The Puzzle of the Iranian Revolution?

The puzzle of the Iranian Revolution and its reasons seem like Pandora's box and an unsolved mystery that, after thirty-six years, continues to provoke debate. The central question is determining the relationship between the revolution and its outcomes, which can be examined from three perspectives: affirmation, rejection, and critique of the duality of the revolution. "The glorious religious revolution"? Islamic thinkers like Reza Davari consider the Iranian revolution a spiritual and Islamic revolution that led to the liberation of the Iranian Muslim individual. Even some postmodern secular thinkers like Foucault initially referred to the Iranian revolution as a "spiritual revolution" for the identity of the lost Iranian individual. In this view, unlike other revolutions, the Iranian revolution was not born out of economic needs but was a reflection of the grievances of a humiliated nation seeking "self-discovery," which, by introducing spirituality into the political realm and a revolutionary reading of religion, rose against Western domination and its local symbols. In this perspective, the role of religion in political mobilization and its "liberating and revolutionary" power is emphasized, and the Iranian revolution is seen as a refutation of the idea that "religion is the opium of the masses." With the realization of the consequences of the Islamic revolution, the credibility of this view has diminished except among supporters of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Even Foucault, upon witnessing the executions in the early days after the revolution, lamented these actions, referring to them as a "fruitless uprising." The consequences of this revolution after thirty-six years include political religious despotism, brutal repression of opponents, and relative international isolation. Economically, in addition to crippling sanctions and an economic crisis, we face rising unemployment, inflation, poverty, and economic disparity. Socially, we are confronted with increasing discrimination, especially the decline of women's status. Social problems such as the collapse of norms, moral and spiritual values, the rise of corruption, delinquency, addiction, violence, depression, frustration, feelings of inferiority, despair, distrust, and the desire to emigrate, especially among the youth, have significantly increased. These consequences, alongside the growing aversion to religion in society, the detachment of more and more sections of the system's leadership and body due to political tensions, and the increasing regret over the events of the 1979 revolution, have turned the notion of a "glorious spiritual and religious revolution" into a bitter irony. Many, however, like Alain Touraine, a French sociologist, consider the Iranian revolution from the outset as a religious, modernity-opposing, patriarchal, anti-Western, and regressive revolution that emerged in response to the modernity-seeking aspirations of the Constitutional Revolution and the Pahlavi modernism. For this reason, it has sometimes been referred to as an "Islamic counter-revolution" (against the White Revolution) and at times, like Daryush Homayoun, as an "untimely revolution." This view, which was previously limited to supporters of the former regime, has now spread among many intellectuals and people regretting the revolution. This theory, like the first view, rejects the separation of the leadership's goals and the people's goals in the Iranian revolution or the distinction between the motivation of the revolution and its outcomes, emphasizing the establishment of an Islamic government as the revolution's goal. However, it considers it entirely modernity-opposing and regressive, which, with the enchantment of the masses and the assistance of intellectuals and foreign powers, made the return of millenarianism to Iran possible. The flaw in this theory lies not only in exaggerating the achievements of Pahlavi modernism and having an uncritical view of the flaws of the Pahlavi regime that led to the revolution but also in disregarding the heterogeneity of the participating forces and their goals in the revolution and the non-religious nature of the initial protests, leading to a complete black-and-white portrayal of all events of the Iranian revolution. This theory, which suggests that industrial progress in Iran would ultimately lead to democracy, is merely an optimistic reading of the Shah's dictatorship and lacks any empirical basis. The "untimely revolution" theory, by reducing the revolution to a mere unfortunate accident and a product of foreign conspiracies, leaves no room for a deeper understanding of why millions of people participated in one of the most participatory revolutions in contemporary human history. "The stolen and misdirected revolution"? This view, especially prevalent among leftists and national forces, emphasizes the dualities of the Iranian revolution and the necessity of separating the motivation and dynamics of the revolution from its results and outcomes, pointing to the misdirection of many revolutions in achieving their initial goals. They consider the Iranian revolution a necessary and positive transformation in line with the ideals and anti-despotism, anti-colonial, and progressive struggles of the Constitutional movement and the era of Mosaddegh, which, due to the weakness of the leadership of progressive forces, was "stolen" or misdirected by the clergy halfway through and ultimately failed. Various supporters of this theory consider the goal of the Iranian revolution to dismantle despotism, dependency, and injustice, and many of them participated in it until the victory of the revolution. However, many of them, upon witnessing the rise of the clergy to power and the establishment of religious despotism or following their exclusion from political participation, spoke of the revolution being "stolen," going "off course," or failing. The most radical critics rejected the Islamic Republic of Iran from the very beginning. The most recent and least vigorous "critics," however, are the religious reformists who consider their exclusion the beginning of going off course from the revolution's path and its goals, as if the history of transformations begins and ends with them. The "stolen revolution" and "misdirected revolution" theories do not provide a convincing answer to the question of how the revolution was stolen by the clergy who led it. It is also unclear, in the context of the political balance of that time, how and to what extent the possibility existed for the Iranian revolution to have a different outcome. This theory leaves little room for a critical reassessment of the role of intellectuals and secular activists in bringing about the Islamic revolution in Iran. From populist revolution to Islamic revolution, the Iranian revolution can also be examined using Max Weber's theory of authority from the perspective of the challenges of transitioning to modernity in peripheral countries. One of the consequences of the uneven growth of peripheral capitalism is the simultaneous presence of social groups that are hard to synchronize and heterogeneous (traditional and modern) whose only common ground is dissatisfaction with the system. The Iranian revolution was the result of the simultaneous uprising of these groups and, by virtue of that, was a populist revolution in which various tendencies with different motivations participated, but due to the dominant role of the clergy, it evolved into an Islamic revolution. The "quasi-modernism" of the Pahlavi regime was a contradictory mix of economic modernization and traditional political authority (hereditary authority). This inevitably called forth contradictory groups to challenge it. While traditional sections of society view economic modernization as a threat to their interests, groups arising from this modernization eagerly seek political participation, dismantling traditional authority, and transitioning to rational (democratic) authority as a natural movement in the process of modernity. Nevertheless, the transition from traditional authority does not always lead directly to rational authority; it can also result in charismatic authority. The experience of fascism in Europe showed that even modern and rational democratic authorities can, in the context of crisis and insecurity, create the conditions for a return to charismatic authority. In Iran, where the grounds for democratic discourse were not strong and anti-imperialism was the most important political discourse of opponents, especially during the Cold War, the dismantling of traditional authority did not create much chance for a direct transition to rational authority and increased the tendency towards charismatic authority, given the influence of religion. Thus, the revolution, which was formed with the presence of different groups, increasingly provided the ground for Khomeini's hegemony, which symbolized the intertwining of political and religious charismatic authority, and the Islamic color of the revolution became more pronounced. Bakhtiar was the last attempt to prevent the dominance of charisma before the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Bazargan, Banisadr, Khatami, and Mousavi are other attempts to push back against charismatic authority in a system built on that foundation, all of which ended in failure. Perhaps today, thirty-six years after the experience of traditional authority during the Pahlavi era and charismatic authority in the Islamic Republic, Iran has gained the ground for a transition to rational, modern, and democratic authority.