The Funeral of Velayat-e Faqih — and Trump?

At this point, it is necessary to explain why such extraordinary public honors for a dictator appear incomprehensible to people in the West. There is little doubt that for the past forty-seven years, Iran has been governed under a form of religious dictatorship embodied in the institution of Velayat-e Faqih, under which even the elected President and Parliament representing ninety million Iranians hold limited authority. It is equally true that this system has repeatedly faced intense nationwide protests, which have been crushed through force. According to reports from independent sources, during the most recent wave of protests, 45,000 Iranians were reportedly killed by live gunfire. The number of executions carried out in Iran has also been staggering. Because of the Iranian regime’s militant proxies and revolutionary ambitions, a nation blessed with immense oil and gas wealth continues to struggle with inflation and poverty. What greater evidence is there than the fact that it now takes nearly one and a half million Iranian rials to purchase a single U.S. dollar? It was for this very reason that Iran’s elected President reportedly placed his resignation before the Supreme Leader in tears, urging him to accept a peace agreement, saying that he could no longer bear to watch his people starve and was prepared to leave what he considered a symbolic office. That, however, is a separate debate, for religious fervor has often been used to glorify not only hunger but even death itself. Perhaps it was this very reality that inspired Pakistan’s national poet, Allama Iqbal, to describe the nature of religious leadership in these words:

You have asked me about the true nature of leadership;
May God grant you insight as He has granted me.
The rightful leader of your age is the one
Who turns your heart away from the present world.
By showing you the face of the Beloved in the mirror of death,
He makes worldly life even more difficult for you.

Trump’s greatest mistake, according to the writer, is that by bombing a struggling and weakening system of Velayat-e Faqih, he unintentionally revived it in the public imagination, giving it a new life and sympathy comparable to the tragedy of Karbala. Many people now view Khamenei’s death through the same lens as the martyrs of Karbala, while his innocent granddaughter is seen in a manner reminiscent of Ali al-Asghar. A regime that many Iranians had grown deeply frustrated with has, because of your external military attack, become associated with the symbolism and moral significance of Karbala.

When Imam Khomeini, the founder of the Iranian Revolution, responded to Pope John Paul II in 1979, he wrote that the Christian world did not truly understand the history of Shia Muslims, a history filled with sacrifice and bloodshed. He stated that Shias do not fear death but confront it directly, and that martyrdom is both their pride and their identity. Today, the deeply committed section of Iranian society believes it has demonstrated those words through its actions. Those who launched the attack should have understood the place that the concept of the Imam occupies in Shia belief. Although they believe the Twelfth Imam, Imam Mahdi, has not yet returned and they continue to await his appearance, anyone recognized as the Imam’s deputy inherits the reverence, authority, and symbolic status attached to that position.

For non-Shias and many people in the West, the level of devotion shown toward figures such as Khomeini or Khamenei may seem unusual despite all the criticisms directed at them. Many have assumed that Khamenei was simply another dictator like Saddam Hussein in Iraq or Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. The writer believes that even if he were to become a greater dictator than either of them, as long as he remains the recognized religious authority for Shia believers, his standing among deeply religious Shia men and women is unlikely to diminish. It makes little difference whether he is chosen by one hundred Shia scholars or by a limited number of senior Ayatollahs.

For centuries, the followers of Imam Ali have experienced the tragedy that their Imams repeatedly sacrificed their lives in political struggles, yet gained little besides martyrdom. Much later, the Fatimid dynasty established Shia rule in Egypt for a time, but it eventually came to an end under the leadership of the Sunni Kurdish ruler Salahuddin Ayyubi. After centuries of such aspirations, the institution of Velayat-e Faqih has finally emerged in Iran with full political authority. It is therefore unrealistic to expect its supporters to surrender it easily. Any attempt to reverse this system would require an enormous, comprehensive, and sustained struggle. Those who strongly criticize the Iranian regime or Velayat-e Faqih because of the regime’s alleged links to terrorism, and who compare its Supreme Leader to figures such as Osama bin Laden, Ismail Haniyeh, or Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, should reconsider that assumption. Velayat-e Faqih literally means the governing authority of an Islamic jurist. In other words, it is not merely an individual but a powerful institution representing Shia religious scholars and senior Ayatollahs. Its roots are deeply embedded in the minds and hearts of religious Shia communities. It possesses the authority to veto decisions made by both the elected President and the elected Parliament. In the eyes of its followers, it serves not only as the representative of Imam Ali but as the representative of the divinely guided authority itself, whose command is regarded as inseparable from religion.

(To be continued)