by Dr. Eran Lerman

Director, Israel/Middle East Office

Connecting the dots in the Middle East is not always easy. Still, there was a common thematic line—namely, the policies (and the crisis) of the Iranian revolution—running through several events of the last week:

1. On Shabbat, July 5, anti-aircraft shells—this time used deliberately by Hizballah as light artillery, not against Israeli aircraft (there were none in the air)—rained down on Kiryat Shemonah near the Lebanese border, causing some damage but no loss of life.

2. On Monday evening, a suicide bomber dispatched by an element of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) walked into a family home in the village of Kfar Yabetz, inside the Green Line, and blew himself up, killing a 65-year-old women and wounding her grandchildren. (It offers a measure of the total dehumanization of all Jews in the eyes of these groups that they actually take responsibility for the murder of a woman in her home, without ever stopping to think of it as a crime.) The PIJ leadership, however, was quick to point out that this was a singular “response” to Israeli policy, not a full abandonment of the so-called hudna or ceasefire; clearly, they feel obliged to their own public not to dash the hopes generated by recent developments.

3. In Northern Samaria, groups within the Fatah “Tanzim” and its armed wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, are in close touch with a renegade Fatah terrorist in Lebanon, Munir al-Maqdah, who in turn is in liaison with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps representatives in Lebanon. Such groups within Fatah, encouraged by Yasir Arafat’s ambivalence, are now challenging Mahmoud Abbas’s right to move ahead in negotiations with Israel.

4. Meanwhile, in Iran, the regime is tightening its grip, disallowing demonstrations and preparing to put student leaders on trial.

The common denominator in all of this is the role of the Iranian revolution as a sponsor of terror—and the link between this role and the existential crisis that the revolution now faces from within.

It was as early as the mid-’90s that signs of moral and political collapse began to appear under the once heroic façade of the Iranian revolution. Little was left of the once fierce loyalty to the so-called khatt al-Imam, the ideological line of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. (The term imam, leader in prayer, is central to the Shi’i tradition; its use to describe Khomeini, despite the fact that he himself never claimed to be anything but a faqih, an expert in religious law, was a dangerous sign of the politicization of religion.) Daring observers, such as former CIA agent Reuel Gerecht (whose fascinating book, Know Thine Enemy, was written under the pseudonym Edward Shirley), found a great majority of Iranians already at their wits’ end, hoping for American action that would liberate them from the mullahs’ regime. V.S. Naipaul came across similar sentiments, to a large extent a painful reflection of the horrific losses and humiliating defeat of the Iranian forces in the 1981-88 war against Saddam—a war that could have been ended much earlier, and on better terms, had it not been for Khomeini’s obstinate refusal to let go of his demand for revenge.

The stunning upset in the 1997 presidential elections—in which a relatively reformist challenger, Ayatollah Muhammad Khatami, won handily against the “official” candidate, Nateq Nuri—indicated the mood of the country. So did the gains of the “reformist” camp in subsequent parliamentary elections and Khatami’s own reelection in 2002. And yet the reformists did not succeed in freeing their country from the deadly grip of Khomeini’s fantasy world, which in one generation impoverished Iran (a Turkish leader once told me that in the ’70s, the GDP per capita in Iran was three times that of Turkey; now it is the other way around, a nine-fold relative reversal!) and drove it, at least in the eyes of the U.S. administration, into the “Axis of Evil.” Real power remained in the hands of a narrow circle of committed revolutionaries, ridiculously referred to in the West as “conservatives.” For them, amid domestic collapse, two instruments of power vis-à-vis the outside world are also designed to revalidate the legitimacy of Khomeini’s “line”:

· The open quest for strategic capabilities: a nuclear program aimed at an “Islamic bomb” (while Pakistan denies that there was ever any intent on its part to provide strategic cover for the Muslim world, Iran does not); and a missile program designed to put Israel—and later, much of Europe and perhaps even the U.S.—within its range. The latter was largely supported by North Korea (the “Shihab 3” missile is a slightly modified version of the PDRK’s “No Dong”), while the former for much too long benefited from the reckless willingness of Russia to turn a blind eye to technology transfers to Iran.

· The sponsorship of terrorism worldwide, including direct involvement in the Israeli embassy and AMIA bombings in Argentina, which claimed so many Jewish lives, as a tool of the revolution and an element of its claim to leadership in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Above all, the use of Hizballah as their proxy in Lebanon gave the office of Iranian “Supreme Guide” Khamenei a high-profile, practical, and symbolic presence, made even more visible in the Arab world through the Lebanon-based, Iranian-run TV station, Al-Manar.

The regime in Iran, in other words, remains a member in good standing in the “Axis”—against the wishes of the majority of its citizens, for whom the tragedy of the brave twins who died in Singapore in an attempt to undergo separation surgery matters more than the revolutionary ranting of the radical mullahs. The war in Iraq had a deterrent effect for a while—and, in fact, pro-Iranian elements in Lebanon and among the Palestinians were told to ratchet down their activities until the Iraqi situation becomes sorted out—but the general pattern is still with us.

All the more reason, at this critical junction, for both Israelis and Americans to send an unambiguous message to the new Palestinian leadership: Make your choice. You cannot be both against terrorism and in favor of the terrorists; you cannot secretly ask for help to restrain Iranian activities and at the same time openly and crudely threaten Israel with the resumption of terrorism unless Hamas and Islamic Jihad “activists” are immediately released from jail. While gestures of generosity, reflecting Sharon’s understanding of Abu Mazen’s predicament, might indeed take place, a Palestinian demand for a sweeping release of mass murderers and dangerous radicals is a worrying sign of political immaturity.