The Foreign Service Journal, June 2007

and a bit more united, especially as signs of internal division have emerged among the governing con- servatives. While they have not man- aged to abandon their own internal fights, it is much less likely that they will repeat the mistake of the 2005 presidential elections when they fielded four of the final seven candi- dates and split the popular vote. The municipal council elections scheduled for 2010 will be influenced by the outcomes of the preceding parliamentary and presidential elections and the political waves they will set in motion. Because the Council of Guardians applies less stringent criteria in vetting many thousands of candidates in municipal elections, it is possi- ble that individuals with reformist dispositions will man- age to win seats. A Work in Progress Ira Lapidus, a historian of the Middle East, comment- ed in the New York Times in 2000 that Iran is “a nation that is open and welcoming but remains hidden and mysteri- ous; a clerical dictatorship, but one of the Middle East’s liveliest democracies; a puritanical regime, but a people who love everyday life; a severe orthodoxy, but an expres- sive cinema and an argumentative press; a revolution that has rejected secularism, but a nation heading toward a fusion of Islamic and Persian identities.” We can also add the following paradoxes to the list provided by Lapidus. • A constitution that simultaneously affirms religious and secular principles, democratic and anti-democratic tendencies, as well as populist and elitist predilections; • A society in which many cultural, political and social institutions are Western and modern in pedigree and con- figuration, yet native and traditional in iconography and nomenclature; • A hyperpoliticized society that does not benefit from the presence of recognized, legitimate or effective politi- cal entities such as parties; • A theocracy where religion is an axiom of political life, and yet secular agents, aspirations, ideas, institutions, language and motifs continue to survive and — more importantly — manifest their significance in the private and public space; • A society where the eclectic texture of popular cul- ture has made the practicality — let alone desirability — of religiously sanctioned statecraft highly doubtful, in turn leading to a gradual but con- sistent disillusionment with the belief that Islam is the only political solu- tion; • A clerical leadership that has claimed to protect tradition but has amended and broken numerous age- old religious protocols for the sake of state expediency; • A society whose Islamic intellec- tuals resort to the writings of Western thinkers to validate their own “Islamic” critique of the West; • A citizenry that has come to enjoy sophisticated artis- tic and intellectual productions despite living under a politically repressive state; and • A society where women’s rights have been trampled upon, yet where women have continued to make strides into the educational, cultural and professional domains, thereby increasing awareness of women’s rights and issues at the social level. These paradoxes demonstrate that what has softened the hardness of an Islamic republic born through revolu- tion — and will continue to do so — are the eclectic real- ities of the political landscape and popular culture of the country. We must bear in mind that in the overtly polar- ized, regimented and stilted world of Iranian politics, every action is politically and symbolically significant. Even the most innocuous signs (pictures, cartoons, the- atrical plays, ambiguous language, nostalgic lyrics), acts (clapping, dancing, holding hands, whistling, anodyne leisure or recreational activity or other manifestations of youthful verve) and events (victory or defeat of the nation- al soccer team, temporary loss of water or electricity, fac- tory closures) can cause a serious political crisis, because the state is neither ideologically nor structurally capable of preventing or defusing such incidents. As an adviser to former President Khatami has put it, the Iranian regime resembles a tall glass building where voices echo, and even the smallest stone that is thrown creates a loud shattering noise. The U.S. As a Wedge Issue “In a curious sense, Iran and the United States are mir- ror images of each other,” writes Gary Sick, a long-time F O C U S 30 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 7 Historian Ira Lapidus says that Iran is a nation of paradoxes: “open and welcoming but hidden and mysterious.”