Revolutionary Guards?

Thse who lead

Their military role was established in the course of the Iran-Iraq War when the Revolutionary Guards—originally a ragtag collection of earnest but untrained volunteers—gradually shouldered aside the professional military. Unlike the professional military, which had always abjured a political role in Iran, the Revolutionary Guards were recognized from the start as the protectors of the Islamic republic. They have gone on to acquire an active and pervasive presence at all levels of the political structure, particularly under President Ahmadinejad, who has appointed his fellow guardsmen to positions throughout the bureaucracy.

The economic role of the Revolutionary Guards has been much remarked on in recent years. The Guards themselves and companies run by the Guards have won major contracts in every corner of the economy, from airport construction to telecommunications to auto manufacturing. They have also allied themselves with some of the most conservative clerics, who view the revolutionary government not as an alliance of Islam and the people but as divinely ordained rule by a philosopher king who is to be regarded as absolute in his judgments—political as well as theological.

These elements combine to form an impenetrable core that arrogates to itself all authority in the Islamic republic. Needless to say, it also provides tangible benefits to very specific groups: the leader himself, who is thus promoted to a position not simply as first among equals but as the equivalent of an absolute monarch; the top leadership of the Revolutionary Guards, whose profitable dominance of all aspects of the government’s operations is guaranteed; and the conservative, politically minded clergy, who want a true theocracy with no meddling by those who are not properly anointed. The objective, quite simply, was to remove the “republic” from the Islamic republic.

This is a formula for the kind of militarized and nationalist corporate state under a single controlling ideology that is not dissimilar to fascist rule in an earlier day. Like fascism, it defines itself not only in terms of its own objectives but even moreso by what it opposes: liberalism, individualism, unfettered capitalism, etc. There is no need to push the definition too far, since fascism tended to be specific to a particular time and set of historical circumstances. But the resemblance in nature and practice seems to justify use of the term

The Power and the Intellectual.

The dictatotial Power - one that rules over many nations - usually has very ambivalent relationship with the Intellectual. Whereas, the duty of justice-seeking Intellectual could be -in famous quote from Edward Said - "to speak truth to Power", it is doubtful how much can be achieved in a closed and repressive society by this stance. In truth, the Power does not rely on the Intellectual for active support, in which as a propagandist he (or she) is inept and shameful, but it relies on him (or her) by what he (or she) is. When he is physically in support, pay or lip service to such a regime, its legitimacy is shored up a bit, although one should not overstate one's own importance to Power.

The survival of any dictatorial regime depends not only on security apparatus or repression, but mostly on explicit or implicit support of the majority, and active support of few groups. Fear of losing the implicit support of the masses and fear of mobilizing these masses against the Power are main challenges that need to be prevented. That is why any regime, even one relying on ideology of God-given righteousness like in Iran, craves legitimacy, for open dictatorship will only rely on brute and hated force.

The Intellectual, through his mental capacity, has analytical powers to assess situation and arrive to conclusions on justice in society. He may even express them openly to Power but on conditions, in which this expression will be in the language not understood by masses. The Power, concerned about progress, education and science needs Intellectual for his mental powers, and his powers of analysis, but precisely these qualities can make him go out of control and should be feared. The Intellectual is like a feared but craved pet lion in Shah's private zoo; a source of pride but with a bite. Domesticated Intellectual could be a source of great value and is very sought after species.

The masses on the other hand may not be feared until their grievances are articulated, for then they may unite and rise up. If the Intellectual crosses a line from "speaking to Power" towards "speaking to Masses", he ceases to be harmless. He may become a Reformer, or worse - a Revolutionary.

An empty shell...

"In a sense, in a democracy, the ordinary citizen is effectively a king, but a king in a constitutional democracy, a king whose decisions are merely formal, whose function is to sign measures proposed by the executive. The problem of democratic legitimacy is equal to the problem of constitutional democracy: how to protect the dignity of the king? How to make it seem that the king effectively decides, when we all know this is not true? What we call the ‘crisis of democracy’ isn’t something that happens when people stop believing in their own power but, on the contrary, when they stop trusting the elites, when they perceive that the throne is empty, that the decision is now theirs. ‘Free elections’ involve a minimal show of politeness when those in power pretend that they do not really hold the power, and ask us to decide freely if we want to grant it to them. It is a shell."

Read it all

Are we building our future together?

The article from Today's Zaman exposes the shallowness of claims of "One Nation - Two States" policy in Azerbaijan-Turkish relations. Azerbaijan's government is simply not interested in developing deeper, more rational strategic partnership which is based on future and does not dwell on the past. Azerbaijan is building its future balancing on the difference between Russia, Europe and Turkey and this is not real policy. Turkophiles in Azerbaijan - see beyond the hype.


There are linguistic, religious and ethnic ties between Turkey and Azerbaijan, but Azerbaijan also has the same ties with Asian countries. Azerbaijan has coexisted with people in Central Asia with Turkish roots for nearly 200 years (through the Russian Tsardom and the Soviet Union) under the same state, sharing the same cultural, political and economic life. Despite sharing so many commonalities, Azerbaijani people have a more deeply rooted sympathy and love toward Turkey than toward the Turkic peoples of Central Asia. What is the reason for Turkey's deep love toward Azerbaijan and Azerbaijan's deep love toward Turkey?

Intellectual movement between the two countries in the 19th and 20th centuries, the interaction of intellectual thoughts, the quest for strategic partnership in the early 20th century, the liberation of Azerbaijan and Baku by the Ottoman state in 1918, Azerbaijan's financial support and volunteer military support for Turkey's War of Independence in 1921, Turkey's safe haven for Azerbaijani opponents during Russian Tsardom and the Soviet Union and Turkey's quick and free political, economic, militaristic and cultural consultation with Azerbaijan after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 are representative of the events that have facilitated the affection between the two countries.

However, a common strategic future has not been built on this deep love between the two countries in the 21st century. Taking each other for granted, the countries haven't felt the need to build a future together. Activities between businessmen and high-level political meetings between presidents, prime ministers and state ministers were deemed sufficient as long as they adhered to the “one nation, two states” slogan. Considering the deep love between the two countries, why haven't relations between Turkey and Azerbaijan reached the level of relations between Turkey and Georgia or between Azerbaijan and the Russian Federation or even between Azerbaijan and Germany? Or rather, the more important question is: How can the two countries develop their relations to that level? There are no visa requirements between Turkey and Georgia for those staying under three months. There are negotiations under way to allow citizens to travel between Turkey and Georgia with just an identification card. Visa exemptions have boosted travel between the two countries and trade along the border. Turkey signed its second-most comprehensive free trade agreement, which includes agricultural products as well, with Georgia, after Bosnia-Herzegovina.

While Turkey has removed visa requirements for Azerbaijani citizens, Azerbaijan has not and would even like to adopt a stricter visa policy.

A Great Question

One of the important problem that i am reminded of for an Islamic rule is posed by current Iranian crisis. Even though situation is very specific to Iran and Twelver Shi'ism the lesson can be passed on any theocratic government. At the heart of the conflict in Iran lies quite an important ideological question, a question which has split the clergy and the faithful.

The question is thus - is ultimate authority over affairs of the state lies with God or with Ummah (The people). And if we believe it is with God, will that state need a religious ruler. And if God is to give guidance through a spiritual ruler, who will make sure the ruler is just and not a tyrant.

Now, Twelver Shi'ism differs from the Sunni tradition in a handful of important ways — not only in its belief in who was the legitimate heir to the Prophet Muhammad's leadership of the community of the faithful after his death, but also in its attitudes toward political authority and devotion. But one of the most important differences is the Shi'ite tradition's unique practice of ijtihad — the use of independent reasoning to pass new religious rulings. This is absent in Sunni tradition which limits possibility of political adaptability of Islamism to politics.

That much is clear is the very history of the Islamic Republic. In the early 1970s, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini deviced a new model for Shia government. Khomeini was a marja al-taqlid (a model of emulation), and he interpreted the Koran and Hadith to conclude that God had decreed for Islamic government — in the absence of the Twelfth Imam, who would return one day in the messianic tradition and launch his own reign of justice. Khomeini called this vision of the clergy being given authority over governance "velayat-e faqih", or guardianship of the jurist. This religious ruling is frowned upon by "traditional" ayatollahs, who advocated withdrawal of clergy from politics - so called quetism; to this school Grand Ayatollah Sistani of Iraq belongs. Because of its position of non-interference most of the queitist clergy was sidelined during the time of Islamic revolution, and was of no importance to ideological machine of Iranian Khomeinist state. However a more politically active "liberal" clergy also existed in Iran - from the time of 1906 revolution, clergy that empowered women, - to this school Grand Ayatollah Montazeri belongs.

How to deal with Iran

Iran as a state always confounds observation - a modern state, religious theocracy with popular yet limited democracy; a state of multiple identities or no identity at all. Islamic Republic of Iran. It is Islamic yet Republic, and Aryan and Persian speaking too. Ultimately it is a state and society which has always frustrated others. Ottomans first, then Russians, French and British - and now the West in general - they were all frustrated in their plans to subjugate the peoples of Persia. Yet Iran, soaked in Shia religion and Persian culture is not a monolith; the gaps between many Irans show well during the times like these.

Old Persian strenght lay in ability to frustrate plans, complicate, scheme and plot against others. Persian state's survival against odds and bravery is admirable. I will not mention democracy, Israeli and Western fears of today, for this is irrelevant to this profoundly un-Europoean state.

Right now, as Aryanist and Shia clergy hybrid Iran stands against a great aspiration of Eurasian political and economic continuum. This aspiration is for Turkish domination in Eurasian space in a distant yet achievable future; it is not a dream of Pan-Turkist nutter. The duel between Russia, Turkey and the West will need to be mediated by peoples of Iran and ultimately will decide the fate of all Muslims.

Iran is a dual state of Turkish and Persian identity. Turkish nation of Iran are not a minority like Kurds or Lurs but coeval founder of Iranian selfhood. Evolution of political and religious thinking in this direction will accomodate varios strands of Iranian society and integrate it back into Turkic-Persian Muslim cultural space. Seljuk Empire of Modernity could be born.

It also needs to be tanglibly demonstrated that Shia religion and Iranian state are not identical twins, as is shown now within the political system of Iran. The falsehood of clerical order build after the Revolution is a mockery of all Shia aspirations to free will, since the times of Imams. Once both Turkish and Persian strands of Islam are integrated, the divide of Islam, which Arabs are unable to cure will be healed over.

Iran needs to end its isolation from the Muslim and Western world and Turks of Iran are instrument to achieve it. Without necessary destruction of geographical space of Iran, the meaning of "Iran" may be profoundly changed.

The most exciting election in Middle East is...

Iran! Here is from New Your Times, and worth a read for Islamophobes amongst you. Not that i like Iran as a country and a government, but some things are worth emulating for us, secular but unfree.

Iran Awakens Yet Again

Published: June 10, 2009

TEHRAN — They’re calling it the “green tsunami,” a transformative wave unfurling down the broad avenues of the Iranian capital. Call it what you will, but the city is agog at the campaign of Mir Hussein Moussavi, the reformist candidate seeking to unseat President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 10th post-revolution election.

Iran, its internal fissures exposed as never before, is teetering again on the brink of change. For months now, I’ve been urging another look at Iran, beyond dangerous demonization of it as a totalitarian state. Seldom has the country looked less like one than in these giddy June days.

I wandered in a sea of green ribbons, hats, banners and bandannas to a rally at which Ahmadinejad was mocked as “a midget” and Moussavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard, sporting a floral hijab that taunted grey-black officialdom, warned the president that: “If there is vote rigging, Iran will rise up.”

A Moussavi kite hovered; a shout went up that “It’s even written in the sky.” I don’t know about that, but something is stirring again in the Islamic Republic, a nation attached to both words in its self-description.

That stirring has deep roots. The last century taught that Iran’s democratic impulse is denied only at peril. Ever since the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, the quest for representative government has flared. Moussavi is dour but seen as a man of integrity, the anti-Ahmadinejad who can usher back the 1979 revolution’s promise rather than incarnate its repressive turn.

Rahnavard, a professor of political science, is not dour. She has emerged as a core figure in Friday’s vote through her vigorous call for women’s rights and the way she goaded Ahmadinejad into a rash attack on her academic credentials during his no-holds-barred televised debate last week with Moussavi.

“Make up your files,” Rahnavard declared at the rally, in a derisive allusion to Ahmadinejad’s Stasi-like brandishing of a document about her before some 40 million TV viewers of the debate. “But the file-makers will be defeated!”

Iran’s democracy is incomplete (a Guardian Council representing the Islamic hierarchy vets candidates) but vigorous to the point of unpredictability. Nobody knows who will triumph in an election that chooses the second most powerful figure in Iran under the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but some things are already clear.

The first is that the frank ferocity of politics here in recent weeks would be unthinkable among U.S. allies from Cairo to Riyadh, a fact no less true for being discomfiting. The problem with Iran caricatures, like Benjamin Netanyahu’s absurd recent description of the regime as a “messianic, apocalyptic cult,” is that reality — not least this campaign’s — defies them.

The second is that while Ahmadinejad still marshals potentially victorious forces, including the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij militia, he now faces a daunting array of opposition ranging across the political spectrum.

If his attack on Rahnavard was rash, his broadside in the same debate against Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the regime’s éminence grise, looks like recklessness. It has ushered this election into the inner sanctum of authority. That’s a transgression Ahmadinejad may not survive.

Rafsanjani, a former president, was so incensed by Ahmadinejad’s accusations of Mafia-like corruption that he responded with a blistering letter to Khamenei, who’s supposed to sit above the fray. The president’s suggestion that corruption was endemic to the revolution also angered the Qom clerical establishment, which responded with its own dissenting letter: How dare Ahmadinejad defile the very system?

“Ahmadinejad has exposed rifts and spread distrust vis-à-vis the whole regime,” said Kavous Seyed-Emami, a university professor. “That’s groundbreaking.”

The Rafsanjani letter, alluding to “volcanoes of anger” among Iranians, including at the alleged disappearance of $1 billion from state coffers, will belong in any history of Iran’s revolution. It says tens of millions watched as Ahmadinejad “lied and violated laws against religion, morality and fairness, and as he targeted the achievements of our Islamic system.” It insists that Khamenei now ensure free and fair elections.

Khamenei has leaned toward Ahmadinejad, but much less so of late. He cannot be impervious to the rage of Rafsanjani, who is chairman of the powerful Expediency Council, which mediates disputes, and the Assembly of Experts, which oversees the supreme leader’s office. Ahmadinejad now confronts surging forces from without (the street) and within (the clerical hierarchy).

Why the sudden turbulence? Here we come to the third critical characteristic of this campaign. Radicalism in the Bush White House bred radicalism in Iran, making life easy for Ahmadinejad. President Obama’s outreach, by contrast, has unsettled the regime.

With Lebanon denying an electoral victory to Hezbollah, the oil-driven Iranian economy in a slump, and America seeking reconciliation with Muslims, the world now looks a little different.

Moussavi’s attacks on the “exhibitionism, extremism and superficiality” of Ahmadinejad’s foreign policy resonate.

Rafsanjani believes in a China option for Iran: a historic rapprochement with the United States that will at the same time preserve a modified regime. I also think that’s possible — and desirable — and that Khamenei’s margin for resisting it has just narrowed. So, too, has the margin for the foolishness of anti-Iran hawks

Political Observations

Obama belittles those European leaders, previously arrogant Sarkozy and Merkel; not the least in his support for Turkish EU membership. Intellegent Americans might be pleased to have elected such a man - at least for now.

Europe, no lonber bullied by US into action, looks weaker, divided and petty by the minute. Obama will try cajoling them rather than bullying without changing key American foreign policy aksioms. It is strange to see how roles reversed, between European moral posturing of years ago; does personality matter so much that suddenly enlighthened Europeans look like the have become bigots of the day?

Meanwhile, Western influence diminishes in the world as years go by- and it is to the benefit of everyone to try to adjust to this new reality with a just global order. Obama maybe the first US president to understand it.