A World of Shock and Aftershock : IRAN: Funeral Depression

BENNINGTON, VT. — The dirge playing on Tehran radio is not merely a funeral hymn for the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini but also the opening theme for a new period in the Iranian revolution.

Khomeini’s unconditional rule was simultaneously a blessing and curse for Iran--blessing because it preserved functional unity among rival factions and curse because absence of a dominant voice caused policy paralysis. Now that Khomeini is gone, it is not clear if the regime can prevent violent internal purges.

What is clear is that continuation of current uncertainty about foreign policy and domestic economy can threaten the survival of the regime. The new leadership simply cannot afford to ignore the widespread frustrations and deprivations that have resulted from a decade of economic decline, war, massive unemployment, high inflation and rapid population growth.

While the theocratic power structure is likely to remain in place, at least in the short run, the new leadership to emerge from an inevitable power struggle is bound to give government more coherent direction. The quick selection of President Ali Khamenei by the Assembly of Experts as the interim supreme religious guide demonstrates that there is a mechanism in place to name, in due time, a permanent successor or successors to Khomeini. But as the players in this high-stakes power game are aware, the task of succeeding “the viceroy of God on Earth” is more than a formal or procedural matter.

At the moment it seems all but certain that Hashemi Rafsanjani, Speaker of Parliament, will be named president on Aug. 18. It remains to be seen whether at that time the Assembly of Experts will also choose him as the permanent supreme leader or whether a council of three clerics (very likely Khamenei, Rafsanjani and Ahmed Khomeini, the Imam’s son) will be designated as the supreme political body.

It is hard to imagine any of these men ruling as Khomeini did for more than 10 years. In addition to being immensely charismatic, Khomeini assumed state power with virtually unanimous support from the Iranian people. This historic beginning was indispensable to Khomeini retaining moral authority while his fundamentalist followers built the apparatus of terror and coercion for the emerging theocracy. It is doubtful that the principal organs of this apparatus, the Revolutionary Guards, the Komitehs and the Intelligence Ministry, would give another cleric the loyalty they so faithfully gave Khomeini.

The ayatollah was always anxious to preserve unity among his lieutenants, but at no point did he show any interest in organizing or energizing his followers for constructive purposes. He never made a statement in support of social welfare or economic well-being.

Whatever else one might find in Khomeini’s thought and behavior, it was hard to miss a vivacity for death and destruction in his attitude toward the world. This tendency had to be primarily understood as a personality trait of the ayatollah, because it certainly is not a distinct feature of Islam, Iranian political culture or the nature of its people.

Perhaps Iran’s most conspicuous failure during the decade has been in economics. Ten years ago the republic pledged to reduce dependence on oil as the principal source of foreign exchange. Yet today, dependence on oil exports is greater than it was during the shah’s rule. Ironically, the original popular base for Islamic leadership, the urban poor and lower middle class, has suffered most from the deteriorating economic situation.

The ruling religious leaders have defined their mission as moral and political, and have relegated economic policy to the background. Islam as a cultural and legal system may be an alternative to Western liberalism and Eastern communism, but it has virtually nothing to offer concerning the practical organization of economic life in the contemporary world.

Since the end of the war with Iraq, however, many influential religious leaders seem to have realized that the rhetorical call for an Islamic economics has to be abandoned in favor of concrete, pragmatic policy options and programs.

This is a very delicate task; the slightest suggestion that Islam might not have all the answers about a particular subject is likely, in the current atmosphere, to foment charges of blasphemy from fundamentalists. Rafsanjani and Khamenei are prominent among those wanting to move in a more technocratic direction. Whether they can prevail over the political and ideological objections of their leftist and rightist clerical rivals is difficult to assess at this point.

The revolution has wrought, despite its repressive evolution, a number of powerful achievements likely to be of permanent benefit to Iran. For the first time in the nation’s history, the gap between the elite and the masses has been significantly bridged. This is a positive development, despite the horrifying cruelty of the leadership. The revolution has liberated the country, once and for all, from the corrupt and exploitative character of dynastic politics.

The revolution has also succeeded at ending foreign interference in the internal affairs of the country, a process that had humiliated Iran in a variety of respects for more than a century--although, paradoxically, the current government is doing more harm to the well-being of the Iranian people on a daily basis than any of its predecessors.

The revolution has made Iranians far more conscious of secularism, pluralism and popular sovereignty--the virtues of liberalism. The experience of theocracy has meant a systematic negation of such ideas and arrangements; it has given them, absent a new value, almost a glorious quality. Ordinary Iranians might not express their longings in these terms, but their aspiration for a less-regimented life has received abundant testimony, as has their growing hostility to the reliance on the symbols of Islam to validate repressive practices.

What the future holds for Iran remains obscure. The revolution makes certain kinds of hopeful evolution more plausible than ever before, and yet it has also left extensive scar tissue on the Iranian body politic. Khomeini’s brooding, dominating rule shaped our perceptions to such an extent that we need some time to adjust to the idea of life in Iran without him.

The tenure of the ayatollah’s theocracy, like his own life, may be unduly prolonged, but its eventual demise is just as inevitable. The atavism of the mullahs cannot withstand the challenge of time or the demands and aspirations of Iranian society. What remains a distant dream for the Iranian people is the experience of belonging to a democratic nation.