LEDEEN GETS IT...

Or at least he did in 2005. You might recall that one of thw wingnut nightmares is that Iran will essentially take over Iraq because both countries have a majority Shia population. The one problem with this is a major difference between the Shia in the two countries. As Ledeen noted on 2/5/2005,

It's hard to imagine the MSM getting stupider, but there they go again...a raft of articles today on the "pro-Iranian Shi'ite list" in the Iraqi elections. It's totally wrong. The Iranians dread the Iraqi Shiites, because the Iraqis, from Sistani to Chalabi to Hakim and on down, all oppose the Iranian heresy of the "Supreme Leader," a cleric at the top of the state. The traditional Shiite view is that such an event can only take place when the "12th Imam" returns from his disappearance--more than a millennium ago--to claim rightful leadership of the entire Muslim world. Until then, people in turbans should stay in the mosques, and the state should be governed by non-clerics. Sistani, Chalabi, and Hakim all said they were opposed to clerics in the government.