Are the mullahs "distracted by millenarian religious fantasies" or not?

Submitted by Dan Simon (United States), Sep 13, 2015 at 02:51

From your response to my comment:

You write: "I'm confident that the Iranian leadership is similarly too focused on their own ambitions to be distracted by millenarian religious fantasies." I did not write anything contrary to this.

From your post:

The Iranian leadership has an apocalyptic mindset and preoccupation with the end of days that does not apply to the North Koreans, Stalin, Mao, the Pakistanis or anyone else. Supreme Leader Ali Khamene'i et al. have reason to use these weapons for reasons outside of the normal military concerns – to bring on the end of the world.

So--do you believe that the Iranian leadership has a millenarian religious vision, or not? I, for one, am convinced that their belief--like the Marxist devotion of the Soviet leadership before them--is sincere only insofar as it justifies and supports their ambitions for ever-greater power, and in no sense leads them to seek the destruction of a world that they would very much rather subjugate and rule than vaporize. Do you disagree?

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