Buzzflash
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Mixx it!
RedditLet's try to sort out what happening on the front of dealing with Iran's pesky nuclear program.
In Italy, the G-8 countries took a stab at addressing the issue, but the result is, well, less than clear.
First, here's President Obama's take, from a news conference on Friday in L'Aquila:
"This notion that we were trying to get sanctions or that this was a forum in which we could get sanctions is not accurate. ..."There was the agreement that we will reevaluate Iran's posture towards negotiating the cessation of a nuclear weapons policy. We'll evaluate that at the G20 meeting in September. And I think what that does is it provides a time frame. The international community has said, here's a door you can walk through that allows you to lessen tensions and more fully join the international community. If Iran chooses not to walk through that door, then you have on record the G8, to begin with, but I think potentially a lot of other countries that are going to say we need to take further steps. And that's been always our premise, is that we provide that door, but we also say we're not going to just wait indefinitely and allow for the development of a nuclear weapon, the breach of international treaties, and wake up one day and find ourselves in a much worse situation and unable to act.
"So my hope is, is that the Iranian leadership will look at the statement coming out of the G8 and recognize that world opinion is clear."
A lot of verbiage, but Obama seems to be saying that "other steps" -- i.e., sanctions -- will be taken if Iran doesn't take up the offer to negotiate by September. In so saying, Obama is hinting at, but not exactly saying, that Iran has until September to start talking. Earlier, in May, he'd suggested that Iran also has until the end of 2009 or early next year to make progress toward a deal, so in a sense Obama is setting not one but two very rough deadlines: one for Iran to sit down and talk and one for Iran to convince the United States it's ready to make progress.
At least one Iranian official, Ali Akbar Velayati, a former Iranian foreign minister, signalled that Tehran might not be averse to opening the dialogue with the US. The Washington Post portrayed Velayati's comments thusly, after first referring to the surprise release of five Iranian diplomats seized by US forces in northern Iran in January 2007:
"The surprise release came a day after unusually positive comments about President Obama by a top adviser to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said Obama had tried to remain silent on the country's election outcome."The comments suggest that Iran's decision makers are still interested in discussing possible diplomatic relations with the Obama administration. 'America accepts a nuclear Iran, but Britain and France cannot stand a nuclear Iran,' Ali Akbar Velayati, a former foreign minister, said in an interview on state television on Wednesday.
It's true that Iran has been painting the UK and France as the evildoers, and Velayati's comments seem especially positive toward the US -- though he's wrong to suggest that the United States "accepts a nuclear Iran." Still, it's something.
So what about the G-8 -- and Russia? And China, which isn't even part of the G-8?
Here's what the G-8 actually said. While describing its "impatience" and suggesting it would review the Iran file when it meets in September, the G-8 said:
"We remain committed to finding a diplomatic solution to the issue of Iran's nuclear program. We sincerely hope that Iran will seize this opportunity to give diplomacy a chance to find a negotiated solution to the nuclear issue. We recognize that Iran has the right to a civilian nuclear programme, but that comes with the responsibility to restore confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear activities."
The G-8 statement seems open to interpretation. Here's Time magazine's take:
"When it came to Tehran's nuclear program, which President Barack Obama sees as the overriding strategic issue between the U.S. and Iran, the leaders struck a milder tone, urging negotiations and underscoring Iran's rights to a civilian nuclear program. It was the clearest indication yet that despite the postelection violence in Iran, Obama intends to stick to his strategy of offering carrots before sticks for handling Iran's nuclear ambitions."
As Velayati pointed out, both the UK and France were far more given to bluster about Iran's nuclear program. Perhaps it's a sign that, during his pre-G-8 visit to Russia, Obama figured out that he isn't likely to get Russia to go along with stronger sanctions, even in the wake of the post-June 12 crackdown in Iran. And China seems utterly uninterested.
Reuters described Velayati as "Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's top adviser on international affairs," and quoted his tough stance:
"Britain and France would want a weakened Iran at the negotiating table and are after the complete stoppage of Iran's nuclear activity. But the Islamic Republic of Iran will be present at the scene even more strongly than yesterday and will not retreat even one step from its peaceful nuclear activity."
It's worth pointing out that two days before the June 12 election in Iran, Senator John Kerry said that Iran has the right to enrich uranium, i.e., not just the right to "peaceful use of nuclear energy," as Obama says, but the inherent right to enrich its own fuel.
The Russians aren't likely to go along with tougher sanctions on Iran. A few days ago, Russian President Medvedev said as much:
"If I understand correctly, the United States would like to establish more open and more direct relations with Iran. We support this choice. It would be counter-productive to resort to other sanctions."
So, despite Iran's brutal repression of pro-democracy demonstrators, and the sweeping arrests of supporters and advisers to Mir Hossein Mousavi and his allies, it's not impossible that serious talks get underway by this fall. Cross your fingers.
Share this article
Robert Dreyfuss
A chronicle of America's adventures in foreign policy and national security.
RSS
DREYFUSS: "......Velayati's comments seem especially positive toward the US -- though he's wrong to suggest that the United States "accepts a nuclear Iran.".."
I am almost sure that Velayati is right....an Obama-led US will accept a nuclear (weaponized) Iran if it can be sure that Israel will not pull the stunts it did in Iraq and Syria.
Even if BHO is not sure (of Israel's also accepting a nuke weaponized Iran), I just don't think THIS administration will go to the mat w/Iran and defy Russia and China, both of which clearly have no inherent objections to Iran's joining the `club'! Might be different if Iran is Muslim, like the Muslims now also causing unrest in NW China.
The only response, under the BHO peacenik approach, is to let the Arab states go nuclear......along with S. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia,.....
I am ready for everybody to have nukes! The US is so weakened that we can no longer fight against the nationalist interests of Russia and China in preventing proliferation....thankless besides......we might as well help our friends get better nukes and ABM systems!
Posted by Happy at 07/10/2009 @ 5:06pm
[insert obnoxious loony-right ravings]
Posted by syfriendly at 07/10/2009 @ 5:26pm
The US is so weakened ...
Posted by Happy at 07/10/2009 @ 5:06pm
This should merge well, therefore, with the wishes of those on the right calling for "less government".
If we're less able to engage internationally, your wish may come true of, indeed, a "lesser" U.S. Government. We won't need all that defense apparatus, for the fact all our friends will be armed to the teeth.
So, calling yet for a reduced defense budget, then, to match this lessened role?
Posted by schnellerheinz at 07/10/2009 @ 6:07pm
Bring back the Triple Entente. That worked really well.
OOPS.
Posted by schnellerheinz at 07/10/2009 @ 6:08pm
The Obamanation that makes desolation is willing and able to make fools of the American people and endanger our national security as much as is possible just to appear diplomatic and successful in foreign relations for which he and Biden haven't a clue about!
He seems to be unable to detect that he is being played a fool by an evil empire such as Iran willing to play both sides against the middle; one of the oldest tricks in the book!
Posted by BigPasture at 07/10/2009 @ 6:14pm
Maybe about time to give up on regime change and sanction policies which are as likely to work as they have with Cuba and North Korea.
Since the current Iranian administration uses foreign enemies and interference as rationales for its repression, backing off sanctions and regime change would likely help those who want democratic change for Iran.
And for context, it would help understand what is going on within the Islamic Republic if there was any presentation what is going on between Mousavi, Rafsanjani, the clerics at Qum, and Khamenei besides generic "reaching out to the West" and "reform".
Charlie M.
Posted by cmsandia at 07/10/2009 @ 6:20pm
Well..... I feel like we can trust Iran now... after the election and whatnot.
Posted by bleedingheart at 07/10/2009 @ 6:55pm
Why are GB & F so bent out of shape? Is there an economic reason? Reactor contracts up in smoke due to the Iranian Tata reactor making market share inroads? I'm just asking
Posted by A_Pax_On_Your_Houses at 07/10/2009 @ 7:20pm
It never ceases to astonish me how the generally cynical, non-idealist left that views the Iraq war as a war for oil shows such naive innocence in assessing the motives of international powers besides the United States. Every Friday, Iranian mullahs hysterically chant "Death to America! Death to Israel!" before masses of deluded fundamentalists, yet still, because Juan Cole pointed out that in one specific case of Ahmadinejad reportedly reiterating his desire to see Israel destroyed it was possible to translate his statement as saying he only wanted the "Zionist regime to vanish from the pages of time," the left argues that Iran is not hostile to America or Israel and that the media is distorting its position. In the same way, they assert that the results of the Iranian "election" being announced before the votes were done being cast, let alone counted (not to mention the fact that only candidates chosen by the theocracy could run, and the fact that Iran refused to allow any international election monitors, and the fact that websites used by Mousavi supporters were banned, and the fact that as many as almost 200 protestors peacefully protesting the "election"'s end result were brutally murdered) is no proof at all that the "election" was anything but free and fair; these same people, however, argue that Bush stole the 2000 and, yes, the 2004 US Presidential elections. Dreyfuss cites one Iranian official saying that Iran is ready to talk with America as long as America "accepts a nuclear Iran" as proof that serious talks with the regime are possible. They aren't. Iran will go nuclear as soon as it gets the chance. No amount of verbiage would make them choose not to go nuclear if they had the capability: and why should they want to give it up if they had a...
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/10/2009 @ 8:31pm
... choice about it, anyway? A non-nuclear Iran that could go nuclear at any moment is FAR MORE LIKELY to be attacked than a nuclear one. I know that Iran would not wipe Israel off the map if it could; although of course it would wish that it would, it wouldn't. If it did, it would kill all of the Palestinians and destroy the mosque from which Mohammed allegedly ascended into Heaven, even as it ensured its own immediate violent destruction. Iran is not a threat. Sanctions are counterproductive, pointless, and are only a smokescreen to mask the failures of policy. There are only two options here, and the intellectually honest should admit it. They are: allow a nuclear Iran, or go to war with it. If the latter is your choice, President Obama, do it now; don't let the regime kill more of its citizens if it's days are numbered. If the former is your choice, then admit it; don't try to have it both ways.
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/10/2009 @ 8:46pm
It would be worthwhile for President Obama to send Hillary Clinton and a delegation to Iran. The Bush administration saw no good options in Iran, and Obama has to try something that changes the dynamic with Iran.
A side note, when Clinton goes to Iran, the condition should be that she can talk to anyone, including opposition leaders. With this, the long term chances of bringing Iran into greater cooperation with the west is possible.
It may not work, but It certainly would be a bold next step.
Posted by erazma at 07/11/2009 @ 08:42am
Once again President Obama assumes/asserts without a shred of evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Iran must to come clean before September he threatens. Do I remember correctly or am I dreaming that his predecessor demanded that Iraq's Saddam Hussein must come clean prior to a specific date? There was once a time when this sort of diplomacy was named "Vabanque Spiel".
Posted by DieterHeymann at 07/11/2009 @ 11:49am
Iran getting nukes is the best possible outcome. The old cold war was very effective at containing both the US and USSR and Iranian nukes will be the only thing that will (or could, perhaps) contain the zionists.
Posted by DejaVu at 07/11/2009 @ 12:30pm
"I guess you missed the FACT that the famous Neda was shot with a bullet that IS NOT produced in Iran.....you have ONE guess from where and by whom".
May I guess? Does the word of the country begin with "I" and end with "L"? The same country whose Mossad was photoghraphed using special rifles killing American soldiers and fomenting the civil war in Iraq? You know the ones Anderson Cooper reported on CNN? The same country which is the biggest terrorist trouble maker on earth? You know the ones who allowed perhaps millions of their Jewish brethren to be slaughtered by Hitler unless those Jews were sent to Palestine and no where else? Read this and weep: It is the shame of the Jewish people: jewsagainstzionism.com and click on "role of Zionism in the Holocaust".
Posted by mystic at 07/11/2009 @ 1:31pm
Quote of the year on Iran;
"I sincerely hope that when the president goes in for his annual check-up, the doctors at Bethesda will do a brain scan. Surely something must be terribly wrong with a man who seems to be far more concerned with a Jew building a house in Israel than with Muslims building a nuclear bomb in Iran ." columnist - Burt Prelutsky
Posted by BigPasture at 07/11/2009 @ 5:35pm
Posted by BigPasture at 07/11/2009 @ 5:35pm
I thought it was the houses OUTSIDE of Isreal, that were concerning folks.
Details.
Posted by Malcontent at 07/11/2009 @ 7:35pm
...or was that Israel...
Posted by Malcontent at 07/11/2009 @ 7:36pm
Obamanation is a traitorous apologist to an evil empire that has willingly been responsible for killing American servicemen and which supports Islamic Terrorism worldwide. Now he is freeing proven killers to continue!
"There are a few things you need to know about President Obama's shameful release on Thursday of the "Irbil Five" -- Quds Force commanders from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who were coordinating terrorist attacks in Iraq that have killed hundreds -- yes, hundreds -- of American soldiers and Marines.
First, of the 4,322 Americans killed in combat in Iraq since 2003, 10 percent of them (i.e., more than 400) have been murdered by a single type of weapon alone, a weapon that is supplied by Iran for the singular purpose of murdering Americans. As Steve Schippert explains at NRO's military blog, the Tank, the weapon is "the EFP (Explosively Formed Penetrator), designed by Iran's IRGC specifically to penetrate the armor of the M1 Abrams main battle tank and, consequently, everything else deployed in the field." Understand: This does not mean Iran has killed only 400 Americans in Iraq. The number killed and wounded at the mullahs' direction is far higher than that -- likely multiples of that -- when factoring in the IRGC's other tactics, such as the mustering of Hezbollah-style Shiite terror cells.
Second, President Bush and our armed forces steadfastly refused demands by Iran and Iraq's Maliki government for the release of the Irbil Five because Iran was continuing to coordinate terrorist operations against American forces in Iraq (and to aid Taliban operations against American forces in Afghanistan). Freeing the Quds operatives obviously would return the most effective, dedicated terrorist trainers to their grisly business."
Posted by BigPasture at 07/12/2009 @ 02:49am
"I sincerely hope that when the president goes in for his annual check-up, the doctors at Bethesda will do a brain scan. Surely something must be terribly wrong with a man who seems to be far more concerned with a Jew building a house in Israel than with Muslims building a nuclear bomb in Iran ." columnist - Burt Prelutsky
Posted by BigPasture at 07/11/2009 @ 5:35pm
The differnce being of course that the house in Israel is real and the nuclear bomb in Iran is not real, nor looks like being real in the future.
Posted by Shingo at 07/12/2009 @ 06:27am
Obamanation is a traitorous apologist to an evil empire
Posted by BigPasture at 07/12/2009 @ 02:49am
Israel has killed American sevicemen and has elected 2 former terrorists to the office of Prime Minister. Quick BigPasture, the sky is falling!!
Now fot the rest of your wingnut lies:
1) 10 percent of them have been murdered by a single type of weapon alone..
Correction: Of all the weapons seized in Iraq, 1% have come from Iran or been Iranian made.
When the US seized a large weapons cache in Karbala, none of thr 512 IED's and EFP's found came from Iran.
2) Second, President Bush and our armed forces steadfastly refused demands by Iran
Correction: Iran mever made any demands, but requests not to be atatcked. Bush, the worst US president in history, also turned down the grand bargain, which offered to meet all US demands in return for normalizing relations.
Bush blew the deal.
3) ran was continuing to coordinate terrorist operations against American forces in Iraq (and to aid Taliban operations against American forces in Afghanistan)
Correction: Iran were instrulmental is helping us go after Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Teh Taliban are enemies of Tehran.
In fact, rather than cooperate with Tehran, Bush, the worst US president in history, chose to support Ql Qaeda Johadist terror groups like Jundullah (Kaleid Sheik Mohammed's old gang) and the MEK (listed by the State Department as terrosits) as they set off bombs in Tehran.
That's right folks, the worst US president in history gave aid and suport to Al Qaeda against a state that was trying to help us go after the guys that attacked us on 911.
Pure genius.
Posted by Shingo at 07/12/2009 @ 06:38am
Iran will go nuclear as soon as it gets the chance. No amount of verbiage would make them choose not to go nuclear if they had the capability: and why should they want to give it up if they had a...
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/10/2009
All that huff and pufff and yet none it remotely based on fact. What a pitty?
Dennis Blair testified before the Senate 2 months ago that the 16 US intel agencies stil stand behind their 2007 NIE that states there is no evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran and that Iran are persuaded by the cost benefit of NOT producing a nuke.
Posted by Shingo at 07/12/2009 @ 06:42am
More of libertyfortheoppressed mistakes to correct:
1. A non-nuclear Iran that could go nuclear at any moment is FAR MORE LIKELY to be attacked than a nuclear one.
Wrong. Iran could never go nuclear at any moment. It would have to a) withdraw from the NPT b) kick out the inspectors c) enrich to 90%, which is far from trivial given that they only mastered 3-5% in 2006.
2. I know that Iran would not wipe Israel off the map if it could
Wrong. Iran have not attacked on invaded any country in 300 years.
BTW. The US kill more people on a good day in Afghanistan and Iraq than Iran killed throughout the entire protests.
Posted by Shingo at 07/12/2009 @ 06:46am
If the latter is your choice, President Obama, do it now; don't let the regime kill more of its citizens if it's days are numbered.
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/10/2009
You've got to admire the wingnut logic here.
libertyfortheoppressed wants Obama to go to war with Iran, whcih wil kill thousands of Iranians, to save the lives of the Iranians the leadership might kill.
Kinda remins you of the ol' destroying the village in order to save it idea.
Posted by Shingo at 07/12/2009 @ 06:53am
Wow, we really have a lot of geopolitical leadership in the comments today.
Take the comment that Iran has not invaded another country in over 300 years. Did you happen to forget that Iran and Iraq fought a war for 8 years with a lot of the battle being fought inside Iraq. That Iran invaded the American Embassy and held Americans hostage for 443 days - first time in history that a country invaded the domain of a foreign country sitting inside their country.
Have you forgotten that Libya decided not to help Iran any further in obtaining the nuclear bomb and came clean about their involvement?
Take a look at how close the relationship is between Pakistan and Iran. A. O. Khan of Pakistan was running a worldwide blackmarket selling nuclear bomb making material and Iran was buying as well as North Korea.
I guess to call a kettle black today it must be red.
Posted by Gene44 at 07/12/2009 @ 07:44am
Wow, Shingo, it appears you did not understand anything I wrote in any of my posts at all. I am NOT a hawk towards Iran.
I wrote "I know that Iran would not wipe Israel off the map if it could". Let me repeat: I know Iran would NOT -- that's NOT -- just to repeat: WOULD NOT wipe Israel off the map if it could. In fact, this is my full statement, which apparently you just skimmed through looking for key words: "I know that Iran would not wipe Israel off the map if it could; although of course it would wish that it would, it wouldn't. If it did, it would kill all of the Palestinians and destroy the mosque from which Mohammed allegedly ascended into Heaven, even as it ensured its own immediate violent destruction. Iran is not a threat. Sanctions are counterproductive, pointless, and are only a smokescreen to mask the failures of policy."
Read it carefully, Shingo. Slowly. Digest the words. If that is too difficult, then reread my sentence before last in the above quote:"Iran is not a threat."
Understand now?
"Wrong. Iran have not attacked on invaded any country in 300 years. "
Well, thank you for repeating this talking point. We agree on Iran, you idiot! What do you want to debate?
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/12/2009 @ 10:08am
"libertyfortheoppressed wants Obama to go to war with Iran, whcih wil kill thousands of Iranians, to save the lives of the Iranians the leadership might kill. "
No, I don't. I don't have any firm numbers on how many Iranians the regime has killed, but my impression is that Iran is one of the least repressive, in fact, probably the least repressive tyranny in the Middle East. No one has yet convinced me that war with Iran would save more lives than it would cost. The key point is that you apparently believe that just because I support the Iraq war, I must be a Zionist imperialist, even though I recognize the unspeakable evil of genuine imperial wars, such as our attempts to bomb South Vietnam and Cambodia back into the Stone Age in the wild belief that this would make them more resistant to Communist influence (though under Nixon we eventually realized the error of our ways in this regard and we bombed North Vietnam back into the Stone Age as well). I am far from a reflexive hawk in the same way you are reflexive in automatically opposing any war the US might get involved in out of a gut feeling that "war is an icky yucky nasty thing we shouldn't have to deal with".
"there is no evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran and that Iran are persuaded by the cost benefit of NOT producing a nuke."
At the moment, I don't know what their cost-benefit analysis is, but you seem rather naive here. If you believe, as I do, sincerely, that Iran would not nuke Israel if it could, stop trying to prove Iran has no desire at all to get a nuclear weapon. It is unserious and intellectually dishonest.
My position is that if we are going to war with Iran, let's do it ASAP, rather than prolong the regime we will destroy. That said, I think it would be best if...
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/12/2009 @ 10:27am
... Iran and the US remained at peace. Unlike you, who apparently is in love with the mullahs based on your constant defense of their every action, I despise the Iranian regime WHILE still firmly standing by the position that war with Iran is probably not a good idea. Unlike Iraq, which was doomed to descend into sectarian warfare regardless of whether or not we intervened, Iran will become a democracy by itself in a decade or two. Speeding up the process by force may just cost more in the way of human life.
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/12/2009 @ 10:33am
"BTW. The US kill more people on a good day in Afghanistan and Iraq than Iran killed throughout the entire protests."
Shingo, this is just a sinister exercise in moral frivolity. Iraq is debatable, but one could prove fairly easily as a FACT that the Afghan war has saved far, far, far more lives than it has cost.
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/12/2009 @ 10:42am
<i>Posted by IlyaKuryakin at 07/12/2009 @ 10:05am </i>
Wow. A few new gems:
1) Without the heroic efforts of AQ Khan, India would have invaded Pakistan? Come again? Evidence would be great.
2) All your talk about Iran doesn't respond to the whole "embassy invasion/hostage-taking" part. And that's kind of important.
<i>Posted by IlyaKuryakin at 07/11/2009 @ 09:35am </i>
Again, delightful assertions, but what is your basis that "someone else" (I assume you mean either U.S. or Israel) supplied the weapons? Also, there were allegations by multiple Iranian NGO's that there were Venezuelan fighters contributing to the regime's repression; might that not supply an alternative explanation?
Finally, your efforts to glaze over the repressiveness of the Iranian regime (and, laughably, to hold up Venezuela's regime as a model of democracy, even if it's Constitution and reality don't entirely match up) are awfully telling. Leaving aside (again) the dubious (actually, logically impossible) claim that you can count all the votes in an election before the polls even close, I wonder how Ahmedinejad was so persuasive as to bring forth roughly 100% participation in the election. It was a fraud, plain and simple. Libertyfortheoppressed has clearly made that case and you have made virtually no effort to respond to it. Why? Because it doesn't fit your image of saintly Ahmadinejad, whose regime promised blood in retaliation for any further protests and who has certainly made no effort to contradict that.
Posted by Thrawn at 07/12/2009 @ 12:36pm
Also, just curious...have you actually read Iran's Constitution?
Posted by Thrawn at 07/12/2009 @ 12:36pm
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/12/2009 @ 10:33am
I take your point and I apologize for misrepresenting you.
I stile stand by my opposition to the notion that an attack now would be preferable to an attack later.
And I don't see why the position that Iran does not want a nuke should be contradictory to the position that they would not nuke Israel if they had one. It is impossible to prove that Iran has no desire at all to get a nuclear weapon. The only thing we know is that there is no evidence of such a program.
Posted by Shingo at 07/12/2009 @ 7:03pm
"Iranian's overthrew a murderous totalitarian dictatorship instituted by Washington and UK in 1953: their actions in 1979 were CORRECTING a previous wrong imposed upon them. That is called SELF DEFENSE. "
Even if you oppose war with Iran, glorifying the present Iranian regime as a source of liberation from the Shah is laughable.
According to political historian Ervand Abrahamian,"whereas less than 100 political prisoners had been executed between 1971 and 1979, more than 7900 were executed between 1981 and 1985. ... the prison system was centralized and drastically expanded ... Prison life was drastically worse under the Islamic Republic than under the Pahlavis. One who survived both writes that four months under warden Asadollah Lajevardi took the toll of four years under SAVAK. In the prison literature of the Pahlavi era, the recurring words had been "boredom" and "monotony." In that of the Islamic Republic, they were "fear," "death," "terror," "horror," and most frequent of all "nightmare" (kabos)." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Iran#cite_note-3) Iran is primarily freer today than many other Middle Eastern countries because it's citizens overwhelmingly value freedom. As Hooman Majd put it, if Iranian intelligence services "were to arrest anyone who speaks ill of the government in private, they simply couldn't build cells fast enough to hold their prisoners."
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/12/2009 @ 8:25pm
Also,IlyaKuryakin, the Iranian regime persecutes the Bahá'í minority (numbering around 300,000) in that country. "With the triumph of the Islamic revolution in 1979, this persecution has been systematized. More than 200 Bahá'ís have been executed or killed, hundreds more have been imprisoned, and tens of thousands have been deprived of jobs, pensions, businesses, and educational opportunities. All national and local Bahá'í administrative institutions have been banned by the Government, and Bahá'í holy places, cemeteries and community properties have been confiscated, vandalized, or destroyed. " (http://info.bahai.org/persecution_iran.html)
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/12/2009 @ 8:53pm
Here's more to combat IlyaKuryakin's absurd lies: "On the afternoon of September 7, 2004, plainclothes agents kidnapped Shahram Rafizadeh from his office in Tehran. First he was hustled into a waiting car, then to another with curtains covering the windows. Then he was beaten, blindfolded and thrown into a dark metal cell. Rafizadeh, a journalist, blogger and poet, spent the next 73 days in solitary confinement. The first time Rafizadeh was interrogated, he was blindfolded and handcuffed, then punched and kicked until he fell unconscious. During subsequent interrogations, he had his head repeatedly bashed against the wall and his entire body whipped by cable wires. Within weeks, his body weight had dropped from more than 200 pounds to less than 100. Rafizadeh was a broken man by the time he was dragged into the office of Tehran's public prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi. Mortazavi demanded that Rafizadeh confess to trumped-up charges, warning that if he did not, Rafizadeh's three children might find themselves in mortal danger. Rafizadeh confessed, then escaped into exile as soon as he was released from illegal detention. The plainclothes agents who kidnapped Shahram Rafizadeh were hardly rogue operatives. They, like Tehran's public prosecutor, were part of a vast parallel intelligence apparatus that operated in Iran during the presidency of reformist Mohammed Khatami. This summary documents that parallel intelligence apparatus. A more detailed and more comprehensive version of this report, Covert Terror: Iran's Parallel Intelligence Apparatus, is available from the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. From 1997 to 2004, the parallel intelligence apparatus' clandestine activities aided conservatives in Iran in their efforts to retain..."
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/12/2009 @ 8:55pm
"...control over the levers of state. Known in Farsi as nahadhayih ittila'tiyih muvazi, the parallel intelligence apparatus (PIA) operated under the effective authority of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei. Members of the PIA were responsible for the brutal intimidation and silencing of reformists, political dissidents and critics. Their primary targets were journalists, bloggers and student activists, many of whom came to prominence as a result of Khatami's relatively tolerant approach toward public criticism of the conservative establishment's policies. PIA agents relentlessly and systematically engaged in measures to silence pro-reform voices and stifle freedom of expression, in violation of both Iranian and international law. Although little, if any, official documentation exists regarding the PIA's establishment, decisionmaking process or inner workings, available evidence indicates that PIA units were not only aided in their efforts by official organs of the state, but were organizationally and operationally part of executive and judicial agencies. These agencies included police and law enforcement and their affiliated intelligence offices, including the Niruyih Intizamiyih Jumhuriyih Islamiyih Iran (NAJA), or Law Enforcement Forces; military forces including the Sipah-i Pasdaran, or Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the Iranian Army; executive agencies including the Ministry of Intelligence, the Ministry of Defense and, perhaps most troublingly, the Judiciary. The PIA's 2 activities were also supported by paramilitary and vigilante groups including the Basij and Ansari Hizbullah, both of which operate under the auspices of the Office of the Supreme Leader. Interviews and independent research..."
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/12/2009 @ 8:59pm
"...conducted by IHRDC reveal a striking pattern of brutality by PIA agents. The PIA's goal was to break its targets through the use of various tactics designed to coerce them into confessing to contrived criminal charges. These tactics included unlawful investigations, surveillance, arrests, searches and seizures of property, prolonged interrogations, torture and detention in illegal and often hidden facilities. Many of the coerced confessions were often obtained under the supervision of judges or other influential members of the Judiciary, and were videotaped and broadcast by state-owned media outlets such as the Kayhan newspaper and Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. The scope of the crimes committed by PIA agents is breathtaking. An analysis by IHRDC has uncovered widespread violations of numerous articles of the Iranian Constitution, as well as of Iran's Citizen Rights Law and State Prisons Organizations Law. The breach of international norms is equally shocking: IHRDC's research has revealed violations of the Convention Against Torture, Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, not to mention the United Nations' Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners and Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary." (http://iranhrdc.org/httpdocs/English/reports.htm)
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/12/2009 @ 9:01pm
From the above link, this striking figure: "Since 1979, the senior leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been linked to at least 162 extrajudicial killings of the regime's political opponents in 19 different countries around the world."
Based on the rate of killing in the regime, there is still no reason to assume necessarily that a US-lead war on Iran would save lives (it could cost tens of thousdands), but I have to say I feel fairly conflicted on the issue in light of the figure of almost 8,000 political prisoners killed in 4 years in the 80s alone. In 2008, at least 335 people were executed, among them seven child offenders. Sentences of stoning to death, amputation and flogging continued to be passed and carried out. In 2007, at least 177 people were executed, at least four of whom were under 18 at the time of the alleged offence, including one who was under 18 at the time of execution. Two people were reportedly stoned to death. Sentences of flogging, amputation and eye-gouging continued to be passed. The true numbers of those executed or subjected to corporal punishment were probably considerably higher than those reported. (http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/iran/report-2007) These figures are bad, but don't indicate to me a moral justification for war.
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/12/2009 @ 9:14pm
Also, why focus on Iran when human rights are worse in Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Burma, ect.?
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/12/2009 @ 9:18pm
According to political historian Ervand Abrahamian,"whereas less than 100 political prisoners had been executed between 1971 and 1979, more than 7900 were executed between 1981 and 1985. ...
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/12/2009 @ 8:25pm
And according to other sources, the Sha's Savak disappeared over 10,000 Iranians during his 25 year reign of brutality.
Posted by Shingo at 07/12/2009 @ 9:39pm
... I feel fairly conflicted on the issue in light of the figure of almost 8,000 political prisoners killed in 4 years in the 80s alone. In 2008, at least 335 people were executed, among them seven child offenders. Sentences of stoning to death, amputation and flogging continued to be passed and carried out. In 2007, at least 177 people were executed, at least four of whom were under 18 at the time of the alleged offence, including one who was under 18 at the time of execution. Two people were reportedly stoned to death. Sentences of flogging, amputation and eye-gouging continued to be passed.
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/12/2009 @ 9:14pm
These numbers are shocking, and while of concern on the human rights front, are of no relevance to Iranian foreign policy.
Posted by Shingo at 07/12/2009 @ 11:21pm
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/12/2009
Massive cut and pastes. Just use url's. Is your point that oppression / murder/ torture / war are horrible?
Why not put forth your own solution in similar detail?
Posted by winyahn at 07/12/2009 @ 11:37pm
Posted by BigPasture at 07/12/2009 @ 02:49am
Poor RIO....the madness is overwhelming him now.
Posted by Mask at 07/13/2009 @ 06:44am
Ilya...is your argument that sources which disagree with you are automatically anti-Iranian? What is your actual basis for attacking the factual claims in those posts?
Posted by Thrawn at 07/13/2009 @ 07:49am
"I am fluent or near fluent in Spanish, Russian, French, Italian, several Slavic dialects, German, Latin , Old English, and a few other related languages. "----Posted by IlyaKuryakin at 07/13/2009 @ 1:58pm
Let's put that to a test....
шально
loco
fou
pazzesco
verrückt
delirusaum
Posted by Mask at 07/13/2009 @ 3:09pm
IlyaKuryakin is by self-description fluent in many languages....I also detect fluency by Ilya in a dialect that transends many languages, and that is the dialect of BS.
Ilya has read Canada's constitution!
That must have taken quite a bit of time, eh?
Maybe so, I guess I should not question what Ilya says....but since unwritten conventions and even decisions in our U.S. courts can be the source of Constitutional authority in Canada, above and beyond the many separate documents and acts that comprise the Constitution of Canada.....
if Ilya has read all this when was there time to read Venezuela's and Russia's and "others"?
Just wondering....maybe it is so, since Ilya says so.
Posted by sjchermak at 07/13/2009 @ 4:58pm
<i>Posted by IlyaKuryakin at 07/13/2009 @ 1:58pm </i>
Yeah; Venezuela's in Spanish and a translation of the Iranian Constitution to English (and please don't say "translation=anti-Iran). Iran's Constitution is quite the bastion of liberty, no? But then again, Sharia is quite liberating...
<i>Posted by IlyaKuryakin at 07/13/2009 @ 2:00pm </i>
Name you factual claims? Are you serious? The posts were a bombardment of factual claims about specific incidents Iran's government had perpetrated and overall numbers of casualties. That's not a factual claim?
You also have yet to answer how an election in which 100 % participation is alleged and for which counting was allegedly done before the polls closed is legitimate. So far...no response.
Also, you have yet to successfully distance Ahmadinejad from the violence his government has committed, especially since some of it can be attributed to foreign fighters. Absolutely NO basis for attributing it to Israel or the U.S. And yet...no response.
Posted by Thrawn at 07/13/2009 @ 5:34pm
"And according to other sources, the Sha's Savak disappeared over 10,000 Iranians during his 25 year reign of brutality."
I find that hard to believe, but, in any case, I'm not defending the Shah.
"These numbers are shocking, and while of concern on the human rights front, are of no relevance to Iranian foreign policy."
When you say "Iranian foreign policy," do you mean Iran's foreign policy? If so, your statement is self-evident. I was responding to the absurd lies and propaganda of IlyaKuryakin, who has argued that Iran today is not brutal or even repressive, has fair elections, and did not clamp down on protestors (who he says either "evil empire" America or the Jews murdered), even though he has also implied that if by chance Iran DID clamp down on protestors, that would be okay because their nonviolent acts of shouting and carrying signs were actually part of a secret plot to overthrow the government by force. Of course, the Shah is a "murderous totalitarian dictator" just because "evil empire" America backed him, and the poster in question suffers from a rather pathological hatred of the United States. I then reiterated in a way that may seem to have contradicted my posts or undermined their moral force the mantra that I'm not calling for war. I'm sorry if this confused the point of my posts; I felt I had to counter IlyaKuryakin's lies, but on this website, it seems I had to be preemptive as denouncing the Iranian regime is akin to calling for war in these parts, where apparently antiwarriors only give a damn about Iranians that might be killed by the United States.
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/13/2009 @ 9:09pm
"Why not put forth your own solution in similar detail?"
Well, I have to say I'm sorry that I'm not quite smart enough to give you a solution that would sit well with me. The idea of war with Iran seems morally ambiguous to me, but I was far more certain that it was a bad idea before I started researching Iran's record on human rights to combat the lies of IlyaKuryakin. Iran is still freer than Saudi Arabia, though, and all the other countries I named. I think the problem is that I wrote "Why focus on Iran when there are all these other bad countries," which is a brain-dead stupid thing to say both morally (as we should always care about human rights violations) and because I had just posted a bunch of quotes from human rights groups related to Iran's human rights record. Point One: It would be amoral to leave the government of Sudan in power. Point Two: I would much rather live in Iran than Sudan. Point Three: Going to war with Iran would leave more cruel regimes in power than the one it would overthrow. Point Four: The US cannot go to war with all the countries worse than Iran simultaneously. It is hubris. Naturally, some bad regimes will have to remain in power. So, I feel reluctantly that it would be best if one of the regimes we left in power was Iran, not only because it is the least repressive Middle East tyranny (which only shows just how bad Middle East tyranny is)-- unless you count Afghanistan as a tyranny, since its laws are still quite backward-- but because it will become a stable democracy anyway regardless of if we intervene or not, in a decade or two.
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/13/2009 @ 9:33pm
Some solutions I can propose: We might as well try and take Iran up on it's "grand bargain" proposal, since if it actually meant it the results would be fabulous, and, as is more likely, even if Iran is insincere it is a good way to get something out of them, even if we cannot get everything they offered us. It was silly on Bush's part to have rejected it because a)it might have prevented Iranian interference in Iraq, b)Iran was helpful in Afghanistan, and c)Bush didn't even want a war with Iran: he actually took action to stop Israel after Israel asked permission to start bombing Iran during Bush's time in office. Bush's policy was apparently to not either go to war with Iran or negotiate with it, but to simply ignore it, only acknowledging it's existence to fund the odd terrorist group in the country, or to condemn it when it did something Bush did not want it to do, NOT THAT BUSH EVER GAVE IT ANY INCENTIVE TO DO OTHERWISE, either through the credible threat of force or through diplomacy. One urgent concern is the Iranian regime's lack of prepration for an earthquake. From 2004: "A devastating earthquake Dec. 26 rocked Iran's Kerman province, 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) southeast of the capital, Tehran. It registered 6.3 on the Richter scale. The area most affected was the city of Bam. The quake left up to 85% of Bam's houses and buildings destroyed or beyond repair. The death toll, according to Iranian government figures, is over 35,000, almost half of the city population, with many buried in mass graves. But other sources put the death toll at between 40,000 and 50,000 people. This is the deadliest quake the world has seen since 1990, when 40,000 were killed in Rodbar in Gilan province, located in northern Iran. Bam's historic..."
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/13/2009 @ 9:50pm
...citadel was reduced to rubble....Who is responsible for the non-natural causes of such an extensive human tragedy? Many believe that if the houses had been built properly, the dead could number 100 or fewer. An earthquake of similar magnitude striking Japan or the U.S. would have many fewer casualties. Why did the Islamic regime neglect to create appropriate housing during its rule over the past 25 years? This shows the complete disregard by the regime toward people's lives and safety.
These people are the ones who executed or jailed revolutionaries or different thinkers and who falsely claimed that they were going to change the miserable conditions people experienced under the past regime of the Shah. We are in the 21st century, but the Islamic Republic remains unprepared for naturally caused catastrophes and acts very slowly to rescue people when they occur.
Many died after surviving for hours and days under the rubble. Some lucky ones were found after a week or two. One man was found after 13 days, and a 97-year-old woman was found after eight days. With these lucky occurrences, the Iranian regime was quick to manipulate people's religious beliefs by declaring that "a miracle had happened." " (http://www.newsandletters.org/Issues/2004/Jan-Feb/Iran_Jan-Feb04.htm) So, if the regime was prepared with it's infrastructure, the two earthquakes here would have killed 200 or less people; instead, as many as 90,000 people died in the two quakes. Unbelievable. The killing on the part of the regime is hardly persuasive enough to justify war; these figures are more striking. However, bombing the hell out of Iran would not make things better, though a democratic regime could be more efficient and less cruel and corrupt in it's efforts to meet the needs...
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/13/2009 @ 10:00pm
...of it's citizens. I think Obama needs to urgently engage the Iranian regime and offer it any number of incentives to improve it's incredibly callous policies in this area (to be fair, we also overlooked the same disregard under the Shah). Again, sanctions are always ineffective and increasing Iran's interaction with the world would help pro-democracy forces in the country; offering to stop most sanctions on Iran and normalize relations with it, as well as give it money to spend to prepare for earthquakes, in exchange for it actually spending the money well, would be a good idea in my view. In fact, Obama promising to accept a nuclear Iran in exchange for such actions would be okay in my book, if only we could actually ensure that a nuclear Iran would live up to it's end of the bargain, which we could not because we obviously could not threaten Iran militarily if it had nukes, unless our President was criminally insane enough to give Iran an incentive to nuke us, or even to wipe Israel off the map (as the threat of force relies on the belief that war is an option: it could not be if Iran had nukes).
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/13/2009 @ 10:19pm
Now, I think that the strongest argument for war is that Iran will go nuclear if we don't go to war, hence we could not go to war with it if we did not go to war with it now, unless we wanted to be nuked (or have Israel be nuked) by Iran. This is significant because it means that no amount of torture or murder or conquest on the part of the Mullahs could lead to them being treated with anything but an exagerated degree of politeness, which is a frightening thought. So, Obama should engage them on the nuclear issue, but he seems too weak and cautious to convince them they had better do what he tells them OR ELSE, and so they will go ahead with the program, knowing that success would be the ultimate deterent. He has to offer them something in return, such as an end to sanctions, money to prepare for earthquakes, "grand bargain"-style normalization. For the moment, Obama is largely taking the correct approach, by preventing the theocracy from portraying the protestors as American puppets. Part of the reason that he is correct is because a)without the nuclear issue, war with Iran would seem clearly to not be an urgent neccessity, and b)we have time with regard to Iran's nukes. As Shingo wrote: "It would have to a) withdraw from the NPT b) kick out the inspectors c) enrich to 90%, which is far from trivial given that they only mastered 3-5% in 2006. " Of course, Shingo's line about it having to withdraw from the NPT is obvious bullshit, but, since the inspectors would be hidden from the Iranians (they would HAVE to be) if they went nuclear since that would require greater enrichment (an increase in enrichment so large that any inspector present would inform us immediatly were it to occur), we would get all kinds of reports about Iranian violations alerting...
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/13/2009 @ 10:41pm
...us as to their intent. That said, the question is what WILL we do in that time, before it all ticks away? I have proposed a few things that I would offer the Iranians if I were Obama, but I am skeptical that talks with the regime will dissuade it. On the other hand, Iran will certainly not nuke Israel if it goes nuclear, which would still leave me in the position of reluctant antiwarrior.
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/13/2009 @ 10:47pm
Can the rumors in Israeli political circles be true? If so any talks between the US and Iran by September are mute. Has Tony Blair, the self appointed "envoy" of the west to the Mideast, along with a score of MI6 operatives, succeeded in coordinated the upcoming attack on Iran's nuclear production facilities. He & MI6 have been busy in recent weeks helping Saudi Prince Turki's Saudi intelligence service, the Al Mukhabarat Al A'amah, to strongarm the other Arab gulf states into cooperating in the attack. And his agents have managed to get the Jordanian intelligence agency, the GID, to facilitate communication between Netanyahu's Israeli Defense Forces and Mubarak's Egyptian Mukhabarat el-Khabeya to allow Israeli submarines to pass through the Suez Canal into the Arabian Sea where they are rumored to have been refueled at Gulf State ports. Rumors abound in Mideast diplomatic circles that the attack by Israeli Defense Forces will be assisted by British Stealth bombers flying from the UK base at Diego Garcia. That remains to be seen. But the Israeli attack has moved beyond the planning stages into full deployment of the submarine forces for cruise missile strike capability and the landing of joint Israeli/Saudi special operations forces to attack Iranian naval forces in the Persian Gulf. Tony Blair may be remembered as the man who started WWIII. America will be blamed by Ahmajinedad, or course, but in all likelihood the attack is all Tony Blair and not Obama. Such an attack will, no doubt, unite all Iranians behind Ahmajinedad, regardless of the success of the military operations. All just rumors? We will know any day now.
Posted by moe_shrevinitz at 07/13/2009 @ 11:03pm
" The killing on the part of the regime is hardly persuasive enough to justify war;"
I have to say I underestimated the scale of the killing on the part of the regime. Just looking at the category of how many political prisoners it has killed alone, not even mentioning any other deaths it's actions have caused (such as the 89,800 Iranians that died due to the regimes refusal to improve conditions with regard to protection from earthquakes in 1990 and 2004) in any other category, the regime had executed well over 150,000 political prisoners as of two years ago according to the Jerusalem Post (http://iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2008&m=05&d=26&a=8). Now, I know that IlyaKuryakin will say that those crafty Jews are not to be listened to and that any factual claims asserted in any journalistic publications put out by them do not, in fact, even deserve to be contemplated and considered and thought through carefully, the better to expose the fallacious logic of their foundation BECAUSE their assertions can be ignored as though they were not really asserted and hence do not have to be addressed; the reason being that they are self-evidently false to those who, like IlyaKuryakin, are sufficiently insulated from reality to believe that any denunciation of the Iranian regime is based on lies, but I find these numbers damning. The problem is that IlyaKuryakin only believes religiously (as a matter of faith) in the Iranian regime's innocence because he does not allow himself to conceive of the possibility of its guilt, hence his belief cannot be strong (this lack of conviction necessitates his refusal to consciously perceive dissent from his predetermined viewpoint). In short, his logic is distinctly circular in that he ignores challenging facts which...
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/14/2009 @ 11:31pm
... suggest the illogic of his position and which would lead to doubt on his part where he capable of unbiased, objective, cold self-examination in order to avoid such an evaluation: he dismisses them as false when there is no reason at all he ever articulates to believe that they are anything but true, because they suggest the falseness of the lies he spews hysterically to support his ideology. He has to refuse to even call my facts "facts" in order to rationalize his bizarre hysteria; he cannot even perceive my facts as facts, he in fact denies them due to his own denial. He cannot perceive them as such because if he did he would have to construct a counter-argument based on facts and evidence, which he cannot do. Instead, he says that his assertions are self-evident even if the "facts" suggest they are wrong because such "facts" are anti-mullah fabrications put out by crafty Jews. The "objective" is "subjective" to him; to him, everyone is entitled to their own personal set of facts. Put simply, talking to him is like talking to a brick wall. Now, how black-and-white is the possibility of war with Iran? Certainly, the mullahs are not as bad as Saddam Hussein, who murdered as many as a million Iraqis not counting the about 1.5 million dead in his wars of aggression or the 500,000 Iraqis that died "from the sanctions," the phrase in quotes being perverse because NO Iraqis died from the sanctions once the oil-for-food program was implemented... in the places where the program was instituted by the UN, as opposed to Saddam. By black-and-white, I mean, as an example, the Iraq war: even if we said that, you know what, there is no way, or at least no gurantee, that the official casualty estimates of the Iraqi government based on the body counts of morgues...
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/14/2009 @ 11:59pm
...in Iraq and the Iraqi ministry of health and the body count of the UN (and backed up by the fact that the highest reported monthly figure for Iraq war casualties reported by any reporters anywhere was about 3,000 and in 03-04 the monthly average was in the hundreds as it has been this year) of Iraq war casualties is correct, even if we said that the true numbers are THREE TIMES higher than the Iraqi government states... Saddam still killed more Iraqis in April 1991 alone than have died in the entire war according to the largest estimates of the numbers of dead resulting from that particular campaign of genocide. This is not even to mention the self-evident truth that a coup would be attempted by all of Iraq's sects as soon as it was feasible, such as when Saddam died; meaning that either the Baathists would have agreed on a successor (probably one of Saddam's sons) and would have put down such unrest (after a decade or two more of rule by Saddam) with massive bloodshed (probably a mass genocide such as the one they employed to put down a coup in 1991, when one was attempted by all of Iraq's sects as soon as it became feasible because it was feasible), leaving Iraq to suffer under decades of rule by Saddam 2... or the coup attempt would have succeeded, in which case Iraq's sects would have successfully overthrown Iraq's government; the artificially created state of Iraq, with it's long history of sectarian war, would have plunged into an anarchy following a prolonging of Saddam's divide-and-rule policies; looting and chaos would have ensued; Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey would have been free to intervene; there would be no coalition of troops to create order and set up a government; and Zarqawi, in Iraq before we were, would have taken advantage of the situation.
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/15/2009 @ 12:31am
Iran, by contrast, will become a democracy in a decade or two on it's own. The question is: should we prolong the regime for that time? I'm not sure. But I do know one thing: if the US had overthrown the regime in 1979, the war resulting would have saved more lives than it cost, assuming the cost would have been the same as it would be in the event of war today, which it would not have been (though the statement is likely true without the caveat). I'm not so sure we should give the regime more time in light of its appalling record.
Posted by libertyfortheoppressed at 07/15/2009 @ 12:39am