CIAO DATE: 05/02

Khomeini’s Incorporation of Iranian Military

Mark Roberts

Institute for National Strategic Studies
National Defense University

January 1996

Chapter 1: History

In her book, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (1979), revolutionary authority and sociologist Theda Skocpol states:

The repressive state organizations of the prerevolutionary regime have to be weakened before mass revolutionary action can succeed, or even emerge. Indeed, historically, mass rebellious action has not been able, in itself, to overcome state repression. Instead, military pressures from abroad . . . have been necessary to undermine repression. ¹

In a later article, she further clarifies this by stating that the "centralized, semibureaucratic administrative and military organizations of the old regimes disintegrated due to combinations of international pressures and disputes between the monarchs and landed commercial upper classes." ²

In other words, according to Skocpol, for a revolution to occur (and subsequently succeed), the armed forces would have to be emasculated and therefore rendered ineffective (due to internal and/or external influences). But in the context of the Iranian Revolution, Skocpol's theory did not apply. Thus the following question arises: Given that the Pahlavi regime had the most powerful, well-equipped, and well-trained military machine in the Persian Gulf, ³ how then did Khomeini and his followers neutralize (politically, socially, and militarily) the armed forces of the Pahlavi Regime?

Placed within the context of Skocpol's theory, the revolution should not have even occurred, much less succeeded. The armed forces were at the pinnacle of their might and by all accounts were capable of removing any threat to the Shah, should he direct them to do so. Indeed, "the least likely of all scenarios generally was thought to be one in which the trained and elaborately equipped military forces of the Shah would fail at the eleventh hour to save the monarchy or at least to be in the vanguard of its replacement." ⁴

But the Iranian revolution succeeded not only in spite of the armed forces, but because of them. More specifically, the Khomeini regime successfully engineered the Iranian Revolution in spite of the military and then incorporated the military into itself. Once it had done so, it used the military as its coercive arm to consolidate its power by removing all potential competition (ethnic minorities, political opposition groups, and religious minorities) and establishing itself as the supreme power within Iran.

To analyze this process it is necessary to examine the inherent structural defects of the Shah's military hierarchy that led to the political emasculation of the armed forces. One defect was the Shah's personal control of and involvement in the command and control structure. Additionally, the Shah insisted that the heads of the armed forces heads deal with him directly on all matters and prohibited direct contact among service chiefs, which prevented effective coordination to counter the revolution, even during a time of military rule. It could be argued that a well-coordinated military response was not necessary to quell the unarmed, civilian population because a section of any one of the armed services could have done so. While this is true, the explanation lies in the lack of decisive leadership on the one hand and psychological dependence upon the Shah on the other hand. Both these factors combined to make the armed forces incapable of independently responding to the uprisings.

Further, it can be shown that the Khomeini regime, having identified the incorporation of the armed forces into its power structure as the key to successful power consolidation, took active measures before and during the Revolution to do so. During the course of the revolution, Khomeini repeatedly appealed to the armed forces, the Shah's backbone, ⁵ to desert the monarch during the last days of the Pahlavi regime and join with the imam's forces. Due to the Shah's compartmentalization of the armed forces and his repressive policies toward Iranian citizens, these broadcasts found a receptive audience among the younger, less traditional members of the military, those not among the established hierarchy of the upper levels of the Pahlavi regime.

Once in power, the Khomeini administration incorporated the armed forces into itself, which ensured that it had the means to first exercise and then consolidate power. Throughout the process, the Khomeini government left the basic infrastructure of the armed forces intact while purging the monarchists from the upper ranks. Replacing the monarchists with "ideologically pure" officers, it then used the armed forces as its primary tool to consolidate its power over other elements of society. It was during this phase that the Pasdaran, or Revolutionary Guards, were introduced as an arm of the Islamic Republic. A later "ideological purge" further ensured military loyalty to the new government. In this manner, the Iranian revolution succeeded not only in spite of the armed forces, but because of them.

In the wake of the purges, the Khomeini regime and the armed forces were drawn even closer together through the Iran-Iraq War. The fledgling Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) found itself relying on the military expertise of the former government to defend the country in a fight for national survival. This wartime experience resulted in the armed forces further solidifying as an arm of the nascent Islamic Republic.

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Notes

Note 1. Theda Skocpol, "Rentier State and Shi'a Islam in the Iranian Revolution," Theory and Society 2, no.3 (May 1982), 266, and States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979). Back

Note 2. Skocpol, "Social Revolutions and Mass Military Mobilizations," World Politics XL, no. 2 (January 1988), 151. Back

Note 3. Joseph A. Kechichian and Houman Sadri, "National Security," from Helen Chapin Metz, ed., Iran: A Country Study (Washington, DC: Headquarters, Department of the Army, 1989), 237, and Robin Wright, In the Name of God: The Khomeini Decade (New York: Touchstone, 1989), 84. Back

Note 4. James H. Noyes, The Clouded Lens: Persian Gulf Security and U.S. Policy, 2nd ed. (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1982), 112. Back

Note 5. Jahangir Amuzegar, The Dynamics of the Iranian Revolution: The Pahlavis' Triumph and Tragedy (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991), 157. Back