The deeply ideological identity of the Iranian state has set restraints on its leaders’ strategic options in two significant areas: 1) respecting and tending to the desires of their public, specifically in the areas of bodily, material, and mental pleasures; 2) respecting and regulating those customs and rituals that pre-date Islam, and/or entail public expressions of joy and excitement.
It is staggering to what extent these basic limitations have forced the leaders of the Islamic Republic into a highly fragile relationship with the Iranian public, specifically the youth. One could easily posit that if they do not arrive at a solution to release their working models from the heavy shackles of their Islamic ideology, this fragility is bound to become the regime's Achilles' heel.
The Islamic state’s weakness and its need for change has become concretely visible for instance every single time that an American official has used complimentary terms to praise the Persian heritage, history, customs and traditions. Such moves, rare as they have been, have typically triggered a flood of enthusiasm among people, followed by scathing comparisons between that official’s tone and the openly contemptuous stance taken by Iran's own leaders.
A most recent example of this situation crystallized around the message sent by Obama on the occasion of Norouz , the pre-Islamic celebration of the Spring equinox marking the Persian new year and paying homage to nature's rejuvenation. By far the most common reaction amongst Iranians hearing the content of Obama's message has been to point out the difference between the respectful language used by him in speaking of Persian traditions, which they find in sharp contrast to the disapproving tone often heard from the Islamic Republic's officials in reference to such “pagan” rituals as Chaharshanbeh Souri, Sizdah Bedar, or Norouz. Rituals, I should add, that are now observed with much more fervor than ever before, specifically by the youth who find in such observance simultaneously the satisfaction of resistance to the regime, and a chance to relish nostalgic fantasies of a bygone glorious Iranian Empire.
In Balatarin, for example, which is arguably the most successful and certainly the most popular Iranian Web2 enterprise (a Persian ‘Digg’), not only did the news of Mr. Obama's message rapidly become one of the most popular 'links' ever posted to the site, but indeed the most popularly voted-for comments beneath that news link included, "By God this [message] is way better than the [New Year's] messages of Khamenei and Ahmadinejad", or even, "I wish Obama was our president".
If I were writing an analysis report for the government of the United States, all I had to do would be to take a glance at the reactions of the people on the streets of Tehran to Obama's recent message to write on the top of my report, "if you want to challenge the Islamic state, just respect Iranians’ old customs." It is highly improbable that the Islamic Republic's intelligent analysts have not noticed this simple point, but it is precisely here also that a fundamental paradox embedded at the very heart of the phrase "Islamic Republic" manifests its inevitability. The problem lies in the fact that "Islamic Republic" means a state attempting to govern the daily material needs and affairs of the public on their behalf (a Republic), while remaining loyal to the framework of an ideology that fundamentally denies the legitimacy of much of those daily needs, desires and fantasies (Islamic).
Perhaps the single viable option for the Islamic Republic to survive over long term would be to undergo an evolutionary transformation whereby the significant paradox I have just described would be relocated from the behavioral and applied registers to the discursive and narrative registers of its identity. On the other hand, while such simplistic approaches as labeling a whole country the ‘axis of evil’ amounts to little but collusion with the Islamic state in its hegemonic definition of its ideology as all that Iran is about, a more nuanced attention to details and diversities would not only be just smarter, but will also sharply increase the perceived need and urgency of the Iranian government for adopting more democratic models of governance.
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Interesting thoughts
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