The End of Khomeinism and the Future of Shiism
Since 1979, the Iranian regime has invested heavily in molding the Shia political identity around Khomeinism, reaching Shias from Bahrain to the United States. Drawing from non-Twelver Shia sources, Khomeini was decisive in transforming a historically quietist community into a politically revolutionary one. But the fall of Iran’s regional empire and the death of Khamenei begs the question: What is next for Shiism? Do Shias revert to a more politically quietist mindset, or will a far more radical movement follow the Axis’s collapse? The answer is both.
Traditionally, Twelver Shiism was never a politically savvy religion. Awaiting the arrival of the twelfth Imam (Messiah), Twelver Shias tended to be politically quietist and pragmatic. However, heretical extremism is not a stranger to the Shia faith. For most of early Islamic history, the majority of Shia were not Twelvers, the dominant branch today. The religion was a web of different sects, many of which were known as the Ghulat (Exaggerators). Ghulat sects differed on a bevy of issues, but common traits included apocalypticism, militancy, and messianism centered on a charismatic leader. This leader would either claim to be a messiah or be exalted as one after he died, forcing the Twelver Shia Imams to spend their time repudiating these Ghulat branches and keep Shiism quietist and based on true niyyah (intention). But the rise of a charismatic and politically active scholar would turn back the clock and threaten to splinter Shiism once again.
Since at least the 1960s, the idea of a Shia cleric-led government, known as Velayat-e-Faqih (Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist), occupied the mind of the cleric Ruhollah Khomeini. He contended that until the reappearance of the twelfth Imam, the clerical class should hold totalitarian control over government and society as the Imam’s representative. The Shia clerical class saw politics as the domain of the political sovereign and rejected Khomeini’s theory as heretical.
To prevent splintering, Khomeini’s clerical enemies were arrested and their seminaries shut down. The Hawza (seminary) of Qom was hijacked, and its curriculum was promptly changed to align with Velayat-e-Faqih. Over time, Iran began producing Khomeinist clerics and silencing the traditionalist Shia ones.
But Khomeini’s takeover was not just religious; it was political. Khomeinism adopted a strategy centered around “eternal resistance.” As Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem put it, “Resistance for us is a societal vision in all its dimensions, for it is a military, cultural, political, and media resistance.” In the Khomeinist view, Shia society should be subservient to the Imam’s deputy on Earth, himself, who will lead a religiously coated resistance against Western oppressors. Ontologically, it wasn’t a Ghulat philosophy since Khomeini stopped short of declaring himself a messiah or divine. But it’s the view that the regime is the precursor to the twelfth Imam that implicitly injects the notion that the end times are near, laying the foundation for a militant Ghulat to rise again in preparation for the twelfth Imam.
To carry out the message of “eternal resistance,” Shia communities in Lebanon and the Gulf were given material support to organize Khomeinist militant groups. The previously feeble Shia were forming a political identity that centered around resistance to oppression. Despite most Imams being intentionally aloof from politics, the Iranian regime was exalted as the earthly representative of the twelfth Imam. Furthermore, Sunni-led movements like the Palestinian cause were appropriated by Khomeini to gain legitimacy with Muslims and anti-colonial movements worldwide. Combining elements of Twelver Shiism, messianism, and Third Worldism, Khomeini constructed a totalitarian regime that centered around himself being the face of divine justice against oppression.
However, after major regional losses and domestic unrest, the Iranian regime and its Axis seem to be on their last ropes. What remains for the Shia political identity? There are two paths at the moment. The first is reverting to quietism. Without the regime, Shias may just abandon Khomeinism and integrate into the new Middle East, prioritizing progress and development over eternal resistance. The second is the possibility of further radicalization of Khomeinist Shias. Historically, the death of Ghulat leaders led to increased apocalypticism. In this scenario, the Shia faith would be riddled with heretical pockets who espouse beliefs similar to those of ISIS’s apocalypticism, believing that Iran’s defeat is a sign of the end times and that it is their duty to hasten the arrival of the twelfth Imam.
As the Shia of the Middle East begin to face the ire of other groups for their tacit or explicit support for Iran’s imperial ambitions, the risk of Shia radicalization rises exponentially. In Lebanon, the Shia are being blamed and harassed by other Lebanese for Hezbollah dragging the nation into conflict. Sunni fundamentalist militias continue to harass and kill Alawites in Syria with little legal recourse. The United Arab Emirates has recently begun to expel Iranian nationals. In many locations, the Shia have brought about their own marginalization and persecution. As seen with the Sunni revolution in Iraq and Syria, group isolation paired with religious fundamentalism can produce insurgency.
To prevent the rise of a “Khameneist” insurgency, two actors must intervene: the Hawza of Najaf and the United States.
After Operation Iraqi Freedom, the clergy at Najaf, headed by Ayatollah Sistani, has been cited as a crucial institution by Bush administration officials in dampening Shia Iraqi opposition to coalition forces. Sistani famously told Iraqi Shias not to disrupt the U.S. invasion and ended the standoff between U.S. and Muqtada al-Sadr’s forces at the Imam Ali Mosque in 2004.
The quietist branch of Shia Islam, represented by the Hawza of Najaf, is still considered the most reputable source for religious advice by Shias worldwide. Sistani has never endorsed the system of clerical control adopted in Iran and rejected the view of worldwide eternal resistance, preferring to work peacefully within the confines of the nation-state system. Despite this influence, Ayatollah Sistani has generally avoided criticizing the Iranian regime to prevent an intra-Shia schism. Privately, however, he has made it clear that he opposes constant provocations by Iran’s Axis that put Shias in danger.
During the 2024 Lebanon war, Sistani sent Hezbollah a private message saying, “Lebanon should not be dragged into wars serving foreign agendas that deepen its people’s suffering.”
If Sistani truly wants to protect the Shia, it is time to reject this charade of internal unity and recognize that due to the hubris of Khomeini and Khamenei, Shiism is at risk of splintering into chaos. Treating Khomeinism as a temporary deviation in Shiism would be best. Therefore, Sistani’s next steps should be to order the purge of Khomeinists from all Najafi institutions, order Hezbollah and Hashd al-Shaabi (Iranian proxies in Lebanon and Iraq) to disarm and publicly disavow the system of Velayat-e-Faqih.
Turning to the political side, the United States, the region’s security guarantor, must take all possible steps to prevent an apocalyptic Shia insurgency that would throw the whole region into chaos. Historically, the United States has pursued a humanitarian policy to protect the world’s vulnerable, like the Bosnian Muslims, Iraqi Yezidis, and Nigerian Christians. The first steps would be to impose pressure on al-Sharaa’s Syria to protect its Alawite and Shia minorities from harassment and murder, advise allies that rhetoric framing the current Iran conflict as a U.S.-Sunni alliance against the Shia will only produce more terror, and inform the GCC, Israel, and the wider region that the United States will not tolerate sectarian targeting of the region’s Shia.
To conclude, the Middle East is at a crossroads, not just geopolitically but religiously. Khomeini’s shadow of terror may be fading away, but his ideology remains fresh in the minds of the average Shia. If the quietists do not seize control, the religion may become fractured for the foreseeable future. Simultaneously, if the United States does not help create material conditions that disincentivize radicalization, the last major regional threat on the cusp of collapsing may not matter in the long-run. It is time to team up with our old friends in Najaf and create a new Middle East. Success will decide whether the region will be a new one of peace or an old one of war.
Ayaan Karan is a political science student at UC Berkeley with a focus on foreign policy and Shia Islam. His work examines geopolitics, sectarian dynamics, and state power in the Middle East.