Iran's behavior has been no more bloody than our own in that respect, Tannywheeler. The US was supporting both sides of the Iran/Iraq war against each other, at the cost of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. And how many times have we heard people here in the US, including some of our own politicians, saying something along the lines of "let's nuke 'em and turn the whole damn country into a parking lot", whenever someobody does something we don't like?

The Ayatollahs may be self described "religious leaders", but they are also politicians. They need a country to lord it over. It's what politicians live for. And I would suggest that not even the most rabid of Islamic fundamentalists would believe they would become a "martyr for Islam" and go to paradise after their death if they turned some of Islam's most holy sites into parking lots.