After Khomeini: Iran Under His Successors - Hardcover

"A clear analysis of Iran's political and ideological transformation in the post-Khomeini period. Dealing with a broad range of issues from political development and constitutional politics to Islamic reformism and the rise of new conservatives, this book is a valuable addition to Iranian studies and current debates in the sociology of revolution."--Ali Gheissari, University of San Diego "Said Arjomand illuminates post-revolutionary Iran by placing it in its broad historical and sociological setting. His familiarity with Islamic texts, together with his careful reading of modern revolutions, makes him exceptionally well qualified to understand and communicate what religion in this case has done to revolution and, perhaps even more importantly, what revolution has done to Shi'ite Islam in Iran. Coming twenty years after his masterful analysis of the Iranian revolution in The Turban for the Crown, this treatment of the revolution After Khomeini removes some of the mystery from one of the most consequential events of our times."--Gary Sick, Columbia University "With an unsurpassed command over the material and events and a comparativist perspective, Said Amir Arjomand rescues our entrapped understanding of Iran and sets a superior standard for a new generation of scholarship. It is impossible to understand what has happened in Iran of the last three decades without a careful reading of this uncommonly perceptive and extraordinary book."--Hamid Dabashi, author of Iran: A People Interrupted "After Khomeini may indeed prove to be a conceptually ground-breaking work of great interest to both lay people and specialists in Iranian, Middle Eastern, Islamic studies, and the sociology of revolution....The work constitutes an invaluable contribution to a genuine theoretical understanding of post-revolutionary and post-reformist Iran, insofar as it seeks to uncover the complex interplay of the intended as well as of the unintended consequences of the 1979 revolution."--American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences "In this timely book, Amir Arjomand concisely presents an analytical perspective on the post-Khomeini Iran that one expects from much longer books...Arjomand's analysis here and in other parts of the book, I believe, may open exciting paths to pursue for graduate students in the field of Iranian studies."--Contemporary Islam "A clear analysis of Iran's political and ideological transformation in the post-Khomeini period. Dealing with a broad range of issues from political development and constitutional politics to Islamic reformism and the rise of new conservatives, this book is a valuable addition to Iranian studies and current debates in the sociology of revolution."--Ali Gheissari, University of San Diego "Said Arjomand illuminates post-revolutionary Iran by placing it in its broad historical and sociological setting. His familiarity with Islamic texts, together with his careful reading of modern revolutions, makes him exceptionally well qualified to understand and communicate what religion in this case has done to revolution and, perhaps even more importantly, what revolution has done to Shi'ite Islam in Iran. Coming twenty years after his masterful analysis of the Iranian revolution in The Turban for the Crown, this treatment of the revolution After Khomeini removes some of the mystery from one of the most consequential events of our times."--Gary Sick, Columbia University "With an unsurpassed command over the material and events and a comparativist perspective, Said Amir Arjomand rescues our entrapped understanding of Iran and sets a superior standard for a new generation of scholarship. It is impossible to understand what has happened in Iran of the last three decades without a careful reading of this uncommonly perceptive and extraordinary book."--Hamid Dabashi, author of Iran: A People Interrupted "After Khomeini may indeed prove to be a conceptually ground-breaking work of great interest to both lay people and specialists in Iranian, Middle Eastern, Islamic studies, and the sociology of revolution....The work constitutes an invaluable contribution to a genuine theoretical understanding of post-revolutionary and post-reformist Iran, insofar as it seeks to uncover the complex interplay of the intended as well as of the unintended consequences of the 1979 revolution."--American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences "In this timely book, Amir Arjomand concisely presents an analytical perspective on the post-Khomeini Iran that one expects from much longer books...Arjomand's analysis here and in other parts of the book, I believe, may open exciting paths to pursue for graduate students in the field of Iranian studies."--Contemporary Islam

Iran has not ceased to surprise the world since the American ambassador's famous "thinking the unthinkable" 1978 cable about the imminent fall of the Shah and the coming of Islamic revolution. The apparent sequence of moderate government of President Hashemi-Rafsanjani (1989-97) and democratic reform under President Khatami (1997-2005) was followed by the return of the hardliners and revolutionary populism coupled with an aggressive foreign policy, including a nuclear program. Iran's political regime has proved remarkably resilient through all these changes, despite the disaffection of the younger half of the population, and become all the stronger, partly as a result of the Bush administration's ill-advised bluff about regime change.

The death of Imam Khomeini as its charismatic leader in 1989 did not mean the end of the Islamic revolution, but only the beginning of a prolonged struggle among the children of the revolution over Khomeini's heritage. The integrative social revolution begun in 1979 has continued quietly, while the raucous/noisy struggle to define, structure and control the new Islamic political order set up by Khomeini among different factions of his followers has produced a unique political regime which defies understanding. Arjomand draws on the sociology of revolution to offer a general explanation of political developments in Iran in the last two decades while seeking to understand its unique features in terms of constitutional politics of the creation of the post-revolutionary order. Not only Iran's domestic politics but also its foreign policy are shown to follow a pattern typical of the great revolutions. Surprising as it may seem, the parameters for Iran's constitutional politics in the last two decades are those set by Khomeini's mixture of theocratic, republican and populist elements in the ideology of the Islamic revolution.