Iran: the adolescent revolution.

• Author: Sick, Gary
• Position: Continuity and Transformation: The Modern Middle East

When Andre Malraux asked Chou En-lai for his evaluation of the French Revolution, the great Chinese revolutionary reportedly pondered for a moment and then replied, "It is too early to tell." The political and social effects of revolutions are measured not in years, but in generations, or even centuries. There are, in fact, only two iron laws that seem to apply to all major revolutions. First, they generate immense turmoil and suffering. Second, they confound the expectations of their founders and their enemies alike. As Charles Issawi liked to point out, "Revolutions revolve 360 degrees."(1)

It will be many years before we are able to make firm judgments about the meaning of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. We do know that its obituaries, which have appeared regularly ever since its birth, have been premature. The revolution is now a full-fledged teenager, having celebrated its 16th birthday on 11 February 1995. But we still do not know what will become of it when it grows up. The revolution qua rebellion is over, and the exultation of overthrowing the old regime is rapidly fading, but the hard work of defining the real meaning of these events has only just begun.

Any attempt to locate Iran within its regional and international setting must confront the bewildering contradictions that have characterized the revolutionary regime since its inception. Is Iran motivated by religion or by nationalism? Is it an expansionist state, or does it seek to maintain the status quo? Is it a military menace or a victim? Is it populist or autocratic? Does it seek to join the international system or to destroy it?

The answer most assuredly does not lie somewhere between these opposites. Rather, these contradictions were woven into the very fabric of the revolutionary system at its inception. The tension between the poles of this dialectic is the energy source that drives, and occasionally short-circuits, decisions and actions in Tehran.

Among the generation that made the revolution, factionalism was more personal than institutional, so the ubiquitous ideological groupings never coalesced into stable, identifiable associations. Instead, they have remained loosely defined coalitions whose members fluctuate according to the issue at hand. The revolution had different meanings for different people, and the contradictions that the revolution failed to resolve have only been exacerbated by the responsibilities and temptations of power. Revolutionary slogans, once the balm of ideological contention, appear increasingly quaint, as real decisions by real people in real positions of real power have real consequences.

It would be possible to construct a case supporting either view of Tehran's behavior, and Iran's friends and enemies busy themselves doing exactly that. In most international discourse, Iran is depicted as an aggressive center of terrorism, motivated by religious fanaticism and a determination to export its revolutionary ideas at all costs. Iran portrays itself - and often genuinely perceives itself - as the aggrieved victim of military and terrorist attacks by expansionist neighbors and implacable counter-revolutionary foes, supported and encouraged by the power brokers of the international system who are committed to the overthrow of the revolution and all it represents. Both images are correct, but neither is adequate without the other. That is the challenge for serious analysts and policy makers.

The prospects for and implications of Iranian post-revolutionary behavior might be examined by looking at virtually any aspect of Iran's domestic or foreign policy. There are three strands of that experience, however, that are particularly worrisome. The first of these is the revolutionary assertion of Muslim and Shi'i universalism, the so-called "export of the revolution." The second is Iran as an aggressive military power intent on regional hegemony. And the third is Iran's potential acquisition of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.

To be understood properly, each of these major issues should be viewed in the context of developments that have occurred since 1979, and those events should in turn be related to Iran's domestic and international setting. Such an inquiry, if done comprehensively, would fill several books. As a consequence, the discussion that follows will be more suggestive than exhaustive.

Export of the Revolution

In the first flush of victory after the overthrow of the Shah, Iran was giddy with its own success and utterly confident that it could reshape the world in its own image. It rejected traditional diplomacy, traditional economics and even traditional ideology in the pursuit of its own vision of universal Islamic rule. The state supported terrorist groups, seized American hostages, rejected any hint of dependency on either East or West, thumbed its nose at the United Nations and earned a reputation as a maverick state.

This is a common experience for revolutionary societies. The toppling of an ancien rigime, which had seemed impossibly powerful and well entrenched, is typically regarded as a miraculous event. In this respect, the band of revolutionaries may be forgiven for believing that their doctrines of universal liberty, economic justice or, in the case of Iran, Islamic ascendance are destined to triumph everywhere.

Such visions are not entirely fanciful, for most genuine revolutions carry the seed of a new idea that transcends the locality and the parochial circumstances that first permitted it to take root and flourish. The appeal of the French, Russian, Chinese and Cuban revolutions extended far beyond the borders of a single state and spawned militant movements that were regional or international in scope.

In the end, however, when a transformation of the international system proves to be excessively difficult, dangerous or expensive, the proselytizing impulse usually wanes and is progressively subordinated to more traditional objectives. Thus, the actions of the revolutionary entity gradually come to resemble those of a conventional state.

This process may take a long time, however, and the revolutionary urge never vanishes entirely. As Chou En-lai suggested, the effects of the French Revolution continue to be felt two centuries after the event, and more recent revolutions continue to dominate national behavior even in those cases, such as in the former Soviet Union, where their results have been repudiated. Revolutionary slogans become national emblems and permeate the national consciousness. Because of the revolutionary experience, certain types of behavior attain a degree of legitimacy and institutional immortality that makes them difficult to eradicate even after they have outlived their usefulness.

Iran seems to be working its way through this process of subordinating universalism to nationalism more quickly than some other revolutionary societies have done. But the process is far from over, and is still capable of producing great mischief.

The behavior of revolutionary Iran, even more than that of most countries, is defined in the eye of the beholder. The concept of "export of the revolution" is particularly slippery and prone to radically different interpretations by observers both inside and outside Iran. One of the main problems is that Iran's words and deeds have changed in the 16 years since the overthrow of the Shah.

In the chaotic early years of revolutionary rule, almost anyone with some revolutionary or clerical credentials could assemble an organization and conduct his own foreign policy. The son of Ayatollah Montazeri, Khomeini's designated successor at the time, organized his own guerrilla band and preached armed intervention in support of the Islamic revolution in Lebanon and elsewhere. Liberation movements sprouted in the hothouse atmosphere of Islamic Iran and were able, in many cases, to get money, weapons and training for dissident elements attempting to overthrow the governments of neighboring states in the Persian Gulf. Some of these factions (almost certainly with government acquiescence if not outright collaboration) attempted to smuggle weapons into Saudi Arabia and to subvert the annual religious pilgrimage. Reflecting the tenor of those times, one of the missions of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, created as a revolutionary counterpart to the regular military, was described in the Iranian Constitution as "fighting to expand the rule of sharia (Islamic law) in the world."

Behind these expressions of militant export of the revolution lay a philosophical universalism, a quest for a just world order, that scholars have traced to Iran's pre-Islamic past.(2) Those views were enshrined in the constitution of the new Islamic Republic, which enjoins the government to "exert continuous efforts in order to realize the political, economic and cultural unity of the Islamic world."

Virtually every major figure in the Islamic Republic has at one time or another insisted that "export of the revolution" is not intended to be conducted by the sword. Instead, they assert, the power of the revolution is the appeal of its ideas, not the force of its weapons. Thus, President Rafsanjani said in a 1993 press conference, "The phrase 'exporting the revolution', if it is mentioned here, means that we introduce our revolution and [that] anyone who wishes to use our experience can do so. But interference and physically exporting [revolution] has never been our policy."(3)

In practice, however, it has never been so simple. Clearly, Iran has been willing at times to tolerate armed interventions in its neighbors' territories by radical factions, and the fiery rhetoric of dissident movements, often replayed through Iran's official media, could justifiably be perceived as intervention by nations on the receiving end of the invective. The ambiguity of Iran's experience can be illustrated by its relations with its tiny island neighbor Bahrain.

Iran and Bahrain

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