This supposed commitment to justice, of course, sits uneasily with revolutionary regime’s record of brutality to its own people. Thousands of the political opposition were martyred in the 1980s, leading to even some Ayatollahs protesting and dissociating themselves from such actions.
Religious minorities, such as the Bahai and Farsi-speaking evangelical Christians, have regularly been imprisoned, excluded from civil society and killed, either judicially or extra judicially. Members of the ancient Jewish community have had their property confiscated, as “enemy” possessions, if they had a relative in Israel.
The Zoroastrians, Iran’s native religion, have been so reduced that there are now more of them in India and Pakistan than there are in Iran. Over the years,protests led by students and women have been dealt with harshly, as have the most recent ones, demanding an end to the regime.
The populist paramilitary group known as theBasij, under the supervision of the IRGC, has been responsible for much of the harassment of women regarding “modest dress”. They have also been behind extra-judicial killings, the confiscation of property and the closing of churches and other places of worship not to the regime’s tastes.
As a movement, theBasijare heavily invested in the Iranian market and derive much of their strength from these resources. They are also the group that has supplied the IRGC with personnel for adventures in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Both corporately and individually, their membership has bought in heavily to Shia ideas of martyrdom and has given them an innovative twist in justifying both their domestic and their international operations.
What the West, and its allies, need to understand is that the rhetoric coming from Tehran is influenced by this martyr complex. It is not merely bluff or defiance but is deeply rooted in Shia psychology, understood in the light of contemporary circumstances.
If the regime were to fall, either as a result of aerial warfare or because of “boots on the ground”, the Islamist revolutionaries have a ready-made force for indefinite resistance to whatever takes the place of the present regime and to its allies. Withdrawal to the mountains and deserts, as well as exile, is an aspect of sharing in the sufferings of their imams, and resistance to the “ungodly” will be understood as hastening the return of Imam Mahdi and the restoration of Sharia-based rule.
Such an awareness of a martyr complex needs to be fed into the political and military calculations now being made. If the regime survives, this will be seen as a vindication by Allah of the sacrifices made by the IRGC, the Basij and the regime generally. Their programme of theocracy, or Wilayat Al Faqih (the rule of the ‘Ulama or experts in Shari’a), will be reinforced as expressing the will of the absent Imam. This means the Iranian people having to bear even more repression and denial of their basic freedoms of thought, expression and belief.
If the military action results in a change of regime, there must be preparations to prevent the Basij and other elements from being able to wage an indefinite guerrilla war, whether from within or outside Iran or both. The difficult tasks of maintaining the structures of civil society, as well as of creating new institutions, need to be planned for now rather than later, which, as Iraq has shown us, maybe too late.
There are large numbers of people in Iran – students, women, minorities, academics and even elements in the Iranian Bazaar or market – who will want to cooperate in the emergence of a new Iran. It will need to be rooted in Iran’s ancient civilisation, from which it can draw inspiration for the urgent task of reconstruction when the ayatollahs fall.