Summary
Iran’s greatest risk may come not from the fall of its current regime but from what follows.
Iranian society is bound more by a shared cultural identity than by ethnicity, religion, or political ideology, making fragmentation along ethnic or sectarian lines unrealistic.
Historical experience shows that sudden regime change often leads to chaos, as Western-style democracy does not align well with Iran’s deeply hierarchical and leader-centered political culture.
Stability after a transition depends on inclusiveness and the emergence of a culturally credible national figure who can unify diverse groups.
Without such leadership, Iran risks repeating cycles of disorder rather than achieving reform, stability, and reintegration into the international community.
What Is Iran?
It is essential to understand how Iranians see themselves before imagining an alternate future when Iran is again a respected member of the international community.
What is Iran? First and foremost, most Iranians share a cultural identity more than a political one. Iran is not a homogeneous ethnic or even religious entity. For more than 2,500 years, its borders have expanded and contracted, depending on political and military struggles. Iran has been a mixture of peoples and cultures since its founding more than two and a half millennia ago.
In the biblical Book of Esther, for example, the land is described as a kingdom consisting of 127 provinces with different traditions. The same is true of Iran today. As a result, there have been periodic upheavals in Iran, sometimes ethnically based, sometimes religiously based, and sometimes driven by internal power struggles among rulers who themselves came from various ethnic and religious backgrounds.
To complicate matters further, many of these groups overlap geographically and therefore cannot be separated. It is impossible to break the country into neatly defined ethnic or religious territories.
The Azeris and Persians, both deeply Shiite Muslims since the 1500s, have intermarried for centuries. Azeris are Turks who speak a language/dialect that is almost completely intelligible to most Turks in Turkey, but who are overwhelmingly Sunni. The Iranian Azeri identity is first and foremost Shiite which separates them from the rest of the Turkish world which is almost totally Sunni. This is one of the major reasons the Iranian Azeris identify so strongly with their Persian Shiite brothers, much more than with the Turks in Turkey or Central Asia.
Therefore, the vast majority of Azeris in Iran identify first and foremost as Iranian. In fact, it was they, not the Persians, who played a central role in creating the modern concept of Iranian/Persian nationalism.
How then do the Azeris rationalize that they, as Turkish speakers, are in fact true Persians? They invented a myth that their ancestors were originally Persian-speaking inhabitants of northwestern Iran who were conquered in the late 1300s and early 1400s by Tamerlane, a Central Asian Turkish leader who despised Persian culture. According to this narrative, he cut out the tongues of 400,000 ancestors of today’s Azeri Turkish speakers and forced their descendants to speak Turkish, which is why they speak Turkish today. This story was invented despite the absence of any historical evidence to support it, but it serves to rationalize the idea that Azeris are, in fact, historically Persian, and therefore pure Iranian.
Two examples illustrate how deeply intertwined Azeris and Persian speakers are:
First, the present heir to the Iranian throne, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, is married to an Azeri woman. His mother, Farah Diba – the wife of the last Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi is also Azeri. Futhermore, from what we know, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s mother – the mother of the late Shah was also an Azeri.
Second, the present ruler of Iran, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has an Azeri father and a Persian mother.
In fact, for at least the past 1,000 years, most of Iran’s ruling dynasties were of various Turkish origins. Therefore, the Azeris and the Persians are almost completely intertwined and cannot easily be separated. Even their DNA is, for the most part, indistinguishable. Nevertheless, at the same time, some retain distinct traditions and identities.
Many other Iranians are Shiites, and that religious identity often unites them more strongly than their separate ethnic origins. But others, such as the Kurds, an ancient Iranian people who share many linguistic and pre-Islamic cultural traditions with Persians, are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslims. Many of these Kurds, like other Sunnis in Iran such as the Baloch of southeastern Iran and the Turkomans, mostly of northeastern Iran, feel discriminated against because they are not Shiite. Shiites, for example, sometimes refer to the Sunnis as “Sag Sunni,” meaning “Sunni dogs.”
For all these reasons, breaking up Iran along ethnic or national lines is impossible.
What, then, unites them? Most of Iran’s peoples share a common Iranian cultural identity. One example is the ancient Iranian celebration of Norooz, which marks the beginning of the Iranian New Year, which is the first day of spring.
Moreover, Iranians do not traditionally embrace the concept of one person, one vote. Decisions are almost always imposed from above, where the head of a unit, whether a family, clan, or community, is expected to take into account the needs of his group. Attempting to impose Western-style democracy as we know it is therefore likely doomed to failure.
The late Professor Bernard Lewis, widely regarded as one of the greatest scholars of the Middle East in the mid-twentieth century, warned that superimposing Western democratic concepts would lead to “one man, one vote, one time,” followed by chaos. Many who have worked with Iranians on alternative political futures have sadly concluded that getting Iranians to work together is like herding cats, almost impossible. Each individual wants to be the head of whatever entity is created, and most politely belittle the others.
Western democracy, under such conditions, would almost certainly fail.
Given this reality, how can a transition be made as peacefully as possible, preventing Iran from descending into chaos, which has historically characterized regime change in that country? The key is inclusiveness. All Iranians, regardless of religion, ethnicity, family, clan, profession, or other identity, must feel part of the transition process and understand that their basic interests are being addressed.
Given the nature of Iranian society, this requires bringing together the heads of various groups to discuss how a peaceful transition might work. Who should lead such an effort? What do Iranians look for in a leader?
Iranians often describe themselves as “bot-parast,” which in Persian implies a need for someone to lead them and show them the way. Literally, the term means “idol worshipper,” though it does not refer to a statue. The language used to describe such a leader is often flowery and reverential.
Historically, what usually happens is that a widely known military or political figure, or a charismatic individual, emerges and imposes his will on others, typically after a period of chaos during which the country descends into anarchy. Smooth transitions are not the norm in Iran or elsewhere in the region.
Having lived through the early and middle stages of the 1978–79 Iranian Revolution while attending university in Mashhad, I can attest that almost no one initially knew of Grand Ayatollah Khomeini. He emerged seemingly out of nowhere as the leader of the revolution. Khomeini became the “bot” people looked up to because they perceived him as powerful, someone to be revered. Yet almost no one had any idea what kind of political/religious structure he actually to impose on Iran.
As a result, Iran descended into chaos for what, in Iranian terms, was a relatively short period.
Could such chaos be avoided? Is there a potentially benevolent leader who could serve as the glue holding the country together and prevent it from breaking apart? Has any group or individual proposed a plan that could avoid the turmoil typical of past transitions? And is there anyone capable of implementing such a plan?
The only nationally known Iranian who fits this description is Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last Shah of Iran. He claims that he seeks only to convene a national convention of Iranians who would decide what form of leadership they want. Whatever his shortcomings, he is currently the only figure with widespread national name recognition. That is why people across Iran are chanting, “Reza Pahlavi is returning.” They see him as a “bot,” a leader who could save them from chaos and restore Iran to its former greatness.
Do they truly know who he is, and does it even matter? His father, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was deposed 47 years ago. Most Iranians therefore have no personal memory of the previous regime, but they have heard from their parents and others about what life was like under the Shah and how much better it was. Given Iranians’ well-known tendency toward exaggeration, we can be confident that these stories have been told in glowing terms. This is why many look to Reza Pahlavi as the powerful figure who might save them from chaos.
Pahlavi’s plan is a good one. It acknowledges the nature of Iranian society and emphasizes inclusiveness. The question is whether he could truly be the leader capable of holding the country together. When the current regime falls, other leaders could also emerge unexpectedly, just as Khomeini did nearly half a century ago.
For now, however, the only figure with national recognition who symbolizes, for many Iranians, life before the current regime is Pahlavi. Whatever happens, without a central leader committed to unity and inclusion across ethnic, religious, economic, and familial lines, Iran would likely descend into chaos which most Iranians fear.
More than anything, Iranians want the opportunity to use their talents, skills, and cultural confidence to make Iran great again. Conscious of the grandeur of their ancient civilization, they long to be respected members of the international community and to stop squandering their resources on foreign military ventures that have led them into the abyss created by the current leadership.
