LESSONS ON THE MIDDLE EAST
Articles by Albert Mohler
Part I
Absolute Hostility to the West and Further Instability in the Middle East: The Death of Iran’s President and the Future of the Islamic Republic
The death and funeral of Iran’s president and other Iranian leaders has brought to American attention, and frankly global attention, the reality of the Iranian regime. And even as the headlines right now have to do with Sunday’s helicopter crash in a mountainous area of northern Iran in the condition of fog. Even now, the big questions are what will be the future of Iran? And we, as Christians, need to understand there’s some very deep worldview issues here. And it requires us to go a little bit further back in the headlines. Indeed, we need to go back further in the headlines even than the term of President Ebrahim Raisi. We need to go back to the Iranian Revolution that took place in 1979. We need to go back to ancient Persia in order to understand what we’re dealing with here and why it is so consequential.
Now, in order to gain some footing here, let’s think first of all of geography. The geography puts Iran there in that critical portion of land in the east, in the borderlands. And in particular, you have many Asian countries to the south, and especially to the southeast. And you have Russia very close as you look to the north and to the west. And so, interestingly, as you look at a map of Iran these days, a lot of it is the result of various military actions over the course of the last several centuries, including ongoing conflict with Russia, the Russian Empire, and what vestiges of an empire were represented at the time by Iran. But when I say vestiges of an empire, we need to remind ourselves that what is now the nation of Iran, that geography was at one point one of the most threatening and powerful empires the world had ever seen.
You can go back in history and just remember the Persian Empire. So, as you’re thinking about Iran, it is the most central representation of ancient Persia, and the very heart of what was the Persian Empire. You can think of figures throughout history such as Cyrus the Great, and you come to understand that there are intersections here with all kinds of empires, the rising and falling of empires. And of course, you have an intersection with the experience of the nation of Israel, where Cyrus the Great is mentioned, let’s just remind ourselves, in Scripture. You can’t tell the history of Israel in the Old Testament without Cyrus the Great, you can’t tell the history of the world without reference to the Persian Empire. But for the better course of the last several hundred years, we weren’t so much talking about anything like a Persian Empire. And much of that portion of the world was basically not at the center of world affairs.
But ever since the middle of the 1970s, Iran has taken on a new significance. But even as we’re thinking about that, we need to recognize you could go back just a few decades and there were hints that Iran was going to be a big part of the world conversation. For one thing, in the aftermath of World War I, one of the big questions is what would happen to much of that world? And remember, that a part of what happened with the end of World War I was that you also had, even before the armistice, you had the collapse of the Tsarist Empire, the Russian Empire. You had the rise of the Bolshevik Revolution, and you had all kinds of questions about the future of what had been the Russian Empire. So, one of the things you have to note is that even as in 1925, a regime came to power in Iran, the leader became known as the Shah, the Pahlavi family became the dynasty.
One of the big questions was how Iran would position itself between the great powers of the day. And at least for many years, it was not exactly clear where that alliance or allegiance would fall, but eventually, it largely fell into congruence with the interest of the British Empire, and also of American foreign policy, particularly during the Cold War, with Iran being so important for two reasons. One, geostrategically, it was right there very close to what became the Soviet Union. And then, in terms of the energy economy, Iran turned out to be a net exporter of oil.
But from the start, there was an awkwardness in Western relations with Iran, and if for no other reason than you had Islam as a major factor. And yet, that also plays in some interesting ways into the history of Iran in modern times. Because even as the Pahlavi dynasty was in place and often, ruthlessly so ,with the support of Western powers, including, most importantly, the United States for so many years, it was not a matter of great affection for many people in Iran. And in particular, for those who saw the Pahlavi dynasty as hopelessly corrupt, and at least in part corrupt because of its involvements with the West.
And as you’re thinking about Islam in what is now Iran, just keep in mind it is not the majority Sunni Islam of most of the Islamic world. It is Shia Islam, the adherents are called Shiites, and it’s often referred to as Shiite Islam, or a Shiite Republic of Iran as an Islamic Republic. And just remember that as you’re talking about Shiites, you’re not talking about, by the way, a distinction in Islam over the use of force. That’s not true. Many Americans thought that because of the rise of terrorism largely rooted in Shiite Islamic cultures and largely personified by Iran at the time, by the late 1970s going into the ’80s and beyond. But that was actually a misapprehension. Much of Islamic terrorism comes not from the Shiite part of that world, where quite frankly, it is commonplace, but also from forces of Shia Islam. In particular, the sect known as the Wahhabis, the ideology known as Wahhabism. And much of that is actually centered not in Iran, but in Saudi Arabia.
Another aspect of Shia Islam that deserves our attention is that it is avidly apocalyptic. It’s apocalyptic because the version of Islam that is represented here is one that claims that Islam was well-represented by the descendants of Muhammad, and they were known as the 12 imams. The most interesting twist comes near the end of the first millennium when it is argued that the 12th or the last of the imams disappears. It is claimed by the Shia adherents that the 12th Imam will appear again. That will be the age of the establishment of a global Islamic reality. And Iran and the Shia Muslims in Iran see themselves and their efforts as a part of that larger theological picture.
Now, the biggest conflict in terms of many of these centuries has been a conflict not between Islam and the West, that’s always been there, at least mostly as represented by for most of those centuries, the Ottoman Empire. But it is a conflict between the majority Sunni Muslims, and the minority Shiite Muslims, and Iran is the center of Shiite influence. And all that came to the attention of the West with the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979, and the establishment under the leadership of the man known as the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and Khomeini as he became known in the West, was the very face of Shia Islam and of course of the Islamic Republic. And this became a matter of daily headline news, indeed almost hourly headline news in the United States because of the capture by Iranian students of those who became the hostages in the United States embassy there in Iran. And the hostage crisis as it became known, actually not only changed history, it changed the way that news broadcasting was done.
You had the development of late night news programs such as ABC’s Nightline. You also had the advent of cable television with 24 hour coverage. All this was basically transformed during this era, not only by just the general events of the age, but specifically, by the hostage crisis. The hostage crisis, by the way, was not resolved until the hostages were freed after negotiations with the United States government. And several others were involved, as you would imagine as well. But it wasn’t until the day of the inauguration of Ronald Reagan as president of the United States that the hostages were freed. And that is because the conflict between Iran and the United States came down, at least in part to what was understood as a personalized conflict between the Grand Ayatollah in Iran and the leader of what the Shia called the Great Satan, which is the United States, who was then President Jimmy Carter.
Now, it’s important to recognize that the establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran was the establishment of the most aggressive Islamic power one could imagine in the modern world. And Iran intended not only to seize the headlines, but to seize the initiative in the Muslim world. And much of the attention that is directed towards the conflict between Iran and the West needs to be modified by our understanding that some of the regimes that are most wary of and concerned about Iran are the Sunni regimes, for example, of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. They might want to say this softly, but trust me, they’re saying it.
So, the Shah of Iran was deposed, his regime came to an end. On February the 11th of 1979, the Islamic Republic was declared in Iran. And ever since then, Iran, not only through the hostage crisis, but ever since, has been a major force of malign influence in the world from the American perspective, and has been openly hostile. And it sees itself as a religious worldview in absolute opposition to the Great Satan, which is often described, not only by the Shia in Iran and elsewhere, but also by the Wahhabis in Sunni Islam as being hopelessly corrupt, atheistic, and depraved in every way. And by the way, it’s also important to recognize that there were emissaries of both versions of Islam who visited the United States in the 20th century, and they weren’t absolutely wrong in documenting the depravity they said they found here.
Now, it’s important to recognize, and this is something that many Americans will miss, that the man who died among others in this helicopter crash, Ebrahim Raisi, was indeed the president of Iran. That does not mean that he was the most powerful political figure, not at all. And instead, that would mean the current supreme leader in Iran, Ali Khamenei, and he remains in power, but he’s 85 years old. One of the things that’s important about Ebrahim Raisi is that he had been considered at least a possible, maybe even the likely successor as the supreme leader. Obviously, that expectation came to an end, there on that mountainous hillside in Northern Iran. But this is where we need to go back and put the story together.
On Sunday, all across the world, headlines were released saying that the Iranian government had said that they were missing the helicopter, and that it is believed that the helicopter had experienced what the government called a hard landing. Now, almost immediately, I think anyone seeing that understood it to be a likely euphemism for a crash. And it’s also very interesting to note that it was reported right at the time that this helicopter, which by the way turns out to have been quite antiquated, was flying in mountainous territory there in Northern Iran in conditions of heavy fog. It also turns out that there were aviation advisories in the region. It raises the obvious question as to why the president of the nation and its foreign minister would be on this helicopter in the fog in the mountains. As you know, previous headlines have reminded us that is a very, very dangerous combination.
It seemed to take quite a long time before the helicopter was located. It turned out that it was located, at least in part, with help from authorities in Turkey, who were using imaging devices to hone in on sources of heat. By the time it was located, it was very clear that there were no survivors of the crash. Now, I mentioned that this was an older helicopter. Indeed, it was older. It goes all the way back to the period before the Iranian Revolution because after that revolution, the United States and other Western allies put trade sanctions in place. It’s one of the reasons why Iran for so many years had no modern airplanes, either when it came to its air force or when it came to its civil aviation. The airliners flown by Iran, well, let’s put it this way. There were many aircraft hobbyists who went to Iran in order to fly on aircraft who could not be found in the Western world precisely because they were so old.
But this helicopter’s age, it is derived actually from the Huey helicopter that became so well-known during the age of Vietnam, I repeat during the age of the Vietnam War, in the United States. Its civilian component is known as the Bell Jet helicopter. And in this case, it was very old, and the nation had not been able to buy adequate parts for a very long time. It declared that it had reached self-sufficiency in terms of aircraft parts, but it’s not at all clear that that was true. In any event, you had a very old helicopter with very old technology, flying in the fog in the mountains, and you can imagine how catastrophic this could turn out to be, and it was. By the time that the wreckage was located, there were no survivors.
Part II
The Background Story in Iran — The Rise and Fall of Empires, and Emergence of Modern Islamic Theocracy
And this led of course to the political crisis of the regime there in Iran, because if you’re going to stake all your power on a very few limited number of officials, and you’re going to drive an ideological regime that is built on the repression of the people, when you have crucial members of that autocratic tight circle die, you are left with a power vacuum. And Iran’s supreme leader moved pretty quickly to seek to fill that void, at least temporarily. Declaring that elections will be held in about 50 days, hence. But in the meantime, Mohammad Mokhber, who had been the vice president, would become the interim president. Here’s where we need to recognize that Iran has remained in power through the exercise of the most ruthless coercion exercised by the state, and thus by the supreme leader and by the Iranian government, even against its people.
That has included mass executions from the beginning of the Iranian Republic until now. It has included the use of force, including deadly force, including executions, including public executions, not only of many, many people numbering in the hundreds and thousands, but even of teenagers and children. It is to say that this is a regime that seeks to hold its credibility by the exercise of absolutely ruthless force. And it’s also important to recognize that in this case, the religious leadership is coming from a variant of Islam that claims that the very use of that force is sanctioned by Islam, and even following in the example of some ways, of Muhammad the prophet.
So, it’s important to recognize that as we’re looking at Iran, we’re looking at the political crisis there, it isn’t at all clear that autocratic and totalitarian governments can handle this kind of crisis all that well. It is no doubt going to show strains. It’ll be very interesting to see because this is coming even as the supreme leader is 85 years old, and the most obvious question is who will follow him? It is also important to recognize that history reveals that when there is this kind of a crisis, it often brings out an even greater ruthlessness. If the old regime supposedly earned its credibility by being ruthless, any new regime, having even less political power, might decide that it has to be even more ruthless.
It’s also important to recognize that even as Iran recognizes the United States and our allies as the Great Satan, and thus, the great enemy to be opposed, we should expect more terrorism, we should expect more of what we saw with Iran’s attempt to launch an aerial attack upon Israel. The very fact that it wasn’t all that successful doesn’t mean that it would not be in the future. And Iran has been threatening to develop nuclear weapons for the better part now of 30 years.
But finally, on this issue today, we need to recognize that the conflict between Iran and the West, including most importantly, the nation that has been known as the Great Satan representing the West, the United States of America, that this conflict is not one that can be resolved through any normal political process. It is one that is a giant clash of worldviews, which of all people we had better understand. And it puts to the lie the claim of a modern secular age and so many of those who would seek to lead and shape it, that we are way past theology in this world, and that anyone who takes theology seriously is just out of step. Well, if you don’t take theology seriously, you’re not going to understand what in the world is going on in Iran, and that’s going to make you very dangerous.
