When a dream is shattered by an awakening, howsoever expected, the dreamers desperately try to cling to remnants of the sweet fantasy. That is what is likely to happen in Iran in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of its Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei.
For many millions of Shias around the world, Iran’s Islamic revolution led by a cleric of their own, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was a dream come true. I was witness to this from close proximity in 1979. Although the revolution ate many of its own children and drove Iran to dire economic straits, clerical rule still has millions of adherents within. From Karbala to Kargil, from Damascus to Dammam, Shia faith is strong enough to fester disaffection across the Arab world in repercussion to Khamenei’s assassination, with lasting consequences.
There were demonstrations during the weekend at the Shia strongholds of Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh. On Sunday, the US consulate general in Karachi was under siege. These demonstrations are likely to spread because this is the month of Ramadan, holy for both Shias and Sunnis.
If the Islamic Republic is toppled through ‘shock and awe’, the chaos that followed the ouster of dictator Saddam Hussein in Iraq is likely to be repeated in Iran. The history of Shia Islam is deeply rooted in the idea of martyrdom since the Battle of Karbala in 680 CE till Iran’s Islamic revolution and in the subsequent assertion of Shia ideology post the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
What Khamenei’s death symbolises is the end of a sprawling and hitherto-formidable Shia Islamic crescent extending from Iran through Iraq, Lebanon and Syria in power, but also incorporating Shia majority Bahrain, eastern Saudi Arabia, pockets in north India and parts of Pakistan without power or trappings of office. Israel has significantly defanged some of these Shia forces since the devastating Hamas attacks in the Gaza Strip.
Khomeini will be judged by history as the astute cleric who sowed the seeds of this Shia crescent, but its emergence was ironically aided by Washington’s lack of understanding of the Gulf—both the Persian and Arab sides—since the administration of Jimmy Carter until the present rule of Donald Trump. These US leaders put all their eggs in the Jewish Israeli basket, forgetting that Muslim Arabs are also people with aspirations, emotions, rights and consciousness like the Jews.
Successive occupants of the White House assiduously cultivated Arab rulers in the region to the exclusion of those they rule over. People-to-people relations were not on their agenda. When the masses seized power, as in Tehran led by Khomeini, they inevitably related to the US only as the ‘Great Satan’. This will not change with the assassination of Iran’s spiritual leader.
There are plenty of Iranians who will rejoice in the death of Khamenei, especially in Tehran’s prosperous north, where nothing much changed during the four decades of Islamic rule. Western movies and pop music can still be bought there, women barely cover their heads and teenagers groom spiky hair—everything the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) would consider decadent. The so-called mullahcracy has, by and large, left north Tehran alone, partly because that is where the capital’s wealthy live. Even the regime needs some of the ‘bazaari wealth’ there.
If the US and Israel succeed in regime change in Iran, they will be surprised that north Tehranis, who have never liked clerical rule, will be opposed to any foreign invasion. That is the paradox of Iran, which a post-Khamenei regime will find as its most formidable challenge.
New Delhi is preparing to cope with the fallout of events that led to Khamenei’s assassination. These have potentially serious economic consequences for everyday Indians that are yet to unfold. It is advisable in this context for Indian policymakers and strategic thinkers to read an insightful biography, Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Very British Coup by Christopher de Bellaigue. The book was published just over a decade ago. President Trump’s statements on Iran since the first US bombing of Iran last year, but more pertinently since last weekend, are eerily reminiscent of some of the unputdownable pages in this book. They show the mettle of Iranian nationalism. More important, they show how Qom, the Islamic Republic’s spiritual home, can link up with Najaf, Iraq, which has its own Grand Ayatollah—the 95-year-old Ali al-Sistani—who is revered even by those Iranians who despised Khamenei’s rule.
In the 1890s, Najafi Ayatollahs brought the then Shah of Iran to heel and forced him to withdraw concessions to the British, eventually paving the way for nationalist Prime Minister Mossadegh. He had to be overthrown by the US’s CIA and the UK’s MI6 to protect Anglo-American interests in 1953. By his misguided West Asia policies, US President George W Bush achieved what was thought impossible. The apolitical Sistani was forced to take anti-Western public positions. The history of the 1890s was repeated and could be repeated again if Trump tramples over Iranian nationalism and religiosity.
The Iranian missile launches against lower Gulf monarchies go beyond the simplistic explanations of their accession to the Abraham Accords or the proximity of some sheikhdoms to Israel beyond the call of these accords. The lower Gulf countries are all Sunni monarchies. Inflicting pain on them—especially economic pain—by the Shia republic in Tehran can revive the centuries-old Shia-Sunni enmities with unpredictable consequences.
Saudi Arabia and Bahrain may have foreseen the inevitability of this call of history when they built a causeway in 1986 linking the two monarchies. Shia-majority Bahrain ceased to be an island then. Otherwise, Iran, which has historically claimed Bahrain, would have occupied the island. It may yet happen if the Islamic Republic is pushed over the edge by the US and Israel.
K P Nayar | Strategic analyst
(Views are personal)