The Fall of Heaven by Andrew S. Cooper and the episode of Imam Moussa Sadr
An episode of the book,The Fall of Heaven by Andrew Scott Cooper, should be of interest to all Iranians who blame Lebanese Hezbollah: Iran and Lebanon relationship is not something that dates only after 1979. Imam Moussa Sadr was the founder and leader of the Shi'a movement Amal. And he was tightly connected with Iran and was in correspondence with the Shah. He tried to prevent Khomeini from seizing power, and was most probably killed in his travel to Libya by Ghaddafi who, in turn, was advised to do so probably by Yasser Arafat who was helping and training militarily the ''Iranian islamic revolutionary'' and Khomeini to overthrow the Shah. After the 22nd of Bahman, Yasser Arafat entered Tehran triumphantly, almost as the ''revolution'' was his! This episode is studied by the author Cooper.
Although, I might be wrong, but I think Hezbollah somehow inherits Amal.
Contrary to what most Iranians think (thanks to American medias), Lebanese Hezbollah is not a radical Islamic movement, like was the Iranian Hezbollah perhaps at the early stage of the ''Islamic revolution in Iran''. It is now a very open minded Shi'a movement, everything is relative of course. It is listed as a terrorist movement in the USA, for different reasons: (a) its heroic defence of the Lebanese territory against Israel's military incursions and (b) the explosion at the American military station in Bayreuth in the early 1980's, during Reagan's presidency, which was attributed to Hezbollah and where many American marines lost their life. But that was then, and things have changed.
Contrary to what most Iranians think (thanks to American medias), Lebanese Hezbollah is not a radical Islamic movement, like was the Iranian Hezbollah perhaps at the early stage of the ''Islamic revolution in Iran''. It is now a very open minded Shi'a movement, everything is relative of course. It is listed as a terrorist movement in the USA, for different reasons: (a) its heroic defence of the Lebanese territory against Israel's military incursions and (b) the explosion at the American military station in Bayreuth in the early 1980's, during Reagan's presidency, which was attributed to Hezbollah and where many American marines lost their life. But that was then, and things have changed.
Hezbollah is still ready to defend Lebanon against military incursions both by Israel and by Islamist militant extremists, but is busy in positive reconstruction of Lebanon, cooperating with all other factions of the Lebanese political spectrum, in making a democratic Lebanese political system work.
Moussa Sadr's brothers (or cousins) were also prominent religious shi'a leaders in Iraq, and some of them as well as Hakim family were arrested and executed by Saddam who got frightened after the Islamic revolution in Iran.
A nephew (xâharzâde) of Moussa Sadr was coincidentally my boss in Tehran when I was in charge of publishing the French monthly Sorouche. An exceptional fantastic honest and lovely person, also like his uncle, quite handsome, was he, Mahdi Firouzan.
People are not aware that many Lebanese and Syrian and Iraqis are of Iranian descent, even though most of them do not speak Persian anymore but only Arabic due to a cultural or silent genocide of Persians and Iranians in the region.
The war in Syria and Iraq is not, as you read and hear and see in the medias, between Sunnis and Shi'as. It is between Iranity trying to survive as cultural entities, communities, and the Arab oppressors who want to islamize and arabize the whole world around them. It would be good if Iranians, those opposed to the IRI, understand what is really happening.
For example, the Lebanese well educated lawyer wife of George Cluny, Amal, the author of Samarkand, Amin Maalouf, the author of The Prophet, Khalil Gibran, and many many other Lebanese, the Druids for example, must have all Iranian DNA, in my opinion, as well as the Yazidis (Izadis) in the region, persecuted, killed, raped, and taken as sex slaves by Daesh's Arabists militants, because of their origin.
Shi'as in Irak, with their Persian DNA do not clash with Sunni Kurds, for their shared Iranity..They say Shi'a in Iraq are Arabs. Yes, after the Persian-Iranian cleansing of Iraq in 1920 by the British who decided to create the State of an Arabic Iraq, but names of their religious leaders, like Al-Guilani and Al-Sistani, even though they sound Arabic with the Al, but are Persian and Iranian in their DNA, as they mean ''from Guilan'' and ''from Sistan''.
