Howdy Laz,
Ahmadinejad is accomplishing a number of things with his pronouncements. First, he is simply saying openly that which is preached from countless Masjids in the Middle-East, Europe, Asia, and even here in the USA every Friday. He is also exposing the West for what it has become, a paper tiger. "Stop, or we'll say stop again" we retort. He is also doing an admirable job of trying to successfully accomplish what Saddam failed to do in the first gulf war - namely provoke Israel into a pre-emptive attack that would allow Iran to respond directly, and which would serve as a rallying cry for the middle-eastern nations to become more overt in their support for Jihad. We view an Israeli attack on Iran's nukes as something that the Iranians would like to avoid, au contraire - their attitude like Iraqs at that time is "bring it on!"
You see, we are making a fundamental error in our approach to dealing with Iran. As secular Westerners we assume that the institutional desires of Iran are fundamentally similar to our own. So we take it for granted that Iran wishes to prosper as a member of the community of nations. However, Khomeni and his successors saw establishing the Islamic republic of Iran as merely the first part in the larger dream of a reestablished caliphate, with the historic animosities between Shia and Sunni largely put aside because of the need to confront the common enemy. As such, for Ahmadinejad and his colleagues, the nation of Iran is more of a vehicle for promoting a wider ideaology. Nations are useful only for what they can accomplish in promoting the wider goals of the Jihad. Ultimately nations are themselves things that must wither and die when the Pan-Islamic vision is realized. In the same way diplomacy, politics, and so on are only useful as far as they may be employed to bring about the overall higher vision. So when we deal with Iran we need to be dealing with a state we fully expect to be absolutely disingenuous and which will stop at nothing to achieve the greater vision. Put simply, they aren't going to play by the same rules we do, and they never will unless secular Iranians can once again successfully take over the government.
To quote Ahmadinejad directly: "The people, in the last elections, proved their faith in the Revolution, and wish to see a revival of the Islamic Revolution's ideals... This revolution was in fact a continuation of the Prophets' movement and, therefore, all political, economic, and cultural goals of the country need to be directed at materializing the Islamic ideals." He added, "Followers of this divine school of Islamic thought are doing their best to pave the way for the urgent reappearance [of the Hidden Imam]."
Put simply, Ahminedjad and co. see it as their duty to finally rally and wake up the faithful and get them moving. At present a pitifully small percentage of the umma the body of the Muslim faithful, are directly involved in Jihad (10%? 30%?) They are looking to awaken them so they might once again become the unstoppable force they were in 700s.
"We must see what the real story of Palestine is... The establishment of the regime that is occupying Jerusalem was a very grave move by the hegemonic and arrogant system [i.e. the West] against the Islamic world. We are in the process of an historical war between the World of Arrogance [i.e. the West] and the Islamic world, and this war has been going on for hundreds of years.
In this historical war, the situation at the fronts has changed many times. During some periods, the Muslims were the victors and were very active, and looked forward, and the World of Arrogance was in retreat.
Unfortunately, in the past 300 years, the Islamic world has been in retreat vis-à-vis the World of Arrogance… During the period of the last 100 years, the [walls of the] world of Islam were destroyed and the World of Arrogance turned the regime occupying Jerusalem into a bridge for its dominance over the Islamic world... 'Oh dear people, look at this global arena. By whom are we confronted? We have to understand the depth of the disgrace of the enemy, until our holy hatred expands continuously and strikes like a wave." - Ahmadinejad, October 26, 2005 as reported by the Iranian Students News Agency
- SEAGOON
