Generation Gap Widens in Iran's Government

An editorial in Bahrain’s Gulf Daily News chides Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad essentially for being a loudmouth.

The editorial quotes Ynet reports of provocative statements by Ahmadinejad — Israel is “too weak” to handle an offensive in Iran, and he doesn’t think that talk of an attack on Iran is “serious.”

Neda Agha-Solta, a 26-year-old girl who was shot and killed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards during protests

The editorial then asks, “Is there a better way to provoke the hawks in Israel and America to join forces and attempt to prove Tehran’s most aggravating Israel-basher wrong? … [This is] is nothing less than a call to arms for both Israel and America. As such, he seems to want to stimulate the West’s unthinking warmongers into catastrophic action and a devastating new war… Ahmadinejad would do well for himself, the Gulf and the world if he bit his tongue occasionally and restrained his inordinate pride.”

This kind of bombast has been going on for years. Is it just pride? After so much time, it must be part of a larger strategy.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, Ahmadinejad’s statements are part of a larger strategy that comes from political desperation, based on the mindset of the Great Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the subsequent Iran/Iraq war that ended in 1988.

To the hardliners who survived the war, the Revolution was a miracle that the united the entire country into a powerful Islamic unit that could then expel the invading Iraqis. This was an achievement of gigantic historic proportions to the entire Muslim world, since it revived the hope that Muslims throughout the region or even the world could be united behind one government, as they’d been united behind the Turkish government before the Ottoman Empire collapsed after WW I.

As always happens in every country, the children who grow up after a crisis war don’t see the world in the same way that the war survivors do. Thus, when young people started having pro-American demonstrations in the late 1990s, Iran’s hardliners began to panic.

That’s why a new strategy became important with the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president in 2005, and everything he said and did should be regarded as a part of that strategy — to unite the country and the region behind Iran’s government. Thus, Ahmadinejad has talked about pushing Israel into the sea and about denying the Holocaust; he’s providing funding to terrorist groups Hizbollah and Hamas, to provoke them into a war with Israel.

To suggest that this is all the words of a bumbling fool who is unintentionally provoking Israel and the world is not credible. The purpose is to unify the nation again, even at the risk of provoking a military strike. In fact, a military strike by Israel or America might even be welcomed.

As the student and “green movement” protests have grown and spread, the hardliners have become increasingly desperate. The protests are not simply putting a few policies at risk; they’re jeopardizing the country’s entire foreign policy. Furthermore, as the economy falters, they’re even jeopardizing domestic policy. The protests that began after last year’s disputed June 12 presidential election even bring the survival of the entire government into question, leading to brutal violence by Iran’s security forces, firing into crowds, mass arrests, torture and brutalizing protesters.

Last year, analysts at Stratfor, BBC, and elsewhere were comparing the protests to the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, that were crushed within a few days. But as I wrote at the time, that’s the wrong historical comparison.

What Iran is going through is called a generational awakening era. (See “Basics of Generational Dynamics.”)

It occurs in every country when the youngsters who grow up after a crisis war rebel against their parents and the austere rules and institutions created by the older generation to prevent a new crisis war. The political chaos reaches a peak some 20-25 years after the end of the crisis war.

The correct historical comparison is to America’s Summer of Love, in 1967, 22 years after the end of World War II. This was followed by almost a decade of protests, climaxing in the resignation of President Nixon, and a political victory by the young Boomer protesters.

In Iran, those analysts who expect the the generational chaos to end soon will be disappointed. Even if street protests have been discouraged, the underlying generational conflict is still exploding, as shown by an explosion of stories recently about splits between moderates and hardliners within the government itself.

(As an aside for those of you who hate Boomers, if you’d like to know what they were like when they were young and cute, just talk to young Iranians. They’re in the same generational archetype as America’s Boomers.)

In one story, for example, hundreds of officers in the Revolutionary Guard Corps had to resign recently, because they were supporters of the Green Movement, as reported by WSJ.

One of the most dramatic splits in the government goes to a fundamental theological contradiction within the Revolutionary spirit itself.

The fantasy is that Iran will unite the Muslim world behind Iran’s government. The reality is that Iran is a Shia Muslim state, and the countries on the Arabian peninsula are overwhelmingly Arab Sunni Muslims, and there isn’t a snowflake’s chance in hell that they’ll ever agree to be subordinate to a Persian Shia Iran.

To make matters worse, Ahmadinejad has claimed to be a devout believer in the Mahdaviat — the Shia Muslim belief that the Mahdi (or “the 12’th Imam” or “the Hidden Imam”) is coming to save mankind. This belief is roughly equivalent to the Christian belief in the second coming of Christ. (By the way, there’s also a Buddhist belief in the Maitreya — that a new Buddha is to appear on earth, and will achieve complete enlightenment.)

This zealous belief, which is not shared by Sunni Muslims or even all Shia Muslims, is a clear contradiction with the strategy of universal Muslim hegemony. (See “Theological split in Iran widens as opposition protests continue.”)

Now this inside theological split has burst out into the open. In an analysis by RFE/RL, Ahmadinejad and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have infuriated hardliners by appearing to be making statements that move away from fundamentalist Shia Muslim, and towards a more nationalist idea. In one controversial remark, Mashaei has said that Iran should be friendly with all people of the world, “including Israelis.” According to the Asia Times, the right-wing factions in Iran’s government are splintering so quickly that Ahmadinejad may be threatened with impeachment.

Every awakening era has a winner, and there are only two possibilities: the older generations that survived the war, or the youngsters who grew up after the war. The younger generation usually wins because, after all, the older generations die off. But if the older generations win, as has happened in China for example, it’s very ominous for the country and will lead to a civil war in later years.

Right now, Iran is a schizophrenic nation, with a hardline government policy that’s bitterly anti-American, and younger generations that are largely pro-American and pro-West, and who don’t really have anything against Israel. Right now, it looks to me that the younger generation is going to win, but it may take a few years.

My expectation, as I’ve been saying for years, is that when Iran is finally forced to choose one side or the other in the Clash of Civilizations world war, they will be on the side of the West, including America and Israel. That’s one very good reason why a military strike on Iran would be a bad idea.