19 Years on Departure of Islamic Republic Founder

19 Years on Departure of Islamic Republic Founder

Mohamad Shmaysani

04/06/2008 Imam Ruhullah Al-Musawi Al-Khomeini was born on September 24, 1902 into a family of strong religious traditions in Khomein, a small town some hundred kilometers southwest of Tehran. His father, Ayatollah Mustafa was murdered by bandits only five month after the birth of Ruhullah, so that his mother and aunt were responsible for his early upbringing. At the age of nineteen, the young Imam Khomeini was sent to study the religious sciences in the nearby town of Arak under the guidance of Sheikh 'Abd al-Karim Ha'iri. In 1922, the young Imam Khomeini moved to holy city of Qom, and took up residence at the Dar al-Shafa school before being exiled to the holy city of Najaf in Iraq. Although during this scholarly phase of his life Khomeini was not politically active, the nature of his studies, teachings, and writings suggest that he believed early on in the importance of political involvement by clerics. Khomeini studied not only traditional subjects like Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh al-Shari'a), and principles (Usul), but also philosophy and ethics. His teaching often focused on the importance of religion to practical social and political issues of the day. Ayatollah Khomeini was now 60 and had assumed leadership following the deaths of Ayatollah Sayyed Muhammad Burujerdi (1961), the leading Shiite religious leader; and Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani (1962), an activist cleric. The clerical class had been on the defensive ever since the 1920s with the rise to power of Shah Reza Pahlavi. The "White Revolution" of Reza's son Shah Muhammad Reza, was a further challenge. In January 1963, the Shah announced the "White Revolution", a six-point delusive program to curb the expansion of anti-Shah clerical influence in Iran. Ayatollah Khomeini summoned a meeting of the other senior Marjaas of Qom and agreed with them to decree a boycott of the referendum on the White Revolution. On January 22, 1963 Khomeini issued a strongly worded declaration denouncing the Shah and his pro-Western plans. Two days later Shah took armored column to Qom, and he delivered a speech harshly attacking the Ulama (clerics) as a class. Imam Khomeini continued his denunciation of the Shah's programs, issuing a manifesto that bore the signatures of eight other senior Iranian Shia religious scholars. In it he listed the various ways in which the Shah had violated the constitution, condemned the spread of moral corruption in the country, and accused the Shah of submission to America and Israel. On the afternoon of 'Ashoura (June 3, 1963), Ayatollah Khomeini delivered a speech at the Feyziyeh madrasah denouncing the Shah as a "wretched miserable man", and warning him that if he did not change his ways the day would come when the people would offer up thanks for his departure from the country. On June 5, 1963, Imam Khomeini was arrested. This sparked three days of major protests throughout Iran and led to the killing of some 400 pro-Khomeini protesters. The Imam was kept under house arrest for 8 months and he was released in 1964. During November 1964, Ayatollah Khomeini denounced both the Shah and the United States, this time in response to the "capitulations" or diplomatic immunity granted by the Shah to American military personnel in Iran. In November 1964, Imam Khomeini was re-arrested and sent into exile. In early 1970 Khomeini gave a series of lectures in Najaf on Islamic Government, later published as a book titled variously Islamic Government or Authority of the Jurist (Welayat al-Faqih). Khomeini spent over 14 years in exile, mostly in the holy city of Najaf, Iraq. Initially he was sent to Turkey on 4 November 1964 where he stayed in the city of Bursa for less than a year. Later in October 1965 he was allowed to move to Najaf, Iraq, where he stayed until being forced to leave in 1978, after then-Vice President Saddam Hussein killed his son Mustapha and forced the Imam out after which he went to Neauphle-le-Château in France where he stayed for four months. Imam Khomeini became the most influential leader of the opposition to the Shah perceived by many Iranians as the spiritual, if not political, leader of revolution. As protest grew so did his profile and importance. Although thousands of kilometers away from Iran in Paris, Khomeini set the course of the revolution, urging Iranians not to compromise and ordering work stoppages against the regime. Imam Khomeini had refused to return to Iran until the Shah left. On January 16, 1979, the Shah did leave the country, never to return. Two weeks later on Thursday, February 1, 1979, Imam Khomeini returned in triumph to Iran, welcomed by a joyous crowd estimated at least three million. Fearing a spread of the Islamic revolution to Arab states, most of which were ruled by pro-American governments, Saddam Hussein, Iraq's Ba'athist leader, launched his full scale invasion against the Islamic Republic starting what would become the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq War. Saddam had received support from the US, Jordan and several other Arab states. By early 1982 Iran regained almost all the territory lost to the invasion. After this reversal, Imam Khomeini refused an Iraqi offer of a truce, instead demanding reparation and toppling of Saddam Hussein from power. The war continued for another six years. By 1988, Imam Khomeini, in his words, “drank the cup of poison” and accepted a truce mediated by the United Nations. As the war ended, Imam Khomeini’s health began to decline. After eleven days in a hospital for an operation to stop internal bleeding, Imam Khomeini died of cancer on Saturday, June 3, 1989, at the age of 89. Millions of Iranians poured out into the cities and streets to mourn the death of the Ayatollah. Iranian officials aborted Khomeini’s first funeral, after a large crowd stormed the funeral procession, nearly destroying Khomeini's wooden coffin in order to get a last glimpse of his body. At one point, Khomeini's body actually almost fell to the ground, as the crowd attempted to grab pieces of the death shroud. The second funeral was held under much tighter security. Imam Khomeini's casket was made of steel, and heavily armed security personnel surrounded it. In accordance with Islamic tradition, the casket was only to carry the body to the burial site. Imam Khomeini's funeral was the largest in history, with more than 12 million people attending the procession.

Iran grieves its charismatic Leader's loss

Iran grieves its charismatic Leader's loss
Tue, 03 Jun 2008 19:50:06
By Hedieh Ghavidel, Press TV, Tehran Rouhollah Mousavi Khomeini was born in the city of Khomein on Sept. 24, 1902, coinciding with the birth anniversary of the daughter of the holy Prophet of Islam, Fatima Zahra (PBUH).

The Imam came from a family of religious scholars who had devoted their lives to offering religious guidance to the thirsty-for-knowledge population.

Young Rouhollah lost his father, Seyyed Mustafa, when he was 5 months old. When he lost his mother in 1918, his brother Seyyed Morteza became his guardian.

He began his education by memorizing the holy Qur'an and was later sent to Arak (1920-21), and finally Qom (1923) to complete his religious education.

Young Rouhollah Khomeini

Imam Khomeini did not engage in any political activities during the 1930's, as he believed that the leading religious scholar of the time, Ayatollah Haeri, should have leadership of political activities.

When Ayatollah Haeri passed away and Ayatollah Boroujerdi became the prominent religious figure in Qom, Imam Khomeini dedicated most of his time to teaching Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), gathering around him students like Ayatollahs Mutahhari and Hashimi-Rafsanjani and Hojatolislam Bahonar, who would later become important figures in the movement which led to the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty.

In 1961, following the passing of Ayatollah Boroujerdi and after becoming a source of emulation, Imam Khomeini gradually entered the political arena.

In 1962, the government enforced new election laws which negated the former requirement for newly elected officials to be sworn into office on the holy Qur'an.

The Imam warned the Shah and the prime minister of the day that violating the law of Islam and the Iranian Constitution of 1907 would lead to a protest campaign headed by religious scholars.

In January 1963, the Shah announced his White Revolution, an American-inspired package designed to give his regime a liberal and progressive facade.

On January 22, 1963, Imam Khomeini issued a strongly worded statement against the Shah and his plans and the senior 'ulama' of Qom headed by the Imam boycotted the referendum.

Ayatollah Khomeini going to exile

He later issued a declaration which condemned the spread of moral corruption in the country, and accused the Shah of submission to the US and Israel and the violation of the constitution.

He also decreed that in protest to the policies pursued by the government, the Persian New Year celebrations, which fell on March 21, 1963, would be canceled that year.

On June 3rd 1963, coinciding with Ashura, in a speech at the Feyziyeh School of Islamic studies, Ayatollah Khomeini drew parallels between Yazid I, the man behind the massacre in Karbala, and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

In his historical speech Imam Khomeini criticized the Shah's regime for its dependence on foreign powers and its support of Israel.

He warned Mohammad Reza Pahlavi that should he continue in his tyrannical ways there would come a day when the nation would celebrate his departure from the country.

The Shah's secret service arrested the Imam two days after this speech and transferred him to a prison in Tehran. On June 5, when the news of Imam Khomeini's arrest became known, Iranians took to the streets in Qom, Tehran, Shiraz, Mashhad and Varamin.

Ayatollah Khomeini and his son Mostafa

The protests of June 5 became a turning point in Iranian history and eventually led to the Islamic Revolution in 1979. After six days of bloody confrontations between unarmed civilians and heavily armed paratroopers, order was finally restored.

The Shah was advised against killing Imam Khomeini as harming him would spark a public outcry and would have irreversible outcomes. Imam Khomeini returned to Qom after his release on April 7, 1964.

The Shah's regime, which continued its pro-American policies, granted capitulation rights to all American citizens in Iran in the autumn of 1964.

In a fiery speech Imam Khomeini announced that the agreement sold Iran's independence for a $200 million loan which would only benefit the Shah. He declared that all those who had voted for this agreement were traitors and that the government had lost its legitimacy.

Ayatollah Khomeini arrives in Tehran

On November 4, 1964, commandos arrested Ayatollah Khomeini in Qom taking him directly to Mehrabad airport in Tehran for immediate exile to Turkey in hopes that exile would make the Imam's popularity fade.

On September 5, 1965, Ayatollah Khomeini left Turkey for Najaf in Iraq, where he remained for thirteen years and continued to guide the course of the revolution.

On January 7, 1978 when an insulting article about the Imam was published in one of the local newspapers, heavy protests broke out all over the country.

The demonstrations, which continued throughout 1978, eventually turned into a widespread revolutionary movement demanding the overthrow of the Pahlavi regime and the establishment of an Islamic government.

On October 3, Imam Khomeini left Iraq for Paris residing in Neauphle-le-Chateau until January 16, 1979 when the Shah left Iran. The Imam finally returned to the country on January 31.

Imam Khomeini's shrine

After many days of continued protests and heavy clashes between government and popular forces, the remnants of the Shah's regime finally collapsed on February 12, 1979.

A nationwide referendum on March 30 and 31, resulted in a massive vote in favor of the establishment of an Islamic Republic. Imam Khomeini announced April 1, 1979, as the official birthday of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, spent the remaining years of his life in a modest house in Jamaran, Tehran.

On June 3, 1989, after eleven days in hospital Imam Khomeini passed away leaving the nation he had guided through the hardships of a long battle against injustice to mourn his loss for years to come.

Iran and Israel: Lost in translation?

Iran and Israel: Lost in translation?

Babak Yektafar explains the meaning behind Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rhetoric

Thursday May 15th, 2008

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterates controversial statements calling for an "end to the Zionist regime," leading different news services to translate his words in different ways, some making them sound more belligerent than others. The Real News Network Senior Editor Paul Jay speaks to Babak Yektafar of Washington Prism to discuss the meaning of the statements.

Babak Yektafar, Editor-in-Chief of Washington Prism is a graduate of Farleigh Dickinson University with a B.A. in Communications. From 1999 to 2005, Babak was a producer with C-SPAN network’s national live morning program, Washington Journal.

Transcript:

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, THE REAL NEWS NETWORK: US President George Bush arrived in the Middle East on Wednesday for a five-day tour of the region. He landed in Jerusalem, where he took part in celebrations surrounding the 60th anniversary of Israel's creation. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, reacted with a searing warning to Israel, which has elicited international scrutiny over the exact meaning of his words. To discuss the latest comments about Israel from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, we're joined from Washington by Babak Yektafar, editor-in-chief of Washington Prism. Welcome back, Babak.

BABAK YEKTAFAR, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, WASHINGTONPRISM.ORG: Thank you for having me.

JAY: Early Wednesday morning in the city of Gorgan, Iran, just outside of Tehran, President Ahmadinejad, speaking to a crowd of supporters, had this to say:

(CLIP BEGINS)

MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD, IRANIAN PRESIDENT (SUBTITLED TRANSLATION): The Zionist regime is dying. The region's nations hate this fake and criminal regime and if they find any opportunity, they will root out this fake regime.

(CLIP ENDS)

JAY: The subtitling that we showed you came from a translation provided to us by Associated Press. Reuters translate it like this: [text on screen] "given the briefest chance, to regional nations, they will destroy it"—"destroy it" clearly meaning the regime, the Zionist regime. Some of the publications seem to stretch it to the destruction of Israel. This reminds us of 2005, when President Ahmadinejad made another speech that was translated around the world in two very different ways. Most of English media heard a translation saying that Israel should be wiped off the face of the earth, whereas an Agence France-Presse translated it and others translated it as saying the Zionist regime is doomed to disappear. So I guess what I'm asking you here is there's two very different camps of translating what Ahmadinejad is saying. One is, you could say, a somewhat observer's voice, in grammatical terms a more passive voice: the Israeli regime is doomed; the Israeli regime will collapse. But another translation is far more active, which is to destroy the regime; sometimes it gets, more often than not in American media, as destroying Israel. So can you tell us what in fact is Ahmadinejad saying?

YEKTAFAR: Well, first of all, as you know, Paul, one of the difficulties of dealing with language, be it language used in the Middle East or English or any other, is these words, the nuances of the words, the context within which these words are being used, the word that he used yesterday in his speech in Farsi is the word ["ree-shih-KAN"], which literally translates into uprooting or pulling out from the roots the physical entity that's being uprooted. You also mentioned the phrase or the word that was used in 2005, which started this whole issue. Again, that's the word—he used the word ["math"], which given the context, given as to how it's being used, it means disappearance. And he at the time meant, and all throughout, I believe, has maintained that he is essentially talking about the physical state, physical borders of the state of Israel, and the government, or the regime, as he mentions, "the fake regime" he often uses. And I think in a lot of ways not only Ahmadinejad himself but the hierarchy of Iran's Islamic republic have tried to portray that this does not mean that they want to wipe out the Jewish population or anything like that. They constantly refer to the Jewish minorities in Iran and the representation that they have in the Iranian Parliament and so on and so forth. They're always as careful, as careful as they can be, to make sure that the reference is to the existence of the state of Israel at the expense of the Palestinians, the whole issue.

JAY: Now, the Iranian government does not recognize the state of Israel.

YEKTAFAR: No, they don't.

JAY: Ahmadinejad's made it clear he doesn't recognize the legitimacy of the state or the borders of that country.

YEKTAFAR: Exactly.

JAY: But it's one thing not to recognize it, and it's quite another to say you're in some active way going to destroy it, which is what we keep hearing over and over again from the White House and from most of the media. In terms of what Ahmadinejad is saying to Iranians in Iran, what is the real meaning of what he's saying?

YEKTAFAR: He is approaching it in two ways. I don't think I have heard, read anything that specifically portrays this as some sort of attack by Iran against the state of Israel. I think a great deal of reaction that we've seen actually is because of the fear that the Islamic republic has of a possible attack by Israel, and this has escalated with the United States being there. What Ahmadinejad has portrayed the situation is more of not a direct attack by Iran, but encouraging the people in some sort of an uprising, parallel to the whole idea that, again going back to the whole justice issue and the way he feels about the Shiite hidden Imam whose return is going to herald the end of the world and, you know, justice to the world and all that, that if the will of the people and some sort of an uprising is there among the neighbors, among the oppressed people of Palestine, among other Arab nations, and so on and so forth then Israel has no chance, *and it will be destroyed.

JAY: *But clearly Ahmadinejad's language often is very provocative. He's not a fool—he knows how this is going to play in international public opinion. He knows what organizing a Holocaust conference is going to play out in world public opinion. To some extent, he doesn't care, he wants to send that message, or is he just completely focused on Iranian public opinion and it doesn't matter too much to him how it plays out internationally?

YEKTAFAR: Well, a big part of it is the way he is focused on the Iranian internal politics, and that to the extent that he wants to have a system, essentially, or he wants the Islamic republic to go back to a kind of system that he believed made the Islamic republic the way it is, (A). And (B), a lot of it again comes from the fact of the mistrust that he has and a great deal of people, the ones, the veterans of the Iran-Iraq War, the mistrust that they have of the western world, and the way that the western world has treated Iran, as well as other countries in the Middle East. And, again, going back to the issue of Israel in the speeches that he has, that's his thing, that the state of Israel—and he calls it a fake regime—is there at the insistence and backing of other criminal powers, and usually this means the United States and Great Britain.

JAY: Now, people in the press and certainly the American government government portray Iran rather monolithically, at least the rulers of Iran. Ahmadinejad represents a very specific faction within the Iranian ruling elite. Is the kind of provocative rhetoric that he uses, does it represent the supreme leader? Does it represent people like Rafsanjani? How unified are they around this kind of positioning?

YEKTAFAR: That's the interesting thing about Iranian politics and the dynamics of the Iranian politics. There is no such directive, as far as I have observed and I can tell, by the supreme leader that this is how it should be done. However, there are groups here that are at play in trying to get the nod from the supreme leader. Remember, the supreme leader has never essentially taken a specific position in regards to foreign policy, even domestic policy. He essentially acts as an arbitrator, and he's very comfortable doing that. So when people like Ahmadinejad and people who think like him come up and say things of that nature, he has a tendency of seeing how does it play? How does it play internally? How does it play externally? If he's really unsatisfied, he will tell them to stop, you know, and clamp down, or he mobilizes other forces there to say things contrary to what Mr. Ahmadinejad has said. And we've heard things from Mr. Larijani, the former nuclear negotiator, who's insisting that, you know, we should start negotiating with the West and the United States, or Mr. Rafsanjani, who says that this kind of rhetoric and talk is not beneficial to the future of Iran, and all it's going to do is that it's going to invite trouble from, you know, various forces that are surrounding us.

JAY: Is Iran actually a credible threat to Israel? Or is this really all about Hamas and Hezbollah?

YEKTAFAR: Well, you have to realize all this talk about—I've said it many times—about Iran being this power or emerging power, there really isn't much there that tells me that Iran is a power that can be in a conventional war, that can have that kind of a power.

JAY: Babak, we're going to end the section here, and we're going to start a part 2 interview and discuss just what is Iran's role in the region and its relationship to Hezbollah, Hamas, and particularly what's going on in Lebanon now. Please join us for part 2 of our interview with Babak Yektafar. Thank you.

DISCLAIMER:

Please note that TRNN transcripts are typed from a recording of the program; The Real News Network cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

The Iranians, though no military powerhouse, have the ability to cause real damage to American forces and interests.

The Iranians, though no military powerhouse, have the ability to cause real damage to American forces and interests.

By Pepe Escobar

• Five ways to think about Iran under the gun

More than two years ago, Seymour Hersh disclosed in the New Yorker how George W. Bush was considering strategic nuclear strikes against Iran. Ever since, a campaign to demonize that country has proceeded in a relentless, Terminator-like way, applying the same techniques and semantic contortions that were so familiar in the period before the Bush administration launched its invasion of Iraq.

The campaign's greatest hits are widely known: "The ayatollahs" are building a nuclear bomb; Iranian weapons are killing American soldiers in Iraq; Iranian gunboats are provoking U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf -- Iran, in short, is the new al-Qaeda, a terror state aimed at the heart of the United States. It's idle to expect the American mainstream media to offer any tools that might put this orchestrated blitzkrieg in context.

Here are just a few recent instances of the ongoing campaign: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates insists that Iran "is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons."

Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admits that the Pentagon is planning for "potential military courses of action" when it comes to Iran. In tandem with U.S. commander in Iraq Gen. David Petraeus, Mullen denounces Iran's "increasingly lethal and malign influence" in Iraq, although he claims to harbor "no expectations" of an attack on Iran "in the immediate future" and even admits he has "no smoking gun which could prove that the highest leadership [of Iran] is involved."

But keep in mind one thing the Great Saddam Take-out of 2003 proved: that a "smoking gun" is, in the end, irrelevant. And this month, the U.S. is ominously floating a second aircraft carrier battle group into the Persian Gulf.

But what of Iran itself under the blizzard of charges and threats? What to make of it? What does the world look like from Tehran? Here are five ways to think about Iran under the gun and to better decode the Iranian chessboard.

** Don't underestimate the power of Shias. Seventy-five percent of the world's oil reserves are in the Persian Gulf. Seventy percent of the Gulf's population is Shia.

** Iran happens to be a nation-state at the crucial intersection of the Arabic, Turkish, Russian, and Indian worlds. It is the key transit point of the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Indian subcontinent. It lies between three seas (the Caspian, the Persian Gulf, and the sea of Oman). Close to Europe and yet at the gates of Asia (in fact part of Southwest Asia), Iran is the ultimate Eurasian crossroads. Isfahan, the country's third largest city, is roughly equidistant from Paris and Shanghai.

Members of the Iranian upper middle classes in North Tehran might spin dreams of Iran recapturing the expansive range of influence once held by the Persian empire; but the silky, Qom-carpet-like diplomats at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will assure you that what they really dream of is an Iran respected as a major regional power.

To this end, they have little choice, faced with the enmity of the globe's "sole superpower," but to employ a sophisticated counter-encirclement foreign policy. After all, Iran is now completely surrounded by post-9/11 American military bases in Afghanistan, Central Asia, Iraq, and the Gulf states. It faces the U.S. military on its Afghan, Iraqi, Pakistani, and Persian Gulf borders, and lives with ever tightening U.S. economic sanctions, as well as a continuing drumbeat of Bush administration threats involving possible air assaults on Iranian nuclear (and probably other) facilities.

The Iranian counter-response to sanctions and to its demonization as a rogue or pariah state has been to develop a "Look East" foreign policy that is, in itself, a challenge to American energy hegemony in the Gulf. The policy has been conducted with great skill by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who was educated in Bangalore, India. While focused on massive energy deals with China, India, and Pakistan, it looks as well to Africa and Latin America.

To the horror of American neocons, an intercontinental "axis of evil" air link already exists -- a weekly commercial Tehran-Caracas flight via Iran Air.

Iran's diplomatic (and energy) reach is now striking. When I was in Bolivia early this year, I learned of a tour Iran's ambassador to Venezuela had taken on the jet of Bolivian President Evo Morales. The ambassador reportedly offered Morales "everything he wanted" to offset the influence of "American imperialism."

Meanwhile, a fierce energy competition is developing among the Turks, Iranians, Russians, Chinese, and Americans -- all placing their bets on which future trade routes will be the crucial ones as oil and natural gas flow out of Central Asia.

As a player, Iran is trying to position itself as the unavoidable bazaar-state in an oil-and-gas-fueled New Silk Road -- the backbone of a new Asian Energy Security Grid. That's how it could recover some of the preeminence it enjoyed in the distant era of Darius, the King of Kings. And that's the main reason why U.S. neo-Cold Warriors, Zio-cons, armchair imperialists, or all of the above, are throwing such a collective -- and threatening -- fit.

** What is Ahmadinejad up to?: Ever since the days when former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami suggested a "dialogue of civilizations," Iranian diplomats have endlessly repeated the official position on Iran's nuclear program: It's peaceful; the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has found no proof of the military development of nuclear power; the religious leadership opposes atomic weapons; and Iran -- unlike the U.S. -- has not invaded or attacked any nation for the past quarter millennium.

Think of George W. Bush and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the new Blues Brothers: Both believe they are on a mission from God. But only Bush, despite his actual invasions and constant threats, gets a (sort of) free pass from the Western ideological machine, while Ahmadinejad is portrayed as a Hitlerian believer in a new Holocaust.

Ahmadinejad is relentlessly depicted as an angry, totally irrational, Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying leader who wants to "wipe Israel off the map." That infamous quote, repeated ad nauseam but out of context, comes from an October 2005 speech at an obscure anti-Zionist student conference.

What Ahmadinejad really said, in a literal translation from Farsi, was that "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the pages of time." He was actually quoting the leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, who said it first in the early 1980s. Khomeini hoped that a regime so unjust toward the Palestinians would be replaced by another more equitable one. He was not, however, threatening to nuke Israel.

In the 1980s, in the bitterest years of the Iran-Iraq War, Khomeini also made it very clear that the production, possession, or use of nuclear weapons is against Islam. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei later issued a fatwa -- a religious injunction -- under the same terms. For the theocratic regime, however, the Iranian nuclear program is a powerful symbol of independence vis-à-vis what is still widely considered by Iranians of all social classes and educational backgrounds as Anglo-Saxon colonialism.

Ahmadinejad is mad for the Iranian nuclear program. It's his bread and butter in terms of domestic popularity. During the Iran-Iraq War, he was a member of a support team aiding anti-Saddam Hussein Kurdish forces. (That's when he became friends with "Uncle" Jalal Talabani, now the Kurdish president of Iraq.) Not many presidents have been trained in guerrilla warfare.

Speculation is rampant in Tehran that Ahmadinejad, the leadership of the Quds Force, an elite division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), plus the hardcore volunteer militia, the Basij (informally known in Iran as "the army of twenty million") are betting on a U.S. attack on Iran's nuclear facilities to strengthen the country's theocratic regime and their faction of it.

Reformists refer to Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Tehran last October, when he was received by the Supreme Leader (a very rare honor). Putin offered a new plan to resolve the explosive Iranian nuclear dossier: Iran would halt nuclear enrichment on Iranian soil in return for peaceful nuclear cooperation and development in league with Russia, the Europeans, and the IAEA.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator of that moment, Ali Larijani, a confidant of Supreme Leader Khamenei, as well as the Leader himself let it be known that the idea would be seriously considered. But Ahmadinejad immediately contradicted the Supreme Leader in public. Even more startling, yet evidently with the Leader's acquiescence, he then sacked Larijani and replaced him with a longtime friend, Saeed Jalili, an ideological hardliner.

** A velvet revolution is not around the corner: Before the 2005 Iranian elections, at a secret, high-level meeting of the ruling ayatollahs in his house, the Supreme Leader concluded that Ahmadinejad would be able to revive the regime with his populist rhetoric and pious conservatism, which then seemed very appealing to the downtrodden masses. (Curiously enough, Ahmadinejad's campaign motto was: "We can.")

But the ruling ayatollahs miscalculated. Since they controlled all key levers of power -- the Supreme National Security Council, the Council of Guardians, the Judiciary, the bonyads (Islamic foundations that control vast sections of the economy), the army, the IRGC (the parallel army created by Khomeini in 1979 and recently branded a terrorist organization by the Bush administration), the media -- they assumed they would also control the self-described "street cleaner of the people." How wrong they have been.

For Khamenei himself, this was big business. After 18 years of non-stop internal struggle, he was finally in full control of executive power, as well as of the legislature, the judiciary, the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij, and the key ayatollahs in Qom.

Ahmadinejad, for his part, unleashed his own agenda. He purged the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of many reformist-minded diplomats; encouraged the Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance to crackdown on all forms of "nefarious" Western influences, and filled his cabinet with revolutionary friends from the Iran-Iraq War days. These friends proved to be as faithful as administratively incompetent -- especially in terms of economic policy. Instead of solidifying the theocratic leadership under Supreme Leader Khamenei, Ahmadinejad increasingly fractured an increasingly unpopular ruling elite.

Nonetheless, discontent with Ahmadinejad's economic incompetence has not translated into street barricades and it probably will not; nor, contrary to neocon fantasyland scenarios, would an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities provoke a popular uprising. Every single political faction supports the nuclear program out of patriotic pride.

There is surely a glaring paradox here. The regime may be wildly unpopular -- because of so much enforced austerity in an energy-rich land and the virtual absence of social mobility -- but for millions, especially in the countryside and the remote provinces, life is still bearable. In the large urban centers -- Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, and Tabriz -- most would be in favor of a move toward a more market-oriented economy combined with a progressive liberalization of mores (even as the regime insists on going the other way).

No velvet revolution, however, seems to be on the horizon.

At least four main factions are at play in the intricate Persian-miniature-like game of today's Iranian power politics -- and two others, the revolutionary left and the secular right, even though thoroughly marginalized, shouldn't be forgotten either.

The extreme right, very religiously conservative but economically socialist, has, from the beginning, been closely aligned with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Ahmadinejad is the star of this faction.

The clerics, from the Supreme Leader to thousands of provincial religious figures, are pure conservatives, even more patriotic than the extreme right, yet generally no lovers of Ahmadinejad. But there is a crucial internal split. The substantially wealthy bonyads -- the Islamic foundations, active in all economic sectors -- badly want a reconciliation with the West. They know that, under the pressure of Western sanctions, the relentless flight of both capital and brains is working against the national interest.

Economists in Tehran project there may be as much as $600 billion in Iranian funds invested in the economies of Persian Gulf petro-monarchies. The best and the brightest continue to flee the country. But the Islamic foundations also know that this state of affairs slowly undermines Ahmadinejad's power.

The extremely influential Revolutionary Guard Corps, a key component of government with vast economic interests, transits between these two factions. They privilege the fight against what they define as Zionism, are in favor of close relations with Sunni Arab states, and want to go all the way with the nuclear program.

The current reformists/progressives of the left were originally former partisans of Khomeini's son, Ahmad Khomeini. Later, after a spectacular mutation from Soviet-style socialism to some sort of religious democracy, their new icon became former President Khatami (of "dialogue of civilizations" fame). Here, after all, was an Islamic president who had captured the youth vote and the women's vote and had written about the ideas of German philosopher Jurgen Habermas as applied to civil society as well as the possibility of democratization in Iran. Unfortunately, his "Tehran Spring" didn't last long -- and is now long gone.

The key establishment faction is undoubtedly that of moderate Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former two-term President, current chairman of the Expediency Council and a key member of the Council of Experts -- the only institution in the Islamic Republic capable of removing the Supreme Leader from office. He is now supported by the intelligentsia and urban youth.

Colloquially known as "The Shark," Rafsanjani is the consummate Machiavellian. He retains privileged ties to key Washington players and has proven to be the ultimate survivor -- moving like a skilled juggler between Khatami and Khamenei as power in the country shifted.

Rafsanjani is, and will always remain, a supporter of the Supreme Leader. As the regime's de facto number two, his quest is not only to "save" the Islamic Revolution, but also to consolidate Iran's regional power and reconcile the country with the West.

If the Bush administration had any real desire to let its aircraft carriers float out of the Gulf and establish an entente cordiale with Tehran, Rafsanjani would be the man to talk to.

** Heading down the New Silk Road: Reformist friends in Tehran keep telling me the country is now immersed in an atmosphere similar to the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s in China or the 1980s rectification campaign in Cuba -- and nothing "velvet" or "orange" or "tulip" or any of the other color-coded Western-style movements that Washington might dream of is, as yet, on the horizon.

Under such conditions, what if there were an American air attack on Iran? The Supreme Leader, on the record, offered his own version of threats in 2006. If Iran were attacked, he said, the retaliation would be doubly powerful against U.S. interests elsewhere in the world.

From American supply lines and bases in southern Iraq to the Straits of Hormuz, the Iranians, though no military powerhouse, do have the ability to cause real damage to American forces and interests -- and certainly to drive the price of oil into the stratosphere. Such a "war" would clearly be a disaster for everyone.

The Iranian theocratic leadership, however, seems to doubt that the Bush administration and the U.S. military, exhausted by their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will attack. They feel a tide at their backs. Meanwhile the "Look East" strategy, driven by soaring energy prices, is bearing fruit.

Ahmadinejad has just concluded a tour of South Asia and, to the despair of American neocons, the Asian Energy Security Grid is quickly becoming a reality.

Two years ago, at the Petroleum Ministry in Tehran, I was told Iran is betting on the total "interdependence of Asia and Persian Gulf geo-economic politics." This year Iran finally becomes a natural gas-exporting country. The framework for the $7.6 billion Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, also known as the "peace" pipeline, is a go. Both these key South Asian U.S. allies are ignoring Bush administration desires and rapidly bolstering their economic, political, cultural, and -- crucially -- geostrategic connections with Iran.

An attack on Iran would now inevitably be viewed as an attack against Asia.

What a disaster in the making, and yet, now more than ever, Vice President Dick Cheney's faction in Washington (not to mention possible future president John McCain) seems ready to bomb.

-- Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is the roving correspondent for Asia Times and an analyst for The Real News. He's been a foreign correspondent since 1985, based in London, Milan, Los Angeles, Paris, Singapore, and Bangkok. Since the late 1990s, he has specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central Asia, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has made frequent visits to Iran and is the author of Globalistan and also Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge, both published by Nimble Books in 2007.

Copyright 2008 Pepe Escobar

TomDispatch

Source: Middle East Online