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    The recent attack on the al-Askari mosque, holy to Shiite Muslims around the world, begs for an analysis beyond the simple answer that Sunni Muslims committed this act to foment civil war between Sunnis and Shiites and destabilize Iraq as it tries to for its new government. While such an analysis seems like looking for conspiracies, enough evidence abounds that such a conspiracy may be found.
    Consider that, aside from instability in Iraq, one of the greatest threats to the security of the Middle East and the Muslim world is Iran. One of the major tenants of Iran’s brand of Shiite Islam is that the world will not be complete until all people believe in Iran’s Shiite Islam. Iran, however, does not have the military, economic, or political power to bring about this reality, so it seeks other methods to bring about this end. As a result, Iran must seek alternative means to achieve its goal.
    Not only is Iran currently seeking to build nuclear weapons, but it has also been involved since its Islamic revolution in continuously supporting and funding the operations of Muslim terrorist organizations, both Sunni and Shiite, around the world. Iran supports and funds these organizations because they create instability, and instability gives Iran a disproportionate influence compared to its actual power.
    Now, consider that, since the Iraq liberation, Iran has been actively involved in destabilizing Iraq, both by direct involvement- such as supporting the activities of the radical Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr– and indirectly by providing funding and support for groups that also create that instability.
    One of the places Iran’s money now goes is Syria, yet one must ask the question why Iran, who seeks to create the worldwide dominance of Iranian Shiite Islam, would provide aid to a country that is clearly Sunni. Iran has very clearly announced that it is in alliance with Syria and that they two nations function to similar purpose. This reality seems out of sync with Iran’s greater purpose.
    In fact, this alliance directly serves Iran’s greater purpose. By providing support to Syria, Iran provides support to the Sunni insurgency and Sunni foreign terrorists within Iraq. In fact, the line can be drawn that Iran is funding Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian Sunni terrorist who is actively pursuing civil war between Sunnis and Shiites, through its alliance with Syria while it simultaneously supports al-Sadr’s Shiite militia.
    Why would Iran fund such cross purposes? Because those purposes create instability, and that instability gives Iran disproportionate influence compared to its actual power. Iran’s goal is to use that influence to provoke a conflict with the West in which it believes it will defeat the West and thereby promote the expansion of Iranian Shiite Islam.
    The truth is that the attack on the al-Askari mosque brings the potential of sectarian civil war in Iraq far closer to reality. If there were such a civil war, the Shiites would immediately begin to lose, largely because they lack the funding, training, and equipment available to their numerically smaller Sunni opponents. This realty would leave the Iraqi Shiites with little hope but to ask Iran for help in that fight, and Iran entering the fight would then put that nation in direct conflict with the US.
    Now, if the US and the West chose to confront Iran, Iran would be finished, but such a confrontation takes a political will to face the consequences that confrontation would provoke in the wider Muslim world. As previously suggested in this weblog and elsewhere, an attack on the radical Muslim theocracy of Iran would be seen by many Muslims as an attack on Islam itself, regardless that very few Muslims outside Iran believe Iran’s form of Islam.
    Hence is illustrated the disproportionate influence that Iran gains from creating instability in the world, especially in Iraq, even if that means, perhaps only indirectly, attacking and destroying a mosque holy to its own brand of Islam, and Iran will use that influence, without a doubt, to further its radical Islamic agenda.
    The West and the world would do well to open its eyes to the threat that an increasingly aggressive Iran poses to the region and the world. As long as Iran is allowed to continue to act with impunity, this threat will continue to grow. If allowed to grow long enough, this threat will become action, and by then, there will be no choice but war.
DLH
