![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
This article argues that recent de-democratization in Iran can be best understood by analysing the interplay of domestic Iranian politics and two external developments. These were the colour revolutions in several post-communist states and the hostile US policies toward Iran after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Together they generated a political climate in Iran conducive to hardliner attempts to discredit and neutralize the reformist opposition. The regime tried to delegitimize the opposition by portraying it as being in the service of foreign elements and claiming it was seeking to foment a popular uprising. The consequences were twofold. On the one hand, the regime's identification of civic and political activism as threats to national security greatly reduced the manoeuvrability of the reformist opposition and contributed to their marginalization. These developments point to the limits and unintended consequences of democracy promotion in Iran. On the other hand, the post-electoral protests of 2009 exposed the limits of conspiracy discourse in silencing mass discontent. This article argues that the regime's attempt to portray the unrest as a foreign conspiracy failed to convince a large segment of the population.
Notes
Tajbakhsh was also one of the defendants on post-election trials following the political unrest in summer 2009.
Khosrokhavar, ‘The Islamic Revolution in Iran’; Sedghi, Women and Politics in Iran, 246–61.
For securitization, see Wæver, ‘Securitization and Desecuritization’.
Levitsky and Way, ‘Linkage versus Leverage’ argues that extensive linkage significantly contributed to democratization in Central Europe and Latin America.
For instance, see Arjomand, After Khomeini; Ehteshami and Zweiri, Iran and the Rise of its Neoconservatives.
For instance, see Pripstein Posusney and Penner Angrist, Authoritarianism in the Middle East; Lust-Okar and Zerhouni, Political Participation in the Middle East; Schlumberger, Debating Arab Authoritarianism. The Arab uprisings of 2011 may lead to reconsideration of some of the claims of this literature.
Parsa, States, Ideologies, and Social Revolutions, 291.
Geddes, ‘What Do We Know about Democratization’, 131–3; Huntington, The Third Wave, 117–21; Magaloni, ‘Credible Power-Sharing’; Smith, ‘Life of the Party’.
Brownlee, Authoritarianism in an Age of Democracy, 42.
Keshavarzian, ‘Contestation without Democracy’, 65.
Moslem, Factional Politics in Post-Khomeini Iran; Kamrava and Hassan-Yari, ‘Suspended Equilibrium in Iran's Political System’.
Buchta, Who Rules Iran?, 6–10, 46–57; Arjomand, After Khomeini, 172–91.
For example, Ganji, ‘The Latter-Day Sultan’, 49–50; Arjomand, After Khomeini, 188–91.
Sultanist regimes are vulnerable to violent overthrows and succession crises because of the concentration of power in the hands of a single individual. Chehabi and Linz, ‘A Theory of Sultanism 1: A Type of Nondemocratic Rule’. Moreover, Khamenei, is not indispensable for the stability of the regime as in the regimes of Ceausescu of Romania, Pahlavi of prerevolutionary Iran, or Marcos of Philippines. Brownlee, Authoritarianism in an Age of Democracy, 204.
Tezcür, ‘Intra-Elite Struggles in Iranian Elections’.
Gandhi and Przeworski. ‘Authoritarian Institutions and the Survival of Autocrats’, 1283.
Brumberg, Reinventing Khomeini.
Diamond, ‘Elections without Democracy’; Levitsky and Way, ‘Elections without Democracy’, 52.
For turnout rates in these regimes, see Bunce and Wolchik, ‘Defeating Dictators’.
There is an extensive literature discussing the pernicious effects of oil for democracy. For instance, see Ross, ‘Does Oil Hinder Democracy’.
Esfahani and Taheripour, ‘Hidden Public Expenditures’.
Tezcür, Muslim Reformers in Iran and Turkey, 95–7.
Keshavarzian, Bazaar and State in Iran, 255–67.
Arjomand, ‘Civil Society and the Rule of Law’; Khalaji, The Last Marja; Kamrava, Iran's Intellectual Revolution, 120–72.
Philpott, ‘Explaining the Political Ambivalence of Religion’, 507–8.
Alamdari, ‘The Power Structure’.
Wehey et al., The Rise of the Pasdaran, 25–9, 32–3.
For the declining appeal of communism, see Furet, The Passing of an Illusion, 446–51. The attraction of the Islamic state among Muslims elsewhere was mostly limited to Shiite Muslims, see Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, 189–93.
Kuran, ‘Now out of Never’, 7–48.
cf. Linz, Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes, 167–8.
Tezcür and Azadarmaki, ‘Religiosity and Islamic Rule in Iran’.
Naji, Ahmedinejad.
This observation is based on the author's interviews with Ahmedinejad supporters in Tehran in June 2005 and March 2008.
Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, 203–6.
This does not mean the formation of a transnational Shiite alliance confronting the power of Sunni regimes of the Arab Middle East as Nasr argues. Nasr, The Shia Revival.
Parsi, Treacherous Alliance, 341–2.
Glenn Kessler, ‘In 2003, U.S. Spurned Iran's Offer of Dialogue’, Washington Post, June 18, 2006.
Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, 497.
Packer, The Assassins' Gate, 8–99.
Woodward, State of Denial, 268–9.
The full text of the speech is available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23747-2005Jan20.html.
Barbara Slavin, ‘US Doesn't Have Needed Support in UN to Punish Iran, Official Says’. USA Today, May 19, 2005.
Howard LaFranchi, ‘The Bush Team Unveils a Plan to Push for Iranian-led Reform’, The Christian Science Monitor, February 17, 2006; Farah Stockman, ‘Rice Wants Funds for Democracy Initiative in Iran’, Boston Globe, February 16, 2006.
Many Iranian dissidents argued against Bush administration policies of bringing ‘democracy’ to Iran on the grounds that his policies undermine the credibility of the indigenous democratic movement in the country. For instance, see Shirin Ebadi and Muhammad Sahimi, ‘The Follies of Bush's Iran Policy’, The New York Times, May 30, 2007.
Elise Labott, ‘US to Sharpen Focus on Iran’, CNN, March 2, 2006.
Seymour M. Hersh, ‘The Iran Plans’, The New Yorker, April 17, 2006; Laura Rozen, ‘The Revolution Next Time’, Los Angeles Times, October 10, 2004.
For instance, Charles A. Kupchan and Ray Takeyh, ‘The Wrong Way to Fix Iran’, Los Angeles Times, February 26, 2006.
Hersh, ‘The Iran Plans’. These linkages would be free from congressional oversight.
Seymour M. Hersh, ‘Preparing the Battlefield’, The New Yorker, July 7, 2008.
For instance, a series of bomb attacks killed several dozens of people in Ahvaz, the capital of Khuzestan between 2005 and 2006. A Baluchi armed group, Jundallah, kidnapped 16 police officers in June 2008. The group later executed 15 of these officers.
Sadjadpour, Reading Khamenei, 16.
For instance, see the comments of Pasdaran Admiral Morteza Saffari reported by Press TV, September 9, 2009.
Khamamei speeches are compiled from an electronic newsletter periodically sent by his official website http://www.leader.ir.
Sadjadpour, Reading Khamenei, 17.
Ibid., 17–8.
Ibid., 18.
Reported by ISNA, July 9, 2006.
Quoted by Iran Daily, March 1, 2007. A few months later he was quoted as saying that the print media was carrying out a ‘velvet revolution’. Reported by Iran Daily, July 19, 2007.
Press TV, August 22, 2007.
Kar's husband, Siamak Pourzand, was abducted in April 2001 and sentenced to 11 years in prison. After his sentencing, he was made to ‘confess’ his crimes on TV. He admitted belonging to a network aspiring to ‘culturally overthrow the Islamic Republic’. The hardliners used these confessions to question the patriotism and loyalty of the reformists.
Iran Daily, July 7, 2007.
Forced confessions have had a long and tragic history in the Islamic Republic. Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions.
Press TV, July 20, 2007; Iran Daily, July 21, 2007.
Kayhan, August 2, 2007.
Kayhan, November 21, 2007. Also see Iran Daily article on a documentary on Ahmedinejad's visit to the USA, November 1, 2007.
AFP, August 6, 2007.
Iranian Daily, November 20, 2007.
Press TV, November 25, 2007.
For instance, a reformist commentator responded to Hossein Shariatmadari, the chief editor of Kayhan, who accused the student protestors of being supported by foreign governments. The commentator asked Shariatmadari to provide credible evidence to back his accusations. Reported by ISNA, October 31, 2007.
Iran's Physical Integrity Right Index (constructed by David L. Cingranelli and David L. Richards) declined from 2 in 2003 to 1 in 2007. This index ranges from 0 (widespread torture, extrajudicial killings, political imprisonment, disappearance by government) to 8 (full government respect for these four rights). For more information see http://www.humanrightsdata.org.
For instance, see Human Rights Watch, Iran: Country Summary. There was also a significant increase in the number of executions. In 2005, there were 86 executions. In 2006, 177 individuals were executed, and in 2007, more than 300. Reported by Amnesty International, Iran-Amnesty International Report 2007, http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/iran/report-2007; Human Rights, Iran: Rights Crisis Escalates, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2008/09/18/iran-rights-crisis-escalates-0.
Farah Stockman, ‘Iran's Arrest of Doctors Jeopardizes US Program’, Boston Globe, September 9, 2008.
Paul Grondahl, ‘AIDS Doctors Tried in Secret in Iran’, Times Union, January 3, 2009.
Obama subsequently cut funding for the Iranian opposition. Reported by the BBC, October 20, 2009.
Press TV, November 18, 2008.
Press TV, November 22, 2008.
Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the other reformist candidate, pointed to a very large number of electoral irregularities including ballot stuffing, voter intimidation, duplicate voting and attacks against their campaign managers and workers.
For instance, see Nazila Fathi, ‘Protestors Defy Iranian Efforts to Cloak Unrest’, New York Times, June 17, 2009.
Full English translation of his sermon is available at http://www.presstv.com/classic/detail.aspx?id=98610§ionid=3510302.
It seems that the IRI rulers were convinced that electoral revolutions in post-communist countries were successful because the authorities refrained from using lethal force against protesters. For a discussion of how electoral protests facilitated mass mobilization, see Tucker, ‘Enough! Electoral Fraud’.
Mass mobilization capacity was a necessary but not a sufficient condition for successful democratization in East Europe. See Bunce, ‘Rethinking Recent Democratization’, 171–4.
Slogans shouted in the demonstrations were a good indicator of this radicalization. Khamenei replaced Ahmedinejad as the main target of protestors by December 2009.
These events defy the observation that authoritarian regimes in oil exporting countries are less likely to experience political protest than similar regimes in resource poor countries. Smith, ‘Oil Wealth and Regime Survival’, 232–46.
For a detailed discussion of the rising power of the Pasdaran and the second generation of hardliners under Ahmedinejad, see Arjomand, After Khomeini, 149–91.
A transcript of the indictment is available at http://www.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8805100074. An English translation by Evan Siegel is available at http://www.qlineorientalist.com/IranRises/the-indictment.
In early January 2010, the Ministry of Intelligence prohibited Iranian citizens from having contacts with 60 Western institutions, including Yale University, for their alleged role in fomenting unrest. See http://www.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8810141571.
A transcript of the indictment is available at http://www.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8805170594. An English translation by Evan Siegel is available at http://www.qlineorientalist.com/IranRises/the-complete-text-of-the-indictment-of-the-second-group-of-accused-in-the-project-for-a-velvet-coup.
A summary of the session is available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/iran/2009/08/090825_he_ir88_mass_trial4.shtml.
There are many examples of the role of street protests in effecting political change in modern Iran. In this sense the reformists did not just imitate electoral revolutions in post-communist regimes. For instance, see Abrahamian, ‘The Crowd in the Iranian Politics’.
Gheissari and Nasr, Democracy in Iran, 126.
This observation is based on the author's interviews with reformist politicians in Tehran in March 2008.
Stewart, ‘Democracy Promotion’.
Williams, ‘Words, Images, Enemies’; Balzacq, ‘The Three Faces of Securitization’.
Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions, 112.
Ashraf, ‘Conspiracy Theories’.
Whitson and Galinsky, ‘Lacking Control’.
Gasiorowski, ‘The 1953 Coup D'Etat in Iran’.