[noemon]

Whatever the case, the US regime-changed Iran and set in motion the ground work for what Iran has currently become. Whatever Mossadegh, the Shah and the Mullahs do in their own country is up to the country to sort out and not up to foreigners.

[skinster]

Stephen Gowans is a great analyst on imperialism:


I went to the anti-war-on-Iran protest at Trafalgar Square last weekend, along with thousands of others. Was pretty impressed at how many were out. Bae Corbyn was amongst the speakers.

This got me thinking. What is a better approach. Mutually Assured Destruction by giving everyone nukes, or working towards disarming everyone?

My feeling is the only solution that has a realistic chance would be the MAD policy. If we all know we can obliterate each other, we simply wouldn't bother to do so.

This is an open question to everyone, not just red_army

I think Iran should get nukes. Iran, a country that's been regime-changed by the US/UK and under a state of economic warfare since 1979, should have some form of protection. No state who has them is in a position to demand others don't, especially savage states like those who've already used them against other countries.

I am flabbergasted at the response by Europeans to this incident.

I am not flabbergasted at the response of cuck-like Americans who love war as though they think they benefit from it.

There is no denying that this general planned hundreds of attacks against American and Europeans not to mention other people in the region. No doubt whatsoever.

Citation needed. He was training troops to fight ISIS/Al-Qaeda etc. in the region, you know, the sectarian extremist groups that your state has been arming for decades...

They are not really allies more like partners and they will not fight for Iran especially Russia which will benefit from the skyrocketing prices of oil if a war will break

Russia supports Iran just like it supported Syria while under the Zionist/Neocon/Wahabi war that's been ongoing on these independent states in the ME. China too. Both came to the defence of Venezuela recently as well.

[Patrickov]

Whatever the case, the US regime-changed Iran and set in motion the ground work for what Iran has currently become. Whatever Mossadegh, the Shah and the Mullahs do in their own country is up to the country to sort out and not up to foreigners.

I at least partly dispute that. The people are basically no match to tyrants if they do not have some sort of foreign support (be it military, economic or even technological).

IMHO Trump is indeed quite restrained here and now. The Iranian government somewhat fucked up themselves afterwards and it is a bit unfortunate that their situation has somewhat reverted to before the assassination.

[noemon]

Your people of Hong Kong are no match to China without foreign support you mean. And that is because your people were created by foreign support in the first place. The Iranians however do not share this history with you and have sufficient historical experience, culture and education to be a fundamentally democratic nation down to their ethnic-character. Something that becomes apparent with any first hand meeting with an Iranian. The extremes have taken over due to necessity, constant power vacuums and the danger of national annihilation. The Chinese are not like that and neither are the Chinese people of Hong Kong either. Neither of you have had a democratic experience at any point in your history. Not even on local, religious, or any level. You have never chosen your leaders, nor have you ever mocked them, or made fun of them, very necessary ingredients for political self actualisation. The Iranians have a tradition in that though.

The Trump administration is not restrained at all, he is proactively throwing flames into the fire just enough to stoke it, uniting Iranians behind their regime so that they never become normal, just enough to put European leaders into a corner to isolate Iran despite the fact that his administration is the one spitting on all the agreements, all decorum and all rational behaviour, bombing civilian airports in broad daylight. And Trump of course himself has probably nothing to do with any of this, he is just tagging along and if you need more evidence just watch his scripted address to the US right after Iran hit the base in Iraq. As SO said it is quite obvious that they possibly had to drug him to keep him to script. The people behind Trump do not want direct confrontation with Iran, because that will result to yet another debacle like Vietnam, Afghanistan, Syria, they do not want troops in Iran, at best they want Iran to eat itself and at worse they want some safe bomb runs to advertise US weapons in the process. A direct war with Iran has several unknowns and lots of unpredictability, they just want to keep Iran in a permanent state of chaos outside the 'normal', keep feeding negative news against them in perpetuity. The Iran deal normalised Iran you see and set the stage for Iran to slowly transition internally. People in here who have been here for several years have seen this movie on repeat several times and in many cases very close to their own homes too. And that is why it has become so difficult to keep up the bullshit despite the overwhelming propaganda power and the fact that the entire Anglo world has closed ranks on this one.

[skinster]

[Patrickov]

Your people of Hong Kong are no match to China without foreign support you mean. And that is why your people were created by foreign support in the first place. The Iranians however do not share this history with you and have sufficient historical experience, culture and education to be a fundamentally democratic nation down to their ethnic-character. Something that becomes apparent with any first hand meeting with an Iranian. They extremes have taken over due to necessity and the danger of annihilation. The Chinese are not like that and neither are the Chinese people of Hong Kong either. Neither of you have had a democratic experience at any point in your history. Not even on local, religious, or any level. You have never chosen your leaders, nor have you ever mocked them, or made fun of them, very necessary ingredients for political self actualisation. The Iranians have a tradition in that though.

I agree that Iran is a sufficiently democratic country, and I had indeed stated it before. However, that doesn't mean the people there cannot turn to foreign support if things go awry. I have no definite conclusion for their current situation and action though -- it just changes so quickly.

I think noemon's argument, despite using wordings specific to Iran, is apparently applicable to anywhere else (I actually had Sudan or Venezuela in mind) and that is where I dispute. Sorry if I seem to move a goalpost but this is the actual scope when I made my previous post.

I will respond on the Trump part later and on Hong Kong elsewhere.

[noemon]

First of all and for the nth time, I am not a Madam. Use people's usernames instead of what you think they are. Second, you do not seem to get it, but foreign intervention in Iran has happened to prevent them from becoming a democracy and not to aid them in such an endeavour. The reason the western governments support Hong Kong is because it damages China, not because of democracy even though I support Hong Kong for that reason regardless since I will never support a retreat from democratic institutions and because I believe that these institutions have found their way into Hong Kong's culture anyway at this stage in development. And even if the west ever supports a democracy in Iran it would be on western terms with western puppets at the helm anyway. That is part of the deal and then it requires another few generations at the best case scenario of active engagement to unshackle that anyway.

[skinster]

[Ter]

bombing civilian airports in broad daylight

You repeated this mistake several times now, sorry to have to correct you:
it was in the middle of the night and the execution happened on a road outside the airport, chosen because there were no civilians around, it was an isolated place on the periphery.
The executed were very very bad people, terrorists of the worst kind.

Side note : killing the leaders of terrorist organisations proved to be a very effective way of fighting those asymetrical wars. The Israelis did it to stop the 2002 intifada, with great success.

[noemon]

Broad daylight is a figure of speech that means doing something unashamedly without even trying to hide the fact and thus normalising it. It was not a road outside the airport but inside the airport. Ergo, the US bombed a civilian airport of an allied country in broad daylight. Statement of Fact.

The General of a sovereign nation is not a leader of a terrorist organisation but the Leader of a UN recognised country. That is actually bad.

The executed were very very bad people, terrorists of the worst kind.

Even if they were "bad" which is not what anyone in the world believes, from Asia to Europe, to Africa to the Americas, to even the US itself who all made deals with him, but even if for the sake of the argument we suppose they were, they were not killed because those who bombed thought they were "bad" but because it suited their interests. Their "bad" will be replaced by another "bad" as these are simply order takers and not policy makers, they were both soldiers.

[Ter]

they were not killed because those who bombed thought they were "bad" but because it suited their interests. Their "bad" will be replaced by another "bad" as these are simply order takers and not policy makers, they were both soldiers.

Yes, fine.
I read about the late General Soleimani and he was quite the guy, courageous, charismatic, a leader of men. That is why this loss is significant. They cannot easily replace such a guy with anyone else.

[Donna]

I'm glad this didn't escalate. Kind of a waste, and all it does is give Iran an icon and symbol to further legitimize the Mullahs.

[Hindsite]

Broad daylight is a figure of speech that means doing something unashamedly without even trying to hide the fact and thus normalising it. It was not a road outside the airport but inside the airport. Ergo, the US bombed a civilian airport of an allied country in broad daylight. Statement of Fact.

The General of a sovereign nation is not a leader of a terrorist organisation but the Leader of a UN recognised country. That is actually bad.

It is not bad in the case of Iran, because Iran is the leading sponsor of terrorism in the region. Even before President Trump, this vicious General Soleimani was designated as a terrorist by the United States and the United Nations security council banned him from leaving Iran because of his terrorist activities. His mistake was assuming President Trump was like Obama and the others.

[Crantag]

For whatever it's worth I talked to my Iranian friend yesterday. He said he didn't really agree with the way it was done but he's glad someone killed that guy, and that he had all sorts of blood on his hands.

[Tainari88]

This Soleimani man might not be a boy scout. That is not the point. The point is? The USA gov't has been interfering with Iranian internal disputes, affairs and determinations without any real right to do so. Since the fall of the Shah in the fifties to now, the USA gov't has been actively interfering in the ME for a long time. It is about geo political interests and oil and it is failing in a big way. It is time to realize that the old tactics of imperialist interventions is not going to undo all these complex problems with trying to rule a region from afar and impose your own interests.

The USA is going to alienate many nations in the Middle East and if it gets mired in another war with high costs for the gov't of the USA and the taxpayers--they are sealing their fate and will become a second rate empire (or are already there but are still in denial).

[late]

Thanks.

This thread has been all over the map. Even I have wandered off the reservation.

I may not always agree with Wilkerson, but he is quite familiar with the issues and people involved, made for a refreshing change.

[blackjack21]

Blackjack21 yet again engaging in outright falsehoods and regime-change apologetics with unashamed obfuscation & creative trivia.

First, I'm making no apologies for the Shah whatsoever. I have plainly stated many times that I am not an egalitarian. Nor am I obfuscating. If anything, I'm providing a great deal of historical detail precisely to neutralize the effect of Soviet propaganda that lingers on as a meme to this very day. There are college professors who believe that claptrap. Students eat up that moralizing rhetoric uncritically.

Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi had power over ministers under the Persian Constitution of 1906. He was perfectly within his power to dismiss Mossadeq from the post of prime minister, which is no different from the Queen of England's powers. It is well known that the Qajars were fighting to retain the old order, and were hostile to Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar creating and signing the Persian Constitution of 1906. As an historical side note, Mozaffar ad-Din, as crown prince, was sent to the North to govern the Azerbaijan province. Mohammed Mossadeq, the nephew of Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar's wife, was elected to the first Majlis in 1906 at the age of 24, and later took the same career path as Mozaffar ad-Din did as crown prince by becoming governor of the Azerbaijan province. Mossadeq was an aristocrat, not some sort of plebian. His father was the finance minister under the Qajar Dynasty. Mossadeq married the grandaughter of Nasser al-Din Shah. So this "Mossadeq was a man of the people" narrative is nothing but Soviet propaganda. Mozaffar ad-Din died 40 days after granting the constitution and is buried in Karbala, Iraq.

Mohammed Ali Shah succeeded Mozaffar ad-Din Shah, and abolished the constitution in 1908. Pro-constitutional factions protested and forced his abdication in favor of his son (who was only 11 years old), and re-established the constitution. During WWI, he was obviously too young to rule or stop the occupation of Tehran by Russian forces. More embarrassingly for Iran, Bakhtaran troops from the South rather than Iranian regular army troops expelled the Russians. Things got pretty wobbly in Iran in the 1920s with the Gilan province trying to break away and become a Soviet Socialist Republic. They were preparing to march on Tehran backed by the Red Army. Ahmad was still very young and a weak ruler. With the threat of Soviet expansion, the British backed Reza Khan--later made Reza Shah by the constitutional assembly in 1926. Anyway, it was Reza Khan coming to power and ultimately deposing Ahmad that could be characterized as a coup, because the head of state did in fact change and the Pahlavi Dynasty succeeded the Qajar Dynasty. For what it's worth, the heir apparent of the Qajar dynasty is still alive today, and lives in Dallas, Texas.

During WWII, the British and Soviets were allied. Reza Pahlavi Shah--becoming Shah by opposing Soviet expansion into Iran--was deposed by joint British and Soviet action, because his neutral stance in WWII was seen as pro-Nazi--but more importantly, lend-lease supplies from British India needed to be shipped via port and rail through Iran to the Soviet Union and they needed to transit Iran to accomplish that end. So Reza Shah was bounced in favor of his son Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. After the end of WWII in 1946, the Soviets refused to remove their military forces from the North of Iran; namely Iranian Azerbaijan and Kurdistan. The US finally forced the issue and it was Truman's first success at containment. See Iran crisis of 1946. Naturally, since @late pressed George Kennan as the architect of containment, I can reasonably assume that @late knew perfectly well what was going on in Iran, since the US lodged its protest and UNSC Resolution 2 was passed in January of 1946, and Kennan wrote his Long Telegram a month later in February 1946 which became the basis for the doctrine of containment in 1947 as the US was working to push the Soviets out of Iran.

So on the one hand @late will champion George Kennan when it suits him. Then, he will act as if he is utterly ignorant of the Doctrine of Containment and its first major success. You should know that perfectly well too @noemon , since the Truman Doctrine was formalized during the Greek Civil War following WWII. The US had to balance both Turkey and Greece even though neither were particularly democratic, and they hated each other. However, US policy stabilized both Greece and Turkey (at a cost of $400M US in 1950s dollars) to the point that they both became NATO members in 1952--the same year Mohammed Reza Shah Palavi first dismissed and later re-instated Mossadeq as Prime Minister.

However, Mossadeq then tried to depose the Shah with an unlawful referendum: 1953 Iranian parliamentary dissolution referendum. Mossadeq illegally dissolved parliament on August 16, 1953. He officially "resigned" August 19, 1953.

Name one thing I have said that is an "outright falsehood." I would suggest that it is you and @late who are being quite economical with the facts, because you both know perfectly well the back story, the aims and effect of the Truman doctrine, and what Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi did in the White Revolution for the people of Iran--particularly the rights of women.

By that logic Bill Clinton was being fought by the establishment too!!!

He was. They ultimately squeezed the "Regime Change" doctrine out of him in 1998 as he was being impeached. Are you going to pretend you didn't know that Bill Clinton was the one who signed the "Regime Change" policy for Iraq in to law too?

To top it all off, he has also thrown severe insults against the administration(for no apparent reason) so he can assume victim posture just in case anyone calls his bullshit. Class!

I'm sorry you feel I insulted you. You have my apologies. It was not my intention to insult you. I would certainly have engaged in a profanity- and adjective-laced tirade if it were my intention to insult you.

blackjack's "The Shah was not a dictator. He was a monarch." is hilarious though

Monarchy comes with a very different state of mind. Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi was not born a commoner. His life was impacted by his status from the moment of his birth until the moment he died. By contrast, Mossadeq, while from an aristocratic family, could have chosen another path in life. Yet, he went straight for law and politics. He was the first Iranian to receive a Doctor of Laws from a European university.

Whatever the case, the US regime-changed Iran and set in motion the ground work for what Iran has currently become.

Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi was the Shah of Iran from 1941 until 1979. There was no regime change in 1953--the head of state and the constitution remained the same. It was Mossadeq who held an illegal referendum, it was Mossadeq who illegally dissolved parliament, and it was Mossadeq who wanted to depose the Shah by referendum.

Whatever Mossadegh, the Shah and the Mullahs do in their own country is up to the country to sort out and not up to foreigners.

That's very romantic, but a lot of "Iranians" do not see themselves as such. Ask the Kurds, Azeris and Balochis for example. They would claim to be occupied by a foreign power. The Kurds are the same way in Iraq, Syria and Turkey as well.

Russia supports Iran just like it supported Syria while under the Zionist/Neocon/Wahabi war that's been ongoing on these independent states in the ME.

(cough cough) Great Game (cough cough)

And that is because your people were created by foreign support in the first place. The Iranians however do not share this history with you and have sufficient historical experience, culture and education to be a fundamentally democratic nation down to their ethnic-character.

Democracy is a European concept. Iran's constitution of 1906 was modelled on the constitution of Belgium.

The extremes have taken over due to necessity, constant power vacuums and the danger of national annihilation.

That's because a lot of Iran isn't Iranian. The British are facing the same thing with the SNP. The Spanish are facing the same thing with the Basques. The Turks, Syrians, Iraqis and Iranians are facing the same thing with the Kurds. Czechoslovakia split into the the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Yugoslavia split up rather famously as well.

The Chinese are not like that and neither are the Chinese people of Hong Kong either. Neither of you have had a democratic experience at any point in your history.

Let's not forget Taiwan.

Since the fall of the Shah in the fifties to now,

The Shah fell in 1979.

[late]

First, I'm making no apologies for the Shah whatsoever.

You argued he had a right to rule, which means the democracy they had did not.

Which is at least consistent with your defense of Trump.

[blackjack21]

You argued he had a right to rule, which means the democracy they had did not.

The constitution gave him power over appointing and dismissing executive ministers and power over the military. He could introduce legislation--not pass it, but introduce it. The president of the United States can do the same thing. Constitutional monarchy doesn't create a separate strong executive as we have in the United States. It creates an executive from within the members of the parliament (Majlis in the case of Iran) with the consent of the Monarch.

Which is at least consistent with your defense of Trump.

Trump is not a monarch. He will be gone next January, or in January 2025.

[late]

The constitution gave him power over appointing and dismissing executive ministers and power over the military. He could introduce legislation--not pass it, but introduce it. The president of the United States can do the same thing. Constitutional monarchy doesn't create a separate strong executive as we have in the United States. It creates an executive from within the members of the parliament (Majlis in the case of Iran) with the consent of the Monarch.


Trump is not a monarch. He will be gone next January, or in January 2025.

Governments change, or are you saying we should call the Queen, say we're sorry, and that it will never happen again?

Trump is trying to become a dictator, and he's getting closer all the time.