Moderation Is a Misnomer in Iran

Proponents of a nuclear deal with Iran have expressed hope that it would put Tehran on a more moderate course. President Obama, on the eve of the deal, suggested that it could “strengthen the hand of those more moderate forces inside of Iran.” Yet no matter how moderate these forces may be compared to their more radical opponents, their policies are not significantly different from those of the so-called hard-liners. A representative example is Seyed Hassan Khomeini, the 44-year-old grandson of the founder of the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The young Khomeini briefly stirred excitement in the West last December when he ran for a seat in the Assembly of Experts, a clerical council tasked with selecting Iran's next supreme leader. (He was later disqualified.) A Financial Times journalist noted that “by Iranian standards, Mr. Khomeini is a moderate senior cleric.” The New York Times' Iran-based reporter dubbed the younger Khomeini “a moderate Iranian cleric.” Once disqualified for running, the Associated Press concluded, “The barring of moderates and reformists is seen as a hardline tactic to limit Rouhani's moderate allies after the nuclear deal.”

But moderate by Iranian standards bears little resemblance to moderation as understood in the West.

Months before Khomeini announced his candidacy, Tehran dispatched him to Latin America as part of its ongoing efforts to export its Islamic revolution in the Western Hemisphere. In a highly publicized trip to Brazil, Khomeini visited Shia mosques, schools and cultural centers in the cities of Sao Paulo and Curitiba, and in Foz do Iguacu, the town at the confluence of the Argentine, Brazilian and Paraguayan frontiers. That tri-border area has for more than a decade been the Latin American center of money laundering and terror finance for Iran's Lebanon-based proxy Hezbollah.

Khomeini toured Brazil accompanied by Iran's ambassador, underscoring the official, Tehran-approved character of his visit. His host in Sao Paulo was Sheikh Taleb Hussein al-Khazraji, whom the slain Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman named in his 2013 report on Iran's Latin American networks as “an employee of the Iranian government” who recruited “highly politicized believers to get them close to Tehran.”

Khomeini's visit also included stops in Curitiba and Foz do Iguacu, both hubs of Shia radicalism and Hezbollah terror finance where local Shia families keep close ties to their ancestral homes in South Lebanon. Brazilian police arrested a suspected Hezbollah financier in Curitiba in May 2013 – an indication that illicit finance activities on the group's behalf are still ongoing. In June 2014, Curitiba Muslims attended a memorial service for a young Hezbollah fighter killed in Syria, which was led by family members clad in a Hezbollah scarf. Foz, the city on the Brazilian side of the tri-border, is home to many Shias of Lebanese origin who work in Paraguay's Ciudad Del Este, including some whom the U.S. Treasury has sanctioned since 2006 for illicit finance on Hezbollah's behalf.

While in Foz, Khomeini described Israel as “a cancerous growth” in the region – an echo of his grandfather's own rhetoric – and called for its immediate destruction. In Sao Paulo, he met with Seyed Mohsen Bilal Wehbe, a local Hezbollah cleric and financier according to Treasury's 2010 designation.

These are not the associations a genuine moderate seeks. Here, then, is the crux of Western confusion over labeling the young Khomeini and his fellow travelers “moderates.” As the chief American nuclear negotiator Wendy Sherman recently noted, “There are hardliners in Iran, and then there are hard-hardliners in Iran.” After all, with “moderates” like Khomeini and his ilk, who needs hardliners?

Emanuele Ottolenghi is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow him on Twitter @eottolenghi