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Khomeini's grandson: US can free Iran

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  • Khomeini's grandson: US can free Iran

    Khomeini's grandson: US can free Iran

    BORZOU DARAGAHI IN BAGHDAD


    THE grandson of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the cleric who launched an anti-American Islamic revolution in Iran that sparked 25 years of unrest in the Muslim world, has condemned his country’s clerical regime and suggested military intervention by the United States as a possible path to liberation.

    "In Iran, the people really need freedom and freedom must come about. Freedom is more important than bread," said Hossein Khomeini, 45, a cleric who has taken up temporary residence in Iraq. "But if there’s no way for freedom in Iran other than American intervention, I think the people would accept that. I would accept it, too, because it’s in accord with my faith."

    Mr Khomeini - in Iraq on a religious pilgrimage to Shiite holy sites in Najaf, Karbala and Baghdad - also praised the US. takeover of Iraq, saying American forces were seen by Iraqis as liberators rather than occupiers.

    "I see day-by-day that the country is on the path to improvement," he said. "I see that there’s security; that the people are happy; that they’ve been released from suffering."

    The US has a long, tangled history with Iran, dating back before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Then, followers of the Mr Khomeini’s grandfather stormed the American embassy and kept employees hostage for more than a year.

    Now, the US and its Iraqi allies accuse Iran of attempting to subvert post-war Iraq by allowing militants to enter the country and broadcasting destabilising propaganda.

    Mr Khomeini crossed the Iranian border into Iraq about a month ago, in a visit rife with irony.

    Iraq harboured his grand-father after the Shah of Iran expelled him from the country. During his exile years in the Iraqi city of Najaf, he masterminded a revolution that ousted the shah and established the world’s first modern-day theocracy.

    Nearly 25 years later, the grandson has returned to the country where he resided from 1963 to 1978, and started to speak out against the legacy of that revolution.

    A long-time reformist who was shut out of Iran’s conservative inner circle of power, Mr Khomeini laced his sentences with religious references. But like many religious Iranian reformists, he confined his critiques of the Islamic Republic to scholarly rather than political arguments. He said a religious government can only come once the 12th Shiite prophet Mahdi- who disappeared in the 9th century - returns.

    Mr Khomeini argues for the separation of religion and state and criticised "velayat-e-faqih" - the religious doctrine mandating Iranian Shiite clerics as God’s representatives on earth, giving them near-absolute power

    And though he says he has yet to meet any US officials, Mr Khomeini’s position might lift the spirits of US officials in Iraq struggling to win the hearts and minds of Iraqi Shiites, who make up 60 per cent of the population.

    He condemned Saddam Hussein’s regime, criticising those countries opposed to the war against Iraq’s Baathist government as ignorant of the conditions under which Iraqis were suffering.

    "The people here were subject to crimes unprecedented in world history," he said.

    He praised the late Ayatollah Asad Abdul Majid al Khoei, the American-backed moderate Shiite cleric killed in the first days following the war, as "freedom loving" and honest. "He was the first martyr on the path to freedom in our region," he said.

    He said nationalism has no basis in religious doctrine, and freedom was more important than independence from foreign rule. "Freedom is a basic right. It supersedes all," he said.

    "America is nothing special," he said. "It’s just another superpower like Russia or China. The important issue is freedom."

    The cleric also says he’s considering starting a Shiite seminary in the holy city of Karbala to spread his reformist theology, adding that he expected Najaf to regain its status as the highest seat of Shiite learning in the world.

    Currently, the Iranian city of Qom, where Mr Khomeini and his family live, retains that title.

    This weekend, Mr Khomeini was told by two different sources that a group of assassins had crossed the Iranian border and were trying to hunt him down.

    But Mr Khomeini said he was not afraid that his words would bring harm to him or his wife and three children. He said one should always take advantage of an "opportunity to speak freely and tell the truth".


    http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/inte...m?id=844422003

  • #2
    Iran will be free soon ... !

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by visioninthedark
      Iran will be free soon ... !
      I pray you are correct.
      No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
      I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
      even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
      He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by Confed999
        I pray you are correct.
        Me 3rd. I cant wait to see the people destroy the mullahs. Any idea as to what govenment system would replace them? My guess is either restore the Shah's family as a constitutional monarchy or a republic.

        Comment


        • #5
          Most interesting bit of news.

          Hope the cleric regime is over the soonest.


          "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

          I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

          HAKUNA MATATA

          Comment


          • #6
            A proper Liberal Democracy .... no need for Shahs and princes ... !!!

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by ChrisF202
              Me 3rd. I cant wait to see the people destroy the mullahs. Any idea as to what govenment system would replace them? My guess is either restore the Shah's family as a constitutional monarchy or a republic.
              Hopefully a republic - the track record of the Shah of Iran would mean that the family would find a bit of fledgling hostility and cause for recrimination. The liberals and academics in Iran need European support! Europe's possibly better placed to help than the USA with its current Middle East record.

              Comment


              • #8
                A representitive republic would be nice- but probably too much to hope for.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by M21Sniper
                  A representitive republic would be nice- but probably too much to hope for.
                  Not a bad idea, but as you say, might be a bit too much too soon.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Maxcraft
                    Not a bad idea, but as you say, might be a bit too much too soon.
                    no ... you underestimate the Persians ...

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      How about a Capitalistic Constitutional Federal Republic:-D

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        See

                        http://www.worldaffairsboard.com/showthread.php?t=1818

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Prawux,

                          You have been a great chamipon of Capitalism. Good.

                          Do let me know how to get it going in an impoverished country. And can it be done straight away? If not, what's the answer.

                          Buzz words and Utopia are no answers.


                          "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

                          I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

                          HAKUNA MATATA

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Praxus


                            "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

                            I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

                            HAKUNA MATATA

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Utopia's don't exsist and I don't claim Capitalism will create one. But what I do claim is that Capitalism is consistant with man's nature and thus is the only moral system and will create the best results economicly.

                              Capitalism is the only solution to impoverished nations. The whole world was impoverished before the industrial revolution and the advent of Capitalism. The so called vices of capitalism such as dangerous work enviroment and child labour may be horrific by todays standered but relitive to times before the Industrial revolution people even the poor were very rich. These "vices" were caused by the lack of capital which was inheranted from the previous system.

                              The other thing people like to scream is that Capitalism only helps the rich. This is the farthest from the truth. In Capitalism wealth has to be created requiring the rich to think and work, where as in the previous systems they would mostly be Government beurocrats who would just loot the wealth to line their wallets with wealth they neither earned or produced (<----- Hmmm sounds just like todays Governments).

                              So yes Capitalism is the ONLY answer to illiminating massive ammounts of property because it is the only system that produces wealth.

                              As far as implimenting it goes, the best way would be to impliment it over several years.

                              Comment

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