Last year, the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian girl, by the so-called "morality police" for wearing an "improper hijab" led to massive protests that lasted a few months and shook the Islamic Republic's foundation. While the trigger of the 2022 protest was morality policing, many structural causes brought Iranians to the streets, including political repression, totalitarian social control, cultural stagnation, economic hardship, and environmental degradation.
The 2022 protest was not a unique event but a continuation of ongoing protests against the regime over many years. They have only grown more frequent and radical in their demands. The Islamic Republic silenced recent protesters using brutal force, killing more than 600 people, injuring and arresting tens of thousands, and intentionally aiming for the eyes of hundreds of Iranian youths, blinding them. The repression of Mahsa Amini protests shows the brutality of a political regime that has lost its legitimacy and function as a government and relied only on repression to maintain political order.
As an Iranian political scientist, I was sought for an interview and comment on the protest and state repression and what Western countries should do. In discussing the issue, I saw the shaping and promotion of a distorted narrative by a cohort of so-called experts that advantaged the Islamic Republic. According to this distorted narrative framework, the 2022 protest was an insignificant social protest by a small group of upper-middle-class females over the issue of the hijab. The best policy this narrative recommended for the Western countries to follow was continued engagement with the Islamic Republic, lifting sanctions against the regime and undermining the hardliners by supporting so-called "reformers." Those propagating such views opposed the idea of actively supporting the Iranian people by pushing for regime change, which many Iranians inside the country were advocating. Yet according to the "experts" narrative, any regime change would be a disastrous policy leading to civil war, the separation of Iran's territory, and, ultimately, regional instability.
This narrative has been promoted since the early 2000s, in opposition to the Bush doctrine of rogue states and the axis of evil, following September 11, 2001. This dominating "hardliner-reformist" paradigm, which claimed that there were popular reformists in the Islamic Republic and, therefore the possibility of reforming the regime, was spearheaded by the pro-western reformists, who had close ties to the reformist elite in the Islamic Republic. They successfully deterred the Obama Administration from actively supporting the 2009 Green Movement, a series of protests that advocated the removal of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In the early 2000s, many people genuinely believed there was a rivalry between reformists and hardliners within the Iranian government network – and thus, the possibility of reform. By the end of the next decade, it became clear that this paradigm was only a smokescreen to deter Western policymakers from pursuing policy change. Despite so much evidence to the contrary, this narrative was promoted by pro-regime individuals and groups again in 2022, and again, the United States lost its chance to support Iranians who were demanding regime change.
Why is this narrative still circulating despite its continuous failures to predict and solve the Iran challenge? How does the Islamic Republic spread its narrative and sway the debates in the U.S.? Who embraces the regime propaganda?
The Islamic Republic's Ideological Traits
Since its creation in 1979, the Islamic Republic's ideology has attracted many groups ranging from Islamists to leftist activists and postcolonial intellectuals, who saw the 1979 Islamic revolution as an "anti-hegemonic," "anti-dictatorial," and "postmodern revolution." This popularity was rooted in the ideology of the Islamic Republic (political Shia Islam) which consisted of several pillars: anti-Americanism anti-imperialism, anti-Semitism as anti-Zionism, a fundamentalist rejection of modernity, and a liberation theology rhetoric of supporting oppressed people.
The various aspects of the Islamic Republic's ideology resonated with multiple groups, especially disaffected Muslims across the globe. Humiliated by Western colonization in the 19th century, disgraced by the world powers for losing the so-called "Holy Land" in the early 20th, and defeated by Israel in the 1950s-1960s, many Muslims began to look to Islamism as a salvation political ideology.
By overthrowing the Pahlavi monarchy in 1979, the Islamic Republic introduced itself as the defender of the Muslims against "Jahiliya,"(ignorance) the age of ignorance, and a political home for the Islamic Ummah. As an anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist regime, the Islamic Republic officially promotes and endorses Israel's destruction. This regime's ideological trait has found considerable resonance with Islamists and more broadly, among Muslims.
The Islamic Republic also promoted itself as an anti-imperialist and anti-hegemonic regime that has challenged Western domination and American hegemony. Those who embrace the idea that the colonialization of the West and of America are the leading causes of backwardness in the global south have cheered the Islamic Republic. They see the regime’s goals of undermining Western and American hegemony as overturning an unjust and repressive international system. This version of the Islamic Republic is the one that appeals to the global Left.
The Islamic Republic finds yet another group of sympathizers among the postmodernists who see the 1979 Islamic revolution as rejecting modernity and giving hope to the spiritless world. This refusal is the point of convergence, where many traditionalists (who want to return to the past) agree with the critics of rationality and humanism brought by modernity (the postmodernists who want to leave modernity behind them). Needless to say, when the traditionalists come to power, the postmodernists quickly face persecution and elimination.
The Islamic Republic's illiberal social and cultural policies and propaganda also appeal to the ultraright groups in their denunciation and enmity toward LGBTQ rights and their support for extremely traditional family values. The Ultraright groups regard Islamism as their ally against the destruction of morality by a decadent modernity and a defender of tradition in the modern world.
In brief, the Islamic Republic's ideology has found resonance among three distinct groups: Islamists, the ultra-right, and the ultra-left. According to the late Ernst Nolte, a German historian, these groups share an antipathy against modernity in the form of Western culture, democracy, and capitalism.
Understanding the nature of American liberal democracy, the Islamic Republic has used several tools to propagate its narrative and influence the American government, society, and the academic world. Tehran’s narrative has used organizations, groups, and individuals to impact American policies from below (public opinion) and above (policymakers).
The Islamic Republic's Toolkits
The oldest tool in the regime's soft power toolkit is the Islamic centers and mosques in the U.S. used now to indoctrinate and mobilize Muslims, especially Shia, in its service. While the number of Shia Islamic centers and mosques in the U.S. is not precise, according to an Iran news agency, there are approximately 230 mosques and Islamic centers affiliated with Shiites across the United States. Some of these mosques and schools are actively working on behalf of Iran's Islamist government.
Through financing and managing mosques and religious centers, Iran appoints imams and promotes the Shia Islamist view. Especially through funding religious trips to Mecca, Iraq, Syria, and Iran, these Islamic centers are recruiting, indoctrinating, and mobilizing Shia Muslims as their agents for exerting the Islamic Republic's soft power. At other centers, children are taught the IRGC-linked anthem titled "Salam Farmande" ("Salute Commander"), whereby they declare their preparedness to become soldiers and martyrs. These centers have also made it possible for Muslim youth to study in Iranian universities and seminaries, including Al Mustafa University. Later, security and intelligence bodies, including the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) QUDS force, recruited some of these students, arming them with the ideological tools to defend Shia Islamism and propagate its message in public, media, and academia.
Through these centers, the Islamic Republic also infiltrates academia and think tanks by connecting the imams with students and professors in Middle Eastern departments in American universities students and professors. Since 1979, Iran has developed a network of supporters in Western universities, including the United States, enlisting them to monitor and defend its propaganda. Some proceed into academic careers and continue to promote the regime's perspective. Through speaking at public events, writing for news outlets, and providing interviews to Western media, these individuals push the Islamic republic ideology, using academic affiliations to legitimize their propaganda as objective analysis.
In addition to organizations that are mainly aligned with the Islamic Republic's interests, Tehran has actively created groups to shape Iran policy in the West using academicians, think tanks, and journalists. There are reports of the Islamic Republic attempting to infiltrate the policy world through the creation of the Iran Experts Initiative in 2014 with the hope of influencing policies in America and other Western countries. While some of the individuals involved reject these accusations, the regime's efforts to manipulate policy by mobilizing Iranian young scholars are deeply concerning.
The Islamic Republic has been using a mix of ideological and material incentives to mobilize and utilize thinkers. It is certainly the case that some individuals genuinely believe in helping their country and its people by promoting engagement policies with the Islamic Republic. Others wish to maintain a connection with the Islamic Republic's policymakers to gain their perspective and demonstrate to American and Western politicians that they are well connected. Some others actively support the Islamic Republic due to their family ties with the regime's elites or, in some cases, for financial gains.
While ideological and materialistic incentives have helped the Islamic Republic to recruit some groups and individuals to defend its policies, transnational repression is the primary tool in the regime's toolkit in silencing dissidents and voices in academia, the policy world, and media in the West. Many academics critical of the Islamic Republic have come under threat by the regime and are no longer able to travel to Iran. Academics also find themselves as one of the main targets of the regime's state hostage-taking policy, which has resulted in university professors avoiding conducting research in Iran. The Islamic Republic has a long history of capturing scholars, members of think tanks, and journalists who dare to travel to Iran, including Haleh Esfandiari, Nicolas Pelham, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, and Xiyue Wang.
From its inception in 1979, the regime has relentlessly used transnational suppression (surveilled, abducted, and killed opposition members and defectors). One of the main targets of these repressive policies is Iranian journalists in the diaspora. Many journalists have received online death threats of horrific violence and thousands of orchestrated abusive comments. The regime also frequently interrogated and arrested their family members in Iran to silence the journalists from criticizing the Islamic Republic. Fear of the regime's retaliation is one of the powerful tools in the disengagement of Iranian academicians in the diaspora. I have been actively marginalized, lost job opportunities, and not been invited to many events, primarily because of the nature of my work on authoritarianism, Iran's security, and my critical view of the Islamic Republic and Islamist groups.
Following the 2022 protests, where hundreds of thousands of Iranians demonstrated in Western cities and openly challenged the regime for the first time since 1979, the Iranian regime intensified its repression. Most of these activities were carried out by ordinary diaspora Iranians, not academicians or thinkers. The regime faced significant threats as political elites warned them against allowing anti-regime activities abroad, which were seen as defamatory and delegitimizing to the Islamic Republic in the international community.
While the Islamic Republic has not been entirely successful in promoting its agenda, it has been successful in silencing many Iranians in the diaspora and in distorting American politics by using individuals and networking. The United States' foreign policy towards Iran has, therefore, not been successful in containing the Islamist regime and its ability to infiltrate this country. It is crucial to reevaluate the approach by identifying and rejecting the Islamic Republic's influence network in the U.S. and the West.
Saeid Golkar is, the UC Foundation Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and a non-resident Senior Fellow on Middle East Policy at The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change in the UK and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
