Es diente in der Vorstellungswelt des Alten Testamentes der Überwindung des Schamgefühles, indem es die eigene Blöße bedeckt.
Das Feigenblatt des Feigenbaums wurde in der bildenden Kunst zum Verbergen der Geschlechtsteile nackter Personen verwendet.It can be grateful to the intelligence minister for dropping the fatwa fig leaf. As it prepares to re-engage Iran in diplomacy, the Biden team should cast off the Obama administration’s credulity on this score. This is risible, of course, but no more so than the idea that the Islamic Republic has until now been restrained by Islam. In this, as in so much else, Iran’s behaviour has been guided by how far it can go until international pressure becomes unbearable.Īlavi’s comments suggest the regime is testing out a new rationale for its nuclear policy: The US and its allies are forcing us to build the Bomb. If religious considerations didn’t prevent Iran from seeking a nuclear arsenal before 2003, they do not now and will not in the future. The nuclear-weapons fatwa is similarly fungible.
And it helped Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad develop the chemical weapons he unleashed on his own people. But Iran continued to develop its own chemical weapons capability, even after it ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997. Khomeini frequently fulminated against WMDs and especially chemical weapons-the kind that killed thousands of Iranians during the 1980-1988 war with Iraq. Sometimes, this is to the good: The Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, dropped his objections to women’s suffrage after the 1979 revolution.Īt other times, the volte-face leads to tragedy. Since then, the fatwa has been deployed by Iranian officials to allay Western suspicions that the nuclear programme may have been revived.īut not all religious decrees are carved in stone, and Iran’s supreme leaders have a history of making 180-degree turns on what is or is not un-Islamic. Rather than admit he was backing down in fear, Khamenei used the fatwa as a fig leaf-a post facto justification for suspending the programme. The US-led invasion of Iraq the following year brought home to Tehran the risk of pursuing weapons of mass destruction. Khamenei only issued the decree after Iran was caught in the act: Its clandestine nuclear-weapons programme, developed with Russian assistance, was exposed in 2002. The decree was always more political than religious-designed to provide cover for whatever nuclear course was expedient for Tehran at any given time. Administration officials briefing journalists at the time suggested the fatwa would allow the government of President Hassan Rouhani to sell the deal to hard-liners within the regime, who wanted Iran to build nuclear weapons.īut the Obama team imbued the fatwa with far more import than it merited. It was cited by former President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry in the lead up to the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the world powers. In turn, American officials have taken comfort in Khamenei’s fatwa, arguing that the religious decree demonstrated his real attitude toward nuclear weapons. The supreme leader himself has repeated that assertion, invoking the Arabic word “haraam" or religiously forbidden. Until now, the regime has maintained it could not and would not pursue nukes because Khamenei has declared them un-Islamic. But he may also have done the US a service by dispensing with the fiction that the programme was governed by religious decree. Alavi’s threat represents a significant escalation in Iran’s rhetoric around its nuclear programme. The Biden administration has, rightly, expressed alarm at the intelligence minister’s comments.
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