The Iranian Reform Movement Majid Mohammadi the Iranian Reform Movement

The Iranian Reform Movement Majid Mohammadi The Iranian Reform Movement

Civil and Constitutional Rights in Suspension Majid Mohammadi Radio Free Europe Stony Brook, NY, USA

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Two decades after a brutal attack on university student dorms in Tehran and Tabriz and the closure of the Iranian semi-independent press in 1999, and a decade after the uncompromising Green Movement, it is time to take a close look at the movements that have both mobilized millions of young men and women and organized the foundations of civil society institutions in Iran. For Iranian society, after a revolution that was used as a pretext to establish an Islamic government and a decade of war, these were new and fresh experiences. Hope was replacing fear and optimism was in the air. After years of darkness, mourning, death, grief and eulogy, Iranian society was waking up to color, life, laughter, pleasure, lust and joy; the positive mood could not help but have an impact on Iranian politics. The task of creating the new Iranian man and woman out of the clerical model for a perfect human being was a total disaster; Iranians who woke up to the exclusivism and closed society of Iran under Khomeini did not want to perpetuate his political fiasco after his death. Even the new junior leader wanted to get rid of Khomeini’s inheritance to establish his own. In less than a decade, most of Khomeini’s followers were protesting against his political tradition and began to discuss both political development and democracy. The need of Iranian people to live in peace, happiness and friendship with others, and an insatiable hunger for knowledge, life and communication in Iranian society, imprisoned by the clerics in the name of religion and morality, began reasserting itself after years of death, darkness and violence. The Iranian reform movement was a non-violent protest against

vii viii PREFACE

Shi’i Islamism as it was introduced and enforced in Iranian society. Khamenei and his loyalists’ inability to control every aspect of Iranians’ life and the duality in the governmental structure in the 1990s made the movement possible. Later, however, they learned how to control every aspect of Iranians’ lives, leading the movement down a dead-end. As an analyst, political activist, writer, columnist and researcher, I was entirely and deeply involved in this movement in different capacities and activities. Banned from teaching in universities and colleges due to my pro-democracy and human rights ideas, I was involved in workshops, focus groups and editorials which produced theoretical frameworks for establishing new institutions and outlets to resist the authoritative and totalitarian policies of the ruling clerics. Although deeply involved in this movement, I do not believe the “you can’t understand it until you’ve lived there” argument. Any freedom-lov- ing democrat who has had an eye on Iran for the past four decades and followed the political and social developments could have written such a work. I was there when it happened and experienced the tragedies of life in that society; now I am narrating a sad story, albeit one with some bright points to offer. The main argument of the book is the inescapability of democracy in a country that has the infrastructure, social forces and social movements for building such momentum. The democratization process may have had its ups and downs in the last century, beginning with the Constitutional Revolution in 1906, but it has never stopped gaining traction. Each chapter in this book is an analytical memoir, reflecting my hopes and grievances at the time. My aim is to record and explain the social, cultural and political developments leading to the various aspects of Iranian reform movement: crucial social forces, efforts to objectify the movements’ demands, and their endings. Unfortunately, based on the reform movement’s failures and the success of government oppression, civil and constitutional rights have been suspended for a long time in Iran. After a brief historical background of the Tobacco Movement and the Constitutional Revolution, the first chapter focuses on intellectual, theoretical and social pretexts, forms, strategies and tactics of non-violent actions in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Iran. The impact of these non-violent actions on nation- and state-building processes and how civil resistance influenced the struggle for Iranian independence are also discussed. PREFACE ix

The second chapter reviews the political development that has been underway in Iranian society over the three decades from the late 1970s to the 2000s. It explains political developments by considering three different and parallel processes: state-building; the development of political pluralism; and democratization. Although achieving democracy is on the agenda of a majority of Iranians, it is not clear what kind of democratic regime will be installed and what force will be more active: a dual sover- eignty, permanent civil disobedience, a unified social movement, or another form of guided democracy. The third chapter documents the emergence of a reform movement in Iran in the late 1990s. The first section raises a number of more general questions pertaining to such a movement in the context of an authoritarian political regime. My first question relates to the question whether we can indeed speak of a social movement in the context of Iranian society in the post-revolutionary era. In the second section, I stipulate the presence of a reform movement in Iran in the second half of the 1990s and then proceed to “prove” its existence by referring to the noticeable increase of non-governmental organizations, the noticeable increase of an independent press, the diversity of narratives reflecting different ideologies, policies and lifestyles, powerful counter-movements, dramatic changes of individual appearance in public, a dramatic decrease in youth appearances in religious places in the hands of people who represent ideologized religion, and the electoral successes of reformist candidates. The second section of this chapter reviews the different explanations for the nature of this movement. Main issues, theory of state, distinguished group, theory of citizenship and expected outcome will be looked at in each possible explanation. This section is an attempt to provide different social movement theories as explanations for the Iranian scene. Leadership, success and political implications, such as destabilization, are discussed in the subsequent sections. The conclusion is an attempt to relate my empiri- cal findings to a broader conceptual and interpretive agenda. Ideology was the main discourse of the 1970s and 1980s in Iran but human rights took over in the 1990s and 2000s. Iranian political literature, even among authoritarian factions, is filled with human rights terms and concepts. The next chapter studies this issue in three sections. The first examines interpretations of human rights among Iranian reformists. The second examines the institutional obstacles to improving the obser- vance of human rights vindications. The third, after noting the lack of strategies, policies, programs and regulations for the vindication of human x PREFACE rights in Iran, enumerates some of the activities that could facilitate moni- toring human rights violations in Iran. Additionally, women have been one of the most important social groups in the Iranian reform movement.1 Iranian female university students, intellectuals, journalists and lawyers have raised the standards of political activism in Iran. Along with male university students, journalists, intellectuals and political activists, Iranian feminists, both religious and non-religious, are the core of this movement. After presenting a compendium of the structural and ideological gender inequalities in Iranian society, mostly in the post-revolutionary era, the fifth chapter of the book provides basic information and analysis about Iranian feminists in the reform movement framework. I also review the relationship between Iranian feminism, on one hand, and the democratization process and demand for the vindication of civil rights of all Iranian citizens as the main issues of this movement, on the other. This review will be carried out in three parts: the essence of Iranian feminism in post-revolutionary Iran, the interactions of women activists and other activists in this movement, and the impact of feminism on the Iranian reform movement. In spite of the crackdown on the independent press (the closure of more than 100 daily, weekly and monthly newspapers in the period of 1999–2004), what we can call a reformist press still exists in Iran. This phenomenon could not and cannot be eradicated, although there are qualitative developments and changes after the worst days for freedom of expression in Iran, April 25–28, 2000. Press trials that ignore due process, the imprisonment of journalists and the continuation of the judiciary’s pressure on the press are some aspects of power struggle between political factions in Iran. The sixth chapter will mainly address three questions. Why did this crackdown happen? Why and how can a non-authoritarian press survive the attacks of an authoritarian regime? What are the developments of the Iranian non-authoritarian press in managerial, organizational, editorial and thematic aspects? The answer to the first question is a legitimacy crisis of the religious leadership. The second question can be answered by looking at deep social discrepancies, the divided polity, the legal structure of license issuing for the press, alternative modes of information flow, non- violent methods of action in reformist positions, social networks and tem- porary statuses that are not controllable by the government. PREFACE xi

My answers to the first and second questions deal with the theoretical roots of the development of the Iranian press. Possible answers to the third question are factors such as the diminishing of an independent press and the monopolization of both the authoritarian and reformist press in the hands of politicians who are inside the political caste. More editorial control on journalists, especially in critical subjects and sensitive information, decreases in circulation, extensions of red lines and a waning of inves- tigative and critical journalism will also be studied. The seventh chapter is a trilogy on the Iranian student movement. The first episode of this trilogy traces the development of the Iranian university student movement in post-charisma Iran. I explore the changes this movement has experienced and the mechanisms it has been subject to in trans- ferring from a justice-oriented movement to a democracy-oriented one. The main forces influencing this movement are intellectuals and women. It was a crucial element of a movement that was mostly characterized as a reform movement in contemporary Iran. Three hypotheses are formulated with respect to the determinants of student support for the reform movement in Iranian universities in the 1990s: student reformism appears to flourish particularly among students who (1) receive government assistance, (2) attend larger universities, and (3) do not belong to the traditionally religious groups based in mosques. Based upon this analysis, some generalizations are formulated concerning (1) the psychology and behavior patterns peculiar to students due to their status in society, and (2) some social conditions favorable to student movements. Conversely, two hypotheses are formulated with regard to the determinants of the student withdrawal of support for the reform movement after 2000: (1) the failure of elected bodies to fulfill the goals of the reform movement, and (2) the insistence of Islamist reformers on ideological and behavioral principles that have been at the core of the Islamist ideology in Iran. The second episode relates to the transition process from party politics and civil society activism to passivism and civil disobedience as the main strategies of the Iranian student movement in its struggle against despo- tism and authoritarianism in contemporary Iran. After a short review of the history of this movement, I will explain its foundations, contexts and implications. Based on discourse analysis of the statements of university student organizations between 1996 and 2006, the third episode will address the pros and cons of five approaches to politics in the reform movement era xii PREFACE based on five discourses among university students in the past two decades of Iranian politics and their consequences for reshaping the Iranian polity. This section first discusses five socio-political processes: Islamicization, social differentiation, limited political competition, transformation of Shi’i authority and the personalization of power. These processes would subse- quently lead to four social and political schisms in Iranian society: inequal- ity, political, social and cultural discrimination, and secular–Islamist tension. These developments are crucial in shaping not only schisms and gaps between different political factions and student groups, but also in some stages, links and bridges among them. Referring to these schisms, political discourses shape the ideologies and actions of Iranian student movements. These discourses are social justice, tradition, totalitarianism, pluralism and Islamic democracy. Even if these discourses were no more than intellectual pronouncements by the university students, they were powerful enough to extend to Iranian political society. Studying these discourses may help us to better analyze and clarify the interactions among different Iranian student groups and to understand how they react to political events external to the student movements. My approach to understanding the socio-political processes, social schisms and discourses is analytical and interpretative. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (Sepāh-e Pāsdarān-e Enqelāb-e Eslāmi) was established under a decree issued by Khomeini as the Revolution’s leader on May 5, 1979, less than three months after the victory of the Iranian Revolution. The Revolutionary Guards were intended to guard the victorious revolution, to consolidate the clerical regime, and to assist the ruling clergy in the day-to-day enforcement of the government’s Islamic codes and morality. It was also impossible and completely irrational to dissolve and disorganize a well-equipped and well-trained army, although the new regime could not trust it. The Islamization of an Americanized army that was emasculated in the first two years after the victory of the Revolution was not an easy or rapid activity. In this situa- tion, a dual military system was unavoidable. The eighth chapter of the book discusses the reasons and causes for this duality in the Iranian polity and governmental structure. Post-revolutionary Iran is the only nation-state that has two formal military systems under one commander-in-chief: the guardian jurist, beside its militia (Basij) and the disciplinary forces. Each of these two military systems has an army, navy and air force. This chapter examines the sociological causes (from the revolutionary leaders’ and analysts’ point of PREFACE xiii view) of this dual system, the interaction between the society and military, how this dual system can survive, the relationship between dualism in the military system and dualism in the political system, and the consequences of this duality for social and political structures and changes. The duality lies the context in which the military forces interfere in the day-to-day politics and at the same time decrease the legitimacy and popularity of the country’s armed forces. Another context of the reform movement was the new communication tools. The Internet was introduced to the Iranian public sphere in 1998. After only five years, almost every governmental and private institution, medium, political party and non-governmental organization had its own website. The government has filtered more than six million websites but this has not stopped a large number of political activists from establishing their own websites and publishing statements, essays and journals almost every day. Although some of these websites are only propaganda and com- mercials, the sponsors and gate-keepers have begun to gather, compose and disclose their information to publish descriptive or analytical essays and stories to ensure more visitors. They have also made access to some parts of their archives possible. I propose in the ninth chapter that the spread of the Internet through- out Iranian society has opened the lid of a treasure trove of information, which has led to a more open public sphere, and the Iranian government cannot resist this trend. Virtual social networks had a defining role in the Green Movement of 2009. This, of course, does not mean that the Internet alone will democratize or liberalize Iranian society, strengthen civil society institutions and make censorship impossible. I will adopt a case-oriented and causal/analytical comparative method to study the neu- tralizing effect of increasing Internet access and thus the number of websites that describe the institutional and cultural limitations on the free flow of information. Chapter 10 discusses the end of an era and the beginning of the new phase of the reform movement. Considering the important political developments of the 2000s, such as the parliamentary and presidential elections of 2004, 2005 and 2008, I will try to give a picture of the polity and society that Khamenei and his loyalists have been trying to establish and main- tain. The government strategy has been rule by fear in a society that is tired of violence. The government’s main approach to controlling society has been through Islamicization. The Islamicization process has led to a shaping of a police state that does not tolerate dissent. The final section of xiv PREFACE this chapter deals with the challenges of Iran’s foreign policy for the nation as a whole and for the reform movement. Iran’s foreign policy is directly under the influence of domestic policies and in turn has had an influential impact on political processes in the country. I finish the book with a review of the Green Movement of 2009, a response to the actions of increasing role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in Iranian politics. Here I introduce the context, discourse and strategies selected to challenge the Islamist government after the fraudulent presidential election of June 12, 2009. The leadership, organization, media and social forces involved are discussed. The coming chapters of this book cover the reform movement in Iran between 1996 and 2009 and its aftermath. This movement is a rare case of a non-violent movement in a region that is the hotbed of violent Islamist movements and ideologies. The most important agendas of this movement were constitutionalism, the free flow of information, democratization, the promotion of rule of law and the vindication of human rights. In this study, I try to understand how this movement has transpired in a country with an authoritarian Islamic regime, how it grew, how it failed and what its achievements were. Iranian women, university students and journalists were the most active groups in this movement; the seminaries, judiciary and paramilitary forces played the role of a counter-movement. While Khatami was a political figure of the movement, one who was supposed to represent the silent and repressed majority that voted for him, too often he played the role of a therapist who listened to a minority of privileged and powerful while not listening to his true patients. He and his administrations were working for the same ruling class that was trying to topple him. From his first day in office, he was a dead man talking to the crowd at his own funeral. He was the mirage of hope in the desert of structural corruption, the rule of a few and by fear, and a religion of death. There has been no extensive study that covers this social movement. My work discusses the background, courses of actions and implications of this rare and non-violent movement in the Middle East, which gave hope and optimism to democracy and human rights activists in Iran and else- where for a very short period of time. The academic and media attention in the USA and Europe has mainly been focused on Islamist movements in the Middle East; in this context, a civil and non-violent movement receives almost no attention other than as an opposition to the Islamist ruling clerics of Iran. PREFACE xv

Chapter 10 was published in the Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Intellectual and Cultural Studies 4(1), 2006). Chapter 5 was published in the Journal of International Women’s Studies (Nov. 2007; 9(1)). Section three of Chap. 7 was also published in the Iranian Studies Journal, (2007, 40, 5). Some sections of Chaps. 10 and 11 have been dis- seminated through the Gozaar webzine.

Transliteration The system of transliteration used in this study renders consonants according to the system adopted by the International Journal of Middle East Studies, but omits diacritical marks, with the exception of the hamzeh (indicated by an apostrophe,’) the ayn (indicated by a grave,’), and Ā and ā for long alef (a in Persian). Vowels are rendered to reflect the sound in English that most closely approximates modern Persian pronunciation. Words commonly used in English are transliterated according to common practice. The common spelling of names such as Reza, Tehran, Shah and Khan has been retained. Personal names are rendered in accordance with the transliteration rules outlined here, except when cited in European lan- guage sources. I have not changed the transliteration of the Middle Eastern names that have been already used in English, such as Sayyid Qutb and Ahmadinejad, while I have used Seyyed when it is applied in Persian literature. I have not changed the transliteration of these words if used by other scholars and quoted in my work. All Persian and Arabic words used in the text are itali- cized. In transliterating of common words used both in Arabic and Persian I have used their own system respectively, for example, fiqh, ‘urf, dhemmi, ijtihad, mujtahid, madrasah and Islam if they are used in Arabic and feqh, ‘orf, zemmi, ejtehād, mujtahed, madreseh and Eslam (when it is used in the name of books or individuals) if they are used in Persian. All translations are by the author, unless otherwise stated. All ezāfehs (a noun governing the genitive or possessive case) are transliterated as –e or –ye, depending on the last character in the Persian word. In the text, dates are all in Gregorian calendar unless they refer directly to Persian texts. Wherever a date is given in the Islamic solar (shamsi, A. S. anno shamsi) or lunar (qamari, A. Q. anno qamari) calendar, they are followed by the corresponding Gregorian date. In the bibliography, I have mentioned Gregorian and Islamic solar/lunar years for books that are originally written in Persian/Arabic. xvi PREFACE

I have avoided using the clerical and other titles such as ayatullah, sheikh, hojjat ul-Islam and grand ayatullah before the names of the clerics; in fairness, I have done the same with the titles of university scholars. In the Muslim world, these titles are arbitrary, self-granted, and most of the time misleading. It is almost impossible to weigh the knowledge, social popularity and authority of Iranian individuals by simply looking at their titles.

Stony Brook, NY Majid Mohammadi

Note 1. In my view, the reform movement began in 1996 when reformers broke the majority of the authoritarian faction in the fifth parliamentary election. It strengthened in 2000 when the sixth parliament (during the Islamic Republic) was elected with a reformist agenda. The movement came to a halt in 2001 when Khatami was elected for the second term; this is because he was not re-elected based on a reform agenda in the 2001 presidential election. Contents

Part I Background 1

1 Civil Resistance and the Non-Violent State-Building Process in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Iran 3

2 The Iranian Reform Movement and Political Developments in the Last Quarter of the Twentieth Century 19

Part II Foundations and Platforms 35

3 Nature of the Iranian Reform Movement: Existence and Causes 37

4 Opportunities Lost: The Iran Reform Movement and Human Rights 73

Part III A Movement of Movements 83

5 The Iranian Reform Movement and the Iranian Women’s Movement: Feminism Interacted 85

xvii xviii Contents

6 The Iranian Reform Movement and the Iranian Reformist Press: Survival and Development 123

7 The Iranian Reform Movement and the Iranian Student Movement 141

Part IV Contextual Framework and Influential Forces 177

8 The Dual Military System and the Framework for the Counter-Movement 179

9 The Internet and the Treasure House of Information 215

Part V A New Era of Protests 241

10 Prelude to the Green Movement 243

11 The Green Movement and the Ordeal of Democracy 271

Bibliography 327

Index 335 List of Abbreviations

CIA Central Intelligence Agency EU European Union IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency ICT Information and Communication Technologies IRGC Islamic Republic Guards Corp IRI Islamic Republic of Iran IRIA Islamic Republic of Iran Army IRIB Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting IRM Iranian Reform Movement IRNA Islamic Republic News Agency MIRO Mujāhedin of the Islamic Revolution Organization Mossad HaMossad leModi’in uleTafkidim MP Member of Parliament NGO Non-Governmental Organizations ROTC Reserve Officers’ Training Corps RSF Reporters San Frontiers (Reporters without Borders) RTT Round Table Talks UAE United Arab Emirates UCB Unity Consolidation Bureau UK United Kingdom UN United Nations US United States USD United States Dollar WMD Weapons of Mass Destruction

xix List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Iran’s political structure due to election and pyramid of power (Note: Out of twelve members of the Guardian Council, half are appointed by the leader and the rest are appointed by the head of judiciary power) 28 Fig. 7.1 Political discourses addressing social gaps caused by social and political processes 160

xxi List of Tables

Table 2.1 Comparing liberal democracy, partial democracy and authoritarianism in the two categories of state and civil society 25 Table 3.1 Characteristics of Iran’s reform movement, 1997–, on the basis of four different approaches to social movements 58 Table 5.1 Different female groups engaged in the Iranian feminist movement and their characteristics 100 Table 7.1 Five main political discourses of the Iranian student movement 162

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