I have been talking to Seyed Ali Pourtabatabaei, a journalist from Qom who says he originally wrote the hypothetical piece in April on what would happen if Iran conducted its first nuclear test, which caused quite a stir after it was republished by Gerdab, a website run by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The piece did indeed appear first on his website Kheyzaranonline, (English version here) which is dedicated mostly to Mahdism, messianic Shia Islam which has a growing following in Iran and counts President Ahmadinejad among its adherents. Pourtabatabaei speaks pretty good English (which I have tidied only slightly below) and was amiable and chatty throughout a thirty minute Skype conversation. This is what he had to say:
