Astronomers tell us that, when a star such as our sun burns through the last of the hydrogen in its core, the star’s core contracts, even as its outer layers swell outwards dramatically. It becomes a “red giant”: vastly enlarged with an angry red aspect, but the star is in fact, beginning to die. Eventually (which means millions of years for stars), the outer layers are cast off and dissipate into a nebula, and all that remains is a dense core of “degenerate” gas, no longer capable of fusion, that slowly cools. The star essentially has died, shrinking into a white dwarf.
I was never good enough at math to do more than dip my toe, as it were, into such cosmological topics, but the explanation of the death of stars due to the long-term process of burning through its fuel and its core contracting got me to thinking about Iran. It, too, has taken on a swollen, threatening appearance—but, like a dying star, its core is shrinking. Even as most observers have been focused on the danger posed by Iran, swollen as it seems with power, a long-term process at its core may be slowly weakening its regime.
In the Islamic Republic, the circle of supporters deemed loyal enough to the supreme leader to be given a stake in the Nezam has been steadily reduced since the revolution. Within their first two years in power, Ayatollah Khomeini’s people expelled from government the pious but liberal-oriented lay politicians like Mehdi Bazargan, intimidated and sidelined the National Front, and violently suppressed such leftist guerrillas and activists that helped pave the way for the revolution, as the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), the Fedayan-e Khalq, and the Tudeh party. With the massacre of thousands of leftist political prisoners at the end of the Iran-Iraq war—a slaughter in which current Iranian president Ebrahim Ra’isi, then a prosecutor, played a prominent role—Iran had eliminated most of its enemies and erstwhile allies.
Under Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the shrinking circle of trusted regime stakeholders continued, only now the Nezam targeted peaceful critics of the regime and Khomeini supporters with impeccable revolutionary credentials but ideas for reforming the revolution that threatened ideological shibboleths and—most importantly—Khamenei’s power. Rightwing vigilantes roughed up reformist intellectuals and politicians, hounding some into exile, while hardliners in the Ministry of Intelligence assassinated a series of dissident intellectuals, artists, and activists. Reformists who played by the rules, such as then-President Mohammad Khatami, were thwarted by regime institutions outside the control of the formal government—the Guardian Council, the Revolutionary Court, the Expediency Discernment Council, and an increasingly partisan IRGC acting on behalf of the Leader. The Guardian Council took an increasingly partisan and blatant approach to vetting candidates for election, disqualifying in 2004 nearly half of all prospective candidates for the Majles, including 80 sitting reformist MPs, to ensure a conservative electoral victory. The IRGC and Basij also increasingly put their thumb on the electoral scale, campaigning against reformists and using IRGC resources to mobilize conservative voters.
The 2009 election, in which the reformists accused incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of stealing the election and mobilized hundreds of thousands of supporters in peaceful protests, marked a watershed in which the reformists were emphatically excluded from the club. Security forces suppressed the protests, scores of reformist politicians and activists were convicted of sedition in televised show trials, the reformist candidates placed under house arrest, and former President Khatami reduced to something of a non-person, with the media forbidden to publish his picture.
The steady exclusion of reformists from meaningful participation in politics went hand-in-hand with the Nezam’s increasing drift toward totalitarianism. Velayat-e faqih, the principle Khomeini used to justify clerical rule, was upgraded to “absolute” velayat in the 1989 constitutional revision. Civil society institutions—such as the proreform student organization, the “Office for Strengthening Unity,” were harassed, divided, and eventually neutered or outlawed. Press freedoms, expanded under Khatami, were rolled back and prominent reformist publications shuttered. Over the course of the 1990s, Khamenei—a mid-ranking cleric who had catapulted to supreme leadership—curbed the autonomy and power of the senior clergy and seminaries by establishing regime-controlled bureaucratic institutions to manage the seminaries, audit the senior clerics’ finances, and stifle debate. Moreover, as the IRGC took on a growing role in the economy—especially during the Ahmadinejad presidency—the old merchant class, many of whom had helped finance Khomeini’s challenge to the Shah, found themselves sidelined and less influential. Regime apparatchiks and military cadre were replacing the traditional clergy and middle class as the main pillars of the Nezam.
The process continues today under the rubric of the “homogenization” of the government—the effort to bring all the branches of government under the control of principlist Khamenei loyalists—President Ra’isi being the poster boy of the effort. Moreover, as reformists have been pushed to the political margin, hardline principlists see in this effort an opportunity to monopolize power and sideline fellow conservatives deemed insufficiently ideological—the Iranian version of “RINOs.” The scapegoating and demonization of former president Hasan Rouhani—a center-right technocratic conservative—has been the centerpiece of this effort.
Traditional conservatives certainly did not oppose—and often actively assisted—the marginalization of the reformists and are only now becoming alert to the risk that they may be next. As noted in our featured article this week, less ideological principlists howled like scalded cats when a member of the hardline SHARAYAN faction said on television that Iran belonged to the “hezbollahis”—the uncompromising revolutionary and religious zealots. It may be a cliché by now, but one is reminded of the quote attributed to German protestant clergyman Martin Niemöller, who regretted his lack of action when the Nazis began arresting socialists, then trade unionists, then Jews—because he was neither a socialist, a trade unionist, nor a Jew—and concluded “then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
The increasing arrogance and ambition of the hardliners—operating in the Paydari Front and SHARAYAN—is beginning, however, to be a problem for the government. As reported in the PersuMedia Daily Summary this past week, the government is going out of its way to justify its relative restraint in the Gaza crisis to its hardline supporters. Principlist media, including the arch-principlist Kayhan and Nour, the mouthpiece for the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), have been at pains to recommend prudence, warn of the dangers of all-out war, and assure readers of that the Resistance Front is taking action to protect the Palestinians. Similarly, a member of the Expediency Discernment Council—one of the most senior of regime councils—joined other principlists in criticizing the SHARAYAN member for her “false” and exclusivist comments about the preeminence of hezbollahis in Iran.
Amidst all the hurly-burly of the Gaza crisis and the increasing focus on the Majles and Assembly of Experts elections, these divisions are likely to worsen in the coming months. As we have reported previously, less ideological principlists like Majles Speaker Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf are trying to organize to contain and turn back the hardliners’ bid to monopolize power. Khamenei, under whose aegis the Paydari has grown in influence, may even see some benefit in clipping their wings for now, to avoid becoming too dependent on a narrow hardline base. The shrinking circle of reliable Nezam stakeholders—the Islamic Republic’s diminishing core—can’t get too much smaller and more homogenized than it already is. Indeed, as far back as 2019, IRGC outlets like Javan, were warning that “a sense of discrimination” as well as government mismanagement and the ever present “enemy” were provoking anger and a tendency toward violence among average Iranians. The efforts by IRGC media organizations to promote a nationalist message, as in the production earlier this year of a lavish play based on the Shahnameh, suggests that they recognize that revolutionary purity alone is not enough to sustain the Nezam, and they must take steps to attract greater popular support for the Islamic Republic.
Yet, it seems doubtful the hardliners will be denied. Even if they do not capture the Majles next year, they are likely to bide their time. The hardliners’ ambitions and exclusivism—and the risks they pose to the position and privileges of other conservative stakeholders in the Nezam—may well make for a lively, if not turbulent, succession to Khamenei. So, dear reader, while keeping an eye on Iran’s efforts to extend its power and influence across the region, like the boiling, swelling outer layers of a red giant, remember that the fervor and ideas that have fueled the revolution are largely spent, and the Nezam’s core is shrinking. It may be dangerous now, but we may yet see it collapse into a white dwarf. And, unlike with stars, it won’t take millions of years—it only seems like it will.
