ABSTRACT
The failure of Rafsanjani’s settlement was predicated on morethan a division at the top; it was founded on a social revolution from below. Iran has a highly communicative social structure and one of the strengths of the Islamic Revolution was the reciprocal osmosis which existed between state and society. Divisions at the top (characterised by some in the growing criticism emanating from the Imam’s son, Ahmad Khomeini),3 were soon replicated in society below, but what was
more important was the extensive politicisation of the public that was taking place, largely unnoticed by the political rivals at the top. This was in part a consequence of Rafsanjani’s tentative liberalisation of the press and his affectation for a measure of populism. A public space began to emerge. But the public which emerged to fill this space was the product of much more than Rafsanjani’s patronage. These were veterans of the war and children of the Revolution who viewed with disdain the bureaucratic centralism and lack of social justice which characterised the Rafsanjani administration. Discontent was expressed in the mid-1990s in riots which shook Iranian cities, the most serious in Qazvin in 1994.4 These malcontents were even more scathing about the President’s allies. The authoritarian Islamists, or ‘Conservatives’ as they were increasingly known, found themselves confronted not only by social discontent, but by an intellectual renaissance in Islamic thought, led by intellectuals such as Abdolkarim Soroush and Mojtahed Shabestari. This was in part galvanised by the threat posed of the possible imposition of an Islamic state. These scholars shaped the intellectual foundation of the reinvention of the Islamic Left. They forcefully argued that the Revolution was being betrayed and that its promise had been left unfulfilled. Challenging the dogma of the Conservatives, the Reformists (as the Left came to be known) argued for ‘Islamic democracy’, adherence to the constitution, civil rights, the rule of law and transparency in the economic activities of the country. While the political elite fought among themselves, these ideas were gradually disseminated via selected newspapers (reflecting the growing literacy of the population), lectures and the network of student associations. The test of this growth in political consciousness was to take place in May 1997.
