Iran Revolution at 30: Beyond Paradox

Washington’s venerable Middle East Institute has released a stunning collection of essays entitled, The Iranian Revolution at 30. Featuring diverse contributions from 53 international scholars and policy participants, the collection is dedicated to my own mentor, R.K. Ramazani. (the reputed “Dean of Iran Foreign Policy Studies”)
Andrew Parasiliti’s dedication essay to Ramazani appears on page 10, and the Professor’s extraordinary essay on “Understanding Iranian foreign policy” is featured at page. 12. My own essay on former President Khatami as a bridge “beyond paradox” appears on page 115.
Topics covered among the 53 essays range from foreign policy to societal trends, internal politics, the status of women, economy, and regional dynamics. Editor John Calabrese has brought together a nice mix of familiar and newer voices, providing a splendid array of insights and facts to consider.
Among the sub-themes that recur frequently is that of “paradox.” As I note in my essay, observers

“often emphasize apparent Iranian paradoxes to alert outsiders to Iran’s vibrant and dynamic society, beyond the static, enigmatic “black” clichés so commonly clung to in popular Western discourse.
In the same country where current President Mahmud Ahmadinejad trivialized the Holocaust, a very popular television program sympathetically portrayed an Iranian diplomat who rescued Jews from the Nazis during World War II.”

Yet the emphasis on “paradox” can be used to conceal more than reveal. Abbas Milani’s essay (26), among several, contends that Iran’s core paradoxes are so unresolvable that they inevitably (in Milani’s view) will “bring about its end.”
I take a rather different approach:

“Paradox as a metaphor for Iran becomes less than helpful if it leaves the impression of a ‘hidden Iran’ being incomprehensively mired in its own contradictions. Bewildered perhaps by such analytical frameworks, top Western officials, beginning with former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, commonly admit that “they do not understand Iran” or that they “do not know” if negotiating with Iran will work.”

I illustrate how paradoxes can be transcended via remarks given by former Iranian President Muhammad Khatami at a Monticello luncheon, on September 11th, 2006. Other than Helena’s blog entry at the time, this is the first time that Khatami’s comments at Thomas Jefferson’s home have been published.
Painfully aware of the past problems, Khatami optimistically sees no contradiction between the requirements of democracy and “a progressive reading of Islam.” Curious? Read my essay (p. 115). It’s also been republished (here.)
Bonus Observations:


The MEI “Iran Revolution at 30” collection includes many stimulating and essays worthy of consideration. I particularly suggest the nuance rich essays by Bahman Baktiari (80), Kian Tajbakhsh (16), Farideh Farhi (29), Raymond Hinnebusch (149) and Nader Entessar (143). Students and scholars will appreciate the 100 pages of charts, maps, and an long subject bibliogrpahy.
I also suggest a critical reading of Charles Kurzman’s update (on p. 32) of his thesis that Iran’s revolution was unthinkable and unpredictable. While Kurzman’s widely cited argument was published by Harvard, it’s quite debatable. Not everyone missed the revolutionary pressures building. No less than R.K. Ramazani (the man to whom this MEI collection is dedicated) was among those who saw the critical vulnerabilities in the previous system, and he published his warnings as early as 1964. (beginning in the American Behavioral Scientist magazine.)
At least Kurzman is consistent. Claiming that most observers are mystified that the Islamic Republic has lasted as long as it has (another debatable proposition), he nonetheless avoids predicting that another cataclysm is in the offing:

“Betting on a regime’s survival is almost always a safer wager than betting on it being overthrown. And if my bet is wrong, and the regime is overthrown, then that only confirms my analysis that revolutions are unpredictable.”

Ah yes, a paradox — though perhaps one that says more about the deconstructed state of revolution studies than about revolutions themselves.

6 thoughts on “Iran Revolution at 30: Beyond Paradox”

  1. Painfully aware of the past problems, Khatami optimistically sees no contradiction between the requirements of democracy and “a progressive reading of Islam.” Curious? Read my essay (p. 115). It’s also been republished here.

    We can point to Iran. If we were talking seven or eight years ago, I would probably say virtually a total story of failure. But in the last five or six years we begin to see very interesting politics emerging in Iran, perhaps more political progress in Iran towards opening up of the system and transparency than we see anywhere in the Arab world in that same period.

    The Islamists in Iran have made a lot of mistakes. They have partly learned from this, as have others. But Iranians today are not terribly open to the idea that we should have more Islam in politics. They want less Islam, want to fine-tune this, and there is great discussion about what is the proper role. They don’t say “no Islam”; they say, “What is the proper role?”

    So Islam coming to power and failing is certainly not a good advertising for elements of the ideology.

    Graham Fuller was Vice Chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA

  2. Scott,
    Yes, paradoxes, properly transcended, can lead to truth and/or new insights.
    Paradoxes were a favored technique of my favorite author, Henry David Thoreau. Excerpts from a review of his work:
    Walden is a work of many gaps and contradictions, a work that seems to keep the reader off balance. . . .
    Perhaps the most useful way to look at the form of Walden is to think of it as negotiating the cracks, not only between past and future but between all kinds of dualities: society and the individual, sounds and silence, body and spirit, form and flux, &c. As soon as you think you have him pinned down to an idea, he slips right out to play with its opposite! . . .
    Thoreau was also very fond of paradoxes, or statements which seem to be logically contradictory but do present a truth which reconciles the contradiction. One example in “Economy” is his conclusion that the savage may actually be the truly civilized man. Paradoxes like this often depend on his redefinition of a key term. Such redefining is most clearly seen in sentences like “To be awake is to be alive.”

  3. The Shia regime in Iran is halfway to winning its undeclared 30-year war with the U.S. which began with the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 by using proxies such as Hezbollah and the Kurds, forging alliances with Russia and China and exploiting the Muslim divide of Shia and Sunni factions, Baer says.

    Former CIA agent Robert Baer, “The Devil We Know

  4. Salah – so predictable. And you find a CIA hack who didn’t previously work on Iran to be authoritative? (one who nonetheless rejects the neocon program)

  5. On Iran and Baer.
    He gets schooled by a soigne Francophile.
    Sometimes style is a sign of substance and the preference for “substance” no more than a pose.
    Most Americans don’t understand how that’s even possible. To them “sincerity” is paramount.
    The road to hell etc..

  6. Your argument about Baer not convincing, most who talking and speaking and writing about Iraq in same position as Baer…..
    Anyway Baer whatever he tagged Iran now and before his call is in regards of Iran is not going to war, Baer call is let talk to them and deal with them they have a lot for US.
    This is his massage whatever other things that raised about him or other CIA guys you can put same pile of words on most of them who specks about ME and Islam and Iraq or Iran.
    It took three high level meeting between US officials and Iranians inside Iraq that make US mission looks like wining Iraq and Surge working as Bush and his folk marketed. but any insider will tell you without Iran US will still struggling with cancer patient for more years to come.
    back to Islam and democracy, It’s not Islam problem with democracy, its those “Rulers” in charge of Islamic nations, who are violating Islam and democracy

    Q Morning, Mr. President. I have a more general question about the United States’ work to democratize the rest of the world. Many have viewed the United States’ effort to democratize the world — especially nations in the Middle East — as an imposition or invasion on their sovereign rights. Considering that it was, in fact, the Prophet Mohammed who established the first known constitution in the world — I’m referring to the constitution he wrote for the city of Medina –and that his life and the principles outlined in his constitution, such as the championing of the welfare of women, children and the poor, living as an equal among his people, dissolving disputes between the warring clans in Arabia, giving any man or woman in parliament the right to vote and guaranteeing respect for all religions, ironically parallel those principles that we hold most precious in our own Constitution. I’m wondering how might your recently formed Iraq Study Group under the U.S. Institute for Peace explore these striking similarities to forge a new relationship with Iraqis and educate Americans about the democratic principles inherent in Islam?

Comments are closed.