Most people are familiar with the Islamic Republic of Iran and its architect, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. His worldview was laid bare during the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and nearly everything we know about his political theology is shaped by what he said and did after the 1948 Nakba. Yet this raises an important and often overlooked question: was the ideological force behind his revolution something that developed gradually in the decades leading up to 1979, or is there evidence that it had already taken shape much earlier? What did Khomeini believe, and what ideas did he articulate, before 1948 transformed the political landscape of the Middle East?

This question becomes especially significant when we consider one of his earliest works, Kashf al-Asrār (“The Unveiling of Secrets”), published in 1942. Unlike his later writings, such as Hukumat-e Islami (The Guardianship of the Jurist) and The Little Green Book, both of which have been translated into English, Kashf al-Asrār has never been made available to an English-speaking audience. Scholars have suggested that this omission is due in part to the book’s deeply problematic and inflammatory content. More importantly, its absence obscures the fact that it directly challenges the popular “Nakba thesis,” which claims that Iran’s hostility toward Israel emerged only as a reaction to the 1948 displacement of Palestinians.

Because Kashf al-Asrār predates the Nakba by six years, it provides a crucial benchmark for understanding how Khomeini’s rhetoric, and Shiʿi Islamist discourse more broadly, evolved after the creation of Israel. It allows scholars to distinguish between the endogenous components of his ideology, rooted in Islamic jurisprudence, Shiʿi theology, and anti-secular sentiment, and the reactive components shaped by later geopolitical events such as 1948, the Suez Crisis, or the Six Day War. One of the most revealing aspects of this early work is how Khomeini discusses Jews and “Zionist” influence before 1948 — before the establishment of Israel reshaped global political discourse.

To fully grasp the ideological significance of Kashf al-Asrār, it must be situated in the tumultuous Iran of the early 1940s. The book was written at a moment of profound transformation and crisis. Reza Shah Pahlavi had spent the previous two decades pursuing a rapid program of Western-style modernization and secularization, weakening the traditional influence of the clergy and sharply curtailing their role in education, law, and politics. In 1941, under Allied pressure, Reza Shah abdicated in favor of his son,

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