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Soviet Republic of Iran
29-Oct-2010
For three decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has bedeviled the United States, resisting both incentives and disincentives and working all the while to foil American designs in the Middle East. If 20th-century Russia was to Winston Churchill a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, for observers of contemporary Iran, the Islamic Republic often resembles a villain inside a victim behind a veil.
Seeking to understand their mysterious foe, American analysts most commonly invoke three historical analogies to explain its character and future trajectory: Red China, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union. The chosen metaphor pretty much dictates the proposed response, and most prescriptions for U.S. policy have come down to one of these variations: attempt to coax the Iranian regime into modernity; forget the diplomatic niceties and "pre-emptively" attack it to prevent or delay its acquisition of nuclear weapons; or contain it in hopes it will change or collapse under the weight of its internal contradictions.
After a momentous decade of watching Iran from both Tehran and Washington, interviewing hundreds of Iranians from across the political spectrum, and closely following the writings and statements of top Iranian officials, my advice for Barack Obama's administration as it came to office last year was to dispense with the historical metaphors and instead try to probe, via engagement, a seemingly facile but fundamental question: Why does Iran behave the way it does? Is Iranian foreign policy rooted in an immutable ideological opposition to the United States, or is Iran just reacting to punitive U.S. policies? To paraphrase Henry Kissinger, is Iran a nation or a cause?
I had always thought that the Islamic Republic was sui generis -- a political system unprecedented in modern times. But in the ensuing months, Iran's cynical response to Obama, followed by the massive post-election crackdowns, show trials, and forced confessions, made me think that historical analogies might shed some light on Iran after all. But which metaphor, if any, fits?
For proponents of the China comparison -- often foreign-policy realists -- the Iranian regime is fundamentally pragmatic, not ideological, and yearns for a rapprochement with the United States. Viewed through this relatively benign prism, Tehran's support for militant groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, its alliances with radical leaders like Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, Iraq's Moqtada al-Sadr, and Syria's Bashar al-Assad, its Holocaust denial, and its weekly jeers of "death to America" are seen as defensive reactions to a hostile United States. The analogy implies that a bold U.S. gesture, à la President Richard Nixon's famous 1972 trip to Beijing, could bring about a "grand bargain" with Tehran.
Many have noted that the propitious geopolitical circumstances fueling Nixon's rapprochement with Chinese leader Mao Zedong -- mutual concern about the looming Soviet threat -- do not exist when it comes to today's Iran. While Mao didn't exactly go around waving the Star-Spangled Banner, the China analogy also vastly underestimates the extent to which anti-Americanism is central to the identity of the Islamic Republic's current leadership, particularly Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Khamenei's contempt for the United States, documented in three decades' worth of writings and speeches, has been remarkably consistent. Whether the topic is foreign policy, agriculture, or education, he seamlessly relates the subject to the cruelty, greed, and sinister plots of what he calls American "global arrogance." Former senior Iranian officials, including even a former president, have told me that in private discussions Khamenei has declared, "Ma doshmani ba Amrika ra lazem dareem," i.e., "We need enmity with the United States." A month before the tainted presidential election of June 2009, Khamenei declared that Iran would face a national "disaster" if a candidate who attempted to thaw relations with America came to power.
While the "grand bargain" option garnered special attention during the George W. Bush years, when Washington shunned dialogue with Tehran, Obama's unprecedented and unreciprocated overtures to Tehran -- including two personal letters from the U.S. president to Khamenei -- undercut the narrative that Iran's hard-liners, despite their own rhetoric, secretly aspire to cordial relations with the United States.
They don't. Indeed, underneath the ideological veneer, the anti-Americanism of Iran's hard-liners is driven in no small part by self-preservation. They are acutely aware of the argument made by many Iran analysts over the years that a rapprochement with the United States could spur unpredictable reforms that would significantly dilute their hold on power. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of the powerful Guardian Council, put it plainly in a 2009 interview with Etemad newspaper: "If pro-American tendencies come to power in Iran, we have to say goodbye to everything. After all, anti-Americanism is among the main features of our Islamic state."
But if Iran is no 1970s China, ripe for an accommodation, the opposite view -- that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a latter-day Adolf Hitler and Iran is Nazi Germany -- is no closer to the mark. For the likes of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who bluntly told a Los Angeles audience in 2006 that "It's 1938, and Iran is Germany," the Islamic Republic is incorrigibly fundamentalist, messianic, and hence, undeterrable. Continued engagement, then, is tantamount to appeasement, and the use of military force might well be inevitable. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently added his name to the small but strident list of people who have endorsed this surprisingly persistent line of thinking.
Yet though the Iranian regime is homicidal toward its own population and espouses a hateful ideology, there is little evidence to suggest it is also expansionist and genocidal. Even the U.S. Defense Department describes Iran's military power -- underwritten by a budget less that 2 percent the size of America's -- as largely deterrent in nature. What's more, despite Ahmadinejad's repugnant rhetoric and delusions of grandeur, his control over the Iranian state is not comparable to the absolute power Hitler wielded in Germany.
So, should we dispense with the historical analogies altogether? Not quite. In fact, few contemporary analyses capture the nature of today's Islamic Republic better than a masterpiece I first read in college: diplomat George F. Kennan's incisive and unapologetic 1947 essay on the Soviet Union, "The Sources of Soviet Conduct." Kennan's article, published in Foreign Affairs under the pseudonym "X" because the author was a serving U.S. official, set the tenor of U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union until it finally collapsed in 1991 under the weight of its economic mismanagement and moral exhaustion.
Like all such comparisons, the analogy is far from perfect. The Soviet Union was an irreligious empire with nuclear weapons and global reach, while the Islamic Republic is an aspiring nuclear power whose influence outside the Middle East is limited. But like the Soviet Union, the Islamic Republic is a corrupt, inefficient, authoritarian regime whose bankrupt ideology resonates far more abroad than it does at home. Also like the men who once ruled Moscow, Iran's current leaders have a victimization complex and, as they themselves admit, derive their internal legitimacy from thumbing their noses at Uncle Sam.
Read Kennan's essay with the Islamic Republic in mind -- replacing "Soviet Union," "Stalin," and "communism" with their Iranian equivalents -- and the parallels are quite evident. Here's 10 striking examples of Kennan's text anticipating today's Iran. They offer time-tested insight into the machinations and gradual decay of Tehran's paranoid, opaque regime. Kennan's wisdom does not call on the United States to shun dialogue with Tehran, but merely to temper its expectations. In the process, Kennan would caution, America should remain "at all times cool and collected" -- and allow the march of history to run its course.
1. Iran's sense of siege is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"[I]deology, as we have seen, taught them that the outside world was hostile and that it was their duty eventually to overthrow the political forces beyond their borders. Then powerful hands of Russian Iranian history and tradition reached up to sustain them in this feeling. Finally, their own aggressive intransigence with respect to the outside world began to find its own reaction.… It is an undeniable privilege of every man to prove himself right in the thesis that the world is his enemy; for if he reiterates it frequently enough and makes it the background of his conduct he is bound eventually to be right."
2. The security apparatus designed to protect the state has begun to subsume it.
"The security of Soviet the Islamic Republic's power came to rest on the iron discipline of the Party Supreme Leader, on the severity and ubiquity of the secret police Basij and Revolutionary Guards, and on the uncompromising economic monopolism of the state. The 'organs of suppression,' in which the Soviet Iranian leaders had sought security from rival forces, became in large measures the masters of those whom they were designed to serve."
3. The looming foreign enemy is needed to justify domestic suppression.
"[T]here is ample evidence that the stress laid in Moscow Tehran on the menace confronting Soviet Iranian society from the world outside its borders is founded not in the realities of foreign antagonism but in the necessity of explaining away the maintenance of dictatorial authority at home."
4. Revolutionary ideology has not evolved.
"Of the original ideology, nothing has been officially junked. Belief is maintained in the basic badness of capitalism liberalism, in the inevitability of its destruction, in the obligation of the proletariat downtrodden believers to assist in that destruction and to take power into its their own hands."
5. The Islamic Republic may make tactical offers of compromise, but its enmity toward the West is strategic.
"It must inevitably be assumed in Moscow Tehran that the aims of the capitalist Western world are antagonistic to the Soviet regime Islamic Republic, and therefore to the interests of the peoples it controls. If the Soviet Iranian government occasionally sets its signature to documents which would indicate the contrary, this is to [be] regarded as a tactical maneuver permissible in dealing with the enemy (who is without honor) and should be taken in the spirit of caveat emptor. Basically, the antagonism remains."
6. The United States must focus on a long-term strategy, rather than short-term tactics.
"Soviet Iranian diplomacy [is] at once easier and more difficult to deal with than the diplomacy of individual aggressive leaders like Napoleon and Hitler. On the one hand it is more sensitive to contrary force, more ready to yield on individual sectors of the diplomatic front when that force is felt to be too strong, and thus more rational in the logic and rhetoric of power. On the other hand it cannot be easily defeated or discouraged by a single victory on the part of its opponents. And the patient persistence by which it is animated means that it can be effectively countered not by sporadic acts which represent the momentary whims of democratic opinion but only [by] intelligent long-range policies on the part of Russia's Iran's adversaries -- policies no less steady in their purpose, and no less variegated and resourceful in their application, than those of the Soviet Union Islamic Republic itself."
7. Ideological fatigue has set in.
"The mass of the people are disillusioned, skeptical and no longer as accessible as they once were to the magical attraction which Soviet Iranian power still radiates to its followers abroad."
8. The succession of power in the Islamic Republic is uncertain.
"[A] great uncertainty hangs over the political life of the Soviet Union Islamic Republic. That is the uncertainty involved in the transfer of power from one individual or group of individuals to others.
"This is, of course, outstandingly the problem of the personal position of Stalin Khamenei. We must remember that his succession to Lenin's Khomeini's pinnacle of pre-eminence … was the only such transfer of individual authority which the Soviet Union Islamic Republic has experienced.… Thus the future of Soviet Iranian power may not be by any means as secure as Russian Iranian capacity for self-delusion would make it appear to the men of the Kremlin Islamic Republic."
9. You can't reach an accommodation with a regime that needs you as an adversary.
"It is clear that the United States cannot expect in the foreseeable future to enjoy political intimacy with the Soviet Iranian regime. It must continue to regard the Soviet Union Iran as a rival, not a partner, in the political arena. It must continue to expect that Soviet Iranian policies will reflect no abstract love of peace and stability, no real faith in the possibility of a permanent happy coexistence of the Socialist Islamist and capitalist liberal worlds, but rather a cautious, persistent pressure toward the disruption and weakening of all rival influence and rival power."
10. U.S. policies can expedite, but not engineer, political change in Iran.
"It would be an exaggeration to say that American behavior unassisted and alone could exercise a power of life and death over the Communist Islamist movement and bring about the early fall of Soviet power the Islamic Republic in Russia Iran. But the United States has it in its power to increase enormously the strains under which Soviet Iranian policy must operate, to force upon the Kremlin Islamic Republic a far greater degree of moderation and circumspection than it has had to observe in recent years, and in this way to promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the breakup or the gradual mellowing of Soviet Iranian power."
First published in ForeignPolicy.com.
AUTHOR
Karim Sadjadpour is an associate in the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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gilani, you're wowing me
by hamsade ghadimi on Mon Nov 01, 2010 02:57 PM PDTgilani, you're wowing me with your clever writing. not only what seemed to be your praise of stalin was about the system and not the person and perhaps not even praise of the system. but it invoked me to ask you a question that i answered myself. well played sir. well played.
HG: You asked me a question and answered it for me!
by Roozbeh_Gilani on Mon Nov 01, 2010 01:37 PM PDTAnd I agree with your answer!
Again you dont have to agree or disagree with communism or Islamism to see the fundamental differences between the two systems which was the point of my original comment
"Personal business must yield to collective interest."
gilani, so you were praising
by hamsade ghadimi on Mon Nov 01, 2010 01:27 PM PDTgilani, so you were praising communism? i see. communism had its "mistakes" too, right? you have your yugoslavian friends who preferred yugo's communism to today's political system. i have my cuban friends (from blue collar families) who despise castro and che with every ounce of their being. go figure. at any rate, we both are suffering from a small sample problem. neither you should infer from your yugoslav friends and i won't infer from my cubans. :)
Roozbeh G.
by Rea on Mon Nov 01, 2010 01:11 PM PDTSorry if I offended the memories of your late friends but to me Marxists and Islamists are bedfellows.
I wish your friends had heard of the Hungarian Revolution 1956 and the Prague Spring 1968, before they had given their lives fighting for a lost cause.
@NP: I'll try next time. Things are getting somewhat mixed up here.
HG:
by Roozbeh_Gilani on Mon Nov 01, 2010 12:56 PM PDTYes, that was the whole point. I was talking about the systems and not the men in charge. As far as Stalin, hitler and his dirty deeds, you dont need me for that, there are volumes written on that on internet, I believe.
And dont start me on khomeini.....
"Personal business must yield to collective interest."
Rea:
by Roozbeh_Gilani on Mon Nov 01, 2010 12:46 PM PDTAnd I and most people here lived under Islamist hell in Iran -and not the waterd down version- and can tell you a thing or two about it. Further I have visited the sites in Iran where Marxists murdered by islamist regime were buried in secret mass graves and I'd tell you that the friends and relatives of these martyrs of Iran would find your comments somehow offensive. Marxists have been and remain the most steadfast opponents of the islamist regime.
BTW, I have quite a few ex Yougoslavian friends here in US and they all tell me life under Tito was a lot better than now, and I am sure they are not being paid by Tito's ministry of peropaganda to say so!
"Personal business must yield to collective interest."
gilani
by hamsade ghadimi on Mon Nov 01, 2010 12:39 PM PDTtake it easy on rea. you had me fooled with your writing as well. after starting a sentence "....stalin, the man-who despite his mistakes-" and then writing only good things about stalin and not acutally writing about his "mistakes" (e.g., killing millions of people). that really threw me off and i thought that you're actually praising stalin.
now, for comparative analysis, who can finish the following sentences:
"hitler, the man-who despite his mistakes-...." or
"khomeini, the man-who despite his mistakes...."
Roozbeh G.
by Rea on Mon Nov 01, 2010 12:31 PM PDTRead again. And again I find them pretty much the same.
And no, I'm not an "expert in all subjects". But I do know a bit about marxists/stalinists/communists et al.
Lived thru it. Lucky, watered down version. Tito was wise enough in 1948 to send them where they belong to. Stalinist' hell !
rea
by Niloufar Parsi on Mon Nov 01, 2010 12:21 PM PDTi read somewhere recently that the soviet union was not actually defeated through reasons usually given, but through a popular non-participation that ground the system to a halt for lack of productivity. to me this made some sense of gorbachev's perestroika and glasnot drive that seemed to have come out of the blue. what's your take on this?
Rea"
by Roozbeh_Gilani on Mon Nov 01, 2010 12:13 PM PDTYou are distorting my comments by quoting me completely out of context. I dont think you understood what I wrote, otherwise you would not come up with comments like:
the IRI mullahs and the Soviet Union marxists are pretty much the same"
I have seen many stupid comments from self declared experts in all subjects in the universe on this site, but yours beat them all.
"Personal business must yield to collective interest."
PS. it is beyond my comprehension
by Rea on Mon Nov 01, 2010 09:14 AM PDTReading there are still people who believe that the Soviet Union was an industrial power.
Shelves were empty and people were hungry. And hundreds of 000s were eliminated ruthlessly just for daring raise their voices.
Roozbeh G.
by Rea on Mon Nov 01, 2010 09:07 AM PDTThe only difference between Khamenei and Stalin is: the latter killed far more opponents.
As for the rest, the IRI mullahs and the Soviet Union marxists are pretty much the same.
Btw, what "first class industrial power" are you talking about ? People went hungry !
fundamentaly flawed analogy: Soviet Union and islamist Iran.....
by Roozbeh_Gilani on Mon Nov 01, 2010 08:09 AM PDTAre two completely different entities with very little in common.
Author fails to mention that the whole strategy of "political islam" was invented jointly by MI5 and CIA to curtail spread of communism into oil rich persian gulf. This strategy saw it's success in two key countries of Iran and afghanistan, on the southern borders of the soviet union, where the local communists were defeated and massacred by the western backed islamists, namely Taliban and khomeini.
Now the comparison of Stalin, the man -who despite his mistakes - under him Soviet Union crushed Nazi germany into submission, developed into a first class industrial power, with first man in space, some of the greatest scientific achievements in the history of man kind, with this drug addicted tin pot dictator ali khamenei whose security apparatus was unable to defeat the other tin pot dictator saddam Hossein, is not only laughable, but raises serious question marks against the author's understanding of modern world history, if not his objectivity.
Islamist regime will disapper, thanks to brave young iranian men and women and no thanks to USA and Great Britain who engineered and finaced it's creation in order to defeat the anti monarchist revolution of 1979.
Sargord's article is Ahmadi's rhetoric for domestic consumption
by Anonymouse on Mon Nov 01, 2010 06:03 AM PDTThe Iranian economy, although plagued by structural problems and stressed by sanctions, is both stable and growing—Iran’s trade with international markets has picked up significantly in the last few years while inflation has fallen dramatically according to the IMF. The government feels confident enough to implement an ambitious economic reform program that would eliminate the subsidies which literally fuel the corruption, waste and inefficiency that Sadjadpour refers to.
- "although" plagued by structural problems "and" stressed by sanctions, is "both" stable and growing?! It's like saying; although been punched by Mike Tyson and given a broken nose and stressed by a fractured jaw I'm both healthy and ready to fight!
- Inflation fallen "dramatically" according to IMF? Where and when IMF has said that? Any links? Inflation is at an all time high and has not only never "fallen" but has always been on the rise by at least 10% (usually more) annualy.
- The Government feels "confident" to eliminate subsidies that have "fueled" the corruption and give it to the Pasdaran foundations (such as Mostazafan Bonyads) to focus and monopolize the distribution of subsidies to the same foundations that run the corruption!
It is always every thing is alright and nothing to be worried about, and not only that, things are only going to get better! If there ever is going to be fundamental change in Iran that will turn Islamic Republic on its head it is only as a result of the Islamic Republic's flexibility but we're not going to discuss it now. We'll wait to see if it happens and then respond however it turns out.
Everything is sacred
Fred
by norooz on Sun Oct 31, 2010 10:22 PM PDTThe key word in your comment is "sane world". The world that has been using force in different shapes and forms on Iran and other nations is not a sane world. Had they been sane, there wouldn't be all these wars and problems in the world and they would have been a cure and not a disease. Sane world Brazil and Turkey reached an agreements on the nuclear issues with Iran, but the insane world you call sane didn't accept it. The human rights issues can also be fixed with the intervention, advice and cooperation of a sane world, but not the insane world you refer to as sane.
The question i have for the author of this blog is, Then what about the letters Ahmadinejad has written to Obama and many times he repeated that we want to resolve the problems with US, but based on mutual respect and not by force? So to claim that IRI want to continue anti America attitude because it serves their interest doesn't seem to be true. For this and many other reasons it seems that west and Israel are the ones interested in prolonging and creating problems, not just with Iran, but with many other countries because they apparently find them beneficial and profitable. IRI has made many wrong decisions internally, but there is nothing wrong with defending Iran's international rights and interests.
Analogy: Dar masal monAghesheh nist
by sa_id_farzaneh on Sun Oct 31, 2010 12:55 PM PDTInteresting article and yes as the author says no analogy is perfect (or as we say in Farsi: Dar masal monAghesheh nist). I rather feel that Ahmadinejad follows Mao-Tse Dong's approach in politics. China at the time developed the 3rd world theory to unite the masses of the world against the two super powers, the then estekbare-jahani during cold war. In effect he was endeavouring to push China to become the third superpower, e.g. acquiring nuclear arms technology. The IRI policy is based on using the weaknesses inherent in the dominant US power in the region. Just talk to the many Egyptians or Pakistanis who claim or do really believe they would rather have Ahmadinejad as their president than Hosni Mobarak or Zardari. Or to talk to the Iraqis who believe their country is better off led by a Saddam like dictator than the chaos US republicans so-called demoncratisation policy brought to their homeland. ... Enough for a comment otherwise I could be writing an article :)
Dr Sa'id Farzaneh
Sargord
by Niloufar Parsi on Sun Oct 31, 2010 07:35 AM PDTthat's a great article. thanks for sharing the link. Reza is so sharp!
Great article
by benross on Sun Oct 31, 2010 06:28 AM PDTThis is basically what Obama administration was doing from the beginning. It has left very little for IRI to feed upon and to justify its victimization rhetoric.
The true value of this approach is not much in the IRI actual players in power. What it is the real benefit, is how the IRI appologists, Iranian or foreigner, scramble to find a point of justification... and that is priceless.
Iranians are now making their own mind.
جناب سجادپور
کلاه مخملیSat Oct 30, 2010 11:39 PM PDT
اون اتحاد جماهیر شوروی، با اون یال وکوپالش، بعد از ٧٠ سال از داخل سقوط کرد .. :)
این رژیم جمهوری اسلامی را زیادی جدی نگیرین .. :) زودتر از اینکه فکر می کنید خواهد افتاد ... !
Goes to show we're not all
by Sargord Pirouz on Sat Oct 30, 2010 08:25 PM PDTGoes to show we're not all anti-Iran partisans:
A RESPONSE TO KARIM SADJADPOUR’S “THE SOURCES OF SOVIET IRANIAN CONDUCT”
By Reza Esfandiari
//www.raceforiran.com/a-response-to-karim-sadjadpour’s-“the-sources-of-soviet-iranian-conduct”
Well-done. thanks you.
by vildemose on Sat Oct 30, 2010 07:55 PM PDTWell-done. thanks you.
sp.
by shushtari on Sat Oct 30, 2010 02:46 PM PDTyou don't have to take my word for it....actually, I think the number is much higher, if you include the million or more who died for khomeini's revenge in the war- a war that would have never happened under the shah's regime.
just over 6000 young men and women were killed in a single summer in 1988, and that is just a fraction of the victims over a period of 30 years.
you see, you consider yourself american, but, I, on the other hand, am an iranian, born and raised- that is were my heart lies- with iran's problems, not US's
and as far as I am concerned, all the problems started when that idiot khomeini landed his ass back in iran
you still haven't answered my questions- are the mullahs peaceful and merciful??
Shush
by Sargord Pirouz on Sat Oct 30, 2010 10:33 AM PDTHundreds of thousands of Iranians tortured by the IRIG? How can I take you seriously when you offer statements such as these? Let's just say you need to provide credible sourcing for this claim.
About Iran's problems, I'm more concerned with my country America's problems. Such as launching two wars, killing over a hundred thousand people (confirmed), sending millions into refugee status and spending over a trillion dollars and counting on these quagmires. Then there's the abuses of Grantanimo, the documented sexual abuse at Abu Ghraib, the murderous torture at Bagram, the numerous CIA black site prisons, and the tens of thousands of people held by US military forces without due process in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So you see, Shush, there's a bigger problem we Americans need to address here of our own making, before we start rubbernecking to every one of little old Iran's problems, which to a certain extent is merely part of an ant-Iran narrative being spun by our mainstream media in hyping a potential war against Iran.
SP,
by shushtari on Sat Oct 30, 2010 08:51 AM PDTok, now that we know, let's ask u this:
do u believe the mullahs are a peaceful bunch? since you are an advocate of 'peace'?
I think it's pretty clear that they are ruthless bunch- having murdered and tortured hundreds of thousands of brave iranians...
it they are indeed peaceful, they would hold free elections, and see what happens!!!!
btw, now it all makes sense, since you have never lived in the hell that is the islamic rapist republic....you can't imagine what it's like to be under the yoke of the akhoonds.
a lot of us here have, and I think if you had experienced such oppression, you would not be saying things that you are saying here.
if you want to see 'anti-iran' then go to iran, and see the mullahs
Hilarious picture
by Simorgh5555 on Sat Oct 30, 2010 03:26 AM PDTHey, They look like French mime artists!
Shush
by Sargord Pirouz on Fri Oct 29, 2010 11:26 PM PDTIt's rainin' outside, so no motorcycle ride tonight. Thus, I've the time and inclination to answer the same question posed many times here.
No, I am not an exile. I'm a native son American of Iranian descent, with an Iranian father who came here in '49, and an American mother whose American descent stretches as far back as the last ice age (her/my ancestors walked their way into America!).
I accept Iran for what it is, politically and socially. And I'm an advocate of peace.
I've dual citizenship, and vote in both American and Iranian elections.
So there you have it, once again, here on the IC.
sargooz jaan.
by shushtari on Fri Oct 29, 2010 10:25 PM PDTI know you don't have an answer, but I'm gonna ask it anyway.
you really believe your vile mullahs, or I should say, pasdars, are comfortably in power, without any fear of being sent to hell??
why is it that they have to suppress any and all dissent at all cost??? if there is no danger of collapse, why is it that are crapping the pants, and readying khayeneis plane to damascus?
there are dozens of videos of top IRGC brass who have fled the hell that is iran, where they expose the level of fear that is in the hearts of your vile paymasters.
interesting that you are constantly here on 'ic.com'??? aren't you and 'exile' yourself
Anon, he was predicting the
by Sargord Pirouz on Fri Oct 29, 2010 07:36 PM PDTAnon, he was predicting the imminent implosion of Iran in '09! How unreliable was that? And many of his talking points were later proven false.
Meanwhile, the Leveretts were predicting the opposite.
Which analysis came to fruition? I mean, geez: remember all the unrealistic expectations? Remember David ET's $1000 dollar constitution? What a joke! And all that false sense of triumphalism that went with it, only to be extinguished by 22 Bahman.
Yeah, if you want to be entertained by wishful-thinking fantasies you happen to adhere to, Karim's your man. But if you want unbiased, American-centric perspectives of policy advocacy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Leveretts are your go-to source. And they've been consistently proven right; something even their harshest critics (who are being truthful on the matter) now openly admit.
The Brilliant Karim Sadjadpour
by Shazde Asdola Mirza on Fri Oct 29, 2010 07:03 PM PDTIt has been a long time since I have had the joy of reading such a brilliant article in this site.
With thinkers like Mr. Sadjadpour, there may still be hope for Iranians and Americans, to one day toast the death of IRI and laugh how easy it was.
Remember 1989!
Sargord anyone you disagree with is highly reliable!
by Anonymouse on Fri Oct 29, 2010 06:50 PM PDTEverything is sacred