War with Iran or just the End of Time?

Perhaps Ahmadinejad is trying to bring the Shia Muslim’s End Times, or Day of Judgement, closer (which many other Iranian Muslims are also hoping for). Ahmadinejad believes that the Mahdi, known as the Hidden Imam, is due to make an appearance in order to help bring about the Kingdom of Allah on earth. Of course that day will be proceeded by ‘a long period of chaos and degeneracy’ in which ‘evil, falsehood and wickedness dominate the earth’. Perhaps it's here where Iran’s nuclear weapons can do their bit by destroying both the Evil Zionist Entity, Israel, and then finishing off all the rest of the earth’s ‘ignorant infidels’.
Before we have that apocalyptic end, Western governments, including the UK, have just stepped up sanctions over Iran’s nuclear programme. More precisely, Western governments have threatened to place an embargo on Iran’s vital oil exports. As you can guess, Iran, or Ahmadinejad, will not take this ‘act of aggression’ lightly. They have talked about blocking the Straits of Hormuz, through which millions of gallons of oil - not just Iranian oil - flow each day.

Our own William Hague more or less contradicted himself today over Irangate 2. He said that ‘we have never ruled anything out. We have not ruled out any option.’ But in the next breath he said that ‘we are clearly not calling for or advocating military action’. I suppose that’s what people call diplomacy. Or maybe it’s just obfuscation.

The United Nation’s Security Council will not, any time soon, agree to anything like that which was done to Libya; such as no-fly zones and yet more sanctions. The dictator-friendly UN came out against Libya, as it were, because they felt that the Libyan government had more or less had it. They knew it wouldn’t survive. Iran, on the other hand, is certainly not on the way out. Thus the UN is going to be very careful about it; though not as careful as it has been, in the past, towards various (Sunni) dictatorships.

Things have been said, but not done, about Syria lately, but the UN is still biding its time and is not as convinced of the end of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as it was about the end of Muammar Gaddafi. So we have words such as Ban Ki-moon’s ‘Stop killing your people’; but no real or concrete actions; as, again, with Libya some time back. And, of course, Iran has a lot of oil. That is, it exports a lot of oil, but nowhere near as much as our long-term friend, Saudi Arabia.