It’s nice of Rick Santorum to provide us with his own idiosyncratic understanding of Twelver Shi’a Islam. Even if he’s right that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s beliefs are a little bit on the loony side (he personally conversed with the Mahdi, e.g.) it’s still the case that he doesn’t control the armed services, the intelligence agencies, or the nuclear energy/weapons program in Iran. Santorum wants the U.S. to help the Iranian reformers overthrow the government in Iran, but he has no idea how that can be done, and makes no mention of how much Iran’s political identity is defined by the 1953 coup where the CIA caused an overthrow of their government. It should be obvious that any hint that the reformers are being aided by the CIA or the American president would be detrimental to their credibility.
I think we have better writers in Philadelphia who know just a bit more about Shi’a Islam and Iran’s history than Rick Santorum. Me, for example.
