The discourses on Iran's "failed revolution" are almost as old as the revolution itself, resurrecting themselves every now and then with every rumblings of mass discontent, like a rehashed gourmet-left over punctuating the pages of, among others, the influential journal, Foreign Affairs.

During the 1990s, Foreign Affairs published several articles which common denominator was the historical clairvoyance about the imminent demise of the Islamic Republic or, to put in the words of one author, Edward Shirely, its "melt down." Such brave predictions resonated with the discourse of Oliver Roy on "failure of political Islam," in a book under the same title, which is still in huge currency despite the fact that its author has long abandoned his own thesis, at least on Iran.

And not to be outdone by foreign experts, we have also had our fair share of Iranian contributions to this discourse, such as Ali Banuazizi's "Iran's revolutionary impasse" in MERIP REPORT in 1994. Banuazizi's theoretically-naïve and lop-sided perspective, criticized by this author in the same journal that year, has now been recycled, albeit with a more rigorous economic analysis, by Jahangir Amuzegar in his "Iran's Crumbling Revolution" in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs.

A comparative glance at Shirely's 1995 piece and Amuzegar's 2003 piece results in but one conclusion, namely, the common desire of both authors to declare the revolution failed to the roots and on the verge of collapse. Shirely, a former CIA analyst, tacitly claimed knowledge of privileged intelligence for his sharp conclusions, such as his adamant rejection of the thesis that there were moderates in the system that the U.S. Government needed to reach to. In fairness to Amuzegar, he does not repeat Shirely's much-disproved thesis, in the light of Khatami and his Second Khordad Movement, and, in fact, boldly predicts that the conservative clergy are now "helplessly" witnessing an inevitable process of democratization. But are they?! Should we take Amuzegar's concluding sentence that the days of Islamic Republic "are numbered" at face value, or rather, with a great deal of skepticism? Indeed, why should we give Amuzegar's analysis any more weight or credence than Shirely's or Banuazizi's, not to mention a whole slew of politically-motivated analyses routinely spawned by the monarchists, leftists, Mojahedin, and others?

One, of course, expects more from the semi-theoretical Foreign Affairs, than to lend itself to academic cronies of the ancient regime who have not stepped foot inside Iran since their regime of political dictatorship was cast to the dust bin of history by the volcanic eruption of the 1978-79 revolution. Amuzegar the former official of the Pahlavi dictatorship and its bankrupt Rastakhiz Party sounds ever so convincing as a born-again liberal bemoaning the plight of Iran's reformists, even though he is optimistic enough to foresee the revolution's "crumbling" and paving the way to genuine democratization quickly on the horizon.

But, alas, we can dwell on the merits of such quasi-academic interpretations only so much, as they detract from a sober analysis of the complexities of Iranian society and polity at the present moment and the various impulses nurtured by the evolution of the post-revolutionary system, which is best described as "demo-theocracy" with an inherent promise - to expand the realms of political participation and citizen input.

Has this promise been kept? Yes and no, and the shorter answer is mixed. Yes to the extent that compared with its predecessor, the scope of popular participation and political accountability has increased, notwithstanding the regular elections, role of Majlis, councils, and political parties, and no, to the extent that the theocratic pressure has stonewalled the natural and gradual evolution of the democratic process, partly in response to the plethora of national security worries tightening the system and causing a political ambivalence on the value of democratization, especially lately since the U.S. president, George Bush, has shed so many crocodile tears for the problems of democracy in Iran. Indeed, what a travesty, when Mr. Bush does not seem the least bothered about undermining Iran's reformists with his demonization of Iran and his intrusive militarist policy in the Middle East, forcing the moderates to turn hawkish for the sake of survival.

Back to Amuzegar and other mouthpieces of "failed revolution." One of their shortcomings is their total inability to present any coherent understanding of the revolution, its dynamism and the processes it has engineered. For if they had, then they would instantly recognize that the manifestations of popular protest, such as student demonstrations, should not be misconstrued as signifying the revolution's end or crumbling, but the open-endedness of the revolution nesting within it the promise of greater and greater democratization. Yet, thanks to their narrow and unitary notion of revolution, these authors indulge in their fantasy of "failed revolution" much to the appeasement of anti-Iran sources around the world.

In conclusion, as I wrote in my "Iran and the Future of World Islamic Movements" in the 1996 issue of Iranian Journal of International Affairs, in response to Shirely's and Banuazizi's articles, my 2003 conclusions remain the same: the thesis of failed revolution may be good music to some ears but hardly in tune with the notes of history.

Further reading:

Afrasiabi, "Problems of Deliberative Democracy in Iran,"
http://www.payvand.com/news/01/may/1037.html

Afrasiabi, "Democracy and Its Discontent," Telos (1999).

Afrasiabi, "Islamic Populism," Telos (1995).

Afrasiabi, "Response to Ali Banuazizi's "Iran's Revolutionary Impasse," MERIP REPORT (1994).

Afrasiabi, "Iran and the Future of World Islamic Movements: A Critique of Western Analysts," Iranian Journal of International Affairs (1996).