Part 1: The Islamic Republic of Iran is Born

The Islamic Republic of Iran was born in 1979 out of a series of compromises about the type of government that should replace the Shah’s toppled monarchy. What emerged out of those compromises was a constitution that attempted to reconcile the apparently contradictory ideas of Islamic theocracy and liberal democracy. Popular will in the form of elections would be combined with the concept of Velayat-e Faqih or the Guardianship of the Jurist. Over the next 30 years, the two natures of the Iranian regime would vie for dominance until a purge of democratic principles in 2009 would cause the greatest crisis in the history of the Islamic Republic.

As a result, it is impossible to understand that later crisis without first understanding the state formation process in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution. In particular, the new constitution would be central to conflicts in Iran since as opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi would later put it, “the Islamic Republic is meaningless without the Constitution”. The recent political conflict in Iran would revolve around the same the types of disagreements over the Islamic Republic and its constitution that existed in 1979.

While a large coalition of diverse groups helped to overthrow the Shah’s regime during the 1979 revolution, that coalition would quickly break down once the Shah was gone. Following a brief rule of the moderates during the provisional government of Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, radical Islamists would seize power in the Islamic Republic. The external threat of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran and the internal threat of dissent groups forged a coalition of liberal, leftist, and conservative Islamists who united to defend the new Islamic Republic. In this chaotic situation after the revolution, a reign of terror would begin in which thousands of dissidents were executed and many more were forced into exile.

To maintain this broad coalition of Islamists, a new constitution was drafted containing both liberal democratic values and authoritarian theocratic elements. The constitution needed this wide appeal to maintain the Islamist coalition and to get the Islamic Republic off the ground. While this approach helped to create the Islamic Republic, it also laid the groundwork for future conflict once all serious threats to the regime were gone.

As with all revolutions, there were many different factions in Iran that temporarily united in order to overthrow the old regime. These factions included leftists inspired by Marxist ideas, secular liberals who wanted to emulate Western style democracy, Islamists who believed in political Islam, and other disparate groups who were all opposed to the Shah. Despite their differing ideologies and visions for Iran, their disapproval of the Shah caused them to join forces to overthrow the old regime.

Once the common enemy of the Shah was gone, the different factions of the revolutionary movement quickly splintered and attempted to consolidate power for themselves. This first big coalition created in the midst of the revolution would be followed by increasingly smaller coalitions as different factions would compete for power in the years to come. It was the Islamic component of the revolution led by its charismatic leader Grand-Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that became the dominant force in the aftermath of the Shah’s overthrow.

In exile while the revolution was gaining momentum, Khomeini put out statements to please leftists, liberals, and Islamists alike. Once he returned to Iran, Khomeini would make it clear that Islam was going to create the framework for the new society to the exclusion of other visions for Iran. The revolution was going to become an Islamic Revolution to completely transform the fabric of Iranian society and that transformation would began with the new constitution.

When it came to his role in politics, Khomeini initially moved cautiously making vague statements with strong democratic overtones in order to win over support from all factions of the revolutionary movement. Just a few months before his return to Iran, Khomeini repeatedly stated that he did not want to have any role in the new government, “personal desire, age, and my health do not allow me to personally have a role in running the country after the fall of the current system”. He also presented a liberal democratic vision for Iran, “our future society will be a free society, and all the elements of oppression, cruelty, and force will be destroyed”. In addition, he stated that clerics would not have a direct role in the government, “in Islamic Iran the clergy themselves will not govern but only observe and support the government's leader”.

Even though Khomeini was in exile, the revolution intensified in the last months of 1978 and the Shah was forced to flee Iran on January 16, 1979. Khomeini returned to Iran on February 1, 1979 and began working with other opposition groups to eliminate the last remnants of the Shah’s regime. Khomeini appointed the moderate liberal Mehdi Bazargan as head of a provisional government to run the country until a new constitution could be put in place. Bazargan assembled a cabinet filled with other moderate liberals and went to work creating a new regime.

At this early stage, Khomeini decided that it would be the people’s vote that would officially topple the old regime apparently enshrining the importance of the popular will in the new Iran. A referendum was organized to ask the people if they wanted to replace the monarchy with what was called an “Islamic Republic”. The term was not defined on the ballot and it was the only alternative to the monarchy which was presented.

Yet the fact that a referendum took place indicates that Khomeini intended to create at least the façade of democracy for the new regime. Khomeini’s statements in Paris meant that many liberals and leftists would join the Islamists to abolish the monarchy and create an Islamic Republic. After heavy participation with relatively few boycotts, the referendum passed with 98.2% of the vote which accurately reflected the votes of the people given the unpopularity of the Shah’s regime at this point.

The idea of an Islamic Republic had existed before most notably with the declaration of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in 1958 although the Pakistani government remained largely secular. Yet when Khomeini talked about an Islamic Republic of Iran, no one really knew what the new state would look like. By combining two fundamentally different words, an Islamic Republic attempts to reconcile the Western concept of liberal democratic republicanism with the 1300 year old teachings of Islam. While this might seem possible at the theoretical level, its actual manifestation in a functioning government was never tried.

Khomeini believed there had to be some real democratic components in the new Islamic regime in order to consolidate power and create a working government. “In 1978 Khomeini became an advocate of Islamic Republicanism not as a calculated political effort at public deception, but rather as an attempt to establish an Islamic regime that could appeal to larger numbers of intellectuals and urban classes”. Khomeini understood that the new regime needed support from different segments of Iranian society and could not survive just with the backing of conservative Islamists. The concept of an Islamic Republic would satisfy a wide ranging coalition from the traditional clergy to liberal intellectuals. At least in theory, it would combine the historically important role that Shii Islam played in Iranian society with the aspiration for a democratic Iran.