In most Third World countries, the only well-trained organisation that functions properly is the Army or the armed forces as a whole. Few countries, however, define the Army’s role in their constitutions, since the recognised role of the Army, generally speaking, is simply that of national defence in the face of aggression from outside. During the twentieth century there were many coups d’état or putsches led by the armed forces, and they were also used to suppress riots and put down subversive movements. Amongst those countries that have defined the Army’s role in their constitution, the case of Iran contains some curious elements that merit examination. Compared with two of its neighbours, Turkey and Pakistan, where the Army is an integral part of government and is regarded as a political institution, the place of the Iranian armed forces in the hierarchy, including their internal role, is unclear, even though they are omnipresent. The Turkish Army is the guarantor of the secularity of the State; the Pakistani Army is considered to be the State’s watchdog; both can justify their intervention on the political stage in one way or another. For the Iranian armed forces, on the other hand, there is no legal justification for their intervention in every field. Worse still is the dichotomy whereby two distinct armed forces are supposed to protect the nation against attack from the outside: the national army and the Guardians of the Revolution.

Historical Aspects

The modern state of Iran really came into existence in the 1920s with Reza Shah, who was just a colonel of the Cossack Division officered by the Russian Army and disbanded after the October Revolution in 1917. Reza Mirpanj was supported by the British, and given the task of achieving national unification in the face of communist revolutionary ideas, and threw out the Qajar dynasty to establish a secular republic. To avoid upsetting religious leaders, fearful of republican notions (the USSR and Turkey), considered to be by their very nature hostile to religions, Reza Shah moved towards the foundation of a dynasty, choosing the purely Persian name Pahlavi. He became King in 1925, gathering all power into his own hands, and for the first time Iran had a homogeneous Army, created on the European pattern instead of the previous tribal armies. This new army was required to be, above all, loyal to the person of Reza Shah, and ready to intervene in every domain, as the Shah commanded. This army had no right to become involved in political matters. After the abdication of Reza Shah in 1941, because of his collaboration with Nazi Germany, his son succeeded him, and followed the same path. The Pahlavi monarchs held military rank themselves, and were at the head of the three branches of State, legislative, executive and judiciary, as well as at the head of the three services. Thus, during the Pahlavi reign, the military were excluded from politics, and intervened only at the King’s order to deal with riots, tribal or other resistance movements, as in 1953 when they intervened to bring about the downfall of the democratically inclined Prime Minister Mossadegh.

With the 1979 Islamic Revolution the situation changed completely. The royalist army fell into the hands of the Ayatollahs. Generals were executed from the earliest days, some senior officers were forced into premature retirement, and the remainder, having sworn obedience to Ayatollah Khomeini and to the Islamic Revolution, would remain in place and witness the complete reorganisation of the Army. However, the Islamic Revolutionary leaders, above all the mullahs, who had never previously seen a senior military officer up close, were so suspicious of them that the military community became marginalised. Although the national army displayed courage, even boldness, defending the country’s territorial integrity during the Iran-Iraq War, soldiers still have no right to become involved in politics. Imam Khomeini showed his intelligence by refusing to disband the national army when the communists and some revolutionary groups were encouraging him, in their propaganda, to do so. Nonetheless, since 1979 the national army has remained in the shadow of another force, called the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, or Pasdaran—an armed force claiming the right to intervene wherever it wants. Why?