The reformist religious intellectuals of the 1990s and the 2000s sought to articulate a new jurisprudence that drew inspiration from dynamic, reason-centered ijtihad. The characteristics of the new, reconstituted fiqh were meant to include a comprehensive research program of reformism, deconstruction of commonplace understanding of religion and religion hermeneutic, and reexamining religious experiences and expectations. It was also meant to historicize religion and reimagine jurisprudence through the application of secular and scientific tools and methods. The project’s spectacular failure, slowly made clear about a decade after its zenith in the mid-2000s, owed much to the right’s merciless and multipronged onslaught. But that failure – more accurately, its violent obstruction – did not come until after the project of deconstructing hermeneutics and ijtihad had been taken to their logical extension, namely efforts to construct a sustained theory of Islamic democracy.

In recent years, we have witnessed increases in the frequency and intensity of spontaneous protests by Iranians from all walks of life. For the status quo to continue, therefore, the state will need to rely on ever greater coercive means to ensure the compliance of the different social actors, or, at the very least, their ambivalence. With Khamenei’s advanced age, and the rising cost of keeping the status quo going, both politically and in human life, a continuation of Khameneism as it has taken shape over the past decade or so, especially beyond Khamenei, seems highly unlikely in the long run. Even if the Revolutionary Guards become politically more powerful, which in the immediate aftermath of Khamenei’s death seems highly likely, the possibility of a stale, archaic state ruling over a dynamic society appears untenable in the long run. The state will have no alternative but to modify some of its austere approach toward society if it is to survive.

In today’s Iran, state–religion relations exhibit three key features. An obvious feature is the deep basis of the state in innovative interpretations of Shia jurisprudence. The Islamic Republic is based on the system of the velayat-e faqih, generally translated in English as the “guardianship of the jurisconsult.” As a concept, the notion of the velayat-e faqih had existed in Shia thought for some time before Ayatollah Khomeini elaborated on it in his 1970 book by the same name. Khomeini’s contribution lay in his innovative interpretation of the velayat-e faqih as a supreme political leader who oversaw not just religious affairs, as previous theologians had theorized but was in overall charge of all affairs of the entire community, profane and political as well as religious. Today, Khomeini’s conception of velayat-e faqih underlies the institutional and political foundations of the Islamic Republic. The Iranian political system is far more ideologically informed, and hence ideological, than may at first meet the eye.

The Islamic Republic system has relied on a whole host of dynamics – political, institutional, and economic – to sustain itself in power. Despite significant changes to much of its leadership cadre and constitution since its establishment, the Islamic Republic remains remarkably consistent in its core identity and its structures. Moreover, the fundamental nature of these dynamics is unlikely to change anytime soon.

This chapter offers the story of the green movement since the 1950s as a case study in how to bring about deep and lasting societal change in the absence of full political consensus. Over the past 60 years, green activists have not succeeded in fully realizing their goal of a sustainable economic system, but they have succeeded in bringing pervasive changes to modern economic, social, and energy systems. By pursuing an eclectic, decentralized, and multifaceted set of strategies over many decades, they have made a significant positive impact. A similar strategy is likely to work best for building new systems of global governance for mega-dangerous technologies. Climate change may prove to be a uniquely potent unifying factor for humankind over the coming decades, allowing effective mobilization for incremental reforms. The reasons for this are threefold: climate change is not subject to the logic of arms races; it threatens to bring tangible harms that affect all human beings; and its disasters will escalate gradually over the coming decades, giving people a chance to wake up and respond constructively.

Chapter two traces the SED’s institutionalization of environmental protection and the party’s conviction that socialism provided solutions to pollution. The SED succeeded in creating a more environmentally minded population and, at least initially, tried to address concerns within existing structures. The SED used mass social campaigns to unite East Germans around the issue of environmentalism and practiced protection through policy and negotiating petitions. The GDR simultaneously reached out to other socialist countries to build coalitions around its brand of environmentalism in contrast to the one taking off in western Europe. This positioning intentionally placed the GDR in the middle of a regional and global phenomenon that spanned the Iron Curtain. Despite minor improvements, however, the discrepancy between rhetoric and lived reality produced a politically untenable situation. The SED relied on the Stasi to police the population, and ultimately opted to classify all environmental data in 1982.

This chapter continues the bottom-up approach to history with a focus on a specific day of crowd action, Quds Day. History infuses this day of protest with immense meaning and importance. In the 1970s all revolutionary factions in Iran championed throughout the region were championing Palestinian liberation, and the Islamists institutionalized the emancipation of Palestine as an integral part of the state’s ideology after consolidating power. Freeing Palestine became part of the nation’s visual culture, and the discourse of Palestinian liberation was taught to a generation of Iranian youth raised under the banner of the Islamic Republic. The state even designated the last Friday of Ramadan as Quds Day (Jerusalem Day). Thirty years later, Iranian youth used the occasion of Jerusalem Day to circumvent the security crackdown, re-emerging to protest the election results and the state that had ratified them. They used specific Palestine-centered imagery and slogans to either negate the state, or to legitimate their own uprising and portray the state as the usurper of power akin to Israel. The protest was continued online with specific digital displays of subversion.

Chapter 1 provides a theoretical introduction to the Green Uprisings of 2009, situating the Green Movement in a genealogy of Iranian history that is informed by the country’s past, and especially by the Iranian Revolution of 1978‒1979. Since the Iranian Revolution draws on specific moments of Islamic history, including the Battle of Karbala, this history is summarized for introductory purposes. Through this history and historiography, the reader can assess the lesser-known victories that have long-term implications for the future of Iran’s experiment with Islamic government—the “post-Islamist turn.” The chapter also makes the case for the research methodology of the book, and includes an outline of the five subsequent chapters. It ends with an important disclaimer in terms of who can speak for such a multi-faceted history so recent that it is still connected emotionally to countless people.