EXISTENCE FREE OF MATTER: IRAN'S NUCLEAR PROJECT AND THE COST-BENEFIT POSTULATE

Iran Spotlight: A Special Position Paper no.2 ● March 2008

The drama of the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) is still unfolding. The statement “in fall 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program,” was translated in the US and the international arena into "War out, diplomacy in." In President George W. Bush’s words “it’s incumbent upon the American President to solve problems diplomatically.” The NIE all but killed that sense of emergency without which there could be no effective pressure. It declared Iran’s military program halted, charted a long timetable, and, most of all, validated Iran’s cost-benefit approach.

Critics counter that the NIE spymasters have been duped, that they interfere in politics and that they underestimate enrichment. Less attention has been paid, however, to the statement that “Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach.” Now a given, Iran’s cost-benefit approach is evident in two schools of thought. One favors a nuclear Iran to safeguard security in the Gulf. The other, drawing on the same cost-benefit paradigm, recommends coercing Tehran to comply through the application of sticks-and-carrots diplomacy.

Yet the cost-benefit postulate should be problematized and contextualized. Granted, the relative openness of segments of Iran’s elite indicates possible flexibility. Iran may be a calculated player. But calculated is not always the same as pragmatic or rational. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared, 20 February 2008, that the "Zionist regime" is a black, filthy microbe (jorsumeh-ye siyah-e kasifi). Two days earlier, the Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran-e Enqelab) commander in chief, Mohammad 'Ali Ja'fari predicted that "in the near future we will witness the annihilation of Israel, that cancerous microbe (jorsumeh-ye saratani)." General Ja'fari specified saying that the hands of the fighters of "the nation of Hizballah" (ummat-e hezbollah) will do away with Israel. The leader of "the nation of Hizballah," in Khomeinist parlance, is Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah 'Ali Khamene'i who is tied here to a plan to destroy Israel. And what about Muslims sacrificed? Hundreds of thousands in the Iran-Iraq war. Where should the carnage be classified, under total loss or under accounts receivable? Should one write the dead in green or in red ink? Both cost and benefit in Iran pertain to a cause that is motivated by idealism but also by belligerent hate. Iran's Islamic Revolution is not a pecuniary nation trying to maximize its economic performance; it has a mission.

The cost-benefit postulate should involve three level considerations. First, to contextualize it to local conditions, beliefs and goals. Second, to look carefully at the esoteric/intuitive intelligence applied by Iran’s religious decision-makers; mystically emanating edicts could be surprising even to those pronouncing them. Third, to factor in the effect of cultural memory and troubling notions impressed upon Iranian minds by frequent instruction and repetition.

I

In 2006 'Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former president (1989-97) and currently the Chairman of the Assembly of Experts, published a letter he had received from Ayatollah Khomeini in 1988 explaining why Iran had to stop the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88). The publication was meant to encourage a cost-benefit approach and criticize President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s loose-canon policies following his election in 2005. In the letter Ayatollah Khomeini cautioned that Iranians would desert in droves from the battlefield citing need for “considerable amount of laser and atom weapons” (meqdar-e qabel-e tavajjoh az selahha-ye leizer va atom).

Ayatollah Khomeini’s letter appears to imply a cost-benefit attitude. Facing defeat, Iran retreats. By publishing the letter, Rafsanjani emerges as quintessential pragmatic. Contextualization, however, reveals that the bomb belongs with asymmetric warfare. In a programmatic speech, delivered 14 December 2001, he declared that “the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality.” Rafsanjani envisioned in that speech Iran’s future nuclear strategy as interwoven with asymmetrical warfare. Martyrdom-seeking people would strike at the vital interests of global arrogance everywhere. "The confrontation of pious and martyrdom-seeking forces with the highest forces of colonialism is extremely dangerous, and might inflame a third world war." All this can be avoided if parties adopt “sobriety,” “realism” and “fairness,” namely doing what Iran wants, beginning with the destruction of Israel. Hence, contextualizing of “not irrational,” “sobriety,” and “realism,” may point to nuclear and terrorist gambling. And this is Rafsanjani; not Ahmadinejad.

II

Rafsanjani’s website, Aftab News, re-published recently another of Khomeini’s letters, his 1989 one delivered to Mikhail Gorbachev, former USSR President (1985-91), inviting him to Islam. “Man wants to be the supreme power of the world,” he explains, to become one with the Divine. We all want to live forever. “The desire for eternal life in the nature of every man is a sign of the existence of an eternal, death-proof, world.” For evidence, Ayatollah Khomeini continues, consult philosophers Farabi and Avicenna. For the actual thing, follow the mystics, Suhrawardi, Mulla Sadra and Ibn ‘Arabi. “The truth of knowledge is existence that is free of matter.” The leader’s unity with and open channels to the Divine (velayat) is central to Ayatollah Khomeini's worldview. Regarding himself to be a conduit to, if not an eternal one-with-God, Khomeini orders included having tens of thousands of boys to run on mine fields and approving hanging early-teens six at a time. These decisions were not the manifestation of conscious cruelty or revolutionary ardor, but the eventual result of the dispassionate application of both practical and speculative mysticism (‘erfan-e ‘elmi and ‘erfan-e nazari).

Iran’s current Supreme Leader is also known to engage in esoteric divination, the results of which are unpredictable to the user, let alone a faraway observer. This unpredictability is even higher with the likes of Ahmadinejad, who are committed to new yet-undeciphered millenarian/apocalyptic worldviews and cults, which no knowledge of traditional Islam can fully explain. On many levels, from the most dangerous to the peaceful, mysticism is widespread all the way to the top in Iran. While there is a lot of evidence that Ahmadinejad's messianic ideas are not popular among the ‘ulama, they seem to be popular among the Revolutionary Guards and those in charge of the nuclear project.

The enmeshing of highest technology with the occult is new to history. There is some knowledge about past mystic warriors, contemporary technological cults and collective suicides. But there are no textbooks on nuclear Khomeinism in action. History books, however, are packed with cases of leaders failing to appreciate the danger emanating from entirely new political cultures.

III

Third, contextualization should also consider the tapes running in people’s heads: cultural memory, regime's propaganda and the education system. What are the slogans that will pop up under stress? Iran's modern history abounds with regimes succumbing for no reason to minor crises. Ayatollah Khomeini’s words are recorded in school textbooks and in people’s minds; “either victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life in paradise.” When nukes will be brandished, tapes may start running in the media and in the heads, veiling logic and wisdom.

* * *

Imagine a Western leader, during a nuclear showdown trying to better understand his rival. He opens a Rumi translation and reads: “Yesterday we were intoxicated by the goblet; today the goblet is intoxicated by us".

Will this leader push the button? Will the button push him?

Eldad J. Pardo is a senior research fellow at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute, where he is heading two research groups: The Religious Actors in Conflict Areas and Iran in Global Perspectives. He teaches at the Hebrew University in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies.

* Views included and/or expressed in The Iran Spot reflect those of the author(s).

The CIS of Tel Aviv University does not maintain an official position on Iran.

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ACIS Special Position Paper: Iran Spotlight No.2 ● March 2008 © All rights reserved.