Witness

Keep the Islamic Republic but perfect the system through reform—so said Iran’s reformist leaders going into June’s rigged presidential election, and it remains their official position even in the wake of the post-election uprising.

But is meaningful reform from within a realistic prospect?

Clearly the Iranian regime’s willingness to crush dissent makes the odds of reform through peaceful means unlikely in the near future. In 1981, after a bloodletting that makes the most recent crackdown look tame by comparison, Ali Khamenei (then President, now Supreme Leader), said, “We are not liberals like Mossadeq and Allende whom the CIA can snuff out. We are willing to take drastic action to preserve our newborn Islamic Republic.” He meant it then, he means it now.

Reform through violence is certainly a possibility. After all, the US went through a civil war to resolve the conflict between slavery and the idea that all men are created equal. Iran has a similar constitutional conflict between democracy and velayat-e faqih (the idea cooked up by Ayatollah Khomeini that dictates Iran’s government be monitored by a near-omnipotent Islamic jurist). Can Iran’s reformists create a stronger Islamic Republic through violence, the way the US did?

I doubt it. Because even in the unlikely event reformists were to win such a conflict, one of two things would result—either velayat-e faqih would be eliminated, or it would be weakened to make room for more democracy. Neither option would result in a stronger, “more perfect” Islamic Republic.

Why not? For starters, unlike slavery and the US constitution, the system of velayat-e faqih is the central element of the Iranian constitution. Remove it completely, through violent or peaceful means, and you haven’t perfected the Islamic Republic, you have destroyed it. Think the Soviet Union, minus communism. An Iran stripped of velayat-e faqih hasn’t experienced reform, they’ve experienced a revolution.

Which leaves the weaken-velayat-e faqih option, perhaps the likeliest short-term outcome were the reformists to best the hardliners in a violent conflict or were Khamenei to die and peaceful options become available. After all, the reformist leaders all still claim to like Ayatollah Khomeini’s idea of velayat-e faqih.

The problem is, the most respected Shi’i Grand Ayatollahs, the ones who actually can claim a sizable following, don’t. Which means any attempt to merely reform the application of velayat-e faqih will result in a government that, like today, lacks legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of its citizens.

Consider that after Khomeini died in 1989, Iran’s constitution was amended to allow for Islamist jurists who weren’t Grand Ayatollahs to serve as the Supreme Leader—because none of the Iranian Grand Ayatollahs were willing to perform the job in a way deemed acceptable to Khomeini. So instead of a respected Grand Ayatollah well-versed in Islamic jurisprudence, Iran got Ali Khamenei, who at the time of his appointment was a mere hojjatoleslam, a rank one below that of even an ordinary ayatollah. As a result, he was viewed by many, including in the clergy, as a poseur, as a political leader pretending to be a religious leader.

The reformists, were they ever able to seize power, would be forced to come up with their own slightly-less-radical poseur to fill the role. Khamenei lite.

And a religious government led by a man who lacks religious legitimacy—whether it’s a hardliner like Khamenei or the watered-down reformist equivalent—is not a system of government destined for the ages.