The Foreign Service Journal, June 2007

The commentary continued: “The nuclear issue will one day come to an end and then the issue of human rights will take over. If a militarist America is worried about nuclear energy, the secular Europeans are instead waiting to ambush you under the cause of human rights. On that day the Islamic Republic will not be able to favor the secular, nationalist and ideological Europe over the religious, multiethnic and pragmatic America.” That editorial seems to advocate a course of foreign policy diametrically opposed to the cantankerous, mal- adroit and raucous diplomacy that has become the hall- mark of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s administra- tion. It is indicative of the deep ideological and political fissures among Iranian political elites. Pessimistic analysts of Iranian politics cite the intimi- dation and imprisonment of prominent activists, lawyers, editors and publishers; draconian measures against the press; and vigilante violence as evidence that things have changed little in the last decade. They maintain that the parliament still lacks power; the judiciary and the Guardian Council, accountability; the civil service, dexter- ity; and the press, freedom. Optimists, on the other hand, insist that we should not interpret the curbing of the belligerent press and the arrest of iconoclastic journalists as anything more than temporary setbacks in Iran’s long and arduous march toward a more open society. A society where the genie of dissent has been let out of the bottle cannot remain silent in perpetuity, they say, arguing that the demography of a young, urban, well-educated and politically aware popula- tion favors the reform movement. The optimists interpret these demographic trends as harbingers of the new revolution of rising expectations gaining momentum in the country. Furthermore, they claim that, thanks to the addition of over 20 million new entrants to the ranks of eligible voters since the 1979 Revolution, Iranian voters are increasingly asserting their willingness and commitment to reshape the socio-political and cultural system of the country. These different readings provide diverging answers to the following questions: Did former President Moham- mad Khatami’s (1997-2005) cautious and syncopated cru- sade for political liberalization drive his popular base toward cynicism, demoralization and dejection? Did hardliners manage to wear down the reformist camp and discredit it in the eyes of voters? If the reform movement is now battered and beaten, does this mean that political change can now only emerge from outside the ranks of the regime? Before we can begin to sort through the answers to these questions, we must try and get a better sense of the deeply embedded cultural and political para- doxes and nuances of Iranian politics. Toward a Modern Society The profound cultural, demographic and socio-eco- nomic shifts during the post-revolutionary era are rapidly reworking the contours of Iranian society from a tradi- tional-authoritarian structure to a modern and open one. They have also bequeathed to Iranian politics a multidi- mensionality and sophistication previously unimaginable. While less than half of the country’s population lived in urban centers at the time of the 1979 revolution, that fig- ure has now reached over 61 percent. During the same time span the literacy rate skyrocketed from less than 47 percent to over 80 percent, and the population’s median age is now 24 years. As of 1996, out of the country’s pop- ulation of 60 million, 40 percent were below the age of 15 and 30 percent were students in primary or secondary school (16 million) and college (2 million). The events of the past two decades have made it clear that the members of Iran’s strong cultural middle class now view themselves not as mere nationals but as citizens. No longer interested in hearing pontificators talk about their patriotic and religious duties, they are increasingly inquiring about their citizenship rights (e.g., jobs and political and social freedoms). A robust and sober move- ment representing millions of high school and university students is a formidable constituency that the state cannot simply absorb, ignore or buy off. In addition, Iranian journalists and writers have man- aged to create a substantial, serious and sophisticated media audience and an animated court of public opinion that looks skeptically at the clergy’s attempts to present a whitewashed view of Islamic history and their own revo- lutionary pedigree. One need only recall the ministerial interpolations and melodramatic public trials that took place during Khatami’s term in office as an example. While the clerical and revolutionary courts almost always reprimanded or found the accused guilty of the alleged F O C U S J U N E 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 27 Mehrzad Boroujerdi, an associate professor of political science at Syracuse University, is the founding director of the university’s Middle Eastern Studies Program. He is also an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute.