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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 August 2021
From the dawn of the 1978–79 Iranian Revolution until the consolidation of Hizbullah in the late 1980s, a network of Iranian, Lebanese, and Palestinian clerics played a crucial role in spreading the revolution to Lebanon and laying the groundwork for Hizbullah. Whereas the historiography of the post-1979 Iran–Lebanon relationship is overwhelmingly focused on Hizbullah, the present study, by drawing on oral history interviews with these clerics and archival materials, contends that the Iranian Revolution came to Lebanon primarily through these Shi‘i and Sunni clerics, who joined ranks and established the Association of Muslim ‘Ulama’ in Lebanon in the wake of the 1982 Israeli invasion. This study argues that these clerics modeled their struggle on the ‘ulama’-led and mosque-based example of the 1978–79 revolution, which this paper describes as the Khomeinist script, to transcend sect to seed a revolution in Lebanon and mass mobilize against the invasion. This article concludes that the ecumenical script was highly appealing to non-Shi‘i Islamists, a key factor in the success of exporting the revolution and the rise of Hizbullah in Lebanon.
1 Hani Fahs, Madin la Yamdi, vol. 2 (Damascus: Dar al-Mada li-l-Thaqafa wa-l-Nashr, 2008), 238.
2 For a discussion about culture and ideas as important forces for social change, see William Sewell, Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); and Heuer, Jennifer, “Liberty and Death: The French Revolution,” History Compass 5, no. 1 (2007): 175–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 On the history and activities of the association, see ʿAli al-Khazim, Tajammuʿ al-ʿUlamaʾ al-Muslimin fi Lubnan: Tajriba wa-Namudhaj (Beirut: Dar al-Ghurba, 1997).
4 On the Islamist international (Baynul Millal-i Islami) advocated by Shaykh Muhammad Montazeri, see Anonymous, Farzand-i Islam va Quran, vol. 1 (Tehran: Vahid-i Farhangi-i Bunyad-i Shahid, 1983), 68.
5 Author interview with Sayyid ‘Ali Akbar Muhtashami, Tehran, Iran, 18 July 2010.
6 Author interview with Sayyid ʿAli Hashimi, Isfahan, Iran, 25 February 2017; author interview with anonymous interlocutor via Skype, Wisconsin, US and Dubai, UAE, 12 May 2018. Both interviewees were members of the IRGC's Liberation Movements Unit.
7 One example of such events was the weeklong “meeting of Liberation Movements” on 3 January 1980 in Tehran. Along with Shiʿi and Sunni clerics, Islamist and pan-Arabism factions from Lebanon attended. See Subh-i Azadigan, 6 January 1980; and Payam-i Inqilab, no. 2, 21 February 1980.
8 Jabri, who was a strong advocate of Sunni–Shiʿi rapprochement, agitated against the Israeli occupation from his mosque in Beirut. Al-Lababidi was a Palestinian member of the Islamic Combatant movement (al-Haraka al-Islamiyya al-Mujahida), a Palestinian group associated with the PLO led by Shaykh Abu Bakir al-Hafi, which fought against the Israeli occupation in Sidon and at the ʿAyn al-Hilwa refugee camp in the city. Author interview with Shaykh Salim al-Lababidi, al-Dahiyya al-Janubiyya, Lebanon, 14 July 2009.
9 On the history of the movement, see Raphael Lefevre, Jihad in the City: Militant Islam and Contentious Politics in Tripoli (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
10 Al-Wahda al-Islamiyya, February 1984, 3; al-Khazim, Tajammuʿ al-ʿUlamaʾ al-Muslimin fi Lubnan, 25.
11 Montazeri was elected by the council of experts in 1985 as Khomeini's successor and remained in the position until March 1989.
12 Al-Khazim, Tajammuʿ al-ʿUlamaʾ al-Muslimin fi Lubnan, 51.
13 I conducted 86 oral history interviews between 2005 and 2020 for my master's thesis (“Syrian–Iranian Relations and the Creation of Hezbollah in Lebanon”) at the American University of Beirut and PhD dissertation (“Exporting the 1978–79 Revolution: Pan-Islamic or Sectarian?”) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Since I worked as a freelance journalist for Iranian publications in Iran and Lebanon, I was able to secure interviews with principal actors who were involved in the internationalism of the 1978–79 revolution.
14 On analyzing revolutions and their ramifications in a global or international context, see David Armitage and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, eds., The Age of Revolutions in a Global Context (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010); Suzanne Desan, The French Revolution in Global Perspective (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013); and David A. Bell, “Global Conceptual Legacies,” in The Oxford Handbook of the French Revolution, ed. David Andress (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015).
15 Fred Halliday, Revolution and World Politics: The Rise and Fall of the Sixth Great Power (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 59–60.
16 See Ervand Abrahamian, Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 1–38; and Hamid Dabashi, Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundation of the Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York: New York University Press, 1993), 1–37.
17 Keith Michael Baker and Dan Edelstein, eds., Scripting Revolution: A Historical Approach to the Comparative Study of Revolutions (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015), 3.
18 Baker and Edelstein, Scripting Revolution, 4. This also is informed by David Armitage, “Every Great Revolution Is a Civil War,” in Scripting Revolution, ed. Baker and Edelstein, 57–58.
19 This view is informed by Roschanack Shaery-Eisenlohr, Shiʻite Lebanon: Transnational Religion and the Making of National Identities (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).
20 On the influence of the Marxist, nationalist, and liberal ideologies on the revolution and on shaping Khomeini's radical rhetoric, see Abrahamian, Khomeinism, 3; Dabashi, Theology of Discontent, 7; and Mansoor Moaddel, Class, Politics and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 130–63.
21 Halliday, Revolution and World Politics, 18.
22 Ahmad Nizar Hamzeh, In the Path of Hizbullah (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2004); H. E. Chehabi, “Iran and Lebanon in the Revolutionary Decade,” in Distant Relations, ed. H. E. Chehabi (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 201–30; Augustus Richard Norton, Hezbollah: A Short History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); Joseph Daher, Hezbollah: The Political Economy of Lebanon's Party of God (London: Pluto Press, 2016).
23 Hassan Fadl Allah, al-Khyar al-Akhar: Hizb Allah al-Sira al-Datiya wa-l-Muqif (Beirut: Dar al-Hadi, 1994), 14–15; Magnus Ranstorp, Hizballah in Lebanon: The Politics of the Western Hostage Crisis (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1997); Masʿud Assadullahi, Az Muqavimat ta Piruzi (Tehran: Muʾasisi-yi Mutaliʿat Andishisazan-i Nur, 2008); Eitan Azani, Hezbollah: The Story of the Party of God; From Revolution to Institutionalization (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
24 Waddah Shararah, Dawlat Hizb Allah, Lubnan Mujtamʿan Islamiyyan (Beirut: Dar al-Nahar, 1996); Rodger Shanahan, The Shi‘a of Lebanon: Clans, Parties and Clerics (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005).
25 See Olivier Roy, “The Impact of the Iranian Revolution on the Middle East,” in The Shi'a Worlds and Iran, ed. Sabrina Mervin (Saint Paul, MN: CPI Mackays, 2010), 29–44.
26 Rainer Brunner, “Sunnis and Shiites in Modern Islam,” in The Dynamics of Sunni–Shia Relationships: Doctrine, Transnationalism, Intellectuals and the Media, ed. Brigitte Maréchal and Sami Zemni (London: Hurst, 2012), 25–38.
27 Shaul Bakhash, The Reign of Ayatollahs: Iran and the Islamic Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1984), 5.
28 Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future (New York: Norton, 2006), 24, 82. See also Maryam Panah, The Islamic Republic and the World (London: Pluto Press, 2007); and Geneive Abdo, The New Sectarianism: The Arab Uprisings and the Rebirth of the Shi‘a–Sunni Divide (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 149. Abdo contends that “sectarianism in the Arab world remains an inescapable presence that ignites whenever there are social or political upheavals, such as the Islamic Revolution, the U.S. invasion of Iraq, or the more recent Arab uprisings and the resulting Syrian and Iraqi civil wars,” 7.
29 For example, Mike Shuster, “As Iran Exported Its Shiite Revolution, Sunni Arabs Resisted,” Morning Edition, NPR, 14 February 2007, https://www.npr.org/2007/02/14/7392405/export-of-irans-revolution-spawns-violence; Claude Moniquet and Dimitri Dombret, “Is Iranian Shiite Expansionism a Threat to the Arab Countries?” European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, 8 July 2009, http://www.esisc.org/publications/analyses/is-iranian-shiite-expansionism-a-threat-to-the-arab-countries; Jonathan Marcus, “Why Saudi Arabia and Iran are bitter rivals,” BBC News, 16 September 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42008809.
30 For a discussion about the revolutionary doctrine and character of Iranian Shiʿi clerics and the reaction of Sunni ʿulamaʾ, see Nikki Keddie, ed., Iran and the Muslim World: Resistance and Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1995).
31 For example, see Ayatollah Montazeri's message to the people of Iraq; al-Shahid, no. 73, 11 November 1981, 10–11.
32 See Khomeini's message to the ʿulamaʾ and seminaries, released a few months before his death; Ruhullah Khomeini, Manshur-i Ruhaniyat: Payam-i Tarikhi va Muhimm-i Hazrat-i Imam Khomeini (Tehran: Muʾasisi-yi Nashr va Tanzim Athar-i Imam, 1999).
33 Ayatollah Husayn ʿAli Montazeri, “Sukhanrani Dar Kungirih-yi A'imi-yi Jumʿih va Jamaʿat,” MP3 audio recording from private collection, Qom, n.d.
34 Al-ʿAmal al-Islami, no. 194, 11 May 1986.
35 Payam-i Shahid, no. 11, 13 August 1979.
36 The al-Da‘wa party and the Shirazi movement had their roots in Karbala and Najaf, respectively, and had branches across the region. On the impact of the revolution on these two groups, see Laurence Louër, Transnational Shia Politics: Religious and Political Networks in the Gulf (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).
37 ʿAbd al-ʿAziz al-Shiqaqi, al-Khumayni, al-Hal al-Islami wa-l-Badil (Cairo: al-Mukhtar al-Islami, 1979); al-Shahid, no. 20, 27 June 1979; Aziz, T., “The Role of Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr in Shii Political Activism in Iraq from 1958 to 1980,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 25, no. 2 (1993): 207CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
38 Umar Abdallah, The Islamic Struggle in Syria (Berkeley, CA: Mizan Press, 1983), 118–19, 128–29.
39 Fadl Allah, al-Khyar al-Akhar, 19–26; Tawfiq al-Madini, Amal wa-Hizb Allah fi Halabat al-Mujabahat al-Mahalliyya wa-l-Iqlimiyya (Damascus: al-Ahali, 1999), 59–73.
40 On the leadership crisis after al-Sadr, see Fouad Ajami, Vanished Imam: Musa al-Sadr and the Shi'a of Lebanon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 191–200.
41 Umid-i Inqilab, 31 August 1982, 18–19; Na'im Qasim, Hizb Allah: al-Minhaj, al-Tajirba, al-Mustakhbal (Beirut: Dar al-Hadi, 2002), 25.
42 See Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadl Allah's speech at the liberation movements conference in Tehran in Vahid-i Nihzatha-yi Azadibakhsh-i Islam-i Sipah-i Pasdaran, Nihzatha-yi Azadibakhsh Dar Guzargah-i Inqilab-i Islami (Tehran: Chapkhanih-yi Daftar-i Intisharat-i Sazman-i Inirzh-yi Atumi-yi Iran, 1982), 56–59.
43 Unlike pro-Khomeini Lebanese shaykhs, Shams al-Din, who was Sayyid Musa al-Sadr's successor as the head of the Supreme Islamic Shiʿi Council, argued that the Shiʿa in Lebanon were primarily Lebanese and should not follow Khomeini's example. See H. E. Chehabi and Hassan I. Mneimneh, “Five Centuries of Lebanese–Iranian Encounters,” in Distant Relations, ed. Chehabi, 42.
44 Augustus Richard Norton, Amal and the Shia: Struggle for the Soul of Lebanon (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1987), 99–100; al-Madini, Amal wa-Hizb Allah, 117. See also Shaykh Shams al-Din's interview about his view of the Islamic Republic in al-Wahda al-Islamiyya, no. 30, March 1986, 21–27.
45 Author interview with Shaykh Subhi al-Tufayli, Duris, Lebanon, 11 November 2009.
46 On al-Sadr's relations with the Shah, see Norton, Amal and the Shia, 41; and Samii, Abbas William, “The Shah's Lebanon Policy: The Role of SAVAK,” Middle Eastern Studies 33, no. 1 (1997): 72–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
47 Ajami, Vanished Imam, 178.
48 For an analysis about the relationship between pro-Palestinian and pro–al-Sadr factions in Iran, see Ataie, Mohammad, “Revolutionary Iran's 1979 Endeavor in Lebanon,” Middle East Policy 20, no. 2 (2013), 137–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
49 Author interview with Shaykh Adib Haydar, Budnayil, Lebanon, 24 October 2009.
50 Muhtashami interview, 18 July 2010.
51 Ayatollah Husayn ʿAli Montazeri, “Guruhi az ʿUlamaʾ-yi Afghanistan,” MP3 audio recording from private collection, Qom, n.d.
52 Keddie, Iran and the Muslim World, 124. On the revolution's impact on Sunni Islamists and intellectuals, see also Sivan, Emmanuel, “Sunni Radicalism in the Middle East and the Iranian Revolution,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 21, no. 1 (1989): 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Khalili, Laleh, “Standing with My Brother: Hizbullah, Palestinians, and the Limits of Solidarity,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, no. 2 (2007): 276–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Nikki Keddie and Rudi Matthee, eds., Iran and the Surrounding World (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011).
53 Pasdar-i Islam, no. 50, January/March 1986. Although Shaykh Saʿid Shaʿban was not officially part of AMUL or Hizbullah, he was a pillar of the pro-Khomeini network of ‘ulama’ and the Islamic resistance in Lebanon. See ʿAli al-Kawrani, Tariqat Hizb Allah fi al-ʿAmal al-Islami (Maktab al-Iʿlam al-Islami, 1985), 187.
54 Al-Wahda al-Islamiyya, no. 27, February 1986, 11.
55 Author interview with Shaykh Ahmad al-Zayn, Sidon, Lebanon, 22 July 2009.
56 Fathi al-Shiqaqi, Rihlat al-Dam Alladhi Hazama al-Sayf, vol. 1 (Cairo: Markaz Yafa li-l-Dirasat wa-l-Abhath, 1997), 564. For an analysis about the centrality of Palestine for the Islamic Republic see Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, Hizbullah: Politics and Religion (London: Pluto Press, 2002), 72–76.
57 On the declaration of this Islamic ecumenical initiative, see Husayn ʿAli Montazeri, Khatirat-i Ayatollah Montazeri, vol. 1 (Tehran: n.p., 2000), 432–33.
58 Author interview with Ayatollah Husayn ʿAli Montazeri, Khaveh, Iran, 21 July 2008.
59 On this initiative, which was launched in 1982, see Jumhuri-yi Islami, 27 December 1982; and Payam-i Inqilab, no. 75, 8 January 1983, 20–25, 78.
60 See Jumhuri-yi Islami, 3 June 1982; Kayhan, 29 January 1986.
61 As-Safir, 15 October 1985; al-ʿAhd, 2 October 1986.
62 Ayatollah Husayn ʿAli Montazeri, “Baradaran-i Lubnani-yi Mihman-i Bunyad-i Shahid,” MP3 audio recording from private collection, Qom, ca. 1985–86.
63 Author interview with Sayyid ‘Isa Tabataba'i, B'ir Hassan, Lebanon, 28 July 2009.
64 See Muhtashami's interview in Etela'at, 2 May 1984.
65 Author interview with anonymous interlocutor, Tehran, Iran, 31 August 2007; al-Lababidi interview, 14 July 2009.
66 Prior to AMUL, Lebanese Shiʿi clerics, inspired by the Islamic Revolution, had established two exclusively Shiʿi organizations. The first was the Association of Muslim ʿUlamaʾ in the Bekaa (Tajammuʿ al-ʿUlamaʾ al-Muslimin fi Biqa‘), which was founded in 1980 by Shaykh Subhi al-Tufayli and some other members of the al-Daʿwa party. According to al-Tufayli, they sought “to increase the role of ʿulamaʾ in the political and social spheres.” However, as Shaykh Adib Haydar notes, establishing this association was viewed by pro–Musa al-Sadr individuals as an attempt to challenge the authority of “the Supreme Islamic Shiʿi Council, which was against the revolutionary actions of Iran.” The second organization was Hayaʾt ʿUlamaʾ Jabal ʿAmil (Council of ʿUlamaʾ of Jabal ʿAmil) in southern Lebanon. Shaykhs Raghib Harb and ‘Afif Nablusi established the council to organize anti-Israeli activities in the south. Author interview with Shaykh ‘Afif Nablusi, Sidon, Lebanon, 22 July 2009; Haydar interview, 24 October 2009; al-Tufayli interview, 11 November 2009.
67 Al-Khazim, Tajammuʿ al-ʿUlamaʾ al-Muslimin fi Lubnan, 79. On AMUL's view of the unification of Muslims see al-Wahda al-Islamiyya, 16 February 1984, 1.
68 Payam-i Inqilab, no. 62, 10 July 1982, 14–16; Fadl Allah, al-Khyar al-Akhar, 12; Fahs, Madin la Yamdi, vol. 2, 260–63.
69 Al-Tufayli interview, 11 November 2009. Other than these influential ʿulamaʾ, dozens of Lebanese and Palestinians, like Shaykh Salim al-Lababidi and Shaykh Ibrahim Ghunaim, attended the liberation movements conference. Vahid-i Nihzatha-yi Azadibakhsh-i Islam-i Sipah-i Pasdaran, Nihzatha-yi Azadibakhsh, 325; al-Lababidi interview, 14 July 2009.
70 Author interview with Shaykh Mahir Hamud, 13 December 2017.
71 The statement was written by Fahs at Istiqlal Hotel, where the conference convened; author interview with Sayyid Hani Fahs, al-Dahiyya al-Janubiyya, Lebanon, 1 May 2010.
72 Al-Tufayli interview, 11 November 2009.
73 The Islamic Committees predated the 1978–79 revolution. They were composed of young activists who took part in battles against the Israeli invasion. Author interview with Shaykh Hassan Himada, al-Dahiyya al-Janubiyya, Lebanon, 31 July 2009. The interviewee is an official in Hizbullah.
74 Author interview with Shaykh ʿAli al-Khazim, al-Dahiyya al-Janubiyya, Lebanon, 23 July 2009.
75 Ruh Allah Khumayni, Sahifih-yi Nur: Majmuʿih-yi Rahnamudha-yi Imam Khumayni, vol. 19 (Tehran: Sazman-i Madarik-i Farhangi-yi Inqilab-i Islami, 1992), 388.
76 On the mosque network in Iran's role in spreading Khomeini's message and mobilizing for the 1978–79 revolution, see Charles Kurzman, The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 33–49.
77 On dispatching the IRGC forces to Lebanon see Payam-i Inqilab, no. 62, 10 July 1982, 74–77, 82; no. 82, 16 April 1983, 27–29.
78 The orientation meetings between the youth who volunteered for military training and the IRGC commanders were held at the seminary. Among the very first volunteers were future leaders of Hizbullah, such as ʿAbbas al-Musawi, Hassan Nasrallah, and Muhammad Khatun. Author interview with Shaykh Muhammad Khatun, al-Dahiyya al-Janubiyya, Lebanon, 10 September 2009; author interview with Mansur Kuchak Muhsini, Tehran, Iran, 19 July 2010.
79 Author interviews with Shaykh ʿAli al-Kawrani, Qom, Iran, 14 November 2019.
80 Hala Jaber, Hezbollah: Born with a Vengeance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 49–50.
81 Rashid al-Huri mosque is adjacent to the Beirut Arab University. At the time of the Israeli invasion, Shaykh Mahir Hamud was the prayer leader of the mosque, which became one of the main centers of AMUL's activities in Beirut; al-Khazim, Tajammuʿ al-ʿUlamaʾ al-Muslimin fi Lubnan, 51.
82 One example of such Sunni groups was the Quwat al-Fajr (Dawn Forces), composed mostly of young members of the Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood. Disenchanted with the reluctance of the Brotherhood leadership to engage in military confrontation, they established links with al-Musawi to expand their military operations against Israel. Nicholas Blanford, Warriors of God: Inside Hezbollah's Thirty-Year Struggle against Israel (New York: Random House, 2011), 51–52.
83 Kayhan, 10 January 1984. Harb also was known as the brain behind the attacks against Israeli soldiers. Hizbullah accused Israel of the assassination. See Jaber, Hezbollah, 21.
84 Before the creation of AMUL, Harb had established Hayaʾt ʿUlamaʾ Jabal ʿAmil to organize Shiʿi clerics against the Israeli invasion. He was not, however, in agreement with the pro-Khomeini clerics who sought to organize resistance activities within a pro-Iran organization. Instead, he believed in “popular resistance.” This drove a wedge between Harb and the clerics who established AMUL and Hizbullah. According to a member of Ayatollah Khomeini's office, Harb came to the Ayatollah's office and expressed serious reservation about the ongoing efforts to establish AMUL and Hizbullah. Author interviews with anonymous interlocutor, Tehran, Iran, 24 November 2019. See also Fahs, Madin la Yamdi, vol. 2, 261–63.
85 Fadl Allah, al-Khyar al-Akhar, 14–15.
86 Umid-i Inqilab, 31 August 1982, 73.
87 See Amin Saikal, Iran Rising: The Survival and Future of the Islamic Republic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019), 52–59.
88 Kuchak Muhsini interview, 19 July 2010.
89 See ʿAbbas al-Musawi interview, al-ʿAhd, 18 October 1987; Fadl Allah, al-Khyar al-Akhar, 14–15.
90 Kuchak Muhsini interview, 19 July 2010.
91 Ibid.
92 For example, see Kenneth Katzman, The Warriors of Islam: Iran's Revolutionary Guard (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), 96–98; Shanahan, Shi‘a of Lebanon, 113–15; Chehabi, “Iran and Lebanon in the Revolutionary Decade,” 216–20; Azani, Hezbollah, 60, 176; and Daher, Hezbollah, 27–29. Chehabi highlights the cultural activities of the IRGC in Bekka.
93 I am grateful to David Siddhartha Patel's illuminating feedback for developing this argument.
94 Hamud interview, 13 December 2017.
95 Norton, Amal and the Shia, 65–66.
96 Ibid., 112–13.
97 Author interviews with anonymous interlocutor, Tehran, Iran, 31 August 2007.
98 Jumhuri-yi Islami, 27 March 1983 and 28 March 1983; Qasim, Hizb Allah, 148–49.
99 Saad-Ghorayeb, Hizbullah, 12; David Hirst, Beware of Small States: Lebanon, Battleground of the Middle East (New York: Nation Books, 2010), 201.
100 Author interview with Sayyid ‘Ali Akbar Muhtashami, Tehran, Iran, 17 July 2010.
101 Hirst, Beware of Small States, 197.
102 Ibid., 194. At the same time, fifty-eight French soldiers died when another truck hit their barracks in Beirut.
103 Norton, Amal and the Shia, 96–97.
104 Author interview with Shaykh Muhammad Husayn ʿAmru, al-Dahiyya al-Janubiyya, Lebanon, 05 August 2009. The lesser Satan is a reference to Israel, versus the great Satan, an epithet used by revolutionary Iran for the US.
105 Blanford, Warriors of God, 71.
106 Al-Khazim, Tajammuʿ al-ʿUlamaʾ al-Muslimin fi Lubnan, 91.
107 The US Secretary of State George Shultz was at the time in Beirut to mediate the agreement; al-Khazim, Tajammuʿ al-ʿUlamaʾ al-Muslimin fi Lubnan, 22–23.
108 Ibid., 25.
109 Al-Lababidi interview, 14 July 2009; al-Khazim interview, 23 July 2009.
110 Al-Zayn interview, 22 July 2009.
111 Norton, Amal and the Shia, 96.
112 Muhtashami interview, 17 July 2010.
113 Al-Khazim, Tajammuʿ al-ʿulamaʾ al-Muslimin fi Lubnan, 23.
114 Muhtashami interview, 17 July 2010.
115 AMUL's charter emphasizes commitment to the Islamic Republic and allegiance to the Vali-yi faqih in the framework of the Sunni and Shiʿi credo. The Sunni ʿulamaʾ define their allegiance to the Vali-yi faqih based on the concept that the leadership of an Islamic Jurist (faqīh), even a Shiʿi one, has precedence over a sultan (king) or lay ruler. Al-Zayn interview, 22 July 2009.
116 Fahs interview, 1 May 2010. In Fahs's view, AMUL was an important channel for attracting clerics to the pro-Iran camp in Lebanon.
117 Author interview with anonymous interlocutor, Tehran, Iran, 31 August 2007.
118 ʿAmru interview, 5 August 2009. As ʿAmru, who is an official in Hizbullah, explains the dominant view within Hizbullah at the time, Shams al-Din's declaration was perceived as a rejection of armed resistance and triggered controversy between the Supreme Islamic Shiʿi Council and Hizbullah.
119 Al-Tufayli interview, 11 November 2009.
120 See as-Safir, 17 February 1985; and Jaber, Hezbollah, 54–61.
121 Qasim, Hizb Allah, 155.
122 Al-Kawrani, Tariqat Hizb Allah, 11, 185–86.
123 Hamud interview, 13 December 2017.
124 See Behrooz, Maziar, “Factionalism in Iran under Khomeini,” Middle Eastern Studies 27, no. 4 (1991): 607–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
125 On the impact of the power struggle on Montazeri's internal and external activities, see Anonymous, Vaqiyatha va Qizavatha (n.p., 1998).
126 Author interview with Shaykh Hassan Ibrahimi, Tehran, Iran, 10 January 2010.
127 The ayatollah quoted this from Shaykh ʿAli al-Kawrani. Montazeri interview, 21 July 2008.
128 Ibrahimi interview, 10 January 2010. Ibrahimi says that he talked them out of this decision lest they undermine AMUL's future.
129 On Ayatollah Montazeri's ouster after he protested the mass executions in 1988, see Ervand Abrahamian, A History of Modern Iran (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 181–82. Montazeri also was critical of the war management and the human-wave tactics the IRGC employed on the war fronts. See, for example, his missive to Khomeini; Montazeri, Khatirat, vol. 2, 1055–56.
130 Al-Khazim interview, 23 July 2009.
131 Fahs interview, 1 May 2010.
132 For information about the current activities of AMUL, see its official website, accessed 21 July 2020, http://tajamoo.com.
133 This also is significant in light of the tensions that existed in the 1980s between the office of Montazeri and the Syrian government, especially over the former's relationships with some of the leaders of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and anti-Asad Islamists in Lebanon. See Ataie, “Revolutionary Iran's 1979 Endeavor in Lebanon,” 148–50.
134 Fahs interview, 1 May 2010.
135 Brigitte Maréchal and Sami Zemni, “Conclusion: Analyzing Contemporary Sunnite–Shiite Relationships,” in Dynamics of Sunni–Shia Relationships, ed. Maréchal and Zemni, 226–27.