Over the last 35 years since the Islamic Revolution, Americans have come to associate Shi’ism
with the hostage taking in Iran, with Hezbollah blowing up the American embassy in Lebanon.
They forget that Shi’ism can just as easily be our allies as our adversaries.
Ever since the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Iranians have claimed to be leaders of
the Shiites; nothing could be farther from the truth.
The fact of the matter is, what the clerical rule that Iran represents is actually a minority
view in Shi’ism, and we know that most Iranians themselves don’t even particularly care
for the type of government they have.
My colleague Ahmad Majidyar and I at the American Enterprise Institute just released a major
report on Shi'ites in the Middle East.
What we did in a series of interviews and travel throughout the region is on a country
by country basis, we went through all the countries surrounding Iran and we looked at
how the Shi'ite communities in those countries actually resist Iranian influence, and argue
that if the US had a more nuanced policy then we could actually peel those Shi'ite communities
away from Iran and roll back Iranian attempts to export the revolution.
The United States needs a nuanced policy towards each and every Shi'ite community.
Just because you’re Shi'ite, doesn’t mean you come from the same cookie cutter.
We need separate policies looking at the problems of Shi'ites in Bahrain, Shi'ites in Lebanon,
Shi'ites in Azerbaijan, and we need to be able to ensure that these communities are
adequately able to resist the pressure they face from the Iranians and the Revolutionary
Guard.
Most Shi'ites outside of Iran don’t particularly care for Iranians either on an ethnic basis
or on a religious basis.
They don’t like being dictated to.
They don’t like the traditional condescension with which Iranians look at Arab communities
or Azerbaijan.
Therefore, if they can have their own independence, if they can ally separately with the United
States, they’d welcome the chance.
We shouldn’t be deferring Shi’ism to the ayatollahs in Iran, and the irony is as the
United States too often defers the identity of Shi’ism to Iran, the Shi'ites, not only
in Iran, but outside it--both secular Shi'ites and religious Shi'ites--are fleeing as fast
as they can from the dictates of people like Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who they see as
a corrupt leader and not as a legitimate religious figure.
If we look at all the Shiite communities as Iranian fifth columnists, it becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy.
I was on a bus between Tehran and Qom.
The air conditioning broke down on the bus.
One of the mullahs on the bus--you could tell by his clerical headgear--asked the person
sitting in front of him to take down the window because it was hot in the bus, and the person
turned around and said in Persian, “No, you mullahs are all going to hell anyway,
you better get used to the heat.”
The point of this is that most Iranians don’t particularly respect the ayatollahs whom they
now associate with corruption.
When you claim to be the Supreme Leader, like Ali Khamenei does in Iran, when you claim
to be the Deputy of Messiah on earth, but you have all these other ayatollahs contradicting
you, then that’s a pretty good sign that any sort of free theological thought, any
free discussion is going to be your Achilles’ heel.
You can’t claim to be the Deputy of the Messiah and get contradicted by all these
other Iraqi Ayatollahs or Shi'ites elsewhere.
That’s why it’s so essential for the United States to protect the independence of various
Shi'ite communities.
We’ve got to understand that that problem with the Islamic Republic isn’t any particular
grievance, it’s rather their ideology: an expansionist and aggressive ideology at that.
No matter what we do, they’re going to lash out at us, so we shouldn’t be so worried
about painting them into a corner.
There’s nothing wrong with, for example, preserving the ability of independent Shi'ite
communities to get up and speak and talk about theology and beam it into Iran.
And if that presents a challenge or makes the Supreme Leader uncomfortable on theological
grounds, so be it.