Comparing the Role of the Military in Iran’s and Egypt’s Revolutions

Abstract

: This article analyzes the states of Iran and Egypt before the eruption of revolutionary processes in those countries in 1979 and 2011 respectively. Its aim is to delineate the different roles of the armies as the last lethal and organized bastions of dictatorships during those revolutions. In Egypt, the army successfully protected the Egyptian state from a complete downfall, while in Iran, the army became completely disorganized and shattered. It argues that the extreme personal rule of Iran’s shah [king] within a neo-sultanic framework and his extreme depoliticization of the army rendered it unable to act independently during a revolutionary process. In contrast, the distribution of power between the army and presidential palace within an institutionalized dual military state enabled the army to play a much more definitive role during the revolutionary process in Egypt. Consequently, unlike in 1979 Iran, the army in 2011 Egypt not only saved the pre-revolutionary military dictatorship but restored it in a much more brutal way.