Isralert, a Jewish news service run out of Texas by Harvey Weiner published an analysis from the Sunday Telegraph called "The Frightening Truth of Why Iran Wants a Bomb". In essence, the explanation given by writer Amir Taheri is that the Iranian president has indeed met and is in consultation with the Mahdi, the mysterious Twelfth Imam of the Shia.
The Mahdi is a messianic figure for the Shia, analogous to the Jewish messiah and to Jesus of Nazareth. Put simply, according to Tajeri, it is no longer a matter of “when will the Mahdi return?” He has returned. It is now a matter of “how to make the world ready for his appearance.” This is messianic politics with a uranium coating.
The article details what President Ahmadinejad must do, and the strategy he must follow to accomplish this goal. Harv Weiner picked out the key point made by Taheri in the article
“Iran is now the strongest presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, after the US. It has turned Syria and Lebanon into its outer defenses, which means that, for the first time since the 7th century, Iran is militarily present on the coast of the Mediterranean. In a massive political jamboree in Teheran last week, Ahmadinejad also assumed control of the "Jerusalem Cause", which includes annihilating Israel "in one storm", while launching a take-over bid for the cash-starved Hamas government in the West Bank and Gaza.”
This evening, the Voice of Israel carried the story in Hungarian, French, Spanish, English, Amharic, and presumably Hebrew that the Iranian government had donated $50 million to the cash-starved Palestinian Authority.
In case anybody in Israel had trouble mistaking the intent of the Iranian president, Scotland on Sunday carried this lead-in pair of paragraphs in its own article covering the same basic story.
“PRESIDENT Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was at pains to make sure he had not been misunderstood. He wanted the west, particularly the United States, to understand that he was not joking when he had called last year for Israel to be ‘wiped off the map’....
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Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Joey
Didn't Jesus say the same thing about the fig tree?
2 - Elvira Black
Terrific and scary article, Ruvy.
3 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Joey:
I wouldn't know about Jesus and the fig tree - you might want to put up a quote about that.
Elvira:
Thank you for the kind words. Yeah, this is scary all right. I WAS going to go to sleep, but I wanted to check my e-mails first. And there was this very scary article from Isralert. I had to get this up on Blog Critics before I went to bed.
4 - RJ Elliott
"In the Sunday Telegraph, Taheri explains that the strategy of the reborn Persian Empire is one of parry the west and delay, making all sorts of phony concessions until George Bush is a lame duck president who cannot command any military excursions into Iran, arguing that Bush is an exception to the kinds of presidents that the U.S. has had since Eisenhower. Unlike the other presidents, Bush does not run away."
This is an incredibly-interesting paragraph. If this correctly depicts the true beliefs of the loons in Tehran, then Bush is actually a godsend of a President, warts and all. Because the next clown to reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is almost certainly going to be be weaker in the face of Islamic terror than our current President, and apparently the Muslims terror-masters know this, and are biding their time...
5 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
And what makes you thnk there is GOING to be a next clown, RJ?
Check this out.
6 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
My apologies, RJ. I just tried out my link and it didn't work.
Go to http://yearsofawe.blogspot.com, and then go to the archives for Feb. 2005. The article's name is End of Days: The Land of Magog Part One.
This is messianic politics, RJ. And don't ever let anyone snow you that the Christians are the only ones with a messiah.
7 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
UPDATE TO THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE
I found this item on Monsters and Critics. According to this article,we see a different wrinkle from the standard Arab patter.
"In the final resolution, recited by conference chairman Ali-Akbar Mohtashami, all Islamic states were obliged to aid Palestine and prepare the grounds for the return of all refugees to their homelands.
The resolution further called on the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and revival of the al-Aqsa mosque as the main centre for world Muslims."
This reflects the Shia view that they want contrrol of the Temple Mount and are willing to stand Islam on its head - moving the center of the religion from Mecca and Medina to what was supposed to have been its original center, Jerusalem.
Hmmm....
There may be a lot more to this than meets the eye.
8 - Christopher Rose
This is just more scaremongering from Blogcritics resident Dr Doom.
For a start, if Iran tried any kind of military expansion, it's going to meet a lot of resistance both from Arab nations who don't want more "Persian" influence in the region and the West.
Then there is the West's response. Despite Ruvy's many offensive assertions that the USA and Europe are the source of all Israel's problems and are to be hated, I have no doubt that the West would not let this happen.
Then there is of course the matter of Israel's own illegally obtained nuclear weapons. They are surely not going to be left unused if the Israelis start to feel even more paranoid.
This whole article is based on oil thinking. Most smart people know that Hydrogen is going to form the basis for the next energy platform. Indeed, the countries that most rapidly adopt this tecxhnology may well have a technical and financial advantage over the oil addicted nations.
Finally, taking one's political thought and perspective based on the writings of the right wing newspaper The Daily Telegraph is a risky proposition at best. The paper's political writing has always been a bit suspect because of the owners behind it...
9 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Chris, so long as you are expressing your opinions and not trying to censor mine, I have no problems with them, though I might disagree with them.
One has to earn his doctorate somewhere, I suppose, and you'll for for a source until I can find a better one. Thanks for the doctorate. the check is in the mail.
I have seen in my own lifetime what "assurances" from America to Israel meant - first in 1967, and again in 1973, again in 1991, 2000 and 2005. They meant nothing then and they mean nothing now. I can read in my history to see what assurances from Europeans mean. That is reality. Evidently, you find reality offensive.
I do not count on America coming to anybody's aid in a crunch - not because of the American people, who are a top shelf bunch, for all of their faults - but because of their government, a pack of corrupt men (and women, let's not be sexist here) who care only for the profits of the corporations they run or are connected to.
While hydrogen will be the next platform for energy, this corrupt bunch of fools is addicted to petroleum. And they have done whatever they could to keep the Americans addicted to petroleum as well. Anyone old enough to remember steetcars and interurban trolleys can confirm my words.
There are cheap and easy to produce substitutes for petrol, as any Brazilian can tell you.
You seem to miss a few things here. The Telegraph article is an analysis, one that takes seriously the messianic politics of the Iranian president. It is about time that someone took seriously the motivations behind the leader of the country, instead of trying to read into and impose upon him his own. Messianic politics may be the only thing that will save the mullahs from their own corruption, stupidity and viciousness.
This is not the prediction of doom you thnk it is. It is a warning to look at your adversaries with the lenses they see themselves.
Doom is the bird flu. Presently nothing can be done about it, should it strike as a pandemic, in spite of all the talk to the contrary. Plenty can be done here. But the leaders of Europe and America will have to look beyond their own pockets and the next business auarter to see the solutions.
10 - temporal
ruvy:
have read amir taheri in nyt for a number of years...having said that his quotes re:mahdi as reported:
that the Iranian president has indeed met and is in consultation with the Mahdi, the mysterious Twelfth Imam of the Shia
appears as a half baked april fool's joke if anything to those who are familiar with islamic history...(almost on par with bush's conversations with God)
as is this from the post: This reflects the Shia view that they want control of the Temple Mount and are willing to stand Islam on its head
the shia holy mosques are in iraq --basra and baghdad regions
al aqsa as the first qibla will always remain the third holiest muslim site
11 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Temporal,
I'd be overjoyed if tis were shown to be an April Fools joke over time. But I've learned that institutions can take strange turns if they are on the verge of a major change.
12 - temporal
ruvy:
But I've learned that institutions can take strange turns if they are on the verge of a major change.
on the verge? institutions?
one can expect the unexpected from people (or countries) when they are pushed to the wall
most people would never part with the most precious gift they have -- their lives!
but daily we witness suicide bombers who give sacrifice their lives…while there are exceptions most of them are pushed to the wall by the world around them to the degree that they lose sanity
i am saddened by the loss of civilian lives in tel aviv today -- but do we pause to think what causes those suicide bomber to act like that? why do they lose hope in living?
am saddened by the loss of civilian lives in iraq…..the living conditions under occupation there must also be worse than under the sadist saddam for them to part with their lives and kill innocents in the process of making statements
13 - Christopher Rose
Ruvy: I don't censor opinions, I follow the Blogcritics comments guidelines to the best of my ability. Maybe if you read them and tried to think about things from a less subjective perspective you'd realise the difference.
The remarks I removed were hateful plain and simple and there was no politics involved. You have been pleased in the past when racial epithets and messages of hate have been removed. Shrugging those fatalistic shoulders of yours and saying "it may be ugly but it's my honest opinion" just doesn't cut it, just as it wouldn't coming from any other perspective.
As to Europe and the USA's commitment to Israel, your attitude is frankly insulting to the dead of two world wars and to people of goodwill everywhere. Your understanding of what I consider reality is bizarre, like looking in one of those fairground mirrors, warped but strangely familiar.
The Telegraph's perspective is well known and it has some great writers. That's how many a reader rationalises buying it, for the writing, somehow managing to forget all about the paper's clear agenda. It's entitled to any perspective it wants of course, but I wouldn't go putting too much trust in it.
As to the ambitions of Iran, I don't take them lightly at all but any serious analysis would include the fact that ranged against it would be Sunnis, Arabs, Europe, the USA, all the allies of the above and let's not forget little old Israel and its totally respectably obtained nuclear arsenal!
That plus the fact that the USA and its "allies" have a near complete ring of airbases around the Iranian borders make it seem highly unlikely.
Who would support it, China possibly? Maybe in the worst of all possible worlds - but who would figure to come out ahead in such a heavily armed world?
I'd need a lot more factual information than you have so far produced to put this into my personal top 5 global problems list.
14 - Mark Schannon
These are the kinds of articles that are easy to dismiss as the rantings of a paranoid mind. Sounds very much the way England's leadership treated Churchill in the 1930s about Hitler.
How much more do the lunatics in Iran have to do and say before people begin to realize we're dealing with people who'd rather see us dead than led.
And Ruvy's right. If Israel has to rely on the west for its existence, all the Israeli's would have been living on rafts in the Mediterranean 30 years ago.
Yeah...maybe it's hype. But wake up and smell the newsprint. Between the Shia unrest in the Arab world, the continual Iranian middle finger to the west on nuclear technology, the obvious inability of the west to do anything but wring our hands and cry "foul," the continuing threats to Israel's existence, and now the "rescue" of Palestinians--whom the Arabs have always hated and treated like dogs...what more do you need to at least consider this might be true?
Whew.
In Jameson Veritas.
15 - Christopher Rose
Er, I don't know if you mean me, Mr Schannon, but just in case, I'd like to stress I do take the possibility seriously enough to consider the strategic implications but not seriously enough to have at the top of my list. Yet. ;-)
16 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Chris, look at this this way. Iran's lap dogs are not sitting in the Balearic Isles or the Canaries or Morocco ready with 10,000 missiles to blow you to bits. So you can afford to look at all this in a rather academic fashion.
But Iran's lap dogs are sitting in south Lebanon ready to blow up Haifa, Akko, Netanya, Natzeret, Tverya, Kvar Sava and Rana'ana. I have friends in Rana'ana, Kvar Sava and Netanya. The proximity factor does make a bit of a difference.
17 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Temporal,
You wrote,
"but daily we witness suicide bombers who give sacrifice their lives...while there are exceptions most of them are pushed to the wall by the world around them to the degree that they lose sanity"
I used to think like this about a decade ago. Thirty months ago, while laying in a hospital bed, I was treated to a visit from a friend, a fellow who had immigrated here from Italy. He told me a very interesting story. He's a bit younger than I.
Around 1978, he had been your standard issue, garden variety Italian Jewish leftist. And he held all the standard garden variety points of view - the Arabs were in a war of national liberation against colonialist occupiers, etc. He is a voracious reader, and he had read what most leftists just debate about. So when he visited Gaza that summer, he was able to get Arabs to open up to him because he did know his Marx and Lenin, not to mention the works of a whole host of others who have been lost to the dustbin of history. They all knew he was Italian, but not that he was Jewish.
In discussions with his Arab hosts he always posed one question.
"I understand attacking and killing the Israeli soldiers and occupiers - my dad fought the Fascists in Italy. But why do you have to kill civilians, innocent children and women?"
And he always got the same answer from people of all walks of life.
"Every Jew who dies is one less Jew we have to deal with."
The answer was always that simple. And it opened his eyes to what he was really dealing with.
18 - Christopher Rose
I don't see what's academic about what I'm saying Ruvy. You wouldn't be trying to marginalise me, would you?
Don't forget I have a friend in Jerusalem...
19 - Richard Brodie
but daily we witness suicide bombers who give sacrifice their lives...while there are exceptions most of them are pushed to the wall by the world around them to the degree that they lose sanity
I disagree that people become suicide bombers because they are "pushed to the wall." I think they become suicide bombers because they are brainwashed by an evil "religion" that glorifies death.
20 - Richard Brodie
Is there any significance to the name ahMADInejad? If this is messianic politics with a uranium coating then the survival of Civilization may require some "military action with a uranium coating" that would render the entire insanely radical Islamic world harmless by sending it back in history about a thousand years or so.
21 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Chris,
For the sake of your friend of Jerusalem, try to understand that I'm not writing as Dr. Doom, or magnifying the problem.
The problems that can break into war are just under the surface, and the immediate enemy is right next door - at present across a fence that is a 1½ meters high, a couple of hundred meters away at Jebel Mukabr and Sur Bakhr.
22 - gonzo marx
also for the gentle Readers to note...
the original Poster is as firm a Believer in "messianic politics" as those on the opposing side
just a Thought
Excelsior!
23 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Richard,
I'm guessing here, but the parto the the iranian president's name that would be traceable to an Arabic word would be "Ahmadi." Maybe some of out Moslem readers would know this better.
The Persians were traditional friends of Jews Richard. I really would not want to see their cities turned to glass. I suspect thsat there is a strong undercurrent of sympathy for Jews and for Israel in Iran in spite of 20 years of theocratic rule.
While I see the military need to strike at Iran - frankly, I'd rather not see it. It's one of those hard to admit ugly realities of today's world.
24 - Richard Brodie
I suspect thsat there is a strong undercurrent of sympathy for Jews and for Israel in Iran in spite of 20 years of theocratic rule.
Yes. They once had a benevolent Zoroastrian culture, until they were force converted to Islam. Perhaps it will be sufficient to turn Riyadh into glass :)
25 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Gonzo writes,
"the original Poster is as firm a Believer in "messianic politics" as those on the opposing side"
Gonzo is so right. That is why I understand what the Iranians are doing so well. That is why, though I understand Ahmadinejad to be an enemy who must be killed for me to survive (unless something even more miraculous than I am presently contemplating is in the works - a distinct possibility), I can appreciate what he is doing and have a certain level of admiration for it.
For me the events I report on in the article are a wake-up call to start acting on the peace ideas that I have been bruiting about on other threads on Blog Critics. Time may be shorter than even I thought.
When the politicians around you are nothing but bought out thieves, other avenues, avenues that are outside the box, must be pursued to ensure survival.
All these are in addition to prayer and having faith. If you are a Jew, it is not suffficient to merely have faith. You gotta do something, too.