By Dr. Ghoncheh Tazmini
Iranian Heritage Foundation, Postdoctoral Visiting Fellow
Centre for Iranian Studies,
London Middle East Institute,
SOAS
16, January 2014
A plethora of analyses have surfaced making wild assumptions about President Rouhani’s diplomatic manoeuvres, translating his diplomatic overtures as reminiscent of Gorbachev’s era of Perestroika and Glasnost. Is Rouhani an Iranian Gorbachev? asks Jochen Bittner of Die Zeit. The Wall Street Journal asks the same question, featuring an article titled, ‘Is Rouhani the New Gorbachev?’ Meanwhile, Stephen Kotkin writes about ‘Rouhani’s Gorbachev Moment’ in Foreign Affairs.
Such analogies shed very little light on the direction of Iran’s political evolution. While Rouhani is comparable to Gorbachev in the sense that he too, is an agent of change, the exercise of reforming Iran presents a more complex picture. Not only are such comparisons gratuitously redundant (when Mohammad Khatami launched his reform programme, numerous works sprung up comparing the reformer with the former Soviet leader), they are often dangerously subjective in nature.
In ‘Why the Democratic Party is Doomed’, for example, Richard Miniter compares President Barak Obama to Gorbachev in an effort to betray a conviction that the U.S. is in a state of decline under a leader who is accelerating that trajectory through his efforts at reform. Walter Russell Mead raises a similar concern in ‘The End of History Ends’, in American Interest, in which he warns of Obama’s Gorbachev-like attempt to correct the country’s past. Mead argues that Obama’s attempts to disengage from the over-commitments of the George W. Bush presidency have emboldened what he calls the Central Powers: Russia, China and Iran. With the U.S. in seeming retreat, these rivals ‘think they have found a way to challenge and ultimately to change the way global politics work’.
Analogies with Gorbachev are often carried out disparagingly and are very much pejorative. After all, although Gorbachev was attempting to change an outmoded, outdated system, the country over which he ruled disintegrated. The fact is that Gorbachev remains in the mind of his compatriots a tragic figure whom some deify and others hate; some see him as a great reformer, others as a perfidious destroyer. For many Russians, Gorbachev’s legacy was national humiliation, or what President Vladimir Putin has called the ‘greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century’.
The other problem with such comparisons is the element of wishful thinking. For the West, Gorbachev was the visionary leader who tackled the economic and political failings of the Soviet Union’s authoritarian system, introducing an era that ended Communist oppression, brought down the Berlin Wall, ended the Cold War and expanded Europe’s community of democracies. Mainstream media and Iran bashers and detractors often make these dubious analogies in the hope that some Gorbachev-esque character will suddenly turn up to unravel the Islamic Republic at the hems. Others make cynically protestations, contending that in fact, Rouhani is No Gorbachev! And that he is really is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, cut from the same cloth as the conservative, traditional establishment and is therefore, alas, unlikely to bring the country to disintegration!
This short expository underscores the problem with Gorbachev-analogies. Either way you look at it comparisons with Gorbachev are bound to be riddled with bias and partiality. Iran’s pathway to reform is far more complex and variegated. Since the revolution, the political inclination of Iranian heads of state has been very much determined by the prioritisation, instrumentalisation or sometimes the interplay of these four principles: (1) Republicanism: This element was central to Mohammad Khatami whose reform movement symbolised an effort to consolidate the rule of law and to stimulate civic activism; (2) Development: This was the cornerstone of Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani’s presidency, which focussed on reviving the post-war economy; (3) Justice: The pursuit of justice was one of the main pillars of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s political platform, which was founded on tackling poverty and corruption, and redistributing wealth; and (4) Independence: The emphasis is on resistance of foreign encroachment. This was the goal of the father of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini with the revolutionary slogan – ‘Esteghlal (independence), Azadi (freedom), Jomhouri Islami (Islamic Republic)’.
Iran stands at the intersection of multiple factors that shape its political reality. President Rouhani’s challenge is to strike a balance between these factors and to achieve a balance point or the ‘nokhteh taadol’. If we are to understand Iran’s transformation, we need a solid understanding of ideational factors and historical legacy rather than simplistic and platitudinous analogies made by so-called serious analysts. The task ahead of the President means finding a balance between continuity and change – this is a challenge Gorbachev never lived up to, love him or loathe him.
Dr. Ghoncheh Tazmini is a Postdoctoral Visiting Fellow at the Iranian Heritage Foundation. She is a Just member.