Iran Spends its Wealth on Other Muslims

Since mid-summer, as the date for US sanctions to be reimposed drew closer, the Iranian economy has experienced a downward spiral of inflation and recession — and with it, there has been renewed attention on the endemic corruption that cripples so much of the country. Blame for corruption has once again been a useful and powerful tool for opposing political factions to use against one another, with all sides pointing the finger at the others.

President Rouhani’s opponents were especially eager to accuse his government of, at the very least, incompetence in its fight against corruption. Recently, the idea of creating an independent agency to investigate and fight corruption gained currency among Rouhani’s critics [Persian link]. The Rouhani administration and reformists both rejected the idea.

For a long time now, moderates and reformists have been complaining about the “hidden government,” a group of “parallel” institutions and agencies that operate outside the control of the government. One powerful example is the intelligence apparatus: the Intelligence Ministry and the Intelligence Unit of the Revolutionary Guards act independently of each other. So, with this parallel reality at play, the idea of an anti-corruption agency was seen by Rouhani’s administration as yet another organization falling outside the government’s remit.

Finally, on September 6, in an apparent attempt to reduce tensions — and perhaps to extend a lifeline to Rouhani — the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei told members of the Guardian Council that “parallelism” was against the national interest and so he was against it [Persian link], even though he himself controls a vast array of these parallel institutions.

But there are those in Rouhani’s government who believe that the problems go much further than corruption, sanctions and parallel organizations. In August, the Center for Strategic Studies (CSS), a think tank operating under the supervision of the president’s office, published “National Sustainability and the Systems of Governance” [Persian PDF], a 79-page report that aims to clarify the deeper roots of the problems Iran faces, including the issue of parallel organizations. The report gives a damning account of how the system of government has emerged in Iran, and indirectly calls into question the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy, as well as some of the foundations for discrimination at play its society today.

“Unsustainable” System of Governance

In direct language, the report concludes that the situation in Iran is “unsustainable.” The main reason for this, it argues, is the failure of the system of governance. Among other things, the Iranian system of governance is not based on a cohesive paradigm. “This inconsistent paradigm,” it says, “is reflected in contradictory goals and even in the design of the system of governance and in one of its most important components, i.e., the political system.”

According the study, the best way to define the present system of governance in Iran is as a “nation-umma” paradigm —  a heterogeneous combination of “national interests” versus “umma interests.”

“Umma” is an Arabic word that simply means “community.” But, in practice, it denotes the Muslim community, regardless of where Muslims live or their nationality. “Nation,” in very general terms, applies to people who belong to a geopolitical unit and share a history and a land, not an ideology. “The paradigm of umma’s interests is centered around maximizing the interests of the umma and means that the resources of the geopolitical unit must be put in the service of the umma,” explains the report, “whereas in the paradigm of national interests, maximizing the interests of the individuals within the national unit has priority and the system of governance must be designed in a way that serves this purpose.”

According to the report, the umma interests model disregards geographical borders. Although its system of governance is located within a certain geopolitical domain, it aims, as an ideal, to apply the resources of that geopolitical unit to the interests of an umma, the members of which also live in other geopolitical units. “In this paradigm, umma’s interests take priority over national interests. As a result, an individual who is a member of a different nation-state but shares the same beliefs as the umma is considered more valuable that the individual who has been born in the same geopolitical unit and is a member of the same nation” but does not share the same beliefs.

Two Contradictory Models

The report says the Iranian system of governance is “based on an incongruous combination” of the two contradictory models. “Of course, since the supporters of the interests of umma enjoyed more power when the system was designed and founded, they succeeded in overcoming numerous challenges [posed] by the supporters of the national interests paradigm and, in general, pushing the system of governance toward satisfying the needs of the paradigm of umma’s interests.”

But the think tank publication says this success has not been absolute, leaving an “unsolved contradiction” that “later exhibited itself in the goals and the architecture of the system of governance — and the resulting contradictions and instabilities continue to this day.” Some of those who support the national interest model have tried for reform, it explains, but have been unable to bring it about because the “architecture” of Iran’s system of governance directs “economic and political resources” toward the interests of the umma.

“The Iranian system of governance suffers from imbalance and the incongruity of its components because of the weak points in the architecture of the system,” the report concludes. And this “foundational imbalance” has led, over time, to “the increasing accumulation of economic and political resources in certain parts of the system.” This accumulation, it says, “has added to the complexity of the balance and the separation of the system’s components” — suggesting that it has helped open up divisions within Iran’s political arena.

In fact, the study is actually a thinly-veiled protest against the overall foreign policy of the Islamic Republic, which gives priority to the interests of other Muslims over the interests of Iranians who live in Iran. Without mentioning Ayatollah Khomeini by name, this protest indirectly criticizes the philosophy of the founder of the Islamic Republic, which was implemented after the 1979 revolution. The study argues that since the inception of the Islamic Republic, supporters of the paradigm of umma’s interests have always had the upper hand in controlling financial, political and military resources, whereas supporters of the national interests paradigm have failed to change the equation.

The clergy, which has ruled Iran for the last 40 years, believe it is its religious duty to provide Muslims around the world, and especially those in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Oman, Yemen and Bahrain, with every kind of support. Over these 40 years, billions of dollars of Iranian wealth has been spent on Muslims — and Shias in particular — in other countries because the rulers of Iran believe they deserve their help.

Some Iranians have retaliated against the policy over the years — one notable example has been the chants people have shouted out during the protests that followed the disputed 2009 presidential election, and many protests since. “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon. My life for Iran!” they have shouted, making their views clear.

Read more: 

Protests in Iran Do Not Spare the Supreme Leader