First, we learned to say and spell the puppets name: Armadinejad. Not exactly Smith. Then we watched him perform upon a crafty mullahs knee. We have been patient, like any fair-minded audience, but the more we listen, the more we realize that the puppet has a script that just doesnt make sense.

He raises one hand and, without the mullah appearing to move his own lips, practiced ventriloquist that he is, little Armadinejad threatens to wipe Israel off the map and blusters against anyone in the audience we disagrees with his absurdly unachievable goal. No sooner does he do that than he raises his other hand and announces that he has the right to nuclear technology but only for peaceful purposes.

The audience is finally beginning to lose patience with the nonsensical but dangerous show. Some members of the audience have become so alarmed that theyre stamping their feet and demanding a new script. A few have even said if they dont get one they may decide to knock down the little puppets playhouse.

Poor little Armadinejad. We certainly wouldnt want such a tragic thing to happen to him and just because he hasnt been given a good script.

In fact, all he can say back to the threatening audience are dares based on fragmented variations of his nations name, as in I ran? You ran? Who ran?

So we must turn to the troupe of turbaned puppeteers who have provided the script. We assume that theyre allowing his illogical performance to continue because they think the survival of their anachronistic theocracy depends on demonizing the West and thereby distancing their own people from the truly beneficently revolutionary ideas that would upend their rule, generally, enlightenment, freedom, democracy, and a hot nightlife, where men and women actually go out together. And little Armadinejad is, with consistently provocative bravado, doing an extraordinary job for them.

We can understand their urgency. Theyre living in a world that has, especially in the West, managed largely to emerge from the overhang of The Dark Ages. Yet the dominion they have imposed over their people depends on the tenuous preservation of a medieval mindset. Meanwhile, their darksome enclave is being continually and very annoyingly impinged upon by unwelcome flashes of modernity, such as the sometimes substantial content of the Internet, the frivolous baubles of the Hollywood road show, and the general conduct of free nations.

We assume that the puppeteers are, in fact, so pleased by the puppets performance that they have decided the hes doing just fine with an illogical script.

Are they concerned about the most explosive consequences? To a degree, of course. But we also suspect that their excessively life-negating belief that theyll all be in Paradise if they do manage to self-ignite the nation is exerting its risky subliminal influence.

Since distance makes the mullahs feel more secure, what, we must ask, is the likelihood that they will provide a new script for the little guy and perhaps cancel his appearances until they do? Knowing the depth of their anxiety, we cannot be overly expectant.

So we turn to the people who finally put up and have agreed to maintain the show, the Iranian people. Since they have been under the dominion of darkness for decades, and are now inspirited to feel that their pride is confounded with the puppets blustery bravado, what hope is there that they will demand a new script or close the show?

Are we just telling ourselves a fairytale by hoping that someone in the terrifyingly mismanaged nation will take over the show before the provocative puppet provokes the audience so much they do bring the house down?

If the past is prologue, of course, we are. And what a sad outcome for ourselves, for Iranians in general, and even for the ill-fated puppet and his intensely paranoid puppeteers.