ISLAM DOES NOT OWN IRAN

Ramin, no sense in arguing with

these bache akhunds. They see that their paycheck is being threatened and have shifted to high panic gear. To them, everything is honky dory  back home and the anti nationalist thugs and muderous regime should get its hands on the nukes - Vy be haale hame .......

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IRAN BEFORE ISLAM 

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A democratic Iran

will in all likelihood reject the pursuit of nuclear weapons. Democratic governments are transparent by nature, not to mention accountable -- as such, we're not worried about their sinister intentions and illicit enrichment programs. 

Only an insecure regime like the IRI would hold the world hostage in trying to barter a grand bargain with the West, using the threat of nuclear proliferation as a bargaining chip so as to get what it ultimately craves -- a security guarantee (OR nuclear weapons, which would provide a measure of security). 

Either way, fascists -- and let's face it, the IRI is a fascist regime -- should not have access to nukes. It's not good for peace, and it's definitely not good for the people of Iran.

ramin

Intentions are one thing... actually carrying them out is another.

Of course you are assuming that a future democratic Iran will NOT want nukes. Shah did want to have a japan option and in all likelihood this regime does the same (almost everyone credible today even accepts that they dont want to go for full nukes).

A democratic Iran could be even more patriotic and could turn even more anti-Arab and pro Israel. What makes you think that Arabs wont atleast try to go after the nukes then?

Sorry but this argument doesnt stick.

Piaz

Egypt and Saudi Arabia have already made their intentions be known that they, too, would like to have access to "civil" nuclear capabilities, code words for a nuclear enrichment program.

Iraq will be next, and of course, Syria has never hidden its nuclear ambitions. American cover didn't exactly keep Pakistan, nor Israel for that matter, from acquring nukes, and who knows, maybe in the future Arab countries will be more independent of Western whims and dictates. 

If the mullahs get nukes, it's almost a foregone conclusion that our Arab neighbors will also at some point get their hands on nukes under the guise of deterence.

Is that what we want for our neighborhood?

Q

"I'm always happy to educate the ignorant and the foul-mouthed."

If only you had been there to civilize and educate your massively ignorant, foul-mouthed hero, mullah Khomeini. Wasn't it Khomeini, who shouted into the crowd at Behesht-e-Zahra upon his arrival from Paris in 1979...

"Man too dahan-e een dowlat meezanam."

What thuggery! What an embarrassment! From Cyrus the Great to mullah Khomeini!

My answer, which you

My answer, which you probably won't like, is a product of our present
situation in light of 30 years of chicanery and shananigans by the IRI.
If there was a responsible and true "Islamic" democracy in Iran, in the
order of Indonesia, I would not promote sanctions nor bombing of the
nuclear facilities, but we're dealing with an existential threat to our
homeland, not from Israel, not yet anyway, but from within!

Israel, or atleast the Likud way of thinking is an existential threat to the democracy movement in Iran. If they could have their way they will spell the end of the democracy movement by attacking Iran.

What you propose is going to do the opposite of what you expect, which is to keep this regime intact. And all your fears about this regime is going to be realized once Israel or US attacks Iran.  

Back in 1979 the military sided with the people.But today the military is both ideologically and politically aligned with the hardliners. Any attack, instead of fracturing their leadership will unite them behind a common goal. 

I just do NOT trust the IRI, specially now in the hands of the IRGC, to
have its seethingly aggressive index finger on the red button, and I'm
further alarmed that if Iran acquires nukes, in 5 years, almost all of
our Arab neighbors will have nukes (in the order of India and Pakistan).

I just don't want our neighborhood, specially our Arab neighbors, to
have atomic weapons. And they will have them for certain, if the mullahs
get them -- that's a fact! Is that what you want for our neighborhood?

This is a fear that some have but  fail to give reasonable evidence to support their argument. Fact of the matter is, the Arab regimes are nothing without their western puppet masters. If the west considers it inappropriate for the Arab states to have the nukes then they will not have them. 

Don't get me wrong, I don't trust the West, not at all. But I'm afraid
at this point in our history, our HOMEGROWN terrorists pose a bigger
threat to our homeland than our hereditary tormentors in the West.

It's the lesser of two evils. The IRI is a blood-thirsty Mafia, and we
all know this. They don't care about Iran, nor its people. And I don't
want that kind of a regime to have a nuclear capability, because they
will use that capability, not to advance the inerests of Iran, but
rather, their own wicked and twisted interests. 

This is where you and I differ. Based on what I've seen over the years and the internal dynamics in Iran I fear that external threats will not solve the problem of IRI but exacerbate them. You said it yourself, this is not 1979. The regime still has some support and the leadership is fractured. And most importantly the military and security apparatus still sides with the regime. An attack on Iran either through oil blockade or air assault will a) spell the end of the democracy movement making them ever more dependent on the state for their livelihoods. The regime will try to resort to what they did in the 80s and kill off opposition in great chunk. b)it will help unite the fractured leadership.

Our democracy movement in Iran cannot afford misguided policies of the west.

Dear Darius,

The more appropriate historical figure is none other than Akhund Khalkhali, not Joseph McCarthy. JM was far too liberal for the Hezbollahi crowd, who much prefer swift execution than a long, drawn-out nasty hearing, which is what McCarthy was most interested in. McCarthy was into black-balling and skewering commies in front of congress.

Hezbollahis, on the other hand, are into torture, murder and literally skewering people over hot coals. As such, poor ol' Joseph McCarthy was a mere pussy cat.

Khomeini was the exact opposite of Gandhi

Those who suggest that there was even a semblance of similarity between these two are living in an even deeper dumphole of ignorance than those who compare Mossadeq with Gandhi. Khomeini by faith believed in the use of violence, something that Gandhi , faithfully opposed. Khomeini had no qualms about changing his stance and lying to the public and his closest aides. Gandhi never quivered from his poistion. Khomeini was in charge of colossal amount of public's wealth, beit-ol-maal, given to him by the Baazaris. Gandhi was in charge of nothing, except the moral leadership of india. Khomeini allowed weapons to be purchased from Israel while he was condemning Israel. Gandhi banned wearing British made fabric and wove his own garment. The stark difference are plenty.

Once again some people insist on putting their foot int their mouth.

I'm always happy to educate the ignorant and the foul-mouthed

any day of the week...

By the way Ramin, it's "deluded" not "diluted".

Yes, unfortunately Microsoft can't fix everything for you.

Ramin Jaan That's because MON Q sees himself as ... ;0)

The self proclaimed Editor of this website ...

He distributes grades on what he sees as a good or bad comment/blog or article.

I supposed hit flatters his Ego to think anything he writes or contributes is relevant ...

No doubt He would qualify at the Ministery of Ershad or Censorship of the Islamic Republic.

Unfortunately for Him we do not live in the US during the McCarthy Years otherwise he would be investigating you on the Commitee of Un American Activities ...

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iGGjGSdqf8

Let him Dream On that he isn't the laughing stock he really is ...

Q, my personal spell-check, writes:

"yes, at the time those words were uttered, Khomeini was genuinely a Gandhi-like figure. For years after, Khomeini was much revered even beyond Gandhi in Iran."

If there ever was a block of words on Iranian.com that was more asinine that the gem highlited above, I'm not aware of it -- only a self-diluted, closet IRI supporter with a limited objective capacity would allow himself to be so diluted as to utter such laughable musings.

I guess that is the price of freedom of speech.

Piaz

Writes: "Then why are you fully trusting the west to do the right thing now?"

My answer, which you probably won't like, is a product of our present situation in light of 30 years of chicanery and shananigans by the IRI. If there was a responsible and true "Islamic" democracy in Iran, in the order of Indonesia, I would not promote sanctions nor bombing of the nuclear facilities, but we're dealing with an existential threat to our homeland, not from Israel, not yet anyway, but from within!

I just do NOT trust the IRI, specially now in the hands of the IRGC, to have its seethingly aggressive index finger on the red button, and I'm further alarmed that if Iran acquires nukes, in 5 years, almost all of our Arab neighbors will have nukes (in the order of India and Pakistan).

I just don't want our neighborhood, specially our Arab neighbors, to have atomic weapons. And they will have them for certain, if the mullahs get them -- that's a fact! Is that what you want for our neighborhood?

Don't get me wrong, I don't trust the West, not at all. But I'm afraid at this point in our history, our HOMEGROWN terrorists pose a bigger threat to our homeland than our hereditary tormentors in the West.

It's the lesser of two evils. The IRI is a blood-thirsty Mafia, and we all know this. They don't care about Iran, nor its people. And I don't want that kind of a regime to have a nuclear capability, because they will use that capability, not to advance the inerests of Iran, but rather, their own wicked and twisted interests.

As such, my bigger enemy today is the IRI -- not the west. Once the IRI is removed, then we can use the massive wealth of natural and human resources in Iran to build an independent country. This is not 1953, nor 1979. Today, Iranians are far more savvy and informed, thanks to the internet. The West will not have the leverage it once did, in terms of pulling the wool over our "backward" eyes. 

Hey genius, you misspelled "Gandhi"

yes, at the time those words were uttered, Khomeini was genuinely a Gandhi-like figure. For years after, Khomeini was much revered even beyond Gandhi in Iran. He was enormously popular during and after the revolution.

Whatever you think now, at the time, people projected onto him every good quality that Shah didn't have: strength, decisiveness, moral authority, humble lifestyle and care for the poor.

These are historical facts your hatred may not allow you to see, but they are the truth.

Ramin, lets assume that you are right

Then why are you fully trusting the west to do the right thing now? Why are you advocating military strikes and airtight sanctions just like they do? the national security establishement in the united states more or less have not changed, only on the surface (Obama) has changed. most of them have a coldwar mentality and most importantly  a) they care about their own interests b) they dont give a crap about human rights in Iran.

Why then are you so much relying on western support to aid the democratic movement? Obama now just like his predecessors is trying out the unilateral sanctions route. And eventually if they could have their way will use the same sort of tactics they used for Saddam to go in Iran. Though it would be easier now since they've already parked their troops in the borders.

Just think...

Why is it that once the Shah was gone, the Western powers and their media outlets almost completely forgot about human rights violations in Iran, almost as if such violations ceased to exist once Khomeini took power?

As Iranians, we know better. They clubbed the Shah with the club of human rights, not because they cared about political prisoners in Evin Prison, but to destabalize the Shah's regime and once they got the Devil they wanted, they brushed aside the massive new waves of human rights violations under the rug.

Seriously, how come after 1979 we no longer heard the Jimmy Carter crowd wax poetically about tyrannical "human rights violations" in Iran?

One other thing...

Mr. Gilani writes, "USA had in fact marginal leverage in Iranian politics and  raised the issue of human rights abuses at the time and subsequent years because human rights have been violated  in Iran for as long as we know it."

These are patently laughable statements! Human rights violations were taking place in Iran for a long time, afer 28 Mordad (communist purges) all the way up to the early 1970's, but you never heard a peep in America and their media outlets until the Carter Administration.

The huge majority of western media stories about the Shah and the royal family were POSITIVE, all the way up to around 1974, when the price of oil quadrupled, from $3 to $12 a barrel seemingly over night, at which point the West suddenly became aware that there was the practice of "torture" in Iran, which in actuality, was grossly exaggerated for shock value (much like Saddam Hussein's WMDs were grossly exaggerated by the Western media to destabalize his regime).

It's like the dirty cop in the movie, Casablanca. "Oh, there's gambling at Rick's? I'm shocked, shocked!" Get real! The west resented the Shah's aggressive oil policies and wanted no part of him, specially after his famously (and to some extent suicidal) announcement that the oil concessions would not be extended, no way no how, after their expiration date of 1978 (what a shock that that's when the shit hit the fan in Iran!).

The British ambassador wrote back to London, "The Shah is getting too big for his boots." And at this point, suddenly we find out there is widespread human rights violaions in Iran's prisons!

A recent LA Times article describes how the destabalization of the Shah's regime actually started BEFORE Carter, when people like Rumsfeld and Cheney, in the Ford Administration, wanted to teach the Shah a lesson, and punish him for his aggressive, and all too independent, oil policies.

The Americans, soon thereafter, pressured the Saudis to produce 11 million barrels of oil per day in 1977, an UNGODLY SUM, which sent the price of oil down like a cannon ball, which further augmented the failing Iranian economy in 1977/1978, which further added to the revolutionary fire.

Were the people disenchanted with the Shah?

Absolutely. But they would have accepted Shapour Bakhtiar's democratic government, if the West had not constantly and continuously fanned the flames of regime change, if they had not sent Huyser to secretly sabotage Bakhtiar's chances, and if they had not promoted Khomeini to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in 1978/1979, even refering to him as the Iranian Ghandi.

Mr. Gilani

Needless to say, by the time the Iranians voted for the "Islamic Republic," there was only one choice -- Islamic republic, yes or no. There was not a choice in their referendum between an Islamic Republic and a democratic republic.

Moreover, I never said that a few statements instigated the nation to rise up against the monarchy. Revolutions are not made or broken in a few weeks or months for that matter. It's a long process of destabalization.

All I'm saying in the above blog -- if you relax and control your knee-jerk reaction to jab at your keyboard -- is that once the Shah became an expensive liability for the West, the Carter administration could have supported Bakhtiar and true democratic reform INSTEAD of throwing their mighty weight behind a bunch of mullahs.

America in September 1978 had a choice -- to truly support Bakhtiar or the Islamic revolution. And the above statements prove that they fully endorsed Khomeini and just as equally sabotaged Bakhtiar's government, specially with the dubious Huyser mission.

The revolution was NOT technically "Islamic" until rather late in the hour, and it could have gone in a number of different directions, but the West, with the help of Jackals like Ebrahim Yazdi, Mehdi Bazargan and Sadegh Ghotzadeh, etc., steered the revolution in the direction of Khomeini and his Islamic republic.

Just answer this question, why did Jimmy Carter send General Huyser to Iran to neutralize the army when they fully knew that without the support of the army, Bakhtiar was a dead man?

The 79 revolution was a mindless revolt

in which the people of Iran legitimately were fed up with the Shah, and wanted him to go. But they commited mass insanity in true mob fashion by throwing their support blindly behind a traitor like Khomeini, who admitted himself he has no country, and cares not for Iran even before he landed in Iran.

This insanity was not unfortunately limited to undeducated underpriveleged people- it was widespread among the educated, who were the ones who really failed Iran. The national front, the party of Mossadeq, turned its back on Bakhtiar and a secular republic, and threw its support behind Khomeini and an Islamic Republic. This was a massive betrayal of the party's core principle. The oppositions in South Korea, Chile, and Phillipines (all traditional religious countries with American backed dictators) made no such gross mistake. And today look at them, and look at us.

The rest is history.

-Fair

So you're saying 79 revolution was really not a revolution?

uncle napoleon syndrome is alive and well i see. Face it ramin, your hero Shah pissed off the majority of Iranians. He pissed them off so much that they wanted him removed. Anything else becomes secondary. screw Carter, or anyone else for that matter.

Iranians wanted change, and Khomeini exploited Iranians desire for change. A sad chapter in our history but it is history nevertheless.

To Ramin Parsa

Sir,

Cannot you remember the speed of happenings in the last few months of Pahlavi era? The Pahlavi regime launched three campaigns against people who were staunch supporters of Shah, and went from Amouzegar, to Sharif-Imami, to Azhari, to Bakhtiar in almost four months.

Have you forgotten about the psychological damage of army personnel’s desertion and the strike by Iranian oil workers? How about the hysteria of Iranian political class and masses that saw the image of Khomeini in the moon? I do not understand how anyone can claim US or UK instigated Iranian revolution.

You are smart enough to know that Iran was a sovereign country and Iranian government was in charge of,and responsible for all political decisions and actions in 1978-1979. USA had in fact marginal leverage in Iranian politics and  raised the issue of human rights abuses at the time and subsequent years because human rights have been violated  in Iran for as long as we know it. To suggest that few comments by American officials agitated Iranians in the street who by the way were shouting “go home Yankees” is just preposterous.

Do you think Americans denied Iranians a miracle or a crystal ball reading few months before a wide spectrum of Iranian people voted for Islamic Republic by 98% during the referendum? I don’t get it.

Abandoning the Shah is one thing,

But why wouldn't Jimmy Carter, the self-proclaimed champion of human rights, support the pro-democracy movement very much in existence at the time in Iran, with the leadership of Shapour Bakhtiar?

Why would Carter openly sabotage any chances of democratic reform by deliberately and ACTIVELY supporting Ayatollah Khomeini at the most critical time in Iran's modern history?

Because the fix was in, the "green belt" theory (wrapping Central Asia with the green belt of Islam) had to be implemented in Iran for a host of reasons (cheap oil, chief among them), democracy and human rights be damned.

Just another US politician with bloody hands

Every single US president since WW2 has been guilty of large-scale killings of civilians around the world: Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Nixon, Kennedy, Obama, LBJ, etc. Here's Carter's rap sheet (this information is available online):

Ordering the CIA to organise the killers running the death squads in Argentina to train Nicaraguan Contras in Honduras and hurl them into battle against the Sandinista government.

Sending millions in aid and riot equipment to the Salvadorian military and sending US personnel to train Salvadorian officers in Panama.

Sending special envoy Richard Holbrooke to South Korea, where workers and students were demanding democracy. Holbrooke gave US backing to the South Korean military and insisted that they crush the rebellion. Some 3,000 South Koreans were killed in March 1980.

Authorising the covert CIA operation in Afghanistan that led to the creation of the mojahedin and giving the green light for Saudi religious, ideological and financial intervention, begun under the leadership of Osama bin Laden.

Re-arming Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Thailand after they were defeated by the Vietnamese.

Leading a campaign in favour of the release of Lieutenant William Calley, found guilty of mass murder in the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam.

Support and weaponry supplied to the Indonesian military dictatorship after the brutal occupation of East Timor.