Iran is not anti-imperialist. It is a state calculating survival
Regardless of its current hostile rhetoric, the Islamic Republic will likely reach a settlement with the US and Israel. More than five months into the
Regardless of its current hostile rhetoric, the Islamic Republic will likely reach a settlement with the US and Israel. More than five months into the US-Israel war on Iran, the prospects for a deal that would end the confrontation remain unclear. Earlier this week, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said there were no direct negotiations with the United States. Meanwhile, hostile rhetoric and calls for revenge continue to emanate from Tehran. Some Western commentators, especially on the right, have claimed that Iran is incapable of striking a deal because of its anti-American ideology. But that is a flawed assumption. One just needs to look at the Iranian constitution and its recent history to discover that the Islamic Republic is not governed solely by ideology. The regime, in its present form, would not shy away from reaching a settlement with the US and even Israel, if it fell in line with its guiding principle: regime survival. The limits of Iranian anti-imperialism In January 1988, Iranian Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini settled an internal dispute over the scope of velayat-e faqih, the guardianship of the Islamic jurist, by declaring that the Islamic government ranks above all other rulings of Islam, including prayer, fasting and pilgrimage. The following month, he ordered the creation of a body to resolve deadlocks between the parliament and the Guardian Council by determining what was in the interest of the governing system. The revisions to the constitution in 1989 gave it a permanent place as Article 112: the Council for Discerning the Expediency of the System. The message was explicit. Preservation of the system â hefz-e nezam â was the highest religious obligation, and an organ was established to license departures from religious law whenever the system required them. In the following years, this principle was clearly applied in how the Islamic Republic deployed official ideology, including its hostility towards Washington and Tel Aviv. Today Tehran presents its anti-imperialist doctrine as a moral commitment grounded in opposition to domination, colonialism and Western hegemony.
That self-presentation has earned it sympathy well beyond its borders, including among people who acknowledge its repression at home while treating it as an indispensable pillar of resistance abroad. But Iranâs anti-imperialism is positional rather than universal. It opposes domination when the Islamic Republic is the object of it, but it has not consistently opposed domination as a political relationship. The doctrine of âforward defenceâ has often treated Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Palestine as arenas in which Tehran deters enemies, projects power and acquires leverage. The anti-imperialist principle is therefore applied selectively. Iran invokes sovereignty and self-determination when resisting external interference in its own affairs, while its regional strategy has often compromised those same principles elsewhere by subordinating other societies to its own security interests. This behaviour is not peculiar to Iran, nor does it make Iran uniquely cynical. Realist theory has long held that survival is the primary end of states, from which other objectives are derived. On that reading, Iran is not an aberration. It is an ordinary state with an unusually elaborate justificatory apparatus. That is exactly the point, and it is what makes a bargain thinkable. The Islamic Republicâs commitments operate on two levels. Enmity towards the US and Israel, support for allied movements and the rejection of accommodation all guide policy. Above them sits a second-order norm that determines when the first-order commitments may be revised. That norm is hefz-e nezam, and Article 112 is its institutional expression. Survival is the core; anti-imperialism is the protective belt, and belts can be loosened. A settlement with the enemy The Islamic Republic speaks the language of principle honoured regardless of cost while governing by calculation of consequence. That gap is not hypocrisy so much as a structural feature of any state that rules in a doctrineâs name, but it leaves a standing problem. It must compromise without appearing to have compromised. The record shows how this is possible. In July 1988, Khomeini accepted the ceasefire with Iraq, saying publicly that doing so was more lethal to him than poison.
The BriefWire