The Modern Middle East - A Political History Since World War I (Third Edition)

by Mehran Kamrava

  Following the embassy takeover, the shah left New York for a military base in Texas, where he recuperated, and from there went to Panama, where rumors circulated about his impending arrest and extradition to Iran. He found himself on the move again in March 1980, this time to Egypt, as the guest of his old friend President Sadat. He died there on July 27.

  Two days after the embassy takeover started, on November 6, Bazargan’s frustration with the course the revolution was taking and his anger at the imprisonment of American diplomats prompted him to resign from office. Several political dynamics that fundamentally influenced later events were now set in motion. Bazargan’s resignation turned out to be the beginning of a long process whereby Khomeini steadily eliminated one “moderate” revolutionary after another. With the cabinet having resigned, Khomeini transferred power to the secretive Revolutionary Council, one of whose responsibilities was to prepare for elections to an Assembly of Experts. It was up to the assembly to draft a constitution. Not surprisingly, it was packed with members of the Islamic Republic Party (IRP), a cleric-dominated party supportive of Khomeini and claiming allegiance to “the Imam’s line.” The constitution that the assembly produced sanctified Khomeini’s position as the Leader (velayat faqih). As its Article 5 stipulated, “The governance of the nation devolves upon the just and pious Faqih who is acquainted with the circumstances of his age; courageous, resourceful, and possessed of administrative ability; and recognized and accepted as leader by the majority of the people.”49 Presidential elections were held in January 1980, resulting in the landslide victory of Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr, who had been popular in the heady days since the monarchy’s collapse and was a close associate of Khomeini. But Bani-Sadr’s presidency was also ill-fated. His eventual break with Khomeini came on June 21, 1981, when he went into hiding to avoid arrest and eventually escaped to France.

  Khomeini’s handling of what evolved into the “hostage crisis” was representative of his modus operandi as a shrewd, populist political animal. Every time events of this nature happened—and in revolutionary Iran they happened a lot—he would initially sit back and gauge the popular response, then opt for the most “revolutionary” (i.e., radical) option. This is precisely what he did in response to the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran by “Students Following the Imam’s Path.” His role in the progressive purging of his once-close revolutionary collaborators followed a similar pattern, as did his response to Iran’s invasion by Iraq, his fatwa on the British author Salman Rushdie, and countless other political maneuvers unknown to outside observers. There are some indications that the takeover of the U.S. embassy might not have been as spontaneous as it initially appeared, although no one suspected that it would drag on as long as it did.50 But it did serve an important political function for Khomeini and his supporters in the IRP. It helped consolidate the ayatollah’s near-absolute hold over the postrevolutionary polity and enabled him to eliminate more of his rivals.

  Meanwhile, the hostage drama inside the embassy compound had given rise to a flurry of frantic efforts by officials in both Washington and Tehran to bring the saga to an early end. As the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months, the United States on several occasions discovered that the Iranians did not speak with one voice. The moderate elements were being cast aside one after another, and those who remained, such as Bani-Sadr, could not deliver on the promises they kept making. The Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in late December 1979 only complicated an already volatile regional climate. The United States pursued multiple tracks and explored a variety of options, some of which were outside normal diplomatic channels.51 Several times it appeared that a deal was imminent and that the hostages would be released soon, but then the delicate negotiations would be denounced by Khomeini and things would fall apart. But President Carter was doggedly determined to secure the hostages’ release, and toward this goal he was willing to explore all options, including military ones. In fact, on April 24, 1980, an elite American commando unit made up of eight helicopters set out from the warship USS Nimitz in the Persian Gulf on a daring and complex mission to attack the embassy compound in Tehran and release the hostages. The mission had been secretly planned for months. But two of the helicopters soon developed mechanical problems in the Iranian desert, and, in the process of abandoning the mission and returning to base, a U.S. transport plane and a helicopter collided on the ground and eight American servicemen were killed.52 The failed rescue mission gave Khomeini cause for keeping the hostages even longer.

  The hostage crisis was to drag on for another eight months. Protracted negotiations, always through third-party intermediaries, continued intermittently, and some in the U.S. administration favored the execution of yet another rescue mission.53 Finally, in September 1980, the Majles passed a resolution that spelled out the conditions under which the hostages would be released. These included the United States’ release of Iranian assets (estimated at around $12 billion) that had been frozen in retaliation for holding the hostages; a commitment by the United States not to interfere in Iranian affairs militarily or politically; and the confiscation of the shah’s assets in the United States and their return to Iran.54 With an eye toward the upcoming presidential elections, the Carter administration found these clear conditions a hopeful beginning and used them as the basis of its negotiations with Iran, with the government of Algeria acting as go-between. Long and arduous negotiations were set into motion, many times coming to the brink of collapse. No doubt, the hostages’ release before the November general elections would have strengthened President Carter’s chances of reelection. But such was not to be, and Carter was to lose in a landslide to his Republican opponent, Ronald Reagan. The negotiations with Iran continued up until and into the day of the U.S. presidential inauguration, January 20, when a number of last-minute details were still being worked out. Finally, on that day, all the complex details of the massive transfer of funds and other legal considerations were worked out, and, as Ronald Reagan took the oath of office, the U.S. diplomats were ferried to two Algerian planes standing by at Tehran’s airport and flown out of Iran.

  The long ordeal was finally over. Everyone involved had suffered a great deal: the hostage diplomats, their families, the Carter administration, and the Iranian people. The only victor, it seemed, was Khomeini—and, of course, Ronald Reagan.

  It appears that the benefits of the hostage crisis to the Reagan campaign and the timing of the hostages’ release were not all that coincidental. There had long been rumors of clandestine contacts between the Reagan campaign and the Iranian hostage takers. While the truth is still murky and may never be entirely known, years later great substance was added to these rumors by the investigative works of Gary Sick, a former White House insider, and a number of journalists.55 In broad terms, Sick has constructed the following scenario. After several clandestine meetings in Madrid between Iranians close to Khomeini and Reagan’s campaign manager, William Casey, an old spymaster and later the head of the CIA, an agreement was reached whereby the hostages would not be released until after the November 1980 U.S. presidential elections. Casey is said to have preferred that the hostages be released during the Reagan presidency (they were released about twenty minutes after Reagan took the oath of office, following an unexplained, four-hour delay in Tehran as they sat on board a plane waiting to take off). In return, the United States sanctioned Israel’s sale of American military equipment to Iran, which it badly needed in its war against Iraq.56 This explains why, in negotiating the hostages’ release, the Iranian side was willing to settle for financial terms far less advantageous than they could have demanded. Later the Reagan White House repeated the same idea—swapping hostages for military equipment through Israel—in what came to be known as the Iran-Contra Affair.57

  The repressive campaigns of Iran’s First Republic did not end with the conclusion of the hostage crisis. In fact, they were heightened as Ayatollah Khomeini’s efforts at consolidating clerical rule kicked into
high gear. As the war with Iraq raged along the country’s western borders, the regime unleashed a reign of terror on its domestic political opponents, the most active of whom by now were the Mujahedeen guerrillas. In a spectacular explosion in June 1980, the Mujahedeen managed to kill some of the IRP’s most influential figures, including the party’s leader, four cabinet ministers, ten deputy ministers, and twenty-seven Majles deputies. In retaliation, within three months, the regime had executed over one thousand people by hanging or firing squads.58 Other political parties, such as the communist Tudeh, were banned, and the authorities began exercising almost total and direct control over all electronic and printed media. The war with Iraq helped facilitate the mobilization for the war effort of countless volunteer militias, the Basijis, thus expediting the process of political consolidation under the auspices of a dictatorial, populist regime. Even notable clerics were not immune to Khomeini’s wrath if they disagreed with him. When in 1986 Grand Ayatollah Kazem Shariatmadari, highly respected and a renowned revolutionary in his own right, challenged Khomeini’s absolutist interpretation of the velayat faqih, Khomeini had him defrocked.

  Accordingly, the revolutionary state’s social and cultural agendas reflected Khomeini’s very conservative, narrow interpretation of Islam. Women had to observe the Islamic dress code in the strictest sense, and many were encouraged to leave the workforce and to resume duties at home.59 A cultural revolution kept the universities closed for a number of years to ensure their purification and their observance of the regime’s Islam. By the mid- to late 1980s, the chaos of the earlier years had subsided, and the Islamic Republic, with regular elections to the presidency and the Majles, had reached a fairly stable level of institutional consolidation.

  In the late 1980s, two significant developments occurred that signaled the end of postrevolutionary Iran’s First Republic and the beginning of the Second Republic: the end of the war with Iraq in July 1988 and the passing of Ayatollah Khomeini in June 1989. By now, after years of revolutionary rhetoric, war mobilization, postrevolutionary terror, and emotional volatility, the people had grown weary. Literally every family had lost a member or knew of someone who had been lost in the revolutionary struggle, or had perished at the war front, or had been killed or imprisoned in the terror of the early years. Added to this general exhaustion was a deep sense of injured pride. Iran had become the pariah of the world, criticized at every opportunity, isolated, and besieged. The urban middle classes had also seen a steady erosion of their living standards and a concomitant loss not only of their purchasing power but also of their social clout and affluence.60 The revolutionaries might have been adept at capturing power, but their managerial skills and their ability to efficiently and effectively run a modern economy left much to be desired. Declining oil revenues and the strains of eight years of war on hardware, infrastructure, and manpower—not to mention the sheer agony of the personal strains of war—did not help matters.

  In many ways, by the late 1980s the Iranian revolution had reached a milestone. For nearly a decade the Iranians had received promises and had sacrificed for them. They had marched and demonstrated, fought in the trenches and mourned their dead, rationed their food, and earned and spent less. Now that the war was over and the “Imam” was gone, they wanted results. All of their sacrifices somehow had to be justified. A generation later, the inheritors of the revolution were keenly aware of the popular pulse, of the need to change the performance of the revolutionary system if not its essence.

  Whereas the First Republic was one of terror and destruction, the Second Republic featured relative moderation and reconstruction. In fact, the word construction (sazandegi) came up frequently in the speeches and statements of policy makers and in many ways became the new mantra of the state. The change in the priorities and even the composition of the state’s highest-ranking officials was apparent. To begin with, nomination to the cabinet and confirmation by the Majles became increasingly based on merit and qualifications rather than revolutionary conviction. Revo-lutionary radicals were gradually, though not totally, pushed out of policy-making positions and replaced by largely nonideological technocrats. In fact, many regime insiders called President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsenjani’s 1989 cabinet “the Cabinet of Reconstruction.”61 The president himself was blunt in signaling the beginning of a new era of state politics and in welcoming the contributions of those who had once been cast aside: “For the sake of the reconstruction of this vast country and for renovation of war damages, we are prepared to accept the participation of friends and governments who will deal with us . . . without any expansionist and colonialist motives.”62

  Elections to the Fourth Majles, held in 1992, confirmed the trend. The “antiradicals” scored a landslide victory. Members of the new Majles tended to be less doctrinaire and younger. There was also a much larger percentage of MPs with doctorates or master’s degrees, and, more importantly, more women were elected from Tehran and the provinces.63 Pragmatism, it seemed—as much as the revolution’s legacy allowed—became the order of the day.

  In addition to a relative liberalization of the political arena and a general relaxation of revolutionary zeal, the Second Republic featured two important developments, one institutional and the other economic. Institutionally, in late 1988, the state undertook a major revision of the 1979 constitution, designed to make the system more efficient and less unwieldy. The original constitution, written when the postrevolutionary state had not yet been fully institutionalized, had embodied several fundamental contradictions.64 Most notably, it had allowed for a split executive—both a prime minister and a president—without clearly delineating the division of labor between the two. Also, the precise nature of the position and powers of the faqih needed to be clarified. These were two of the most important areas in which changes were made, although the total number of amendments to the constitution was around fifty. Along with other changes, the amended constitution eliminated the office of the prime minister and created an “executive presidency.” Equally important, it streamlined the powers of the Leader by removing the provision allowing for his replacement by a three- to five-member committee. The primary goal of these changes appears to have been the reduction of possibilities for factional infighting at the regime’s highest levels.

  More difficult to implement were the state’s efforts to liberalize the economy and, presumably, improve its performance. There had long been many “bottlenecks” in the postrevolutionary economy. Such structural problems included a lack of adequate managerial skills within the various developmental institutions of the state, incessant and counterproductive statist intervention in economic affairs and the work of enterprises, and the existence of several parallel, often competing, state organizations charged with similar tasks.65 The costs associated with the war with Iraq and the slump in the oil market only exacerbated the economy’s difficulties.

  Without adequate infrastructure, and with the needs arising from the dislocating effects of the war and inadequate resources, the state’s economic liberalization drive encountered severe difficulties. Many of the larger economic problems could not be simply remedied by state disinvestment. Also, some within the regime, especially Majles deputies, strongly resisted the implementation of neoliberal economic policies. The lack of a comprehensive economic reform program and the absence of resources and the political will to carry it out continue to plague postrevolutionary Iran’s economy to this day. In the words of one observer, “The crisis continues. . . . The theocracy that claimed to be the government of the oppressed has no way other than to crown itself a ‘run of the mill’ capitalist state.”66 And, it might be added, not a very successful one at that.

  As scheduled, presidential elections were held in May 1997, and to everyone’s surprise a dark-horse candidate named Muhammad Khatami was elected president. Khatami’s presidency ushered in a Third Republic. In the early 1990s, Khatami had briefly served as the minister of culture, but his tenure had been cut short after he was impeac
hed by the Majles for his overt advocacy of reforms. While having name recognition, therefore, he was generally seen as a political outsider. Moreover, his clerical background and rank of hojjatoleslam gave him additional credibility with the masses and made him a safe compromise candidate between the moderates and the more radical elements of the regime. All expectations were that Khatami’s candidacy would be just that, a candidacy, and that the hard-line Speaker of the Majles, Ali Akbar Nateq-Nuri, would be elected president. But with more than 70 percent of the votes cast in his favor, Khatami’s victory was decisive.

  Khatami’s election turned out to be a turning point of sorts for the Islamic Republic. Having been reelected in 2001, for eight years the president relentlessly pursued a policy of openness and reforms domestically and confidence building and reconciliation internationally. In the international arena, he oversaw steady improvements in Iran’s relations with the outside world, especially insofar as Iran’s immediate neighbors and the West were concerned. His foreign policy objectives in relation to the Arab world were meant to build trust and confidence between the two sides and to put behind the tensions and the mistrust that still lingered in the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq War.67 With regard to the West, Khatami also greatly improved Iran’s relations with the European Union and, somewhat halfheartedly, especially during the tenure in office of President Clinton, also sought ways of mending the acrimonious state of affairs between Iran and the United States. All of this was done under the auspices of a “Dialogue of Civilizations,” through which Khatami tried to narrow the gap in cultural understanding and respect dividing Iran and the Muslim world from the West.