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In his 1998 speech to the American people, Iran’s reformist president, Muhammad Khatami, said he prayed that “at the close of the 20th century, people would . . . begin a new century of humanity, understanding and durable peace, so that all humanity would enjoy the blessings of life.”
Khatami’s address marked a stunning departure from the anti-Americanism that had fueled the Iranian revolution. A scholar of The Enlightenment, he praised Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” which “reflects the virtuous and human side of this American civilization. In [Tocqueville’s] view, the significance of this civilization is in the fact that liberty found religion as a cradle for its growth, and religion found protection of liberty as its divine calling. Therefore, liberty and faith never clashed.”
By insisting on the compatibility of religion and liberty in America, Khatami laid a philosophical foundation for bridging the political divide between Iran and the United States. He did not vilify the United States as the “Great Satan.” Instead he held the United States as a model for emulation – a democratic civilization whose success reflected the ingenious combination of the principles of religion and the virtues of liberty.
The promise of hope abounded. Like the mythical Persian Phoenix, Khatami and the reformists carried many dreams on their wings.
Invoking the words of the poet Saadi – “the children of Adam are limbs to each other, having been created of one essence” – President Obama’s Nowruz address to the Iranian people was a gracious, if belated, response to Khatami’s prayers.
Instead of dehumanizing Iranians by branding Iran as part of an “axis of evil,” Obama opened a new space by asking Iranians to imagine “the promise of a new day – the promise of opportunity for our children, security for our families, progress for our communities and peace between nations.” In Obama’s own Christian tradition, the Persian paradise – paradise is an old Iranian word – figures prominently in hopes for justice and peace.
Yet, tragically, the Persian Phoenix – the promise of paradise – lies incinerated on the streets of Tehran.
The iconic image of Neda Agha Soltan, a young woman whose dying moments shook the conscience of the world, has exposed the face of a nightmare: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.
Khamenei is intent on denying Iranians the blessings of life and liberty by sanctifying fraud and force in the name of religion. Having wrapped himself in a tissue of lies to fix Iran’s 2009 elections to protect his toxic dauphin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Khamenei has blamed the Iranian people’s protests on the United States and Britain.
But Khamenei’s old formulas will fail. The days of holding Iranians hostage in the name of waging God’s wars against Satan are over.
Although foreign powers have recognized Ahmadinejad as Iran’s president, the deed is far from done.
Iran’s crisis is no longer about the sanctity of Ahmadinejad’s vote. It is about Khamenei’s abduction of the republic and usurpation of religion. Khamenei has shattered his religious authority by converting the Iranian state into a caliphate whose guardians prey on the corpse of Iran’s children in the name of guarding the constitution of an absent sovereign: the Hidden Imam.
In a fatwa issued on July 11, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri condemned Khamenei as an unjust ruler whose decrees were “null and void.” Iran’s former president, Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, implicitly criticized the handling of the elections for sowing doubt and called for the release of political prisoners. Khatami and the Association of Combatant Clerics called for a national referendum to be monitored by “a neutral body that people can trust.”
With the presidential oath scheduled for as early as Sunday, Khamenei stands alone, isolated and exposed. Virtually all of Iran’s ancient religions and traditions bind its people to the rejection of falsehood. Whether or not Ahmadinejad takes the oath, Iranians will not accept it and Obama should not recognize force and farce as a substitute for faith and freedom.
This article originally appeared in The Boston Globe.
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