American Thinker
January, 2007
Mullah knife fight in progress?
James Lewis,
The mullahs of Tehran are in
midst of the most dangerous power struggle since Jimmy
Carter handed Iran to Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. Think of
it as a knife fight for keeps, with nuclear weapons and control of Middle
East oil at stake.
Michael Ledeen's sources report
that Supreme Guide Khamenei is dead, but Iranian media are not confirming
that point. This doesn't mean anything until a replacement is announced.
Nobody announced Stalin's death or Mao's death until the power struggle
was over. El Supremo Khamenei has been reported as suffering
from cancer now for many months, and a fierce struggle is bound to be
going on whether he is actually dead or merely moribund.
We do know that Ahmadinejad is trying to get his
favorite apocalyptic guru, Ayatollah Yazdi, to become Supreme Guide. The
more pragmatic (and corrupt) faction may be trying to get Ayatollah
Rafsanjani elected instead. All mullah
factions are bad news, but some are worse than others.
Tony Blair and Germany's Angela Merkel have said
out loud what George W. has been saying all along: That the
Iranians are too mad to trust with nukes.
Even the Democrats are beginning to sound alarmed, with House Majority
Whip Steny Hoyer giving assurances that a
nuclear Iran is not acceptable
--- no matter what the Chomsky Left loudly proclaims on its own websites,
newspapers and magazines. Abandon Iraq, yes. Abandon Israel, no. (But can
we expect any Democrat to stand up to Iran? Would Carter? Would Clinton?
Would anybody since JFK?)
It's 1962 again, and we are having another Cuban
missile crisis. Half a century later, do we have working anti-missile
defenses? We don't know. Does the West face a rational foe? We don't know
that either. Ahmadinejad has been going out of his
way to sound like a kamikaze pilot, ready
to sacrifice his own people for the greater glory of Allah.
Let's hope and pray that we elected the right
leader in 2000 and 2004.
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