low-income housing the regime had promised:
These luxurious buildings are merely tips of an iceberg, which is the
astronomical wealth of those who have no records of any innovative business
or industrial and manufacturing work. Wealth accumulated over a short time
is usually [the result] of special advantages of those linked to power
centers . . .
The Financial Times finding of mega-corruption and repression is amplified
in a just-published book: Democracy in Iran: Why It Failed and How it Might
Succeed. The author, Misagh Parsa, is a professor at Dartmouth, and his
study, although well-written, is a touch dry and academic. But as he piles
on the evidence, his work becomes both a crushing indictment of the
theocratic regime, and an inspiring chronicle of the widespread, continuing
and brave resistance. It turns out that corruption may have even reached as
high as the son of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is
alleged to have taken 1.5 billion euros from oil revenues.
Misagh Parsa
Professor Parsa explains that the Khamenei regime turned even more
repressive after its candidate almost certainly lost the 2009 presidential
election to the reformers. Iranians poured into the streets for huge
post-election demonstrations, one of which attracted three million people,
until the Revolutionary Guards cracked down. The regime arrested 4000 people
in the months after the vote and put to death 115 of them, one of the
highest rates of executions in the world. Some 100,000 fled Iran, and the
candidates who supposedly lost in 2009 are still under house arrest.
But the resistance continues. The ongoing economic stagnation and corruption
is regarded as the major reason that the more moderate candidate, Hassan
Rouhani, comfortably won re-election on May 19. No one is suggesting that
Iran is on the verge of a democratic revolution. But the portrait of a
sinister Islamic juggernaut, the view that unites Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald
Trump and the King of Saudi Arabia, is seriously out of date.
Iran today is another blow to the tottering Clash of Civilizations theory.
Samuel Huntington, its main proponent, argued 20 years ago that "Islam" was
unifying, preparing to expand beyond its already "bloody borders." He
claimed that the world was witnessing a "reduction or suspension of
antagonisms within the Muslim world," as "old differences among Muslims
shrank in importance compared with the overriding difference between Islam
and the West."
Huntington died in 2004, so he is not around to squirm as his theory to
fails to explain the vicious "intra-Muslim" civil war in Syria, and he would
be stupefied by Donald Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia to strengthen the
anti-Iran alliance between the U.S., Israel, and the most fundamentalist
branch of his "Islam."
Clash of Civilizations is inspired partly by the philosophy of Orientalism,
which has as one central tenet the conviction that Muslims are different
than other kinds of human beings. Unlike the rest of us, Muslims are not
mainly motivated by the daily reality they face. Instead, Muslims act after
consulting their sacred texts, and then, robot-like, they join with other
Muslims to ruthlessly spread their religion.
But Iranian Muslims turn out to be not all that different from people
elsewhere. Some are surely genuinely religious (and Professor Parsa reports
that many of the most sincerely pious have turned against the theocratic
regime). Certain other Iranians are hypocrites, who have used religion to
consolidate political power and amass great wealth. But quite possibly a
majority of Iranians see through that hypocrisy, and demand the same rights
as Americans or Europeans; freedom to express themselves without fear of
arrest or execution, to form independent labor unions, and to choose their
leaders instead of being ruled by unelected, thieving theocrats.
And an inspiring number of Iranians are prepared to risk their freedom and
even their lives to resist. Here is just one of them: Bahareh Hedayat, a
36-year-old student leader and activist for women's rights, was sentenced to
10 years in prison in 2010 for "insulting the president" and "disrupting
public order through participating in illegal gatherings." The regime forced
her to serve more than 6 years of her sentence before releasing her in
September 2016, even though her health had deteriorated sharply in prison.
