Sweet Dreams

You don't have to read Taheri today. You can just keep the ostrich position if you like:

"Tehran believes that a victory for Hezbollah in Lebanon will strengthen President Ahmadinejad’s bid for the leadership of radical Islam. A number of recent events have made his attempt to wrest control more likely. This week several leading Sunni theologians at the Al-Azhar seminary in Cairo issued fatwas that allow Sunnis to fight alongside and under the command of Shia Muslims. The fatwas came in response to a Saudi fatwa that had declared any association with and support for Hezbollah to be haram (forbidden). [ Whoops. We were a little too optimistic about the Sunnis there, eh? -ed. ]

More significant was a message from Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s number two. The Salafist radical tried to get hold of Hezbollah’s tailcoats in the hope of winning a share of the expected spoils of victory. He endorsed the idea of a global campaign against the “infidel”, thus abandoning his previous strategy of focusing the jihad on countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. More significantly, he dropped the al-Qaeda claim of fighting a defensive war against the infidel by designating a vast area of jihad from Spain to India. [ Whaaaat??!! You mean the change of government in Spain wasn't good enough? The land for peace drivel isn't quite all it's cracked up to be? It worked so well with Hitler after all. It's: We give them all of our land and then there can be peace. Back to the future Andalusia indeed. -ed. ]

All that is good news for President Ahmadinejad, who claims that Sunni radicalism has reached the limits of its capabilities in the fight against the global system led by the US and that it is now the turn of the Shia, led by Iran, to be in the driving seat. [ And of course, the Pakis would never have shared actual nukes with them. Just nuke technology we are lead to believe by our vaunted CIA New York Times. And everyone's agreed that the Iranian's are too stupid to build a bomb themselves. Why, there's just light-years of difference between the Pakis and them, non? -ed. ]

“Hezbollah has fought Israel longer than all the major Arab armies combined ever did,” President Ahmadinejad told a crowd in Tehran this week. He also promised that Muslims would soon hear “very good news” about the jihad against the United States. [ I would suspect that August 22nd falls within a reasonable definition of "soon". -ed. ] "

You really need to get busy and watch Obsession, don't you? Go ahead. I'll wait.

Oh -- I almost forgot: Sweet dreams...