As if Bush & Co. didn't have enough headaches, President Ahmadinejad of Iran threatens to bring on a real migraine. In yesterday's New York Post, Amir Taheri reports on a scheme to disrupt this year's Hajj, or pilgrimage to the holy sites of Mecca. So far, this latest Mahmoud caper has attracted little attention. A print file, more compact and easier to read than the web page, can be found . The continuation below has five brief paragraphs as a teaser, but the column deserves to be read as a whole.
Briefly, the article deals with a plan to overwhelm the pilgrimage crowd with Iranians, including military and intelligence people, as well as a rent-a-mob of Persian thugs, and some thousands of Hezbollah fanatics. The plan has ominous echoes of 1987 when Iranian miltants, whipped into a frenzy by Khomeini's rhetoric, rioted around the Kaaba. Hundreds of deaths ensued.
There is every indication that Mahmoud is serious. Mr. Taheri writes--
On Friday, a leading cleric with close ties with Ahmadinejad fired what sounded like the first shots in the coming clash with Saudi Arabia over the Hajj. Addressing the Friday prayer congregation in Tehran, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami warned the Saudi authorities against any attempt at preventing the Iranian pilgrims from "venting their anger at the Crusaders and the Zionists."
An upcoming violent and exceedingly provocative outbreak of internecine enmity among Muslims should be greeted with grins of Schadenfreude by red-blooded Americans, right? Maybe yes, maybe not. It all depends on whether crazy Mahmoud succeeds in his aim of becoming the acknowledged world leader of Islamofascism. He has already spoken openly of the "clash of civilizations," an inadmissible thought that sends shivers up the spine of every prominent Westerner-- whether leader, pundit, or just plain poobah. Anything that furthers that aim has got to be bad news.
Continued...
Here is the lead-in to Amir Taheri's column. [The usual RTWT is implicit.]--
IMPERIALIST IRAN
By AMIR TAHERI
December 17, 2006 -- MILLIONS of Muslim pilgrims from all over the world begin trekking to Mecca for the annual Hajj ceremony next month - and officials in Saudi Arabia, where the "holy" city is located, are on tenterhooks. They fear that Iran's ultra-radical President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will turn the Hajj into a political demonstration in support of his agenda for a "clash of civilizations" between Islam and what he calls "The Zionist-Crusader camp" led by the United States.
"We know that a lot of agitation is going on," a senior Saudi official claims. "Iranians have been recruiting radicals to send to Mecca from all over the world, including the United States."
The Islamic Republic itself is expected to send 200,000 pilgrims, representing almost 10 percent of the total. Saudi officials claim that some 5 percent of the Iranian pilgrims have always been identified as members of the Islamic Revolutionary Corps and the Islamic Republic's various intelligence services. This year, however, the profiles of Iranian applicants for pilgrimage visas indicate that more than 20 percent may belong to the military or security services.
To these must be added professional street-fighters from the various branches of the pan-Islamic Hezbollah movement, which Iran created in the 1980s as a way to "export" Khomeinism to other Muslim countries. The movement's best-known branch, the Lebanese Hezbollah, has announced it will sending over 3,000 pilgrims this year - all paid for by Iran.
With so many men with military and security backgrounds in Mecca, the mullahs leading the Iranian pilgrims would be in a position to seize control of the space around the black stone of the Ka'aba (The Cube) and use it as a venue for political demonstrations
Contributed by John Werntz on December 18, 2006 at 01:26 AM in , , |