Civil Society in Syria and Iran: Activism in Authoritarian Contexts

Civil Society
in Syria
and Iran
Activism in
Authoritarian Contexts
edited by
Paul Aarts and
Francesco Cavatorta
b o u l d e r
l o n d o n
Published in the United States of America in 2013 by
Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301
www.rienner.com
and in the United Kingdom by

Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU
© 2013 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Civil society in Syria and Iran : activism in authoritarian contexts /
edited by Paul Aarts and Francesco Cavatorta.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-58826-858-7 (alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-58826-883-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Civil society—Syria. 2. Syria—Politics and government. 3. Syria—
Social conditions. 4. Civil society—Iran. 5. Iran—Politics and government. 6. Iran—
Social conditions. 7. Authoritarianism. 8. Regime change. 9. Comparative government.
I. Aarts, Paul, 1949– II. Cavatorta, Francesco.
JQ1826.A91C58 2012
322.40955—dc23
2012022251
British Cataloguing in Publication Data

A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book
is available from the British Library.
Printed and bound in the United States of America
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements

of the American National Standard for Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992.
5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
1 Civil Society in Syria and Iran 1

Paul Aarts and Francesco Cavatorta
2 Syria’s Civil Society as a Tool for Regime Legitimacy 19

Line Khatib
3 Iran’s Civil Society Grappling with a Triangular Dynamic 39

Ali Fathollah-Nejad
4 Business Associations and the New Nexus of Power in Syria 69

Bassam Haddad
5 The Ambiguous Role of Entrepreneurs in Iran 93

Peyman Jafari
6 The Internet and Civil Activism in Syria 119

Roschanack Shaery-Eisenlohr and Francesco Cavatorta
7 From Virtual to Tangible Social Movements in Iran 143

Ali Honari
8 The Paradox of Government-Organized

Civil Activism in Syria 169
Salam Kawakibi
v
vi Contents
9 Co-opting Civil Society Activism in Iran 187

Paola Rivetti
10 Civil Society Activism in Authoritarian Regimes 207

Mustapha Kamel Al-Sayyid
Bibliography 221
The Contributors 243
Index 247
About the Book 259
3
Iran’s Civil Society Grappling
with a Triangular Dynamic
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
The headlong stream is termed violent

But the river bed hemming it in is
Termed violent by no one.
—Bertolt Brecht1
The scholarly literature on the role of civil society in authoritarian

states often focuses on the relationship between the state and civil so-
ciety, examining the ways in which the former maintains power over
the latter. However, in order to adequately assess the evolution of
civil society, especially in countries of geostrategic importance and
in conflict with great power interests, it is essential to explore the tri-
angular relationship among global geopolitics, the state, and civil so-
ciety. Thus, I contend in this chapter that a proper understanding of
state-society dynamics must take into account external pressures ex-
erted on the country and hence on the entire body politic.
The debate on “new authoritarianism” or “upgrading authoritar-
ianism” revolves around the claim that today’s authoritarian govern-
ments, rather than relying on the classic repertoire of totalitarian
control, are using new and more sophisticated methods of control
over and of co-optation of dissent. 2 Here, the use of new communi-
cation technologies and the political co-optation of the opposition
often take center stage. However, such strategies might be success-
ful also because external dynamics are exploited by the authoritarian
39
40 Civil Society in Syria and Iran
regimes doing the upgrading. Generally, however, the literature on

political liberalization and democratization neglects, with some ex-
ceptions,3 external influences, with the emphasis usually on domes-
tic political culture, the dynamics and nature of civil society, and do-
mestic political economy. Whereas most literature focuses on the
regional or global diffusion of democratic models and discourses,
the study of the infusion of external forces—for example, in the
forms of economic globalization and foreign policies—has been
widely neglected. In particular, little attention has been given to ex-
ternal pressures that might fuel authoritarian tendencies in the name
of national security, especially in countries and/or governments be-
leaguered by the “West” (or, for that matter, any other great power
with global ambitions), or, in other words, to “the complex interac-
tion between external and internal variables in shaping the prospects
for democracy.”4
In the Iranian case, many studies display a blatant disregard of
geopolitics as a factor in facilitating or constraining authoritarian
rule, and in shrinking or widening the space available for civil society
activism. Therefore, I suggest here that only an exploration of the tri-
angular dynamics between the global level (in the case of Iran, the
key actor is the United States, in particular, and the West, in general),
the state, and civil society can provide useful insights to the space
left for civil activism in the contested field of democratization and
authoritarianism. Hence, I shall examine the impact of “external in-
fusion” upon state-society relations, and its effect on authoritarianism
and democratization.
First, I will identify the reasons behind the omission of external
factors when discussing authoritarianism in strategically important
countries not allied to the United States. Second, I will introduce the
concept of space as a key dimension for civil society activism, im-
pinging on its scope, limits, and form. Taking into account the geopo-
litical environment, I will assess the space for civil society in Iranian
state-society relations. Third, I discuss the role of external infusion
since 2002, in the context of US confrontational policies and the
transatlantic “coercive diplomacy”5 toward Iran. I will assess the con-
sequences for the interaction between the state and civil society in
Iran as well as for resulting forms of civic activism. Finally, I will ex-
amine the relationship between economic sanctions—the other salient
pillar of the transatlantic coercive diplomacy—and the issue of au-
thoritarianism and democratization.
Iran's Civil Society Grappling with a Triangular Dynamic 41
The Authoritarianism Debate

and the Shadow of US Interests
Through a critical examination of the uses and misuses of the label of

authoritarianism, its politico-strategic raison d’être is brought to the
fore. Not unimportantly, a great number of studies conducted on au-
thoritarian rule in Iran have been produced by agencies close to the
US government and its European allies. They almost exclusively
focus on authoritarianism in countries that are in geopolitical conflict
with the United States (e.g., Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Russia, and
China) or find themselves at critical junctures in this regard (e.g.,
Pakistan), while concealing the conditions in authoritarian countries
friendly to US interests (e.g., the countries of the Gulf Cooperation
Council). In that vein, a study on twenty-first-century authoritarian-
ism by Freedom House, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Radio
Free Asia unequivocally explains the choice of its focus on Russia,
China, Iran, Venezuela, and Pakistan as reflecting the countries’ “fun-
damental geopolitical importance . . . integrated into larger eco-
nomic, political, and security networks and exert[ing] a powerful in-
fluence on international policy at the regional and global levels.”6
Iran is defined as “a unique authoritarian polity ruled by Shiite Mus-
lim clerics, loom[ing] over the Middle East.”7 While the study attrib-
utes to those countries “an important role in contributing to the
global setbacks for democracy,”8 the potentially negative effects of
the policies pursued by the “established democracies”—as they are
complacently called in the study—escape due consideration.
Often the authoritarianism debate on Iran is framed in a US-
centered imperial narrative that discusses the “Iranian challenge” in
regard to US interests,9 thus reducing Iran’s internal and external pol-
itics to its usefulness for US interests often disguised as that of the
entire international community. The United States is therefore pre-
sented as an intrinsically benevolent actor when it comes to further-
ing the case of democracy in Iran. For instance, based on a peculiar
reading of history, Abbas Milani argues that “promotion of democ-
racy has been part of US policy in Iran for [the] better part of half a
century,” portraying the United States as the only outside force truly
interested in Iranian democracy. It was only eclipsed in such a benign
endeavor by the “exigencies of the Cold War,”10 in which context, for
Iran, “[a]uthoritarianism was deemed a reasonable, if not indeed neces-
sary price to pay for the containment of communism.”11 Such a narra-
tive totally ignores the fundamental question of how a democratic and

independent Iran would satisfy US imperial ambition, or, inversely,
undermine those very “vital interests,” as has been powerfully illus-
trated in the context of the US/UK-designed 1953 coup d’état of
Iran’s democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh.
Concerning the situation today, it is along such an imperial framing
that Milani suggests that an “‘International Brotherhood of Authori-
tarianism’ is emerging, with Iran as a junior partner to Russia and
China”12—again simply reducing the complexities of political systems
around the globe to their function of usefulness to US interests.
In contrast to the euphemistic description by the United States of
friendly Arab dictatorships as “moderate,” derogatory notions are de-
ployed to describe the political systems of challengers to US domi-
nation: besides authoritarianism, the terms “dictatorship,” “tyranny,”
and “despotism” often appear in government literature, the press,
public discourse, and even academia. Such denominations have fore-
most a political purpose in US strategic thinking, as the 2006 US Na-
tional Security Strategy illustrates when it discusses authoritarian
politics in states that challenge US interests.13 Therein, the alleged
concern for the nature of domestic governance in those “tyrannical”
countries is directly connected to their external anti-US behavior.
Such a line of argument, primarily suggesting the external politics of
a country as a mere corollary of its internal constitution, obscures the
fact that geopolitical divergences might be driving countries to act in
ways not in line with US interests.
Furthermore, in such literature, the claim that a democratic Iran
is seen as the best hope for the United States to tackle the “Iranian
challenge”14 comes with the idea that Iran’s perpetual quest for de-
mocracy, with its population described as the Middle East’s most
“pro-American” one, would inevitably bring the country back into
the fold of the “international community,” and concomitantly a stra-
tegic realignment with the West would materialize.15 Such an asser-
tion is flawed in many ways, not least because it portrays Iran’s civil
society as being pro-American as well as secular in the Western
sense. However, Iran’s diverse civil society cannot necessarily be
captured within the frame of such “Western ideals.” For instance, a
groundbreaking Harvard University study on political and cultural di-
mensions of the Iranian blogosphere has shown that, aside from the
secular-reformist camp (allegedly pro-Western), another major camp
is conservative-religious (allegedly anti-Western) yet at the same
time critical of the government.16 In fact, a Western-centered per-

spective that largely constructs a division in the domestic sociopolit-
ical scene along the schism of secular/pro-Western and religious/anti-
Western forces is a profoundly inadequate representation of the
politics of Iran.
Besides the benevolent, prodemocracy role ascribed to the United
States, Milani’s discussion of outside influences on a country’s gov-
ernance is reduced to a flawed argument about the power of conspir-
acy theories as an inherent dimension of the modern Iranian politics
of paranoia. The externally stimulated 1953 coup was not a conspir-
acy, but a hisorical reality. And, whereas “conspiracy theories” in Iran
might constitute a powerful “enemy of democracy,” it should be em-
phasized that there is a powerful history of external meddling that
justifies a degree of suspicion.17 Certainly, both the many revolution-
ary moments in modern Iranian history and more recently the mobi-
lization around the June 2009 presidential election can hardly stand
as proof for Iranian citizens’ passivity.
The previous perusal sheds light on the potential reasons behind
the lack of a proper consideration of the geopolitical dimension in the
analysis of authoritarianism in geostrategically important countries.
In this, the framing of a benign (US) empire is pitted against a tyran-
nical state.
Space and Civil Society
This section will highlight the importance of space as an analytical

tool for assessing the scope, limits, and contents of civil society ac-
tivism. The concept of space is pivotal for examining the strength
and influence of civil society. Therefore, analyzing the context and
the reasons why space is shrinking or expanding, how this is done,
and by whom should be at the heart of any discussion of civil society.
In a number of studies, however, the discussion of civil society’s
space is framed solely as a function of state behavior or measured as
a result of the interaction between civil society and the state. Hence,
it ignores influences from outside the country, which also affect the
space within which state-society relations take shape.
The Gramscian concept of space is theoretically useful for ana-
lyzing the triangular dynamics between geopolitics, the state, and
civil society. In the Gramscian sense, space is regarded as an area in
which civil society actors can create and organize counter-hegemonic

projects and challenge state authority. There is a threefold dimension
to this term: social, physical, and mental space.18 If all these dimen-
sions of space are being constrained, the very existence of civil soci-
ety will be jeopardized. Social space, in this context, can be regarded
as the setting for the entirety of relationships and networks of both in-
dividuals and collectives. Obviously, this setting can be subject to
control and repression by the holder(s) of coercive power (i.e., mostly
but not exclusively the state) by preventing certain groups or individ-
uals to gather and thus narrowing the opportunities for public conven-
tions. “In more concrete terms,” Shmuel N. Eisenstadt writes, “the
elites of these societies attempted to limit the contacts among the dif-
ferent units of the periphery and between them and the center to
mostly adaptive or external relations.”19 Such preemptive measures
are intended to thwart the creative outcome of the “great diversity of
knowledge”20 that is implied in social space. By only permitting se-
lected parts of society to convene and seek collective action, state au-
thority may succeed in shaping the creative outcome in its favor.
The control of physical space is indispensable for an authoritar-
ian state apparatus, and Asef Bayat addresses the relevance of physi-
cal or public space for resistance in suppressed societies.21 He argues
that public space, such as streets, can potentially turn passive net-
works into active ones, with the previously anonymous actors taking
notice of each other and their common aims. Iran’s modern history
provides numerous incidents of mass street protests, from the late-
nineteenth-century Tobacco Revolt through the revolutionary up-
heaval in the late 1970s to the “Green” marches of 2009. Interest-
ingly, in the run-up to the 2009 presidential elections, by allowing
citizens to march in the streets and by offering for the first time in
Iranian history live TV debates among the candidates, the Iranian
state engaged in an effort to upgrade the legitimacy of the system by
opening up the public space. This is when the reform-seeking part of
the electorate took note of each other during the numerous and large
gatherings. The street—as a physical or public space—appeared to be
in its hands. As Augustus R. Norton points out, once authority loosens
its grip on space for civic activism, it is likely that active parts of civil
society step in to seek the shaping of politics.22 Such a correlation—
a zero-sum game—will hold true for all three dimensions of space.
In controlling the mental space, it is ensured that norms, values,
and thinking patterns reproducing hegemonic structures are profoundly
internalized, so that counter-hegemonic thought is prevented from
spreading.23 External geopolitical pressure upon the entire country,

the state, and/or society is likely to shape the mental space for civil
society activism. The following discussion will concentrate on men-
tal space as a dimension in which development inherently depends on
the triangular dynamics between global geopolitics, the state, and
civil society. The condition of the mental space is likely to shape the
two other dimensions of space, as it can define the normative frame-
work of civil society activism.
Toward the Advent of Civil Society During

External Détente: The Opening of Political Space
The eight-year war with Iraq (1980–1988) proved to be a heavy blow
to the democratic aspirations of Iranians. During the war, political re-
pression intensified and was often legitimized by invoking “national
security” in the “Holy Defense” (Defâ-e Moghaddas) against the ag-
gression by Iraq, which was heavily backed by the United States and
its allies. “[T]he consequence of the Iran-Iraq war for Iran,” Elaheh
Rostami-Povey writes, “was the creation of a state of emergency,
leading to a far more centralised and authoritarian state, which im-
posed further Islamisation and repression of women, the secular left
and nationalists.”24
The end of the 1980s saw two major events within a matter of
months. In August 1988 the war with Iraq ended, and in June 1989
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died. The state’s priority under the
presidency of Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani turned to the economic
reconstruction of the country after the devastations of the war. Along
with it came a pragmatically motivated period of political liberaliza-
tion, both internal and external. The international relations of Iran
were marked by détente, including neutrality in the 1991 Gulf War,
pragmatism in its dealings with conflicts erupting in post-Soviet Cen-
tral Asia and the Caucasus, and rapprochement with European coun-
tries and Arab neighbors.
Détente in external relations was a crucial prerequisite for a re-
laxation of the domestic political scene. In other words, the postwar
extinction of an imminent external threat paved the way for a more
liberal political climate. On the domestic scene, according to Majid
Muhammadi, one of the most influential voices in Iran’s civil society
discourse, the previously mentioned twin events “resulted in the dif-
fusion of social and political power into multiple centres, on the one
hand, and the formation of new political sentiments and increasing
awareness among the various social forces on the other hand. . . .

Power is no longer the monopoly of any one group,” he maintained,
“and what results from power is now a product of many efforts, trials,
bargains, and pacts.”25 It was in that context that the Iranian discourse
on civil society emerged.26 At the same time, the 1990s saw the rise of
Iran’s civil society and its constituent social movements, above all the
women’s, students’, and labor movements.27
In May 1997, civil society’s power in relation to the state became
apparent:
Despite the new political environment that emerged starting in the

late 1980s, it was not until a second highlight, the presidential elec-
tions of 1997, that discussions of civil society moved out of small,
often timid intellectual circles and assumed national political cen-
tre stage [when] Hojjatoleslam Muhammad Khatami . . . made the
notion of civil society (jame’h madani) the centrepiece of his pres-
idential campaign.28
With huge support from various civil society groups, Khatami,

who was from the Islamic Republic’s reformist faction, scored an un-
expected landslide victory in the presidential elections. His victory,
however, was based on support from a wide range of groups and
went beyond the traditional scope of civil society. Not only the youth
and women stood behind the reformist cleric, but even a majority in
the clerical capital of Qom, many if not most of the people inside the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and the traditional Is-
lamic left, as well as business leaders hoping for an opening of the
economy, favored Khatami over the Supreme Leader’s and the hard-
liners’ favorite candidate, Ali-Akbar Nateq-Nouri.
The evolution of social movements throughout the 1990s sig-
naled a widening of social space. In the international relations of
Iran, détente had an empowering effect on civil society. The Iranian
struggle against authoritarian rule and the concomitant quest for
democratic government began at the end of the nineteenth century.29
Back then, Iran was already finding itself in the midst of global
geopolitical competition, originally because of its central strategic lo-
cation, but soon after boosted by the world’s first-ever discovery of
oil there. Hence, Iran’s struggle has persistently been a dual one: (1)
against domestic authoritarian rule and for democracy, and (2)
against imperial domination and for national independence.30
A hundred years on, by the end of the twentieth century, diametri-
cally opposing trends could be observed. While the reform movement
celebrated its most important successes in the history of the Islamic

Republic, Iran’s nemesis, the United States, saw the political rise of
neoconservatives. In particular, two events that took place in 1997
cast a cloud over years to come. The spring of 1997 not only saw the
landmark election of Iran’s first reformist president but also the cre-
ation of the neoconservative Project for a New American Century
(PNAC) in the United States. In its Statement of Principles,31 re-
leased on 3 June, PNAC made the case for a US offensive centered
on the Middle East and based on military might. On the Iranian side,
President Khatami in January 1998 called for a “dialogue of civiliza-
tions” with the United States. Despite his administration’s call for
improved ties with the United States, PNAC and its neoconservative
allies continued to argue for a continuation and even deepening of
the existing containment policy toward Iran, which finally influenced
President Bill Clinton’s Iran policy.32
External Pressure and State-Society Relations
Another Kind of Authoritarian Upgrading

This section will deal with the ramifications of the external pressure
exerted on Iran by the United States, focusing on the last decade. The
terrorist attacks of 11 September 2011 were immediately followed by
the promulgation of the global war on terror. The rapid “regime
change” in Afghanistan, for which the Islamic Republic was a key
enabler, would soon be followed by the January 2002 State of the
Union address by US president George W. Bush, in which he desig-
nated Iran as part of an “axis of evil.” The message sent by the US
neoconservatives that Iran had been chosen as a potential regime
change target had a profound effect on both the Iranian state and civil
society. From one day to another, the issue of Iran’s “national secu-
rity” made an extraordinary resurgence and remained center stage
with the threat of a military attack by the United States and/or Israel
looming.
In a first step, the “axis of evil” speech broke the back of the re-
formist government’s foreign policy approach built on rapproche-
ment with Western countries, heralding the reformists’ loss of credi-
bility in the crucial field of national security policy. Also, the foreign
threats prompted interelite consensus to focus on safeguarding the
system of the Islamic Republic. In the face of the danger posed to the
security of the nation and that of the system, democratic aspirations

took a back seat.33
As journalist Seymour Hersh reported, war preparations by the
United States against Iran had already begun in 2003.34 The de facto
external threat to national security, amplified by the state’s instrumen-
talization of the latter to disqualify dissent as consciously or uncon-
sciously playing into the hands of Iran’s enemies, limited the mental,
physical, and social spaces left for civil society activism. Another im-
portant aspect that contributed to further limiting the space for civil
society was the provision by US state institutions of hundreds of mil-
lions of dollars of “democracy promotion” money to Iran, which
wreaked havoc in Iranian civil society organizations. In 2007, upon
President Bush’s request, the US Congress allocated $400 million for
covert operations in Iran’s strategically important border regions in
order to destabilize the country through separatist groups, and to
eventually bring about regime change.35 Funds were also made avail-
able to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Iran. In the name of
funding democracy, in the same year, the US government allocated
$75 million to existing propaganda efforts—such as for the Voice of
America’s Persian News Network (VOA PNN)36 that established a
twenty-four-hour news program (the first of its kind on VOA), and
Radio Farda that was part of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Yet,
even Milani acknowledges that the latter fund
to support “regime change” in Iran helped the regime and under-

mined the genuine democrats. It created an atmosphere of con-
frontation between the two regimes [the United States and Iran],
and the clerics used that atmosphere to further dismantle the rudi-
ments of civil society. Moreover, it put the democrats in a kind of
defensive position—needful of “proving” that they were not a re-
cipient of the seventy five million dollars largesse.37
Coupled with US covert operations, such US “largesse” paved

the way for the Iranian regime’s post–“axis of evil” insecurity to
turn into paranoia, and also facilitated repression against regime op-
ponents. Genuine civil society activists and organizations were the
first to bear the brunt of those US policies,38 as they were now ex-
posed to heightened state surveillance and faced frequent interroga-
tions.39 In other words, the talk of war emanating from Washington
turned out to be a “gift from heaven” for the conservatives among
the Iranian elite.40
The “democracy promotion” funds have been closely associated

with the US “Greater Middle East Initiative” and its regime change
agenda, as Thomas Carothers lays out the double standards underlining
US behavior: “Washington’s use of the term ‘democracy promotion’
has come to be seen overseas not as the expression of a principled
American aspiration but as a code word for ‘regime change’—
namely, the replacement of bothersome governments by military
force or other means.”41
Even under the Obama administration, which had initially
pledged diplomatic engagement with Iran, these programs have con-
tinued. New funds amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars were
made available for US clandestine military activities in Iran, anti-Iran
broadcasting, and support for underground militant movements and
“civil society” in Iran.42 As such, also under Obama the effects on de-
mocratization in Iran have continued to be negative as the Iranian
regime can readily blame any dissent as a US-sponsored plot. The se-
cret nature of these US funds has jeopardized the security and even
existence of the entire civil society sector in Iran rather than protect
the security of the actual recipients, as claimed by successive US ad-
ministrations. Iranian activists and organizations can easily be blamed
by the Iranian authorities as beneficiaries of US regime-change money
to justify even further crackdowns against them.
Since the early 2000s, the stage has been set for a process of se-
curitization inside the Islamic Republic resulting from constant
threats of war emanating from Washington and Tel Aviv, the encir-
cling of Iran by US troops, the military buildup of Israel and the Arab
petro-monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council funded by the
United States and European Union (EU) countries, and covert mili-
tary operations going on in Iran since at least 2004. This situation fa-
cilitated a process of securitization if not militarization of state and
society, with most notably IRGC figures acceding to the highest lev-
els of state power. Hence, the IRGC developed into an indispensable
actor for the country’s defense while simultaneously assuming the
role of crushing dissent at home and running the greater part of the
country’s economy. Ultimately, the authoritarian state has employed
the credible foreign peril to the country’s national security in order to
increase its control over domestic dissent.43
On balance, it can be concluded that the term democracy promo-
tion, used as a public-policy motto, is misleading, because it rather
promotes the opposite—authoritarianism.
Iran’s Civil Society “Double-Track”

Approach to Carve Out Space for Activism
In light of the preceding, civil society activists opposed the kinds of
external policies affecting both its marge de manœuvre and the forms
of its activism. For instance, in mid-July 2008, roughly thirty repre-
sentatives of Iran’s civil society, in an open letter to the US Congress
and president, asked for the suspension of democracy promotion
funding “which has had an outcome completely opposite to [the] de-
clared goals” and “has caused so much pain and stress to a signifi-
cant part of Iranian civil society.”44 The letter further states, “The
fund has undermined Iran’s home grown civil society initiatives. . . .
The fund has provided a pretext for distrust and suspicion, leading to
narrowing of space for independent civil society.“45 The statement
voiced a great deal of anger over US policy, asking for the cancella-
tion of the funds while demanding greater freedoms from the Iranian
government with which dialogue was still sought.
In another open letter, in early July 2008, a large number of Ira-
nians also lamented the negative consequences that the US-led wars
in Iran’s immediate neighborhood had produced for their country:
“Because of this external climate of threat coupled with internal
shortcomings and policies that are [a] groundswell for domestic ten-
sion, Iran, although not directly at war, has suffered the negative im-
pacts of a virtual war, that is, massive inflation, economic stagnation,
and tighter political, technical and scientific restrictions.”46
The letter further stressed the need for a peaceful environment so
welfare and sustainable development could succeed. With an implicit
reference to the stated US goal to promote democracy, the statement
notes:
Iranian academicians believe democracy, not as an imported and

luxury commodity, but as a viable method of people’s participation
in major domestic and foreign decision makings . . . is the best
method for governing the country [and] view avoidance and pre-
vention of war, while protecting Iran’s honour and integrity, as a
national duty.47
Also in July 2008, a National Peace Council was set up, follow-
ing a November 2007 call by the head of the Center for Defenders of
Human Rights (Kânoun-e Modâfe’ân-e Hoghough-e Bashar), Dr.
Shirin Ebadi, to unify and organize movements around the issue of
peace. The objective of the movement was defined as “long-lasting
peace” (solh-e pâydâr). Its aims were outlined as “creating and

strengthening the basis for peace; preventing a military attack; abol-
ishing the imposed sanctions and preventing any additional sanc-
tions; ending the situation of ‘neither war, nor peace.’”48 The Na-
tional Peace Council’s founding committee included seventy-two
prominent civil society, political, and cultural activists, including
journalists from several banned newspapers and former political pris-
oners. Hence, in the face of the Bush administration’s confrontational
policies toward Iran, several independent movements and organiza-
tions for peace have been formed in Iran,49 most of which criticized
government repression yet sought dialogue with it.
In addition, conscious of an outside threat while advocating
peace, for the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic, both
secular and religious groups agreed to meet on a regular, two-week
basis. A number of peace organizations and activists took part in
meetings by September 2008, including the Society for Chemical
Weapons Victims Support, the Revolutionary Cinema and the Sacred
Defense (led by the well-known writer Habib Ahmadzadeh), the
Children’s Culture of Peace Council (consisting of thirty NGOs),
Hamyaran (a capacity-building NGO headed by Dr. Baquer Namazi),
the Council for Research on Children, and the Peace and Tourism So-
ciety. Whereas the first two groups are Islamic NGOs, which get
funding and support from the government, the rest are secular. Re-
portedly, despite this difference, all groups showed great respect and
support toward each other and used a common language and consen-
sus to promote a peace movement. Furthermore, representatives of
the National Peace Council were invited, including well-known Iran-
ian filmmaker Rakhshan Bani-Etemad and Marzieh Mortazi-La-
garoudi from the group Mothers Against War. Women and women’s
rights activists were at the forefront of such peace initiatives by con-
necting the domestic and international contexts, hence exhibiting a
profound consideration for the “triangular dynamics” at hand. Promi-
nent among them has been Mothers for Peace, which began its activ-
ities in 2008 as a group of women with different ideological back-
grounds who opposed the possibility of war against their homeland.
On 25 November 2011, the International Day to Fight Violence
Against Women, the group stated:
We as a group of women’s rights activists in Iran, are worried about

the increasing violence against women and children [that is the re-
sult] of the polarized and hostile atmosphere [and] dead-end national
and international politics of tension and violence. As a result of

these policies, violence against women and children infiltrates the
deepest social and political and familial layers of Iranian society.50
In conclusion, the belligerent posture of the Bush/Cheney admin-

istration toward Iran has forced Iranian civil society to deal with this
newly emerging situation and its ramifications. Not only was civil so-
ciety’s own well-being in jeopardy, in case a military attack on Iran
had materialized, but the state seized upon this opportunity by pursu-
ing a harsh crackdown against independent civil society actors in the
name of protecting national security. In fact, the US “democracy
promotion” and “regime change” campaigns became a perfect tool for
promoting and upgrading state authoritarianism. Iran’s civil society
found itself in a state of siege between extreme imperial pressures and
massive state repression. Hence, civil society activists adopted a dou-
ble-track approach: condemning foreign pressures and the provision of
aid, and opting for a constructive dialogue with the increasingly re-
pressive state. This strategy can be understood as an effort to counter
the shrinking of space for civil activism by carving out new spaces
commensurate with the unfolding dire circumstances. At the forefront
of this new form of activism were mostly women’s rights activists who
showed the greatest amount of sensibility and comprehension neces-
sary to offer a framework in which civil and human rights activism
could continue, although under precarious circumstances.51 Accompa-
nied by the unrelenting warmongering from outside, the state never-
theless carried on its crackdown against independent civil society. This
was done in an effort to further the patriarchal sociopolitical agenda of
the Islamist ultraconservatives. The latter depicted feminist activists as
part of an outside plot to bring about the soft overthrow of the Islamic
Republic.52 As a result, many civil activists, particularly among the
women’s rights movement, were forced to flee the country.53
Economic Sanctions and State-Society Relations
In addition to politico-military pressures, Iran has also been sub-

jected to a severe regime of economic sanctions. In this section, I
will address the ramifications of coercive economic measures on
state-society relations and the question of authoritarianism. I will
show that economic sanctions affect mostly the civilian population
from which civil society originates, while cementing the position of

the powers that be in the targeted state. In contrast to widely held as-
sumptions in policy circles, there is scant evidence for a positive re-
lationship between economic sanctions and the weakening of author-
itarian structures. On the contrary, both the empirical evidence in the
specific case of Iran and the scholarly literature on the effects of eco-
nomic sanctions suggest that sanctions widen the power gap between
society and the state, with the former overwhelmingly paying the
price of sanctions while the latter’s hold on power remains firm or
becomes even tighter. This occurs in a number of ways.
A Magic Wand to Decapitate Evil?

The Political Narrative of Empowering Sanctions
In the public and political arenas, confusion looms large when it
comes to the effects of economic sanctions on issues of democratiza-
tion and authoritarianism. Importantly, it is the terminology embed-
ded in the debate that casts a long shadow on how the effects of sanc-
tions on these issues are commonly assessed. The sanctions imposed
are alternately adorned with the attributions “smart,” “intelligent,”
and “targeted.” Such sanctions, it is claimed, are designed to weaken
the repressive regime while sparing the civilian population, thus hav-
ing an empowering effect on civil society. These kinds of sanctions
are presented as a quasi-peaceful tool, which is deployed with surgi-
cal precision, targeting the designated entity portrayed as evil. Much
like smart bombs, however, the sanctions variant produces collateral
damage, whose wider ramifications remain largely unnoticed. More-
over, this dominant political discourse presents the sanctioning coun-
tries as benevolent actors engaged in weakening authoritarianism
while opening the way for a democratic transition. Hence, such a
portrayal of sanctions has indeed attracted parts of the Iranian regime
opponents, almost exclusively in the diaspora, to the extent of voic-
ing support for them.54 However, such claims that sanctions can or do
help the cause of democracy in Iran have not been based on empiri-
cal evidence. Rather, such assumptions are mostly a sign of wishful
thinking, be it as a result of political desperation and a perceived lack
of viable alternatives to war and/or state repression, or a disregard for
the social repercussions of sanctions. With the round of US and EU
unilateral sanctions imposed for 2012, politicians from the sanctioning
countries began to abandon the rhetoric that the coercive economic
measures imposed were “targeted” and “intelligently” aimed at the

leadership of the sanctioned country. In fact, US and some European
politicians openly started highlighting the “crippling” nature of the
sanctions on Iran. US president Barack Obama, for instance, admit-
ted that Iran would face “unprecedented, crippling sanctions.”55 In
the same breath, however, politicians have been quick to add that
sanctions are not meant to target the civilian population. In a press
release accompanying the announcement of its boycott of Iranian oil,
the EU echoed the distinction well known from other US policy dec-
larations on Iran: “The Council [of the EU] stresses that the restric-
tive measures agreed today are aimed at affecting the funding of
Iran’s nuclear programme by the Iranian regime and are not aimed at
the Iranian people.”56
The partial shift in the political discourse—that is, the increasing
acknowledgment that the sanctions were, in fact, crippling—was a
reflection both of a unilateral drive by the United States and the EU
to ostensibly increase the economic pressure on Iran and, by so
doing, of an effort to comply with longstanding Israeli demands for
crippling sanctions in order to dissuade Tel Aviv from taking unilat-
eral military action against Iran. Yet, as an analysis of the “smart
sanctions” reveals, they have already had crippling effects on the en-
tire economy of the sanctioned country, that is, Iran. Hence, it is sug-
gested that smart, targeted sanctions must be comprehended as be-
longing to the field of political discourse and rhetoric rather than as
reflecting an empirically deduced socioeconomic reality.
The Comprehensive Economic

Sanctions Regime on Iran
Iran’s economy—including manufacturing, agriculture, banking, and
financial sectors—has suffered from almost three decades of sanc-
tions.57 However, the most recent rounds of sanctions imposed on the
country during the so-called nuclear dispute has elevated the sanc-
tions regime to an unprecedented level. Iran is very much connected
to the global economy, with about half of its (nominal) GDP based on
trade with the outside world. Not only does the export of oil play a
dominant role here, but also the import of goods.58 The sanctions im-
posed are both unilateral (by the United States and its allies, but,
above all, the EU) and multilateral (by the United Nations Security
Council since 2006), as well as both formal and informal. Especially
since 2004, the United States has pushed for a number of important
economic and financial sanctions against Iran, making the country

unrivaled in terms of its isolation from the international financial and
banking systems, while incrementally disrupting Iranian trade relations
with the rest of the world. In June 2010, multilateral UN sanctions tar-
geted insurance companies worldwide that insured Iranian shipping.
Another set of sanctions targeted the sale of gasoline products to Iran.59
The financial sanctions, arguably the most effective ones, have a wide-
ranging impact on the whole economy, as they handicap the financing
of any trade involving Iran, both for domestic and foreign parties. This
impedes the country’s ability to do business and leads to rising busi-
ness operating costs and even the closing down of businesses. In fact,
the sanctions on the financial and banking sectors constitute the eye of
the storm that subsequently wreaked havoc on the entire economy.
The sanctions regime has placed Iran’s economy in a vicious
cycle. Before the stark tightening of the sanctions for 2012, the situ-
ation could be depicted as follows:
• The costs for buying raw materials and intersectoral industrial

goods have risen at an estimated rate of 50 percent.
• Production has therefore been considerably affected, which in
part crumbled due to lack of spare parts and equipment or
their becoming more expensive.
• The effects on production have led to widespread price hikes.
• All of that has resulted in rising inflation (because of the price
increases of imported goods and the lack of coverage in con-
sumer goods) and in rising unemployment (as a result of fac-
tory and enterprise closures).
A crucial aggravating aspect has been that Iranian institutions in

international trade, such as banks, insurance, and logistics, have been
boycotted by Western countries and their allies, which has led to a
considerable increase in overall costs.
This isolation was carried to extremes when, by the end of 2011,
the United States imposed sanctions on foreign financial institutions
engaged in oil-related transactions with the Central Bank of Iran,
which caused the Iranian currency to lose half of its value against the
US dollar and other major currencies.60 According to Mehrdad
Emadi, an EU economic adviser,
this particular form of sanctioning a nation has been unprecedented
in the history of the world. . . . In this framework, all monetary
transactions, currency transactions and business credit accounts for
imports as well as exports and for the coverage and payment of in-
surance, which in every country falls under the responsibilities of
the Central Bank of that country, will be made illegal in Iran.61
On top of that, as of 17 March 2012, in an unprecedented step,

SWIFT (the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommu-
nication) disconnected Iranian banks from its system that handles
global banking transactions, making it almost impossible for money
to flow in and out of the country through official banking channels.
In other words, Iran has virtually lost the ability to finance imports
and to receive payment for its exports. The result is an almost com-
plete isolation of Iranian trade and businesses from the global market.
As a matter of fact, the reality of the sanctions regime could not
differ more starkly from the portrayal of benign, targeted sanctions.
Grasping the core of the matter, Suzanne Maloney, a US expert on
Iran’s economy, commented: “It’s not an overstatement to say that
the sanctions we’ve put on Iran . . . constitute a full-fledged attack on
the Iranian economy.”62 According to Trita Parsi, president of the Na-
tional Iranian American Council, “Many in Washington acknowledge
that we are conducting economic warfare. That means the entire Iran-
ian economy is the battlefield—and ordinary Iranians are [seen as]
enemy combatants.”63 At the very least, international sanctions have
deepened Iran’s economic crisis and made it extremely difficult, if
not impossible, to get on the path of economic recovery.
The EU itself was fully aware of the major consequences of its
unilateral sanctions imposed in June 2010, in the wake of UN sanc-
tions (UN Security Council Resolution 1929) decided in the same
month. According to Mehrdad Emadi, Brussels expected that in the
course of the first twelve months following the imposition of EU
sanctions, Iran’s economic growth would become negative for the
first time ever.64 Against this background, it can be argued that the
crippling of the economy has been within the scope of expectations
of the sanctioning states, and has been carried to extremes in spite of
the proclaimed concern for the well-being of the Iranian populace.
The Political Economy of Sanctions: Crippling the

Economy and Bolstering the Authoritarian State
The sanctions imposed on Iran negatively affect its entire economy,
but, due to stark imbalances in the domestic power structure, their ef-
fects vary from one societal sector to another. About two-thirds of the
Iranian economy is controlled by state and semi-state actors.65 In

general, economic entities close to the state have the means to access
state resources, with which they can to some extent cover the higher
operational costs resulting from sanctions. Alternatively, such actors
can circumvent the sanctions by using “black channels” mainly for
importing goods, as can be seen in the case of the IRGC. Originally a
defense organization erected to counter Iraqi aggression in the 1980s,
the IRGC has developed into an expansive sociopolitico-economic
conglomerate that is believed to possess unrivaled economic and po-
litical power in today’s Islamic Republic. Sanctioning countries pro-
claimed that “smart sanctions” would target the IRGC’s grip on the
Iranian power structure, but an analysis into the effects of sanctions
reveals that the IRGC’s economic power position, in fact, expanded
in the wake of sanctions.
With much of the international trade involving Iran being illegal-
ized through sanctions and economic actors largely cut off from im-
porting goods, the IRGC and its economic empire have been able to
benefit from this situation. Both due to its control over at least sixty
harbors in the Gulf and a number of unofficial airports, and its pres-
ence at the borders, the bulk of imports have been monopolized by
the IRGC while lucrative profits from rising cross-border smuggling
have been secured. As such, the IRGC as a (semi)-state entity has
been capable of expanding its economic dominance vis-à-vis the
civilian economy, which does not have the same sort of privileges.
Moreover, with the bulk of the Iranian economy now part of the
IRGC’s economic empire, the much ignored difficulty is that the tar-
geting of IRGC firms will in the end affect the millions of civilians
connected to these wide-ranging sectors. Seen in this light, the gi-
gantic dimension of even truly targeted sanctions aimed at specific,
yet wide-ranging entities comes to the fore.66 As such, the IRGC is
gaining ground vis-à-vis other domestic economic actors and is being
fortified as a linchpin actor of the authoritarian state.
In addition to that, the dramatic weakening of the civilian econ-
omy makes the socioeconomic role of the state even more crucial. As
the economist Djavad Salehi-Isfahani explains:
Sanctions are likely to cement the authoritarian pact between the
conservatives and the economic underclass and at the same time
weaken the voices calling for greater social, political and economic
freedom. Heavy sanctions are likely to strengthen the hands of the
Iranian leaders who have opposed the liberal economic reforms of
the Rafsanjani and Khatami era and favor a return to the controlled
economy of the 1980s, when the government rather than markets

decided on the allocation of foreign exchange, credit, and even
basic necessities.67
Hence, sanctions enhance the role of the state for the provision of
public services and even basic goods, and as such contribute to a
more centralized country.68
Taking another angle, if one were to interpret Iran’s domestic cri-
sis in the wake of the June 2009 presidential election primarily as an
economic war of allocation between the old elite, particularly sur-
rounding the figure of former president Rafsanjani, and the new elite,
composed of the Ahmadinejad-IRGC faction,69 sanctions turn out to
be detrimental to the interests of the former.
With the sanctions punishing honest traders and rewarding cor-
rupt ones, Iran’s civilian economy—those firms and factories not ben-
efiting from privileges derived from regime proximity—and thereby
both the middle class (usually seen as the backbone for processes of
democratization) and the urban poor have been affected by this further
economic isolation of the country. In other words, Iran’s increasing
isolation from the outside world, a fundamental face of sanctions, in
fact, significantly limits the social space available to its citizenry as
the role and power of the authoritarian state is strengthened.
Sanctions and the Weakening

of Iran’s Civil Society Actors
The weakening of the entire economy adds to the hardship experi-
enced by civil society. Hence, in addition to political repression, civil
society also suffers from economic pressures.70
As I will show, the constituent groups of civil society’s key so-
cial movements—women, students, and workers—are significantly
affected. In addition, as Sussan Tahmasebi, a prominent Iranian
women’s rights activist, explains, activists in Iran get increasingly
isolated from the outside world: “Those who carry on despite hard-
ships inside the country are also feeling more and more isolated. Ac-
tivists, like regular Iranians, cannot use banks to transfer funds for
conference participation, hotel reservations and to attend training
workshops abroad.”71
Women. The impact of sanctions on women and gender relations

has been thoroughly studied in the context of the sanctions regime
against Iraq from 1990 to 2003.72 Socioeconomic patterns similar to

the Iraqi case regarding the ramifications of sanctions on women can
be identified, with women being disproportionately affected. The rise
in unemployment is likely to fuel regressive conservative social poli-
cies that aim to preserve the traditional social status reserved to the
male population by externalizing the costs of sanctions onto the fe-
male population. These include measures that push women out of
work, relegate them to the domestic sphere, and curtail their access to
higher education. Even the next generation of women’s rights ac-
tivists may be drained when “school age girls are at risk as economic
pressures may force families to make choices and opt for boys’
schooling [that] may lead to diminished literacy rates among girls in
the near future.”73 Hence, sanctions can serve as the political plat-
form on which conservative politicians can go on the offensive in
order to marginalize women from education and employment, which
consequently also limits the space for women’s rights activism.
Moreover, widespread unemployment affects the entire family, but
mainly women, and exacerbates dominant gender relations.
Women will bear the brunt of dealing with their unemployed spouses
and the men of the family within the home. These new dynamics are
likely to lead to increased incidences of domestic violence and fam-
ily conflicts, as men’s ability to meet social expectations can lead to
depression and attacks on women. Reduction in family income is in-
evitable forcing women to find new sources of income. Their coping
strategies will likely include cutting back on their own health, well-
being and dietary needs to provide for their dependents.74
As a result, both economic sanctions and the heightened securitization

of state and society as a result of the external threat of war foster pa-
triarchal structures and complicate, if not undermine, the women’s
rights struggle.75
Students. The youth (fifteen-to-twenty-nine year olds), which com-

prises 35 percent of the population, disproportionately suffer from
sanctions as they account for 70 percent of general unemployment.76
Facing increasingly deteriorating job prospects, students also face ad-
ditional hurdles. Sanctions affect the ability of Iranian students to
study in the West, as the sanctions have severed their access to visas
and made it almost impossible to use bank channels to pay for their
tuition fees. Also, Iranian students and academia in general are pro-
hibited from accessing academic journals online. Furthermore, many
Iranians and even those of Iranian descent are banned from many ac-
ademic science programs at US and European universities. These
sanctions-driven discriminations, as well as limits imposed on the
mobility of Iranian students, also negatively affect solidarity work
with the outside world when it comes to civil activism.
Workers. Workers are harshly hit by the economic crisis affecting

Iran. Despite the lack of studies on the impact of sanctions on labor
in Iran, one can think of a number of ways in which sanctions nega-
tively affect Iranian workers. For one, Iranian businesses and facto-
ries that have been dependent on importing items to sustain their op-
erations but cannot do so anymore because of sanctions have reduced
their costs by cutting down on wages, laying-off workers, or even
completely closing down. Furthermore, sanctions and the crisis in
domestic production paves the way for curtailing workers’ rights and
benefits. Such measures could affect the right to strike, the level of
the wages paid, and large-scale layoffs. As such, sanctions can also
serve as an excuse for economic problems that lie in structural prob-
lems, mismanagement, and other shortcomings or profit-driven moti-
vations by the employers themselves.77 Hence, sanctions add to the
hardship experienced by Iranian workers who are suffering from both
neoliberal economic policies and harsh state repression.78
Throughout the rise in labor activism in the 2000s, Iranian workers
were both sensitive to their struggle against neoliberal economics at
home and the threat of war from abroad that served as a justification
for the state’s repression against them in the name of national secu-
rity.79 The negative effect of sanctions on labor has also been under-
stood by their US counterparts. In a March 2012 solidarity resolution,
US Labor Against War voiced its opposition to war, but also sanctions
against Iran “that primarily victimize civilians and strengthen the Iran-
ian regime, which portrays itself as the defender of the Iranian peo-
ple.”80 As a result, all three social movements experience indirect fall-
outs from the severe sanctions imposed on the country, which in turn
weaken their struggle in various ways. It can also be noted that the
Green Movement81 has largely opposed economic sanctions.
Iranian Case as an Example of the Effects of Sanctions

In this section I shall present additional insights derived from the ac-
ademic literature on the effects of economic sanctions and tested in
the specific context of Iran.
Prolonging authoritarian rule. In a remarkable article from spring

2010, Emanuele Ottolenghi formulates the goals of crippling sanc-
tions: “strategic sectors of the economy” must be targeted, among
them the operation and development of refineries, the energy, petro-
chemical, and metallurgical industries, so as to undermine the re-
gime’s stability:82
Iran must know that the West is prepared to exact a steep price and
that sanctions are designed to cause economic damage that will un-
dermine the legitimacy and credibility of the regime. Not least,
Tehran should be told that the international community will support
regime-change from within. It must know that the West will work
tirelessly to make Iran poor and internationally isolated unless and
until dramatic changes occur within the Islamic Republic.83
Despite the claim that crippling sanctions might undermine

regime stability, all the evidence points to the fact that sanctions con-
tribute to regime resilience.84 As noted, sanctions undermine the
well-being of the civilian population while actors who are part of or
close to the ruling system find ways to accommodate themselves to
the sanctions regime, even cementing their own position of power. As
a result, the power gap between the state and society widens.85 This
is in line with findings from the academic literature on sanctions that
coercive economic measures prolong rather than shorten the rule of
leaders in authoritarian states, with sanctions often having a stabiliz-
ing effect on such rule.86
Increasing state-sponsored repression. Academic research offers a

number of findings about the impact of economic sanctions on au-
thoritarian structures which can be relevant in the Iranian context. It
has been shown that economic coercion through sanctions (even tar-
geted ones) is counterproductive as it stimulates the sanctioned
state’s political repression.87 Economic sanctions, particularly multi-
lateral ones, worsen the targeted country’s human rights situation by
reducing the government’s respect for physical integrity rights, in-
cluding freedom from disappearances, extrajudicial killings, torture,
and political imprisonment.88 More broadly, the effects of economic
sanctions on democracy as a whole have been examined. It has been
argued that sanctions decrease the level of democracy because the
economic hardship caused by sanctions can be used as a strategic
tool by the targeted regime to consolidate authoritarian rule and
weaken the opposition. The findings show that both the immediate
and longer-term effects of economic sanctions significantly reduce the

level of democratic freedoms in the targeted state, with comprehen-
sive economic sanctions having greater negative impact than limited
ones. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that economic sanctions en-
hance government control over the free flow of information, while in-
dependent media outlets suffer from economic damage inflicted by
sanctions. As such, economic sanctions also affected media openness
in a negative way.89 Lastly, various authors concur that the more com-
prehensive and multilateral (as opposed to unilateral) the sanctions
regime is, the more harmful it is to various pillars of democracy.90
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have sought to explore the effects of external factors

on state-society relations in the context of authoritarianism and space
for civil society. First, it has been demonstrated that much of the con-
ventional literature on authoritarianism in strategically important
countries inimical to US or wider Western interests suffers from a po-
litically driven selectivity when it comes to the identification of au-
thoritarian states. The focus on countries like Iran or Syria are im-
portant cases in point, while allied countries such as Saudi Arabia
often escape due scrutiny as authoritarian states. Second, it has been
shown that since the Iranian revolution of 1978–1979, geopolitical
détente mostly coincided with the opening of space for Iranian civil
society, while, conversely, geopolitical tensions have boosted author-
itarian structures and limited space for civil society. Third, it has
been argued that, faced with the dual peril of foreign threat and med-
dling as well as increasing repression at home, Iran’s civil society has
reacted by adopting a double-track approach. This included con-
demning malign external factors, engaging in a kind of critical dia-
logue with an increasingly repressive state, and forming new al-
liances among a diverse range of civil society activists to bring about
long-lasting peace as a necessary condition for the realization of their
democratic demands. In other words, the externally induced shrinking
of space for civil society activism, in tandem with increasing state au-
thoritarianism, was countered in a number of ways that allowed for a
carving out of new space(s) for activism. Fourth, I have shown that
economic sanctions widen the power gap between the authoritarian
state and civil society, cementing and even boosting existing power
configurations while hollowing out social forces indispensable to a

process of democratization, such as the middle class and various con-
stituents of social movements such as women and youth. It can be
observed that authoritarian states use economic sanctions to cement
their hold on power, regardless of the severity of the economic
costs.91 In an interesting recent development, a great deal of Iranian
civil activism mostly taking place in the West has indeed taken into
account the triangular dynamics among geopolitics, the state, and
civil society. A categorical rejection of war and sanctions has been a
fundamental proposition by these groups in order to impact posi-
tively upon the space available for civil activism inside Iran and
more broadly the human rights situation there.
Crippling sanctions as a prototype of economic warfare in con-
cert with the seasonal flaring-up of war-mongering is a toxic mix as
to prospects of democratization. One of the resulting dilemmas is that
with increasing sanctions that can pave the way for war, the repres-
sive state itself and its defense forces will be the main actors defend-
ing the country against foreign aggression, and in the process of
doing so could expand their reach into the state and society with fur-
ther detrimental effects for civil liberties and democratic aspirations.
It has thus been argued that Iran’s civil society has been placed
in a state of siege, caught between reinforcing pressures: on the one
hand, external-imperial, and on the other, internal-authoritarian,
predicated upon the authoritarian machinations of the state. The
global war on terror and the coercive policy toward Iran have thus
proved to be a significant obstacle in the struggle to lay the ground-
work for overcoming authoritarianism in Iran. One could indeed sug-
gest that the most promising midwife for democratization in Iran
seems to be geopolitical détente, regional peace, economic prosper-
ity, and social justice—all of which ought to replace the policies and
atmosphere of enmity, compulsion, and domination. If the attempt to
further isolate Iran continues, it is unlikely that the new space of ac-
tivism created over recent years will have more fruitful results than
traditional activism.
The efforts so far to encourage the process of democratization
from the outside have utterly failed to bring about positive results, or
even gradual ones. Rather, they have acted in a counterproductive
manner insofar as they have emboldened the authoritarian machina-
tions of the state by sustaining a “state of emergency” in the country
and reduced the space for democratic activism in Iran.
Therefore, productive international support must be geared to-

ward détente. Cornerstones for such a policy of détente would be
both immediate measures for the resolution of the conflict primarily
pitting the Islamic Republic against the United States, including steps
toward deescalation and preparing on the ground for a reconciliation
of interests through a sustained diplomatic process respectful of
widely accepted standards of international law. A promising project
here is the establishment of a Middle Eastern zone free of weapons
of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons.92 Finally, it is im-
portant to end a sanction regime that is utterly counterproductive
when it comes to democracy promotion.
Notes
1. From “Über die Gewalt” (On violence) (1930s), trans. John Willett,
in Poems, 1913–1956, revised edition (London and New York: Methuen,
1987), p. 276.
2. See, e.g., Heydemann, “Upgrading Authoritarianism in the Arab
World.”
3. For instance, Cavatorta, The International Dimension of the Failed
Algerian Transition.
4. Brynen, Korany, and Noble, “Introduction,” pp. 18–20. Also see
Aarts, “The Longevity of the House of Saud.”
5. Sauer, “Coercive Diplomacy by the EU.” Also see Fathollah-Nejad,
Der Iran-Konflikt und die Obama-Regierung (The Iran conflict and the
Obama administration).
6. Freedom House, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Radio Free
Asia, Undermining Democracy, p. 2.
7. Ibid., p. 2.
8. Ibid., p. 3.
9. See, e.g., Milani, “Transition to Democracy in Iran,” pp. 3–4, 13–
14; and Freedom House et al., Undermining Democracy, pp. 29–30.
10. Milani, “Transition to Democracy in Iran,” p. 15.
11. Ibid., p. 12; see also Milani, The Myth of the Great Satan.
13. White House, The National Security Strategy of the United States of
America, p. 3.
15. See Fouad Ajami’s foreword in Milani, The Myth of the Great
Satan.
16. Kelly and Etling, Mapping Iran’s On-line Public.
17. Milani, “Transition to Democracy in Iran,” pp. 2–3; see also Pipes,
“Dealing with Middle Eastern Conspiracy Theories.”
18. Lefebvre, The Production of Space.

19. Eisenstadt, Traditional Patrimonialism, p. 30.
20. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, p. 73.
21. Bayat, Street Politics.
22. Norton, “Associational Life.”
23. For that discussion of space, I am indebted to Adnan Tabatabai.
24. Rostami-Povey, Iran’s Influence, pp. 215–216. Also see Fathollah-
Nejad and Yazdani, “Das Verhältnis von Religion und Staat in Iran” (The re-
lationship between religion and state in Iran), pp. 303–305.
25. Cited in Kamrava, “The Civil Society Discourse in Iran,” p. 169.
26. Ibid., p. 168.
27. See, for example, Farhi, “Religious Intellectuals, the ‘Woman Ques-
tion,’ and the Struggle for the Creation of a Democratic Public Sphere in
Iran.”
28. Ibid., p. 170.
29. See Azimi, The Quest for Democracy in Iran.
30. Dabashi, Iran: A People Interrupted; and Rostami-Povey, Iran’s
Influence.
31. Available at the Project for the New American Century, Statement
of Principles, http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples
.htm.
32. See Katz, “The United States and Iran”; and Clawson, “The Contin-
uing Logic of Dual Containment.”
33. Haghighi and Tahmasebi, “The ‘Velvet Revolution,’” p. 965.
34. Hersh, “The Iran Plans.”
35. Hersh, “Preparing the Battlefield.”
36. Previously it was called the Persian Service.
37. Milani, “Transition to Democracy in Iran,” pp. 19–20.
38. See also Azimi, “Hard Realities of Soft Power”; US Department of
State, “Update on Iran Democracy Promotion Funding”; and Parsi, “Deny-
ing Iran’s Democrats.”
39. Interview with an Iranian women’s rights activist, formerly active in
a leading Tehran-based women’s rights NGO, London, November 2011.
40. See also Jafari, Der andere Iran (The other Iran), pp. 155–156.
41. Carothers, “The Backlash Against Democracy Promotion,” p. 64.
42. For details, see de Vries, “United States Policy on ‘Democratizing’
Iran,” pp. 7–8.
43. See also Warnaar, “So Many Similarities.”
44. “Message of Peace and Friendship to the People of United States of
America: Request for the Congress and President of USA,” cited in Ong,
“Iranians Speak Out on Regime Change Slush Fund.”
45. Ibid.
46. Cited in CASMII, “Iranian Academicians Call for Long-Lasting
Peace.”
47. Ibid.
48. Cited in CASMII, “Iran’s Civil Society Movement Sets Up ‘Na-
tional Peace Council.’”
49. CASMII, “Iranian Academicians Call for Long-Lasting Peace.”

50. “Bayâneh-ye Jam’i az Fa’âlan-e Jonbesh-e Zanân dar Dâkhel-e
Keshvar be Monâsebat-e ‘Rooz-e Jahâni-e Mobârezeh bâ Khoshounat Aley-
heh Zanân’” (A statement of a group of women’s rights activists inside the
country on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Vio-
lence Against Women), Focus on Iranian Women, 27 November 2011,
http://ir-women.net/spip.php?article9837; cited from the translation from
Persian by the International Civil Society Action Network, “Killing Them
Softly,” p. 7.
51. See, e.g., International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Raising
Their Voices; Esfandyari, “In Iran, Talk of Military Strikes from Above
Raises Fears Below”; Esfandyari, “Iranian Women’s Rights Activists Say No
to War.”
52. Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, Silencing the Women’s
Rights Movement in Iran, p. 9.
53. See Kian, L’Iran—Un mouvement sans révolution? (Iran—A move-
ment without revolution?), pp. 66–72.
54. For an exposition of such a view, see Torfeh, “Sanctions Against
Iran May Boost the Protest Movement.”
55. Cited in Voice of America, “Obama.”
56. Council of the European Union, “Council Conclusions on Iran,”
p. 2.
57. See Torbat, “Impacts of US Trade and Financial Sanctions on
Iran.”
58. Ravand Institute for Economic and International Studies, “Sanctions.”
59. For an overview on Iran sanctions, see Katzman, “Iran Sanc-
tions”; and Fathollah-Nejad, “Auf Kollisionskurs mit dem Iran” (On colli-
sion course with Iran), and “Sanktionsregime gegen den Iran” (The sanc-
tions regime on Iran). See also Gordon, “‘Smart Sanctions’ on Iran Are
Dumb.”
60. See Collinson, “Obama Signs New Iran Sanctions.” The Kirk–
Menendez Iran Sanctions Amendment to the U.S. National Defense Author-
ization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (H.R. 1540)—worth $662 billion—was
signed into law by President Obama on 31 December 2011 and went into ef-
fect by the summer 2012. For the Iran-related sanctions, see “Imposition of
Sanctions with Respect to the Financial Sector in Iran,” sec. 1245 of H.R.
1540 (112th Congress), at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1540
enr/pdf/BILLS-112hr1540enr.pdf, pp. 350–353.
61. Cited in International Civil Society Action Network, “Killing Them
Softly,” p. 4.
62. Cited in Dreazen, “The U.S. and Iran Are Already Locked in Eco-
nomic War.”
63. Cited in Kamali Dehghan, “Sanctions on Iran.”
64. See statements made by Mehrdad Emadi, an economic adviser for
the EU, on BBC Persian TV (18 June 2010) and Radio (19 May 2010), and
on CNN iReport (10 June 2010).
65. See Daraghi and Mostaghim, “Iran Hard-Liners Skirt Sanctions.”
66. Fathollah-Nejad, “Collateral Damage of Iran Sanctions.”
67. Salehi-Isfahani, “Iran Sanctions.”

68. The same happened to Iraq while under sanctions. See Gordon, In-
visible War.
69. Abdolvand and Schulz, “Elitenkampf um Ressourcen” (Elite strug-
gle for resources).
70. See, e.g., Salehi-Isfahani, “Iran Sanctions”; “Iran and Sanctions,”
The Economist; Mehrabi, “Report from Tehran”; Kamali Dehghan, “Sanc-
tions on Iran.”
71. Cited in Kamali Dehghan, “Sanctions on Iran.”
72. See Al-Jawaheri, Women in Iraq; Al-Ali, “Women, Gender Rela-
tions, and Sanctions in Iraq,” “Gendering Reconstruction,” and “A Feminist
Perspective on the Iraq War”; and Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq,
Sanctions on Iraq.
73. International Civil Society Action Network, “Killing Them Softly,”
p. 5.
74. Ibid.
75. “Under these circumstances, with economic hardships and prospects
of yet another devastating war, long-term planning and the development of
sustainable programs to maintain the gains already made and push for basic
rights are increasingly difficult, if not impossible” (International Civil Soci-
ety Action Network, “Killing Them Softly,” p. 7); Khanlarzadeh, “Iranian
Women and Economic Sanctions.”
76. Salehi-Isfahani, “Iran’s Youth, the Unintended Victims of Sanctions.”
77. See Iran Labor Report, “Radio Interview”; International Civil Soci-
ety Action Network, “Killing Them Softly,” p. 5.
78. See, e.g., Iran Labor Report, “New Year Begins with Fresh Layoffs,
Protests.”
79. See Malm and Esmailian, Iran on the Brink.
80. For the resolution adopted on 9 March 2012, see US Labor Against
War (USLAW) Steering Committee, “USLAW Calls for More Diplomacy,
Not the Military in Dealing with Iran.”
81. For a good discussion on the Green Movement, see Kian, L’Iran—
Un mouvement sans révolution? (Iran—A movement without revolution?),
pp. 15–37.
82. Ottolenghi, “Setting the Sanctions Agenda,” p. 25.
83. Ibid., p. 21, emphasis added.
84. Fathollah-Nejad, “Salient Sanctions and Regime Resilience.”
85. Fathollah-Nejad, “Iran,” pp. 9–12; Salehi-Isfahani, “Iran’s Youth,
the Unintended Victims of Sanctions”; International Civil Society Action
Network, “Killing Them Softly,” pp. 4–6; Khanlarzadeh, “Iranian Women
and Economic Sanctions”; also, with a focus on Iraq, see Al-Ali, “Women,
Gender Relations, and Sanctions in Iraq,” “Gendering Reconstruction,” and
“A Feminist Perspective on the Iraq War”; and Campaign Against Sanctions
on Iraq, Sanctions on Iraq.
86. Licht, “Falling Out of Favor.”
87. Peksen and Drury, “Economic Sanctions and Political Repression.”
88. Peksen, “Better or Worse?”
89. Peksen, “Coercive Diplomacy and Press Freedom.”
90. Also see Morgan and Bapat, “Multilateral Versus Unilateral Sanc-
tions Reconsidered”; and Bahrami and Parsi, “Blunt Instrument.”
91. Bahrami and Parsi, “Blunt Instrument.”
92. See Fathollah-Nejad, “Iran,” pp. 13–14, and “Security and Coopera-
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The Contributors
Paul Aarts is senior lecturer in international relations in the Depart-

ment of Political Science, University of Amsterdam (Netherlands).
His research focuses on the politics of the Arab world, with a specific
focus on Gulf countries. He has published articles in numerous aca-
demic journals, including Democracy & Society, Orient, Middle East
Policy, International Spectator, Review of International Affairs, and
Middle East Report. He is also coauthor (with Gerd Nonnemann) of
Saudi Arabia in the Balance: Political Economy, Society, Foreign
Affairs.
Francesco Cavatorta is senior lecturer in the School of Law and

Government, Dublin City University (Ireland). His research focuses
on processes of democratization and authoritarian resilience in the
Arab world, with a specific focus on North Africa. He has authored
or coauthored articles for Government and Opposition, Parliamen-
tary Affairs, Mediterranean Politics, Journal of Modern African
Studies, Journal of North African Studies, British Journal of Middle
Eastern Studies, and Democratization. He is author of The Interna-
tional Dimension of the Failed Algerian Transition and coauthor
(with Vincent Durac) of Civil Society and Democratization in the
Arab World.
Ali Fathollah-Nejad was educated in France (Sciences-Po Lille),

Germany (University of Münster), and the Netherlands (University of
243
244 The Contributors
Twente). He is currently a PhD candidate in international relations in

both the Department of Development Studies of the School of Orien-
tal and African Studies, University of London, and the Institute of
Sociology, University of Münster (Germany). He is author of Der
Iran-Konflikt und die Obama-Regierung: Alter Wein in neuen Sch-
läuchen? (The Iran conflict and the Obama administration: Old wine
in new skins?).
Bassam Haddad is director of the Middle East Studies Program

and teaches in the Department of Public and International Affairs at
George Mason University, and is a visiting professor at Georgetown
University. He is founding editor of the Arab Studies Journal and co-
founder of the online journal Jadaliyya Ezine (http://www.jadaliyya
.com). He is also coproducer/director of the award-winning documen-
tary film, About Baghdad, and director of the critically acclaimed film
series, Arabs and Terrorism. Recent publications include The Political
Economy of Regime Security: State-Business Networks in Syria.
Ali Honari is master researcher in the Department of Human Be-

havioral and Social Sciences at the University of Groningen, the
Netherlands. His areas of research include social networks in collec-
tive actions and the impact of the Internet on social movements. As a
university student, he was involved in the student movement during
the reform period in Iran. In 2004, he launched a group weblog,
SarSar, and currently is an active blogger running his own weblog,
“fromnederland.”
Peyman Jafari is a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam

and the International Institute of Social History, where he conducts
research on the effects of class structure, state-society relations, and
the international power structure on postrevolutionary politics in
Iran. He is also a media commentator on Iranian current affairs. His
publications include Der andere Iran: Geschichte und Kultur von
1900 bis zur Gegenwart (The other Iran: History and culture from
1900 until today).
Salam Kawakibi is director of research at the Arab Reform Initia-

tive Centre in Paris. He was research fellow in the Department of Po-
litical Science of the University of Amsterdam. He has studied both
in Syria and France and is a leading expert on Syrian affairs. He has
The Contributors 245
contributed extensively to a wide range of journals in Arabic, French,

and English. His most recent publications include 10 Papers for
Barcelona 2010: State and Society: The Democratic Challenge (co-
edited with Esra Buklut), Internet or Enter-Not: The Syrian Experi-
ence, and The Private Media in Syria.
Line Khatib is a lecturer at the Dubai School of Government and

senior research fellow at the Inter-University Consortium of Arab and
Middle Eastern Studies, McGill University. She has done in-depth
field research within Syria, examining how the resurgence of Islamic
groups influences a number of independent variables such as secular-
ism, policy, gender relations, and youth. She is the author of Islamic
Revivalism in Syria: The Rise and Fall of Ba’thist Secularism.
Paola Rivetti is an IRCHSS postdoctoral fellow at the School of

Law and Government, Dublin City University (Ireland). She has
worked on Iranian postrevolutionary reformism, focusing, in particu-
lar, on the way it adapts to international and domestic political
change. She has authored articles on Iranian politics and history, and
coedited with Rosita Di Peri a volume on the rhetoric and practice of
civil society in Iran, Lebanon, Morocco, and Egypt.
Mustapha Kamel Al-Sayyid is professor of political science and

director of the Center for the Study of Developing Countries, Cairo
University. He also teaches at the American University in Cairo. His
areas of specialization include the politics of development, foreign
aid, human rights, and civil society. He has published extensively on
civil society, political change, and ideology, and his articles have ap-
peared in World Policy, Middle East Journal, Washington Quarterly,
and Maghreb-Machrek, among others.
Roschanack Shaery-Eisenlohr is research fellow at the Max

Planck Institute for the Study of Religion and Ethnic Diversity in
Göttingen, Germany. Previously, she was Syria researcher at the Uni-
versity of Amsterdam, where she was able to establish close contact
with a variety of Syrian dissidents and activists both in Syria and
abroad. She is the author of Shi’ite Lebanon and is currently working
on a manuscript titled Lebanese Detainees in Syria: Transnational-
ism, Piety, and Suffering.
About the Book
What are the dynamics of civic activism in authoritarian

regimes? How do new social actors—many of them informal, “below
the radar” groups—interact with these regimes? What mechanisms
do the power elite employ to deal with societal dissidence? The au-
thors of Civil Society in Syria and Iran explore the nature of state-
society relations in two countries that are experiencing popular de-
mands for political pluralism amid the constraints of authoritarian
retrenchment.
Paul Aarts is senior lecturer in international relations at the Univer-

sity of Amsterdam. He developed the Zeytun Academic Exchange
program with academic institutes in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Iran, and
is coauthor of Saudi Arabia in the Balance: Political Economy, Soci-
ety, Foreign Affairs. Francesco Cavatorta is senior lecturer in the
School of Law and Government, Dublin City University. His publi-
cations include Civil Society and Democratization in the Arab World
and The International Dimension of the Failed Algerian Transition.
259

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

British Cataloguing in Publication Data

Printed and bound in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements

1 Civil Society in Syria and Iran 1

2 Syria’s Civil Society as a Tool for Regime Legitimacy 19

3 Iran’s Civil Society Grappling with a Triangular Dynamic 39

4 Business Associations and the New Nexus of Power in Syria 69

5 The Ambiguous Role of Entrepreneurs in Iran 93

6 The Internet and Civil Activism in Syria 119

7 From Virtual to Tangible Social Movements in Iran 143

8 The Paradox of Government-Organized

9 Co-opting Civil Society Activism in Iran 187

10 Civil Society Activism in Authoritarian Regimes 207

The headlong stream is termed violent

The scholarly literature on the role of civil society in authoritarian

regimes doing the upgrading. Generally, however, the literature on

The Authoritarianism Debate

Through a critical examination of the uses and misuses of the label of

tive totally ignores the fundamental question of how a democratic and

time critical of the government.16 In fact, a Western-centered per-

Space and Civil Society

This section will highlight the importance of space as an analytical

which civil society actors can create and organize counter-hegemonic

spreading.23 External geopolitical pressure upon the entire country,

Toward the Advent of Civil Society During

awareness among the various social forces on the other hand. . . .

Despite the new political environment that emerged starting in the

With huge support from various civil society groups, Khatami,

celebrated its most important successes in the history of the Islamic

External Pressure and State-Society Relations

Another Kind of Authoritarian Upgrading

security of the nation and that of the system, democratic aspirations

to support “regime change” in Iran helped the regime and under-

Coupled with US covert operations, such US “largesse” paved

The “democracy promotion” funds have been closely associated

Iran’s Civil Society “Double-Track”

Iranian academicians believe democracy, not as an imported and

peace” (solh-e pâydâr). Its aims were outlined as “creating and

We as a group of women’s rights activists in Iran, are worried about

and international politics of tension and violence. As a result of

In conclusion, the belligerent posture of the Bush/Cheney admin-

Economic Sanctions and State-Society Relations

In addition to politico-military pressures, Iran has also been sub-

from which civil society originates, while cementing the position of

A Magic Wand to Decapitate Evil?

measures imposed were “targeted” and “intelligently” aimed at the

The Comprehensive Economic

economic and financial sanctions against Iran, making the country

• The costs for buying raw materials and intersectoral industrial

A crucial aggravating aspect has been that Iranian institutions in

On top of that, as of 17 March 2012, in an unprecedented step,

The Political Economy of Sanctions: Crippling the

Iranian economy is controlled by state and semi-state actors.65 In

economy of the 1980s, when the government rather than markets

Sanctions and the Weakening