Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran in 1988 issued a fatwa ordering the execution of members and supporters of a leading opposition force, the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran, the PMOI. Thousands were executed without trials or sentences while in jail because of politically motivated charges.

About 3,500 refugees in Camp Ashraf, in Iraq close to an hours drive from both Baghdad and the Iranian border, are at serious risk. They are members and supporters of the main Iranian opposition, the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), formed in the 1960s in opposition to the shahs absolute monarchy and currently seeking to replace the Iranian regime with a secular and democratic government.

Watch those clichés. There is a reason, usually a pretty good one, that they exist. Two that jump to mind when thinking about the Middle East in the post Georgian-Russian conflict is "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and "politics makes strange bedfellows." You be the judge of just how applicable these sayings are in view of recent developments in the Caucasus.

Iranian missile tests sent shock waves across the Middle East this past week, with the clerical regimes spokesmen leaving no doubt the demonstration was aimed squarely at Israel. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameneis representative to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Ali Shirazi, threatened to "burn" Tel Aviv while IRGC Commander Mohammed Ali-Jafaris comments took aim directly at Israels nuclear facilities at Dimona.

Is the Islamic revolution, propelled by Lebanons Hezbollah and backed and financed by Irans mullahs picking up in Africa where the Soviet Union and the Cubans left off decades ago? Substitute the communists with militant Shiism and you have history repeating itself. Well, almost.