Since the assassination of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31, the world has watched with bated breath to see how Iran would respond to Israel’s purported role in his killing. Amid escalating brinkmanship and largely unnoticed by the international press, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iran’s regular armed forces have been quietly redirecting military and intelligence resources for a seemingly benign purpose—to provide logistical support and security for a religious ceremony in neighboring Iraq. The annual Arba’een pilgrimage to the city of Karbala, about 100km south of Baghdad, which concluded on August 25th this year, is a voluntary act of piety for Shi’a Muslims. Banned for decades under Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist party rule, the once obscure commemoration has, in recent years, been loudly co-opted as a political symbol by the Islamic Republic of Iran. In an economy decimated by sanctions, Iran spends half a billion dollars every year to encourage its citizens to participate in the Shi’a pilgrimage. This year, over three million Iranians made the journey. Arba’een commemorates the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and a holy figure in Shi’a Islam—and, according to the Islamic Republic, the spiritual prototype for Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah. Karbala, meanwhile, is glorified by the IRGC as its spiritual home. Tellingly described as a ‘20-million [person] manoeuvre’ by former IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani and as a “great and astonishing combat rehearsal” by Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khameini, Iran’s patronage of the pilgrimage serves as a form of soft power projection. It is a potent symbol intended to shore up Iran’s image as the global leader of the Shi’a community and the indispensable role of the Ayatollah and the IRGC in providing that leadership.
That Iran’s military and clerical establishment would expend such resources to exploit a religious celebration amid an intense period of conflict with Israel and the West is revealing. It speaks to an important, if uncomfortable, facet of the Islamic Republic, which continues to beguile Western politicians and commentators: the enduring role of ideology and mythology in shaping the regime’s actions. Despite the recent election of reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian and promises of domestic civil reforms, revolutionary and apocalyptic myths continue to guide Iran’s ruling elite—the Ayatollah, the IRGC, and the Guardian Council—while simultaneously legitimizing their stronghold over Iranian society. Understanding Iran’s enduring political mythology remains key to understanding the long-term foreign policy strategy of the Islamic Republic, and why a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will do little to change it.
Modern Mythmaking and the Revolutionary State
Modern political myths are distinct from the ancient fables that once ordered the Greco-Roman world. They are, in the words of 20th-century political philosopher Ernst Cassirer, “artificial things fabricated by very skillful and cunning artisans.” In The Myth of the State (1946), Cassirer observes that in “our own great technical age…myths can be manufactured in the same sense and according to the same methods as any other modern weapons—as machine guns or airplanes.” The modern authoritarian serves as both prophet and scientist; “the priest of a new, entirely irrational and mysterious religion. But when he has to defend and propagate this religion he proceeds very methodically…every step is well prepared and premeditated.”
Iran’s reigning political mythology was meticulously constructed in such a manner by Ayatollah Khomeini, following the 1979 revolution. According to official historiography, the revolution saw the overthrow by Islamists of a Shah-ruled corrupt and decadent American puppet state and the establishment of a sacred system of government: Velayat-e Faqih, or the Guardianship of the Jurist, by which the Ayatollah would stand above the ordinary instruments of state and serve as the ultimate arbiter of policy and law. The IRGC was created and granted extrajudicial powers to protect the revolution from enemies from both within and without, and to help export the revolution. It is this ongoing revolution in support of Islamist movements in Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Syria and Yemen that necessitates the preservation of Velayat-e Faqih, and the continued watchfulness of the IRGC. The revolution was not a one-time event that created the Islamic Republic; rather, the Islamic Republic exists for the sake of perpetuating the ongoing revolution.
This official narrative is, of course, mired in falsehood. There is little precedent within the long arc of Islamic history, from the time of the early caliphs to later empires, for Iran’s peculiar system of government. Drawing more from Marxist-Leninist theories of vanguardism (as well as the anti-liberal thought of Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger), rather than from traditional Shi’a Islamic principles of quietism, Velayat-e Faqih is a decidedly modern construct. It was denounced as heretical, even at the time, by the four other living grand ayatollahs of Shi’a Islam apart from Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of the 1979 revolution. Nor was the revolution an exclusively Islamist affair, driven by considerations of religious piety. Historians have long pointed out that the revolution originated among socialists, liberals, and urbane middle-class activists and was only later violently co-opted by religious radicals. Khomeini himself was a clever and pragmatic mythmaker, in Cassirer’s model. While first presenting himself as a champion of the downtrodden masses and of constitutional government merely guided by Islamic principles, his tone and thinking shifted soon after his return from exile. Later, following the Iran-Iraq War, Khomeini moved to consolidate power for the mullahs by executing thousands of political rivals.
Consolidation and Perpetual War
While most revolutions experience a Thermidorian Reaction where the excesses of revolutionary fervor precipitate a return to some semblance of normalcy, Iran’s political mythology has successfully reigned for nearly half a century. Neither Khomeini’s death, nor attempts to reign in radicals by reformist presidents Akbar Rafsanjani, Mohammad Khatami, and Hassan Rouhani, nor widespread civilian protests against the regime—in 1999, 2009, 2017, 2019, and 2022—have put a dent in the idea of Velayet-e faqih. Conversely, over the years, state ideology has only been bolstered with additional layers of mythical innovation. Mahdism, the messianic belief that political and military victories by the Islamic Republic of Iran can hasten the return of the Mahdi (the “Hidden Imam”) and thereby hasten the apocalypse, became a powerful motif in the early 2000s. Exploiting popular religiosity, the state spent half a billion dollars expanding and refurbishing the hitherto obscure Jamkaran Mosque in a small village outside the city of Qom to promote apocalyptic beliefs and stoke populist support for the regime. Religion is abused time and again; the IRGC’s Quds Force incursions into Iraq and Syria, in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, were portrayed as efforts to protect Shi’a shrines from Sunni militants, rather than calculated geopolitical maneuvers.
Other forms of propaganda have evolved to fit the times. The IRGC’s Political Office once situated Iran within a broader discourse of resistance against 20th-century colonialism; during the Cold War, IRGC publications regularly highlighted revolutionary struggles across the Third World. Today, that transnational ethos has evolved to support Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as growing ties with China, Cuba, Venezuela, and other spoilers of the American-led rules based international order. As Michael Eisenstadt, director of the Washington Institute’s Military and Security Studies Program once said, “Iran was born at war with the international system because from their point of view, it was a system that was under American hegemony and thus inherently hostile to their interests. Accordingly, we must look at Iranian actions in that light.” While circumstances have changed, what has remained consistent is the central role played in the great drama by the Great Satan and the Little Satan—the US and Israel.
Every myth requires its heroes and villains. For the Islamic Republic, the latter role has been diligently served by Israel and the United States. Since 1979, the eradication of the Jewish State and the expulsion of US forces from the Middle East have been portrayed as necessary preconditions for the triumph of the revolution. America and Israel remain principal hurdles for the creation of a vast Shi’a Islamist crescent stretching across the Levant. For more hardline factions within the IRGC, the ‘liberation’ of Jerusalem is viewed in decidedly eschatological terms; it is a sine qua non for the return of the Mahdi. Thus, while Arab states have largely disentangled from futile conflict with Israel, choosing instead to enrich themselves through peace treaties and trade deals, Iran’s clerical and military establishment continues to trade the wellbeing of its citizens for ideological ends. This is the most enduring and dangerous aspect of Iran’s political mythology.
There are, of course, less ideological reasons behind Iran’s bellicosity. Recurring cycles of hostility bolster the IRGC’s domestic influence vis-à-vis would-be reformers. The mullahs and the IRGC understand that perpetual, intermittent war with the Great Satan and the Little Satan provide long-term legitimacy. Without the bogeyman of an ‘imperialist’ menace, the revolution ceases to exist, and so too does the raison d’être for the revolutionary state. Simultaneously, Iran’s continued isolation in the international sphere has proven remarkably profitable for the IRGC and its extensive network of enterprises, which exploit existing sanctions to create domestic market monopolies. These perverse material and political incentives create conditions in which the institutional belief in the irrational becomes hyper-rational. Iran’s ‘philosopher kings’ (and their enforcers) have not only come to believe their own Noble Lie, but depend on it to sustain their power and lucrative existence. While a quarter century of civilian protests against the regime suggest that many ordinary Iranians have long ago abandoned ideology in favor of diplomatic rapprochement and the comforts of liberal modernity, those who govern Iran remain as committed to the struggle as ever. So long as they do, prospects for regional peace remain elusive.