Spoke Tehran last eve re Ahmadinejad's standing among the poor
and disenfranchised in Tehran and countryside. Ahmadinejad is
considered a hero; he is most admired because he wears simple
common clothes, is extremely pious, speaks flatly and to the
prejudices of the mob. How popular? He is legendary box office
popular. Ahmadinejad is front page news to the working man and his
obedient wife and children. Ahmadinejad provokes expressions of
chauvinism and defiance and bloodymindedness unto
self-destruction.
Recognize that this is not on message with the Diaspora freedom
fighters. However it is consistent with historical models. Nazis
were never more powerful and popular than when they were under
attack by UK and France before the war. During the war, the night
and then day strategic bombing campaigns made Adolf a prince and
god to the folk doing the dying in the cities. Suggest that the
more Iran is isolated and under attack by West, by UN, by US, the
more potent and aggressive Ahmadinejad and IRGC and mullahs can be
at home and abroad.
Today is Ashura, the tenth day of holy month remembering seventh
century battle of Karbala and death of Imam Hussein, Mohammed's
grandson. The Shia remember it bitterly sadly defiantly every year:
the Shia have a proveb: "Every day is Ashura and every land is
Kerbala." This is the day of self-punishment and self-flagellation
to identify with the losing side at Karbala. Am told that Iranian
media and mullahs link Karbala loss fighting for Imam Hussein with
present standoff with West re nukes and terror export. Iran feels
surrounded. Iran likes to feel surrounded. Iran is comfortable for
a thousand years feeling surrounded.
This is all a formula for the sort of paranoia and inherent
sense of weakness that launched two world wars in 20th century, the
first when in '14 the Kaiser's general staff felt that the army was
losing the edge to the Triple Entente, so they launched war out of
fear. In '39, Hitler preached same sense of persecution and
victimization with regard France, UK and Russia. Launched '39
against Poland out of a sense of weakness, out of a mania that
waiting any longer would only make matters worse. Not hard to link
the '39 attack to the same sense of persecution and weakness of
'14: the fear that the Germans could not scratch.
Iran feels a recognizably similar sense of persecution and
weakness, from the '53 coup, from the '79 revolution, from the Iraq
war massacres; and these are the condition that make for stunning,
lunatic, mass-murdering aggression.
Picture Karbala in the 21st century, an apocalyptic and
prophesized final battle, led by the Invisible Imam and his agent,
the charismatic and hallucinatory and non-rational and driven
Ahmadinejad.
Jaw and jaw, Foggy B, the battle comes. Is already here. Oil
weapon first. Then WMDs. Then pistols. Then swords.
topics:
Iraq, Iran, Russia, NATO, Oil
