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| Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic by Michael Axworthy – review | Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic by Michael Axworthy – review |
| (6 months later) | |
| A few months before the 9/11 attacks I joined a unit of Iranian police and paramilitaries patrolling the country's eastern border with Afghanistan. It was brutally tough work: long hot days hiking through high desert mountains interspersed with chaotic gun battles with well-armed smugglers trying to bring trucks, jeeps, camels or donkeys laden with opium across the frontier. After a firefight that had lasted all afternoon, as the bodies of the smugglers were carried to a waiting pick-up truck and a wounded patrolman was patched up, the officer in charge of the operation turned to me and asked why Iran was so "badly understood" in the west. | A few months before the 9/11 attacks I joined a unit of Iranian police and paramilitaries patrolling the country's eastern border with Afghanistan. It was brutally tough work: long hot days hiking through high desert mountains interspersed with chaotic gun battles with well-armed smugglers trying to bring trucks, jeeps, camels or donkeys laden with opium across the frontier. After a firefight that had lasted all afternoon, as the bodies of the smugglers were carried to a waiting pick-up truck and a wounded patrolman was patched up, the officer in charge of the operation turned to me and asked why Iran was so "badly understood" in the west. |
| It was a fair question. Our collective image of Iran and Iranians has been constructed by images that are almost always terrifying (the finger-waving bearded cleric addressing the crowd, the gun-toting extremist, the ranks of identical veiled women), by a small selection of high-profile and dramatic events involving animosity towards the west (the 1979-81 Tehran hostage crisis, the fatwa against Salman Rushdie of 1989, more recent "meddling" in Iraq) and by an evolving perception of immediate threat. Most recently it is the question of Iran's nuclear programme which preoccupies decision-makers and policy analysts. | It was a fair question. Our collective image of Iran and Iranians has been constructed by images that are almost always terrifying (the finger-waving bearded cleric addressing the crowd, the gun-toting extremist, the ranks of identical veiled women), by a small selection of high-profile and dramatic events involving animosity towards the west (the 1979-81 Tehran hostage crisis, the fatwa against Salman Rushdie of 1989, more recent "meddling" in Iraq) and by an evolving perception of immediate threat. Most recently it is the question of Iran's nuclear programme which preoccupies decision-makers and policy analysts. |
| Even the more conscientious popular representations of Iran, such as Ben Affleck's Oscar-winning dramatisation of an episode from the hostage crisis in Argo, reinforce the immediate association of the country with fanaticism and violence. | Even the more conscientious popular representations of Iran, such as Ben Affleck's Oscar-winning dramatisation of an episode from the hostage crisis in Argo, reinforce the immediate association of the country with fanaticism and violence. |
| As Michael Axworthy points out in the prologue to this long, dense, meticulously fair and scholarly work, the myths about Iran are tenacious. He explains, for example, that far from being religiously conservative, the clerics who took power in 1979 were in fact radically innovative in theological terms and demonstrates persuasively that many senior Shia clerics today are "out of sympathy" with the current regime. He also convincingly explains Iran's collective distrust of the west, taking the reader through the CIA- and MI6-organised coup which deposed the democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh, as well as the complicity of Britain and the US in the disastrous and repressive rule of the shah and the trauma of the Iran-Iraq war, a conflict fought not by professional soldiers but by "volunteers, conscripts, reservists" and prolonged by western and regional support for Saddam Hussein. Drawing on an autobiographical novel published by a veteran, Axworthy delivers a harrowing description of appallingly wasteful trench warfare in conditions rivalling the first world war. | As Michael Axworthy points out in the prologue to this long, dense, meticulously fair and scholarly work, the myths about Iran are tenacious. He explains, for example, that far from being religiously conservative, the clerics who took power in 1979 were in fact radically innovative in theological terms and demonstrates persuasively that many senior Shia clerics today are "out of sympathy" with the current regime. He also convincingly explains Iran's collective distrust of the west, taking the reader through the CIA- and MI6-organised coup which deposed the democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh, as well as the complicity of Britain and the US in the disastrous and repressive rule of the shah and the trauma of the Iran-Iraq war, a conflict fought not by professional soldiers but by "volunteers, conscripts, reservists" and prolonged by western and regional support for Saddam Hussein. Drawing on an autobiographical novel published by a veteran, Axworthy delivers a harrowing description of appallingly wasteful trench warfare in conditions rivalling the first world war. |
| Indeed, one of the strong points of the book is Axworthy's use of such source material. Seamlessly woven into the broader narrative, passages from Iranian authors little known in the west as well as references to both popular and arthouse cinema bring depth, richness and often welcome breaks in a sometimes dry narrative. So too do nuggets of information which illuminate and explain. Ayatollah Khomeini initially dismissed Salman Rushdie as a "lunatic" and copies of the Satanic Verses were not only imported into Iran but even reviewed. His eventual fatwa was aimed at reinforcing the internal radicalism of the nation's revolution. A few years earlier, Mohammad Ghazi, one of the most prolific translators of western literature in Iran, had trouble with the title of Ignazio Silone's Bread and Wine, the latter being banned. The censor suggested vinegar as a substitute. Ghazi accepted on the condition that a couplet appeared at the front of the work: "People of Iran, think of the revolution. They turned wine into vinegar, make vinegar into wine." Passages on prostitution and drug addiction are moving and vivid. The alleged involvement of current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 1979 hostage crisis is nailed as a falsehood. The stories of the grotesque failure of the Bush administration to seize a historic opportunity to better relations after the 9/11 attacks and of Iran's nuclear programme are deftly told. The "Shia Crescent Theory", which supposes an Iranian plot to mobilise the "Shia underclasses" of the Gulf and elsewhere in a series of revolts is described as "bunk". | Indeed, one of the strong points of the book is Axworthy's use of such source material. Seamlessly woven into the broader narrative, passages from Iranian authors little known in the west as well as references to both popular and arthouse cinema bring depth, richness and often welcome breaks in a sometimes dry narrative. So too do nuggets of information which illuminate and explain. Ayatollah Khomeini initially dismissed Salman Rushdie as a "lunatic" and copies of the Satanic Verses were not only imported into Iran but even reviewed. His eventual fatwa was aimed at reinforcing the internal radicalism of the nation's revolution. A few years earlier, Mohammad Ghazi, one of the most prolific translators of western literature in Iran, had trouble with the title of Ignazio Silone's Bread and Wine, the latter being banned. The censor suggested vinegar as a substitute. Ghazi accepted on the condition that a couplet appeared at the front of the work: "People of Iran, think of the revolution. They turned wine into vinegar, make vinegar into wine." Passages on prostitution and drug addiction are moving and vivid. The alleged involvement of current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 1979 hostage crisis is nailed as a falsehood. The stories of the grotesque failure of the Bush administration to seize a historic opportunity to better relations after the 9/11 attacks and of Iran's nuclear programme are deftly told. The "Shia Crescent Theory", which supposes an Iranian plot to mobilise the "Shia underclasses" of the Gulf and elsewhere in a series of revolts is described as "bunk". |
| It is thus odd, however, that Axworthy, so careful to counter myths about Iran, states so baldly that the US financed "al-Qaida and the Taliban to prevent pro-Iranian groups taking over Afghanistan". This is an odd reading of events in the 1980s and 1990s on Iran's western borders which seems to confuse Washington's assistance to the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s with some kind of later involvement with factions fighting in the country during the civil war following the Soviet defeat and withdrawal. In neither case were US funds deliberately directed to either the Taliban or al-Qaida. Indeed it is extremely unlikely either received any US financial assistance. Axworthy's suggestion that Saudi Arabia has backed insurgents in Afghanistan more recently is also controversial. | It is thus odd, however, that Axworthy, so careful to counter myths about Iran, states so baldly that the US financed "al-Qaida and the Taliban to prevent pro-Iranian groups taking over Afghanistan". This is an odd reading of events in the 1980s and 1990s on Iran's western borders which seems to confuse Washington's assistance to the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s with some kind of later involvement with factions fighting in the country during the civil war following the Soviet defeat and withdrawal. In neither case were US funds deliberately directed to either the Taliban or al-Qaida. Indeed it is extremely unlikely either received any US financial assistance. Axworthy's suggestion that Saudi Arabia has backed insurgents in Afghanistan more recently is also controversial. |
| One senses too that the author may not have been able to spend the time in Iran that would have given the later chapters of the book, dealing with the probably fraudulent 2009 elections and the reform protests that followed them, greater immediacy. He may, as a result, be too quick to minimise the depth of popular conservativism. | One senses too that the author may not have been able to spend the time in Iran that would have given the later chapters of the book, dealing with the probably fraudulent 2009 elections and the reform protests that followed them, greater immediacy. He may, as a result, be too quick to minimise the depth of popular conservativism. |
| But these are only very minor gripes in a very fine work that deserves to be read by anyone interested in the Middle East. Iran is inevitably still central to events in the region and beyond, not just through the potential for war over its nuclear programme, nor even because of its continued support for the Assad regime in Syria, but because it is, as Axworthy says, less a country than a continent, more a civilisation than a nation. | But these are only very minor gripes in a very fine work that deserves to be read by anyone interested in the Middle East. Iran is inevitably still central to events in the region and beyond, not just through the potential for war over its nuclear programme, nor even because of its continued support for the Assad regime in Syria, but because it is, as Axworthy says, less a country than a continent, more a civilisation than a nation. |
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