Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini arrived in Tehran on February 1, 1979. His tumultuous welcome was the crowning touch of the revolutionary turmoil which swept away the Pahlavi dynasty from power. The Islamic Republic of Iran that Khomeini established was destined to send shock waves throughout the Middle East and the world. Its subsequent politics have never left the headlines. In the name of exporting the Islamist revolution, Iran used assorted Shiite militias to carve out a sphere of influence known as the Shiite Crescent. These revolutionary foot soldiers engaged in terrorism and other forms of violence to destabilize neighboring countries and strike out against real and perceived enemies of Khomeini’s brand of Islamism.
As in other cases or revolution regimes, underpinning the lofty rhetoric of revolutionary export were more pedestrian concerns of regime survival and national interests of Iran as a nation-state. These tangled imperatives could be best understood by analyzing the peculiar duality of Iran.
The Duality of the New Regime: Iran as a State and an Exporter of the Revolution
There was nothing in traditional Shiite theology to indicate an inclination to partake in political activism. In the conventional Shiite jurisprudence, the issues of governance and government have rarely been mentioned. Known as quietism, this tradition stipulated that the leadership of the society rests solely with Imam Mahdi, the 12th Imam believed to be hidden in the Major Occultation. Until his return to bring justice to the world, Muslims must tolerate the government and the concomitant idolatry and oppression. Because of this stipulation, the religious class, the ulama, remained largely apolitical and never proposed an alternative to the ruling system.
Shiite quietists justify their stance by referring to a hadith of Imam Jaafar al-Sadeq, the sixth Shiite Imam who asserted that raising any flag before the return of Imam Mahdi was idolatrous. According to this hadith, Shiites should avoid imposing their true belief on the government, no matter what its nature is, to give them a chance to live under adversity imposed by the unjust rulers.1
Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi, the marja-e taghlid (the Source of Emulation), who founded the Qom Seminary—the central religious authority in the Shiite world—was a strong advocate of clerical quietism. Borujerdi explained that politics is a highly complex issue, which the ulama were ill-prepared to tackle. For instance, he repeatedly noted that “the Constitutional Revolution in Iran taught me not to get involved in political affairs if I did not have a clear idea of their origins and outcomes.” During the tumultuous period of Mohammad Mosaddegh2 rule and the debate about nationalizing Iran’s oil industry, Borujerdi forbade clergy to interfere in political affairs. Because the Grand Ayatollah was universally revered, quietism officially prevailed in Iran until his death in 1961.3
For all his influence, Borujerdi encountered opposition from activist clergy associated with the teaching of Ayatollah Abulqassem Kashani, a left-leaning clergy closely involved with the anti-colonial movement in Iran. Kashani, who opposed, capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism, was only of the clergy to defy Borujerdi to support Mosaddegh. Although he subsequently had a falling-out with the nationalist leader, Kashani has been considered a true leader of the activist camp. Indeed, to demonstrate the synergy between religion and politics, Kashani went on to serve in the Iranian parliament in the 1950s.4
More consequentially, Kashani did not limit his activities to legitimate politics. He joined up with Navab Safavi, a devotee of the Sayyid Qutb, the founder of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood who advocated political violence. Kashani and Safavi believed that the Muslim regimes needed to be “purified,” and it was up to the true believers to get rid of “corrupt” government officials by assassinating them. They founded the first Islamist terrorist group in Iran, the Fadā’iyān-e Islam (Fighters of Islam). The Fadā’iyān-e Islam was involved in several assassinations and assassination attempts. On December 25, 1955, Safavi and three other members of the group were executed. Ayatollah Borujerdi, who expelled the Fadā’iyān-e Islam from Qom in 1950, refused to intervene on his behalf.5
Sayyid Ruhollah Mūsavi Khomeini, a rising start in Qom, however, was far more sympathetic to the cause of the Fadā’iyān. Although loyal to Borujerdi, the young cleric felt it was imperative for the ulama to get involved in the political realm. Indeed, Khomeini was well acquainted with both Kashani and Safavi who visited him in 1943 and 1944. It was also through Safavi that Khomeini became open to the Muslim Brotherhood idea of Muslim ecumenism. In one of his early writings, Kashf al Asrar (Uncovering of Secrets), Khomeini revealed his predilection for engaging in the political arena. The pamphlet was a radical denunciation of the secularization of the society and a thinly veiled attack on the anti-clerical activist and historian Ahmed Kasravi. Khomeini decreed Kasravi to be a Madhur-al-Dam (one whose blood needs to be shed by believers). On March 11, 1946, two members of the Fadā’iyān, Hoseein and Ali-Mohamed Emami murdered Kasravi and his assistant. Khomeini intervened with the Shah to spare their lives.6
If the Kasravi murders were an early indication that Khomeini was willing to embrace political violence, his subsequent history revealed a radical transformation in personality and ideology. Following an unsuccessful effort to derail the Shah’s White Revolution, an attempt to modernize and Westernize Iran, Khomeini was exiled to Turkey in 1964. Less than a year later, in November 1965, Khomeini was allowed to move to Najaf, the center of Shiite learning in Iraq, where many of his students followed him. Despite the shared faith, Khomeini found Najaf less than congenial, often referring to it as a “den of snakes.” What bothered Khomeini the most was the fact that senior Iraqi Shiite leaders were quietists who frowned on his activism and especially his evolving notion of a theocratic state. Instead, he surrounded himself with a handful of like-minded activist clerics such as Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr al Sadr, the founder of the Dawa Party, and Musa Sader who became part of the so-called Najaf circle. Khomeini’s former students in Qom who attended classes in Najaf noted the change in his demeanor: “In Qom he wanted to be a religious leader; in Najaf he wanted to be a political leader” in the words of one of them.7
Khomeini first articulated his political vision in a series of lectures in Najaf, “The Islamic State,” which appeared in a 1970 book published in Beirut. In a radical departure of historical Islamic practices, Khomeini used post-Occultation theology to postulate that a proper Islamic order needed to be based on a principle of velayat-e faqih, the rule of a capable jurist. The government of the faqih was essentially a form of guardianship awaiting the arrival of the truth ruler, the Hidden Imam. While the theocratic feature captured much of the popular attention, a deeper analysis of Khomeini’s teaching revealed that it amounted to a radical revision of Shiism, known as neo-Shiism or Khomeinism.
It is not entirely clear how many of participants in the anti-Shah revolution realized that the rule of the monarchy would be replaced by an all-encompassing neo-Shiite philosophy. However, shortly after the arrival of Khomeini, decisive steps were made to turn the velayat-e faqih theory into practice.8
Although Khomeini received a tumultuous welcome, his top advisers, Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, realized that the democratic fervor which toppled the Shah needed to be acknowledged. To satisfy the democratic impulse without undermining too much of the rule of the faqih, the Khomeinists created a complex system of representation. The Majlis (parliament) members and the president were elected by popular vote, albeit from a list of names approved by the Council of Guardians. The Council was also in charge of making sure that the Majlis legislation was compatible with the Koran. The Constitution of November 1979, which codified this peculiar “theocratic democracy,” stipulated that an 86-member body known as the Council of Experts would choose the faqih, elevated to the position of a Supreme Leader.
Even with the added constraints of Islamist theocracy, Iran could have passed as a conventional nation-state. As in other countries, the Constitution provided for a hierarchical power structure in which a higher level indicates a more significant measure of power and control over the lower levels and the chain of command extend...