An Iranian website is soliciting militants for war, Al Arabiya has reported. The site, which is registered under the regime-licenced “ir” domain, urges recruits to carry out immediate suicide attacks on members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a multilateral military alliance led by Saudi Arabia and currently deployed to the US-allied state of Bahrain.
The website, which features numerous verses from the Quran calling for Jihad, or holy war, as well as photos and video of alleged GCC troops in combat, was approaching 2000 volunteers Thursday. The page claims those who sign–up will be notified by email of their assignments, which will include “martyrdom” attacks on foreign troops.
But the site also makes a number of ominous references to a "redeemer" whose hand, it declares, is responsible for the unprecedented revolts sweeping the Islamic world.
Those familiar with the rhetoric of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will no doubt recognize this claim as a reference to the "Mahdi", a Shiite messianic figure also known as the Hidden Imam. Though a long-standing feature of Islamic eschatology, paying lip service to the Madhi’s return has become a noted tactic in the Iranian regime's attempt to influence the ideological geography of an increasingly unhinged Muslim world.
Ahmadinejad's own personal obsession with the Mahdi prophesy was revealed to the international community during his 2005 speech to the United Nations, when he ended his address with an apocalyptic prayer calling on God to hasten the Islamic messiah's return to earth.
Since the 1979 Islamization of the Iranian government, backers of the Mahdi doctrine have successfully anchored its teachings in the regime's political philosophy. Though the country's population remains largely moderate and educated, officials in Tehran continue to proliferate messianic interpretations of world events. And while timing of the Mahdi's return remains predictably uncertain, the conditions in the Middle East at present are clearly emboldening Ahmedinejad's increasingly doomsday antics.
Trevor Westra is a Canadian analyst and blogger whose writings on international affairs are featured at FamilySecurityMatters.org, syndicated security news-blog WorldThreats.com, and online magazine Global Politician. He writes frequently on role of religion in global conflict at his website, and is a contributing analyst with </i>Wikistrat. A graduate of Canada’s Laurentian University, he specializes in the religious historiography of the Middle East and South Asia.
