The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution

by Amir Taheri

  Ahmadinejad’s “Holocaust denial” speech raised another and bigger storm. Once again, some Islamic Republic officials, including the foreign minister, Manuchehr Mottaki, with some Western “useful idiots” in tow, tried to claim that the president had not really meant what he said. Mottaki claimed that Ahmadinejad had tried to draw attention to how the West was trying to “impose its narrative of events.” Most of the “useful idiots” played semantic games with the president’s phraseology and ended up blaming the West and Zionists for distorting his views. They claimed that truth was relative and that each culture was entitled to its own version of it. Ahmadinejad, however, would not let himself be redefined by Westernized bureaucrats like Mottaki, or by “useful idiots” from American universities. While self-appointed exegetes were telling the world that he neither wanted Israel wiped off the map nor doubted the Holocaust had happened, one of Ahmadinejad’s senior advisors was preparing the first Holocaust denial conference ever organized by a member state of the United nations. The man in charge was one Muhammad-Ali Ramin, a German-educated militant of the Iranian branch of Hezballah with close connections to neo-nazi groups in Germany. For years, Ramin was advisor on psychological warfare to Ali Larijani during the latter’s tenure as director of the state-owned Islamic Radio and Television in Tehran.13

  Ramin’s hatred of the Jews, as reflected in the standard speech he has been delivering at Hezballah seminars and “courses for cadres,” is structured around traditional European anti-Semitic themes rather than the more superficial dislike and distrust of Jews current in the Muslim countries of the Middle East. For him, the Jew is the quintessential “other” not only in religion but also in ethnic and racial terms. For years, Ramin had proposed holding a Holocaust denial conference, but both of Ahmadinejad’s immediate predecessors, presidents Rafsanjani and Khatami, had rejected the idea. Ahmadinejad had a more favorable view, and on December 12, 2006, he addressed the final session of the conference that Ramin had dreamed of and organized with government money.

  The list of participants at the Tehran conference reads like a who’s who not only of those who oppose Israel on political grounds but also of individuals who make no secret of their racial and religious hatred for Jews. Many of Ramin’s neo-nazi friends from Germany, Belgium, and France were in attendance, thanks to all-expenses-paid invitations from the president of the Islamic Republic. Present also were a crowd of self-styled historians who make a living out of their claim that the Holocaust either did not happen or, if it did, was not as terrible as the Jews said. One such “esteemed scholar,” as described by the conference brochure, the American Veronica Clark, claimed that the Jews had made money in Auschwitz. Another, the Frenchman Robert Faurisson, compared the Holocaust to one of Lafontaine’s fables and other fairy tales. The former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke informed the audience of how the Jews influenced American policies, and Frederick Toben, the Australian president of the Holocaust Denial Institute, spoke of how Jews used “the myth of genocide” as a “murder weapon” against others, notably the Palestinians. A Belgian convert to Islam, Leonardo Clerici, electrified the audience with his prediction that Jews were destined for ultimate destruction. Also present were members of the anti-Israel Orthodox Jewish sect neturei Karta, in their traditional gear. They told anyone who wished to listen, including reporters from the Islamic media, that although they did not deny the Holocaust, they prayed for the destruction of Israel.

  The organizers of the conference also offered an exhibition of photos, books, and “documents” supposedly proving that the Holocaust never happened. These were meant to support the real theme of the conference: that Israel could claim no legitimacy based on a crime that had never taken place. Ramin made no secret of his belief that “the issue of Holocaust could be solved with the destruction of Israel.”

  In his speech, Ahmadinejad praised the conference for shaking “the very raison d’être” of the Jewish state.14 He added: “The life-curve of the Zionist regime has started its descent, and it is now on a downward slope towards its fall. . . . The Zionist regime will be wiped out, and humanity will be liberated.”15 Ahmadinejad’s belief that the fate of Israel would be determined in the broader war that Islam was supposed to wage against the infidels was reflected in his first substantial speech on his policies as president in October 2005: “We are engaged in the process of a historic war,” he said. “This war has been going on for hundreds of years. We must measure the depth of the disgrace that the enemy [has inflicted on us] so that our sacred rage rises like a wave and strikes our enemy.”16

  One of Ahmadinejad’s predecessors as president of the Islamic Republic, Hashemi Rafsanjani, had evoked the prospect of a thermonuclear exchange that would end up with Israel’s annihilation. Speaking in December 2001, Rafsanjani asserted that “the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel would destroy everything” while the Muslim world, if attacked in retaliation, could easily afford to lose millions of “martyrs.” He concluded: “It is not illogical to contemplate such an eventuality.” And Rafsanjani is often regarded in the West as a moderate.

  12

  Esther and the King

  The idea of the Jew as the quintessential enemy of the natural order is a key theme in the Islamic Republic’s propaganda. The Ministry of Islamic Guidance and Culture has financed the publication of hundreds of books accusing the Jews of having “betrayed God” by rebelling against his commandments. Jews are blamed for the death of Jesus, although the Koran, and Islam in general, never made such a charge—if only because they believe the Son of Mary did not die on the cross at all. Khomeinist literature accuses Jews of having “altered” the sacred scriptures brought by Moses and Jesus and having attempted to falsify the Koran as well. Khomeinists also claim that Jews planned the Crusades in order to divide the Muslim world. Conveniently ignored are the fact that Iran was not involved in most of the Crusades, and that in some of them it sided with Christian powers against rival Sunni Muslim caliphates and emirates. Because they import a good part of their anti-Semitism from the West, Khomeinists pay no attention to the fact that no Muslim historian ever claimed that the Jews played any role in the Crusades except that of helping the Muslims whenever and wherever they could.

  Jews are credited or blamed for many major events in the past three thousand years. Khalkhali claimed that the Jews sent “the beautiful spy Esther” to seduce Cyrus, a Persian princeling of no consequence, to encourage him to create an empire, liberate the Jews from Babylonian captivity, and help them rebuild their temple in Jerusalem. “Cyrus was young and full of lust,” the ayatollah writes, “and his blood boiled with passion for the Jewess.” Esther was so effective that not only did she succeed in persuading Cyrus to give up his homosexuality and become heterosexual, but also helped him build his empire and release the Jews from bondage.1

  Khomeinist literature blames the Jews for the French Revolution of 1789 and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. It claims that Jews invented Communism through Marx, who divided mankind according to class rather than religious belief, as in the Islamic system. Khomeini himself claimed that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the idea that all human beings are equal, was a Jewish invention designed to enable Jews to achieve high positions in societies where their minority status limited their progress. He said that a cabal of Jewish conspirators prompted the British-Indian novelist Salman Rushdie to write The Satanic Verses, for which Khomeini issued a death fatwa against him. The 9/11 attacks on new York and Washington were launched by Jews to persuade the United States to start a war of conquest against Muslim nations. Jews paid Danish artists to come up with cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Jews have been buying land in Iraq under American occupation in the hope of expanding Israel to the River Tigris. The destruction of the Mosque of the Two Imams, a Shiite shrine in Samarrah, Iraq, was also the work of Jews. According to Ahmadinejad, “The Zionists have placed themselves in control of a substantial part of the financial, cultural, and media sectors.” Havin
g blackmailed Western democracies for sixty years, they are now trying to become rulers of the whole world.

  Despite the presentation of the Jew by the Khomeinist regime as the ultimate “other” and object of hatred, anti-Semitism has failed to find a wide audience in Iran. Leaving aside what one might call “vulgar anti-Semitism,” there is no evidence that hatred of the Jews has any echoes in contemporary Persian literature and art. Part of this is because the overwhelming majority of Iranian writers, poets, and other “producers of culture” reject Khomeinism as a form of anti-Iranian fascism. The main reason, however, is that the average Iranian, though he may sympathize with the widely and constantly reported sufferings of the Palestinians, cannot identify with the Arabs, whom he regards as an ancestral foe. The fact that the only major war that Iran has fought in the past three hundred years was started by an Arab nation—Iraq under Saddam Hussein—makes it hard for most Iranians to contemplate an Irano-Arab front against Israel.

  So, why has the Khomeinist regime tried to present itself as an advocate of the most radical anti-Israeli, not to say anti-Jewish, strategy? The answer lies in the regional and even global ambitions of a regime in search of hegemony and empire. If Iran were to use Iranian culture and the Persian language as vehicles for projecting those ambitions, the regime would have to tone down its Islamic pretensions, thus losing its principal claim to legitimacy.

  Iranian nationalists have often dreamed of recreating the Persian Empire, albeit in its most modest version, and they also seek recognition by the West as a member of the broader Indo-European family of peoples. The author and journalist Rahmat Mostafavi remarked that the word “Iran” came from the same root as the word “Eire,” the name adopted by the Irish Republic. Both meant “Land of the noble,” and signaled the “common ancestry of Iranians and Europeans from the Caspian Sea to the Atlantic Ocean.” Mostafavi also claimed that Iran was separated from its “kith and kin” in Europe by “alien races such as Turks and Arabs.” The poet Lotfali Suratgar demanded that European nations recognize Iran’s “heroic resistance on their behalf ” against invaders from the depth of Asia:

  For a thousand years, as the world slept,

  Iran guarded the gates of Europe

  Against the invading Tatars.

  There was, however, no prospect of the Western European powers accepting Iran as an equal ally and partner. French presidents from Charles De Gaulle to Valéry Giscard d’Estaing visited Tehran to shower the shah with praise and laud Iran’s “great contributions to culture and civilization.” All German chancellors from Ludwig Erhard to Helmut Schmidt also visited Iran, as did the queen of England and senior British political leaders. The European Common Market acknowledged Iran’s importance by offering it the status of an associate partner. That was not good enough for the Iranians, who realized that no matter what they did, they would never become more than a small fish in the big European pond. Today, with Iran stuck in one of the darkest nights of its long history, it is even less likely that Europe, now a club of twenty-seven nations and the most powerful economic bloc in the world, would offer anything more enticing.

  For obvious reasons, the Khomeinist regime cannot play the cards of Iranian culture and the Persian language. And even if it did so, this might generate some enthusiasm for Iranian leadership only in a few places, notably Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

  What about Shiism as a vehicle for Iran’s ambitions? Here, too, the limitations are evident. An Iran that claims leadership only in the name of Shiism might, at most, attract the support of some 15 percent of the world’s estimated 1.3 billion Muslims. Even then, it is not at all certain that Arab Shiites, who form a majority of the population only in Iraq and Bahrain, would wish to be led by a non-Arab power. Thus, Iran cannot claim regional leadership in the name of either Iranianism or Shiism.

  One theme that Iranian nationalists share with their Khomeinist enemies is that of “being alone.” Most nations are part of a larger family that could provide them with adequate space to ensure their security and help them achieve their full potential. Most nations of Europe, sharing historical, cultural, and religious roots, have come together in the European Union. More broadly, the Western nations, led by the United States, form a common family under the banner of the Atlantic Alliance or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The Arabs have their League of Arab nations. In the new World, there is the Organization of American States (OAS), plus a number of regional groupings. African nations nurture their common roots through the African Union. Turkey is part of a family of Turkic nations stretching from Europe to Central Asia. China and India, though too big to need anyone, are nevertheless projecting power and influence through their respective “kith and kin” communities around the world. Iran, being Persian and Shiite, is all alone.

  The only way that Iran could claim leadership was by casting itself as an Islamic power seeking a new world order as shaped by Islam rather than the “Judeo-Christian conspiracy.” Iran’s claim of leadership in the Muslim world is not fanciful. For centuries, Iran in its various incarnations was one of only three nations—along with the Ottoman Empire and, from the nineteenth century onwards, Egypt—that set the agenda for the Muslim world. The Ottoman Empire no longer exists. Its successor, the Turkish Republic, advertising its secularism, has been out of the Islamic orbit for too long to seek a leadership role among Muslim nations. Having dropped its Arabic alphabet in favor of the Latin, Turkey has also rewritten its history to de-emphasize the role of Islam. Even under a conservative pro-Islam government, Turkey’s ambition to become a member of the European Union remains unchanged. Egypt, too, has dropped out of the competition for the leadership of Islam. More than half a century of autocratic rule, from nasser to Hosni Mubarak, has turned Egypt into an Islamic no-man’s land.

  none of the other Muslim nations is in a position to claim the leadership of Islam. Saudi Arabia has a great deal of money but a small population. It is also hamstrung by its Wahhabism, which a majority of Muslims regard with suspicion if not outright hostility. Moreover, its Wahhabi religious establishment has failed to produce anything resembling a current of creative theological thought.2 The four most populous Muslim countries are Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and nigeria, while India has three times as many Muslims as does Iran. However, none of these countries ever played a leading role in Islam or has the intellectual wherewithal to claim it today. Iran’s leadership claim could be based on a number of facts. Even today, Iran has one of the two or three largest economies in the Muslim world. It is the fifth largest Muslim nation in terms of population. Of the fifty-seven Muslim nations of the world, twelve are Iran’s neighbors. Iran is the only Muslim nation to have direct geographical links with all major components of the Muslim ummah: Arabs, Turks and Turkic peoples, and Central and South Asian nations.

  While Khomeini believed that only “permanent revolution” could ensure the survival of the Islamist rule in Iran, his succesors Banisadr, Rafsanjani, and Khatami tilted towards the idea of “revolution in one country.” They argued that the Khomeinist system still had to crush its enemies at home, especially Iranian nationalists and the middle classes seduced by Western ideas. Ahmadinejad, on the other hand, follows the example of Rajai, the second president of the Islamic Republic, who believed that the Khomeinist revolution in Iran could achieve its “divine mission” only by spreading to other Muslim countries. Boasting that he is “the second Rajai,” Ahmadinejad regards “exporting revolution” as necessary for the regime’s survival in Iran itself.

  The idea of promoting Iran as the leader of the Muslim world had even tempted the shah, albeit only briefly. In 1968, the shah led the move that culminated in the first Islamic Summit, held in Rabat, the capital of Morocco, in April 1969. He also became one of the founders of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). By the early 1970s, however, he had decided that playing the Islamic card could lead to a clash with his Western allies, thus leaving Iran exposed in the face of the p
ermanent Soviet threat, while emboldening his domestic enemies among the mullahs. nevertheless, encouraged by Iran’s rising economic and military power, the shah developed hegemonic dreams of his own. In 1975 he came up with a proposal for the creation of a “Common Market of the Indian Ocean,” to encompass some fifty African, Middle Eastern, and Asian nations, including India and Australia.3

  The shah realized that the historic decline of Islam as a force on the international stage had ended in the mid-twentieth century and could be followed by a period of rapid ascent, provided that Muslim nations modernized their economies. It was in this context that the shah thought of promoting Iran as the leader of an Islam in the ascendant. At the start of the twentieth century, there were only two independent Muslim nations: Iran and the Ottoman Empire.4 By the end of the century, that number had risen to fifty-seven. In the same period, the number of Muslims rose from some 8 percent of the world’s population to almost 25 percent. (Iran’s own population rose from six million to almost seventy million.) Significant Muslim minorities began to take shape in over a hundred non-Muslim countries around the globe. The rising importance of oil—of which some 60 percent of all known reserves happen to be in Muslim lands—added a new dimension to the “return of Islam” as a force to reckon with on the international stage. Despite all this, however, the shah could never have sold the idea of Iranian leadership in the name of Islam. His own ambiguous attitude towards Islam represented an insurmountable hurdle, as did Iran’s majority Shiite faith, and the nationalistic narrative of his regime.