World War 3... Here we come!

[Rex Kickass]

I don't think they much care what the rest of the world thinks. Think about it from their point of view. The entire world, sans the US, votes against them every chance they get in the UN. They are condemned, attacked, and hated by most of the world. Its not like they are endangering some big base of support here. They don't care what the rest of the world thinks, as they only care about their own survival. If they are attacked with nuclear weapons, do you really think they are going to stop and think about what the rest of the world would say if they answered that attack? They never have in their history, why would they start with the most deadly of attacks? Seriously, at very least, they would launch at nuclear attack at whereever the missile came from. More than likely they would settle old scores and attack anyone who was even thinking of attacking them again.

 

Actually, Israeli warfare has generally been fought with much restraint - when out and out war is the issue. I just read a history of the 6 day war in 1967. They were attacked by Egypt, Jordan and Syria simulatneously, with support from Iraqi troops. That's why the six day war was fought on several fronts. There isn't the will on behalf of Arab countries at this time to fire on Israel after Israel would exercise a nuclear strike on Iran. These states are interested in their survival as well.

 

The scenario you describe assumes that there are no rational actors on either side, and I just can't see something getting that out of control.

[Gregory Pratt]

Actually, Israeli warfare has generally been fought with much restraint - when out and out war is the issue. I just read a history of the 6 day war in 1967. They were attacked by Egypt, Jordan and Syria simulatneously, with support from Iraqi troops. That's why the six day war was fought on several fronts. There isn't the will on behalf of Arab countries at this time to fire on Israel after Israel would exercise a nuclear strike on Iran. These states are interested in their survival as well.

 

The scenario you describe assumes that there are no rational actors on either side, and I just can't see something getting that out of control.

 

I agree.

[NorthSideSox72]

Actually, Israeli warfare has generally been fought with much restraint - when out and out war is the issue. I just read a history of the 6 day war in 1967. They were attacked by Egypt, Jordan and Syria simulatneously, with support from Iraqi troops. That's why the six day war was fought on several fronts. There isn't the will on behalf of Arab countries at this time to fire on Israel after Israel would exercise a nuclear strike on Iran. These states are interested in their survival as well.

 

The scenario you describe assumes that there are no rational actors on either side, and I just can't see something getting that out of control.

Exactly what I was saying.

 

[YASNY]

Actually, Israeli warfare has generally been fought with much restraint - when out and out war is the issue. I just read a history of the 6 day war in 1967. They were attacked by Egypt, Jordan and Syria simulatneously, with support from Iraqi troops. That's why the six day war was fought on several fronts. There isn't the will on behalf of Arab countries at this time to fire on Israel after Israel would exercise a nuclear strike on Iran. These states are interested in their survival as well.

 

The scenario you describe assumes that there are no rational actors on either side, and I just can't see something getting that out of control.

 

There is a very irrational mindset when it comes to the Jews as far as the Muslims are concerned. For that very reason, I can see things getting that out of control.

[Rex Kickass]

There is a very irrational mindset when it comes to the Jews as far as the Muslims are concerned. For that very reason, I can see things getting that out of control.

 

Except, no. Their actions towards Israel (with the exception of non-state actors) have been entirely rational. Rarely are you seeing one state act unilaterally against Israel.

[YASNY]

Except, no. Their actions towards Israel (with the exception of non-state actors) have been entirely rational. Rarely are you seeing one state act unilaterally against Israel.

 

They know they'll get there asses kicked, that's why they don't act unlaterally against Isreal. That's pretty rational.

[Rex Kickass]

Umm exactly. Oh, and by the way, where do you think Israel got its oil from through out the 1980s?

 

Here's a hint - Flock of Seagulls wrote a song about this country.

 

Why is this important? Because in foreign affairs, words and actions are two completely different things.

[YASNY]

Umm exactly. Oh, and by the way, where do you think Israel got its oil from through out the 1980s?

 

Here's a hint - Flock of Seagulls wrote a song about this country.

 

Why is this important? Because in foreign affairs, words and actions are two completely different things.

 

Okay ... I must admit. I don't have any idea what you are saying here.

[Rex Kickass]

With all the death to Israel calls that Iran made throughout the first ten years of the revolution, they were the only country in that region to trade with Israel.

 

In fact, there's a book called "Charlie Wilson's War" which talks about the Jihad against the Soviets in the 1980s and how it was funded with US cash and Israeli weaponry.

 

The mid-east is such a complicated region that nothing is really as it seems. Is Iran building a nuclear weapon? Probably. Why? My best guess is protection. Major powers tend to try to prevent major regime change in nuclear declared states, because chaos means a lack of protection for the most dangerous weaponry around.

 

Nobody really wants a nuclear armed Iran around because nobody really likes the system of government that they have. If Iran was nuclear, Russia, China and the US would find itself in the awkward position of not trying to completely destroy the Revolutionary Council for fear that control over the weaponry would disappear.

[YASNY]

With all the death to Israel calls that Iran made throughout the first ten years of the revolution, they were the only country in that region to trade with Israel.

 

In fact, there's a book called "Charlie Wilson's War" which talks about the Jihad against the Soviets in the 1980s and how it was funded with US cash and Israeli weaponry.

 

The mid-east is such a complicated region that nothing is really as it seems. Is Iran building a nuclear weapon? Probably. Why? My best guess is protection. Major powers tend to try to prevent major regime change in nuclear declared states, because chaos means a lack of protection for the most dangerous weaponry around.

 

Nobody really wants a nuclear armed Iran around because nobody really likes the system of government that they have. If Iran was nuclear, Russia, China and the US would find itself in the awkward position of not trying to completely destroy the Revolutionary Council for fear that control over the weaponry would disappear.

 

I can't disagree with with you are saying in this post. I just don't get what you are driving at.

[Rex Kickass]

My point is that although language towards each other might be irrational, actions toward each other tend to stay rational in the mideast.

 

Ahmadenijad talks crazy, but won't act crazy. And probably won't get the opportunity to because the President of Iran needs permission from the Supreme Council to take a dump, let alone invade or attack another country.

[YASNY]

My point is that although language towards each other might be irrational, actions toward each other tend to stay rational in the mideast.

 

Ahmadenijad talks crazy, but won't act crazy. And probably won't get the opportunity to because the President of Iran needs permission from the Supreme Council to take a dump, let alone invade or attack another country.

 

Ok ... It's a given that Ahmadenijad doesn't have the power to act as he talks. In other words, he's a blowhard. Still, the politics of the mideast is entirely irrational. If the combined powers of the Muslim nations thought they could push Isreal into the sea, they'd do it in a heartbeat. They tried it in '67 and got thier collective asses kicked. They'll try it again when they think they can succeed.

[Rex Kickass]

The atmosphere isn't the same and the will isn't there anymore. Neither Jordan nor Egypt wants in on a war with Israel. Even Syria is at best tepid to the idea, and Iraq is incapable of acting.

 

This isn't 1967 or 1973 anymore. This region doesn't have anything close the the Unity that it used to have.

[YASNY]

The atmosphere isn't the same and the will isn't there anymore. Neither Jordan nor Egypt wants in on a war with Israel. Even Syria is at best tepid to the idea, and Iraq is incapable of acting.

 

This isn't 1967 or 1973 anymore. This region doesn't have anything close the the Unity that it used to have.

 

But ... they would if they could. That's my point.

[Rex Kickass]

I honestly don't think they would. Egypt has normal relations with Israel IIRC.

[YASNY]

I honestly don't think they would. Egypt has normal relations with Israel IIRC.

 

Okay ... I'll give you that Egypt make be the exception to rule. But, that's being generous. The rest of them want Isreal to be nonexistant. From the river to sea has been a mantra of Islam for quite a while.

[southsider2k5]

My point is that although language towards each other might be irrational, actions toward each other tend to stay rational in the mideast.

 

Ahmadenijad talks crazy, but won't act crazy. And probably won't get the opportunity to because the President of Iran needs permission from the Supreme Council to take a dump, let alone invade or attack another country.

 

Rational? Using a nuclear weapon wouldn't be a rational move in the first place. The very survival of Israel would be at stake at that point. I have no doubts they will respond as they always have and blow their attackers to smitherines.

 

Ahmadinejad doesn't talk crazy, he talks like a total devotee to his religious beliefs. He honestly believes that it is his job to blow Israel off of the map to herald the return of the 12th Imam. Any context of this thinking has to be viewed through those ideals. The guy is preparing his country for the end of the world. That should tell you what his priority list looks like. Read through his belief system if you are not familiar with it.

 

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3258

 

Thanks to the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a new word has entered the political vocabulary: mahdaviat.

 

Not surprisingly, it's a technical religious term. Mahdaviat derives from mahdi, Arabic for "rightly-guided one," a major figure in Islamic eschatology. He is, explains the Encyclopaedia of Islam, "the restorer of religion and justice who will rule before the end of the world." The concept originated in the earliest years of Islam and, over time, became particularly identified with the Shi‘ite branch. Whereas "it never became an essential part of Sunni religious doctrine," continues the encyclopedia, "Belief in the coming of the Mahdi of the Family of the Prophet became a central aspect of the faith in radical Shi‘ism," where it is also known as the return of the Twelfth Imam.

 

Mahdaviat means "belief in and efforts to prepare for the Mahdi."

 

In a fine piece of reporting, Scott Peterson of the Christian Science Monitor shows the centrality of mahdaviat in Mr. Ahmadinejad's outlook and explores its implications for his policies.

 

As mayor of Tehran, for example, Mr. Ahmadinejad appears to have in 2004 secretly instructed the city council to build a grand avenue to prepare for the Mahdi. A year later, as president, he allocated $17 million for a blue-tiled mosque closely associated with mahdaviat in Jamkaran, south of the capital. He has instigated the building of a direct Tehran-Jamkaran railroad line. He had a list of his proposed cabinet members dropped into a well adjacent to the Jamkaran mosque, it is said, to benefit from its purported divine connection.

 

He often raises the topic, and not just to Muslims. When addressing the United Nations in September, Mr. Ahmadinejad flummoxed his audience of world political leaders by concluding his address with a prayer for the Mahdi's appearance: "O mighty Lord, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the Promised One, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace."

 

On returning to Iran from New York, Mr. Ahmadinejad recalled the effect of his U.N. speech:

 

one of our group told me that when I started to say "In the name of God the almighty and merciful," he saw a light around me, and I was placed inside this aura. I felt it myself. I felt the atmosphere suddenly change, and for those 27 or 28 minutes, the leaders of the world did not blink. … And they were rapt. It seemed as if a hand was holding them there and had opened their eyes to receive the message from the Islamic republic.

 

What Mr. Peterson calls the "presidential obsession" with mahdaviat leads Mr. Ahmadinejad to "a certitude that leaves little room for compromise. From redressing the gulf between rich and poor in Iran, to challenging America and Israel and enhancing Iran's power with nuclear programs, every issue is designed to lay the foundation for the Mahdi's return."

 

"Mahdaviat is a code for [iran's Islamic] revolution, and is the spirit of the revolution," says the head of an institute dedicated to studying and speeding the Mahdi's appearance. "This kind of mentality makes you very strong," the political editor of Resalat newspaper, Amir Mohebian, observed. "If I think the Mahdi will come in two, three, or four years, why should I be soft? Now is the time to stand strong, to be hard." Some Iranians, reports PBS, "worry that their new president has no fear of international turmoil, may think it's just a sign from God."

 

Mahdaviat has direct and ominous implications for the U.S.-Iran confrontation, says an Ahmadinejad supporter, Hamidreza Taraghi of Iran's hard-line Islamic Coalition Society. It implies seeing Washington as the rival to Tehran and even as a false Mahdi. For Mr. Ahmadinejad, the top priority is to challenge America, and specifically to create a powerful model state based on "Islamic democracy" by which to oppose it. Mr. Taraghi predicts trouble ahead unless Americans fundamentally change their ways.

 

I'd reverse that formulation. The most dangerous leaders in modern history are those (such as Hitler) equipped with a totalitarian ideology and a mystical belief in their own mission. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fulfills both these criteria, as revealed by his U.N. comments. That combined with his expected nuclear arsenal make him an adversary who must be stopped, and urgently.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Jan. 14, 2006 update: Anton La Guardia concludes in a similar article in London's Daily Telegraph, "'Divine mission' driving Iran's new leader," the sneaking suspicion among Western officials that "Iran's president actually relishes a clash with the West in the conviction that it would rekindle the spirit of the Islamic revolution and - who knows - speed up the arrival of the Hidden Imam." (In Twelver Shi'ite doctrine, the Hidden Imam returns just before the appearance of the mahdi.)

 

May 11, 2006 update: Jackson Diehl provides more information on this topic in "In Iran, Apocalypse vs. Reform," which I excerpt below:

 

QOM, Iran—In a dusty brown village outside this Shiite holy city, a once-humble yellow-brick mosque is undergoing a furious expansion. Cranes hover over two soaring concrete minarets and the pointed arches of a vast new enclosure. Buses pour into a freshly asphalted parking lot to deliver waves of pilgrims.

 

The expansion is driven by an apocalyptic vision: that Shiite Islam's long-hidden 12th Imam, or Mahdi, will soon emerge—possibly at the mosque of Jamkaran—to inaugurate the end of the world. The man who provided $20 million to prepare the shrine for that moment, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has reportedly told his cabinet that he expects the Mahdi to arrive within the next two years. Mehdi Karrubi, a rival cleric, has reported that Ahmadinejad ordered that his government's platform be deposited in a well at Jamkaran where the faithful leave messages for the hidden imam.

 

Such gestures are one reason some Iranian clerics quietly say they are worried about a leader who has become the foremost public advocate of Iran's nuclear program. "Some of us can understand why you in the West would be concerned," a young mullah here told me last week. "We, too, wonder about the intentions of those who are controlling this nuclear work."

 

Qom is a place where the possible ends of Iran's slowly crumbling Islamic regime can be glimpsed—both the catastrophic and the potentially benign. There is the rising, officially nurtured last-days cult at Jamkaran, and the extremist rants of Ahmadinejad's own spiritual adviser, Ayatollah Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, who recently suggested that future elections were superfluous because a true Islamic government had arisen.

 

http://freedomspeace.blogspot.com/2007/10/...or-mahmoud.html

 

Who is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

by Amil Imani

25 Sep, 2007

 

To understand Ahmadinejad's mind set and behavior requires a close scrutiny of the elaborate and intricate theology of Hujjatiyyah Shiism, perhaps the most fundamentalist of the numerous Shiite sects.

 

In the 1950s, a group of Islamic clergy led by Sheikh Mahmoud Halabi (a close associate of Ayatollah Khomeini) formed a society called the Anjoman-e Khayryyehye Hujjatiyyah-ye Mahdaviat (Charitable Society of the Mahdi), based in Mashhad, Iran.

 

The Hujjatyyah society were mostly made up of the bazaar-i businessmen and fanatical mullahs. Among many things, they were against the communists, Marxists, and atheists. Their overarching "raison d'être," however, was to prepare the world for the upcoming of the 12th Imam - the Mehdi. Though, the most important agenda on their list was to harass, campaign against, and persecute the Baha'is, a religious group representing a very small percent of Iran's population. In fact, the group's other name became Anjuman-e Zidd-e Baha'iyat ( the anti-Baha'i Society). They collectively worked for a single purpose: the eradication of Baha'is.

 

The terrible plight of the Baha'is in Iran is particularly heart-wrenching, since they are the largest non-Muslim population in the country and have, from day one, been severely brutalized by Muslims. The Baha'i faith dates back to the middle of the 19th century when an Iranian nobleman, Baha'u'llah, founded the new faith as an independent religion—a very painful thorn in the side of a ruling vested clergy with a stranglehold on the masses. The slaveholder, Islam, finds the Baha'i faith a threat to its very existence, since many of the Baha'i teachings are anathema to that of Islamofascism—the favorite version of Islam.

 

The egomaniac President Ahmadinejad, is a member of Hujjatyyah society. He sees himself as the personal vassal of the Mahdi-Messiah or Hidden Imam, with whom he has fantasized tête-à-têtes all the time.

 

In the same fashion that George W. Bush has a spiritual advisor in Billy Graham, Ahmadinejad has one too- Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi (the defacto leader of the Hojjatieh). He is known for his extremist views on Islam; he promotes suicide bombings, attacks on civilians in the West and once said, "if anyone tells you their own interpretation of Islam, punch them in the mouth!"

 

He has, thus, in a short time acquired great many appellations. He is viewed as zealot, fascist, fanatic, anti-Semitic, lunatic and more. One prominent Western columnist called him "unhinged." All these labels aim, in part, to dismiss the man as an aberration, as someone who is in urgent need of psychological help, a person out of touch with reality who represents nothing of substance. He has, thus, in a short time acquired great many appellations.

Once again the West is misreading and misjudging the people and the events in the Middle East, due to the fact that it views things through its own prism.

 

Looking at the man through Western spectacles, he indeed appears to be all of the above and more. Yet Ahmadinejad is far from unhinged. As a matter of fact he is firmly hinged to a set of beliefs that dictate his views of the world and how he should deal with it from his position of power. An unhinged has the potential of being hinged. But, there is very little that can be done to a person who is inseparably hinged. Ahmadinejad views are firmly rooted in the most orthodox philosophy of Shiism.

 

For our purposes, however, it is sufficient to document the fact that Ahmadinejad is not unhinged. "Unhinged" is a derogatory term for a person who is mentally disturbed. A prominent feature of a mentally disturbed person is the display of contradictory thoughts and behavior. Ahmadinejad's words, deeds and beliefs show a fully hinged person. He, to the perception of many, may be hinged to a dangerous and faulty hinge. Yet he is hinged.

 

There is a full internal consistency in Ahmadinejad. Below are a few examples of his sayings, beliefs and actions. Whether one agrees or disagrees with them, they all fit perfectly into a consistent pattern.

 

He literally believes in the imminent emergence of the Mahdi – the Shiites promised one who is expected to appear to set aright a decadent and wretched world.

He views himself as the vassal of Mahdi, working for him and being accountable to him.

His main task is to prepare the world so to hasten the Mahdi's coming. If this preparation requires much destruction and bloodshed, so be it.

As a former mayor of Tehran, he developed elaborate detailed plans preparing the city for the arrival of the Mahdi.

 

He allocated generous sums for extensive road improvement to a mosque at Jamkaaraan near the city of Qum where it is believed the promised Mahdi is hiding in a well since the age of nine, over 1100 years ago.

He reportedly visits the well frequently and drops his written supplications into the well for the hidden Mahdi to act upon them.

 

He has said in private that it was he who asked the Mahdi to inflict the massive stroke on Ariel Sharon.

 

He sees the Jews as the sworn enemies of Islam. The hostility dates back to the time of Muhammad's own treatment of the Jews in Medina. At first, expediently, Muhammad called the Jews "people of the book," and accorded them a measure of tolerance until he gained enough power to unleash his devastating wrath on them.

He says that the Holocaust is a myth. He is, in this respect, in good company with a number of other revisionist claimants.

 

He wants Israel to be wiped out of the map or transferred to Europe.

In his speech at the UN general assembly, he implored the Mahdi to come and save the world. He claimed that during his speech of some twenty odd minutes, a powerful light enveloped him and all participants were held transfixed unable to move their eyes.

He believes that the earth is Allah's and all people must either become believers of his brand of Islam or must perish as infidels najis (unclean) who by their very presence defile Allah's earth.

 

He believes that this earthly life is passing and worthless in comparison to the afterlife awaiting a devoted and faithful believer. Hence, he holds to the old belief that if a faithful kills an infidel, he goes to Allah's paradise; and, if the faithful gets killed in the process of serving the faith, again he goes to Allah's paradise. Hence, it is a win-win proposition for the faithful.

 

Ahmadinejad is a true devoted Muslim. Being unpredictable, self-contradictory and inconsistent are major symptoms of the mentally unhinged. By these standards of insanity, Ahmadinejad emerges as completely sane. He is fully predictable, consistent and has shown no self-contradiction. He does not even pretend that he misspoke or apologizes for his outrageous statements. He is not a typical politician who practices the devious art of doublespeak, deception and change of position to suit him.

 

He knows who he is, what he believes, what he holds as veritable truth and what his own mission in life is – serving as the instrument for the revered Mahdi whom Allah shall make him emerge from the well as soon as the world's conditions hit the absolute hopeless bottom. Ahmadinejad sees himself as a driver who can play a critical role in doing just that – driving the world to the very bottom.

 

There is nothing really "unhinged" about Ahamadinejad's thinking, statements and actions. They are internally consistent. He is simply a fanatic who is wedded to an extremely dangerous exclusionary system of belief. Humanity must learn that dismissing a fanatic as lunatic or unhinged rather than squarely facing the likes of Ahmadinejad and Hitler will result in great suffering.

 

Tragically, Ahmadinejad is not a single solitary "unhinged." He is the embodiment of several million people who are hinged exactly like him and are willing to give their life, and take as many lives as required in the service of their belief. And in the age of Weapons of Mass Destruction a man with huge sums of petrodollars can indeed serve as the catalyst of total annihilation. It is by far more prudent to err on the side of being an alarmist than a complacent dismissive.

 

Ahmadinejad and his ilk are not interested in any negotiation, any compromise or live-and-let-live. They are determined to be the soldiers of Mahdi come-what-may. They have no problem with the total destruction of the world. They are headed for a life of eternal bliss in Allah's paradise. They hardly care, even rejoice, if the rest of humanity is subjected to a tragic death in the nuclear, biological and chemical wasteland of planet earth.

 

Humanity cannot afford and must not ignore the emergence of the final threat to its very existence on this planet.

[kapkomet]

He's just blowing smoke and we need to sit down with him and hold hands. That will make him come around to our thinking on all subjects.

 

[GoSox05]

He's just blowing smoke and we need to sit down with him and hold hands. That will make him come around to our thinking on all subjects.

 

 

yeah god forbid we sit and talk to other countries. You know diplomacy. We should just bomb everyone that even think's something different than the goold ole' USA and Jesus.

[kapkomet]

yeah god forbid we sit and talk to other countries. You know diplomacy. We should just bomb everyone that even think's something different than the goold ole' USA and Jesus.

whatever, Mr. Chamberlain.

 

 

[Rex Kickass]

He's just blowing smoke and we need to sit down with him and hold hands. That will make him come around to our thinking on all subjects.

 

Personally, I think we oughta sit down and talk with the people in Iran who actually make decisions.

[kapkomet]

Personally, I think we oughta sit down and talk with the people in Iran who actually make decisions.

Actually, so do I - but not publicly but covertly.

 

[Rex Kickass]

Ummm, not covertly - but privately. It shouldn't be secretive, just quiet.

[kapkomet]

Ummm, not covertly - but privately. It shouldn't be secretive, just quiet.

I think it should be secretly - and for a reason. No one needs to know that the meetings are taking place - no one. That's part of the problem today.

 

[Balta1701]

Zakaria.

At a meeting with reporters last week, President Bush said that "if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." These were not the barbs of some neoconservative crank or sidelined politician looking for publicity. This was the president of the United States, invoking the specter of World War III if Iran gained even the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon.

 

The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative ideologist whom Bush has consulted on this topic, has written that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is "like Hitler … a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism." For this staggering proposition Podhoretz provides not a scintilla of evidence.

 

Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland's and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?

 

When the relatively moderate Mohammed Khatami was elected president in Iran, American conservatives pointed out that he was just a figurehead. Real power, they said (correctly), especially control of the military and police, was wielded by the unelected "Supreme Leader," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now that Ahmadinejad is president, they claim his finger is on the button. (Oh wait, Iran doesn't have a nuclear button yet and won't for at least three to eight years, according to the CIA, by which point Ahmadinejad may not be president anymore. But these are just facts.)

 

In a speech last week, Rudy Giuliani said that while the Soviet Union and China could be deterred during the cold war, Iran can't be. The Soviet and Chinese regimes had a "residual rationality," he explained. Hmm. Stalin and Mao—who casually ordered the deaths of millions of their own people, fomented insurgencies and revolutions, and starved whole regions that opposed them—were rational folk. But not Ahmadinejad, who has done what that compares? One of the bizarre twists of the current Iran hysteria is that conservatives have become surprisingly charitable about two of history's greatest mass murderers.

 

If I had to choose whom to describe as a madman, North Korea's Kim Jong Il or Ahmadinejad, I do not think there is really any contest. A decade ago Kim Jong Il allowed a famine to kill 2 million of his own people, forcing the others to survive by eating grass, while he imported gallons of expensive French wine. He has sold nuclear technology to other rogue states and threatened his neighbors with test-firings of rockets and missiles. Yet the United States will be participating in international relief efforts to Pyongyang worth billions of dollars.

 

We're on a path to irreversible confrontation with a country we know almost nothing about. The United States government has had no diplomats in Iran for almost 30 years. American officials have barely met with any senior Iranian politicians or officials. We have no contact with the country's vibrant civil society. Iran is a black hole to us—just as Iraq had become in 2003.

 

The one time we seriously negotiated with Tehran was in the closing days of the war in Afghanistan, in order to create a new political order in the country. Bush's representative to the Bonn conference, James Dobbins, says that "the Iranians were very professional, straightforward, reliable and helpful. They were also critical to our success. They persuaded the Northern Alliance to make the final concessions that we asked for." Dobbins says the Iranians made overtures to have better relations with the United States through him and others in 2001 and later, but got no reply. Even after the Axis of Evil speech, he recalls, they offered to cooperate in Afghanistan. Dobbins took the proposal to a principals meeting in Washington only to have it met with dead silence. The then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he says, "looked down and rustled his papers." No reply was ever sent back to the Iranians. Why bother? They're mad.

 

Last year, the Princeton scholar, Bernard Lewis, a close adviser to Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal predicting that on Aug. 22, 2006, President Ahmadinejad was going to end the world. The date, he explained, "is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the Prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to 'the farthest mosque,' usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back. This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world" (my emphasis). This would all be funny if it weren't so dangerous.