Iran

Also facing the Gulf (and much more besides) but on the other side and having been a significant player in the Middle East since well before the time of Muhammad, through the discovery of oil and up to today’s revolutionary times, is of course, Iran (or at least the Persian people and the geographical region that now contains Iran).

Iran in the sense of a nation is a longstanding multi lingual, multi religious and multi ethnic nation which today has land borders with Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq and is a relatively short distance by boat from both the Gulf States and Russia. The name Persia is actually an Ancient Greek term for a small portion of what is now Iran. A Pahlavi Shah of Iran (i.e. from the most recent royal dynasty) chose the modern name, which is a more indigenously Aryan name for the country.

Before Islam, Persia was ruled by a succession of generally long-lasting dynasties concluding with the Sasanians that were conquered by Muslims in their first wave of conquests.

The official language is called Farsi and it now has an Arabic script. The major ethnic minorities include Turks, Arabs and Kurds and the religious ones include Sunni Muslims, Armenian Christians, Zoroastrians and probably the largest population of Jews in the Middle East outside Israel at around 11,000. The population is quite young and often multilingual.

The land itself consists mostly of mountain and plateau country: there are two main mountain ranges and two desert areas. Major cities such as Tabriz, Tehran, Esfahan and Mashhad have tended to be built in the foothills of mountain ranges where water can be tapped in a country with few significant water courses. The fertile region around the city of Tabriz in the far north is particularly densely populated and is not a generally Persian area ethnically. There are also significant nomadic populations in Iran, which tend to be difficult for a state to control. Partly as a result of this feature of Iran, all changes in rule in Iranian history have tended to be precipitated by tribal challenges. Throughout its history, much of the population has tended to not in fact speak Farsi as a first language.

Regarding its Shi’a Islam majority, the Safavid Dynasty was the first to introduce Shi’a Islam into popular use in Iran (in the 16th Century). Sunnism had been the main religion from the 7th to the 16th Centuries. The party of ‘Ali had developed its distinctive religion and political ideas since a division in the 7th Century including of a politico-religious Imamate ruled over by descendents of Muhammad. The subdivision introduced into Iran called Twelver or Imami Shi’a Islam holds that the twelfth Imam disappeared in the 9th Century as a child and is the final Imam who will return in the end times as the Mahdi to restore justice since dispensed with in his absence. Sunni Islam has an idea of the Mahdi but has not generally developed its ideas to the extent of Shi’a Islam. As the Shi’a form of Islam holds that the Imam should rule and one is not presently available, many Twelver Muslims have accepted that a deputy role may be appropriately filled by a wise religious ruler in a form of senior co-rule with a secular ruler as the current constitution of Iran arguably currently provides.

The Safavids didn’t provide for this form of co-rule in the 16th Century, however. They were local leaders of a Twelver Sufi order who sought to combine secular power and religious authority in the person of one ruler. Having been brought to power with the assistance of Twelvers which he organised for the purpose, the first Safavid ruler of Persia, Ismail I, first attempted to standardise the form of Shi’a Islam practiced in Persia. This standardisation was furthered under later rulers.

Shi’a ulema leaders were permitted a degree of independence from the government in this system by the establishment of the khoms tax for the purpose of funding their activities. In this fruitful environment, two camps formed among them called the Usulis and the Akhbaris. The conservative Akhbaris lost the battle of ideas and the Usulis thus became dominant. The Usulis attempted a policy of quietism which generally tolerated the rule of secular rulers.

This attitude to secular rule began to unravel, though, by the 19th Century, when the Qajar were the ruling dynasty. The Qajar dynasts generally collected taxes, spent them lavishly on themselves and caved into the demands of foreigners and that was about their limit. The judges they appointed were effectively outranked in the legal system by senior mujtahidun (the senior ulema).

The Usuli ulema had no reason to respect this new ruling clan and its legitimacy and every reason to doubt it so quietism thus came to be reconsidered as a policy. Interestingly, in this period there was a fine tradition of female scholarship in a period when the passive government left the field of education open to the ulema. A kind of alliance also became established in this period mainly by marriages between family members of the senior ulema class and senior bazaar merchants and craftspeople (called the bazaari class). The bazaaris were organised into powerful guilds and the ulema of course also had the power derived from the khoms and their activity in the community. In an era of weak government, this was a potent political alliance. The bazaaris were particularly concerned at erosion in their position by the allowance of foreign competition.

The external governments involved in pressuring the Shah at this time for their own reasons involving economic and political control of the region were Britain and Russia. A balance of power between those two countries may have contributed to Iran avoiding direct colonisation by one or the other of them. Meanwhile neither country interested itself in developing Persia in any serious way. Britain’s ‘generous’ intervention to install telegraph lines in Persia was clearly a security measure for the British seen as necessary following the 1857 Sepoy Massacre in India in a year in which British troops had been engaged in a war against Persia.

The local silk industry was hit especially hard by foreign competition. Some of the concerns for the ulema included a new cotton and opium industry for export that may have (in the case of opium) been considered immoral and also may have diluted the power of the old ‘axis powers’ of Iran. The upshot of the diversion of land use to growth of these cash crops (especially opium) appears to have also been severe famine conditions from 1869 to 1872. In such circumstances, Baron Von Reuter (a formerly German British journalist more famous as the founder of the British newsagency bearing his name) effectively imposed an ‘unequal treaty’ upon Iran in 1872 in the way similar treaties were imposed upon the rest of the semi-colonised third world in that colonial period but that gave monopolies to the British to an extent that even the British marvelled at (notably Lord Curzon).

The period 1890 to at least 1912 was characterised by protests instigated by the ulema and bazaaris and most notably the reformer, Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, who formally brought them together for the purpose. Al-Afghani had developed a hatred of the British and the West after experiencing India in 1857-8 in the era of the Sepoy Mutiny. He became persona non grata with the Shah soon after arriving in Iran. In 1890 the Shah had granted yet another extravagant concession to the West, a tobacco concession which the protesters combated with a successful boycott of all commerce in tobacco products.

The leading cleric, Grand Ayatollah Mirza Shirazi from Samarra in Iraq but born in Shiraz, Iran, as his name indicates, provided the imprimatur to the idea of protest required at this time with a fatwa against tobacco products and other senior ulema were also prominent in the movement. By 1906 the movement had achieved a form of constitutional check on the power of the Shah, generally, with the advent of a formal Persian constitution. The Majlis (assembly) thus instituted was set up in such a way that Bazaaris were major beneficiaries. The constitutional document itself was expressly progressive and tolerant. An open press was set up as well as a national bank.

Meanwhile in 1907 the British and Russians reached agreement on their spheres of influence within Persia (naturally without consulting the Persians). A Russian-supported coup soon led to the dissolution of this relatively democratic majlis and the return of its powers to the presumably relatively compliant Shah. Also, following the discovery of oil, a British oil company was set up in 1908 to exploit it. Women had also been prominent in this era of protest.

After the overthrow of the Qajar by the first Pahlavi dynast, capitulations with the West by the new (and, it turned out, last) dynasty seemed to remain the order of the day and further increased interest in politics among the combined ulema/bazaari axis of power which had already become subtly evident and in revising the general quietist policy of the ulema.

The Qajar was replaced by the Pahlavi dynasty ultimately by means of another coup in 1921 led by Reza Shah Pahlavi. His attitude to government was notably more active and reformist than had been the attitudes of the Qajar monarchs but also quite authoritarian. As a result of favouring the axis (Nazi) side during the Second World War, he was forced by the allies to abdicate in favour of his son, Mohammed (who thus became the last Shah), in 1941.

By the 1950s there were two main parties in the Iranian political system: a Communist Party and a nationalist party. Iran had also become the world’s second largest oil exporter. Both of these facts naturally attracted the Cold War era interest of the US so that when Prime Minister Mossadegh attempted to nationalise oil, the CIA engineered a coup to depose him.

Following this success at the elimination of a democratically elected leader, the Shah became increasingly autocratic. From 1953 until 1977 Iran effectively became an American assisted military dictatorship led by the Shah. Education and the economy were in crisis (especially in the 1960s). The Shah’s response was called the “White Revolution” and didn’t meet with the approval of the powerful ulema/bazaari coalition whose power it tended to erode. In this period there were even Americans acting as ministers in the Iranian government.

The great symbolic final insult to Islam which enraged many Muslims was a celebration of an alleged 2,500 year anniversary of the so-called Iranian “Great Civilisation” and the monarchy. It thus suggested a status for pre-Islamic rulers and pre-Islamic Persia that Muslims regarded as virtually blasphemous. Added to that, the celebration itself, which was mostly engaged in by the Shah and invited foreign dignitaries, was obscenely ostentatious (and therefore un-Islamic) in a time of depredation and suppression of a large number of Iranians. At around the same time he added to the blasphemy by also changing the start date of the official solar calendar formally imposed in the reign of his father (the popular unofficial one was still the standard lunar Islamic calendar) from the date of the Hijra to the presumed beginning of the reign of an early Shah some 4,000 years ago, well before the time of Muhammad.

The opposition in this repressive period came from various quarters besides the powerful axis including workers who had been suppressed and whose trade unions had been banned and women’s groups concerned with the social conditions. Minority groups that were traditionally oppressed in Iran continued to be oppressed and also formed part of an opposition increasing in popularity and militancy. Student groups and intellectual and Islamic student and professional groups also stood out in this environment of determined opposition. Parties that conspired to bring about the revolution that occurred in 1978-79 included the Communist Party, a Marxist guerrilla organisation, various Ayatollahs, laypeople and a nationalist/religious guerrilla group.

The idea that there was unity even within any of the disparate groups (including the senior ulema) as to precisely what system the revolution should bring about is certainly questionable. There were many views and no clear consensus even within the clerical fraternity. Khomeini was one among many of the 'ideas people' seeking to be heard at the time. In his case he was trying to be heard from his exile near Paris after having fallen foul of both the Shah’s and then Saddam Hussein’s regime where he had at first sought and been given refuge. His activism (and often against the Shah rather than for any particular replacement) was successfully conducted via the distribution of lectures and sermons both on cassette tape and in writing.

Finally the Shah was forced to flee Iran and a strike of oil workers can be said to have finished his regime off. The strike struck at the very heart of that income stream which had given the Shah the resources with which to repress his people. Within a couple of weeks Khomeini was back on Iranian soil. The question of what would replace the Shah’s regime now became pressing.

A consensus finally formed that a model giving supreme power to the popular Khomeini and perpetually to a learned Islamic lawyer (known as the Rahbar, or guide/pilot) would shape the forming of the constitution. Along with the theocratic Islamist element, an element of republican secular government was included (a novel combination). There would be an elected parliament (a majlis) and an elected president (a ra’is). However the ruling cleric had two major forms of control: he (at the head of his not popularly elected “Council of Guardians”) was permitted to vet all prospective presidential and parliamentary candidates and he was also permitted an absolute veto power over any law. The vetting power was at first not often exercised but came to be exercised more as time went on.

In Islamic terms, the rule of a supreme jurisconsult thus established in accordance with Khomeini’s political ideas known as Velayat-e Faqih was new even to Shi’a Islam. The power to rule supremely politically had hitherto been validly able to be exercised only by Muhammad, himself, and the Twelve Imams that followed him.

From 1979 virtually until his death in 1989, the Iranian Revolution became established and was shaped largely by the charisma and understanding of the issues of Ruhollah Khomeini. Khomeini was a pragmatic leader. Much of this period was also taken up with a conflict with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, which was significantly supported by both the Arab and Western worlds in a war with the new state, and with a dispute with the US brought about ostensibly by the US’s alleged protection of the Shah from the Iranian ‘justice’ system. That system had a revolutionary character that was also responsible for many deaths and attempted assassinations in the period both within and outside Iran’s geographical borders. The war with Iraq also resulted in millions of Iranian deaths.

Domestically, the participation of women in education and literacy levels of women markedly increased in a sign of Khomeini’s modernist pragmatism. Interestingly, a 2007 report of the United Nations Development Program found that in various indices of equality between males and females Iran fared bettered than the US in several areas. However issues of inequality remain, especially in the more rural regions of the country. Other social issues to which the Shah had apparently been somewhat indifferent were swiftly dealt with.

Khomeini also had the constitution changed when the time came to consider his successor to the position of Rahbar, to permit the less senior cleric he favoured to be appointed. The current Rahbar anointed by Khomeini, Ayatollah ‘Ali Hoseyni Khamanei, who was thus permitted to succeed him had been a relatively junior cleric who would not have been able to succeed him under the former version of the constitution. He had not even been an Ayatollah when he was formerly chosen by the required committee of experts (he immediately achieved this rank upon the choice being made, however).

The period from the death of Khomeini in 1989 to around 1997 was a period of reconstruction following the long war with Iraq as well as a period of adjustment to the absence of one of the greatest symbols of the revolution. The president in the entire period was Ayatollah ‘Ali Rafsanjani, a great social and political reformer, under the new Rahbar, Ayatollah Khamanei.

A revised 1989 constitution, which strengthened the powers of the Rahbar over all other constitutional groups including the ulema from which it finally formally separated him, inaugurated the period. The electronic media became fully nationalised. In the period also, a religious movement developed, including a number of women, whose ideas were referred to as “new religious thinking” and which regarded the Rahbar as having become effectively a secular ruler and thus sought further reform to protect the religious ideals of the revolution.

A reform period from 1997 to 2005 under a new president (Mohammad Khatami, the son of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khatami) although the same Supreme Leader and Guide (Ayatollah Khamanei) in a sense answered the questions posed by this group. Khatami liberalised the media and arts somewhat and also made government more transparent. The period was also characterised by lively debate in the free daily press. Khatami’s 2001 peace overtures towards the US were met with a US declaration in George Bush’s 2002 “State of the Union” address to congress that Iran belonged to the famous “Axis of Evil”. Iran was thought to be (and is still thought to have been) secretly and illicitly developing a nuclear weapons programme. The US estimated more recently in a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that a presumed programme was halted in autumn of 2003. Nevertheless, the failure of the US to reach back when an olive branch was at least offered may be regarded today as a lost opportunity.

This period of opportunity was effectively ended by the election in 2005 of the inflammatory former mayor of Tehran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president. He was the first non-Ayatollah appointed or elected to one of the two top jobs in the country since 1981. His election platform was a redistributive programme and he drew his support from two conservative but not necessarily religious movements with which he had longstanding connections and which had begun during the Iran-Iraq War period.

Today, many Iranians feel threatened by the US in a comparable way to the way Americans have felt threatened by al-Qaeda since 9/11. As we have seen, the threats to the US have had a significant impact there. So, too, the presumed threat to Iran indicated by America’s general warlike attitude has had a significant impact in Iran. Up to recently, Ahmadinejad’s support has thus remained relatively strong (despite his failure in the distribution effort) largely because of those fears.

As of today there are still no private local television stations. However Iranians generally have access to satellite television broadcast from outside Iran. Iranian cinema on the other hand is extremely active. Much of the cinema is quite ‘Bollywood’ in style and Iran doesn’t seem an especially Islamic place in it, exploring issues of drug use and abuse and other subjects which might be thought to be ‘taboo’ in an Islamic society. Each film must be approved for distribution by authorities, which are naturally influenced by the nature of the Iranian government system.

Iran has recently undergone a significant major period of industrialisation and at the same time has become mostly self sufficient in food. Practically the only food not produced within Iran is the banana. The siege mentality that has been a feature of the post revolution period has naturally contributed to these quite successful projects.

Women continue to extend their influence and activities in public life and to achieve reforms in their favour. In nationality law, for instance, children can now choose to identify with either their fathers’ or mothers’ nationalities. Also women’s pensions may now continue to be received by their dependents in the event of their deaths as was formerly only the case with men’s pensions.

A major area of continuing concern for human rights groups continues to be the treatment of people of the Baha’i faith. Generally speaking discrimination against recognised religious minorities is outlawed but the Baha’i continue to not be recognised thus permitting severe discrimination against this group. There is also a level of discrimination against even the recognised religious minorities despite the law.

Part 8: Iran - Late Modern Revolutionary Theocracy?

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The Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution firstly arose out of the special circumstances of the Twelver form of Shi’a Islam that predominates in Iran. According to that sect, the valid political and religious authority is the Imam (the Prophet’s son-in-law and then a relative chosen by ‘his’ predecessor). The 12^th Imam had been occulted (hidden) from the mortal world near Samarra in Iraq as a young boy many centuries ago and as such there was no available political or religious sovereign and Shi’a Muslims at first adopted the view that Sunni Caliphs and local rulers, while not legitimate, should be obeyed until the return of the Imam. Occasionally, but by no means generally under Sunni Caliphs, local rulers in Iran (such as the Buyids) also had Shi’a sympathies. The Iranian Shi’a got their big break when they were finally independently ruled from home by the Shi’a Safavid dynasty. More interests were also involved, however.

The decline of the Safavids may have led to a renewed interest in jurisprudence and other circles in more activism in the 19^th and early 20^th Centuries in Iran. This was probably exacerbated by the extension of the influence of the Western Powers in the region at the level of government. The Shi’a Safavids had managed to create an expectation of consultation of religious authorities that were closely related to their community. This expectation began to grow the more later governments attempted to suppress it. An 1881 visit by Afghani proved a catalytic instigator of this new trend of religious opposition to government (as unduly influenced by Western ‘imperialists’). The famous Tobacco Revolt of 1891 against tobacco concessions given to Westerners followed soon after this visit. On the constitutional front, Iran gave itself a new constitution in 1906 following the Western inspired Tunisian and Ottoman precedents but leaving a role in final approval or refusal of laws to jurists. So ultra-constitutional theocratic "constitutionality" was the order of the day even in modernising Iran.

Within the Shi’a legal/religious establishment there had been two long established schools up to this point, the Usulis and the Akhbaris, but despite their interest in activism, neither had given much theoretical thought to what constitutional Islamic government required. The establishment also had two major cities of learning, Qom in Iran and Najaf in Iraq, so the idea of Iran itself was diluted by the apparent dissolution of the international Iran/Iraq border in local Shi'a thought. The Akhbari School resembled the Sunni Ahl al-Hadith and Saudi Arabian Islam in its extreme conservatism. The Usulis in turn were more receptive to independent contemporary legal thought and reasoning in interpretation of the law and became the dominant group in Iran. It's worth noting that modern thinking (as we've often seen in recent posts) has often been more radical in its anti-Westernism than much conservative Islamic thinking.

There were two great early 20^th Century thinkers in the Shi’a establishment, Abul Qassim al-Khoei and Muhammad Baqir as-Sadr. As-Sadr was the more modernising of the two but al-Khoei was a prolific writer of opinions (known as fatwas in English and fatawa in Arabic, singular fatwa, as I've mentioned before). Later there were two other prominent scholars based at times in Lebanon, Musa as-Sadr (who started the Amal (Hope) Movement there) and Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, who has been associated with Hezbollah. Of these four scholars Fadlallah is the only scholar alive today [subsequently died in 2010]. The first as-Sadr was killed under Saddam Hussein and the second disappeared.

The term Ayatollah (God’s Sign), by the way, which was attained by these (except for Musa as-Sadr) and several other men, refers to the second highest rank in religious/legal academic circles in Usuli Twelver Shi’a Islam, the highest being Grand Ayatollah. There is an equivalent ranking to Ayatollah for learned women. A cleric/legal thinker generally attains the rank of Ayatollah upon being male, completion of certain studies (especially in Iran), seniority and production of at least one suitably acclaimed work of religious scholarship. It is usually established somewhat informally by the acceptance of usage of the title by colleagues and students of the person. Grand Ayatollah 'Ali as-Sistani in Iraq is influential there today. One can thus attain the rank and not interest oneself in politics, interest oneself in politics and not attain the rank or, as the example below shows notably, attain the rank and interest oneself in politics.

The most influential Ayatollah (along with his supporters) has been Ruhollah Khomeini (1902 – 1989). His family hailed from Eastern Iran though he was born in Khomein near Qom. His family was steeped in Islam containing many clerics and he was educated at Qom and Najaf and later taught in both of those preeminent centres of Shi’a learning. As I mentioned above, the constitution of 1906 gave him (as a leading cleric) some constitutional power and his position also made him a religious figure of major importance. He was quite influenced by Sufi thought and practices and therefore was able to teach both jurisprudence and irfān (Islamic mystical philosophy).

For most of the time his views of politics were being formed, the Pahlavi dynasty, which had first come to power in 1925 by means of an officer coup, ruled (until 'his' revolution deposed them in 1979). The dynasty proved so unstable that the first dynast was deposed by Western Powers during the Second World War in favour of his son and the son had to flee the country in the 1950s before being restored with American support. Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s new regime (upon his restoration) continued to be flagrantly discriminatory in favour of westerners and their interests. At the same time, he carefully hid the oppression that he was perpetrating from the westerners (as his father probably did before him) thus maintaining a veneer of respectability with them. One of the most offensive things he did to Islam was symbolic. He effectively ignored it at an extravagant gala at the ancient (and pre-Islamic) ruin of an ancient capital, Persepolis, to celebrate 2,500 years of ‘unbroken’ royal rule of Iran. The clergy (including Khomeini) were also treated badly by the regime but were supported (including economically) by the equally oppressed population.

In this light, and also in keeping with the recent tradition among the senior clerics mentioned above but more so, Khomeini became a militant political activist. He entered clerical politics with confidence as a critic of the establishment in his early 20s in about 1929. He then wrote his first major political work in 1944 while still in his 30s urging scholars to speak up for God against political leaders regardless of personal cost. Later in the 1940s he wrote Kashf al-Asrar (the Revealing of Secrets) about, among other things, the issue of religious and political leadership in the interregnum caused by the occultation of the 12^th Imam (confirming the rightness of the Usuli position with regard to legal reasoning and of the constitutional position of the clerics brought about by the 1906 constitution). In addition to the 1906 constitutional position threatened by the Pahlavis, he suggested that the ulema should also have a role in formally approving or rejecting a proposal for any new ruler as had been the practice in the Safavid period.

The 1962 Electoral Bill and the 1963 Reform Bill were clearly not favourable to this legitimate position of the clergy (as Khomeini perceived it). Their joint effect was to remove the clergy from all constitutional roles. By 1964, Khomeini’s actions (in concert with other outraged clergy) had led to his expulsion from Iran and asylum in Iran’s neighbour and rival, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. While he was in exile at Najaf, he wrote further on the role of government (and the role of the clergy in it) in Tahrir al-Wasilah and expanded upon that and the meaning of Velayat e-Faqih (Rule of the Jurist) in a work of that name in 1970. In essence, his claim was that the Qur’an required that Islamic scholars formally have and exercise political as well as moral authority. In the meantime, as relations between Iran and Iraq thawed, by 1978 Khomeini was again expelled (this time from Iraq) and this time chose to seek refuge in France. From there, he continued to exert influence on the militant opposition in Iran by means of sermons on cassette tapes smuggled into the country from France suggesting a ‘modernised’ and ‘progressive’ Iran be brought about (i.e. regime change).

After the revolution he had encouraged had occurred, he was able to return from exile in 1979 and effectively lead the revolution (and the revolutionary government). He was placed in a category with Abraham and Muhammad as “the Third Idol Destroyer”. During his life, he may also have encouraged (or at least not discouraged) the belief that he was the 12^th Imam returned from occultation after hundreds of years. He was certainly given the honorific title Imam and that is a title considered a couple of magnitudes greater in Shi'a Islam than Ayatollah.

His revolutionary supporters included at that time socialist students and communists as well as bazaaris (members of the rich merchant class that was from time immemorial aligned by marriage with the ulema class in Iran) and the revolution was about removing Western control from Iranian life for many revolutionaries as much as a religious movement. It was also about permitting the bazaaris and the ulema the freedom and independence denied them by the hated Pahlavi Shah rather than imposing theocracy.

Its first orders of business, however, had essentially religious overtones, though they may have seemed opposed mainly to Western influence. Bars and cinemas were outlawed by the new Iranian Revolutionary Council. The revolutionary constitution gave the supreme position of Rahbar (Farsi for captain-navigator) to a cleric. Khomeini was, of course, the first Rahbar. In addition, there was an elected President, an elected parliament and a supervising council of senior ulema including the Rahbar. After Khomeini, each new Rahbar was to be elected by the senior ulema. All government actions were required to be two things: modern and Islamic. There could be no question of legalising brothels or bars or permitting the unveiling of women. In addition, religious police existed to police morality.

The ulema now began to theorise about how to govern whereas before Khomeini they had theorised on how to oppose government (when they could be bothered to discuss politics at all). Traditional Shi’a quietist jurisprudence was therefore supplanted by Khomeini in favour of the revolutionary extension of the rule of the ulema. Khomeini was a charismatic ruler and his rule was thus able to subsume under it divisions within the ruling classes which have nevertheless re-emerged. There has only been one Rahbar since Khomeini, Grand Ayatollah ‘Ali Khamanei, but his rule has not had the charisma that could continue to subsume divisions. The control of the mullahs (mullah being a Farsi (Persian) word for cleric), as the conservative ascendency was called, is hotly debated today in Iran even between the mullahs themselves and has waned somewhat.

Iran was perceived as a threat by many Gulf countries including Iraq and this led to the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s known at the time as the Gulf War. The revolution inspired both Shi’a and Sunni groups and regimes. Its influence in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine continues to be felt. Sunni Islamists in Sudan and other countries saw the regime as a worthy model of Islamic government and it influenced and was favoured by governments in Tajikistan and other Central Asian states, especially those as in Tajikistan with large Iranian populations.

Despite the strict nature of the revolution, relaxations have occurred over the years. Women are now permitted to wear coloured veils, for example, and the police are now (generally) more polite in their policing as they have lost influence. The President before Ahmadinejad, Mohammad Khatami, was firmly in the reformist camp. Democracy has been more limited recently with the limitation of candidates for elected office by the ulema and an apparently flawed recent election. There is an ongoing struggle between conservative and other elements in the society and polity. Devout women, who participated actively in the revolution, have proved winners in post-Revolutionary Iran becoming prominent in business, politics, public life and higher education. The media is subtly suppressed but the blogosphere has been relatively unmolested by government repression until recently (though there has certainly always been some). Such subtle suppression has required subtle expression of controversial views. Student groups remain active politically today (as they were during the vital stages of the 1979 revolution).