Please note that this is BBC copyright and may not be reproduced or copied for any other purpose. RADIO 4 CURRENT AFFAIRS ANALYSIS TRANSCRIPT OF A RECORDED DOCUMENTARY Presenter: Edward Stourton Producer: Helen Grady Editor: Innes Bowen BBC White City 201 Wood Lane London W12 7TS 020 8752 7279 Broadcast Date: 19.10.09 2030-2100 Repeat Date: 26.10.09 2130-2200 CD Number: Duration: Interviewees include: Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri, one of Shi’ite Islam's most senior clerics. Ayatollah Sayyed Fadhel Milani, the UK's most senior Shi’ite cleric. Professor Ali Ansari, director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews. Mehdi Khalaji, a Shi'ite theologian who studied in Qom and a senior fellow of the Washington Institute. Larry Haas, a former White House advisor and vice president for policy at the Committee on the Present Danger - an American think tank. Amir Taheri, Journalist and author of The Persian Night: Iran under the Khomeinist Revolution. Nazenin Moshiri, diplomatic correspondent of the London- based Iranian newspaper Kayha. Baquer Moin, former head of the BBC's Persian Service and the author of Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah - a biography of Ayatollah Khomeini. Roya Kashefi, chair of the human rights committee for the Association of Iranian Researchers. (Prayer in Arabic) STOURTON: At a London mosque Shi’ite Muslims pray for the return of the Hidden Imam. MILANI: "My greetings and salutations to the Saviour of the Time, the Twelfth Imam. Oh Lord I renew my allegiance to Him and I expect his reappearance soon.” STOURTON: The prayer expresses a teaching that for more than a thousand years has been central to the Shi’ite school of Islam that is followed in Iran - now that teaching could decide the country's future. President Ahmadinejad has succeeded in suppressing the mass protests over this summer's disputed election. But he hasn't stilled the public anger they reflected, and he hasn't settled the national argument they began. The challenge to his authority has gone underground, and become, in part, a debate about theology. Ali Ansari is director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews. ANSARI: Actually Islam is being used to deconstruct the Islamic Republic because one of the arguments taking place is the Opposition is actually saying, look, we are more authentically Islamic than you lot are. The language is quite curious. It's from a different age - it's a traditional argument in a way. Both sides are accusing the other not only treason but heresy, blasphemy. STOURTON: Iran is far from being the monolithic religious state it sometimes appears to be; some of the most serious opposition to the regime in Tehran now comes not from protestors on the streets but from the very heart of the religious establishment. Grand Ayatollah Montazeri is one of Shi’ite Islam’s most senior clerics – he was a moving spirit behind the revolution that created Iran’s Islamic Republic. From his home in the city of Qom he gave us a rare interview by email. And – in the name of the original ideals of that revolution - he is exhorting Iran’s 200,000 strong clergy to take on the government. MONTAZERI: Just as activist clerics played an important role in starting the revolution, in its victory and in the establishment of the Islamic Republic, so they can play their role in improving the affairs of the current regime and in establishing democracy - which was one of the main goals of the revolution. The important action that the esteemed Iranian clerics can and must take in order to initiate reforms, to change the present situation and the current policies, must be in step with the people - with intellectuals and experts, with the members of the elite and with committed political activists. The clerics should tell the people of their rights. They must also remain faithful the values of the revolution and to the goals of the reforms. Otherwise, their social standing among the people will become weaker and shakier. STOURTON: Mainstream Shi’ite Islam – the theological tradition which Ayatollah Montazeri represents - holds that the Prophet Mohammed's authority was inherited by a line of spiritual leaders known as Imams, and that in the 10th century the last of them, the 12th Imam, went into what's known as occultation - that is to say he didn't die, but he has been hidden from humanity ever since. One day, the teaching goes, he will return, ushering in an age of justice and peace and, shortly thereafter, the end of times. Ayatollah Sayd Milani of the Imam Al Khoei mosque in London is one of only two clergymen of that rank in Europe. MILANI: The Shi'as have hundreds of sources who speak about the hidden imam and that we have to prepare ourselves to be ready - to be the real awaiters. And this awaiting is very, very important - it is considered to be act of worship. It means not to keep silent, not To keep indifferent, rather that it is a positive improvement in our behaviour and making ourselves go up to level to be amongst the chosen disciples or servants of the 12th imam. No one can tell us that it's going to happen soon. No one can tell us that it's going to happen in 200 years or 20 years - no one can talk about it at all. But to be ready any time. STOURTON: The concept of the return of the Hidden Imam – or Madhi - is very similar to the Christian idea of the second coming, and most Shi’ites understand it in a similar way - as something that will happen in God' s good time. But there is a minority sect known as the Hasteners who believe that the return of the Imam is imminent, and that it is the duty of the faithful to prepare the way. And the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, one of the most powerful nations of the Middle East, is a Hastener. Mehdi Khalaji is a Shi’ite theologian who studied in Qom, the heart of Shi’ite theology, and now teaches in the United States. KHALAJI: We call apocalyptics people who believe in the imminent return of Hidden Imam and people who believe that worshippers have some duties more than prayer in order to prepare the ground for the return of Hidden Imam. Apocalyptics, they've been always in margin of the religious community and also political structure of the country. But with Ahmadinejad, this is the first time that they take over the political power. STOURTON: In 2005, President Ahamdinejad ended his speech to the United Nations with a prayer for the Hidden Imam's return ARCHIVE "O mighty Lord, I pray to you hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace." STOURTON: Later he was caught on video in conversation with an Ayatollah who suggested Mr Ahamdinejad had been surrounded by some kind of halo during his speech. On the recording the president appears to say: AHMADINEJAD VOICEOVER: I felt it myself, too, I felt that all of a sudden the atmosphere changed there, and for 27-28 minutes all the leaders did not blink. I am not exaggerating when I say they did not blink; it's not an exaggeration, because I was looking. They were astonished as if a hand held them there and made them sit. It had opened their eyes and ears for the message of the Islamic Republic. STOURTON: The president has surrounded himself with a clique of advisers with similar views. His closest - until recently his vice- president – is said to see himself as the barb, or gate to the world of the Hidden Imam. And some of them apparently believe that their president is what is known as a nail or peg - one of a small group of wise men the Imam has left behind to stop society falling apart altogether. In our email to Grand Ayatollah Montazeri – whose position gives him huge authority to make rulings on theological questions like this - we asked him for his view of claims that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in contact with the Hidden Imam and that his government is working for the return of the Mahdi. The Grand Ayatollah’s response... MONTAZERI: During his occultation or disappearance it is possible to establish contact with His Holiness the Hidden Imam (may God speed his return). But anyone who made such contact would never dream of announcing it publicly because making use of such claims for propaganda and political purposes would be contrary to the qualities required for such contact. The best way to prepare for the re-appearance of the Hidden Imam would be to act in accordance with Islamic teachings in order to establish justice and Islamic values in society. STOURTON: But President Ahamdinejad’s circle seem unabashed by that kind of condemnation from senior clerical authorities. Professor Ali Ansari of St Andrew’s University. ANSARI: They aren't shy about it - they've developed this shrine complex in Jam Quaran in Southern Tehran which is this well, which according to come theories anyway the hidden imam will come out of this well, and they've spent a lot of money on it to prepare for his arrival, you know they've even had fanciful notions of when they write their cabinet proposals they've taken a note and dropped it down the well so the imam can be aware of it, they've had these televised, they've had meals where they leave a space clear just in case the hidden imam wants to come and eat and these sort of things - it’s very interesting because a lot of Iranians don’t see it, you know, because it’s a bit embarrassing, so they say well this is just him pandering to a certain constituency, but actually I think it’s very serious! STOURTON: Ordinary Iranians may find this sort of carry-on eccentric and embarrassing, but some Western policy-makers and commentators use rather stronger terms. Larry Haas was a White House adviser in the Clinton administration. HAAS: I think the evidence, frankly, is rather strong that he believes that we are going to see the return of the so-called 12th imam or mahdi in the near future and that the Islamic Republic can in essence speed the return of the mahdi by provoking a violent confrontation between the forces of Islam and the forces of the West. That is not something that all Shia believe, but he belongs to a radical view. STOURTON: That’s pretty alarming – particularly in view of the fact that he aspires to possess nuclear technology or to ensure that his country does. How strong is the evidence that he subscribes to that? HAAS: I think the anecdote that really ties all of this together - the belief in the Mahdi's return as well as the desire for a violent confrontation - is when he met with European foreign ministers in 2005. At one point, after a lot of discussion about the nuclear programme and ways to negotiate and all the rest and no-one was really getting anywhere, Ahmadinejad asked the diplomats the following question: "Do you know why we wish to have chaos at any price?" And when the rather stunned diplomats did not answer, he said: "Because after the chaos, we shall see the greatness of Allah." Now that is an anecdote from the memoirs of a former foreign minister from France, so I think it is actually quite a believable story. He was in the room when it occurred. And of all the anecdotes that I know, that one seems to me the most telling one in terms of the deep-seated nature of his beliefs and really the implications of what the Islamic Republic could … could provoke, frankly, with its pursuit of nuclear and ballistic missiles. STOURTON: You don't think he could have been teasing? HAAS: Anything is possible, but I think when you add that anecdote up with his public praying for the Mahdi's return in his speech to the UN along with the things that he has told leaders within the Islamic Republic, it all paints a rather convincing picture to me. I think this theology is much more dangerous, frankly, than the Communist ideology that we faced from 1945 until about 1990 because it's not entirely clear to me that those who subscribe to this radical view really believe that it's better to be alive than it is to be dead. STOURTON: The idea that President Ahamedinejad might use nuclear weapons in the service of his belief in the end of times - his millenarianism - is obviously very alarming – whether you can really follow the logic to that point is another question, and it’s difficult to judge because this popular religion without much in the way of thought- through theological structures to underpin it. Ali Ansari. ANSARI: Ahmadinejad and the others, yes, they do believe that the hidden imam will arrive when the world has reached the most disastrous situation. Whether they feel they have to help that along is a different matter. I think that’s where you’ve got to be a little bit careful. I haven’t seen anything which suggests that. I mean he hasn’t said anything specific. That’s not to say that he might not at some stage. It’s perhaps a question of semantics and a question of being quite pedantic about it but it’s important because people do then extrapolate from things that he has not said yet – whole policy decisions, which I think are unhelpful. KHALAJI: I think it is frightening, and it is not only frightening for the international community... STOURTON: The Shi’ite theologian Mehdi Khaliji KHALAJI: This apocalyptic trend is anti-clerical; and clerics even in Qom - in my city, the city I was born in, the centre of Shi’ite theology - clerics are really scared about Ahmadinejad's political agenda because in his agenda clerics have no place. Three years ago, his special advisor, Jabat Shamavgari , said in a public speech that when Hidden Imam returns, the first thing he does is to behead the clerics because clerics are not representing Islamic spirit very well and they've been corrupted by money and politics. So they believe that they are the authentic representative of Islam, not clerics. So this is very scary for clerics too. STOURTON: Resentment against the clergy is deep-rooted among followers of the President's sect, and that has become a critical factor in post-election Iran. The impression that the Iranian government is a theocratic monolith with universal support among the country's religious authorities is a false one; it is thought the overwhelming majority of mainstream clergy and theologians wanted to see him go this summer, not least because many of them regard his brand of millenarian Mahdi-ism as heretical. Amir Taheri is a veteran observer of the Iranian scene. TAHERI: People don't know that you know the number of clerics in jail in Iran today is higher than the number of people in prison from any other social category - the number of for example intellectuals or working class people or housewives and so on. There are over two thousand mullahs in jail in Iran. It's the largest group of anybody. And you know when you go to the websites of the clerics in Qom, you know their writings and so on, 90% of them are against the present regime fundamentally but at the same time they don’t want to seize power for themselves. STOURTON: Since the election clerical concern about the Ahmadinejad regime has focused increasingly on the fear that it is giving Islam itself a bad name. Because state and religion are represented as one and the same in the Islamic Republic, the sins of one are tarnishing the other. Professor Ansari again. ANSARI: There was one cleric said in a tape that turned up on Youtube actually and he was a hard-liner and he said I am saddened to tell you that one minister came and told me that his daughter no longer prays and he said, "this is a fiasco". And the reason she no longer prays is because of the post election violence, you know they said they were doing this in the name of Islam and people couldn't believe it. And I always say to people – the events over the summer should be seen as two distinct events: the election fraud (or not, whichever you want to look at it) and then the post electoral violence is less disputable – people have seen it. And I think for a lot of people it shocked them in a way that they never understood. You know, they always knew people would say this lot are quite vicious. But to actually see it in the streets was something else. And I think it turned a lot of people off. And they said this is not the Islam that we wanted. STOURTON: Some 70% of Iran’s population weren’t even alive at the time of the Revolution that gave birth to the Islamic Republic. The clergy have been watching the way the younger generation view religion with some alarm – thus Grand Ayatollah Montazeri’s warning in our email exchange about the threat to their status if they don’t contribute to the reform process. Nazenin Moshiri is based here in London the diplomatic correspondent of the opposition newspaper Kayha. MOSHIRI: Because of this deviation that happened after the revolution, and because religion and politics became one - many of the malaise that happened in Iran that followed the Islamic Revolution like increasing drug addiction, increasing prostitution, like unemployment, their social economic malaise is being blamed on religion. And therefore one of the pillars of Islam is paying of alms or religious tax. Because of this, a lot of people have withdrawn their paying of religious tax to these ayatollahs. And what happened, that whereas before it was very easy to you know fill up the mosques with followers, but gradually we have seen that not as many people are going to the mosques. STOURTON: There is of course one senior clerical figure who has supported President Ahmadinejad; the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. He is the highest authority in the Islamic Republic, and his swift endorsement of the election result in June probably saved the President's political skin. But Ayatollah Khameini's own position is less secure than it looks. The Assembly of Experts, the one body with the constitutional right to unseat him, took months to endorse his statement on the elections. Khamenei was promoted to the rank of Ayatollah at the behest of his predecessor as Supreme Leader - the father of the Iranian Revolution himself, Ayatollah Khomeini. But some of Iran's grander theologians think he never really earned his academic spurs, and regard him with what's perhaps best described as Oxbridge High Table snobbery. Baquer Moin is a former head of the BBC's Persian Service. MOIN: Ayatollah Khamanei's weakness, if you wish, is that he is part of a man-made constitution. The clergy who snub him in Qom, they say we have earned our religious leadership through years of studying, years of teaching and public trust and support, - i.e. the faithful pays the chief theologian, the source of emulation, the religious taxes. And it is that financial ability to have students, to give money to hospitals, to give money to the poor that establishes a chief theologian or marja, as they call it, the position to have influence. STOURTON: Grand Ayatollah Montazeri was one of the intellectual fathers of the constitution that created the position of Supreme Leader – indeed he was once designated to fill the role himself in succession to Ayatollah Khomeini. In our email exchange we asked him if he felt the legitimacy of the role had been eroded. MONTAZERI: As, in my view, the government will not achieve legitimacy without the support of the people, and as the necessary and obligatory condition for the legitimacy of the ruler is his popularity and the people’s satisfaction with him; therefore, the present dissatisfaction – which is unfortunately increasing – will have a direct bearing on the legitimacy of the ruling establishment, unless the wiser figures in the nation can think of a solution by changing the current policies, and can remove the causes of the dissatisfaction of the majority of the people, and deal with the people with kindness, mercy, compassion and humility. STOURTON: If someone who was such a central figure in the creation of Iran’s Islamic form of government can express that kind of scepticism, how far might the wider opposition go?An attack on Ayatollah Khamenei would almost certainly look like an attack on the very institution of the Islamic Republic. But even that may no longer be unthinkable in the post election Iran. Doubts about the theological legitimacy of an Islamic Republic go right back to Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution. Classical Shi’ite theology held that it wasn't possible to have a religious form of government until the return of the Hidden Imam - rather in the way that ultra-Orthodox Jews object to the State of Israel because it is founded by man and not by God - and Khomeini was running against the mainstream tide of theological opinion. Amir Taheri. TAHERI: The majority of Shi'ite clergy are against the concept of the Islamic Republic. This is very important to understand. Of all the grand ayatollahs of the 1970s when the Iranian Revolution happened, only one - Khomenei himself - supported the idea of the rule by a theologian. Nobody else did. And today you know the highest authorities of Shi'ism -theological authorities in Iran, in Iraq, in Lebanon - do not accept the theory of valayat al-faqih or ruled by the theologian. For example Grand Ayatollah Sistani in Najaf is you know the pre-eminent leader of the Shi'ites, theological leader of the Shi'ites. He rejects that. So it’s a contradiction in terms you know – an Islamic Republic, it’s an oxymoron. STOURTON: That debate was given new life by the dispute over this summer’s election. In July Ayatollah Montazeri issued a fatwa denouncing President Armajinedah’s government as illegitimate – the last time anything like that happened was when Ayatollah Khomeini denounced the Shah. In our email exchange he is still sounding the tocsin of discontent. MONTAZERI: The current decisions, which are being taken by the minority faction that is in power, are mainly against the interests of the country, and are not in keeping with Islamic principles and values. If the present course of action continues – in terms of the way the government has dealt with the protests by the majority of the people against the results of the recent presidential election, and in terms of the arrests and the trials of political activists and members of the elite - trials which are illegal and against Islam - then the rift between the people and the government will continue to grow and people's dissatisfaction will increase. STOURTON: Montazeri has been a critic of the direction taken by the Islamic Republic for a very long time, but his views are suddenly becoming more fashionable in clerical circles. Ali Ansari. ANSARI: The way in which Ahmadinejad and his cabal are moving ahead and some of the arguments are being put forward have been so shocking to a lot of mainstream clerics - many of whom are not liberals, by the way, I mean they're just mainstream Shi'a clerics, is to just say this is an absurdity. I mean when the leading ideologue of the hard-line faction - Ayatollah Misbah Yazdi - makes the extraordinary statement that obedience to Ahmadinejad is the equivalence to obedience to God, you can see that it causes a certain amount of shock waves in the system. They say this is bordering on idolatry. In a sense the opposition has crossed over and taken the battle into the hard-line terrain. They’ve actually gone into there and said what you’re doing is blasphemous. STOURTON: If clerical discontent is to make a difference in practical politics there is a big and very obvious hurdle to overcome; can there really be a coalition between the clergy – socially conservative even if they find themselves in the rebel camp over the way their country is being governed - and the secular protestors who are fired up over democratic ideals and western ideas about human rights – women’s rights especially? Amir Taheri thinks there can. TAHERI: Several grand ayatollahs have already come out in support of the secular democratic movement. For example, Ayatollah Sanei, Ayatollah Rafsanjani, Ayatollah Dastgheyb - some of them are members of the highest organs of the regime. So these are the people who have set aside the contradiction that you know if you shouldn't intervene in politics, why are you intervening in politics, by intervening on behalf of the opponents of Ahmadinejad. STOURTON: So could the clerical concern that you've been describing be the factor that really makes a difference in the end? We've all been waiting to see whether the opposition will continue after the elections. Could that underlying concern about the theological position be what makes the difference? TAHERI: Yes because you know when there is a vacuum in a society, you need an alternative source of moral authority. Where could this alternative source of moral authority come from? You know in many third world developing countries, it comes from the armies. You know they stage a coup and say you see we are the real guardians of the nation. Politicians are corrupt, they are sold to foreigners and so on like you know in Turkey, in Egypt, in Latin America and all over the … In Iran, and we don't have a tradition of military coups. You know the Iranian Army never intervenes in politics, and if they did people would laugh them off the stage. So the moral authority for a successful anti- regime movement at the moment could … should still come from the Shi'ite clergy you know because other civil organisations have been destroyed. KASHEFI: the young people are very aware of what they want. The clerics are also aware of what they want, and so it's a question of using the best that they can of each other now, and then at the end see who's going to have the upper hand. (laughing) We hope obviously the civil society's going to have the upper hand rather than the clerics. STOURTON: Roya Kashefi, who runs the human rights committee for the Association of Iranian Researchers, is more sceptical about the success of a coalition between socially conservative clerics and secular democrats. KASHEFI: The young people are after democracy, they're after freedom, they're after a republic which has all the values that they're after, and they don't see that in an Islamic Republic and you can see that in the slogans that are being chanted on the streets in Iran. They're saying "An Iranian Republic" that’s constantly being repeated when they’re marching. They call for an Iranian Republic as opposed to an Islamic Republic. It's the very core of the Islamic Republic that's now being challenged. And this coalition cannot last if the clerics insist on having an Islamic Republic. STOURTON: For the moment secular democrats and orthodox clerics have a common enemy; President Ahmadinejad. Almost everyone we spoke to for this programme said they believed that change is on the way in Iran, but most of them also thought it could take a long time, and might be very traumatic. Amir Taheri. TAHERI: the whole of the Muslim world is watching what's happening to Iran. And if Iran manages to offer a model which is a mixture of Western democracy with the preservation of its Islamic cultural heritage and identity, of course it would be a very powerful message for all Muslims you know from Indonesia to Nigeria. This is why what happens to Iran is of crucial importance. And not only for Islam, but for the world at large. STOURTON: Iran’s Revolution thirty years ago was one of the decisive moments of the late twentieth century – the way the country resolves its current crisis - could be every bit as influential. END OF TRANSCRIPT