Iran. Psychopathology of Control. Iranian regime

Iran. Psychopathology of Control. Iranian regime.

Our research into the Iranian regime illustrated that it is obsessed with the psychosocial control over its own population and over the populations of its surrounding Arab neighbours. Regardless of the directions of Iranian elections in any given electoral cycle, the deciding issue is always the dogma that “Human beings are inherently sinful and must be carefully guarded and/or controlled by [Shi’a] Islamic jurisprudence.” After a decade of studying the Shi’a pedagogy of victimisation control-guardianship-oppression, its logic does not follow normal political rationale of human governance. The Judaeo Christian-Muslim intellectual concept of human-kind’s struggle between good and evil has been malformed to create a structural argument for absolute repression of human agency. To say this differently, the regime works to coopt one segment of the population to actively work against and suppress all other segments of the population, providing them with intellectual and emotional reasoning (however weak) for their success at the expense of others. Over the past 40 years, the regime’s efforts have deformed and malformed the Iranian society into a monstrous version of human life that is filled with dread, hopelessness, helplessness, and a willingness to self-sacrifice in the faint hope of a better life for the next generations.

The next several sections describe the phenomenological lived realities of the Iranian population under this malformed reality of Iranian Shi’a theocracy. All real power is held by the Supreme Leader (Ayatollah) who is nominally appointed by the 86-member Assembly of (Shi’a) Experts, who themselves are drawn from three overlapping but closed political parties. The oldest, founded in 1961 by the first Ayatollah Khomeini, controls the other two.

As the graphic aid in Figure 2 illustrates, the three authorized political organizations in Iran are mirror images of each other, with slight variations in governing practices. While slight, these ideological variations were thought to create differences in the number of lives lost to torture, execution, imprisonment, and overall oppression.

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To say this differently, the regime’s challenge is to coopt one segment of the population to actively work against and suppress all other segments of the population, providing them with intellectual and emotional reasoning (however weak) for their success at the expense of others.

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Ultimately, however, the most progressive or regressive tendencies or decisions are acquiesced to or overturned by the Ayatollah who reigns with absolute authority. The Ayatollah controls all major policy decisions either directly or through a network of groups appointed by him. He oversees the military and has the power to remove the president. He appoints six of the twelve members of the Guardian Council who determine eligibility for running for any elected office. Iranian law makes it a crime to disagree with, attempt to supervise, or refuse directions of, the Ayatollah. This authoritarian national governing structure is protected, and its decisions are enforced by, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp or IRGC.

While the country has a police force and regular military, in practice they are under that tight control of the IRGC and do not play an independent role in internal security for the regime. The Commander of the IRGC (Internal defence and control) and the IRGC Quds Force (external expansion) both reports directly to the Ayatollah and are subject only to their own internal supervision. The IRGC’s principal purpose is the control of the Iranian resources and population groups as part of their protection of the theocracy. The IRGC and its Quds Force are not accountable to the Iranian president or Majles (parliament). They and the Ministry of Intelligence (Ettala’at) report only to the Supreme Leader. The offices of the Ayatollah, the IRGC, and Ettala’at, constitute a ‘government-within-government’ and a ‘closed economy’ that hides in plain sight under cover of Bonyads (non-profit foundations). This closed economy self-funds the operations of the Ayatollah, the IRGC and Ettala’at. The single most expensive portion of the IRGC’s budget is its Quds Force, once led by Major General Qasim Soleimani, killed by a missile strike ordered by US President Trump. The IRGC’s Quds Force, in their role as the external arm of the Ayatollah, accounts for potentially as much as 35% of IRGC revenues spent building, training, organising, and directing five separate organised military-political organisations across the Levant, Arabian Peninsula, and southwest Asia.

The Ettala’at spends the majority of its classified budget hunting down threats to the regime and assassinates them, including current or former citizens domestically and abroad. Iran has assassinated dozens of its enemies across four continents — in Asia, Europe, North America and South America — over the four decades since the 1979 revolution. As of September 2020, the IRGC and Ettala’at have targeted Iranian citizens in exile for assassination, and US Intelligence agencies have reported that “Terrorism is an important instrument of Iranian foreign policy, used both to promote national interests and to export the regime’s revolutionary ideals…” The import of this reality is that regardless of the amount of lives it costs the Iranian government, there is no possibility of change from within, absent a collapse of the Theocratic Regime. This absolute power is achieved only by the effective control over the population & resources to include wealth creation and distribution. Both are required for the Ayatollah and his Quds Force to build the Shi’a Crescent that surrounds Shi’a Iran’s ultimate competitor – Sunni Arab’s influence over the Muslim world. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the regime in Tehran has been forging a psychosocial political "land bridge" that

surrounds the Arab centre of Islam – Saudi Arabia. This encirclement connects Iran through Shi’a minorities & majorities in Oman, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and Yemen. This is what MENA scholars refer to as the “Shia Crescent” illustrated in figure. Iran leads the global Shi’a Islamic community, but that ummah only comprises just 10 percent of the world's Muslim population, against the remaining 90 percent Sunni led by Saudi Arabia. The centre of the universe for the 100 billion or so Muslims is Arab controlled Mecca and Medina, which the Saudi Arab Kingdom holds in safekeeping. Because society, politics, law, and religion are so closely fused in Islam, the political state that controls Islam, wields outsized influence over all Islam. The import of this is to establish the clear focus and purpose of the Ayatollah and IRGC’s regime and the lengths to which this structure will go to maintain its control over its population and resources.

The graphics in figure strips away the sheer amount of precious financial and national resources the regime spends and allows us to more accurately estimate the regime’s current and future trajectory. The clerical structures, the resource extraction, and the Revolutionary Guards operations are all protected by a man from the Iranian shadows, Esmail Khatib, Ayatollah Khamanei’s former office security chief. For the past 43 years, Khatib has been linked to the deaths of clerics, intelligence agents, and guards who posed threats to the reign of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his heir. Khatib has worked closely with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Intelligence unit. At the end of the day, these are the men in Iran who matter.