A Reform(ing) Socialist, Atheist in Tehran

Christopher Hitchens recently completed his series on the Axis of Evil when he submitted this piece on Iran. It's a wonderful survey of the conflicts and tensions endemic in that country. While the recently completed bogus election appears to have strengthened the intransigence of the mullahs and their nuclear aspirations, Hitchens' article does give us hope for the future in Iran:

Young Khomeini [son of the late Ayatollah] has been spending a good deal of his time in Iraq, where he has many friends among the Shia. He is a strong supporter of the United States intervention in that country, and takes a political line not dissimilar to that of Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani. In practice, this means the traditional Shia belief that clerics should not occupy posts of political power. In Iranian terms, what it means is that Khomeini (his father and elder brother died some years ago, so he is the most immediate descendant) favors the removal of the regime established by his grandfather. "I stand," he tells me calmly, "for the complete separation of religion and the state." In terms that would make the heart of a neocon soar like a hawk, he goes on to praise President Bush's State of the Union speech, to warn that the mullahs cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons, and to use the term "Free World" without irony: "Only the Free World, led by America, can bring democracy to Iran." Anyone visiting Iran today will quickly become used to hearing this version of street opinion, but there is something striking about hearing it from the lips of a turbaned Khomeini. Changing the emphasis slightly, he asks my opinion of the referendum movement. This is an initiative, by Iranians inside the country and outside it, to gather signatures calling for a U.N.-supervised vote on a new Iranian Constitution. One of the recent overseas signatories is Reza Pahlavi, the son of the fallen Shah. Khomeini surprises me even more by speaking warmly of this young man. "I have heard well of him. I would be happy to meet him and to cooperate with him, but on one condition. He must abandon any claim to the throne." (The opportunity of delivering a message from the grandson of Khomeini to the son of the Shah seemed irresistible, and the first thing I did upon my return to Washington was to seek out Reza Pahlavi, who lives in Maryland, and put the question to him. We actually met in a basement kitchen in the nation's capital, where he was being careful to be as unmonarchical as it is feasible to be. His line on the restoration of kingship is one of "Don't ask, don't tell." He doesn't claim the throne—though he did at one point in our chat refer bizarrely to his father as "my predecessor"—nor does he renounce it. All he will say, and he says it with admirable persistence, is that the next Iran must be both secular and democratic. So, even if they remain at arm's length, it can be said at last that a Khomeini and a Pahlavi agree.)

An eminently readable and informative submission, I highly recommend the entirety of the article. The tensions he describes in Iran are certainly unique to that society, but in a broader sense, not unlike those to be found in much of the Muslim world. It is in understanding these tensions, aspirations and humanity of the Muslim world in which we find the seeds for success in the War on Terror and in the President's broader democracy agenda. It is here where we can truly have hope. Nevermind the prattling negativism of the naybobs.