Thank you, Mr. Sweet.
With the indulgence of the committee, I have a follow-up question.
Professor Gordon, you opened up an interesting line of thought, and I had actually been making some notes on this beforehand. The thought of anti-Zionist, anti-Israel sentiment as a binding agent in an otherwise fractious community is a thought you're making vis-à-vis international relations within the Muslim world. The thought occurred to me that there might be a domestic component to this, and so I'm posing this as a question, given that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Perhaps in the right kind of environment, anti-Israel sentiment might be the last refuge of certain scoundrels. Is this in a sense a version of the Argentinian generals invading the Malvinas as a way of turning to something else when they've lost all domestic credibility?
It appears to us from our hearings that there is a rising sentiment--and not just among Azeris and Bahá'ís and other groups that are historically not treated well or persecuted, but among Persians themselves--of intense frustration as the population becomes more sophisticated and more knowledgeable of their current regime. Is it possible that this is not merely driven by an internal ideology but also is meant to distract attention and focus national attention away from the problems of the regime itself?