Kavian - TD

Transition to Democracy for Iran — Part IV

Dissolving the Regime

In Part III it was described that seven main conditions need to be fulfilled to achieve regime change. In this part we will focus on the following question:

What is the best way for changing the IR regime?

Rupture or Reform

Two approaches exist for a transition to democracy. The first is when the conditions for regime change are fulfilled completely and this forces a regime change against the will of the rulers. This is called revolution or rupture. It can be due to war, civil war, invasion, violent revolution or sudden economic collapse (e.g. French Revolution, the US independence, Iran’s 1979 revolution, Soviet Union). This process is often accompanied by widespread violence. The second is gradual and through structural reforms, meaning that the existing elite (of the dictatorship regime) see more benefit in giving up control and power in order to retain some of the resources and influence they currently have (the UK,, South Africa, South Sudan, Indonesia).

Our view is that these two approaches are the sides of the same coin. The fulfillment of the economic and social conditions for regime change provide a long-term basis for rational choice among the existing elite. And hence we advocate for gradual changes, especially “strategical pressures for forced dissolution”, because its moral justification is readily available and also because its social costs (lost lives, injuries) and economic costs (lost values, destruction of production and trade capacities) are much lower.

More importantly even, because the outcome is easier to control and predict. Gradual changes and reforms are also easier to steer in the right direction, should they lose their way. At the same time, while applying the forced fundamental, structural reforms, the PiE will have the time to organize debates about every major grievance and demand of the population in an extensive and elaborate way. This provides the Iranian population, for the first time in history, the opportunity to participate in free and open social and political discourse, learn from them and critically assess the positions and programs of different political groups, which would lead to substantial shifts in public opinion on subjects such as freedom, democracy, legitimacy and religion. A sudden revolution will not provide such a possibility, as it was the case of the 1979 revolution.

If a leadership incites a violent revolution (rupture), it cannot guarantee that after the revolution, it will get what it wanted. Indeed, this is exactly what happened in Iran in 1979. People wanted the Pahlavi king to stop making laws on a whim and instead hand power over to the parliament. And yet, after the revolution, Islamists came to power and took even more power away from the parliament. As a clear difference between the pathway of rupture and the pathway of reform, we can use the example of two Britain and France:

400 years ago, France and Britain had both monarchies. Today both are democracies.
Britain reached democracy without violent uprisings in London. France went through several violent revolutions that together took more than 10 years, while over 30,000 people were executed.

It is possible to achieve democracy through fundamental, structural reforms without violence, chaos and bloodshed. But how?

When the French were revolting, the British government wasn’t any better than the French government. Bad management, endless military spending, lack of transparency and rampant corruption were normal. No moral basis for the laws decided by the monarchs and the lack of social development made the Brits just as unhappy as the French. When the French revolution started, the British parliament (house of the lords — in principle wealthy landowners in Britain) went to the monarch and told him „look at France, if you don’t accept our proposal for reforms, the same will happen to you“.

The monarch was obviously at the beginning resisting, but slowly, it became evident that the parliament meant business. The first thing the parliament wanted was transparency over military spending. What is the king spending money to protect and why? The parliament passed resolutions to make military spending a matter of public information. If the king wanted to spend on a war with China, it had to explain why and what benefit was there to have. With proper pressure, the king finally yielded. After that came a reform on transparency about the lands and palaces owned by the monarch’s families and relatives. Then came the reform on the control of the government budget. On and on, step by step, fundamental reforms by the parliament took more and more power away from the monarch and put them in the hands of the parliament. And today, Britain’s democracy is not weaker than the French democracy. But the country did not go through decades of turmoil and civil conflicts.

It is worth mentioning that none of these governments were weak, they had massive armies that had colonized vast areas of Asia, Africa and Americas. They had well trained, well equipped armed forces ready to suppress any opposition and they had strong controls over the economy. In every aspect both of these governments were stronger, more efficient and better trained than the IR regime is. And yet, both were subjected to regime change and were eventually replaced by a democracy.

Another good example we can use as inspiration is Indonesia. Its population is mostly culturally muslim, it is an Asian country that has seen a fair deal of wars and armed conflicts, it has had experience with European empires and their colonialism and it has had to deal with marxist movements inside the country. Iran’s political history has sufficient similarities to Indonesia so that we can compare the two. In 2001, Indonesia started a long-term process of transition to democracy, which has been ongoing for 20 years. No widespread violence, no invasion or civil war, no coup d’etat and no destruction has occurred. Indonesia is well underway to become democratic.

It is possible to achieve democracy through fundamental, structural reforms without violence, chaos and bloodshed, while keeping the lost lives and lost values at a minimum. The same thing can happen with the IR regime. We can replace it with a democracy. But we should strive for gradual, structural reforms that dissolve the regime without violence and not the violent rupture method. Obviously, since the IR regime strongly opposes any kind of referendum on the matter, the structural reforms have to be forced on it.

A Winning Strategy: Strategic Pressure for Forced Dissolution

What we want for Iran is political, economic and social developments and the protection of the environment. These will lead to a fair and just system of social cooperation, which will enhance the quality of life. We can use the example of the mandatory headscarf law to illustrate the point. This law does not represent the will and preference of the Iranian people, but rather it is the forceful application of what some mullahs interpret from Islam. Indeed, mandatory headscarf for women is not enforced in most Islamic countries. In Iran the violent enforcement of this law exists rather to prove the authority and rule of mullahs. Mullahs insist that the legitimacy of this political establishment comes from Islam as they interpret it, as was discussed in previous parts. Ideally women should have the freedom to choose whether they wear a headscarf or not. But as the regime sees the headscarf as a symbol of its rule, it is not willing to yield. Especially because yielding in this case would open the door for more demands.

To gain that freedom, we need to change the law that has taken that freedom from us. Changing the laws is the job of a parliament. This means we need representatives in the Iranian Majles, who truly represent us, understand our problems and work to solve them. Of course, under the current system, that won’t work. All Majles representatives are handpicked and filtered to serve the interests of the oil mafia. This means we can’t change the headscarf law without changing how candidates become Majles representatives.

To have a proper Majles that works for the people, we need to change the limiting function of the „Approbative Selection Committee“ (Council of Revolution’s Guardians). Up until now, the „Council of Guardians“ under Mr. Jannati has been a major part of the oil mafia’s illegitimate monopoly on lawmaking. This council has been foreseen in the constitution and dissolving it would require a referendum on the constitution. But the act of filtering candidates to protect the supreme leader and the oil mafia was never a part of the job description for this committee by the currently valid constitution and is hence illegal.

This is a function that Mr. Jannati and Mr. Khamenei decided on themselves and it needs to disappear. And that is exactly how strategic pressures work. They are a type of change that fundamentally reform the dynamics of power in the regime. They are also a type of change that will lead to changes in the structure of the regime. This will change the structure of the regime in the sense that candidates for the Iranian Majles will be able to enter office unfiltered by the oil mafia. As you can imagine, this would be an assault on the core of the regime’s structure, because it would disrupt the easy operation of the oil mafia. Obviously, Mr. Khamenei’s oil mafia and so he does not accept such reforms easily. The changes have to be forced on them.

Forcing the regime into accepting structural changes is possible without violence. What is needed to achieve such a goal are

large scale strikes in sensitive industries like oil and gas, and important services like banking or supply-chain,
protests and demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of people in Tehran and other large cities,
focused and deliberative foreign pressure through sanctions and support of opposition groups.

The reason why the regime would accept such changes is that the only alternative would be violent forcing of these changes. This means for example, if the regime does not accept to abolish the illegal filtering of Majles candidates by Jannati, then the pressure from strikes, protests and foreign governments will increase so much that there will be a snap like

the oil income is suddenly reduced for a certain period (e.g. one week strike of oil-workers would cost over 1 bn. USD for the state),
protesters storm a government building like national TV or Majles and speak their demands clearly to the whole nation,
some government offices or armed forces take the side of protesters and demand change, because the pressure has meant lost income for them.

The opposition leadership should make such reforms its most important mid-term goals. The parliament in exile should develop strategies and roadmaps how to force the regime into a corner, so that it has no other choice but to accept such corrections. In practice, the PiE will develop a Government in Exile (GiE) to carry out the strategies. The responsibilities and limitations of the GiE will be decided in public debates of the PiE and hence be in accordance with the will of the majority of Iranian voters, who participate in the PiE.

Of course, it would be naive to think that immediately after the development of the PiE such actions would be possible. The population inside Iran would not easily trust a leadership in the diaspora if they have no proof of their ability and no clear understanding of the population’s demands. Hence, the PiE should first start with developing a detailed and well-analyzed roadmap for its actions, including time steps, gap-analysis, resource monitoring and short-term objectives. Based on these plans, small projects will have to be defined, e.g. helping a village or a city in Iran with the issue of drinkable water, or providing financial assistance to the families of political prisoners, stopping political execution, freeing political prisoners, supporting journalists, etc.

Project by project, the PiE and the GiE clarify their objectives through action and achievement and show what they want to do and can do, but also prove to Iranians and the rest of the world that they are able to plan actions, gather resources and achieve their goals. This will increase the trust in them and some groups of Iranians would be willing to cooperate with such a leadership. After years of such activity, the Iranian Government in Exile will be considered as the establishment that wants to increase the quality of life by enabling political, social and economic development and its influence will increase sufficiently to allow it to plan large scale protests and strikes inside Iran.

Incentive for Structural Changes

But why would the IR regime budge and accept changes or reforms? For the elite, who today enjoy huge rents from the oil money, their security and their access to the oil money is more important than the ideologies of Mr. Jannati and Mr. Khamenei. Most of the elites have no ideologies. They are there for the money. If that money is endangered because Mr. Jannati doesn’t want to allow some candidates into the Majles, these elites will force Mr. Jannati to change his ways. This is a part of what is called the elite origin of democratic change. Nearly all Eastern European countries have achieved a form of democracy through such reforms since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Faced with no better alternatives, Mr. Jannati will have to accept certain structural, fundamental changes in the hope of staying in power longer. These changes will dissolve his political power later down the line. But our immediate goal should not be to kick everyone out of the government, that would lead to chaos, disruption of social and economic services or even armed conflict. We want better laws but we want to avoid chaos and implosion of the government also. These forced changes will go on for a few years, until all the anti-democratic mechanisms of this regime are replaced. This will automatically bring into power candidates or ministers, who will also work to change the anti-human laws, which will ultimately lead to the abolition of the Islamic Republic regime altogether and its replacement by an interim government, which will mainly consist of the GiE.

The other articles of this collection:

1. Institutional Democracy for Developing Iran

2. The Structure of the IR Regime

3. Conditions for Regime Change

5. The Transition Process

6. The Missing Link — A Consolidated Leadership

7. Developing Leadership through a Parliament in Exile

8. Legitimacy

9. The Roots of Laws in Modern Societies

References (First Author (Year), Title, Link)

George Lawson (2019), Anatomies of Revolution, LINK

Jack Goldstone (2019), Revolutions of the Late Twentieth Century, LINK