de Borchgrave has been reporting on self-styled "mahdis" for at least a quarter century. His point is about the way that Ahmadinejad uses the Mahdi in a political context to advance Iran's nuclear weapons program. His two-sentence explanation was adequate for this article.
You may be right, and I might be a bit too harsh on him.
But this essay is not the first place I've seen this "Twelvers-want-to-begin-chaos-so-that-the-Mahdi-will-come" argument with regards to Ahmadinejad. Previously these past few weeks I've been concentrating on telling people that Ahmadinejad is not alone in expecting the Mahdi -- that many Sunni and Shi'ite imams have been preaching this for decades. Today I decided to focus on that particular reasoning, and Mr. de Borchgrave gets the brunt of my frustration.
I'm glad that finally, after over four years, the people in Washington are starting to understand that Muslim End Time beliefs are having an impact on the War on Terror. But they really need to get up to speed.