The political elite in the Islamic Republic of Iran: From Khomeini to Ahmadinejad

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East

Volumn 29, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 105-125

  Rakel, Eva Patricia ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ELITE POLITICS; LEADERSHIP; POLITICAL SYSTEM;

ASIA; EURASIA; IRAN; MIDDLE EAST;

EID: 64349106762     PISSN: 1089201X     EISSN: 1548226X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/1089201X-2008-047     Document Type: Article

References (136)

1. Vilfredo Pareto, The Mind and Society (Tractate di sociologia generale), ed. A. Livingston, 4 vols. (1916-23; New York: Harcourt Brace, 1935);
2. Gaetano Mosca, The Ruling Class (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1939);
3. Robert Michels, Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der Modernen Demokratie: Untersuchungen über die Oligarchischen Tendenzen des Gruppenlebens [Political parties: A sociological study of the oligarchical-tendencies of modern democracy] (1911; Stuttgart: Kroner, 1925).
4. Bernhard Schäfers, "Elite-Begriffsverständnis bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg," [Understanding the notion of elite until the First World War] Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 10 (March 2004): 3-7.
5. C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959);
6. Robert Dahl, "Equality versus Inequality," PS: Political Science and Politics 29 (1996): 639-48.
7. Goran Therborn, "What Does the Ruling Class Do When It Rules? Some Reflections on Different Approaches to the Study of Power in Society," Critical Sociology 23 (1999): 224-45.
8. Mehdi Parvizi Amineh, Die globale kapitalistische Expansion und Iran: Eine Studie der Iranischen Politischen Ökonomie 1500-1980 [The global capitalist expansion of Iran: A study of the Iranian political economy, 1500-1980] (Münster: Lit, 1999).
9. Volker Perthes, "Politics and Elite Change in the Arab World," in Arab Elites: Negotiating the Politics of Change, ed. Volker Perthes (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004), 1-32.
10. Ibid.
11. Marvin Zonis, The Political Elite of Iran (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), 80-102, 117.
12. Ervand Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), 437.
13. Zonis, Political Elite.
14. Amineh, Die globale kapitalistische Expansion, 265.
15. Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions, 440.
16. Amineh, Die globale kapitalistische Expansion, 255.
17. Ibid., 265-67.
18. The velayat-e motlaqah-e faqih gives the supreme leader far-reaching power over all Muslims, even entitling him to temporarily cut short pillars of Islam such as prayer and the hajj (the pilgrimage of Muslims to Mecca). Mehdi Moslem, Factional Politics in Post-Khomeini Iran (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002), 285n16.
19. H. E. Chehabi, "The Political Regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Comparative Perspective," Government and Opposition 36 (2001): 62, 64.
20. The distinction of the political elite into factions is not my own categorization, but is based on several works published on factional politics or factionalism in the IRI; see, e.g., Moslem, Factional Politics;
21. Hossein S. Seifzadeh, "The Landscape of Factional Politics and Its Future in Iran," Middle East Journal 57 (2001): 57-75;
22. Wilfried Buchta, Who Rules Iran? The Structure of Power in the Islamic Republic (Washington, DC: Washington Institute of Near East Policy, 2000);
23. and Bahman Bakhtiari, Parliamentary Politics in Revolutionary Iran: The Institutionalization of Factional Politics (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996). This distinction is also used by the Iranian political elite itself and the Iranian public, as can be seen from academic publications, newspaper articles, speeches, etc.
24. Moslem, Factional Politics, 33-34.
25. For the responsibilities of the supreme leader, see article 110 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, in Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, ed. and trans. Hamid Algar (Berkeley, CA: Mizan, 1980), 67-68.
26. Silvia Tellenbach, "Zur Änderung der Verfassung der Islamischen Republik vom 28. Juli 1989," [On changing the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran] Orient 31 (1990): 45-66, 71.
27. The Council of the Guardian consists of twelve jurists (six clerical and six nonclerical). The six clerical members are selected from among the ranks of the clerical elite and appointed by the supreme leader. The six nonclerical members are appointed by Parliament at the recommendation of the head of the judiciary. The Council of the Guardian determines whether laws passed by Parliament are compatible with Sharia (Islamic law). It has supreme oversight of the elections for Parliament, the Assembly of Experts, and the presidency. Asgar Schirazi, The Constitution of Iran: Politics and the State in the Islamic Republic (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997), 89.
28. The Assembly of Experts is a council of eighty-six clerics who are elected by the Iranian people for an eight-year term. The Assembly of Experts elects the supreme leader from its own ranks and may dismiss him if he does not fulfill his duties (Algar, Religion and State in Iran, 1785-1906: The Role of the Ulama in the Qajar Period [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969]), the latter of which is very unlikely to happen. The Expediency Council was established in 1988 to act as a mediator between the Majlis and the Council of the Guardian and to advise the supreme leader (Tellenbach, "Zur Änderung der Verfassung," 54).
29. The Expediency Council's thirty-one members are appointed by the supreme leader from among the ranks of the Iranian political elite (Buchta, Who Rules Iran, 61).
30. The Friday prayer leaders are appointed by the supreme leader. While the executive branch of the government provides their budget, it has no control over the contents of the weekly Friday prayers. The Friday prayers have served as powerful propaganda forums for the conservative faction. They have been very influential in setting the tone on important political issues, especially foreign policy. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and the head of the Expediency Council, Rafsanjani, have often made use of the Friday prayers to bring their views to the public, especially on foreign policy issues, without taking into account the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the president. The head of the judiciary and the leadership of the IRGC are others who use the Friday prayers as a platform to bring their views on foreign policy to the public. The SCC is another example of an institution that functions outside of, and parallel to, the judiciary. It was created during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88). Its responsibility lies in prosecuting dissident clergies, that is, those who give an interpretation to Islam that could undermine the official state ideology. It is one of the most powerful institutions of the regime, as it safeguards the ideological unity of the clergy. The SCC has imprisoned several prominent reformist clergy, including Abdullah Nuri, confident of Ayatollah Khomeini and former minister of the Interior; Mohsen Kadivar, candidate for president in 2005; and Hassan Yussefi-Eshkevari, cleric and founder of the Ali Shariati Research Center. Mehran Kamrava and Houchang Hasan-Yari, "Suspended Equilibrium in Iran's Political System," Muslim World 94 (2004): 509-12.
31. Moslem, Factional Politics, 33-34.
32. Bakhtiari, Parliamentary Politics.
33. The NSC has twelve permanent members that coordinate governmental activities in defense, intelligence services, and foreign policy. The members include the heads of the executive and the legislative; the chiefs of the regular military and the revolutionary military; the ministers of the Interior, intelligence, and foreign affairs; departmental ministers; two representatives of the supreme leader; and the head of the Plan and Budget Organization. The president acts as the chairman of the NSC.
34. Mohsen M. Milani, "The Evolution of the Iranian Presidency: From Bani-Sadr to Rafsanjani," British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 20 (1993): 86-89, 94.
35. The LEF was established in 1990, after Rafsanjani became president, out of the various Islamic Revolutionary Committees (Komiteh-ye Enqelab-e Eslami), the city police (shahrbani), and the gendarmerie (countryside police). During the first decade after the revolution, the revolutionary committees - mainly composed of members of the conservative faction - together with the regular police were responsible for implementing law and order in Iran. By merging them with other police forces in 1990, Rafsanjani aimed at reducing their scope of action. The committees, not so visible on the streets today, maintain an independent structure and activities. Rainer Hermann, "Von der Wirtschafts: Zur Legitimationskrise; Die Ära Khamenei/Rafsanjani in der islamischen Republik," [From an economic to a legitamacy crisis: The era of Khomeini Rafsanjani in the Islamic Republic] Orient 35 (1994): 546.
36. Both the regular military and the revolutionary military are controlled by the conservative faction of the Iranian political elite. Buchta, Who Rules Iran, 143.
37. On civil-military relations in Iran, see Nader Entessar, "The Military and Politics in the Islamic Republic of Iran," in Post-revolutionary Iran, ed. Hooshang Amirahmadi and Manoucher Parvin (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1988), 56-74.
38. On the military equipment of the regular army and the IRGC, see Shlomo Brom and Yiftah Shapir, eds., The Middle East Military Balance, 1999-2000 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 181-98.
39. For more details on the Basiji militia, see Nikola B. Schahgaldian, The Iranian Military under the Islamic Republic (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 1987), 87.
40. Moslem, Factional Politics, 34-35.
41. On these three foundations, see further Rakel, Power, Islam, and Political Elite, chap. 3.
42. Ali A. Saeidi, "The Accountability of Para-governmental Organizations (Bonyads): The Case of Iranian Foundations," Iranian Studies 37 (2004): 488.
43. Eva Patricia Rakel "Conglomerates in Iran: the Political Economy of Islamic Foundations," in Conglomerates and Economic Groups in Developing Countries and Transition Economies, ed. Alex Fernandez Jilberto and Barbara Hogenboom (London: Routledge 2006), 121-23.
44. Hossein Akhavi-Pour and Heidar Azodanloo "Economic Bases of Political Factions in Iran," Critique, no. 13 (1998): 69-82.
45. Suzanne Maloney, "Agents or Obstacles? Parastatal Foundations and Challenges for Iranian Development," in The Economy of Iran: Dilemmas of an Islamic State, ed. Parvin Alizadeh (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000), 145-76.
46. In the first ten years after the revolution, particularly when the new republic's main foreign policy guidelines were formulated, the foreign policy of the IRI was dominated by two principal guidelines that had emerged shortly after the revolution: the first was summed up in the slogan "Neither East nor West, but the Islamic Republic," and the second was the "Export of the Revolution." To summarize these two slogans, Iran should refrain from relations with the West and support those Muslims who are suppressed by the West or their un-Islamic rulers.
47. Johannes Reissner, "Iran: Vor dem Ende Klerikaler Macht?" [Iran: Toward the end of political power?] in Perthes, Elitenwandel in der arabischen Welt (Berlin: SWP-Studie, 2002), 189-208.
48. Buchta, Who Rules Iran.
49. Reissner, "Iran," 192.
50. Ibid., 195.
51. Ibid., 196.
52. The main issues of the intellectual debate in Iran, for clerics and (religious) laypersons, concentrate on the velayat-e faqih system, the relations between Iran and the West, and the role of Islam and the clergy in politics. More recently, the rising demand for reforms by the Iranian population has shifted the discussion of reform from within elite circles, to more secular intellectuals and activists in NGOs and universities (Hassan Yousefi-Eshkevari, Kherad dar Ziafat-e Din [Knowledge in the service of religion] [Tehran: Qasideh, 2000]). This development in the political discourse distinguishes itself from the earlier discourse in that the new secular thinkers no longer aim to protect Islamic identity in politics and believe that an ideal form of government does not necessarily have to be based on Islam (Ali Gheissari and Vali Nasr, "Iran's Democracy Debate," Middle East Policy 11 [2004]: 103).
53. Reissner, "Iran," 198-99.
54. Historically, charitable foundations have played a significant role in Islamic societies. They could be used as mechanisms for untaxed savings and investment and provided financial independence of the clergy from the state. During the Safavid period (1501-1722), the Safavid rulers granted endowments to the clergy and, therewith, strengthened the independence of the foundations from the state, providing the clergy with "economic independence." The clerics for their part guaranteed noninvolvement with politics (Nikki R. Keddie, Iran and the Muslim World [Hampshire, Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1995], 12).
55. During the Qajar Empire (1783-1925), the religious authority of the clergy developed with the collection and distribution of various kinds of taxes. The more taxes the clergy received the more it reflected its authority and importance. Additionally, the income from the endowments associated with shrines and mosques was one of the most significant sources of income for the clergy (Algar, Religion and State, 14). In contrast to the foundations of the Safavid, Qajar, and Pahlavi periods, the foundations established after the Islamic revolution have been part and parcel of the political system. After the revolution the Islamic government gave the foundations the assets of the shah, his ruling elite, and other Iranians who had fled the country, including hundreds of companies in all sectors of the economy (Hooshang Amirahmadi, "Bunyad," in The Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Modern Islamic World, ed. John L. Esposito [New York: Oxford University Press, 1995], 234-37).
56. Bakhtiari, Parliamentary Politics;
57. Gheissari and Nasr, "Iran's Democracy Debate," 98.
58. On the mobilization of the different revolutionary social forces in Iran, see Amineh, Die globale kapitalistische Expansion, chap. 13.
59. For more information on the Liberation Movement of Iran, see H. E. Chehabi, Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism: The Liberation Movement in Iran under the Shah and Khomeini (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990).
60. Mehdi Bazargan, Inqilab-i Iran dar du Harikat [Iran's revolution in two movements] (Tehran: n.p., AH 1363/1984);
61. Bazargan, Masa'il wa Mushkhilat-i Awalin Sal-i Inqilab [The problem of the first year of the revolution] (Tehran: Daftar-i Nahdat-i Azadi-i Iran, AH 1362/1983);
62. Ali Rahnema and Farhad Nomani, The Secular Miracle: Religion, Politics, and Economic Policy in Iran (London: Zed Books, 1990).
63. Anoush Ehteshami, After Khomeini: The Iranian Second Republic (London: Routledge, 1995).
64. Moslem, Factional Politics, 48.
65. On the foreign policy of Iran since the Islamic revolution, see Eva Patricia Rakel, "Iranian Foreign Policy since the Islamic Revolution, 1979-2006," in The Greater Middle East in Global Politics: Social Science Perspectives on the Changing Geography of the World Politics, ed. Mehdi Parvizi Amineh (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 147-75.
66. Gheissari and Nasr, "Iran's Democracy Debate," 95.
67. Farhad Nomani and Sohrab Behdad, Class and Labor in Iran: Did the Revolution Matter? (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2006), tables 3.4 and 4.6;
68. Siasat-e Rooz (Tehran), 21 July 2005;
69. Jomhouri Eslami, 29 July 2005.
70. For 1991, see Statistical Center of Iran, www.isc.ir
71. for 2004, see United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty, and the Global Water Crisis, Human Development Report (2006), hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2006/.
72. As Stephen Fairbanks notes, the change of the legal voting age from fifteen to eighteen in January 2007 was probably an attempt to counteract the many reformist-oriented young voters. See Stephen Fairbanks, Countries at the Crossroads 2007: Iran (Washington, DC: Freedom House, 2007), 3.
73. Jahangir Amuzegar, "Iran's Crumbling Revolution," Foreign Affairs 82 (2003): 44-57;
74. Seyed Mousavi-Shafaee, "Globalisation and Contradiction between the Nation and State in Iran: The Internet Case," Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 12 (2003): 194.
75. See, e.g., the Web sites of Khamenei (www.khamenei.ir)
76. Kadivar (www.kadivar.com)
77. Khatami (www.khatami.ir)
78. and Rafsanjani (www.hashemirafsanjani.ir).
79. Hooshang Amirahmadi, Revolution and Economic Transition: The Iranian Experience (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 22-23.
80. Hermann, "Von der Wirtschafts."
81. Among those who lost their positions were Ahmad Khomeini (Ayatollah Khomeini's son), Mir Hossein Musavi (former prime minister), Abdolkarim Musavi-Ardebili (former head of the Supreme Judicial Council), Mohammad Musavi-Khoiniha (former prosecutor general), Ali Akbar Mohtashami (former minister of the Interior), and Behdad Nabavi (former minister of heavy industries). On the dominance of pragmatism in the IRI, see Sohrab Behdad, "The Post-revolutionary Economic Crisis," in Iran after the Revolution: Crisis of an Islamic State, ed. Saeed Rahnema and Sohrab Behdad (London: I. B. Tauris, 1995), 117-18.
82. For an analysis of the 1992 elections, see Farzin Sarabi, "The Post-Khomeini Era in Iran: The Elections of the Fourth Islamic Majlis," Middle East Journal 48 (1994): 89-107.
83. On Iran's postrevolutionary economy, see, e.g., Amirahmadi, Revolution and Economic Transition;
84. Jahangier Amuzegar, Iran's Economy under the Islamic Republic (London: I. B. Tauris, 1993);
85. Massoud Karshenas and M. Hashem Pesaran, "Economic Reform and the Reconstruction of the Iranian Economy," Middle East Journal 49 (1995): 89-111;
86. Alizadeh, Economy of Iran;
87. Massoud Karshenas and Hassan Hakimian, "Oil, Economic Diversification, and the Democratic Process in Iran," Iranian Studies 38 (2005): 67-90.
88. Moslem, Factional Politics, 142-43, 227-233.
89. See, e.g., Abdolkarim Soroush, Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam: Essential Writings of Abdolkarim Soroush, trans. and ed. Mahmoud Sadri and Ahmad Sadri (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000);
90. Soroush, Bast-e Tajrobeh-ye Nabavi [Expansion of the prophetic experience] (Tehran: Serat, 1999);
91. Soroush, Modara va Modiriyat [Tolerance and administration] (Tehran: Serat, 1997);
92. Soroush, "Tahlil-e Mafhum-e Hukumat-e Dini" [Analysis of the concept of religious government], Kiyan 6(32) (1996);
93. Soroush, "Saqf-e Ma'ishat bar Sutun-e Shari'at" [The ceiling of livelihood upon the pillar of the Sharia], Kiyan 5(26) (1995): 28;
94. Soroush, Farbih-tar az Idiuluji [More comprehensive than ideology] (Tehran: Mu'assassah-yi Farhangi-yi Sirat, 1993).
95. On the relations between women and the state since the early twentieth century in Iran, see Hamideh Sedghi, Women and Politics in Iran: Veiling, Unveiling, and Reveiling (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
96. On the role of the religious lay intellectuals in the democracy debate, see Gheissari and Nasr, "Iran's Democracy Debate," 96-97.
97. Gheissari and Nasr, "Iran's Democracy Debate," 99.
98. Shahram Chubin, "Whither Iran? Reform, Domestic Politics, and National Security," Adelphi no. 342:18.
99. Mehran Kamrava, "Iranian Shiism under Debate," Middle East Policy 10 (2003): 102-12;
100. Ziba Mir-Hosseini, "Rethinking Gender: Discussions with Ulama in Iran," Critique, no. 13 (1998): 45-60.
101. Mohammad Mojtahed-Shabestari, Naqdi bar Qiraat-e Easmi az Din (Tehran: Tarh-e Naw, 2000).
102. Ziba Mir-Hosseini and Richard Tapper, Islam and Democracy in Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 30.
103. On the situation of journalism since the Islamic revolution, see, e.g., Hossein Shahidi, Journalism in Iran (London: Routledge, 2007).
104. Ladan Boroumand and Roya Boroumand, "Illusion and Reality of Civil Society in Iran: An Ideological Debate," Social Research 10 (2000): 304.
105. Ibid., 309-10.
106. Jahangir Amuzegar, "Khatami: A Folk Hero in Search of Relevance," Middle East Policy 11 (2004): 83.
107. Chubin, "Whither Iran," 20-21.
108. Ayatollah Beheshti was an Iranian cleric, the secretary-general of the IRP, and the head of the IRI's judicial system. He was killed at the age of fifty-two together with more than seventy members of the IRP on 28 June 1981 by a bomb planted by the radical group Mujahedin-e Khalq.
109. Meir Javedanfar, "Meet Mahmoud Saborjian," 29 May 2007, www.iranian.com/Javedanfar/2007/May/Meet/index.html.
110. Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, "The Pluralistic Movement in Iran and the Future of the Reform Movement," Third World Quarterly 27 (2006): 668.
111. Majid Mohammadi, "The Shifting Composition of Political Forces in Iran," Gozaar, August 2007, www.gozaar.org/ template1.php?id=7238language=english.
112. Ibid.
113. Alexandre Leroi-Ponant, "The Poor Get Poorer and the Revolutionary Guards Get Dollar Deals: Iran's New Power Balance," Le Monde diplomatique, 4 December 2006, mondediplo.com/2006/12/04iran.
114. Mark Gasiorowski, "The Real Power in Tehran," Guardian, 29 June 2005, www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/jun/29/foreignpolicy.iran.
115. In 1999 Ervand Abrahamian published a book that investigates torture and executions in Iran since the Islamic revolution. Special attention is paid to the mass executions of political prisoners in 1988, during which (depending on the source) twenty-five hundred to twelve thousand people were killed. The mass killings were hardly noticed in the Western press at the time and have not been discussed in the Iranian press until today, even in the reformist newspapers. See Ervand Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions: Prison and Public Recantations in Modern Iran (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
116. Gasiorowski, "Real Power in Tehran."
117. Anoush Ehteshami and Mahjoob Zweiri, Iran and the Rise of the Neoconservatives: The Politics of Tehran's Silent Revolution (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007);
118. Mohammadi, "Composition of Political Forces."
119. Mohammadi, "Composition of Political Forces."
120. Eliot Hen-Tov, "Understanding Iran's New Authoritarianism," Washington Quarterly 30 (2007): 163-79.
121. Jahangir Amuzegar, "The Ahmadinejad Era: Preparing for the Apocalypse," Journal of International Affairs 60 (Spring/ Summer 2007): 38-40.
122. Leroi-Ponant, "Poor Get Poorer."
123. Naghmeh Sohrabi, "Conservatives, Neoconservatives, and Reformists: Iran after the Election of Mahmud Ahmadinejad," Middle East Brief, no. 4 (2006): 3.
124. Shargh (in Persian), July 2005, different issues, www.sharghnewspaper.com/840524/html/online.htm
125. Hamshari (in Persian), July 2005, different issues, www.hamshahri.org/.
126. K. N. Yasin, "Climatic Political Battle between Hardliners and Pragmatists Looms in Iran," Eurasia Insight, 21 November 2005, www.eurasianet.org.
127. "Kamal Kharrazi be Reyasat-e Shora-ye Rahbordiye Ravabat-e Khareji Mansub Shod," Aftab-e-Yazd, 26 June 2006, 2.
128. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 29 June 2006, www.rferl.org.
129. Bill Samii, "Iran: New Foreign Policy Council Could Curtail Ahmadinejad's Power," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 29 June 2006, www.rferl.org.
130. Associated Press, 18 December 2006, www.ap.org.
131. "Rafsanjani to Head Iranian Assembly," Deutsche Welle, 4 September 2007, www.dw-world.de.
132. The July 1999 demonstration was a peaceful demonstration against the banning of the proreformist newspaper Salam. It was brutally crushed by members of the Ansar-e Hezbullah (Followers of the Party of God), a militant group that declares itself to be absolutley loyal to the supreme leader.
133. Barbara Slavin, "Iranian Shakeup a Setback for Hardline Leader," USA Today, 4 September 2007, www.usatoday.com.
134. BBC, 16 March 2008, www.bbc.co.uk.
135. BBC News, 20 October 2007, www.bbc.co.uk.
136. PressTV, 28 May 2008, www.presstv.ir.