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Past as Present: Messianism, Sectarianism and the Politics of Disorder in Contemporary Iran (2003-2013)

  • Writer: lchamankhah
    lchamankhah
  • 2 days ago
  • 32 min read

 

             Abstract

Iranian politics has been defined using many elements including its relevance to religion, which at times and depending upon approaches that have been adopted to set the tone between the two institutes of state and church, have been varied. Both the classical division of labor between religion and politics, and their full amalgamation in the theory of wilāyat al-faqīh, are regarded as the two most notable solutions to the problematic of the relationship between religion and politics. However, especially with regard to the changes in Iran’s political and religious scene in the late 2000s and early 2010s, the messianic fervor of Mahmud Ahmadinejad and the later invention of Maktab-e Īrānī (lit. Iranian School), represented a new era. Ahmadinejad’s political discourse in both his terms of office should be studied in relation to wilāyat al-faqīh and as a reaction to the hegemony of the hierocracy on one hand, and as a solution, albeit temporary, to the labyrinth of religion and politics in the post-revolutionary Iran on the other. As will be investigated in the following, his policies, other than creating challenges for the ruling clerics, were also counterproductive, and encouraged sectarianism and politics of disorder; a toxic legacy that has put an indefinite mark on Iran’s religio-political landscape indefinitely.

Keywords: messianism, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, politics, Iran

 

            The Shīʿa Messiah

Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s appearance on Iran’s political scene shocked many, particularly those who did not expect an unknown figure to be able to rise to prominence so fast, and of course so controversially, in a setting where age, family and religious training are decisive. However, today and after slightly more than a decade since he left office, we are in a position to pull the scattered pieces of this puzzle together and come up with a clearer image. What stands out from among the elements that construct this portrayal of power, which most of the time tended to be anarchic and dusty, was a zealous messianism that came to serve as the ideological backbone of his government. Any investigation of this genre of messianism would be incomplete if one failed to understand it in the light of the socio-economic context of the late 2000s and early 2010s, as well as the mechanisms of power in Iran. Belief in the awaited Mahdi and his return is carved on the mentality of the Twelvers, therefore, his obsession with the Hidden Imam was not just a matter of personal choice, but rather an alternative for the ruling hierocracy that had kept his grip on power for more than three decades. From this perspective, his religious orientation had not just been chosen to be the voice of ‘marginalized dissent’ at home, or the continuation of the revolutionary passion of 1979 with all its anti-western tendencies on show, but rather as a leverage that could help him to build a distinct identity for himself, different from that of the ruling Shīʿa clerics.

The existing primary literature on the Hidden Imam, his life during the ghayba (the Occultation) and his return, which has been produced at different stages in the life of Twelver Shīʿīsm, is vast and considerable, building a robust legacy that attests to the centrality of the Occultation in shaping Shīʿa identity. It is a legacy that goes back as far as the formative period of Shīʿīsm, when books such as Kitāb Sulaym were written in the late eight and early ninth century[1]. One can find traces of the topic in the Four Shīʿa Compilations known as Kutub-e Arbaʿay-e Shīʿa as well, where Occultation, alongside other doctrinal issues such as wilāyat are indicated. Relevant to this are the two magnum opuses, namely Kamāl al-din wa tamām al-niʿmateh (lit. the Perfection of Religion and the Completion of Blessings), a two-volume book by Ibn Bābwayh al-Qumī, Shaykh-e Ṣadūq (d. 991), and Al-ʿAbqarīya al-ḥisān fī aḥwāl mawlānā ṣāḥib al-zamān (lit. the Good Genius in the Life of Our Master Imam of the Age) of Ali Akbar Nahāwandī (d. 1950), which are texts exclusively on the Hidden Imam. One can see how such a belief has shaped the mentality as well as the direction of the Shīʿa community since its formative period onwards.

Based on such a heritage, a number of modern scholars including the late Sachedina argues that chiliastic aspirations, “expressed in terms of radical social protest in the face of political oppression” (Sachedina, 1981, p. 1.), are inherent in Twelver Shīʿīsm. As inheritors of “all major religions of the world” (p. 1.), Twelvers nurtured “the notion of an expected deliverer, who is to come and humble or destroy the forces of wickedness and establish the rule of justice and equity on earth” (p. 1). At stake is salvation (a word with both worldly and metaphysical connotations), which makes it the historical responsibility of all believers to establish an ideal and worldwide religious and political community following Muhammad and his example.

            However, the conception of salvation was rather more creating a rift in the ummah than pulling it together, because each side had its own understanding of it. Whereas for the Sunnites, salvation was only possible “through the allegiance and loyalty of all believers in the community” (Ibid., p. 4), for the Shīʿas, the course of events went in the opposite direction. Due to Ali’s deprivation of his right of successorship to the Prophet, the community had already lost its legitimacy, therefore a charismatic leader, as both the holder of spiritual and temporal power, was needed to carry on the message of the Prophet. The Islamic messiah, whose mission is closely tied to salvation, is the deliverer of such an order. At a certain time, which is only clear to God (towqīt is forbidden then), a messianic leader, an Imam par excellence from the household of Muhammad, will again appear to this world to fill it with equity and justice, “as it has been filled with injustice, oppression and tyranny” (Ibid., p. 3). Additionally, the savior Imam is endowed with divine knowledge and that’s why he is called Mahdi (the rightly-guided one), and his action to stand for justice has political (and military) connotations, which is why he is al-Qāʾim too. For Sachedina, the idea of a messianic savior of all Muslims is not only historically earlier than the doctrine of imamate, but also on a theoretical basis, the latter represents the more sophisticated notion of the eschatological Hidden Imam (Sachedina., 1981, Op. cit., p. 18).

Nevertheless, due to the political situation, this combination of imamate and messianism in the personality of the Imam, has never had a chance to fully bloom; and since Shīʿa utopia had been stopped sometime in the past; in the golden days of the Imams,[2] the urge for a direct political action to restore those days never left this community alone. This is the reason why once in a while an al-Qāʾim from within this community rises to restore justice as a pre-requisite for salvation. While God does not break His promise[3], the narratives about the length of Mahdi’s reign are notably varied; from three-hundred and nine years to seven years (which is equal to seventy years of the regular calendar), and even to nineteen years (Majlesī, 1375, pp. 1080-1089). However, in another rewāyat (lit. narrative) from the fifth Imam, Muḥammad Bāqir (d. 733), the one who rules three-hundred and nine years is not Mahdi, but a man from the household of the Prophet who comes afterwards (most probably al-Ḥossein), as Mahdi lived only nineteen years after his appearance (Ibid., p. 1089).

Messianism is anti-modern, and adheres to a primal truth, which is only endowed to the Imams by God, although it has been passed down to Mahdi during the Occultation. Things such as Qurʾān-e Faṭemeh, which is the most authentic Qurʾān having been put together by Ali, are among the components of this treasury, and will be revealed when the Imam comes. So is the sharia of the Prophet, as the most comprehensive sharia, containing all the preceding laws, which will be fully implemented by him when he appears. In addition to this, one should mention a number of Shīʿa prayers, chief among them al-Zīyārat al-Jāmiʿat al-Kabīrah (Commentary on the Grand Comprehensive Visitation), embedding the primal wisdom, or Perennial Philosophy.[4]

            As will be discussed in the following, from 2003 to 2013, messianism was the main element of Ahmadinejad’s political discourse, although as soon as he established himself, he took a more nationalistic, and even secular turn towards initiatives such as Maktab-e Īrānī (lit. Iranian School). A development that can explain why messianism suits to represent an unsettled phase of an administration when it is still in making, but once it is settled, it will sacrifice its revolutionary drifts for a more established ideology, when initiatives such as Maktab-e Īrānī make sense. Also, with Maktab-e Īrānī a new era with a brand new political personality for the tenth government was supposed to start; an identity distinct from any attachment, or debt to its religious supporters, mainly to the Alliance of the Builders of Islamic Iran (Eʾtelāf-e ābādgarān-e īrān-e eslāmī) and the Ḥojjatīyeh both. 

           

            Messianism as A Political Discourse

            Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s rise to prominence dates back to his days as the first governor of Ardabil from 1994 to 1998 [1372-1376]; a newly-established Azeri-spoken province in northwestern Iran. As the first governor of Ardabil, he showed enough competency to be nominated as Iran’s chosen governor for three years in a row[5], although he ended up in a corruption case, which was built around the oil swap file in his respective province. In his circle, there was a certain Ṣādeq Maḥṣūlī, a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Western Azerbaijan and the then governor of Urmia, a key figure in the oil swap corruption case (1403)[6]. As will be discussed in the following, Maḥṣūlī comes to play a key role in Ahmadinejad’s government, as well as in later feuds within the circle, which eventually resulted in the formation of The Stability Front of the Islamic Revolution, with Maḥṣūlī as its general secretary.

During Khatami’s presidency (1376-1384/1997-2005), Ahmadinejad withdrew from politics to focus on teaching and research in his university; Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST). However, as a ‘revolutionary’ engineering professor, and a member of the Islamic Society of Engineers (Anjoman-e eslāmīy-e mohandesīn), he was collaborating with different newspapers in the form of writing pro-Rafsanjani pieces, adopting an anti-reformist, pro status quo stance.: “Whenever we distanced from welāyat-e faqīh, we went astray …” (1400)[7]. In 2004/1382, we see him back in politics, this time as Tehran’s mayor, while having the support of the Principlists (uṣūlgerā block) under his belt. Due to his involvement in the abovementioned oil swap file, the intelligence ministry of Khatami’s Reformist government did its best to veto him from becoming the capital’s mayor to no avail. He became the mayor regardless, and in fact it was Tehran’s municipality that exposed him to the labyrinth of Iranian politics at an unprecedented level.

A pragmatist governor of a pragmatist president, (both were concerned with dealing with corruption charges against them in one way or another, though), cast him this time as a Principlist, seeking pākdastī (lit. cleanness) in politics with his anti-corruption justice-oriented agenda plastered all over the window. The Alliance of the Builders of Islamic Iran (Eʾtelāf-e ābādgarān-e īrān-e eslāmī), a confederation of hardliner forces and people, known as Iran’s neocons, who had rallied behind him to make him the mayor in 2004 (1382), two years later, helped him to become a two-term president (1400)[8].

During his tenure as a mayor, two names were heard more than any other: one, his main consultant, relative by marriage, and later vice-president, Esfandyār Raḥīm Mashā’ī (an engineer from the northern province of Mazandaran, with no significant political or non-political activity in his resume), and the hardliner clergy, Muḥammad Taqī Meṣbāḥ Yazdī (d. 2021), who was later addressed as ʿAllāmey-e baṣīr (the Insightful Polymath) by his disciples in The Stability Front of Islamic Revolution (Jebhey-e pāydārīy-e engelāb-e eslāmī).[9] Meṣbāḥ was a well-known figure, whose political activities were traceable back as early as the 1960s, and as much as he seemed to be safe and sound, Raḥīm Mashā’ī was troublesome and unsetting. What had brought them together was the latter’s hatred of Rafsanjani’s and Khatami’s governments as distortions, a heresy par excellence, from the message of the revolution of 1979 (Cohen, 2013, p. 140 & Ansari, 2007, p. 42), and the former’s political opportunism. Ansari describes Meṣbāḥ as an elitist and authoritarian conservative clergy with zero belief in the participation of people in politics. For him and the “new generation of articulate conservatives, who would present the case for authoritarianism”, politics was the job of a qualified few (Ansari, 2007, p. 23), whose elitism worked smoothly and well with the populistic approach of Ahmadinejad, in the sense that each made one blade of scissors: one selected to rule, and the other predestined to be used as the fuel of politics.

However, for Mashā’ī things were more pragmatic: Tehran’s municipality was a historical chance that was able to launch him to a higher position, and as history proves, whatever they had tested in Tehran’s municipality to check its feasibility was put into action on a larger scale when Ahmadinejad became president. For such a task, it was not only the Alliance of the Builders of Islamic Iran who helped him, but also almost all traditional and new uṣūlgerā groups came together to make it happen, just to stop their rivals from returning to Pasteur Street. As soon as he stepped into Tehran’s city building he took a messianic tone, loaded with repulsive populism and political opportunism; a tone which resented many, including their Principlist supporters (1400, 1396)[10]. Pertinent to this rhetoric were supplementary, yet amusing, initiatives including building a private highway for the Imam’s return to facilitate his movement,[11] and assigning an empty chair for him with an empty plate on a table in front of it in all the cabinet meetings, to name two. Meṣbāḥ Yazdī, who was still loyal to him, went so far as to claim that the Imam was sending his special prayers for Ahmadinejad on a daily basis, and he himself called his government a facilitator for his return (1394)[12]. Besides, one could hardly find any public lecture in which he did not make random references to the Hidden Imam and the imminence of his ẓuhūr:

“Is the ẓuhūr imminent and should we ask for it to be so or not? Hope, action and motivation are only [possible] in light of expectation and faith[13] to the imminence of appearance. The world is moving towards the full appearance[14], as this process has speeded up and everything is clear now. Basically, the ẓuhūr has started from the beginning[15] and with the help of the Almighty, we are now in its last stages, which will bear fruit in its full realization” (1394)[16].

To Ahmadinejad, the political discourse of the post-revolutionary regime was to culminate in his government, with the ẓuhūr as a replacement for its current dysfunctional ideology. It was dysfunctional, because it was distorted from its original principles, and the ninth and the tenth governments were here to reorganize things yet again. He was fanning the flame tirelessly too: “the return is imminent and we are here to make it happen even faster and more convenient” (by making a highway, for instance) (1394)[17]. And since from a theological perspective, the ẓuhūr is both historical and ahistorical,[18] this government would mark the beginning of the end; the termination of thousand years of desperate expectation and perplexity of the believers.

Although what one can call ‘the culture of expectation’ has been always an inseparable part of Twelver Shīʿīsm, the imminence of the ẓuhūr, and what Abbas Amanat calls “popular yearnings” (Amanat, 1989, 93-105), was a trend that came to the fore once in a while. These zealot followers of the Imam did not believe in the passive expectation of his return for things to happen spontaneously and in their right time: instead, they had come to make[19] it happen.[20] A few of his ministers even claimed that they were appointed to their posts by the direct verdict of the Imam through his personal communication with Ahmadinejad (1394)[21]. This emphasis on the imminence of the ẓuhūr, as well as the zeal and restlessness that came with it, among other things helped them to create an identity for themselves different from the more reasonable and calculative political personality of the two preceding governments. Reasonable politics requires reasonable people and vice versa, and Ahmadinejad and his team were examples of this. In 1389/2010, his younger supporters created a CD called, ẓuhūr nazdīk ast (lit. The Appearance Is Close), in which the Iraqi clergyman, Muḥammad Bāqir Ḥakīm (d. 2003), known as Shahīd-e Ḥakīm (the Martyred Sage) was compared with Al-Nafs al-Zakkīyah (the Pure Soul), Ahmadinejad himself with Shuʿayb ibn Ṣāliḥ (one of the companions of the Imam), and figures such as Seyyed Ḥasan Naṣrullāh (d. 2024), the head of the Lebanese Ḥizbullāh Organization, with Seyyed Yamānī. To the contrary, people such as King ʿAbdullāh of Jordan corresponded with the ‘bad guys’ of Shīʿa history, such as Al-Sufyānī[22]. This polarizing attitude soon backfired and resulted in the chaotic sectarian atmosphere that prevailed in all corners of Iranian politics for almost eight years.

Pertinent to this was Maktab-e Īrānī (lit. Iranian School), which caused uproar among his fans and adversaries both, and made many call Ahmadinejad and his crew, particularly Mashā’ī, jaryān-e enḥerāfī; a term that can be interpreted as bidʿat (also bidʿa, heresy) and can make a heretic the subject of death punishment.[23] The first trace of Maktab-e Īrānī goes back to Mashā’ī’s meeting with the Iranian diaspora in New York during Ahmadinejad’s second term in 2010, in which he maintained that “the most authentic and pure understanding of Islam, towḥīd, and the faith is accessible in Maktab-e Īrānī, and one of our main concerns is to introduce it to the world, … because it is a crossroad where celestial and terrestrial values meet” (Mashā’ī, 1400). Following him, Ahmadinejad also emphasized the importance of loving Iran, not in a nationalistic way, but in a religious one, “because Iran is no longer a tribe, a country, a nationality and an ethnic group, … but a path and a school” (Ahmadinejad, 1400, Ibid.).[24] 

However, the most vocal critic of Maktab-e Īrānī was Meṣbāḥ Yazdī, who after identifying Mashā’ī with Mahdi Bāzargān (d. 1995), the first prime minister after the revolution from the National Front, accused Mashā’ī of dishonesty and fraudulence:

“Many of our intellectual aberrations today are the skillful handiwork of the Devil, who insinuates to believers that contentment is the main value of people and that is why we should stop concerning ourselves with [religious] beliefs. But what about beliefs? Is it not that everything comes from faith (īmān) and Qurʾānīc teachings? … Nationalists used to say such things as well, but what do discussions like this have anything to do with you?” (Meṣbāḥ, 1389)[25].

After being criticized by hardliners for prioritizing Iran over Islam, Mashā’ī invited his critics to believe that his words were neither new nor odd, but merely a rephrasing of what they themselves had said before. Furthermore, in a comparison between the Shīʿī ʿulemā and the medieval Christian church, he accused the former of creating a schism and dividing society into the two bands of ḥaqq and bāṭel (lit. the Truth and falsehood); although, according to Mashā’ī, Ahmadinejad and his team were standing on the right side of the history. Mashā’ī argues that their mission, just like that of the prophets before them, is universal, and that is why it embraces every nation around the globe, including the people of Israel and America, who are supposed to be unified under the banner of the Hidden Imam.[26] This is what Khomeini did, but it went astray after his death in 1989, and the presidency of Ahmadinejad was a golden chance to put things back in the right order again.

But why astray? Because according to the ẓuhūr literature, Mahdi’s coming is for spreading justice and restoring the sharia of Muhammad, which was distorted after his death in 632, and Twelvers never had a chance to put it fully into action. For them, the ruling hierocracy is the least eligible group to execute the sharia, because they are corrupt, greedy and regressive. Maktab-e Īrānī, on the other hand, is here to reorient things by taking two bulwarks of the regime back from it: women and the West. The first, by opening the doors of the stadiums to them[27] (albeit limited to those women who come with the family), and/or appointing the first female minister to the cabinet, and the second, by pillorying the hierocracy through forging a friendship with the peoples of Israel and America. This brand new politics is based on a different understanding of Iran-ness, revolving around elements such as nationalism, a more public space for women (except for the female supporters of the Green Movement, who were detained, tortured and received heavy charges, of course), an active messianism as its political philosophy, a greater regional role for Iran through adopting an interventionist approach to regional issues, particularly in the neighboring countries, and intense hostility towards the West.

The cumbersome political Islam and the rusty ruling hierocracy both belong to history, because this better Iran requires the eruptive energy of the companions of the Hidden Imam (Ahmadinejad and his crew) who are preparing the ground for his appearance so tirelessly. When in 2013/1392, in the last days of his friend’s tenure[28], Mashā’ī declared the formation of Ḥalqeye bahār (lit. the Spring Circle), for their supporters it became clear that Ahmadinejad’s cause was but a distortion of the revolution of 1979; just like those of Khatami and Rafsanjani.[29] This is exactly the reason why I call it ‘active messianism’, because its latent potential for mass mobilization, as well as their actual steps to make the ẓuhūr happen, had already been activated, and the reaction of the establishment and the hierocracy to it attests to the urgency of the threat they felt. Was Ahmadinejad outrageous enough to call himself the much awaited Imam? A few, including Seyyed Ali Muhammad Shīrāzī (d. 1850), who, in the year 1844 called himself the Hidden Imam,[30] had done it before, and therefore Iranian history was not unfamiliar with assertive and self-proclaimed figures who once in a while appeared on the scene and called themselves the Imam. This is exactly where Maktab-e Īrānī stood, in its connection to the past on one hand, and to the anti-intellectualism of people like Fāṭemeh Rajabī, who calls Ahmadinejad the ‘Miracle of the Third Millennium’ (Muʿjezeyeh hizāreyeh sevvum), on the other.

Since the adaptation of Twelver Shīʿīsm as the official religion of the Ṣafawīds in the 16th century, nationalism has been mostly understood in religious terms, and the many forms of Shīʿīsm adjusted themselves to the political atmosphere of their time. For example, if the welāyat-e faqīh of Khomeini, as a militant narrative of Twelver Shīʿīsm, matched the revolutionary fervor of 1979, Maktab-e Īrānī of the tenth government could be the architect of a new Iran too. However, both Maktab-e Īrānī and the fiery yet hollow rhetoric of Ahmadinejad about the Hidden Imam were aborted before they became effective, and since he had lost his credibility after ousting the Reformists and Rafsanjani, his political being was but a waste. Furthermore, any account of Ahmadinejad’s tenure would be incomplete if his once-in-a-while clashes with Khamenei were not indicated; clashes that occasionally reached unmanageable heights. Out of these clashes an organization was born that saw the far-right religious radicalism take a different turn; to the scary agenda of purification.

 

Justice-Oriented Messianism, Economy and Religious Dissent

From being always the most important component of theories of governance and statecraft in both the pre- and post-Islamic eras, which have been reflected in sīyāsatnāmeh and sharīʿatnāmeh literature, to Twelver Shīʿīsm known as ʿadlīyeh (of justice), and to the popularity of socialist (and therefore statist/interventionist) economic philosophies, justice has always occupied a central place in Persian political philosophy. In addition, social justice was “a code word” (Amuzegar, 1999, p. 538), through which the governments could control prices and put “perpetual subsidies” (Ibid.,) into effect.

In the existing literature on messianism/millenarianism, it is commonplace to associate the emergence of the savior/warrior messiah with the economic misery of his devoted followers. For instance, in his account of the historical background of the many eruptions of European millenarianism, Norman Cohn shows how the revolutionary millenarians and mystical anarchists of the medieval period rode on factors such as religious dissent, economic hardship, natural disasters and disease to promote their salvationism (Cohn, 2004, passim). While we are alert to the differences between ‘millenarianism’ and its relevance to Christian tradition on one hand, and ‘messianism’ and its Islamic background on the other, millenarian and messianic movements bear significant and undeniable resemblances. Just as an example, the way salvation was pictured by millenarian sects and movements of medieval Europe as collective, terrestrial, imminent, total, and miraculous (Ibid., p. 13), has bold similarities with the conception of salvation in the political discourse of ‘the Government of Spring’.[31] They were both anti-clerical-anti-politics[32], egalitarian and seriously utopian. But in the case of Ahmadinejad, this inextinguishable desire for restoring Shīʿa, and not just Islamic utopia through the savior Imam, was to be assuaged by bringing past to the present, while for the millenarian medievalists everything was to be created afresh.

Contextualizing his messianism in the socio-economic milieu of its time, the question arises whether the religious dissent of the marginalized community of believers of the late 2000s and early 2010s (if any) (in the way Cohn elucidates) was behind his selection as the president. There is no doubt that many of his voters, particularly in over-populated and relatively un-urbanized areas, like the impoverished suburbs south of Tehran and other big cities, as well as in remote villages, were living on the margin of society. However, there is evidence that stands for the opposite; for “the devout poor [who] by and large voted for the reformists, who were considered to oppose the rich elites” (Ansari, 2007, Op. cit., p. 28). Also, one can find ‘some’ level of misery and marginalization in any election no matter where, but was the situation of Ahmadinejad’s voters “a state of chronic insecurity” (Cohn, p. 58) as Cohn describes? How much misery and marginalization is enough to put one in ‘a state of chronic insecurity’ and persuade him to go for the justice-oriented messianism of Ahmadinejad? Only after scrutiny of the economic situation from 1997-2005 can one answer these questions.

The fact is that Iran’s economy during the Khatami period was suffering from a number of serious structural deficiencies, which, in addition to “a difficult domestic scene” (Clawson, 1998, p. 2), itself an outcome of the “very structure of the country's closed-circuit clerical oligarchy and the 1979 Constitution, [as well as] … some irreconcilable ideological differences within the political leadership” (Amuzegar, 1999, p. 551), gave him a small space and limited options for maneuver. Furthermore, Khatami’s young supporters, who expected him to speed up his reforms, were mostly dissatisfied and restless. His efforts to find a third way out of the stalemate created by the two conflicting solutions; one “the Mussavi administration's wartime economic management”, and the other “Rafsanjani's postwar muddling-through stewardship” (Amuzegar, 1999, Op. cit.), were unsuccessful. Relevant to this were factors such as the continuation of American sanctions, (Clawson, 1998, Op. cit., p. 6), low oil prices, and a huge foreign debt problem (Kanovsky, 1998, p. 54 & pp. 63-65). Needless to say that for an economy in which the oil share is eighty percent, low crude oil prices can create a concerning problem. However, there was a silver lining in the sanction part, because not only did Europe not rally with the US in its Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA), it also remained hostile to them in general; an attitude, which eventually (and in spring 1998) made the United States change its policy that had been in place since October 1997 (Clawson, 1998, Op. cit., pp. 5-6). In addition, in 2000, Bill Clinton reduced sanctions on items such as pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, caviar and Persian rugs. However, and in spite of the abovementioned factors, Khatami’s economic workbook ended up being defendable (Ḥātamī, 1400, Tāj Dīn, 2021).

Things changed dramatically when in delivering his State of the Union message on 29 January 2002, less than five months after September 11, 2001, and more than a year before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush “branded three countries — North Korea, Iran and Iraq — as rogue states that he said harbored, financed and aided terrorists” (Glass, 2019).[33] Using the term “Axis of Evil” for Iran, when Iran and America, delegated by Ryan Crocker, were cooperating on the exchange of intelligence on Al-Qaida via their frequent meetings in Geneva, had negative consequences for Iran. It not only stopped Iranians from having any cooperation with America as such, but also resulted in the weakening of Khatami and his Reformists supporters, as well as in the radicalization of politics in Iran. Many scholars consider the rise to power of the hardliners and the presidency of Ahmadinejad, with his messianic political discourse as a tool to mobilize and instigate, were an immediate reaction to Bush’s Axis of Evil (Ansari, Op. cit., p. 26 & Wastnidge, 2016, p. 19).

Was his justice-oriented messianism rather a bonus back to Ḥojjatīyeh, who saw in him a historical moment to be at the highest level of policy making in Iran; a chance that had been taken from them by Khomeini? Maybe, but whatever the reason, his victory was far from being a natural outcome of the grass-root and genuine religious dissent of ‘the oppressed poor’, and rather a result of an engineered electoral process, albeit partly, in which voting was manipulated. In the same way, his loud, yet hollow propaganda about Rafsanjani’s so-called aristocracy as the main cause behind the bad economic situation, made everyone suspicious about whether he was truthful in his battle for the poor and the marginalized. For him, this aristocracy, which was harassing the country like an incubus, was real, because it had not only stopped Iran from being a more egalitarian country when Rafsanjani was president, but also its continuation in the possible government of his main rival in his second presidential race, Mīr Ḥossein Mūsavī,[34] was equally worrisome. To tackle this, Ahmadinejad’s justice-oriented and Robin Hood-styled government launched a radical economic program, consisting of seven sections, chief among them the controversial policy of subsidy, aiming to redistribute the national income in a more egalitarian way. People were asked to find their remedy in the Targeted Subsidy Plan, which was described by Ahmadinejad as the “biggest surgery” to the economy in half a century, and one of the most important undertakings in Iran's recent economic history (2010).[35] The program was passed by the Parliament in 2010, and had the full support of Khamenei.

An evaluation of the impact of this plan on Iran’s economy and politics falls beyond the scope of this paper.[36] However, today and after more than a decade we know that this program eventually ended up in deepening inequality and redistribution of poverty instead of redistribution of wealth. So was its long-lasting mark on the structure of power in Iran, in the sense that after involving the armed forces (both regular and irregular), particularly IRGC, in the economy and subsequently politics, Iran’s political and economic landscape changed indefinitely. Furthermore, it was an anti-constitutional endeavor. Ahmadinejad, who had come with his Hidden Imam magic wand to solve the problems of injustice and accumulation of power and money in the hands of a few, left the office while his country was at her worst after the Iran-Iraq war. In his final years Iran looked like an apocalyptic milieu, where ‘uncertainty’ was the most salient characteristic of all aspects of life. A combination of mismanagement, structural corruption, and the steady militarization of life through destructive interventions of the IRGC and Basīj on one hand, and severe international sanctions, which were called “ripped papers”[37] by him on the other, had created a situation where everyone was anxiously wondering what would come next. The question of “what will happen tomorrow” is apocalyptic in nature, when only ‘a state of chronic insecurity’ makes sense.

Therefore, it was not ‘a state of chronic insecurity’ of the poor and of the oppressed that had made him president with the Hidden Imam at the center of his discourse. On the other hand, a combination of numerous economic mistakes, as well as his “politics of confrontation” (Ansari, 2007, Op. cit., passim) eventually created such an insecure atmosphere that it pushed the country to the verge of disorder and deterioration.[38] Many people have come and gone, but none of them so far has been able to remove the inflationary effects of his wrong policies. The government of his successor Hasan Rowhani, was for years famously occupied with “rubble removing” (āvār bardārī) from what Ahmadinejad had left behind as his legacy for him. Pertinent to this is “the scorched earth”, as another description of post-Ahmadinejad Iran by his critics.[39] Muḥammad Ṭāhirī, the editor-in-chief of the weekly Tejārat-e fardā (lit. Tomorrow’s Business) explains how Ahmadinejad should be accountable for wasting billions of dollars of oil income on projects that were mostly commissioned by the IRGC and other parts of the armed forces; a trend that exacerbated the problem of nepotism and structural imbalances of the economy. It has also led to corruption and the loss of financial resources due to a lack of check and supervision mechanisms.[40] Ahmadinejad’s fantasy about Rafsanjani’s aristocracy was also a strident hoot, coming out of the mouth of a charlatan-anarchist disguised as president, whose maneuvers on domestic and international cleavages to win at any cost backfired in generating the politics of disorder.

 

Meṣbāḥ, Ahmadinejad and the Ḥojjatīyeh Society

What was the intellectual background of Ahmadinejad’s obsession with the Mahdi? Ronen A. Cohen suggests that he and his mentor, the above-mentioned Meṣbāḥ, must previously have been members of the Ḥojjatīyeh (Cohen, 2013, pp. 124, 126, 142). Given their anti-Bahāʿī and anti-Semitic inclinations on one hand, and the widespread infiltration of Ḥojjatīyeh members and sympathizers in all corners of the post-revolutionary political system on the other, this observation should be taken into consideration. However, in terms of other factors, including their socio-economic backgrounds, as well as their messianic tendencies, they were different. The Ḥojjatīyeh was “officially “apolitical” and even “antirevolutionary”; a tendency that made it “bent on preserving the status quo” (Ibid., p. 75) rather than joining Khomeini’s political ambitions, for instance. Ḥojjatīyeh not only never opposed the Shah, but also as an organization, which was shaped by the green light of the system, was well-connected within the administration; an advantage that makes Cohen believe that “they had the SAVAK’s favor” (Ibid., p. 76).

Relevant to this is the Society’s opposition to any messianic tendencies, which eventually turned them against the Bahāʿīs and later against Khomeini’s messianic ambitions (Ibid., p. 72), and regarding this, the rhetoric of Ahmadinejad and his propaganda for the imminent return of the Imam must have had a backlash among the members of the Society.[41] However, the Society continued to enjoy its presence in different bodies of government despite Khomeini’s disapproval. ʿAlī Akbar Muḥtashamī Pūr, Khatami’s minister of interior and a member of Majmaʿ-e rowḥānīyūn-e mobārez (Association of Combatant Clerics) narrates a conversation between Ḥalabī and Khomeini after the revolution, according to which the former asked the latter to facilitate the recruitment of the Society’s cadres under the new regime, arguing that the well-educated members of the Society, consisting of some fifteen to sixteen-thousand engineers, doctors, and specialists in different areas, could assist Khomeini in building his new system. The offer fell on the deaf ear of Khomeini, because he believed that “those who made the revolution happen, are able to govern too, and therefore there is no need for your cadres” (1394).[42] Despite Khomeini’s unfriendly gesture, as we observed earlier, many Ḥojjatīyeh members infiltrated into the system. Also, this considerable number of educated people in one organization indicates a trait, i.e., the importance of modern education in the Society, as opposed to the anti-intellectualism of Ahmadinejad. Proof of this is his decision to close the Planning and Budget Organization only one year after he took office, or to walk the universities through another phase of cultural revolution, to name two.

Another difference between the Ḥojjatīyeh and Ahmadinejad was their different social bases. The Ḥojjatīyeh constructed its social grounding on rich and well-connected people of the bazaar, and since its original founders and supporters had a bāzārī background with tight connections to rich and influential ayatollahs, they “supported the free market system and were against the radical policies of the Islamic government who wanted to nationalize trade and industry and the distribution of land” (Cohen, 2013, Op. cit., p. 105 ff). On the other hand, for Ahmadinejad, who was known as “a man of the people”, the traditional middle class of the bazaar or the hierocracy of Qom were too much of a luxury and stability.[43] He was more comfortable with the excesses; fiery rhetoric, extraordinary spending, macro-thieveries such as missing an oil rig (to name just one), the routinized yet disrespectful back and forth verbal interactions in the cabinet meetings and/or in public with journalists, and so forth. Therefore, for such a mindset, the passive cult of the Hidden Imam of the Ḥojjatīyeh Society looked conservative.

All in all, even if one does not agree with Cohen about their previous membership of the Ḥojjatīyeh, Meṣbāḥ shows more closeness to the Society’s worldview than Ahmadinejad. Both were apolitical, and both valued and invested in modern education; no matter how hypocritical they were in their outlook. Meṣbāḥ was behind the establishment of a number of cultural and educational institutes too. Educational and research centers including, Dar rāh-e ḥaqq (On the Right Path), a cultural charity called Bāqir ul-ʿulūm, which was established to further promote Dar rāh-e ḥaqq’s activities, and Imam Khomeini Institute of Education and Research, which has trained many students, are among the notable ones. Obviously, for traditionalists such as Ḥojjatīyeh and Meṣbāḥ, modern universities were but tools through which the message of Islam was to be propagated; an outlook that can be summarized as ‘physics without metaphysics’.

As for Meṣbāḥ’s disciples in Jebheye pāydārīy-e enqelāb-e eslāmī, he is far from being affiliated to a society like Ḥojjatīyeh with its passive messianism and quietist approach to politics, because his credentials attest to his active engagement with political and cultural activities, including his firm belief in the necessity of the establishment of an Islamic government. Therefore, the general tendency of the Front is to deny their master’s relationship with the Society.[44] Meṣbāḥ looms large in the Front that was founded in 1390/2011 as a reaction to Ahmadinejad’s polarizing policies, which had resented many within the Principalist block and pushed them to leave. In the same way, Mashā’ī’s ‘provocative’ gestures, particularly Maktab-e Īrānī, were labeled liberal and Westoxicated by the hardliners. Eventually, a number of Ahmadinejad’s men in his first government, including the abovementioned Ṣādeq Maḥṣūlī, allied with a few students of Meṣbāḥ Yazdī, as well as with a number of members of parliament and established the Front of Islamic Revolution Stability.

How can one locate the Front in its nexus to the past, that is, to its like-minded predecessors, including the Alliance, who helped Ahmadinejad to take office? First and foremost, although the members refused to ally with the Principalist block in the ninth parliamentary election, and went for a brand new uṣūlgerā political organization, they come from the same intellectual background. Second, one can see the continuity of the right wing Weltanschauung in the Front, albeit with a more uncompromising and revolutionary tone. We are asked to believe that it was the continuation of the mission of the 1979 revolution and the teachings of Khomeini that prompted the Front to be formed, i.e., to purge politics from any impurity, including Jaryān-e fetneh (the Sedition Movement, indicating the protest movement which was shaped against the fraudulent election of 1388/2009 and the formation of the Green Movement), and Jaryān-e enḥerāf, referring to Mashā’ī and his Maktab-e Īrānī. From this perspective, the Front is an inheritor of the legacy of Khomeini; however, it is exactly where the Front diverges from the conventional uṣūlgerā block, because it took the right-wing politics to its limits, i.e., to the agenda of khāleṣ sāzī (lit. purification).

 

              Conclusion

              In a conversation back in 1390/2011, I was asked by my interlocutor to express my opinion about Ahmadinejad, when amidst one of his numerous rifts with Khamenei he had refrained from going to work and ended up being in his eleventh-day of tantrum at home. The rift had started over Ahmadinejad’s acceptance of the resignation of Ḥeydar Moṣleḥī, the then minister of intelligence, and Khamenei’s insistence on Moṣleḥī’s presence in the cabinet; of course Khamenei won. I was shocked by this question, because I was sure that they knew my political interests,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   so why then did he ask? After I replied, my interrogator’s comment on my answer was clear enough: “someone was given power and responsibility [by the system], but abused it. Ḥaḍrat Ᾱghā (the honorary title they used to use to address Khamenei) puts up with him until he leaves the office”. Obviously, he did not mean to check whether I was pro-Ahmadinejad or not, because he already knew the answer, but to clarify that Ahmadinejad has lost the system’s approval, even though he had been chosen by it before. This is Khamenei, closed-off and defensive whenever one of his trustees, including Ahmadinejad, who had his full support at the beginning, no longer has his confidence. But why had he lost his entitlement to enjoy the full support as in the past? Either he had shown independence by refusing to be Khamenei’s tadārokātchī (lit. procurement officer), or his grave mistakes had damaged the system’s reputation, which is a red line in Iran. When the time came, neither his Hidden Imam’s magic wand, nor his extravaganza theaters of money-distribution to his blind followers saved him from falling from Khamenei’s grace.

              His messianic philosophy shaped Iranian politics domestically, regionally and internationally, and created unnecessary rifts both at home and abroad. It also activated the traditionalism of the Front of Islamic Revolution Stability as a new right-wing (no uṣūlgerā) political organization, with dangerous agendas such as purification, revitalizing the ummah-style politics in a country famous for its nationalism, and a revolutionary foreign policy. Ahmadinejad had obviously opened Pandora’s box, because not only hardline organizations such as the Front were formed out of these rifts, but also Iranian politics was witness to the banality of the most regressive rhetoric and actions. Concomitant with the emergence of the threat of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, terms such as Shīʿa ISIS, referring to thousands of zealot Shīʿī wanderers, who were traveling across the borders of Iran, Iraq and Syria, were a going trend. Reminiscent of Cohn’s “anarcho-communistic order” (Cohn, 2004, p. 216) of medieval Europe, these landless members of the ummah were striving to build their utopia in a land stretching from Iran to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Regardless of how Maktab-e Īrānī’s concept of Iran-ness was contrary to this ummah-type of utopia, a combination of Ahmadinejad’s non-stop messianic rhetoric and regional developments prepared the ground for the emergence of these warriors/anarchists.

              The author prefers to wrap up this paper by narrating another memory from (more or less) the same time; when one of my friends with a Kārgozārān affiliation was complaining about his Reformist counterparts as being the only responsible force behind the presidency of Ahmadinejad: “these guys [Khatami supporters] took the government from Mr. Rafsanjani (whom he obviously had admiration for), and handed it over to Ahmadinejad, and had it not been for us in Kārgozārān Party to save Khatami in his second term, the hardliners would have kicked him out even before he was able to finish his tenure”. Should the Reformists be held accountable for such a failure? There is no doubt that Khatami and his team lacked any governance skills and proficiencies (which of the post-revolutionary governments had, by the way?), but blaming them for Ahmadinejad’s success is injustice. A number of domestic and international factors came together and facilitated his victory, and anyone, even with a basic knowledge about the structure and the mechanisms of power in Iran knows that the Islamists, i.e., Khomeini’s disciples, will not lose their grip on power easily. Ahmadinejad was the choice of the uṣūlgerā block to remove Rafsanjani’s and Khatami’s supporters from the scene, and as soon as he fulfilled his mission, he had to step aside and watch another triumph. In addition to what the system wanted, his mistakes brought about such disorder and chaos to the point that even every minute of his presence in Pasteur Street would damage the country irreparably.

                 

Bibliography

-        Amanat, Abbas, Resurrection and Renewal: the Making of the Babi Movement in Iran, 1844-1850, 1989, Cornell University Press.

-        Amuzegar, Jahangir, Khatami and the Iranian Economy at Mid-Term, Middle East Journal, Autumn, 1999, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Autumn, 1999), pp. 534-552, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4329389 

-        Ansari, Ali M., Iran Under Ahmadinejad: the politics of confrontation, 2007, Adelphi Paper.

-        Clawson, Patrick L., The Khatami Paradox, in Iran Under Khatami: A Political, Economic, and Military Assessment, Patrick L. Clawson [et al.], 1998, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, pp. 1-12.

-        Cohn, Norman, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millennarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, 2004, Pimlico.

-        Cohen, Ronen A., The Hojjatiyeh Society in Iran; Ideology and Practice from the 1950s to the Present, 2013.

-        Corbin, Henry, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth: From Mazdean Iran to Shī’te Iran, translated by Nancy Pearson, 2nd edition 1989, Princeton University Press.

-        Ghajar, Ᾱydā, Mahmud Ahmadinejad dar haft pardeh (The Seven Shades of Mahmud Ahmadinejad), 1396/2017, https://www.bbc.com/persian/iran-features-39583028 

-        Ghofrani, Shayesteh, Walāya in the Formative Period of Shi’ism and Sufism: A Comparative Analysis, 2023, Routledge.

-        Glass, Andrew, President Bush Cites ‘Axis of Evil,’ Jan. 29, 2002, 01/29/2019 https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/29/bush-axis-of-evil-2002-1127725 

-        Ḥātamī, Muḥammad Mahdī, Kārnāmey-e eqteṣādīy-e yek dowlat-e sīyāsī/ Kārnāmey-e eqteṣādīy-e eṣlāḥāt qābele defāʿ ast? (The Economic Workbook of a Political Government/Is the Economic Workbook of the Reformist Government Defendable?), 1400, https://tejaratnews.com/training/%DA%A9%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%86%D8%A7%D9%85%D9%87-%D8%A7%D9%82%D8%AA%D8%B5%D8%A7%D8%AF%DB%8C-%D8%AF%D9%88%D9%84%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D8%B5%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AD%D8%A7%D8%AA 

-        Majlesī, Muḥammad Bāqir, Beḥār ul-anwār (Oceans of Lights), Volume 13th, translated by ʿAlī Dawānī, 27th edition, 1375, Dār ul-kutub ul-eslāmīyeh.

-        Kanovsky, Eliyahu, Iran’s Sick Economy: Prospects for Change under Khatami, in Iran Under Khatami: A Political, Economic, and Military Assessment, Patrick L. Clawson [et al.], 1998, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, pp. 53-70.

-        Sachedina, Abdulaziz Abdulhussein, Islamic Messianism: The Idea of the Mahdi in Twelver Shi’ism, 1981, State University of New York Press. 

-        Sedgwick, Mark, Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century, 2004, Oxford University Press.

-        Tāj Dīn, Behrang, Chahār raʾīs jomhūrī, panj nemūdār; Rafsanjani, Khatami, Ahmadinejad, wa Rowḥānī bā eqteṣād-e Iran che kardand? (Four Presidents, Five Diagrams; What Did Rafsanjani, Khatami, Ahmadinejad, and Rowhani do to Iranian Economy?), 2021, https://www.bbc.com/persian/business-58094048 

-        Wastnidge, Edward, Diplomacy and Reform in Iran: Foreign Policy under Khatami, 2016, I. B. Tauris &Co. Ltd. 

 

 

Websites


[1] - For a scholarly analysis of Kitāb Sulaym and its importance in Shīʿīsm, see:

Shayesteh Ghofrani, Walāya in the Formative Period of Shi’ism and Sufism: A Comparative Analysis, 2023, Routledge.

 

[2] - Henry Corbin and Muhammad Ali Amir Moezzi have discussed the issue at length. For more information, see:

Henry Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth: From Mazdean Iran to Shī’te Iran, translated by Nancy Pearson, 2nd edition 1989, Princeton University Press.

[3] - For instance, a narrative from the sixth Imam, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 765) states that:

إِنَّ الْقَائِمَ مِنَ الْمِيعَادِ وَ اللَّهُ لا يُخْلِفُ الْمِيعادَ. 

[4] - For primal wisdom or Perennial Philosophy in anti-modern traditions see:

Mark Sedgwick, Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century, 2004, Oxford University Press, p. 205.

&

[11] - In theory, Imam appears in Mecca, while turned his back to the wall of the Kaaba, but in Ahmadinejad’s discourse, his first location would be Jamkarān Mosque in southern Tehran.  

[13] - Expectation and faith (enteẓār wa īmān), as the two key words in the terminology of messianism.

[14] - He never explains what “full appearance” (vs. possibly incomplete appearance) is though.

[15] - Italic is mine.

[18] - The abovementioned Majlesī in Beḥār ul-anwār (Oceans of Lights) (1375, passim) brings countless narratives about the historical/real and non-historical genre of the ẓuhūr, and other related issues, including malāḥem wa fetan (epics and seditions) of the apocalypse.

[19] - Italic is mine.

[24] - For more information see this:

The main characteristic of his rhetoric was its contradictions; contradictions that were indicative of his personality, which most of the time made one to doubt his sanity and hence his eligibility to take the role of a president. For instance, while he was supporting friendship with the people of Israel, or holding the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust on 11 December 2006 in Tehran, he was denying the Holocaust, or throwing stones at Israel in his trip to Lebanon in 1389/2010. For more information, see:

[28] - 19 May 2013.

[30] - The choice of 1844 for him, who was later knows as the Bāb was deliberate, as it corresponded with the year 1260 ḥejrī and the one thousandth anniversary of the birth of the Hidden Imam, who was born in 260 ḥejrī. The active messianism of the Bābī movement stands against the messianism of the Sheykhī school, which remained passive and intact throughout its life.

[31] - Or Dowlat-e bahār, which was the way Ahmadinejad and his team used to call his government. 

[32] - In the form of the established political system.

[36] - For an analysis of the policy of subsidy, see: Ansari, 2007, Op. Cit., pp. 79-90.

[38] - For a decent evaluation of his economic policies see:

Ansari, 2007, Op. cit., pp. 83 ff.

[41] - The author remembers a conversation with one of the affiliates of the Ḥujjatīyah, and a Ph.D. graduate in Islamic theology from Tehran University back in 2010. I was told that he “had forced himself into one of the meetings (traditionally called ḥalqah, lit. circle) of Ahmadinejad with his close friends in order to identify Ahmadinejad with the aforementioned Shuʿayb ibn Ṣāliḥ”. However, since the former’s physical characteristics did not match Shuʿayb, he had left the meeting. The fact that he was able to meet Ahmadinejad in one of his private meetings is indicative of the Ḥujjatīyah’s influence, as well as its capability to infiltrate into a president’s circle.

 
 
 

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