Why has Iran’s Islamic revolution survived?

By James North

"Orientalism" is much more than just prejudice against Arabs and Muslims. Edward Said, who did more than anyone to explore the ideology, explained that Orientalism can include a genuine interest in the languages and (ancient) history of the Arab and Muslim Other. But Orientalists assume that Arabs and Muslims have a largely unchanging Essence, which has persisted for many centuries. You can discover this Essence by reading their ancient texts, the Quran, the Hadiths and others. Said pointed out that it is no mistake that the leading Orientalists – Bernard Lewis is a major surviving example – specialized in philology, the study of words and languages.
Ervand Abrahamian, a professor at Baruch College and the Graduate Center at CUNY, is the opposite of an Orientalist. He was born in Iran, of Armenian extraction, and he has spent decades analyzing his homeland not by burying himself in Sunni/Shi’ite theology, but by looking at Iranian political parties, class formations, the distribution of income, and government budget allocations. The indispensable Middle East Report has just published his latest findings as part of its valuable Spring 2009 issue on "Iran: The Islamic Revolution at 30."
His article is titled "Why the Islamic Republic Has Survived." An Orientalist would answer that question with a few words: Islamic zeal and fanaticism. Abrahamian includes militant Shi’ism among his list of the four frequently-used explanations for the Islamic Republic’s longevity – the others are "a reign of terror," the intense nationalism promoted during the Iran-Iraq war, and rising oil revenues. He looks closely at all four explanations, and finds all either wrong or far from sufficient.
"If these stock explanations do not suffice, then what does?" he asks. "The real answer lies not in religion, but in economic and social populism." He reports that the Islamic Republic has over 30 years given "priority to social rather than military expenditures," "dramatically expanding the Ministries of Health, Agriculture, Labor, Housing, Welfare and Social Security." He adds: "The military consumed as much as 18 per cent of the gross domestic product in the last years of the shah. Now it takes up as little as 4 per cent."
If Iran were, say, Paraguay, a detailed account of its internal life would unfortunately not matter much to the rest of the world. But the Bush administration and the Likud Lobby have turned Iran into a potential flashpoint. In an earlier book that Abrahamian co-authored (Inventing the Axis of Evil, The New Press, 2004), he showed how Bush’s harsh rhetoric undercut reformers within Iran and destroyed the growing movement toward detente with the United States.
Abrahamian’s work is no apologia for the Islamic Republic; he recognizes it is not a genuine democracy, and it continues to violate human rights. But by coolly analyzing the sources of its strength and longevity today – instead of invoking the dusty texts of Shi’ite theology – he helps us see how the outside world can reduce the risk of war, which, some day, could even include a Mideast nuclear confrontation.