Pawlenty is in line with conventional conservative wisdom on that, but out of step with one of the state’s leading experts on Iran. University of Minnesota anthropology Prof. William Beemon told Minnesota Public Radio this week there’s no evidence that Iran is trying to manufacture nuclear arms.

As for the governor’s sudden interest in pronouncing the names of foreign leaders correctly … who could have been prodding Pawlenty on that? Maybe it was some the new advisors for his Freedom First PAC who don’t want to see their presidential hopeful repeat the pronunciation struggles of their old bosses, President George W. Bush and U.S. Sen. John McCain.

Pawlenty, who keeps his passport current with international hobnobbing, corrected sidekick Brian McClung’s pronunciation of the Iran leader’s name.

But, as sometimes happens, the governor was also slightly off his upbeat game, offering a couple unhelpful interjections during the show’s opening patter about football rivalries with Wisconsin. McClung suggested Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle might “defect” and move to Minnesota.

McClung: He’s not running for another term.

Pawlenty: Neither am I.

McClung then tried to defend Minnesota against a Doyle jab (“We’re all intrigued by what ‘Minnesota beer’ might be,” Doyle said, a comment Pawlenty termed “fairly snarky”):

McClung: Minnesota is one of the great brewing states in the country.

Pawlenty: Was.

Pawlenty maintained his three-week streak of trashing (but not naming) Republicans who participated in a budget summit that the governor boycotted last month. Again he used his radio platform (now secure from DFL balance) to attack former House Speaker David Jennings, also a former Minneapolis school superintendent. When enrollment declined in Minneapolis several years ago, Pawlenty said, “leadership in the district at that time didn’t act very boldly.”

The background: Pawlenty turned down an invitation earlier this month to meet with a bipartisan group of current and former Minnesota leaders at the Capitol seeking a way out of the state’s budget woes. Instead he counter-programmed his own summit at a corporate HQ in Eden Prairie to toot the state economy’s horn.

So on his Sept. 18 show, Pawlenty sneered at the capitol summit, telling the WCCO audience “with the exception of Al Quie, there were no current Republicans there.” That dig seemed meant especially for former Gov. Arne Carlson, and it ushered in a war of words between the two.

On today’s show, Pawlenty took a swipe at the next guy who crossed him by attending the wrong summit: former House Speaker David Jennings. T-Paw railed against school districts that complained recently about delayed payments from the state, then reached back to recall the gall of an unnamed Minneapolis Public Schools superintendent who advocated for the district when “he knew — knew! – there were 900 empty classrooms.”

Jennings led the Minneapolis schools at a time when critics alleged the district wasted money by maintaining schools in which there were 600 or even 800 empty classrooms. (The 900 figure seems new, if the bile behind it is not.)

It’s like an Agatha Christie whodunit where guests at a country estate keep dropping. The rest of the attendees at the Minnesota Leadership Summit better watch their backs on future Friday mornings.