The Books Khamenei Loved but Others Shouldn’t Read

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. (Reuters)
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. (Reuters)
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The Books Khamenei Loved but Others Shouldn’t Read

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. (Reuters)
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. (Reuters)

“Tell me which books you read, and I’ll tell you who you are!” That was how the late Iranian literary critic Mohit Tabatabai used to tease Tehran’s glitterati in the “good old days.” To be sure, the claim wasn’t based on any scientific study but empirical evidence showed that it wasn’t quite off the mark either. Books do offer an insight into the soul of a reader, provided he has a soul.

Thus, those interested in all things Iranian, especially in these exciting times, wouldn’t want to miss a new book on Iran’s “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei if only because it devotes a chapter to books that he loved as a young man.

The new book, a sort of biography, was originally written in Arabic under the title “En Ma’a al-Sabr Fathan” (Patience Leads to Victory), but has just come out in Persian translation under a pseudo-poetical title “The Drop of Blood That became a Ruby”. The “Supreme Guide” recalls his “passion for reading famous Iranian and world novels” and insists on “the deep impact” that reading novels had on him.

But what novels did the future “Supreme Guide” found especially captivating?

Top of Khamenei’s list are 10 of the cloak-and-dagger novels written by Michel Zevaco, the Corsican-French writer who helped popularize what the English call “penny-dreadful” romances in France.

Zevaco uses a simple formula: taking an historic character or event and fictionalizing it with a dose of page-turning pathos. Zevaco’s world is a universe of sex, violence, conspiracy and betrayal. In his best-selling novel “Borgia”, the head of the dreadful Borgia family that dominated Florentine politics in the medieval times, rapes his own sister Lucrece, a seductive blonde. The novel “Nostradamus” is a fictionalized biography of a roaming charlatan who claimed to read the future to gain money, power, sex and fame.

Zevaco’s most popular novels come in the series known as “Les Paradaillans” of which only two are translated into Persian.

Zevaco was an anarchist who edited the movement’s organ “Les Gueux” (The Beggars) and thus he aims at highlighting the corruption of European ruling classes. Ferocious anti-clerical, Zevaco regards organized religion as “the poison of the masses”. Some of his best writing is about the massacre of Huguenots (Protestant Christians) by the French King Charles IX under the influence of his shrewish mother Catherine of Medicis.

Khamenei’s next favorite novelist is Alexandre Dumas, another spinner of 19th century swashbuckling yarns, including the “Three Musketeers”, “The Count of Monte Cristo”, “Twenty Years Later” and, the gripping “Cagliostro” relating the adventures of Joseph Balsamo, another charlatan in search of sex, money and power. Dumas’s work has less sex, revenge and violence than Zevaco, but the two French authors share many similarities, especially when it comes to fast-paced adventures and unexpected reversals of fortune.

Another 19th century French novelist is Maurice Leblanc, best known for his “Arsene Lupin” series about a gentleman thief who robs gentlemen, a classic of escapist literature.

Leblanc’s work shares two features with the works of Zevaco and Dumas. The first is the creation of an alternative world as a fictionalized double for the real one. The second is the central hero’s disdain for codes and norms of established bourgeois morality.

Khamenei says that he also read “almost all Iranian novels” of the period.

At the time of Khamenei’s youth, Persian novel seldom went beyond imitations of French novels of the late 19th century with JK Huysmans, Emile Zola, Hector Malot and Anatole France as favorites.

Because Iranian intellectuals disliked the British, none bothered to translate major English novels until the 1950s and, in the case of American literature, until a decade later. For the average Iranian reader, young men like Khamenei, France was the world’s “Literary Superpower.” Russian literature was also little known, again partly because of Iranian elite’s dislike of Russia as an enemy of Persia for two centuries.

Curiously, all the Iranian novelists of the time Khamenei talks about chose women as central characters at a time that Iranian women were still treated as second class citizens.

Ali Dashti’s novel offers a heroin named “Fitneh” (Sedition) who decides to use her charms to move up the ladder in a world dominated by men.

Muhammad Hejazi’s heroin “Ziba” is equally charming and ruthless in pursuit of a place in a world that tries to shut women out.

Then we have “Shahrashub”(literally: the disturber of peace in the city) the heroin of Hossein-Qoli Mosta’an whose appetite for sex is as keen as that of the main male character Aqa-Bala Khan. Mosta’an’s other popular novel “Rabi’a” also has a woman as central character, but is set in medieval times.

Jawad Fadil’s “Yeganeh” is in a different register, a romantic tear-jerker about star-crossed lovers. But even there, it is the heroin “Yeganeh” (The Unique One) who captains the wayward ship of a forlorn love. Fadil’s second novel, “Sho’eleh” (The Flame), also has a woman as its central character but is more ambitious in literary terms.

Taghi Modaressi’s heroin “Yakolia” in the novel of the same title is the most literary of the works of that period with the added distinction of being set in Biblical times.

The best-selling novel of the latter-end of that period was Muhammad-Ali Afghani’s “Ahu Khanum’s Husband” which launched a nationwide debate on the status of women and was used as material for a feature film and a television series.

Khamenei says he loved and cherished all those books. Ironically, however, all the novels he devoured with great appetite are on a blacklist of books that “corrupt public morality and violate religious values”, established under President Muhammad Khatami in 1999. Iranians who are today the same age as Khamenei was in his youth cannot read the books he loved.



Netanyahu’s Governing Coalition Is Fracturing. Here’s What It Means for Israel and Gaza

 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walks in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, on the day of a vote over a possible expulsion of Ayman Odeh from parliament, in Jerusalem, July 14, 2025. (Reuters)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walks in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, on the day of a vote over a possible expulsion of Ayman Odeh from parliament, in Jerusalem, July 14, 2025. (Reuters)
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Netanyahu’s Governing Coalition Is Fracturing. Here’s What It Means for Israel and Gaza

 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walks in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, on the day of a vote over a possible expulsion of Ayman Odeh from parliament, in Jerusalem, July 14, 2025. (Reuters)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walks in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, on the day of a vote over a possible expulsion of Ayman Odeh from parliament, in Jerusalem, July 14, 2025. (Reuters)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government suffered a serious blow on Tuesday when an ultra-Orthodox party announced it was bolting the coalition.

While this doesn’t immediately threaten Netanyahu’s rule, it could set in motion his government’s demise, although that could still be months away. It also could complicate efforts to halt the war in Gaza.

United Torah Judaism's two factions said they were leaving the government because of disagreements over a proposed law that would end broad exemptions for religious students from enlistment into the military.

Military service is compulsory for most Jewish Israelis, and the issue of exemptions has long divided the country. Those rifts have only widened since the start of the war in Gaza as demand for military manpower has grown and hundreds of soldiers have been killed.

The threat to the government “looks more serious than ever,” said Shuki Friedman, vice president of the Jewish People Policy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank.

Netanyahu is on trial for alleged corruption, and critics say he wants to hang on to power so that he can use his office as a bully pulpit to rally supporters and lash out against prosecutors and judges. That makes him all the more vulnerable to the whims of his coalition allies.

Here is a look at Netanyahu's political predicament and some potential scenarios:

The ultra-Orthodox are key partners

Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving leader, has long relied on the ultra-Orthodox parties to prop up his governments.

Without UTJ, his coalition holds just 61 out of parliament’s 120 seats. That means Netanyahu will be more susceptible to pressure from other elements within his government, especially far-right parties who strongly oppose ending the war in Gaza.

The political shake up isn't likely to completely derail ceasefire talks, but it could complicate how flexible Netanyahu can be in his concessions to Hamas.

A second ultra-Orthodox party is also considering bolting the government over the draft issue. That would give Netanyahu a minority in parliament and make governing almost impossible.

The ultra-Orthodox military exemptions have divided Israel

A decades-old arrangement by Israel’s first prime minister granted hundreds of ultra-Orthodox men exemptions from compulsory Israeli service. Over the years, those exemptions ballooned into the thousands and created deep divisions in Israel.

The ultra-Orthodox say their men are serving the country by studying sacred Jewish texts and preserving centuries’ old tradition. They fear that mandatory enlistment will dilute adherents’ connection to the faith.

But most Jewish Israelis see the exemption as unfair, as well as the generous government stipends granted to many ultra-Orthodox men who study instead of work throughout adulthood. That bitterness has only worsened during nearly two years of war.

The politically powerful ultra-Orthodox parties have long had outsize influence in Israel’s fragmented political system and used that status to extract major concessions for their constituents.

But a court last year ruled Netanyahu’s government must enlist the ultra-Orthodox so long as there is no new law codifying the exemptions.

Netanyahu’s coalition has been trying to find a path forward on a new law. But his base is largely opposed to granting sweeping draft exemptions and a key lawmaker has stood in the way of giving the ultra-Orthodox a law they can get behind, prompting their exit.

The political shake up comes during Gaza ceasefire talks

The resignations don't take effect for 48 hours, so Netanyahu will likely spend the next two days seeking a compromise. But that won't be easy because the Supreme Court has said the old system of exemptions amounts to discrimination against the secular majority.

That does not mean the government will collapse.

Netanyahu's opponents cannot submit a motion to dissolve parliament until the end of the year because of procedural reasons. And with parliament's summer recess beginning later this month, the parties could use that time to find a compromise and return to the government.

Cabinet Minister Miki Zohar, from Netanyahu’s Likud party, said he was hopeful the religious party could be coaxed back to the coalition. “God willing, everything will be fine,” he said. A Likud spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Once the departures become official, Netanyahu will have a razor-thin majority. The far-right parties within it could threaten to leave the coalition, further weakening him, if he gives in to too many of Hamas' demands.

Hamas wants a permanent end to the war as part of any ceasefire deal. Netanyahu's hard-line partners are open to a temporary truce, but say the war cannot end until Hamas is destroyed.

If they or any other party leave the coalition, Netanyahu will have a minority government, and that will make it almost impossible to govern and likely lead to its collapse. But he could still find ways to approve a ceasefire deal, including with support from the political opposition.

Israel may be on the path toward early elections

Netanyahu could seek to shore up his coalition by appeasing the far-right and agreeing for now to just a partial, 60-day ceasefire with Hamas, promising his governing partners that he can still resume the war once it expires.

But Netanyahu is balancing those political constraints with pressure from the Trump administration, which is pressing Israel to wrap up the war.

Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said she expects Netanyahu to work during those 60 days to shift the narrative away from the draft exemptions and the war in Gaza, toward something that could potentially give him an electoral boost – like an expansion of US-led normalization deals between Israel and Arab or Muslim countries.

Once the 60-day ceasefire is up, Netanyahu could bend to US pressure to end the war and bring home the remaining hostages in Gaza — a move most Israelis would support.

Elections are currently scheduled for October 2026. But if Netanyahu feels like he has improved his political standing, he may want to call elections before then.