ArchDeacon
02-06-2006, 10:47 PM
Interesting Article I received via e-mail, please forgive if RMM.
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." --Sir Winston Churchill
The man in charge Iran's secret nuclear program believes the apocalypse will happen in his own lifetime. He'll be 50 in October. The average life expectancy of an Iranian male "ain't" very much beyond fifty either at 68.58 years.
So here's the backstory: Iran has a Shiite religious sect known as the "Twelver" sect. Iran's dominant "Twelver" sect holds that Mohammed ibn Hasan (aka Mahdi) is the suggested righteous descendant of the Prophet Mohammad and is said to have gone into "occlusion" in the 9th century, at the age of five. They say that he will return and that this return will be preceded by cosmic chaos, war, bloodshed and pestilence. After this cataclysmic confrontation between "the forces of good and evil" it is believed that the Mahdi will then lead the world to an era of universal peace. (Sidebar: This sounds strangely similar to the New Testament second coming of Christ doesn't it? The earliest complete manuscript of the Koran is 200 AH or 800AD. You can work the other dates out for yourself and draw your on conclusions.)
So the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad http://www.scgonline.net/DI/LeaderBios/MahmoudAhmadinejad.html buys into this. But worse, his Shiite creed has convinced him that HE (a "lesser mortal") not only can influence, but also hasten the awaited return of the 12th imam Mahdi. So we now have a radical Shiite who believes that chaos, bloodshed and pestilence is necessary before his religious beliefs can be realized AND he believes that he can make it all happen AND he is in the process of creating nuclear weapons. What a nice scenario.
The Iranian President reckons the return of the imam who has been AWOL for 11 centuries is only two years away. Ahmadinejad is religiously close to the Hojjatieh Society, which is governed by the conviction the 12th imam's return will be hastened by "the creation of chaos on Earth." He has fired Iran's most experienced diplomats and scores of other officials, presumably those who don't share his belief in apocalyptic conflagration.
The Iranian leader's finger on a nuclear trigger would be disquieting under any circumstances but it is positively alarming to have a nuclear weapon in the hands of a man who badgers Israel, the United States and the European Union in the belief that a pre-emptive aerial attack on Iran's nuclear facilities will hasten the return of the missing Mahdi. Such an attack presumably would trigger anti-Western mayhem throughout the Middle East.
When he became Iran's sixth president since the 1979 revolution last summer, Ahmadinejad decided to donate $20 million to the Jamkaran mosque, a popular pilgrimage site where the faithful can drop their missives to the "hidden imam" in a holy well. Tehran's working class faithful are convinced the new president and his Cabinet signed a "compact" pledging themselves to precipitate the return of the Mahdi -- and dropped it down Jamkaran's well with the Mahdi's zip code.
In Ahmadinejad's eyes, Iran is strong with oil inching up to $70 a barrel and America, dependent on foreign oil, is weak in their eyes. He has said publicly America and Europe have far more to lose than Iran if the U.N. Security Council votes for tough economic sanctions.
A top Ahmadinejad general, Brig.-Gen. Mohammad Kossari, who heads the political watchdog, or Security Bureau, of Iran's armed forces, recently taunted the United States when he bragged: "We have identified all the weak points of our enemies" and have sufficient cannon fodder -- i.e., suicide operation volunteers -- "ready to strike at these sensitive locations." Iranian television recently broadcast an animated film for Iranian children glorifying suicide bombers. Boy that's a nice way to help jumpstart the future generation, eh?
So far, Ahmadinejad appears to have his religious rear well covered. His ideological mentor and spiritual guide is Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi who heads the ultra-conservative acolytes who believe the return of the 12th imam is "imminent."
The son of a blacksmith, Ahmadinejad earned a doctoral degree in engineering and is a former member of Iran's notorious Revolutionary Guards at a time when dissidents and "counter-revolutionaries" were being executed by the thousands. Dr. A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, first showed Iran how to build a nuclear weapon 18 years ago. Khan also opened his nuclear black market to Iranian engineers and scientists.
The Bush administration is anxious to clear the decks in a democratic Iraq before facing the Islamist counterpart of the "Rapture" in the "Left Behind" series of books on the end of times by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. President Bush says all options are on the table. But the military option is probably the one the "twelvers" would look forward to. Some think tank strategic thinkers in Washington argue if Iran's Dr. Strangelove attacked Israel with a nuclear weapon, five Iranian cities would be vaporized next day.
It might behoove the United States to sit down with "axis of evil" Iran to find out if the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) doctrine that kept the USSR and the United States at peace for half a century could still be made to work. In any event, one would have to be irredeemably myopic not to see that Iran has an active nuclear weapons program. The only question is how far this secret program is from delivering a useable weapon and then fitting it in the nose cone of a Shahab-3 missile with the range to reach Israel. The Israeli air force will be "overhead" Iran long before that.
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." --Sir Winston Churchill
The man in charge Iran's secret nuclear program believes the apocalypse will happen in his own lifetime. He'll be 50 in October. The average life expectancy of an Iranian male "ain't" very much beyond fifty either at 68.58 years.
So here's the backstory: Iran has a Shiite religious sect known as the "Twelver" sect. Iran's dominant "Twelver" sect holds that Mohammed ibn Hasan (aka Mahdi) is the suggested righteous descendant of the Prophet Mohammad and is said to have gone into "occlusion" in the 9th century, at the age of five. They say that he will return and that this return will be preceded by cosmic chaos, war, bloodshed and pestilence. After this cataclysmic confrontation between "the forces of good and evil" it is believed that the Mahdi will then lead the world to an era of universal peace. (Sidebar: This sounds strangely similar to the New Testament second coming of Christ doesn't it? The earliest complete manuscript of the Koran is 200 AH or 800AD. You can work the other dates out for yourself and draw your on conclusions.)
So the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad http://www.scgonline.net/DI/LeaderBios/MahmoudAhmadinejad.html buys into this. But worse, his Shiite creed has convinced him that HE (a "lesser mortal") not only can influence, but also hasten the awaited return of the 12th imam Mahdi. So we now have a radical Shiite who believes that chaos, bloodshed and pestilence is necessary before his religious beliefs can be realized AND he believes that he can make it all happen AND he is in the process of creating nuclear weapons. What a nice scenario.
The Iranian President reckons the return of the imam who has been AWOL for 11 centuries is only two years away. Ahmadinejad is religiously close to the Hojjatieh Society, which is governed by the conviction the 12th imam's return will be hastened by "the creation of chaos on Earth." He has fired Iran's most experienced diplomats and scores of other officials, presumably those who don't share his belief in apocalyptic conflagration.
The Iranian leader's finger on a nuclear trigger would be disquieting under any circumstances but it is positively alarming to have a nuclear weapon in the hands of a man who badgers Israel, the United States and the European Union in the belief that a pre-emptive aerial attack on Iran's nuclear facilities will hasten the return of the missing Mahdi. Such an attack presumably would trigger anti-Western mayhem throughout the Middle East.
When he became Iran's sixth president since the 1979 revolution last summer, Ahmadinejad decided to donate $20 million to the Jamkaran mosque, a popular pilgrimage site where the faithful can drop their missives to the "hidden imam" in a holy well. Tehran's working class faithful are convinced the new president and his Cabinet signed a "compact" pledging themselves to precipitate the return of the Mahdi -- and dropped it down Jamkaran's well with the Mahdi's zip code.
In Ahmadinejad's eyes, Iran is strong with oil inching up to $70 a barrel and America, dependent on foreign oil, is weak in their eyes. He has said publicly America and Europe have far more to lose than Iran if the U.N. Security Council votes for tough economic sanctions.
A top Ahmadinejad general, Brig.-Gen. Mohammad Kossari, who heads the political watchdog, or Security Bureau, of Iran's armed forces, recently taunted the United States when he bragged: "We have identified all the weak points of our enemies" and have sufficient cannon fodder -- i.e., suicide operation volunteers -- "ready to strike at these sensitive locations." Iranian television recently broadcast an animated film for Iranian children glorifying suicide bombers. Boy that's a nice way to help jumpstart the future generation, eh?
So far, Ahmadinejad appears to have his religious rear well covered. His ideological mentor and spiritual guide is Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi who heads the ultra-conservative acolytes who believe the return of the 12th imam is "imminent."
The son of a blacksmith, Ahmadinejad earned a doctoral degree in engineering and is a former member of Iran's notorious Revolutionary Guards at a time when dissidents and "counter-revolutionaries" were being executed by the thousands. Dr. A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, first showed Iran how to build a nuclear weapon 18 years ago. Khan also opened his nuclear black market to Iranian engineers and scientists.
The Bush administration is anxious to clear the decks in a democratic Iraq before facing the Islamist counterpart of the "Rapture" in the "Left Behind" series of books on the end of times by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. President Bush says all options are on the table. But the military option is probably the one the "twelvers" would look forward to. Some think tank strategic thinkers in Washington argue if Iran's Dr. Strangelove attacked Israel with a nuclear weapon, five Iranian cities would be vaporized next day.
It might behoove the United States to sit down with "axis of evil" Iran to find out if the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) doctrine that kept the USSR and the United States at peace for half a century could still be made to work. In any event, one would have to be irredeemably myopic not to see that Iran has an active nuclear weapons program. The only question is how far this secret program is from delivering a useable weapon and then fitting it in the nose cone of a Shahab-3 missile with the range to reach Israel. The Israeli air force will be "overhead" Iran long before that.