Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei today claimed in a meeting with Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir in Tehran that Iran is ready and willing to share its nuclear technology. Via the NY Times:

“Iran’s nuclear capability is one example of various scientific capabilities in the country. The Islamic Republic of Iran is prepared to transfer the experience, knowledge and technology of its scientists,” said the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, IRNA news agency reported.

Mr. Khamenei’s comments to the leader of Sudan, one of the most unstable countries in Africa, came a few days ahead of the Friday deadline by the United Nations Security Council for Iran to suspend its sensitive uranium enrichment activities.

If the West wasn’t in all out crisis mode over Iran’s nuclear development before, it should be now. If Iran openly exports its technology, especially to a place like Sudan, it would make it much easier for terrorist elements to attain nuclear material. It’s not so much that Bashir would actively hand nuclear secrets over to al-Qaeda or one of its subsidiaries, but I wouldn’t trust anything nuclear in an extremely volatile country where ultra-Islamist Hasan al-Turabi and his supporters walk around openly. The last thing the world needs is a North African country actively enriching its own uranium as terrorist organizations increasingly shift their central operations from the Mesopotamian hot zone to the relative backwater of Africa.

What I find rather difficult to figure out is why Khamenei is openly announcing this by way of the Islamic Republic’s state-run media. Is it a bluff designed to reiterate Tehran’s independence from the West, or something else? If anything, it’s reckless. Saudi Arabia has to be looking at its supposedly dormant nuclear program currently and moving toward a hard decision. After all, with Iranian influence spreading deep into southern Iraq, how long can the Saudis remain oblivious to Iran’s nuclear posturing? An unstable regime in the very center of the world’s most unstable region locked in a nuclear showdown is the true nightmare scenario.

I have to disagree with Asia Times writer Syed Saleem Shahzad’s conclusion that Iran is a logical ally of al-Qaeda, prepped to serve as a central base for Islamic revolution throughout the Middle East and South Asia. Take the following passage, featuring commentary by a Pakistan-based Muslim scholar, with a rather hefty grain of salt:

[A]lthough the Afghan resistance is linked with the Iraqi resistance and they have started open battles against US-led forces in Afghanistan, the question of a unified command that would control resistance movements whether they be in Iraq, Palestine or Afghanistan is still unanswered.

This is where Iran could now fit in, by evolving from an inspirational anti-US model to taking a lead role in orchestrating resistance movements, in collaboration with al-Qaeda.

For radical Islamists, the situation is a major turnaround for their cause of pan-Islamicism and one that could even resolve 1,400 years of historical, ideological and political differences in the Muslim world.

"The Islamic Revolution of Iran [1979] was in fact a victory of all Islamic movements which were striving to establish one Islamic role model in the world so that it would be an inspirational force and would convince the masses that the Islamic system of life was still workable after 1,400 years," Muslim intellectual Shahnawaz Farooqui explained to Asia Times Online.

…

"The Iranian revolution was in fact a complete revolution under the leadership of imam [Ruhollah] Khomeini. It was above any sectarian bounds. After the revolution, Khomeini announced that the base of Shi’ite-Sunni differences was historical rather than theological.

…

"Unfortunately, imam Khomeini could not convince anybody - neither his internal circles of clerics nor Al-Howza [the supreme Shi’ite religious council in Iraq] as no one among the Shi’ites was ready to give up their historical position on the question of the caliphate.

"However, the situation turned bad after the demise of Khomeini and it was felt that during the period of [ex-president Hashemi] Rafsanjani and [former president Mohammed] Khatami the Iranian revolution was somewhere lost.

"However, the victory of President Ahmadinejad has once again revived the very spirit of the Iranian revolution, and once again all Islamic movements, whether it is the Muslim Brotherhood, Jamaat-i-Islami, Hamas, Islamic Jihad or any other, are joining hands with Tehran," said Shahnawaz.

"To me, President Ahmadinejad has redeemed the Iranian Islamic revolution with all its ideological legacies," Shahnawaz added.

Note the phrase I bolded: historical rather than theological. I am certain Shanawaz is easily more versed than I on Islamic issues, but the divisions between the two sects are historical and theological; the two cannot be logically separated. The history of Islam in and of itself is theological — the disagreement over who would lead the caliphate following the Prophet’s death was obviously a question of religion. Besides, there are also political concerns. Shanawaz (and Shahzad by association) seem to be foregetting that Iran actively attempted to topple the Taliban-led regime in Afghanistan due to its ideology, religious and political, and for the instability it fomented on Iran’s border by simply existing. Certainly Iran was not serving as the happy-rainbows-and-sunshine pan-Islamic regime then.

If anything, the expansion of al-Qaeda-linked control in the mountainous regions of the Pakistan/Afghanistan frontier is not being greeted warmly by those in Tehran, and is, in fact, creating concern for the same reasons Taliban-led Afghanistan did. The US and NATO presence in Afghanistan is, in actuality, acting as a buffer that protects Iran’s interests nearly as much as it protects the West’s.

Iran’s preference for the wilayat-al-fiqh system of government (or, rule by Islamic jurists), clashes with Sunni ideas of rule by the umma, or the Muslim community. That combined with the historical/theological disagreements held between the sects over a millennium maintains an environment where little revolutionary cooperation between Iran and extremist Sunnis can exist. Certainly Iran will work with extremist Sunni elements to push its agenda (as it has in the past), but to suggest it would actively support the rising of Taliban-esque governments in southern Asia and throughout the Middle East borders on ludicrous. The rise of radicalized Sunni regimes in the region would not only undermine Iran’s desire to push its own style of revolution, but incite its ethnic minorities, includig Arab Muslims living primarily in its border regions, toward their own sort of localized revolutions. In short, such cooperation could very well create instability within Iran itself.

Also, the article suggests Iran needs al-Qaeda to seriously undermine Western efforts in the case of a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Unfortunately, Tehran’s own terrorist networks — including Hizbollah, but more importantly the IRGC, Quds Force, and Basij militia (basically an army of potential suicidal "martyrs") — are more than adequate to cause chaos throughout the region and the world. Why would Tehran want to be beholden to outside groups for its security and quick strike capability, regardless of who it is?