Khomeini's grandson: US can free Iran

"In Iran, the people really need freedom and freedom must come about. Freedom is more important than bread," said Hossein Khomeini, 45, a cleric who has taken up temporary residence in Iraq. "But if there’s no way for freedom in Iran other than American intervention, I think the people would accept that. I would accept it, too, because it’s in accord with my faith."

Mr Khomeini - in Iraq on a religious pilgrimage to Shiite holy sites in Najaf, Karbala and Baghdad - also praised the US. takeover of Iraq, saying American forces were seen by Iraqis as liberators rather than occupiers.

"I see day-by-day that the country is on the path to improvement," he said. "I see that there’s security; that the people are happy; that they’ve been released from suffering."

The US has a long, tangled history with Iran, dating back before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Then, followers of the Mr Khomeini’s grandfather stormed the American embassy and kept employees hostage for more than a year.

Now, the US and its Iraqi allies accuse Iran of attempting to subvert post-war Iraq by allowing militants to enter the country and broadcasting destabilising propaganda.

Mr Khomeini crossed the Iranian border into Iraq about a month ago, in a visit rife with irony.

Iraq harboured his grand-father after the Shah of Iran expelled him from the country. During his exile years in the Iraqi city of Najaf, he masterminded a revolution that ousted the shah and established the world’s first modern-day theocracy.

Nearly 25 years later, the grandson has returned to the country where he resided from 1963 to 1978, and started to speak out against the legacy of that revolution.

A long-time reformist who was shut out of Iran’s conservative inner circle of power, Mr Khomeini laced his sentences with religious references. But like many religious Iranian reformists, he confined his critiques of the Islamic Republic to scholarly rather than political arguments. He said a religious government can only come once the 12th Shiite prophet Mahdi- who disappeared in the 9th century - returns.

Mr Khomeini argues for the separation of religion and state and criticised "velayat-e-faqih" - the religious doctrine mandating Iranian Shiite clerics as God’s representatives on earth, giving them near-absolute power

And though he says he has yet to meet any US officials, Mr Khomeini’s position might lift the spirits of US officials in Iraq struggling to win the hearts and minds of Iraqi Shiites, who make up 60 per cent of the population.

He condemned Saddam Hussein’s regime, criticising those countries opposed to the war against Iraq’s Baathist government as ignorant of the conditions under which Iraqis were suffering.

"The people here were subject to crimes unprecedented in world history," he said.

He praised the late Ayatollah Asad Abdul Majid al Khoei, the American-backed moderate Shiite cleric killed in the first days following the war, as "freedom loving" and honest. "He was the first martyr on the path to freedom in our region," he said.

He said nationalism has no basis in religious doctrine, and freedom was more important than independence from foreign rule. "Freedom is a basic right. It supersedes all," he said.

"America is nothing special," he said. "It’s just another superpower like Russia or China. The important issue is freedom."

The cleric also says he’s considering starting a Shiite seminary in the holy city of Karbala to spread his reformist theology, adding that he expected Najaf to regain its status as the highest seat of Shiite learning in the world.

Currently, the Iranian city of Qom, where Mr Khomeini and his family live, retains that title.

This weekend, Mr Khomeini was told by two different sources that a group of assassins had crossed the Iranian border and were trying to hunt him down.

But Mr Khomeini said he was not afraid that his words would bring harm to him or his wife and three children. He said one should always take advantage of an "opportunity to speak freely and tell the truth".