Iranian Soulcraft: Birth of a Terror State

>> Abbas Milani: I know of no other regime in the world today, none, that is as entangled, too involved in, proud of its terrorist activities.

Welcome to Hoover and to Stanford. I've had a couple of my students here accepted to this program, so I know the quality and caliber of scholars, young scholars that you are.

So it is for me a special pleasure to be talking with you. In a sense, it is inauspicious moment to be talking about Iran and terror because I think the world is waiting to see what Iran might do in response to the fact that, by all accounts, Israel Assassinated Mr Haniyeh in Tehran in one of the most protected buildings that the Iranian regime had for its protected guests.

And it's become a very embarrassing situation for Iran. And the world thinks, as Iran has threatened that it is going to respond. And Israel has indicated that if Iran attacks, Israel will respond forcefully. And my sense is a little bit different than what the media thinks. I think the Iranian regime is much afraid of engaging Israel in a war, a war that it thinks, I think rightly will also involve the United States and Europe.

And the Iranian regime, in my view, at this moment, cannot survive such a war. But there are also a regime that is used to the language of violence. It is a regime that is used to bullying its own people, bullying the region. It's a regime that survives on a fear, both domestically and internationally.

Thus, it has created a rhetoric, and it is using that rhetoric to tell people at home and its proxies in the region that we are going to do something. But what they're going to do, I think remains to be seen clearly. It is my sense they're trying to find a way to not respond militarily and get out of this without too much embarrassment.

But I can talk about this a little more detail at the end of my talk. This regime, I think I know of no other regime in the world today, none that is as entangled to, involved in, proud of its terrorist activities. It doesn't call it terrorism, it calls it jihad.

It has a full range of legitimizations for it in theology, in politics, in history. It is unabashed in defending what most countries in the world, most countries in the world would be ashamed of admitting. It is a regime that has had an enormous track record of terrorist activities.

It is very difficult to count them. But if you begin at the beginning of this regime, this regime took power essentially with a terrorist act, a terrorist act that radicalized the situation in Iran. I lived in Iran at the time. I lived and taught in Iran till 1987.

So what I'm telling you about the impact of that event was both based on personal observation and the writings of many other scholars. And that terrorist act is one of the most heinous acts. And no one at the time believed that a religious force would engage in this kind of an act.

We are now used to the fact that religious radicals might indeed engage in sectionian sex. They closed the door to a theater in the city of Abadan, the Rex Theater, and burned it. And over 400 people died. And they immediately blamed the dent regime in Iran, the Pahlavi regime in Iran for engaging in this act.

It was truly impossible at the time. I can tell you. I lived, as I said, in Iran at the time. I knew some of these clergy. I had spent some time in prison with them. I was a political prisoner under the Shah. So I knew some of these people firsthand.

I spent months with them. I would not have imagined that any religious force that claims to want to bring in a religion of democracy, as they called it, would engage in such an act. Today, there is no doubt, absolutely no doubt that it was religious forces. We don't know whether Khomeini directly ordered it, that we don't know.

But the fact that the religious forces ordered it, knowing that it would radicalize the regime, knowing that radicalized the opposition. Knowing that it would begin to have the slogan of an end Death to the Shah, Death to America. They engaged in it. And once they came to power, they clearly consolidated their hold on power with another egregious act of terrorism, state terrorism, that is when students climbed the walls of the US embassy and held the US diplomats hostage for 444 days.

It was extremely Machiavellian calculated to consolidate the clerical despotism. This regime came to power with the promise of creating a democracy, a republic. And it has created what is now clearly one of the most sinister pseudo totalitarian regimes in the world. And if it isn't a fully totalitarian regime, it is only because the Iranian people have fought it.

Iranian civil society has been stronger than this regime imagined. Iranian women have been braver than this regime could ever imagine. They have created a resistance to this effort to create a pseudo totalitarian society. Political theorists tell us that regimes are two kind. Some engage in what they call soulcraft.

Some engage in what is called statecraft. Sheldon Wolin, a great political philosopher who taught at Berkeley when I was a student there, then went to Princeton, has written brilliantly about this. Regimes who want to change your soul and create a new human being are perfect recipes for totalitarians.

Regimes that want to create a better state, they don't want to create a perfect state, they want to create a new human being. But they want to create a more democratic society, a more egalitarian society. They engage in statecraft. Out of them we usually get democracy. The Iranian regime, unambiguously, in its constitution, in the writings of its leader is engaged in soulcraft.

They want a new Iranian, an Iranian that is less Iranian and more Islamic. They want to create, as Khomeini indicated, a new society, as Khomeini, the current leader for the last 35 years, repeats AD nauseam. They want to create a society based on an ideal model. If you've ever read Plato's Republic, which many political theorists have considered to be the first recipe for a totalitarian society, Khomeini's ideas are very much similar to Plato's Republic.

In the case of Plato, the best regime is created if the philosopher rules. In the case of Khomeini, unambiguously, the only regime worth having is one led by him and people like him, because they have access to an infinite source of wisdom, that is Allah, and they have self declared themselves to be followers of that divine wisdom.

And it is a system that is Khomeini's system. Khomeini's version of Islam. Not all versions of Islam like this, but Khomeini's version of Islam is unambiguously like this. It is an idea that thinks it has a solution to every conceivable problem that you will face. It does not think rationalism is needed.

It does not think human reason is capable of competing with the divine wisdom. Thus, it has a solution to every conceivable problem. If you submit once to its ideology, then all your problems are solved. There is a brilliant novel written by a French writer called Submission. It became very controversial.

It caught less attention than it deserved because its publication coincided with the attack on Charlie Abdo magazine. And the basic argument of the novel, and it's a brilliant novel, is that once you submit once to this ideology, then all your problems are solved. And the character of the novel is Professor Infidel, wine drinking, womanizing, almost depressed professor.

And Saudi Arabian money essentially comes and takes over the university, the Sorbonne University. And they tell this professor, just submit once, accept us all your problems are solved. And if you accept this, that's why some people say the word Islam doesn't really mean peace. The word Islam means submission.

Taslim, you can say it comes from Shalom. You can say it comes from Taslim. Many scholars say it comes from Taslim. Khamenei and Khomeini clearly, unambiguously believe that that's the fundamental premise of the faith, submission to the will of Allah. And now the will of Allah is manifesting Khamenei and Khomeini.

And once you have the absolute truth, once you think you possess an absolute truth, an absolute truth that is global, that will eventually end in a global Islamic society. And these are very clearly written in Khomeini and Khamenei's writing, the world will be happy place. And in the path to creation of that happy future, the regime is capable, is legitimate, is actually required to engage any trick that it has in its trip.

Khomeini famously said, when I lie to the Iranian people, I'm verbatim quoting him. I engage in trickery. A fundamental precept. A fundamental precept, not a tactical use. A fundamental precept of Khomeini and Khamenei 's version of Islam is the concept of Taqiyya, which means you can lie to your enemy in order to save the faithful.

And Khamenei and Khomeini have repeatedly lied to the international community and have repeatedly said, our violence, the violence we use against the other is legitimate violence.

The violence the others use against us is illegitimate. The language that they use to legitimize their terrorism is very similar, structurally similar to the language that some Marxists in Soviet Union used to use to legitimize their version of violence and attack what they call bourgeois violence.

There's two kinds of violence. Our violence is good. Violence are revolutionary. Their violence is counter revolutionary. So this regime is theoretically committed to the notion that jihad, holy war, is incumbent on everyone. Khomeini literally has written, and I began literally quoting, that if you as a Muslim witness someone say nasty things about the Prophet, the word theologically is Sab Imam, badmouthing the Imam, the Prophet, it is incumbent on you to try to stop him, first verbally, then threatening the, finally killing them.

If that is not a license for individual terrorism, individual vigilantism, I don't know what is. But the state also has usurped that right. And one of the reasons they have continued, sadly, is that the international community has played along.