What fuels Iranian hostility to Israel? How does Khamenei continue to maintain control even over his opponents? And why killing him would be a terrible mistake? A Conversation with Iranian-born Author and Commentator Hooman Majd
What is the mood in Iran after the end of the 12-day war? Iranian-born author and journalist Hooman Majd has a clear answer: Iranians are angry.
“My own family does not have running water in their house right now,“ he says in an interview from his home in the United States. "[Israel hit] gas stations, oil depots... If Israel had limited its attack to just the nuclear sites, if it hadn't killed innocent people, if it hadn't targeted residential buildings... if it had done just that and then withdrawn, I don't think there would have been the same anger towards Israel.
He continues: "There are people who don't believe Iran should have had a nuclear program. It caused more problems for the Iranians than it did good... But when you say, "I'm going to get rid of your ballistic missiles... I want you to be so weak that I can bomb you whenever I want," well, that's not going to be acceptable to the Iranians."
What about the Iranians' attitude towards their own regime? In Israel, people fantasize about regime change in Tehran.
"Among the people in Tehran that I talk to, no one talks about regime change. When they bomb, nationalism takes over. People don't necessarily rally around [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei or even the regime - they rally around Iran. I see posts on social media from Iranians who are against the regime but say, “We will fight any invader, we will fight for our country“. And that's completely understandable. In Israel, you can hate [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, you can hope that someone can get rid of him. But when Israel is attacked, this is your homeland”.
Moreover, Majd notes, "most people in Iran don't believe that there is an alternative waiting in the wings. Take Reza Pahlavi, the Shah's son, who spent 46 years in America. He has no government in exile, no army. He has nothing, just nostalgia for the Shah's era. For him to become the head of the new regime, the United States and/or Israel will have to put him there... It will be like Iraq or Afghanistan, and Iranians really don't want that," he says, even though Iranians "want a better economy." They want jobs, they want to be able to communicate with the rest of the world, they want to be able to travel, they want good relations with the West.
"You have to remember that this is Iran, not North Korea," he adds. "Everybody has a satellite dish. Everybody watches CNN, everybody watches everything. Everybody has VPNs for blocked websites. They read newspapers, they read the New York Times, they read Haaretz, they know what's going on. You can't go to a bar because there's no alcohol, but for anyone who wants alcohol, it's available on the black market." He notes that "when the nuclear deal [i.e., the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] was signed in 2015, when Foreign Minister Javad Zarif returned to Iran, hundreds of young people were at the airport celebrating. It's true that he's a regime guy, but people thought, 'Thank God, someone made a nuclear deal, now things will be okay. The Americans will come, we'll get Boeing planes, there will be investment.'" But that is not on the horizon at the moment."
With his articles and opinions published in the “Washington Post“, “Financial Times“, “New Yorker“, “New York Times“ and “The Guardian“, as well as his appearances on NBC, Majd has become one of the most prominent Iranian voices in the United States over the past 20 years. He maintains close ties with his many relatives in Iran and with key figures in the country, including some representatives of the regime. In the past, he has even served as an interpreter for Iranian officials, including former presidents Mohammad Khatami and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, during their visits to the United States and the United Nations.
Majd was born in Tehran in 1957. as the son of an Iranian diplomat. He grew up in places from London to San Francisco, from India to Tunisia. “I went to American schools, but I was always connected to Iran,“ he says. “We spent our summer vacations at my grandfather's house, who was an ayatollah.“
During the revolution, Majd's family was divided: Some supported Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, while others supported Khomeini and the uprising. At the time, his father was the Shah's ambassador to Japan, a position he naturally lost when the regime fell in early 1979. Unable to return to Iran, the family stayed in the West and Majd began attending college in the United States.
He began his career in film and music, but in the early 2000s he decided to try his hand at journalism. This sparked his desire to return to Iran, a country he had not visited since the revolution, and to explore life by reporting on what was happening in the country.
In 2008, he published his first book, in which he attempted to demystify the way Iranians were perceived by the outside world. The title is "The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran", which has been highly praised by critics - it was named book of the year by The Los Angeles Times and The Economist - and has been translated into numerous languages.
In 2010, amid mass protests aimed at overthrowing Ahmadinejad after his election the previous year, Majd published his second book with a more political focus - "The Democracy of the Ayatollahs: In it, he mainly tries to describe Iranian politics for Western readers. He recalls that Iranians did not believe that Ahmadinejad had really won the 2009 election. "They thought Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had rigged the vote," he says, and that sparked demonstrations across the country.
His latest book, "The Ministry of Guidance Urges You Not to Stagnate: (2013), is a memoir of sorts, in which Majd describes his attempt to return to Iran with his wife and young son in 2011; they left about a year later. In the book, he weaves together his family's personal hardships in the land of the ayatollahs with the history of the mass protests fueled by the events of the Arab Spring that erupted that year.
"After my third book, I got into trouble," Majd told Haaretz. "The authorities in Iran have begun to question my loyalty, so today I can't go back. I maintain contact with my family and with people in the government, but as someone with dual citizenship, as an American, and as a journalist who has written things that are not always pro-Iranian and pro-regime, and in some cases has been critical - I was told that it wasn't worth the risk of going back."
A lot has happened in Iran since you published your last book, but one thing has remained constant: Khamenei. He is 86 years old. What do you think his legacy will be in the eyes of the Iranian people?
“I don't think it will be a very good legacy, even though he has support inside and outside Iran.“
Many Iranians consider Khamenei's foreign policy a failure, Majd explains, especially given the way Israel has crushed the so-called "axis of resistance" in the Palestinian territories and Lebanon, and its attacks on Yemen. In Syria, the fall of Bashar al-Assad may not have been a surprise, but “the ease with which Israel got rid of Hezbollah's leadership was a shock”. The strategy of surrounding Israel with a "ring of fire" was intended to deter an Israeli attack on Iran - a goal it failed to achieve.
In the long run, Majd continues, "Khamenei's legacy will be largely defined by the last two years. He led the country at a time when Iran was being brutally attacked by Israel, destroying part of its military and [other] infrastructure, and then by the United States. Iran had not been attacked in this way since the Iran-Iraq war".
In retrospect, he adds: "I don't believe Iran knew about October 7, because if Iran knew about it, Israel knew about it, because Israel has so many spies in Iran. Iran may have known that there was some plan to do something, in principle" - but he could not have known the details of the Hamas attack.
From the beginning, he emphasizes, many in Iran, including staunch anti-Israel figures and members of the regime itself, have considered the country's provocative actions and statements against Israel to be counterproductive. “I will go back to the time when Ahmadinejad said, “Wipe Israel off the map”. Then [many asked], “Why are you doing this? You are giving them every excuse to attack us”.
During his years as supreme leader, Khamenei has been known for his tough stance against Israel. For many Israelis, he is one of the country's greatest enemies. What are the roots of this hostility?
"A friend of mine who is Israeli-American recently asked me: Why does Khamenei hate Israel and Israelis? What is his problem with Israel? And I said: I don't think there is that much of a problem with Israel. You have to remember that [Khamenei and his supporters] come from this revolutionary, anti-imperialist environment. The equivalent revolutionaries ... were the Palestinians. The first person to visit Iran after Khamenei [came to power] was Yasser Arafat. Iran closed the Israeli mission and handed over the building to the Palestinians to open an embassy. So it's not so much about anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli. It was the Palestinian cause."
Majd points to Israel's apparent control over the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the expanding settlements, and the occupation of Palestinian land as reasons that fueled the “reflexively anti-imperialist“ sentiments shared by Khamenei and his supporters. “They associate Israel with imperialism and colonialism“.
In the early days of the revolution, opposition to Israel served as a unifying force that brought together different factions in Iran: “It united the communists, the socialists, the religious groups - all of them supported anti-imperialism, which extended to anti-Israel and anti-colonialism.“ This anti-Israel stance also helps Iran garner support for its new Islamic Republic throughout the Arab world, while also distinguishing itself from other regional leaders who have normalized relations with the United States, Europe, and even Israel.
"Iran was able to win the support of the man on the street, to get the Arabs in these countries to be pro-Iranian. [The sentiment was:] Let us be popular as the real Muslims who actually care about our brothers who are oppressed by the Israelis. While Egypt makes deals with these Israeli colonialists and while Jordan helps them, we are the ones who stand up for [the Palestinians]."
So there was no anti-Semitism? And what about the Holocaust denial by Khamenei and other Iranian leaders?
"I'm not saying that there isn't anti-Semitism among a certain hierarchy in Iran, especially among the clergy. Some of them come from willful ignorance. They don't watch Steven Spielberg movies or Holocaust documentaries. But this is not the [kind of] anti-Semitism that seeks to kill Jews. There are kosher restaurants in Tehran. I went to Shabbat services more than once under Ahmadinejad. There is more than one synagogue in Tehran. You go to the synagogue on Friday night, before sunset, and there is not a single guard. People come out with yarmulkes on their heads.
"Even Khamenei - his anti-Semitism doesn't go so far as to say: I don't want a Jewish member of parliament. I don't want a Jewish synagogue. I don't want there to be a Jewish hospital. He is the supreme leader. He can do that. And yet he doesn't. Every Iranian knows that there has been a Jewish population in Iran for 2,000 years. Every Iranian knows a Jewish neighbor, a Jewish friend. This is not the same anti-Semitism that we saw in Europe... So there is this anti-Semitic bias that sometimes comes from the anti-Israel bias."
Khamenei himself is far from ignorant, Majd notes. He is a very well-read, educated man who is familiar with the great works of Western literature, especially loves Victor Hugo's "Les Misérables," for example, and is also very familiar with poetry and philosophy.
"He is very sophisticated - in addition to his political acumen, which has allowed him to survive so many years in power in the face of various challenges. He doesn't act like a dictator you're afraid of all the time. There's room for objections from people. There's room for opposition parties to say things he wouldn't approve of. That's part of his smart way of being a dictator. If you want to survive, you don't want to crush every single voice that doesn't agree with you. When the nuclear deal was signed in 2015, he said, "I don't trust the Americans. I don't trust them, but go ahead. See what happens."
"He's an interesting figure," Majd says, explaining that Khamenei hails from Mashhad, in northern Iran, the country's second-largest city and a holy site for Shiites. He was raised in a devout family and served as a cleric during the Shah's rule, but his political activism led to numerous arrests and prison sentences. “People who are pro-Shah would deny it, but if you were in prison in Iran during the Shah's time, chances are you faced some level of torture.“
By the outbreak of the Islamic Revolution, Khamenei was already a close confidant of the revolutionary leader and future Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini. In 1981, Khamenei became president after the assassination of President Mohammad-Ali Rajai by an anti-regime militia. Shortly after, the militia attempted to assassinate Khamenei himself, using a bomb planted in a cassette player that exploded during a press conference; the attack left his right arm permanently paralyzed.
Over the next decade, amid the Iran–Iraq War, Khamenei continued to amass political power and maintain close ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. When Khomeini died in 1989, the Assembly of Experts, which was tasked with choosing his successor, unexpectedly appointed Khamenei as Supreme Leader. To facilitate this, it gave him the title of ayatollah and amended the constitution, since he lacked the necessary religious status for the role.
His competence was evident early in his term. “In the early years, he wasn’t very strong, but he was very smart,” Majd says. “He began to cultivate the elements of the regime that you would need to become all-powerful.” This was achieved as Khamenei secured the IRGC’s loyalty and expanded its power by steadily increasing its budgets and privileges, including free education and preferential admissions to universities.
However, of course, Khamenei is still a dictator, and his popularity has been declining for years, Majd notes. The evidence for this is the numerous waves of protests, from the demonstrations in 2009 and 2011 to the anti-hijab protests that erupted in 2017. The latter escalated into mass riots following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was arrested in 2022 for not wearing her hijab properly and who died in custody.
Yet, Majd warns, "killing Khamenei would be a very big mistake on Israel's part. It would make him a martyr in the eyes of religious Muslims, not just in Iran" - which could trigger mass bloodshed.
Any closing words for the Israeli people?
"[The war may be] successful from a military perspective for Netanyahu and even for Israel as a whole, as a way to demonstrate to the world how incredibly powerful he can be when he wants to exercise power. But from a strategic perspective, I think it was a mistake. I also think that the way the war in Gaza was conducted was also a strategic mistake.
"Will the Islamic Republic always be a threat to Israel? In the long run, no, I don't think it will be. [However] I don't think that especially after this war that Israel provoked in Iran, there will be a lot of pro-Israel sentiment in Iran. Even after Khamenei is gone, after the war - even if there is someone who doesn't want to attack Israel or provoke Israel - you won't see a lot of pro-Israel sentiment."
Jonathan Jacobson - Haaretz
translation: Nick Iliev