It is often said that Ahmadinejad is more dangerous because he is a millenarian, i.e. he believes in the near advent of the messianic Twelfth Imam, the promised one of the Shiites. But in fact, most millenarians are fatalists, and are willing to wait passively for God's will to intervene in history. So, his belief in the near advent of the last days may actually make him less dangerous than a practical, hardnosed secularist might be. Besides, he cannot be dangerous if he is not a commander of the armed forces, which the president in Iran is not.Putting aside the notion that someone who might one day supply nuclear material to terrorists can't be dangerous because he is not a "commander of the armed forces," I'll grant Cole that many millenarians are indeed passive fatalists. However, Ahmadinejad’s history of incendiary rhetoric immediately excludes him from their number. Even on his best behavior (and meds?), the guy is more Shoko Asahara than Joachim of Fiore.
I think Charles Krauthammer, not Cole, understands Ahmadinejad's incentives:
So a Holocaust-denying, virulently anti-Semitic, aspiring genocidist, on the verge of acquiring weapons of the apocalypse, believes that the end is not only near but nearer than the next American presidential election. (Pity the Democrats. They cannot catch a break.) This kind of man would have, to put it gently, less inhibition about starting Armageddon than a normal person. Indeed, with millennial bliss pending, he would have positive incentive to, as they say in Jewish eschatology, hasten the end.
