In an article in New York Times April 26th issue titled; "Iran Won't Give up on its Revolution", three of the Washington Institute senior fellow experts on Iran have wrongly connected the history of Iran to an anti-Iranian Moslem Shia establishment without any facts or documentation. Here are the historical facts that these gentlemen have ignored:

The article says: “Although the 1979 Islamic revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is often cited as the beginning of this imperial worldview, Iran's hegemonic aspirations actually date back to the Safavid Dynasty of the 16th century.”

It looks as if these gentlemen are trying to give a historical legitimacy to the power-grabbing Islamic regime in Iran while trying to more isolate and discredit the Iranian people.

Here are the historical facts; the Safavid dynasty was not Iranian, it was a Turkish tribe from Lebanon who conquered Iran in 1499. Until then, Iran had no national religion dating back to the human rights proclamation of the Cyrus the Great and freedom of the Jews from Babylonian slavery, in 539 BCE. The Safavids were Shia, and upon their occupation they imported a group of Shia clerics, olima, from Lebanon -- hence the connection of Iranian Shia establishment with the Hizb’allah -- including the infamous Mohammad Baghir Madjlesi, the author of the rule of Jurisprudents, meaning the god-given rule of clerics, that Khomeini adopted 300 years later and implemented in Iran again in 1979.

The imported Shiite establishment overrode the Iranian culture and civilization of human rights, equal rights of women, freedom of worship and respect for all, dismissing it as pagan and enforcing a new culture of Islamic Sharia laws written by Madjlesi.

In response to this next statement: “In the ensuing centuries, Iran extended its control over Afghanistan, the "Persian" Gulf, Iraq and the southern Caucasus.”

It is also true that the Persian Gulf has been Persian since the first Millennium BCE, and also during the same time span, Iran lost territories to the Ottomans and Afghan Khans. From 1501 to 1925 Iran was conquered by the Safavid Turks and then Qajar Tartars and dominated by Russian and British imperialists for almost a hundred years.

The Shia establishment never considered themselves Iranian, as they are rooted in Lebanon and have kept the ties by intermarriage. In 1979, when the American reporter on the plane to Iran asked Ayatollah Khomeini about his feelings going back to Iran after all these years, Khomeini responded with one word, hichi, nothing.  He repeatedly said that Iran is not important, it is only a source and a base to establish his Islamic foundation to spread in the region and the world.

The Iranian people have never considered the Shia clergy as one of their own either, for the reason that mullahs have enforced their ideology by denigrating Iranian history and culture. There is no love lost between the two parts of Iran; the regime on one side and the people of Iran on the opposite side. 

Marguerite Del Giudice traveled to Iran in 2008 and spent some time listening to the people “privately”. In her long article for National Geographic’s August 2008 issue she reveals the hidden feelings of the Iranian people in a few sentence such as: “An irony is that the Islamic revolution -- at times referred to as the “second Arab invasion” -- appears to have strengthened the very ties to antiquity that it tries so hard to sever. On page 62 she writes; “The first thing people said when I asked what they wanted the world to know about them was, “We are not Arabs” (followed closely by, “We are not Terrorists”).”

There is no connection between the Islamic Republic of the Shia clergy and Iranian history or culture. These two are in opposition. The only fact is that Khamanei and his gang want to guarantee their rule by having the Bomb. He wants to continue the Khomeinist doctrine that has nothing to do with Iran and Iranian history, civilization or culture. 

The Shia establishment has always denied Iranians' history and have even declared that Cyrus the Great was made up by the Jews and that he never existed.

Connecting the Islamist movement that has taken over Iran to Iran’s ancient history and culture is an insult to an already devastated and silenced people who cannot exonerate themselves. It is discrimination against the people of Iran to farther isolate them from the international community by making them partners in the crimes that Khamenei and his gang are committing (inlcuing this week's seizure of the M/V Maersk Tigris in the Gulf of Hormuz). And please don’t call the Shia establishment Iran, they are not Iran, they are the Shia clergies in Iran.