Iranian Theocracy Under Scrutiny

An important change is evident in what since Samuel Huntington's time has been mistakenly identified and manipulated as a war between Muslim and Western civilizations.

I say mistakenly for several reasons, one of them being that Professor Huntington himself actually foresaw a war in which an alliance of Muslim and Chinese civilizations attacked the West, in an exaggerated cold war scenario. (The Chinese are now on the American side, where much of their fortune is tied up).

I say manipulatively because the Huntington thesis served the purpose of those Americans who believed in the inevitability of conflict with Islam as a whole -- not just with individual states.

This was because 9/11 was not taken in the U.S. as an attack by a state, but as the action of a whole society "that hates Americans for their freedoms." Islamic radicalism was not understood as a politico-nationalist reaction to foreign intrusion, composed of collective Arab enmity toward Israel because of its creation on Arab territory, and fear of a Western strategic threat to the region's strategic resources.

Washington, and many if not most Americans, have conceived of the affair as a conflict between us and them. "

"Them" might be composed of several states, including even those governed by elites with ties to the United States, as well as those dominated by radical anti-Western forces. But ultimately, they were all "them."

It followed from this bi-polar interpretation that "we" had to do something about "them." Such as overturning or subverting hostile Muslim governments, or organizing international opposition or sanctions on those Islamic countries identified as "rogue" or "failing" (or "failed") states, vulnerable to radical Islamic forces.

When all of this was added together, it was simple for the West to sum it up as war by Islam against the West, dictating a Western counteroffensive against this Islamic threat; and for the other side to interpret events as a war against Islam by the West.

A war that began with the Crusades, was followed by imperialism in modern times, continuing with the seizure of Arab land to create Israel, and producing the Suez invasion, the Western-organized coup in Iran in 1953, various Lebanon interventions, two wars against Iraq and the invasion of Afghanistan -- all part of a vast neo-colonial enterprise inspired by Western religion and Western oil interests.

The thesis of war of religion, promoted on both sides, neglected the existence of a vast part of Muslim society lying outside the Middle East and Central Asia, in Indonesia, Malaysia, China and Africa, all of it with other problems to think about than oil and Israel.

The West was wrong about this being a war of civilizations, and so were the Muslims.

George W. Bush's Great War on Global Terror, against Islamic radicalism and Muslim terrorism, and the Great Fear that came close to paralyzing America after 9/11, and continues to preoccupy the American and West European governments, are both fundamentally due to a crisis inside Islamic civilization: a double crisis, of modernity and of religion.

Nothing could be clearer today in Tehran.

Iran is convulsed by a struggle between its modernizing classes, reaching out to become part of a cosmopolitan international society, and to possess the respect of Western nations (if necessary, through the dangerous possession of nuclear weapons, as well as other evidences of Western modernity), and to be taken into the high councils of the modern world and be invited to participate in the rounds of international meetings where the Iranians no doubt think the world's problems are today being settled over their heads and against their interests.

The Iranian modernizers want all this, while remaining an Islamic great power (the Islamic Great Power, if possible). They want it without losing their immortal souls and their civilization. They will, of course, as others before them (as in Turkey, and on the Christian side, in Europe and the United States), find that this combination is not easily achieved.

That is why they also suffer a religious crisis.

The Ayatollahs' revolution in 1979 was a successful rejection by the Iranians of the flamboyant Westernization efforts of the Shah Reza Pahlevi, America's "gendarme in the Middle East."

In 1971, the Shah arranged a colossally extravagant party at Persepolis to celebrate the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of the empire of Cyrus the Great, Zoroastrian in religion. The guest list of the world's great personages included Emperor Haile Selassi, King Moshoeshoe of Lesotho, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Ranier and Princess Grace. It extended to the Presidents Tito, Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania and Mobutu of Zaire, Imelda Marcos, and Spiro Agnew.

The Ayatollah Khomeini, from his exile, called it "the Devil's Festival."

The Islamic revolution followed in 1979, and the Ayatollah then ruled Iran, in Muhammad's name, as his successors do today.

But the Iranian people are restless, unsatisfied, unsure of what they should want.

Iran Elections

As Iranians Revolt, Their Government Reveals True Self
by William Pfaff

The truly significant result of the suppressed Iranian revolt is that the most important Islamist radical movement in the contemporary world has demonstrated that it has become a brutally repressive dictatorship whose leaders rig elections and beat down clear popular demands for a true election count or repeat of the election itself.

The War Between Civilizations That Never Was
by William Pfaff

An important change is evident in what since Samuel Huntington's time has been mistakenly identified and manipulated as a war between Muslim and Western civilizations.

Iran's (So Far) Revolution-less Struggle
by William Pfaff

Iran's cosmopolitan and liberal middle classes and its students are making a revolutionary bid without intending a revolution. Few think that the demonstrations in Tehran, and now in other Iranian cities, can produce a change in regime.

Hungary 1956, Iran 2009
by Paul Greenberg

Liberty is not something that can be rationed; one freedom leads to another. Iran's demagogue-in-chief understands that old truth, which is why he is so determined to crush this peaceful revolution in today's Iran. All the odds are in favor of his doing just that, but Mahmoud Ahmedinejad has already lost something far more important than Iran's presidency; he has lost legitimacy.

Iran Elections: The Silent Revolution
by Paul Greenberg

This is something new: a Silent Revolution. The huge throng that marched through the Iranian capital last Monday spoke nary a word, Theirs was a silent vigil for a liberty not so much lost as never gained, from Shah to Ayatollah. Meanwhile, the White House and President Obama practiced its own form of silence. Things have changed since a president of the United States could be counted on to at least voice a protest when another people are cowed.

Iranian Regime Change Is for Iranians to Decide
by Mary Sanchez

I find Iran's government structure of vaguely democratic elections and Islamic theocracy almost incomprehensible. However, if Iran's government needs reform, it is Iran's people that must make that case -- and they are, very eloquently and tragically even with their lives. The last thing Iranian reformers and protesters need is to be painted as agents of the Great Satan.

The 'Neda Moment' Shows Promise of Social Networking
by Leonard Pitts, Jr.

Maybe you were there when Neda died. If you were, you saw a tragedy, of course, a 26-year-old Iranian protester gunned down in the streets. But I am convinced you also saw the future -- a profound change in the way you and I will henceforth comprehend the world.

Obama's Iran Policy Is a Bomb
by Jonah Goldberg

Here is the one immutable fact of Barack Obama's foreign policy agenda as it relates to Iran: It's over. If the forces of reform and democracy win, Obama's plan to negotiate with the regime is moot, for the regime will be gone.

Obama's Choice Is Not to Choose on Iran
by Jonah Goldberg

Stop measuring the success of your diplomacy with Iran by the degree to which the grinning, hate-filled stooge of a clerical junta will "temper" his rhetoric about the pressing need to destroy Israel and slow his ineluctable pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Iran's Crisis of Legitimacy
Ramin Jahanbegloo - Global Viewpoint

Increasingly, Iran's divine sovereignty has been less about religion than about political theology. As for the popular sovereignty, it has found its due place in social networks and political action of Iranian civil society

Iran Must Void Elections to Restore Peace on Streets
Shirin Ebadi - Global Viewpoint

People's dissatisfaction with the results does not concern the present elections alone: Many objections were made four years ago when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was first elected president. Ahmadinejad's most important position until then had been mayor of Tehran. He was, however, supported by Basij and Ayatollah Khamenei, the Islamic Republic's leader for life. Ahmadinejad's four years of presidency resulted in people's great dissatisfaction.

Will Iran Look More Like Turkey, or Turkey Like Iran
Nathan Gardels - Global Viewpoint

The effort to forge new forms of non-Western modernity in the Muslim world has pushed Iran into bloody civil strife while Turkey swirls with persistent rumors of military plots against the Islamist-rooted government. The great historical question is whether, at the end of the day, Iran will look more like Turkey, or Turkey like Iran