A picture is worth a thousand words.
"To celebrate the 33rd anniversary on Wednesday of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s triumphant return from exile, Iran re-enacted his arrival at a Tehran airport, using a cardboard cutout to stand in for the late Iranian leader." - J. David Goodman, "Cardboard Cutouts of Khomeini Are Mocked Online," The New York Times, Feb 2, 2012.
The real Khomeini was a cardboard cut-out of an Ayatollah and a patriotic revolutionary. He never attained the high status of Ayatollah on his own merits. Instead, he was elevated to that senior position by his handlers in the CIA and MI6 who established contacts with high-ranking members of Iran's Islamic fundamentalist community throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.
Since Khomeini did not have the religious knowledge and religious authority to become an Ayatollah by himself, his handlers in the CIA and MI6 persuaded their religious contacts to make Khomeini an Ayatollah for political reasons. Khomeini was the beneficiary of their special services. So Khomeini was really a cardboard enemy, not a renegade Islamic visionary and anti-colonial revolutionary.
Khomeini was a fraud.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is a fraud.
The regime is shooting itself in the foot by letting the image of a cardboard Khomeini enter the minds of the Iranian people and the people of the world. It is stupid symbolism and stupid propaganda. It suggests too many things that are true but which are kept hidden by the regime's mythologists and propagandists.
