Privatization as a Regime of Truth: An Interpretation of the Iranian Experience after the 1979 Revolution

Introduction
In the post-Iran-Iraq War era, one of the most recurrent and contentious concepts has been "privatization." How such a term has gained its current prominence and expanded or contracted its conceptual boundaries in recent decades requires a historical-conceptual inquiry. This elevation has formed a discursive framework with extensive consequences not only in the economic-political sphere but also in other spheres of Iranian social life. However, taking it for granted and the mechanisms supporting this naturalization have concealed these consequences. Notably, neither in pre-revolution development policymaking nor during the war did this concept circulate so pervasively. In contrast, it has been constantly repeated and naturalized in the post-war period (1368/1989). This article asks: How has this naturalization or taken-for-grantedness occurred? How has the private sphere or privatization swollen from a specific term to a point where a clear interpretation has been impossible for over three decades? Can it be considered the core concept of a self-referential regime of truth that has transcended the economic-political sphere? If so, how?
Method
The article's conceptual model rests on three pillars. First, the concept of "semi-colonial science/knowledge" (based on the critique of scientific imperialism by McLeod and Sagasti), analyzed as the context and vehicle for transferring concepts like privatization to Iran. Second, the "spatial history" approach (derived from a critical reading of Foucault), which enables studying phenomena through the simultaneous articulation of temporal (historical) and spatial (geopolitical, social) dimensions, exploring the intersection of the global (neoliberalism) with Iran's specific conditions. Third, the negative formulation of Critical Theory (referencing Adorno), which posits the primary task as questioning dominant and naturalized "regimes of truth." This combined framework allows the article to examine "privatization" in post-revolutionary Iran not as a merely formal, abstract category but as a "historical" concept (in the Koselleckian sense). It is rooted in specific political-economic transformations and discourses, constructed and stabilized within a network of power relations (scientific, economic, political). Methodologically, it adopts a systemic methodological approach and a genealogical-archaeological strategy.
Findings
The analysis, based on statistical data and policy documents, shows that the transition from revolutionary Islamism to Islamic free-market ideology was not an abstract discursive shift. It occurred tangibly and interconnectedly across four key levels:

Transformation of Ownership and State Control: Initial data shows that immediately after the revolution, a strategy of "socialization" was implemented through confiscating assets tied to the former regime (e.g., the Pahlavi Foundation, 51 major bourgeois families) and transferring them to new revolutionary institutions (the Mostazafan Foundation, Jihad-e Sazandegi, etc.). By 1982, over 20% of active workshops were under the management of the Mostazafan Foundation. This trend reversed from the 1990s with the discourse of "reducing state control" in the first to third development plans. Statistics from the Privatization Organization indicate peak activities in 2009, 2013, and 2020 (collectively 70% of total transfers), often coinciding with state budget deficits. For instance, transfers in 2020 generated about 40,000 billion tomans in state revenue, turning privatization into a revenue-generating tool to offset budget shortfalls;
Shift in Public and Social Expenditures: Data indicates a turn from biopolitics (public welfare policies) toward a market-based political economy. The share of public education expenditure fell from 17% in 1991 to 10% in 2019. Simultaneously, the education system privatized; reports suggest that before 2023, about 55% of Sharif University entrants came from the wealthiest income decile. In healthcare, the share of direct household expenses rose from 53% in 2013 to around 60% including private insurance. This "commodification of health" has led to the exclusion of vulnerable groups like low-income elderly;
Discursive Reconstruction and Legitimation: These changes were not merely economic but were legitimized through a new discursive "regime of truth." A new binary of "state (negative) versus private (positive)" replaced the tripartite division in Article 44 of the Constitution (state, cooperative, private). Foundational documents like the "Second Phase of the Revolution Statement" (2018) institutionalized this logic within Islamic political theology. Concepts like Jihad (struggle), "resistance economy," and "popularizing the economy" are emptied of prior meanings and filled with new signifiers like "transfer to the private sector," "productivization of state assets," and "non-intervention of the state." Thus, privatization is elevated from an economic tactic to a "religious and jihadi obligation";
Institutionalization and Continuity: This discourse is embodied in laws and institutions. The establishment of the Privatization Organization (2001) and the Productivization Council (2022) demonstrates its institutionalization. Even in official dynamic models (e.g., Public Sector Studies Office reports), key variables are "quality of privatization" and "revenue from transfers," confirming the inherent and ideological primacy of privatization logic.

Conclusion
The reinterpretation of the past, with the advent of free-market power technology, inevitably elevated privatization from the status of one technique among many within that technology to the level of a veritable regime of truth. The emergence of conceptual binaries such as the public-private dichotomy, predicated on this reinterpretation, served to legitimize it. The vehicle for institutionalizing this new technology of power was a semi-colonial science or knowledge regime, which, through educational and research institutions, achieved hegemony over and captured Iran's development policy space—a dominance sourced from its prevalence in developed and developing countries, their academic institutions, and global organizations. Iran's crises in international relations and the heightened role of an Islamic political theology based on the necessity of a jihadi orientation and an inward turn of the economy—coupled with the diminished horizon of economic globalization as the ultimate aim of the prevailing power technology—did not weaken the dominion of this regime of truth. On the contrary, by absorbing the significations of its equivalent concepts, namely popularization (Mardomi-sazi), resistance, and economic/managerial jihad, it even contributed to its reinforcement. Ultimately, the hegemony of this regime of truth has had broader social consequences, which manifest in their own significance and corporeality within resistances, social movements, and even teachings opposed to desire within the Greater Jihad (Jihad-e Akbar).