When, in 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile in Paris and Iraq to claim the role of the revolution's "Supreme Leader," he did so in the name of an assault against the entire regional order and indeed the institutional arrangements of modernity. The
doctrine that took root in Iran under Khomeini was unlike anything that
had been practiced in the West since the religious wars of the
pre-Westphalian era. It conceived of the state not as a legitimate
entity in its own right but as a weapon of convenience in a broader
religious struggle.
Imam Ayatollah Seyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini
» The First Day of God's Government. «
The twentieth-century map of the Middle East, Khomeini announced, was a false and un-Islamic creation of "imperialists" and "tyrannical self-seeking rulers" who had "separated the various segments of the Islamic umma [community] from each other and artificially created separate nations." All contemporary political institutions in the Middle East and beyond were "illegitimate" because they "do not base themselves on divine law." Modern international relations based on procedural Westphalian principles rested on a false foundation because "the relations between nations should be based on spiritual grounds" and not on principles of national interest. In Khomeini's view - paralleling that of Qutb - an ideologically expansionist reading of the Quran pointed the way from these blasphemies and toward the creation of a genuinely legitimate world order. The first step would be the overthrow of all the governments in the Muslim world and their replacement by "an Islamic government." Traditional national loyalties would be overridden because "it is the duty of all of us to overthrow the taghut; i.e., the illegitimate political powers that now rule the entire Islamic world." The founding of a truly Islamic political system in Iran would mark, as Khomeini declared upon the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran on April 1, 1979, "the First Day of God's Government."
including Christians, Jews and the Muslims. «
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian during the emergency special session of the United Nations General Assembly
on the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas at UN headquarters in New York City, October 26, 2023.
Nature and qualities of the Great Satan (US) and the Little Satan (Israel)
from a Sunni perspective by Shahid Bolsen, October 26, 2023.