Revolution and Politics in Iran

Government 94py: Revolution and Politics in Iran

Fall 2018

Prof. Payam Mohseni Email: [email protected] Class Time: Tuesdays, 3:00 – 5:45 p.m. Location: CGIS Knafel K450 (FAS) Office Hours: TBA Office Location: 124 Mt. Auburn, Suite 100, Room 108A

Course Description:

With President Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and the ensuing uncertainty which has followed, the significance of Iran in Middle Eastern and global affairs is now more important than ever. From its internal domestic politics to its role across the region in Syria and Iraq and rising tensions with Saudi Arabia, the political trajectory of Iran is critical for the future of peace and stability in the Middle East. To contextualize and understand these processes, this course examines the intricacies of Iranian politics since the 1979 revolution. It explores a broad range of topics including the causes of the Iranian revolution; the institutional architecture of the Iranian political system; competitive political ideologies in the contemporary Iranian scene; factional dynamics within the ruling elite; Iranian regional and foreign policy, Iran-US relations, and the multilateral complexities surrounding its nuclear program; and, contemporary Shi’a political ideology.

This course is divided into three sections. We first look modern history of Iran prior to the revolution, the 1953 coup, the development of the Islamic revolutionary movement and Shi’i Islamic political ideology, and the establishment of the theocratic regime during the rule of Ayatollah Khomeini. The main purpose of this section is to familiarize ourselves with the ideological and institutional roots of the state at its inception—the knowledge of which will be necessary to grasp the consequent developments that have taken shape in the country. Our attention then turns to competitive factional politics in the post-Khomeini era in the second section of the course, largely undertaking a chronological examination of Iranian politics under the Rafsanjani, Khatami, and Ahmadinejad presidential administrations. Despite the different time periods and contexts examined, our purpose will be to assess the factors and variables that continue to shape the political dynamics of the state irrespective of who holds office. Finally, in the last section, we turn to issues of Iranian foreign policy and international affairs. Our goal is to contextualize Iranian foreign politics within the domestic political context and the contours and institutions of the theocratic state. We also assess what impact US and Western policies may indirectly have on Iran’s domestic political scene when engaging Iran over security issues, such as the Iranian nuclear file.

There are no prerequisites for this course. The seminar is designed to introduce and delve into Iranian politics for students with varying familiarity on the topic. Background reading assigned for Week 1 is critical for course success.

Course Objectives:

After the completion of this course, students will gain a theoretically nuanced understanding of the contemporary politics of Iran. Moreover, they should be able to:

• Identify the main arguments and supporting evidence of a text.

• Present original ideas both orally and in writing.

• Develop critical and analytical arguments about the state, factional politics, and religion in Iran.

Course Requirements:

The course grade will be based on the following components:

Class Attendance and Participation – 20%

Students are required to attend class regularly and to be actively engaged in classroom discussions and organized activities. All absences must be discussed with the instructor. If a seminar is missed without prior approval or due to a serious medical reason, the student must write an additional reaction paper for the missed session and email it as an attachment to the professor before class. The seminar will also include quizzes administered randomly on the key terms assigned for the weekly readings. Quiz grades will count for 50% of the participation grade. There will also be two required movie screenings scheduled outside of class time (Weeks 5 and 8). An absence during a movie screening will require a two-page (double-spaced) reaction paper to the movie.

Discussion Leading and Presentations – 15%

Each student is required to be a discussion leader for the discussion portion of the class period at least once during the semester. Discussion leading requires students to prepare discussion questions for the class in consultation with the professor. Students should develop discussion questions based on their own reading of the materials. The specific requirements include:  Meeting with the professor either during office hours or by appointment before class.  E-mailing the professor and fellow class members prepared discussion questions by 8 p.m the day before you present.  Actively taking part in class discussion. You are considered the day’s expert on the readings.

Reaction Papers – 20 % (10% per paper)

Each student will write two reaction papers over the course of the semester. The paper should be 2 pages in length (double-spaced) and should critique and critically respond to the assigned readings of the week. Moreover, these papers cannot be written for the weeks in which you serve as a discussion leader for the readings.

Final Research Paper – 45%

Each student is required to write a 25 page research paper on a topic of choice related to the themes and content of the class. Students will be expected to discuss the topic with the instructor at office hours by Week 8 and submit a finalized research proposal by November 2nd. More information on the precise requirements of the paper will be provided later in the semester. The deadline for the final paper is the course assigned final exam date.

Late Paper Policy: Students are expected to turn in their written assignments on time in order to receive full credit. Unexcused reactions papers will be marked down half a letter grade for each day they are late. In exceptional circumstances, student must inform of the professor beforehand and request for a deadline extension. No excuses will be accepted for the final research paper

Collaboration Policy:

Discussion and the exchange of ideas are essential to academic work. For assignments in this course, you are encouraged to consult with your classmates on the choice of paper topics and to share sources. You may find it useful to discuss your chosen topic with your peers, particularly if you are working on the same topic as a classmate. However, you should ensure that any written work you submit for evaluation is the result of your own research and writing and that it reflects your own approach to the topic. For the final paper, you must also adhere to standard citation practices in this discipline and properly cite any books, articles, websites, lectures, etc. that have helped you with your work. In the short paper, which is based on the assigned readings, full citation is not necessary; use shortform (i.e Author, page number) in the text of your paper, and there is no need for a bibliography. If you received any help with your writing (feedback on drafts, etc), from anyone other than the instructor, you must also acknowledge this assistance.

Readings:

The following books are required for class:

Ervand Abrahamian, The Coup: 1953, The CIA, and The Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations. New Press, 2013. ISBN-10: 1595588264.

Mehdi Moslem, Factional Politics in Post-Khomeini Iran. Syracuse University Press, 2002. ISBN-10: 0815629788

Vanessa Martin, Creating an Islamic State: Khomeini and the Making of a New Iran. I.B.Tauris, 2003. ISBN-10: 1860649009

Afshin Ostovar, The Vanguard of the Imam: Religion, Politics, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Oxford University Press, 2016.

All other required readings will be available on the course isite as PDFs or as links. In some cases, the professor will provide you with literature in the class period prior to their assigned dates.

Topics & Class Schedule:

Part I. Modern Iranian History and the Islamic Revolution

Week 1 (Sep. 4): Pre-Revolutionary Background

BBC article, “The obscure religion that shaped the West,” http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170406-this-obscure-religion-shaped-the-west William Cleveland, History of the Modern Middle East. Westview Press, 2009. Chapter 3, pages 37, bottom of page 51-56; Chapter 6, pages 110-117; Chapter 8, pages 130-131, bottom of page 140-145; Chapter 10, pages 172, 182-189; Chapter 14 pages 275-277, 288-300. Vanessa Martin, Creating an Islamic State: Khomeini and the Making of a New Iran. Introduction, Chapters 1 and 3. Homa Katouzian, “The Pahlavi Regime in Iran.” In Chehabi and Linz, eds., Sultanistic Regimes. Johns Hopkins UP, 1998.

Week 2 (Sep. 11): The 1953 Coup

Ervand Abrahamian. The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U. S. -Iranian Relations. The New Press, 2013. Malcolm Byrne, “CIA Admits It Was Behind Iran's Coup.” Foreign Policy, Aug. 8, 2013. Peruse the confidential CIA documents that were recently released on the coup (August, 19, 2013): http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB435/

Recommended reading:

Mark Gasiorowski, “The 1953 Coup D'Etat in Iran.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 19 (03), 1987

Week 3 (Sep. 18): The Revolution & the Founding of an Islamic State

Theda Skocpol, "Rentier State and Shi'a Islam in the Iranian Revolution," Theory and Society 11, no. 3 (May 1982): 265-283. Vanessa Martin, Creating an Islamic State: Khomeini and the Making of a New Iran. Chapter 7. Michel Foucault, “What are the Iranians Dreaming About?” Le Nouvel Observateur, October 16-22, 1978. Excerpt from Excerpt from pages 203-9 of Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism by Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson. The University of Chicago Press, 2005. Mansoor Moaddel, “Ideology as Episodic Discourse: The Case of the Iranian Revolution.” American Sociological Review, Vol. 57, No. 3 (Jun., 1992), pp. 353-379. Charles Kurzman, “Structural Opportunity and Perceived Opportunity in Social-Movement Theory: The Iranian Revolution of 1979.” American Sociological Review, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Feb., 1996), pp. 153-170.

Week 4 (Sep. 25): Iranian Islamic Ideology, Part I

Selected Readings from the works of Shariati and Mutahhari. TBA

Vanessa Martin, Creating an Islamic State: Khomeini and the Making of a New Iran. Chapters 2 and 4.

Week 5 (Oct. 2): Iranian Islamic Ideology, Part II

Selected Readings from Ayatollah Khomeini. TBA

Vanessa Martin, Creating an Islamic State: Khomeini and the Making of a New Iran. Chapters 5 and 6. Daniel Brumberg, Reinventing Khomeini: The Struggle for Reform in Iran. Selections from Chapter 4.

Part II: Factional Dynamics in Post-Khomeini Iran

Week 6 (Oct. 9): Institutionalizing the Revolution (The Institutions of the Islamic Republic)

Abridged version of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Daniel Brumberg, Reinventing Khomeini: The Struggle for Reform in Iran. Selections from

Chapters 5 and 6. Yasmin Alem. “Duality by Design: The Iranian Electoral System.” IFES, 2011. Read Sections: Introduction; Legislative Framework; and Election Management Bodies Farideh Farhi, “Constitutionalism and Parliamentary Struggle for Relevance and Independence in Post‑Khomeini Iran.” In Arjomand and Brown, editors, The Rule of Law, Islam, and Constitutional Politics in Egypt and Iran. Albany, NY : State University of New York Press, 2013. Asghar Schirazi, The Constitution of Iran: Politics and the State in the Islamic Republic. I.B. Tauris, 1997. Chapter 12.

Week 7 (Oct. 16): Factionalism and Elections

Ganji, Akbar, “Who is Ali Khamenei?”, Foreign Affairs, 92(5), Sep/Oct 2013 Mehdi Moslem, Factional Politics in Post-Khomeini Iran. Introduction, Chapters 1, 2, 3. Payam Mohseni, pages 37-48 of “Factionalism, Privatization, and the Political Economy of Regime Transformation.” Chapter 1 in Daniel Brumberg and Farideh Fardi, eds., Power and Change in Iran. Arang Keshavarzian, “Contestation without Democracy: Elite Fragmentation in Iran.” In Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Regimes and Resistance, edited by Martha Posusney and Michelle Angrist, 63-90. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2005. Yasmin Alem, “Electoral Politics, Power, and Prospects for Reform.” Chapter 5 in Daniel Brumberg and Farideh Fardi, eds., Power and Change in Iran.

Week 8 (Oct. 23): The Reformists and a New Intellectual Discourse

Selected readings from Abdolkarim Soroush TBA.

Farzin Vahdat, “Post-Revolutionary Islamic Discourses on Modernity in Iran: Expansion and Contraction of Human Subjectivity.” International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Nov., 2003), pp. 599-631. Dabashi, Hamid, “Blindness and Insight: The Predicament of a Muslim Intellectual.” In Iran: Between Tradition and Modernity. Edited by Ramin Jahanbegloo, 2004. Mehdi Moslem, Factional Politics in Post-Khomeini Iran. Chapters 4 & 5 up to page 240.

Recommended Reading: Farzin Vahdat, “Post-revolutionary discourses Part I: Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari.” Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, 9 (16), 2000. Farzin Vahdat, “Post-revolutionary discourses Part II: Mohsen Kadivar.” Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, 9 (17), 2000.

Week 9 (Oct. 30): The Politics of Khatami’s Reform Period

Mohammad Khatami, “Round Table: Dialogue among Civilizations.” United Nations, New York, 5 September 2000. Marc Lynch, “The Dialogue of Civilizations and International Public Spheres.” Millennium Journal of International Studies 29(2), 2000, 307-330. Patrick Smith, “The Indigenous and the Imported: Khatami's Iran.” Washington Quarterly 23(2), 2000. Short interview with Masoomeh Ebtekar, the first female vice-president in Iran under Khatami: http://www.digitalnpq.org/archive/2002_winter/ebtekar.html Shabnam Holliday, “The Politicisation of Culture and the Contestation of Iranian National Identity in Khatami's Iran.” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 7: 27–45. Mehdi Moslem, Factional Politics in Post-Khomeini Iran. Chapters 5 (beginning on page 240) and 6.

Recommended Reading: Geneive Abdo, “From Revolution to Revelations: Khatami's Iran Struggles for Reform.” Middle East Report 211, 1999. Robin Wright, “Iran's New Revolution.” Foreign Affairs 79, 133 (2000).

Week 10 (Nov. 6): The Ahmadinejad Era and the Green Movement

Abbas Milani, “Pious Populist: Understanding the Rise of Iran's President.” Boston Review, November 01, 2007. http://bostonreview.net/milani-pious-populist Farideh Farhi, “Cultural Policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Woodrow Wilson Center, 2005. Read intro, skim section “Quick History of Cultural Policies,” and begin fully reading from “Conservatives in Ascendance” to the end. Farideh Farhi, “Iran’s Security Outlook.” MERIP 2007. Hersh, “Preparing the Battlefield: The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran.” The New Yorker, July 2008. Kazem Alamdari, “The Power Structure of Islamic Republic of Iran: Transition from Populism to Clientelism, and Militarization of the Government,” Third World Quarterly 26 (8), 2005. Ali Afshari and H. Graham Underwood, “The Green Wave.” Journal of Democracy 20 (4), 2009. Payam Mohseni, “The Party’s Over: Regime Breakdown and the Durability of Fragmented Political Systems in the Middle East.” Working Paper.

Week 11 (Nov. 13): The Political Economy of the Islamic Republic

Iran UN Human Development Report 2015 Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, “Poverty, inequality, and populist politics in Iran.” Journal of Economic Inequality 7 (5), 2009. Payam Mohseni, “Factionalism, Privatization, and the Political Economy of Regime Transformation.” Chapter 1 in Daniel Brumberg and Farideh Fardi, eds., Power and Change in Iran. Arang Keshavarzian, “Regime Loyalty and Bazari Representation under the Islamic Republic of Iran: Dilemmas of the Society of Islamic Coalition.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 41 (2009). Kevin Harris, “Social Welfare Policies and the Dynamics of Elite and Popular Contention.” Chapter 2 in Daniel Brumberg and Farideh Farhi, eds., Power and Change in Iran. Payam Mohseni, "Make No Mistake, America: Sanctions Didn't Force Iran into Nuclear Talks," Christian Science Monitor. November 20, 2013.

Payam Mohseni. Pages 1-25 of The 2016 Iranian Parliamentary Elections and the Future of Domestic Politics under the JCPOA. Cambridge, MA: Report for Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, December 2016.

Part III: Iranian Foreign Policy and International Affairs

Week 12 (Nov. 20): The Foreign Politics of a Revolutionary State

Mohsen Milani, “Tehran's Take- Understanding Iran's U.S. Policy.” Foreign Affairs 46 (2009). Payam Mohseni and Hassan Ahmadian, TBA Farhi and Lotfian, “The Foreign Politics of a Revolutionary State.” In Nau and Ollapally, eds., Worldviews of Aspiring Powers: Domestic Foreign Policy Debates in China, India, Iran, Japan and Russia. Oxford University Press, 2012. Gregory Gause, Chapters 1 and 2 of International Relations of the Persian Gulf. Cambridge University Press, 2009. Afshin Ostovar, Vanguard of the Imam, Chapters 1 and 3

Week 13 (Nov. 27): Iranian Regional Security

Payam Mohseni and Hussein Kalout, “Iran’s Axis of Resistance Rises,” Foreign Affairs. H. E. Chehabi and Hassan 1. Mneimneh, “Chapter 1: Five Centuries of Lebanese-Iranian Encounters.” In Chehabi, ed., Distant Relations: Iran and Lebanon in the last 500 years. I.B. Tauris, 2007. Lara Deeb, “Hezbollah: A Primer,” Middle East Report, 2006.

Roschanack Shaery-Eisenlohr, “Iran, the Vatican of Shi‘ism?” Middle East Report 233 (Winter 2004). Afshin Ostovar, Vanguard of the Imam, chapters 6, 7, and 11.