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It is a sad day that a murderer gets a heroes welcome for killing off one of what was Iran’s greatest intellectual assets, Shahrpour Bakhtiar. Imagine for a moment how different the history of the past 32 years would have been if Shahrpour Bakhtiar had been able to survive as the Prime Minister of Iran. He was a brilliant and well educated man who had been opposed to the Shah and his regime for his entire professional life. He was a man who understood the importance of the seperation of church and state which the illiterate masses at the time of the revolution are still struggling to understand and are still being exploited for their misguided sense of religious duty to obey the ambitious self imposed Khamanei who moderate clerics like Montazeri oppsed from the start. Montazeri although Khomeini’s pick as his successor understood the importance of the seperation of church and state which is why he turned the position of Supreme Leader down.
The only mistake Shahpour Bakhtiar made which cost him his life was accepting the appointment of PM from the Shah. I have yet to understand why he couldn’t foresee the danger that he put himself in but he may have felt that he was doing his patriotic duty as one thing which is certain is that Shahrpour Bakhtiar was a patriot who cared deeply for Iran. The fact that convicted murderers who resort to vigilanti activity well outside the laws of any nation with a bicameral form of representative government, are welcomed as heroes by the IRI shows how far they have to go in joining the international community. Having said that the USA and Israel also have a long way to go if you examine their records for state sponsored political assassinations, kidnapping and torture. I commend the two brave individuals in Italy, prosecutor Armando Spataro and judge Oscar Magi for being the first to challenge the CIA on their “rendition” program.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091104/ap_on_re_eu/eu_italy_cia_trial
Against the wishes of the Italian Prime Minister, they tried and convicted 23 CIA officers in absentia for their “rendition” program in which the CIA abducted foreign nationals extraterritorily outside the USA and exported them to countries which allow torture. “First cast out the beam out of your own eye; and then shall you see clearly to cast out the mote out of your brother’s eye. … ”
