I July's Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens illustrates, through real reporting, sterling prose description and a bit of spooky insight, why he continues to be the best, perhaps last, reason to read the magazine. This time out, Hitchens travels to Iran, visiting Tehran, Qom, Ayatollah Khomeini's grave ("and 'why the fuck,' said the guard at the subway station when I asked directions, 'would you want to go to that bastard's grave?'"), Neyshabur (where he visits the tomb) of Omar Khayyám and the grand city of Esfahan.
All the while, he talks to Iranians, listens actually and reports a travelogue not based on time and location, but of the longing of the Persian soul to be released from the prison that is the Islamic Republic. At the beginning of his article Hitchens reintroduces us to the person who is perhaps the most unique, arresting and potentially saving figure in Iran today: Hossein Khomeni, the grandson of the man who led the Islamic Revolution that deposed the Shah and thumbed its nose at the United States.
Young Khomeini has been spending a good deal of his time in Iraq, where he has many friends among the Shia. He is a strong supporter of the United States intervention in that country, and takes a political line not dissimilar to that of Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani. In practice, this means the traditional Shia belief that clerics should not occupy posts of political power. In Iranian terms, what it means is that Khomeini (his father and elder brother died some years ago, so he is the most immediate descendant) favors the removal of the regime established by his grandfather. "I stand," he tells me calmly, "for the complete separation of religion and the state." In terms that would make the heart of a neocon soar like a hawk, he goes on to praise President Bush's State of the Union speech, to warn that the mullahs cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons, and to use the term "Free World" without irony: "Only the Free World, led by America, can bring democracy to Iran."
There is much of this kind of talk, which Hitchens is at pains to point out as a bit immature in a way. Much of the hope of a savior has to do with the fact that a generation was lost in the Iran-Iraq war and that so far, very few are willing to organize a vanguard that will almost surely be sacrificed for a new democratic Iran. While many of Hitchens' conversations seem to lead to an invitation to invade, there is an expectation that the West ride in, vanquish the mullahs and ride out with a week or two.
Hitchens says that Iranians live "as if" they already live in a free society that is a least at peace with the US and hopefully, back onto the path of history that the nation forsook long ago.
The country is an "as if" society. People live as if they were free, as if they were in the West, as if they had the right to an opinion, or a private life. And they don't do too badly at it. I have now visited all three of the states that make up the so-called axis of evil. Rough as their regime can certainly be, the citizens of Iran live on a different planet from the wretched, frightened serfs of Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il.
This is an important piece for the reminding of Persia's myriad contributions to civilization (and with all that, a tacit speculation on the value of having modern Iran rejoin the world) and for the profile of the prevailing attitude in a country run by thieves, dullards and misogynists.
There is not much here to encourage. The idea that the west, lead by America can or will do what many Iranians seem to want has probably gone up in the smoke that trails the latest roadside attack in Iraq. For all the talk of growing anger at the mullahs, there have been few victories as liberal leaders are jailed and beaten and young women are hanged in a public square for defying a judge in court. Hitchens likens the country to a tree rotting from the inside. Iran is not alone in its forest If this tree collapses, we will certainly hear it fall.
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