The Little Ayatollah and The Prosecutor

 Hassan Rouhani, a Hojatoleslam, which is a cleric’s honorific title that ranks a bit below the top title of Ayatollah, has just been elected president of Iran and that has aroused much attention. However, Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman’s formal accusation against the terrorist regime over which Rouhani will soon preside has passed pretty much unnoticed. It may be due to the Western media’s unanimous rating of “moderate” for Rouhani. The argument includes some facts, but a lot of wishful thinking. Among the former, one finds the support received by Iran’s former leaders Khatami and Rafsanjani; among the latter, the willingness with which the West considers the possibility of an armistice in the Syrian war or even a negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear program.

However, reality is more complex. So Rafsanjani, the exhibited example of containment, had declared in 2001;

“If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.”

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s novel interpretation of the traditional Mutually Assured Destruction, (MAD) theory constitutes an Iranian find in its own right. In effect, it renders useless any hope of balance between equivalent threats. MAD, far from being a drawback, was described at the time by scholar Bernard Lewis as an "inducement", particularly if one adds to Rafsanjani’s scarce concern for partial annihilation, the religious reward that suffered martyrdom grants in the name of the greater good – the expulsion of the infidels from the Dar al-Islam.

It is in light of these final -eschatological- goals of the Islamic Revolution that we must interpret Rouhani’s own work since he was the person in charge of the 2003 nuclear negotiations. It was then, faced with the invasion of Iraq, that he decided that the regime’s survival in order to achieve its aspirations was worth, not a mass for Paris in Henry IV’s style, but a strategic pause.

Dissident Maryam Rajavi opined about the issue, precisely from the capital coveted by the French King where today she takes refuge in exile;

The new president has been the secretary of the National Security Council during the last sixteen years, where he represents Khamenei; [Rouhani] was one of the founders of the Association of Combatant Clerics, closest to the supreme leader; [Rouhani] participated in the repression of the 1990’s student riots and in 2001, he ordered the launching of one thousand missiles against a resistance camp. In addition, Khamenei instructed him to hold nuclear negotiations with the European troika. [Khamenei] has absolute trust in Rouhani.

But what makes Rouhani certainly the worst of the possible options, excluding all the others, is his absence from the international lists of search and seizure. In other words, he is not one of the two candidates, supported by Khamenei to participate in the electoral process, accused and called for interrogation regarding the 1994 bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), which killed 85 people. Indeed, two of the candidates pre-selected by the Supreme leader, Ali Akbar Valeyati and Mosen Rezai are included in Prosecutor Nisman’s report, issued on May 29, as participants in the attack against AMIA’s headquarters in Buenos Aires.

In his 500-page report, Nisman identifies other culprits, namely the Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi, the former Information Minister Ali Fallahijan, the former Attaché of the Iranian Embassy in Buenos Aires Mohsen Rabbani and the former diplomat Ahmad Reza Ashgari. Rabbani is considered the principal architect of the terrorist action.

The prosecutor explains in his report how the Iranian regime organized an extensive terrorist network in Latin America whose goal was to promote the Islamic Revolution. The origin of this usage of legal appearances by the Iranian Republic to promote illegal activities can be traced to a seminar held in 1982 in Tehran, attended by 380 clerics from 70 countries, which concluded that the regime needed to export the Iranian revolution, and would use “violence and terrorism” at their convenience. According to Nisman, since then, every Iranian embassy was to become “an intelligence center.”

The prosecutor also refers to the relevance for the Iranian regime of another of its agents, Abdul Kadir – a disciple of Rabbani’s and dedicated to expanding Islamism, quite curiously, in Guyana, where he arrived via Venezuela. He ended up being sentenced to life imprisonment in the United States for trying to blow up John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.

For all these reasons, it is evident the contrast in media attention to highlight Rouhani’s reformist prudence compared to the limited information regarding the Nisman indictment.

Besides, Nisman’s inquiries must have been disturbing for Iran. Otherwise, it is difficult to understand the agreement Iran reached with the Cristina Kirchner government. Nisman had managed to make Interpol add to its Red List the five major defendants of the case: The Defense minister, Ahmad Vahidi, former Information minister Ali Fallahijan, former Government advisor Mohsen Rezai, former Attaché of the Iranian Embassy in Buenos Aires Moshen Rabbani, and former diplomat Ahmad Reza Ashgari. In February, the Argentine parliament ratified a memorandum of agreement, allowing Iran’s participation in the interrogation of these suspects. The Islamic Republic did it on May 20.

These events certainly influenced Nisman to the point that he ended up making public the latest revelations regarding the systematic organization of the Iranian regime to expand by violent means the Islamic revolution in Hispanic lands. This included the AMIA bombing, highlighting Iran’s presence at the border with Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina (via Hezbollah) and in the Caribbean. It was a permanent implementation that went beyond what the superficial contact between Chavez and Ahmadinejad in recent years might suggest. It went beyond mere propaganda that was part of the regime’s way to promote its television channel Hispan TV throughout Latin America, via the Spanish satellite Hispasat – used until it stopped hosting the network, just as Eutelsat did with the equivalent in English, Press TV.

The truth is that Rouhani will preside over this regime, where the highest power belongs to the Supreme Leader, namely Khamenei. The Supreme Leader used the day of the elections to send the U.S. to hell for doubting the democratic character of the Iranian elections teeming with pre-selected candidates. These were the elections immediately after the bloody crackdown in 2009 to keep Ahmadinejad in power. It is difficult to think that this regime could be different for the better, when it has lately evolved from theocracy to the militarism of the Pasdaran (Guardians of the Revolution) – regardless of the fact that the new president’s recently granted Ph.D. in Glasgow may help him cool his revolutionary ardor. Naturally, it would be completely foolish to believe that the only thing changing is just the regime’s presentation strategy – so far crude, vulgar, and primitive.

Ahmadinejad’s discredit and the damage that sanctions have done to Iran’s economy (1 euro = 47,000 rials) due to its refusal to comply with the international non-proliferation demands to which Tehran had committed made the victory of a similarly unsophisticated trend impossible. Ahmadinejad’s brutal simplicity could have been replaced or tempered by the skilled and astute negotiator Saeed Jalili. However, his poor charisma and the infinite capacity of the Qom clerics to fathom not only their religion’s theological subtleties, but also the political problems of our times, seem to have guided them to an even more intelligent option. To give the West the impression that this move is working would allow Iran to consolidate its regime while not ceasing to be the first threat to peace in our days. The Islamofascist hydra that the West must confront –like it or not– uses two wings: One is constituted by terrorist organizations e.g. al-Qaeda; the other wing is made of other totalitarian regimes such as Iraq before, and even before that, Syria and Iran – dedicated to eroding Western interests by using terrorism and coercion. It would be extraordinary if Rouhani could bring that pattern to an end. Yet it would be only natural that he played wolf in sheep’s clothing in order to consecrate the regime. Having the same level of media coverage regarding the election of the Hojatoleslam (or the Little Ayatollah) and Nisman’s report is the only way one can strike the right balance and conclude that this regime and its ethos are a danger to peace and civilized life .