Khomeini's spell over Iranian people has broken

Wednesday marks the 30th anniversary of the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979. Fifty-three Americans were held hostage for 444 days by radical Islamist students and militants. The American hostages were released on Jan. 20, 1981. Yet U.S.-Iranian relations have never recovered from the diplomatic crisis triggered 30 years ago.

That's about to change.

American politicians have been slow to recognize the nature of the seismic shift in Iranian politics, but Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's spell over the Iranian people has broken. In 2009, it is not the CIA's coup of 1953, but the legacy of Khomeini's fundamentalist coup of 1979 that is at the heart of the protests for democracy and human rights in Iran.

For 30 years, Iran's leaders have made anti-Americanism the ideological cornerstone of Islamic fundamentalism. In this revolutionary demonology, the United States was branded as the Iranian people's mortal enemy — the Great Satan. Anti-Americanism became the glue uniting a broad coalition under the umbrella of Ayatollah Khomeini.

The shah and the United States were blamed for "Westitis" — the Iranian people's political oppression, economic exploitation and cultural alienation. And Khomeini's revolutionaries were glorified as Iran's saviors: the agents of Iran's liberation from corruption and contamination.

But in 2009, history has shifted. Iranians have no illusions about 1979.

The seizure of the American embassy in Iran served as a pretext for the seizure of the Iranian state and economy by radical Islamists loyal to Ayatollah Khomeini. Under the cover of waging a holy war against the Great Satan, the hostage crisis allowed Khomeini and his allies on the left to stage a constitutional coup. They established a theocracy premised on the negation of democracy. Revolutionary tribunals established in Khomeini's name proceeded to stifle political and religious dissent by branding their opponents as agents of foreign powers. Thousands were executed in Evin prison after summary trials held in violation of the Iranian constitution and Islamic law. Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari rejected Khomeini's coup. He was defrocked. Ranking members of Khomeini's entourage — Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, Foreign Minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh and heir designate Hossein-Ali Montazeri — became the victims of the terror unleashed in the wake of the hostage crisis.