➜ geographical distribution of power unitary state ➜ relationship between legislature and executive presidential ➜ executive supreme leader, appointed indefinitely by the assembly of experts president, directly elected every 4 years, limited to 2 terms ➜ executive election system supreme leader is unelected two-ballot majority for president ➜ legislature unicameral: majlis, though laws may be blocked by the guardian council ➜ legislative election system single-member-district (smd) ➜ party system multiparty system, with most parties fitting neatly into a “conservative” or “reformist” category ➜ judiciary courts are highly decentralized, with a chief judge overseeing their administration of cases
Iran is often characterized in Western news media as a clear enemy of the West, possessing a radical Islamic agenda that cannot comport with the modern world. Yet inside Iran’s unique theocratic regime, there is an undercurrent of secular values and a desire for democratization. In addition, Iran’s economy is heavily reliant upon one resource alone, which is oil, and oil has provided many benefits to Iran. Yet, this reliance has substantial costs as well.
Iran is a unitary state, and has existed in some form as a sovereign entity since ancient times, dating back at least to 625 b.c.e. when it was known as the Achaemenid Empire (called the Persian Empire by rival Greece). Persians have generally been united sovereignly, though under different regimes, ever since. The Iran of today has its legitimacy rooted in the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and in the Constitution, which was a direct product of the revolution. Initially, the country was united by the charismatic authority of the revolution’s leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, but Iran’s political processes are becoming institutionalized and formalized as the regime has evolved post-Khomeini. Iran is a constitutional republic, but also clearly an Islamic republic, placing theocratic institutions of the religious leadership above the elected republican institutions in a supervisory role.
Most of Iran is situated on a massive plateau, thousands of feet in elevation higher than its neighbors. Very little of Iran’s land is arable, prompting early Persians to conquer neighboring territories. In the major eras of European colonization, Iran’s sovereignty was never brought under the formal control of a foreign power as a colony or a satellite state, while its Middle Eastern and Asian neighbors were either colonized directly, or controlled indirectly in the sphere of influence of Britain or France.
The tension between ancient traditions and modernization is evident in changes that have occurred in Iran’s regime over time. Iran’s modern history can be broken into four eras: three of which were dynastic, and the modern post-revolutionary regime.
Although Iran was largely comprised of Muslims, they were divided between the Shi’ites and the Sunnis. Shi’as and Sunnis divided in 632 after the death of the prophet Muhammad, with the Shi’as believing that a hereditary heir of Muhammad, Ali, should lead the faith going forward, and Sunnis believing that one of Muhammad’s closest advisors and friends, Abu Bakr, should succeed him. When the Safavids conquered Persia in 1501, they began converting all of their subjects to Shi’ism, enforcing a particular version called Twelver Shi’ism, which teaches that the twelfth descendant of Muhammad who mysteriously disappeared will one day return to judge the world and rid it of evil. More than 90 percent of Persia was converted to Shi’ism, and Iran remains over 90 percent Shi’a today. The Safavid ruler was known as the shah, but he did not rule absolutely. There were early systems of “checks and balances” built in to prevent the abuse of power, beginning the tradition of authoritarian rule without totalitarianism.
A number of dynastic families competed for power over Persia after the decline of the Safavids, and the Qajars, a powerful Turkish-descended family (with the backing of Turkish tribal forces) took control of Persia in 1794. As Turks, the Qajars had no lineage connecting them to Muhammad, and could not claim the right to rule based on heredity, as the Safavids could. Separation of church and state began to emerge, as Shi’a descendants of Muhammad claimed the authority to interpret Islam.
The Qajar dynasty was generally dominated by foreign powers, and gradually became dependent upon them. They were the first to rent drilling rights for oil to a British company in southwestern Iran, and their lavish lifestyle was funded by borrowing heavily from European banks. Persian business interests (who had also loaned money to the government as an investment) became increasingly worried that the government’s debt was unsustainable, and that the government would choose to pay the Europeans and ignore them when they couldn’t pay the full debt. This resulted in the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–1909.
Desperate for money, the Qajars continued selling assets of the old Persian empire to fund their lavish lifestyle, and business leaders and merchants began demonstrating against the shah. They were heavily influenced by the British presence in Iran, and demanded a constitutional monarchy similar to the British system, with an elected parliament that would have final approval over most of the matters of the state. The shah agreed to their demands, and a new constitution was created, complete with an elected representative assembly called the Majlis, and a Guardian Council of Shi’a clerics with the power to review and veto the laws passed by the Majlis. The new constitutional government’s efforts to bring Iran independence from foreign powers was a failure, though. Britain and Russia signed an entente with each other to divide Iran, giving the southwestern portion to Britain, the north to Russia, and what was left to a weak Iranian government. After World War I, Britain and Russia were distracted enough by domestic concerns and economic pressures that a fractured Iran was poised for strong leaders to bring about independence.
Colonel Reza Khan, a leader of the Cossack Brigade, which was at the time perhaps the only powerful element of a weak Iranian state, lead a coup d’état overthrowing the Qajar monarchy in 1921, and by 1925, the Majlis placed Colonel Khan on the throne as the new shah, taking the name Reza Shah Pahlavi. Reza Shah was an absolute monarch, increasingly reducing the role of the Majlis until it no longer acted as a functional political check of any kind. In 1935, Reza Shah instructed foreign embassies to cease using the term “Persia” and use the ancient name of the land, Iran, instead. The Shah increasingly attached his foreign policy interests to Germany in the 1930s in an effort to prevent further encroachment by Britain and Russia, but this plan backfired when Britain and Russia jointly declared war on Germany, and invaded Iran in 1941. The shah was forced to abdicate, and his son, Muhammad Reza Shah, succeeded him.
During the reign of the Pahlavis, Iran funded the state by leasing oil drilling rights to foreign oil companies, becoming a rentier state that was more reliant on foreign support than on domestic taxation for revenue.
Muhammad Reza Shah had to contend with more internal democratic opposition than his father. He was no longer governing from the strength of independence as his father had, and Iranians had not forgotten the legacy of the Constitutional Revolution. His strongest opposition came from the Tudeh Party (“Party of the Masses”), which was an Iranian communist party, and the National Front led by Mohammad Mossadegh. Both of these opponents sought to nationalize Iran’s resources, most notably its oil, to use in domestic investment and building a social welfare state. Mossadeq emerged as the new prime minister in the Majlis, and briefly nationalized the assets of the British oil company that previously monopolized the industry. Britain and the United States, fearful of growing communist influence in Iran, organized a covert plot known as Operation Ajax to discredit Mossadeq, the National Front, and the Tudeh Party as anti-Islamic, and assist the military in overthrowing the Majlis in a coup. The operation was successful, Mossadeq was arrested for treason and sentenced to life in prison, and the shah returned to power. The United States, in return for its role, received a share of Iran’s oil wealth and entered into a partnership with the shah to provide him with arms that would help him remain in power. The shah returned to governing autocratically, without any input from representative assemblies. To many supporters of democracy in Iran, the United States and Britain were forever discredited given their choice to preserve autocracy over the emergence of democracy, and the shah was forever seen as a pawn of the West.
It is during this era that Iran increasingly took the shape of a rentier state. The state’s revenue came almost exclusively from renting drilling rights for oil to foreign corporations, as opposed to the collection of tax revenue from its own citizens. While the prospect of paying no taxes might seem like a great bargain, it has disastrous effects on democratization and the formation of civil society. The government was dependent upon foreign companies and U.S. arms assistance to keep itself in power. It did not need or care to solicit the opinion or support of the Iranian people, and it had all the money it needed to suppress their dissent if they decided to stand up against the state.
The shah attempted to reduce the influence of leftist forces in Iran through the White Revolution starting in 1963. The government forced the sale of unused land from absentee landlords, and sold it to peasants at bargain prices, creating a new class of over four million small landowners. He expanded education programs, gave women the right to vote and work outside the home, banned polygamy, and built a modern Iranian judicial system modeled on the West. Islamic clerics saw many of these changes as abandonment of Iran’s long Shi’a traditions, and they became critical of the shah.
As time progressed, the shah increasingly centralized his power, and appeared more and more detached from the desires of ordinary Iranians. In 1971, he threw a celebration of 2,500 years of continuous monarchy over Persia, lavishly furnished with precious jewel-encrusted tents, luxurious crystal glasses filled with the most expensive champagne, and roast peacock served to the nobility prepared by French chefs. In today’s U.S. dollars, the event is estimated to have cost over $100 million. The state held control over all Iranian oil, banking, and national media. In 1975, the shah abandoned Iran’s competitive party system for Majlis elections, and declared Iran a one-party state under the Resurgence Party, requiring membership and dues (essentially taxes) from all Iranian citizens. The Shah also replaced the traditional calendar, which began at the Prophet Muhammad’s migration from Mecca to Medina, with a new calendar beginning at the reign of Cyrus the Great. He also gave himself a number of new self-congratulatory titles, such as “Guide to the New Great Civilization.” In short, Iran was becoming increasingly totalitarian, rather than just authoritarian.
There were several major factors that led to the Islamic Revolution.
Protests began breaking out as early as 1978, when a government media article accused Ayatollah Khomeini, a popular critic of the shah, of being a British agent conspiring to sell Iran out to neo-colonialists. Seminary students who were loyal to Khomeini in the city of Qom, where most leading seminaries and clerics are located, took to the streets in protest. They clashed with police, and as many as seventy of the protesters were killed. Funeral services for the students were used to organize new demonstrations against the shah, and the network of protests continued to spread across the country. The sharp downturn in the economy brought many frustrated working-class Iranians into the movement as well. A series of mismanaged responses by the government led to a massive demonstration on a major Islamic holiday, in which between 200,000 and 500,000 protesters marched through the streets of Tehran, prompting the shah to declare martial law and ban demonstrations. Days later, two million Iranians took to the streets to protest. The clashes with police regularly resulted in the deaths of civilians, and the police and military became increasingly demoralized about their role in preserving the shah’s rule.
Ayatollah Khomeini had been exiled by the shah in 1964 because of his criticism of the White Revolution. He spent most of this time in Iraq, but as the shah realized Khomeini’s influence in motivating Iranian protesters, he asked the Iraqi government to exile Khomeini to the West. Khomeini arrived in France, where he continued his criticism, but now with much better access to media, particularly the BBC, which portrayed Khomeini as a gentle mystic fighting for the freedom of his people from the oppression of the shah.
In January of 1979, the massive wave of protests estimated to include more than 10 percent of Iranians (most revolutionary demonstrations have not even involved 1 percent of the people), and the demoralization of the military forced the shah to leave Iran, though he did so ostensibly “on vacation.” He would never return. Two weeks later, the exiled Khomeini returned to Iran, to the elation of the Iranian people in the streets. Khomeini appointed his own government to compete with the existing authorities, declaring it “God’s government,” and many in the military defected to his side. In March, Khomeini staged a referendum of the Iranian people asking the question, “Should the monarchy be abolished in favor of an Islamic government?” More than 98 percent voted in favor of the referendum.
Iran held elections to choose a group of clerics called the Assembly of Religious Experts who would be charged with drafting a new Iranian constitution. The final product was based largely on the model of government Khomeini had outlined in a book he had published earlier in the 1970s. The constitution centered power in a concept called jurist guardianship, the idea that the chief interpreters of Islam, the high-ranking clerics such as Khomeini, needed to be responsible for all aspects of Iranian society. The system would be built around a Supreme Leader, chosen by the Assembly of Religious Experts, to exert control over the political system on the basis of his interpretations of Shari’ah law. The constitution was submitted to the people in a referendum for final approval, and 99 percent of Iranians voted in favor of it.
The revolutionary fervor and charismatic leadership of Khomeini resulted in a state structured around Khomeini’s personal preferences for centralized religious control.
The Assembly of Religious Experts naturally chose Khomeini as the first Supreme Leader. The earliest days of the Islamic Republic were defined by efforts to consolidate power in the new regime, and crush the remaining opposition within the country. When women protested against the regime’s new restrictions on divorce and attire, along with other movements opposed to Islamic fundamentalism, Khomeini launched a cultural revolution to purify the country of Western and secular values. The new government removed liberal intellectuals from universities, suppressed civil society, and executed known dissidents. Those who expected the shah’s authoritarianism to be replaced with democracy were thoroughly disappointed. Khomeini himself once said, “Do not use this term, democratic. That is the Western style.”
In this revolutionary atmosphere, the exiled shah finally gained admittance into the United States for treatment of cancer. Iranian revolutionaries, already viewing the United States as the power behind the shah’s oppression, demanded the return of the shah to face trial and possibly execution, but the United States would not return him. Students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took the fifty-two diplomats inside as hostages. The hostage crisis lasted for 444 days, and deepened the already massive rift between Iran and the West.
Iran’s economy was devastated by the revolution and a subsequent war with Iraq, to the dismay of many of its early liberal participants and supporters. The Iranian rial fell against the U.S. dollar from 7 to 1 in 1979, to 1749 to 1 in 1989. Khomeini demonstrated no concern for the economic crisis, saying, “I cannot believe that the purpose of all these sacrifices was to have less expensive melons,” and “economics is for donkeys.” The state seized control of companies all over the country, nationalizing enterprises to keep the revolution’s supporters employed amidst the chaos. The property of the old class of notables tied to the former regime was seized under the control of state “foundations,” where their money and property would be used for charitable or regime-building activities.
By the time of Khomeini’s death due to ill health in 1989, the clerics had cemented power in the new regime, thanks to a rebound in oil prices that stabilized the economy, and the invasion by Iraq, which galvanized national support behind the new regime. Iran’s constitution indicated that one of the marja, leading Shia scholars who are to be emulated, must become the new Supreme Leader (this was Khomeini’s position before the revolution). However, Khomeini was not pleased with any of the existing marja near his death, and Iran’s constitution was altered to make it possible for one of his chief lieutenants, Ali Khamenei, to become his successor, even though he was not as academically credentialed as Khomeini. The Assembly of Religious Experts met in 1989 after Khomeini’s death, and chose Khamenei as the new Supreme Leader.
Since Khomeini’s death, Iran has developed new constitutional processes and adapted the regime to function without their revolutionary leader, though there is enduring conflict between conservative and reformist factions over how to structure the state.
Much of Iranian politics since Khomeini’s death has been defined by the battle between conservative hard-liners who want to preserve the purity of the theocracy, and reformists who want to liberalize Iranian society. Conflict between these two sides plays out frequently in Iran’s elections for the Majlis and the presidency, which are both directly elected by all eligible Iranian citizens, though with the caveat that the Guardian Council and Supreme Leader may reject many candidates from running for office. This conflict is particularly evident in three recent presidencies.
Iranians are limited in their experience with democracy and civil society. What was once the cradle of civilization has been suppressed by generations of authoritarianism, though under different pretenses. The religious enforcements of the current regime place major limitations on civil society’s formation, but Iran is also subject to liberalizing influences dating back to the Constitutional Revolution, and continuing to come into the country today due to the forces of globalization and technology.
Iran has a single majority ethnicity, the Persians, who make up about 61 percent of Iranian society. The remainder is very diverse. Azeris, concentrated in the northwest, make up 16 percent of the population, making them the largest minority group in Iran. Kurds, concentrated in the west, make up 10 percent. Other groups present include Lurs, Arabs, Balochs, and Turkmen. The Persian language (also called Farsi) acts as the official language, and is identified as such in the constitution, though the constitution permits minorities to continue using their own language in private affairs. While there are often fears in Iran of ethnic separation (such as Azeris seceding to join Azerbaijan, as one possibility), most ethnic political matters in Iran involve minorities seeking greater rights and integration into Iranian society, as opposed to independence or autonomy. Azeris, who are predominantly Shi’a, seem to be better integrated than other minorities, and play a larger role in Iranian high-level politics than the other non-Persians. Khameini, the current Supreme Leader, is believed to come from an Azeri background, and one of the major presidential candidates from 2009, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, was Azeri. The Rouhani government has promised to involve ethnic minorities in its political decisions, even as cabinet members, and also gave assurances that language protections would remain in place for schools in minority regions. At times in the past, these languages have been suppressed in schools, which were demanded to teach in Persian exclusively, and this is a major concern of Iranian minorities.
Social class tends to coincide as a cleavage with urban-rural regional divides. Those Iranians living in cities are much more likely to be middle class and westernized (or at least globalized), and usually have much better education levels. Iranians in the countryside and in the lower-middle class have benefited more from the nationalization and redistribution of the regime’s economic policies, compared to the urban and educated middle class, who lost most of their property and value of their investments in the turmoil of the revolutionary regime, and its global isolation. This divide correlates closely with the reformist-conservative divide, as a result, with most middle- and high-class Iranians in cities supporting reformist candidates, and lower-class Iranians in the countryside supporting conservatives and the theocracy in general. Criticism of the current regime is most likely to come from educated, middle-class Iranians. There has also been a major “brain drain” in Iran, as it is estimated that up to 25 percent of Iranians with a college education have left the country to live in the developed world since the 1990s, costing Iran approximately $50 billion in loss of human capital.
In the early days after the revolution, the new regime encouraged the formation of large families through religious doctrine, saying the Koran encouraged early marriage and large families, and also by giving direct benefits to citizens based on family size. Economic pressures forced these policies to change in favor of birth control and sex education in the 1990s. Today, more than 50 percent of the population are under thirty-five years old, and they are very politically active. While older Iranians who experienced life under the shah are more likely to support the current regime, young Iranians are more concerned with the lack of jobs available and religious restrictions on personal self-expression. Unemployment is over 10 percent in Iran, and over 70 percent of those unemployed are young. The youth vote turned out in large numbers in 1997 and 2001, helping reformist candidates win the presidency and legislative majorities. When the Guardian Council rejected nearly all reformist candidates in 2004, the youth boycotted the elections, helping conservatives like Ahmadinejad take power. The return of the youth vote in 2009 and beyond has reshaped the Iranian political landscape.
Iran is the most religiously unified society studied in this course. More than 99 percent of Iranians are Muslim, with about 90 percent Shi’a, and about 9 percent Sunni. The constitution recognizes Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians as religious minorities, which should be accorded rights and respect, though there are reports of harassment, intimidation, discrimination, and persecution by authorities of all religious minorities, including Sunnis. The Baha’i faith is officially persecuted by the state, and there are many examples. All Baha’i property was confiscated by the state in 1979 and has not been returned. Baha’i who are victims of crimes are not eligible for compensation in court, as the law says only Muslim plaintiffs are eligible. They are routinely denied admission to public universities or jobs based on their faith alone. Baha’i are not even permitted to bury and honor their dead, except in unmarked graves in wastelands the government allows.
Interestingly, the government does not recognize “non-religious” or “atheist” as a designation of religious belief on any of its surveys, so the extent to which Iranians are nearly all Muslim may be less clear. In fact, clerics recently complained that they believe up to 70 percent of Iranians do not submit to regular prayer as they should. Fear of persecution and poor data may be painting a more unified vision of Iran’s religious culture than the reality of individual convictions.
Much of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 was motivated by anger over the state’s regular intrusion into private life, specifically the secularization that the state was imposing on religious elements of society. Post-revolution, the behavior of the state hasn’t changed much, although it now imposes religious values on what would otherwise be secular institutions. This, along with a general lack of economic opportunity, is often cited as a major cause of Iran’s “brain drain” of intellectuals and trained professionals leaving the country. President Khatami was able to encourage early formation of civil society through his liberalizing reforms from 1997 to 2005, but he faced tremendous opposition from the clerics the entire time, and his reforms were mostly reversed by President Ahmadinejad. Women’s groups were more active in their demands for additional rights during Khatami’s “Tehran Spring,” but with no tangible result in public policy. Iran’s constitution guarantees the freedom of association, but with the caveat that it may not “violate . . . the criteria of Islam, or the basis of the Islamic Republic.” Laws in Iran also allow for government supervision of the activity of NGOs. There are numerous examples in Iran of suppression of civil society in nearly all sectors, including but not limited to unions, teachers, human rights groups, lawyers, doctors, women, academicians, and journalists.
Iran’s constitution guarantees the freedom of assembly and the freedom of expression, again with the caveat that it cannot “violate . . . the criteria of Islam, or the basis of the Islamic Republic.” Protests have become an increasingly common method for frustrated supporters of liberalization to voice their opposition to the regime. The response of the state is nearly always crackdown and suppression, rather than cooptation or accommodation to the demands of the protesters. Most notable in recent years has been the emergence of the Green Movement.
After Ahmadinejad’s first term in office, youth who boycotted the election in 2005 turned out as active supporters and voters in much larger numbers for reformist candidate Mir-Hossein Moussavi. When election results were finalized in 2009, there was a great deal of evidence indicating that the results were rigged to guarantee Ahmadinejad’s reelection. The Green Movement was born in massive protests through Iran’s cities demanding a fair count of the votes. Green Movement protest activity continued with large numbers of participants through 2012, and the government has consistently responded by arresting large numbers of the protesters, and even killing many of them in clashes with the police or in executions for treason. Young people caught engaging in protest are usually denied entry into the country’s universities, or are kicked out of their current school placement.
Politics in Iran is defined in the context of the theocracy. All political institutions in Iran are expected to contribute to (or at least not oppose) the spiritual shepherding of the clergy over the people of the country. Linkage institutions are operating under restrictions the clerical elite deems necessary to protect the spiritual health of the community. While democratic state institutions are allowed to exist, they exist and operate under the watchful eye of the senior clerics.
Iran’s political parties are incredibly fluid and temporary in nature. They are in many cases synonymous with civil society organizations that decide to field candidates for office in a given election. Many parties will stand candidates for office in one election cycle when their leader or major personality has decided to run for president, and then disappear in the next election when he has decided not to run again. There are cases where a president will win election with one party, and then run for reelection under the name of a new party. For example, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ran with the party Islamic Society of Engineers (ISE) in 2005, then the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran (ABII) in 2009. Mir-Hossein Moussavi, the leader of the powerful Green Movement, did not have any existing political party backing him when he first announced his candidacy. The current president, Hassan Rouhani, was the candidate of the Moderation and Development Party (MDP), which has only existed since 1999 and ran a candidate (Rouhani) for president for the first time in 2013.
Iran’s political party system is highly fluid, and there are no stable enduring political parties. Instead, parties generally align with either a conservative or reformist perspective on the theocracy, and political conflicts occur between these two factions.
While voters and outside observers may or may not be familiar with individual parties in Iran, the pattern of Iranian politics in recent years is that all of the parties contending are relatively easy to categorize as reformist or conservative, and results of elections for the legislature and other offices are often reported based on which of those broad alliances has won the majority.
Iranians directly elect the members of three national level institutions: the president, the Majlis, and the Assembly of Religious Experts (the democratic institutions). Iranians have no direct say in who occupies the positions of Supreme Leader, Guardian Council, and Expediency Council (the theocratic institutions).
Iran’s president is directly elected in a two-ballot majority system every four years. If no candidate wins a majority in the first round of voting, a runoff is held between the top two candidates with the winner taking office. Presidents can serve up to two four-year terms, at which point they may not run for the office again. Compared against its neighbors in the Middle East, Iran’s elections have been considered more open and competitive. However, they do not resemble anything that citizens in the West would characterize as democracy.
Although Iran is characterized as an authoritarian system, voters still directly elect the president, the Majlis, and the Assembly of Religious Experts, though theocratic institutions exert control over who may run for these offices.
Most important, there are significant restrictions on who may run for president. While the constitution proclaims that any Iranian over eighteen who is “pious” may run for the office, the Guardian Council has the power to vet the list of candidates and reject any they do not approve of. In 1997, the Guardian Council rejected 234 candidates and allowed four to appear on the ballot. In 2017, six candidates were allowed out of more than 1,600 who filed paperwork to run for office. Although many of these candidates are rejected by the Guardian Council on the grounds that they are not “well-known political figures,” the Council is not required to explain their decisions, and often appear to be attempting to limit the possible election outcomes in favor of the clergy’s preferences.
Despite these limits, Iranians are generally accustomed to having their preferences on election day reflected in who wins and wields power. There is not a tradition of manipulation or vote-rigging in Iranian elections, as was frequently asserted in Russia and Mexico. When many Iranians perceived that the election in 2009 had been “stolen,” there were major uprisings and demonstrations all over the country, especially in the capital of Tehran. This is evidence not only of the degree to which Iranians expect that their votes matter but also of the rising tension between the conservative and reformist camps.
The Majlis (also called the Islamic Consultative Assembly) is elected every four years, the year before a presidential election. Iran is divided into 290 single-member-district (SMD) constituencies, each of which elects a member in a first-past-the-post plurality system, with the caveat that a candidate must get at least 25 percent to win, otherwise a second round of voting must occur. Fourteen of the seats are reserved for candidates from minority religion areas of the country, but candidates must be Shia in order to run for all remaining seats.
The Guardian Council also exercises a tremendous amount of control over who runs for the Majlis. More than 12,000 candidates registered to run in 2016, but only about 6,000 of them were approved to be on the ballot. Most of those rejected were from the reformist camp, including many incumbent members of the Majlis. Despite the Guardian Council’s controls, conservative-aligned parties were unable to win control of the Majlis in 2016, and no group holds a majority of seats.
The Assembly of Religious Experts is elected directly by voters every eight years. The Guardian Council administers a written test and an interview to each prospective candidate to guarantee their academic qualifications. To this point, only clerics have been allowed to run for the office, save for two doctors of Islam in 2006, neither of whom was elected by voters. The last term of the Assembly of Religious Experts was extended from 2007 to 2017, rather than the usual eight years, due to a reform meant to unify the time frame of Majlis and Assembly of Religious Experts election dates (so that both elections occurred in 2016).
In those 2016 elections, more than 800 candidates attempted to run, including, for the first time in Iran’s history, sixteen women. The Guardian Council disqualified more than 600 of them, including all of the women and some prominent incumbents, such as the grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini. Moderate and reformist clerics made gains in the election, but the Assembly is still dominated by hard-line conservative clerics.
The line between interest groups, political parties, and other civil society organizations is tough to draw in Iran. Many parties that run a controversial candidate are banned, only to reemerge as an interest group, or continue operating in secret. Civil society is generally weak and suppressed in Iran, but the government has not developed a corporatist model to control and coerce interest groups. Iran is not especially pluralist or corporatist due to the general lack of organized groups compared to other societies. The most common private interests that organize group political action are in agriculture, professional trades, and labor unions, but the government is in control of the large majority of the economy due to nationalization in the 1980s. Private business interests are a very small portion of the Iranian economy, and an even smaller participant in Iranian political activity.
Iran takes management of the media very seriously. While there is a balance of privately owned and state-owned media in all formats, all media is subject to significant censorship. The government may revoke the license of any media outlet for publishing material considered antireligious, slanderous (including criticism of political leaders), or detrimental to the national interest. The relatively diverse media ownership landscape is not as diverse in viewership. It is estimated that over 80 percent of Iranians get their news primarily from state-owned sources, which print and broadcast stories consistent with the desires of the clergy and the Supreme Leader. Reporters Without Borders contends that there are more jailed journalists in Iran than any other Middle Eastern country. Globalization is having an effect on access to information in Iran, though. Despite an official ban on satellite television, estimates are that between 40 and 70 percent of Iranians regularly watch a satellite channel.
Some state institutions are theocratic in nature and others are elected. It is important to remember, however, that the Supreme Leader and Guardian Council (who are directly and indirectly appointed by the Supreme Leader) exert control over who may run for the elected offices.
Iran’s state institutions can best be understood as divided between those that operate the day-to-day business of government service and administration (the president and the Majlis), and those that are meant to preserve the theocratic nature and spiritual purity of the revolutionary state (the Supreme Leader, the Assembly of Religious Experts, the Guardian Council, and the Expediency Council). It is also important to remember the division between the elected institutions (the president, Majlis, and Assembly of Religious Experts), and the unelected or appointed institutions (the Supreme Leader, Guardian Council, and Expediency Council).
| Theocratic, Unelected | Theocratic, Elected | Administrative, Elected |
|---|---|---|
|
|
|
The Supreme Leader is chosen by the Assembly of Religious Experts, and can also be removed from office by the Assembly of Religious Experts (although this has never been tested). There is no timetable upon which they must make these decisions, though the decision in 1989 for Ali Khamenei to succeed Ruhollah Khomeini is the only applied case so far, and this occurred after Khomeini’s death. Khamenei has been the Supreme Leader ever since. The Supreme Leader is considered the chief jurist, the leading interpreter of Islamic law (the Shari’ah) for the Shia people. In the Iranian constitution of 1979, he is given the power to:
The Supreme Leader would function as Iran’s symbolic head of state, but he is vested with real and significant powers, far greater than the head of government, the president.
The Guardian Council is comprised of twelve men, six of whom are clerics chosen by the Supreme leader, and six of whom are lawyers nominated by the Chief Judge (who is himself appointed by the Supreme Leader), and confirmed by the Majlis. Each member has a six-year term, with the Supreme Leader and Chief Judge each picking three names every three years so that membership is staggered. The Guardian Council exerts a number of major powers crucial to the preservation of the theocratic nature of the Iranian state. They have the power to:
The Expediency Council was created in 1988 as a mechanism to settle disputes between the Majlis and the Guardian Council. When the Guardian Council rejects a law from the Majlis, the Majlis has an opportunity to “correct” the law. If they cannot work out an agreement with the Guardian Council, the matter is referred to the Expediency Council to resolve the dispute. The members of the Expediency Council are chosen by the Supreme Leader every five years, but automatically also include the president, the speaker of the Majlis, the Chief Judge, and any government ministers and Majlis committee members who are responsible for the topic being debated.
The real powers of the Expediency Council probably lie in a trend noticed by Iranian political observers after 2005, in which Supreme Leader Khamenei increasingly delegated his own powers of supervision of other institutions to the members of the Expediency Council. It is a largely informal, yet very powerful institution of the theocratic state.
The Assembly of Religious Experts is comprised of 88 members who are elected by voters directly after they prove their religious qualifications on a test administered by the Guardian Council. So far, only male clerics have managed to win election to the office. The Assembly of Religious Experts is required by law to meet at least twice every six months, but the purpose of their regular gathering is unclear. They have no responsibility over legislation or day-to-day governance. Their only clear power is to remove the Supreme Leader, or to appoint a new one when there is a vacancy.
The president of Iran is elected by voters every four years and can serve up to two terms. Presidential candidates must be approved by the Guardian Council in order to appear on the ballot. The president is the head of government, possessing many administrative powers, but his actions are always under the shadow of the Supreme Leader, who may dismiss him from office at any moment he chooses. The president has the power to:
The Majlis is directly elected by Iranian voters every four years, after candidates are vetted by the Guardian Council. The Majlis acts as Iran’s unicameral legislative assembly, though its laws must keep the approval of the Guardian Council. The Majlis has the power to:
Iran’s bureaucracy is massive and employs millions of Iranians. In addition to the typical functions of bureaucratic approval and enforcement of laws, Iranian bureaucracy also manages many of the large state-owned enterprises and monitors access to information for the purposes of the theocracy. One example of a bureaucratic agency in Iran is the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, which acts to restrict access to any commercial, artistic, or political media deemed problematic by its officials.
The bureaucracy’s reputation for bloated inefficiency, corruption, and patronage was a problem that President Khatami tried to tackle, with limited success. Many of his ministers resigned only a few months into their work because of frustration with the large numbers of employees they were expected to manage. President Ahmadinejad expanded the bureaucracy even further, in some cases tripling the number of employees in individual agencies, especially those producing content for state-owned media. The bureaucracy is often used as an easy way to create jobs and quell the dissatisfaction of the public when the economy is performing poorly. Ahmadinejad was able to boast significant increases in jobs due to his reforms, and won the support of government workers in his election bids. However, paying all those bureaucratic salaries creates a large burden for the state to manage in future years. There is a clear patronage network present in Iranian bureaucracy. Many jobs, especially the most powerful and best paying, are held by clerics and their family members.
Iran’s legal system is divided into two types of law.
The Iranian judiciary has a hierarchy of review of appeals, but it is rarely used, as Khomeini expressed his belief that the spirit of Shari’ah was for local judges to decide cases most often. The Chief Judge is appointed by the Supreme Leader to a five-year term, but is more of an administrator of the courts than a judge himself. Iranian courts do not possess any power of judicial review, as this power is associated with interpretation of the Shari’ah, a power held by the Supreme Leader and Guardian Council.
Iranian courts are divided by function, with different court systems for many different types of cases, including different levels of civil and criminal law. For example, the controversial Revolutionary Courts of Justice try any crimes that are said to undermine the Islamic Republic. The Revolutionary Courts are suspected of involvement in the secret executions of thousands of leftist dissidents in the early decades after the Revolution. Many times, judges at Revolutionary Courts and Criminal Courts are overwhelmed by the number of cases before them, and a trial will take only minutes. Iran employs an inquisitorial system rather than the adversarial system used by Britain and the United States, in which a government prosecutor presents a case against an attorney for the defendant. Instead, the judge takes sole responsibility to find the facts of the case by talking to the defendant and the government’s officers. The concept of a defense attorney is dismissed as a “Western absurdity.”
The Shari’ah dictates severe punishments for all manner of crimes, and Iran’s system has employed many of these. Death sentences can be handed down for many offenses, including adultery, drug trafficking, kidnapping, “disruption of the public order,” and homosexual acts. Legal methods of death sentences include hanging, firing squad, beheading, stoning, and throwing from a height, though hanging and firing squad seem to be the only methods employed.
Iran continues to experience the internal tension between the conservative values of the regime, and the desire of a young, urban, middle class to modernize and liberalize. These tensions are visible in the public policy debates in the country.
The place of women in Iranian society is a tense debate in the country. The shah’s westernizing and liberalizing policies with regard to women were of particular concern to the conservative clergy. After the Revolution, women were no longer allowed to initiate a divorce except under very specific circumstances, and restrictions on contraception and abortion were put back into place. Of particular symbolic significance is the enforcement of the hijab, the hair-covering veil worn by Muslim women. During his westernization effort, the Shah forbade the wearing of the hijab in public, and police would force women to remove it. After the revolution, the hijab was required attire. Over time, women in Iran grew to test the boundaries of hijab requirement, wearing the garment, but far back on their heads so as to reveal most of their hair. Women would also increasingly use colorful, decorative cloth rather than the standard black. In 2007, Iranian police (under orders from Khamenei) began a large crackdown on “bad hijab,” giving punishments of up to seventy lashes or sixty days in jail to women who were found not to be in compliance.
Demographically, Iran’s workforce is changing rapidly. About a third of the labor force in Iran are women, and that number is likely to grow, particularly in the highest paying fields, since more than 60 percent of university students in Iran were women, as of 2012. Iran’s conservatives are alarmed by these trends, and a policy was enacted in 2012 to ensure that university enrollment was 50 percent male and 50 percent female at most of Iran’s universities (thus removing many women), and it converted many of Iran’s most prestigious schools to single-gender (male) institutions, including the Oil Management school.
Iran’s economy is heavily dependent upon oil and gas, which are responsible for over 60 percent of the government’s revenue, and almost 20 percent of total GDP. This arrangement has disincentivized Iran from diversifying its economy into other industries, and has dampened overall development. The state remains firmly in control of most economic assets, including most large companies. Iran’s economy suffers major recessions when there are decreases in the price of oil, or economic sanctions from oil-importing countries, such as those in Western Europe.
Iran’s government also heavily manages prices of household goods by subsidizing them to make them incredibly inexpensive, especially those considered “necessary,” such as food, fuel, and electricity for heating and cooling. In 2010, with energy use spiraling out of control, and the state running out of money due to a drop in oil prices and Western sanctions, Iran announced an end to the subsidies, which immediately sparked major price inflation of the goods. Iran avoided public outrage by replacing the subsidies with direct cash payments to poor families to help them afford these necessities, so that only the richest Iranians would need to adjust their consuming habits without the cheap energy. The plan appears to have worked, as Iranian energy usage has gotten under control since the reform.
In the early days of the Islamic regime, the state encouraged people to have large families by giving larger shares of rationed goods to families on a per capita basis. The typical family size from 1975 to 1980 was 6.5. In 1988, concerned that the massive population increase would be unsustainable given the state’s dependence on one resource (oil) to pay for it, President Rafsanjani asserted that “Islam favored families with only two children,” and the Health Ministry introduced family planning services, contraceptives, and sex education into the country. In 1993, the Majlis reduced the subsidies for every additional child starting with the third, removing the incentives for large families. The projected birth rate at present is less than two per woman, indicating tremendous success in the goal of limiting further population growth. However, in 2012, Khamenei described Iran’s contraceptive services as “wrong,” and the government cut funding to its family planning services in a major reversal of the previous twenty-four years of policy. It is yet to be seen what consequences this latest policy direction will have.
Qom is a major seminary city located about eighty miles from Tehran, and most prominent Shi’a clerics teach and preach from the city. While there is broad agreement about many issues in Islam among Shi’a clerics, there is a growing debate over the structure of the regime itself. The Iranian constitution proclaims the doctrine of Twelver Shi’ism, asserting that the hidden Twelfth Imam will return one day to establish a perfect kingdom of justice on earth. Although most clerics in Iran want the political system to impose Islam and Islamism in as many ways as possible, there are many more liberal clerics of the Twelver sect who assert that a perfected fusion of political and religious authority cannot occur until the appearance of the Twelfth Imam. In other words, there should be no political theocracy until that moment. This debate among the seminarians spills into Iranian political dialogue as people espouse their opinions of the regime in general.
Iran’s long rivalry, suspicion, and separation from the West continue to drive the political debate over foreign relations in Iran. Hostility between the United States and Iran plays out in battles over Iran’s nuclear program, economic sanctions levied against Iran by the West, and a proxy war Iran engaged in by supporting insurgent groups against the U.S. forces in Iraq after 2003.
After the Islamic Revolution, chanting “Death to America” became a common feature of Friday prayers. It has been suspended at times (such as after the September 11 attacks in New York City), and returned with renewed vigor at times (such as after George W. Bush asserted that Iran was part of an “axis of evil” in his 2002 State of the Union Address). Interestingly, most Iranians rather like Americans, just not their government. A World Public Opinion poll in 2009 found that 51 percent of Iranians view Americans favorably, compared to 5 percent of Americans who view Iranians favorably. Once, an American woman attended a Friday prayer, where the chant was used. Afterward, she talked with an Iranian woman who was seated next to her. When the woman found out she was an American, she quickly apologized and said, “Don’t worry about it, we don’t really mean it, it’s just something we say.” This seems to be the case for most Iranians at this point, though Khamenei drew quite a bit of attention when he joined in the chant enthusiastically in 2015, amid negotiations with the United States and other powers to lift sanctions against Iran in exchange for additional nuclear inspections.
Iran began its pursuit of nuclear energy in the 1950s, with the support of the West. After the Islamic Revolution, the West cut off support of Iran’s nuclear program, and Iran proceeded on its own. In 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an international regulatory body, reported that Iran was withholding details about sensitive enrichment procedures, indicating the possibility that Iran was pursuing weaponization rather than just energy. Iran’s failure to cooperate and disclose its activity to the IAEA eventually led to crippling economic sanctions imposed by the West. Iran has always insisted that its program was entirely driven by energy concerns, and never had any intentions to produce nuclear weapons. Recently, U.S. intelligence is indicating that it appears Iran abandoned its weaponization efforts in 2003 after the initial IAEA report. The Rouhani government agreed in 2013 to meet with representatives of the “P5 + 1,” or the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany. The talks created a framework in which Iran would get immediate and gradual sanctions relief in exchange for rolling back their nuclear program and submitting to regular inspections.
In Iran, the political debate over foreign policy tends to be divided by conservatives who are suspicious of the motives of the West, and reformists who, going forward, would prefer a path to peace and cooperation on areas of mutual concern.
*Note: Terms with an asterisk (*) are those that consistently appear on the AP Comparative Government and Politics exam as tested concepts.
Unlike the other countries of study, Iran
During the reign of the Pahlavi shahs, the oil resources of Iran
The policies of Mohammad Khatami would be most associated with which of the following?
Iranian political conflicts are often defined in the context of conflict between
Which of the following best describes the religious practices of Iranians?
The Green Movement refers to
Which of the following is true about presidential elections in Iran?
When there is a vacancy for the office of Supreme Leader, the successor
Qanun, civil law with no sacred basis, is crafted primarily by
Compared to Russia and Great Britain, Iran’s population is