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After the End of HistoryAuthor: After the 'End of History'
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How Ruhollah Khomeini Constructed the Islamic Republic
Tuesday, 8 September, 2026
Welcome back to After the End of History. This discussion was recorded on August 27th, 2026.The many false starts and stops of the war on Iran tell us, unhappily and perversely, that this conflict will stretch well into our future – just as we recognize its long past continuity from the 2016 strikes on Syria to the war on Iran in 1980 just after its revolution. This follows recent episodes where we talked to Brandon Wolff -Hunnicutt about the Iraq wars, and Nicholas Mulder about sanctions often preparing and precipitating total war. The long draw up to this war, and its likely duration, suggest that Iran’s sin against the West is not only its success in outmaneuvering sanctions but the Islamic Republic itself as a future-orientated form, birthed by necessity, that contributes a heretofore unknown model of popular democracy underwritten by religious law.Our guest today describes the life and ideas of Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the IR, which initiated a process that continues to develop and deepen even in a war against the world super-power. Dr. Nura Hossainzadeh is the author of the 2016 dissertation in Political Science at UC Berkeley, “The Constitutionalism of Ruhollah Khomeini's Theory of Guardianship.” (read it here: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4rg2c49c ), as well as recent articles in Middle East Eye: www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/how-boogeyman-mullahs-trope-led-us-war-iranIn conversation with our own Pat Cabell, she describes the constitutionalist responses to Iran’s early 20th Century occupations by imperial powers, and how conceptions of anti-imperialism turned to the Islamic tradition for guidance. This is a rich and rarely heard perspective on Iran as not disfigured by its battle with the empire but emboldened to inaugurate a new stage in the journey of spirit, and a new chapter of revolution, akin to the historical role of the Mexican and Russian peasants at the beginning of the century.A partial list of works mentioned in this discussion:- Homa Katouzian. Iran and the Revolution (2026)- Vali Nasr. Iran's Grand Strategy (2025)- Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi. Revolution and its Discontents: Political Thought andReform in Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2019) as well ashttps://phenomenalworld.org/analysis/mosaic-of-deterrence/- Ruhollah Khomeini. (anonymous) Kashf al-Âsrâr (unveiling of secrets). 1943.- Khomeini. Hukumat-i Islami: Velayat-e faqih (Governance of the Jurist). 1970.Hawks and Sparrows is a research collective that has been publishing and podcasting about international relations, Marxist and conservative political philosophy, history and aesthetics since 2020. Our primary archive can be found at the Patreon page for the After the End of History podcast patreon.com/afterhistory where you can also subscribe and support our work.ATEOH on Xhttps://x.com/after_historySupport the show
