The return of Banisadr to the heart of Iranian politics
(From L to R) Iranian President Hasan Rouhani, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani. Parspix/ABACA/ABACA/PA Images. All rights reserved.A historical conjuncture is
a ‘period during which the different social, political, economic and
ideological contradictions that are at work in society come together to give it
a specific and distinctive shape’ – and provide conditions for a new state of
social affairs.
For example, the coming together of BREXIT, a failed coup by New
Labour MPs against Jeremy Corbyn and the general hostility of the media against
him provided the Conservative Party with a tremendous lead over Labour. With an
effective electoral machine behind Theresa May, the party portrayed the opposition leader "as
an amusing, eccentric joke that could be squashed like a fly that had already
had its wings ripped off."
Unlike Corbyn, however, May failed to realize that she was
representing and defending a failed neo-liberal economy which, having been
forced upon people for years in the form of ‘austerity’, has created simmering
discontent.
Society is in such a state of crisis that many people are now
questioning the neo-liberal mantra that ‘there is no alternative.’ Corbyn
presented an alternative, which the Tories believed to be dead. The rest,
as they say, is history.
A new historical conjuncture in Iran
This is not the only interesting conjuncture emerging. Not long
after Jeremy Corbyn became the undisputed leader of the Labour Party, political
circumstances also unexpectedly shifted in Iran. Political contradiction is not
new here. Because of an intrinsic contradiction within the Iranian
constitution, there are always tensions between the unelected ‘supreme leader’
and the ‘elected’ president. These are usually ignored or made invisible by the
subservience of the president to the leader.
However, after the May 2017 presidential election,
president-elect Rouhani realized that he would be unable to fulfill his
campaign promises due to increasing economic and political interference from
the Revolutionary Guards, which he has called an ‘armed government.’
As the country’s economy deteriorates faster and is accompanied
by looming environmental catastrophe (desertification, an unprecedented fall of
the underground water tables, the drying up of rivers and lakes, mainly due to
mismanagement and the ‘water mafia’ controlled by the Revolutionary Guards), so
does his frustration.
In addition, Supreme Leader Khamenei has been trying to pave the way for his son, Mojtaba, to succeed him. He believes this will maintain his policy
of crisis-creation in order to create a ‘Shia belt’ across the Middle East. As
this presented an existential threat to the county, Rouhani decided that enough
was enough and indirectly challenged both the guards and Khamenei’s efforts to
appoint his son.
He invoked the early history of Islam, arguing that Imam Ali,
the Fourth Kalif and first Shia imam, became a leader through people’s will and
consensus. He referred to Ali’s famous statement that he would never have
accepted the leadership without the people’s consent and that he would remove
himself as soon as this consent wanes.
This matters in Iran, as it challenges the concept of ‘velayate-motlageh-faqih’ (the
absolute rule of a jurist), which asserts that the leader is chosen by God
through appointment (not elected) and the only task of the Council of Experts is to discover such an appoitnment – this is the linchpin of the
Iranian regime.
Rouhani’s challenge alarmed Khamenei, who warned Rouhani that if
he did not observe this line he would have the destiny of Banisadr, Iran’s
first president, who was said to have polarized society to the extent he had to
be removed.
Who was Banisadr?
Abolhassan Banisadr was the first elected president of Iran
after the 1979 Revolution. The struggle that ensued between him and the
Islamic Republican Party (IRP) and its allies became an open struggle between
freedom and despotism within the government.
Ayatollah Khomeini openly sided with the IRP, Banisadr then warned people to
resist: “what is important is not the elimination of the president, but the
fact that the demon of despotism and oppression once again wants to impose
itself upon you, the people, and to make the effect of the precious blood of
those, which was shed for Islam and freedom, worthless.”[1]
This standoff ultimately ended in a coup against the president
in June 1981, which became the stolen narrative of the Iranian revolution.
‘Fire at will’
Shortly after Khamenei threated a similar fate for Rouhani in
June of this year, he also instructed his supporters to ‘fire
at will’, giving them a green
light to openly challenge the president.
At the annual Jerusalem Day demonstration, many of Khamenei’s
supporters indeed surrounded the president, chanting: "Rouhani, Banisadr, happy
union!" This was the first time the name of Banisadr had been chanted in
the streets of Iran since June 1981. In order to remove the memory of Banisadr
from the people’s memories, even the chant "death to Banisadr" had been
forbidden.
This action quickly spread across the country, creating a
tsunami of interest among people, especially the young. Social media began
buzzing with questions about Banisadr and the reasons for his dismissal. People
asked: if Khamenei has turned against Rouhani for saying that Iran’s leader
should be elected rather than appointed, had Khomeini turned against Banisadr
for the same reason? This gave the older generation new opportunities to share
their memories of the president and what he stood for.
In a short period of time, people’s views about Banisadr began
to transform to such an extent that a famous historian, Hussein Dehbashi, tweeted: “To draw similarity between Banisadr and Rouhani, will not
make the latter infamous, but unintentionally, exonerate the former. After 35
years, everybody asks: Why?”
This sudden flurry of interest among young people terrified many of the
elites within the regime. A former MP and a well-respected analyst, Mohammad
Azad Jalali Zadeh, even wrote an article titled “To equate the president with Banisadr is a prelude to the
Iranian version of the Trojan (horse)”.
He argues that “a deep analysis of the
contemporary political phenomenon, especially to liken the president, who has
24 million votes, to a member of the opposition outside of the country who
intends to overthrow the regime, can be seen like the “Trojan horse”, waiting
behind the castle of this land. If it continues, the gates will be opened and
our land will become the land of the Trojan. Neither reformists nor the
principlists, nor the sacrifices of the youth in this memorable land, will last
in the land of the Iranian Trojan. All will be harmed and Iran and the Iranians
will suffer destruction. We should not forget this.”
Being alarmed and not knowing how to react, the regime’s elites
were confused and divided. Many decided to stay quiet, as further talk
about Banisadr would only increase young people’s curiosity. Many others have
tried to protect their own positions by continuing to defend the negative
narrative about Banisadr, which has circulated for 37 years. They all realize
that if the tide rises, they (and their privileges) will be the first to be
washed away.
A consensus was therefore reached to stop talking about
Banisadr. But this was broken by a big bang when, during a live broadcast of
Friday Prayer in Tehran, Mohsen Eje'i, Deputy Chief Justice of Iran, implicitly criticized Rouhani by explicitly attacking Banisadr,
calling the latter an arrogant, overbearing leader who had been opposed to the
newly founded ‘revolutionary institutions’
in the early post-revolutionary period.
The next day, after sixteen years of waiting, an extensive interview with Banisadr in which he responds to many of the accusations
made against him since the 1981 coup was published. Hundreds of
thousands of people saw and heard this interview within days on social media,
and many asked to see the interview in its entirety. An unprecedented flurry of
comments and tweets praising the former president ensued.
Returning to the question of the conjuncture, we turn to the
critical cultural theorist Stuart Hall, who once argued that “history moves
from one conjuncture to another rather than being an evolutionary flow. And
what drives it forward is usually a crisis, when the contradictions that are
always at play in any historical moment are condensed.”
In the Iranian context, a permanent state of crisis has
intersected with the Supreme leader’s actions to create conditions for the
emergence of a new ‘post-reformist’ conjuncture. This will not lead to a
‘paradigm shift’ if Rouhani fights and forces his opponents to step back. If
this happens, we will see something like the state of crisis that shadowed the
last years of Margaret Thatcher, which did not lead to a major shift but to the
premiership of another Tory prime minister, John Major, who continued
Thatcher’s policies in a relatively less repressive way.
If Rouhani gives in and submits to the Supreme leader, then the
next social movement already has at least one speaker waiting in the wings. The
possibility that this could create a home-grown and dynamic democracy in an
independent Iran cannot be overestimated. In any case, the genie is out of
the bottle.
[1] Seyed Abdolkarim Mousavi Ardebili, ed., Ghale chahardeh esfand
[The Crisis of Fourteen Esfand] (Tehran: Nejat Publishing Co., 1364 [1985]), p.
680.