The Reform Movement: Background and Vulnerability

Abbas Abdi is a political analyst and a founder member of the Participation Front, the leading reformist party in Iran.

Iran’s reform movement has both strong and weak points, some of which are intrinsic to the nature of the movement itself. A comprehensive and scientific understanding of the first four years of the reform movement would require an analysis of these strengths and weaknesses. Although some lie within the nature of the movement, certain of the weaknesses were not inevitable and could have been avoided. Hence, any guideline proposing to improve the effectiveness of the movement without highlighting the realities governing it would be inaccurate and subjective and would consequently have to be rejected.

 

This paper attempts to analyse the social and historical basis of the reform movement while stressing its weak points and vulnerabilities, thus assisting a realistic and fair assessment of the movement.

The Movement’s Significance

It is crucial to grasp the real meaning of the reform movement that became manifest in the presidential elections of May 1997. The significance of the elections was that the results were utterly different from what the Iranian state had anticipated; in other words, the elections became the expression of the people’s will and demands against what sections of the state power structure wanted. The situation prior to the elections was that the general public will was entirely different from what the state was pursuing. The elections thus largely ended the split between nation and state and to a certain extent democratised a politics which was previously undemocratic.

 

The most significant difference between the two groups, i.e., the advocates of reform and the state, lies in the foundations of the legitimacy of Iran’s political regime.

 

The state worked hard over the years to establish for itself divine legitimacy, ruling out a role for the people’s agreement or disagreement. The logical culmination of this stance was that the leadership had no responsibility to the people, being accountable only to god—a god, moreover, whose meaning in practical terms was defined by the state. Within this ideological framework, the duty of the state was to lead and guide the people towards heaven, preventing them from becoming god’s lost children. Such a belief placed the Supreme Leader above the law; the law would be diminished by the Supreme Leader’s will. The president at best was the Supreme Leader’s executive deputy, and parliament would be reduced to a consultancy role. All statespersons would first and foremost have to declare their commitment and obligation to the Supreme Leader. This would be the only criterion for distinguishing right from wrong, justice from cruelty, etc. In other words, the yardstick for drawing the line between justice and cruelty, merit and demerit, right and wrong, would rest in the hands of the Supreme Leader, who was naturally above all criticism.

 

The reformers took an opposing view on all of the above issues. Despite their commitment to Islam and the 1979 revolution, they enjoyed the support of a huge proportion of the people because of their alternative stance. They rejected the notion of divine legitimacy on the grounds of objectivity, or considered it impractical, to say the least. They regarded the people’s will and support as the foundations of state legitimacy, and accordingly considered the entire power structure, including the Supreme Leadership, as one derived from and accountable to the nation.

 

The reformers recognise no right to prevent and limit the people’s choice when it comes to presidential or parliamentary elections. They view state institutions such as parliament and the administration as being above all composed of individuals, among whom is the Supreme Leader himself. No single person can be the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong, justice and cruelty, etc. On the contrary, the deeds of all individuals, including the Supreme Leader, are to be assessed by these criteria; no one is above criticism. The securing of minimum legal and legitimate freedoms is necessary to realise these objectives. On this view, the duty of the state is not to guide people but to implement their demands. Almost all the challenges in President Mohammad Khatami’s first four-year term have in one or way or another been related to the above issues.

 

Another aspect of the reform movement was its emphasis on peaceful, non-violent means to pursue and realise the above-mentioned objectives. This meant that with respect to Iran’s status quo, any attempt to bring about change must come from within the regime; consequently, the reform movement had its roots within Iran’s political regime. The reform movement also endeavoured to open up new political horizons in Iranian society by accepting the principle of maximum participation and minimum cost in terms of social conflict and repression.

The Roots of the Movement

Khatami’s landslide victory in the 1997 presidential elections was due to various reasons, all of which must be noted if a thorough understanding of what happened is to be obtained. Political, cultural, economic and international developments combined to produce this victory.

Social Background

Broad changes had occurred in Iran over the first two decades after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. These changes can be observed in the size and composition of the population, its concentration in urban areas, social indicators such as educational levels, and in popular behaviour patterns, including social abnormalities. Changes to do with gender are also noteworthy.

 

Following the revolution, various factors caused a significant rise in the Iranian population. In a matter of twenty years, between 1976 and 1996, the population nearly doubled, rising from 33.7 million to 60 million. The rate of growth was 3.91 per cent in the first decade, dropping to 1.47 per cent in the second half of the second decade. The population is predominantly youthful. The number of people aged between fifteen and twenty-four almost doubled in these two decades; two-thirds of Iranians are aged under thirty.

 

In the same period, Iran’s urban population grew from 15.9 million to 36.8 million, or from 47.2 per cent of the overall population to 61.3 per cent, a growth of 132.2 per cent in twenty years. While the average population growth of the country as a whole was 2.9 per cent per annum, the average urban population growth was 4.3 per cent. In 1976, only one city had a population of more than a million and there were fourteen cities with populations of between 250,000 and half a million. In 1996, however, there were five cities with populations of over a million, four cities with populations of between half a million and a million, and fourteen cities with populations of between 250,000 and half a million.

 

Educational levels had improved dramatically: the literacy rate rose from 47.5 per cent in 1976 to 79.5 per cent in 1996. This ratio was particularly significant among women and those in rural areas: the 35.5 per cent women’s literacy rate had become 74.2 per cent after twenty years, and the figures for those in rural areas during the same period were 30.5 per cent and 69.3 per cent, an increase of 130 per cent.

 

The number of university students in Iran also rose, from approximately 150,000 to 1.22 million. The results are clearer when set against the illiteracy rates (see Table 1).

 

TABLE 1

 

It can be seen that the ratio of illiterate people to degree holders is twelve times smaller in 1996 than it was in 1976, and that there has been a general equalising of the educational status of Iranians.

 

Another remarkable development is the rapid social advancement of women, which is particularly evident in education. In recent years, the number of women admitted to university is 4 per cent higher than that of men. Furthermore, contrary to the image of women’s social participation following the revolution, the grounds have been set for a more extended dynamism and mobilisation among women. To this end, women have raised a huge range of legal, political and social demands.

 

Another notable development concerns socially deviant behaviour in the sense that Iran’s prison population has grown remarkably, putting the country second after the United States in this regard. One out of a hundred Iranians experiences detention every year and one out of 375 is in prison at any given time. This rise in deviant behaviour is partly the result of new offences being recognised that were not previously considered criminal. But it is also caused by economic problems and identity crises that earlier definitely did not exist to the same extent.

Cultural Background

Several cultural developments are significant in the genesis of the reform movement. One is the change in thought and ideology whereby, a decade after the revolution, the notion of struggling against and eliminating the opposition was gradually replaced by that of co-operation and integration. A number of the elite, both those supporting and opposed to the state, reached the conclusion that it was impermissible to undermine or attempt to eliminate the other side. Both sides reconsidered their previous dogmatism and were eventually prepared to recognise each other’s existence. Most ideological elites also arrived at a common analysis of Iran’s major problem and the way to overcome it, seeing the chief obstacle in the path of development as being the power structure’s independence of the people. The power structure has relied upon oil revenues ever since the industry emerged in Iran and thus feels no sense of dependence on the people. Accordingly, it is not accountable to them and has prevented the unity and coherence of the different layers of society.

 

These cultural shifts gave rise to a more accurate conception of citizenship, the rule of law, and civil institutions. In effect, it was in the years after the Iran–Iraq War that these concepts and terms were first employed in Iran’s political discourse without the misconceptions that had previously marked them.

 

Another significant cultural development is acceptance of the principle that the understanding and interpretation of religion are relative matters, not absolute. In other words, there has been a trend emphasising that one’s reading of religion should not be confused with the religion itself, that this understanding may differ in different contexts and circumstances, and that different people may have disparate interpretations of religion in the same circumstances, with no interpretation being essentially privileged. In short, the discourse of reform, which is synonymous with accepting the real meaning of reform, was born in this period.

 

Yet another cultural development was the establishment of certain independent periodicals since 1989. Following the end of the Iran–Iraq War in 1988 and subsequent political developments, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, headed by Mohammad Khatami, changed its policies on the freedom of the press. These changes were highly significant: the number of all periodicals that received a licence between the revolution and March 1989 was 112, whereas between 1989 and 1992, when Khatami resigned his ministerial post, 437 publications were licensed. Although fewer licences were issued after he left office, his conservative successors did not succeed in halting the trend and over one hundred periodicals were licensed per annum.

 

The publication of so many periodicals, which were generally non-governmental and belonged to the private sector, created room for social and political groups to re-emerge and connect with each other, and thus to influence the state. Even the periodicals established in this period that were dependent on the state sector had an entirely different character and function from traditional ones. The Salaam daily was the symbol of relative freedom in this period, playing a special role in the creation and triumph of the reform movement.

Economic Background

With the end of the war in 1988, and during Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s first presidential term (1989–93), a new economic discourse emerged. Asceticism was no longer a virtue. Wealth and its pursuit, frowned upon during the war, were gradually encouraged. There were strong efforts to reconstruct and develop the economy, and this approach was immediately welcomed by the people because a decade of war, recession and inflation had caused severe economic hardship. Although the Iranian population had increased 50 per cent in the first ten years after the revolution, GNP indicators had fallen from 100 to 90—a 60 per cent drop in income per family.

 

Another economic development was the trend towards privatisation. This was very slow and was accompanied by immense corruption, but it did produce some mobility in the private sector. Civil institutions consequently received a degree of encouragement.

 

The economic changes that took place between 1989 and 1997 were focused on the growth of GNP. These changes primarily resulted from the utilisation of capacities neglected during the war, the increase in oil prices and the accumulation of large debts. However, people’s hopes of a better economic future were dashed by high inflation, of a level not experienced even during the days of the war, by administrative and economic corruption, by Iran’s failure to meet debt repayment deadlines, and by a fall in oil prices. In 1994, the economic liberalisation policies were completely reversed, wiping out all the previous achievements.

Political Background

The political background against which the reform movement emerged is highly significant. Primarily, the death of Imam Khomeini created a gap in overall political legitimacy in Iran, since from the early days of the revolution he had enjoyed three kinds of legitimacy: charismatic legitimacy in his leadership of the revolution, traditional legitimacy in his being a supreme Shi’ite cleric, and legal legitimacy in his general acceptance by the people and popular support. Once he was succeeded by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the first two forms of legitimacy were gradually put aside. Naturally, the state should have focused on restructuring and strengthening the remaining legal legitimacy. In practice, however, the reverse policy was adopted: there were attempts to endow the new leadership with charismatic legitimacy, and strategies were pursued to establish Khamenei as one of the few supreme Shi’ite clerics. Crucially, the leadership’s legal legitimacy was not strengthened. In fact, it faded, especially through Rafsanjani’s coming into office and consequent removal of left wingers from administrative positions and their disqualification in huge numbers from participating in the fourth and fifth parliamentary elections (1992 and 1996). All this led to a further diminution of the state’s legal legitimacy.

 

The effect of these policies was a split between nation and state as of 1989 because of the fragility of the foundations of legitimacy: charismatic and traditional legitimacies were beyond repair, and legal legitimacy had eroded. By 1997, the state was confronted with a serious lack of legitimacy which could not be overcome except through a restructuring of its legal legitimacy and the holding of extensive elections.

 

Crucial in the genesis of the legitimacy crisis was the post-Khomeini exclusion of the left from political life during the first Rafsanjani presidency. Leftists were first expelled from the judiciary, leaving it in the hands of conservative clerics, and were then squeezed out of other branches of the state. Later on, a climate was created in which a major portion of the left did not participate in the elections for the Assembly of Experts (which appoints the Supreme Leader and monitors his performance). Ultimately, leftist deputies who formed the majority in the third parliament (1988–92) were disqualified from standing for the fourth parliament. The conservatives were thus able to seize the legislature and bring it within their authoritative domain. For the first time, a major sector of the political class was excluded from government and participation in the affairs of the state.

 

Excluding the left gave this “discarded” sector the chance freely to undertake a scientific analysis of all that had happened since the revolution. To this end, many leftists gathered in the Centre for Strategic Research in the President’s Office, while others went to university to complete postgraduate studies, particularly in the political and social sciences. Yet others began working in the press, the most influential and important newspaper being the Salaam daily. Also influential in creating the reform movement were the Assreh Ma weekly and the Kiyan monthly.

 

When Khatami resigned as culture minister in 1992, rather than face a vote of no confidence in the new, conservative-dominated parliament, the ring of those excluded from the state was complete. A number of reformist figures, including Khatami, established a circle to enrich and lead the existing cultural–ideological movement. They eventually created a political party and published a magazine called Ayeen, with Khatami as editor. Amid all this, the possibility that Khatami might run for president was raised.

 

The conservatives, for their part, were suffering splits in their ranks. Rafsanjani won a second presidential term in 1993, but his share of the vote fell dramatically. This encouraged extremist conservatives to push for hegemony in the power structure. In the parliamentary elections of 1996 they tried to eliminate all those who were not in their camp and pave the way for their absolute hegemony in all the country’s bodies. Consequently, there was a deep split between traditional conservatives and Rafsanjani’s supporters, a split which became vividly manifest in the 1997 presidential elections.

 

One of the most important developments in the political sphere was the inclination of extremist sectors of the state to resolve their problems by violence and other illegal measures, as evidenced in the conduct of the Ministry of Intelligence. The ministry took advantage of its specific circumstances to carry out numerous illegal and inhumane acts in Iran’s political and economic life. Although at the time many were aware of the ministry’s cruel and criminal behaviour, they were unable to talk about it openly. Some of these measures were disclosed after the 1997 elections but even in that period they had an impact on domestic and international politics.

International Background

The disintegration of the Soviet Union, developments in the global economy, the advance of liberalism in world politics, the replacement of totalitarian and despotic regimes by relatively democratic ones, and the communications revolution produced by satellite and the Internet, all led to certain changes in Iran that obliged the left to modify its own economic and international policies. There was a further convergence within the left on what reforms were needed and how to implement them.

 

Despite these changes, Iran was continually in conflict with the outside world and had not improved relations with the United States, Europe and the southern states of the Persian Gulf, largely because of a continuation of past policies. The conditions giving rise to those policies had long disappeared, but the policies lingered on, with unpleasant consequences for Iran, one of them being the summoning of European ambassadors from Tehran after a German court ruling in 1997 which implicated a number of Iranian leaders in the shooting of Kurdish dissidents in Berlin.

The Khatami Breakthrough

The aforementioned developments created the conditions for a reform movement in Iran. The only factor that might conceivably have acted against the emergence of such a movement was the rapid growth in the size of the youth population, which could have encouraged emotional and revolutionary currents in political life. But the expansion of the elite reduced and isolated the impact of youth on politics, which became subordinate to the policies and strategies of that elite.

 

Why, then, despite all these changes, was the outcome of the 1997 presidential elections so unpredictable? (This very unpredictability actually permitted the outcome, for if the conservatives had had the slightest intimation of Khatami’s success, they would definitely have prevented his running in the first place.) The major reason for the unpredictability lay in Iran’s closed political climate. This prevented the ruling powers from gaining a clear and true picture of social realities. Even the political opposition was denied an understanding of all that was happening in society. Another factor was the culture of duality in behaviour and thought—a culture itself influenced by the background of despotism in Iran’s history.

 

The conservatives did not countenance the idea of Mir Hossein Mousavi—Iran’s prime minister during the war with Iraq, and a man who enjoyed popular support—standing for president because they knew all too well that he would easily beat his conservative rival, Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri. Yet when Khatami announced that he would stand, they expressed no opposition. His candidacy suited the conservatives because they felt it would alleviate the state’s legitimacy problems. Khatami, they believed, had no chance of winning and would merely boost the size of the vote. The higher turnout would strengthen the democratic legitimacy of their candidate’s victory, in which they implicitly believed. Khatami likewise did not foresee his victory. He had explicitly told his friends that his candidacy was just the beginning of a long road and that he was running only to win a few million votes with a view later to establishing a political party to contest future elections.

 

Hence, the election result was the outcome of errors in calculation by both sides; neither, naturally, was prepared for the consequences.

 

The conservatives were unprepared since they had been working hard to create the necessary pretext to complete their project of hegemony. They had not the slightest inkling that their plans might go down the drain. Following the elections, they took comfort in the belief that the reform movement would come to an end in a matter of six months.

 

In the other camp, the reformers were equally unprepared for the new situation. Their original plan had merely been to enter the ring as a powerful opposition following their anticipated electoral defeat. Now, their man had won.

Weaknesses

Some of the handicaps of the reform movement are due to its specific conditions. The twenty million people who voted for Khatami in 1997 did so primarily as a vote of no-confidence in the other side. This negative aspect to its support was a weak point of the reform movement. It was relying on the support of twenty million non-partisan voters, twenty million voters whose only point in common was above all rejection of the opposing side, and who otherwise agreed only on very general issues. Consequently, making decisions that would guarantee the unity and coherence of this front-like collection of voters was out of the question. To prevent disunity, there was no alternative but to avoid tackling controversial issues. This approach influenced the composition of Khatami’s cabinet and his choice of executive assistants to such a degree that the economic authorities of his administration were individuals holding opposed economic outlooks.

 

Moreover, as president, Khatami himself could not now be a member of any political organisation, whereas originally he and his supporters had planned to establish a political party that they hoped to transform into the opposition. But this did not happen and in effect the leadership and strategy of the reform movement was transferred outside the government. Since no coherent and inclusive political organisation was available, this leadership emerged from within the press and journalists assumed the prime responsibility of leading the reform movement. This is another weakness of the movement; although the press fulfils an important role in determining a society’s orientation, it is to an extent affected by and subordinate to public opinion, occasionally becoming its follower rather than its creator and leader. A good example would be the way the press actively pursued the issue of the 1998 serial killings of four dissidents by “rogue” intelligence agents, and then relapsed into passivity. The rivalry and occasional incoherence of the various newspapers also reduced their effectiveness. Above all, the press was highly vulnerable to the repressive measures of the conservatives, and the reform camp failed to find an alternative to the press to spearhead its cause.

 

The press mobilised and articulated popular demands without paying attention to the need to create the grounds for those demands to be met. The outcome was a deep divide between the activated demands of the public and the practical response to those demands.

 

There were various reasons for the reform camp’s turn towards journalism: newspapers could be set up quickly, they had a rapid output, they could swiftly recruit supporters, etc. All these are some of the advantages of journalism over other activities such as establishing political parties. But these strengths eventually become weaknesses. The demand for licences to set up periodicals rose dramatically after the 1997 presidential elections. In 1997, there were twice as many licence applications as in the previous year. The number of applications in 2000 was 2.5 times higher than in 1997. In the first three years of Khatami’s presidency, 782 licences were issued, while the number stood at 291 between 1994 and 1997. Before the state-ordered closure of several newspapers in May 2000, sixty dailies were published regularly, with a combined circulation of 3.35 million. After the closure of twenty-three reformist periodicals, circulation dropped by 2.3 million to stand at 1.05 million. This clearly demonstrates the vulnerability for a political reform movement of relying merely on the press.

 

In contrast, Iranian political parties have shown a greater capacity to withstand adverse circumstances than the press. Despite the pressures exerted by the conservatives, reformist parties, especially the Islamic Iran Participation Front, were able not only to defend themselves but also to shape the climate of the 2001 presidential campaign through their organisational activities. They also succeeded in reorganising and re-establishing reformist newspapers to the extent that currently, in the early days of Khatami’s second term, the previous absence of the reformist press has been somewhat overcome.

 

The weaknesses of the reform movement became more vivid when rapid decision making was required. For instance, during the student riots in the summer of 1999, Khatami’s slow response to the crisis caused a setback for the reform movement. The conservatives were largely passive at the time, but the reformers’ failure to control the riots allowed the conservatives to exploit the disturbances as a means of suppressing student movements.

 

Another weak point of the reform movement is its failure to expand the circle of Iran’s political governors. Iran’s ruling political class is an increasingly restricted elite. Khatami, as soon as possible, should broaden the number of those entitled to participate in decision making. This has happened to a limited degree, but not one commensurate with social needs. Khatami has unquestionably had the opportunity to do more in this regard, but it must not be overlooked that he himself is a member of the state elite who for a few years was effectively excluded from power when he was obliged to resign as culture minister in 1992. Perhaps one should not expect more than what has been done.

 

One major weakness of the reform movement is its unjustifiable ignorance of economic privatisation and of the need to reduce the role of the state. In his first presidential term, Hashemi Rafsanjani carried out some privatisation, but those efforts were opposed and brought to a standstill because of multiple abuses and a lack of transparency. This negative record probably deterred Khatami from tackling the issue, but continued avoidance will eventually weaken the reform movement since a major obstacle to reform is the indisputable hegemony of the state over various sectors of the economy and the private sector’s extreme and continuous weakness. This can lead to despotism and may further reduce economic efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

 

If the reform movement is to pave the way towards democracy in Iran in the next four years in such a way as to preclude a return to power by the opponents of democracy, it has no alternative but to make priorities of the following policies:

 

1. Minimising the state and encouraging the private sector.

 

2. Promoting civil institutions.

 

3. Widening the circle of the decision-making elite.

 

4. Strengthening the reform movement and increasing Khatami’s role in it.

 

5. Immediate decision-making during times of crisis to prevent passivity and stagnation in the reformist cause.