Iran mellan tre revolutioner

Iran mellan tre revolutioner: förebilder och motbilder (Iran between three revolutions: role models and counter-models) by Mohammad Fazlhashemi, Lund: Historiska Media, 2024.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, Iran has undergone three revolutions. It began with the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 with the aim of introducing constitutional governance according to the European model. Various actors belonging to the political and cultural elite as well as a group of religious representatives supported this model of replacing autocracy with a liberal form of government. The European constitutional form of government was seen as a model that stood for political and civil liberties and modernity. Europe was looked up to as the free and happy civilization.

The revolution did not realize all the high expectations. The country was plunged into political chaos, and the constitutional model was opposed by both domestic forces and European states. Despite this, Europe and the West stood out as role models for a long time. This picture changed after the coup d’état of 1953 and the overthrow of the democratic government. This was not least due to the fact that the United States and Great Britain were involved in the coup d’état.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the stocks of the European/Western model slumped like a stone. This coincided with the illiberal political development in the country that went against the ideals of the constitutional revolution through, among other things, the concentration of power in the hands of the monarch and the absence of political rights and freedoms. Now the models were taken from left-wing ideologies and Islamist ideals. Everything associated with the Western model was given a negative content. They wanted to reshape the country based on new models. Those who drew their models from left-wing ideologies wanted to introduce a classless society, and those who drew their models from Islamist ideologies spoke of the classless monotheistic society or the reintroduction of an ideal society that supposedly existed at the beginning of Islam.

After the revolution of 1979, the country was plunged into a bloody political power struggle between the groups that previously fought the autocratic monarch. It was the Islamist faction that emerged victorious from the battle. A new theocratic form of government based on the political doctrine of rule of the jurist, Velayat-e faqih, was to be implemented in the country, which proved to be extremely authoritarian.

More than four decades after the revolution, the post-revolutionary generations have turned their backs on the norms and values with which they have been indoctrinated since childhood. The government’s methods of imposing its ideals on citizens through an authoritarian approach have proven to be counterproductive. There is a veritable social revolution going on in Iran that is turning against Islamist rule. This takes place through demonstrations in the streets and squares, but above all in everyday life. Characteristic of this revolution is its low-intensive continuity that cannot be stopped by violence. Many of those who participate in this revolution draw their models from the West. Like the actors of the last century, they look to Europe/the West as a model, as a civilization of happy life.

Mohammad Fazlhashemi