Opinion The coming Iranian Enlightenment

The funeral in December of the regime’s bête noire,Grand Ayatollah Montazeri,where hundreds of thousands turned out,suggests the regime may be encountering resistance from the clerical establishment. The holy city of Qom never had much regard for Khamenei’s credentials; their quiescence has been achieved through intimidation and their inability to see any political alternative. But part of Montazeri’s appealing dissent,echoed by other clerics since his death,is that the Islamic Republic doesn’t have to change much for the differences to be telling. Just freeing the parliament from unelected clerical oversight would be a revolutionary step.

An opposition combining young mullahs,college-educated bureaucrats within Iran’s bloated civil service and a significant slice of the urban poor could be too diverse to suppress. The regime’s bulwark,the Revolutionary Guards,rose to prominence defending the homeland; they have not yet shown that they have the fortitude to kill their countrymen. Note how much time and effort the regime has spent to deflect blame for the killing of one young woman,Neda,last summer. A self-confident regime would have killed unapologetically.

Iranian journalists are reporting that former guardsmen who’ve joined the opposition are signaling to their one-time brothers that they could have a soft landing in a new order. If more Iranians are killed,rank-and-file guardsmen may suspend their belief and choose not to shoot.

A democratic revolution in Tehran could well prove the most momentous Mideastern event since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. A politically freer Iran would bring front and centre the great Islamic debate of our times: How can one be both a good Muslim and a democrat? How does one pay homage to Islamic law but give ultimate authority to the people’s elected representatives?

To an extent seen in no other country,Iran’s intellectuals have battled and evolved over these questions. For a century,the country has been trying to develop constitutional government. For 30 years,dissident clerics and lay intellectuals have struggled to reassert the democratic promise in the revolution.

Especially for religious dissidents,democracy is now seen as a keystone of a more moral order,where the faith can no longer be used to countenance dictatorship. The evolution of Christianity tells us that the West’s political evolution from autocracy to democracy,more than anything,depoliticised Christianity.

The same process is happening to Islam in Iran,but much faster. Millions of Iranians have secularised — a softening secularisation that is likely to last,since both non-religious and faithful Iranians increasingly see representative government as indispensable to their values.

The impact of all this on Muslims everywhere is likely to be profound. Sunni Arabs often like to pretend that they live in a different world from their Shia Iranian cousins,but the truth is the opposite: cross-fertilisation has been enormous. With Iranian democracy growing,liberal Arabs and Sunni Islamists would become much bolder in their demands. Iran could easily become what Ayatollah Khomeini had wished — the model that transforms the Middle East — albeit not in the manner he hoped for.

Obama has nothing to lose by moving away from engaging Khamenei and toward a vigourous engagement with the Iranian people’s quest for popular sovereignty. Rhetoric,sanctions aimed at cutting off Iran’s gasoline imports and intelligent covert aid to dissidents should be harnessed to the democratic cause.

Without the bogeyman of a Great Satan and the militant dream of regional hegemony,a Persian Parliament,overwhelmed with the people’s demands,would find much better things than enriched uranium to spend the nation’s money on. And if the clerical regime cracks,Obama will get credit.