There is much debate in the analytical sphere as to whether the audacious attacks on Iran’s nuclear production and weapons sites were sufficient to set back Iran’s nuclear programme.
The United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency announced on 12 June 2025, to no one’s surprise, that Iran was not complying with its nuclear nonproliferation obligations. This was the agency’s first resolution against Iran in 20 years.
The next day, Friday 13th, Israel began its attack on Iranian nuclear and military infrastructure, as well as assassinations of scientists and military personnel.
What comes next is unknown, but the regime is apparently turning its anger inwards, as the clergy and some of the military appear to be challenging the increasingly exposed theocracy.
Did 1979 betray Shia Islam?
Core to Iran’s ruling clerical regime was the destruction of Israel. This has been fundamental to the regime’s very purpose since the revolution in 1979 that brought the ‘supreme leader’, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to power.
The 36-year long and ongoing rule of his successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has seen this creed grip the country and the region in misery and hate. Khamenei has always been key to this.
Khameini argued in a book written in 1970 that since Islamic sharia law contains everything needed to rule a state, whether ancient or modern, any other basis of governance will lead to injustice and sin. Iran, the Muslim world and eventually the whole world, must be ruled according to sharia.
The regime’s obsession with Israel and Palestine does not emanate from Shi’ism but from the Muslim Brotherhood, a fanatical and militant Sunni organisation founded in Egypt.
Hasan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928 to promote the revival of an Islamic caliphate to spread Islam, by any means including violence. The Egyptian government banned him and in 1949 he was assassinated. His rival and successor, Sayyid Qutb, wrote books that defined the Brotherhood more substantively and in particular its hatred of Jews.
The young Khameini translated Qutb’s work into Farsi, including Qutb’s critique of Israel and the West.
Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, wrote an article dealing with the historic nature of Shi’ism pre-1979, and posits a possibly different future.
Abdul-Hussain writes that Khomeini imported Qutb’s ideas into Shiism and developed the controversial theory about an Islamic government guided by one cleric – the supreme leader. This idea broke with a millennium of Shi’ia religious decentralisation; militant Brotherhood-inspired Shi’ism was alien to traditional Shi’ism. Shias follow the religious guidance of Muhammed’s descendants, whereas Sunnis follow the guidance of his followers.
Pre-1979 Shi’ism
Shia Islam regards Najaf in Iraq, the burial place of
Muhammad’s son-in-law and cousin, Alī ibn Abī Tālib, as the major pilgrimage destination after Mecca for Shia Muslims.
According to Shia tradition, when Prophet Muhammad made his night journey to the “furthest mosque” as described in the Quran, he travelled to the Mosque of al-Kufah in southern Iraq, not to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem per Sunni tradition. The similarly golden-domed mosque is in Najaf, and dates back to the 7th century.
The Shia traditionally revere places and shrines across the Levant (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan), Iraq, Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but not in what was Mandate Palestine. Medina, the city in which Muhammed ultimately lived is not of much consequence to the Shia.
Abdul-Hussein, in an interview with journalist and lecturer Haviv Rettig Gur, said that there were two Shia traditions – Arab and Iranian. The Iranians consider Arab Shia to be the ‘father’ religion.
Splits into various Shia sects occurred until the rise of the formidable Fatimid (North Africa, Egypt, the Levant) from 909 until 1171, and Buyid dynasties (Iran and Iraq) from 930 to 1048. This was the “Shi’a Century” of Islam. In Iran a process of forced conversion of the majority Sunnis to Shia Islam under the Saffavids occurred between the 16th and 18th centuries. The process also ensured the dominance of the Twelver sect within Shiism.
For over a millennium the Shi’tes agreed that their clerics would guide followers on spiritual issues only until the return of the Mahdi. The Mahdi was a messianic figure: the twelfth imam in Mohammed’s line. Tradition is that he had gone into occultation (been hidden from view) and would return at the end of time to restore justice on earth. Until then, the Shi’ites pledged their allegiance on temporal matters to whichever sovereign was in power.
Abdul-Hussein said that his grandparents, who came from Iraq and Lebanon respectively, regarded the Palestinian question as an exclusively Sunni issue. The Iran regime’s exhortations to die as martyrs and free the world was not part of the Shi’ism he grew up with; it was much more pacifist.
His grandparents pledged their allegiance to Iraq and Lebanon respectively. Obeisance was not made to an authority in Iran. This was alien to their centuries-old beliefs, traditions, and customs.
Most senior Shia clerics in Iraq and Iran opposed Khomeini’s idea of clerical rule, because leadership belonged to the Mahdi only. Khomeini justified the position of supreme leader as the Mahdi’s “deputy” until his return.
Abdul-Hussain says that Khomeini, fearing the success of the communists who had joined his revolution to topple the Shah, ordered the attack on the US embassy and the taking hostage of its diplomats. He sought to rally the Sunni Muslim world around his Shia leadership by inviting Yasser Arafat to take over the Israeli embassy in Tehran.
Quds (Jerusalem) Day is celebrated on the last day of Ramadan. This Sunni celebration owes its existence entirely to Khomeini who introduced it ostensibly to protest Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem.
Anti-Americanism and antisemitism became the defining doctrine of the regime of Iran. However, “the Shia creed advocates pacifism while waiting for the second coming of the Mahdi”.
Khomeini’s regime expanded the organisation of the Shia communities in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria, to establish proxies with allegiance to Tehran. They became “a ‘first line of defence’ for non-Arab Shia Iran”.
Israel’s response to Iran
Israel has never regarded the regime’s virulent anti-Semitism, and its regional and global ambitions as merely performative.
Israel has regarded Iran and its proxies as possessing the ultimate existential threat, with its ‘ring of fire’, and had no illusions that its nuclear capabilities would be used when the enrichment process was sufficient.
After Hamas’s invasion on 7 October 2025, it became clear that the attack had been planned by Iran, Hisbollah (Iran’s Lebanese proxy) and Hamas for as long as a decade.
Previously Iran, through Hizbollah, was responsible for the bombing of the American military barracks in Beirut in 1983 killing 241 people; bombing the American embassy in Beirut in 1984 where 23 people were killed; and the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, where 85 people were killed.
The Second Lebanon war was largely a war between Hizbollah (Iran) and Israel. When that war ended the Israelis started to gather intelligence for the inevitable next war. Israel’s success against Hizbollah in 2024 proved the Israelis prescient. Tragically, they thought Hamas could be managed.
An Israeli and an Iranian writing in The Times of Israel remind us that the people of Iran are the regime’s first victims. They also echo Abdul-Hussain’s comment about the regime’s global intentions, and warn against continuing to appease the regime. Its culpability for the 7 October massacre should serve as a sober warning to the West.
The authors write that Iranian (Persian) civilisation was one of immense depth which shaped much of the ancient world with poetry, science, music, architecture, and philosophy. “Jewish civilisation, from biblical ethics to modern contributions in medicine and human rights” makes the Israeli and Iranian civilisations complementary as “beacons of cultural pride and creative spirit”.
So could something positive happen?
The Israeli government has made it abundantly clear that it is not at war with the Iranian people.
For Abdul-Husseini the ’12-day war’ of Shia traditional leadership in Najaf was the opportunity to “lead the Shia world back to pacifism”.
It is difficult to know exactly what the regime is thinking: there are reports of killings by the regime but also of defections within the military. The parlous state of the economy could help to drive change further and faster.
It is by no means clear that the significant Iranian opposition could actually coalesce into something that can bring genuine, positive change. Events may become increasingly chaotic, but there is hope that if the right change can be made, the dynamic in the region could see some level of peace that has hitherto been elusive, even unimaginable.
[Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mastababa/322382753]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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