Since its founding in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has dedicated considerable resources to constructing new international norms that reflect the practices, worldview, and aspirations of the ruling authorities in Tehran—all with the goal of enhancing its legitimacy and devaluing its domestic critics. From recasting the conventional principles of human rights and political participation to launching alternative international media and working to reshape and restrict access to the Internet, the Islamic Republic’s quest to forge counternorms is moving ahead unabated. In the course of these efforts, it seeks out global partners that share its agenda. Tehran has found Russia and China, in particular, to be useful role models, facilitators, and collaborators.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, considered the very notion of “democracy” to be an undesirable Western concept. He insisted that “Islam itself is democratic” and set out to define Islam’s provisions for political life. In the infant days of the 1979 revolution, few dared to defy the icon of the anti-shah movement over a single word, allowing Khomeini to prevail in this matter. Iran thus became an “Islamic republic,” leading to an ongoing struggle to define the system’s republican character. Khomeini and his inner circle in the Islamic Republican Party quickly formulated the new polity’s characteristics, which over the years became the regime’s counter to democracy. Those who opposed the new constitutional arrangement, starting with Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan in November 1979, were sidelined or imprisoned. Some, including the Islamic Republic’s first elected president, Abolhassan Bani Sadr, even fled.
Although the popular uprising against the monarchical dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (1941–79) had been a rainbow movement with strong prodemocracy leanings, less than two years later Khomeini had installed himself as Iran’s supreme leader and “God’s representative on earth.” The democratic struggle had ironically produced an unabashedly illiberal theocracy that soon proved resourceful in its quest to survive, predatory in its political behavior, and unprincipled in its disposition. Before Ayatollah Khomeini died in June 1989, he cemented this Machiavellian approach by decreeing that the interests of the “Islamic Republic” superseded even the tenets of Islam. Thus the very few who can define the interests of the system, principally the supreme leader himself, were made invincible.
Two constant features have been part and parcel of the political process in Iran ever since: First, there has been a continuing struggle among key regime personalities, factions, and institutions to define, own, and defend the revolution of 1979 and “Iranian national interests.” Second, thanks to intense intraregime competition for influence—most visible in the violent schism that followed the disputed 2009 presidential election—the Islamic Republic has faced a hemorrhaging of support from within its ranks. Accordingly, although the regime has managed to consolidate its institutional grip, the system’s basic legitimacy is no more secure today than it was in 1979.
The regime’s many critics see Iran’s “Islamic democracy” as a façade that allows the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to maximize control while making minimal concessions to a society hungry for genuine political rights. When President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad opportunistically began to challenge Khamenei during Ahmadinejad’s second term in office (2009–13), Khamenei publicly warned that the presidency could be eliminated altogether. The notion of “Islamic democracy” is perhaps the most blatant counternorm conceived by the Islamic Republic, but Ayatollah Khamenei is not stopping there
