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| Volume XVI, Fall 2009, Number 3 |
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EXCERPT
The Rise to Power of Iran's "Guardians of the Revolution"
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| Bernard Hourcade |
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Mr. Hourcade is a senior research fellow at the French National Centre
for Scientific Research in Paris. This updated essay originally appeared in
French: “ La ‘prise du pouvoir’ par les Gardiens de la révolution: retour
au passé ou perspective d’ouverture?” in La Revue Internationale et
Stratégique (IRIS), Vol. 70, 2008.
In the misty landscape of internal
Iranian politics, simplistic ideas
are often a substitute for analysis.
Many analysts consider that power is
entirely in the hands of the Shia mullahs,
that the supreme leader decides everything
and that the “Guardians of the Revolution”
— the Pasdaran — are in the process
of occupying all key positions in business,
public and private institutions, and now in
the government. The Iranian opposition
abroad generally characterizes the Iranian
system as totalitarian and thus, by nature,
incapable of change or internal evolution.
According to this view, the only possible
way for positive change to occur in Iran
is through a complete change of regime
brought about most likely with assistance
from abroad. For more than three decades,
not one year has gone by without
some prediction of the imminent fall of
the Islamic Republic due to pressure from
civil society. In fact, there is consensus
among analysts that the majority of Iranians
would like political change, but that
does not mean that they have the means to
provoke a new revolution. After the dashed
hopes of reform under President Mohammad
Khatami, the middle class is still
discouraged.
After three decades of political stability
under the control of the clergy, there is
the possibility of profound political change
in Iran now that the generation that was
in their twenties at the time of the Islamic
revolution has reached the top ranks of the
power structure. This demographic fact
merits attention because it could offer a
new opening for maneuver, not to change
the Iranian regime but to change the regime’s
politics.
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