Religious delusions and nuclear weapons

Iran's been on my mind (and therefore on this blog as well) a lot lately, and so it should. It should be on the mind of every person on this planet, even Shiite muslims living in Iran. Because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's current leader, follows the trend to call every muslim who dies - no matter the cause - a martyr. And that makes starting a nuclear war so much easier.

Daniel Pipes goes into some detail about this man. It becomes clear why he's so much more dangerous still than his predecessor, because he's so much more deluded still. Ahmadinejad believes in the return of the Mahdi, in fact hopes to facilitate it and speed it up:

As mayor of Tehran, for example, Mr. Ahmadinejad appears to have in 2004 secretly instructed the city council to build a grand avenue to prepare for the Mahdi. A year later, as president, he allocated $17 million for a blue-tiled mosque closely associated with mahdaviat in Jamkaran, south of the capital. He has instigated the building of a direct Tehran-Jamkaran railroad line. He had a list of his proposed cabinet members dropped into a well adjacent to the Jamkaran mosque, it is said, to benefit from its purported divine connection.

He often raises the topic, and not just to Muslims. When addressing the United Nations in September, Mr. Ahmadinejad flummoxed his audience of world political leaders by concluding his address with a prayer for the Mahdi's appearance: "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."

On returning to Iran from New York, Mr. Ahmadinejad recalled the effect of his U.N. speech:

one of our group told me that when I started to say "In the name of God the almighty and merciful," he saw a light around me, and I was placed inside this aura. I felt it myself. I felt the atmosphere suddenly change, and for those 27 or 28 minutes, the leaders of the world did not blink. … And they were rapt. It seemed as if a hand was holding them there and had opened their eyes to receive the message from the Islamic republic.

What Mr. Peterson calls the "presidential obsession" with mahdaviat [Return of the Mahi - Ed] leads Mr. Ahmadinejad to "a certitude that leaves little room for compromise. From redressing the gulf between rich and poor in Iran, to challenging America and Israel and enhancing Iran's power with nuclear programs, every issue is designed to lay the foundation for the Mahdi's return."

His personality alone should scare you. Imagine this madman (apply this term literally here) with control over nuclear weapons.

For him, this is his destiny.