Is Iran going to be playing chicken with the US?

Amir Taheri looks at some recent statements from some of Iran's new revolutionaries.

Having secured most key positions in the past few months, the new generation of Iran's Islamic revolutionaries is now invited to prepare for playing "chicken" with the United States.

"The Satanic powers want to play chicken with us," says Gen. Muhammad Hijazi, the man in charge of the Islamic army's office of war preparation. "We must show that we are eagles."

The idea that the Islamic Republic faces a game of "chicken" against the West was publicized last month by Ali Larijani, the new "security czar" in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's administration. But the man who first came up with the analysis is Hassan Abbasi who has emerged as Ahmadinejad's chief strategic guru.

Abbasi heads the Center for Security Doctrines Research of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (RGC). His friends call him "The Kissinger of Islam", after Henry Kissinger who served as US secretary of state in the 1970s.

"To Iran's new ruling elite, Abbasi is the big strategic brain," says a European diplomat in Tehran. "More and more officials quote him in meetings with foreign diplomats."

According to Tehran sources, Abbasi is the architect of the so-called "war preparation plan" currently under way in Iran.

Last month Abbasi presented an outline of his analysis in a lecture at the Teachers Training Faculty in Karaj, west of Tehran.

The lecture merits attention because it offers an insight into the way the new leadership in Tehran approaches issues of international politics.

According to Abbasi, the global balance of power is in a state of flux and every nation should fight for a place in a future equilibrium. The Western powers, especially the United States, still wield immense military and economic power that "looks formidable on paper." But they are unable to use that power because their populations have become "risk-averse."

"The Western man today has no stomach for a fight," Abbasi says. "This phenomenon is not new: All empires produce this type of man, the self-centered, materialist, and risk-averse man."