« Previous · Home · Next »
Iran: How Our World Views Affect Our Decision-Making
By Charlie
I want to do a quick thought exercise with you, before jumping into the main text of this post. I want to do a word association. I’ll write a word, and you tell me the first thing that comes to your mind. No tricks, no jokes, just think about the first thing that pops into your brain when I say:
Mercedes.
Mercedes, Mercedes, Mercedes.
What comes to mind when you hear that word? What if you were a guard, standing a post somewhere, and I told you “be on the lookout for a yellow Mercedes?” What would you look for?
What word came to mind when I said “Mercedes?” was it “car”, “Benz”, or was it something else? In America, most of the Mercedes that we see are cars, and the Mercedes Benz is a popular model. But Mercedes makes other product lines as well, including trucks, like the one that blew up the Marine Barracks in 1983.
What was the point of this thought exercise? Just to show that how we view the world can drastically effect the way we solve problems, the way we make decisions, and the way we interact with other people.Around 6:20 AM on the morning of October 23, 1983, a yellow Mercedes delivery truck drove to Beirut International Airport, where the United States Marines had their local headquarters. It turned onto an access road leading to the compound and circled a parking lot. The driver then accelerated and crashed through a barbed-wire fence in the compound parking lot, passed between two sentry posts, crashed through a gate, and barreled into the lobby of the Marine headquarters building. The Marine sentries at the gate had loaded pistols but were not able to stop the driver even though they shot at him. According to one Marine, the driver was smiling as he sped past him.
The suicide bomber detonated his explosives, which were equivalent to 12,000 pounds (about 5,400kg) of TNT. The force of the explosion collapsed the four-story cinder-block building into rubble, crushing to death many inside.
The death toll was 241 American servicemen: 220 Marines, 18 Navy personnel, and 3 Army soldiers. 60 Americans were injured. In the attack on the French barracks, 58 paratroopers were killed, and 15 injured. In addition, the elderly Lebanese custodian of the Marines' building was killed in the first blast; the wife and four children of a Lebanese janitor at the French building were also killed.
This was the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima (2,500= 1 day) of World War II. The attack remains the deadliest post-World War II attack on Americans overseas.
From that, let’s examine Iran, whose terror proxy Hezbollah carried out the above attack. How is the Iranian world-view different from ours?
This chart shows some differences between our cultures:
Next, let’s look at the specifics of the Shiite faith. While Shia and Sunnis basically share the same views on the life of the Prophet Mohammed and the 5 pillars of Islam, they do have differences that need to be pointed out to further understand the culture. Think of the Sunni/Shia rift as a Catholic/Protestant type of divide. The Shia believe that the “leader of the faithful” should be a direct blood descendant of the Prophet, and that the Imams are a nexus for divine inspiration, while the Sunni believe that everyone has equal access to God. Therefore, Shia Imams are held in a higher regard than Sunni religious leaders. The Shia, being more “spiritual” also embrace many of the prophecies that the Sunni do not take literally: specifically, the apocalypse.
The Shia belief in the end-times centers around the return of the 12th Imam, who will usher in Judgment Day. From what I have read, the exact details of this are disputed, but one of the common themes is that Imam al-Mahdi, the 12th Imam will appear during a great war, and will liberate the Palestinians and save the world from destruction by uniting it into one Islamic society.
What’s the bottom line on this? President Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs believe this, and buy into the mystic vision of Shia Islam, and believe that they can bring about the second coming of the 12th Imam by instigating an armed conflict.
Ahmadinejad has been surprisingly frank about this strategy, mentioning it in just about every news-cycle:
"Dear Friends and Colleagues,"From the beginning of time, humanity has longed for the day when justice, peace, equality and compassion envelop the world. All of us can contribute to the establishment of such a world. When that day comes, the ultimate promise of all Divine religions will be fulfilled with the emergence of a perfect human being who is heir to all prophets and pious men. He will lead the world to justice and absolute peace.
"O mighty Lord, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace.
After this speech, he said an aura appeared around him:
“According the report by the Farsi-language news web site Baztab, President Ahmadinejad made the comments in a meeting with one of Iran's leading clerics, Ayatollah Javadi Amoli.“Ahmadinejad said that someone present at the UN told him that a light surrounded him while he was delivering his speech to the General Assembly. The Iranian president added that he also sensed it.
"’He said when you began with the words “in the name of God”, I saw that you became surrounded by a light until the end [of the speech]’, Ahmadinejad appears to say in the video. ‘I felt it myself, too. I felt that all of a sudden the atmosphere changed there, and for 27-28 minutes all the leaders did not blink.’"
Next, he has linked the Hamas terror fight against the Israelis as the focal point of the great war he hopes to start.
“Speaking to HAMAS leaders in Damascus, the new Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Friday that the Middle East conflict has become “the locus of the final war” between Muslims and the West, Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, reported.”
Then, referring to the 1979 revolution, which he was a part of, Ahmadinejad says that the goal of the Iranian nation should be to usher in the end-times:
“In a keynote speech on Wednesday to senior clerics, Ahmadinejad spoke of his strong belief in the second coming of Shi'ite Muslims' ‘hidden’ 12th Imam.“According to Shi'ite Muslim teaching, Abul-Qassem Mohammad, the 12th leader whom Shi'ites consider descended from the Prophet Mohammed, disappeared in 941 but will return at the end of time to lead an era of Islamic justice.
"’Our revolution's main mission is to pave the way for the reappearance of the 12th Imam, the Mahdi,’ Ahmadinejad said in the speech to Friday Prayers leaders from across the country.
"’Therefore, Iran should become a powerful, developed and model Islamic society.’”
Now, unfortunately for us, Iran lies along the expansive and profitable oil fields of the Persian Gulf and Iran now finds itself in an advantageous position. Economically, the region is dependent on the Straits of Hormuz, which Iran has the ability to project power into. The removal of Saddam has also proved advantageous to Iran, by removing the old counter-balance to Persian hegemony of the region. The Iranian leadership, at this point, probably sees a historical opportunity to seize the mantle of regional power for the first time in 1000 years.
Further, in case you hadn’t noticed, Iran is doing everything they can to project their power and influence outward, short of invading their neighbors. They have recently donated $50 million to the floundering Hamas government, have struck numerous deals with Syria, and still project into Lebanon through Hezbollah. This “Shia crescent” of countries stretches from the Shia in the lower Gulf states of Yemen and southern Saudi Arabia, up through Iran along the Persian Gulf, through Iraq, through Syria, and to the shores of the Mediterranean in Lebanon.
So we come to the question of “assuming rationality” in the actors on the world stage. I don’t have any information on if the Iranian public are buying any of their president’s apocalypse-mongering, but I suspect that it is kept in the background. A war must precede the return of the 12th Imam, and the best way to start a war is to provoke Israel or the United States. War with an outsider would solidify the regime’s support among the people. Is the regime acting rationally? I believe that they are, in order to achieve (what I view as) their irrational goals.
All of that, and I didn’t even mention their relentless pursuit of nukes.
Obviously, a country like Iran cannot be painted with one brush, but the ruling mullahs can be painted with one brush, and their rhetoric and actions are giving us the same warning signs that the Marines had in 1983. They knew to look for a yellow Mercedes, they just didn’t realize what form it would appear in.
So now we have a new thought exercise. If you were in charge of Iran, and wanted to bring about an apocalyptic conflict in the near-term, would you be doing anything differently than Mahmoud Ahmadenijad?
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://op-for.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/36
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Iran: How Our World Views Affect Our Decision-Making:
» War Of Civilizations and Political Speak from Strategic Outlook Institute - Weblog
Cheney stumps in Washington. He only has it partially right - the global war on Terror is only one branch of the coming war. Although there have been plenty of articles regarding the fact that “terrorism” is a tactic to achieve an end, I... [Read More]
Comments
fireplace mantles fireplace mantles
Post a comment
Potential comment conditions listed here. Oh, and you may use basic HTML for formatting.
For starters, I'd wear some sort of fancy robe, and maybe get one of those poofy white cats. Of course, it wouldn't hurt to have an underground lair with a self-destruct button and everything - including a doomsday weapon with big words in its name. Then I'd get a shark tank, and a disfigured sidekick, and a sexy female assassin...