What's Up in Iran?

From this morning's Washington Times: "Tehran Elite Turning on Extremist Presidency"

I certainly would like to hope so, but there are some serious red flags about this story.

"A relatively small group of extremists 'at the top of the government around the president' are seeking to benefit from a crisis with the West, because 'that way they will be able once again to blame the West for all of their problems,' said Mousa Ghaninejad, the editor of Iran's best-selling economics daily newspaper, Dunya Al-Eqtisad."

See, that's all good news while you're reading the quote itself, especially in light of the preceding paragraph, because it makes it look like Ahmadinejad might face internal upheaval before the U.S. has to take drastic -- and almost certainly catastrophic -- measures.

But then you get to the source. This guy is writing this kind of stuff in a widely-circulated newspaper, in Iran itself? Granted, I'm not a daily reader of Dunya al-Iqtisad (Arabic for "The World of Economics"), but something tells me nothing gets printed in a popular Iranian newspaper unless it gets official approval first.

I kind of wonder if this isn't a Rabban tactic (this analogy's for you, Enas). In Frank Herbert's Dune, Baron Harkonnen wanted to instal his nephew Feyd-Rautha as head of Arakis, the desert planet. He devised a plan whereby he actually put his other, fatter nephew Rabban in charge, with express instructions to make a complete tyrant of himself. That way, the Baron reasoned, he could let things get really bad, then remove Rabban, and install the comparatively benevolent Feyd, who would then command the loyalty of the people simply by being a lot better than Rabban.

Then the Baron got eaten by a giant sandworm. So, you see how well that worked out for him.

Now Drudge has a headline up (it's supposed to be a link to the New York Times, but the link doesn't work yet) that says "IRAN PRESIDENT'S INNER CIRCLE SPLITS OVER NUKES... DEVELOPING..."

Again, I hope so. Then again, I also hope the mullahs all get eaten by giant sandworms, so I guess that's not much.