is iran a totalitarian state

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Is Iran a Totalitarian State?By Peter Beinart

Ask Iran hawks to describe the regime in Tehran, and youll likely hear the word totalitarian. I donot trust inspections with totalitarian regimes, Benjamin Netanyahu told CBS in March. In a speechlast year to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Marco Rubio called Iranalong withNorth Korea, China, Venezuela, Cuba, and Russiatotalitarian governments. A few weeks ago,Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton declared that there are nothing but hardliners in Tehran. PresidentObama, likes [sic] liberals throughout the Cold War, keeps looking for the vaunted moderates intotalitarian regimes that never seem to emerge.

The above statements are factually false. Irans government, while brutal and tyrannical, is nottotalitarian. And the fact that Iran hawks think it is helps explain why their strategy for stoppingIrans nuclear program makes no sense.

Totalitarian regimes seek total control over how their people act, and even think. Thats not true of alldictatorships. All dictators suppress political opposition. But many allow their subjects a sphere ofpersonal freedom so long as that sphere remains apolitical. In a run-of-the-mill dictatorship, the stateneed not control bowling leagues and gardening clubs so long as those bowling leagues and gardeningclubs dont become vehicles for organizing against the regime. In an ordinary dictatorship, if youre notagainst the regime, you can maintain some autonomy from it.

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In a totalitarian regime, by contrast, not opposing the regime isnt good enough. You must activelysupport it. Your bowling league and gardening club cant be apolitical. They must serve the state. Iftotalitarianism takes its own claim seriously, wrote Hannah Arendt, it must come to the point whereit has to finish once and for all with the neutrality of chess, that is, with the autonomous existence ofany activity whatsoever. Jeane Kirkpatrick, who would later become Ronald Reagans UNambassador, made a similar distinction when she contrasted traditional autocrats who do notdisturb the habitual rhythms of work and leisure, habitual places of residence, habitual patterns of

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family and personal relations and revolutionary communist regimes that claim jurisdiction over thewhole life of the society. (Conveniently, Kirkpatrick classified third-world dictators who backed theU.S. as authoritarian and those who backed the U.S.S.R. as totalitarian.)

Which brings us to Iran. The regime in Tehran does make some effort to control peoples personal,non-political affairs. Women must dress modestly in public, for instance, and its illegal to sell liquor.But these efforts, while ugly and repressive, are nowhere near as intrusive as the behavior of moregenuinely totalitarian regimes like the Taliban, which banned flying kites, playing cards, keepingpigeons as pets, listening to music, hanging paintings even in private homes and yes, chess.

Even more importantly, Iran allows competitive elections, something a truly totalitarian regime nevercan. In totalitarian regimes, the state must speak with one voice, thus maintaining the pretense thatbecause they are agents of History or agents of God, its leaders have access to absolute truth. Politicaldisagreements can only occur behind closed doors.

By holding elections, by contrast, Iran allows public political argument. Of course, those elections takeplace within narrow ideological limits, among candidates vetted by Irans ruling clerics. Still, theoutcomes are not preordained. Thus, Iran concedes what a totalitarian state cannot: That when itcomes to government policy, there is no single correct path to which everyone must pledge fealty.

Why is this relevant to the nuclear negotiations? Because when Netanyahu, Rubio, and Cotton call Irantotalitarian, they conjure a homogenous, uniform regime. That regime, they claim, entered nuclearnegotiations because of the pain of sanctions. Thus, if America imposes more sanctions, the regime willmake greater concessions.

But because Iran is not totalitarian, different factions inside the ruling elite disagree, even publicly,about the wisdom of a nuclear deal. In 2005, when he served as President Mohammad Khatamisnuclear negotiator, current President Hassan Rouhani favored a deal that capped uranium enrichmentat 5 percent, prevented the reprocessing of plutonium, and allowed for intrusive internationalinspections of Irans nuclear facilities. When Rouhani won the presidency in 2013, he initiatednegotiations along these lines.

Yes, sanctions mattered. They caused popular discontent, which Iranian voters took out on Rouhanishardline opponents. But the sanctions only mattered because they brought Rouhani and hispro-nuclear deal faction to power. In the words of Harvard Iran expert Payam Mohseni, The victory ofanother candidate, such as [hardline] former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, would not have producedsuch a change in foreign policy despite the presence of the same sanctions regime.

If Iran really were a totalitarian regime, its possible more sanctions might bring more concessions. Butbecause its actually an authoritarian regime in which different factions jostle, privately and publicly,for power, more sanctions will likely have the opposite effect. Just as prior sanctions sparked popularanger against Rouhanis hardline predecessors, new sanctions will likely spark popular anger againsthim. They will make the agenda on which he won the presidencyimproving Irans ravagedeconomya failure. And thus, they will strengthen his opponents who want no accommodation withthe West at all.

Words matter. And so long as Iran hawks keep mischaracterizing what Iran is, theyll keep offering badadvice about what America should do.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/global/archive/2015/04/is-iran-a-totalitarian-state/389393/

Copyright 2015 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.


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is iran a totalitarian state

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