Iran Reframed

Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic

Narges Bajoghli

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781503610293, 9781503608849
• eBook ISBN: 9781503610309
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Anthropologie culturelle et sociale

An inside look at what it means to be pro-regime in Iran, and the debates around the future of the Islamic Republic.

More than half of Iran's citizens were not alive at the time of the 1979 Revolution. Now entering its fifth decade in power, the Iranian regime faces the paradox of any successful revolution: how to transmit the commitments of its political project to the next generation. New media ventures supported by the Islamic Republic attempt to win the hearts and minds of younger Iranians. Yet members of this new generation—whether dissidents or fundamentalists—are increasingly skeptical of these efforts.

Iran Reframed offers unprecedented access to those who wield power in Iran as they debate and define the future of the Republic. Over ten years, Narges Bajoghli met with men in Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Ansar Hezbollah, and Basij paramilitary organizations to investigate how their media producers developed strategies to court Iranian youth. Readers come to know these men—what the regime means to them and their anxieties about the future of their revolutionary project. Contestation over how to define the regime underlies all their efforts to communicate with the public. This book offers a multilayered story about what it means to be pro-regime in the Islamic Republic, challenging everything we think we know about Iran and revolution.

1

Generational Changes

ON A COLD WINTER AFTERNOON, I joined the directors of all the regime cultural centers in the offices of the Center for the Chronicles of Victory (Revāyat-e Fath). The center held pride of place in the cultural sphere of the Islamic Republic. Named after the influential weekly television documentary series aired in the 1980s, the center had been established by Morteza Avini, the godfather of postrevolutionary regime filmmaking.¹ The center continues to produce films that highlight the revolution, the war, and its martyrs. Some of those in the room had been members of Avini’s original film crew during the war. All were men in their late forties and early fifties. Fervent revolutionaries in the first decade of the Islamic Republic, they now identified as reformists and lamented Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reelection.

The center, right off Ferdowsi Square in central Tehran, was in the middle of one of the city’s most crowded areas. By the time we had all arrived at the meeting, we felt like we had accomplished quite a task, getting there through the pollution, the endless crowds, and the aggressive Tehran traffic. We spent the first twenty minutes recovering, and the men caught up with each other. They congratulated one of the men whose daughter had been married the week before. They jokingly chided him for not bringing cake to celebrate with them.

At that moment, a man in his mid-twenties with an impressive beard and a black buttoned-up, collarless shirt walked in. The older men in the room were visibly uncomfortable, but they politely exchanged pleasantries with the young man. He asked the group if they needed his help in the meeting, and they politely declined his offer. As soon as he walked away, they gave each other knowing looks and a few shook their heads in exasperation. Mr. Ahmadi leaned in from his wheelchair and picked up his cup of tea. He took a sip and muttered, “Lā elāha ella allāh” (There is only one God).

I did not know it at the time, but this closed-door meeting was being held to discuss ways to limit the hand of Ansar-e Hezbollah and hard-line Revolutionary Guard members from the Center for the Chronicles of Victory. It would be a futile attempt, as the pro-Ahmadinejad elements eventually gained control of the center. The Supreme Leader’s Office and the Ahmadinejad administration were determined to rid the ranks of anyone who supported the “sedition” (fetneh) of the 2009 Green Movement. Ansar-e Hezbollah and the more hard-line elements of the Revolutionary Guard began to insert their younger members into meetings at the center because it was a crucial node in the regime cultural sphere. Later, they ousted many of the filmmakers and producers who had been working there for years. The ousted included over half of those in the meeting that day, some of whom had been part of Avini’s original film crew during the war and who were among the founding members of the center.

Three weeks after that meeting, Mr. Ahmadi received a phone call at home, just as his family was about to have dinner. It was from his boss, whom he had worked with for twenty-five years. Mr. Ahmadi recalled: “‘They’re changing things at the center,’ he told me. ‘It’s best not to come back to work for a while. I’m sure this will be temporary.’ I knew it wasn’t going to be temporary. And just like that, they forced me out of the job I had done every day of my life for nearly three decades.”

The tale of what happened to Mr. Ahmadi and his colleagues was a familiar one during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s second term as president. After 2009, reformists were marginalized, and the government imposed repression in the cultural sphere and paranoia ran high. The international press widely reported that those who disagreed with the system altogether were imprisoned or silenced (e.g., renowned filmmaker Jafar Panahi). But what was not reported was how poorly the internal critics of the Islamic Republic fared—those who supported the system but advocated for an opening.

The films Mr. Ahmadi and his colleagues had in the pipeline to be aired on national television were pulled. Even more surprisingly, all of Avini’s films, which had been the bedrock of the Islamic Republic for two decades, were confiscated from stores after the disputed 2009 presidential elections.

Mr. Ahmadi stayed home for three days after that phone call, but, he reported, “I knew I’d go crazy if I didn’t work. I wouldn’t let these kids silence us. They had already humiliated me during the protests. I wouldn’t let them also take away my life’s work.” Knowing that he had all the right connections to get commissioned work, he decided to create his own production company. He hired five young directors and editors, and he busied himself with finding the assignments and the funding to continue producing films.

Before we get into the intricacies of the Islamic Republic’s media world, some background is in order. To make sense of the current generational shift among regime supporters in Iran, we first need to look at the founding of the revolution.

The Revolution and the Regime’s Military Forces

The 1979 Iranian Revolution, with its rallying cry of “Death to the Shah,” came about through a vast mobilization of various sectors of society, and it resulted in the overthrow of millennia of monarchical rule and the institution of the Islamic Republic. Demonstrations against the autocratic rule of the U.S.-backed Shah began in the fall of 1977. With a wide range of groups initiating civil resistance campaigns, the protests intensified throughout 1978, including massive strikes that paralyzed the country. In January 1979, the Shah fled Iran with his family, and on February 11, 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini entered Iran from exile in France as the spiritual leader of the revolution.²

Despite the resounding victory of the 1979 Revolution, it is the 1980–88 Iran-Iraq War that provides the master narrative of the Islamic Republic. The revolution was too messy; it included too many secularists, leftists, feminists, and nationalists to be neatly packaged as an “Islamic Revolution,” as much as the regime tries.³ The war, which followed on the heels of the revolution, allowed the regime to imprison members of the opposition for reasons of “national security,” to mobilize the population in defense of the revolution as the regime defined it, and to consolidate its power. In other words, the war crucially allowed the Islamic Republic to silence dissent, rally the country behind nationalist sentiments inherent to war, and strengthen the state.

In the years leading up to the revolution, Khomeini gained popularity by painting the Shah and the ruling elite as “morally corrupt,” by being staunchly anti-imperialist, and by capitalizing on the class antagonisms between the lower class (tabaqeh-e pāyin) and the upper class (tabaqeh-e bālā), following in the footsteps of the anti-Shah leftist groups.⁴ Khomeini and the core group of clerics who surrounded him vowed to right social wrongs by redistributing wealth and eliminating poverty, shantytowns, unemployment, and morally corrupt behavior. The establishment of the Islamic Republic relied upon the support of the mostaz’afin, members of the “dispossessed masses,” who had indigenous organizing networks in mosques and neighborhoods. These networks served as organizing centers both to oust the Shah and to recruit volunteer soldiers in the subsequent war effort. It was this segment of the population that answered Khomeini’s call to defend the nation and nascent revolution when Iraq invaded in September 1980.

Although both the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij were created following the 1979 Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War turned them into central institutions in Iran. With the once-powerful army of Iran in disarray and the new Revolutionary Guard still untrained, the Iraqi regime mistakenly believed that its invasion of Iran in September 1980 would lead to a swift victory. Instead, the 1980–88 Iran-Iraq War turned into the longest conventional war of the twentieth century. In it, trench warfare was used for the first time since World War I, and Iraq dropped numerous nerve-gas and chemical bombs on Iranian military and civilian populations, as well as on Iraqi Kurdish communities.

Iraq attacked Iran along its southern border, in the province of Khuzestan, home to Iran’s ethnically Arab population. Saddam Hussein was hoping that Iran’s Arab population would rise up against the Iranian government and side with the Arab invader, but that did not happen. Taking advantage of Iran’s disarray following the revolution, Iraq made a surprise attack and quickly occupied the port city of Khorramshahr, twenty-two miles from Abadan. Iraq’s eyes were on Abadan, where the Middle East’s largest oil refinery at the time was located.⁵ Despite a weakened army and an untrained Revolutionary Guard, Iran was able to fight off Iraq’s assault on Abadan. It took two years for Iran to take back the city of Khorramshahr, at which point the Islamic Republic went on the offensive and attacked Iraqi territory under the slogan “From Karbala to Jerusalem.” The war continued for another six years, and when both sides finally signed a United Nations cease-fire in 1988, no territorial changes had taken place.

The Revolutionary Guard

The founding of the Revolutionary Guard dates to the early months of the Islamic Republic.⁶ Three months after the Shah fled Iran in January 1979, the Islamic Republic’s Central Committee (komiteh-ye markazi) established the Revolutionary Guard with the mission of defending the revolution against “counterrevolutionaries,” and the possibility of a coup d’etat. Reza, a former commander of the Revolutionary Guard, said to me, “In the days and months after the revolution, we woke up every morning wondering if the U.S. would stage a coup and bring the Shah back again, like they did with Mossadegh.” The Revolutionary Guard was necessary because Ayatollah Khomeini did not trust the Artesh, Iran’s professional army, which was a remnant of the Shah’s regime. Khomeini believed the Artesh remained loyal to the Shah and could plan a coup d’état against him. Thus, while the Artesh would defend the nation—its territory and boundaries—the Revolutionary Guard was charged with safeguarding the revolution, both internally and externally, as outlined in Article 150 of the constitution. Between 1979 and 1980, the new government purged, dismissed, imprisoned, or executed 12,000 Artesh personnel. In total, between 30 and 50 percent of the officers between the ranks of major and colonel were removed. Additionally, approximately 60 percent of the army’s original 171,000 personnel deserted after the revolution.⁷

Recruitment to the Revolutionary Guard began soon after its foundation, with many members coming from families who had belonged to the lower and lower-middle classes in revolutionary Iran.⁸ Recruitment was primarily based upon recruits’ ideological and political commitment to the Islamic Republic; only the most loyal citizens could join. Each potential guard had to pass a test on the Qur’an, the Nahj al Balāgheh (Path of Eloquence) by Imam Ali, and the Hukumat-e Islāmi (Islamic Government) by Ayatollah Khomeini as well as rigorous military and strategic tests.⁹ Importantly, the Revolutionary Guard, unlike the military in Syria and pre-2003 Iraq, is not controlled by one tribe, ethnicity, or family, but by people who remain loyal to the Islamic Republic. The Revolutionary Guard experienced exponential growth with the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War and expanded its mission to include national defense.

At the beginning of the war, the Revolutionary Guard remained largely untrained and the Islamic Republic had to trust the Artesh to stave off the invading Iraqi military, effectively dividing the defense of the nation between the Artesh and the Revolutionary Guard. Despite the Revolutionary Guard’s lack of training, Khomeini trusted it more than the Artesh. As a result, the Islamic Republic gave the Revolutionary Guard preferential access to arms and spare parts and better contact with the country’s civilian leadership. During the war, it developed a structure parallel to that of the Artesh, with the creation of ground, naval, and air forces by the mid-1980s. The Revolutionary Guard also became instrumental in recruiting forces to the battlefront through the Basij paramilitary organization. By publicly framing the war as a struggle for Islam and the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini and his government were able to counter the advanced training and weapons of the Iraqi forces with a surge of soldiers and manpower, many of whom eventually joined the Revolutionary Guard.

The Basij

In 1980, Ayatollah Khomeini launched the Basij, a volunteer paramilitary group in the service of the war effort; in 1981, the Sāzmān-e Basij-e Mostaz’afin (literally, the Mobilization of the Oppressed) became a unit of the Revolutionary Guard. The emphasis on this voluntary mobilization of the oppressed echoed the class-based revolutionary slogans of the 1977–79 revolutionary period.

In mosques and schools throughout the country, hundreds of thousands of men and women received training in the use of weapons. The Basij became the main channel to recruit legions of volunteers to the battlefront. Volunteers signed up for the war at their neighborhood Basij center. Each province in the country had at least one central Basij command center, while neighborhood mosques housed local Basij centers. For each new volunteer, a file was created, containing his photo and personal information, including parental permission if he was underage (many young boys forged these documents). The file also contained official permission for deployment (barg-e e’zām). For the first five years of the war, deployments were made individually, based on information the local Basij offices received about where volunteers were needed most. Starting in 1985, caravans of Basij volunteers in the thousands were sent to training and then the battlefront.

The Basij centers in each city and town coordinated their efforts and sent the volunteers to the Basij training center (pādegāh-e āmuzeshi) in their province’s Basij command center for forty-five days of training. These forty-five days involved weapons and shooting training, body and strength training, and tactical and strategic training. The volunteers were taught how to fight both during the day and at night (most attacks by the Iranian side were done at night because they lacked sophisticated weaponry and could catch the Iraqis off guard in the dark), how to fight in the mountains and on flat land, and how to deal with landmines. Once trained, depending on the aptitude they had demonstrated during the forty-five days, some Basijis were then given specialties, such as reconnaissance, defusing mines, sniper shooting, while others were assigned general tasks.

In general, Basij volunteers were deployed from forty-five days to three months before they received a break from the front. Some Basijis renewed their deployment instead of taking leave, thus prolonging their service at the front. Anyone could volunteer to become a Basiji: young, old, man, woman. The women supported the war effort from behind the front lines as nurses and volunteers who made food and warm clothes for the soldiers. Men as old as seventy years volunteered at the front with the Basij, and although the legal age to fight was sixteen, younger boys eager to defend their nation forged their parents’ signatures and were deployed to the battlefront.

Once a volunteer went through training and became a Basiji, he could be deployed to the front. If he desired to later become a member of the Revolutionary Guard, he made a formal request at a command center. The process to become a Guard was difficult and involved thorough background tests, including investigation of the applicant’s neighbors and interviews about his family members, their politics, and their level of religiosity. Only after undergoing a lengthy investigative period could a Basiji with the right religious and revolutionary credentials become a member of the Revolutionary Guard. The Guard, as a more professionalized military force, received salaries of 70,000– 80,000 rials per month (USD 777–888), compared to 20,000–24,000 rials per month for members of the Basij (USD 222–266).¹⁰

Both Revolutionary Guard and Basij members told me repeatedly how antihierarchical the warfront was; veterans remember fondly the sense of brotherhood and equality they felt at the front. Mr. Ahmadi recalled, “Sometimes our Guard commanders would wear the same khaki uniforms as us. They didn’t want to differentiate themselves at all from us.” Mr. Hosseini added, “We all addressed each other as ‘Brother’ [barādar]. I never recall addressing our commanding Guard officers in any other way.” The sense of religious and revolutionary brotherhood prevailed at the battlefront, and men strived to create a feeling of equality among all those there, regardless of age, education, rank, or socioeconomic status.

For the most part, veterans told me that they had joined the Basij to defend the nation...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Generational Changes
• 2. Cracks in the Official Story
• 3. Insiders, Outsiders, and Belonging
• 4. New Strategies
• 5. Producing Nationalism
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Series List