The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution

by Amir Taheri

  Promoting Iran under a Khomeinist regime as the leader of Islam is no easy task either. Few Muslims, even among Shiites, would endorse the claim made in the Khomeinist constitution that the Iranian Supreme Guide is the spiritual and temporal leader of the ummah throughout the world. Iran’s majority Shiite faith remains as much of a hurdle as it was under the shah. This is why some Khomeinist reformists, like Abdul-Karim Sorush, suggest that the regime modify aspects of its Shiite discourse to reassure the Sunnis. That, however, could threaten one of the main pillars of the regime’s claim of legitimacy. What the Khomeinist regime needs is a temporal, that is to say political, message with which to sell the idea of Iran’s leadership to other Muslim nations. Ahmadinejad knows that Muslims, though divided, all yearn after some vague political unity that might revive the real or imagined Golden Age and make Islam the master of the world. In other words, while there could never be a unified religion named Islam, a united political movement under the label of Islam is quite possible.

  Ahmadinejad is not the first to make such an analysis. Go to any mosque anywhere in the world, including those in European and American cities, and what you hear is a political, not religious, discourse. You would hear of the sufferings of the Palestinians and, occasionally, Kashmiris and Chechens, and how the infidel West is trying to undermine Islam with “Islamophobia.” Translations of articles and books by well-known anti-Americans, some from the United States itself, are read aloud and commented upon to shed more light on the “constant conspiracies of the American Great Satan” to destroy Islam and devour the world. Because Islamic theology died over a century ago, you are unlikely to hear much that resembles a proper religious discourse. To be sure, God often makes a cameo appearance, mostly to promise to burn Israel and bring down the United States. Of what the Persian poet nasser Khosrow called “the “Science of Faith,” however, you would find no sign.5 What you would see is Islamism, a political movement that dreams of revenge and reconquest. The modern Islamist dismisses all talk of spirituality as “a plot hatched by the infidels” to demobilize the Muslim masses and frustrate their efforts to destroy Israel, reconquer Spain, liberate Kashmir, and eventually rule mankind under the banner of Muhammad. Khomeini’s dream and that of Ahmadinejad is to gain control of the global Islamist movement in the name of common political goals. The starting point of this quest for leadership must be Iran’s geopolitical habitat in western Asia, a region where Arabic-speaking peoples are a majority.

  now, what is the message that might galvanize those Arabs? Moderate politicians and movements might suggest such themes as democracy, human rights, economic development, and the rule of law. These, however, are not themes that a regime such as the one Khomeini imposed on Iran could adopt without provoking derision. Such a regime must appeal to religious bigotry, xenophobia, class hatred, and whatever other base instincts are most easily provoked.

  In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a generation of Islamists had cut its ideological teeth by adopting the cause of Algerian independence against France. Some—like Banisadr, Qotbzadeh, and Yazdi—adored Franz Fanon before they discovered Khomeini. Even then, few Iranians sympathized with the Algerian national Liberation Front and its use of terror as an instrument of politics. The Islamists were enraged in 1962 when Hassan Arsanjani, the shah’s minister for agriculture, unveiled a plan to invite forty thousand of the French living in Algeria, known as pieds-noirs, to come and settle in Iran, where they would be given farm-land and credit to build a new life. Today, however, there is no Muslim people engaged in an anticolonial war of liberation; or if there is, as with the Chechens in Russia and the Uighur in China, they have no kith-and-kin who could be mobilized for a global war against the infidels.6

  The only theme that the Khomeinist regime might use to find an audience among the Arabs is one that has resonated with at least some of them since the 1950s: hatred of Israel. Israel has all the qualifications to become the ideal scapegoat for the Arab audience that Ahmadinejad seeks. To start with, Israel is Jewish and thus presumed heir to “the Jews who made Muhammad suffer in Medina.” Israel is also the “outsider” because millions of its citizens, though perhaps no longer a majority, have Western backgrounds. Being a democracy also makes Israel the opposite of the despotic Khomeinist system. Having adopted a capitalist market economy, Israel is perceived as a challenge to the Islamo-fascistic populism that Khomeinists present as their political ideology. In any case, Israel must be doomed because it has already had a woman as prime minister, and, as Muhammad is supposed to have said, a nation ruled by a woman is bound to perish.

  Because of all these factors, the Khomeinists see Israel as something more than a mere political enemy or rival. Israel is a foe,7 which cannot be placated or accommodated, let alone turned into a friend. Muhammad had urged peace and reconciliation with the factions of the Qureysh tribal confederation that he regarded as mere enemies. In dealing with such enemies, one could persuade them to convert to Islam, or sign a truce renewable every ten years by mutual consent. With a foe, however, there could be neither peace nor truce.

  The Khomeinist regime hopes to achieve a number of objectives by adopting the destruction of Israel as its cause. It will attract the attention of the Arab intelligentsia, a good part of which has built its vision of the world around deep hatred of Israel. Hatred of Israel also provides a bond between the Islamic Republic and the broader Arab masses who are suspicious of Iran’s Shiism. The same is true of the remnants of the left in the Middle East, to whom an anti-Israel stance is part of a broader anti-imperialist strategy that Khomeinism, too, claims to espouse.

  Using the “destroy Israel” slogan as the only theme that could unite Muslims, Tehran hosted a conference called “The End of Israel” on May 26, 2008. Organized by the so-called Justice-Seeking University Students Movement, the conference drew participants from the United States, Venezuela, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, nicaragua, Cuba, and France, plus Pakistan and eleven Arab countries. According to the official Islamic Republic news Agency, the participants were “distinguished academics” who would “examine, analyze and debate President Ahmadinejad’s assertion that the Zionist enemy state will soon come to an end.”

  Ahmadinejad’s message to the Arabs is simple: Forget that Iran is Shiite, and remember that today it is the only power capable of realizing your most cherished dream, the destruction of Israel. The Sunni Muslim Brotherhood promised you it would throw the Jews into the sea in 1948, but failed. Pan-Arab nationalists, led by nasser, ushered you into one of your biggest defeats in history, enabling Israel to capture Jerusalem. The Baathists under Saddam Hussein promised to “burn Israel,” but ended up bringing the American infidels to Baghdad. Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian “patriots” promised to crush the Jewish state, but turned into collaborators on its payroll. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda never gave two hoots about Palestine, focusing only on spectacular operations in the West to win publicity for themselves. Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and Hamas did all they could to destroy Israel but lacked the power, like flies attacking an elephant. The only force now willing and able to help realize your dream of a burned Israel and drowning Jews is the Islamic Republic as created by Khomeini.

  Although the preceding is presented as a verbal caricature, it exposes exactly how many Arabs have received Ahmadinejad’s message. A visitor to Arab capitals could easily ascertain this for himself by dropping in to any teahouse or mosque or bazaar and talking to the locals at random. (Arabs and many other Muslims in Europe and the United States are likely to express similar views in support of the Islamic Republic’s anti-Israel posture.) This does not mean that the Arabs are naïve enough to buy the bundle offered by Ahmadinejad. Most know that the Islamic Republic has neither the intention nor the power to take on Israel in open warfare. What they hope for is that the Islamic Republic will devote part of its resources to making life increasingly unbearable for the Israelis, through low-intensity war waged by the Lebanese branch of Hezballah as well as Hamas and half a dozen o
ther Palestinian groups financed by Tehran. In any case, what do the Arabs have to lose? If Ahmadinejad succeeds in wiping Israel off the map, so much the better; if he fails, the Arabs would not be any worse off. One Saudi personality, speaking perhaps only half in jest, claims that the prospect of endless war between Iran and Israel should delight the Arabs. “Shiites and Jews killing one another?” he quips. “Allah himself couldn’t promise anything better!”8 After all, Sunni Arabs regard both Iranians and Jews as eternal foes of Arabism and Islam. The Iraqi Sunni politician Taha Yassin Jizrawi, who was Saddam Hussein’s vice president, wrote a book titled Jews, Persians, and Flies: Three Things That Allah Should Not Have Created.

  Ahmadinejad might want to ponder whether he is making a good long-term investment by propelling the Khomeinist regime towards war with Israel. He might also recall the proverb: Beware of what you wish for! Suppose that Ahmadinejad, helped by the Hidden Imam and Jesus Christ, whom the mullahs describe as “the Mahdi’s special assistant,” succeeded in destroying the state of Israel. But would he be allowed to enter Jerusalem in triumph? not likely. The Palestinians, both Arab nationalists and Sunni Islamists, would consider him as much of an outsider as Israeli Jews. Even supposing he were welcomed in Jerusalem, he would still face a major problem from another direction: as a Shiite, he could not pray in Sunni mosques; and, as he surely knows, there is not a single Shiite mosque in the whole of Palestine. What would Ahmadinejad do? Would he pray in the Mosque of Omar, named after the second caliph, who is the most hated man of all history in the eyes of Shiites? As a child, Ahmadinejad’s Shiite parents must have taught him that he should wash his mouth three times after pronouncing the name of Omar even to curse him. Would the Khomeinist president go to the Dome of the Rock, built by the very Umayyid caliphs who “martyred” Hussein bin Ali, the third imam of Shiism and Iran’s most revered saint, by severing his head, and then mutilated his corpse? What would the Hidden Imam say of such behavior? Would Ahmadinejad just go around in Jerusalem as if his newly liberated friends were not the same Sunni Nassibis that the Hidden Imam will put to the sword?

  While politics in the shape of hating the “other” unites Muslims today, religion has always divided and will continue to divide them. Today, Israel is the quintessential “other.” If it were gone, Muslims would be forced to think about and talk of religion among themselves. Then they would find out how dangerous and deadly a politicized religion can be. Ahmadinejad must have an inkling of this already. He has seen how Hamas leaders behave on their visits to Tehran. They come to pick up millions of dollars, often crisp greenbacks in leather cases, but refuse to pay homage to Khomeini at his so-called shrine, something no Sunni Muslim worth his salt would ever do. Hamas leaders also refuse to pray alongside their Iranian Shiite hosts. Sunni Arabs are not alone in regarding Iran as a political ally but a religious enemy. Shiite Arabs, too, have difficulty accepting Iranian hegemony, especially under a Khomeinist regime.

  Since 1982, the Islamic Republic has spent some $30 billion helping Lebanon’s Shiite community. It has created a branch of Hezballah in Lebanon, training and arming its militia to the point that in 2008 it was regarded as the strongest military force in the country. And yet, with the exception of Hezballah’s secretary general Sayyed Hassan nasrallah and a few of his associates, all of them creatures of the Iranian secret services, few Lebanese Shiites accept religious leadership from Iran. Despite generous cash handouts, the number of Lebanese Shiites who regarded Iran’s Supreme Guide, Ali Khamenehi, as marja taqlid (“source of imitation” in religious matters) did not exceed a few thousand in 2008. The overwhelming majority of Lebanese Shiites were followers of Grand Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq or the Lebanese Ayatollah Sayyed Hussein Fadlallah in Beirut. Almost two decades of Iranian largesse has produced no more than a few thousand religious followers for Khamenehi among Shiites anywhere, including in Iran itself. Sheikh na’im Qassem, number two in the Lebanese Hezballah leadership and thus one of Tehran’s point men in Beirut, puts it this way: “We look to Ayatollah Khamenehi as a political leader!” Qassem has missed the point: Khamenehi claims political leadership on the ground that he is a religious leader.

  Ahmadinejad might find out that helping Arabs destroy Israel was not such a good idea after all. For six decades, most of the negative energies of the Arabs have been directed against the Jewish state, but with Israel gone, those energies might seek a new target. One possibility is Turkey, because of its supposed oppression of the Arabs during the Ottoman Empire and its refusal to hand over the province of Iskanderun, where ethnic Arabs form a majority, to Arab rule. But inciting Arabs to hatred of Turkey, a predominantly Sunni Muslim nation, would not be easy. The designer target for those negative energies is Iran, which is Persian and Shiite, and now it is aggressively expansionist.

  Today, the United Arab Emirates claims ownership of three Iranian islands, a claim endorsed by every single session of Arab foreign ministers or heads of state since 1995. Most Arab states have already rebaptized the Persian Gulf as the “Arabian Gulf.” Many Arabs, both nationalists and Islamists, regard Iran’s oil-rich province of Khuzestan as an “Arab land” that must be either attached to Iraq or allowed to become an independent state. According to an Iraqi foreign minister, speaking only half in jest, the claim is based on one key fact: Khuzestan has palm groves, and wherever dates grow is part of the Arab world!9 For a decade, the song “From the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf,” by the Egyptian pop star Abdul-Halim Hafiz, promised Arabs a new empire built partly on the ruins of Iran.10

  Once Israel is out of the equation, Ahmadinejad’s Arab allies might well thank him and quickly move on to other issues. Might they not demand to know why Iran’s twelve million or so Sunni Muslims suffer religious restrictions of the kind that even Israel never inflicted on its Sunni Muslim citizens? Khalid Mash’al, the leader of Hamas and a member of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood movement, might entreat “Brother Mahmoud” to allow Iranian Sunnis to build their own mosques and present their version of Islam to their Iranian Shiite brethren. Arabs might also ask how it is that the children of Iran’s Arab minority are not allowed to study in their own language, the language of Allah himself, which Khomeini called “far superior to all other languages of mankind.” Even Israel allowed its Arab citizens to study in their native tongue, publish Arabic-language newspapers and books, and stage plays and make films in Arabic. Could the Islamic Republic of Iran, the “liberator” of Jerusalem, be more repressive towards Arab Muslims than Israel, that “stain of shame on the map of the Middle East”? Ahmadinejad might want to contemplate another question: is it wise to speak of wiping nations off the map? Would it not set a precedent that Arab radicals could one day use against Iran, as did Saddam Hussein and his gang in the 1980s when they spoke of “wiping the Persians off the map”?

  In any case, Ahmadinejad should not assume that Arabs were born yesterday. Over the past six decades, Arabs have seen how hatred of Israel has been abused to justify policies and ambitions the cost of which they had to bear. The Arab feudal regimes spoke of “liberating Palestine” as a priority that overrode all other issues—such as individual liberties, the rule of law, and social reform. The military regimes asked the Arabs to be patient with despotic rule until after Israel is wiped out. nasser tried to annex Syria in the name of “liberating Palestine.” He sent his army to Yemen as a “prelude to liberating Palestine.” Today, Arabs watch as Iran extends its dominion over Syria and Lebanon, again in the name of “liberating Palestine.” For the first time since the seventh century A.D., Iranian troops have reached the Mediterranean through Syria and Lebanon, treating both as part of an Iranian glacis in the heart of the Middle East.

  Ahmadinejad’s militant rhetoric against Israel, signaling a return to Khomeini’s most extreme positions, has failed to resonate with most Iranians—something that the maverick president may end up accepting as fact. His predecessor, the mullah Muhammad Khatami, also toyed with anti-Israel themes in the early stages of his pre
sidency. On October 24, 2000, he told an Iranian television audience, “In the Koran, God commands [us] to kill the wicked and those who do not respect the rights of the oppressed. . . . If we abide by human laws, we should mobilize the whole Islamic world for a sharp confrontation with the Zionist regime. . . . If we abide by the Koran, all of us should mobilize to kill.” Soon, however, Khatami realized that while presenting the Jews as the enemy might appeal to hardcore Khomeinists such as himself, the message would not sell with Iranians at large.

  It is not easy to present Israel as a threat to Iran, let alone a Muslim world of 1.3 billion people. There is no history of enmity between Iranians and Jews. On the contrary, most historical narratives on both sides radiate with genuine warmth and mutual affection. Ancient Persians helped save the Jews from extermination in Babylon. Jews always remained loyal to Iran, fighting and dying for it whenever given an opportunity. Even when Israel was reborn as a state, few Iranian Jews were prepared to choose it over Iran. Iran and Israel do not face any of the problems that set one nation-state against another. There is no border dispute between them. They are not competing over access to rare natural resources or markets. They do not suffer from a collective memory of hatred and war. Any Western visitor to Iran would quickly realize that Iranians do not hate Jews and would not be prepared to sacrifice them for the Arabs. This lack of a popular base for a policy of hatred and war may well prove to be the ultimate check on Ahmadinejad’s messianic illusions.