faetal on 23/3/2012 at 23:06

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*Sigh* Islam doesn't encourage martyrdom, there are just some extremists who do. Like any religion, you can lift bits of it out and make it appear that it's a core tenet if that's what you want to portray. Christianity can be manipulated quite nicely if you e.g. want to kill an abortion doctor or similar. Christ, Reagan believed that in order to trigger the rapture, a large scale conflict in the middle east would need to take place.



It's easy to form a one-dimensional image of Iranians as being orally-frothing zealots shouting infidel at pictures of Brad Pitt while plotting the overthrow of the world, but it's not quite like that. The Western media has some odd preoccupation with Ahmedinejad, despite the fact that he has very little power over the ayatollahs, who also don't hold him in such high regard, largely due to his theatrical posturing and inflammatory polemics. There are elements of course who hold the view that X lifestyle/religion is the template for how the world should be and that it is perfectly acceptable for any manner of destruction to be undertaken to get there (and I'm not just talking about the US here, badumtish), but there is no indication that this is part of Iran's foreign or domestic policy, just lots of speculation in the allied nations' media. There are plenty of right wing religious ideologues in the US who have proclaimed that the middle east should essentially be levelled into a giant glass crater and that there should be no separation of church and state blah blah, but I don't think that the US is suddenly going to pop a nuke in Terrorstan's ass any time soon either.



Besides, this misses my point. *I* fear a nuclear Iran FFS. I just think that they haven't been left with a lot of choice what with the US interference in the region and the fact that Israel is sitting there all twitchy like with its fucking huge nuclear arsenal, with both the US and Israel "Not ruling out military intervention" (usually meaning thay have thought about going to war) against Iran.

I don't want to get bitten by a dog, hence I don't flop my genitals into a dobermann's mouth and start whipping its nads with a wet towel. If I were Iran, I'd probably think that I should probably get nukes as quick as fucking possible before someone pre-emptively invades me under spurious pretences. Seriously - what are their options?