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Like the dynasty it displaced, the Islamic Republic has been bedeviled by dissent. By the early 1990s, an eclectic group of politicians, seminary leaders, religious scholars and intellectuals undertook an imaginative reexamination of the role of public participation in an Islamic government.

The challenge of the reformers was to reconcile two competing demands: On the one side was Islam with its holistic pretensions; on the other side was political modernity with its democratic claims. In essence, the reformers claimed that these two realms were not incompatible in principle or practice.

This was a remarkable rebuke to totalitarian Islam, which was increasingly serving as the regime’s ideology. The odyssey of the reform movement is as familiar as it is tragic, as President Mohammad Khatami and his allies ultimately failed to adjust the parameters of Iran’s Islamist rule. However, the guardians of theocracy could not rest easily, as the reformers quickly gave way to an even more robust Green Movement.

In many ways, the Green Movement is a descendent and successor of all the previous political coalitions that have sought to liberalize Iran.

The regime, to be sure, has managed to regain control of the streets through brute force, show trials and repression. However, what is important is that the Green Movement severed the essential link between state and society.

For long, the Islamic Republic sought to present itself as different from ... >>>