Western policymakers and political pundits mistakenly interpretIran’s relationshipswith therest of the globe, particularly the United States and Israel, as well as with the broader Islamic world, through the lens of the Shia–Sunni divide. However, the reality of Iran’s theocracy is far more complex and farmore sinisterthan that.
The Islamic Republic’s ruling theology is not mainstream Twelver Shia Islam. Twelver Shia Islam, followed by roughly 85 percent of Shia Muslims worldwide and recognized as Iran’s official state religion, has been transformed into a controversial fusion of apocalypticism, political mysticism, and quasi-divine claims of authority that orthodox Shia scholars have explicitly rejected.
The centerpiece of that transformation is the regime’s radicalized interpretation of Mahdism, a concept that exists within mainstream Twelver Shia theology but has been radicalized and repurposed by Iran’s ruling clerics into something the traditional Shia scholarly world does not recognize.
Mahdism holds that the Twelfth Divinely ordained Shia Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, was withdrawn into a miraculous state of concealment by God in 874 CE to protect him from the Sunni Abbasid Caliphate, which had killed his father. Shia Muslims believe he will one day return to defeat evil in a final apocalyptic battle.
For centuries, mainstream Shia clerical doctrine held that any government during this period of occultation was illegitimate, that clergy should confine themselves to spiritual matters, and that believers should wait passively for the Mahdi’s return.
In 1979, Ruhollah Khomeini led the revolution that overthrew Iran’s U.S.-backed Shah, took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, and established the Islamic Republic, which has remained in direct confrontation with the United States ever since.
Khomeini also broke sharply with traditional Shia doctrine. During his years in exile, he developed the theory of velayat-e faqih, arguing that rather than waiting passively for the return of the Imam, Shia Muslims were obligated to prepare the conditions for his arrival. This required political action, the creation of an Islamic state, and the elevation of a supreme clerical authority to act as the Imam’s deputy on earth. Iran’s 1979 constitution codified this framework, presenting the revolution as the first stage in a process leading to the Mahdi’s return.
This doctrine was widely opposed by the Shia establishment, particularly Ayatollah Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari, who viewed it asunjust and tyrannical.
The unorthodoxy ran deeper than politics. Scholar Vali Nasr concluded that Khomeini’s authority rested not on Shia history or theology but on mystical doctrines, that “his was a new Shiism.” Khomeini incorporated Neo-Platonist Greek thought into his governance theory, envisioning the ideal leader as a “perfect man” possessing the divine essence,stating: “Anyone who has the quality of a perfect man, that is the quality of the divine essence, is a caliph in this world.”
It has beenclaimedthat Khomeini believed he himself had achieved mystical union with God, a position with no basis in orthodox Islamic theology of any school. Prominent Shia cleric Sadiq ShiraziaccusedKhomeini of elevating himself to divinity, asking publicly: “Did he not say that the powers of the guardian jurist are the same as those of God?” Shirazi was subsequently arrested.
Source: The Gateway Pundit
