When the devastating Iran-Iraq War ended in 1988, the virtually unanimous opinion of analysts in the West was that the fanatical and extremist Islamic fundamentalism espoused and pushed by Iran was now dead. The Ayatollah Khomeini, who had fueled the coals of hatred toward the more moderate Muslims of the Middle East, had clearly failed. Finally, it was all over, and the Middle East could go back to seeking more rational and less murderous ways of developing and expressing itself.
The only problem was that it was not all over. The new, supposedly "moderate," regime in Tehran first covertly and then overtly pursued the policies of Khomeini, continuing the efforts to undermine, sabotage, and overthrow the moderate regimes through every kink of extremist terror. ism, infiltration, and diplomacy. It was a volte-face because, almost always by the time a fanatical regime has been definitively defeated, the fanaticism has drained out of the people, and their rulers are compelled to turn to more normal ways. That this did not happen in Iran after Khomeini's death was a consequence of his successors' need and desire to hold on to power by reverting to their mentor's tactics and weapons of power.
The new nexus, it soon was learned, began in Tehran with approximately $100 million a year in expenditures; ideas, influence, and money then moved to Sudan, where that country's government transformed it into training camps and influence for fundamentalists from Algeria to Tunisia to Egypt and (again) the Gulf. The situation by 1993 had become so serious that Turkish President Turgut Ozal warned when he came to Washington that the world was now facing basically a "religious war" of extremist and radically politicized Islam against the West.
It had seemed that America's struggles with Iran of a decade ago were fading into history. The American public and news media were focusing on the continuing confrontation between Iraq and the United States and on the peace talks between Israel and her Arab neighbors. Meanwhile, Tehran was again on the move, its continued Islamic fundamentalism as hostile to democracy, human rights, and true social progress as always. Indeed, the mullahs have been presented with opportunities for catastrophic mischief making that Khomeini never dreamed of in his heyday.
Thanks to the disintegration of the Soviet empire, the enfeeblement of lran's neighbor and rival Iraq, and the West's disregard for the Iranian challenge, the clerical rulers are developing nuclear and chemical weapons, exporting terrorism, torturing the citizenry, and assassinating their opponents abroad.
There was also a new element to the drama. As the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union gained independence, Iran began to move into Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Tadzhikistan. So far, the Turkish influence has prevailed, but with so many ethnic conflicts already in progress and so many more on the horizon, no one can foresee where the people will turn next.
Meanwhile, the outside world was getting very little in-depth analysis of the developing situation inside Iran. It was, after all, a Byzantine court closed to the world and even to its own people, in whom it inspired hatred. What was going on behind the secreted corridors of power in Tehran?
This book, for the first time, exposes in considerable detail-and in largely rational detail-the inside story of lran's ongoing Islamic fundamentalism after the Iran-Iraq War, which left probably one million people dead on either side. Mohaddessin takes you inside the pillars of Khomeini's rule, inside the "whys" and "ways" of the export of Islamic fundamentalism, inside the terrorist networks. It is a carefully footnoted book, and a valuable one that can be used well by scholars of the situation and by people who simply want to know more about one of the most important syndromes of our times. I know of no other study like it in terms of depth and interpretation.
The author, of course, is a prominent official of the People's Mojahedin, the major and most active opposition group to the mullahs and the fundamentalists since the beginning of the resistance against the shah. They have fought valiantly for many years, but I personally make no judgments, political or otherwise, on the organization. I speak only for the scholarly aspects of the book, which are considerable.
The reason why Khomeini and his heirs literally "got away with murder" lies deep in the history of lslam. Muslim movements have almost always appealed to popular goals, such as an end to tyranny, by linking them to the original intent of the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad. Khomeiniism thus struck-and still strikes-a sympathetic chord in the hearts of Muslims when it promises a return to the values and principles of pristine Islam. This has potent appeal for Muslim nations disappointed with experiments in liberation and renewal that used non-Muslim and ultimately unworkable ideologies. Thus the situation today.
It is a complicated story and an old story, using a beautiful and noble religion for cynical and diabolical goals. It is a story the West ignores at its peril.
Georgie Anne Geyer
March 1993
