The Ayatollahs' Democracy: An Iranian Challenge

by Hooman Majd

  While Arab nations struggle over how to come to terms with Israel, and how to solve the Palestinian problem without offending the United States, the “other side,” as Kayhan put it, Iran, views the issue in simple terms: support a people their fellow Arabs have abandoned in their tilt to the West, and the masses will once again view a resurgent Persian empire as the supreme (and even benevolent) power in the region, whether peace comes between Israel and the Palestinians or not.

  But more ominously, at least for many Westerners and certainly the Arabs, Iran’s ambitions do not stop in the Middle East. Iran believes, and many of its top officials, both conservative and in the opposition, have told me this, that it can become the real bulwark against what it sees as U.S. hegemony across the globe, by appealing not only to friendly governments but also to the masses of people in the Third World—and not just the Muslim Third World. Arab Muslims may share their distrust of the United States and the West and praise Iran for its stand against Israel, but Iranian leaders recognize that in the long term the Shia-Sunni split will be difficult to completely overcome in Arab countries. However, the leaders think Iran’s anti-imperialist message will be easier to sell in non-Arab Muslim lands, and certainly in non-Muslim but still revolutionary lands. Iran also believes that the key to the longevity of the Islamic regime is its ability to win friends and influence people, while at the same time dominate and instill a certain amount of fear where necessary, just as the ancient kings of Persia—Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, whose name alone inspired dread—once did to great effect.

  IN SEPTEMBER 2008, during his trip to New York to attend the opening of the UN General Assembly, President Ahmadinejad had his usual meetings with American think-tank scholars and peace activists and interviews with the U.S. media, and he again also held a lavish dinner, this time for nearly a thousand Iranian-Americans (who are by and large opposed to his policies and philosophies). A gift bag, brought from Tehran on his jet, was distributed to his guests as they departed the Hyatt hotel ballroom in midtown Manhattan. On the bag, in large, fanciful lettering, was the word “Persia,” as part of an Iranian tourist board promotion, but perhaps the first use of the word by Iranian officialdom since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Persia, apart from being a Western word that the late Shah’s father banished from use, conjures up images of a kingdom ruled by lay monarchs without regard for the primacy of Islam, images that have been anathema to the Islamic regime for a long time. In the immediate aftermath of the Islamic Revolution, authorities went to great lengths to scrub Iran of its pre-Islamic history, in actions ranging from the deletion of that history from school textbooks to the government neglect of historic sites, and in some ways rewrote history to reflect their view that Iran’s glory came only during its Islamic phase.

  The Iranian government today, however, has finally decided that the ancient empire of kings, non-Islamic ones at that, is a fitting image for Iran’s new role in the world. Projected on one wall during that dinner with Ahmadinejad in 2008 was a huge map of the Persian Gulf with the words “Persian Gulf Forever!” printed on it (a reference to the allergic reactions, across the Iranian political spectrum and among all expatriates, to the idea of renaming it the “Arabian Gulf” or just “The Gulf,” as the BBC is wont to do). But more interestingly, the flag of Iran was superimposed not only on the country itself, whose borders any Iranian would instantly recognize, but on the entire Arabian Peninsula to the south, a not-so-subtle indication of what Iran views as its dominion. Persia and the Persian Gulf.

  WHERE HAS THIS renewed desire for influence and power come from? In a post-Soviet and unipolar world—that is, a world without competing political ideologies—most developing countries are generally satisfied to be given a leg up by the West. They are satisfied with the quid pro quo of the alliance in which they reap the benefits, most often economic, in return for their allegiance (or as some would argue, subservience). The handful of countries that have resisted Western domination—Cuba, for example—have done so out of revolutionary political commitments, but no non-superpower country has set out an agenda that so clearly challenges American supremacy as has Iran, which is intent on becoming a superpower in its own right within a generation. And Iran has the audacity to view itself as a potential superpower very simply because Iranians have always felt it is their natural place in the world. They were an empire that controlled half the world’s known geography, and their Islamic view holds that Iranian Shias are the natural and true defenders of the faith.

  While it may seem counterintuitive that Iran, a still relatively weak country militarily and even economically despite its massive oil and gas reserves, could imagine itself as an empire to rival the great powers, Iranians, especially the ambitious post-revolutionary generation, don’t think so. “A billion and a half Muslims have woken up,” a deputy foreign minister in Ahmadinejad’s first administration said to me. And Iran sees itself as the hope for Muslims and non-Muslim people everywhere who imagine themselves, or in fact are, the oppressed majority, but it also sees itself as their leader, much in the way that Iran’s ancient kings saw themselves as the rightful supreme leaders of and guides to various tribes and smaller kingdoms across the globe. “All the kings who sit upon thrones throughout the world, from the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea, who live in the districts far-off, the kings of the West, who dwell in tents, all of them, brought their weighty tribute before me,” reads an inscription on the Cyrus Cylinder in the British Museum, “and kissed my feet where I sat in Babylon.” In the biblical book of Isaiah, the coming of Cyrus is predicted, confirming for Persians of the time and Iranians today that Yahweh (God) chose the Persian king to liberate Babylon. You can’t get any more “supreme” than that. The Iranian leadership also sees itself as analogous to the early Soviets, who viewed themselves as the hope for socialists and communists, as well as the working class, everywhere. Iranian leaders will unapologetically claim that within another generation they will have extended Iranian influence, and even Iranian leadership on vital world matters, to all corners of the globe.

  Go ahead, laugh. I do too, along with some other Iranians who are used to the gholov, the grandiose hyperbole common to Iranian discourse. I laughed at a joke making the rounds of Tehran in 2009, after yet another military parade and another exaggerated technological accomplishment by its navy, which along with the Revolutionary Guard naval division, is charged with protecting the Persian Gulf from Arabs and Westerners alike. Ali and Asghar, the joke went, are two unemployed youths (like many of their contemporaries) in Tehran, and while looking for work one day they stumble on an ad for the Iranian navy in the back of a newspaper. “Let’s go join!” says Ali. “We have a navy?” asks Asghar. “With ships?” “Come on, let’s go and sign up,” says Ali, “of course we have a navy.” The two boys show up at the recruitment office and are called in for their preliminary interview. “So,” says the officer, looking at their birth certificates and taking a pencil to paper, “can you swim?” “See!” whispers Asghar to Ali, “I told you these motherfuckers don’t have any ships.”

  Yes, it’s true that the Iranian navy is hardly prepared to rule the waves (although it does have ships, and even domestically produced submarines, which I, for one, would be hesitant to board), but to dismiss Iranian ambitions, and the Iranian leadership’s determination to achieve its goals, would be a mistake. Underestimating Iran and Iranians has been the one constant factor in Western opinion for the last thirty years, and in recent years, inflating the danger of Iran has become fashionable in some quarters. The Supreme Leaders of Iran, past, present, and future, may not measure up to Cyrus and the “tribute” he commanded, their armies will never be on par with those of the kings of ancient Persia, but nor will Iran be the meek and toothless nation of its more recent past. The truth of Iran’s ambitions and its potential lies, as it always does, somewhere in the middle.

  AS A YOUNG CHILD I would sometimes see my father, when he was a diplomat under the last Shah, come home angry and frustrated. O
ften, I would glean from conversations I overheard that it was because he had had to deal with an issue that day that he felt strongly about, but one in which the United States had made the decision for Iran, or an issue that the Shah had shown a particular weakness in when it came to Iran’s national interests. Ironically, as my father became a senior diplomat, ambassador to Japan, he no longer talked about work at home, mainly, as I discovered, because the Iranian government had thoroughly wired the homes it provided for senior officials (and undoubtedly it continues to do so). The Shah had actually started to believe, for a moment in the 1970s, that he had risen above a dependence on America and the West, evidenced in his lecturing tone when discussing their profligate ways in interviews, particularly during the oil crises. (Pro-monarchy conspiracy theorists still claim that the British and the Americans engineered the Islamic Revolution as payback to the newly bumptious Pahlavi.) Ayatollah Khomeini didn’t buy it, this independent-minded king who had visions of himself as the heir to Cyrus the Great’s legacy, but some of the Shah’s men did, until he began calling on the American ambassador to Tehran for advice when Khomeini’s revolution showed signs of taking hold. I don’t think my father ever bought it fully either, for he still grew visibly agitated by issues of foreign policy, the corruption of the Iranian elite, and the Shah’s tendency to bend to the will of American presidents; when the revolution came, my father was hesitant only because of his great dislike of organized religion and the politicized clergy, not because of a great love for the Shah’s regime.

  When I talk to my father today, and tell him stories about my meetings with current Iranian ambassadors and other officials, I see in him an envy, not for their positions or jobs, but for the way they behave and for their ability to act completely in the interests of their country, without regard for whether a greater power might object. And he, like so many of the old guard who detest the rule of the mullahs, expresses an (often reluctant) admiration for a government that has been able to accomplish so much in terms of its influence and power on the world stage. To the astonishment of those like my father though, it took what they considered the un-or under-educated, the provincial and unsophisticated, those who never succumbed to the temptations or the conventions of Western society, to turn Iranian dreams of past glory into realistic ones for the future. And sometimes even those most opposed to the likes of Ahmadinejad can reluctantly admire him for his in-your-face por-roo’ee, cheekiness or impudence, in the face of foreign attempts to control Iran or its development.

  In late 2009, a few days after the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, issued a resolution demanding that Iran halt construction of its newly revealed uranium enrichment site near the holy city of Qom, Ahmadinejad declared that Iran not only would refuse to do so, but would build an additional ten enrichment sites (the United States has only one, believe it or not, in Kentucky) on a much larger scale than the one under sanction. He added, just in case anyone was wondering, that he was not bluffing. He may not have thought he was bluffing, but his statement was classic gholov, bluster that drew an admiring remark from even my mother. “You have to like how he sometimes deals with the West,” she said with a slight grimace, “as loathsome as he is.” And in the Muslim and developing world, Ahmadinejad and his government know, despite their falling in stature because of the 2009 election, that standing up to the parvenu West in that manner wins the hearts and minds of those, proud of their long histories and cultures, who would like to see their own leaders display a similar stance on their own nations’ rights.

  ALTHOUGH Ayatollah Khomeini first broached the idea of an expansionist Iran, it was only after his death that Iran formulated such a policy. Khomeini’s concept was that since Islam knows no borders, then an Islamic Iran needn’t either. His goal was to spread the revolution to Muslim lands, starting with Shia Muslim lands such as Lebanon and Iraq, and since other Islamic revolutions would be under his guidance, Iran would become the dominant power in the region. Khomeini’s plans were no secret to Arab leaders—he spoke quite openly about them—and when Saddam Hussein attacked Iran shortly after the revolution, every Arab country save Syria (and a hapless Levant) rushed to Iraq’s support, militarily and financially. King Hussein of Jordan even flew to Baghdad, inspected Saddam’s troops, and declared his undying allegiance to the latest Arab invader of Persia. Because of the length of the war—a brutal one that was fought in trenches and by the Iraqis with poison gas, cost almost a million lives, and ended exactly where it started, that is, with no changes to either border—Khomeini’s plans were essentially on hold, with the exception of Lebanon, where Iran still had the ability to influence its politics through support of Shia groups, specifically the Iranian-created Hezbollah. After the war ended and after Khomeini’s death, however, Iran, along with rebuilding its military capability, which it felt it needed to do indigenously because of sanctions against it and because the United States was arming its neighbors, turned its gaze outward.

  First President Rafsanjani, in office from 1989 to 1997, began the process of repairing relations with Arab states. They were less nervous about Iran after the stalemate of Iran’s war with Iraq, but it was important to reassure them about Iran’s future intentions, which were no longer to export the revolution per se but were defined by a far more subtle expansion of influence. President Rafsanjani also made attempts to expand Iran’s reach into the Far East and into Africa, but it was under President Khatami that Iran, having rebuilt its economy, its military, and developed a nuclear program unbeknownst to the world, put its plans into practice for domination of the Middle East and influence across the globe.

  Khatami was actually very popular among Arab and even European leaders, but they didn’t for one moment believe, despite their willingness to see a thaw in relations, that the president of Iran actually set foreign policy. The president does have influence in the direction of foreign policy—by default he sits on the Supreme National Security Council—and the reformists and pragmatists are able to steer the tone of that policy, even affect its strategy, as much as the hard-liners. But virtually no one, in the leadership, the opposition, or even among the population at large, believes that Iran should pull back from an aggressive move to expand its influence and reclaim the mantle of a regional superpower. In the wake of widespread opposition to President Ahmadinejad, his domestic economic policies, and his belligerent foreign policy rhetoric, some politicians, and particularly supporters of reformists, believe that Iran needs to concentrate on the home front—much as in hard times American politicians tend to criticize foreign entanglements or an aggressive foreign policy—but few believe Iran should do so at the expense of losing the valuable economic and strategic benefits of spreading its influence across the world.

  PRESIDENT KHATAMI’S outreach to the world took him on state visits to African, Asian, and South American countries. Ahmadinejad continued that outreach enthusiastically by taking trips to Africa, Asia, South and Central America, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Central Asia, and most of the Arab countries, building ties and cementing friendships, friendships that usually resulted in increased Iranian influence wherever his plane landed. In addition, confidants of the Supreme Leader, government officials and leaders of governmental bodies such as Ayatollah Rafsanjani, Ali Larijani, and Ali Akbar Velayati (foreign policy advisor to Ayatollah Khamenei and foreign minister for sixteen years), and even the mayor of Tehran made notable international trips and appearances, mostly since 2005, that have garnered hardly any coverage in the West, yet all those trips have been significant in Iran’s expansion of its influence and power. President Ahmadinejad, no hero to Arab governments, who are wary of his belligerent tone and naked ambition, was personally invited to the haj by the king of Saudi Arabia in 2007, and in the first week of June 2008, Rafsanjani, who regularly meets with foreign ambassadors and dignitaries in his role as chairman of the Expediency Council and the Assembly of Experts, was also personally invited by the king to attend a Muslim conference in Riyadh, an invita
tion he accepted.

  Iran’s foreign policy has many tentacles and its reach is expanding, but its head sits in Tehran, surveying the landscape of foreign lands like no Iranian king has dared in the last two or three hundred years. When my father was an ambassador, Iran had embassies throughout the world, but not in countries that the Shah didn’t view as strategically important to him, or where Iran was irrelevant. Within Africa, for example, Iran had small embassies in North Africa, a tiny one in Ethiopia (only because Ethiopia had an emperor, and the Shah, no surprise, liked emperors), Kenya, and South Africa. Under the Islamic regime, over time Iran has built embassies in every single African nation. African leaders regularly make the trek to Tehran on state visits, and Iranian presidents (starting with Rafsanjani) regularly reciprocate on tours of the continent. Iran knows that its money, its oil, and its technology will win friends in Africa (where many countries have a Muslim population) and elsewhere, but it also knows that the key to influence and safeguarding its interests is in close personal contacts with governments and the people. It may seem unimportant that Iran exports automobiles to Senegal (and has even built an assembly plant there), for example, or that it sends a trade delegation to Gabon, but when it comes time to count Iran’s friends at the UN, or when Iran claims that over one hundred countries support its nuclear program, it is not exaggerating.