Iran’s president is on the lookout for global upheaval – and nuclear weapons
Editorial
Newsday.com – What if your country is led by a man who believes the world is preparing for the return of a messiah who will restore order to a degenerate world after a period of global tribulation – and that this leader wants nuclear weapons?
Iran’s hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – the Holocaust denier whose incendiary oratory against Israel (“a tumor” that should be “wiped off the map”) has made even his own conservative allies in Iran more than a little uneasy – is such a man.
Ahmadinejad has been reported to believe the world is ripe for the return of the Mahdi, the 12th Imam, expected by fundamentalist Muslims of a messianic bent to return to life to redress wrongs and set the world on an eternal course of peace and justice under Islam, after a period of great global upheaval. And Ahmadinejad, who has said in public that God speaks through him, is a fervent supporter of Iran’s development of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles.
End-of-time beliefs are not uncommon in religions. They play a part in Christian and Muslim theology. But when they are folded in the rhetoric of a national leader itching to get his hands on nuclear weapons, they tend to make everyone very nervous.
For decades during the Cold War we lived with the likes of Josef Stalin and his successors having the bomb. In retrospect, Stalin was a conservative player. But we don’t know that about Ahmadinejad. It behooves all responsibile nations to try to prevent him from getting nuclear weapons.