Pictory

Pro Revolution, Pro Khomeini, Pro Obama?

Note that I am still presenting this as a question and not an assertion. In other words, I still allow for a (tiny) margin of error. But the more I look at the comments and the commentators behind them, who still believe that the revolution of 1979 was a just and genuine movement, the more I see that they are the same people who worship, and voted for, Barack Obama.  Surely, this can't be a coincident. I can cautiously assume that most of these commentators were in their early teens or infancy some thirty years ago. Some were not even born. But whether they were mature enough to conciously heed the Khomeini's call for a massive revolt against the a working a flourshing order or if they are the latter-day "me-too" revolutionaries, the parallels between the revolt of 78 and the vote of 08 are too strong to be dismissed. 

Back then, a relatively unknown but populist figure emerged from 15 years of exile and called for "change." He gave "hope" to every household that the wealth of the nation will be "redistributed." The poor were told that their "taxes were to be abolished." The rich were told that their "wealth was to be taxed." The foreign enemies of the nation were warned "to be beaten." Iranians were told that "under the new order they all had the same right." That they all could express their opinion. "They were ONE nation."

Now three decades later the offspring of the same people who rallied behind that unknown figure in Iran, answered the same call from another unknown figure, this time in America, who sold them a rich cocktail of hope and change very much in the same color and flavor that their parents bought thirty years earlier back in Iran.

And now, three decades after the greatest post-Mongolian calamity that has befallen Iran, these latter-day, me-too revolutionaries  honor their parents foolhardiness by being jubilant about the achievements of their parental adventures.

Is there still not a correlation between the Iranian revolutionaries of 78 and the Iranicans-for-Obama voters of 08?

 I rest my case.

Napolean: Copy all the links for future reference!

As someone said in another thread we Iranians are extremely intelligent however, we are neither wise or informed. We are too trusting of people and have learned not to question authorities unless others push us to for their own agenda.

Lately, the power that be are shoving the reformers down our throat because the reformers are too stupid to figure out that they are doing the bidding of those who don't have the interest Of Iran in their heart. They really think that following the prescription of the oil mafia in the US is going to get them anywhere.

Akbar Ganji: We Lied about the Shah!
An ex-Revolutionary Guardsman Comes Clean!

N. Kamvari's interview with Akbar Ganji (Zamaneh Radio):
Ganji: We Lied!

ما دروغ می‌گفتیم،...
ما به دروغ می‌گفتیم حکومت شاه ۱۵۰ هزار زندانی سیاسی دارد و این دروغ بود، و امروز باید بابت این دروغ، یعنی خودمان و همه کسانی که این دروغ را گفته‌اند باید خودشان را نقد بکنند. ما به دروغ می‌گفتیم حکومت شاه صمد بهرنگی را کشت، ما به دروغ گفتیم حکومت شاه صادق هدایت را کشت،‌ ما به دروغ می‌گفتیم حکومت شاه دکتر شریعتی را کشت. همه‌ی این دروغها را گفته‌ایم، آگاهانه هم گفته‌ایم

//news.gooya.eu/politics/archives/2007/01/056...

sickof...

There are still naive people who think a stupid mulla from najaf could stage the dark revolution!

Shah was too self-confident in early 70s, that caused him his regime.

The evidence is in front us and some still think that iran is independent and strong.

After 30 years of IRI, the country is broken down, infra-structurally and culturally with 25% unemployment and drug use rampant. The iranian treasury has a mere $7B reserve (according to central bank leak) after 30 years of pumping crude out of iranian soil. IRI after 30 years of screaming and showing fists in the streets has not even been able to provide for internal Gasoline use, or for electricity, or finish up the half-finished reactor in bushehr.

IRI has done nothing for iran in the past 30 years. As one said, iranian birds and bees did more for iran than IRI has done. What the outside world wants, IRI delivers to them in silver and gold platters: unprecedented 25-year long gas and oil deals with india and china, purchase of useless arms from russia and china, and feeding russia in the hope of them finishing the bushehr reactor.

Transfer of iranian assets to personal bank accounts, to hezbollah and hamas and sadr and taleban does not leave much of iranian wealth for iranians.

And let's not forget that IRI brought us war and executions and tortures and serial murders. Iran is so weak, but with a loud voice, that even the past treaties are broken with or without iranian consent. Iran was to receive 50% of northern resources according to 1941 treaty, and now others decide that iran does not deserve more than 11% of areas without any major resource.

Even a newbie like UAE wants the 3 islands back, the islands that they voluntarily ceased claim to when they were dealing with the shah.

And still some think that shah was pushed aside by a mulla to create an independent iran.

We obviously deserved no better than we got when 98% of us demanded shah's exit without thinking about the consequences of our action that is what we see today.

We sold iran, cheaply and easily, to islamic ideology and a bunch of mullas. We did to ourselves and allowed others to play games with our future and benefit from iranian religious beliefs.

The late Jeanne Kirkpatrick

The late Jeanne Kirkpatrick once made a nice distinction between totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. The Shah was at the most autocratic; he never brought his full powers to bear against the revolt. The Shah's American ally under President Jimmy Carter was inconsistent and President Carter proved himself completely inept. The growing Iranian middle and professional class should have supported the Shah, but they were deceived by Khomeini. Sad. They neglected the ancient Hindu proverb, ''Do not ride to power on the back of the tiger.''

Here are the real reasons

Here are the real reasons why the Shah got sacked:

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=06Hb1S2vD8E

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=66-jkx36BPc

"""And so began a world-wide campaign of the vilification of the Shah, a campaign led by self-described “leftists” and “liberals”. Vilification is actually an understatement, for the Shah was turned into the Devil himself. That is why, while Chomsky’s friends were massacring hundreds of thousands in Cambodia, the Shah of Iran was singled out by Amnesty International as the “world’s number one violator of human rights.” I mention Cambodia only, because in Apartheid South Africa, Red China, Uganda, Zaire, Middle East and Latin America,… the governments there were singing of brotherly love, while others were preoccupied with dropping flowers on Vietnam.). The greatest crime of the "Liberal-Left" intellectuals in the past century was their vindictive campaign of lies, fabrications, and treachery against Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi; a campaign that will go down in history as the most vivid manifestation of a "double standard" aimed at demonizing an anti-Communist leader, while prolonging a deafening silence about the atrocities of leftist dictatorships.

Today, with the exception of those relegated to the marginalized swamps of the "liberal-left" dogma, any reputable observer would concede that virtually every aspect of Iranian life and society (education, health, arts, sports, infrastructure, banking, justice system, the military, women's rights, social and religious freedoms…) was breathtakingly modernized and "civilized" under the Shah. When it came to the participation of Iranian people in the political process, while the Shah's system of government was "authoritarian", Iran was far from being a brutal "totalitarian" state, examples of which were plenty under Communist and strict Islamic regimes. In the words of historian "George Lenczowski" -the author of “Iran Under the Pahlavis”- Iran under the Shah was not only "freer" than all of its neighboring Islamic and most other Middle Eastern countries, but also all the Communist "Utopias" to which the intellectual “Mafia” was comparing its government.
Did these "facts" ever interfere with the Leftist intellectuals’ "war" against the Shah? Did any of them ever offer a similar critique of “Castro’s Socialist Paradise”? To them, and to the Left in general, the Shah's regime was a tool of American influence in the region.

The poor Shah had envisioned refining the nation's own oil in 1971 and manufacturing related products whereas in 2007 the Islamic Republic has to import 40% of its oil and has to resort to brutal tactics to suppress rebellion against fuel rationing. No government has benefited from such a surge in oil revenues in the entire history of Iranian nation as the IRI has in recent years. Even the IRI's own economists are telling the murderous mullahs that they're wasting the unprecedented oil wealth. Where does the money end up you might ask? The oil revenues buy the mullahs Arab/islamists mercenary militias across the ME and wasted on propganda networks such as PRESSTV or AL-MANAR and manufacturing fake "dissidents", fraudlent Islamic women movemnt (Reformers women movement), front organizations and web of all extractions to manipulate and control the sheeple inside and outside of Iran.

And on the social justice and freedom front, the debate for freedom and liberty has been reduced to appropriate size of stones used in stoning men, women and children or the amount of blood money prescribed when a woman is killed by a man whereas before the pestillence of Khomeini, they would automatically go to jail instead of following the stupid sharia's Diyah doctrine.""

Mike Wallace Interview with the late shah
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=66-jkx36BPc&mode=re...

I have concluded that the

I have concluded that the Iranian revolution was really masterminded to a greater extent by external forces (US, UK , France), who deliberatly engaged in a mud slinging campaign against the Shah in the late 1970's.

//www.amazon.com/Century-War-Anglo-American-P...

//www.payvand.com/news/06/mar/1090.html

THe Shah was a Saint compared to the mullahs. The Islamic Republic has killed, plundered, stolen, and tortured more people than the Shah ever did in his entire reign.

Iranians might have not had much political freedom because of the cold war and soveit-backed toudeh party but they had a hell of lot more social freedom.

At least the Shah never stoned anyone to death and pedophilia as far as I know was not legal in Iran (age of marriage was brought down to 9 during khomeini). Also, legalized prostitutions (sigheh) and polygamy were not the norms in the Shah's time. Drug dealing was not also a state-run venture capital as it is in the Islamic Republic.

//www.emadbaghi.com/en/archives/000592.php

Repeating the 3-decade old propagnda is not going to help us to understand what really happend to us. If we don't understand this now, we will be manipulated and taken advantage of forever by everyone, the mullahs, the monarchs, the imperialist, the communists,etc.

Reza shah was born in a poor family in the village of ...

Alasht. We read in the history books that he was not wealthy by any stretch of imagination when he was chosen by the Brits to replace Ahmad Shah Ghajar. Reza shah did some good work to put Iran on track to become a functioning Western-oriented country. But it is a fact that the man who did not own a single village before he became a shah left 1200 villages to his son. There's no shred of evidence that he paid for any of those villages. Later in order to get his Land Reform program, or Eslaahat-e Arazi started, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi distributed some, not all, of those villages among the ro'aaya who were toiling in those villages. The villages that were not distributed were put in a trust to create the Bonyad-e Pahlavi, which was supposed to be a charity organization. So how did a man with no land holdings end up owning almost 1200 villages?!!!

Well,..how can you argue with that??

Abarmard's neighbor, who was a friend of his sisters disappeared at the age of 15 because she looked, acted and dressed as a communist. "It did happen but then the world and medias didn't publish the extend," he enlightens us.

Let me guess: SAVAK kidnapped her, and the Shah ordered her execution.

Akheh baba,...no one asks Who? What? Why? There were those heavy weights who picked up arms, and even conspire to assasinate Shah and other high ranking officials, and they managed to survive. Who would want to kidnap a 15 year old girl??

Besides, don't you think this would make a sensational story, after the fall of the Shah? They blamed Shah for the death of Takhti, Ali Shariati, and Samad Behrangi,and sensationalized them for propaganda, how come other than Abarmard, no one has ever heard of this "15 year old communist-looking neighbor"?

Did it ever occur to you, that she might have run away with a boyfriend and the family created this story to save themselves from embarrassment, and everyone knows it, expect a few who are easily fooled, who swallow anything without asking questions, just as they bought the story of SAVAK burning Cinema REX, and any other crap they shoved down out throats in the last 30 years.

Have we learned anything in the past 30 years??

Abarmard;

I cannot disagree with any of your points.  Facts in the field support your conclusions.  Rational conclusions.  Thanks.

Saed K.

Saed K, you say that there is no proof that he stole any money from the treasury. So what the hell is everyone talking about??? where did they hear that from??? i always hear everyone saying it. Or is there proof, somebody please post the proof. If nobody posts it, but just keeps blindly saying it, i will have to discard it as a fact, and accept it as a rumor.

Damn Right!

Iranians were known as Hassan, farzandeh akbar, or hazrateh vaalaa, or moayerol-olama!

Reza Shah made away with all those ceremonial names.He brought the new western system of registry in Iran. Everyone was required to pick a first name and a last name! He picked "Pahlavi" for himself!

He was an unusual fellow. Unlike all his fellow Iranians, he was sharp, diciplined, goal oriented, and got the jobs done!
He didn't have 200 wives in his heram, like all the other Kings has, proceeding him. He'd get up at5, wear his military uniform and go to see if the work was done.

The late Shah had several close calls with death. Surviving any of them, would turn a rational person to a person who thinks there are invisible hands , protecting him. Ask anyone who survived a close encounter to death, and they tell you, God was watching for me.
It's human nature.
There is no shred of evidence, Shah stole all the money from the Iranian treasury. None. I guess he could have taken the royal jewelery, easily, and he didn't.
So, I have forgiven him for his mistakes. I hope he has forgiven us for ours.

Regarding my previous posting, Answer to Haj agha Tajrishi

Dear Mr. Haj agha Tajrishi, fellow Iranian:

The comments made by Zion hinted that he believed the Great Iranian revolution was a mistake. The Iranian revolution was not the result of 5 to 6 Iranian Shia Muslim Priests. There were a lot of people who were secular that wanted to abolish the dictatorial blood thirsty rule of the evil Pahlavi dynasty. To tell you the truth, their name wasn't even Pahlavi. Reza Mir Panj became Reza Khan became Reza Shah became Reza Pahlavi. This guy who came to power in 1925 had a multiple personality disorder. His grand daughter Leila was also taking psychiatric medication (that was not her fault, it seems psychiatric problems were in their genes). Mohammad Reza Pahlavi sais he spoke with the Shia saint Imam Mahdi in person. How such mental cases ruled Iran is just un-real.
It was a pleasure to the masses and the majority of Iranians in January 16, 1979 to see the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi leave Iran. It would have been better if the Shah did not steal all the money from the Iranian treasury. To this day Mohammad Reza pahlavi's family are free loaders living on the money stolen from the Iranian people back in January 1979.

As for Zion view of the Islamic Republic of Iran, that government will not attack Israel. And Israel will not attack Iran. In the end, there will be a long lasting Mid East Peace plan and every one will live in peace.

Let us not forget that it was the Israeli's that help arm Iran during the Iran Contra Affair which took place during the Iran-Iraq war.

Iran has not started a war with anyone in the area since the time of Nader Shah.

well said shadoneh, I am ok with Zion too

Well said Shadooneh. The revolution for me was a struggle for freedom and redistribution of wealth and I was among the first in my hometown to bring those ideas out of university ... the revolution I remember did not want to to restrict anyone's freedom of expression including Zion's.
I am vehemently against many of Zion's ideas but I am ok with her/him, in fact I appreciate her/him being here ... even when she/he gives us s**t.
BTW, I still don't know if Zion is a she or a he, Iranian or not, do you? ... anyway Zion is interesting, and sometimes even honest ...

jonestown ro dishab to CNN

jonestown ro dishab to CNN mididam. taajob nadareh on 900 ta ro khar gir aavordeh bood ina ye melato ke mireh 12 farvardin 1358 dar refrandom sherkat mikoneh ke bege jomhoori islami ari ya na? khaylee ham moftakhareh az in aazadi ke be dast avardeh!!! ZEKI!! khod kardeh ra tadbir nist!! pedar bozerge ma ham ke zaman Paseeyan dar be dar shodeh bood mikhond " in sar ke neshan sar parastid ba dideh ebratash bebeenid in ast aaghebate vatan parasti" babam ham ke kodeta ro dideh bood mikhond: tarsam ze farte shobadeh chandan kharat konand ta dastan eshgh vatan bavarat konand" hala man migam ke change is comin!!

Uhhh Look at the continent of Africa. Those now with opportunity

are doing incredibly well. it's not just iranians who have suffered because of british. Nigerians and other Africans who are studying abroad are doing incredibly well too. Luckily, Iran is better off than those countries.

p.s. conspiracy theories are the best! shah was really a gift from the gods above.  

I admire british immenslely with awe!

Is is amazing that they could stage such a dark revolution and bring in a trained indian mulla origined from their old colony and excite so may people to shoot themselves in their feet.

Brits knew the weakness of iranians, the blind religiosity; they sent shia ready-made mullas from india to iran starting some 200 years ago to turn events in their favor.

They lost iran thrice:

once when reza shah came to power (they spread the rumors that they brought him so people can get rid of him -- that did not work. See recent research by Prof. Katouzian).

the second time in 1941 when reza shah insisted on iranian independence, they managed to exile him, but then iran was too close to america which was not acceptable to them.

third, they created leftists/islamist uprisings in 1953 and then the coup, they failed again as iran became ally of US and progressed.

their revenge finally came in 1979 when they successfully brought in an islamic regime which has deep-rooted animosities with anything of iranian origin, including trivial cultural events like norooz and chahrshanbeh souri. they succeeded in destroying iran that pahlavis built and turned iran into a true 3rd world country, with resources depleted, total dependence on the west (even for their gasoline!), and with 70 million people with no jobs and lots of drug addicts (same tactic they used for china a couple of centuries ago).

british wake up call came when shah started sending iranian students to england for education and some of them turned out to be pretty smart. Seeing iranians educated in one generation going from single-digit literacy to 65% literacy with some showing signs of hyper-intelligence was a major danger to british interests, not acceptable to brits, and had to be curtailed.

They knew the serious weakness of iranians, their religion, that could be used to the fullest to destroy a country that could have been a progressive country by now had they not fooled the people to stage the "deceitful coup" of 1979.

I admire british on their un-paralleled ability to fool people so that some of us still favor the treasonous islamic regime and still have not gotten it in the face of 30 years of british success in destruction of iran and iranian culture and iranian nationalism which they saw as the main barrier to achieving their goals.

Zion is a louse. He doesn't contribute anything here.

How they hangin Zion? To the left or the to right? Even if the Islamic leadership bugs you, coming here won't change it. The non-Iranians who are here, besides you, CONTRIBUTE in a meaningful way. You're just here to tell us how dumb we were to get rid of shah and bla bla bla. Nothing new. You're just a Jew and that's the only new thing about you. And if Israel is annihilated, they will have a part in it too. They aren't innocent, so I don't feel so bad for them. They created their enemies too. They didn't just appear. 

No,

I'm not another persona of Q nor your father...

And, you girl, you made me proud of my english as It's not one of my most fluent languages, Thanks.

Q, is that you? Your other persona?

You make me very proud of my contributions here. Thanks.

Dear Shadooneh,
You forgot to mention the Shooting of Palestinian Children®.

Zion(ist) you're welcome to come and go as you please.

Please ignore the bigoted comments about "non-Iranian creeps" on this site. Last time I checked the US was still a free country and I, for one, hold the right of free speech very dearly. I am very sorry there are still bigots who "lurk" the Internet and litter this beautiful information highway with their ugly remarks.
Having said that, I disagree with everything you say and have said in your posts.
The Iranian Revolution may have ingnited the Islamic fundamentalist sentiments, which have existed among the ordinary people of the region for centruies, but the actions of the policies of the state of Israel rule by the Zionitas including occupation, imoral land grab by esbablishing illegal settlements and esblishing a Zionist Apartheid regime have all served as a incubator for Islamic extremists/terrorists. Khomeini realized that terroism based on regligous dogma got the Zionist a whole country, so why wouldn't he use the same technics go get his "government" established?! As for Hezbollah, the real cause of the creationg of the resistance movement of the invasion and 20-year occupation of Lebanon by you comatose hero, Ariel Sharon. Iran's role in helping the Lebanese to defeat and expel the Zionist invaders is a moral contribution to history of Lebanese who would be speaking Hebrew if Iran had let the occupation to continue.
Come back to see us, buddy.

Nice

'Iranian government has never supported any Terrorist group, Hezbullah is a resistance group.' etc.

Is this the position of Iran lobby now? Well, good luck with that! :-)

Some facts

First to answer bi-Vatan:

Yes, our neighbor, who was a friend of my sisters disappeared at the age of 15 because she looked, acted and dressed as a communist. It did happen but then the world and medias didn't publish the extend.

"Suicide bombing" was not a product of Iranians or Islam, actually began by the westerns in wars when they were under dogs. Iranian government has never supported any Terrorist group, Hezbullah is a resistance group. You may title them anyway you like, but the mass population around the region don't think so.

The Islamic Crescent was the idea of the West to fight against the Soviets expansion, for this very reason a Mullah in Iran was preferred by the west against a Democratic seculars, such as Mosadegh.

Ultimately Iranians chose the Islamic Republic because the majority were suspicious about the western influence to their country, and rightly so.

Iranian system has not posed a danger for the region, rather than the regional governments who are (and were) frightened from the people's uprise to free themselves from the western dominance have put this idea to those who think so. It's really not that complicated when you look at the source.

Fundamentalism is not in Iran or Shia based, but rather the Sunnies and it is directly linked to the US policies. Even today, in Shia areas in Iraq are much more peaceful than the rest. The Sunni tribes who are armed by the US military are the cause of the problems. Sunnis are armed by the US to fight against "Iranian" dominance. There you go, Once US is gone, who do you think is going to behead the innocent people? Name one Shia group that has ever beheaded an individual.

Iranian diplomats have been killed or taken hostage in either Afghanistan and Iraq by the Sunni militias. Some have broken away from the US, some have not yet. In this case, Iran and the US share the same strategy, yet US is afraid to say so since it will give Iran the credit, and that's against the interest of the oil and energy companies, which their wealth is directly related to the Shaikhs and kings in the Arabic neighboring countries.

In short, if before the Taliban took power or before Saddam attacked Iran, if the western policies towards Iran was realistic and humane, the fundamentalism that some mention here did not need to form.

When you STOP the social progress of any nation, the people who have no other media to push for their independence or ideas will take arm. That's also embedded in the constitution of the Unites Stated, the Rights to bear Arms. the result is not the social or cultural norm, but rather the policies that have been forced upon people. Eventually people uprise.

If some believe that Iran is the real problem, whether is bombed or the regime has changed, will notice the new Middle East and the real issue. The reality is that Iran is a force to stop fundamentalism in the region, and as you can see, all the fundamentalists and international terrorist groups are against Iran and Iranians along with US and West!

Feel free to do your own investigation about the realities of the Middle East and the Iranian revolution.

Iranian people are too stupid for anything better than the shah

They wanted Democracy????? Are you kidding me? You can't have democracy in a country where 99 percent of the people think that Allah and the hidden imam are going to save them. Look at these morons running the through the streets yelling marg bar shah! Marg bar urselves, idiots. And now they consider khomeini to be a saint, HAHA. Anybody who wants to talk about how Iran would have been a democracy in 1953... please, spare me.

Re; Revolution... and more...

Shahyad said:

That's what they wanted & that's what they got...

Now they watch a country in ruins...their sons & daughters turned into drug addicts & whores because of their beloved revolution !

My sympathy only lies with those who did not support the mullahs & suffered as a result...

Khalayegh har cheh layegh...

Absolutely true, and now we are stuck.

After revolution a "looti" in iran said:

"People thought that shah had a wide ass until they figured khomeni out, then they realized that khomeini had the widest ass that they could not even imagine and wished they could have shah's now-realized tight ass back to kiss with their eyes."

What greedy fools iranians were. Even when bakhtiar promised freedom and shah yielded, they kept pressing for islamic republic and they got what their foolishness deserved.

The sad reality is that now we know the true face of all those revolutionaries. None had any good intentions, all only pursued their own ambitions, and ended up being nothing but nation-less murderers, torturers, thieves, and criminals. The crimes of the shah that they screamed about for decades was overshadowed by crimes of revolutionaries in only a week after the revolution with kangaroo summary executions of personnels of previous regime (including army officers who scared likes of saddam). Then widely publicized crimes of the shah now looks like petty mistakes of an angel comparatively. Face the reality: Islamists and leftists destroyed our country for their own purposes; otherwise they did not give a damn about iran and iranian; they have had 30 years to prove it, and they still do not have anything to offer except for their age-old empty rants and vendetta against the shah. Where are those confederation of iranian students who would come to the west on scholarship or out of their rich father's pocket and the first thing they would do is to do anti-shah activities. What happened to them that they are so silent or non-existent today.

We were set up by islamic and leftist gangsters with tools of deceit. They brought us nothing but an iranian nazi regime to power in 1979.

Don't forget some statistics:

Total iranian oil revenues prior to 1979: $110 billion (not adjusted for inflation).

Iranian oil revenue only for 2008: estimated over $100 billion.

Per capita income in 1979: $2400 ($7200 adjusted for inflation in 2008 dollar)

Per capita income in 2008: estimated $1800.

Total number of people killed on streets or executed as a result of opposition with shah prior to 1979 (excluding those killed during the revolution): around 371.

Number of political prisoners executed in Evin in a single day in 1988 (10 to 12 people executed every half hour for 8 to 12 hours): estimated around 200 (source: memoirs of prisoners).

Number of iranians residing outside iran in 1979 (excluding students): around 40,000.

Number of iranians residing outside iran in 2008: estimated 4,000,000.

Number of students studying in US in 1979: estimated 50,000.

Number of phd students studying nuclear engineering on government scholarship in best US schools (most in MIT per a contract between shah's regime and mit) for iranian nuclear industry in 1979: 35. One or 2 went back to iran after the revolution, the rest are working in US nuclear industry, some with high positions (source: NPR).

1975 (?) accord between shah and saddam resolved the border dispute between iran and iraq peacefully in favor of iran.

1980s: saddam marched on iranian territory with some 500,000 iranian casualties, a large number attacked by chemical weapons which are still suffering.

1940: reza shah and soviet union signed an agreement to share caspian sea resources. Iranian share 50%.

2008: iran is being forced to accept only 11% of the resources and iran has no supporters to enforce the treaty of 1940. Even the 11% is located where no major resources exist.

Why did we do this to ourselves?

Why did we so easily and cheaply sell our country to a bunch of mullas to impose arab culture of 1400 years ago on us and destroy our country and our culture? Was that all the we were asking of shah?

Why do we so much dislike our iran, our iranian culture, and being iranian for the pride of being iranian that we have to spoil it with arab culture of 1400 years ago?

Why do we hate iran and iranian culture so much that we sell them out so easily?

Agreed:

"Those who are merciful to the cruel will in the end be cruel to the merciful." (The Talmud)

U2

.

Well, you thought wrong.

.

Melateh khaen va bisharaf'e Iran

We deserve this stupid Government. Look at the idiots running around saying "Marg bar Shah".
Well, he is dead. Now what?! Did Shah ever execute teens?
Iranian = khianat

that's all I have to say.

You don’t listen carefully what people tell you.

I thought that it’s just Jewish who keep the world responsible of their misery (Eternal conspiracy of humanity against Jews) – You see, we have a lot of things in common...

Not cured yet, eh?

'Iranians didn’t make a revolution to have islamists as rulers!'

No? That's why they chose a mullah as their imam, hero and leader, waved posters of mullahs all around and chanted Allah Akbar? I see.

You didn't have anything to do with the Islamic Republic that emerged. Right. It was all a conspiracy. Of course!
Of course you are always the victim of some conspiracy. Of course. That's another thing you share with your Arab and muslim brothers, you knew that? Maybe it is yet another crypto-Islamist craving you are not fully aware of? Ever thought of that? Not really cured yet, eh? Probably need more "lessons". Don't worry they are on their way, and you will finally get reality pass through your skulls. Inshallah!

Agreed, thanks pal.