ARTICLE: "Iran's Unlikely TV Hit: Show Sympathetic to Plight Of Jews During the Holocaust Draws Millions Each Week," by Farnaz Fassihi, Wall Street Journal, 7 September 2007, p. B1.

You have to understand Sunni domination of Shia for the vast majority of Islam's history to see why Persian Shia would identify with Jews being persecuted in Europe. From the outside of today's propaganda being issued by Tehran, it seems counter-intuitive, but that's a domestic regime legitimacy function, not something based in any past grievances.

Truth is, relations between Persians and Jews have historically been pretty good, and there is much identification between the two in terms of being persecuted minorities.

Khomeinism was the break with this, and Ahmadinejad certainly plays that card with great gusto to justify his attempts to revive the dead revolutionary spirit of the place. Khomeini aspired to be a pope for all Islam, so he played up the pan-Islamic angle by focusing all anger on Israel (near devil) and the US (far devil). Osama tries similar stuff today, although the Salafists can't help doing pleasure (killiing Shia) before business (killing Americans), and thus AQI overreached so badly in Iraq (let's be honest, AQI f--ks it up everywhere they've ever gone, but we buy their propaganda just like with lap up Ahmadinejad's, and if we weren't such pussies about nukes we'd be a heckavu lot more likely to look past that transparent manipulation).

The learning curve is steep my friends, especially on the Shia and Iran. The best thing about all this war talk with Iran is that our media gins up stories like us as a result.