Hopes that the Islamic Republic in Iran may moderate its foreign policy were dashed last week with nationwide demonstrations Friday calling for the destruction of America and the elimination of Israel.
The tone was set by Hassan Rouhani, just days before his inauguratation as president. “Israel has been a wound in the body of Islam for years,” he told reporters as he joined an anti-Israel, anti-US march in Tehran. “That wound must be eliminated.”
“The Zionist regime that occupies Jerusalem is continuing its aggressive nature,” Rouhani said. “In calling for the liberation of Jerusalem, we highlight the unity of Islam.” (Iranian state media later claimed it had misrepresented Rouhani’s remarks.)
Outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad echoed the themes set by Rouhani in a speech at the Friday prayer congregation in Tehran University.
Recalling his speech at the United Nations denying the Holocaust, Ahmadinejad repeated his claim that the Holocaust was nothing but “a fable and an historic lie.”
As a result of a merger between Zionism and capitalism, he claimed, some “2,000 Zionists” control the United States and European countries. Even the president of the United States, a country that “thinks it is the most powerful in the world,” must kowtow to Zionists.
“Don’t think that when I say Zionist I just mean some Jews who happen to be extremists,” Ahmadinejad added. “What I am talking about is the dirty capitalists who control all major economic centers, banks and media groups in the world.”
“Zionism is the animal dimension of satanic rule,” he added. “It knows nothing but plundering the world. They have seized control of the world’s pharmaceutical centers to produce microbes to kill their opponents.”
Designated “The Day of Quds” (Jerusalem), the demonstrations attracted virtually all regime officials in addition to the usual “Death to America!” rent-a-mob.
With banners bearing the late Ayatollah Khomeini’s saying “Israel Must Be Effaced from the World,” militants burned US and Israeli flags in more than 800 demonstrations, according to the official news agency IRNA.
The anti-American theme was spelled out in sermons by mullahs across the nation.
One sermon given top billing by the official media was delivered by Ayatollah Abbasqoli Akhtari, who heads the Ahl-e-Beit (People of the House) organization. Controlled by the ”Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei, Ahl-e-Beit operates as a parallel government structure. It also has a network of representation in more than 50 countries, including the United States (where, claiming a religious status, it benefits from First Amendment protections).
“America is the arch-enemy of Islam,” Akhtari said. “It will not settle for anything less than the destruction of Islam. The only way to fight back is through resistance until it is brought to its knees.”
Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi, a Revolutionary Guard general, focused on praising the Lebanese Hezbollah as “the vanguard of Islamic resistance.” He claimed that Hezbollah, backed by Iran, represents “the best hope for liberating Jerusalem.”
The anti-US and anti-Israel feast appears to have had two objectives.
First, hardline Khomeinists who control the essential levers of power wanted to serve notice that Rouhani’s election heralds no substantial changes in foreign policy, especially with regard to America.
Rouhani has made no secret of his desire to “de-couple” the US and the European Union to ease pressure on the Islamic Republic. The demonstrations signaled that desire, with no hostility shown against European powers.
The second objective was to reassert the ideological unity of the factions within the regime, shaken by the rift over the 2009 election and this past spring’s bitter presidential campaign.
Distilled down to its essence, the Khomeinist ideology contains two ingredients: deep hatred of Israel and intense hope of destroying the United States as the last barrier to an imagined global triumph of Islam.
This is how Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem-Shirzai, one of the top six mullahs endorsed by the regime, put it: “Today, determination to liberate Jerusalem and break the hegemony of Global Arrogance [i.e., the United States] provide the pillars of Islamic unity.”
Yet the demonstrations also highlighted the regime’s growing isolation. The crowds were smaller than at any time in memory and the stage-managed nature of the exercise was more apparent than ever. In Isfahan, the country’s second most populous city, for example, only around 10,000 took part.
The fist-shaking feast notwithstanding, Khomeinism is a moribund ideology.