You Are Not Any Less of a Revolutionary If You DON’T Pull Trigger

Seyyed Sadegh Tabatabai*, an associate of the late Imam Khomeini during his years in exile in France, passed away at the age of 71 on Saturday (February 21).

On February 22, Ehsan Razzaghi published a piece in Aftab-e Yazd daily which featured a memory of the late Tabatabai to urge the principlist critics of President Rouhani’s government to rethink their nuclear stance. The following is the translation of the piece:

I am using the passing of Sadegh Tabatabai as a good excuse to recall a memory and make the principlist critics of the government rethink their fiery stances in the days when nuclear talks with P5+1 get closer to their final critical moments.

Let’s assume that their stances are honest and based on good intentions, not an excuse to sandbag and find a way to deflect attention from numerous corruption and mismanagement charges lodged against them for the eight-year performance of their faction [when the principlists were in office].

The late Sadegh Tabatabai once recalled a memory and said, “Yasser Arafat once called the office of Imam Musa Sadr (May their souls rest in peace) and asked Imam [my uncle] to go and see him.”

“When we got to Arafat’s office in Beirut, it was around 1:00 a.m. We were in a big room with a big table in one corner. A few minutes later, Arafat came in. After greetings, he told Imam Musa Sadr that Israelis have sent him a gift and asked a cardboard box which was sitting on the table there to be brought to him.”

“When he opened the box, we saw the severed head of a Palestinian newborn. As Imam Musa Sadr looked at it, Arafat turned to Imam and asked, ‘Oh, brother! What shall I do with this gift?’ By that question Arafat seemed to be asking how his Lebanon-based Palestinian forces (the Fatah movement) should react to attacks by the Zionists.”

“What Imam said in response was strange. ‘Oh, brother! A revolutionary man is not necessarily the one who always pulls a trigger; to be a revolutionary, sometimes you should avoid pulling the trigger. When the enemy seeks to allure you to a path where it can carry out its plans, the real revolutionary is the one who does not fall into the enemy trap and avoids getting stuck in a vicious circle of revenge which culminates in nothing but the killing of innocent people’.” (I don’t recall the exact wording, what I just said was a paraphrase)

If there are people in the West and among those Zionists who are trying to enrage us today, we should take heed of such a strategy, and this is a strategy the government of moderation – backed by the Supreme Leader – has pursued in nuclear talks [with the West], trying its utmost to have the unjust sanctions imposed against the country lifted.