In the mid-eighteenth century the extraordinary success of Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws triggered a new and often critical interest in the ancient concept of Oriental Despotism. In Montesquieu’s view the despotic universe didn’t coincide with a indefinite or prevalently geographic Eastern world, but specifically with an area formed by the three great Muslim political entities: the Ottoman and the Moghul empires, and the Persian kingdom. Over two century and half after the original publication of Montesquieu’s classic work, the Islamic world seems still uneasy with the modern political notions of constitutional government, rule of law, and democracy. Thanks to the worldwide influence of ayatollah Khomeini’s ideology, the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran assumes a paradigmatic value with its new despotic practices. From this viewpoint, the Islamic/Iranian Revolution, which in
February 1979 overthrew the partly modernizing but also despotic and corrupted autocracy of the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, must be seen as a pivotal event, not only in the history of the 20th century but also for its momentous consequences. The article aims to connect the reflection of Montesquieu with the complex and contradictory experience of contemporary Iran. It is organized as follows. Section one examines Montesquieu’s concept of Oriental Despotism and its controversial reception from the very beginning of its formulation. Section two offers a brief overview of the metamorphosis of this notion in the twentieth century, especially in the
work of Karl Wittfogel. Finally, section three and four try to elucidate some aspects of the unprecedented characters of Khomeini’s regime, particularly in respect to the ideological and geopolitical competition with Saudi Arabia for the leadership of the entire Muslim world. Even though many relevant aspects of the current predicament in the Muslim world are of course quite outside the range of Montesquieu’s original analysis, the regime built in the immediate aftermath of the Revolution and now arrived at its fortieth anniversary allows some comparative reflections. The theological despotism inaugurated by Khomeini along with a vast recourse to the instruments
of a classic military and secret services dictatorship finds itself nowadays in the presence of a vast anti-dispotic movement flourishing in various sectors of Iranian society. Such a phenomenon implicitly refers to Montesquieu’s insights on the connection between political institutions and changing societal realities.