Islamic Utopian Romanticism and the Foreign Policy Culture of Iran

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Notes

⁸⁷ In international relations, the return to critical theory has constituted a serious challenge to mainstream portrayals of international relations. For overviews see, among others, Andrew Linklater (Ed.) International Relations: Critical Concepts in Political Science (London: Routledge, 2000), esp. vols. IV and V; and Richard Wyn Jones (Ed.), Critical Theory and World Politics (London: Lynne Rienner, 2001).

⁸⁶ Max Horkheimer, ‘Traditional and critical theory,’ in: Critical Theory: Selected Essays (New York: Seabury Press, 1972), p. 232.

⁸⁵ See Eric Hobsbawm;Terence Ranger (Eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); and Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

⁸⁴ For the German case, see Thomas U. Berger, Cultures of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany and Japan (London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998); and John S. Duffield, ‘Political culture and state behavior: why Germany confounds neorealism,’ International Organization, 53(4) (1999), pp. 765–803. For the impact of norms and ideas on French military doctrine, see Elizabeth Kier, ‘Culture and military doctrine: France between the wars,’ International Security, 19(4) (1995), pp. 65–93.

⁸³ Richard K. Ashley, ‘Foreign policy as political performances,’ International Studies Notes (1998), p. 53.

⁸² The emerging ‘post-Islamicist’ moment in Iran's foreign relations led in January 2004 to the renaming of a Tehran street after Khaled Islambouli, the assassin of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat (1981), thus opening up the current rapprochement with Egypt. Irish Republicans in January 2001 launched an Internet campaign urging the Iranian government not to rename a street in Tehran that was named after the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands after his death in 1981.

⁸¹ Ibid., p. 165. Kian is the journal founded by Soroush in 1992.

⁸⁰ Abdolkarim Soroush, Reason, Freedom & Democracy in Islam: Essential Writings of ‘Abdolkarim Soroush, Mahmoud Sadri & Ahmad Sadri (Trans. and Eds) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 156.

⁷⁹ , ‘Scientific development, political development,’ Kian Monthly Review, 10(54) (2000), available at < http://www.drsoroush.com/English/By_drsoroush/E-CMB-19990500-Seminar_on_Tradition_and_Modernism_held_in_Beheshti_University.html> (accessed 12 June 2004).

⁷⁸ Ricoeur, Lectures, p. 278, n. 42.

⁷⁷ See Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, esp. chap. IV, n. 1.

⁷⁶ For a perceptive, anthropological analysis of Iranian modernity, see Fariba Adelkhah, Being Modern in Iran, Jonathan Derrick (Trans.) (London: Hurst, 1999).

⁷⁵ , ‘But what about Iran's grand strategic preferences?,’ The Daily Star, 26 August 2004.

⁷⁴ Mohammad Khatami, Islam, Dialogue and Civil Society (Canberra: Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, 2000), p. 62; see also Javad Zarif, ‘Indispensable power: hegemonic tendencies in a globalized world,’ Harvard International Review, 24(4) (2003), available at < http://www.ceip.org/files/Publications/2003-04-01-brumberg-HIR.asp?from = pubdate> (accessed 13 November 2003). Zarif is Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations.

⁷³ See further BBC News , ‘Iran releases British servicemen,’ 24 June 2004, available at < http://www.news.bbc.co.uk/2hi/middle-east/3835313.stm> (accessed 24 August 2004); and International Crisis Group, ‘Iran: where next on the nuclear standoff?,’ 24 November 2004, available at < http://crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id = 3118&1 = 1> (accessed 13 May 2005).

⁷² See further Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, ‘The contemporary political landscape of Iran: the eclectics of post-revolutionary politics,’ Part I, 8 November 2004, The Tharwa Project, available at < http://www.tharwaproject.com/English/Main-Sec/Features/Feat_11_29_04/index.php?option = com_keywords&task = view&id = 817&Itemid = 0; and idem, Part II, 29 November 2004, available at < http://www.tharwaproject.com/English/Main-Sec/Features/Feat_11_29_04/index.php?option = com_keywords&task = view&id = 814&Itemid = 0>.

⁷¹ Ibid., p. 113.

⁷⁰ For a conceptualization of ‘residual,’ ‘dominant,’ and ‘emergent’ culture see Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), esp. pp. 121–127.

⁶⁹ ‘Editor's Introduction,’ in: Ricoeur, Lectures, pp. xxviii–xxix, n. 42.

⁶⁸ R. K. Ramazani, ‘Shi'ism in the Persian Gulf,’ in: Cole & Keddie (Eds) Shi'ism, p. 33, n. 48.

⁶⁷ Mehrzad Boroujerdi, ‘Iranian Islam and the Faustian bargain of Western modernity,’ Journal of Peace Research, 34(1) (1997), p. 4.

⁶⁶ Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, Sermon delivered on 5 November, in Kayhan (Tehran), 6 November 1982, and quoted in Rajaee, Islamic Values and World View, p. 75, n. 2.

⁶⁵ See Abrahamian, Khomeinism, n. 49.

⁶⁴ BBC Survey of World Broadcasts , Part IV (A), The Middle East, 24 November 1979, ME/6280/A/8.

⁶³ See David George, ‘Pax Islamica: an alternative new world order,’ in: Abdel Salam Sidahmed & Anoushiravan Ehteshami (Eds) Islamic Fundamentalism (Boulder: Westview, 1996), pp. 80ff.

⁶² See n. 59.

⁶¹ The occupation occurred about two weeks after the shah was allowed to come to the United States for medical treatment.

⁶⁰ See Fred Halliday, ‘Iranian foreign policy since 1979: internationalism and nationalism in the Islamic Revolution,’ in: Cole & Keddie (Eds) Shi'ism, p. 96, n. 48.

⁵⁹ First Communiqué of the Muslim Students Following the Line of Imam,’ in Ebtekar, Takeover in Tehran, p. 70, n. 57.

⁵⁸ Halliday, Revolution and World Politics, p. 96, n. 53.

⁵⁷ Letter from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to Pope John-Paul II,’ in: Massoumeh Ebtekar, Takeover in Tehran: The Inside Story of the 1979 U.S. Embassy Capture (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2000), p. 246.

⁵⁶ For further analysis see Farhang Rajaee, ‘Iranian ideology and worldview: the cultural export of revolution,’ in: John L. Esposito (Ed.) The Iranian Revolution: Its Global Impact (Miami: Florida International University Press, 1990), pp. 63–80.

⁵⁵ See, among others, Rajaee, Islamic Values and World View, pp. 83–84, n. 4; and R. K. Ramazani, Revolutionary Iran: Challenge and Response in the Middle-East (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp. 26ff.

⁵⁴ Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, Sahifey-e nur, vol. 18 (Tehran: Vezarat-e Ershad, 1364/1985), p. 129.

⁵³ For a comparative analysis, see Fred , Revolution and World Politics: The Rise and Fall of the Sixth Great Power (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999).

⁵² Hamid Algar (Trans.), Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1980), p. 19.

⁵¹ See Ervand Abrahamian, Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic (London: I. B. Tauris, 1993).

⁵⁰ For Khomeini's perception of international affairs, see Rajaee, Islamic Values and World View, n. 4.

⁴⁹ The doctrine of velayat-e faqih was put forward by Ayatollah Khomeini in Hokumat-e Islami in the early 1970s. For an English translations of Khomeini's main arguments, see Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini, Hamid Algar (Trans.) (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1981).

⁴⁸ See Roy P. Mottahedeh, ‘Shi'ite political thought and the destiny of the Iranian Revolution,’ in: Jamal S. al-Suwaidi (Ed.) Iran and the Gulf: A Search for Stability (Abu Dhabi: The Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 1996), pp. 70–80; and esp. Juan R. I. Cole & Nikki R. Keddie (Eds), Shi'ism and Social Protest (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986).

⁴⁷ Ali Shari'ati, On the Sociology of Islam, p. 122.

⁴⁶ Idem, ‘A discussion of Shahid,’ in: Abedi and Leggenhausen (Eds), Jihad, p. 233, n. 44.

⁴⁵ Ali Shari'ati (n.d.), ‘Arise and bear witness,’ available at < htttp://www.shariati.com> (accessed 24 March 2003).

⁴⁴ Mortada [Morteza] Mutahhari, ‘Shahid,’ in: M. Abedi & G. Leggenhausen (Eds) Jihad and Shahadat: Struggle and Martyrdom in Islam (Houston: Institute for Research and Islamic Studies, 1986), p. 126.

⁴³ One of the main tenets of Iran's Ja'afari or Twelver Shia school is that the Twelfth Imam went into hiding (gheiba) and will return to establish the just rule of God on earth.

⁴² Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, George H. Taylor (Ed.) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 276.

⁴¹ Ibid., p. 193.

⁴⁰ Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, p. 173, n. 1.

³⁹ Ibid., p. 159.

³⁸ Ibid., p. 345. In an interesting insight into the identity politics of Pahlavi Iran, Rahnema notes that Shariati's articles were printed next to another serialized article entitled ‘Reza Shah the Great, saviour and reconstructor of Iran.’

³⁷ See Ali Rahnema, An Islamic Utopian: A Political Biography of (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000), pp. 119–128.

³⁶ Ibid., p. 19.

³⁵ Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Plagued by the West (Gharbzadegi) (New York: Caravan, 1982), p. 10.

³⁴ Joya Blondel Saad, The Image of Arabs in Modern Persian Literature (Lanham: University Press of America, 1996), p. 134.

³³ For a comparison of the representation of ‘Self’ and ‘Other’ in textbooks before and after the revolution see Golnar Mehran, ‘The presentation of the “Self” and the “Other” in postrevolutionary Iranian school textbooks,’ in ibid., pp. 232–253.

³² See Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, ‘Cultures of Iranianness: the evolving polemic of Iranian nationalism,’ in: Nikki R. Keddie & Rudi Matthee (Eds) Iran and the Surrounding World: Interactions in Culture and Cultural Politics (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002), pp. 162–181.

³¹ For a critical deconstruction of Ernest Renan's study of ‘semitic’ and ‘orientalist’ discourse, see Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 1995), esp. pp. 140–150.

³⁰ Indeed, one of the many titles of Mohammad Reza Shah included Aryamehr, which means ‘light of Aryans’ in Persian. His father, Reza Khan, who established the Pahlavi dynasty, promoted the name ‘Iran’ (Land of Aryans) instead of Persia and supported the elimination of Arabic terms from the Persian language.

²⁹ Morteza Mottahari, Islam and Iran (Beirut: Dar al-Ta'aruf, n.d.), p. 22, quoted in Wajih Kawtharani, ‘Mutual awareness between Arabs and Iranians,’ in: Khair el-Din Haseeb (Ed.) Arab–Iranian Relations (Beirut: Centre for Arab Unity Studies, 1998), p. 74.

²⁸ For a perceptive analysis of Iran's domestic political culture, see especially Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals, n. 26; and Samih K. Farsoun & Mehrdad Mashayekhi, Iran: Political Culture in the Islamic Republic (London: Routledge, 1992).

²⁷ I have employed the terminology of Karl Mannheim here; see his Ideology and Utopia, p. 174, n. 1. Here, utopianism is not synonymous with ideology as E. H. Carr claimed; rather, utopianism refers to rationalization of political change (termed realism by Carr). See Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1961). For an examination of the differing uses of terms common to Carr and Mannheim, see Charles Jones, E. H. Carr and International Relations: A Duty to Lie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

²⁶ For an examination of this political culture, see Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals and the West: The Tormented Triumph of Nativism (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996).

²⁵ Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971), p. 12. Writing in the Marxist tradition, Gramsci distinguished between ‘organic’ intellectuals and ‘traditional’ intellectuals. Whereas the former are created by dominant social classes to give them homogeneity and awareness of their function, the latter category refers to intellectuals (most notably the clergy, but also administrators, scholars, philosophers, scientists and theorists) who are already in existence and seem to represent historical continuity.

²⁴ Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 176.

²³ Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, p. 14, n. 6.

²² Wendt, Social Theory, p. 329, n. 14.

²¹ See George H. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934).

²⁰ See Wendt, Social Theory, chap. 3, p. 92ff., n. 14.

¹⁹ For the social construction of legitimacy, see Bukovansky, Legitimacy, esp. pp. 2–3, n. 14.

¹⁸ The centrality of language is accentuated by the ‘semiotic’ approach to culture; see, among others, Ferdinand Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (New York: McGraw Hill, 1964).

¹⁷ Herbert Marcuse, One-dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (London: Routledge, 1964), p. 11.

¹⁶ Archer, Culture and Agency, p. 107, n. 14.

¹⁵ I have drawn on sociological theory here; see further Peter & Stanley Pullberg, ‘Reification and the sociological critique of consciousness,’ History and Theory, 4(2) (1965), pp. 196–211; Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy (Garden City: Doubleday, 1966); and Berger & Luckmann, Social Construction, n. 8.

¹⁴ Most contemporary sociological and constructivist analyses, in international relations and other disciplines, subscribe to that viewpoint. See further Mlada Bukovansky, Legitimacy and Power Politics: The American and French Revolutions in International Political Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002); Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), esp. chap. 4; Margaret S. Archer, Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); and Nicholas Onuf, The Republican Legacy in International Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), chap. 8.

¹³ Wilhelm Dilthey, Selected Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 179.

¹² Karl Marx, ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,’ in: Karl Marx, Survey from Exile, David Fernbach (Ed.) (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1973), p. 146.

¹¹ Ibid., p. 49.

¹⁰ Peter L. Berger & Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979), pp. 69–70.

 ⁹ For a comprehensive critique of (neo)realist methodologies and ontologies, see R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), esp. chap. 5.

 ⁸ See further Hans Morgenthau, Politics among Nations (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1948).

 ⁷ See, for example, Anoushiravan Ehteshami, After Khomeini: The Iranian Second Republic (London: Routledge, 1995); and Adam Tarock, Iran's Foreign Policy since 1990: Pragmatism Supersedes Islamic Ideology (Commack: Nova Science Press, 1999).

 ⁶ Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (Basic Books: New York, 1993), p. 5.

 ⁵ Most foreign policy theorists rate ideas as secondary to material factors; see further Judith Goldstein & Robert Keohane (Eds) Ideas and Foreign Policy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993).

 ⁴ Sermon delivered on 2 November 1979 and quoted in Farhang Rajaee, Islamic Values and World View: Khomeyni on Man, the State and International Politics, vol. XIII (London: University Press of America, 1983), p. 82.

 ³ On Foucault and Iran in English, see among others Didier Eribon, Michel Foucault, Betsy Wing (Trans.) (London: Faber and Faber, 1991), p. 281ff.; James Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault (London: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 306ff; Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson (2005), Foucault, Gender, and One Iranian Revolution: The Seductions of Islamism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). See also Foucault's essays ‘Open letter to Mehdi Bazargan’ and ‘Useless to revolt?,’ in: Michel Foucault, Power: Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, vol. 3, Robert Hurley et al. (Trans.) (London: Penguin, 1997).

 ² Ali Shari'ati, On the Sociology of Islam: Lectures by Ali Shari'ati, Hamid Algar (Trans.) (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1979), pp. 92–93.

 ¹ Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 236.

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ARSHIN ADIB-MOGHADDAM

TheauthorwouldliketothankCharlesJonesZaheerKazmifortheirsightfulcommentsonearlierdraftsofthispaperThearticlealsobenefitedfrompresentationssemarsattheUniversityofCambridgetheUniversityofHamburgtheSchoolofternationalRelationsTehranfromnumerousconversationswithIranianforeignmistryofficials