Jimmy Goes (Pea)Nuts

Jimmy Carter, our 39th President and man who ran the most disastorous presidency of the 20th century, has come out today calling President Bush's foreign policy the worst in our nation's history. He has equally kind and uplifting words for Tony Blair.

One wonders what is going on with Mr. Carter. His presidency was an utter catastrophe. In his post-presidency years, Mr. Carter actually accomplished far more for humanity building houses and erradicating parasites in Africa then he ever did as President. Why he did not maintain some dignity and stick with what has worked for him is a mystery.

Please note that I am not criticizing Mr. Carter solely to make an ancillary attack on his veracity and judgment. Rather, Mr. Carter's history and his view of acceptable foreign policy must be considered in assessing the worth of his judgment. And that assessment can only be that Carter's judgment of Bush's foreign policy is worthless as a valid criticisim. Actually, one could even go beyond that and argue that Carter's censure is actually to be taken as a sign that Bush is doing all the right things in the foreign policy arena.

Carter, besides domestically presiding over double digit inflation and the worst economy since the depression, was a tsunami of disaster in foreign policy. His one success was the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel. For a general walk down bad memory lane, here is a retrospective on the Carter years from 2002 by Jay Nordinger.

Perhaps President Carter's most infamous contribution to the mess that is the world today was his enablement of Khomeini's revolution in Iran and Carter's refusal to take effective action to end the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. As Amir Taheri recently explained:

The first contact between the US and the mullahs was established in November 1978, soon after Khomeini set up shop in a suburb of Paris. George Cave, the CIA's Iran specialist traveled to Paris and met Khomeini's close aides at the time: Abol-Hassan Banisadr and Ibrahim Yazdi. The message from President Jimmy Carter was one of support for the ayatollah and his Islamic Revolution.

When the Shah's regime collapsed, the early signs were encouraging for Carter. Khomeini's first Cabinet, under Mahdi Bazargan, included five ministers who had immigrated to the US from Iran and had become US citizens.

The Carter administration saw the Khomeinist revolution as the first step towards creating what Zbigniew Bzrezinski, the National Security Advisor, described as "a green Islamic belt" around the Soviet Union. The idea was that, in time, the "belt" would, become a noose that, when pulled, would strangle the Soviet empire.

Eight months after Khomeini had seized power, Bazargan met Bzrezinski in Algiers and obtained promises of US aid, and a resumption of military supplies, in the context of shared anti-Communist sentiments. Bzrezinski told Carter that Bazargan was "a man with whom we could do business."

A few days later, however, a band of militants raided the US Embassy in Tehran and seized its diplomats hostage. Bazargan and Yazdi, foreign minister at the time, were kicked out, never to return to power.

See here. And, for those of us who lived through the next 444 days, treated to video of our citizens paraded on t.v. while Khomeini consolidated power and made speech after speech about the Great Satan America, Carter's ineffectualness is seared into our consciousness. It is not unfair to say that Carter was midwife to the birth of political and radical Islam in the modern era.

Carter's recollection of events varies somewhat. According to Carter, he was responsible for ending the hostage crisis by his noble efforts.:

President Carter committed himself to the safe return of the hostages while protecting America's interests and prestige. He pursued a policy of restraint that put a higher value on the lives of the hostages than on American retaliatory power or protecting his own political future. The toll of patient diplomacy was great, but President Carter's actions brought freedom for the hostages with America's honor preserved.

That from an article on the subject available at the Carter Library. It's not even good fiction. Actually, the hostages were not released until the day Ronald Regean was sworn in as President. Only a fool would credit Carter with ending the crisis rather then Khomeini's calculus of Regean's likely response to Iran on Day 2 of his Presidency.

Possibly just below Iran on the scale of calamity, there was Carter's disastorous meddling in North Korea. In 1994, Clinton was in the midst of addressing North Korea's nuclear program when Carter, on his own initiative, travelled to North Korea and negotiated an utterly worthless agreement with North Korea that has, today, resulted in North Korea attaining nuclear weapons capability.

I could go on, but the legacy has been covered in far greater detail by far better authors then I. I would recommend that you go to Powerline and do a search for Jimmy Carter. The bottom line is, for Jimmy Carter to criticize Bush's foreign policy is the height of lunacy.

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A Significant Political Development in Iraq as the SCIRI Goes Local

There was a very positive political development Friday involving Iraq's largest Shia political party, the Supreme Counsel of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The SCIRI was originally a resistance organization formed in the 1990's by Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al Hakim. Al Hakim had fled to Iran to escape a death sentence from Saddam Hussein. With the support of Iran's theocracy, al Hakim formed a political organization, the SCIRI, that pledged to take direction from the Supreme Giude of Iran. The organization also had a military wing, the Badr Brigade. Anyone viewing the situation in 2003 would likely conclude that SCIRI was an Iranian proxy along the lines of Hezbollah. Events since 2003 have proven otherwise.

SCIRI joined Iraq's political process following the 2003 invasion. While the Badr Brigade pledged to disarm, they did not do so. Nonetheless, SCIRI has not engaged in the extreme anti-American rhetoric of Iran's other best friend in Iraq, Sadr, nor have they engaged in any sort of major hostilities with coalition forces. Actually, to the contrary, they have assisted coalition forces in several notable instances, though the slate is not clean. The Badr Brigades have been accused of playing a significant role in reprisal attacks against Sunnis in the months following the bombing of the Golden Mosque. But, even if true, there is no evidence of any ongoing major role in the sectarian violence.

Politically, the SCIRI has proven far more pragmatic then its religious origins and relationship to Iran's brand of Khomeinist political Shia'ism would lead one to project. Indeed, in December, 2006, in order to stop the havoc caused by the ever increasing sectarian attacks being carried out by the Sadr militia, SCIRI reached across the aisle to Sunni and Kurdish legislators to discuss the possibility of forming a coalition government that would isolate Sadr and his 30 member bloc in Parliament. This may well have been a critical event in moving Prime Minister Maliki to break with Sadr and support the counterinsurgency effort that today sees Sadr hiding in Iran while the U.S. military and Iraqi forces occupy Sadr City.

Now the latest acts of SCIRI suggest a much cleaner break with the Iranian theocracy:

Iraq's biggest Shi'ite party on Saturday pledged its allegiance to the country's top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, in a move that would distance it from Shi'ite Iran where it was formed.

The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) said it had introduced significant policy changes and changed its name to the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) -- dropping the word "Revolution".

Party officials told Reuters on Friday that the changes were aimed at giving the party more of an Iraqi flavor and to reflect the changing situation in the country since the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

They said the party had been close to Sistani for some time, but a two-day conference on Baghdad that ended on Friday had formalized relations with the influential cleric.

"We cherish the great role played by the religious establishment headed by Grand Ayatollah Sayed Ali al-Sistani ... in preserving the unity of Iraq and the blood of Iraqis and in helping them building a political system based on the constitution and law," said Rida Jawad al-Takki, a senior group member, who read out the party's decisions to reporters.

The party pledged to follow the guidance of the Shi'ite establishment, he said.

Sistani, a reclusive figure who lives in the Iraqi holy Shi'ite city of Najaf, is the spiritual leader of Iraq's majority Shi'ites. He rarely makes public statements but his utterances are closely monitored by his followers.

Officials said the party, which was formed in Iran in the 1980s to oppose Saddam, had previously taken its guidance from the religious establishment of Welayat al Faqih, led by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran.

They said the party had been close to Sistani for some time, but a two-day conference on Baghdad that ended on Friday had formalized relations with the influential cleric.

"We cherish the great role played by the religious establishment headed by Grand Ayatollah Sayed Ali al-Sistani ... in preserving the unity of Iraq and the blood of Iraqis and in helping them building a political system based on the constitution and law," said Rida Jawad al-Takki, a senior group member, who read out the party's decisions to reporters.

The party pledged to follow the guidance of the Shi'ite establishment, he said.

Sistani, a reclusive figure who lives in the Iraqi holy Shi'ite city of Najaf, is the spiritual leader of Iraq's majority Shi'ites. He rarely makes public statements but his utterances are closely monitored by his followers.

Officials said the party, which was formed in Iran in the 1980s to oppose Saddam, had previously taken its guidance from the religious establishment of Welayat al Faqih, led by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran. . . .

Read the entire story here. This is all very good news. Grand Ayatollah Sistani, himself an Iranian, is at odds with Iran's theocracy. He subscribes to the traditional principles of apolitical Shia'ism, which Khomeini shredded when he established a clerical regime in Iran following the 1979 revolution. Indeed, according to the Middle East Institute, Sistani's belief in non-political Shia'sm present "a serious threat to Iran’s Islamic Republic." Thus, for example, Sistani has refused to involve himself in criticizing or negating political proposals for de-baathification that would open the way for Sunnis to retake positions in government. The SIIC formal turn towards Sistani and break with Iran's theocracy is very significant. On its face, this move by 'SIIC' seems a very positive political development indeed.

(H/T Dinah Lord)

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Iran's Economic Time Bomb

Even as the Supreme Guide and the Supreme Mouth of Iran, Khamenei and Ahmedinejad respectively, seek to go nuclear, it may well be the local Iranians who go nuclear first. The clerics of Tehran and the IRGC have never paid that much attention to the economy, other then to squeeze every last dime from it that they can get. The Iranian economic system is famed for its corruption. But, up to now, subsidy of many everyday products, such as gas, have kept the middle class from joining the many segments of Iranian society ready to go into open revolt. Now as the economics get ever worse, the clerics are seeking to lay all the blame on Ahmedinejad and jettison him in hopes of keeping their skins intact and their bank accounts solvent (Allah be praised):

The play has ended and the 15 British pawns have returned to their families. The verdict is that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad neither enhanced his image as the divinely inspired warrior, who humbled the British lion, nor as the humanitarian, who freed the fifteen helpless prisoners.

The public was not fixated on the television drama that Ahmadinejad presented. Instead, Iranians are watching the prices of tomatoes and other basic necessities rising at between 20% and 40% per annum, while salaries and wages are scarcely moving.

On 21 May, the long awaited next economic blow will strike when gasoline rationing goes into effect. Iranian drivers will be limited to three litres per day at the subsidized cost of 40 cents per gallon. They will be permitted to purchase more than the three litres, but anything beyond the limit will be at a higher price. What that higher price will be has not been announced.

Rationing is the final admission by the Ahmadinejad administration that the program of promised prosperity that began a mere two years ago has failed and has brought only inflation, hardship and unemployment. The president’s preoccupation with verbal warfare with the rest of the world has done nothing to improve the lives of the Iranian public.

. . . [Ahmedinejad's recent] statements to the outside world may reduce the level of tension, but his political survival does not depend upon what foreigners think. His survival will be determined by what Iranians do; and they have spoken already. President Ahmadinejad’s days are numbered. His failed policies have alienated the lower income portion of the population that had been is strongest supporters.

He ignored in December the discontent of the public when his faction was defeated in the local elections. In spite of the severe losses, he continued his confrontations with the U.S. and the U.N.

Although he failed to heed the warning from the disenchanted voters, the conservative clergy that had elevated him from obscurity as the mayor of Tehran to the prominence of the presidency, were aware of his falling star. In January, while Ahmadinejad was visiting Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and other leaders with an anti-American view, the unelected Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei withdrew his support. Since then, the Supreme Leader has retreated into the safety of the shadows, while Ahmadinejad remains exposed to the public scorn.

Blame for everything that has gone wrong with the economy is being placed directly upon Ahmadinejad. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that “economics is for donkeys,” but he is demonstrating by his silence that he understands just how hard a hungry donkey can kick.

Ahmadinejad is learning that his former supporters have abandoned him and that is personal connections with the divine world will not protect him from the angry public. For that, he is relying upon the police and brute force. Any demonstration is being met with police batons and arrests. Opposing newspapers have been shut down; bloggers are being required to register. Once ignored morality codes are being enforced with a new vigour. Women wearing Western fashions are being warned that they can be flogged and barbers are under orders to provide only Islamic haircuts or face revocation of their business licenses.

The crack down gives signs of a pre emptive strike by a government preparing for worse conditions ahead. The real trouble is expected when the full impact of the rationing regulations is felt. During April, the first sign was an increase in the minimum charge by taxis that are often used for car-pooling. One more squeeze on already stretched home budgets could very easily be the breaking point that could send people into the streets to demand the resignation of the president. Saeed Laylaz, an Iranian economist, believes that rationing will stir social disorder and further economic stresses. His words are given credibility by the open grumbling that is being heard on the streets.

Khamenei and the “Grey Elite,” the conservative clergy that dominates much of Iranian life, seems to be preparing for Ahmadinejad’s departure. When the protesting demonstrators turn into the screaming mobs that want someone to pay for the public misfortune, the clergy will need a scapegoat; and no one fills that role better than Ahmadinejad, who has spent the two years of his administration cultivating the image of the firebrand.

Waiting in the wings to replace Ahmadinejad is Brigadier General Mohamed Baqer Qalibaf. Like Ahmadinejad, he was a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRG).

Mohamed Baqer Qalibaf was chief of the national police and succeeded Ahmadinejad to the office of mayor of Tehran. While Ahmadinejad has been portrayed often as a mystic, Mohamed Baqer Qalibaf is described as a “pragmatic conservative,” a man concerned with civic improvements and not with international confrontations.

. . . This is not a change in the essence of the system that gives the clergy its privileges. It is a change only of style in an effort to preserve the status quo, while giving the appearance of substantive change. A brief look at Qalibaf’s credentials reveals a man dedicated to the preservation of the current system.

How quickly the change comes will depend upon the determination of the demonstrators in the streets. When the mob demands blood, the Ayatollah will serve up the head of Ahmadinejad to satisfy the blood lust.

For the outside world, it should bring a respite from the months of threats and bluster. At that point, how much of a risk premium has been built into the price of crude oil should reveal itself. Whatever it is, the oil markets are likely to experience a softening in price, which actions by the George Bush Administration is making a more likely possibility.

. . . Now, we wait. Already, the grumbling in the streets has begun. Somewhere down the road in the near future, as people run out of gas, Ahmadinejad will run out of time. The neglected people will openly express their rage, and the pretence of change will come. It should for a while lower the pressure in the region; and it will all depend upon the anger of the mob.

Read the entire article here. My own personal suggestion to Khamenei and his corrupt and bloody clerics is that they pacify the mobs by suggesting that they eat some cake.

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What Now Inside Khomeinist Iran?

Walid Phares, the Middle East scholar and terrorism expert, argued at the start of the UK-hostage crisis that the Mullah's purpose in taking the hostages was mostly aimed inward, at providing justification for a tightening of the screws on a restive population and also an attempt at reigniting revolutionary zeal. See here and here. That assessment is borne out by Iranian author Amir Taheri, who gives us a view of the crackdown that is going on today in the wake of the hostage crisis.

. . . The crackdown is beginning to gather pace. Several publications critical of government have been shut down, and numerous officials regarded as "not revolutionary enough" elbowed out, especially in the provinces. And now the regime seems to be setting the stage for show trials that recall the worst days of Stalinism in the Soviet Union.

Last month, a member of the Majlis, the regime's ersatz parliament, was sent to prison for six years on trumped-up charges. The real "crime" of Salaheddin Ala'i: He had criticized the killing of dissidents in Iran's Kurdistan province.

Next week, it will be the turn of former Deputy Interior Minister Mostafa Tajzadeh, who'll stand trial on charges of undermining the security of the Khomeinist state.

Tajzadeh is one of the establishment's most interesting figures. A man with impeccable revolutionary credentials, he has always insisted that the regime cannot ensure its future by silencing or murdering critics.
The next on the block is expected to be Muhammad Reza Khatami - a brother of former President Muhammad Khatami - who also has an impressive revolutionary resume.

In 1979, he was one of the two dozen or so "students" who raided the United States' Embassy in Tehran and seized its diplomats hostage. Later, he built a career in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and solidified his revolutionary credentials by marrying a granddaughter of Ruhallah Khomeini, the ayatollah who created the Islamic Republic. During his brother's presidency, Muhammad Reza acted as deputy speaker of the Majlis.

Yet, he too, is targeted by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's new radical administration - charged with "activities that undermine the Islamic system."

Ahmadinejad believes that people like these three represent dangers for the system - if only because they insist that the authorities should obey the laws set by their own regime. In his view, a revolutionary regime, because it stands outside the normal framework of history, simply cannot be bound by any law.

According to dissident sources in Tehran, the regime's security apparatus is preparing show trials for scores of others. The chief targets: thousands of middle-class elements who joined the Khomeinist revolution because of a misunderstanding. Ahmadinejad calls them "the half-pregnant ones" - people who dream of being revolutionaries but also crave for a comfortable, Western-style bourgeois life.

Ahmadinejad's supporters speak of a "third revolution" - which, in practice, would amount to a purge of dissidents within the establishment.

Many actual or would-be dissidents have already left Iran for what they hope will be temporary exile in Europe or America. They include a dozen former Cabinet ministers and hundreds of lesser functionaries and apologists. If the looming crackdown gathers pace, thousands more may join them.

To prepare the ground for his "third revolution," Ahmadinejad has worked on three schemes.

* First, he has radicalized political discourse.

Under his two predecessors, Presidents Hashemi Rafsanjani and Muhammad Khatami, the regime had gradually changed its vocabulary by abandoning the revolutionary terminology and borrowing terms of ordinary politics.

Those two mullah-presidents spoke of economic development, civil society and a dialogue of civilizations. They also allowed some space for non-revolutionary (though not overtly counter-revolutionary) expression in such fields as art, cinema and literature.

. . . * Second, Ahmadinejad aims to link any criticism of the system with foreign powers.

In the decisions to close newspapers or put "khodi" figures on trial, the authorities drop hints about illicit relations with "foreign enemies of Islam." This amounts to a return to classical revolutionary lore in which anyone who criticizes the regime must be an agent of a foreign enemy.

* Ahmadinejad's third and perhaps most important scheme is to revive the regime's pretension of sacredness. He claims to receive periodic instructions from the Hidden Imam - a Mahdi-figure who, according to Shiite lore, went into hiding in 940 A.D. and will someday return to preside over the end of the world. He has thus restored the concept of the Hidden Imam to a central position within the Khomeinist doctrine.

The concept was pure fiction from the start, and most leaders of the Islamic Republic realized that retaining it posed insurmountable theo-political problems. This is why the Hidden Imam was given a back seat under Rafsanjani and Khatami, although both are Shiite clerics.

By restoring the Hidden Imam, Ahmadinejad makes it impossible for anyone to claim that Shiism, let alone Islam, admits of a range of interpretations. In this version of the Khomeinist doctrine, Islam is equated with Shiism, Shiism with the Hidden Imam - and the Hidden Imam with the Khomeinist regime.

THE "half pregnant" had hoped that "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenehi might, would, at some point, restrain Ahmadinejad. Earlier this month, however, Khamenehi, in his Iranian New Year message, paid glowing tribute to Ahmadinejad, and endorsed his strategy.

The "half-pregnant" are now forced to choose between becoming full-blown revolutionaries - or joining the counter-revolution.

Read the entire article here. There has also been a return to public punishents under Sharia law:

The reformist website Rooz reported on April 5, 2007 that the Friday prayer leader of Shiraz, a city in the heart of Iran, had called for more public punishments, as prescribed by "hodud," Islamic penal law.

After a convicted thief’s hand was amputated in public in Kermanshah, Ayatollah Mohiyeddin Shirazi, an appointee of the supreme leader of Iran, criticized the halting of public punishments, and added, "Those who say that practices like amputating hands belong to the past are themselves part of the past." He also claimed that imprisonment had no effect "on educating criminals and reducing crime."

At a meeting with judges from Fars province, Shirazi argued that public punishments are more effective that imprisonment: "Prison and imprisoning individuals do not have an effect on educating criminals and reducing crime. They also add to corruption." He also called for using criminals convicted for drug-related charges as forced labor.

Kermanshah judiciary head Allahyar Malekshahi promised more amputations in the future and said that citizens had requested the public amputation.

Contine reading here. (h/t LGF)

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Taheri on Iran's Act of War

Amir Taheri has an excellent article on Iran's kidnapping of the 15 British sailors and Marines. His point is that this was no simple act of border defense, irrespective of whether the Brits had strayed into Iranian territorial waters.

We may never know what actually happened. The area where the sailors were captured is at the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab, a border estuary that has caused two wars between Iran and Iraq since the 1970s. Iraq claims ownership of the entire estuary, while Iran wants it divided between the two neighbors. It is possible that the sailors thought they were in Iraqi waters while the Islamic Revolutionary Guard's Marines believed them to be on the Iranian side.

What is certain, however, is that the sailors would not have been captured without Tehran's approval at the highest level. The Brits based in Basra have often strayed into waters that Iran regards as its own; Iranians have also often passed into Iraqi waters.

In other words, these are almost daily incidents. The standard procedure is to warn the trespassers and guide them back to their own side of the water. If that procedure was abandoned this time, the reason must be someone's desire to provoke an incident.

If trespassing were the cause of the incident, one wonders why the Islamic Republic turns a blind eye to American vessels often straying into its so-called continental-shelf territorial waters. A casual boat ride in the Persian Gulf would offer the visitor countless examples of this on a daily basis.

It is possible that the mullahs don't yet wish to provoke a direct clash with the United States, and have used the incident with the Brits as a means of testing the waters. They may also hope that they could force London to press Washington to release the Revolutionary Guard commanders held in Baghdad in exchange for the British hostages.

The mullahs' move cannot be fortuitous: The Brits were captured on the eve of a new Security Council resolution, drafted by Britain, to impose harsher sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

It also came after months in which the Western powers have been exerting what is known as "proximity pressure" on the Khomeinist regime. A former deputy defense minister of the Islamic Republic, Gen. Ali-Reza Askari (Asgari), was kidnapped or defected and is presumed to be in the United States. Five senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including its head of special operations, Gen. Mohammed Jafar Sahraroudi, remain under lock and key after having been arrested by U.S. forces in Baghdad.

Tehran is full of rumors about supposed secret contacts established by the Americans with several senior political and military figures with a view toward a regime change. The contacts supposedly include a former prime minister and a former defense minister.

Not surprisingly, the "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei appears to have concluded that the best defense is to go on the offensive. In a tough speech last week, Khamenei in effect put the Islamic Republic on a war footing. He endorsed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "no compromise" position on the nuclear issue and threatened to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

Ever since it erupted on the scene, the Khomeinist revolution has always accompanied a hardening of its position by seizing hostages. In November 1979, just eight months after seizing power, the Khomeinist regime endorsed the seizure of American diplomats as hostages in Tehran.

During the following quarter-century, the Islamic Republic was involved in seizing more than 1,000 hostages from more than 30 countries in Iran or through its Hezbollah agents in Lebanon. These included a French ambassador to Tehran, Guy Georgy, two German bankers and eight American and French journalists - plus dozens of businessmen, priests and tourists from countries as far apart as South Korea and Italy. Right now, in addition to the 15 Brits, the Islamic Republic is holding a German hostage.

Western apologists for the Khomeinist regime have already started blaming the United States for having made the mullahs nervous. The argument of the apologists is simple: Don't do anything that makes the mullahs unhappy, or else they will do more mischief.

The truth, however, is that making the mullahs nervous may be the only way of persuading them to end their defiance of the United Nations and stop trying to export Khomeinism to neighboring countries.

Read the entire article here. Without going into extensive detail, I can attest, from my one year plus spent on the DMZ in Korea, of the accuracy of Taheri's description of how minor border are regularly treated between two countries without a clear border line and who are not in open hostilities.

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Iran's Theocracy Driving Younger Generation to Secularism

Given time, many expect the Iranian theocracy to crumble. There are too many faultlines in the society - the economy, jobs, and indeed, there is a signficant waning in religiosity as Iranians, particularly younger Iranians, become cynical of their government. Indeed, it is the faultlines in Iranian society that augur most against attakcing Iran over the nuclear issue unless there is no other choice.

This is from an article today in the Boston Review:

Modern Iran has consistently wobbled between the dual and sometimes conflicting pillars that define it: Islam, and what is now euphemistically called Iran’s “pre-Islamic heritage.” As Iran struggles to emerge from the oppressive failures of its Islamic revolution, it has grown increasingly conscious of its roots.

Despite Iran’s reputation as the harbinger of Islamic revolution, the simple fact is that Iranians never wanted an Islamic state in the way Ayatollahs Ruhollah Khomeini and Ali Khamenei have forged it. Many Iranians welcomed the re-emergence of religion in Iran after the Shah’s relentless modernism, but few wanted or expected the clerics to grab control over people’s daily lives and government.

While in most Sunni Arab countries matters of religion and state have always been inextricable, Iran’s Shi‘ite society sought to separate them. Shi‘ite clerics traditionally belonged to three schools of political thought—“loyalists” who believed in cooperation with the state, “opposers” who exercised moral suasion on the political process from the outside, and “quietists” who advocated outright withdrawal from politics. Before Khomeini, the latter were the largest group.

Khomeini introduced a radically new principle into Shi‘ite Islam: velayat-e faqih (or direct rule by the most senior cleric, i.e., himself). This novel doctrine progressively alienated Iranians and created deep divisions within the clergy, as in the current rift between the hard-line clerics led by Iran’s current Supreme Leader Khamenei (the new beneficiary of velayat-e faqih) and the reformers led by President Hojjatoleslam (the rank just below Ayatollah) Mohammad Khatami.

It is this Shi‘ite tradition of interpretive Islam and political freedom that is causing Iranians to chafe under Khamenei’s velayat-e faqih and giving rise to political changes that could produce the first and most sustainable democracy in the Middle East.

“A loss of faith with the mullahs [in government] has led to a loss of faith in the religion,” says Azar Bharami, a lawyer and women’s rights activist in Tehran. “When the government does not respect the [line] between religion and state how can people?” Numerous surveys, including one by the magazine Asr-e Ma (“Our Era”), have shown that most Iranians under the age of 25—who make up 50 percent of the overall population—consider themselves agnostic. Many young Iranians are cynical, even derisive, about their religion. Epithets like “mad mullahs” and “this thing Islam” are not uncommon.

I do truly hope that the "mad mullahs" do not force the hand of the West before Iran's experiment in theocracy can crash of its own corrupt weight.

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