President Donald Trump keeps promising a “deal” with Iran. But the theological and historical perspective of the Iranian mullahs may make any permanent treaty with Iran unreachable.
The Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979 was not merely the overthrow of a government. It was a rejection of some 60 years of attempted modernization and westernization, which had the effect of weakening the authority of Iran’s traditional Shia religious leaders.
When Ruhollah Khomeini seized power, he did not just overthrow a monarchy. He argued that all temporal governments were illegitimate in the absence of the Hidden Imam, the messianic Twelfth Imam who disappeared in 874 c.e., and whose return is awaited to establish global peace.
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Thus, the only legitimate government is one run by the Hidden Imam’s theological representatives. As historian Ali M. Ansari has explained in Iran, his book on modern Iranian history, the supreme leader is the deputy and representative of the Hidden Imam. We have seen negotiations with Iran appear to break down when the Iranian negotiators claimed not to have the authority to make concessions the U.S. was demanding. This is not surprising as, under traditional Shia thinking, any settlement of hostilities with non-Muslims must serve the interests of the Muslim community and must conform with Islamic law. Only the imam, or his deputy, can make such determinations.
Other modern Muslim states, no matter how conservative or committed to their Muslim identity, generally accept international norms and the existence of international boundaries. However, the current theocrats of Iran look back to a more militant and expansionist Islam, where evangelism was not done by missionaries, but by force, and in which the world was literally divided between the Islamic world and everyone else.
In the modern era, this historical concept of extending war to all non-believers has generally been reflected by movements outside of existing modern states, such as al Qaeda and ISIS, whose goals were not merely to purify existing Muslim states, but also to extend that battle to non-Muslim states. Both movements attempted to establish territorial bases where their vision could become reality. Although those examples are Sunni, and not Shia, both are fundamentalist movements, looking back to early Islamic interpretations, as does the Iranian theocracy. Iran is unique in that the purifying theocrats actually took over a complete preexisting nation from which they could export their vision. Since the revolution, Iran has followed this pattern: specifying the U.S. as a fundamental enemy (“the great Satan”) and funding and arming proxy movements in the Middle East and elsewhere to attack U.S. interests, among others. For example, Iran-backed Hezbollah’s 1983 killing of 241 American marines in Lebanon, and Iran’s (probable) involvement in the 2000 al Qaeda attack on the USS Cole in Yemen.
How does this relate to the current conflict?
Islamic jurisprudence extends to how an Islamic state must deal with conflicts and the termination of conflicts with non-Muslim states. While different classical jurists naturally had different interpretations, one well-developed line of thought was, and to some extent is, that the conflict between Muslim and non-Muslim states is eternal, and must continue until Islam prevails universally. Thus, there can never be a permanent peace treaty, but only periods of suspended hostility.
This concept finds authority in the Quran:
“Fight those who do not believe in Allah … until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjugation.” Surah 9:29.
“Fight them until there is no fitnah and religion is wholly for Allah.” Surah 2:193. (“Fitnah” can mean, among other things, civil strife, temptation, or persecution.)
Labeeb Ahmed Bsoul, in his article “Treaty (Mu’ahada) Making in Islam,” even notes that some Islamic authorities provide that a treaty with non-Muslims cannot be permanent, as it is immediately void once the Muslims become capable of again fighting the non-Muslims.
The hard-liners who see conflict with unbelievers as eternal use as precedent the actions of Muhammad in 628, when he entered into the Treaty of Hudaybiyya with the leaders of Mecca, explicitly limiting the peace to 10 years. During the crusades, this practice of entering into term- limited truces between the Christian crusader states and the Muslim states was also often followed.
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This doctrine is not universally accepted. Other Islamic jurists accept that treaties can be made with non-Muslims and that Muslim states can maintain peaceful relations with non-Muslim states. Such reasoning is also grounded in the Quran: “And if they incline to peace, you also incline to it, and trust in Allah.” Surah 8:61. Modern Islamic states, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, and Jordan, to mention only a few, follow international law and enter into treaties with other nations of the world.
The Islamic Republic of Iran may have many in its leadership who are capable of looking to the concepts of modern politics and practicalities to enter into a treaty with the U.S. But President Donald Trump would do well to remember that the underlying worldview of the revolutionaries who created, and have maintained, the Iranian theocratic state is one of perpetual hostility and contains a prejudice against any resolution that binds them to a permanent voluntary termination of conflict.
Thomas Paine Dunlap is a retired California attorney and a lifelong student of Middle Eastern history and politics.