Khomeini’s grandson pushes for a revolution’s revolution
: The grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, an Iranian reformist, goes to Iraq and says some surprising things about the state of Iran, the Star-Ledger reports:
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 young Khomeini argues for the separation of religion and state…
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.
Iranian blogger Kaveh is amazed that some of this was even published in Iran.
