Khomeini's Ghost: Why Obama's Negotiations with Iran are a Waste of Time (book review)

New York Post ^ | March 8, 2009 | Amir Taheri

[reaganaut1]

As the Obama administration prepares to engage Iran diplomatically, one question is paramount: Who are the men with whom the White House hopes to reach accommodation?

In "Khomeini's Ghost," British journalist Con Coughlin finds some troubling answers. He identifies the "Supreme Guide" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the final decision-maker in the Islamic Republic and thus the interlocutor for Obama. "The powers entrusted to the Supreme Guide . . . compare favorably to those claimed by Europe's fascist dictators . . . with the added benefit of claiming divine inspiration." Next to the supreme guide, Coughlin says the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the parallel army created by the mullahs, is the key element in shaping Iran's domestic and foreign policies.

For Coughlin, the Khomeinist movement has been at war against the United States from the first day of the mullahs' rule 30 years ago. He dismisses claims that diplomacy could persuade the regime to change its behavior on any key issue. "From Khomeini through to Ahmadinejad," Coughlin writes, "Iran has maintained its uncompromising devotion to its unique expression of revolutionary Islam, no matter how much hostility from the outside world. And so long as the heirs to Khomeini's revolution maintained their iron grip on power, the Islamic republic of Iran would continue to uphold the banner of radical Islam and proclaim its defiance of the rest of the world."

The only way to appease the Khomeinist regime is to surrender to it, Coughlin says. Even then, it is almost certain that the more radical elements in Tehran, people like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who dream of world conquest in the name of Islam, would demand more.

[reaganaut1]

The New York Times has a review that is more critical of the book (and favorable towards Iran) here . A review at the Guardian (UK) is here and the book web site is here .

[chuck_the_tv_out]

Most often overlooked is the fact that Iran was created & supported by the Russians. The KGB’s most successful operation of the last 40 years was injecting “death to America” into the islam bloodstream.

[Vaduz]

uncompromising devotion to its unique expression of revolutionary Islam, no matter how much hostility from the outside world and the idiot in chief obama wants to talk them into a deal he’s such a loser.

[nuconvert]

“” By the spring of 2007 senior NATO commanders found compelling evidence that the Revolutionary Guards had set aside their traditional antipathy towards the Taliban and were supplying them with roadside bombs and rockets to attack NATO positions, particularly British forces deployed in southern Afghanistan.”

“As Coughlin shows, the real question is not whether or not to go to war against Iran but how to end the war that Iran has been waging against the US for three decades.”

[nuconvert]

pong

[GOPJ]

..."the links between al Qaeda and Iran's Revolutionary Guards went back nearly a decade, and there was evidence that Iran might have had some involvement in the September 11 attacks." Moreover, Imad Mughniyah, the chief terror mastermind of the Lebanese Hezbollah "accompanied the 9/11 hijackers on their flights between Iran, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia and had meetings with Saudi Hezbollah which had links with the hijackers."

Westerners clung to the hope that minor religious differences (sunni/shia) would keep these two groups apart. They have so much more in common with each other - than either group has with anyone else in the world - their bonding is a given.