Iran: Between Authoritarianism and Imperialism
Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 which toppled the US backed authoritarian regime under the Shah Iran has been an enemy of US imperialism. The intelligence community coined the term "blow back" to refer to the revolution and the regime it produced because the US backing of the Shah is what produced the Islamic Revolution and the Islamist, anti-American, anti-Israeli regime. Iran is thus a symbol of the decline in US hegemonic geopolitical power in that the very US creation and maintenance of a pliant regime in the country produced one of its biggest and most troublesome foreign policy enemies. This, however, does not mean that the Islamic Revolution shed the authoritarian state.
An authoritarian state isn't just any repressive, or undemocratic state (all states, even democratic ones, have repressive functions), but a non-democratic state whose purpose is to depoliticize the population via repressive pacification mechanisms. The goal of an authoritarian state is thus to reduce political mobilization and participation among the wider population. Both the US backed Shah and the anti-US Islamic Republic were and are authoritarian regimes. Under the Shah political authoritarianism, including a bloody police state, was used for the ideological goals of what may be referred to as "authoritarian liberalism".
Authoritarian liberalism is actually a peculiar version of liberal conservativism, that is the variant of conservative ideology that embraces liberal constitutional governance embodied in the rule of law and constitutional limitations on state power. Usually, liberal conservatism is compatible with liberal democratic states characterized by democracy plus separation of powers and civil rights. However Authoritarian Liberalism aims to create constitutional rule of law via the authoritarian state; typically, with the purpose of creating a polity centered around business interests. The US had a taste for backing these sorts of regimes during the Cold War, for instance in the Nicaraguan Somoza dynasty.
The Islamic Revolution brought to power an authoritarian state, whose morality police regularly terrorize the population into submission to a patriarchal concept of Islam, this time as a tool of an illiberal version of conservatism we may refer to as legitimism. Legitimists reject liberal constitutionalism and seek the abolition of the separation between the public and private spheres of society characteristic of the separation between religion and government. The Islamic Republic maintains an Islamic version of legitimism whereas Christian versions can be seen in Catholic integralism. The generic point of conservative ideology is to tie social progress to the preservation of social tradition.
Increasing and maintaining the mediation of progress by tradition relative to the other way around requires central political authority to carry out repressive functions that ensure traditions aren't undermined by runaway social forces looking to remake society. In both legitimism and authoritarian liberalism, the authoritarian state is the repressive mechanism of choice, but the relevant social traditions are different. Authoritarian liberalism sees the relevant set of traditions primarily in a (usually business centered) constitutional form of law and order, whereas legitimism sees it in a modernization of the premodern unity between cultural mores/practices and state power. The result is always boots stomping on necks in the name of tradition.
While the Shah's secret police massacred dissidents the Islamic Republic has continued to whether severe protests, including its most severe since the Islamic Revolution in recent weeks, by heavy state repression (we can be confident that recent protests over economic failure and cost of living were subdued by the killing of thousands of protestors compared with mere hundreds of security forces). Meanwhile the reversal of geopolitical fortunes in Iran has been a primary item on the US foreign policy agenda since 79. It is emblematic of the US' broader decline of geopolitical power represented in the upgrading of Western Europe and Japan from US satellites to partners, the 20th century competitiveness of Western European and Japanese products with US products, the failure of the Vietnam War, the burning through of US gold reserves, the loss of the Soviet Union as an ideological enemy to mobilize US society and allies against, the rise of China and Russia, the nuclearization of US enemies, and the failure of the wars in the Mideast to reverse many items on the above list as was intended.
Trump's foreign policy strategy, despite nominally being "America First" (Trump himself gaining popularity off of criticizing US adventures abroad) has largely been a continuation of the neocon attempt to reverse US fortunes by global intimidation. Trump's recent threats to Iran of a military strike are part and parcel of this strategy, in particular aimed at ending Iran's ballistic missile and nuclear programs. The weakness of this strategy in general can be seen in the fact that US aggression is precisely what incentivizes Tehran to keep such projects going which is epitomized in Iran's threats back to Trump of a wider regional escalation in kind. While Tehran and Washington will never cease their militaristic game until one of them achieves final victory, or both are destroyed, the task for oppressed people around the world is to rise against the entire militaristic world-system. World social revolution which achieves a new world-system based on self-determination and cooperation, rather than military competition and state repression, is the only way to free the people of Iran and the United States from a dismal future.
Sources
Revolution: A Very Short Introduction, Goldstone
https://theconversation.com/us-and-iran-have-a-long-complicated-history-spanning-far-beyond-israels-strikes-on-tehran-259240
https://redandblackanarchists.com.au/fuentes-and-the-executioner-the-rising-legitimist-in-the-age-of-populism/
https://redandblackanarchists.com.au/the-abduction-of-maduro-speaks-to-the-weakness-of-the-united-states/
Authoritarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know, Frantz
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberalism/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/conservatism/
Politics: The Basics, Tansey and Jackson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyHpVZoMIbc&pp=ygUXYmxvd2JhY2sgaXJhbiBpbnRlcmNlcHTSBwkJfAoBhyohjO8%3D
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/1/28/live-iran-says-it-will-respond-like-never-before-after-trumps-threats
