Prospects of a Future Revolution in Iran Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Prospects of a Future Revolution in Iran - Essay Example Post-Revolutionary leaders in Iran, in an effort to consolidate their power and destroy opposition, have undertaken a number of social policies focused on rural and urban populations to encourage the development of a healthier, better educated, and more sophisticated society (Keddie, 2006). Although improvements emerged, there has been a socio-cultural realignment, suggesting that the official Iran of devout multitudes may not be a majority, as compared to the â€Å"other† Iran of a largely modern, progressive, and pragmatically secular citizenry (Afshari, 2009, p.840). This projection is supported by the June 2009 Green Revolution in which the Islamic Republic of Iran faced a legitimacy crisis, the like of which it had not experienced since its creation in 1979. The 2009 experience has critical differences as well as deja vu similarities to the 1979 Revolution. The clerical cloth of legitimacy has undeniably been tattered in the recent uprising and demonstrations; however, th e prospects of another revolution still remain uncertain because of crucial contextual changes. Nevertheless, the interest of the international community for the Green Revolution to succeed and lead Iran to peaceful integration within the world system of nations is a force that can have a significant determining value in the balance of power in Iran domestically. For a long time, academic scholars have tried to identify what produces a revolution. Of all possible factors, political scientist James DeFronzo identifies five as critical for success: Mass frustrations among urban or rural populations that result in popular uprising, dissident elite political movements that pit some elite members against the existing government, unifying motivations for revolution that cut across major groups and mobilize the majority of society’s population behind the goal of revolution, severe political crisis that paralyzes the administrative and coercive capabilities of the state, and permissi ve or tolerant world context towards the development and success of a revolution in a given nation. In the case of Iran, unified motivation among major groups was the fundamental factor in ensuring the revolutionary success of 1979. More than two decades of autocratic rule caused the social base of support for the Pahlavi monarchy to decline. Loyalists, primarily from the aristocratic core and the non-aristocratic upper class, constituted less than 0.01 percent of the population- a meager force in defense of the regime (Abrahamian 1989: DeFronzo, 304). The majority of the population- the traditional middle class, the modern middle class, and the sub-proletariat class-demanded more reforms, more human rights, more freedom, and more democracy. Two main revolutionary movements formed: The first was the religious movement headed by the Ulema, demanding return to a society based on the Shari’ah and religious administration (Hooker, 1996). The second movement was liberal, promoting modernism, democracy, openness in government, wider participation, and increased social justice via economic development for the poor. Opposition to the regime also included a radical Marxist-Leninist element consisting of the ‘Peoples Fedayeen’ and the ‘People’s Mojahadeen’ (Feldman, 2007). Initially, the Shah and the West fixated on these Leftist elements in the Cold War paradigm, causing them to disregard the threat of Islamic fundamentalism as a movement. (Feldman, 2007) Historians, political theorists, and contemporary