Islam and revolution [III]

But two years later, by the middle of 1982, Iran had recaptured nearly all its territory and was pushing onto Iraq, and Saddam was desperately looking for any way out of the war. The West, the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council, which had been formed to counteract Iran, had all lost hope of […]

But two years later, by the middle of 1982, Iran had recaptured nearly all its territory and was pushing onto Iraq, and Saddam was desperately looking for any way out of the war. The West, the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council, which had been formed to counteract Iran, had all lost hope of an Iraqi victory, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, OIC, came to the rescue by setting up a peace and reconciliation committee.
When members of the committee arrived in Iran, they requested for an audience with the Imam [qss], who gave a condition that they must first condemn Iraq before he would receive them. They replied that they could not do so because, as mediators, they could not take sides. The Imam [qss] then said he couldn’t receive them; because they were not in Iran to establish an Islamic peace. He said not only is it a duty incumbent on them to condemn Saddam Hussein and ask him to stop his aggression, they must join hands with Iran to fight him until he is subdued and complies with the command of Allah.
And if two parties or groups among the believers fall to fighting, then make peace between them both, but if one of them rebels against the other, then fight you [all] against the one that which rebels till it complies with the Command of Allah; then if it complies, then make conciliation between them justly, and be equitable. Verily, Allah loves those who are equitable. [Holy Qur’an 49:9]
Thus, the OIC committee failed, and got a lesson, in the diplomacy of Islam; but if the function of diplomacy is telling lies on behalf of one’s nation, a follower of the Imam [qss] taught the world that the truth must be told at all times—and that the noble art of diplomacy need not be sullied by hypocrisy.
It was February 11, 1982 and the French government had just shipped off a new consignment of Exocet missiles and other sophisticated lethal military hardware to Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran. The cargo was on its way when, as was customary, protocol demanded that President Francois Mitterrand write a letter congratulating President Mohammed Ali Rajaie of Iran and the entire people of the Islamic Republic of Iran on the second anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution. And to international diplomacy, this was not unacceptable.
In great astonishment, President Rajaie marvelled at the disparity between the words and action of a man. How could a man send my enemy weapons with which to kill me and my countrymen—and in the same breath congratulate me and wish me the best? Rajaie did the unthinkable—he rejected Mitterrand’s letter of congratulations and returned it to him, advising him to learn to be honourable in word and deed. A follower of the Imam [qss] had dethroned Machiavelli and set the Islamic standard of diplomatic engagement, which in this case should be a human, not just Islamic, quality.
O you who believe, why do say that which you do not? Grievously odious is it in the sight of Allah that you say that which you do not. [Holy Qur’an 61:2-3]
Meanwhile, it was around this time that the U.S. began to provide Iraq with satellite intelligence information about Iranian troop movements glimpsed using the AWACS planes bought by the Saudis. In addition, it beefed up its naval presence such that by the end of 1987, the U.S. had stationed what was said to be “the largest single naval armada deployed since the height of the Vietnam war,” consisting of an aircraft carrier, a battleship, an assortment of cruisers, destroyers, frigates, and other supporting naval vessels in the Persian Gulf. On July 3, 1988, the USS Vincennes brought down an Iran Air Airbus commercial jet carrying 290 passengers all of whom perished in the crash.
That was when the Imam [qss] was forced to drink hemlock. With virtually the entire world ranged against him in spite of the justness of his cause, the Imam [qss] had to reluctantly accept the UN ceasefire resolution. ‘Accepting this resolution was a decidedly bitter and tragic affair for everyone and in particular for me… [but a]t this juncture I regard it to be in the best interest of the Revolution and of the system,” he said. “… Death and martyrdom would have been more bearable to me…. How unhappy one is to have survived and to have to drink this poisoned chalice…!’
After failing to conquer Iran, Saddam turned his attention to Kuwait, which had earlier on helped to finance his invasion of Iran and which he invaded in 1990; and, ironically, after his invasion of Kuwait, he agreed to accept the pre-Gulf War status quo ante—to share, control and use Shatt a-Arab waterway with Iran, to renounce his claim to Khuzestan, to withdraw all his troops from Iranian territory, exchange prisoners with Iran and accept the reality of the Islamic Republic which he had vowed to destroy, but with which he was now forced to resume diplomatic relations.
Here was a man who took two Muslim nations to war and caused the death of 1.5 million people, including his own countrymen; the maiming and wounding of 2 million more, the displacement of more than a million others, the total destruction of 157 Iranian towns and the wiping off the map of 1,500 Iranian villages, and the destruction of property valued at $750 billion, or $1 trillion, if GNP losses, oil revenue losses, damage and debt were added, all for nothing; and then he came out and unashamedly repudiated and discarded every one of the reasons which he used to justify his eight-year long war against Iran.
But this didn’t change anything for the Imam [qss]. In a letter to Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union on June 4, 1989, he [qss] predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union before it did and the end of communism. “From today, it will only be right to look for communism in the dustbins of world political history,” he said, inviting Gorbachev and the people of the Soviet republics to Islam.: “The basic problem of your country has nothing to do with ownership, with the economy or with freedom; it is the lack of a true belief in God, the same problem that has drawn the West into a blind alley of triviality and purposelessness.”
By now it had become clear to the Americans that they could not outwit the Imam [qss], they decided to cut their losses. On April 7, 1980, the United States government broke diplomatic relations with Iran; and the Imam [qss] declared it a day of National Thanksgiving, calling it the day of the victory of the revolution; for, he [qss] said only now had the United States lost all hope of destroying or containing the Islamic revolution.
Then US President Jimmy Carter requested His Holiness Pope John Paul II to intervene in the Iranian hostage crisis; and he did, sending Monsignor Bugnini, Papal Nuncio with a message to the Imam [qss] on November 12, 1979; and it provided a chance for the Imam [qss] to define the acceptable limit of diplomacy.
Wondering why His Holiness never considered intervening while Iranians were being brutalised by the Shah and the US, but would seek to do it now that they were on the threshold of victory, the Imam [qss] respectfully tried to explain some of the issues—the well-being of the hostages, the activities of American diplomat, the nature of the complaint of the people in Iran. Then he extolled the virtues of Jesus [AS] and championed the sanctity of the Virgin Mary [AS], the virtuous and chaste, as stated in the Holy Qur’an.
“The acts of treachery he [Shah] committed during these last ten to fifteen years in particular—the slaughter and imprisonment of our young men and women—are too numerous to recount,” the Imam [qss] said. “During this period, we would have liked some foreign spiritual authority, particularly the supreme authority of the Christians, to have shown some concern for our defenceless people. I cannot believe that the Vatican was unaware of what was happening, and if our people ask me whether the Vatican was in agreement with all the crimes that were being committed, I will not know what answer to give them.
“Let me inform the Pope that if Jesus Christ were here today, he would call [Jimmy] Carter to account and deliver us from the clutches of this enemy of humanity. Since the Pope is the representative of Jesus [AS], he must act in the same way that Jesus [AS] would. May God Almighty acquaint us all with our religious and divine duties so that we may become champions of the oppressed.”
But the Americans were not done yet; two weeks after their request to His Holiness, they despatched an ultra-secret military expedition to rescue the American hostages, and, it is said, to also strike at the one-room residence of the Imam [qss] in Jamaran. The rescue and assassination attempt ended in a humiliating fiasco as American helicopter gunships crashed into each other in a mysterious sandstorm that enveloped them in the desert of Tabas; and the survivors fled, leaving their comrades on fire in the wilderness of the Kavir. Now, 35 years later, their president stands in a corner begging for a handshake. That is the Islamic Revolution—a veritable favour from the Lord of Power.