Thus here I would like to take a moment to explore whether or not there is any plausible future in which a changed Iran might find common ground with the US. My aim here is not to ponder the ways that Iran must change, but to think through the possibilities of how it might change. Is there any reason to believe that Iran and the US could grow toward one-another, given world enough and time?
The first reality one must confront in answering such a question is that the system of theocracy and the institutional leadership of an ayatollah as "Supreme Leader" is not likely to disappear from Iranian politics, even in the long term. The durability of these structures in the face of extraordinary diplomatic, economic, and military pressure shows that they have deep-rooted support in Iranian society that cuts across lines of class, education, region, ethnicity, and gender. This fact engenders the most vehement pessimism among outside observers of Iran. "A theocracy," so goes this line of reasoning, "is hopelessly behind the times. So long as the Iranian people accept the leadership of the mullahs, they can never truly be part of the modern world."
The latter perspective, however, overlooks several important realities. The first of these is the reason for the resilience of theocracy in Iran. Outside observers might be inclined to believe that Iranians follow the mullahs because, as a society, they are more devout or awestruck by religious authority. This might be true for parts of Iranian society (as it is true for some evangelical Christians in American society that would like to see our government become more theocratic), but it does not statistically explain the persistence of the current system in Iran.
On the whole, the mullahs enjoy the broad support they do because of Iranian nationalism, not religious devotion. Pious Muslim farmers and cynically atheistic university students can be counted among the mullahs' supporters (to varying degrees), because all respect the clerical authorities as successful stewards of Iranian independence. The Shah was widely perceived to be an American puppet, and elected politicians like Mohammed Mossadegh had proven vulnerable to the combined machinations of the US and Soviet Union. Ayatollah Khomeini succeeded in establishing Iran as a neutral party in the Cold War, an achievement that few nations as small as Iran had been able to accomplish.
His legates have profited from the lingering credit for that achievement. Moreover, the theocracy is a source of pride among Iranians because it is a system uniquely their own. Because it is built upon the peculiar foundations of the Shi'ite clerical establishment, it distinguishes majority Farsi-speaking Iranians not only from "the West," but from their Arab-speaking neighbors, who (with the exceptions of Bahrain and Iraq) generally adhere to Sunni Islam.
The institutions of the Islamic Republic thus do not mark Iran as any more captive to "superstitious religiosity" than any other nation in the region. A belief in the irredeemable stasis of the Iranian system is more a product of European and American bias, grounded in the prejudices of the Enlightenment, than of empirical fact or observation. The role that the mullahs play in the construction of Iranian national identity is comparable to that of the Queen in Britain or the Emperor in Japan. If the latter countries could evolve to claim a place in the modern world, so can Iran.
How might this occur? By the same process in Iran as occurred in many of the most exemplary democracies of the current era. In both Britain and Japan, for example, democratic (the Parliament and the Diet) and anti-democratic (the royal thrones) institutions shared power in dynamic tension with one-another over decades and centuries. Each of those nations became the "constitutional monarchies" that we see today through a process by which power bled away from the royal throne and toward the legislatures.
A similar process could occur in Iran, transforming it into a "constitutional theocracy." This would require much less system-building than many people might realize. Iran already possesses relatively robust democratic infrastructure. It has an elected parliament and president, both of which have genuine authority and are substantially accountable to the electorate. These offices are presently rigidly constrained and impeded by the arbitrary fiat of the mullahs, but that admixture of power could shift in Iran over time, as it did in Britain and Japan.
Such a shift is more than a hypothetical fantasy. The Green Movement of 2009-10 and the even more violent spasms of civil unrest that have rocked Iran over the last year show that the government of Iran is under constant pressure to further democratize. As unlikely as it is that the mullahs will be overthrown, it is equally unlikely that they will be able to resist pressure to yield power to the democratically elected leadership indefinitely.
Again, some in Europe and America might protest that religious leaders "will never surrender power that they believe comes to them from God." But this again betrays an Enlightenment bias. Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire portrayed "religion" as a uniquely pernicious force because they were preoccupied with their own struggles against the Catholic Church. But to insist that Iran's system is uniquely irredeemable by comparison to that of Britain or Japan is to wildly overstate the difference between an ayatollah and a king or emperor. The Queen is after all, the head of the Church of England, and the Emperor is the Chief Priest of the Shinto faith.
The leaders of Meiji Japan were so sensitive to "modern" contempt for "religious superstition" that they encoded the ludicrous proposition that Shinto was "not a religion" into imperial law, so as to clear the imperial throne of any charges of "theocracy" even as mass participation in Shinto rituals was made compulsory throughout the empire. This did not prevent democratic reform, however. During the Taisho Era Japan saw a burgeoning of democratic political life, in which the imperial throne gradually yielded control to civilian politicians and the elected representatives of the legislative Diet. Writers like Minobe Tatsukichi (1873-1948) envisioned a future of constitutional government for Japan like that I am imagining for Iran, one that bears close resemblance to the democracy operative in Tokyo today.
Some might point to the case of Japan as proof that real democratic reform requires regime change. But this is to (at least in part) overlook the lessons of the Taisho Spring. The rising prosperity and robust international diplomacy (the willingness of the industrial powers to enter into the Kellogg-Brian Pact, for example) of the post-WWI era helped foster democratic reform in Japan. The tide was only turned toward militarism and autocracy by the cataclysm of the Great Depression.
Japan's experience suggests that military pressure and the infliction of economic distress through sanctions will not encourage progressive tendencies in Iran. The forces for democratic reform in Iran obviously exist. For them to prevail, they must be empowered to compete with the forces that would retrench religious authoritarianism. If that were to occur, we could see a shift of power from the "Supreme Leader" and his fellow ayatollahs to the elected legislature and president. The role of the clerical establishment would not disappear, but would become progressively more ceremonial and symbolic (like that of the Queen in England or the Emperor in Japan).
Though violent conflict might play a role in that process, historical example would suggest that violence is not the only or necessary means of such a transition. Rather than continuing to pursue its fruitless decades-long policy of military coercion, diplomatic isolation, and economic deprivation, the US could thus more effectively foster an "Iranian Spring" by being open to commerce and diplomacy with Iran. Such a transition might be long in developing and might never lead to complete trust and amity, but it would assuredly yield profound benefits for the people of Iran, the US, and the entire world.
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