← CONFLICTED
Loading summary
Transcript147 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hello, dear listeners, welcome back to Conflicted. I'm here with Eamon. Eamon, hello.
- [00:06]
B
Hi everyone. Don't worry, the oracle of Arabia is safe and sound and continuing to forecast the doom of Arabia from here.
- [00:14]
A
Eamon, who do you think said this? Around about 1975, quote, Islam proclaims monarchy and hereditary succession wrong and invalid. When Islam first appeared in Iran, the Byzantine Empire, Egypt and Yemen, the entire institution of monarchy was abolished. Who do you think wrote that? Ali Khamenei. What makes that ironic, my dear friend,
- [00:45]
B
that his son became his successor.
- [00:48]
A
Just this morning it was announced officially that members, hardline members within the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran have anointed Mujtaba Khamenei, the second son of the now deceased former supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, supreme leader. So, Eamon, it seems, despite its revolutionary foundations, that Iran is becoming a hereditary monarchy once again.
- [01:15]
B
Exactly. It's becoming another Syria, more importantly, another North Korea. All of these revolutionary kind of ideals always descend, you know, into monarchy, into nepotism, into self serving, you know, leadership.
- [01:34]
A
Well, in this episode of Conflicted, dear listeners, we are going to talk all about Mujtaba Khamenei. In the first half we are going to tell you who he is, and in the second half we are going to explain who he believes himself to be. And this will require us to go on a deep dive into all those Eskimos, eschatological beliefs that swirl around this war on the Shia side, on the Sunni side and on the Christian side. It's a real tour de force episode of conflicted. I know it. Dear listeners, this is why you come to Amen and to some extent me, to explain what's really going on. Let's get right into it. Amen. Amen. Amen. Mujtaba Khamenei. You know someone that I think three months ago, four months ago, literally no one except top experts on the Iran file would have known about, and yet now he is the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic.
- [02:38]
B
Can you believe it? In 2009, I wrote a paper on him.
- [02:41]
A
Oh, really? What did you say then?
- [02:43]
B
At that time, I was saying that he is the power behind the throne. And that was only 16 years ago. Can you believe it? And so I was talking about the fact that he just became 40 and he is indeed the head of his father's office. He holds within it all the files, the sensitive files of the irgc, of the judiciary, of the diplomacy, of the nuclear file. He is the gatekeeper of his daddy's
- [03:10]
A
empire, ayman you truly are the Oracle of Arabia. You know, I feel sorry for non experts because they already found it hard enough to to distinguish between Khomeini and his successor Khomeini. Everyone was hoping, I think that the supreme leader of Iran would have a name that didn't sound like Khomeini or Khamenei. But sadly it's now Khamenei. Once again, everyone remember Khomeini. Khamenei. They're different names.
- [03:40]
B
Exactly. Although we do refer to him as analysts in our intelligence company. Like basically we refer to him as MK now in a more easy because there is AK and mk so Mujtaba and Ali. So basically his father is Ali Khamenei. So AK and we refer to him as mk. You know, when we are texting each other what MK is saying, what MK is doing, where is he hiding? You know. So yeah, MK.
- [04:06]
A
Okay, well, MK was born in 1969 in Mashhad, Iran. As I said, he was the second eldest son of Ali Khamenei. As we know Mashhad, one of the holiest cities in Shia Islam. The shrine of the Imam Reza, the eighth Imam in Twelver Shi' Ism is there. It's a major clerical and pilgrimage center.
- [04:32]
B
I did visit indeed that shrine. It's the largest Shia shrine in the entire world. It's really big. It's almost like, I mean the third largest, you know, place of worship in Islam. Like in after Mecca, Medina. And by the way, like, I mean when I visited it was you know, around like in 1997, beginning of 1998. I just, you know, went there illegally from Herat in Afghanistan and just like made all my way to Mashhad pretending to be an Afghan refugee. I was only, you know, barely 20 at that time.
- [05:04]
A
Wow.
- [05:06]
B
And guess what? What an amazing place. But not many people know that it is weird place. Mashhad, while it is the holiest city in all of Iran, by the way, by, you know, because it's the only Imam whoever like you know, basically lived
- [05:21]
A
and died there within the borders of Iran today. It's the only place where one of the Imams was lived and died. Yeah, yeah.
- [05:27]
B
And it is so far in the east. It's near the Afghan border, like near Heraj.
- [05:31]
A
Well, you know, foreshadowing. We'll have a lot to talk about that part of eastern Iran into Central, Central Asia called Khorasan in the old maps.
- [05:40]
B
Yeah, exactly. Which is extremely significant. We will talk about it later in the episode. But so when I went there into the shrine Just to notice that, you know, basically that Imam Riza, the eighth imam, is there, but also next to him is who? Harun al Rashid. So the. Yeah, the tomb of Harun al Rashid,
- [05:59]
A
the great Abbasid Caliph. The one who sent an elephant to Charlemagne.
- [06:04]
B
Exactly. So looking at both shrines next to each other and thinking, okay, yeah, Harun Rashid is not so revered by the Shia at all. You know, next to him is one. Someone who's so revered. And that's why Lakina, I mean, it was always, you know, amazing that when I. And the thing that I was told when I was there by our guide, he said, guys, just remember that Mashhad is the most important city here because everyone who becomes the great servant of the shrine of Mashhad will one day become either the president of the Republic or even. Or even the imam of the country himself, which means the supreme leader.
- [06:50]
A
Well, there you go. That is the city in which MK Mujtaba Khamenei grew up. And so, you know, it's already a sign of the kind of environment he was saturated with. He was luxuriating in a very religious environment, very, very millenarian, apocalyptic in its style. And so when the revolution broke out in 1979, he was only 10 years old. And the first 10 years of that revolution, as he came of age, the years of the Iran Iraq War, the years of the establishment of the irgc, the years in which his father, Ali Khamenei, rose slowly up the ranks and eventually in 1989, became supreme leader. Those would have been formative years for the young mk. He, as a young man, MK did participate in the Iran Iraq war, indeed.
- [07:45]
B
Actually, he was part of the newly established division of the Young Fida' Iyin of the irgc. And in fact, he participated in the Marshes conflict roughly around 1987, 1988, and he was only 17 years old. Because as far as Khamenei was concerned, he was saying to everyone, look, guys, I'm not sending your kids to die while my kids are having good time. My kids are going to like in a fight and might even die too. So he exposed his own son to danger, to real danger, for the purpose of saying, we are all in it together.
- [08:22]
A
Many elite sons did participate in the war, helping to garnish their own revolutionary credentials. But the fact that Ali Khamenei sent his son there is a sign that Ali Khamenei was a true believer in the revolution. He was an austere man. He. He was an idealist and an ideologue. He Wasn't a faker. And I don't think his son MK is entirely a faker either. Although he's very different from his father, as we'll see. In the 90s, Mujtaba pursued religious education. He went to the seminary in Qom, the intellectual center of Shia clerical learning in Iran, and eventually achieved the rank of Hajat al Islam, a kind of mid level clerical rank which is just
- [09:07]
B
below the level of Ayatollah. So you start as Mullah Mirza, you know, and then you, you know, you achieve the level of Shaykh. But then after that, once you receive Hujjat al Islam, Hijat al Islam is the equivalent of a master degree. You know, the Ayatollah is like the ultimate PhD.
- [09:26]
A
And then of course, beyond Ayatollah, there's the Grand Ayatollah.
- [09:30]
B
Oh yeah, the professor, kind of like a dean.
- [09:33]
A
So it will be contro in some Shia circles, both inside Iran and outside Iran, that the man that the IRGC has basically forced or whatever schemed to be made Supreme Leader of Iran is only a Hujat al Islam, not an Ayatollah. Certainly not a Grand Ayatollah, at least not formally.
- [09:53]
B
Not formally, but he did receive the title from the 88 members of the assembly just this morning.
- [10:02]
A
Oh, I see. He is a Grand Ayatollah as of today?
- [10:05]
B
Yeah, he's been, he skipped two, you know, promotions in order to be made, you know, Grand Ayatollah. Talk about goodness. Like in a. Basically like in a what you call
- [10:17]
A
meteoric rise, or maybe in the current context we should call it a ballistic rise. But it's a very quick rise through the ranks. Now Listen, in the 90s in the noughties, unlike a lot of political figures inside Iran, Mujtaba never held a major public office. He never sat in the cabinet, he never pursued any electoral positions in the parliament, nothing like that. He operated squarely inside the office of his father, the Supreme Leader. He became something like a power broker inside the court of the Supreme Leader, a kind of gatekeeper now controlling access to some extent as he did to the Supreme Leader. And you know, in authoritarian hierarchical systems, this isn't entirely unusual. In Saudi Arabia, mbs, the Crown Prince established a similar role for himself in the court of his father, now King Salman. This is normal kind of way politics works in such systems. Mujtaba Khamenei became the gatekeeper to his father. But what would that have achieved for him, Eamon? What kind of network built up around him as a result of that access?
- [11:32]
B
Oh, he became the arbitrator between different centers of power, whether it is the bazaaris, the reformists, the conservatives, the religious establishment in Qom, or of course, the irgc and separately the armed forces, and even beyond that, the Quds Force and all the proxies outside the extensions of the Islamic militant empire that his father was building, including Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Iraqi militias, and even, for example, figures like Nour al Maliki, the former prime Minister of Iraq, Adel Abdul Mahdi and other senior figures. Hyderabadi. All these prime ministers of Iraq have to go and of course, kiss the ring. But before they kiss the ring of Ayatollah Khamenei, they have to go through his son Mujtaba. And this is why he suddenly found himself to be the people who. Because you see, Ayatollah Khamenei has no time to spend hours and hours and hours being, you know, lobbied. So he somehow put his son forward
- [12:46]
A
to be chief lobbyist.
- [12:48]
B
Exactly. So he pushed his son forward to be his gatekeeper to protect him from being lob. And, you know, I'm being asked for favors and therefore, no, my son will be my chief office minister.
- [13:03]
A
It was from around 2005 that he became increasingly visible inside the internal power struggles that Iran frequently witnessed inside the inner sanctum. It was alleged from that year onwards that he was a big supporter of President Ahmadinejad, a very hard line IRGC LinkedIn person who was controversial certainly outside Iran, but inside Iran too, a lot of people who were more on the reformist wing very much opposed Ahmadinejad's rise to the presidency in 2005. But Mujtaba became one of his supporters, a sign that he had placed himself firmly in the hard line faction of Iranian politics.
- [13:50]
B
Exactly because he believed passionately, both ideologically and theologically, as we will see later, that the salvation of Iran and the protection of the Islamic Republic comes from within the projection of strength, not from within the borders of Iran, but from outside the borders of Iran. That is the proxies that the proxies are the extension, the natural extension of the Iranian eschatological theological empire his father built.
- [14:23]
A
But in the meantime, there was unrest inside Iran, and Mujtaba played a role in suppressing that unrest in 2009 when the Green Movement broke out there. Now this is somewhat forgotten today, but back in 2009, and I suppose it was because of the Green Movement and those protests, Eamon, that you wrote that report about Mujtaba.
- [14:46]
B
Exactly.
- [14:46]
A
So back in 2009, everyone thought that the regime might fall because the movement seems to have a lot of unity, a lot of force behind it. Now, in the end, we know it was crushed. It inspired to some extent the Arab spring. So the 2009 green movement in Iran is very important. And opposition figures that were leading that movement accused Mujtaba Khamenei of supporting the security crackdown on demonstrators in. In a big way. And so as the teens unfolded in Iran, his political identity became very much tied to the security apparatus of the regime, both inside and out.
- [15:29]
B
I mean, just to give you an idea that after Qasem Soleimani led the first battle, the first battle of the Syrian civil war in Baba Amr and Homs in December of 2011, you know, transitioning the uprising into a civil war. And that's what Qasem Soleimani himself did, not a Syrian figure. As far as Qasim Soleimani of the Quds Force of the irgc, when he returned after that to Iran, there was a video where he was, you know, greeted, you know, of course, by Khamenei. But before he was greeted by Khamenei, Mujitaba was coming to greetings Qasem Soleimani. And Mujtaba wanted to kiss the head of Qasem Soleimani, you know, to show that his respect for what he did in Syria. But Qasem Soleimani refused. And he was actually, you know, forcefully pushing Mujtaba from kissing his head. And he was insisting on kissing Mujtaba's head.
- [16:34]
A
Oh, wow. How interesting. Yes, well, you know, the story of Mujtaba and the Syrian civil war doesn't end there. There are Amen allegations. Really. And the evidence, it has to be admitted, remains, at least from what I could tell, somewhat fragmentary and unverified. But widespread reports say that at some point Mujtaba himself went to Syria during the civil war and worked the room a bit with Bashar Al Assad. And Soleimani, he adopted a nom de guerre during the conflict. And there are various nomes, Daguerre, that are that people say he adopted, but you know, he was there working alongside IRGC Quds force commanders. What do you know about these allegations, Ayman? Do you feel confident that we can say that Mujtaba Khamenei did play some direct role in the Syrian civil war, if only as a kind of onlooker from the ground?
- [17:33]
B
I am absolutely sure based on intel that we've received in 2013 and 2014 during the critical years of the fight against ISIS and the rise of isis, that he was there in order to assure Bashar Al Assad that all of this will be overturned by 2015, 2016, and that he should remain steadfast. And that the Islamic Republic is working on co opting the current occupant of the White House, as they used to call him that time, the useful idiot, President Obama, into achieving the goals of the Islamic Republic within both Iraq and Syria by reversing the gains of ISIS and by also at the same time, when you reverse the gains of isis, you reverse the gains of Sunnis, basically like simultaneously the moderate Sunnis at same time in both countries and solidifying that Shiite crescent from Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad all the way to Tehran.
- [18:39]
A
So, you know, if we can put ourselves in 2017, 2018, 2019, those key years when it did look like maybe Bashar Al Assad would survive long term, his regime would survive and the Shia Crescent would survive. This is before the 7th of October happened and everything was unwound. And all of the places plans that the Iranian regime had put in place the previous 20 years were largely undone. But in those years, we can say that Mujtaba Khamenei had basically built up three pillars of power. First, inside the court of his father, he was embedded inside the Supreme Leader's office. He controlled access to patronage networks, to communication flows, as you say, he was the chief lobbyist and gatekeeper. Second, the Islamic Republic's security networks. He had deep ties with the irgc, including the Quds Force, deep ties with the Basij paramilitary structure, which he had used to crack down on protests in 2009 and afterwards. So the security networks that he built deep ties to really are the backbone of his power today. And it's why the IRGC has backed him so hard. And finally, I do think we need to talk about the third pillar, which is basically financial patronage, financial power. Mujtabat Khamenei stands at the center of one of the Islamic Republic's networks of financial corruption, money laundering, drug dealing, and basically putting money in property in shell companies all around the world. Bloomberg just a couple of weeks ago released an incredible report. Now, this is before they knew or anyone knew that he would become Supreme Leader. An incredible report really detailing how Mujtaba Khamenei has built up a financial empire for himself using an agent named Ali Ansari, who is in fact now being prosecuted for breaking the sanctions against Iran in the UK and elsewhere. So tell us a bit, Eamon, since you know A lot about this dark money, shadow finance world. Tell us a bit about Mujtaba Khamenei's relationship to that world.
- [21:02]
B
From the beginning, Mujtaba Khamenei was copying to some extent, but then improving so much on it. You know, the idea of a resistance economy from countries such as and North Korea and Syria. The idea is how do we diversify our illicit means? So it's called illicit diversification of means to generate wealth and financial means for the Islamic Republic. And these need to be as clandestine as possible because whatever we generate, we will channel back into also clandestine operations, proxies, terror networks, sleeper cells all across the world, money laundering network. So we need that. And it's very clear that he used the irgc, considerable experience in setting up companies first inside Iran to do it outside of Iran. And that has five pillars. And I will explain the five pillars now very quickly. First, the use of charity is very important. Why? Because of something in Shia Islam called al Khums, which is the 20% Zakat religious tax that every Shia must pay. And so the estimates that we had in 2012, 2013, that around the world, the people, the Shia Muslims who follow Ayatollah Khamenei as their leader, as opposed to Sistani, who was in Najaf, they contribute roughly about $74.5 billion, almost $75 billion a year. A year. I just like, I mean, remind you, $75 billion a year in Al khams. So they already have a cash cow. That cash cow was actually his own daddy, his own father, because that khums is paid to the Imam Mahdi. They call it, like in Khums, al Imam, to the Imam Mahdi. So his father is the deputy of the Mahdi while the Mahdi is in his occultation. So the question is not about, like, you know, who pays the Khums inside Iran? That's up to them. But the question is, who pays the Khums inside Iraq, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, uae, United States, anywhere outside Iran, especially Latin America. So Suddenly there is $75 billion of free money coming every year, you know, and so because you have 138 million Shia outside of Iran and they are paying, you know, 65% of them are paying. 60, 65% are paying.
- [23:52]
A
Question for you then, Eamon, because you're going to talk about the four other pillars in a second. But as we're talking about Al Homs now, you told us in a previous episode, and I have no reason to disbelieve you, that Ali Khamenei himself had a well founded reputation for asceticism, moderation, that he wasn't himself actually personally financially corrupt. And yet $75 billion a year is flowing into him as the deputy of the Imam Mahdi, et cetera. So where did Ali Khamenei think that money was going to?
- [24:29]
B
Okay, both Ali Khamenei and his son never lived a life of luxury. Let me put it this way. They are not collecting the money because basically they want to have you know, their own personal fortune. Like you know, basically in Beverly Hills, you know, nice mansions and jacuzzis and lots of girls.
- [24:48]
A
So this isn't like Gaddafi's sons or you know, in the old days the, the sons of Gulf monarchs and stuff. It's a different sort of style.
- [24:56]
B
Different style because they are collecting the money in order to enable a vision, it's a collective vision. They are doing it for the cause, not for themselves, which is even more dangerous. I wish they were doing it for themselves.
- [25:09]
A
But anyway, so when Bloomberg says that like, like you know, Shell companies linked through his agents to Mujtaba Khamenei have, have put money into massive, expensive hundred million pound properties in North London, for example. Again, this isn't because Mujtaba wants to live in luxury in these properties. He's just hiding his money, trying to hedge against, you know, whatever downturns in the economy. He's basically managing this money. But the goal is the revolutionary aims.
- [25:38]
B
Exactly. At the end of the day it is either to sell, to rent, generate wealth out of it and just to keep an asset that appreciate in value. So the whole idea is like can you diversify, diversify your assets, whether it is gold, properties, shares and companies and at the end of the day bonds, whatever. So there is no reason to believe in any way, shape or form that they were personally benefiting from all of this. They were doing it on behalf of a rather, as we will see soon, basically a fanatical cause.
- [26:14]
A
So what are the four other pillars?
- [26:16]
B
The four other pillars basically is the companies, the business. So the business is very important. So the second pillar is the business of oil. So oil and sanction busting. Sanction busting business. When it comes to oil, the shadow fleet as they used to call it, the tankers waiting in the middle of the sea, a certain, you know, coordinates where you navigate towards them and then you empty your vessel into them or you basically fill your vessel from them depending if you are a buyer or a seller and you know, and the brokerage that is billions of dollars of an industry. The third one is the business in narcotics, which generated billions of dollars of managing narcotics, especially Captagon and other things alongside Assad and Hezbollah. This has been exceptionally lucrative. Not only that, but they also did it in places like Latin America and other places. The fourth pillar is the business, but this time in export and import. When it comes like the export and import of goods and services, you know, whether they are luxury items, electronics, cars, you know, to all of the elites in Iran. So they were, you know, while themselves were never driving Ferraris or Lamborghinis, they were happy, happy to give the rich kids of Iran, you know, Ferraris and Lamborghinis, but after they have been taxed properly, you know, at customs, you know, which usually prohibit the import of such items just for the sake of making more money for the IRGC and for the proxies.
- [28:05]
A
There's another dimension to that because, you know, in Iran as it functions in a way, people are allowed to get very rich on the condition that they don't pursue political power.
- [28:16]
B
Exactly.
- [28:16]
A
Very strange country from that point of view. The people who are really in power, as you say, in fact, live more or less modestly. But there is a class of very rich people who are allowed to get very rich on condition that they leave those in power in power.
- [28:33]
B
Exactly. And the final pillar is finance itself. Because while they were moving these funds from one place to another, from one continent to another, from one bank to another, they themselves became extremely savvy. And people noticed. Presidents from Africa and Latin America came to them. Chavez, Maduro, you know, even Mugabe, you know, quite few other leaders like, you know, they want to mention them. You know, we're starting to come to them and to say, wow, guys, like. And I mean, you're amazing. You know, you could launder like, you know, basically tens of billions of dollars a year and hardly anyone notice. Can we join the club, please? Like, I mean, and so they made, you know, the money laundering they were involved in as a means of moving funds into a business in its itself, the forex business. The forex, which is the foreign exchange currency. They established clearing houses from Caracas to Beirut to Mauritius, you know, to Muscat, unfortunately, also Lucky to Kuwait to Dubai before, in the past, before they cracked down on it in 2021. That's, by the way, one of the reasons why the Emirates is at the receiving end of more than 60% of the projectiles now, because the Emirates, Interesting. Secretly crushed the whole empire between 2021 and 2024. And I was having a Front seat of it. I saw the whole thing one day I will make a whole episode out of it.
- [29:58]
A
Yeah, yeah, we look forward to that.
- [29:59]
B
So Turkey was also a Forex part of it. Vietnam, Cambodia, we could go on and on about basically the Forex system they created and they made so much money out of it. Now we come back to the fact that these five pillars, all of them led, or let's say five streams, all of them led to one pond. And that pond was who?
- [30:26]
A
Mujtaba Khamenei. Well, you know, it's funny then he is. He's a very symbolical figure and who knows how long he will remain supreme leader. But his becoming the supreme leader really marks a watershed in the history of, of the Islamic Revolution. So a change is happening, but what has not changed is the hardline, hardcore, absolute commitment to Shia theological and eschatological beliefs. And after this quick commercial break, we'll come back and we will try our best objectively and in a balanced way to explain to the listeners the apocalypticism that still informs the Iranian regime, the Islamic revolution there and its new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. We'll be right back. We're back. We're talking about Mujtaba Khamenei, the new supreme leader of Iran. And we're going to do a deep dive now, Eamon, into the eschatological beliefs, which really animates Mujtaba Khamenei more than people might think. But before we go specifically into those Shia12 or Shia Khomeinist12 or Shia beliefs, I just want to do justice really to the whole question of apocalypticism, end of the world world expectations that inform not just Shia Islam, not just Islam, but all of the Abrahamic faiths as they're called, Judaism, Christianity and Islam in all their various forms have apocalyptic beliefs. And, you know, it's, it. I think it's important to remember or to point out that the world that gave birth to Islam, the world that Islam came From, the early 7th century Near Eastern world, was totally saturated with expectations of the end of the world. On the Christian side, for sure. You know, most people know that Christians have this idea that at the end of time, Christ will return preceded by the Antichrist. There will be a big war, maybe called Armageddon. I think most people are familiar with that. Fewer people will be familiar with the fact that Zoroastrianism, the traditional and historic religion of Iran and the Persianate world before the coming of Islam, Zoroastrianism also had very Strong apocalyptic beliefs. Zoroastrianism is fascinating. It has this incredibly ornate and sort of complex cosmological timeline really. They believed the universe would last precisely 12,000 years, that there were four cycles within that, and that at the end of time, you know, after good and evil had become all mixed up into chaos, there would be a big sort of battle, three savior figures would emerge to separate good from evil properly, and there would be a final restoration at the end of time. So both of those pre Islamic religions, Christianity and Zoroastrianism, had apocalyptic beliefs. And in the early 7th century, when the Prophet Muhammad begins his mission, you know, to bring Islam to the world as is, as Muslims understand it. The Eastern Roman Empire, which was Christian, and the Iranian Sassanian Empire, which was Zoroastrian, were totally embroiled in a cosmic war, like a kind of world war of the age. The Sasanians successfully pushed the Romans almost entirely out of the Middle East. They conquered Jerusalem. They took the fragments of the true cross that had been kept there as great sacred relics. They took them back to their capital in Ctesiphon. And this generated from within the Christian world this tremendous desire to get the true cross back. The Emperor Heraclius declared for the first time holy war, promising that his soldiers would reach paradise if they fought valiantly on the battlefield to defend the cross of Christ. In an incredible move, he sort of outflanked the entire Sassanian army and stabbed them from behind. The Sasanians had this huge reversal. The true cross was captured back, taken to Jerusalem in triumph. Now, at the time, everyone thought this was a sign of the end of the world. And in fact, the Quran itself has a memory of this time because the Romans in the Quran are invoked as being in the midst of a big war. They had suffered a defeat. But the Quran says, don't worry, soon they will triumph over their enemies and all of the believers will rejoice. So hard baked into Islam from the beginning is this eschatological, apocalyptic environment. And it saturates Islam both Shia and Sunni.
- [35:39]
B
And how ironic, Thomas, is that we are now having a, you know, another Roman Persian, you know, descendants of the Sassanids, you know, fighting against the descendants of the Romans, at least. Like this is the extremely idiotic, simplistic way the IRGC operatives online who produce rather very poor AI videos, try to portray the current conflict.
- [36:07]
A
I mean, not just idiot IRGC operatives, although there are a lot of those I see on the Internet now from Christians as well. A lot of Christians are seeing this war through the lens of apocalypticism. There is a, a prominent trend within certain strands of Protestant, especially evangelical Christianity, sometimes known as Christian Zionism, sometimes known as dispensationalism. There are various forms of this, but they believe that these are the end times. They believe that the State of Israel, the political entity, the State of Israel, plays some prophetic role in those end times. And they believe that from the East, Gog and Magog, unholy pagan, you know, infidel disbelievers will attack that state at some point. So it's Christians as well, and Sunnis. Sunni discourse is shot through with eschatological expectations as well, including now, I mean, the Mahdi, which we're going to talk about now. The Mahdi, this figure is a Sunni figure as well as a Shia figure.
- [37:12]
B
Indeed. Except like, you know, basically his role in Sunni Islam is extremely less significant as in Shia Islam. I mean, it's way, way, way irrelevant in comparison. If we really look at, you know, Mahdism, Mahdism really starts really 50 years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, you know, so we're talking here about like in a 670, you know, around that time. And it really started with the, you know, battle of Karbala, you know, the death of Hussain, you know, who is the third imam of the Shiite. And the idea that there has to be a revenge and all of that. And then of course, like, I mean, the supporters of Ali and his two sons, Hassan and Hussain, now that they are gone, they are looking for a savior. And this is where it's all started. The word Mahdi started to be inserted into the general literature, you know, of Islam at that time. There was no Sunni or Shia Islam at that time.
- [38:14]
A
Yeah, because there was no Sunni and Shia Islam at the time. This sense that a Mahdi, a savior, a guided one is just around the corner was growing throughout the Muslim community because they had experienced a couple of civil wars. The sense of their unity, of their prophetic destiny to unify the world under Islam was slightly shaken by these civil wars. And some members of the early Muslim community were looking forward to this guided one Mahdi, who would save them from this disunity.
- [38:45]
B
Exactly. The word Mahdi means guided, as you said. But then really, let's now focus on where the Mahdi really, really started. I mean, politically and eschatologically in a way that shook the entire Muslim world. It really started around the year 720 to 730 AD during the Abbasid uprising against the Umayyad dynasty. So you have the Abbasid dynasty. They are Hashemites. They are the cousins of Ali and Hassan and Hussain. And they want to wrest the caliphate from the Umayyad dynasty, who they see as an anathema to Islam, a hereditary rule that was not supposed to be in charge of Islam. And so. And guess where do they start? They start from the province of Khorasan. Yes, they started from that far flung province at the very periphery of Islam. It's in the, in today, today's Mashhad, the city of Mashhad again. And this is when they start to say there will be the black flags of Khorasan rising up. And they started, let me put it this way, Thomas, in my humble amateur theological opinion, fabricating hadith, you know, starting putting out the hadith about a Mahdi rising up with the army of black flags, coming from Khorasan of all places. Wow. As if the Prophet knew what Khorasan is. And they are coming all the way not only to conquer Damascus and Aleppo, but also to conquer Jerusalem and to raise the black flag over the mosque in Jerusalem, blah, blah, blah. Okay, fine. So now we start to see Mahdism started there. But then as soon as The Abbasids by 750 completed their mission and they have taken over the great cities of Iraq and Levant, they just, you know, completely forgot all about the Mahdi. And the Mahdi went into legend. And then it is picked up then. And this is where the tragedy is, Thomas. The tragedy here is that for both Shia and Sunnis is that the era of the writing of the hadith just started there.
- [41:09]
A
And then, well, the writing down, the collecting of the hadith, let's say, not necessarily the invention of all the hadith, although some scholars say a lot of them were invented. I think most people today will agree that a lot of them were invented at this time, including these hadith about figures like the Mahdi coming from Khorasan with his black flag.
- [41:27]
B
Exactly. I mean, if you look at Bukhari, Bukhari is about 4,000. In Bukhari, the second book after Quran, for the Sunnis, it is 4,400 hadith. And he said himself, Imam Bukhari, that he chosen those 4400 hadiths to be included out of 600,000. So he rejected 99 point something out of them all. Like, I mean, so really, really, the invention was just too much. The fabrication was just too much. So including those hadiths about the Mahdi. So, and this is why, you know, it was unfortunate that. Because the narration of these hadith started to circulate around and when the hadith collectors started to include them. It came across a scholar that you and I, you know, discussed at length in two episodes in the past, which is Ahmad bin Hanbal and his musnad.
- [42:20]
A
As you should go back, listeners, listen to our series on Ahmad bin Hanbal in the fourth, for the fourth season. It was, it's great. It really grounds you in that period, the Abbasid period, when a lot of what would be codified in Islam, both Shia and Sunni, was codified.
- [42:38]
B
Exactly. So he collected all of these hadiths, including the black flags and Khorasan and the Mahdi and all of that. So now of course, like, you know, basically by then, of course, the Shiat imamat continued, you know, just because Hussain died in the battle of Karbala, that his offspring became the imams, you know. So after Hussain came his son, Ali IBN Al Hussain, Zain Al Abideen. So basically he became, you know, the Imam after his father Ali.
- [43:08]
A
I'm sure that most listeners know this, but let me just make sure that the singular thing that divides Sunni from Shia really most generally is that the Sunni do not believe in a divinely elected heritable imamat. They believe that the community as a whole, the Muslim community as a whole, comes together to decide who leads them based on that person's virtue and knowledge. The Shia, however, believe that God has foreordained that the leadership of the Muslim community should pass by blood from Muhammad to his heirs through his son in law, Ali. And generation after generation after generation, one of those heirs led that part of the Islamic community that felt that the leadership must be an heir of Muhammad in that line until eventually the 11th Imam in that line died without seemingly having sired an heir.
- [44:06]
B
Exactly. And all of them lived in different places. For example, Al Qaddam lived in Baghdad, you know, Al Baqir lived in Medina, you know, and Al Sadiq lived between Baghdad and Medina. But Arida, you know, basically lived in Mashhad and died in Mashhad.
- [44:21]
A
We talked about it before.
- [44:22]
B
Yeah, exactly. That's important, like basically for all of this. So he lived in Khorasan, died in Khorasan. And his sister Fatima, known as Fatima al Masuma. It means like, you know, basically the sacred Fatima. Her grave is in Qom. And that's why Kum is considered to be also holy, because of the fact that the sister of Imam Al Riza, you know, basically is in Qom and buried in Qom.
- [44:45]
A
Yeah, Qom is not too far from Tehran, really. And it is now like the spiritual center of Shia in Iran. And this name, Rza Reza. You know, it's a very important name in Shia Islam. The founder of the Pahlavi dynasty, Shah Reza Pahlavi, was named Reza. His son was Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. That's the name. Reza. It goes back to this imam, Imam Reza in Mashhed in Khorasan.
- [45:10]
B
Exactly. So, but then, of course, the Imamat went back to Baghdad and from there to Samarra, when the Abbasid caliphs built a administrative capital 60 kilometers north of Baghdad. It's called Samarra.
- [45:24]
A
It's on the Tigris river, just up the river from Baghdad.
- [45:27]
B
And there we have the Imam Al Askari, the son of Imam Al Hadi. So he is the 11th imam. He died at the age of 28, and there was a dispute whether there was a child or not. The Abbasid court documents showed that his will did not include a son. His brother and mother. His brother Ja' Far and his mother inherited the entire estate without the presence of any other heir. Suddenly, one of the friends of the last Imam, a man called Uthman IBN Said Omari, he started the idea, saying, no, no, no, no. Because he was one of those people who was tasked with collecting the khums. You remember we talked about the khums before in the first half of the episode, the 20% zakat. So since he was tasked with collecting that, he said to the followers that used to give him the money on behalf of the Imam, no, there is a child. I swear to you, there is a child. His name basically is Muhammad, son of Al Hasan.
- [46:38]
A
Okay, so this is where I, as Thomas in this podcast, would like to state clearly that at this stage, Sunni and Shia, Sunni and Twelver Shia deviate from each other profoundly. So what Eamon is going to narrate here is for Twelver Shia, part of their sacred history. They believe it is true, and they hold it very, very closely. This is whether they are Khomeinist hardline Islamic revolutionaries or just ordinary pious Twelver Shias.
- [47:10]
B
Exactly.
- [47:10]
A
And so I do not want us to be mocking this belief.
- [47:13]
B
Exactly.
- [47:14]
A
God knows, religion is full of beliefs which, on the surface and in terms of what history can determine, don't seem to be verifiable. So it is true, as you say, that the court documents at the time suggest that the 11th Imam died without his son. However, it is also true that one of his followers said, no, no, no, he had a son. His name was Muhammad Al Mahdi, and he is young. And we are taking care of him secretly hiding him from the authorities.
- [47:40]
B
Exactly. So this is where the first occultation Happened like the first hiding, they call it like basically al Ghayba Sughrah. The first hiding, the first occultation started from the age of five year old and it lasted 69 years. And there were four ambassadors that deputized on his behalf. It started with that guy, basically with that man, Uthman Bin Said Al Omari, then his son after him, then two more ambassadors and then the last ambassador. Ambassador said, that's it. There is no more ambassadors. Every jurist will be of the Shia, will be an ambassador on his own, but without being in touch with the Mahdi. So this is now where we enter from the minor occultation to the major occultation. According to the Shia 12 for faith. The idea is that one day he will come back.
- [48:28]
A
So this period introduced this idea in Shia discourse of deputizing on behalf of the Imam who is hidden either in the minor occultation, the major occultation in general, because the Shia community believe that only the Imam can lead them. Once there was no sense, perceptible Imam, maybe because there was none at all, or maybe because he was an occultation. It put the Shia movement in a kind of political and theological quandary. If we don't have this man to lead us, who does lead us? Well, initially it was his deputies.
- [49:05]
B
Now we have to take into account here that the Abbasids also, who are Sunnis, did in fact give far more weight to this creed, to the creed that there is a hidden Imam. Why politics again. In North Africa and Egypt, there was a menace for the Abbasid dynasty. It's called the Fatimid dynasty. A dynasty came from the line of the 7th Imam, the other son, Ismail, rather than from Al Qaddam. And you know, his descendants claimed overlordship in North Africa and then Egypt. And then they started to call themselves the Mahdists.
- [49:48]
A
This is a split within Shia Islam itself. Ismailis chart the Imam it through one line, the Twelvers through another line. Now the Twelver line stopped and the 12th Imam entered occultation. The Ismaili line has never stopped. And to this day, the Aga Khan is the Imam of the Ismaili Seveners, the Ismaili Shia.
- [50:12]
B
Exactly. So they call him Imam Hazra. It means the present Imam as opposed to the absent Imam for the Shia Twelvers.
- [50:19]
A
So in the early 10th century, the Fatimid caliphate is growing in North Africa. This is an Ismaili Caliphate. And the Abbasids were very much threatened by this rival.
- [50:31]
B
Exactly. So in order to deviate people from the idea that really these people are the true representation of the Mahdi, they're talking about the Fatimids, of course. So as soon as this idea that there is a potentially hidden son for the last imam, the 11th imam in hiding, they actually magnified and amplified this belief among Shiites in Iraq in order to create that barrier between Baghdad and Cairo at that time and to put a buffer and to stop the idea that there is only one Mahdi and he is among the ranks of the Fatimids. So again, the Abbasid really Lakhna Amin, had twice a big influence on the idea of a Mahdi.
- [51:23]
A
And so eventually, let's say around the year 1000, the Fatimid Caliphate is established with its capital in Cairo. The Abbasid Caliphate still exists with its capitals in Baghdad and Samarra. Although it's weak, it's much weaker than before. Real power is in the hands of sultans across the Muslim world. Nonetheless, there it is. This idea amongst 12 or Shias is more or less now hard baked in. The Mahdi is the 12th Imam who is in occultation. He will one day return in glory to save the world before Jesus, the Messiah returns, but then before the Mahdi returns. This idea had also grown up that three other figures remember hearken back to that Zoroastrian belief of three saviors. At the end of the world, three other figures would emerge, appearing in the same someone known as the Yamani, someone known as the Sufyani and someone known as the Khurasani. Now, the Yamani based on his name would come from Yemen and would call people to the Mahdi. The Sufyani would emerge in Syria and would be the enemy of the Mahdi and the Khorasani would the man from Khorasan would emerge in Khorasan with black banners to support the Mahdi in his fight against the Sufyani. And just news flash, dear listeners, it is quite clear based on many insider reports from the Islamic Republic regime that Mujtaba Khamenei, the new supreme leader, seriously believes that he is the Khorasani.
- [53:10]
B
Absolutely. When we started looking into his mindset from 2009, 10, 11, 12, it became very clear that his entire research and the papers he was actually studying and the books he was internally writing within the seminaries of Qom focused a lot on putting together not only like basically an understanding of the three people who would pave the way for the Mahdi, you know, the two who are his followers and the one who is his enemy, but also the same time like in a. Basically he started to craft for himself that image even among the religious figures within the seminaries of Qom because Many of the descriptions of the Khorasani seems to, you know, in his mind, fit him, you know, born in Khorasan. He was born in Khorasan, in Mashhad of all places. You know, he. He will be like among those who would be fighting in the battles of Iraq. You know, he fought, you know, in the Iran Iraq war, and then he will advance himself further into Iraq. So he did so during the battles against Daesh as he is visiting Syria, you know, undercover. He did visit Iraq undercover, along with Soleimani. Soleimani himself used to tell leaders of Hezbollah and the other militias from Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq that, you know, he believes Mujtaba is the Khorasani.
- [54:42]
A
And it also might explain why Mujtaba was in Syria during the Syrian civil war. And it certainly explains why many Twelver Shia in this line of thinking can consider the new president of Syria, Ahmed Ashara, the Sufyani. So the Khorasani is going to fight the Sufyani?
- [55:02]
B
Exactly. As soon as Ahmad al Shara went into the umayyad mosque in 8th December, 2024, and he stood on that pulpit to declare the end of Bashar al Assad and the reclamation of Syria for Sunnis, this is when the whole Shia world exploded, exploded with one name, Sufyani. Sufyani, Sufyani. All of them said Dasa Sufyani. And it never stopped. Because why? In their belief, Sufyani is a figure that would emerge out of Damascus and he will actually announce his rule according to the texts within the Shia 12 verse books. He will declare his rule from the pulpit of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus and suddenly, as Sufyani, they call him Sufyani, the Umayyad Sufyani, the incarnation, the reincarnation of the Umayyads returned back and he is going to oppose, you know, the emergence of the Mahdi. So now there need to be the two figures, the Yamani and the Khorasani.
- [56:17]
A
So the Yamani, the man from Yemen who calls people to the Mahdi, they
- [56:21]
B
say it is Abd al Malik al Houthi.
- [56:23]
A
Oh, there we go.
- [56:26]
B
Exactly. So the Houthis. One of the things, Lakina, when I was. You remember, Lakina, I mean, I shared with you a manuscript long time ago, Thomas, about the Al Qaeda and the Jihad and the power of eschatology.
- [56:39]
A
Oh, yes, of course. You studied all of this a lot.
- [56:42]
B
I mean, it was 90,000 words, like in basically manuscripts.
- [56:45]
A
Because again, dear listeners, the Sunni jihadist movement has its own eschatological apocalyptic beliefs that are similarly kind of crazy and yet can often be interpreted along current events to be seen to be coming true.
- [56:59]
B
Exactly. So if you remember, I actually devoted the whole chapter there to actually come compare, you know, Sunni jihadism with, you know, the eschatological, you know, apocalyptic vision of the Shia 12 years, you know, and how they are fighting in all the same places. Iraq, Syria, you know, basically the Levant and Yemen, how Al Qaeda established Iraq, Levant and Yemen, how ISIS did the same and how the IRGC did the same because all of their prophetic eschatological maps aligned over each other, they overlap. And one thing though, basically I want to add here, which is absolutely mind boggling, is the fact that the name, the name basically mentioned for the Iraqi militias that they established, the Iranians, the IRGC established in Iraq was called Asad Asa' Ib Ahlul Haq. Now why this is important is because they wanted to establish an army in Iraq called Asa'. Ib. Because in the text of the Shia Twelvers they say that the Khorasani is going to be supported by Asa' Ib Ahlul Iraq. Asa' Ib means the disparate battalions of Iraq. So that's what Asa' Ib means, disparate battalions coming together to join the Khorasani as soon as he advanced from Khorasan, which is Iran, into Iraq. So even everything is being pre prepared like for this eventuality.
- [58:32]
A
So listeners, if you, you know, maybe you're listening to this and you're getting shivers because it is true that a lot of this very old, very ancient prophetic material seems from one point of view to becoming true. Now you might argue, and I'm sure Amen will argue, that that's because to some extent people on the ground who believe in these prophecies are ensuring that they're coming true. They're making them come true. And yet, you know, we all like a bit of spooky sort of paranormal stuff, you sometimes do wonder, are they coming true before we get back on the, on the Shia journey? Because eventually we want to tell the story of how this eventually resolves into the Ayatollah Khomeini and his constitution for the new Islamic Republic and his ideology of the Wilayat Al Faqih. But I do want to be fair here and just say, as I said before, Christians, especially evangelical Christians, especially those in what's called the dispensationalist line, Christian Zionists in the United States mainly, but they're good missionaries, they've spread it everywhere. They also have views that, you know, non believers would consider a little bit weird. And yet in their own eyes, are coming true. Prophecies that are coming true on the 5th of March. So as of this recording, just four days ago, in the Oval Office itself, Donald Trump hosted a gathering of around 20 evangelical Christian pastors and faith leaders. They gathered around him, they laid their hands on him, and they prayed for him in the context of this war. They asked God to give him wisdom from heaven, strength to lead our nation, to protect him. And all of this is informed not just by American patriotism, not just by general Christian faith, but by a very clear understanding that the Iranian regime, because it threatens the State of Israel, is a servant of the devil. Because in their dispensationalist view, the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948 is a sign that Jesus Christ will soon return. Before he returns, faithful Christians, evangelical Christians will be raptured out of this world and a tremendous chaotic kind of global war will break out as the Antichrist appears. And the State of Israel plays a role in all of that. So they are protecting the State of Israel so that it will be intact when the rapture occurs. So again, both sides are involved in this kind of eschatological, apocalyptic thinking.
- [61:17]
B
The problem is, it's not just only involved, Thomas, it's overlapping. How? Because from the point of view of the Shia Twelvers, is the fact that the Khorasani, the one who would actually pave the way for the Mahdi, would actually fix the black banner. Where? In Jerusalem?
- [61:36]
A
Oh, of course, yes, it's going to be in Jerusalem.
- [61:39]
B
He would defeat a great, you know, host of, you know, you know, Roman, Jewish, like, you know, I mean, alliance or whatever, and he will just conquer and just vanquish all of these enemies and just go all the way to Jerusalem. So the whole, you know, the fact of the matter is that I remember, like, you know, I mean, when I was recruited into al Qaeda in 1997, the head of bin Laden's bodyguard, Hamza al Ghamdi, at that time was actually using eschatology with me in order to recruit me, because eschatology is the narcotics of the mind, you know, among many young Muslims, whether Sunni or Shia. And he. And I asked him, I said to him, how do we know that we are living the age of the prophecies? And he said, well, we do have the trigger. And I said, what is the trigger? And he said, the return of the Jews to the Holy Land. Their return to the Holy Land and the establishment of a state there is the trigger for the end of times, epic battles. This is exactly mirrored also in Shia, Dwal, versus Islam as it is in Sunni Islam, or at least I would say in Sunni apocalyptic Islam, because this is now a new branch in emerging, just like Protestant evangelical apocalypticism.
- [62:52]
A
It also mirrors what happened all those centuries ago when Islam was being born. Because when the Persians back then conquered Jerusalem and forced the Romans out of the Levant, what did they do? But for a brief period, a few years, they invited the Jews of the Roman Empire who had been forbidden from living in Jerusalem under its Christian rule. They invited them to come back to Jerusalem and inhabit it. So even then, all those centuries ago, Christians in Rome were saying, the end times have arrived because the Jews have returned to Jerusalem. So this story, this story, I mean, again, it gives you shivers because it's just like it's. That repeats, you know, century after century after century. Okay? So when the 12th Imam disappears and then there's that period of deputizing, and then the deputizing period ends and the great occultation begins. For several centuries, 12 or Shia Islam embraced explicit quietism. It really did not get involved in politics at all. Now, in the 15th and 16th centuries, a new power arose from the Iranian lands. Initially a Sunni Sufi power, what would in time be known as the Savavid dynasty. They eventually embraced Twelver Shiism. Their own rise to power and their conflict with the Ottoman Empire was also infused by tremendous eschatological and apocalyptic expectations at the time. And during that time, the clerical class of that empire was empowered by the
- [64:34]
B
Shah a bit more especially judiciary. Especially for the first time ever, they are recognized as official jurists of the state for the first time, because the
- [64:45]
A
Safavids needed a clerical class through whom they could exercise their rule. And so they empowered the Shia clerisy.
- [64:53]
B
And where did they import them from? You will be surprised.
- [64:55]
A
From Lebanon.
- [64:56]
B
Yes, exactly. Exactly. From Lebanon.
- [64:59]
A
They didn't have these. See, this is the irony is Iran at the time was a majority Sunni. The Safavids forced or imposed Twelver Shi' ism on Iran. So they were lacking a Shia clerical class to, you know, to be the lawyers and the judges for their empire. So they imported them not only from southern Lebanon, but they did from southern Lebanon and from Iraq and from even Yemen, I think some of them came.
- [65:24]
B
Exactly.
- [65:25]
A
And they created this new reality where suddenly the Shia clerical class were participating in statecraft. They had not done that before. They had been a kind of minority. They were usually far from power.
- [65:38]
B
And you'll be surprised that there are many. For example, a Sadr family came from Jebel Aml in Lebanon, Arakchi they came from Najaf. Larijani also, they came from Najaf. It's amazing that many of the leaders now of Iran are people who trace their lineage back to the clerical classes that were imported from Iraq and from Lebanon, from Jebel AML in southern Lebanon.
- [66:05]
A
As we've discussed before on previous episodes of Conflicted. Go back, find them. The Safavid empire weakened. The Qajar dynasty rose to power. It was weakened through its rivalry with the Russians and the British. It was the age of humiliation for the non European powers of the world. European empires were so much more powerful and Iran felt that humiliation as well. During that time, ideas began to percolate amongst some Shia thinkers. Ideas that would grant even more power to the clerics and even to a single cleric to govern the Shia community in the name of the Imam. These were just ideas at the end of the 19th century. But in the 20th century, after the Pahlavi dynasty had come to power, after Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi had introduced modernity into Iran in a way that offended the sensibilities of a lot of the conservative clerics, these ideas from the 19th century were revived. And a cleric named Ruhollah Khomeini adapted them and in 1970 announced his doctrine of Wilayat al Faqi, the Guardianship of the jurist.
- [67:24]
B
Exactly. Because during his years in exile in Iraq, of all places, in Najaf, when Khomeini left Iran, exiled by the Shah, and went to Iraq to Najaf to actually both study and teach in the grand religious seminary there in Najaf, he became so infatuated with the writings of one particular cleric from the 1850s in Najaf. His name was Ayatollah Bahrani. So Ayatollah Bahrani argued heavily in his writings in the 1850s and 60s, so 100 years before Khomeini arrived to Najaf, that maybe we should think about establishing a polity in which the. A grand jurist, a grand Ayatollah from within the Najaf seminary should rise up and actually take control and be the arbiter of all three branches of power, the executive, judiciary and legislative. And he called it, for the first time we now have a. The proper name for this theory.
- [68:32]
A
But he was completely sidelined by the majority of scholars at the time. His ideas seemed crazy. And all the Shia scholars in Najaf and elsewhere said, no, no, no, no, no. The political power, worldly rule is for the Sultan.
- [68:47]
B
Exactly.
- [68:47]
A
We, our job is religious, our job is juristic. Only in the sense of helping people, you know, with their divorces and their marriages and their sin and their redemption. These are our responsibility. The sultan has political power.
- [69:01]
B
But, you know, Khomeini realized that Ayatollah Bahraini was into something because both of them, ironically, were influenced by the writings of Plato and the idea of a republic headed by a philosopher king. Now, while the circumstances were not right for Ayatollah Bahrani at the time, Ayatollah Khomeini realized that, no, maybe Bahrani was ahead of his time by a hundred years. So he basically just dusted, you know, the writings, you know, removed the dust from the writings of Ayatollah Bahrani and embraced them. And somewhere else, you know, fate has it that another obscure cleric, you know, basically called Ayatollah Kaamanai, or at that time he was actually Hujjat al Islam. He wasn't even Ayatollah. Another Hajjat al Islam, Khamenei was in a prison somewhere translating the books of Sayyid Qutb to give the wilaat al faqih system, you know, which is a grand theory, a political framework borrowed from the Muslim Brotherhood.
- [70:02]
A
Yeah, we talked about this in the last episode that the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was a translator of Sayyid Qutb and imported the Muslim Brotherhood Qutbist ideas into Ayatollah Khomeini's velayat al faqi ideas, which had itself grafted on ideas from Plato. So we're beginning to see that Khomeinism, the ideology of the. Of the Islamic Republic, is a strange hybrid of many things.
- [70:28]
B
Exactly. But then it needed, just like an alchemist, it needed one important ingredient. So you have the political framework borrowed from the Muslim Brotherhood in Sitkotom. You have al Faqih, the stewardship of the grand cleric. That's what the translation is of Fahat al Faqih, you know, borrowed from Ayatollah Bahrani. You know, you put them together. But then there is one thing that is missing. It's the crucial ingredients. And Ayatollah Khomeini realized that he has it because we are living the end of time. Several things came into fruition. First, the return of the Jews to the Holy Land. And then, of course, there is the
- [71:08]
A
Soviet apocalyptic, godless communism about to conquer the world. Atheists on the march, nuclear weapons, you
- [71:15]
B
know, all of these things. Like, you know, battles here and there, civil wars, tribulations.
- [71:20]
A
And again, dear listeners, the same things were being told by evangelical Christians in the United states in the 70s. I remember growing up with a book called the Late Great Planet Earth, a huge bestseller in America, which told us that the Soviet Union and the return of the Jews and all of this was down to the end times having arrived. And Jesus was soon to return.
- [71:45]
B
Exactly. Except Khomeini borrowed this. Exactly. And he put, instead of Jesus, he put the Mahdi. So he actually gained incredible popularity within Iran and especially among the lower classes, the working classes, you know, basically, and the religious class classes. And he gained so much popularity throughout Iran with his eschatological cassettes, lectures that
- [72:11]
A
were distributed so widely in 1978. You know, the Iranians were really in the grip of apocalyptic fervor. Remember that famous episode when they saw in the full moon they saw the face of Khomeini.
- [72:23]
B
Exactly.
- [72:23]
A
And people thought, oh, oh my gosh. And many people, when Khomeini touched down in early 79 back in Tehran and was driven into the center of town with all of those hundreds of thousands of people screaming their guts out, a lot of them thought that he was the Imam returned. Ayatollah Khomeini did not entirely disabuse them of that fiction. He used it to his advantage.
- [72:50]
B
Exactly. So the whole idea is this is when the constitution of Iran was written, and it was written by April 1st of 1979 to be April's fool's, to coincide with April Fool's Day. The fifth article, as we discussed many times here before, the fifth article of the constitution stated that the head of the state in Iran is the Mahdi. You know, so that's it, it's settled. That's the official head of the state. The head of the state of the Islamic Republic in Iran is the Mahdi. However, there will be, according to Willaat Al Faqih system, a deputy on his behalf, which should be a grand jurist, you know, someone who will be the grand steward on his behalf until his return, until, you know, his return from his occultation. And that would be of course, the supreme Leader of Iran, Khomeini first and then Khamenei after that. And now of course, it comes to
- [73:44]
A
Khamenei Jr. Who is the Khorasani. Remember? So this is the point. This eschatological kind of expectations are continuing and perhaps they are reaching fever pitch. Because if you were right now, if you were in the IRGC and you believed all this and you believed that Mujtah Bahamane was the Khorasani and you believed that the end times were nigh what would you think? Amen. What would you be thinking right now as hundreds of ballistic missiles from America is pummeling you and the Great Satan himself is saying, you must surrender unconditionally, surrender. What would you think?
- [74:17]
B
Exactly. This is why I'm saying that what Trump and his administration, what the European Union and they're like in a cynical, non believing, basically idiotic ways of thinking and all the other pundits, all the publications of the world, from the Economist to the Wall Street Journal basically to the NYT to the, to all of them, they don't get it. They don't get the fact that the IRGC and the Basij armies believe that Mujtaba is the Khorasani. They believe that Ahmad Al Shara of Syria is the Sufyani. They believe that Abdul Malik Al Houthi in Yemen is the Yamani. And they believe that the reason, the only reason that Israel and America, the Jews and the Christians are coming to destroy Iran is to destroy the re emergence of the Mahdi. Because the three figures now like basically are gonna clash. It's all happening. How could you not believe it? And you see, we all fall for this and unfortunately we all gonna pay the heavy price in this region because of highly enriched intellectual narcotics called prophecies.
- [75:40]
A
And Eamon, we have every reason to believe that Mujtabat Khamenei also believes all of this, that he does believe that he is the Khorasani and in fact the assassination attempt against his life, you know, he was also there when his father was killed. He survived. And the prophecies say that the Khorasani would what, survive an attack or something?
- [76:02]
B
Exactly. He would actually be wounded. Yet he will survive and his survival would be miraculous. And it will be the sign to his followers and to his commanders that he is the one. He survived an attack that killed his father, his mother, his wife, his daughter, his son, his niece, his brother. So actually, as far as they are concerned, he is the one. And guess what? Within the prophecies it says that at the beginning he will refuse the leadership. And what happened is Ayatollah Hussain Hashimi Bou Shehri, the Secretary General of the Council of Experts who were supposed to elect him, when they were pressuring him, the other experts to say, announce it, please announce the name. And he keeps saying, I'm having trouble because the person you elected refused the leadership. So he just put the beautiful cherry at the top of the cake.
- [77:04]
A
Eamon, I don't know. You're turning me into a real believer because so many of these Prophecies seem to be coming true because people work
- [77:13]
B
to make them true.
- [77:15]
A
But the point is, dear listeners, that all of this is informing the policy of the Islamic Republic right now. If both the United States and Israel think that they're dealing with rational people.
- [77:28]
B
Yeah.
- [77:28]
A
And if they think it's going to be easy through bombing alone to get rid of this zealous enthusiasm for end of times expectations, they are in for a shock because it's going to be hard. I mean, to the extent that I wonder, should it even be attempted? I know, Eamon, you support the war aims. I guess what you wish is that people would go into it understanding better what's really animating their enemies.
- [77:53]
B
I have a feeling that if Trump, Rubio, Hexith, besent, you know, Jared Kushner, Steven Witkoff and all of the people like, you know, basically who I heard were, some of them basically were listening to this podcast. I just want to say something like, you know, basically, I wish if you just had far more foresight about the apocalyptic eschatological foundations of the Islamic Republic before you went into it, maybe you shouldn't have taken out the Ayatollah in the first place and focused on the irgc. Focus on the tool, not basically the wielder of the tool for now. Disarm the perpetrator. Do not shoot the perpetrator. By shooting the perpetrator, we might have unfortunately unleashed powers that were not supposed to have been unleashed.
- [78:46]
A
Oh dear. This is all very profound, dear listeners. We, you know, there are other things that inform the ideology of the Islamic Republic. Third Worldism, anti capitalist, post colonialist Marxist idea that was infused into Shi' ism through a figure called Ali Shariarty. So there's lots of things that cooked together to create this ideological regiment, but it's still there, it's still kicking, despite the beating that it is getting. And, you know, keep listening to us because we're going to do our best to try to make sense of it for you. Ayman, this is a long episode, but I think it's a valuable one because this is. This stuff isn't talked about enough.
- [79:25]
B
Well, this is why I remember when I came up with that manuscript 13 years ago when I talked about Sunni and Shia eschatology and the fact that it was informing the strategy of militant groups across the Middle east, whether Shia or Sunnis. There was 24 publishing houses who returned the manuscript to me, telling me basically that this is all nonsense. I want them to look me in the eyes right now and tell me how foolish they are.
- [79:55]
A
Well, I don't suppose you're going to get that particular sweet vengeance, Eamon. Anyway, we've got to bring this to an end. Thank you. Thank you very much for bringing all of your scholarship and all of your analysis to bear. Dear listeners. You know, thank you very much for putting up with this longer episode of Conflicted. We hope you enjoyed it. Until next time, take care.
- [80:12]
B
Take care, everyone. And survive the apocalypse.
- [80:17]
A
Conflicted is a message heard. Production Our executive producers are Jake Warren and Max Warren. This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Smith, Mo.