Iran Needs to Bury Khomeini's Ghost
03 September 2016
By Amir Taheri
More than 17 years after his death, the man who led the mullahs to power in
Iran, Ayatollah Ruhallah Khomeini, is still at the center of the
post-revolution debate that has divided Iranians to the point of inciting some
to violence against each other.
Last week the debate over Khomeini's decade in power reached a new flash-point
with the publication of the secret recording of remarks made in 1988 by the
ayatollah's closest aide, and designated heir at the time, the late Ayatollah
Hossein-Ali Montazeri.
The audio-file was made public by Ahmad, Montazeri's surviving son, with the
claim that it had been recorded in August 1988 during a meeting between his
father and a delegation of mullahs sent to seek permission to carry out
thousands of summary executions within a couple of days.
The background to the fateful meeting was dramatic. Khomeini had just accepted
a ceasefire with Iraq, ending an eight-year war, without achieving his
declared aim of going to ''Jerusalem via Baghdad.''
The war had claimed over a million lives, at least two-thirds of them
Iranians, without the ''Army of the Imam'' making a single inch of conquest.
In fact, in August 1988 when Khomeini announced his unconditional surrender,
Saddam Hussein's troops occupied a chunk of Iranian territory in Zaynal-Kosh
which was later recovered by Iran when the Americans toppled the Iraqi despot.
In other words, Khomeini had ended up with egg on his face by prolonging a war
at the end of which five Iranian provinces were in ruins, thousands of Iranian
troops, mostly teenagers, were captured as war prisoners or were missing in
action, and the nation's economy was in meltdown mode with nothing positive to
show for the folly.
The ayatollah must have spent sleepless nights seeking a way to change the
narrative of a humiliating climb-down. As always, he came up with his favorite
solution: killing large numbers of people to divert attention from the
failures of his inhuman regime.
According to a study by Zaynab Mansouri, at least 10 Iranians or Iraqis died
for every single hour of Khomeini's rule. We have already noted the lives
claimed by the senseless 8-year war. But Khomeini also killed thousands in the
notorious massacre of Kurds in Naqadeh and the slaughter of Turkomans in
Gonbad. He also killed thousands of demonstrators, including many women and
children, who defied his satanic rule in the streets.
Having practically abolished the rule of law in the country, Khomeini had set
up his Islamic Revolutionary Tribunals with a single mullah as judge, often
clerical students in their twenties, and with no legal representation for the
accused, no witnesses and no cross-examination of the evidence.
According to estimates by Amnesty International and other human rights groups
over 100,000 Iranians were executed during Khomeini's 10-year rule.
This compares to 317 executions during the late Shah's 37-year reign,
according to a report established by the late Ayatollah Muhammad-Reza Mahdawi
Kani who briefly served as Khomeini's Prime Minister.
Under Khomeini Iran suffered the kind of mass bloodshed and violence it had
not experienced since the medieval times. It was against such a background
that Khomeini ordered the mass executions of 1988. These mostly concerned
members of an Islamist group, Mujahidin-e-Khalq (Combatants of the People),
who had helped Khomeini come to power, but broke with him after 18 months.
Most of those executed had been sentenced to prison and there was no legal
basis, even in Khomeini's system, for their execution. (There are conflicting
reports on the numbers involved, between 2000 and 4000.)
In the audio-file made public last week, Montazeri opposes the executions and
advises caution. He warns that were the executions to be carried out Khomeini
would be remembered as ''a blood-sucker'' (saffah) and that the revolution,
indeed Islam itself, would be harmed. To nail in his point, the heir-apparent
even wrote a letter to Khomeini begging him to be merciful.
The ''Supreme Guide'' who had promoted himself to the position of ''Imam''
with the help of sycophants, reacted by ordering Montazeri to be divested of
all his positions, including that of successor, and put under house arrest.
Khomeini simply forgot that he had repeatedly called Montazeri, who had been
his student three decades earlier, ''the pupil of my eye'' and ''fruit of my
life.''
Montazeri's position at the time was not dictated by liberal sentiments on his
part. In fact, for nine years he had endorsed thousands of other illegal
executions. By 1988, however, he had become sore with Khomeini because the
ayatollah had ordered the execution of a brother of his son-in-law Hadi
Hashemi and the mass arrest of people close to him in the wake of the Irangate
scandal in 1985-87.
The ''secret'' audio-file does not transform Montazeri into a choirboy. Nor
does it sweeten the image of those massacred by Khomeini. It does, however,
highlight the necessity for Iran to re-examine the blood-soaked Khomeini era
in the hope of embarking on a rational, calm and non-revanchist process of de-Khomeinization.
To be sure, Khomeini wasn't alone in his crimes. Many of the men who met
Montazeri are still alive and in positions of power.
Over the years, many commentators have speculated on who would be Iran's
Gorbachev, with former President Muhammad Khatami cast in that role for a
while and which is now played by President Hassan Rouhani. Others, looking to
China's experience rather than that of the Soviet Union, have tried to find
the Iranian Deng Xiaoping with former President Hashemi Rafsanjani trying to
cast himself in that role. However, before Iran can have either a Gorbachev or
a Deng, it must first find either a Khrushchev or a Chou En-lai.
In 1956, addressing the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union, Nikita Seregyvich Khrushchev exposed Stalin's crimes, rehabilitated
some of the victims of Stalinism, and led the USSR towards a totalitarianism
which obeyed at least its own laws. The same happened with de-Maoization in
China thanks to Chou En-lai and Deng Xiaoping, starting in 1971.
Without serious de-Khomeinization, the Islamic Republic in Iran would have no
chance of achieving a reasonable measure of political, economic and legal
stability. De-Khomeinization would not transform a bad regime into a good one,
far from it. But it might make it bearable for at least those within it.
Unless Iran definitely breaks with the lawlessness that Khomeini introduced,
it won't be able to tackle any of its numerous problems in a serious way.
Without de-Khomeinziation no one will ever be safe in Iran, not even the
current ''Supreme Guide'' Ali Khamenei. Maybe especially not him!
Amir Taheri was born in Ahvaz, southwest Iran, and educated in Tehran,
London and Paris. He was Executive Editor-in-Chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran
(1972-79). In 1980-84, he was Middle East Editor for the Sunday Times. In
1984-92, he served as member of the Executive Board of the International Press
Institute (IPI). Between 1980 and 2004, he was a contributor to the
International Herald Tribune. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, the
New York Post, the New York Times, the London Times, the French magazine
Politique Internationale, and the German weekly Focus. Between 1989 and 2005,
he was editorial writer for the German daily Die Welt. Taheri has published 11
books, some of which have been translated into 20 languages. He has been a
columnist for Asharq Alawsat since 1987. Taheri's latest book "The Persian
Night" is published by Encounter Books in London and New York.
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