Situating NIAC Within Inter-Elite Class Politics in Iran

The tale of a country and its two-and-a-half bourgeoisies

Iranian conservatives protesting the nuclear deal during Rouhani’s presidency

Current anti-regime protests

While the Iranian democratic movement is engaged in political struggle inside the country, the diaspora has in recent weeks been rocked by in-fighting and conflict. Much of it is centered on the role of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a small Washington, DC-based NGO that promotes diplomacy between Iran and the United States. While more recent conspiracy theories allege that NIAC is a front for the Islamic Republic, the organization had until recently been accused of being the very opposite: an organization dedicated to overthrowing the Islamic Republic.

Hilary and Flynt Leverett, two former US State Department analysts, had years earlier echoed beliefs held by Iranian conservatives regarding NIAC’s role in the 2009 Green Movement. They focused on NIAC’s founder Trita Parsi (a refugee who fled the Islamic Republic to become a Swedish diplomat) and the group’s funding from classic US regime change outfits like the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for Democracy. According to the Leveretts¹, NIAC seeks “soft regime change” in Iran by “changing its political system from within” – “a goal to which their advocacy of engagement is ultimately subordinate."

The Leveretts’ statements regarding NIAC are worth quoting in full:

After the 2009 election, which they insisted was fraudulent without producing any evidence, [NIAC] called for a strategic pause in US engagement with Tehran, to avoid legitimating the established order. While they now once again favor diplomacy, they stipulate that any diplomacy must include “human rights as a core issue, with the goal of a world in which the United States and a democratic Iran” – no mention of the Islamic Republic – “enjoy peaceful, cooperative relations.”

[NIAC’s] advocacy of “targeted sanctions” against the Iranian government serves only to facilitate the passage of broad-based sanctions… Moreover, its ultimate vision for Iran is not fundamentally different from that of neoconservatives… [NIAC] has “conducted nonpolitical trainings for NGOs in Iran to help foster a stronger Iranian civil society” – which it regards as key to realizing its goal of a secular Iranian state.

According to the Leveretts, the difference between NIAC and hardline regime change groups like the MEK is simply one of strategy:

Parsi and NIAC do not want the United States to attack the Islamic Republic or to back terrorist campaigns against it by the MEK, because, in their view, these tactics are unlikely to turn Iran into the secular, liberal, and pro-Western country they dream of.

Another example of this conspiracy theory is an interview from 2020 between Houshang Amir Ahmadi and Abdolreza Davari, two shadowy characters from the Iranian right-wing. In the interview, Ahmadi claimed that NIAC, under instructions from Javad Zarif, Iran’s liberal reformist former foreign minister, helped develop the US sanctions regime against the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). Their claim reflected a widespread belief held by Iranian conservatives that politicians like Zarif were US-controlled regime change assets.

For years, Iranian conservatives painted NIAC as a Soros-ian force that sought to cultivate a liberal color revolution inside Iran. The disproportionate number of religious minorities in the NIAC universe, including its Zoroastrian founder, made the organization even more suspicious in the eyes of pro-regime Iranians. In some versions of the conspiracy theory, NIAC is controlled by traitorous liberals like Zarif. Other, more common, versions of this conspiracy theory flip the chain of command, with Iranian liberals being funded and backed by the shadowy CIA-linked NIAC cabal in DC.

Considering this background, it is a truly ironic historical twist that NIAC has today become the main bête-noire of diaspora Iranians opposed to the Islamic Republic – almost as hated as the Islamic Republic itself. Though fueled by Israeli and Saudi-backed media, celebrities, and twitter bots, the backlash is organic and even extends to Iranians living in Iran.

The organization is attacked for allegedly being the secret lobbying arm of the Islamic Republic (it is not²) and its members, or alleged supporters, are hounded by death threats and online harassment.

In real life, NIAC is a small NGO with a budget in the range of $1-2 million, a fraction of the budgets of the media platforms that have cultivated the anti-NIAC backlash (£90 million for Manoto TV and $250 million for Iran International TV). It mostly seeks to promote diplomatic ties between Iran and the US, achieving the zenith of its influence in the Obama-Rouhani era before gradually fading into irrelevance.

The anti-NIAC campaign has managed to completely subsume debates as to what is actually happening inside Iran, even drawing the attention of young activists inside Iran. The phenomenon of Iranian anti-regime protesters bravely confronting security forces on the street, before returning home and tweeting about NIAC is an absurdity that requires explanation.

In explaining this phenomenon and much else about Iran, it is necessary to consider the actual composition of the Iranian elite. While anti-government protests are comprised of the working and professional classes, it has been inter-elite competition that has shaped much of the Iran’s recent history, including the farcical NIAC saga.

In understanding Iranian politics, it is useful to divide its elite into three separate conceptual categories: two bourgeoisies and a semi-bourgeois elite. One of these elites, the Islamist bourgeoisie, is based exclusively in Iran. Another, the semi-bourgeois diaspora elite, is based exclusively outside Iran. The third force, the nationalist bourgeoisie, straddles both Iran and the diaspora.

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The ascendant Islamist bourgeoisie is rooted in the main revolutionary families that formed the backbone of Khomeini’s victory after 1979, many of whom had ties to the bazaar or the clergy. These include the Khomeinis, Khameneis, Motaharris, and many others. Inside Iran, this bourgeoisie is often referred to as the ‘Islamic Aristocracy’ (ashraafiat-eslami) and their sons as Agha-zadehs. This class is the dominant class in contemporary political and economic life in Iran. It has successfully been able to reproduce itself and even absorb pro-regime families from rural or working-class backgrounds, particularly through the Revolutionary Guards and institutions like Imam Sadegh University.

The second elite force is the leftovers and descendants of the Iranian pre-revolutionary elite that kept its ties to the old country; families that remained after the revolution or returned in the ensuing years. Many members of this ‘nationalist’ bourgeoisie have landowning aristocratic backgrounds or were technocrats and capitalists in the Pahlavi era, though the class has been partially able to absorb newer capitalists. This secular (though not always irreligious) Western-oriented class retained its influence on economic life in Iran for decades after the revolution, as it owned a large but declining share of Iran’s private industry and commercial trading firms. It was particularly dominant during the Rafsanjani era, as it provided the financial and human capital for the high economic growth rates of the ‘Reconstruction’ era. Together with the professional middle class and Khomeinist dissenters, they formed the basis for the moderate and reformist bloc in Iranian politics.

A large number of the nationalist bourgeoisie are dual citizens as its members straddle dual lives in Iran and places like Switzerland, Germany, the UK, Canada, and the United States. Their connections abroad, access to capital (both their own and foreign) coupled with elite foreign education, ensured their future dominance should Iran ever integrate into the global economy. As a result of this clear class interest, the nationalist bourgeoisie has been more effective than any other political force in pushing for a rapprochement between the West and Iran.

Pro-diplomacy organizations in the diaspora like NIAC and Bourse & Bazaar are expressions of this class interest. An example par excellence is Mohammad Bagher Namazi, a former Pahlavi era governor and dual Iranian-American citizen who influenced NIAC’s development. Namazi the elder was incarcerated in the infamous Evin prison up until several weeks ago. His son Siamak remains in Evin.

Though greatly declined, the presence of the nationalist bourgeoisie can still be seen in Iran, including through the country’s main financial newspapers Donya-e-Eqtesad and Tejarat Farda. They also still retain some control over the influential Iranian Chamber of Commerce, private banks like Bank Saman, the Middle East Bank, and EN Bank, as well as their own industrial and commercial groups.

The third force is the diaspora elite; remnants of the pre-revolutionary elite that fled Iran and failed to maintain any ties whatsoever. Calling this class a ‘bourgeoisie’ would be stretch, as it has includes many members of the diaspora middle class, particularly those with conservative, anti-Islamic, and anti-regime beliefs. Nonetheless, those mostly monarchist families that fled the revolution form the underlying foundation of this force. Though potentially capable of being organized under the Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the diaspora elite has been a fairly amorphous force with historically little influence over events in Iran – until recently.

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For the first decades of the Islamic Republic’s life, inter-elite competition was limited to the struggle between the Islamist and nationalist bourgeoisies. The diaspora, consisting of scattered and then much less populous communities, had no influence over Iranian politics. Even within the diaspora, the monarchist elite struggled to compete with organized leftist parties. Inside Iran, the idea of a royal restoration would get anyone laughed out of the room.

The relationship between the Islamist and nationalist bourgeoisies shares similarities to the inter-elite competition between the secular-nationalist and Islamist elites in Turkey. Despite sharing many raw ingredients as the Kemalist secular-nationalist bourgeoisie in Turkey, the Iranian nationalist bourgeoisie was never able to coalesce and form as coherent of a class or political identity.

Initially, the competition between the nationalist and Islamist bourgeoisie was contained by high economic growth rates which ensured that everyone’s slice of the pie continued to grow. The Islamic Republic was also completely reliant on the expertise and capital of the nationalist elite along with other vestigial pre-1979 groups – like Pahlavi era technocrats in various government ministries.

This history explains the perplexing outsider rhetoric of conservative Iranian politicians. Though in charge of the state and its security services, politicians like Saeed Jalili and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were forged in an era where the nationalist bourgeoisie was considerably richer than their Islamist counterparts.

With Rafsanjani’s backing and reformists dominating every election, the nationalist bourgeoisie became complacent. In the late 1990s and early 2000’s, they and the wider liberal reformist movement came under the spell of the Fukuyamist fantasy that their victory was preordained. While they daydreamed of turning the Supreme Leadership into something like a constitutional monarch, Supreme Leader Khamenei was assembling a thermidor.

The one constant underlying the Iranian Islamist-conservatives’ strategy in the last three decades has been an unceasing struggle to cripple, undermine, and eventually eliminate the nationalist bourgeoisie. Innate to that process has been the strengthening and consolidation of the Islamist bourgeoisie.

Through various constitutional bodies like the Guardian Council and Assembly of Experts, the reformist project was blocked and vetoed at every conceivable opportunity. Its intellectuals were savagely murdered and its newspapers shut. At any radical turn, zealous reformist activists were contained by the pincer of heavy state suppression and a reformist elite that did not want to rock the boat before achieving the victory it believed to be destiny.

Most importantly, the IRGC and other institutions directly controlled by the Supreme Leader were empowered at the expense of the regular military and institutions controlled by the elected government.

This empowered and now mature Islamist bourgeoisie, rooted in the revolutionary families as well as younger military and political elites, began to outmaneuver their rivals in the economic front.

Sabotage by conservative control of key veto-holding institutions, as well as their own mistakes, resulted in the reformists and moderates losing to Ahmadinejad in the 2005 election. During his presidency, the ‘pseudo-privatization³’ of Iran’s vast publicly owned enterprises occurred; a monumental step in the war against the nationalist bourgeoisie. Leaving these enterprises in public control risked them becoming controlled again by reformists (or worse, leftists). Actual privatization, as in selling them to the highest bidders, risked a serious empowerment of the nationalist bourgeoisie – who had the deep pockets required to absorb these enterprises onto their balance sheets.

Instead, ownership of state-owned enterprises was transferred to a range of para-state entities like the IRGC, various foundations controlled by the Supreme Leader, as well as military-linked pension funds. These parastatal entities are controlled by and broadly benefit the Islamist bourgeoisie.

This is the context within which many analysts warned that sanctions risked empowering the ‘deep state’ and crippling the private sector. A better analytical lens would be that sanctions reduced the leverage and power of the nationalist bourgeoisie, cutting them off from European capital and connections, and instead empowering those who could move money and products through illicit means: the Islamist elite.

The sudden collapse and devaluation of the Iranian currency following Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA may have been the proverbial nail in the coffin for the nationalist bourgeoisie. Their assets, disproportionately held in Iran, were sunk by the collapsing value of the Rial. Their businesses, disproportionately oriented towards importing rather than exporting, were ruined. Meanwhile, their Islamist rivals used their political connections to access the much cheaper official exchange rate. At the same time, the currency devaluation meant that the diaspora elite was also now much wealthier than the nationalist bourgeoisie.

Together, the failure of the Rouhani administration and Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA caused the ensuing economic collapse that in turn shattered the nationalist bourgeoisie’s hegemony over the Iranian middle classes. With no organized progressive working class force to align with (the Islamic Republic made sure of this), the middle class has increasingly come under the influence of the diaspora elite. This latter elite had been greatly buttressed materially by a growing diaspora population as well as its de facto alignment with Saudi Arabia, Israel, and American neoconservatives.

After being outmaneuvered and routed by its Islamist rivals, the nationalist bourgeoisie is now under attack by its other rivals in the diaspora. When confronted by the disaster of Trump’s JCPOA withdrawal, diaspora-ites aligned with the nationalist bourgeoisie quickly mobilized to defend the nuclear deal. Prominent intellectuals and journalists within that camp, all of whom came of age during the War on Terror, realized that war with Iran was once again on the horizon. Recalling the intellectual climate of the War on Terror, they once again feared that every conversation about Iran, regardless of the topic, was implicitly about the likelihood of war. Just as progressive activists during the Bush era took every opportunity in discussing Iran to counter pro-war narratives, NIAC-affiliated journalists and intellectuals interpreted every Iran-related debate as being actually about sanctions. Any and all Iran-related issues were circled back to the necessity of the United States returning to the JCPOA. As the JCPOA was an existential issue for the nationalist bourgeoisie, this zealousness was a predictable. But for middle class Iranians in Iran viewing these clips on social media, it represented an absurd alternative reality of diaspora-ites who apparently saw no other explanatory factor for their declining living standards and political freedoms other than the absence of the JCPOA. Nudged along by Saudi and Israeli media, a consensus emerged that such individuals could only be lobbyists for the Islamic Republic; an analysis that completely ignored the underlying existential conflict between the nationalist and Islamist bourgeoisies.

Understanding competition between these three elite forces explains why there is no contradiction in NIAC-affiliated individuals like Siamak Namazi being arrested for anti-regime activities in Iran; simultaneous to NIAC being attacked for being pro-regime in the diaspora. The once great national bourgeoisie is being assaulted and defeated on two fronts.  

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Though the next weeks and months are difficult to predict, the heuristic of the two-and-a-half bourgeoisies can shed light on underlying trends. For the nationalist bourgeoisie, it is deeply difficult to imagine a comeback. Its younger generations are less interested and capable of living in the country – especially in an increasingly poor and undemocratic Iran. Many of them studied abroad or in Tehran’s international schools and likely lack the skillsets and connections required to compete with their Islamist counterparts, especially if foreign connections continue to be irrelevant. Though their parents retain their businesses, most are likely destined for trouble. The smaller firms have been squeezed by the economic crisis while the larger conglomerates are prone to takeover by Islamists. With this elite’s decline and the middle class’s defection to the diaspora elite, the reform project is likely dead.

On the other hand, the Islamist bourgeoisie’s ascent includes many contradictions. Though it has appendages that reach into the popular classes, its ability to absorb new elements will be stretched by ongoing economic crisis. Their record suggests substantial deficiencies in actually managing the economy, especially compared to the nationalist bourgeoisie. Trouble is guaranteed if the economic crisis blocks upwardly-mobile Islamists, especially from the security services, from joining the elite. From the perspective of a young basiji from a lower-middle class background at Imam Sadegh University, the Larijanis may as well be Farmanfarmaians. This reflects a process in which the upper levels of the Islamists may actually ‘graduate’ into the nationalist bourgeoisie. This certainly appears to be true for the Khomeini, Larijani, and Rafsanjani families. After all, it is the children of the Islamist bourgeoisie, especially their daughters, who aspire to be like the children of the nationalist bourgeoisie, not vice versa. Even if the families comprising the nationalist bourgeoisie die out or leave, the category may be reproduced by rapidly secularizing elites from an Islamist background.

Despite now achieving the peak of its influence, the diaspora elite is likely destined for extinction. The lack of communal organizations in the diaspora and links to the homeland ensure that their ‘Iranian-ness’ will quickly disappear. If even the Pahlavi royal family could not pass on the Persian language to their children, it is unlikely that the legion of dentists and realtors forming the core of the anti-regime diaspora elite will fare much better. Meanwhile, their influence over the democratic movement has led the movement into a dead-end. Rather than using the safety of the diaspora to undertake the valuable task of building opposition parties, they have abdicated any historical responsibility in favor of building para-social relationships with celebrities posting Instagram stories about Iran. Rather than engendering serious political work, the Iranian struggle has simply empowered an identitarian cudgel for virtue signaling.

Though there is serious emotional engagement with the Iranian struggle, the lack of any actual skin in the game has prevented serious strategic engagement. At the end of day, events in Iran will have minimal material impact on their lives. Unlike the back-and-forth nationalist bourgeoisie, the diaspora elite have rarely been willing to actually live in the homeland. Life in Iran after another revolution will obviously be very challenging for many years, likely more challenging than it is now. If they have not been willing to move back now, they certainly are unlikely to do so after a revolution.

Under the influence of diaspora elites, the Iranian professional and working classes are unlikely to develop the political structures necessary for sustained and effective political struggle. Sanctions will accelerate the decline of the nationalist elite, the depletion of the working classes, and the out-migration of the professional class. The effect of sanctions on the Islamist elite is more complicated as it allows them to continue to cannibalize their nationalist counterparts. This loot can sustain redistribution and upward mobility for lower elements in the Islamist bloc for years to come. The Islamist elite is far better equipped to withstand sanctions in the coming years compared to other classes. For most Iranians, sanctions will worsen the breakdown of Iranian society. At some point in the theoretical future, the Islamist elite will run out of other elites to cannibalize but by then there may not be much of a country left standing.

Although the elite diaspora continues to lead Iran’s democratic movement into an intellectual and strategic dead-end, two sources of hope remain on the horizon. The first is that the class and gender contradictions within the Islamist elite cause fragmentation and create space for political competition. While this bloc has almost mechanically been able to absorb upwardly-mobile men from its base while simultaneously expelling elements from the top (ie. Larijanis, Rafsanjanis, and even Ahmadinejad), this strategy produces a growing bloc of secularized ex-Islamist elites purged from power. At some point, this uneasy balance may generate a crisis. A second source of hope comes from within the diaspora. Newer waves of immigrants from Iran, often highly-educated, have a much better sense of life in Iran than the diaspora elite. If able to come out from under the shadow of this older and wealthier elite, younger first-generation diasporans may be able to create valuable independent political organizations capable of influencing events in Iran. After all, the diaspora played a critical role in the 1979 revolution and can do so again. But this is only possible if it advances past the stage of ‘amplifying Iranian voices’ (there will always be voices on both sides of any issue) and riding the coattails of a reactionary diaspora elite that often discredits itself by aligning with foreign countries. Instead, younger elements in the diaspora need to accept the historical responsibility of developing strategy and organized political parties. In the absence of organized collective participation by the popular classes inside Iran, these elements are the most likely to be the Islamic Republic’s undoing.

1. Leverett, Flynt, and Hilary Mann Leverett. Going to Tehran. Picador, 2013, pp. 324-25

2. This is based on a misreading, intentional or otherwise, of a libel suit brought by NIAC against a critic.

Harris, Kevan. "THE RISE OF THE SUBCONTRACTOR STATE: POLITICS OF PSEUDO-PRIVATIZATION IN THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN." International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 45, no. 1, Feb. 2013.

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