Molavi Abdolhamid Ismaeelzahi: A Danger Beyond the Islamic Republic

Molavi Abdolhamid Ismaeelzahi: A Danger Beyond the Islamic Republic
A Critique of Israel Hayom’s Naïveté

Molavi Abdolhamid Ismaeelzahi is no defender of Iran’s Sunnis, no voice of conscience, and certainly no friend of freedom. He is a dangerous double agent—at once a Sunni cleric serving the Shiite regime, a longtime asset of Britain, and an open sympathizer of Taliban terrorists. He has trampled women’s rights for decades, hiding behind the façade of “temporary marriage” while fathering more than a hundred children. His name is whispered as a reformer by the gullible, but his true record reveals him as an architect of division, a man who feeds on sectarianism, fanaticism, and fear.

On November 4, 2022, Abdolhamid stood before his congregation during Friday prayers and called for a referendum under the Islamic Republic. At a time when Iranians were being shot dead in the streets, he offered them not freedom but submission, not revolution but a plebiscite designed to strengthen the very tyrants who rule. This was no act of dissent. It was an act of loyalty disguised as opposition, a maneuver meant to deceive both his followers and international observers. Abdolhamid has always played this double game: posing as critic while shielding the regime from its true enemies.

His words on the Taliban alone should have been enough to expose him. He praised their takeover of Afghanistan, declaring: “The Taliban’s rapid advances and victories show that this movement has deep popular roots and enjoys God’s support.” These are not the words of a mediator. They are the words of a jihadist preacher who blesses terror as divine mandate. Any man who glorifies the Taliban is not a partner in peace. He is a threat to his own people and a menace to all who mistake him for an ally.

Today, Abdolhamid speaks of forgiveness, of compensation, of blood money and reconciliation. To outsiders, he appears as a calm mediator. But in Iran nothing is ever so simple. Every statement he makes is calculated for survival. His authority rests not on justice but on the ethnic and sectarian loyalties of Baluchistan. He is no neutral cleric. He is a fundamentalist, cut from the same cloth as the regime he claims to oppose, only operating from a different base. If Tehran draws its power from Shiite institutions, Abdolhamid draws his from Baluchi tribal loyalties. This makes him not a counterweight to the regime but a parallel force of the same disease—one that can at times oppose, at times cooperate, but always feeds on the same ideology of clerical absolutism.

He cannot hold influence in Baluchistan without his ties to armed groups. His relations with Jaish al-Adl and other insurgents are part of the bargain that sustains him. His words of peace mask his coexistence with jihadists. He survives not by opposing them, but by tolerating, legitimizing, and in some cases celebrating them. His sermons are not theology. They are transactions—bids for survival in the dangerous marketplace of tribal militancy and clerical politics.

And yet, astonishingly, on August 17, 2025, Israel Hayom published an article calling Abdolhamid “Israel’s bridge inside Iran.” This was not merely naïve. It was reckless. Abdolhamid has no national power. He has no army, no institution, no ability to shape Iran beyond Zahedan. He remains a provincial cleric propped up by his tactical coexistence with terrorists. To elevate him as a strategic channel is not strategy—it is folly. Worse, by branding him as a bridge, Israeli media risk legitimizing Islamist fundamentalism itself. If Abdolhamid can be painted as a partner, then tomorrow the same can be done with the MEK, with Taliban clerics, or with PKK Kurdish terrorist group.

This is precisely the same mistake the West committed in 1979. Just as the BBC, France, and Carter’s White House dressed up Khomeini as a saintly reformer, now Israel Hayom tries to dress Abdolhamid as a “bridge.” Both are lies. Both are betrayals. Both feed the clerics while strangling the Iranian people.

The cost of such delusions would be catastrophic. Israel has earned unprecedented goodwill among Iranians in recent years. For the first time in decades, ordinary Iranians began to view Israel not as an enemy but as a friend, especially as Tel Aviv stood with Reza Pahlavi and the democratic opposition. This trust is a rare treasure, born of shared recognition of tyranny’s evil. But if Israel lends legitimacy to Abdolhamid, that trust will collapse overnight. Iranians will see Israel as just another foreign power propping up fundamentalists and separatists. They will conclude that Israel, like the Western Left, betrays them. That betrayal would be unforgivable.

The truth must be spoken plainly: Abdolhamid is not a bridge. He is a threat. He is no alternative to Tehran but part of the same Islamist plague. At best, he is a provincial cleric juggling jihadists. At worst, he is a partner in the same terror networks that spawned al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS. To treat him as a partner is to empower Jaish al-Adl, to destabilize Iran, to damage Israel’s credibility, and to poison Iranian trust. Abdolhamid is not a reformer but a parasite who survives on the bloodstream of fanaticism.

This dangerous illusion is not new. In 1979, the West committed the same mistake when it betrayed Iran’s King, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Shah was no tyrant. He was the stabilizer of the Middle East, a loyal friend of Israel, a builder of modern Iran, and a champion of peace. But instead of standing with him, the West stabbed him in the back.

The Carter administration abandoned him under the pretext of “human rights.” The BBC became the ayatollahs’ loudspeaker, broadcasting Khomeini’s propaganda into every Iranian home. France gave the black-turbaned cleric a safe haven in Neauphle-le-Château, where he plotted his takeover. Western journalists from The Guardian to Le Monde portrayed Khomeini as a humble ascetic, a saintly reformer, even as he preached executions, veiling, and jihad. President Giscard d’Estaing of France and Carter’s national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski played their roles in dismantling the monarchy. Together, they betrayed not just the Shah, but the Iranian people, delivering the nation into the hands of clerical fascists.

The result was catastrophe. Iran’s sovereign monarchy was toppled, its independence destroyed, its people shackled under the darkest tyranny in modern history. Out of that betrayal grew four decades of terror, war, forced veiling, executions, and regional instability. The betrayal of the Shah by the West was the betrayal of Iran itself.
Iranians do not want another Abraham Accord—an agreement of convenience with tyrants that suffocates nations. What we demand are Cyrus Accords: agreements rooted in truth, justice, and liberty. Call Israel’s pacts with Arab despots what they are—Israeli–Arab Accords. Stop laundering mafia deals in the name of peace. The mantra of “no regime change” has already robbed Iran of its monarchy, its sovereignty, and its future. The clerical dictatorship in Tehran survives precisely because the West and its allies refused to confront it. And now, figures like Erdoğan, the emirs of Qatar, and the generals of Pakistan are paraded as respectable statesmen while they bankroll terror. Abdolhamid belongs to their company. He is one more cleric masquerading as a partner while he conspires with jihadists.

Peace will not come from Abdolhamid. It will not come from clerics, separatists, or foreign-backed impostors. Peace will only come when the Iranian people themselves are free to reclaim their nation, restore their sovereignty, and rebuild their civilization. Until that day, to treat Abdolhamid as a partner is not only a mistake—it is a betrayal. Israel must not repeat the West’s error of 1979. Iranians will never forgive another betrayal.

The lesson of history is clear. Every time the world has trusted clerics, it has birthed terror. Every time it has sacrificed Iran’s freedom, it has destabilized the region. Abdolhamid is cut from the same cloth as Khomeini. He is not a bridge to Iran’s future. He is a shadow of its darkest past. And let us not forget: this man who is hailed abroad as a “bridge” has fathered more than a hundred children through sham “temporary marriages,” treating women as disposable vessels while cloaking exploitation in the language of piety. Such a man cannot speak for the oppressed. He is their oppressor.

The only path forward is clarity, courage, and loyalty to the people of Iran—not to their oppressors, not to their betrayers, and never again to their clerics.