Kin of Khomeini turns to U.S. for military help in freeing Iran








Kin of Khomeini turns to U.S. for military help in freeing Iran
Late cleric's grandson praises America for liberating Iraq and relieving
people's suffering
Monday, August 04, 2003
BY BORZOU DARAGAHI
SPECIAL TO THE STAR-LEDGER
Baghdad, Iraq -- The grandson of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the
fiery cleric who launched an anti-American Islamic revolution in Iran that
sparked 25 years of unrest in the Gulf region, yesterday condemned Iran's
clerical regime and suggested United States military intervention in Iran
as a possible path to liberation for his country.
"In Iran, the people really need freedom and freedom must come about.
Freedom is more important than bread," said Hussein Khomeini.






The 45-year-old cleric said that "if there's no way for freedom in Iran
other than American intervention, I think the people would accept that. I
would accept it, too, because it's in accord with my faith."
The young Khomeini -- here ostensibly on a religious pilgrimage to Shi'a
holy sites in Najaf, Karbala and Baghdad -- praised the U.S. takeover of
Iraq.
"I see day-by-day that (Iraq) is on the path to improvement," he said. "I
see that there's security, that the people are happy, that they've been
released from suffering."
The United States has accused the clerical regime in Tehran of harboring
terrorists, trying to build nuclear weapons and oppressing its own people.
Conservatives in Washington have called for the ouster of the Iranian
leadership following American military successes in Afghanistan and Iran.
The United States has a long, tangled history with Iran that precedes the
1979 Islamic Revolution. Back then, followers of the young Khomeini's
grandfather stormed the American embassy and kept employees hostage for
more than a year.
These days, the United States accuses Iran of attempting to subvert
post-war Iraq by allowing militants to enter the country, broadcasting
destabilizing propaganda and using its pull with Shi'a clerics to rouse
the Iraqi populace.
The newly established Iraqi governing council already has begun meeting
with representatives from Tehran. Iranian deputy foreign minister Hussein
Sadeghi visited Iraq several days ago, meeting with Iraqi officials, said
Adnan Pachachi, Iraq's former foreign minister and a leading member of the
nation's 25-member governing council. "We discussed all aspects of
relations between the two countries," Pachachi said.
Hussein Khomeini crossed the Iranian border into occupied Iraq about a
month ago in a visit rife with irony.
Iran and Iraq have been regional rivals for decades. Iraq harbored
Ayatollah Khomeini after the Shah of Iran kicked him out of the country.
During his exile in the Iraqi city of Najaf , Khomeini's grandfather, a
high-level cleric, masterminded a revolution that ousted the Shah of Iran
and established the world's first modern-day theocracy.
Iran and Iraq fought a brutal war from 1980 to 1988 that left 1 million
dead and strained relations between the two countries. Nearly 25 years
later, the grandson has returned to the country where he resided from 1963
to 1978 and begun speaking out against the legacy of that revolution.
A longtime reformist silenced and shut out of Iran's conservative inner
circle of power, Khomeini confined his critiques of the Islamic Republic
to scholarly rather than political arguments. He said a religious
government can only come once the 12th Shi'a prophet Mahdi -- who
disappeared in the 9th century -- returns.
The young Khomeini argues for the separation of religion and state and
criticized "velayet-e-faqih" -- the religious doctrine mandating Iranian
Shi'a clerics as God's representative on earth and giving them
near-absolute power
Although he says he has yet to meet with any American officials,
Khomeini's positions might lift the spirits of U.S. officials in Iraq
struggling to win the hearts and minds of Iraqi Shi'as, who make up 60
percent of the population.
He condemned Saddam Hussein's regime and criticized those countries
opposed to the war against Iraq's Ba'athist government as ignorant of the
conditions under which Iraqis were suffering.
"The people here were subject to crimes unprecedented in world history,"
he said.
He said nationalism has no basis in religious doctrine, and freedom was
more important than independence from foreign rule. "Freedom is a basic
right. It supersedes all," he said.
Iran's conservative clerics have used their stranglehold over Islamic
doctrine to impose medieval conditions on Iranians, forcing women to cover
their heads and punishing dissidents for heresy.