The Modern State: A Contradictory Nature

Transcript

Is Iran motivated by religion or by nationalism? Is it an expansionist state or a status quo state? Is it a military menace or a victim (as it would claim)? Is it populist or autocratic? Does it seek to join the international system or to destroy it? The answers to these questions do not lie somewhere between those extremes. Instead, Iran has incorporated all of these elements during the course of its existence as a revolutionary state.

The problem with this dialectic is that Iran is constantly pulled in opposite directions. In many cases this tension short-circuits the nation's decision-making system. When Iranian leaders seek to pursue their national interests, they have trouble determining the proper way to achieve those goals. For example, Iran calls itself an Islamic republic. Many people would say that the description is a contradiction in terms—that Islam is simply not compatible with democratic, republican ideas. In a peculiar way, Iran has formed a kind of laboratory in which to test these different ideas—not just the nature of the nation's government but the whole question of Islam and governance.