Crises with the outside world, especially the West, have been one of the most salient characteristics of Tehran's foreign policy since the establishment of the Islamic Republic. These crises did not only come as a mere response to the hostility with which the Islamic Republic was met with the fall of the Shah, the ally of the West, but also served a domestic function: to exploit the nationalistic feelings and rally the Iranians behind the regime. Perhaps one of the internal characteristics of the Iranian regime lies in its heavy handedness in dealing with its opponents, most often accused of conspiring with the West, which is akin to an accusation of treason, to help eliminate them. Thus the approach to dealing with the internal Iranian situation has always been linked to the regime's foreign relations. In the first months after the fall of the Shah and the return of the founder of the Islamic Republic Imam Khomeini from his French exile, the nature of the regime was rejected by many movements that have previously stood against the regime of the Shah. These forces enjoyed wide popular support, expertise in domestic work, and strength on the ground. While their clout did not match the popularity of Khomeini and the networks of clerics who supported him across the country, they were strong enough to pose a threat to the regime as envisioned by its founder. Bloody confrontations erupted between these movements and the nascent regime. When the internal crisis reached the apex of escalation, in light of the balance of powers in the street, with the authorities in power potentially following a path other than the one drawn by Khomeini, the “Students Following the Khomeini Path” (the hard core of the new regime and its iron hand, later known as the “Revolutionary Guard”) occupied the American embassy in Tehran (the nest of spies) and took its employees as hostages, thus sparkling the first major crisis between the new regime and the United States. Thus the Iranians were presented with two choices: supporting the regime through its occupation of the embassy, or confronting the regime and falling under the tutelage of the “great Satan.” Khomeini managed, in the months during which the American embassy was occupied, to crystallize the concept of his enmity to the West, attempting at the same time to settle the internal struggle in his favor. Khomeini ended this struggle once and for all during the war with Iraq. The regime practically wiped out, in the name of confronting the forces of global arrogance, all the left-wing organizations, Islamic factions opposed to the Wilayat Al-Faqih, and the liberal groups that supported Khomeini and formed the nucleus of his first government. Some died in the street wars, some were executed for treason in infamous mock-trials, and some escaped the country. Thus Khomeini ensured his supremacy inside Iran by seeking crises in his foreign relations. This policy is being followed by his successor, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. We can look at the Iranian nuclear program in this context. Regardless of the actual technical details connected to this program and its goals, it is intended as an internal rallying point against what Tehran describes as the Western denial of its right to use nuclear energy. Despite the guarantees presented by the six great countries in return for using nuclear energy peacefully, the Iranian leadership remained committed to its ambiguous policies which arouse the suspicions of the West, and thus preserve the necessary level of crisis. There is also the possibility that Iran is really trying to develop a nuclear weapon to guarantee the survival of its regime, following the example of Pakistan where the regime was protected from collapse under the weight of its consecutive crises only because it possessed nuclear weapons. In this sense, we can understand the motives for re-electing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the master of sparking trouble with the West, after a period of calm under his predecessor Mohammad Khatami in which the internal unanimity weakened, and in light of the competition with his opponent Mir Mousavi who raised the slogan of rapprochement with the outside world. Today, with the wave of objections to the results of the latest presidential elections, questions are being asked about the extent of the schism inside the regime and the gulf separating the opposition from the regime. The signal clarifying the answers might come in the form of Tehran's foreign relations with the outside world. If Tehran pushes for more crises, escalates tensions and increasingly talks about a foreign conspiracy, then we can deduce that the internal divisions are widening and we can also deduce the nature of the Iranian approach to dealing with these divisions, based on Khomeini's experience in this regard.
