Why are the beliefs of the Iranian president relevant? Unlike the US, in Iran the president doesn't command the armed forces; neither does he have the power to declare war.

And doesn't the presence of Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem also act as a deterrent? If the Iranian Supreme Leader (that's the guy who actually leads the military there) is supposed to be motivated by religious faith, won't this same faith keep him from wanting to nuke the Dome of the Rock?

I think it depends on who becomes the Supreme Leader after Khatami. Unfortunately the results of the last recent election, which seemed to go heavily against Ahmadinejad, have still not, as far as I know, been made public and released. At least that was true in mid-January.

No, the presence of Islamic holy sites won't necessarily act as a deterrent.

Here's Bernard Lewis' take - and Bernard Lewis is fairly well a centrist on these issues, as well as having great authority from his years of scholarship.

The threat of extremist Islam goes far beyond Europe, Lewis stressed, turning to the potential impact of Iran going nuclear under its current regime.

The Cold War philosophy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), which prevented the former Soviet Union and the United States from using the nuclear weapons they had targeted at each other, would not apply to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran, said Lewis.

"For him, Mutual Assured Destruction is not a deterrent, it is an inducement," said Lewis of Ahmadinejad. "We know already that they [Iran's ruling ayatollahs] do not give a damn about killing their own people in great numbers. We have seen it again and again. If they kill large numbers of their own people, they are doing them a favor. They are giving them a quick, free pass to heaven. I find all that very alarming," said Lewis.

Iranians are Shias-THEY WANT TO BE MARTYRS. Please take note. Muslim religious shrines will not deter them !

"Why are the beliefs of the Iranian president relevant? Unlike the US, in Iran the president doesn't command the armed forces; neither does he have the power to declare war."

Where I come from we call that kind of statement: "whistling past the graveyard."

If G-d wanted you to live in that neighborhood, He may have some 'splaining to do.

Bernard Lewis is the one who got all the right-wing sites all paranoid last summer about a possible apocalyptic Iranian event on Aug 22nd. Which failed to materialize.

I see, reading that editorial by Lewis, that much of his argument could apply to the US as well. Every US president of the nuclear age was a Christian. From the point of view of an atheistic Soviet, that means the US was ruled by religious maniacs who believe that, if the world ends, they (the Christians) will go to heaven, while the Soviets go to hell.

Even Lewis's arguments about the low value Iranians place on human life can be applied to the US, which still has the death penalty (and the current occupant of the White House himself presided over an unusually large number of executions), has no compunctions about starting wars and bombing people, and has a history of cooperating with terrorists.

Robert, where I come from it's called "knowing what you're talking about." I recommend it.

Paul, how many Iranian suicide bombers have there been?

BTW, I already know about the claim the Iranian government made, last year, that they've got 40,000 suicide bombers ready to attacks US and UK targets in case we attack Iran. I don't believe them. Forty thousand is a ridiculous number. There have only been a few hundred suicide bombing attacks in the whole world over the past thirty years; there's no way Iran could have 40,000 ready to go.

I smell a troll in here. I am leaving until this place gets aired out.

He's not a troll, Robert. He's an occasional poster with a different point of view.

Actually, many right wing sites were paranoid about the possibility of something happening on 08/22 before Lewis made his pronouncement. He came in very late in the day to say that it was a possibility, based on the conjunction of an important official ceremony being called for that day and the apocalyptic importance it was commemorating. That it didn't happen - it was obviously premature given Iran's nuclear readiness - is no guarantee, with the present mullah's in power and one's of a similar mindset, that nothing like this will ever happen.

Your arguments about the Soviets believing that the US is filled with a bunch of messianists all seeking to bring about the end of days by blowing up the world is not a serious one. Sure, you can make that argument, but it is meaningless. It does not reflect any reality.

I have no clue if you actually believe that the US has no compunctions about starting wars and killing people - do you mean that the US looks this way from your POV or from Irans? In any case, it reads like you're grasping at straws.

Oh, I meant to include this link to evidence of Iran helping Hamas in Gaza.

Iranian agents nabbed in Gaza,1 commits suicide
Palestinian security forces arrest sat least five Iranians at Hamas-linked university in Strip, say men sent by Iran to train Islamic group. Hamas commander believed to have orchestrated kidnapping of Israeli soldier Shalit injured in raid, report says.

Alcibiades, the point of my comparison with the USSR attitude about the US is that it's just as based in reality as the claims you've been repeating about Iran.

Back during the Cold War you'd sometimes find people saying that the Soviets were fanatics who couldn't be deterred or reasoned with. During the build-up to the Iraq War I heard people claim that Saddam Hussein was irrational and couldn't be deterred (even though his behavior during the first Gulf War showed that he could be). I wasn't true for those two; I don't expect it's true for Iran either.

While it's true that Ahmadinejad makes occasional references to the 12th Imam, it's also true that Reagan used to talk about the biblical End Times. ("For the first time ever, everything is in place for the battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ. It can't be too long now. Ezekiel says that fire and brimstone will be rained upon the enemies of God's people. That must mean that they will be destroyed by nuclear weapons." -- Ronald Reagan, 1971, when he was governor of California) There are some indications that the Kremlin really did believe that Reagan was a religious kook who'd start WW3 at the least provocation.

As far as the US starting wars -- I think we have some compunctions, but have you noticed that we tend to get involved in a whole lot of wars? (Though we usually don't call them "wars".) Look at our last three presidential administrations: Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia/Kosovo/Yugoslavia, East Timor, Afghanistan, Iraq, and keep in mind that we were dropping bombs on Iraq all through the period between the two Iraq Wars. That averages more than two wars per administration. And there are lots of minor military operations that I'm ignoring.

Oh, and about Iran helping Hamas in Gaza -- The reasons I asked about Iranian suicide bombers was because of Paul's claim up above that Iranian Shiites "want to be martyrs". If they do crave martyrdom, you'd expect to see a lot of Iranian suicide bombers, right? It's a relatively quick and easy martyrdom.

If, on the other hand, there are few or no Iranian suicide bombers, then maybe that's an indication that they do value their earthly lives more than some people would have us think.

As to the number of Iranian suicide bombers - or, let's just say Shi'ite, because the Iranian influenced and trained ones are spread out over Lebanon and Syria and Iran and Iraq, with minorities in other countries, including Saudi Arabia.

The US military has not published, as far as I know, the statistics of who is doing the suicide bombings in Iraq - and suicide bombings as opposed to sniper attacks and IEDs, but it would be valuable to know the body counts, there, before making claims about the number of suicide bombings.

As for Ahmadinejad's messianism - it's deeply sincere and he believes the arrival of the 12th Imam is imminent. Did you know - and this fact I learned from an Iranian blog - that when he was mayor of Teheran, one of Ahmadinejad's proposals was to spend money paving the road for the 12th Imam to use for his arrival to Teheran?

This is in no way comparable to a statement, made once in 1971, that, based on the description of Ezekiel, that the arrival of nuclear weapons appears to signal that Armageddon is nigh. That's a general remark, and I bet observations like that were pretty common back then. I certainly heard a few versions of that myself, both from Jews and Christians - though in none of them was there an implicit threat to bring Armageddon now. There is no threat within that remark to hasten the end of days by provoking a nuclear war.

If some people of the liberal and communist variety want to "interpret" it that way - through a prism of fear and repulsion, I think that reveals much about them.

Ronald Reagan did not belong to an extremist branch of Christianity; whereas Ahmadinejad belongs to a branch of Shi'ism which is aggressively messianic. It strikes me as theologically comparable, in a much larger and globally destructive sense, to the way that Shabbtai Tzvi tried to hasten the messiah by performing anti-nomian rites in order to release the holy sparks even from evil actions.

Avram,

Heh. We can be cool. If we let North Korea and Iran develop a nuclear weapon capability, nukes will prolferate, and you can be happy nuclear winter will be started without us. As for Texas executions, it arises from the perspective that there can be criminals, murderers. If the vaunted British morality which you reflect had not been conformed to by Lord Halifax when the pope conveyed to him, Foreign Secretary, from the German general staff, that they would remove Hitler, after Poland, if the allies did not attack in the ensuing disorder, there would not have been 50 million unatural deaths. You have perhaps wished for that morality to your destruction in the past.

Alcibiades, let's not "just say Shi'ite". The argument is about Iran, not about Shi'ites in general. Lots of countries are willing to use other nations as pawns in political games. Iranians themselves were pawns in Britain's and Russia's "Great Game" in the 19th and early 20th centuries, which is part of why we've got the mess we have there today. Iranians training people in other countries is not the same as iranians willing to be nuked to destroy Israel.

I'm perfectly willing to believe that Ahmadinejad is sincere in his beliefs, and that Reagan wasn't. But paving a road isn't the same as expressing a desire to die in a nuclear apocalypse either.

Michael, what the heck are you talking about? You appear to be babbling incoherent nonsense.

Avram, You're one up I guess. To me what you say is nonsense but not incoherent. Be happy to explain; where do I lose you?

..there are lots of minor military operations that I'm ignoring.

Avram, you're ignoring the majority of 'minor military operations' that have occurred around the world (without US involvement) in the past decade; for instance, there's the Islamist war against the Hindus in India, the Islamist war against the black Sudanese in Darfur (and the 2 million dead as a result of the Islamist-inpsired conflict in the Sudan).

There's the Arab/Islamist led ethnic cleansing and slavery in the Middle East and Africa, the Islamist war against Buddhists and ice-cream vendors in Thailand, the Islamist attempt to take over the government in Lebanon and other Islamist paramilitary attacks around the world.

And, of course, you ignore the major military-government organized crimes against humanity that were committed by communist regimes in the past century, including the millions killed in Russia and the millions slaughtered in China and Cambodia. You ignore the wars we weren't invloved in - we didn't get involved in Rwanda, although the French certainly did (helping the agressors, not the victims in that genocidal frenzy).

As philosopher Andre Glucksman said, sometimes you have to make a choice between war and genocide. When that choice has to be made, in general the right tends to choose the former and the left tends to choose the latter.

When it comes to actually participating in a genocidal frenzy, the French have also made their choices.

Mary, you're right. Still, what does it say of us that Americans, who like to think of ourselves as peace-loving, get involved in a couple of wars per presidential administration, on average?

Michael, pretty much every sentence of your first two posts in this thread seems to have been brought in from some other conversation. "If G-d wanted you to live in that neighborhood", "you can be happy nuclear winter will be started", "it arises from the perspective that there can be criminals", "the vaunted British morality which you reflect", "Lord Halifax [and] the pope", etc.

Still, what does it say of us that Americans, who like to think of ourselves as peace-loving, get involved in a couple of wars per presidential administration, on average?

Everyone loves peace, they just define it in different ways.

Pacifists define 'peace' as the absence of war, and for that reason they're willing to look the other way as genocide occurs. For the most part, democratic governments define 'peace' as unencumbered trade between nations that don't slaughter their people or their neighbors en masse. Osama bin Laden defines peace as a worldwide Caliphate under Islamic law, as do his sponsors in Saudi Arabia. He thought Afghanistan under the Taliban was a perfect state.

Hitler thought that getting rid of the Jews and oppressing/killing all non-Aryans would lead to a perfect peace.

The Left promises the peace that will come from state-enforced equality and UN control of US actions.

Gandhi was one of our most peace-loving leaders, yet his actions led to a religious-ethnic conflict that claimed 4 million lives. Everybody is peace loving. The definition is meaningless.

Since the end of WWII and the beginning of the Cold War, the United States has been one of the few nations in the world with a military force that's capable of defending our nation and others.

Since the end of the Cold War, we're just about the only nation in the world that's willing to use our military force to defend ourselves and others. Whether we want to be the 'world's policeman' or not, we're currently stuck with the job. When push comes to shove, everyone, the UN and even the French, expects us to rush in and save the day.

Until other nations begin to take responsibility for their own self defense, we're going to be stuck getting involved in things we would rather not be involved with.

Avram,

I don't buy your arguments that the Soviets believed that Ronald Reagan was a religious nut likely to set off a bomb - not without proof. In fact, I think likely what happened was the reverse. They didn't believe it, but used it as disinformation to help create anti-Americanism all across Europe.

In any case, that's the explanation on such matters of Ion Pacepa, the head of Romanian intelligence during the Cold War and the highest level intelligence chief to defect to the West.

He's spoken repeatedly about how such nuggets of information were used to exploit fear in the west and to manipulate the left, who bought whole into such matters.

In any case, the point with Iran is that they themselves may be using their messinic apocalypticism to create fear in the West and perhaps it's all propaganda. Or perhaps it's all propaganda, a way to shut down criticism at home and instill national pride, by making Iran seem like its a tough challenger of the West.
Perhaps the whole thing is a big joke.

The problem there is the perhaps - do you want to stake Israel's survival on that narrow piece of territory. I myself would prefer surer ground.

In which regard, if the Mossad did assassinate the head of the Iranian nuclear energy group, that strikes me as a useful way to proceed. Hardball, but not war.

It's clear enough that Iran has been playing hardball with both Israel and the coalition for some time. So this strikes me as a symmetrical response.

Acibiades, assassinating the head of Iranian nuclear energy (assuming that the Mossad did it, which, as you point out, we don't know) is hardball, and might serve Israel's interests in the short term, but is it good in the long term for Israel to have a reputation is a country that solves its problems in this manner?

(Hey, what if it wasn't Israel? Did you notice how quickly you jumped to that assumption? And you're not the only one -- it's a pretty obvious guess. What does that say about our beliefs about Israel?)

Going back to the point I made in my first comment, Ahmadinejad doesn't actually have the power to launch a nuclear attack against Israel. He was elected on the basis of his promises to improve the Iranian economy and help its poor, and he hasn't delivered on those promises. As you suggest, that's probably why he'd banging on the war drums, hoping that an aggressive stance taken by the US and/or Israel will cause the Iranian people to rally around him. (It's not working.)

Resist the impulse to think of the Iranian government as a monolithic institution with a single will. There are factions and divisions there, and political maneuvering.

The guy who actually does control the Iranian military, Supreme Leader Khamenei, seems to oppose Ahmadinejad's provocative stance.