Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an evil man. But he is not a stupid man. Indeed, he is smart and fastidious. He understands power and how to get it. And he understands that the purpose of a nation’s foreign policy is to sell ideas and messages and to build coalitions that enable a state to achieve its national aims. Due to his understanding and his abilities, Ahmadinejad has achieved significant success in advancing his policy aims of defeating the United States, destroying the State of Israel, and acquiring nuclear weapons.

The source of his frenetic motivation for destruction is his deep-seated and fanatical desire to hearken the arrival of the Shi’ite messiah - the twelfth imam or the Mahdi. Ahmadinejad promises that the arrival of the Mahdi will signal the enduring defeat of liberal democracy and the notion of human freedom and the eradication of Christianity and Judaism. All will be replaced by the “pure” Islam of the Mahdi, of Ahmadinejad and of the late Ayatollah Khomeini.

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