Mullahs' nuclear push ...

Today's New York Times Editorial (Iran's Best Friend, March 5, 2006) may be a satirical outlook on the current sorry state of affairs vis-a-vis Iran's desire to have a nuclear weapon and the mullahs' near autonomy in Iraq, but it is accurate to the core. It is also a late (very late) acknowledgment of how the mullahs have been perfecting their latest act. To think, now, and only now, that the events in Iraq and the mullahs' sprint to acquire a nuclear device, are intertwined, is like having been blind, deaf, and anosmic, all of the past few years.

To put it mildly, Iranian shock troops in Iraq, both the Badr and the Sadr militias, have already been at work preparing the sort of environment that their Iranian handlers need, should the mullahs decide to tighten the screws in Iraq, in response to any adverse action by the IAEA Board tomorrow in Vienna. The precision bombing of a Shiite holy shrine in Samarra two weeks ago, regardless of whether one believes that it was an act perpetrated by the Iranian intelligence or not, has cultivated a condition of fear, that thus far, not even two day-curfews, have managed to alleviate. It is precisely the same culture of fear that has sustained the fundamentalist theocracy in power in Iran for more than a quarter of the century .

Then, there is the issue of national supremacy and right that the mullahs claim the Iranians are entitled to with regard to nuclear technology and research. This is misplaced. It is the Iranian national identity that the mullahs have hijacked and now try to exploit in their attempt in regional hegemony. If there is a sense of national unity, and there is, it is desire of the people of Iran to rid themselves of the fundamentalist theo-facisim they encounter daily.