The economic failures of the Islamic Republic of Iran are legion and well-known. In this space last week, we examined a number of examples of the Nezam’s economic dysfunction to argue that the regime is weaker than it appears. Beset by high inflation, lack of transparency, political interference, international sanctions, and epic corruption, the Iranian economy will hobble the ambitions of the Nezam and the prosperity of the people well into the future. This is an important weakness, but it is not the only one holding back the Islamic Republic. Perhaps equally as debilitating as its economic poverty is the Nezam’s poverty of imagination.
There is a dearth of new ideas, of the ability to reexamine assumptions or reinterpret principles in the Islamic Republic. This was on display last week at a conference on the “New World Order Geometry,” hosted by the Supreme National Defense University in response to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s call to study the lessons of the war in Ukraine and the changes in the world order. Both topics have, of course, spawned a vast body of literature and opinion and are fertile ground for cultivating new insights and ideas about international affairs and security. As described by a report on the conference by the Israeli Meir Amit Terrorism and Intelligence Center, however, the main speeches at the conference produced little in the way of new insights—most simply repeated standard Iranian propaganda tropes and policy nostrums: the US is in decline, the East is rising, Israel is decaying and the Palestinians growing stronger, and so on. And of course, to exploit these changes the Muslim world must recognize its strength, resolve its disputes, and “demonstrate greater solidarity to become a significant force” in the new world order—an idea that has been around at least since the days of Jamal al-Din Afghani.
The problem is deeper, however, than the lack of creative thinking at a conference intended to demonstrate fealty to Khamenei. The organizing concept of the current configuration of state power—the “homogenization of government,” in which all branches of government are controlled by reliably conservative figures loyal to the leader—is predicated on excluding an entire range of political thought from the deliberations of the Nezam. Intended, in part, to produce a more efficient government and overcome policy gridlock, it has instead resulted in an incompetent presidency unable to address effectively the main challenges facing the Nezam. After the government last fall provoked the worst episode of unrest since the revolution, it fell to Khamenei’s Swiss army knife, the IRGC, to quell the protests and it became the task of the pragmatic Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), to complete the stalled negotiations with Saudi Arabia and relieve Iran’s isolation.
Shamkhani’s reward arrived this past week when he was relieved of his duties at the SNSC and replaced by Rear Admiral Ali Akbar Ahmadian, a career IRGC officer noted mainly for his development of the IRGC Navy’s asymmetric small boat swarming tactics. As noted in our featured article this week, the hardline Paydari Front had long sought Shamkhani’s removal—they were especially incensed at his outreach to moderate and reformist figures during the protests last fall—and he really was not on the same page as the government of President Ebrahim Ra’isi with regard to security policy. (Tellingly, he was one of the few speakers at the New World Order conference last week who sounded a note of caution, warning that the changing world order posed threats as well as opportunities for Iran, and urging that the “doctrine of resistance” not become a policy of domination.) Looking ahead to the parliamentary elections only nine months away, President Ra’isi likely sought to escape the shadow of the politically astute Shamkhani, who succeeded where Ra’isi’s government had failed in negotiating détente with the Saudis. The career military man Ahmadian—whose most significant political act was to sign the infamous “coup letter” of July 1999 in which 24 IRGC senior officers threatened to intervene if then-President Khatami did not rein in student protests—will no doubt supply the Nezam with predictably conservative policy advice without eclipsing President Ra’isi and his lackluster administration.
Similarly, the election reform bill before the Majles, as detailed in the PersuMedia Daily Summary this past week, aims to ensure that figures who might challenge the status quo or question the prevailing orthodoxy are marginalized. After the “women, life, freedom” protests last fall, the Nezam came face to face with the stark fact that it had lost much of its political legitimacy—and that early warning of this could be found in the historically low voter turnout for the blatantly fixed presidential election of 2021. Last month, Khamenei charged officials with organizing elections in such a way as to ensure their credibility, security, and voter participation. The reform bill’s solution is to empower the appointed and hardline Guardian Council to remove a Majles deputy from office at any time during before or after his election, thus allowing the Nezam to approve a broader range of candidates to attract greater voter participation, while giving it the power to dispose of any candidate the minute he actually tries to implement new ideas or policies the Nezam disapproves of.
The election reform bill is emblematic of the Nezam’s governance under Khamenei: it is at once cunning and shortsighted in its defense of the status quo. It favors the illusion of tolerance over the genuine article, which if permitted might lead to challenges to the ruling orthodoxy and Khamenei’s authority. But it fails to see—or perhaps, does not care—that such chicanery, a “bait and switch” approach to the electorate, will only worsen the Nezam’s legitimacy problem by raising expectations of change and then dashing them.
The Islamic Republic was not always so rigid. Although it was never a democracy, in its first decade a fairly broad range of ideas were at least tolerated, with liberal Islamists such as Mehdi Bazargan’s Freedom Movement allowed to operate and even speak out against government policy in wartime. To be sure voices who challenged the supremacy of the clerics around Khomeini were suppressed, but the Nezam countenanced a greater variety of voices then than it does now. When Khamenei became Supreme Leader, the range of condoned voices steadily narrowed. The Freedom Movement was banned in 1990; the Guardian Council required candidates for the Assembly of Experts to take a test to demonstrate their theological chops in 1992; rightwing vigilantes began breaking up lectures by popular reformist professors, and by 1996 the IRGC and the Basij were campaigning against “liberals”—mostly supporters of President Ali Akbar Rafsanjani. The winnowing continues today, with even such regime stalwarts as Ali Larijani prevented from running for president in 2021 and hardliner calls this month for the prosecution of former President Hasan Rouhani. Iranian politics have become even more impoverished as a result.
The Nezam’s steady drive for monochromatic thinking and loyalty to the Leader has, to be sure, preserved Khamenei’s power and secured the regime for more than thirty years. But the cost has been to deprive the Nezam of the services of some of its more talented and thoughtful figures, limiting the options that might be considered in policy deliberations and narrowing the political base on which the Nezam relies for support. That, in turn, feeds discontent and erodes the political legitimacy of the regime. Shamkhani reached out to moderates and reformists during the protests for a reason—he wanted their assistance in calming the unrest and broadening the appeal of the Nezam. The Nezam is signaling, however, that in the end it values ideological purity over such “unprincipled” pragmatism. The regime will be surprised and reactive when reality does not conform to ideology.
Perhaps it does not matter that the Nezam no longer enjoys political legitimacy among much of Iranian society, and even among some elites, as long as it commands the loyalty of the IRGC. Moreover, a new government effort to censor Iranian media—masquerading as an effort to evaluate each outlet’s “performance”—will help to stifle criticism and limit government accountability. But as policy options and competent officials are excluded from consideration for insufficient fealty to principlist dogma, at what point does the system become so narrowly based and limited in vision that it cannot effectively react to a crisis? We may not have long to wait to see such a test—Khamenei is 84, and his passing may reveal whether the system he has built is supple enough to survive him.
