Iran’s Thermidor?

Jun 28, 2009 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

Thirty years ago, the twenty-six year old regime of Shah Mohamed Pahlavi in Iran ended ignominiously as he fled from the wrath of a popular revolution. And a revolution it was: the break from the past was as abrupt as one could envisage as a new social, political and economic order was ushered in.
Installed in a CIA-sponsored coup that ousted the first democratically elected Prime Minister in the region, the Shah was determined to one-up his father’s emulation of Kemal Attaturk in neighbouring Turkey and wipe out all public expression of Islam in the society as he “modernised” his country.

Today, the Islamic Republic designed by Ayatollah Khomeni after 1979, which succeeded the Shah’s experiment, is engaged in a convulsion that some believe may mark another decisive turn in Iran’s evolution. In the west, the potential change is being articulated in a discourse of “democracy” versus “theocracy” with the latter supposedly representing fetters on the forces of progress and development.
In the study of revolutions, the French Revolution of 1789 is considered a paradigmatic one and the expressions that described its course and trajectory – such as Jacobinism, Brumaire and Thermidor etc. – have been appropriated for many such as the several Russian revolutions that followed.

Revolutions, it would appear, are supposed to follow certain laws. As mass movements, they are led by minorities that articulate the inchoate fears and frustrations of the ordinary folk into concrete political objectives. This is what Khomeni was able to do with his relatively small band of followers from his base in France where he had been exiled for opposing the Shah’s regime in the sixties. Through its commitment, clear vision for change and willingness to sacrifice, the minority inspires the majority in the belief that change is possible and channels the energy of the latter into a revolutionary force.

Beginning with merely hundreds of supporters in 1978, Khomeni was able to pull out fully one-tenth of the Iranian population within a year in what is arguably the largest protest demonstration in history. The Shah had to go.
In the first phase of the revolution, as the leadership tackles the many burdens that had oppressed the populace, they become increasingly radicalised as they overrun and destroy those obstacles by mobilising the direct participation of the expectant latter group. Opponents, whether from the old order or from groups with differing visions of change are swept aside in this phase.

In the case of Iran, this phase became a very protracted one because of the seizure and holding of hostages in the US embassy in Teheran by student radicals loyal to the revolution and also by the opportunistic invasion of Iran in 1980 by Iraq led by Saddam Hussain and supported by the US.
Analogous to the invasion of France by the European monarchs in 1791, the followers of the Ayotollah followed in the footsteps of the Jacobins to consolidate the new order which, not so incidentally, meant eliminating rivals who could be deemed as “unpatriotic”. The war that lasted eight years allowed that consolidation to deepen as the nation was rallied to “patriotic” sacrifices.

In the next phase – which occurred in the new revolutionary French calendar month of Thermidor and takes its name – the populace wearies of the internal purges and high level of sacrifice demanded in the evidently never-ending radicalising moves of the leadership. In France, Robespierre was executed, but while “Thermidor” refers to the seemingly inevitable “counter-revolution” that follows the early revolutionary zeal and excesses and could possibly lead to the reintroduction of the old order, it is important to note that because the feudal order had been broken in the short two years, this reversal never really occurred in France.

The question that arises is whether the street protests in Iran following the June 12 Presidential elections represent a Thermidor moment for the Iranian Revolution to represent a clean break with the revolution? Or will it end up with a further consolidation of the new order?
There is no question that large swathes of Iranian society are dissatisfied with present conditions – with the dissatisfaction ranging from economic and social concerns to a more fundamental disagreement with the premises of the new state. But in absolute terms, social and economic conditions – represented, for instance, by the UNDP’s Human Development Index – have improved markedly from the days of the Shah.

The dissatisfaction now arises from the inevitable rising expectations – which, in a sense, are an endorsement of the new dispensation that can generate such expectations.
Secondly, we have to note that in the contraposition of the present theocracy with “democracy”, the old order represented by the Shah was hardly democratic – much less so that even the present theocracy. Thirdly, we are now two decades away from the first phase of the revolution, during which a whole new generation have become socialised into accepting its premises.

Interestingly, during that time the Iranian Revolution has already dealt with questions of its legitimacy and direction when it elected the moderate Mohammad Khatami as President in 1997 and again in 2001. Many observers in the west were dismayed when President George Bush dubbed Iran as one of the members of an “axis of evil” because the external pressure placed the reformists in an awkward position even as it emboldened the radicals. The invasion of Iraq also did not help.

The election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the Presidency in 2005, obviously with the support of the radicals, was a reaction to the failure of the moderates to translate their program into a new national vision. Fourthly, western efforts, led by the US, to stymie the incipient nuclear capabilities of the country will also impact on the possibility of a decisive thermidor moment.
Most importantly, the role of Islam in underpinning the vision of the present order of the radicals and what that implies for a democratic turn in any possible Thermidor, has to be considered, and it is that factor which we will address next week.