67
revo
lution was over, those same "freedom fighters" tossed aside the
idea that other countries also deserved to be free from foreign control.
At Iran's Congress of Muslim Critics of the Constitution, shortly after
the Revolution, one faction argued that "Islam knows no borders," and
passionately insisted on the eventual creation of a unified state of all
Moslem nations.  Who would hold the reins of this massive new
superstate, directing it with a leaden grip?  The Iranians, of course.
Another august debater ridiculed the idea of self-determination
for other countries.  This speaker attacked the proposition that Iran
"would neither permit itself to be dominated nor seek to dominate
others."  Islamic governments, he declared, had a duty to spread Islam.
"Islamic culture and knowledge," he added, "are by nature
domineering."199  As a result, the preamble of the Iranian constitution
established under the Ayatollah refers to the "ideological mission of the
army and the revolutionary guard to extend the sovereignty of Allah's
law throughout the world."
In other words, the day of peace would come only when we
heathens have fallen to our knees and embraced the true faith,
allowing ourselves to be tucked into the nether regions of a global
Islamic order.  This is a classic case of a meme driving a superorganism
to expand.
The Iranians took their responsibility to conquer the world
seriously.  They called for the overthrow of Iraq's Saddam Hussein,
and dreamed of turning Iraq into an Iranian satellite.  When 100,000
had been killed in the Iraq-Iran War and two million had been turned
to refugees, the Iranians refused to discuss peace.  They were
determined to fight until Hussein gave way to a "revolutionary" leader
under the Ayatollah's thumb.200  By the time the Iran-Iraq War finally
entered a ceasefire in August of 1988, the conflict had killed a
million.201
The Iranians stirred up revolutionary movements in the nations
of the Persian Gulf.  They became a major force in Lebanon, where they
exerted considerable influence over the country's violence-prone Shiite
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