1. In Black Mass, his latest book, a professor of European thought at the London School of Economics, John Gray, correctly describes radical Islam of the al–Qaeda mold as Islamo–Jacobinism: "Their closest affinity is with the illiberal theory of popular sovereignty expounded by [Jean–Jacques] Rousseau and applied by [Maximilien] Robespierre in the French Terror." Bin Laden may be now expounding in full a modern revolutionary ideology, but he is still the leader, as Gray would define it, of "a millenarian movement with Islamic roots". The whole question around the face–off of the year is not how Petraeus will "save" the US$3–billion–a–week Bush war on Iraq.

2. But in terms of the geopolitics of the region in which Iran is located, viewed from the US perspective, "all this owes more to the examples of [Maximilien] Robespierre and [Josef] Stalin than to those of [Prophet] Mohammed and Ali" (to borrow the words of Bernard Lewis). No doubt, what annoys the US is that instead of sticking to mainstream Islam and reposing trust in faith, hope and pious devotion (as the pro–Western Arab regimes do), Ahmadinejad has imparted to it a messianic strain, making it a vehicle for a sort of Heideggerian commitment, resolve and willpower on behalf of oppressed people.