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Backgrounder: Religion and Politics in Iran

Council on Foreign Relations

Author: Greg Bruno, Staff Writer

June 19, 2008

Introduction

In 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran closed a speech at the United Nations with a call for the "mighty Lord" to "hasten the emergence" of Imam Mahdi, a direct descendent of the Prophet Muhammad. Shia Islam holds that the Mahdi, as the redeemer of Islam, will return from hiding to rid the world of injustice. This belief made Ahmadinejad's plea more than a pious invocation: Some analysts speculate the president was seeking to sow chaos by using religion to further his political goals. The debate reached a boil in May 2008. During a nationally broadcast speech Ahmadinejad suggested that Imam Mahdi supported the day-to-day operations of his government, a claim that brought condemnation from Iran's powerful clerical elite. The president also indirectly accused senior clerics of economic corruption, further upsetting the Iranian clergy and shining a rare spotlight on the increasingly tenuous relationship between politics and faith in post-revolution Iran.

Birth of Political Islam

Political and religious disagreements that have arisen since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 have their roots in the evolution of the contemporary Iranian state. In 1925, a young military officer, Reza Khan, led a coup that deposed the 131-year-old Qajar dynasty and founded the Pahlavi dynasty. After being named shah, Reza Khan pursued relations with Germany, angering Britain and Russia, and prompting those powers to invade. British and Soviet troops left in 1946, but foreign influence only intensified with the advent of the Cold War. Nationalists, led by Mohammad Mossadeq, rose to power in 1951. But the CIA and British intelligence colluded to topple him two years later, restoring the exiled Pahlavi dynasty to power in the form of Reza Khan's son, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. The shah repressed Iran's Islamists, however, and his restoration fostered anger among the general population.

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Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.