Khomeini’s Ghost by Con Coughlin
Macmillan, £25
THERE are few things I remember from the 1970s. The drought of ’76, Margaret Thatcher entering Downing Street for the first time and, of course, the television pictures of the American Embassy siege in Tehran. How we reached this extraordinary impasse forms the first part of Con Couglin’s book which traces the modern history of Iran through the life and times of that charismatic revolutionary Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
According to Couglin, the Islamic revolution might never have happened had the Iranian people, beaten into a near catatonic state by years of “cruelty and corruption” and inept governance by the autocratic Shah, fully comprehended Khomeini’s plan for a “religious dictatorship”. But Khomeini was an opportunist who cleverly took advantage of the growing clamour against the Shah and his feared SAVAK intelligence agency to speak from exile in Paris about a “progressive Islam in which even a woman might one day be president” when what he really wanted was to be leader not just of an Islamic Iranian state but of the Islamic world.
Coughlin maintains that Khomeini’s ambitions gained momentum with the election of President Jimmy Carter, whose human rights policy emboldened opposition to the ailing Shah. This we have heard before. Less well known is the role played by an old woman in the desert town of Qom who claimed to have been told by a visiting apparition that the faithful would be able to see Khomeini’s face in the new moon. On November 27 1978, millions of Iranians gathered on their rooftops to catch a glimpse of their saviour. By happy coincidence it was made clear that only the devout, not “criminals and bastards” would be able to see the Ayatollah. Khomeini’s “moon trick” was not well received by Iran’s religious leaders but Khomeini refused to issue a denial, declaring that he would not act against “the spontaneous initiatives of the people”. It was this defining moment, argues Coughlin, when the “majesty of the Shah was replaced by the superstition of ignorant peasants”. The Iranian establishment was no match for Khomeini’s superior organization and support. The Shah left Iran and his prime minister immediately flew to Paris to offer Khomeini his resignation.
The main interest of this book lies not in the facts of the revolution, which are widely known, but in the structures Khomeini began to erect almost immediately to protect the revolution after he was gone. Clearly this was a man with a master plan. Despite the obvious pro-Western bias of the author it is clear that elections were rigged and the constitution was fiddled with to ensure Khomeini’s choice of successor, and prime ministers were appointed and/or eliminated, at whim. Although Khomeini was supposedly a religious leader he was, it appears, the ultimate back seat driver who would stop at nothing to protect his legacy.
In this the Revolutionary Guards were instrumental. From disrupting the Middle East peace process to their links with al Qaida to the execution of acts of terrorism across the world, Couglin argues that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have for 30 years succeeded in wreaking havoc against the West and getting away with it.
The final chapter of Couglin’s book, In Search of the Apocalypse, brings us up to speed with the election in 2005 of Iran’s sixth president, former Revolutionary Guard commander Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a devotee of Khomeini who immediately set about dismantling the moderate reforms of President Khatami and pursuing Khomeini’s nuclear ambitions.
Coughlin concludes: “The quest for the atom bomb was a central part of Khomeini’s legacy, and as long as the Islamic Republic survived, the Islamic revolutionaries who governed the country would never give up on their nuclear ambitions.” Just how close Iran is to realising this ambition depends on who you believe. Despite an over-reliance on material gleaned from private interviews Coughlin’s book provides a warning that the West should ignore at its own peril, and builds nicely towards its conclusions.
I have no doubt that should the author find the time away from his day job as executive foreign editor at the Daily Telegraph he could write a masterful thriller. It is only a pity he didn’t find the time to read the final draft of his own book. If he had, perhaps we would have been spared the numerous editorial errors that slightly mar the enjoyment to be gained from reading what is otherwise a gripping and important narrative.
Cary Gee
