Iran and the arc of history

AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes

When I was an undergraduate student back in the mid 1970s, I took a concentrated summer course in the Russian language at the University of Minnesota. While my grasp of Russian would weaken over the ensuing decades, I still remember the protests on campus of Iranian students against the rule of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had less than two years remaining in his troubled reign. At the time, it seemed possible that the Shah might be replaced by a Marxist régime. My political science education, coupled with a minor in history, had prepared me for the likelihood that an unpopular American-supported monarch, whom the CIA had put in power in 1953, could be replaced by a revolutionary group sympathetic to the Soviet Union. After all, we had seen it happen before in Asia and Africa, and, of course, in Castro's Cuba, only 140 kilometres from Florida's coast.

By the time the Iranian revolution occurred, I was studying in Toronto. It was February 1979, and I had just been to Québec City with a group of fellow students and friends to take in the bitterly cold annual winter carnival. During the drive home, we heard over the radio that the Shah had fled the country and the Ayatollah Khomeini had returned to Iran from his exile in Paris. The revolution had indeed taken place, but it was not what I had expected. Rather than installing a Marxist junta, it had put in place an Islamist régime intent on imposing sharia law on the country.

How could this be? None of the categories with which I was familiar could make sense of this development. Was the ideology behind the new régime a variety of fascism? Some thought so, but fascism was a distinctive development growing out of the turbulent interwar era in Europe, manifesting itself in Mussolini's Italy, Franco's Spain, Codreanu's Iron Guard in Romania, and elsewhere. The notion that devout Muslims could attain power and attempt to govern according to the principles of Islam seemed inconceivable. Yet it happened.

More than four decades later, the Islamic republican régime has grown stale. Its ageing leadership is perceived increasingly to be out of touch with younger Iranians, who have grown to adulthood with no memory of the Shah but with a desire for something better for their country.

Last month 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was arrested by the Guidance Patrol, Iran's morality police, for wearing her hijab improperly. Two days later she was dead in police custody, with many asserting that she had been severely beaten. Her death has sparked waves of protest across Iran, as well as in other countries around the world. Thus far more than 200 people have died as police have clashed with protesters.

Is Iran on the brink of another revolution? Perhaps. Long ago I stopped trying to predict the future, which all the resources of historians and political scientists are powerless to do. What can be said is that Iranian women—and men—are weary of the unjust restrictions with which they have lived under their rulers. While the government claims that nearly all Iranians are Muslims, there is evidence that the numbers are much lower—perhaps as low as 40 percent—and that Iranian society is rapidly secularizing. Moreover, we read reports that the number of Christians is increasing, with perhaps as many as 1.5 million believers in Iran.

What will this mean for Iran's future? It seems unlikely that the Islamist régime can endure in its present form, but what will replace it is unclear. The Soviet Union is long gone, although China still clings to its communist identity, with Xi Jinping recently confirmed in power by the 20th National Party Congress. China has some influence in Iran, although it seems unlikely that Iran would adopt China's domestic model for itself. Yet a western-style constitutional democracy is even less plausible simply because Iran lacks supportive traditions for this form of government.

Iran is not the same country it was four decades ago and seems evidently to be in a state of transition. The current Islamist régime may not be altogether doomed, but it obviously cannot remain as it has been since 1979. Given the surprising twists in events that occur in the real world, I think we can say that the arc of history cannot always be discerned, especially when we are in the midst of an especially momentous period of change. Only in retrospect can patterns sometimes be traced. Yet even then, we do well to remain humble as we attempt to account for the goings-on in a nonwestern country with such an ancient civilization.