Comparative Politics - Iran

Explain the importance of the constitutional movement, who was behind it, and what did it achieve.

In 1905-1911, Iran established the first written constitution.

Who: Iran was independent, but dependent on Russia and Britain. Merchants, clerks, and intellectuals did not like this. As a result, they formed an alliance, an alliance of three major forces: clerics, merchants, and intellectuals.

Achieved: Iranian political system was based on absolute monarchy where the king had absolute power. This movement was designed to define and limit power of the king. The second goal was to establish a parliament. They wanted to liberate Iran from European, British, and Russian domination.

• In response to autocracy, corruption, and foreign control a broad coalition of clerics, merchants, and intellectuals launched a successful movement to establish a constitutional monarchy and elected parliament, marking the birth of modern Iranian political thought.

Explain Mohammad Mosaddegh and the Iran Coup of 1953

• Nationalization of Oil (1951): As prime minster, Mosaddegh led a bold move to nationalize Iran’s oil industry, previously controlled by the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, galvanizing nationalist support and provoking Western backlash.

  • Oil was discovered in 1907 in Iran. The British established a Persian-British oil company.

  • In 1913-1914, this discovery made Iran so important for both the British and West.

    • The British navy stopped using coal and began to use oil, meaning that Iran’s oil was an important and strategic commodity for the British. Iran became much more important from this moment onward. Britain completely controlled Iranian oil until 1951 when Iranian oil was nationalized.

    • Used to be called British Persian oil company, and it was in 1951, the British Persian oil company was the largest company the British owned outside of England. The largest investment the British had outside their country. They completely controlled it and did not allow Iran to look at the books, decide how to sell it, how much to produce, and how to distribute it. They would only give on their own discretion and generosity a certain amount of profit to Iran.

• Mosaddegh is an Iranian aristocrat and decides this control must come to a halt.

  • Iran says we will nationalize it, British says no it is ours, and if you try we will impose embargoes and attack your military.

  • Mosaddegh was not scared and kicked all of the British out and shut down their embassy.

    • He saw America as an ally, as they were popular in Iran because America had no territorial ambition over Iran.

    • America was and admired, and Mosaddegh admired President Truman. Due to this admiration, Mosaddegh came to America trying to secure a loan and gain support for his nationalization. However, Truman believed that if he gave a loan to Mosaddegh then Britain should be compensated. Mosaddegh did not agree.

    • Once Truman stepped down, Eisenhower came into office and things changed because he was a military man. Eisenhower looked at Iran from the prism of the Cold War, and that there were only Russians and Americans.

    • Winston Churchill proposed and made the decision to convert from coal to oil, so he knew and recognized the importance of Iran. In 1953, he came up with the idea of staging a coup in Iran.

• Confrontation with the West: his refusal to compromise on oil nationalization, along with his push to curb the Shah’s powers, alarmed London and Washington.

• 1953 CIA-MI6 Coup (Operation Ajax): In a covert operation backed by the Shah, Mosaddegh was overthrown in a joint US British Coup restoring royal autocracy, radicalizing Iranian politics, and laying the groundwork for anti-western sentiment in decades to come.

What are the causes of Islamic Revolution in Iran (1979 revolution)?

1. Iran experienced rapid economic development, socioeconomic development, improvements in education, culture, and the arts, but there was no political development in Iran.

• In 1979, the King of Persia acted as if we had no constitutional movement. He was in charge of making every decision, large and small, military and political.

  • As a result, a gap was created between socioeconomic development and political development. Revolutions do not happen in static countries. They happen in societies that are vibrant and about to take off. They happen in areas that are restless and feel constraint because government holds them back.

    • When socioeconomic development takes place, the middle class is enlarged & the economic/social system changes. But, if the political system doesn’t change accordingly, they will come to crash.

2. Shah the King was autocratic and detached from people that he did not understand the nature of the opposition. He was also sick with cancer and not born as a king that could deal with crisis. He was there and a good king in ordinary times, but he did not have the strength and spine of his father. He was a weak man. He was not made to be a leader of a country during revolution of upheaval. This is because he was in control of everything, and when he showed a sign of weakness at the top of the pyramid, everything under collapsed.

• Another dimension to this, is that the US was as indecisive and as confused as the Shah of Iran, in particular Jimmy Carter.

  • Carter’s problem was that he came to power trying to restore confidence in America because of Watergate. During his campaign, he talked about restoring confidence in the White House and American leadership. Emphasizing human rights because by advocating he wanted to undermine Soviet Union and restore credibility in America.

  • When Carter tried to apply this outlook to Iran, he did not know what to do. He wanted to push the Shah to open political processes, make it more responsive, transparent, and democratic. However, America had huge economic and military interests in Iran, which resulted in the US pursuing inconsistent and contradictory polices.

  • Indecisiveness: Once the revolution started against the Shah, Carter would sign with State Department and the next day he would sign with the Secretary of Defensive who believed something completely different. The Shah was already indecisive but became even more indecisive. Shah was replaced by Khomeini.

Explain the Islamic Republic System

The Islamic Republic System is sort of hybrid - authoritarianism, some features of totalitarianism, and a facade of democracy or transparency.

• Islamic comes before republic intentionally. As Islamic focuses on Islamic nature, meaning Islamic republic of Iran has consisted of two interconnected systems: one is the religious and second is what would be the ‘government’. The Islamic part is the dominant part.

  • The Islamic part is controlled by one-person, religious leader, supreme leader (unelected, stays in power for life, commander of armed forces, and most powerful man in Iran), and is based on the doctrine of ‘velayat-e faqih’. This is also known as the jurist’s guardianship which was Khomeini’s concept that the Iranian clergy should rule on the grounds that they are the divinely appointed guardians of both the law and people.

    • He argued that jurist’s guardianship gave the senior clergy all-encompassing authority over the whole community. He insisted the clergy were the people’s true representatives, since they lived among them, listened to their problems, and shared their everyday joys and pains.

• Khomeini is the supreme leader, commander of armed forces, decides the grand policies of the Islamic republic. Does not answer questions from anyone, including parliament. Controls national television, major private foundations, and is the most powerful figure.

• The republic part is the subordinate part. Republic part has three branches, legislative, executive, and judicial & they have elections.

  • The problem is that the election is controlled. There is an assembly called the guardian council. The council has 12 members. 6 are decided by the supreme leader and the other 6 are names parliament submits and the supreme leader chooses. Either way circles back to supreme leader.

  • Parliament members who want to compete must submit an application to the guardian council and then members of council evaluate the application to decide if you can or can’t compete in elections.

• System is set up so that the Supreme Leader has more power than republic part. In a way, the system in Iran has 4 branches, in terms of structure. If you include the Supreme authority/network of the supreme leader who is not in charge of running daily affairs of government, but in charge of making big decisions.

Identify one Persian philosopher, mathematician who made a huge contribution and what that contribution was. Summarize in 1-2 paragraphs on what he has done.

Al-Khwarizmi & Algebra: introduced systematic methods for solving linear & quadratic equations in his book that contained the root word “algebra”

• “father of algebra”

• his book, Kitab al-Jabr, systematically presented algebra as a distinct mathemtaical discipline, introducing methods for solving linear and quadratic equations

• the term “algebra” itself comes from al-jabr, one of operations in his text, involving balancing and restoring equations

• his name gave us the word “algorithm” and revolutionized mathematics by creating Hindu-Arab numerals.

  • this numeral system introduced the concept of zero and place value

  • in latin numeral system it does not allow you to write 0, .1, or 1.5

US & Iran Conflict

• they were close allies during cold war. nixon had a closer relation with Iranians.

• once Mosaddegh was overthrown in 1953-1979, Iran experienced rapid economic growth.

• after coup, British no longer controlled Iranian oil, but instead British, Americans, and other European countries controlled Iranian oil.

• Mosaddegh believed that Iran should have a close strategic alliance with the US.

• during cold war, iran and US were close allies.

• iran was the #1 buyer of american weapons in the world.

  • nixon had given iran the permission to buy anything they want except nuclear bombs, without pentagon review

  • not even israel had this kind of permission from the US

• solely cared about money, and Iran was an ally of US to contain Soviet Union.

• one year later in 1979, Khomeini launches a revolution and kicks Shah out of country and kicks America out of Iran.

• America missed seeing this because there was no contact with regular/ordinary Americans, they only cared about being in contact with American governance. They thought the Shah was so secure in power that no one could overthrow him.