Events of the last three week’s have unsettled Iran’s future, and the range of potential outcomes is now broader than it was before.
Regardless of how Iranians actually voted, “Iran is a divided country now,” as one analyst put it to the New York Times, with different forces backing more starkly competing visions of the world. As a result, all of these outcomes have become more likely:
- A shift to straight authoritarianism, unleavened by the partial democracy that had characterized post-revolution Iran, with the security forces and hard-line conservatives at their core
- A rapid transition to a less authoritarian version of Iran’s religiously based governance system, an idea supported by “many prominent first-generation revolutionaries”
- An outright collapse of the theocratic system, though this might plunge Iran into civil conflict
The forces driving these futures are quite complex. These are a few factors that have emerged:
- Some grand ayatollahs have expressed sympathy with the dissenters and have not sided with supreme leader Khamenei, the Washington Post notes.
- Powerful establishment figure Rafsanjani may be abandoning opposition candidate Mousavi, Juan Cole reports.
- The Basij volunteer militia, other security forces, and even the Revolutionary Guard may be less monolithic than thought, and might balk at some kinds of repression, analyst Afshin Molavi suggests.
- An Iranian student has suggested that Ahmadinejad could be in a position to do a “Nixon-to-China,” improving relations with the US on the basis of his conservative credentials.
International system
Pei suggested that there will not be an “Asian century” in the same way that the 20th century was the American century: Asia will lack the capabilities and skills to remake the world in the way the United States did. Moreover, the region is too divided, and intraregional rivalries will cancel the individual powers out, for no net effect.
Martinez agreed that, in the short term, the narrative of American decline due to the financial crisis was overblown. He emphasized that the US and China are now in a position of mutual dependence, a relationship could actually help the US perpetuate the American century. He does not see any innovative ideological worldview motivating China: no great ideological challenge is coming out of Asia.
Japan does not want to be second to China in Asia, Pei noted.
Asian economies
Continued growth in the 7-9% range should not be assumed, Pei asserted, given the challenges countries face in as little as 10-15 years. He suggested that Asia lacks an ecosystem for innovation, and that such a system is obstructed by the entire Asian “way of life.”
China’s domestic evolution
China will become a democracy at some point, Pei said. It will come from the top down, when members of the political elite choose to use popular discontent to further their personal goals. This could actually undercut its economic performance, he added.
He said that the Communist Party has successfully whitewashed history, and Chinese know little of the repressions from the 1950s to Tiananmen. As a result, the Party’s legitimacy could be threatened when it all comes out, as happened to the Party in Russia during glasnost.
Martinez forecast that, if economic growth falters, the Party would need an alternative rationale for its continued dominance, and might turn to nationalism, for instance on the Taiwan issue. He noted that even young, educated, cosmopolitan Chinese are in full agreement with the government on nationalistic issues such as Tibet and Taiwan.
Pei said that the financial crisis has not disillusioned Chinese about Western capitalism, but it has provided an “aha” moment, as they have watched the US make serious mistakes.
The discussion is at the NAF site on video.
Image copyright FutureAtlas.com — usable with attribution and link.
Though Iran appears to be headed for more years with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president, columnist Roger Cohen recently noted a potential long-term path for the nation.
Former president and powerful establishment figure Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani “believes in a China option for Iran: a historic rapprochement with the United States that will at the same time preserve a modified regime.”
This could either mean simply less militancy abroad, which would greatly reduce external pressure on the country, or a the full Chinese option: greatly reducing the trappings of Islamic theocracy while maintaining control of key aspects of power. The analogy is not precise, however, as Iran is much more democratic than China, and indeed more democratic than most states in the Middle East, US allies included.
(Flag courtesy State Dept.)