Members of the Iran revolutionary guard declaring allegiance to their state.
Courtesy of Safwat Sayed (2012): https://flic.kr/p/bxZ1DX
Over the course of this article, the factors amounting to the possible role of Iran in the coming years will be considered, with a specific focus being paid to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (Iran’s deal with China, Russia, Germany, France, the United States and the United Kingdom to peacefully develop nuclear energy) and possible consequences amounting from it.
The majority of this work is underpinned by the understanding that for a state to remain dominant within a region, or even consolidate its power domestically, it must rely upon a unity amongst the people, even if this is artificial and stems from fear.
This kind of methodology will hasten the time required for analysis, and falls in line with the author’s perspectives, though please bear in mind that this topic is subject to much academic discussion.
The Iran Nuclear Deal and Recent Tensions
Firstly, to consider the position of Iran internationally today, we must ultimately consider the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA but will henceforth be referred to its informal name: ‘the Iran Nuclear Deal’).This initiative began in 2015 as a means of co-operatively reducing the uranium stockpile of Iran, which is estimated to have been enough to create 8-10 nuclear warheads (though this is unfortunately unable to be confirmed), through the reduction of sanctions that had been placed upon the country.
These measures, described as ‘crippling’ by some, are proposed to have ‘brought the Iranian economy to its knees’, which is what eventually pushed it to work with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) (Rezaei, 2018: 167). As of recently, this deal has been the focus of a great deal of controversy, with former President Donald Trump withdrawing the USA from the initiative, despite vocal Iranian support for maintaining the agreement in place, thus establishing a legal predicament in which the continued production of enriched uranium could take place, much to the anger of some Western states.
This placed the Iranian governance in a unique position, as the withdrawal of the USA was portrayed as a hostile action that threatened the safety of the state, while internationally it was slightly removed from the culpability due to the unilateral nature through which this agreement was broken.
This, of course, led to the continuation of Iranian nuclear development programme, something which the international community largely views as a means of acquiring nuclear weapons, while Iran maintains that it is for the creation of nuclear reactors (basic investigations of the IAEA seem to disprove this explanation). However, until the ascension of Joe Biden to the presidency of the USA, the EU was unable to make headway with Iran at the negotiating table, though not for want of trying.
Iranian protesters burning a Trump plastic figure in protest of the assassination of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi.
Courtesy of Getty images (2018)
National Uproar and State Legitimacy
To compound this already tense environment, it is at this time that the alleged Iranian head of the nuclear programme (please note that this ought not to be misconstrued as deliberate development for nuclear armament) Mohsen Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi was assassinated, seemingly by the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad.This event led to widespread protests across Iran, ultimately drawing the people together in demonstrating against the presumed attempts against national sovereignty of the country, thus facilitating a hostile attitude towards the West (and Israel in particular), legitimising the further development of the nuclear programme.
If one is to adhere to a popular vein of thinking within the broader academic network, we could argue that the utilisation of public unity in the face of controversial events such as these, could ‘[reinforce] revolutionary regimes’. This argument is unfortunately hard to verify, and academics specialised in public persuasion initiatives outline that even when one attempts to measure public support for a state, self-censorship out of fear distorts the data that is collected (Soules, 2015: 64; and Ellul, 1965: 25).
Therefore, one might propose that arguments that the government can utilise public support to legitimise its actions (which, in this case, are military), are somewhat misplaced, as an authoritarian government will always ultimately control the means of dominating discourse and establishing its desired narrative, yet public support is a challenging metric to use to gauge leadership success.
This argument is, therefore, one that lacks a concrete basis through which we might be able to explore the developments within Iran that can contribute to its position internationally, as neither empirical data of public support nor general interviews can be wholly trusted.
Such a concept is thus further problematised by the fact that even if the government were to benefit from the opposition at the murder of Fakhrizadeh, this political benefit is likely to be less useful to the state than had he continued to develop a programme that would have given them greater leverage.
If one examines this in further detail, we also see that Iran, who is fundamentally at odds with the West, is crippled by its sanctions, yet is not so isolated from the world that senior members of government can escape the threat of being targeted by intelligence agencies, thus creating a slight dependency on sanction-establishers to reduce the economic burdens of the people, while also being fundamentally threatened by these same states.
The consequence of this in relation to the Nuclear Deal is that Iran can seemingly only lose, either its people suffer from the sanctions that the government refuses or is unable to compromise on, or the state is humiliated by other nations which creates vast public discontent.
Given that, as the aforementioned academic said, it is a revolutionary state, the people are much more susceptible to wanting change to happen, and any such conflict within the state may threaten the active status quo.
Joe Biden discussing the arrangements for the US to rejoin the JCPOA when he visited Jerusalem on July 14.
Courtesy of Eric Haynes (2022)
The Weakened Ability of State Governance
Not only this, but the problems with being able to assert Iran’s dominance goes beyond academic and empirical inconsistencies: internal strife has recently come to greatly destabilise the means through which the state is able to act.
Firstly, and perhaps most obviously, we see that while Iran has certainly had a history of conflict with its neighbour Iraq, nowadays the tensions between the country and Saudi Arabia have reached a boiling point, with both countries accusing one-another of enabling hostilities in Yemen, something which is undoubtedly accentuated by the various sectarian tensions that have long plagued relations between both countries (van der Heiden & Krijger, 2018).
At present, Iran is undoubtedly the ‘underdog’ when compared to Saudi Arabia, with the latter having tactfully increased the dependence of European countries on its oil resources, allowing it to crack down upon state dissidents (such as Jamal Khashoggi) and spend vast sums on weapon modernisation programmes that it could utilise in its bid to sway the direction of the Yemeni Civil War.
Iran has no such economic ties that would enable it to make use of highly modern weaponry, instead being dependent upon other pariah states or relatively inferior domestically-produced weaponry which, while large in quantity, are likely to be insufficient to decisively win a conflict against its regional opponent.
Not only this, but the economic woes of Iran continue to hinder the capacity of the nation to truly dominate in the region, with the 40% inflation rate being compounded by catastrophic droughts, the invasion of Ukraine (raising the cost of wheat, a staple food for the lower economic classes) and the critical devaluation of the Rial.
Within such a context, even a country unified politically failed to utilise a popular movement to bolster itself, given that the several waves of mass protests that took place were squarely against government policy, thus necessitating excessive force to punish protestors.
Does this begin to form a crack within the face of Iran’s potential legacy as a future superpower? Karim Sadjadpour, a senior academic specialised on Iran, would say so, believing that there is ‘Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif ’ that is formed from ‘economic malaise and political and social repression’.Yet, the opposition still lack charismatic leaders, means of resistance, and a true will to rise up (i.e., there is not enough of a social awareness of the possibility of changing the ruling class for it to become a tangible creation).
This is seemingly far more convincing than the previous body of analysis, as the ties between the academic bases of argument and the challenges faced by Iran face less logical inconsistencies.
Then Iran foreign minister Javad Zarif visiting Lausanne, Switzerland in talks with the EU.
Courtesy of the European External Action Service: (https://flic.kr/p/rShVQZ)
The Importance of National Unity in an Authoritarian State
For this reason, perhaps it will be interesting to consider how we can rectify this division into a more holistic image that provides us with an insight into Iran’s future within the region. It is the author’s perspective, as has been mentioned previously, that unity is the key tool required for a state to be able to exert itself, though this unity can be forcibly created or spontaneous through revolution and culture.
From this basis, one might argue that the political unity present within Iran is less linked to the regime in and of itself, but is more of a means of reacting in a hostile manner against states considered to infringe upon the existence of the state and its peoples, thus creating a form of unity through mutual distaste of a foreign power. This would then mean that the economic issues and the oppression simply represent an opposition to the governance that fails to accurately represent the perspectives of the people and work to their benefit.
These perspectives interweave one-another nicely, and can thus explain the desire of President Raisi to resume the talks with the EU and USA in a bid to alleviate the economic sanctions that pose a threat to the state structures that enable the current theological/oligarchic distribution of power within the state.
This topic could, of course, be thoroughly deconstructed so as to incorporate aspects of culture and religion within this broader framework, but given the constraints in space this is not entirely feasible, but this article has aimed to leave you, the reader, with an insight into the current developments within Iran, and how this may come to impact the state within the future.
The Iranian flag in front of a cloudy sky.
Courtesy of Blondinrikard Fröberg (2014): (https://flic.kr/p/nZggtv)
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