At the far edge of the Shi’ite timeframe is the Hidden Imam who will destroy the kingdom of evil and establish a reign of justice on earth.
Immanuel Sivan, Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics
The level of pro-Iranian indoctrination I have noted in the legacy media is truly mind-boggling. There are a few things such people should know, if they had the honesty and wherewithal to give themselves the trouble. The Shi’ite branch of Islam, which has flourished as the official religion of the Islamic Republic of Iran under the various ayatollahs for the last half century, believes in the return of the so-called Twelfth Imam or Mahdi (messiah), who is descended from Mohammed’s son-in-law, Ali ibn Abni Talib. Talib was the fourth caliph, assassinated in 661 in a succession war, after which the split between Sunnis and Shi’ites, the two major branches of Islam, eventually became permanent.
According to the traditions of Twelver Shi’ism, the twelfth of these Imams disappeared under mysterious and disputed circumstances in the year 874 – but remained alive. Though communicating with the world through various agents, he entered the state of “occultation” in 941, promising to return when the time would be propitious.
The reigning authority on Twelver Shi’ism is the historian Emmanuel Sivan, who in his magisterial volume on the subject, Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics, warned that an integral part of Shi’a Islam’s belief and thought involves the initiating of a planetary conflagration. This belief system posits that Allah’s kingdom will be established on earth by the Twelfth or Hidden Imam, whose advent can be hastened by creating the right set of circumstances: friction and misunderstanding among the nations and violent upheavals in a welter of blood and fire. The nuclear option appears to be the Islamic Republic of Iran’s favored methodology to bring this about.
Incredulous Westerners who would pass this off as merely a quaint belief to be taken with a grain of salt, or indeed with a whole salt shaker, should reconsider. Sivan spends many pages describing and analyzing the Shi’ite vision of an “ideal, legitimate state to be instituted by its leader, the Hidden Imam.” Over the course of history, he writes, a “minority of Shi’ites, quite substantial and dangerous at times, would move from pessimistic idealism to an optimistic brand of the same approach—the imam’s arrival is imminent, Allah’s kingdom is bound to be brought upon earth by this messiah, and one should help precipitate its descent by armed revolt.”
The Mahdi’s arrival has, indeed, been eagerly anticipated. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran from 2005 to 2013, reportedly considered widening a street in Tehran to celebrate his return. It was a “paving the way” narrative of symbolic purport, though he did widen Pasadan Street in northern Tehran. But Ahmadinejad’s conviction was profound. Westerners who do not understand this are part of a naïve and uninformed multitude who have failed to meet the challenge of both a comparatively free society—their own—and a despotic and violent society like Twelver Iran. Their myopia is as stunning as their self-righteousness.
Other excellent sources are worth consulting. These include Lesley Hazelton’s After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split, which is dispositive. In Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azir Nafisi challenges the “cultural relativism,” condescension,” and “gender apartheid” of Leftist ideology and Western Woke dementia. For a general overview of Islamic theology and politics, Joan Peters’ From Time Immemorial and the Reverend James Parkes’ books on the subject are pertinent. Novelist James Parker’s The 12th Imam is chock full of verifiable historical facts. Joel Rosenbeg’s Iranian Trilogy reads as if it had been written this morning.
It should be obvious that there is something terribly wrong with the vast population of pro-Islamic and Islamic regime sympathizers among the Left. Their political frivolity and bone-deep disingenuousness disqualify them as serious observers of the current situation in particular as it does of world affairs in general. As Sivan writes, “Such a lack of intellectual earnestness would help explain how many left-wingers could so easily compromise their secularist ideals for the sake of alliances with Muslim political formations.” We know they’re anti-Trump, but to be this while American troops and ordinary Iranian civilians are in danger, fighting the Iranian psychopaths who have slaughtered 40,000 of their own people in the streets, is shocking.
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Simply put, Twelvers must be viewed with extreme concern. The pathology of martyrdom is a “moral” compulsion and sought-after goal native to Islam. But Twelvers are the religious automatons who have brought the phenomenon to eschatological perfection. It is well-known that they willingly sent their young children walking through minefields, as they did during the war with Iraq. (One recalls Israeli prime minister Golda Meir’s remark that peace would not arrive until Muslims learned to love their kids more than they hate ours. Twelvers are a special case.) The IRGC is content to empty surplus oil into the Persian Gulf, causing a marine ecological catastrophe the likes of which has never been seen, threatening not only the region but possibly the planet.
These people are not rational actors. They are precisely those for whom the concept of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) does not govern their geopolitical thinking. They are fully willing to bring the planet to destruction should they believe circumstances require it. It is in their doctrine. This is why they are not prepared to genuinely give up their nuclear program and fissile materials and why Trump is determined to deprive them of their atomic ambitions. It is also why peace negotiations are a waste of time for the Americans and an effort to stall for time for the Iranians.
As of this writing, the kinetic war was just put on hold for yet another round of negotiations. Will this be Trump’s greatest failure in pursuing the Art of the Deal? Even should the Islamic regime ostensibly surrender its so-called “right” to military nuclear development, they nevertheless possess the requisite knowledge to restart the program, they have the will to do so, and all the practice they need to escape detection. They will have won. This is why Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg “argued the administration should stop negotiating altogether,” proceed to strangle the country economically, and seize Kharg Island. He “openly endorsed regime change in Tehran…‘You cannot deal with a theocratic government. These guys are thugs.’” He is correct.
The Revolutionary Guard cannot be left in place following the war’s end. They must be annihilated, a word Trump has brandished more than once. It is, quite frankly, a political obligation and a planetary necessity — for the world as a whole, including Iranian allies like Russia and Communist China. The war is currently misconceived as the U.S. and Israel against the IRGC. Not so. The war is effectively the International Community against the IRGC, though not referred to as such and certainly, for the most part, not understood as such. We understand that the International Community is cerebrally disadvantaged. But this is the nature of the conflict. If the IRGC is given a new lease on life, the world will come to regret it. The Twelfth Imam will see to it.
Editor’s Note: President Trump is leading America into the “Golden Age” as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
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