Angel Jaramillo Torres
In 2006, I traveled to Iran from Vienna, where I was studying the language of Goethe, Kafka, Nietzsche, and so many other thinkers and writers that the great German culture has left us. I visited Tehran, Qom, Isfahan, and, further south, Shiraz. It was a fantastic and mysterious trip. I still remember how happy I was when I was told I was welcome at the immigration desk at Tehran airport. What I want to emphasize now is that Iran is a country with a large, educated, and civilized population, yet it is ruled by a theocracy that aspires to possess nuclear weapons.
Now that the diplomatic, military, and intelligence authorities in Tel Aviv have decided to carry out an intervention that it is no exaggeration to call surgical, it would be worth pausing for a moment to discuss what lies at the heart of the conflict. As we know, Iran is an amalgam of Persian culture and history and the Shiite branch of Islam. In the former case, the situation is similar to that of Brazil in Latin America. The primary distinction is that what distinguishes Brazilians from the rest of Latin Americans is their language. In contrast, for Iranians, their history, culture, religion, and language are what distinguish them from Arabs.
With the fall of the Sassanid Empire in the 7th century CE, Zoroastrianism declined, and Persia converted to Islam; however, the branch adopted was Shiism rather than Sunni orthodoxy. To simplify, we could say that mysticism and martyrdom are two characteristics of the Islam practiced by the clerics who control power in Iran. Sufism and the great Persian poetry represent the former. The eschatology of the twelfth Imam represents the latter.
Shiites believe that the line of legitimate imams is the bloodline of Ali, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law. The Sunni majority does not share this in the Arab world. However, the imams of Persian Shiism are considered martyrs because of the way they died, assassinated. Hence, after the death of several Iranian military leaders was announced as a result of attacks commanded from Tel Aviv, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that they “had achieved martyrdom,” referring to their deaths.
According to the belief shared by the Shiite leadership in Tehran and Qom, the last of these imams, Muhammad al-Mahdi, went into “hiding” in the 9th century and is thought to return at the end of time as the twelfth Mahdi, a savior who will bring justice to the world. It could be said that several religions postulate the arrival of a savior. I would reply that not all do, and that none postulate a tradition of martyr-prophets who have also established a successful theocracy in a country with the power and influence of Iran.
The serious problem for global security is that this messianic eschatology intersects with the ambition of Iran’s theocratic leadership to possess atomic weapons. In some interpretations, a nuclear holocaust would be the prelude to the arrival of the twelfth Mahdi: in the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful. This confluence of apocalyptic weaponry and eschatological beliefs is further reinforced if we add to the explosive mix the influence that modern ideas of European fascism have had on the Shiite leadership in Iran, as Paul Berman noted in his book Terror and Liberalism.
Without considering this context, it is impossible to understand the significance of Israel’s recent actions.
*Ángel Jaramillo is a journalist, essayist, and historian of political ideas.
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