entombed in a gold-domed shrine clearly modeled on
those of Ali and Hussein.
Messianic fervor also helped fuel the Iran-Iraq War of
the 1980s, when Iranian troops at the front woke many
nights to see a shrouded ɹgure on a white horse blessing
them. Who else could it be, it was said, but the Mahdi
himself? In the event, the mysterious ɹgures turned out
to be professional actors sent to create exactly that
impression, but nobody could ever be sure if they
appeared as a sincere homage or in cynical
manipulation of popular faith.
Certainly there was nothing cynical about the way
Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad invoked the
Mahdi when he took oɽce in 2005. He was utterly
sincere, and this made what he said all the more
disturbing. Government policy would be guided by the
principle of hastening the Mahdi’s return, he said—an
idea quite familiar to fundamentalist Christians trying
to hasten the second coming of the Messiah, and to
fundamentalist Jews trying to hasten the ɹrst.
Ahmadinejad appeared to be tapping into a deep well of
sincerely felt faith, both his own and that of others. But
as he repeatedly used the symbolism of “hastening the
return” over the years, linking it to anti-American and
anti-Israel rhetoric, many in the West worried about the
apocalyptic implications, especially given Iran’s nuclear
ambitions.