Iran
The Islamization of Law in Iran
The re-Islamization of law by the leadership of the Islamic Republic following the 1979 revolution immediately clashed with the realities of contemporary Iranian society. [1] This clash engendered divisions between the parliament and the Guardian Council (a body of faqihs [2]] tasked with safeguarding laws’ conformity to Islam and the constitution). [3] Numerous government projects and decisions adopted by the parliament were rejected by the Guardian Council on the grounds that they did not conform to shari‘a (Islamic law). The Council’s hard-line policy generated continuous conflicts, necessitating the intervention of Ayatollah Khomeini, Supreme Guide of the Islamic Republic.
Do-e Khordad and the Specter of Democracy
A shadow haunts Iran, the shadow of democracy and popular sovereignty. Twenty years ago the Islamic Revolution established a polity based on two contradictory elements: a republic of equal and sovereign citizens, and a hierarchical theocracy of pastoral power descending from an unelected religious leader (vali-e faqih, the Supreme Leader), which represented an innovation in Shi‘i Islam. The inevitable tensions between these irreconcilable elements are now coming to a head. [1]
From the Editor (Fall 1999)
A quarter of a century ago, MERIP Reports, the forerunner of this magazine, received wide acclaim for its incisive and politically accurate reporting on Iran in the years leading up to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Two decades after the culmination of the tumultuous events that redefined Iranian society and politics, and indeed, regional geostrategic and ideological realities, we are pleased to present this special issue of Middle East Report assessing Iran's Islamic Revolution at 20 from an on-the-ground perspective.
Deja Vu All Over Again?
Two decades after Iran's Islamic revolution of 1978-79, another US administration has been surprised by violent demonstrations on the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities. The Clinton Administration and members of Congress watched with alarm and some helplessness as Iranian student protests persisted and spread–despite official warnings, the brutality of religiously inspired vigilantes claiming to protect the Islamic Republic's interests and carefully orchestrated counter-demonstrations. The US Department of State has reacted cautiously to these developments, while members of Congress–usually eager to criticize the Clinton Administration's intelligence failures–have remained silent so far.
Report from Iran
International press reports have not done justice to the complexity of recent dramatic events in Iran. What began as a genuine, spontaneous student uprising in defense of press freedoms and political reforms has now been appropriated by extremist religious paramilitaries and vigilantes aiming to discredit the students and provoke a crackdown by anti-reform elements of the regime. Khatami's call for moderation in the wake of street battles between students and security forces was not an "about face" on reform, but a demand consistent with several appeals for calm issued by leading pro-reform figures and groups, including the fledgling student "Unity Council."
From Revolution to Revelation
The revelations came on a January evening and were reminiscent of the days when the Shah’s Savak hit squads ruled Iran. Renegade agents within the country’s secretive Intelligence Ministry admitted to killing secularist writers and politicians they considered enemies of the Islamic state. For weeks, hard-liners within the ministry had been accused of the mystery murders. Iran’s newspapers, which grow in number by the day, were identifying the culprits as members of clandestine conservative factions. Everyone claimed to know the orientation of the assassins, but solid evidence seemed nearly impossible to come by until that night.
Women and the Political Process in Twentieth Century Iran
Parvenu Paidar, Women and the Political Process in Twentieth Century Iran (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
This book argues that in neither the Pahlavi nor the Islamic eras have Iranian women enjoyed direct and independent control over the establishment of gender policies. “By destroying the independence of the women’s movement through cooption and coercion, both secular and Islamic states aimed to protect the nation…from the negative side effects of women’s social emancipation” (p. 358).
Labor and the Challenge of Economic Restructuring in Iran
During the last 20 years, the Iranian economy has had to adjust to a revolution, an eight-year war with Iraq, economic isolation and the collapse of its oil revenues. As a result, Iran witnessed the complete undoing of its gains in per capita income from the boom years of the 1970s. The generation of Iranians who grew up before the revolution, at a time of steadily increasing incomes, view the last 20 years of decline and stagnation with disbelief. For the new generation, which came of age after the revolution, the pressing issue is not past losses but the current reality of stagnation and unemployment: One in four Iranian youths cannot find jobs.
The Containment Myth
Among those who direct American foreign policy, there is near unanimity that the collapse of communism represents a kind of zero hour. The end of the Cold War so transformed the geopolitical landscape as to render the present era historically discontinuous from the epoch that preceded it. Policy makers contend that America’s mission abroad has had to change to keep pace with these new circumstances.
Tensions in Iran
The May 1997 election of Mohammad Khatami as president of Iran was a watershed event in the history of the almost 20-year-old Islamic Revolution. While the current on-the-ground situation in Iran remains confusing, it is not for lack of information. During the last year, the press has blossomed with a variety of daily newspapers printing real news, including murders, scandals, police misconduct, public protest and opinion, public appeals to rulers and polemical debates between Iran’s different factions. With the exception of attacks on the concept of velayat-e faqih (regency of the jurisconsulate) and the role of the Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, many previously forbidden things have now been printed.
Iran and the Virtual Reality of US War Games
The year is 2002. Saddam Hussein has been assassinated, and Shi‘i forces in Basra have declared their independence from Baghdad. Iran, the dominant regional power, invades Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to gain regional hegemony, control the price of oil, finance its military buildup “and ameliorate its social problem.” Tehran threatens to use nuclear weapons if the United States intervenes to defend its Gulf allies.
Ideology and Revolution in Iran
Ervand Abrahamian, Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993).
Hamid Dabashi, Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundations of the Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York: New York University Press, 1993).
John Foran, Fragile Resistance: Social Transformation in Iran from 1500 to the Revolution (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993).
Middle East Watch, Guardians of Thought: Limits on Freedom of Expression in Iran (New York, 1993).
Squatters and the State
The early 1990s saw a period of renewed urban popular uprisings in Iran, unprecedented since the 1979 revolution. From August 1991 to August 1994, six major upheavals took place in Tehran, Shiraz, Arak, Mashhad, Ghazvin and Tabriz, and there were frequent minor clashes in many other urban centers. Most of these incidents involved urban squatters concerned with the destruction in their communities. This was the case in Tehran, Shiraz, Arak, Mashhad and Khorramabad.
An Open Letter to a Jailed Iranian Writer
Dear Dr. Saidi Sirjani:
For almost 20 years now, I have known and admired you and your writings. Whatever your detractors may say, Ali Akbar Saidi Sirjani cannot justly be accused of partisanship. I have known you as a fierce critic of Mohammad Reza Shah’s insufferable pretensions and intolerance of dissent, and later as an equally sharp thorn in the side of the Islamic government. May the nib of your pen never be blunted!
From the Editors
This issue looks at the economic and social crises that beset Iran more than 15 years after the Islamic Revolution. While the articles presented here share a critical perspective toward the present government, the authors allow us to see aspects of a society that both endures and challenges the inept, contradictory and impoverishing policies of the state. As was the case on the eve of the anti-Shah revolution, the most salient issues are corruption, legitimacy and competence.
Devices and Desires
The development of population policy in the Islamic Republic of Iran provides fertile ground for reexamining the widely held assumption that Islamist ideology is the antithesis of modernity and surely incompatible with any form of feminism. Recent strategies that the Islamic Republic has adopted to build a public consensus on the necessity of birth control and family planning indicate the flexibility and adaptability of that ideology in response to political and economic realities.
