This chapter brings to light the main conclusions of this work, while also presenting generalizable principles for future research to expand on. This part of the book contributes to the theoretical study of mediation and aims to encourage further first-level analysis approaches to the study of mediation and mediators. Most importantly, it clarifies the actual input of Kofi Annan, Lakhdar Brahimi, and Staffan de Mistura to the mediation efforts in Syria. It leaves readers with a detailed record of what Kofi Annan, Lakhdar Brahimi, and Staffan de Mistura have done in their roles as mediators in Syria and presents a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics that shaped their decision-making. Outside the cases of these three mediators, it introduces a method by which to forensically identify a mediator’s fingerprints on the mediation process and charts a map to guide investigations into the decision-making processes of mediators. In doing so, it hopefully serves to encourage steps toward developing institutional mechanisms to evaluate the performance of these mediators – to hold them accountable for their successes and their failures.

The Introduction outlines the main objectives of the book: to pinpoint the agency of UN mediators as decision-makers and explain the strategic-thinking behind their decision-making. To do so, it bridges the literature surrounding levels of analysis in international relations and foreign policy analysis with scholarship focused on mediation. By bridging knowledge from scholars who have focused on first-level analysis, or the role of the individual in shaping policy, this chapter finds that mediators are an opportune case-study for such a method. Ultimately, by exploring the world of the mediator, with the tools developed in foreign policy analysis, the political behavior of these individuals and the phenomena of mediation can be better explained. Given the focus on UN mediators and the Syrian conflict, the chapter ends with an institutional analysis of the margin of maneuver UN mediators have as well as a detailed discussion on why the UN’s mediation process in Syria is linked to its raison d’être.

This chapter presents an analysis on Kofi Annan’s mediation efforts in Syria and focuses on his agency when overseeing the UN’s entry into the Syrian conflict. The chapter is divided in three main sections. The first offers a concise background of the main mediation initiatives pursued during Annan’s time as mediator. Of which there were five main mediation policies and responses – the mediator’s entry into the conflict, the Six-Point Plan, the nationwide ceasefire and deployment of UNSMIS, the Geneva I process, and the mediator’s resignation. Using a first-level analysis, the second section continues to elucidate the agency of the mediator in shaping each of these mediation outcomes. Finally, the third section explores the dynamics behind the mediator’s decision-making. Specifically, it examines how the mediator’s key strategic perceptions influenced his decision-making. Drawing on the contingency model, four categories of perceptions are studied – the identity of the mediator, the context of mediation, the parties, and the process of mediation. Building off this analysis, the chapter proposes general links between each category of perceptions and specific mediation behaviors.

This chapter turns to the third UN mediator in Syria, Staffan de Mistura, and has the same two objectives as the preceding case studies in this book – to delineate the mediator’s agency as a decision-maker and to elucidate the strategic dynamics behind his decision-making. It is split into two sections dedicated to each objective. The first section investigates the mediator’s input to the main mediation policies during the period studied. Of which there are six – the Aleppo Freeze, sanctioning military action against ISIS, the Geneva Consultations, the intra-Syrian Talks, the Astana Process, and the mediator’s resignation. Building on these findings, the section uncovers the dynamics behind the mediator’s decision-making using the categories of perceptions drawn from the contingency model. This analysis also helps produce more generalizable knowledge concerning associations between mediation perceptions and behaviors.

Ali Khamenei, a least likely leader on Khomeini’s death, capitalized on his years of political and organizational experience to outmaneuver and outfox friends and foes alike and to emerge as Iran’s paramount leader. Khamenei’s ascent was slow and by no means certain, with the leader having to take a back seat to the likes of Rafsanjani on the political front and to Montazeri in matters of jurisprudence. Steadily, however, with political assistance from the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij, and ideological support from Mesbah Yazdi and other ascendant figures within the Qom clerical establishment, Khamenei’s position was increasingly strengthened. Simultaneously, Khamenei’s traditionalist, conservative brand of Shia theology emerged as the formal ideology of the state. Starting with the second term of the Ahmadinejad presidency in 2009, “Khameneism” became politically and ideologically dominant in Iran. Today, whatever this Khameneism is meant to signify is far from uncontested. But its political, ideological, and jurisprudential dimensions rule over the country. The absolute velayat-e faqih, a position devised and first occupied by Khomeini, has found its full expression during Khamenei’s long tenure as Iran’s leader.

The focus of the chapter is the overriding assumption in Shia fiqh in general and theories of the velayat-e faqih in particular that society is in need of proactive protection and guidance. The notion of velayat is neither exclusively nor predominantly Shia in origin and development. However, it has played a central role in Shia theology. The logic underlying the notion of velayat-e faqih is that society needs proper guidance and protection, both from the hostile world in which it exists and from itself. Guidance needs to be provided by a specialist of fiqh, a mujtahid who has reached the esteemed position of marja‘iyat and is a “source of emulation,” a marja‘-e taqlid. Protection, or velayat, meanwhile, in its fullest sense is also to be provided by a specialist of fiqh, a faqih, who would be selected to serve in a system based on the velayat-e faqih. In relation to Iran, the clergy have long assumed that Iranian society needs protection from a number of clear and present dangers, be they communism, secular nationalism, unchecked republicanism, modernity, indiscriminate autocracy, or, more recently, the reformist “sedition” (fitna).

At the broadest level, conceptions of the Islamic Republic’s political legitimacy are guided by one of three assumptions. The first assumption is that legitimacy is divinely bestowed, with the velayat-e faqih installed by God as someone who has the wisdom necessary to guide his people. There is no need for popular vote for the system to become legitimate, although there is no harm in it either. This popular vote is valid only when it has the leader’s approval. A second perspective assumes that God has given people the right and the ability to determine their own destiny and their affairs. Therefore, according to the shari‘ah, legitimacy rests with the people. A third outlook bridges these two perspectives, maintaining that while legitimacy is exclusively divine in genesis, it is practically irrelevant without acceptability, which makes the system functional when people participate in it. Legitimacy comes only from God, while it is the people who give the system the acceptance it needs by deciding what is in their interests. Moreover, acceptance has the added benefit of drawing people closer to the political system.

The reformist religious intellectuals of the 1990s and the 2000s sought to articulate a new jurisprudence that drew inspiration from dynamic, reason-centered ijtihad. The characteristics of the new, reconstituted fiqh were meant to include a comprehensive research program of reformism, deconstruction of commonplace understanding of religion and religion hermeneutic, and reexamining religious experiences and expectations. It was also meant to historicize religion and reimagine jurisprudence through the application of secular and scientific tools and methods. The project’s spectacular failure, slowly made clear about a decade after its zenith in the mid-2000s, owed much to the right’s merciless and multipronged onslaught. But that failure – more accurately, its violent obstruction – did not come until after the project of deconstructing hermeneutics and ijtihad had been taken to their logical extension, namely efforts to construct a sustained theory of Islamic democracy.