Odd Couple: Ahmadinejad and Cheney

This week the President of Iran was strutting around his nation’s main uranium enrichment facility, claiming installation of 6,000 new centrifuges in addition to the existing 3,000 there–an ill-advised nose-thumbing gesture in the direction of the US and Israel.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a chronic sufferer from the need for attention on the world stage, who has been in remission since his visit to the UN last fall. With this latest turn for the TV cameras, he is showing symptoms of an acute and, for his regime, possibly life-threatening new outbreak.

Dick Cheney immediately made the diagnosis on right-wing talk radio. The Iranian President, he told Sean Hannity, is “a very dangerous man” who “has repeatedly stated that he wants to destroy Israel” and believes that “the highest honor that can befall a man is that he should die a martyr in facilitating the return of the 12th Imam. It’s a radical, radical point of view.”

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