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Iran
ARMED FORCES AND SOCIETY
Status in National Life
Since 1979 Iran has witnessed political and military changes
with long-lasting domestic repercussions. The shah relied on the
country's considerable military strength to implement his policy
goals. When his rule was replaced by a theocratic regime with
a new domestic agenda, political power presumably rested in the
hands of Khomeini and a group of cautious clerics bound by deeply
conservative religious values. In the turmoil of the Revolution,
the regular armed forces lost their preeminent position in society
primarily because of their close identification with the shah.
The military was paralyzed by fast-moving events and incapable
of effective action, and its downfall was accelerated when a number
of key senior officers fled the country, fearing reprisals from
the revolutionary regime. The public trials and executions of
high-ranking military officers further tainted the military's
image. On February 15, 1979, three days after the official declaration
of the republic, a secret Islamic revolutionary court in Tehran
handed down death sentences on four generals. Five days later
the regime ordered the execution of four more generals. Other
military officers were executed for the Islamic crimes of "causing
corruption on earth" and "fighting Allah," according to an interpretation
of shariat (see Glossary). The new regime considered
these officers as Pahlavi holdovers, lacking proper Islamic credentials
and therefore potential instigators of military coups. When protests
were voiced about summary executions, Ayatollah Mohammad Reza
Mahdavi-Kani, the cleric in charge of the komitehs, replied,
"We must purify society in order to renew it." The resulting leadership
vacuum in the military took several years to fill.
Mobilized to fight a foreign enemy, the armed forces by 1981
were gradually developing autonomy and an esprit de corps, despite
their acrimonious infighting with the Pasdaran, whose independent
military power acted as a check on any possible coup attempts
by the armed forces. The Khomeini regime, aware of its dependence
on the armed forces, adopted a new strategy aimed at assimilating
the military into the Revolution by promoting loyal officers and
propagating Islamic values. Leaders recognized that as long as
the country was at war with Iraq and was experiencing internal
political turmoil, they would need a loyal army on the battlefield
as well as the loyal Pasdaran on the homefront. Despite the need
for military support, however, the revolutionary regime continued
to exercise tight control over the armed forces and to regard
them with some suspicion.
Political rivalries notwithstanding, the regular armed forces'
professionalism and impressive performance in the war stood as
clear alternatives to the early "human-wave" tactics of the Pasdaran
and Basij, which cost hundreds of thousands of lives and achieved
little. The armed forces' respectable military performance also
helped exonerate them from the role they had played during the
Pahlavi period. Since September 1980, the military has demonstrated
that it could and would defend the country and the legitimate
government.
Data as of December 1987
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