Too many people I know still hold Iran with the revulsion one would associate with the Khomeini regime of the 1980s. If I asked them what a "Khomeini' from "Iran" said about Allied democratization of Iraq, I doubt they'd ever consider this:
The grandson of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the cleric who launched an anti-American Islamic revolution in Iran that sparked 25 years of unrest in the Muslim world has condemned his country’s clerical regime and suggested military intervention by the United States as a possible path to liberation.[...]
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."
And for those of us who aren't aware, Khomeini clarifies the proper Shiite opinion on God and government:
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.[...]
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.
Find this man a megaphone. And, if at all possible, a freed Iran in which to preach.