Ayatollah Khomeni’s Grandson Calls for US invasion of Iran

If President Bush decides on military action in Iran, he will have enthusiastic support from one unlikely quarter:

Ayatollah Hossein Khomeini, grandson of Ruhollah Al Khomeini, the founder of the Iranian Republic, has said that his country is living under a religious dictatorship, governed by the mullahs. He also defended his call for President Bush to invade Iran!

During an interview with the news Web site alarabiya.net, Hossein Khomeini called for the liberation of Iran from religious rule and Al-Fakih [rule by the most learned of Islam] and said that the revolution, which was led by his grandfather against the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979, had devoured its children.

[…]

Hossein Khomeini observed that, “my grandfather’s revolution devoured its sons and lost its way.” He said that when the revolution took place it did not intend to install the Fakih rule, but that all this changed because of the religious thinking that was predominant in religious societies and schools. He said that the revolution used to call for freedom and democracy, but instead it persecuted its leaders. People like Al Sayyid Al Talkani, who was often imprisoned during the Shah’s regime. After the revolution he opposed the breaking of laws and suffered tremendously, having to go in hiding full of sadness over of his actions.

[…]

About his call for U.S President George W. Bush to occupy Iran, Hossein Khomeini clarified: “freedom should be promoted in Iran in any way possible, and it is irrelevant whether this freedom comes as the result of domestic or foreign developments. If I were imprisoned, what does it matter? It is in my interests that someone come and break me out of that prison.”

In regard to his meeting with the son of the deposed Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, Khomeini said it was an ordinary meeting between two people who share the suffering over a singular problem, which is tyranny, even though each of us comes at it from a different angle.”

What’s particularly interesting is that Khomeini is allied in this with the son of his grandfather’s archnemesis, the Shah of Iran.

While President Bush might be very tempted to take Khomeini up on this offer from an ideological perspective, it’s incredibly unlikely in light of the difficulty of applying the neo-conservative agenda in Iraq and the near-universal sense that there are no viable military options in the case of Iran.

via Michael Demmons

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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. Anderson says:

    Good. Put a rifle in his hand and let him lead the first landing.

  2. RA says:

    No viable military options?!! What nonsense. How about laying off shore and bombing the government, infrastructer and military back into the stone age. WE DON’T HAVE TO INVADE!