The Frightening Side of a Nuclear Iran

In the corridors of power in Washington, it is increasingly recognized privately that the US will not be able to halt the Iranian nuclear program and therefore the Obama Administration's Plan B is to rely on deterrence. They hope that the US and its allies can deter Iran the same way that they deterred the nuclear weapons of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But they fail to take into account that Iran is not run today by secular communists but rather by a radical version of Shiite Islam that has spread across much of the Iranian leadership.

The Twelver Shiism practiced in Iran and throughout most of the Shiite communities in the Islamic World is based on the idea that the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad though his daughter, Fatima, and son-in-law, Ali, have a special spiritual status--especially the twelfth descendant, who is supposed to re-appear as the "Anointed One" or Mahdi, in the future. He is also called "Lord of Time."

For Shiites these descendants are the rightful leaders of the Islamic community and not the Caliphs, who were chosen to lead Islam by the Sunnis. According to Shiite tradition the Twelfth Imam went into a state of being hidden in the year 874 at the age of six, but his return will usher in events that will culminate with the destruction of the world and the end of days. Both Judaism and Christianity have a concept of the end of days, but in Iran a radical interpretation of Shiism has gathered strength in elite circles that believes the arrival of the Mahdi is not a fixed date in the distant future but rather can be accelerated by man. 

Generally, Iran has witnessed in the last decade a massive revival of the belief in the imminent arrival of the Mahdi. In 1983, Ayatollah Khomeini outlawed the main group that advanced the idea of the Mahdi's imminent arrival, the Hojatieh Society, but now its members have become openly active with government support.  For example, there is a mosque outside of the Iranian holy city of Qom, known as the Jamrakan Mosque, where a well is located through which, by local legend, a pilgrim can communicate with the Twelfth Imam, even though he is still in a state of hiding. Jamrakan may have historically been a minor and run down center for pilgrimage, but in the last ten years, the Iranian government has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the site. It has become an important center for popularizing the cult of the Twelfth Imam.

More disturbingly, the growing obsession with the imminent arrival of the Twelfth Imam as the Mahdi has been popular among the Revolutionary Guards and their Basij corps. Their faith in the Mahdi grew on the battlefields of the Iran-Iraq War. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad comes from the same religious milieu.  Speaking in 2005 at the UN General Assembly, he added a prayer: "...hasten the reappearance of the Imam of the times and grant to us victory and prosperity." After his speech in 2005, he said that he was surrounded by a halo of green light while he spoke for 27 to 28 minutes. That same year, Ahmadinejad met with the French foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, asking them: "Do you know why we should wish for chaos at any price." He then explained: "Because after chaos, we can see the greatness of Allah." 

After his 2005 election victory, the first religious figure Ahmadinejad consulted with in the city of Qom was Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, whose journal deals with the return of the Mahdi; in 2005 it wrote that the Koran calls on Muslims "to wage war against the unbelievers and prepare the way for the advent of the Mahdi." A Yazdi disciple has given the religious justification for the use of nuclear weapons. Yazdi was a teacher at the Haqqani School which trained senior officers in the Revolutionary Guards and the Iranian intelligence services. He continues to appear in various events sponsored by the Revolutionary Guards.  This month Ahmadinejad decided to increase funding by 143 % to Yazdi's religious institute and other radical groups that spread the belief in the Mahdi.

Of course the President of Iran does not have exclusive control over the Iranian nuclear program, though he is a partner with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards commanders in deciding Iranian defense policy. Khamenei has been a political ally of Mesbah-Yazdi, who supported his becoming Supreme Leader after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini. Khamenei's influential son, Mojtaba, has been Yazdi's student at his seminary in Qom. 

There are also other key officials in the Iranian national security establishment who share Ahmadinejad's Mahdist beliefs, including the former head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization. Ali Akbar Vilayati, Iran's foreign minister for nearly two decades, was a Hojatieh member. He now serves as foreign affairs adviser to the Supreme Leader, and yet is still active in a newer organization examining the arrival of the Mahdi.

The Commander of the Revolutionary Guards, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, declared in 2008: "Our duty is to prepare the way for an Islamic world government and the rule of the Lord of the Time". In 2009, both the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij were undergoing indoctrination using materials from the Hojatieh Society concerning Shiite doctrines on recognizing the arrival of the Mahdi. The Revolutionary Guards will undoubtedly control Iran's nuclear weapons along with the civilian leadership when they become operational.

It is far easier for intelligence agencies to monitor Iranian capabilities than Iranian intentions. It is especially difficult to penetrate the minds of the Iranian leaders to understand to what extent their religious views affect their political behavior. There are reasons for the West to be seriously concerned. When Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, within two years, the Iranian army captured back all the territory that it lost, so that the Iran-Iraq War could have ended in 1982.

But the Iranian leadership kept the war going for six years, sacrificing hundreds of thousands of Iranian soldiers in order to achieve their ideological goals of exporting the revolution. When Ayatollah Khomeini decided to agree to a cease-fire in 1988, the only Iranians who objected were the Revolutionary Guards. The hard question that needs to be answered in Western capitals, and in Israel, is to what extent is deterrence a reliable defense doctrine against a military leadership harboring this kind of world view.

Useful Sources: Dore Gold, The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West (Regnery: 2009), Abbas Amanat, Apocalyptic Islam and Iranian Shi'ism (I.B. Taurus, 2009), Muhammad Sahimi, "The Man in the Shadow: Mojtaba Khamenei" Frontline: Tehran Bureau, July 16, 2009.  

A version of this article will appear in Hebrew in Israel Hayom.