Deterrence and a Nuclear-Armed Iran

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Deterrence and a Nuclear-Armed IranHenning P. Duusa

a Danish Army Academy, Frederiksberg Palace Copenhagen, Denmark

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To cite this Article Duus, Henning P.(2011) 'Deterrence and a Nuclear-Armed Iran', Comparative Strategy, 30: 2, 134 — 153To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/01495933.2011.561731URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01495933.2011.561731

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Deterrence and a Nuclear-Armed Iran

HENNING P. DUUSDanish Army Academy, Frederiksberg PalaceCopenhagen, Denmark

A nuclear deterrence policy will probably not be effective vis-a-vis a nuclear-armedIran the way it was effective vis-a-vis the Soviet Union and China because of the presentIranian leadership. The West faces an unprecedented asymmetrical threat. While theWest will be deterred by a nuclear-armed Iran, Iran may perceive its own nuclearweapons not as a deterrent but as the facilitator of a unique eschatological opportunitytowards the God-promised worldwide rule of Imamite Shi’a Islam.

Introduction

The nuclear weapon introduced an unprecedented, immediate, and long-termdestructiveness1 into warfare and raises questions about war as a rationally calculatedmeans to an end. During the Cold War, East and West both subscribed to the same threatand reached the same conclusions even if they did not have the same conceptions on warand peace and the international system,2 that a nuclear war would be an unacceptabledisaster, and that there would probably be no life the way we usually think of it beyondan all-out war. In the words of the pioneering strategist Herman Kahn, the nuclear weaponwas potentially a Doomsday Machine.3

What if someone were to understand the doomsday scenario posed by a nuclear war,not as today a threat to mankind, but literally as the execution and fulfilment of God’sdeeper mission for mankind? In such a situation what might pose a threat to the UnitedStates and the West from the perspective of mainstream natural science might be lookedupon as an opportunity, as a sign of fulfilment to the ruling leaders in Iran of a God-given plan to perfect mankind and cast Iran as the purveyor of the Mahdi, the IslamicMessiah’s rule of the world. Where deterrence theory is founded on the tacit assumption ofthe existence of only one kind of understanding and logic, that based on natural science, inthe everyday world there are different ways of understanding “rationality,” as the eminentphenomenological sociologist Alfred Schutz (1899–1959)4 has demonstrated. Accordingto him, there are multiple realities and therefore multiple universes of understanding, that is,the worlds of dreams, of music, of religion, of science, and these universes of understandingare not translatable to each other. Experiences within one such universe cannot be translatedvery well to a different one,5 and a person moving from one such universe to another mayexperience a mental, and maybe even physical, shock.

The West faces an asymmetrical threat from Iran should it successfully develop andweaponize a nuclear option, an asymmetry that exists within the dynamic of a clash ofmentalities6 embedded within a clash of civilizations.7 I therefore have strong reservationsagainst relying on a George Kennan–like containment policy vis-a-vis global terror andIran, for example as proposed by Ian Shapiro in a recent book.8

The author expresses his gratitude to friends and colleagues for their kindly assistance by proof-reading, especially his friend and former colleague Mr. Theodor B. Goschal. It is a privilege to beallowed the benefit of his extraordinary linguistic instinct.

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Deterrence and a Nuclear-Armed Iran 135

I shall begin with a presentation of nuclear deterrence theory as it was developed in the1950s and 1960s in order to identify its most central element, credibility, because it is eventoday the cornerstone of the theory.9 Then I shall present the apocalyptic vision in ImamiteIslam and the signs according to it given by Allah in advance of the coming of the Mahdi,who, pursuant to the prophecy, shall lead the true Muslims in their final jihad against daral-kufr (the house of unbelievers),10 which shall be conquered and totally eliminated ina cosmic11 carnage. Following this, the Mahdi shall rule the world according to shari’aas it is understood by the Imamites. I shall then show how nuclear weapons fit into thisvision insofar as they might make the Mahdi “sahib al-sayf ”12 (master of the sword), bywhich the Mahdi shall take revenge for all wrongdoings against Shi’a and gain ultimatevictory for Shi’ite Islam. It is indispensable to understand this apocalyptic vision in orderto understand properly how serious and credible the threat from Iranian nuclear weaponsreally is, and that this credibility is different from the credibility on which the theory ofdeterrence is built.

Deterrence Theory

According to Richard Brody’s famous definition in the International Encyclopedia of theSocial Sciences,

“Deterrence” refers to the attempt by decision makers in one nation or groupof nations to restructure the set of alternatives available to decision makers inanother nation or group of nations by posing a threat to their key values. Therestructuring is an attempt to exclude armed aggression (resort to war), fromconsideration.13

Brody’s basic premise is that the decision-making unit is a rational actor, which calculatesthe ends and means of its advised potential actions according to the national interests of“its” state. States have vital interests and secondary interests. The most vital interest andprimary key value is the survival of the state as a member of the international system. Allother interests, vital as well as secondary, are interests on which the state might eventuallycompromise. Under the threat of severe punishment by its adversary, a decision-making unithas to compromise on matters it otherwise would not even have dreamed of. At the sametime the decision-making unit has to ask itself a crucial question before it compromises: Isthe threat credible or does the threat of a nuclear retaliation from the threatening adversarycancel the threat itself? In other words: Does self-deterrence outweigh deterrence?

In order to answer the credibility question Glenn H. Snyder—another one of the pio-neering nuclear strategists—distinguishes between “deterrence by punishment” and “deter-rence by denial.” “Deterrence by denial” has been established when A’s territorial defenseis sufficiently strong to deny an adversary entrance into A’s territory, while “deterrence bypunishment” is working when A is capable of inflicting unacceptable losses on B. I shallconfine myself to the last one. In order to maximize the credibility of this punishment,according to Glenn H. Snyder,

The deterrer may increase the credibility of a seemingly irrational response bycreating the general impression that he is prone to act irrationally. It is certainlyparadoxical, even bizarre, to say that a certain amount of “irrationality” can bean aspect of “rationality.” Yet this follows logically if deterrence is to dependon a threat which it would be madness to carry out.14


136 H. P. Duus

Credibility as it is established within the theory of deterrence is in other words a con-test between irrationalities—personal as well as institutional15—on the sides of the twoadversaries. From this contest grows the “rationality of irrationality.”

Imamite Shi’a

I shall focus on what the French historian Pierre Renouvin aptly termed “les forcesprofondes,”16 the deep forces. Renouvin calls attention to a fact that all too often hasbeen overlooked, namely that different areas and layers of the same society are subjectto different timeframes.17 Renouvin’s colleague Fernand Braudel—a historian too and aleading figure in the famous and very influential Annales School18—speaks of a coexistenceof three hypothetically different timeframes in society, “la longue duree,” “la conjoncture,”and “l’histoire l’evenementielle.”19 In my analysis of deterrence and the religious meaningof Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, I shall follow Braudel.

In the picture I shall paint of how the Iranian leadership seems to look upon the world,the West, the future, and its nuclear weapon, I shall combine directly la longue duree withl’evenementielle, “the long duration” with “the events,” in order to substantiate my claimthat Iran may perceive its own nuclear weapons not as a deterrent, but as the facilitator ofa unique eschatological opportunity towards the God-promised worldwide rule of ImamiteShi’a Islam. I am fully aware of my by-passing la conjuncture, but I think it is justifiableunder the present circumstances, because that is exactly what Islamism generally andKhomeinism particularly is all about. So I adjust my analytical method to its particularobject.

Culture—La Longue Duree

Myths represents, according to Fernand Braudel, extremely long durations.20 I shall outlinethe pertinent elements of Imamite Shi’a’s mythological “sacred history,” which from thebeliever’s point of view, in the words of Mircea Eliade, is considered “a true history: it relateshow things came into being, providing the exemplary model and also the justifications ofman’s activities.”21

When Muhammad suddenly died in June 632, the umma was left without any instruc-tions from the Prophet or any consensus among themselves on his succession.22 Muham-mad’s close companion Abu Bakr was elected by shura (consultation) as the first Khalifat23

Rasul Allah (Successor of the Prophet of God) against the opposition of Ali, Muhammad’scousin and son-in-law.24 Bakr died within two years time, in 634, and was followed by Umar(634–644), Uthman (644–656), Ali (656–661) and Muawiyyah (661–680). Muawiyyah se-cured his son Yazid as his successor25 and thereby laid the foundation to a hereditarymonarchy of what was to be known as the Umayyad Dynasty (661–750). This hereditaryappointment of the Khalif was opposed by Hussein, a son of Ali, who as already mentionedwas Muhammad’s cousin, and his wife Fatima, who was a daughter of Muhammad. Husseinwas not opposed to heredity per se, on the contrary. He claimed, as had the followers of Alisince the election of Abu Bakr, that the only legitimate selection of a Khalif should be fromwithin the family of Muhammad. This means that the appointment of a Khalif by shurawas considered illegitimate by Hussein and his followers. Hussein tried to impose his willby force, but he and his party were defeated in the Battle of Karbala in 680, where Husseinwas killed and his followers massacred men, women, and children. From that point we havethe two branches within Islam, the Sunni branch, which claims that the Khalif might be



elected by a shura, and the Shi’a branch, which claims that the Imams (as the Shi’ite Khal-ifs are called) must be hereditarily selected among the descendants of Muhammad, eachdesignated by the preceding Imam.26 Shi’a was a minority group within Islam then as it isto day, and quite often suffers from heavy repression and persecution inflicted by the Sunnimajority. Shi’a itself has been internally divided into three large sects, Ithna Ashariyah,called Imamite or Twelvers; Isma Ismailite, or Seveners; and Zaydiyah, or Fivers; alongwith some small ones too.27 I shall confine myself to the Imamites, because Imamite Shi’ais the ruling sect in Iran. According to Imamite Shi’a,28 Ali was the fourth Khalif and thefirst Shi’a Imam, and Hussein the third Shi’a Imam. His death (“martyrdom”) in 680 hadprofound and long-lasting effects on the Shi’a, the relationship between Shi’a and Sunni,and Shi’a’s relation to the world at large. In order to survive and escape from repressionand persecution, the Shi’a went underground mentally and some often physically too. Theylearned to pretend to be Sunni and loyal to the Khalif in order to protect their belief,themselves, families, and property from persecution and destruction. This pretending is thefamous dissimulation called taqiyya.29

Potential as well as actual repression and persecution had a crucial impact on theformulation of Imamite political theory. This theory rested upon two doctrines: the justiceof God and the leadership of righteous individuals (imama) free from error and sin, whowere acting to uphold and promulgate the rule of a just and equitable public order, whichwas believed to embody God’s will. Because of its minority position, the Imamite Imamsalmost nowhere possessed political power. The Imams ruled only by authority throughtheir recognized ability to interpret divine revelation, and they had, pursuant to that ability,the right to demand obedience from the believers. Political instability, turmoil, and civilwars at various times during Umayyad (661–750) and Abbasid (750–1258) periods madeit difficult and at times even impossible for the Imams to maintain normal contacts withtheir followers. They had to hide for shorter or longer periods in fear of being killed bythe Khalif. According to Shi’ite belief, the Imam is the only leader of the umma and theonly authority who could establish the Islamic rule of justice on earth. He acts on behalf ofProphet Muhammad, who acts on behalf of God himself. Without direct contact with thebelievers, the establishment of the ideal Islamic order would have to be postponed, unlessShi’a political theory was further developed.

To cope with this gloomy situation the jurists (fuqaha) gradually developed the ideaand the institution of the deputyship of the Imamite Imams.30 According to this theory,the Imam delegates part of his authority to his personal representatives selected among thejurists. This theory of representation is at the same time a theory of decentralization, whichallows the Imam to guide his followers indirectly at far distances and over vast territories.In fact it is more than that. It is a theory of dual power not unlike the Leninist one. Whatstarted as a precautionary measure to save his life was gradually rationalized to the religiousdoctrine of The Hidden Imam unique to Imamite Shi’a.

Parallel to this development, something quite different and logically distincthappened—even if it was fused by history with the above-mentioned line of develop-ment into one single stream. It is the idea of the Mahdi, the Islamic Messiah, which Shi’ashares with Sunni,31 but which has a distinctive character within Imamite Shi’a.

Islam originated and developed within an environment with intense religious fervor,debates, and rivalries.32 Just as Christianity33 probably was born as an eschatologicalmovement,34 so was Islam.35 Almost from its very beginning Muhammad was fightingwars against the infidel Christian Byzantine Empire36 in order to establish the Islamic justorder on earth, and the Islamic conception of war and peace was developed in response tothis confrontation, a confrontation of life and death.37


138 H. P. Duus

The Shi’ite ideas about the Mahdi have been interwoven with the historical fact thatthe Imams, as mentioned, had difficulties in having direct contact with their followersbecause of repression and persecution from the side of the Sunni Khalifat, although it isnot always clear what came first. The doctrine of the Hidden Imam and the doctrine of theImamite Mahdi were developed primarily by the very same fuqaha (jurists) who developedthe doctrine of the deputyship of the Imam, namely the fifth Imam Muhammad al-Baqir(d. 732?) and his son the sixth Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq (d. 765).38 They are the foundingfathers of Imamite Shi’ism.39 To the Imamite Shi’a it is the twelfth Imam, Muhammad binal-Hasan al-Askari, who is considered the real Mahdi and therefore known as Muhammadal-Mahdi, and he disappeared—or went into hiding (ghayba)—in 873/4, in fear of beingkilled.40 Now the period of the Short Occultation (873/4–941) begins,41 during which hisfollowers waited for his return, and when it did not happen, they passed into the so-calledGreater Occultation. The Occultation is a temporary state chosen by God for the twelfthImam in order to prepare him properly for his task to restore Islamic purity and equity atthe End of Time. The Greater Occultation will last until his return as al-Qa’im al-Mahdi,42

which means that the Twelfth Imam acting in his capacity as the Mahdi, is “the one whowill rise” and “redress the wrongs.” He is also called al-Qa’im bi Amr Allah, “the Upholderof the Command of God,” al-Qa’im bi’l-Jihad,43 “the Upholder of the Holy War” to bewaged against the enemies of ahl al-bayt (the Prophet, Ali, Fatima, and Ali and Fatima’stwo sons Hasan and Hussein), al-Qa’im bi’l-sayf,44 “the one who will rise with the sword”against the enemies of ahl al-bayt. The enemies of ahl al-bayt are by the way all those whoare Neither Imamite Shi’a Nor Isma’ilite!

The dragging out of the Occultation had occasionally put the Imamites’ longings onheavy trial—fuqaha and ordinary believers alike—and confusion abounded: Why did theMahdi not return as the fuqaha had told the believers? Were they not infallible (ma’sum)?What had to be done in the meantime? For centuries very little happened, even during thetime when the Safavids ruled Iran (1501/03–1722) and made Imamite Shi’a the officialreligion of the state45 as it is today. The fuqaha majority advised quietism to the believers.Abdulazziz A. Sachedina46 shows convincingly that the basic conceptual developmentswere made quite early, but according to Ann K. S. Lambton,47 it was the intrusion ofNapoleonic France, Britain, and Russia into Iran toward the end of eighteenth century thatdecisively changed the opinion of the fuqaha. This change is, says Lambton, most clearlyseen during the reign of Fatih ‘Ali Shah. The duty to jihad had tacitly been allowed tolapse,48 but because of the wars with Russia (1806–1813 and 1826–1828),49 the Imamitetheory of jihad had to be revived and revised. Originally only the Imams were allowedto wage jihad. With the Occultation of the Twelfth Imam this prerogative fell on theMahdi, which would preclude anyone from declaring jihad, except in case of defending thefrontiers. Now it was maintained by Shaykh Ja’far (d. 1812) that during the Occultationthis prerogative actually had been delegated to the fuqaha, although with a preference tothe best one, or him who is given permission by him in this respect. Obedience to thefuqaha under these circumstances is obligatory to the people and anyone who disobeysthe fuqaha, disobeys the Imam and anyone disobeying the Imam disobeys the Prophet, thebest of creation, and anyone who disobeys the best of creation, disobeys Almighty God! Itbears witness to the basic continuity in this way of thinking to observe that 150 years or solater Khomeini reasoned in exactly the same way in his book Islamic Government (1970).50

There is another basic continuity through the years from the above-mentioned delegation ofthe prerogative of the Imam to the fuqaha during Occultation, with a preference for the best,to Khomeini’s concept of the vilayet-e faqih (rule by the jurisprudent) and the new Iranianconstitution.51



The return of the Mahdi is the very focal point for the Imamites’ longings and dreamsconcerning a God-willed world order, and the return is the precondition to this world order:no return of the Mahdi, no God-given world order, and no justice! And by implication: noImamite Islam as it has been taught by the fuqaha for at least 1200 years!52 He will beawaiting the time God has decided for him, and it will happen shortly before the final Dayof Judgment.53 It is therefore little wonder that real eschatological excitement is substitutedfor mere eschatological longings (as they are at times) when the signs from God that theEnd of Time is near are considered to be obvious. According to Moojan Momen, a Imamitecleric of our own time, the signs are numerous and may be divided into two groups: thegeneral ones and the more specific ones. Among the general signs heralding the advent ofthe Mahdi will be that Islam is reduced to empty words, as in the hadith where the “Apostleof God said: ‘There will come a time for my people when there will remain nothing of theQur’an except its outward form and nothing of Islam except its name and they will callthemselves by this name even though they are the people furthest from it.”’54

The most pivotal prophecy is said to stem from the Sixth Imam, Ja’far al-Sadiq (d.765),55 who reports what Ali the first Shi’a Imam said about the signs. This prophecy depictsa kind of upside-down world (“the forbidden permitted and the permitted forbidden”)56

measured by the standards of a true Islamic society. The signs may be grouped under twoheadings, power and manners, of which I shall give only a few examples. In this totallywrong society, the power relations between Muslims and infidels, between men and women,and between the generations are totally upside-down: “I saw the people of falsehood masterthe people of truth,”57 and “I saw women taking their places in the meeting places [majalis]like men . . . and I saw the young scorning the elder . . . and I saw the rulers bringing theinfidels close while removing the faithful far away . . . I saw a man seeking supremacyfor the vanities of this world, and to popularize himself by the filth of [his] tongue, so thatthe affairs of state would be certain to devolve upon him.” The manners are upside-downtoo. “I saw effeminacy appear [among men, the author of this article], and they wore dyeopenly and dressed their hair, like a woman dresses her hair for her husband . . . I saw winedrunk openly . . . and [alcoholic] drink sold openly, without any opposition . . . I saw theuse of alcohol for healing and it being prescribed to the sick and used for medical purposes. . . I saw the boys giving what women give [sexual intercourse], and I saw the womenmarrying women . . . and the taking of interest was open and uncondemned, and womenwere praised for fornication. I saw women encouraging their husbands to have intercoursewith men. . . . ” I think these few examples of general signs are sufficient to make the readerunderstand the core of this pivotal apocalyptic prophecy. It goes without saying that to thetrue believer, the frightening upside-down society in this prophecy has already been calledinto being in contemporary modern Western and westernized societies by their unbelief,but in order to guide the believer in understanding when the End of Time actually will behere the specific signs must be added to the general ones.

The specific signs are of two sorts, those both the Sunnis and the Shi’a accept, and thoseonly the Shi’a accepts. This difference might be of decisive importance for the possibleeventual spread of the apocalyptic excitement to the Sunnis, too, and the mobilizationof the entire Muslim world behind the Imamites and their religious zeal to convert thenon-Imamite Muslim world and the non-Muslim world alike into Imamite Shi’a. Thisconversion is a central theme in the Imamite doctrine of jihad. The structure of the theoriesof jihad in Sunni and Shi’a Islam are basically identical, but there are important differences.According to Sunni and Imamite Shi’a, the world is divided into two “Houses,” dar al-Islamand dar al-Harb, the House of Islam and the House of War.58 Between these two Housesthere exists a permanent state of war, jihad, and according to the Sunni theory, dar al-Islam


140 H. P. Duus

will ultimately be victorious and all other beliefs will convert into Sunni Islam with thepossible exception of Shi’a, which is supposed to continue to be an oppressed minority.The Imamite Shi’a however thinks differently. They consider themselves as dar al-Iman(House of Faith), which from the beginning is part of dar al-Islam, but which during theperiod of intensifying confrontation and fighting between dar al-Islam and dar al-Harb atthe same time struggle to convert the dar al-Islam into dar al-Iman. This conversion mustprecede the final onslaught on dar al-Kufr (the House of Unbelievers), which now alsoincludes those Sunnis who reject conversion.59 What starts with an open struggle betweendar al-Islam and dar a-Harb must end with an open struggle between dar al-Iman anddar al-Kufr. This struggle to convert Sunni to Shi’a was an immanent part of Khomeini’sstrategy of revolution in 1979 and beyond,60 as it had been back in time to the formativeyears of Imamite Shi’a. The present Iranian leadership is a true heir to Khomeini, even ifKhomeini’s strategy vis-a-vis the Sunnis was more of an inclusive one, not as exclusive andconfrontational as the one practiced by the present leadership, according to Vali Nasr.61

The above-mentioned general signs were signs in the sense of antecedents to the adventof the Mahdi or preconditions to it, but the specific signs as they are understood in thisconnection are signs in quite a different meaning of the word. “Signs” now mean “appear.”A person shows up and claims to be the Mahdi, whereupon the true believers in greatnumbers follow him. In order to qualify as the Mahdi according to tradition the followingsigns will appear among others:62 (1) He will be a descendant of Muhammad of the lineof Fatima and bear the name Muhammad, (2) He will not come in an odd year,63 (3) Hiscoming will be accompanied by the raising of the Black Standard64 in Khurasan.65 A hadithsays: “If you see it [the Black Standard] then go to it even if you have to crawl over the snow,for with it is the Mahdi, the vice-regent of God,” (4) His coming will be accompanied bythe appearance of the one-eyed Dajjal (the Anti-Christ) in the East, (5) Before his comingthere will come the red death and the white death. The red death is the sword and the whitedeath is the plague, (6) Death and fear will afflict the people of Baghdad and Iraq. A firewill appear in the sky and a redness will cover them, (7) The sun will rise from the West anda star will appear in the East giving out as much light as the moon, (8) The Arabs will throwoff the reins and take possession of their land, throwing out the authority of the foreigners,(9) The Mahdi will announce himself in Mecca between the Corner (of the Ka’bah) andthe Station (of Abraham) and will summon the people to pay allegiance to him, and hewill go from Mecca to Kufah,66 (10) Between the Mahdi and the Arabs (the Quraysh67),there will only be the sword, (11) The al-Qa’im al-Mahdi will do what the Prophet did anddemolish the structures of Jahiliyya, “the Time of Ignorance,”68 but he will be in a muchmore unfortunate position than the Prophet Muhammad was because he came to a peoplewho worshipped stones and wood but the Qa’im will come to a people who will interpretthe Book of God against him and will bring proofs from it against him. When the flag ofthe Qa’im is raised, the people of both East and West will curse it.

The Situation—L’Evenementielle

I have now finished my description of basic, long lasting elements in the Imamite visionof history and world, its “sacred history,” its longue duree. They have during centuriesbeen transmitted partly consciously, partly unconsciously from generation to generationand have formed every individual Muslim’s feelings, aspirations, behavior, perception, self-perception, and way of thinking, and they have been working behind each individual’s backas well as through its consciousness. Clifford Geertz has made this “behind the back and



through the consciousness” way of influencing people the pivot in his famous definition ofreligion. Religion is:

(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, andlong-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions ofa general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such anaura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.69

As the title of his article attests, Clifford Geertz conceives of religion as a cultural systemwhere culture, in the words of Geert Hofstede, is a set of mental programs, “the software ofthe mind.”70 On the other hand, each individual is something unique because of that partic-ular individual’s uniquely genetically determined nature and its unique way of internalizingsociety, and therefore has its own unique set of mental programs, which on the other handmay be more or less replicas of the cultural ones. Therefore it makes sense scientificallyto explain and predict a particular decisionmaker’s personal decision by conceiving him orher as embedded in his or her cultural environment. This is confirmed by current researchin cognitive psychology.71

I shall therefore try to sketch the contours of how the present Iranian leadership in thepresent situation probably might understand the events in the world, Iran’s place in it, andthe future perspectives of what is going on according to their understanding, and how theymight act in order to get the best out of the present situation and the best possible futurefor Iran and the rest of the world as they see it. In doing this I follow in the methodologicalfootsteps of Richard C. Snyder, H. W. Bruck, and Burton Sapin in their path-breakingand foundational study, “Decision-Making as an Approach to the Study of InternationalPolitics” (1954),72 and Alexander L. George and his insistence on actor-specific models ofadversaries.73

First of all, there is little doubt that the ayatollahs consider Western societies and theWest as degenerated socially, morally, and religiously because of its Jewish and Christianelements.74 The aforementioned general signs have, according to them, come true andagainst this only “Islam is the solution” (al-hall al-islami).75 This is, of course, not ajudgment they have made after a careful and unbiased observation of reality, but ratherit is just a dogmatic truism not to be questioned. To an outside observer this is what oneshould expect. It will therefore be much more illuminating to an outside observer to take acloser look at the specific signs. What do they tell true-believers in the present situation?The signs are disparate and isolated, but one might make a reasonable assumption that thepresent Iranian leadership in today’s context and with its Imamite “mental software” willtry intensely to look for a comprehensive perspective on society and world behind thesesigns, which might inform them of what is to be expected or done as an Imamite believer.I think that, with a very high probability, they will come up with answers of the followingkind: To many Sunni and Shi’a alike, it was an omen full of hope and excitement when theTaliban came to power and raised the Black Standard in Afghanistan in 1994–1995,76 partof which is ancient Khurasan, just as it was when Khomeini came to power in Iran in 1979almost simultaneously with the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Part of Iran belongedto ancient Khurasan too. It was as if Khomeini or the Taliban were the Mahdi.77 The factthat the Taliban appeared after the defeat of the infidel Soviet Union, which afterwardeven fell apart, had a dramatic psychological impact on Muslim minds worldwide. Butthe Taliban in power78 was a frightening experience too because the coming of the Mahdiwould, according to apocalypses, be accompanied by the appearance in Khurasan too of theDajjal,79 a Satanic figure.80 He is said to be a scary personage; he is one-eyed, corpulent,


142 H. P. Duus

red-faced with frizzy hair and on his forehead is written “This is the kafir (non-believer).”His name means “deceiver,”81 and he will lead the believers astray by his powerful, falsemiracles, and let impurity and tyranny rule the world for forty days or forty years. TheWest, the United States and particularly Israel,82 are widely believed throughout the Muslimworld to be the Dajjal83 or Shaytan, a belief supported by the fact that U.S. military forcesactually appeared manifestly in Afghanistan/ Khuresan from late 2001. To Khomeini andhis followers, the United States was and is considered to be the Great Satan (saitan-ebozorg84) and Israel the Little Satan.85 His coming86 is, just as that of the Mahdi, a sign ofthe End of Time. In Imamite doctrine, the appearance of the Mahdi is not just accompaniedby that of the Dajjal but even of Isa ibn Maryam, Jesus, Son of Mary. Jesus and the Mahdiare merged to the same person in Imamite doctrine.87 It is the Mahdi as Jesus, son of Mary,who will descend in the Holy Land and kill the Dajjal with his spear, whereupon Jesuswill subject himself to Islam and the shari’a, kill the swine, break the Cross, and kill allthe Jews88 and Christians who have rejected the invitation89 to convert to Islam in a cosmiccarnage.90 Jesus will after this bloodbath establish the rule of justice,91 and after 40 yearshe will die and be buried in Medina beside Muhammad, whereupon the resurrection ofthe dead will happen. A further sign verifying the first ones is that death and fear afflictedBaghdad and Iraq from 1990 onwards, while Sunni and Shi’a alike since 2003 fight to takepossession of their land, throwing out the foreigners. This fight against the foreigners isat the same time interwoven with Shi’a’s fight against the Sunni pursuant to the Imamiteconception of jihad, according to which Imamite Shi’a shall fight Sunni in order to makethem convert to Shi’a while the End of Time is approaching.92

Iran’s Nuclear Weapon as the Facilitator of the Mahdi

What about the sun, which according to Imamite sayings will rise in the West, heralding theadvent of the Mahdi? This is where the Iranian nuclear weapon is gaining its unparalleledimportance as seen from within Imamite Shi’a. What really counts is strictly speakingnot the nuclear weapon in the military sense of the word, but its religious meaning as asubstitute for the sword of Prophet Muhammad as well as for the sword of the Mahdi inhis competence as al-Qa’im bi’l-sayf,93 “the one who will rise with the sword” against theenemies of ahl al-bayt. Just as the Wahhabi Osama bin Laden attacked the United States94

as a representative of Sunni Islam, Iran representing the rivaling Imamite Shi’a shall launcha nuclear attack against the United States and make the rise of the sun in the West come trueby the way of an American nuclear retaliation of supposedly apocalyptic dimensions. Andan attack against Israel95 will follow suit, appearing as the star from the East according tothe prophecy, “giving out as much light as the moon.”

The Iranian nuclear weapon will make Iran’s President Mahmoud Muhammad Ah-madinejad and the vilayet-e faqih the sahib al-sayf, the Master of the Sword.96 He gainssupport from Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi Mezbah-Yazdi, who is his theological alter egoand the most conservative among Iran’s clerical elite, at the Haqqani97 Theological Semi-nary in Qom, and from Abdulazziz Abdulhussein Sachedina too, who in an anti-Americanconference in Mashhad in Iranian Khurasan (!) on June 1, 2008, “endorsed Ahmadinejad’sclaim that the Hidden Imam was about to reappear.”98

After the attacks against the United States and Israel and their retaliation, the Saudikingdom will collapse and Mahmoud Muhammad Ahmadinejad will announce himself theMahdi99 in Mecca between the Corner of the Ka’bah and Abraham’s Station. From thissacred position he will advance as al-Qa’im al-Mahdi as “the one who will rise” and “redressthe wrongs.”100 He and Iran will also be called al-Qa’im bi Amr Allah, “the Upholder of



the Command of God,” and al-Qa’im bi’l-Jihad, “the Upholder of the Holy War,” which isto be waged against the enemies of ahl al-bayt, and that means for all practical purposesthe rest of world. In the End Iran will rule the world, as will Imamite Islam.

Deterrence Policy and the Mahdi

From the science of religion we learn that apocalyptic death and destruction have a deeperpurpose within the God-willed order. Death and destruction are not just death and de-struction per se, but also and primarily rebirth and re-creation. Death and destruction arenecessary in order to please God and purify mankind and society in a recreated world wheremankind can live a new and perfect life. Death as precondition for the establishment of aGod-willed order is one of the most basic themes in the history of religion. Imamite Shi’ais acting out what Mircea Eliade aptly has termed “the myth of the eternal return.”101

From the perspective of deterrence, my analysis is of the utmost importance becauseit demonstrates that, with a very high probability, it will be impossible to deter a nuclear-armed Iran if centrally seated political, elite decision makers have internalized deeply anImamite Shi’a logic way of understanding. To realist theories of international relations102

and conventional theories of Western common sense understanding, it just does not makesense to maintain that an Iranian nuclear weapon is not primarily an instrument of Iranianraison d’etat,103 just as it does not make sense from the perspective of Enlightened WesternHumanism to say that an Imamite Shi’a is not just a person in the sense he or she is conceivedwithin a natural science-based universe, but in fact is an agent in a cosmic struggle for theestablishment of a God-willed order. This “present day–ancient” perception means that lifeand death are considered something totally different compared to what it is in a naturalscience–based universe of understanding. Deterrence policy works by pushing the decision-making unit to the brink in order to have it making up its mind and realize that “before-death-life” is truly preferable to a hypothetical “after-death-and-resurrection-life.” If on the otherhand “before-death-life” is little more than a preparation for the adored “after-death-and-resurrection-life,”104 deterrence policy turns into its opposite. An Iranian nuclear weapon iswithin the Imamite universe of understanding a Doomsday Machine in the original religiousmeaning of the word, and it is highly probable that it is intended to function as one. Thisdemonstrates the unbridgeable gulf that divides a modern natural science–based way ofunderstanding from premodern archaic ways of religious understanding.

Conclusion

I have approached my subject from three angles: deterrence theory, a theory of differentialtimes of history combined with insights from science of religion, and current theories ofactor-specific decision-making models. According to Richard Brody’s definition, deterrenceworks by having the adversary change his courses of action through a threat to his keyvalues. The American nuclear weapons are no threat to the key values of the present Iranianleadership, because they are basically “after-death-and-resurrection values,” while on thepart of the West the opposite is true: an Iranian nuclear weapon will make the U.S., Israel,and the West only conditionally viable. Military stability will therefore cease to be possible.The insistence by Iran to have a nuclear weapon is decoupled from anyone else’s nuclearweapon—with probably a Saudi one as the only exception. Within the religious universeof understanding, Iran’s nuclear weapon is probably designed to create an apocalypticopportunity to make Imamite Shi’a universally victorious. Glenn H. Snyder’s “rationalityof irrationality” has been turned into a religiously guided “irrationality of rationality” free


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from self-deterrence. The Iranian nuclear weapon gains its ultimate necessity for the Iranianleadership from the two foundational premises of Imamite Shi’a: The justice of God and theleadership of the vilayet-e faqih, which is considered free from error and sin and is believedto embody God’s will. This necessity is what ought to make the threat highly credible tothe West.

Notes

1. Kevin N. Lewis, “The Prompt and Delayed Effects of Nuclear War,” Scientific American,vol. 241, no. 1 (1979): 27–39.

2. See Julian Lider, On the Nature of War (Farnborough: Saxon House, 1977), 181–352; andJulian Lider, Correlation of Forces: An Analysis of Marxist-Leninist Concepts (Aldershot: Gower,1986). Gorbachev’s “New Thinking” (1986) cancelled Marxist-Leninist concepts and introduced theWestern understanding of the international system; see Hans-Henning Schroder, “Strategiediskussionund Streitkrafte in der Ara des ‘Neuen Denkens”’ [Discussion of Strategy and Armed Forces duringthe Era of the “New Thinking”] and Falk Bomsdorf and Hannes Adomeit, “Das ‘Neue Denken’:Grundzuge und Verwirklichung” [The “New Thinking”: Basic Principles and their Implementation],in Hannes Adomeit, Hans-Hermann Hohmann, and Gunther Wagenlehner, eds., Die Sowjetunionunter Gorbatschow [The Soviet Union under Gorbachev] (Stuttgart: Verlag Kohlhammer, 1990),respectively, 86–110 and 261–296.

3. See Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, 2nd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 1961), 144–160.

4. Only an anthology of articles by Alfred Schutz in Danish is available to me at the moment,cf. Alfred Schutz, Hverdagslivets Sociologi [Sociology of Everyday Life] (København: Hans Reitzel,1975).

5. Schutz, Hverdagslivets Sociologi, 82–83 (from “Mangfoldige Virkeligheder,” i.e., “On Mul-tiple Realities”). In his discussion of Islamic modernism up to 1970 and in particular of what he calls“double speaking” and “double writing,” Fazlur Rahman writes that “Even more than in the West,scientists in these countries are only technologists; under the circumstances it is out of the question toexpect any intellectual effort at formulating a scientific world-view. But the scientists do not even feelthe need to discern the social implications or requisites of their technology. They live in an isolatedworld of their own—or, rather, they live as technologists in their laboratories or their field-work andas humans and perhaps even as Muslims in the society at large.” See Fazlur Rahman, “Islamic Mod-ernism: Its Scope, Method and Alternatives,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 1,no. 4 (1970): 323. So the technologist who formally has been educated within a natural science hasduring his training and time as a student not really learned to move out of his religious-based universeof understanding and into a natural science-based universe of understanding. Without any experienceof a mental shock, the natural sciences have just been grafted onto his universe of religion.

6. See Richard E. Nisbett, The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners ThinkDifferently . . . and Why (New York: Free Press, 2003).

7. Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs, vol. 72, no. 3 (1993):22–49; and Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (NewYork: Simon and Schuster, 1996).

8. See Ian Shapiro, Containment: Rebuilding A Strategy Against Global Terror (Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 2007).

9. Patrick M. Morgan, Deterrence Now (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Fora discussion of deterrence after the Cold War and the development of a new norms-based frameworkof analysis in line with the English school in international relations theory, see Lawrence Freedman,Deterrence (Cambridge: Polity, 2004).

10. E. Kohlberg, “The Development of the Imami Shi’i Doctrine of Jihad,” Zeitschrift derDeutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, vol. 126, no. 1 (1976): 69.



11. It is in no way an Imamite or Islamic privilege to understand itself as engaged in a cosmicwar between good and evil. It is part and parcel of all religions. See Mark Juergensmeyer, The NewCold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1993), particularly 156–163.

12. Abdulaziz Abdulhussein Sachedina, Islamic Messianism: The Idea of Mahdi in TwelverShi’ism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981), 22.

13. Richard A. Brody, “Deterrence,” in David L. Sills, ed., International Encyclopedia of theSocial Sciences, vol. 4 (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 130.

14. Glenn H. Snyder, Deterrence and Defense: Toward a Theory of National Security(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), 24.

15. Thomas C. Schelling explains, “It is the tactic of deliberately letting the situation getsomewhat out of hand, just because its being out of hand may be intolerable to the other party andforce his accommodation.” Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (London: Oxford UniversityPress, 1971 [1960]), 200; and “The key to these threats is that, though one may or may not carry themout if the threatened party fails to comply, the final decision is not altogether under the threatener’scontrol” (emphasis in original). Schelling, Strategy of Conflict, 188.

16. Pierre Renouvin and Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, Introduction a L’histoire Relations Interna-tionales (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1964). It has been translated into English as Introductionto the History of International Relations (New York: Fredrick A. Praeger, 1967), and “les forcesprofondes” has been rendered into “the underlying forces” (p. 1).

17. Reinhart Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (Frankfurtam Main: Suhrkamp, 1979). It is rendered into English as Futures Past: On the Semantics of HistoricalTime (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985).

18. Peter Burke, The French Historical Revolution: The Annales School 1929–1989 (Stanford:Stanford University Press, 1990).

19. Fernand Braudel, “History and the Social Sciences—The Longue Duree,” in FernandBraudel, On History (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), 25–54; Fernand Braudel,The Mediterranian and the Mediterrannian World in the Age Of Philip II, vol. 1 (Glasgow: Fontana,1986), 14–22; and Fernand Braudel, The Perspectives of the World: Civilizations and Capitalism15th–18th Century, vol. 3 (London: Fontana, 1984), 619–632.

20. Braudel, “History and the Social Sciences,” 41, 45–47.21. Mircea Eliade, The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion (Chicago: The University of

Chicago Press, 1969), 76.22. I rely on Mahmoud M. Ayoub, The Crisis of Muslim History: Religion and Politics in Early

Islam (Oxford: Oneworld, 2003). About the difference between ijma (consensus) in Sunni and Shi’aunderstanding, see Sachedina, Islamic Messianism, 138.

23. The term khalifa is mentioned only twice in the Qur’an (Sura 2, 30 and 38, 26). On itsmeanings, see Rudi Paret, “Signification Coranique de Halifa et d’Autres Derives de la Racine Halifa”[The Quranic Meaning of Khalifa and Other Derivations from the Root Khalifa], Studia Islamica,vol. 31 (1970): 211–217.

24. Sunni and Shi’a disagree on the question of whether Ali gave his support to Abu Bakror not. See the discussion in Ayoub, Crisis of Muslim History, 17–25 (balanced Sunni and Shi’a),and in Moojan Momen, An Introduction to Shi’I Islam (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985),18–22 (Shi’a). It must be emphasized, however, that the versions of history given by Mahmoud M.Ayoub and Moojan Momen are both dogmatic versions of history, as presentations given by Muslimauthors on this subject often are. Reality as seen from modern Western historical research is a lotmore complicated. See Patricia Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought (Edinburgh: EdinburghUniversity Press, 2004), 17–32, 135, and 224–228.

25. Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a WorldCivilization, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977 [1974]), 214–220.

26. Abdulazziz Abdulhussein Sachedina, The Just Ruler In Shi’ite Islam: The ComprehensiveAuthority of the Jurist in Imamite Jurisprudence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 90.This is an admirably well-researched and cogently written book with heavy political implications.Cf. note 98.


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27. See the Article “Shi’ite” in Encyclopædia Britannica 2010 Ultimate Reference Suite(Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2010).

28. I rely on Momen, Introduction To Shi’i Islam; Sachedina, Islamic Messianism; and Sached-ina, Just Ruler In Shi’ite Islam.

29. Taqiyya was originally a Shi’a specialty, but today it seems to have been widely adopted bythe Sunnis too, living as a minority in Western countries. The concept is based on the Qur’an, Sura 3:28and 16:106, and hadith, e.g. Sahid al-Bukhari, vol. 1, book 2, no. 54: “I gave the pledge of allegianceto Allah’s Apostle for the following: . . . 3 and be sincere and true to every Muslim” (narrated by Jarirbin Abdullah). Which by implication means that a Muslim does not have to be sincere and speakingthe truth to a non-Muslim! Available at http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/bukhari/002.sbt.html. I am grateful to Tina Magaard, Ph.D., a former research fellow at the Instituteof Political Science at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, and now a new colleague of mine, forkindly bringing Bukhari to my attention. According to Ahmad Amin, Egyptian, and an author of amulti-volume history of Muslim civilization, the Sunnis have practiced taqqiya only when their liveswere in danger because of their faith and it was impossible to emigrate from the place where theylived. See Hamid Enayat, Modern Islamic Political Thought (London: I. B. Taurus, 2004 [1982]),43–45.

30. Sachedina, Just Ruler In Shi’ite Islam, 38–57.31. See Jane Idleman Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, The Islamic Understanding of

Death and Resurrection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002 [1981]) for an overview of the Sunniconceptions of death and resurrection in general, including the meaning of the Mahdi; and DavidCook, Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2005) foran overview of the current Arab-Sunni debate on Apocalypse.

32. See (in Danish) Mircea Eliade, De Religiøse Ideers Historie [History of Religious Ideas](København: Gyldendal, 1983).

33. See the seminal classic, Albert Schweitzer, Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung [Historyof the Life-of-Jesus-Research] (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1984). It was first published in 1906. It isrendered into English as “The Quest of the Historical Jesus” (1910).

34. Eschatology is the “doctrine of the last things. It was originally a Western term, referring toJewish, Christian, and Muslim beliefs about the end of history, the resurrection of the dead, the LastJudgment, the messianic era, and the problem of theodicy (the vindication of God’s justice).” Onehas to distinguish between mythical and historical eschatologies. While the mythical one interpretsthe human condition in non-temporal terms and stories, the “historical eschatology appears in oneof three distinct forms—messianism, millennialism, or apocalypticism. Messianic hopes are directedtoward a single redemptive figure who, it is believed, will lead the people of God, now suffering andoppressed, into a better historical future. Messianism sometimes promotes visions of the vengeanceand justice that befall tyrannical political and religious leaders. In these instances, local historicalexpectations shape the belief in the fulfillment of history before its end. Apocalypticism, on theother hand, promises a sudden, cataclysmic intervention by God on the side of a faithful minority.”From “Eschatology,” Encyclopædia Britannica 2010 Ultimate Reference Suite. “Eschatology” is nota Biblical term, contrary to “Apocalypse,” e.g., “The Apocalypse of John.”

35. David Cook, “The Beginnings of Islam as an Apocalyptic Movement,” in Stephen D.O’Leary and Glenn S. McGhee, eds., War in Heaven—Heaven on Earth: Theories of the Apocalyptic(London: Equinox, 2005), 79–93. See Willem A. Bijlefeld, “Eschatology: Some Muslim and Chris-tian Data,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, vol. 15, no. 1 (2004): 35–54 for a comparison.According to Abdulazziz Abdulhussein Sachedina, “the essence of Shi’ite Islam is a chiliastic visionof history,” see Sachedina, Islamic Messianism, 1. Patricia Crone disagrees, see Crone, MedievalIslamic Political Thought, 119.

36. See the classic, George Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State, rev. ed. (NewBrunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1969) and a new, excellent investigation, Nadia Maria ElCheikh, Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press andCambridge University Press, 2004).

37. Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1979[1955]); Albrecht Noth, Heiliger Krieg und Heiliger Kampf in Islam und Christentum. Beitrage zur



Vorgeschichte und Geschichte der Kreuzzuge [Holy War and Holy Struggle in Islam and Christendom](Bonn: Ludwig Rohrscheid Verlag, 1966); David Cook, Understanding Jihad (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 2005); Michael Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practice (Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006); Khalid Yahia Blankmanship, The End of the Jihad State: TheReign of Hisham Ibn ‘Abd al-Malik and the Collapse of the Umayyads (Albany: State Universityof New York Press, 1994); Bassam Tibi, Krieg der Zivilisationen: Politik und Religion zwischenVernunft und Fundamentalismus [War of Civilizations: Politics and Religion between Reason andFundamentalism] (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1995); and Bassam Tibi, Kreuzzug und Djihad:Der Islam und die Christliche Welt [Crusade and Jihad. Islam and the Christian World] (Munchen:C. Bertelsmann, 1999).

38. Sachedina, Islamic Messianism, 152; and Sachedina, Just Ruler In Shi’ite Islam, 38–57.Muhammad al-Baqir and his son Ja’far al-Sadiq may both have been under strong influence fromGnosticism. See Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought, 81–84.

39. See Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought, 111.40. Sachedina, Islamic Messianism, 23, 103, and 105.41. According to Ibn Khaldun, Prolegomena: Introduktion till Varldshistorien (in Swedish)

[Prolegomena: Introduction to World History] (Lund: Alhambra, 2003), 197, “[The Imamites] believethat the twelfth of their Imams, Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-’Askari, whom they call Mahdi, wentto the cellar in his family’s house in al-Hilla and ‘hided,’ while he was down there with his mother(873). He has stayed ‘hidden’ there. He will return at the End of Time and fill the world with justice”[translated from Swedish by the author of this article].

42. Sachedina, Islamic Messianism, 150 and 201.43. According to Kohlberg, the Prophet is quoted as describing prayer, charitable piety, and

jihad as the three works most beloved by God. And death in a holy war atones all sins. See Kohlberg,“Development of the Imami Shi’i Doctrine,” 65.

44. According to a tradition of the Prophet, “All that is good is embodied in the sword.” Ibid.45. Ann K. S. Lambton, “A Nineteenth Century View of Jihad,” Studia Islamica, vol. 32

(1970): 184. For a general overview of the Safavid period, see Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Ventureof Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, vol. 3, The Gunpowder Empires andModern Times (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977 [1974]), 16–58. See the Islamic Republicof Iran Constitution from 1979, Art. 12.

46. Sachedina, Just Ruler In Shi’ite Islam.47. I rely on two articles by Ann K. S. Lambton, “A Nineteenth Century View of Jihad,” and

“Some New Trends in Islamic Political Thought in Late 18th and Early 19th Century Persia,” StudiaIslamica, vol. 39 (1974): 95–128. This change under Fatih ‘Ali Shah was prepared by the ulema, whenthey in 1722, the year of the collapse of the Safavid dynasty in Iran, claimed that they collectivelyembodied the Naib Imam, the earthly representative of the imam. See Stephen F. Dale, “The IslamicWorld in the Age of European Expansion, 1500–1800,” in Francis Robinson, ed., The CambridgeIllustrated History of The Islamic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 74.

48. I have omitted quotation marks, but the wording is mostly Professor Lambton’s.49. Hugh Seton-Watson, The Russian Empire, 1801–1917 (London: Oxford at The Clarendon

Press, 1988 [1967]), 117–118.50. Imam Khomeini, “Islamic Government,” (1970), Islam and Revolution: Writings and Dec-

larations, trans. Hamid Algar (London: KPI, 1981), 27–166, esp. 42–57.51. Cf. Islamic Republic of Iran Constitution of 1979, Art. 5: “During the Occultation of the

Wali al-Asr (may God hasten his reappearance), the wilayah and leadership of the Ummah devolveupon the just [‘adil] and pious [muttaqi] faqih, who is fully aware of the circumstances of his age;courageous, resourceful, and possessed of administrative ability, will assume the responsibilities ofthis office in accordance with Article 107.” “Wali al-Asr” is the Master of the Age, which is oneof the names of the Mahdi. About the Master of the Age, see Sachedina, Islamic Messianism, 22.The Master of the Age is “the infallible leader and the protector of the Religion.” See GudmarAneer, Imam Ruhullah Khumeaini, Sah Muhammad Riza Pahlevi and the Religious Traditions of Iran(Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Historia Religionum, 1985); Said Amir Arjomand, “Shi’iteJurisprudence and Constitution Making in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” in Martin E. Marty and R.


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Scott Appleby, eds., Fundamentalisms and the State: Remaking Polities, Economies, and Militance(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 88–109; Asghar Schirazi, The Constitution of Iran:Politics and the State in the Islamic Republic (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997); Vanessa Martin, Creatingan Islamic State: Khomeini and the Making of a New Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000); WilfriedBuchta, Who Rules Iran? The Structure of Power in the Islamic Republic (Washington, DC: TheWashington Institute for Near East Policy and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2000).

52. On the inner contradiction within Shi’a Islam between the founding principles of Shi’a as arevolutionary belief and the Imamate as a political system, see Hamid Dabashi, “The End of IslamicIdeology—Iran,” Social Research, vol. 87, no. 2 (2000): 475–518.

53. Momen, Introduction to Shi’i Islam, 166–170.54. Ibid., 168.55. Ibid., 166f. The prophecy is reproduced in its entirety by David Cook in his article, “Moral

Apocalypse in Islam,” Studia Islamica, no. 86 (1997): 65–69. According to Cook it really does notstem from al-Sadiq, but from al-Zaljani in the tenth century.

56. All quotations are from Cook, “Moral Apocalypse in Iran.” On the “the forbidden and thepermitted,” see the impressive study by Michael Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong inIslamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

57. According to Bernard Lewis, one of Ayatollah Khomeini’s main grievances against theShah was “that his legislation allowed the theoretical possibility (never in fact realized before thefall of the monarchy) of non-Muslims exercising political or judicial authority over Muslims.” SeeBernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 194.

58. See Fred M. Donner, “The Sources of Islamic Conceptions of War,” in John Kelsay andJames Turner Johnson, eds., Just War and Jihad: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on Warand Peace in Western and Islamic Traditions (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991), 46 and 50, whereDonner makes an important distinction between jihad as a permanent state of war between dar al-Islam and dar al-Harb and qital as the actual behavior of fighting. Even if there is no qital for thetime being, jihad exists as a permanent state of war, which at any moment might be transformedinto qital. Offensive wars are according to shari’a called futuhat which means “openings.” Islamicwars are never aggressive wars, because of the permanent state of war between dar al-Islam and daral-Harb. Bassam Tibi emphasizes on futuhat that “Schuld daran seien ‘die anderen,’ weil sie diesenZustand durch Ubertritt zum Islam beenden konnten . . . Einig sind sie [die Islamische Juristen, theauthor of this article] sich aber darin, dass es einen Dauerfrieden zwischen der Welt des Islam undder der Unglaubigen nicht geben kann.” [“The others” are to blame, because they could end thisstate by converting to Islam . . . All (the Islamic Jurist Scholars) agree that a permanent conditionof peace between the world of Islam and the infidels is impossible], in Tibi, Krieg der Zivilisationen,196, 204; and Bassam Tibi, “War and Peace in Islam,” in Terry Nardin, ed., The Ethics of War andPeace: Religious and Secular Perspectives (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 130.This succinct overview by Professor Tibi has been republished in Sohail H. Hashmi, ed., IslamicPolitical Ethics: Civil Society, Pluralism, and Conflict (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 2002).

59. Kohlberg, “Development of the Imami Shi’i Doctrine,” 69.60. Wilfried Buchta, Die iranische Schia und die islamische Einheit 1979–1996 [The Iranian

Shia and Islamic Union, 1979–1996] (Hamburg: Deutsches Orient-Institut, 1997), 51ff; “AyatollahHomeini und die Islamische Einheit” [Ayatollah Khomeini and the Unity of Islam] and particularly63ff. “Die Sunni-Schia-Frage und die Revolutionsideologie Homeinis” [The Sunni-Shia Questionand Khomeini’s Ideologi of Revolution] and “Das Endziel: Schiitisierung der Umma oder SuzeranerStaatenbund?” [The Ultimate Goal: Shiitization of the Umma or a Confederation of States?].

61. See Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future (NewYork: W. W. Norton and Company, 2007), 225–226.

62. I am much indebted to Momen, Introduction to Shi’i Islam, 168–169. He gives a moreextensive list of signs. I have omitted quotation marks, but the wording is mostly Mr. Momen’s.

63. There is however no well-defined “odd year,” because there is no universally agreedIslamic calendar. See the excellent article “Islamic Calendar” in Wikipedia, English language version,accessed on September 6, 2010.



64. Cf. “The banner of the Prophet, which was spread for the last time in the Battle of theCamel (36/656–657) by Ali, will once again be spread by al-Qa’im, as a symbol of the Alid victoryand hegemony,” in Sachedina, Islamic Messianism, 175. The Holy Standard (arab: al-liwa ash-sharif )was according to tradition originally a door-curtain of Muhammad’s favorite wife Aisha. See “HeiligeFahne” [Holy Standard], in K. Kremer, W. Diem, and H. G. Mayer, eds., Lexikon der IslamischenWelt [Encyclopedia of the Islamic World] (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1974), 26. Black is also the colorof the enormous cloth which most of the year covers the Ka’bah, called the kiswah; see “Ka’bah,”Encyclopædia Britannica 2010 Ultimate Reference Suite.

65. Khurasan is a “historical region and realm comprising a vast territory now lying in north-eastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, and northern Afghanistan. The historical region extended, alongthe north, from the Amu Darya (Oxus River) westward to the Caspian Sea and, along the south,from the fringes of the central Iranian deserts eastward to the mountains of central Afghanistan. Arabgeographers even spoke of its extending to the boundaries of India.” From “Khorasan,” EncyclopædiaBritannica 2010 Ultimate Reference Suite.

66. Kufah is a medieval city of Iraq that was a center of Arab culture and learning from theeighth to the tenth century. It was founded in 638 as a garrison town by Umar I, the second caliph. Thecity lay on the Hindiyah branch of the Euphrates River, about 7 miles (11 km) northeast of an-Najaf.It was populated largely by South Arabians and Iranians and served as the seat of the governor of Iraq,sometimes sharing this position with its sister city, Basra. In 655 the Muslims of Kufah became thefirst to support the claims of Ali, son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad, against the caliph Uthman;Kufah subsequently served as Ali’s capital (656–661); see “Kufah,” Encyclopædia Britannica 2010Ultimate Reference Suite.

67. Muhammad was born in 570/571 (?) and belonged on the side of his father to the clanHashim of the tribe Quraysh, which turned against him and his revelations and had him expelled fromMecca in 622. He went to Medina, but they continued to fight him. He defeated the Meccan forcesand returned victoriously to Mecca in 628. See Maxime Rodinson, Muhammed (Harmondsworth:Penguin, 1971), 38, 103, 142ff, 177ff, and 215ff.

68. Jahiliyya is the pre-Islamic period with “ignorance” of monotheism and divine law. Incurrent use it refers to secular modernity, too. See “Jahilliyah,” in John L. Esposito, ed., The OxfordDictionary of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). To pioneering fundamentalist theoristssuch as S. Abu al-Mawdudi and Sayyed Qutb, jihalliyah does not only demarcate before and afterGod’s revelation to Muhammad, but also between the actual contemporaneity of dar al-Islam anddar al-Kufr today. To both of them secular democracy is “a reversion to the days of pagan ignorance(jahiliyya).” Cf. Youssef M. Choueiri, Islamic Fundamentalism, rev. ed. (London: Pinter, 1997), 106.

69. Clifford Geertz, “Religion As a Cultural System,” The Interpretation of Cultures (London:Fontana Press, 1993 [1973]), 90. I am deeply indebted to Bassam Tibi’s two unparalleled andpenetrating analyses, Der Islam und das Problem der Kulturellen Bewaltigung Sozialen Wandels.[Islam and the Problem of Cultural Change] (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985) and Die Krisedes Modernen Islams: Eine Vorindustrielle Kultur im Wissenschaftlich-technischen Zeitalter [Crisisof Modern Islam: A Premodern Culture during the Age of Science and Technology] (Frankfurt amMain: Suhrkamp, 1991).

70. Geert Hofstede, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (1991). I rely on thenew Danish translation of Hofstede’s book, Kulturer og organisationer: Overlevelse i en Grænseover-skridende Verden (Handelshøjskolens Forlag, 2002), 20.

71. I shall call the attention of the reader to only a few particularly illuminating articles: PaulDiMaggio, “Culture and Cognition,” American Review of Sociology, vol. 23 (1997): 263–287; PhilipE. Tetlock and James M. Goldgeier, “Human Nature and World Politics: Cognition, Identity, andInfluence,” International Journal of Psychology, vol. 32, no. 2 (2000): 87–96; Valerie M. Hudson andMartin W. Sampson, III, “Culture Is More than a Static Residual: Introduction to the Special Section onCulture and Foreign Policy,” Political Psychology, vol. 20, no. 4 (1999): 667–675; Valerie M. Hudson,“Cultural Expectations of One’s Own and Other Nations’ Foreign Policy Action Templates,” PoliticalPsychology, vol. 20, no. 4 (1999): 767–801; Jeanne Ho-ying Fu, Michael W. Morris, Sau-lai Lee,Melody Chao, Chi-ye Chin, and Ying-yi Hong, “Epistemic Motives and Cultural Conformity: Need


150 H. P. Duus

for Closure, Culture, and Context as Determinants of Conflict Judgments,” Journal of Personalityand Social Psychology, vol. 92, no. 2 (2007): 191–207; Ching Wan, Chie-ye Chiu, Kim-pong Tam,Sau-lai Lee, Ivy Yee-man Lau, and Siqing Peng, “Perceived Cultural Importance and Actual Self-Importance of Values in Cultural Identification,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol.92, no. 2 (2007): 337–354; and last but certainly not least, a seminal modern classic, although not frompsychology but from anthropology, Sherry B. Ortner, “On Key Symbols,” American Anthropologist,new series, vol. 75, no. 5 (1973): 1338–1346. There are intersections between these investigations intothe importance of culture and, for example, the investigation into the importance of perceptions andideological worldviews in relation to decision making done by Alexander L. George. See his seminal“The ‘Operational Code’: A Neglected Approach to the Study of Political Leaders and DecisionMaking,” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 2 (1969): 190–222; and Alexander L. George,Presidential Decisionmaking in American Foreign Policy (Boulder: Westview Press, 1980).

72. Richard C. Snyder, H. W. Bruck, and Burton Sapin, “Decision-Making as an Approachto the Study of International Politics” (1954), reprinted in Richard C. Snyder, H. W. Bruck, andBurton Sapin, eds., Foreign Policy Decision-Making: An Approach to the Study of InternationalRelations (New York: The Free Press of Glenco, 1962), 14–185, and again in Richard C. Snyder,H. W. Bruck, and Burton Sapin, Foreign Policy Decision-Making, revisited, with new chapters byValerie M. Hudson, Derek H. Chollet and James M. Goldgeier (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,2002), 21–152.

73. See Alexander L. George, “The Need for Influence Theory and Actor-Specific BehavioralModels of Adversaries,” Comparative Strategy, vol. 22, no. 5 (2003): 463–487.

74. Buchta, Die Iranische Schia, 55, “Der von Elementen judischer und christlicher Kulturgepragte ‘Westen’ stellt nun den Hauptfeind der Muslime und die Antithese des Islam dar” [“TheWest” as shaped by elements from Jewish and Christian culture is now the main enemy of the Muslimsand antithetical to Islam].

75. This is the battle cry of the Islamists. It was originally part of the titles of three importantvolumes by the Sunni Shaykh Yusuf al-Quaradawi. Vol. 1 was published 1971 in Beirut, vol. 2 1974in Beirut, and vol. 3 1988 in Cairo. See Bassam Tibi, Die Fundamentalistische Herausforderung(Munchen: C. H. Beck, 1992), 46, 266.

76. Peter Marsden writes, “The Afghan jihad took on an enormous symbolic importance foradherents to radical Islam throughout the Islamic world, and attracted large numbers of volunteersfrom the Middle East and elsewhere to fight alongside the Mujahidin.” See Peter Marsden, TheTaliban: War, Religion and the New Order of Afghanistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press andZed Books, 1998), 84. See also William Maley, ed., Fundamentalism Reborn? Afghanistan andthe Taliban (London: Hurst and Company, 1998), 18–19; and particularly Ahmed Rashid, Taliban:Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000), 42–43, where hedescribes the election by shura of Mullah Omar as Amir-ul Mumineen (Commander of the Faithful)who thereby assumes the right to lead all Muslims, not just all Afghans in the jihad. On April 4,1996 Mullah Omar appeared on a roof in Kabul cloaked in the mantle of Prophet Muhammad. Thegreen mantle was kept as a relic in a Holy Shrine in Kandahar. See (in Norwegian) Fredrick Barth,Afghanistan og Taliban [Afghanistan and Taliban] (Oslo: Forlaget Pax, 2008), 49.

77. A Sunni–Shi’a rivalry is surfacing here. Taliban is Wahhabi-influenced and fiercely anti-Shi’a. See Oliver Roy, “Has Islamism a Future in Afghanistan?” in Maley, ed., FundamentalismReborn?, 210. At the state-to-state level it translated into “a proxy battle in Afghanistan, with Iransupporting segments of the Taliban’s opponent, the Northern Alliance.” See Geoffrey Kemp, The EastMoves West: India, China, and Asia’s Growing Presence in the Middle East (Washington, DC: TheBrookings Institution Press, 2010), 57.

78. Cook, Understanding Jihad, 158–161.79. “Al-Djadjdjal,” Encyclopedia of Islam, vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1983), 76. The Dajjal is

unknown to the Qur’an.80. According to Sachedina, Islamic Messianism, 173, “Al-Dajjal’s role at the End of Time is

almost identical with that of Satan, as explained in traditional sources . . . ” And Smith and Yazbeck



Haddad, Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection, 68: There “is no clarity in the under-standing of Iblis’ relation to the Dajjal.” And one might add that there is no clarity of the exactrelationship of Shaytan (Satan) to Iblis either, see John L. Esposito, ed., The Oxford Dictionary ofIslam (London: Oxford University Press, 2003), 279.

81. Ahmadinejad seems to allude to Dajjal in his speech of September 17, 2005, to the UNGeneral Assembly without mentioning the name Dajjal. See full text of President Ahmadinejad’sspeech at the General Assembly on GlobalSecurity.org.

82. Dajjal is in some sources called “the king of Jews.” Cf. “Al-Djadjdjal,” 77.83. See Cook, Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature, passim.84. Buchta, Die Iranische Schia, 55. Ahmadinejad told his supporters that “Satan inspires

Mr Bush” (BBCNews, October 16, 2006).85. It is quite telling that Ayatollah Khomeini begins the first passage on page 1 of his book on

Islamic government by emphasizing the importance of the principle of vilayet-i-faqih, and beginningthe next passage with “From the very beginning, the historical movement of Islam has had to contendwith the Jews, for it was they who first established anti-Islamic propaganda and engaged in variousstratagems, and as you can see, this activity continues down to the present. Later they were joinedby other groups, who were in certain respects more satanic than they.” See Khomeini, “IslamicGovernment,” 27. So the Jews are satanic, but the Christians are even more satanic!

86. Khomeini allowed himself to be called “Imam” by others even if he, to the best of myknowledge, never used that title himself. It had until then been reserved for the Twelve Imams. See A.Savyon and Y. Mansharof, “The Doctrine of Mahdism In the Ideological and Political Philosophy ofMahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Mesbad-e Yazdi,” Inquiry and Analysis, vol. 357 (May 2007),Middle East Media Research Institute, available at www.memri.org, 4.

87. I am almost entirely relying on Sachedina, Just Ruler In Shi’ite Islam, 170–173.88. See “Iranian Leader Denies Holocaust,” BBCNews, December 14, 2005, and his letter

of July 2006 to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Full text in German translation available atwww.uni-kassel.de/fb5/frieden/regionen/Iran/brief-an-merkel.html.

89. Ahmadinejad in his speech of September 17, 2005, invites the Members of the UN GeneralAssembly and his worldwide non-Imamite audiences to convert to Islam, just as he does PresidentBush in his letter to him of May 9, 2006. It is a prelude to war according to standard Shari’a. Ifthe invitation is not accepted war might begin and the invited might be killed, enslaved, or as a ahlal-kitab (People of the Book) subjected to the status of a dhimmi, who has to pay tribute (jizya)to the Islamic ruler. Cf. Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam, 96: “ . . . the jihad must bepreceded by an ‘invitation to Islam,’ and only failure to accept the new faith, or pay the poll tax [thejizya, the author of this article] in the case of Scripturaries [ahl al-kitab, the author of this article],would precipitate fighting with the enemy.” And ibid., 80, “The polytheists have the limited choicebetween Islam or the jihad.” In his speech to the UN General Assembly on September 25, 2007,the invitation is reissued, and the benefits for those accepting it and the costs for those rejectingit are emphasized: a bright future filled with justice and beauty under Iranian leadership for theformer and the destruction by God for the latter, which he expect will be realized in the near future.H. E. Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Before the Sixty-SecondSession of the United Nations General Assembly, 9–11, available at the Web site of the Council ofForeign Affairs, www.cfr.org/publication/14305/president ahmadinejads address to the un generalassembly 2007.html?breadcrumb=%2Fregion%2F404%2Firan. And “the near future” will never bean odd year according to the prophecy mentioned earlier.

90. See Cook, Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature, for an analysis of contemporarySunni apocalyptic literature, and Richard K. Fenn, Dreams of Glory: The Sources of ApocalypticTerror (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006) for a discussion of the Christian counterpart. Stephen D. O’Learyoutlines a theory of millennial rhetoric based on his analysis of the new American Christian right. SeeStephen D. O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1994).

91. Ahmadinejad plays upon the self-identification of George W. Bush as a reborn Christianin his letter of May 9, 2006, to President Bush, in which he alludes to the idea that “Christ and the


152 H. P. Duus

virtuous of the Earth will one day govern” the unified international community. He almost holds outthe prospect of a future coalition to Bush, Washington Post, May 9, 2006. In fact this co-governingof Christ (George W. Bush) and the virtuous (Mahmoud M. Ahmadinejad) has according to theapocalypse to be established only after the American nuclear retaliation, where Jesus shall convertto Islam and carry out the final cosmic carnage where all those rejecting ahl al-bayt has to be killed,including the majority—one might guess—of the Americans!

92. Kohlberg, “Development of the Imami Shi’i Doctrine,” 68ff.93. According to a tradition of the Prophet, “All that is good is embodied in the sword.” Ibid.,

65.94. Osama bin Laden made use of civilian airplanes in his attack, not military ones. It is

religion that counts. On the other hand, that does not mean that a military perspective is absent. Onthe contrary, according to Bassam Tibi, the (Sunni) fundamentalists reject modernity, but demand thatMuslims learn modern technology and science in order to be able themselves to develop and operatemodern weapon systems necessary to defeat the West and make Islam rule the world. Cf. Bassam Tibi,Islamischer Fundamentalismus, Moderne Wissenschaft und Technologie [Islamic Fundamentalism,Modern Science, and Technology] (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992), 67–74.

95. In his speech to the UN General Assembly on September 25, 2007, he declared Palestine“under occupation of the illegal Zionist regime.” See H. E. Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Presidentof the Islamic Republic of Iran Before the Sixty Second Session of the United Nations GeneralAssembly, 2.

96. According to Vali Nasr, the presidential election of 2005 bringing Ahmadinejad into poweralso meant a basic shift of emphasis in Iranian foreign policy away from Khomeini’s policy ofbringing Shi’a closer to Sunni in order to boost Khomeini and Iran as the sole leader of the Islamicworld, while at the same time keenly confronting the West and Israel. The new and more conservativeleadership has chosen to confront the Sunnis too, domestic as well as foreign: “ . . . Iran’s leaders. . . understand that Iran can achieve great-power status only if it can reduce Sunni resistance to Shiarevival.” See Nasr, Shia Revival, 216; and “Shi’ite Supremacists Emerge from Iran’s Shadows,” AsiaTimes, September 9, 2005, available at www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle East/GI09Ak01.html

97. See Nasr, Shia Revival, 216. It was Mesbah-Yazdi who, after the election of Ahmadinejad,declared that Iran now for the first time had a true Islamic government and that there was no needfor elections anymore. An “Islamic Republic” was a contradiction in terms and incompatible withtheocracy. Elections were from the beginning only a concession to secular forces. “While manyIranians yearned for a democratic future, Mesbah-Yazdi was looking to the Taliban for his,” in thewords of Nasr, see Shia Revival, 216. My apology to Professor Nasr. The wording is mostly his.

98. See Amir Taheri, The Persian Night: Iran under the Khomeinist Revolution (New York:Encounter Books, 2009), 388.

99. Ahmadinejad published a video in November 2005 showing him telling a cleric that hefelt the hand of God when he spoke to the UN General Assembly September 17, 2005. Anton LaGuardia,“‘Divine mission’ Driving Iran’s New Leader,” Daily Telegraph, January 15, 2006. He evensaid that he at that time saw the light of the Mahdi. “Die Iraner glauben, jetz schlagt ihre grosseStunde” [The Iranians believe that from now on they are moving into a bright future], an interviewwith Professor Vali Nasr in the German daily Die Welt, March 3, 2007. See also the last few sentencesof his UN General Assembly speech, September 17, 2005.

100. Ahmadinejad is of the opinion that the World War II victorious powers have establishedan unjust rule of the world, which must be redressed. He is alluding to this in his September 2005and September 2006 speeches to the UN General Assembly, available at GlobalSecurity.org. In hisletter of July 2006 to Chancellor Angela Merkel he is much more outspoken, available in Germantranslation at www.uni-kassel.de/fb5/frieden/regionen/Iran/brief-an-merkel.html. In an interview hegave to Der Spiegel, vol. 22 (May 31, 2006) he answers the question “Und das heisst auch, dass Iransich von Atomplanen und aufruhrerischen Reden verabschiedet?” [And that means too that Iran isgoing to drop both its plans for an atomic weapon and its inflammatory speeches?] in this way, “Zusagen, dass wir die Welt, so wie sie ist, akzeptieren sollen, bedeutet, dass die Sieger des ZweitenWeltkrieges noch 1000 Jahre Siegermachte bleiben, und dass das deutsche Volk noch 1000 Jahre



erniedrigt werden muss.” [If we said that we accepted the world, as it is, that would mean that thevictors of the Second World War would continue as victorious powers another 1000 years, and thatthe German people would be humiliated for another 1000 years.] In his September 25, 2007, speechto the UN General Assembly he went a step further with the words “I officially declare that the age ofrelations arising from the Second World War as well as materialistic thoughts based on arrogance anddomination is well over now. Humanity has passed a perilous precipice and the age of monotheism,purity, affinity, respecting others, justice and true peace-loving has commenced.” H. E. Dr. MahmoudAhmadinejad, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Before the Sixty Second Session of theUnited Nations General Assembly, p. 10. It is worth mentioning that the letter to Chancellor Merkelcontains no invitation to convert to Islam, but tries on the contrary to voice sympathy with the defeatedGermany and to reject the unjust claim against the Germans that they were guilty of Holocaust. Onemight guess that Ahmadinejad is trying tactically to exploit the questioning in Germany lately of thelawfulness of the indiscriminate bombings of the German cities by the Western Allies during WorldWar II.

101. See the modern classic (in Danish), Mircea Eliade, Myten om den Evige Genkomst:Arketyper og Gentagelse [The Myth about the Eternal Return. Archetypes and Repetition] (Samleren,1997), Orig. title: “Le mythe de l’eternel retour: Archetypes et repetition” (1949); and Mircea Eliade,“Cosmogonic Myth and ‘Sacred History,”’ in The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion (Chicago:The University of Chicago Press, 1969), 72–87.

102. Religion has been almost neglected as an area pertinent to international relations theory.Bassam Tibi has done a pioneering work in relation to Islam and international relations theory in aplethora of admirably well-researched and penetrating books and articles since the mid-1980s, withPolitical Islam, World Politics and Europe: Democratic Peace and Euro-Islam versus Global Jihad(London: Routledge, 2008) as a recent contribution.

103. I strongly disagree with Kenneth N. Waltz and John J. Mearsheimer, when they maintainthat the spread of nuclear weapons will bring peace and stability to international relations. This ispurely axiomatic theory, and it presupposes what actually should be demonstrated! See Kenneth N.Waltz, “The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better,” Adelphi Paper, no. 171, InternationalInstitute for Strategic Studies, 1981; and John J. Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability inEurope after the Cold War,” International Security, vol. 15, no. 1 (1990): 5–56.

104. Sachedina, Islamic Messianism, passim; and Smith and Yazbeck Haddad, Islamic Under-standing of Death and Resurrection.


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Corrigendum

The article by Henning P. Duus entitled “Deterrence and a Nuclear-Armed Iran” thatappeared in Comparative Strategy, 30(2), pp. 134–153, contained an error on p. 149 inendnote 67. Muhammad defeated the Meccan forces and returned victoriously to Mecca in630, not in 628. The author apologizes for the error.

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Deterrence and a Nuclear-Armed Iran