User blog comment:LoveWaffle/We Didn't See It Coming - Iron Man 3 and the Future of the MCU/@comment-5977347-20130513205536/@comment-1895174-20130515090211

The Mandarin character is all about symbolism.

It's actually all about a lot of that Fu Manchu stuff I mentioned above.

''It also had a part in his vision for the future. His search for power.''

It had to do with him manufacturing a need to escalate the War on Terror. His vision of the future had nothing to do with the Mandarin's goals. Unless Aldrich Killian is actually an Islamist.