Iran, technology, and revolution
by Michael
Rubin
Middle East Strategy at Harvard
June 25, 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2169/iran-technology-revolution
The Boston Globe, Christian
Science Monitor, and Washington Post have dubbed it a "Twitter
Revolution," speculating about whether new technology will enable Iranian
protesters to overcome government forces. The role of technology in the
current unrest is well-covered elsewhere. What is lacking in much of the
coverage, however, is a sense of context.
Technology has been essential both
to empire formation and preservation, and to state degradation in the
Middle East. The late historian Marshall G.S. Hodgson described
the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires as "gunpowder empires." Their
sultans and shahs consolidated control over expansive territories by
controlling weaponry which potential aspirants to power along the
periphery did not have. Once the central government lost monopoly over
guns and cannons, however, the empires fractured—devolving into fiefdoms
or dissolving completely.
In Iran, technology played a
particularly important role in state preservation Looking at 18th and
early 19th century atlases, borders are all over the place. Discrepancies
of dozens if not hundreds of miles mark frontiers on maps published by
different gazetteers. Whereas today imperialism is presented in almost
cartoonish terms as a free-for-all, in reality there were huge debates
during the 19th century whether or not to expand imperial control over
various territories. Imperial rule was an expensive prospect, and so many
imperial powers preferred to advance informal control.
Britain did this in Iran by
supporting various regional officials—for example, briefly recognizing the
autonomy of Makran (Baluchistan) in the mid-19th century and flirting with
Sheikh Khazal in Khuzistan at the beginning of the 20th century. While
rulers could claim as much territory as they liked, the real litmus test
was whether they were able to extract taxes. Sometimes governors or
sub-district governors along a country's periphery, many of whom paid for
their offices, calculated they could keep all the revenue for themselves
and not remit anything to the center. Often, foreign powers encouraged
such defiance (e.g. in Georgia, Kuwait, Herat, and Khorramshahr).
This would create a quandary for the
Shah. If he ignored the governor's defiance, he would effectively lose
that province. Mobilizing the military and launching a punitive
expedition, however, was extremely expensive. As Iran flirted with
bankruptcy throughout the 19th century, the Shah had very few resources at
his disposal, and the periphery knew it.
Nasir al-Din Shah (r. 1848-1896),
however, embraced the telegraph. He could threaten and cajole opponents,
and keep on top of the latest intelligence. What were the Russians doing
in Azerbaijan? What were Kurdish tribes doing across the Ottoman frontier?
Could he afford to dispatch the army and still maintain his security? In
many ways, it was the telegraph which allowed the Shah to play foreign
powers and domestic competitors off each other and preserve Iranian
independence, even in the regime's weakened state.
What was a blessing for the
government and for the consolidation of the state, however, turned into a
liability. Over time, the Shah's government lost control over the
communications network. While the popular belief in the 1860s and 1870s
was that the telegraph ended at the Shah's throne, myriad Iranian groups
discovered that they could communicate directly with each other and
against the central government. This became quite clear in the early 1890s
when, desperate to raise revenue, the Nasir al-Din Shah granted the
unpopular Tobacco Regie which gave the British a monopoly over all phases
of one of Iran's most important industries, from agriculture to sale.
Liberals, nationalists, and clerics joined forces to force the Shah to
retract. Clerics in Najaf used the telegraph to issue a fatwa, obeyed even
by members of the Shah's household, prohibiting the use of tobacco until
the Shah recanted. The telegraph network enabled the formation of the mass
movement.
This point was driven home in the
first decade of the 20th century during Iran's constitutional revolution.
Britain backed constitutional forces, and the Russian government supported
the autocrat shah. The conflict was bloody and, just as in Iran today, it
made headlines. When reactionary forces laid siege to Tabriz, then Iran's
second largest city, British papers reported news of the deprivation and
starvation received by telegraph. What once would have occurred without
notice in Europe, sparked outrage.
As the Shah cracked down, a broad
array of constitutionalists, nationalists, liberals, clerics, and
Bakhtiari tribesmen coordinated their actions by wire. The Shah's forces
sought to cut the wires, but the network was too vast, and not entirely
under the government's control. Importantly, the telegraph extended across
the frontier into what now is Iraq. Senior clerics cabled instructions
from Najaf and Karbala.
Technology created a template upon
which the opposition could act. Oppression was a constant during the Qajar
period and, indeed, before. It was technology, however, that enabled the
mass movement; it simply could not occur before the technology template
was laid.
Into the 20th century, the Iranian
government sought again to dominate technology. Early in Reza Shah's reign
(1925-1941), the Iranian government controlled radio. Under his son and
successor, the state controlled television. However, it could not control
audio tapes smuggled across the border from Iraq, and so in the 15 years
before the Islamic Revolution, the audio cassette—easily copied and
distributed—was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's only means of communication.
While Khomeini's image is iconic now, it should be remembered that until
his return to Iran, many Iranians knew his voice but had not seen his
image.
The Islamic Republic knows it is
unpopular, and knows its vulnerability to technology. The Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps stepped in to cancel a 2004 contract granted to
Turkcell to create an independent cell phone network in Iran. Only this
past year did the Iranian government bless
the introduction of multimedia messaging services in the Islamic
Republic. It could be a decision the Islamic Republic will not live long
enough to regret.
Michael Rubin, a senior editor
of the Middle East
Quarterly, is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a
senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate
School.
Related Topics: Iran Michael
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