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Give me that Old Time Nuclear Fatwa

[ by Charles Cameron — when is a tweet not quite a fatwa? when it’s a tweet! ]
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A day or two ago Tim Furnish pointed me to a recent MEMRI post titled:

Tehran Again Offers Khamenei’s Nonexistent Fatwa In Negotiations As A Guarantee That It Is Not Developing Nuclear Weapons

You can pretty much imagine the content by means of its title, but the piece also contains a lead to Khamenei‘s Twitter feed, and thus to the tweet with which I’ve opened this post.

What to make of it?

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It seems to me that there are two obvious possibilities —

  • the Ayatollah is lying, there is no such fatwa
  • the Ayatlloah is telling the truth, there is such a fatwa

    • Those who are prone to hope may well take the Ayatollah’s word for it — whether or not that trust is justified — while those who are prone to doubt are liable to distrust the Ayatollah…

    And so we’re at that old “trust but verify” business again.

    It seems to me that neither proposition — that a fatwa exists as claimed, but has not been made public, or that no fatwa exists, and claims to the contrary are simply incredible — is verifiable, or falsifiable for that matter. Hunh.

    The one thing that is clear from my POV is that the Ayatollah Khamenei is playing this close to his chest. He could very easily write out a fatwa and publish it, and he doesn’t. He could very easily not have issued a fatwa, which would explain its non-publication. But his refusal to publish a fatwa, while claiming to have issued it, presumably by word of mouth, is a clear indication that he is toying with his interlocutors in the west. And the game is:

    I claim to have given a fatwa — will you take my word for it?

    He’s asking for trust, we’re asking for verification: trust, but verify, it’s not a new idea. And it seems to me that neither axiomatic doubt nor axiomatic trust is the point, although we are mostly prone to one or the other.

    The point is that this is poker. Perhaps this is an obvious truism that others move quickly past on their way to reading the Ayatollah’s “tells” one way or the other. Or perhaps we are so quick to take sides that the idea that we face a formidable opponent in what is essentially a very high stakes game eludes us.

    I’m not a player, I don’t speak or read Farsi, the Shah was still in power when I visited Tehran, I haven’t studied for years in Qom or Najaf, I’m not inclined to make political assertions more than one or two levels above my pay grade, I’m mostly unpaid, and I’m left with this:

    We’re in a game.

    And if that’s the case, intelligence — human intelligence — is the way to read Khamenei’s poker face. And FWIW, Amir Taheri wouldn’t be my go to source for intel.

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    BTW, here’s Khamenei’s latest:

    This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 25th, 2014 at 6:20 pm and is filed under Charles Cameron, iran, negotiation, nuclear, shia, twitter, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

    5 Responses to “Give me that Old Time Nuclear Fatwa”

    1. Tim Says:
      November 25th, 2014 at 6:26 pm

      Charles,
      Taqiyyah is also an option.

    2. Charles Cameron Says:
      November 25th, 2014 at 6:36 pm

      Hi Tim:
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      In general, I tend to think taqiyya is overused as an explanation for many things, both Shia (where it’s more appropriate in any case) and Sunni — but in this case, I think “the Ayatollah is lying, there is no such fatwa” would include religiously-permitted dissimulation as a possibility.

    3. Tim Says:
      November 25th, 2014 at 6:58 pm

      Agree with all of that!

    4. Cheryl Rofer Says:
      November 25th, 2014 at 10:41 pm

      I’m not a poker player, but yes, this could be something like that: a pointless competition to outsmart the other guy so you can laugh at him and say “Ha, ha, I got you.”
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      Or I’ll suggest another option: the Ayatollah is being arbitrary because he doesn’t understand the theology well enough, or he thinks different things at different times.
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      The problem with either of those is that if you say enough different things for apparently no reason, nobody believes anything you say. Another player in those games is Vladimir Putin.
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      I think that, as strategy, it may seem like a smart thing to do – confuse the enemy – but turns out to be just a little too smart. Or perhaps they both want chaos in the system, the sooner to bring about The Coming of The One.

    5. larrydunbar Says:
      November 29th, 2014 at 10:44 pm

      In the context of the Maghreb, all it really says is that the Ayatollah isn’t an Arab 🙂

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