The Fog of War
In the battle for the narrative, the Islamic Republic has the advantage
This reflection first appeared on the New Statesman website on 28th March with the title ‘The West Cannot understand Iran’. I am grateful for the opportunity to upload it here with additional citations and links.
War, we are regularly reminded, is chaos. Yet it is remarkable how the very same people who remind us of this, are keen to tell us just how events will unfold. The absence of information from Iran, a country size of Western Europe, locked under an internet blackout for the better part of two months has not stopped a welter of pundits and commentators, many of whom have barely lifted a finger to understand the nation’s history and culture, from making judgements of alarming clarity. It is difficult not to conclude that the certainty expressed is in inverse proportion to the knowledge possessed.
Take the much referenced ‘lessons of history’ - these abound. But whose history? Certainly not Iran’s. We are warned to learn the lessons of Iraq, Afghanistan and on occasion Libya, but few seem to address the particularities of the Iranian experience. When pundits do venture to make a comment on Iran, specifically, it is frequently ill informed and quite often simply incorrect. The Iranian polity has not always been held together by ‘force’, it is not in imminent danger of ‘balkanisation’, and the country’s name was not changed to Iran (from Persia) in 1934 – Iran has long been the indigenous name for the country.
Nor is there much point drawing analogies with the Iran-Iraq war without recognising the tremendous changes that have taken place in the intervening forty years. Iran in 1980, in the high tide of revolution, was a very different polity to that which we find today. History is not static and if there are lessons to be learnt it is that developments are contextual and contingent. Among the most egregious errors has been the suggestion that the Islamic Republic was on the verge of a ‘liberal turn’ had the war not started, or that we were on the verge of an agreement prior to the attack1.
Too often the ‘rigour’ of political ‘science’ strays too easily into the realms of political astrology, with comments so general as to be meaningless. ‘Iran’ or the ‘Iranians’ (few bother to distinguish between the State and wider society), are ‘proud’, ‘resolute’, ‘resilient’, and on occasion are very fond of ‘martyrdom’; they are at times, ‘pragmatic’, ‘ideological’, ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’, determined to survive and suicidal, all depending on the argument. They are at once great strategists and reckless gamblers, both cunning (a very old trope) and anarchic (another old trope), though the current analysis seems to favour the former over the latter. Iranians are sophisticated, educated, rebellious and subdued though by and large, wider society has faded from view as the ‘State’, the leadership of the Islamic Republic, takes centre stage.
Indeed, one of the more depressing developments has been the growing awe and admiration of the State – the political system – over the wider aspirations and demands of the people whose suffering has receded, if not disappeared, from the focus of discussion. Here the Islamic Republic has a definitive advantage over the West in that while information coming out of Iran is controlled, they have easy access to the West and coverage tends to focus by necessity on the damage being caused by the Islamic Republic rather than to Iran. In the narrative war, the asymmetric advantage lies with the Islamic Republic. Their ability to manipulate narratives is made all the easier by the fact that the West always loves an underdog and combined with the loathing of Trump that pervades much of the media, there is a natural inclination to underplay one’s own strengths and exaggerate that of your enemy. A good recent example was the regime’s missile attack on Diego Garcia on 21st March, which was more performative than real. The strategy of the Islamic Republic has caught the imagination, but it is not at all clear it is as coherent (or as ‘cunning’) as some project or that it will yield the results it intended.
A generation of analysts who have grown up with the Islamic Republic, and whose continued existence appears to serve their life’s purpose, seem to struggle with the notion that it may be approaching its end game. So, despite all the evidence to the contrary, not least the condition of the political economy before the war, they argue that the Islamic Republic will not only survive (possible), it will thrive (unlikely). So vocal has this view become that an attentive Iranian leadership has absorbed it into its own ambitions for the future, which far from simple survival now demand, reparations and a permanent seat on the Security Council, among its suggested peace terms
But missing from any of these analyses is the Iranian people. Having been obscured by the prolonged internet blackout, they have been deprived of a voice by their own government, and by those abroad who find their positions inconvenient to the arguments they seek to make. That many are conflicted by the fate of their country should be obvious, but the fact that they clearly also loathe the regime and ‘want the job done’, sits uneasily with many commentators in the West, who have chosen to silence, rewrite or simply decry it as some form of false consciousness. If they have not been completely written out, in not having risen up in the midst of a bombing campaign, they have peremptorily been written off.
If any good is to come from the catastrophe and chaos of war, it will come from the people not the State, from the very part of the equation that is hidden from view. It is to the patriotism of the people not the nationalism of the state that we should look to. Political systems, as Iranians are fond of reminding anyone who might listen, come and go. Societies and their cultures remain. If there is a resilience to be found – and hope for the future - look for it here.
Precisely our thinking.
The state-driven narrative has been privileged too long by legacy and Western state media (by design), but the new factor at work is that Iranians themselves are driving events.
State-centric commentators are paid not to understand this kind of thing.
Thank you very much, Ali.
I believe that you are, at present, one of the very few Iran specialists who has truly grasped the situation in Iran and reflects the voices of ordinary Iranian people, acknowledging their agency. This is especially valuable in a context where many academics/specialists seem, unfortunately, somewhat disconnected from realities on the ground or tend to interpret events primarily through the lens of current Western political narratives.