Stalinist Iran

FRONT PAGE: "Iran Stepping Up Effort to Quell Election Protest," By NAZILA FATHI and MICHAEL SLACKMAN, New York Times, June 25, 2009.

Per my piece for Esquire.com, the growing consensus of what this electoral putsch represents:

The nation's leadership cast anyone refusing to accept the results of the race as an enemy of the state. Analysts suggested that the unyielding response showed that Iran's leaders, backed by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had lost patience and that Iran was now, more than ever, a state guided not by clerics of the revolution but by a powerful military and security apparatus.

The absurd finger-pointing and accusations of treason and collaborating with foreign enemies is downright Stalinist.

Comments

[Louis Heberlein]

Perhaps the Supreme Leader really does not care about the government's poor economic and administrative practices, or the street power seizure by military fascists. If he really believes firm Shiite faith and practices are the important factors that will bring a near term return of their savior, the other factors are relevant only in the way they impact that religious context.

If that is true, there are both bad and good implications for the rest of the world that must interact with Iran.

[Tom Barnett]

We've got to give up this absurd fall-back interpretation of everything Iran does in terms of whether or not it brings back their version of the savior. The historical record--and it is a very long one--simply does not support it whatsoever, and yet people insist of indulging in this "analysis" everytime the real-world record does not fit.

That is the strategic equivalent of chasing our tails.

Like everywhere else in the world, the truly pious priests stay out of politics, believing it ruins religion, as Iran has amply demonstrated. The ones who go into politics operate on the same motivations as every other politician. The ones who don't, simply don't rise to any influence.

To me, this is just another "irrationality" argument, and I don't care to misunderestimate my opponents.

[Louis Heberlein]

Looks like I hit a hot button. Supreme Leader is not the same thing as Iran which seems to be a much more complex mix of interests, perspectives and power relationships. However, we should not ignore the possibility that the Supreme Leader's personal decisions may be based on 'irrational' thinking. No one with security responsibilities for US can ignore unlikely, but potentially significant people factors.

Just like those with economic management responsibilities should not have ignored the factors behind recent crises that peers said would be unlikely and irrational, and would be contained by a rational responses by national and global players.

[Gilbert Garza]

Tom Replies to a Comment:“Like everywhere else in the world, the truly pious priests stay out of politics, believing it ruins religion, as Iran has amply demonstrated. The ones who go into politics operate on the same motivations as every other politician. The ones who don't, simply don't rise to any influence.”

It should also be mentioned that in their training and study especially in very ordinary more stable times (even in a theocracy) there is the intention at least (even among truly pious priests and truly entrenched hardnosed politicians) of finding proper roles of interaction/connection influence (and power), one with the other. This occurs less within narrow areas in which one or the other has primacy and more in broad areas in which primacy remains fluid contentious and tense- as in dealing with modernity and globalization, in re-settling from the most recent revolution, in anticipating staging and completing the next revolution. During stable times each thinks it is reasonable to seek the advantage of earning deserving and maintaining some form of legitimate legitimacy from the other.