Reuel Marc Gerecht: The Islamic Republic of Iran is Alive but Not Well
Supreme leader Ali Khamenei had a good day on February 11. If the pro-democracy Green movement had managed to send hundreds of thousands of demonstrators once again onto Tehran’s streets, his heybat—the indispensable awe behind dictatorship—would have been finished. Backed by an enormous security force drawn from all over the country, the regime let the world know that Khamenei still rules. So is the opposition finished? And has the Islamic Republic’s theocracy now mutated into a crude police state, an Iranian version of the Arab autocracies that become ever more unpopular and lifeless but don’t collapse?
All the opposition must do is keep challenging the authority of Khamenei. This will let Iranians know that the regime isn’t omnipotent. And it will keep alive the possibility that the country’s collective embitterment about the failure of the Islamic revolution to provide prosperity and happiness could explode. A big difference between a Marxist totalitarian system spiritually running out of gas and an Islamic theocracy withering is that faithful Muslims maintain a less forgiving standard of measure: the Holy Law and the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad and, in the case of Shiite Iranians, the traditions of Ali, the fountainhead of the Shiite creed. Unlike Marxists, Iran’s Islamic rulers cannot just completely make it up as they go along. Although it sounds odd to Westerners, religion does not always play to the advantage of Iran’s avowedly religious government. Faithful Muslims have a deeply held sense of justice—the justice that God promises every believer through the Law. Although Western observers of Iran have a strong tendency to believe that religion has become a contrivance for the powerful, this is wrong.
Certainly, there are members of the Iranian ruling elite who “know not God.” Yet both rulers and ruled are generally men of faith. Marxism had collapsed into utter cynicism by the 1980s. It had earth-bound standards of achievement; it failed them, but Marxists could suppress with gusto any sign of discontent. Man-made morality is infinitely flexible. Iran’s theocrats—and even their praetorians, the Revolutionary Guard Corps—claim to be operating on a higher level. Their regular disregard of the Holy Law can deeply anger the religious (let alone the millions of secular Iranians who now live more or less by Western norms). This is why the regime loathed the recently deceased Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who passionately denied the regime religious legitimacy. The more Iran becomes like a classic police state, the more the regime’s religious base cracks. Even the instruments of oppression—the faithful Guard Corps and the Basij—could have debilitating doubts. In Iran, the power that grows out of the barrel of a gun must contend with long-established Shiite Islamic ethics, which checks totalitarianism and gives the opposition, even the godless Westernized wing, some maneuvering room....
Assuming the opposition can hang on, it wouldn’t be surprising to see other brave souls come forward. When people are getting jailed, tortured, and killed, furious relatives in proud accomplished families can rise up. They might come from the clergy, the Revolutionary Guard Corps itself, or, like Mousavi, the lay religious notables. One day we won’t see them; the next day we will. The real issue for the opposition, and the regime, is how many Iranians are willing to die for political change. The frightened and paranoid way the regime reacted to the death of the beautiful Neda Agha-Soltan should tell everyone how scared Khamenei’s people are of women dying for the cause. Iran’s reform movement has in great part been pushed forward by women. A deeply conservative society in rapid social transition, the Islamic Republic doesn’t handle well brutality aimed at females—even highly Westernized ones. Kill a woman from the wrong family, and the regime could have hell to pay....
Which brings us to what America should do while the Iranians fight this out. It’s an odd fate that the United States should have as president a man with Muslim third-world roots who conducts foreign policy in the manner of George H.W. Bush. Under Democratic and Republican presidents, the United States fought a cold war against the Islamic Republic, waiting for the regime to start cracking from its internal contradictions. That’s now actually happening, and we’ve heard faint praise from the administration for the Iranians who are struggling against a regime that has repeatedly shed American blood. We are witnessing the most momentous struggle for the Muslim heart and soul in the Middle East, between despotism and democracy, religious militancy and moderation, and President Obama gives the distinct impression that he’d rather have a nuclear deal with Khamenei than see the messiness that comes when autocracy gives way to representative government....
President Obama could rightly claim that his outreach policy toward the Islamic Republic helped create the tumult that we’ve seen since June 12. But it’s a bow that the president so far hasn’t wished to take. John Limbert, the deputy assistant secretary for Iran and a former hostage, wrote a wonderful little book about his favorite country. The title, Iran: At War with History, captures what’s been going on in Persia since Limbert spent 444 days in captivity there. President Obama likes to describe himself as a “student of history.” If so, he should appreciate how far Iranians have come since 1979. They are an old and great people struggling desperately to integrate the humane political traditions of the West with their own culture and faith. The American president should lend them a helping hand.