1. Islam and regional politics
2. Why no other Islamic revolutions?
3. Iran-Iraq War
The social dislocations brought on by vast oil wealth were a contributing factor in the Iranian Revolution of 1979, but certainly not the only factor. We are not going to get into the details of why the Revolution happened – comparative politics course. But the coming to power of a revolutionary regime that claimed to rule in the name of Islam was a new phenomenon in Middle East regional politics, and had consequences far beyond its borders. In many ways, the question of how “Islam” as political identity and political ideology fit into regional politics has been one of the major issues of the last two decades in the Middle East. Islam is a transnational identity, much like Arab nationalism – it cuts across state borders and encourages political loyalties that transcend the state. Thus it is a threat to some rulers, who see such cross-border loyalties as undercutting their own claims to rule, just as Arab nationalism did. It encourages ambitious rulers to use the banner of Islam to justify involvement in the domestic politics of other states – just like Arab nationalism does. It encourages states to contest over leadership of the movement, for the right to define just what Islam means for politics – just like Arab nationalism did. These factors all help to explain why the Iran-Iraq War, the longest and bloodiest war in modern Middle Eastern history occurred.
The first issue I want to raise is: why did Islam become such an important political force in the 1980’s and since? Of course, it never disappeared from the politics of the region: Muslim Brotherhood as an important political actor in many countries; Saudi Arabia putting forward Islamic Conference Organization proposal in the 1960’s to counter Nasir’s Arab nationalism. However, the nationalist strand – in both the Arab world and Iran – was clearly dominant in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Why the change? I identify five reasons:
1) Failure of other ideologies to produce: To a certain extent, the new political relevance of Islam as a legitimating ideology is a result of the failure of other ideologies to deliver the goods, on both the domestic and international planes. Parliamentary liberalism, as practiced in the Middle East in the 1940's and 1950's, is associated with Western colonial domination, intolerable economic inequality, and the failure of 1948-49. The socialist/unionist experiment of the 1950's and 1960's is associated with large-scale repression, stagnant economies and the disaster of 1967.
2)
Social changes and the class base of the movement: The oil boom and the
relative success of 1973 brought in a period of comparatively mild
authoritarianism and an economic and cultural opening to the West. While this
period saw real improvements in the standard of living throughout the Middle
East, it also brought with it new inequalities in wealth in many societies,
increased social dislocation represented by the massive movements of populations
from the countryside to the city, and a kind of cultural discordance. It was in
this situation of social flux that some turned to Islam as an ideology of
opposition. Do not get the idea that Islamic movements are simply a cover for
class politics, as some crude Marxists have contended. The backbone of Islamic
movements is educated, middle-class people. Islamic movements are strong in the
science and engineering faculties of Middle Eastern universities. In the
contested syndicate elections of Egypt and Jordan, the Islamists have come to
dominate the doctors', engineers', teachers' and lawyers' syndicates. In the
Iranian revolution, the merchants of the bazaars were the major financial
backers of the revolutionary movement. But without a doubt the vast influx of
people into the cities provided a mass base for Islamic mobilization, whether in
electoral politics or in street politics.
3) Social authenticity and political space: Islam has the benefit, unlike other
ideologies in the Middle Eastern political arena, of being home-grown. It has a
resonance and an appeal to a very broad stratum of people that ideologies like
Communism, liberalism and even nationalism did not. It also has a kind of
built-in organizational structure with which governments were and are very
hesitant to interfere -- the mosques, the religious schools, the Islamic
charitable organizations. These places help Islamic activists to overcome the
oppressive apparatus of state control over society -- they are places were
Islamic activists can meet, organize, recruit, raise funds, etc. with at least
some greater freedom from direct state oversight than in other public areas.
Iran is of course the best example of this kind of Islamic opposition, and the
success of the Iranian Revolution was an incentive to other movements of Islamic
opposition throughout the Middle East.
4) State support -- A number of Middle Eastern states have very explicitly encouraged Islamic political organizations to take a more active role in political life, to act as a counter-weight to other kinds of political challenges. Very clear in Jordan, where the King during the 1950's through the 1970's allowed the Muslim Brotherhood a very free rein politically in exchange for support against Arab nationalists, leftists and Palestinian nationalists. In Saudi Arabia, the state has built an entire infrastructure of Islamic institutions -- schools, research institutes, universities, ministries, media outlets, international organizations -- meant to act as a bulwark to the regime. Specifically in the 1970's a number of regimes began to encourage Islamic political activity -- Sadat's Egypt, to counter the Nasirists; the Israeli occupation authority in WB and Gaza, to undercut the PLO. In all these cases Islamic opposition to these authorities has emerged, unwittingly, under state auspices.
At this same time in the 1970's, with the vast influx of money into the region, and particularly into the oil states, some governments increased their support for Islamic groups abroad. This was certainly true of the Saudis, who had political and financial ties to groups like the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood for some time. Those ties were extended into North Africa, Yemen, and Afghanistan, and even further afield. The Jordanian regime supported the Syrian Muslim Brothers in their confrontation with the Asad regime, as relations between the two states were quite tense in the late 1970's and early 1980's. With the Iranian Revolution of 1979, another oil state ready to fund Islamic groups outside its borders appeared -- Shi'i oppposition in Iraq, Lebanon, Gulf states; recent support for Hamas. And this kind of transnational support was not limited to governments. Rich private individuals in the Gulf developed direct ties with Islamic activists elsewhere, helping to fund their activities. [story of Usama bin Ladin]
5) the Iranian Revolution itself: Demonstration effect (recruitment, self-confidence of other movements); tangible political and financial support; articulation of Islam as an ideology of opposition (not unique here -- Sayyid Qutb and other Egyptian thinkers, but it does have an effect to have a powerful state propagating these notions -- can disseminate them further).
For all of these reasons, “Islam” became the dominant discourse in regional politics. The consequences for regional politics were enormous. For about one decade, “the state” had unrivaled prominence in Arab politics – pan-Arabism was defeated and dormant; the oil revolution strengthened the state system in the Arab world (anti-union forces stronger, previous pro-union forces have more stake in the status-quo); Egyptian-Israeli treaty introduces notion that Arab-Israeli conflict could be settled on a state to state basis. Now, with the Iranian Revolution, a new transnational factor is introduced into the area. Interstate rivalries were not simply state v. state, but idea v. idea – with broad consequences for the international relations of the region. Domestic and international politics once again become intertwined, as conflicts between states become contests not just over territory and power, but over principles of rule domestically. The stakes of regional politics are raised, because the strengthening of one’s regional rival could mean that they would try to disrupt you domestically, using your own Islamist opposition movements against you.
The consequences for the foreign policy of the Middle East of the Islamic resurgence are several:
1) once again, as in the Nasirist era, leaders see threats to their domestic positions coming from abroad, increasing regional tensions and helping to cause a major war. This fear for domestic political stability leads to new alliance patterns in the region, as those states most fearful of the spread of Islamic revolutionary ideology join together against Iran. We will discuss this in greater detail in our discussion of the Iran-Iraq War.
We should be careful not to think of these disruptive effects of the Iranian Revolution as unique to the Middle East. I would suggest that the Iranian Revolution has a similar dynamic to other great social revolutions of the modern age, specifically the French and the Russian. In each case the revolutionary regime, simply because of the attractiveness and power of its ideology, posed a threat to its neighbors. In each case some neighboring regimes sought to end this threat through military intervention. These interventions not only failed but called forth a great national mobilization, which allowed the revolutionary regimes to attempt to expand their spheres of political and ideological influence. In the French and the Russian cases, after some time the realities of world politics led to a less revolutionary, more "normal" approach to world politics. The revolution, both domestically and in foreign policy, became routinized and lost its elan -- its burning sense of mission, its drive to expand. In the end, the same fate will befall the Iranian Revolution. We see that process developing now, but how long it will take is anyone’s guess.
2) As regards the Arab-Israeli conflict, this seems to be the one issue on which the various strands of political Islam agree. Clearly, at the tactical level, it does not preclude a great deal of flexibility. For all Teheran's rhetoric, the regime was still willing to deal with the Israelis for arms in the 1980’s. But in a larger sense, the resolute opposition of Islamic political groups and states to Israel is important. The seemingly ironclad Arab nationalist refusal to recognize the reality of Israel was finally breaking down. Sadat's Jerusalem trip and the Camp David accords were the first cracks in the wall. Since then, the tone and tenor of Arab declarations on Israel have progressively softened. Islamist movements give a new ideological justification for not accepting the reality of Israel in the region. Also see Iran playing a new role in Arab-Israeli affairs – direct support for HAMAS and Islamic Jihad, through Lebanon with Hizballah, that complicates peace efforts.
3) Finally, as regards the US: While in their earlier years Islamist movements were not automatically anti-American (common antipathy to the “left” in Arab world and USSR, culminating in U.S. support for the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980’s), since the 1990’s they have certainly adopted very anti-American positions, for the most part. It is certainly true of the popular Islamist opposition movements throughout the area – leading up to Usama bin Ladin and September 11. The anti-Americanism of the Iranian regime is a major part of its political agenda, a raison d'etre of its rule and an important aspect of its political legitimacy formula. It makes the prospect of improved US-Iranian relations very unlikely in the short term. It is also true of “official Islam” in states which have close relations with the United States, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The official religious leaders support those regimes, but have very little good to say about the U.S.
If the Islamist resurgence is so important and so powerful, why haven’t there been any other Islamist revolutions on the Iranian model? Nasirist Pan-Arabism was much more successful in destabilizing regimes. Why?
Some reasons put forward: Shi'i vs. Sunni; Iranian vs. Arab, but I do not find them all that persuasive. If they were true there would have been no reverberations of the Iranian Revolution in the region, and clearly there are plenty.
My explanation: The Arab regimes are better able to confront a challenge to their stability than was the case in the 1950's and 1960's. The states have become better able to monitor and control their populations, offering both carrots and sticks to people -- control over economy, secret police. Evidence of the strengthening of the Arab state: See the three tables. The example of the Iranian Revolution taught the regimes what to look for, and alerted them to be aware of Islamist opposition groups. By the same token, this increased power of the state in the Arab world concentrated people's political attentions on their own domestic politics, because it has a more important role in their lives. Really, up until Usama bin Ladin, the major Sunni opposition movements in the Arab world were concentrated on changing the domestic politics of their home countries – not much of a transnational agenda (MB in Egypt, Syria; FIS in Algeria).
Interesting that Iranians have had most success where state remained weakest – Lebanon, Sudan, Palestinians.
The most important regional conflict to emerge out of the Islamist resurgence was the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted from 1980 to 1988, cost hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of dollars for the two countries involved. While ostensibly Iraq began the war over border issues, the real reasons behind the launching of the war are to be found in two areas: 1) the fundamental ideological clash between Bacthism, or secular nationalism in general, and the type of Islamic government that emerged in Iran, which was seen as a threat in Baghdad; 2) the particular set of regional political circumstances that seemed to promise Iraq an easy victory and subsequent regional domination. Iran and Iraq had dickered over any number of issues like those listed above before, but always in the end had found some diplomatic solution, however temporary, to their conflicts. What was different about 1980 was the fact that a revolutionary Islamic regime ruled in Teheran. Its very existence was an implicit threat to the Bacthist government in Baghdad, because it challenged the very bases of Bacthist rule and appealed naturally to a majority group in Iraq that had historically been denied a full share of political power. Thus, even without any active encouragement of opposition in Iraq, the Khomayni regime was a danger to the Iraqi government. [majority of Iraqi population Arab Shi’is; politically more mobilized since Iranian Revolution; Iran aiding in that mobilization]
You can read my argument about this in the readings. Here I just want to point out that the weakening of Iran in conventional power terms, which began in late 1977 as the revolutionary movement gathered steam, did not immediately excite Iraqi ambitions. On the contrary, Baghdad did what it could to help the Shah, most noticeably by expelling Ayatallah Khomeini from Iraq in 1978. When the Shah's regime fell in February 1979, Iraq's first reactions were mildly welcoming to the new regime. An explanation that focused purely upon Saddam's ambitions would expect a militant change in Iraqi policy toward Iran from that time. However, that did not happen. For the remainder of 1979 and into early 1980, the Iraqi approach to Iran was wary and increasingly suspicious, but not inflammatory. Saddam, whose ambitions no one doubted, certainly looked to take advantage of Iranian weakness on the diplomatic front. But there were as yet no concrete indications of Iraqi military ambitions against Iran.
Until November 1979 the Iranian government was headed by prime minister Mehdi Bazargan, a moderate Islamist with good credentials with the old nationalist opposition to the Shah. He tried to maintain correct relations with Iran's neighbors, and keep the more revolutionary elements of the Khomeini coalition in line. The crisis which began with the capture of the American embassy in November 1979 led to his resignation, and a marked turn in Iranian government rhetoric against the Bacthist regime. Statements about the need to export the Iranian Revolutionary model around the region became more frequent, and by 1980 there were explicit calls for the Iraqi people to overthrow the Bacth regime.
Those calls found at least some receptive ears, and the Iraqi authorities knew it. Events at the beginning of 1980 raised once again the possibility that unrest in Iraq's Shici communtiy could call into question the domestic stability of Saddam's regime. There were a series of bomb attacks and assassination attempts on Bacthist officials in April 1980 which the Iraqi government blamed on Iran. Saddam responded by ordering the execution of Ayatallah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr and his sister and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Iranians from the Shici pilgrimmage cities in Iraq. With that, all restraints were dropped in the propaganda war between Baghdad and Teheran. Border skirmishes began around that time, and Arab diplomats subsequently pointed to April 1980 as the time that Iraq began its preparations to go to war with Iran.
This was the defensive rationale, as it were, of the Iraqi war decision. But the decision also had what we might call an offensive component, which resulted from the particular regional political configuration that obtained in 1980. Iran was in chaos, and thus appeared to be unable to counter a swift Iraqi military foray. In fact, many thought that such an Iraqi attack might push what seemed to be the fragile Islamic government in Teheran out of power. Thus, a successful Iraqi military campaign might not only remove the implicit threat posed by the Iranian Islamic regime, but might also establish Iraq as the dominant regional power in the Gulf for some time to come. When we remember that Egypt had been expelled from Arab politics, so to speak, because of Camp David and that Iraq had moved to fill that void in Arab leadership, we can see that the Iraqi attack on Iran was part of a more general strategy by Saddam Husayn's regime to claim for itself the role of leading regional power.
So in the end the Iraqi decision to go to war was both defensive and offensive, both in reaction to a perceived threat and opportunisticly aimed at taking advantage of a favorable regional configuration to make a grab for local political dominance. But I would argue that without the defensive rationale, there would have been no war.
So the fighting in this war began on September 23, 1980. The Iraqis advanced rapidly at first, but by December 1980 their offensive had slowed and they dug in, assuming defensive positions. They had failed either to destroy the Iranian Air Force on the ground, or to topple the revolutionary regime. The people of Khuzistan, who were ethnicly Arab but were Shicis, did not rise up in support of the Iraqis, as Baghdad had hoped and encouraged. 1981 saw the Iranians begin to mount counter-attacks on the Iraqi positions in Khuzistan, scoring limited if costly victories.
March 1982 was the major turning point in the war, as an Iranian counter-attack forced the Iraqis back across the Shatt al-Arab in a total rout. Iraq sued for peace on the basis of status quo ante, but Khomayni announced that Iran would not make peace with the Bacthist regime. In July of 1982 Iranian troops crossed over into Iraqi territory. From this point on the roles had clearly changed. Iran was now the aggressor and Iraq assumed a defensive stance. It is interesting to note that, very much like the Iraqis in Khuzistan, the Iranians expected the Shici population of southern Iraq to rise up in support of the Iranian offensive into Iraqi territory. And, like the Iraqis in Khuzistan, they were for the most part disappointed. It is difficult to say with any certainty why in both cases the local populations remained loyal to states with which they had a history of grievances. In both cases, relatively effective state security apparatuses undoubtedly discouraged overt manifestations of disloyalty. Perhaps, in both cases, the years of living within the borders of the Iranian and Iraqi states had led to the development of some sense of loyalty and attachment to those states, the beginnings of nationalist feeling. It is interesting that, despite the real strains placed on both states at various times during the war, each was able to keep itself and its territory together.
The war settled down into a bloody but desultory pattern of Iranian ground offensives [not only in south, but also in central areas and in Kurdish areas, were Iranian-supported Iraqi Kurdish rebels had made gains] and Iraqi air attacks on Iranian land targets and on Iranian shipping in the Gulf. There are some notable dates in the progress of the war. From late 1984 to early 1986, there was relative quiet on the battlefield, as Iran pursued a strategy of separating Iraq from its local allies [like Saudi Arabia] and perhaps neutralizing superpower tilt to Iraq. In effect, the Iranians were attempting to isolate Iraq, end international acceptance of its war on Iranian shipping, and basically wear Iraq down on the diplomatic as well as the military front. This strategy largely came to an end in early 1986, as an Iranian offensive [pretty much one every winter] led to the capture of the Fao Peninsula in Iraq, adjacent to Kuwait. This soured relations between Iran and the Gulf states. In 1987 US Navy becomes directly involved, to protect oil shipments from the Arab Gulf states. US diplomacy begins to push for an end to the war (UNSC 587). In 1987 the Iraqi “Anfal” campaign against Iraqi Kurdish areas began. In this effort to suppress Kurdish nationalist opposition to Baghdad, 50,000 to 100,000 Kurds were killed, 4,000 Kurdish villages were destroyed and 1.5 million Iraqi Kurds were displaced. The Iraqi regime used poison gas against some Kurdish villages suspected of supporting Iranian troops, most notably Halabja in March 1988. In 1988 Iraqi military begins to turn the tide, with recapture of Fao (aided by US intelligence information). In July 1988 Iran accepts a cease-fire, which Ayatallah Khomeini compared to drinking poison.
Other parties -- interesting alliance choices:
a) Saudi -- back Iraq, fear of Iranian revolutionary fervor, despite balance of power problems
b) Joran -- back Iraq, for same reason
c) Syria -- back Iran, despite Arab nationalist problems. Long history with Iraq.
d) Israel -- helping Iran in Iran-contra. Basic policy of helping anyone who is fighting Arabs
Let's conclude today with a brief discussion of the relative lack of superpower positions in the war. If past Middle Eastern, or at least Arab-Israeli wars, had been any guide, we could have expected the superpowers, either jointly or unilaterally, to have intervened somehow (probably through severe diplomatic pressure, not direct troop deployments) to bring the war to a swift end. Given the strategic importance of the Gulf to both superpowers, this would not have been an unreasonable assumption. So why is it that the war went on so long.
There are a number of reasons why. First, the situation on the battlefield itself. Except for a few brief periods when it seemed that one side might break through and decisively defeat the other, this war was relatively stalemated. With no immediate prospect of defeat for either side, there was no compelling reason for either superpower to intervene.
Another important reason why the Western powers as a whole were not more active in efforts to stop the war until 1987 was the situation in the world oil market. The advent of the Khomayni regime in Iran was accompanied by a new upheaval in the world oil market. In 1979 the price of oil doubled, as a result of cutbacks in Iranian production, a Saudi decision to restrict production at a critical point, and the concomitant panic buying by some parties. From around $14 per barrel at the beginning of 1979, the price of oil rose to over $30 per barrel by the end of the year. Coming on top of the price increases just 5 years earlier, this was a devastating blow to the economies of the industrialized West and the non-oil exporting Third World (double digit inflation and high unemployment of the Carter years). But the increase had some positive effects -- it led to the discovery and development of non-OPEC oil sources (Alaska, North Sea, etc.) which were only economical at the higher prices, it led to conservation and the change to alternative energy sources throughout the world economy, and it led both governments and oil companies to develop and sustain substantial reserve capacities of oil, in the event of further political and economic dislocation.
So, when the Iran-Iraq war began, taking some 3.5 million barrels per day off the world oil market, a third oil panic did not ensue. The Saudis upped their production to help smooth out the market, non-OPEC sources continued to pump, and conservation measures brought world demand for oil down. Thus, paradoxically, as the war continued, oil prices began to fall. The price reached as low as $10 per barrel on the spot market in 1986. With world oil supplies plentiful and prices going down, the countries of the industrialized West, which had the military and political clout to directly intervene in the Gulf War, saw no compelling need to do so.
Finally, to understand why the superpowers did not, up until 1987 at least, taken a more active role in the war, we have to realize the dilemma this war presents to both the US and the USSR. The United States, at the beginning of the conflict, had diplomatic relations with neither of the combatants. Iraq was the leader of the Arab consensus against US Middle East policy; the Iranians were still holding the American hostages. The US wanted neither side to win, in effect, and had little leverage over or influence in either. So the US policy at the beginning of the war was basically restricted to support for the Saudis [AWACS sent there immediately] and verbal assertions that it wanted a return to the status quo ante. After that, the US was tugged in two directions. Once Iran went on the offensive, there seemed to be a consensus that the US should tilt toward Iraq, to prevent Iran from winning a decisive victory and perhaps spreading its form of Islamic ideology to other parts of the Middle East. US gave Iraq intelligence information, encouraged other countries to supply Iraq with weapons (though did little of that itself), did supply Iraq with credits to purchase food in the U.S.
Yet, there was another impulse working in Washington, one which saw Iran, rightly, as the geopolitical key to the Gulf, a country with which the US wanted to re-establish some kind of relationship with as soon as possible, if only to keep the Soviets from taking advantage of the situation. It was this impulse which motivated some in the government to support the crazy arms for hostages deal in 1985-86. So there is a real uncertainty, if not downright confusion, as to which way US policy should go.
It was not until Iraqi and Iranian attacks on Gulf shipping escalated in late 1986 and 1987, with Iran beginning to target oil tankers going to and from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, did the U.S. increase its military role in the conflict, with dispatch of naval forces to protect that shipping. This led to direct confrontations between the U.S. and Iranian forces, culminating in the shooting down by an U.S. navy vessel of an Iranian civilian airliner in the summer of 1988, just before Iran accepted a cease-fire in the war.
That kind of confusion was also present in Soviet policy. The Iranian Revolution was a great strategic benefit to Moscow, in that it broke the dominant US position in the Gulf. Soviet diplomacy on the one hand has sought to take advantage of this change by improving relations with the Khomayni regime. [despite strong anti-Soviet feelings in the regime, seen in destruction of Tudeh On the other hand, the Soviets have their own reasons for being leery about Khomayni-ist style Islamic political movements. Iran after all borders on Soviet Central Asia, where tsars and commissars have ruled over Muslim populations for the last two centuries. Khomayni might be OK in Iran, but nobody in Moscow wants to see his example emulated within the Soviet Union. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 was, at least in part, motivated by the desire to avoid the spread of Islamist movements in Central Asia. The Soviets at the beginning of the war condemned the Iraqi attack on Iran and cut off arms shipments to Baghdad, but resumed them in 1982 when the Iranians turned the tables and went into Iraq. After that, the Soviets played a double game similar to the Americans -- supporting the Iraqis while attempting (with more success than the US) to develop ties with the Iranians.