Target: Hezbollah

IRAN, as its president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in his recent letter to George W. Bush, is hearing the sounds of “the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems.” That is a general threat to the international order. With astonishing and obsessive regularity, Ahmadinejad rehearses a particular promise to wipe out Israel. According to most experts, Iran will complete its nuclear program within a period of one to three years, four at most. The regime asserts that this program is solely for peaceful purposes, but it is flagrantly breaking the nuclear-nonproliferation rules. Suspicion and fear of its intentions are further justified by the terror and deceit it has practiced since 1979, the year of Iran’s Islamic revolution.

A Third World pre-industrialized country, Iran should in reality be a regional power at best, but evidently Ahmadinejad sees himself mobilizing Muslims everywhere-not just fellow Shiites, but Sunnis as well-for a clash of civilizations that he is sure to win, with God on his side. His belligerence appears to be actively inviting attack from liberal democracies-and first of all Israel-because this will certify his Islamism. The irrational element in the credo is what links him and the ruling ayatollahs to Hitler and Stalin, secular though those two were.

IRAN, as its president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in his recent letter to George W. Bush, is hearing the sounds of “the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems.” That is a general threat to the international order. With astonishing and obsessive regularity, Ahmadinejad rehearses a particular promise to wipe out Israel. According to most experts, Iran will complete its nuclear program within a period of one to three years, four at most. The regime asserts that this program is solely for peaceful purposes, but it is flagrantly breaking the nuclear-nonproliferation rules. Suspicion and fear of its intentions are further justified by the terror and deceit it has practiced since 1979, the year of Iran’s Islamic revolution.

A Third World pre-industrialized country, Iran should in reality be a regional power at best, but evidently Ahmadinejad sees himself mobilizing Muslims everywhere-not just fellow Shiites, but Sunnis as well-for a clash of civilizations that he is sure to win, with God on his side. His belligerence appears to be actively inviting attack from liberal democracies-and first of all Israel-because this will certify his Islamism. The irrational element in the credo is what links him and the ruling ayatollahs to Hitler and Stalin, secular though those two were.