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Iran’s Export of the Revolution: Its Politics, Ends, and Means
- University of Virginia Press
- Chapter
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[ 128 ] iran’s export of the revolution Its Politics, Ends, and Means Since its creation following several decades of genuine Islamic and popular struggle the Islamic Republic of Iran has considered it one of its main duties to defend dear Islam, its sacred aspirations, and the oppressed Muslims in every region of the world. —Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, March 7, 1989 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s imposition of a death sentence on Salman Rushdie ignited a new global crisis. The move demonstrated that Iran’s underlying commitment to “the export of the revolution” (sodour-e enqelab) was alive and well. It also demonstrated that an assessment of the relative impact of Iran’s export activities compared with the indigenous causes of Islamic resurgence in other societies can have profound implications for not only the Muslim world but also the international system as a whole. Such an assessment is the principal burden of this volume, which seeks to inquire into the global impact of the Iranian Revolution. The main objective of this essay is to explore the politics, ends, and means of exporting the revolution in the overall context of Iran’s foreign policy. The appellation “export of the revolution,” unlike such terms as “intervention ,” “aggression,” and “self-defense,” is not commonly found in the literature of international relations. Yet the basic idea that underpins the act of exporting revolution is part and parcel of ancient as well as modern international relations when defined broadly and not just Eurocentrically in terms of the post-Westphalia international society.1 As sacred as the Prophet’s Islamic Revolution may be, and as secular as the American, French, and Russian revolutions have been, the concept of exporting revolution is a corollary of the phenomenon of the revolution throughout world history. This proposition also holds true for the more recent example of the Iranian Revolution. By intervention, America wants to make the world safe for democracy; witness the cases of Iran, Guatemala , El Salvador, and Nicaragua. And by invasion, the Soviet Union wants to make the world safe for socialism; witness the cases of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. And by the export of its revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran “Iran’s Export of the Revolution: Its Politics, Ends, and Means” was originally published in The Iranian Revolution: Its Global Impact, ed. John Esposito (Miami: Florida International University Press, 1990), 40–62, and is reprinted with permission of the University Press of Florida. Iran’s Export of the Revolution [ 129 ] wants to make the world safe for Islam; witness the cases of the Persian Gulf, Lebanon, and Soviet Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. the politics Like the Iranian Revolution itself, the emergence of the revolution ’s export as a fundamental foreign-policy principle reflected Iran’s domestic political dynamics. The revolt in Iran was a populist opposition to both the Shah’s foreign policy and domestic politics.2 The disparate forces of opposition were as united against the Shah’s de facto alliance with the United States as they were against his repressive rule. The revolutionary epithet “the American king” reflected a nationwide resentment of the surrogacy of Iran, especially as the Nixon-anointed “policeman” of the Persian Gulf. Whether one traces the roots of the Iranian Revolution to the CIA-engineered overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh’s nationalist government in 1953, or to the bloody suppression of the Khomeini-led anti-Shah uprising in 1963, or to earlier developments in Iranian society, politics, and culture, the fact remains that at no time before the 1972–77 period had the alienation from the Shah’s regime and the United States reached such explosive levels of populist expression.3 In the early days of Khomeini’s regime, from Mehdi Bazargan’s appointment as prime minister of the provisional government in February 1979 until Iranian students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in November of that year, the principle of “equilibrium” (tavazon) dominated the theory and practice of Iranian foreign policy. Historically, the principle of equilibrium had great appeal to modern-educated Iranians. Mirza Taqi Khan, better known as Amir Kabir, first introduced the principle into Iranian foreign policy during his short-lived premiership in 1848–51 as an antidote to the European balance-of-power principle .4 He believed that Iran might better ensure its independence by maintaining an equilibrium between rival British and Russian influences than by aligning itself with one or the other imperial power. During his equally short-lived premiership in...