All Iran needs: a cinematic religious state instead of a modern government.

I’m trying to figure out just what it is about the current situation in Iran - particularly as it pertains to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his sneering, sniveling sidekick, incumbent President Mahmoud Amadinejad that reminds me every time of Darth Vadar in Star Wars.

In the current unhappy situation, we see a religious leader who is in control of Iran’s Army and Revolutionary Guard. He also seems to control the Guardian Council.

Does this sound as draconian and ridiculously theatrical to you as it does to me?

All Khamenei needs is the black helmet. He’s already got the flowing robes.

According to Fareed Zakharia of Newsweek:

When the current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a “divine assessment,” he was using the key weapon of velayat-e faqih, divine sanction.

Millions of Iranians didn’t buy it, convinced that their votes—one of the key secular rights allowed them under Iran’s religious system—had been stolen. Soon Khamenei was forced to accept the need for an inquiry into the election. The Guardian Council, Iran’s supreme constitutional body, promised to investigate, meet with the candidates and recount some votes.

Khamenei has realized that the regime’s existence is at stake and has now hardened his position, but that cannot put things back together. It has become clear that in Iran today, legitimacy does not flow from divine authority but from popular will.

For three decades, the Iranian regime has wielded its power through its religious standing, effectively excommunicating those who defied it. This no longer works—and the mullahs know it. For millions, perhaps the majority of Iranians, the regime has lost its legitimacy.

Is this state religious enough for ya?

So, this is what a religious state looks like. What fun! Governance flowing from ‘divine saction’ and ‘divine assessment.’ No wonder the Iranian people are coming apart at the seams - they want to be taken seriously by the rest of the world as the thoughtful, well educated, hardworking people that they are - who could really contribute to the world in so many ways - and they’re being held back by a cinematic cliche of religious proportions.

Can you say separation of church and state?

For all the fringe evangelical element that deeply believes that we just can’t have enough Gawd in the schools, or the judiciary or even the west wing of the White House … take a good look at this.

This is what you’d end up with - a crushing theocracy that brooks no dissent, that gags its media and people and ultimately violence in the streets.

This isn’t just some pip squeak pope sitting in his Disney castle in Rome. Catholics around the world can choose to follow his crackpot ideas or not. In Iran, there is no choice.

Once again the world unites

Thinking people who believe that religion needs to stay in its place, are joining with the Iranian opposition via - of all things Twitter.  Although I’m not a huge fan of Twitter - being a little too busy having a life, if that’s what works in Iran - or any other oppressed country - so be it. I celebrate it.

At the end of the day, the compelling need to join the modern world in expressing their common humanity will lift the Iranian people out of this mess, not god.

I will be waiting for them with an open heart and open arms.

maven