Nice to see you back
Crab! The thoughts above are, on the surface, entirely logical to you and I and most others here. However, it does rely on Iran having the same agnostic-based "world view" and "logic" which, of course, many Iranians will doubtless have. However..........
Assuming that the Iranian Government is not agnostic, and you throw in the "Hidden Imam", you now have sections within the Iranian Government who view their role in seeing him "revealed in the midst of a violent apocalyptic scenario played out on a battleground stained with infidels’ blood".
All of a sudden normal
PPRuNers logic breaks down.
Of course, many other Islamic states don't see it this way but it suggests a key faction in the Iranian Government actually see the apocalypse as being "a good thing". What constitutes the "battleground" is also unclear but "it will be what it needs to be" seems to be the general idea.
This short
Open University Blog (just 8 paragraphs) gives a brief if depressing summary of this and, I suspect, is possibly behind
gums' stance on all of this. There's quite a bit more out there on the matter but, factoring in the fact that we in the West just ain't supposed to talk about such matters as it's not "politically correct" to do so, we have simply not had this debate exposed to the general public.
So, just how much of a factor this "Mahdism" is in all of this is, well, rather like the question "How long is a piece of string?". Clearly, there is some string there, we just don't know how much of it there is. Something to cheerfully muse over while doing Sunday lunch on the BBQ! You can always rely on
H 'n' H to bring some cheer to the discussion!!!
