Danny Postel writes:

The last decade has seen historic political upheavals across the Middle East and North Africa: a tsunami of popular uprisings that have brought down several dictators and led to momentous transformations in political consciousness, if not always to democratic outcomes. But the last decade has also seen a concomitant counter-revolutionary roll-back across the region: authoritarian regimes, entrenched elites, ruling classes, deep states, and reactionary forces have marshalled considerable resources to torpedo these movements from below.

Saudi Arabia’s role as a counter-revolutionary force in the Middle East is widely understood and thoroughly documented. Historian Rosie Bsheer calls the Saudi kingdom “a counter-revolutionary state par excellence,” indeed one that was “consolidated as such.” The Saudi monarchy has gone into counter-revolutionary overdrive since the onset of the Arab uprisings, scrambling to thwart popular movements and keep the region’s dictators in power — from Egypt and Bahrain to Yemen and Sudan (and beyond).

What is less understood is the counter-revolutionary role that Iran plays in the region’s politics. This is poorly understood and under-examined because it flies in the face of the dominant narrative, that of Iran as a “revolutionary” state in the vanguard of a regional “Axis of Resistance” to US imperialism and its allies. This view is shared across the ideological spectrum, from neoconservatives and US foreign policy hawks (for whom Iran’s “revolutionary” policies are dangerous and must be contained/confronted) to large swaths of the “anti-imperialist” Left and antiwar movement (for whom Iran is merely defending itself and “resisting” US/Israeli/Saudi belligerence). While the two camps disagree about whether Iran’s “revolutionary” agenda is a good thing, they agree that it is “revolutionary.” This is also the official line of the Islamic Republic itself, whose self-image as a “revolutionary” state in the vanguard of an “Axis of Resistance” is central to its identity — and legitimacy.

Here we have a classic instance of what the sociologist Ulrich Beck calls a zombie category. Zombie categories, he argues, “are dead but somehow go on living, making us blind to the realities” of the world. [Continue reading…]