The Iranian regime believes it is running high. Three years ago, the Islamic Republic was near bankruptcy because of sanctions and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s “Maximum Pressure” campaign. Hezbollah had trouble paying its salaries, and Iraqis complained the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that gave birth and long subsidized specific Shi’ite militias now demanded remittances from them.
The Islamic Republic’s Achilles’ heel has always been questions about its legitimacy. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini mobilized Iranians to oust the shah. Historians estimate ten percent of Iranians took part in the street protests that forced the shah to flee into exile. In comparison, only one percent of Russians participated in the Bolshevik Revolution, and two percent of colonists participated in the American Revolution. Most Iranians, however, mobilized over what they were against but did not share a common vision. Khomeini elided this problem by saying different things to different groups or by outright lying. “I don’t want to have the power of government in my hand; I am not interested in personal power,” he told one gullible journalist.
On April 1, 1979, two months to the day after his return, Khomeini sponsored a referendum with a single question: “Do you want an Islamic Republic?” He never defined what an Islamic Republic would mean but nearly 45 years later, regime officials still base their legitimacy on this initial vote.
Behind-the-scenes, though, the regime knows it exists on a lie. It stages elections not to hold officials accountable to the public or change policy, but rather to demonstrate legitimacy. For Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who succeeded Khomeini upon his death 35 years ago, what matters in elections is not the winner but rather voter participation. Foreign Ministry handlers regularly exaggerate turnout or parade gullible journalists around Tehran, but keep them far away from the periphery such as Kurdistan or Baluchistan, where voter turnout hovers around 12 percent. Many who vote do so to keep public sector jobs. They get their national identity card stamped to prove participation but then spoil their ballot. Hiding the spoilt ballot statistics allowed the Islamic Republic to maintain the fiction of popular legitimacy. That ended 16 months ago when regime thugs murdered 22-year-old Iranian Kurd Mahsa Amini. The resulting “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement demonstrated unequivocally that Khamenei’s theocracy was a zombie regime that no longer had any claim to popular legitimacy.
Hiding the spoilt ballot statistics allowed the Islamic Republic to maintain the fiction of popular legitimacy. That ended 16 months ago when regime thugs murdered 22-year-old Iranian Kurd Mahsa Amini.
Regime leaders incite violence and “export revolution” abroad to distract from their problems at home. This is a major reason why Iranian officials greenlit the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. President Ebrahim Raisi has a roadmap for Gaza. Long before the South African government sought to conflate Israeli self-defense against Hamas with genocide against Palestinians, Raisi declared Iran’s policy “to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes in international courts.” In the same speech, Raisi declared, “the complete solution of the Palestinian crisis would come with holding a referendum for all the true inhabitants of the Palestinian nation.”
Put aside Raisi’s effort to erase Jewish emigres to Palestine in the 19th and 20th centuries, long before many Arabs migrated from Syria to what had been a centuries-long backwater. Or the fact that the United Nations has for more than 30 years pursued a referendum for Morocco’s Western Sahara only to be stymied by Algeria’s attempts to massage the voter rolls. The Jewish state is here to stay and efforts to erase a 75-year-old country whose creation the United Nations legitimized is tantamount to incitement to genocide.
That said, Raisi’s legitimization of a referendum is important. Iranian voter rolls are clear; the Islamic Republic cannot dispute them since they created them. Nor should the Iranian diaspora be an impediment if limited to current residents of Iran itself.
If Khamenei and Raisi are as certain as they claim that they have popular legitimacy, invite in UN observers and international monitors and hold a new referendum with a simple question: “Do you want an Islamic Republic?” if the answer is no, consider the Islamic Republic dissolved and prepare for a new, democratic constitutional order.
