On the rise of Militarism in Iran: Ahmadinejad's Presidency Marks the Return of the Old Guard

Note: This post was edited at 9:30 pm of 9 July 2005.

First off, I would like to thank Nema Millaninia for quoting me in his fantastic blogological analysis that was recently published on Freethoughts.org and Pacific News. Here, I would like to once again cite another insightful contribution of his to the Iranian politics realm of blogosphere on Iran Scan on the rise of  militarism under the Islamic Republic of Iran.

My argument in the present post is to confirm Nema's observation on the rise of militarism, with some flashbacks. I also would like to build my argument on the recent observations of Mr. Behi concerning the rise of militarism in Iran. I have to attach a disclaimer and an acknowledgement vis-a-vis my perspective first. Any recounting of memory starts with a narrative, and any narrative comes with its own style of refashioning the past:

First,

I left Iran in 1997, and I appreciate that due to my absence my understanding of the events in Iran post-1997 can very well be out of touch with the realities of today's Iran. From what I hear, what I research and what I observe through the very constrained lens of the Iranian and non-Iranian mass media outlets, plus the bloggers, I think we, relatively recent exile Iranians, can still play a role in remembering and recounting the past in order to hold the present accountable. 

Against this backdrop, I hope, our memory will not always fail us. Indeed, it might help us to see the broader picture of the recent events in a different manner from the generation of reform-minded youth; especially, before the same veteran actors of the Islamic Republic struck us by another masterly planned reenactment of the past in the foreseeable future.

Second,

Islamic revivalism in Iran, in the late 1940s, was informed and inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood of the time as founded by Hassan-al-Banna. These Islamic revivalists called themselves Fadayian Eslam, and many of them were arrested, executed or hunted down by the Pahlavi regime's intelligence in the immediate years after the US-UK orchestrated 1953 Coup.

Fadyian Eslam were never completely dealt with. Pahlavi regime's record indicates that the regime's intelligence was more concerned with militant communists. The Shah referred to both the Islamists and the Communists as reactionaries with different colours; the former he always referred to as "the Black Reactionaries", and the latter he used to call "the Red Reactionaries".

His Imperial Majesty King of Kings Arya-Mithra, nonetheless, appeared to be more concerned with the threat of the Red Reactionaries and their infiltration in the ranks of the Imperial Army's officer cohorts. Many of these officers were the main focus of the Shah's regime's intelligence and were sentenced to death through summary trials.

I do contend that Islamic militants were not suppressed in the same way at all. Comparing the number of the Islamists who were hunted down by the Shah's regime, such as Andarzgoo (Andarzgu), or were killed under torture, for example Ayatollah Saeedi, or executed, in the case of Navab Safavi and his group, with those tortured and executed communists, might empirically support my contention that many more communists were killed under the Shah than the Islamists. The Shah's regime considered the Red Reactionaries more of a threat than the Black Reactionaries.

After the destruction of Fadyian Eslam, the remaining militant Islamist groups were very active, but appeared to be more flexible in their tactics and militancy than their Communist counterparts. Of these militant Islamist organisations, whose leaders were to play a strong role in consolidating the power after the revolution in the form of the Islamic Republic of Iran's Party, I would name two: the Hey'at Motalefeh Eslami (I roughly translate it as the Islamic Coalition Commission), under the leadership of Habibollah Askar Oladi and Ali-naqi Khamooshi, and Sazemane Mojahedin Enqelab Eslami (the Islamic Revolution Mojahedin Organisation), under the leadership of the most renowned Lotfollah Meisami (who is said to have lost his eyesight when he was making a bomb some time in the 1970s).

Habibollah Askar Oladi and Ali-naqi Khamooshi are said to have written letters of repentance to the Shah in which they expressed regret for the crimes they had committed against the Monarchy and begged for His Imperial Majesty's Pardon. A former member of the Islamic Revolution Mujahedin Organisation, in a conversation in the early 1990s, confirmed that Askar Oladi and Khamooshi did write those letters of repentance to the Shah some time in mid-1970s. Writing these letters was a tactical retreat, as they were needed outside the prison to organise and mobilise the revolution that was to happen in 1979. While the credibility of such reports can be questioned, there is no doubt that Khamooshi and Askar Oladi were the outspoken supporters of the creation of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard force that would simultaneously deal a blow to the Communists, Nationalists, and Monarchists, in the event of the overthrow of the Shah. According to the plan, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards force could be initially supported by donations of the Bazaar, and after its establishment, it could become an institution of the regime to guard it against domestic and foreign enemies.

Indeed, according to many exile left-wing revolutionaries, these Revolutionary Guards, the Pasdars, received some "start-up" funding from the Bazaar and were in total control of most of the Comitehs (armed revolutionary committees that were formed to confront the counter-revolutionary elements right after the victory of the Revolution) by March 1979.

This effort fully unfolded when the Islamic Revolutionary Guard was created through the concerted effort of these young Islamist revolutionaries, who received much support from the old Islamic militants of Bazaar, that is Askar Oladi and Khamooshi. Ironically, Askar Oladi and Khamooshi are still of the mindset of ultrorthodox Islamist militants, supporting people like Ahmadinejad today, while the youth that they once supported in the early days of the Revolution to create the Revolutionary Guard are now dissidents of the regime; chief amongst them one can name Mohsen Sazgara, Abbas Abdi, Hamid Reza Jalayipour, and last but not least Saeed Hajarian.

While those who I have just mentioned appear to have lost their powerful positions for quite some time,  Askar Oladi and Khamushi's power is still relatively intact. They have wielded incredible power through controlling Iran's influential merchant class, the Bazaar, since 1979 with almost no interruption.  Indeed, Askar Oladi and Khamooshi have been always in control of many facets of power behind the scene, running a government inside the government, without any problem throughout the past twenty-five years.

With the benefit of such a long and broad hindsight, Ahamdinejad is not an exceptional phenomenon. In the early years of the Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War, Askar Oladi and Khamushi believed that the Bazaar could ensure that a good portion of the working class was sufficiently assisted by the resources of the Revolution so that their loyalty was guaranteed. By securing the loyalty of this relatively violent poor minority, the regime would create strong allies among the masses that would preserve the hegemony of their militant ultra-orthodox Islamism, and ironically, at the same time, the mercantilist interests of the Bazaar.

After the war, Iran was simply too poor to be able to subsidise Ahmadinejad's class of society that had sacrificed many of their youth during the war. Poor oil revenues coupled with the burden of the post-War reconstruction cost these heart-bleeding (most often literally so) supporters of the Revolution gravely. They felt betrayed by the Revolution's ruling elite, and they did express their disgruntlement in various ways. In the early 1990s, riots in Eslamshahr, and a few other southern neighbourhoods of Tehran, were strong indicators that alarmed the regime and caused confusion amongst the ruling elite about the post-War political and economic agenda that the regime had to pursue.

Iranian dissident film directors (well that might be an overstatement, I concede) have contributed a great deal in illustrating the grief of this most betrayed class of the supporters of the Revolution. Moshen Makhamalbaf's Marriage of the Blessed (1989) , the defiant Ebrahim Hatami Kiya's From Karkheh To Raine (1993), and last but not least, Jafar Panahi's Crimson Gold (2004).

Third,

I close this post here with one note. Those of us who thought the Islamic Republic's ruling clerical elite might find Rafsanjani a more suitable candidate to assure their own survival made the mistake of discounting the apathy of almost half of the eligible voters. At the same time, we discounted the fact that Askar Oladi and Khamooshi's faction that won the present Parliament through capitalising on the same sense of apathy, mobilised their support for the war veterans and revolutionary guards commanders who by virtue of their humble social origins know nothing but supporting the revolution with which they have identified with much blood and sacrifice.

About 95 deputies of the present Parliament are Revolutionary Guards Commanders who participated in the Iran-Iraq War. During the first and second rounds of June 2005 Presidential election, these deputies mobilised their supporters in their constituencies to assure the victory of their fellow commander, Mr. Ahmadinejad. They also kept a low-profile until the last moment to leave the public rather confused about the hardliners' favourite candidate.  Amongst them, however, there was a secret consensus over who was going to be the Conservatives favourite candidate: Ahmadinejad. They ambushed the Iranian political scene, the same way that they did ambush the Iraqi Republican Guard, with humble weapons, and with mass mobilisation. To guarantee the results, they certainly used their militant and revolutionary zeal to rig the election as much as possible.

As the reformists and moderate conservatives had already bled each other white, and caused a massive public apathy towards both of their camps, Ahmadinejad came to power as a result of the much renewed alliance of the Ancient Old Guard, Askar Oladi-Khamooshi and the more recent Old Guards, the War Veterans of Iran-Iraq War. The old militancy of militant Islamist Bazaaris that has always been against the industrialisation of Iran through Western investment allied itself with militant working class Revolutionary Guard War Veterans to make a renewed stand against the so-called US Imperialism, and those former fellow revolutionaries, such as Abdi, Hajarian, Jalayipour, and Sazgara, who had betrayed the fundamental principles of the Revolution for quite some time.

The pre-revolution and post-revolution Old Guard constitute a militarist Islamist faction that has shown much sophistication in coming back, and in striking back, domestically.

It remains to be seen how it will fair internationally.