Many analysts have said it is faulty to compare Rouhani and Gorbachev. That’s true, but not quite for the reasons they list. As General Secretary of the Communist Party, Gorbachev was the head of state. His Iranian counterpart, therefore, is the Supreme Leader. Like Gorbachev, Khamenei’s primary concern is the survival of the Islamic Republic of Iran. As Mehdi Khalaji, senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said on NPR in October: the regime “[doesn’t] fight for Islam; they fight for their self-interest. The expedience of the regime trumps everything, including religion.” Similarly, while Khamenei supports Rouhani’s reconciliation efforts, that support would surely vanish and Rouhani would be outcast (or worse) if Khamenei felt that Rouhani was—like Yeltsin—trying to dismantle the Islamic Republic.
But Khamenei’s hands are tied, just like Gorbachev’s were in 1991. The Russian people—like the Iranians today—were restless and stagnant, demanding better economic conditions. Gorbachev’s revision of the Union Treaty, however, was decidedly different from Deng’s approach to fixing China’s economy. Deng tackled the deep structural problems of China’s economy, while at the same time reducing political freedom in his country. Gorbachev, on the other hand, made only minor, piecemeal economic changes, and accompanied these baby steps with giant leaps forward in the political arena.
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To read the entire article, go to Jay Friedel’s blog.
