"[Some] analysts," writes the historian and former Israeli Ambassador
to the United States, Michael Oren, "claimed the president [Barack
Obama] regarded Iran as an ascendant and logical power -- unlike the
feckless, disunited Arabs and those troublemaking Israelis -- that could
assist in resolving other regional conflicts. I first heard this theory
at Georgetown back in 2008, in conversation with think tankers and
former State Department officials. They also believed Iran's radical
Islam was merely an expression of interests and fears that the United
States could with sufficient goodwill, meet and allay. ... Iran,
according to Obama was a pragmatic player with addressable interest. For
Netanyahu, Iran was irrational, messianic, and genocidal – 'worse,' he
said, 'than fifty North Koreas.'"
[1]
Since the signing of the deal at the UN, hot-tempered criticisms and
defences have gone into overdrive in the political, journalistic, and
diplomatic spheres. Acres have been written and are still being written
about the deal, making it the hottest political potato of recent years.
Expert analysts such as
Omri Ceren and, more recently,
Joel Rosenberg
have cut through the deliberate obfuscation to show the extent of the
dangers the deal presents to the Middle East, the United States, Israel,
and the world.
The deal's supporters insist that it will bring peace and calm to the
region, while a host of denigrators -- chief among them Israeli Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu -- have exposed the enormous risks it
entails. Already, a vast
majority of American citizens are opposed to the deal.
Within the U.S. Congress, bipartisan opposition to the deal is high
and mounting. Yet, on September 2, President Obama succeeded in
winning over a 34th senator,
enough that ultimate passage of the deal is a foregone conclusion. That
does not, however, mean that the debate will end. In all likelihood, it
will grow fiercer as time passes and true consequences become clearer
to the public and politicians alike.
Recent revelations that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which oversees nuclear developments worldwide, has agreed that
only Iranians will be allowed to inspect
the most controversial of Iran's nuclear sites, have raised anxieties
about proper monitoring of the deal. The military complex of Parchin,
where Iran is suspected of work on nuclear weapons, will be closed to
outside inspection, making it certain that, if Iran decides to cheat
(something it has done before), it will be able to do so with impunity.
Sanctions will not be re-imposed. And, as we shall see, cheating on the
deal can be justified by the Iranians who could always refer to the
practice of the prophet Muhammad with the Quraysh tribe in Mecca.
Obama, his Secretary of State John Kerry, and the entire US
administration are not merely behind the deal, but almost fanatically
so. Many argue that Obama is more interested in securing his "legacy" as
the world's greatest peacemaker (or war-creator, as the case may well
turn out to be), the statesman
par excellence who alone could
bring the theocratic regime of Iran in from the cold and shower the
Middle East with true balance in its troubled affairs.
To bring this about, Obama has had to diminish, if not leave totally
open to obliteration, American support for Israel, the single country in
the world most clearly exposed to a possible genocide should the Iran's
Islamic regime choose to exterminate it, as it has so often threatened
to do.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's words
mellal-e Eslami bayad Esra'il-ra qal' o qam' kard
– "the Islamic nations must exterminate Israel" -- have been given
renewed vigour now that it is highly likely that Iran, evading serious
inspections by the IAEA, will soon possess the weapons to do just that.
Even if the treaty is a done deal, it is time to show yet another
massive hole in the administration's strategy. Already, Obama, Kerry and
the tightly knit administration have shown themselves remarkably
obdurate in turning a blind eye to the many concerns that surround the
deal. At the end of the "sunset period," if not sooner, Iran gets to
have, legitimately, as many bombs as it likes. Other problems include
breakout times; centrifuge production; centrifuge concealment; uranium
enrichment by stealth; refusal to allow the IAEA to inspect military
sites; the acquisition of intercontinental ballistic missiles --
presumably to be used intercontinentally at guess who. It is no secret
that the hardliners in Iran still speak of America as "
The Great Satan"
and consider it their enemy. That does not even include the
implications of lifting sanctions on, and paying billions of dollars to,
the world's main sponsor of terrorism.
As Michael Oren has shown, however, the American president presumably
thinks he is doing a deal with a logical and pragmatic regime. Barack
Obama, an intelligent, well-read man of Muslim origin, knows almost
nothing about Islam; that is the greatest flaw in the Iran deal he has
fought so hard to inflict on the human race. With access to platoons of
experts, to some of the greatest libraries with holdings in Islamic
doctrines and history, and with the Mullahs and Iran's public still
daily promising to destroy America,
Obama apparently still believes Islam is a religion of peace and that a
theocratic, terror-supporting, medieval regime should have the power to
make nuclear bombs. The obverse is that he might like, perhaps not
wittingly, to see America, Israel and the West brought to their knees.
This author
has previously exposed
one aspect of Iran's serious lack of logic, rationality, or pragmatism
-- namely the extent to which apocalyptic thinking, messianic prophecy,
and dreams of Islamic transcendence through universal conflict pervade
the clerical elite, a high percentage of the masses, and even the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. One might assume that this would be
especially true when they are flush with cash and nuclear weapons, and
the risk to their own survival is substantially lower.
On August 17, just over a month after the signing of the nuclear deal, Iran's Supreme Leader, 'Ali Khamene'i,
addressed a religious conference, where he expressed his undying hatred for the United States. He said, for example:
We must combat the plans of the arrogance [i.e. the West,
led by the U.S.] with jihad for the sake of Allah. ... jihad for the
sake of God does not only mean military conflict, but also means
cultural, economic, and political struggle. The clearest essence of
jihad for the sake of God today is to identify the plots of the
arrogance in the Islamic region, especially the sensitive and strategic
West Asian region. The planning for the struggle against them should
include both defense and offense.
The deal has done nothing whatever to stop military threats to
Israel, an ally of the United States (though treated with disrespect by
America's president).
Speaking on 2 September,
the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp's top commander in Tehran
province, Brigadier General Mohsen Kazemayni, stated that, "... they
[the US and the Zionists] should know that the Islamic Revolution will
continue enhancing its preparedness until it overthrows Israel and
liberates Palestine."
There is a simple word for this: warmongering.
Why is the U.S. President insisting on a bad deal with a warmongering regime?
When a military force at its strongest fantasizes about the coming of
a Messiah (the Twelfth Imam) to lead them to victory over all infidels,
talk of logic, rationality and pragmatism seems acutely out of touch
with reality.
Obama's assumption that there is something solid about the Iranian
regime that makes it suitable as a recipient for such largesse and the
chance to enrich uranium until kingdom come seems to be based on false
consciousness. The regime has been in place for almost forty years,
quite a respectable time for a dictatorship. In part, that has been
because it has mastered the art of suppression, giving its people a
degree of freedom that is missing in several other Islamic countries,
such as Saudi Arabia, Sudan, or Afghanistan. These partial freedoms,
especially for young people, lull the population into risk-averseness,
possibly helped along by the memory in 2009 of pleas for more freedom,
which the United States ignored and the mullahs savaged.
Obama, in his ongoing attempt to portray Islam as benign -- and a
dictatorial regime as a sold basis for peace and understanding in the
Middle East -- ignores the religious element of the theocracy, as well
as the sadistic repression, and in doing so misses a lot.
First of all, Shi'ite Islam is different from its Sunni big brother.
It is deeply imbued with features largely absent from Sunni Islam. The
most important Shi'i denomination is that of the Twelvers (Ithna'
'Ashariyya), who, from the beginning of Islam, have believed themselves
to be not only the true version of the faith, but the group destined by
God to rule in its name. Beginning with 'Ali, the son-in-law of the
Prophet and the fourth Caliph of the Sunnis, the Shi'a began as his
supporters. (Please see the Appendix that follows this article: it
contains material that even Barack Obama and his advisors need to know;
without it, they simply will not "get" what the ayatollahs are about. It
comes to an important conclusion that has considerable bearing on
today's events -- and not the one you may expect.)
Beneath the smiles and banter lie the unsmiling masks and the
taqiyya-flavoured
lies. Beneath the wheeling and dealing and the refusals to compromise
lies a sense of destiny for the regime, a belief that it stands on the
brink of the realization of the centuries-old Shi'ite dream: that God
will finally set his people on the pinnacle of the world and usher in
the never-ending reign of the Imam Mahdi, with all injustice gone, the
martyrs in paradise, the ayatollahs and
mujtahids and
maraji' in glory, and all the infidels in hell.
It is precisely because Barack Obama and his aides have never got
down and dirty to take in hard information that they have remained
utterly out of touch with the real springs and cogs of Iranian Shi'ite
thinking.
Obama has, when all is said and done, let himself be deluded by the
charm offensive of Hassan Rouhani and his henchman Javad Zarif. Obama
may not believe in the mystical land of
Hurqalya or the white
steed on which the Twelfth Imam will ride to the world's last battle any
more than you or I do. But the clerical elite of Iran, and those who
follow them blindly -- men and women brought up from birth on these
tales, and who travel in the thousands every day to send a message to
the Imam at the Jamkaran Mosque near Qom -- believe these things with
absolute devotion, and that is why this story matters, because it has
political consequences.
Shi'i Muslim law enshrines
jihad, holy war, as fully as does
Sunni law. For Sunnis, jihad has always been possible under the
authority of a Caliph, whether fought under his orders or led by kings
and governors under his broad aegis.
The Shi'a, however, do not recognize the Caliphate and have often
been the victims of Sunni jihads. They may feel impelled to fight a holy
war, but under what authority could they do so?
The power of the clergy had waned under the anti-clerical reign of
Iran's Pahlavi dynasty (1925-1979), only to burst out more strongly than
ever in the Islamic Revolution, which placed all authority in a new
system of government: rule by a religious jurist, a
faqih.
[2]
Overnight, a jihad state was brought into existence; a jihad state with
vast oil reserves, modern military equipment, and, at first, the
support of almost the entire Iranian population. The clerical hierarchy
under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini did not just intend to prepare the way
for the coming of the
Mahdi. They were now his earthly deputies, in whose hands lay life and death for millions.
The new Shi'ism allowed the clergy to take on powers they had never
imagined. More and more economic and legal power came to be concentrated
in the hands of a narrow body of scholars, and sometimes a single man
could be the source of religious and legal authority for the entire
Shi'i world -- in Iran, Afghanistan, eastern Arabia, Bahrain, and so on.
Thus were the foundations laid for the revolutionary rank of Supreme
Leader, taken by the Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamene'i.
Look for a moment at the preamble to the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
[3]
You will see quickly that this does not read like any other
constitution you have seen. The preamble sets the tone. Here, in an
account of the circumstances leading to the revolution we read of the
clergy as the
ruhaniyyat-e mobarez, "the militant or fighting clergy." These are not Anglican vicars at their prayers or rabbis studying Talmud. A
mobarez
is a warrior, a champion, a fighter. Not far down the preamble, one
encounters a description of their struggle as "The Great Holy War,"
jihad-e bozorg.
We are not in Obama's world of logical and pragmatic striving for
political and diplomatic coherence. This is made even clearer in one of
the constitution's earlier articles, "The Religious Army." Here, we read
that the Iranian Army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps "have
responsibility... for a religious mission, which is Holy War (Jihad) in
the path of God, and the struggle to extend the supremacy of God's law
in the world."
How do you reach a compromise and a pragmatic deal with a regime that
thinks in this way? Are the U.S. administration and the P5+1 blind to
something the Iranians have never even bothered to conceal? Do they
really take everything in the talks at face value? Perhaps they think
references to jihad and fighting clergy are nothing more than pious talk
"for domestic consumption," as they tried to explain -- as real and
everyday as the myths and legends of other faiths. If they do, then they
have far less excuse for their blindness, for the Iranian regime is
already at war and is already fighting its jihad.
In Iraq, for example, a country with a majority Twelver Shi'i
population, Iranian-backed militias have been at war for many years,
first against the Americans, then the Sunnis, and now the hordes of
Islamic State. In June 2014, Grand Ayatollah al-Sayyid 'Ali al-Husayni
al-Sistani
issued a fatwa calling on Iraqis to fight against Islamic State, justifying their fight as
jihad wajib kafa'i:
a Jihad that is compulsory for those who choose it, but not for the
entire population. The ruling calls for a struggle against ISIS's
irhab – their "terrorism." Jihad is a religious and legal duty, and even though ISIS may call its fighting
jihad, it is here condemned as terror.
Hezbollah, created and backed by Iran, is by far the largest
terrorist group in the region. Hezbollah is considered a state within a
state, with forces and infrastructure inside Lebanon and Syria. It has
used the name "Islamic Jihad Organization" to cover its attacks on
Israeli forces in Lebanon. In its 1988
Open Letter (
Risala maftuha),
it describes its followers as "Combatants of the Holy War" and goes on
-- in terms similar to those in the Hamas Covenant -- "our struggle will
end only when this entity [Israel] is obliterated. We recognize no
treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate
or consolidated."
Hezbollah and its creator, the Iranian Islamic regime, have a curious
link to the Palestinian terror movement, Hamas, despite Hamas being
exclusively Sunni. By financing, arming, and defending Hamas, Iran is
fighting a strange proxy jihad that serves its own purposes of defying
the West, achieving regional hegemony, and winning praise from all
Muslims in the world for its own war against Israel. It also furthers
the goals of the Muslim Brotherhood (of which Hamas is the Palestinian
branch) in the same struggle.
I have dragged you through the briars and mud because it is important
here to see another culture through its own eyes. If we insist in
pretending that Shi'i Muslims think like Sunni Muslims or, worse still,
like Jews or Christians -- if we brush all that history and all those
doctrines under the carpet of "any deal is better than no deal " -- we
will go on making the same mistakes. We will believe that a purely
political and diplomatic enterprise to bring Iran in from the cold and
create a new trading alliance will transform an evil regime into a land
of sweetness and light.
Members of the U.S. Congress must wake up and examine, in however
cursory a fashion, these views that motivate the Iranian leadership, and
must stop pretending that they are as logical and pragmatic as would be
convenient for the wishes of the West.
Not that Obama and Kerry have ever sounded logical or pragmatic in
how they have approached this debate and this deal-making process. In an
act of supreme folly, the
White House has dismissed Ayatollah Khamene'i's recent call for "Death to America;" they pretend it is just empty rhetoric for the Iranian people.
Left:
Senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Movahedi Kermani, speaking
on July 17 in Tehran, behind a banner reading "We Will Trample Upon
America" and "We defeat the United States." Right: Iran's Supreme
Leader, Ali Khamenei, proclaims "Death to America" on March 2.
|
We are walking with a blindfold toward sure disaster. Forget the
dreams of a Messiah if you will, but do not for one moment let yourself
be lulled into thinking that only ISIS is serious about waging a jihad.
Despite their oft-expressed delusion that "Islam is a religion of
peace," President Obama, Secretary John Kerry and other leaders are,
like it or not, already engaged in a war against jihad. They have
already fought it in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere. However
much Obama wants to stand off from involvement in the jihad struggles of
the Middle East, he cannot: Western states are fighting jihad,
sometimes abroad, increasingly at home.
A Third World War is already taking place, a war the Islamists and
Islamic states understand, but which many in the West still refuse to
grasp. They are not even willing to respect the true motivations of the
enemies against whom they fight. The Iran deal strengthens the hands of a
regime that is the world's terrorist state, a state that furthers jihad
in many places because its clerical hierarchy considers itself uniquely
empowered to order and promote holy war.
Let us for the moment ignore the nuclear aspect of this deal and look
instead on what it offers the world's leading jihad state. The removal
of sanctions coupled with the business deals Europeans and others are
rushing to secure, the delivery of perhaps $150 billion to Tehran, and
the turning of many blind eyes to both Iran's internal repression and
its jihad wars in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Gaza, and Lebanon leave the
ayatollahs poised to dominate much of the Middle East.
And that is not all. Obama's belief in the stability of the Iranian regime seems to rest on its endurance since 1979. His
trust in Khamene'i's presumed fatwa of 2013, forbidding nuclear weapons rests on the assumption that it even exists. It does not.
No one has ever seen it. Even if the
fatwa did exist,
fatwas
are not permanent. They are always regarded as temporary rulings with
Twelver Shi'ism. This is a crucial technical point that the White House
seems incapable of -- or ill-disposed to -- grasping.
Further, Obama's faith in Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as a
reformer and moderate flies in the face of Rouhani's devotion to the
hardline clerical leadership of which he is a part. Here are a few
facts:
- 'Ali Khamene'i is 76 years old, but his health is poor and he
may not live much longer. Already, factions within the hierarchy will be
jostling for the Supreme Leadership.
- In the Usuli Twelver version of Shi'ism, once a Mujtahid dies, his fatwas are no longer valid. A new Mujtahid or, in this case, a new Supreme Leader, has to issue fatwas of his own. A new fatwa may confirm an old one or radically differ from it.
- A new Supreme Leader is an unpredictable personality.
- The Iranian nuclear program is already up and running.
- The breakout time for weapons grade materials may be as short as three months.
- Iran already has and is acquiring ballistic missiles with an intercontinental range.
- Jihad is hard-wired into the regime's philosophy.
- Iran is already conducting a series of jihad wars abroad.
- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has expressed a hope to return to the presidency
in 2017. Ahmadinejad and his clique are bent on apocalyptic outcomes
and actions to bring the Hidden Imam back to this world.
We only have to get this wrong once. Chants of "Death to America" and
"Death to Israel" are not narcotic iterations of slogans but sincerely
felt expressions of intent.
Khamene'i last month praised the Iranian people for calling for the
deaths of the USA and Israel, and said that he hoped God would answer
their prayers because in at most ten years, the Iranian mullahs and
their IRGC will possess the power to exterminate Israel, if they and
their God so wish.
Why, then, is this deal going ahead at all?
Why are sanctions against the world's leading exporter of jihadi terrorism being lifted, not strengthened?
Why is one of the world's most tyrannical regimes being rewarded for
its intransigence, and especially for repeatedly violating the
Non-Proliferation Treaty?
Why has Israel's Prime Minister been vilified and sidelined simply
for drawing attention to the weaknesses of a deal that could lead to the
death of all of his people?
Why have the P5+1 never taken seriously the Shi'ite rule that it is
permitted to lie to infidels and conceal one's own true intentions?
Why are secrets being kept -- such as the contents of the two side-deals?
Why is the U.S. Congress being asked to vote without the benefit of full disclosure?
Why is the IAEA banned from spontaneously inspecting only
declared Iranian nuclear sites, and why are military sites completely off-limits?
The questions are so many and so critical that we remain in the dark
about where this will lead mankind. No one who has ever done a financial
or political deal would ever sign on the dotted line until they had
answers to all their questions. Far more hangs on this deal than perhaps
any deal in history. Yet those who want to make it enforceable under
international law are uninformed about the most basic contents of the
deal, as well as the beliefs and historical roots of their enemy.
Such folly is almost without precedence, except possibly in the
process of appeasement that endeavoured to placate the Third Reich and
treat Adolf Hitler as the best friend of democracy.
The Iranian regime not only despises democracy, it considers all
Western law -- including international law -- invalid. This view has
several deep roots. For both Sunni and Shi'i Muslims, only rule under
God is valid, under a Caliph or a clerical theocracy under a Supreme
Ruler. Human beings have no right to interfere. Democracy leads to the
making of human laws that may contradict shari'a law, and such
effrontery is considered arrogant and presumptuous. The democratic
elements in Iran are tightly controlled, and supremacy rests in all
areas beneath clerical authority. The same principle applies to
international law, UN resolutions, treaties and so forth.
Iran has openly genocidal intent, as well as a devotion to holy war that goes to the very deepest level.
Before we leave the subject of jihad, there is one other factor that
everyone has overlooked. It is the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, the most
important agreement in early Islamic history. In the year 628, Muhammad,
now ruling in Medina, signed the ten-year Treaty of Hudaybiyyah with
his long-time enemies, the tribal confederacy of Quraysh, who ruled
Mecca. Twenty-two months later, under the pretext that a clan from a
tribe allied with the Quraysh had squabbled with a tribe allied to the
Muslims, Muhammad broke the treaty and attacked Mecca, conquering it.
What is important about this is that Muhammad had made the treaty
while he was still relatively weak. But in the months after signing it,
his alliances and growing conversions meant that he now possessed
superior military strength -- and that was when he pounced.
In 1994, the treaty became crucial to the issue of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
[4]
In September 1993, Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat signed the Oslo
Accords along with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the
following year the two leaders were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
However, even as he awaited that prize, Arafat spoke at a mosque in
Johannesburg alluded to the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah and referred to "a
jihad to liberate Jerusalem": "I see this agreement," he said, "as being
no more than the agreement signed between our Prophet Muhammad and the
Quraysh in Mecca."
Non-Muslims may well have misunderstood this as a reference to some
early Muslim peace-making. But Arafat made his meaning clear: "We now
accept the peace agreement, but [only in order] to continue on the road
to Jerusalem."
[5]
The nuclear deal that President Obama and his supporters have imposed
will strengthen Iran considerably, removing sanctions and delivering
perhaps $150 billion to the country. It is as certain as day follows
night, that the Iranian regime will find a pretext to break the deal.
Already, on September 3, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene'i made it
clear that
he would back out of the deal if sanctions were not completely removed at once.
Whatever happens in the days ahead, the U.S. Congress, backed by a
majority of the American public, needs to strike this madcap deal down
before it wreaks a storm of tribulations on everyone.
Denis MacEoin has a PhD (Cambridge 1979) in Persian Studies and has written widely on Iran and its religious beliefs.
Appendix
'Ali became the first in a line of twelve imams, all deemed the true
leaders of Islam, but all denied their right to rule and all but one
assassinated (or so it is claimed) by the Sunni Caliphs. From this comes
the Shi'i sense of suffering, injustice, oppression by despots, neglect
and rights -- all of which played an important part in the 1979
revolution and continue to play out across society.
The Shi'a are the underdogs who are willing to sacrifice all to
establish the rights of their imams and their successors. That was what
the 1979 evolution was all about, and it is what present the regime
still insists on as the justification for its opposition to Western
intrusion, democracy, women's rights and all the rest, which are deemed
by Iran's leadership as part of a plot to undermine and control the
expansion of the Shi'i faith on the global stage.
The twelfth imam, according to Shi'ite legend, was a young boy,
Muhammad al-Mahdi, the son of the murdered eleventh imam. Born in 869 in
the Iraqi city of Samarra during the reign of the Sunni Abbasid
Caliphate, his father, Hasan al-'Askari, died when Muhammad was born.
It is said that young Muhammad, in order to avoid his enemies, went into something called Occultation (
ghayba). Even if this originally was physical, he was never seen alive again and is supposed to have entered the celestial realm of
Hurqalya,
from which he will one day return as the promised Saviour, the Qa'im
bi'l-Sayf, the One Who will Arise with the Sword to do battle with
injustice and infidelity.
This belief is what waters modern Shi'i apocalypticism, something
promoted intensely
by former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This expectation has
considerable significance for Iran's drive to nuclear power. But that is
not why I raise the issue here. There is another, more mundane, aspect
to the Imam's disappearance and continued Occultation, and it may be
even more relevant to the matters at hand.
The answer to what authority they could fight under was that only the
Imam in each generation could order or lead jihad. But when the twelfth
Imam vanished from human sight, was jihad to remain in abeyance until
his return or could it be fought under another authority? The answer was
not at first simple, but one thing started to happen: the Shi'a began
to consider their religious scholars to be the intermediaries with the
Imam, and this laid the basis for the possibility that they might have
the right to order jihad. For some time, this was just conjectural, for
the Shi'a had little worldly power.
In 1501, a new dynasty, the
Safavids,
came to power in Iran, forced most of the population to convert to
Shi'ism, and created a line of kings under whom the clerical class
became more and more powerful. The Shah could still lead jihad, but the
clergy were needed to give permission. The Safavid dynasty lasted till
1722, and an interregnum was followed by the emergence of a new line of
Shahs, the
Qajars, who ruled from 1796 to 1925.
Under the Qajars, the Shi'i clerical hierarchy underwent deep and
lasting changes, producing today's version of Twelver Islam, the Usulis.
The newly powerful
'ulama of the 19
th century took
on the mantle of deputies for the Hidden Imam and ordered jihads in 1809
and 1826 (against Russia), 1836, 1843, and 1856-7 (against the
British). In 1914, when the British occupied Iraq at the start of World
War I, the Shi'i clergy in the shrine centres there declared jihad to
reinforce the call for Holy War by the Ottoman empire.
[1] Ally by Michael Oren
[2] As in Khomeini's theory and book,
Velayat-e Faqih, the Custodianship of the Jurisprudent.
[3] Here in English,
here in Persian.
[4] For a detailed discussion of the treaty and its implications for making peace with Muslims, see Daniel Pipes, "
Lessons from the Prophet Muhammad's Diplomacy,"
The Middle East Quarterly, September 1999, pp. 65-72.
[5] Natasha Singer, "
Arafat Text Raises Ire,"
Forward, May 27, 1994.
