I detest Iran’s dark embrace of the Hitlerian regime of Damascus, but Tehran does have a right to possess a Nuclear deterrent.

I, too, shouted “Istiklal Azadee, Hukamati Islamee” (independence, freedom, Islamic government) and “tau Margi Shahi Kha’en, Nehzat Idameh Durad” (until the death of the treacherous Shah, the revolution will continue.” That was in the late 1978, when I, along with the bulk of Muslims around the world, Sunnis and Shiites, gave the late Imam Khomeini and his companions the benefit of the doubt. We thought the Sun of Islam would rise anew from the land of Abu Hamed al-Ghazali, Umar Khayyam and Saadi Shirazi. We were tragically wrong, as the Grand Ayatollah soon took off the outer cloak of true, authentic Islam in favor of the repugnant Turban of schismatic sectarianism. (See my book “My story with the Shiites: Major Contradiction in the Shiite Imami Religion.”

I didn’t immediately lose the hope for some reforms that would correct the course of the revolution which was facing overwhelming challenges from a huge cacophony of internal and external enemies at the top of which stood the United States and Israel, as well as a number of despicable Arab regimes that were at Washington’s beck and call. But as the years passed, Iran’s sectarian character became hard to hide and harder to defend. racism