When Mojtaba Khamenei actually turns into Iran’s subsequent supreme chief, the Islamic Republic can have crossed a line it as soon as claimed outlined the very objective of the revolution.
The 1979 rebellion that toppled the shah was, above all else, a revolt in opposition to hereditary rule. For many years, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his followers insisted that Iran’s monarchy had corrupted the nation by concentrating energy in a single household. The revolution promised one thing completely different — not dynasty, however ethical authority rooted in faith.
But as energy now passes from Ali Khamenei to his son, Mojtaba, the system created to abolish dynastic rule could find yourself reproducing it.
The stakes are usually not merely symbolic. Within the brief time period, the American and Israeli bombing marketing campaign in opposition to Iran has performed what international assaults nearly at all times do: consolidate hard-line energy contained in the nation, justify better repression and silence dissent within the title of nationwide safety. However within the longer run, a hereditary succession may show extra damaging to the Islamic Republic than any outdoors try at regime change.
Navy stress usually strengthens governments by rallying the nation round them. A dynastic switch of energy, in contrast, threatens the regime’s most vital supply of sturdiness: its declare to non secular legitimacy.
To grasp why that issues, one has to take a look at the non secular logic that underpins the Islamic Republic.
Shiism — the department of Islam practiced by nearly all of Iranians — has lengthy been formed by a strong narrative of injustice and resistance. Its defining story facilities on the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. Imam Hussein was killed in 680 A.D. after refusing to acknowledge the authority of the Umayyad caliph Yazid, son of the earlier caliph. For Shiites, the tragedy of Karbala represents resistance to tyranny and, partially, a rejection of the transformation of Islamic management into hereditary rule underneath the Umayyad dynasty.
For hundreds of years, this custom positioned the ethical authority of Shiite clerics not in governing the state however in critiquing it. Clerics served as students, jurists and guardians of spiritual life, usually performing as a test on political energy reasonably than exercising it immediately.
That modified with Ayatollah Khomeini.
Khomeini’s doctrine of velayat-e faqih, or “the rule of the jurist,” argued that within the absence of the Hidden Imam — the messianic determine Shiites imagine will at some point return — a senior non secular cleric ought to govern on his behalf. It was a radical reinterpretation of Shiite political thought. Many senior ayatollahs rejected it outright, insisting that clerics have been meant to protect the ethical character of society, not administer authorities.
But the revolution institutionalized Khomeini’s imaginative and prescient. The Iranian Structure vested final authority within the supreme chief, giving him energy over the judiciary, the armed forces and the elected branches of presidency.
For many years, the system justified this extraordinary focus of energy by invoking non secular legitimacy. The supreme chief, its defenders argued, was not merely a political determine however essentially the most realized cleric within the land, uniquely certified to information the Islamic state.
That declare had already been underneath pressure. The violent repression of protest actions, rampant corruption among the many clerical elite and a collapsing economic system have steadily eroded the regime’s credibility.
But even now, important components of Iranian society — notably extra conventional communities and segments of the non secular institution — nonetheless settle for the premise that clerical rule derives its authority from non secular scholarship reasonably than political inheritance. That lingering perception stays one of many final pillars supporting the Islamic Republic.
A hereditary succession would strike immediately at that pillar.
Mojtaba Khamenei isn’t broadly considered as a towering non secular scholar however as a substitute as a mid-ranking cleric whose affect derives largely from his proximity to energy. If management passes from father to son, the theological justification for the Islamic Republic begins to look much less like divine mandate and extra like dynastic inheritance.
That contradiction can be particularly troublesome to disregard inside Iran’s seminaries. Shiism has traditionally thrived on debate, pluralism and competing non secular authorities. No single cleric was meant to carry unquestioned authority over all others. For a lot of clerics and seminary college students — notably a youthful era already uneasy with the politicization of Shiism — a hereditary succession would blur the excellence between the Islamic Republic and the monarchy it changed.
And as soon as that distinction disappears, the regime dangers dropping the very constituency that has sustained it for many years.
Overseas bombs can harden nationalism and consolidate energy within the brief time period. However the quiet withdrawal of spiritual legitimacy, particularly amongst clerics and believers who as soon as defended the system, is way tougher for any regime to outlive.
None of this implies the Islamic Republic is about to break down. States not often fall just because their ideological contradictions grow to be seen. However legitimacy issues.
For greater than 4 many years, the Islamic Republic has endured partially as a result of it claimed to symbolize an ethical different to monarchy — a system grounded in non secular benefit reasonably than in a bloodline. Passing energy from father to son would undermine that declare in essentially the most seen method potential.
And if that declare collapses, the regime could discover it far tougher to steer its personal clerical institution — or the following era of seminarians now learning in Qom — that clerical rule stays morally justified.
The revolution that promised to finish hereditary rule could finally be remembered for having performed little greater than change the crown with a turban.
Reza Aslan is a Los Angeles-based scholar and writer of “An American Martyr in Persia: The Epic Life and Tragic Dying of Howard Baskerville.”
