Understanding Iran and Syria’s Awkward Alignment

Ideology lies at the core of modernity, in which political power depends on the consent and support of putatively sovereign societies, not just the possession of material resources. For the famous Marxist theorist Gramsci, "willed" or "arbitrary" ideologies should be distinguished from "organic" ideologies, which "are necessary to a given structure." In the Middle East context, Ba'thism and Islamism represent "willed" ideologies, but their contribution to general ideological power rests on the resonance they have with broader organic ideologies through which individuals "acquire consciousness of their position,” as postulated by Gramsci. Ideological hegemony depends on this congruency with political subjectivities that are integral to the structure of power in modern states. A regime's ideological hegemony can be augmented or lost through domestic and foreign policy. Middle East regional politics play out within a common ideological space, stemming from the interactive historical development of the region's states and social movements. Promises to redistribute wealth and increase political inclusion, alongside opposition to imperialism and Zionism, constituted central motifs for the movements that consolidated state power in Iran, Syria, Egypt, and elsewhere, emanating as they did from the "organic ideology" of the publics that supported them. Scholarship has confirmed that populist governments view themselves as champions of the people's will against the predations of a corrupt elite. In the Middle East context, Ba'thism and Islamism represent "willed" ideologies, but their contribution to general ideological power rests on the resonance they have with broader organic ideologies through which individuals "acquire consciousness of their position." Failure to deliver on domestic promises to improve the material condition of the masses led regimes to rely more on anti-imperialism and anti-Zionism to substantiate their conformity with organic ideology. The growing need of populist regimes to engage politically and economically with the West often meant that the most direct way to achieve this substantiation was through supporting the Palestinians against Israel. Palestine has come to embody the de facto instantiation of "the people" in general for populist regimes, whose claims to fulfill the needs and aspirations of their own people are no longer credible. The need to protect this power resource creates ideological codependency among regional populists, of which the Iranian and Syrian regimes—despite partial moves away from populism since the 1990s—represent the paramount examples in the contemporary Middle East. Explaining the Iranian Intervention in Syria As with Middle Eastern international relations in general, the Iran-Syria relationship tends to be understood in terms of either identity or geopolitics. Accounts that attribute the alignment to primordial identifications are easily challenged by pointing out the constructed and fluid nature of sectarian identity and the existence of cross-sect alliances, as well as the correlative rather than causal character of sectarianism in regional confrontations. More subtle approaches to identity as a driver of Iranian policy toward Syria focus on the symbolic importance to Iran of maintaining a so-called axis of refusal, comprising Syria and Hezbollah, as well as the Palestinian Islamist groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The importance of the axis for Iran, in such accounts, lies in its substantiation of Iran's identity as an opponent of Western imperialism. In turn, this prestige rests on the regional resonance of anti-Zionism, anti-imperialism, and solidarity with the "downtrodden" Muslim masses, toward which Iran's revolutionary identity is directed. However, this regional identity-based explanation struggles to explain why Iran would support a regime the standing of which among most populaces in the region has reached rock bottom. The prestige of Hezbollah, previously a glowing advertisement for the vitality of the Islamic Revolution, also has plummeted as a result of its role in the Syrian civil war. Iran's identity as champion of the downtrodden in the Muslim world has been seriously undermined, despite its dogged commitment to preserving the axis of refusal. According to more realist explanations, Iran needs Syria so that it can reliably arm and fund Hezbollah, the better to threaten Israel and boost its power and influence in the Levant. Indeed, Hezbollah has leveraged its impressive military capability and its network of Iranian-funded social services to sustain local popularity and create problems for Israel. It also has deterred a US or Israeli strike on Iran. However, Iran risked and expended much for what could never be more than a limited deterrent. Were Israel and the United States ever to plan a large-scale assault on Iran, Hezbollah could do little to prevent it. A related geopolitical explanation often advanced for Iran's support for Hezbollah, as well as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, rests on these groups' utility as "spoilers" of an Israel-Palestine peace process deemed central to the further consolidation of US power in the region. However, there has been no such process to spoil since at least 2000, and the Palestinian people have proven themselves more than capable of rejecting unjust peace settlements without Iran's help. The frequent equation of Palestinian popular resistance with Iranian-financed terrorism in Western and Israeli media discourse should be treated as propaganda rather than as an accurate reflection of Iranian influence in Palestinian activism. Ideological Codependency Ideological compatibility tends to be discounted as an explanation for the Syria-Iran alliance. Islamist Iran and secular Ba'thist Syria, after all, should have little in common on the level of ideas. However, the ideological mismatch between two allies appears puzzling only if we treat ideas narrowly (as willed ideology) rather than taking into account their relation with deeper organic ideology. Both Ba'thism and Islamism resonate within a common regional ideological space. Core tenets of each include: 1) a commitment to the liberation of "the people" from corrupt elites kept in place by imperialism and Zionism; and 2) a conception of "the people" that transcends the borders of the nation-state: the Arabs in the case of the Ba'th Party and Muslims for the Islamic Republic. Pan-Arabism and Pan-Islamism are not neutral expressions of shared heritage. Revolutionary intellectuals and social movements have "ideologized" ethnic and religious identities and directed them toward the struggle for social emancipation and liberation from imperialism. Organic ideology in the Middle East reflects the accumulated collective memory of contentious politics, war and revolution, framed and given meaning within social movements. Engaging with such sentiments through "willed" ideology forms the bedrock of the Iranian and Syrian regimes' ideological power. Both Iran and Syria embarked upon redistributive economic policies aimed at mobilizing marginalized classes and breaking the power of the old oligarchies. In Syria (from 1963, but especially from 1970) and Iran (from 1979), the strengthening and proliferation of political and bureaucratic structures—and their penetration into almost all areas of life—blurred the distinction between regime and state and even between state and society. The state was able to exert considerable control over ideas, making any challenge to its willed ideology not only politically risky but also tantamount to treason. However, the Syrian and Iranian regimes also experienced a progressive diminution of their ideological power, manifest in their declining ability to credibly claim to be acting in the interests of "the people." In line with global trends, they evolved in a post-populist direction. The Ba'th Party under Hafiz al-Assad steadily became an instrument of top-down control for the regime rather than one of revolutionary mobilization. Until the 1990s, the regime could credibly claim to exchange political freedom for economic redistribution—a key element of the populist authoritarian social contract. Since then, however, social welfare has scaled back and neoliberal economic policies have deepened inequality. The regime diversified its support base to include a crony style private-sector bourgeoisie linked to the state via patron-client relations. This reflects a transition from populism to post-populism in economic and social terms, but ideological change has not kept pace. Bashar al-Assad has relied increasingly on force and Syria's demonstrable activism on behalf of the Palestinian people as the pivot of an "axis of refusal." His regime thus derives domestic ideological power from the "resistance" credentials of its external allies in Iran, as well as non-state allies, Hezbollah and Hamas. The populist regime of Khomeini also came under pressure in the context of Iran's war with Iraq. In the 1990s, under Rafsanjani and Khatami, Iran moved some way toward economic and political liberalization; however, the populist authoritarian core of the regime remained dominant. The fact that reformists broadly accept the legitimacy of vilayet-e faqih means that much dissent can be absorbed within the system. At the same time, populist factions in Iran, clustered around the Supreme Leader, are unable to rely on purely domestic policies to rally their base and neutralize calls for reform. Like Assad's regime in Syria, foreign policy fills the ideological void. For Iranian populists, Bashar al-Assad is useful precisely because he is so reliant on the Iranian-led axis of refusal for his regime's survival. A regime in Syria based on alternative sources of power would not have such an existential need for Iranian support. Foreign policy can be considered to serve a "diversionary" or "internalist" function in the sense that it distracts from problems at home. However, diversionary foreign policy in this case provides not only a short-term palliative. Rather, it also reinforces the power of Syrian and Iranian regimes whose socioeconomic promises are wearing thin but who are unwilling to fully yield their positions of dominance to competing domestic actors. For Iranian populists, Bashar al-Assad is useful precisely because he is so reliant on the Iranian-led axis of refusal for his regime's survival. The fact that populist regimes come together with non-state actors in common cause reflects the extent to which the struggle against imperialism and Zionism, and the defense of the Palestinian people, have become "common sense" to publics across the region. The axis of refusal serves domestic-power interests for regimes by reinforcing their ideological hegemony. This mutually reinforcing dynamic can be understood as ideological codependency. Although Iran has spent billions of dollars defending the Syrian regime during the current civil war, it is not in a position to use financial resources to establish with the Syrian regime the type of ongoing economic-dependency relationship that binds, for example, the Egyptian regime to that of Saudi Arabia. Rather, Syria is something of an ideological client state. Understood this way, the interrelationship between the domestic and international functions of ideology—as a dominant form of power for populist actors—emerges clearly. In Iran, the ideological support given to Syria substantiates the authoritarian regime's claims to be acting in the interests of the people. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—the most powerful political actor in Iran and the one most wedded to the Islamic Republic's populist character—has energetically championed and prosecuted the war in Syria despite objections from other less-populist factions. However, the populist IRGC, on which the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei depends, prevailed. In seeking to explain Iranian support for the Assad regime, this intervention raises two important issues for International Relations theory. The first is to introduce a more sociological understanding of the role of ideology—particularly the notion of ideological codependence among regional actors—to International Relations. Ideological power can be gained and lost through foreign policy. National identity for populist regimes is predominantly "ideology-based," meaning that ideological power assumes considerable importance within the overall power configuration. Although space limitations prevent further reflection, we also might expect that "post-populist" states—wherein populist actors have lost state power—will seek to devalue ideological power in general as a currency in regional politics. The second issue relates to the importance of "politics from below" for understanding foreign-policy strategies and regional order. Populist regimes suffer diminution in their ideological and, therefore, general power when they cannot deliver on their domestic economic promises. Without the resources to address domestic ills, these regimes turn to foreign policy and the cultivation of ideological codependency. In the Middle East, these predominantly revolve around the struggle against imperialism and Zionism through the defense of Palestine, as a type of surrogate for "the people" in whose interests they must be seen to act. Societal pressure in the face of the growing chasm between ideological claims and material reality fueled Bashar al-Assad's commitment to supporting an external alliance devoted to the Palestinian cause. The failure of this strategy, demonstrated by the uprising in Syria, prompted Iran to intervene with military and economic support for its Ba'thist ally. That this policy was maintained despite its unpopularity among Arab publics at large is testimony to the centrality of the axis of refusal to the domestic ideological, and therefore general, power of populist forces in the contemporary Middle East. About the author: Akshan de Alwis is Diplomatic Courier’s UN Correspondent. Photo by Sander van Dijk via Unsplash.