Iran needs organic transformation, not a West-backed regime change

Regime change has been part of Iran’s collective memory and triggered upheavals there. Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian’s comments in an interview with American non-profit media organisation NPR that the protests would not lead to regime change highlighted the attempt to tap into the emotional import of the phrase.

Britain and the US smothered democracy in its infancy in Iran decades before they sought to import it to the region. In 1953, they removed democratically-elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh from power, setting off a chain reaction that led to the 1979 revolution and the state of play in Iran. Mossadegh was ousted for defying it by ending the British monopoly over Iran’s oil after sweeping to power in 1951 on the back of a pledge to do so.

Educated at the Paris Institute of Political Studies before receiving his doctorate in law from Switzerland’s University of Neuchâtel, Mossadegh was a far cry from Iran’s post-revolution rulers. He was a proponent of the values the West champions. Mossadegh was a liberal, a rationalist, who opposed obscurantism and believed in secularism and pluralism. He symbolised Iran’s secular constitutionalism and civic nationalism. Mossadegh crossed the line by seeking to invest Iranian oil revenues in the welfare of the poor through his nationalisation project.

Britain would have none of it and tried to cripple the Iranian economy through economic sanctions and a naval embargo. Its attempt to overthrow Mosaddegh was frustrated with the closure of the British embassy and the deportation of undercover agents plotting it. Mosaddegh proved no match when Britain and the US joined hands to mount covert Operation Ajax to overthrow Mosaddegh with the help of a section of the clergy, rogue elements from the military, and the press in August 1953.

Mossadegh was banished to spend the rest of his life under house arrest. The Shah, or king, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, became the absolute ruler shortly after fleeing Iran in the face of riots after unsuccessfully trying to dismiss Mosaddegh.

While democracy was organically taking root under popularly elected Mosaddegh, the Shah undertook an aggressive secularisation and Westernisation drive without the public having any say in it. It would have the Iranians turn to religion and religious leadership. The Shah deprived Iranians of basic political participation by doing away with the party system and abolishing the constitution. He fuelled record inflation through his recklessness and went for rapid militarisation and diluted Iran’s national and religious identity.

The Shah created conditions for the clergy, intellectuals, merchants, communists, feminists, etc to put aside their differences and revolt. Author Reza Aslan has argued that the revolution was by no means monolithic and not initiated at Ayatollah Khomeini’s behest alone. Diverse and sometimes conflicting voices were raised against the Shah and Khomeini’s was merely the loudest.

Much of the Muslim clergy including those from Khomeini’s fellow Shia sect disagreed with his to wilayat al-faqih, or the rule of the jurist theory, which has since 1979 vested a supreme leader with absolute legal authority and the right to arbitrate the state’s matters in Iran. The Shia clerical establishment in Iraq’s Najaf, where Khomeini refined his theory while in exile there, rejects clerical control and seeks a mere advisory role in the state’s affairs.

Khomeini rejected the insistence of his fellow clerics against getting involved in the machinations of the state and continuing with traditional political quietism.

Aslan has noted valayat-e-faqih proposed startling modifications to traditional Shia thought with an insistence on absolute concentration of authority in the hands of a single cleric. Most clerics rejected Khomeini’s doctrine arguing that clerics were only meant to preserve a state’s spiritual character and could not run it.

Khomeini countered his critics by broadening his appeal and couching his theology in populist rhetoric. He wooed Leftists by calling for an uprising of the oppressed masses, and secular nationalists by alluding to Iran’s glorious past while obscuring the details of his philosophy and calling dictatorship the greatest sin in Islam.

The system Khomeini created was also unprecedented. Clerics have traditionally interpreted how to apply Islamic law to matters such as criminal codes, inheritance, etc without ever ruling directly. But the Shah’s West-backed brutal dictatorial zeal to strictly reorganise society on secular lines while undermining religion made Khomeini’s ideas more acceptable than they otherwise would have been. The attack on religion was seen as more sinister against the backdrop of the Shah’s installation as an absolute monarch.

The American Central Intelligence Agency, which admitted to its involvement in the anti-Mossadegh coup for the first time in August 2013, and the Israeli spy agency Mossad trained the Shah’s infamous secret police force. It was the worst manifestation of the West’s role in the nature of the Shah’s rule and helped prepare the ground for the revolution.

The revolution has endured despite constant threats of regime change. The fears of a 1953-style covert action also triggered the American embassy seizure immediately after the revolution. The US-backed Iraqi dictator Saddam’s eight-year war, the 20th century’s longest, which left an estimated million dead, on Iran to counter the revolution also failed.

The US later invaded Iraq to remove Saddam from power in 2003 citing non-existent weapons of mass destruction and to export democracy. The war and Iraq’s subsequent occupation left about half a million dead before the Americans withdrew in 2011, allowing Iran to fill the vacuum and creating a corridor of influence up to the Mediterranean.

Iran used the corridor to help expand its influence and shore up its allies, notably preventing the change of Syrian Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The Iranian influence in Iraq has grown so much that Baghdad is virtually dependent on everything on Tehran.

Iran’s prolonged isolation has also made it resilient and self-reliant to counter regime change attempts. It has developed a significant industrial base despite crippling sanctions since the 1980s and emerged among significant automobile, cement, and steel manufacturing countries. Iran has excelled in nanotechnology and stem-cell research and ranked 76th on the 2021 Human Development Index ahead of China (79) and India (132).

Maryam Mirzakhani, who became the first woman to win Fields Medal in 2014, graduated from Iran’s the top-ranked Sharif University of Technology. Women have outnumbered men in Iranian universities and in part explain the groundswell for change with the full backing of young men on the streets and campuses. This is remarkable for a country that has faced crippling sanctions, the longest war of the last century, and has had little breathing space over the last four decades. An organic transformative change is inevitable against this backdrop as long as mistakes such as regime change are not repeated.