The Unique Resilience of Iran’s Theocracy – Max J. Prowant

On January 8, a normal of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) appeared on state tv with a message for Iranians: “Maintain onto your youngsters.” After two-weeks of country-wide protests, the regime was issuing one closing warning disguised as a plea to oldsters to deliver their little kids off the streets. That evening, it will start the bloodiest crackdown towards its civilians since coming to energy in 1979, killing wherever from 3,000 to 36,000 within the days to come back.

It’s a signal of how weak the regime feels that it resorted to such violence. Its leaders are proper to be nervous. Economically, the nation is in shambles, with the worth of its forex dropping to report lows (1,445,000 rials to the greenback in December). Strategically, it suffered the indignity of being bombed by each Israel and america final summer time whereas its regional proxy community collapsed. Socially, this was the sixth mass protest in a decade and noticed practically all segments of society take part (together with the extra conservative service provider class). After 5 many years, the mullahs have little to point out for themselves however hyperinflation, strategic humiliation, and a inhabitants that prefers secular democracy to clerical rule.

And but, regardless of its weak spot, the regime displayed a disquieting will to remain alive. A month after the early January massacres, the protests have quelled, and the regime appears to have survived but once more. Tragic as it’s, we shouldn’t be shocked. Iran’s specific mixing of Shia resistance theology and its prescribed authoritarian political construction has yielded a system uniquely insulated towards well-liked discontent. Fostering a peaceable collapse will take extra time and a cautious exploitation of the regime’s weak factors.

Elite Unity

Political scientists not often agree on something, however a number of matters command broad assent. Amongst these is that well-liked (or social) revolutions can succeed solely when there’s a main cleavage within the reigning elite. The place there may be elite unity, the probability of success diminishes significantly. This was the important thing perception made by Theda Skocpol in her 1979 work, States and Social Revolutions. To place it extra starkly, essentially the most decided, well-liked, well-organized revolution will fail if the state equipment stays unified and has the desire to outlive. Accordingly, one key to determining whether or not a preferred revolution stands an opportunity is that if there may be main infighting between or defections from the elites within the protested regime. In Iran, there weren’t any. In lots of different international locations, both an financial crash or a army defeat may alone suffice to generate the type of elite cleavage essential to cripple the state. However the Islamic Republic is a special type of beast.

A part of the regime’s benefit is the substantive educating of its founding ideology. Not like different twentieth-century ideologies, Khomeinism is explicitly (and fanatically) spiritual, granting its adherents the boldness that God is on their facet. It’s one factor for a secular dictator to stroll away from energy and stay in snug exile; it’s one other for a believing man to show his again on God. The previous faces disgrace and irrelevance. The latter faces disgrace, irrelevance, and everlasting damnation. Put in another way, the prices of defection are increased in theocratic regimes.

This drawback is accentuated by the particularly Shia model of Islamism animating Iran. All international locations honor their lifeless. However in Iran, they’re worshipped. That is partly as a result of Shia Islam is drenched in sacrificial tragedy, extra so than most religions and definitely extra so than different department of Islam.

Shi’ism begins in a way with the martyrdom of Imam Hussein (Muhammad’s grandson and third Imam in accordance with Shias) on the Battle of Karbala in 680 AD. His loss of life by the hands of the Umayyads infused Shia Islam with a way that the world is basically unjust, that tyrants will trample over the righteous, that battle is a advantage, and that one who dies on behalf of God is strolling within the path of the Imams. Tehran has made ample use of the Karbala metaphor, evaluating itself to Hussein and the West to the Umayyads because the starting. It has additionally acted on this comparability, notably when it despatched a whole lot of 1000’s to die within the Iran-Iraq warfare, some extent Ayatollah Khamenei reminded listeners of through the January protests.

Stepping again from the spiritual dimension, the particular historic narrative instructed by Khomeinism lends itself, as Haviv Rettig Gur put it, to a “zero sum” view of the world. In line with Khomeinism, the West seeks a minimum of the destruction of Islam. Accordingly, the chief purpose of the regime is resistance towards Western “imperialism.” The extra the nation suffers, the extra elites can inform themselves (and people within the inhabitants who will pay attention) that the West continues to hunt its destruction. “In such an ideological body, excessive losses are simply recast as proof of righteousness, not of coverage failure; as displaying a willingness and capability to outlive.” The regime can grind on in full conviction that the blood within the streets is a consequence of imperialist meddling, not regime corruption or incompetence.

We must always not underestimate the boldness these dimensions of Khomeinism give to regime leaders or the lengths they’re keen to go to meet their divine mandate. It was revealing how dedicated the regime remained to Khomeinism within the aftermath of the Girl, Life, Freedom protests in 2022 when it refused to chill out legal guidelines requiring ladies to put on head coverings. As a substitute of compromising and appeasing its pissed off populace, it dug in its heels in protection of medieval laws.

However the elites in Iran get pleasure from greater than a sticky ideology. Additionally they profit from army and political establishments consciously designed to lock within the Islamist character of the 1979 revolution and stand up to public strain for reform. As I’ve written beforehand, Iran has a parallel army system consisting of the formal armed forces (Artesh) and the extra ideologically infused IRGC (Sepah). The IRGC each checks the armed forces and oversees paramilitary models (the Basij) whose formal cost contains “defend[ing] neighborhoods in case of emergency.” Put extra straight, the IRGC is a revolutionary establishment specifically tasked with ensuring one other revolution doesn’t succeed. This poses main issues for any well-liked rebellion. Usually, it’s each vital and tough to flip the army to the protesters’ facet. In Iran, doing so with out main buy-in from the IRGC may set off civil warfare.

On the political facet, Khomeini intentionally designed a regime that maximized the ability of the “guardian jurist” within the workplace of the Supreme Chief. As a result of he was meant to be the wisest and most morally pure, the guardian jurist may do with minimal authorized constraints. Accordingly, Iran’s institutional design provides vital discretion to the Supreme Chief, Ali Khamenei. Along with appointing chiefs and division heads within the armed forces (each Artesh and Sepah), the Supreme Chief additionally appoints half of the members of the Guardian Council, who in flip vet candidates for the Meeting of Specialists (on paper, the first verify on the Supreme Chief). Each the Meeting of Specialists and the Guardian Council, in flip, vet candidates for Iran’s Parliament and might disqualify candidates even after they safe an election. Most political roads lead again to the Supreme Chief.

Khamenei has at all times taken benefit of those institutional strings to make sure dedicated Khomeinists remained in cost. Lately, nevertheless, the regime has shrunk the house for dissenting opinions even additional in an effort at political “purification.” For instance, within the 2024 elections to the Meeting of Specialists, the Guardian Council barred earlier incumbents from working, together with reasonable reformers like former president Hassan Rouhani. Regime meddling and strategic vetting have yielded the same “hardline” trajectory within the Iranian parliament such that voter participation dropped to its lowest in 2024 (at 41 p.c in comparison with 62 p.c two cycles beforehand). These traits point out a weakening legitimacy of the regime, however in addition they recommend consolidation of a extra stringently conservative elite, even much less more likely to defect now than ten years in the past.

Wanting Forward

The substance of Khomeinism and its attendant political buildings present regime officers distinctive sturdiness towards unrest, however they don’t make the regime invincible. Like all authoritarian preparations, the elite in Iran is a posh internet of quietly competing factions spattered throughout establishments and whose loyalty to the regime consists of various levels of ideological alignment, concern, and financial curiosity. Broadly talking, this elite contains the Supreme Chief and his private circle, the broader clerical institution, parliamentarians, members of the Meeting of Specialists and the Guardian Council, the dual-pronged safety equipment, and huge enterprise and patronage networks. Many of those overlap: Khamenei’s shut circle contains members of every section; IRGC officers typically go on to serve in parliament and are particularly well-connected within the black market; clerics might be discovered in all places (together with within the IRGC and parliament). This matrix held by means of this spherical of protests, however there are weak factors whose exploitation may yield peaceable collapse when Iranians once more take to the streets.

There isn’t any established system for predicting which configuration of forces should defect as a way to safe regime collapse. Given the spiritual claims of the theocracy, main clerical desertion would carry particular weight however proved inadequate previously. From the attitude of a preferred revolution, crucial teams are the IRGC and the traditional armed forces: Revolutions succeed when the rank-and-file troopers both refuse to shoot or when their officers refuse to subject orders to shoot.

That the safety forces adopted orders in January means that the regime will not be but able to fall. Not solely did it double down earlier than large unrest, it did so within the face of very public threats from an American president who has demonstrated his willingness to make use of army drive. It’s exceptional that the regime carried out its assaults within the face of seemingly credible threats from the US. It belies the argument that final summer time’s army strikes significantly divided the regime.

Accordingly, untimely army motion geared toward fracturing the elite may very simply yield civil warfare, the final end result any occasion ought to need. Profitable regime collapse will as an alternative require cajoling people within the regime (significantly within the IRGC), persuading them that defection is healthier for them and their households than clinging to a sinking ship. Current sanctions towards these accountable for the crackdown recommend a flip towards this extra tailor-made method. These sanctions implicate not simply the person, but in addition his household, by stopping them from touring to the US to, for instance, make the most of our superior training system.

Critically, these efforts mustn’t focus solely on financial incentives. If a part of the issue with Iran is its fusing faith and political ideology, profitable wooing would require persuading officers that the ethical and spiritual ends they search aren’t met by the regime, that Khomeini’s theological innovation has been tried and confirmed to be a failure. There are many nodes to work with on this entrance, from declining religiosity amongst Iranians to widespread corruption amongst clerics. Removed from advancing the reason for Islam, there may be enough proof that the Islamic Republic has harm it. It’s price remembering that leaders of the 2009 Inexperienced Motion have been conservative clerics who had uninterested in the regime; we shouldn’t assume that each one like-minded ones are in home arrest.

These efforts mustn’t supplant however ought to work in tandem with present measures to put on down the regime, together with the “most strain” sanctions regime in place. Nor does this exclude using army drive to neutralize threats towards the Strait of Hormuz or a reconstituted nuclear and ballistic missile program. However none of those measures alone will generate the type of defection that’s wanted for a manageable transition sooner or later.