Ervand Abrahamian: Why the Islamic Republic Has Survived
[Ervand Abrahamian is a CUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of History, Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is author of A History of Modern Iran.]
Obituaries for the Islamic Republic of Iran appeared even before it was born. In the hectic months of 1979—before the Islamic Republic had been officially declared—many Iranians as well as foreigners, academics as well as journalists, participants as well as observers, conservatives as well as revolutionaries, confidently predicted its imminent demise. Taking every street protest, every labor strike, every provincial clash as the harbinger of its inevitable downfall, they gave the new regime a few months—at best, a few short years.
Such predictions were understandable. After all, Iran—not to mention world history—had produced few full-fledged theocracies. Regimes often taken to be theocracies turn out, upon closer examination, to have been no such thing. Cromwell’s England was controlled by generals and landed gentry. It was princes, rather than preachers, who ruled the Lutheran kingdoms. Even Calvin’s Geneva, one of the first totalitarian states, was managed by lay lawyers rather than seminarians. What is more, few in 1979 could contemplate the possibility that seminary-trained clerics could administer a country that had experienced a half-century of modern development and was home to hundreds of thousands of engineers, doctors, scientists, civil servants, teachers and industrial workers. How could “mullahs” steeped in esoteric medieval writings deal with the formidable problems of the twentieth century? One did not have to be a Trotskyite in 1979 to think that the downfall of the Shah would inevitably and quickly pave the way for a more profound Permanent Revolution.
Despite the prognostications, the Islamic Republic has not only survived three full decades but in recent years has been hyped as a major Middle Eastern power that threatens its neighbors as well as the world’s sole superpower. It is often depicted in the United States as a cross between the Sassanid Empire and the Third Reich, between the early caliphate and the Soviet Union. Leaving aside the geopolitical reasons why a Third World state with a fourth-rate military has such a puffed-up image, the question worth asking is: What accounts for the 30-year survival of the Islamic Republic?..
Read entire article at Middle East Report
Obituaries for the Islamic Republic of Iran appeared even before it was born. In the hectic months of 1979—before the Islamic Republic had been officially declared—many Iranians as well as foreigners, academics as well as journalists, participants as well as observers, conservatives as well as revolutionaries, confidently predicted its imminent demise. Taking every street protest, every labor strike, every provincial clash as the harbinger of its inevitable downfall, they gave the new regime a few months—at best, a few short years.
Such predictions were understandable. After all, Iran—not to mention world history—had produced few full-fledged theocracies. Regimes often taken to be theocracies turn out, upon closer examination, to have been no such thing. Cromwell’s England was controlled by generals and landed gentry. It was princes, rather than preachers, who ruled the Lutheran kingdoms. Even Calvin’s Geneva, one of the first totalitarian states, was managed by lay lawyers rather than seminarians. What is more, few in 1979 could contemplate the possibility that seminary-trained clerics could administer a country that had experienced a half-century of modern development and was home to hundreds of thousands of engineers, doctors, scientists, civil servants, teachers and industrial workers. How could “mullahs” steeped in esoteric medieval writings deal with the formidable problems of the twentieth century? One did not have to be a Trotskyite in 1979 to think that the downfall of the Shah would inevitably and quickly pave the way for a more profound Permanent Revolution.
Despite the prognostications, the Islamic Republic has not only survived three full decades but in recent years has been hyped as a major Middle Eastern power that threatens its neighbors as well as the world’s sole superpower. It is often depicted in the United States as a cross between the Sassanid Empire and the Third Reich, between the early caliphate and the Soviet Union. Leaving aside the geopolitical reasons why a Third World state with a fourth-rate military has such a puffed-up image, the question worth asking is: What accounts for the 30-year survival of the Islamic Republic?..