Current Affairs

Shia across the Middle East accepted Ayatollah Khomeini as a political leader, but most sought spiritual guidance from Ayatollah Abol-Qassim al-Khoi, Ayatollah Sistani’s mentor.  But, as said in other arguments throughout my articles on Iran, the argument of the state’s identity is never settled; it is an evolving argument—where it is impossible to follow the teachings of a dead Marja’ (Ayatollah). Meaning Shia law continues to evolve through the interpretation of laws drawn from a set of arguments, meanings, and understandings that reflect the diversity of the state and its resources.

The reasoning behind the strength of Shiaism is that, as a religion, it is meant to continually evolve, and in the 1980s, Mohammed Baqer al Sadr adopted the arguments of Western philosophy and economics. Of course, the idea was not to mirror the ideas of Western philosophy and economic argument, but to create a lineage of argument that could be central to a continually evolving identity of Shiaist argument. Meaning, ideas such as Enlightenment, Kant, Marx, and others became part of Shiaist argument and philosophy.

But it was in the Social Mobilisation movement in Iraq that borrowed heavily from Marxist thoughts on how to recreate a fairer, more balanced state after the excesses of the Tsar’s leadership. There was a movement to bring a more balanced society with social and land reform. Of course, the ideas, arguments, and pronouncements needed a public enemy and closure of the route back to power for the Peacock throne, which in itself isolated the state from the West.  Iranians never forgot the CIA’s influence in the state , nor the 1958 coup that restored the Pahlavi dynasty to the throne.

So a public enemy was necessary, and Khomeini created the “Great Satan,” meaning the U.S. and, to a degree… the rest of the West. In much of Khomeini’s chauvinism, it was a caricature of year zero—a new beginning: identity and leadership after the trauma of the Peacock Throne, Savak, and failed statements by parliamentarians who had believed that the revolution was as much theirs as it was the theocracies.

This has been brought up because there is so much surprise that Iran is still on its feet after the assassination of its leadership. The reasoning that the state exists today is a question of identity, not Pahlavi, but a theocratic state within a parliamentary system underpinned by the IRGC and the army. The idea of perpetual revolution within Shia regional politics is Trotskyist, but at the same time, it is an ideology that existed before the state in its present form. Tehran is the cash cow; it is the armor but not the theological argument guiding Hezbollah, which itself developed through the nineteen seventies and eighties, in much the way Shia argument expanded across Iraq and Lebanon…

The only difference in the argument today is that the IRGC has taken hold of Hezbollah, or what is left of it, and controls the dynamics of the argument within its ranks. However much L’Orient publicizes the movement, there is not much left. And though the Assad years presented the movement with an opportunity to re-arm, the present Syrian government does not. So the idea of Hezbollah being a Lebanese entity has ended. It is not so much that it was ever a Trotskyist invention by the Iranian state; it is an ideology that encompassed the grievances of the Shia in Lebanon. With Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1978, the farmers, peasants, and businessmen were forced to move up to Beirut, forcing the Shia into ghettos or to emigrate.

You can move into the 1980s and argue that the bombing of the Marine barracks was the catalyst for Hezbollah, but it was as much a response to the creation of Amal. The same voice has been leading Amal since the 1970s, but the ideology that created Amal is not the same as Hezbollah. The evolution of the Shia in Lebanon came through Imam Musa al-Sadr, the religious head of the Shia community in Lebanon, who brought the communities together (Beqaa Valley and Southern Lebanon) and organized them into Harakat al-Mahrumin (movement of the deprived), which gave way to Amal (Hope) and then to Hezbollah (party of God) in the 1980s.

In much the same way that Hezbollah adapted to the new normal of Israeli occupation, the ideas and arguments of religious Shiaism had to adapt and, in many ways, evolved through the 1960s–1970s in Iraq, which was Baathist. Shia led by Sadr, Sistani, and the clerics of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.  Musa al-Sadr, Khomeni and Baqer al-Sadr, along with the Hakims, became involved in social mobilization. In Iraq, Baqer al-Sadr wrote on philosophy and economics, adopting the style and arguments of Western philosophy—with the aim of integrating those arguments into Shia thought, creating an avenue of argument that competed with Western thought.

So the argument of Iran’s Shiaist revival came through Lebanon and Iraq. Though Khomenini was a cog in the philosophy of those who came through with the ideology that evolved from the poor, the message was clear: Iran needed change, and that change was theoretical in its identity and intellectually underpinned by events. Being second-class citizens, and with philosophical arguments encompassed into the theocracy, Shia philosophical arguments continually evolved until Ali Khamenei secured the state through the empowerment of the IRGC.

In much the same way, Khomenine characterized the West as the Great Satan; there is and was fear of the West.  The ideas and arguments within the state charactured the West with the outlets that challenged the elements of the state, and though the West from Reagan through to Obama was in decline in its influence in the Persian Middle East, the JCPOA created an era of consultation on all nuclear arguments.

Today, the Persian area of influence has been damaged by the fall of Assad, the degradation of Hezbollah, and the destruction of Hamas and Gaza.  The so-called four pillars:  Hamas, Hezbollah, Iraq, and Yemen are, in themselves, buffers, taking the war to the West rather than just areas of influence; they buffer the regime from the West.

Though the war has come to Iran—the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and Bal al-Mandab has globalised the war once again, buffering the Persian sphere of influence. It is a complex argument determined by the argument of power, and although Iran itself is closed off from its export markets (oil and agricultural products to the Gulf countries), it is trying to develop markets in Eurasia. And though the Ryal is in a downward spiral and the state is facing hyperinflation, the state has put in place the arguments that underpinned the state during the seven years of the Iran–Iraq war.

The question is whether the state, with all its interests abroad and inflation, can it survive either to a negotiated end to the war or the end of the presidency. The influence of the Shia clerics that created the state has underpinned the state through arguments of philosophical, economic, police, and military alignment. The theocracy is now similar to the war with Iraq, which was underpinned by nationalist rhetoric that has given the theocracy ground support. Although the US is blockading the state, the development of the state is starved, and the resources it needs have been saved for a scenario such as now.

But the idea that the state will fall without boots on the ground is a new argument. It is as much a geopolitical argument today, with Russia and China continually ramping up the ability of the Iranians to hit back against the US. But at the same time, the capital necessary to fight the war in so many theaters is putting a strain on the regime, the populace, the IRGC, and the axis. At best, the theocracy can fight to a stalemate, and at worst it withdraws into itself, with a devastating conclusion. It is an ending that has not yet been created, but ultimately the arguments throughout the formation of the theocracy are holding the state together.