While the left sheds a tear for the Ayatollah, let’s forgo premature celebration to look ahead to what needs to happen in Iran.
The moral bankruptcy of the left is made manifest in the widespread protest against the Israeli-US intervention in Iran.
Left-wingers are embarrassing themselves, contradicting their own claimed principles to defend a brutal authoritarian regime that imposes medieval religious law upon its citizens and responds to public protests by mowing down tens of thousands of civilians.
That many of the pro-Iran protesters in the West would have been caned, imprisoned, tortured or hanged had they lived in Iran, is an irony too thick to penetrate their simple minds.
Iran’s persistent nuclear ambitions and overt financial and material support for (primarily anti-Jewish) terror throughout the Middle East and the wider world has made it a pariah, even in its own neighbourhood. Its isolation by UN-imposed sanctions has had disastrous economic consequences for its people.
Iran has been a malign influence on the world stage, and its theocratic regime has oppressed and murdered its own people.
For this reason alone, I fully support regime change in Iran, in principle.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (and his successor, who survived only a few hours in that unenviable office) had it coming. I hope he enjoys the 72 incels that are the heavenly reward of martyrs, in his ideology.
No plan
How exactly Donald “No New Wars” Trump bumbled into regime change in Iran, when he spent well over a decade insulting his predecessors for being too incompetent to negotiate a favourable peace, is a mystery.
The military strikes initially appear to be well-planned and executed, although the 150-plus girls killed at the Shajare Tayyebeh elementary school and the accidental downing of three US fighter jets by Kuwaiti air defences raises concerns about exactly how smoothly the assault is going.
Iran, by attacking almost every one of its Gulf region neighbours, has made itself thoroughly unpopular, which will stand the Israeli-American campaign in good stead in the coming days and weeks.
The longer-term plan for Iran is entirely obscure, however.
If the US has any more of a plan than it did before invading Iraq in 2003, the public has yet to be taken into its confidence.
Unlike George W. Bush, Trump didn’t have the courtesy to seek Congressional authorisation for war, even though he had plenty time in which to do so, and even though it is a legal prerequisite for making war.
I don’t believe for a minute that Trump is doing this to liberate the people of Iran, which is one of several reasons he has given for the campaign. (The others are halting nuclear enrichment activities that were supposedly “obliterated” last year, destroying long-range missile manufacturing, ending the financing of regional and global terrorist groups, and pre-empting an attack on American assets in the Gulf, or even on America itself.)
Trump couldn’t care less about the people of Iran. He doesn’t even care much about his own followers, let alone some dark-skinned people in a far-off desert who speak no English and have nothing of value to offer America (except oil, I suppose).
Cornered
This is all about not losing face. While ratcheting up the heat on Iran, he was driven into a corner, and Iran appears to have miscalculated.
Instead of chickening out, as TACO Trump is wont to do, he instead made good on the threats of violence that lie at the heart of his supposedly masterly negotiation style.
That Israel was champing at the bit to have a full go at Iran certainly helped.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for it. I dream of a Middle East populated by modern democracies, at peace with Israel, and part of the global community of free countries.
I wonder, though, if Trump can even carry his own base along with his apparent impetuosity. He campaigned on isolationism and an end to foreign entanglements. He campaigned on making peace, not war.
It seems doubtful that the Trump administration will be able to make the claim that it acted pre-emptively stick. There is no evidence that Iran was on the brink of developing nuclear weapons, or was about to attack US bases in the Gulf region.
Meanwhile, oil prices have already risen, and will rise much further, which will hit ordinary Americans in their pockets, while the war will cost taxpayers billions.
If this adventure goes sideways, as it very well might, it is hard to imagine that disaffected Republicans both in government (Thomas Massie, Rand Paul, Marjorie Taylor Greene) and out of it (Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson) will let him get away with it.
And while Trump warned repeatedly that his Democratic Party predecessors might consider attacking Iran just to boost their poll numbers, it is entirely possible that a messy campaign against Iran will have the exact opposite effect on his own popularity by November, when the mid-term elections come around.
Even his obvious attempt to rig them might not save his majorities in the House and Senate.
What now?
But fine, Trump’s hypocrisy and strategic inscrutability aside, the Ayatollah is gone, as are his obvious successors, and a large number of senior regime officials. That’s a good start, and it seems unlikely that either Israel or the US is going to let the remainder of the regime regroup to cling to power.
Iran’s foreign minister has already stated that the Iranian government no longer has control over the military, and that military units are now operating independently, according to prior directives. That is quite the admission to make.
The question is what happens now.
Trump has simply told the Iranian people to take over their government. He has not said how, or who should take the lead.
While public protests against the regime certainly give the impression of broad popular support, it isn’t clear exactly how widespread that support is. A country-wide internet blackout makes it hard to judge the response, but we’ve seen footage of both celebrations and ostentatious grief.
Which way Iran’s well-armed military forces will swing, when push comes to shove, is another unknown. Will the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the elite enforcers of the regime, remain loyal to the Islamic Revolution? What will the regular army and navy do?
There are many different political and military groupings in Iran, and a power vacuum might well implode into extended civil strife, as it has after so many other decapitation campaigns waged by the US (the toppling of Muammar Qadaffi springs to mind).
It is also not clear what the approach of Russia and China might be, should Iran descend into protracted instability.
The most obvious resistance leader is Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former Shah of Iran, but Trump has been surprisingly cool towards him, refusing even to meet.
Pahlavi has spoken of wanting to help usher in a new democratic dispensation, which would be the best possible outcome, but what influence he can exert from abroad is unclear.
The spectre of a return to a monarchy under a new Shah might also not be welcomed by a majority of Iranians.
Imperial State of Iran
Iran wasn’t always a radical Islamist state. In fact, it tried its hand at democracy on several prior occasions.
Most notably, Iranians made a bid for democracy in 1951, when they elected Mohammad Mossadegh as prime minister. His National Front coalition brought together nationalists, liberal democrats, socialists, bazaar merchants and both secular and religious factions.
Though diverse, it was united by left-leaning nationalism and resentment of foreign dominance, particularly British control over Iran’s oil sector. Mossadegh nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, a popular move at home because Iran received only a 17% royalty.
Neither the British nor the Americans were much amused. They orchestrated a coup in 1953, which toppled the nascent democratic government and strengthened the position of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi as Shah, who consolidated power under himself.
During the 1960s, the Shah began a successful campaign of economic modernisation and oversaw a rapidly growing, rapidly urbanising, country. To remain in power, however, he was also authoritarian and a brutal suppressor of dissent. Meanwhile, his regime became increasingly corrupt and ostentatious.
By the late 1970s, the Shah was weakened by cancer. In 1978, an article in a Tehran newspaper, critical of the exiled religious leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, sparked widespread protests.
The regime cracked down, notably killing 64 civilians in Jaleh Square on 8 September 1978. Pahlavi had underestimated the extent of popular discontent with corruption, youth unemployment, and the regime’s excesses.
Revolution
The revolutionary movement against the Shah at first involved a wide range of political groups. There were nationalists and secular liberals who sought a constitutional democracy with guaranteed rights. There were Marxists and socialists, who hated imperialism and were concerned about economic inequality. There were Islamic clerics who objected to Western influence, moral decline and the decadence of the Shah’s regime. There were students, intellectuals, and ordinary citizens, who were all frustrated with corruption, unemployment, and political repression.
The revolutionary movement, collectively, sought to end the monarchy and adopt a representative democracy. When the United States, the United Kingdom, France and West Germany declared the Shah’s position to be untenable at the Guadeloupe Conference in early January of 1979, and the military declared itself neutral, Pahlavi’s fate was sealed, and he went into exile.
It was into this heady mix of political dissatisfaction that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, newly returned from exile, became the symbol around which the revolution coalesced. He framed the conflict in moral and religious terms, speaking of unity and “Islamic democracy”.
Contrary to his public statements, what he really intended was rule by Islamic jurists. He soon took control, ousted the pro-democratic government, and appointed a state loyal to him and his clerical supporters. He rapidly consolidated power, establishing revolutionary courts to try and execute former regime officials. He drafted a new constitution which would establish Iran as an Islamic Republic governed by an Islamic council, giving Khomeini the ultimate authority and veto power as the Supreme Leader. He established the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and revolutionary committees to suppress dissent, and purged former allies of the revolution: liberals, socialists, and secular nationalists.
In December 1979, the new Islamic Constitution was approved by referendum subject to widespread intimidation. It retained a superficially democratic form, but subordinated all governing institutions to the authority of the Supreme Leader and the unelected Guardian Council.
By 1982, Iran had become a theocracy. The revolution’s early democratic ideals were dead.
Heads, I win, tails, you lose
The prospect of a Pahlavi return may not be universally welcomed inside Iran. They kicked out Reza Pahlavi’s father for good reason. Meanwhile, religion will continue to play a significant role in Iranian politics.
To establish a representative democracy, Iran’s people need to eschew both Islamic theocracy and a return to monarchy, and they also need to avoid a military grab for power. Exchanging one form of autocratic rule for another is a Hobson’s choice.
Trump wouldn’t care, either way. He would be satisfied with any more tractable regime that does as it’s told.
Negotiating a democratic dispensation that satisfies all the major interest groups in Iran will be a tall order. It is far from clear to me that anyone outside Iran – least of all the US – has any coherent plan for how this is to be achieved.
If Reza Pahlavi is genuine in his desire to shepherd Iran through a transition to democracy, he might well be the interim leader the country needs. Given the deceit of his father, and of Ayatollah Khomeini after him, one might forgive the Iranian people, and the military, for being unwilling to trust his bona fides.
Either way, Iran desperately needs a clear plan for the future.
Nation-building
Bombing a country to topple its regime is relatively easy.
Helping a country through a peaceful transition to democracy is a great deal harder, and has failed almost everywhere it has been tried.
Of all the people who have tried it, Donald Trump is perhaps the least qualified to do so.
When George W. Bush invaded Iraq with a “coalition of the willing”, and recognising that America had never been very good at nation-building, I hoped that Western countries – including those who disliked Bush – would step up after the inevitable overthrow of Saddam Hussein to help build a stable democracy in Iraq.
That didn’t really happen, and Iraq became an unstable quagmire. With hindsight, I regret having supported it at the time.
With Iran, the prospects are considerably better. Its people are well-educated and politically sophisticated. It has a coherent national identity, built upon a glorious Persian legacy.
Yet without a great deal of support and facilitation from the international community – which will have to swallow its views on Trump’s America and Netanyahu’s Israel – it seems more likely to collapse into protracted instability and conflict than to miraculously rise as a free country in the Middle East.
A puppet regime controlled by the US and Israel will not do. (Perhaps Trump’s reluctance to be seen endorsing Pahlavi is secretly a clever move to avoid tainting him.)
That the odious theocratic regime is dead is worth celebrating, but it will be a Pyrrhic victory if the international community does not step up to help establish a durable secular democracy in post-war Iran.
The Iranian people may thank Trump for his intervention, but they have a long, difficult road ahead of them if they are to secure true freedom.
[Image: Iranian flags of a design used prior to the Islamic Revolution of 1979, photographed in Brussels by Tijl Vercaemer on 17 June 2007. Used under CC BY 2.0 licence]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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