We complete our Persia/Iran history with a deeper look at the Iranian Islamic Republic spending time with their leaders, and understanding their aims. It is a sobering experience.
We complete our Persia/Iran history with a deeper look at the Iranian Islamic Republic spending time with their leaders, and understanding their aims. It is a sobering experience.
Persia and Iran - Part Three: Terrors of the Future
October 2023
“Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious. Islam does not allow swimming in the sea and is opposed to radio and television serials. Islam, however, allows marksmanship, horseback riding, and competition.”
“We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry ‘There is no god but Allah’ resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle. All those against the revolution must disappear and quickly be executed.”
― Ruhollah Khomeini
When we left off our last podcast, we had established some key pillars of insight into Iran.
First, the nation was old, thousands of years old. Additionally, at different times, it had been one of the preeminent nations on Earth. We explored the introduction of Islam in the 600s CE, including the split of Sunni and Shia. A vital aspect of this history was that until the Safavids of the 1500s, Sunni, the larger, more wealthy branch, held sway in Iran. The Safavids changed this dynamic wholeheartedly, embracing Shia as the state religion. Then, we introduced the secular West in the forms first of Tsarist Russia, Imperial Britain, and later, the United States. All of these nations, to a greater or lesser degree, entered Iranian politics, especially after the discovery of oil. There was an imposition in 1906 of a constitution. And finally, the Pahlavi Dynasty, which tried to bring Iran into the West by linking to the pre-Islamic past, put religion on the sidelines. As we know, this failed.
The last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, left the country in January of 1979, never to return. The government he left in place to govern for a potential return had collapsed. In February, after a 13-year exile, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned. Opposition to a Republic led by the tenets of Islam began to be put down, and a Constitution was ordered. On March 30 and 31, a referendum was held over whether to replace the monarchy with an “Islamic republic.” Khomeini called for a massive turnout, and only the National Democratic Front, Fadayan, and several Kurdish parties opposed the vote. Results showed that 98.2% had voted in favor of the Islamic Republic.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards, or IRGC, was founded in the immediate aftermath of the Shah’s fall as leftists, nationalists, and
Islamists jockeyed to set the course of the revolutionary republic. While the interim prime minister controlled the government and state institutions such as the army, many clerics and disciples of Khomeini organized counterweights to those inherited institutions. Among them was the IRGC, which operated beyond the bounds of the law and the judiciary. Answering to Iran’s supreme leader, its command structure bypasses the elected president.
Before we go further, a little bit about Shiism. Unlike
Sunni Muslims Shiites established a formal clergy system with leaders called imams. The head imam is given the title of ayatollah. The title is derived initially from the Arabic word Ayah.
I wanted this as context for the following.
In June 1979, the Freedom Movement released its draft constitution for the Islamic Republic, which it had worked on since Khomeini was in exile. It included a Guardian Council to veto un-Islamic legislation but had no guardian jurist ruler. Khomeini (and the assembly) rejected the
constitution – its correctness notwithstanding – and Khomeini declared that the new government should be based “100% on Islam.”
In addition to the president, the new constitution included a more powerful post of guardian jurist ruler intended for Khomeini, with control of the military and security services and power to appoint several top government and judicial officials. It increased the strength and number of
clerics on the Council of Guardians and gave it control over elections and laws passed by the legislature. The new constitution was also approved overwhelmingly by the December 1979 constitutional referendum. Khomeini permitted no alternatives or opposition to this constitution, and in case anyone got any bright ideas, he now had the IRGC at his back.
But even before this final approval of Khomeini’s power came the hostage crisis. In late October 1979, the exiled and dying Shah was admitted into the United States for cancer treatment. In Iran, there was an immediate outcry, and both Khomeini and leftist groups demanded the Shah’s
return to Iran for trial and execution. On November 4, 1979, a group of mostly younger Islamists
stormed the US embassy compound in Tehran and seized its staff. Revolutionaries were angry because of how the Shah had left Iran, which spawned rumors of another US–backed coup in Iran that would re-install him. The occupation was also intended as leverage to demand the return of the Shah to stand trial in exchange for the hostages. The students held 52 American diplomats hostage for Four hundred forty-four days, which played a role in helping to pass the constitution, suppressing moderates, and otherwise radicalizing the revolution.
Holding the hostages was very popular and continued even after the death of the Shah. Khomeini stated, “This action has many benefits. ... This has united our people. Our opponents do not dare act against us. We can put the constitution to the people’s vote without difficulty.” What
Khomeini had realized, as have thousands of despots throughout history, that one of the best paths to legitimacy is not just to be for something but against something. That thing, in his case, was America, which would grow from a political entity wishing to overthrow his regime for political purposes to cosmically significant proportions, labeling the United States as the “Great Satan.”
This was not just an international incident but may have changed history with the election of Ronald Reagan as president. Would the ineffectual Carter have been defeated anyway? Perhaps, but his subsequent weakness, including a failed rescue attempt that led to the deaths of eight service people, cemented his defeat. One of the criticisms of Reagan was that he was too much of a cowboy. By November 1980, a cowboy started to look good to the American people.
With his constitution in hand, Khomeini and his fellow clerics began to purge opposition. After the revolution, human rights groups estimated the number of casualties suffered by protesters and prisoners of the new system to be several thousand. The first to be executed were members of the old system – senior generals, followed by over 200 senior civilian officials–as punishment and to eliminate the danger of a coup d'état. Between June 1981 In March 1982, the theocratic regime carried out the largest political massacre in Iranian history, targeting communists, socialists, social democrats, liberals, monarchists, moderate Islamists, and members of the Baha’I faith as part of the Iranian Cultural Revolution decreed by Khomeini on 14 June
1980 with the intent of “purifying” Iranian society of non-Islamic elements. Between June 1981 and June 1982, Amnesty International documented. Nearly 3,000 were murdered, with several thousand more killed in the next two years.
And it was not just the United States that represented a threat. Across the border, a very different type of dictator held sway in Iraq and, like Khomeini, is well known to Western audiences. Though Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was more of a secularist; his Baath party was Sunni in practice, though he claimed legitimacy through the army barracks rather than through the
mosque. In September 1980, Iraq took advantage of the uncertain situation and invaded Iran. At the center of Iraq’s objectives was the annexation of the East Bank of the Shaat Al-Arab waterway that makes up part of the border between the two nations. Hussein also wanted to annex the Iranian province of Khuzestan, which Iranian Arabs substantially populated. There was also concern that a Shia-centric revolution in Iran may stimulate a similar uprising in Iraq, where the country’s Sunni minority ruled over the Shia majority. So, not only was this conflict about Saddam’s ambitions, but it also contained Sunni vs. Shia and even Arab vs. Persian elements.
Hussein was confident that Iraq’s armed forces, being well-equipped with new Soviet-provided technology and with high morale, would enjoy a decisive strategic advantage against an Iranian military that had recently had many of its command officers purged following the Revolution. Iran also needed help finding replacement parts for much of its US- and British-supplied equipment. Hussein believed that victory would, therefore, come swiftly.
However, Iran was “galvanized” by the invasion, and the populace of Iran rallied behind their new government to repel the invaders. After some early successes, the Iraqi invasion stalled and was then repelled, and by 1982, Iran had recaptured almost all of its territories. In In June 1982, with Iraqi forces all but expelled from Iranian territory, the Iraqi government offered a ceasefire. This was rejected by Khomeini, who declared that the only condition for peace was that “the regime in Baghdad must fall and must be replaced by an Islamic republic.” Peace was finally concluded in 1988.
I noted that the two principal figures are well known, but the conflict is not. This war caused nearly 1 million causalities, far higher than the Shah’s repressions, Islamist purges, or the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 combined. It also served as a further catalyst to impose ever greater
control of the nation. Though the US was handy as an Iranian bogeyman, Iraq was right there on the border with an army several million strong. There is much criticism of President George W Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 based on faulty intelligence about weapons of mass destruction. As a matter of realpolitik, it was a mistake to remove a critical check on Iranian ambitions. But as a moral matter, Hussein has the death of over a million people on his hands.
One year after the conclusion of the Iraq-Iran war, in 1989, Khomeini died absolute master of Iran. But not before he famously issued a fatwa, or ruling in Islamic law, ordering Muslims to kill the writer Salman Rushdie for a depiction of Mohammad in his novel ‘The Satanic Verses.’ Rushdie was to live in hiding for the next ten years.
Also, before his death, Khomeini named another cleric, Ali Khamenei, one with suitable revolutionary credentials, to be designated as successor. Ayatollah Khamenei was elected Supreme Leader by the Assembly of Experts on 4 June 1989. But this was a rubber stamp. The decision has already been made. Khamenei rules Iran to this day.
In an era of alternative facts or fake news, one in which the leader of one of our parties is a fabulist and the other who dispenses lies like a restaurant handing out dinner mints, it is hard to realize that there are people in deadly earnest. People who embody the “when they say it, believe
them stripe. When Hamas states in their charter they want to eliminate Israel, along with their recent actions, we need to believe them. River to the sea is not some catchphrase but a pithy statement of their intentions.
Likewise, when the Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei say their goal is a worldwide Islamic Revolution; they are not just trying to rally the Iranian people and use religion to cement rule.
They mean what they are saying, that Shia Islam is the most significant force in the world and that they will not rest until the world is brought into under this religion, which also has the happy coincidence of having them interpret the implementation of their faith. This is not demagoguing on my part. And I do not believe that the vast majority of Muslims wish to impose their religion on others. But Khamenei controls an oil-rich state with 90 million people and wants nuclear weapons. They are serious. He is trying to fulfill his dreams of Khomeini.
On September 12, 1979, Oriana Fallaci was led into the Faizeyah religious school, for an audience with Khomeini. Barefoot, enveloped in a chador — the head‐to‐toe veil of a Muslim woman—Fallaci was seated on a carpet. Here are a few of the quotes she obtained.
“It is unjust and inhuman to call me a dictator. On the On the other hand, I couldn’t care less because I know that wickedness is a part of human nature and such wickedness come from our enemies.”
Religious figures have always dabbled in secular matters. Thousands of years ago, Pharaohs claimed legitimacy not just from being the instrument of the gods but also from being one themselves. The Roman emperors also created a sense of the divine. But these were attempts to use the power of religion to buttress their rule.
There was a time in Europe in which this was reversed. By allowing Pope Leo III to crown him, Charlemagne unintentionally set up a crown vs Church conflict that lasted throughout the Middle Ages. Innocent III, Pope from 1199 to 2015 and arguably the most powerful pontiff in history, had the moral authority derived from his position to bend kings and Emperors to his authority. He also used the crusading concept to proselytize Christianity. However, by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the power of religion held less sway than that of a national identity. Napoleon featured a pope at his coronation as French Emperor, but unlike Charlemagne, made it a point to grab the headgear and crown himself, then his wife. The Secular trumped the religion. So, it is easy for us to believe that religion serves the needs of the state, much as it did for the Romans. And even in the Middle East, there is an element of that.
I noted in the last podcast the Saudi’s embrace of a very orthodox, Wahhabi-influenced brand of Sunniism in their rule of their kingdom. Unlike Iran, crown trump’s cleric, not the other way around.
But in Iran the state exists to serve the needs of the religion. So when Khomeini claimed an aversion to holding power, which was probably a lie, he was believed by the people of Iran. He was the religious hero who had to grubby his pristine hands with the affairs of the state. A sort of Iranian Cincinattus or George Washington. Khomeini was in his mid-70s, had never held public office, had been out of Iran for more than a decade, and told questioners, “The religious dignitaries do not want to rule.” Khomeini stated, “Since the people love the clergy, have faith in the clergy, and want to be guided by the clergy, it is right that the supreme religious authority should oversee the work of the Prime Minister or the President of the Republic, to make sure that they don’t make mistakes or go against the law: that is, against the Koran. It can be either the supreme religious authority or a representative group of the clergy.”
So, is that a lie? Unlike the Romans and Americans, Khomeini never relinquished power. But did Khomeini believe, really believe in the divine right of his authority as a religious leader?
These sorts of stories always lead me to Herbert Gregg. Gregg was abducted on Nov. 11 after playing basketball at an orphanage in Makhachkala, capital of the republic of Dagestan in the Caucuses Mountains. Gregg and his wife, Linda, had lived and worked in Dagestan for four years. Gregg was a missionary with the Evangelical Alliance Mission, known as TEAM--a
Christian organization based in Wheaton, Ill. that places charity workers and religious instructors around the world. Okay, old story: missionaries in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then there was this: After being rescued and brought back to the US, “Asked what message he would like to send his captors, Gregg said only, “That God really loves them.” And there it is. Gregg believes.
He does not believe he will get a mansion like Joel Osteen or is compensating for something like Jerry Falwell. Nope. Gregg is the real deal. And if a human is capable of seeing such love in god, can another know the need for hate?
“FALLACI: All right, but I did not necessarily mean the tortures and the Savak killers (The Shah’s secret police). I told those who were executed and had nothing to do with the Shah’s regime, the people who are still being shot today for adultery, or prostitution, or homosexuality. Is it right to shoot the poor prostitute or a woman who is unfaithful to her husband, or a man who loves another man?
KHOMEINI: If your finger suffers from gangrene, what do you do? Do you let the whole hand, and then the body, become filled with gangrene, or do you cut the finger off? What brings
corruption to an entire country and its people must be pulled up like the weeds that infest a field of wheat. I know there are societies where women are permitted to give themselves to satisfy the desire of men who are not their husbands, and where men are permitted to give themselves to satisfy other men’s desires. But the society that we want to build does not permit such things. In
Islam, we want to implement a policy to purify society, and in order to achieve this aim we must punish those who bring evil to our youth.
And here we have a position right out of the book of Hamas, which makes them not just wards of Iran, but imitators, KHOMEINI: The women who contributed to the revolution were, and are, women with the Islamic dress, not elegant women all made up like you, who go around all uncovered, dragging behind them a tail of men. The coquettes who put on makeup and go into
the street showing off their necks, their hair, their shapes, did not fight against the Shah. They never did anything good, not those. They do not know how to be useful, neither socially, nor politically, nor professionally. And this is so because, by uncovering themselves, they distract men, and upset them. Then they distract and upset even other women.
Regarding Khomeini’s rollback on the role of women, Sepideh Zamani, writing for the
Fikra Forum notes, “On March 7, 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini announced a mandatory
Islamic dress code, whereby women lost most of their rights. Rollbacks in family law rights occurred, and the now infamous morality police were established to enforce them. Today, the authorities arrest thousands of women for their clothing. The punishment is a prison sentence, flogging, or a fine. Women get slapped, beaten, and dragged to police cars, in public, and sometimes even by catchpole—a long pole with a noose at one end, used for controlling animals.”
Khomeini was not wholly opposed to all aspects of Western culture when they suited his Revolution, “We are not afraid of your science and your technology. We are afraid of your ideas and of your customs. Which means that we fear you politically and socially. And we want this to be our country. It would be best if you did not interfere anymore in our politics and our economy, in our habits, our affairs. And from now on, we will go against anyone who tries to
interfere — from the right or from the left, from here or from there.”
We shall talk later about the proxy wars Iran is conducting throughout the Middle East and how that right does not seem to exist in his neighbors. The current day Iran interferes in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Persian Gulf. By equipping Russia with weapons, Iran interferes with Ukraine. For the zealot, all is justified; it is divine.
One Western journalist described Khomeini’s robes, turbans, and long beards as something out of the 7th century. He was more correct than he knew. Whereas the current Presidents of Iran seemingly have authority and often dress in Western styles, the real power, the Supreme
Leader is always an Ayatollah and always dresses like a figure from medieval
times. They are walking reminders not only of Iran’s past but the linkage to Shiite beliefs.
Sunnis do not recognize the Shiite Imamate or believe in the return of the “Hidden Imam.” Nor do they follow influential religious leaders like the Shiite ayatollahs, who issue decrees on matters of Islamic law and even politics. Aside from Sunni scholars, Sunnism has no formal structure of clergy members. When Iraq was under Saddam Hussein’s Sunni Baathist
party, there were no Ayatollahs, but now, under the new regime, the majority Shia country currently features four Grand Ayatollahs.
So, I have spent the majority of this podcast on Khomeini, but though he is dead now for 34 years, his stamp on Iran is the key to understand their beliefs, their systems, and their goals for today. And one of those was a hatred for
Israel. Khamenei, after the attacks from Iran catspaw Hamas murdered 1,400 people, including women, teens, and infants, called Israel a “cancer” that will be eradicated by the ongoing terrorist attacks. Khamenei added that “God willing, the cancer of the usurper Zionist regime will be eradicated at the hands of the Palestinian people and the Resistance forces throughout the region.”
But there are two key pieces not directly pursued by Khomeini but are mainstays of Khamenei: Iranian reliance on proxies rather than their armies and the pursuit of a nuclear device.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal this past month,
Holman Jenkins notes of Iran,
As the Israel Defense Forces prepare to move into Gaza to destroy Hamas, one truth cuts through the fog: The greatest obstacle to peace in the The Middle East is the Islamic Republic of Iran. When I worked for President George W. Bush he would remind us that al Qaeda was at war with America long before we were at war with them. The same holds for Iran. So far, 30 Americans have died in this latest conflict with Hamas. But Iran has been killing Americans for decades. Iran gets away with it because it relies on proxies to do the dirty work when it operates outside its borders.
If the thought of a nuclear Iran does not instill a cold shiver, then you are of sterner stuff than I.
In the Ukraine conflict, there was concern about Putin’s use of such devices, but Putin is nothing if not a realist. Would an 84-year-old (Khamenei’s age), with the absolute certainty that heaven awaits, have such scruples if in possession of such a weapon? So, both the Obama and Biden administration has pursued the prevention of such but doing so in a way that furnishes Iran with the funds necessary to support their proxy campaigns. As with much of Democratic policy, their goals are understandable, but their approaches and methodology are near lunacy. This also means that a figure such as Biden, a politician to his core, cannot fully vent criticism of Iran when, a few scant months ago, he was pursuing a deal.
Walter Russell Mead noted of this approach, “Even now, Team Biden does not seem to have internalized the reality that that American policy of “conciliate to evacuate”-to develop a US Iranian détente that would allow the US to reduce its role in the region-remains, as it has since President Obama first began to implement it, a destabilizing force in the Middle East. It has discomfited our friends, disrupted our alliances, emboldened terrorists, and provided Iran’s mullahs with the resources to turn both Hezbollah and Hamas into formidably destructive forces.”
Whether it be the toppling or control of the government in Iraq, equipping factions in Yemen, or directly weaponizing and training anti Israel groups Hamas and Hezbollah in Gaza and Lebanon, respectively, when one scratches at a crisis in the Middle East, one finds Iran behind the
trouble.
This is from the 2021 State Department report on Iran: “In 2021, Iran continued providing weapons systems and other support to Hamas and other U.S.-designated Palestinian terrorist groups, including Palestine Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command. These groups were behind numerous deadly attacks [against Israel] originating in Gaza and the West Bank.”
For all of the hand-wringing around humanitarian aid to Gaza, it is lost on the anti-Israel folks that Hamas receives approximately $100 million per year from Iran. That would buy a lot of food and heating oil, but of course, it is used for weapons.
The concept of imposing a system upon another nation is not exactly new. It was Lenin and his successors who believed, after taking over Russia, that the exportation of communism was part of their mission. And during the early 1950s, with the loss of China, it seemed to be becoming a reality. But Communism lacks two vital pieces. First, because its economics, the concept of material equity, is so against the grain of human reality and desires, it never has been, nor will be, implementable. Eventually those smarter, harder working, or more ruthless will create inequality. The miracle of capitalism is that it harnesses this reality for the benefit of all. The other missing piece is the human need for spirituality. By rejecting religion and substituting in the state, Communists severed a key pillar of legitimacy. Note how Putin embraces the Orthodox Church in Russia having learned this lesson. By failing to produce economic success or providing spiritual nourishment, the likes of Stalin turned to the army for terror to maintain his regime, something we see in North Korea today. In the case of China, an embrace of western capitalism created the prosperity so lacking under the more doctrinaire Mao.
But what if one had all three? A spirituality so powerful that all actions are considered sanctioned by the divine. Material prosperity due to the value oil profits. And an iron control by a military entity such as the Revolutionary Guards. This would then allow the export of Revolution.
Today’s Iran is enthused not just with the ambitions of a single person, such as in Russia and North Korea, or the desires of a group of Oligarchs, as in China, but is something different. Conscious of a history that they believe entitles them to regional, if not global, leadership. They are fired not just by religion but the certitude that their interpretations are the right ones, and even those of fellow Muslims are wrong. Bringing the zeal of the revolutionary, a clear Iranian policy that does not include appeasement, needs to be articulated, debated, and implemented in the next few years, certainly before they obtain a nuclear device. I believe the Trump decision to target a leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards was just such a step. My views on Trump are clear, but it was one of his better decisions.
In the 1930s, having seen the horrors of World War up close, the French and British bent over backward to avoid such a fate. But it was that appeasement that sowed the seeds for the next conflict. Just as with World War II, the overarching concern that we do not prevent the next World War may well bring it on.