Iran And The 12th Imam

Keeping alive the thread of growing concern about the nature of true-believing Islam, Charles Krauthammer logs in at WaPo this morning with an unbeliveably frightening column on Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad is a believer in Islam's apocalyptic vision, in which the Twelfth Imam comes to earth and initiates an era of profound suffering that brings the triumph of Islam. His belief is evident in practice: Krauthammer points out that one of Ahmadinejad's first acts as president was to give $17 million in government funds to the shrine that honors the Twelfth Imam. Says CK:

So a Holocaust-denying, virulently anti-Semitic, aspiring genocidist, on the verge of acquiring weapons of the apocalypse, believes that the end is not only near but nearer than the next American presidential election. (Pity the Democrats. They cannot catch a break.) This kind of man would have, to put it gently, less inhibition about starting Armageddon than a normal person. Indeed, with millennial bliss pending, he would have positive incentive to, as they say in Jewish eschatology, hasten the end.

So, as Iran parades its Shahab rockets with banners proclaiming "Israel must be wiped off the map" on their sides, don't think that Ahmadinejad looks on their sleek forms and thinks "deterrent."

The UN and the IAEA are used to sane people with nukes. They need to recalibrate.

h/t memeorandum