What could make a difference in Iran, and why it would be so hard to achieve it
The most recent protests in Iran seem to have been successfully put down. This is a sad but not surprising thing, since Iran’s government is tyrannical and willing to use its muscle to stay in power:
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced that the regime has squashed the uprising that took place the last few weeks. The protests left 22 people dead and 3,700 arrested.
The regime also disrupted internet communication, but more about that later.
Every time there are such demonstrations in Iran I have a glimmer of hope for the country although I remain profoundly pessimistic about the possibility for overthrowing an Iranian government that’s clamped down on the country for nearly forty years. I was also musing on how the revolution of 1979 managed to succeed where recent movements have failed, and in doing so I reread some of my much earlier posts chronicling that 1979 revolt. I urge you to read them: Part I (Khomeini), Part II (Bakhtiar), and Part III (Carter), as well as this one about Khomeini as a con man.
Here are some of the differences between then and now. It’s not meant to be an exclusive list.
Khomeini was an extremely popular and charismatic figure who attracted millions in the street on his return to the country from years of exile. That made for a huge popular movement in 1979 composed of his religious supporters. But that group was also joined by a large number of leftists and human rights democrats. Each of those latter two groups thought they would be able to use the mullahs in the revolution and then control them when it came time to form the government—but of course the bitter laugh was on the leftists and the democrats, who were ruthlessly crushed.
Khomeini was also smart—strategically and politically smart—and he knew how to say just the right thing to lull those two groups (and most of the West) into thinking he wouldn’t be much trouble for them (in that con man post, I give some examples of how he did this).
In addition to the personality of Khomeini and his particular gifts, Iran also had a Shah who’d earned the enmity of many groups by killing hundreds of protestors, and by modernizing the country. The first approach (violence and/or imprisonment of protesters, much like the current mullahs’ reaction to the recent demonstrations) alienated groups two and three (leftists and human rights democrats), while the second approach (modernization) alienated group one, the ultra-religious.
The turning point for the Shah was reached in several ways: President Carter put pressure on him to release hundreds of political prisoners in the name of human rights. Afterwards, when that softening had emboldened the anti-Shah forces, the Shah cracked down on them again, thus angering several groups once more. But the crucial turning point was when army and police turned on him and refused to treat the protestors as they had in the past. After the Shah resigned under pressure, Iran’s temporary leader Bakhtiar—an anti-Shah human-rights-advocating democrat—let Khomeini back into the country:
On Bakhtiar’s appointment as the new Prime Minister, Khomeini condemned him, of course, from his exile in France. But Khomeini continued to live his charmed life; Bakhtiar allowed him to return to Iran shortly thereafter. The reason? A combination of Bakhtiar’s own devotion to freedom of speech, and the Shah’s old conundrum: Khomeini was so popular that to try to ban him would cause such public unrest in Iran that it seemed counterproductive. In essence, Bakhtiar, although a far different ruler than the Shah, faced the same dilemma; he resolved it in favor of not suppressing the opposition.
Allowing Khomeini back into the country was like lighting a match in an oxygen-saturated room.
You can see the differences between then and now. At present there doesn’t seem to be any particular charismatic figure who commands great allegiance and respect among large numbers of people, unlike in 1979. Now the demonstrators can use the internet to organize, but the government also uses the internet quite effectively as a tool of repression:
Iranian authorities shut down social media channels and disrupted internet access as protests against the government spread across the country over the past two weeks, showing an unprecedented ability for the nation to shut down dissent online, according to a new human rights report.
The crackdown showed that the Iranian government has developed an increasingly sophisticated ability to restrict, block, and monitor internet, according to a new report released Wednesday by the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).
“As the government shut down access to the global internet, protestors desperately pleaded for a restoration of internet access,” Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the CHRI, told Newsweek.
This is their lifeline to the outside world and to each other.” Ghaemi said the Iranian government wants to show off that “it can retain its repressive grip on society.”
Social media platforms like Instagram and the Telegram messaging app, the main methods of communication protesters used to mobilize other demonstrators to join them on the streets, were blocked during the protests. Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), and other tools Iranians frequently use to circumvent censorship and access banned platforms like YouTube and Facebook, were also blocked. On December 30, the government blocked all Iranians from the internet for at least a half an hour.
It is my distinct impression that the current anti-government movement isn’t as large, or at least not the current active movement, compared to 1979. It consists (as far as I know) of mainly three factions with a certain amount of overlap—what’s left of the left; the human rights advocates, many of them young, who want more liberty; and those who are dissatisfied with the economy (is that the largest group?). Minus the large religious faction that fed the revolution of 1979, I wonder whether these protests can ever reach critical mass. And I wonder what (if anything) would cause the police and army (especially the elite guards) to turn on the government, this time—the economy, perhaps?
Nor are the mullahs being pressured—at least, not successfully pressured—to give people more rights, a la Jimmy Carter. Economic sanctions on Iran were lifted in 2016, post-Iran-deal. Nevertheless, they are doing poorly economically, but mainly because of the leaders’ failure to throw the population enough fish to keep them happy enough:
…[T]he lifting of sanctions on Iran in January 2016 has failed to deliver an economic boom.
Instead, the non-oil part of the economy has continued to struggle, with unemployment officially put at around 12.5 percent ”“ in reality, much higher for Iran’s millions of young people ”“ and inflation running at nearly 10 percent.
“There is a crisis of expectations in Iran,” said Tamer Badawi, a research fellow at the Istanbul-based Al-Sharq Forum. “It is a deep sense of economic frustration.”
To ease that discontent, Rouhani may need to spend more government money on creating jobs, restrain inflation by supporting the rial exchange rate and do more to eradicate the widespread corruption which angers the protesters.
But all of those actions would involve policy change. Rouhani has been pursuing a conservative budget policy to bring Iran’s volatile state finances under control, part of his effort to create an attractive environment for foreign investors. Meanwhile, fighting corruption would risk a backlash from powerful interests hurt by a crackdown…
Emadi [Iranian economist based in London] blamed much of the economy’s poor performance on a deep-rooted structural issue: the influence of paramilitary bodies such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as well as religious institutions on business.
Those interests, which according to some estimates control over 60 percent of assets in Iran, generally do not pay taxes and stifle competition from small private companies, blocking job creation, he said.
More:
Indeed, Iran has not produced up to its maximum OPEC quota for some months now. The industry needs serious investment to improve, but Iran does not have the cash or the equipment it needs. The Iranian people see their country’s money wasted on military engagements and terrorism abroad instead of being put to work for their own economic wellbeing, and this has been a major complaint of the protestors.
For Iran’s oil industry, foreign investment ”“ especially from oil companies with the expertise and capital to work on Iran’s mature oil fields ”” is needed. Many foreign companies expressed interest in working in Iran after sanctions were lifted, but they have found it very difficult to sign contacts with the NIOC. The Iranian government has established rules and policies that make it difficult and unattractive for foreign businesses.
In a way, then, it may be that lifting the sanctions has had a paradoxical effect. Poor economic conditions in the country prior to that could easily be blamed by the mullahs on the sanctions and the West. Now they themselves have been exposed as the cause of the problem.
I don’t see much changing in Iran until unrest—for whatever reason—reaches such overwhelming proportions that millions upon millions of people demonstrate and risk death, and the police and army finally turn on the mullah-controlled government and refuse to cooperate in stopping the protests. But I make no predictions as to when that might happen—except that I don’t think it will be any time soon, and maybe it will be never.
It requires external help, without it, its forever
once the US finally falls its way thanks to the most successful leftist front and the denuement of millions not born, thats that for the planet…
even the american revolution required playing the british, french, and the indians against each other in some way by different groups doing similar things.. (and this was over 100 years after the spanish set the reputation by poisoining and really nasty treachery that made the later people we biatch about look like cubscouts)
even the american civil war required the help of the french to not lose it..
no..
its forever..
because once its like that, and the key p[eople have power, like in the US they remove the things that woudl allow its reversal.. voting (brussels no voting)… weapons (no guns, no this no that.. )… only approved economy so no tools and materials… and on and on it goes.
of course if you know it and have lived and studied it, you would have an idea how far along we are and why its pretty much over. (as i predicted almost 11 or so years ago here… )
why is it over?
because there is no way to clean a house of subversives born and trained by mom, schools, and state to be termites..
and only a tyranical system that is willing to do exterminations and clean house can remove them.
Ask indonesia
Ask, well you get the point.
anyone want to discuss the process, methods, and papers and training things on this stuff, or you still prefer to wing it and lose (as only one side is refining the game, and the other side still argues there is no game being played!!! how good is that? just like willi said, dont let them think htese ideas are not theirs… even creepier if you read the white papers and such on implementations!)
if you WANT to learn you have to know the way the language changed the words and things
you wont find much under – coup d’état
because thats more recent in usage
you can find more in the swedish prusian – Putsch
what would have to happen is not a coup, but a putsch
but few know the difference, but do throw words around
—the politico-military actions of an unsuccessful minority reactionary coup is a putsch and coup?
The phrase did not appear within an English text before the 19th century except when used in translation of a French source, there being no simple phrase in English to convey the contextualized idea of a “knockout blow to the existing administration within a state”.
there were 457 coup attempts from 1950 to 2010, of which 227 (49.7%) were successful and 230 (50.3%) were unsuccessfu
so they dont work out well do they? in fact, you can say the coup was succesful if you know that its the elites that do the coupe, and the lower classs that do a putsch, at least in the old sense of things
The 2016 study found that about half of all coups – both during and after the Cold War – install new autocratic regimes
New dictatorships launched by coups engage in higher levels of repression in the year that follows the coup than existed in the year leading to the coup
so get ready for a lot of dead people coming up the pike
One third of coups during the Cold War and 10 percent of post-Cold War coups reshuffled the regime leadership – meaning they were not revolutions but reorganizations masquerading as coupe (like the soviet one in 1995!!! the same people who were in power just switched seats like a musical chairs thing. the whole point was to trick the west and open uip the borders, get access to technology and make the west think that they gave up on communism and suich.. (to which gorbachev said to the people, no, this is just for the west ,we will never get off the path to communism!!!!!))
Democracies were installed in the wake of 12 percent of Cold War coups and 40 percent of the post-Cold War coups [but a social democracy is a communist state.. though the people in it may think differently, but thinking changes the nature of nothing but thought)
and here is the fun part:
The literature review in a 2016 study includes mentions of ethnic factionalism, supportive foreign governments, leader inexperience, slow growth, commodity price shocks, and poverty
under obama and next clinton how would that list look?
big time ethnic factionalism and they are rampint that up more and more… like merit is white supremecy..
next ingredient.. we have that too as russia and others support our left here.. and have for about 100 years
leader inexperience, check..
slow growth (ah, trump negated this, and they had nearly baked the cake).
they used housing price shocks, venezuela used food
oh, and telling people that having a slow economy that harms blacks and such is hurting the rich. well unemployment is at a 44 year low… the black community unemployment is the lowest its been on record.. finally dropping below 5%
IF you know how to make a coup happen, then you know what is going on and so on. but if you never studied it, like green berets, spetznaz, and others do, and read their books and so on, you just feel your way making up stuff
by the way
what do you think special forces mostly does?
small team goes in and turns the society into a fighting group, destabilizing and causing a coupe.
you can read the army manuals and such on this.
but the nice thing about being an armchair commenter is that you win even if the other person knows the real deal, beacuse the real deal is never as good as the contrived one designed to fit that has no limit in veracity!!!
by the way, in those coupes and such in the cold war
how did the russians and the US contrive them
and how did they get to look natural to you?
400 coupes and none of them accidental or spontaneos
and yet most have no idea of the most important things in the items they discuss.. thats process and method, not feelings and motives.. the latter is what you use to engage the former, the former is where the answer is whether or not you use it!!!
funny
not my circuis not my monkeys
IF you want to know about this process read this
The Snake-Eaters and the Yards—
by the way, the key here is that you get your people past the border of the other country!!!
this is why they dont let people in, and track them
and why they work to convince us to open things up
think people, think!!!!
the point isnt the point, the point is for consumption
so stop eating the sh*t
oh, so thats why they hate NGOs
oh, so thats why we have our borders open
the left is facilitating the import of such experts
tell me, can you identify them by looking at them?
what about no records behind them?
we are in a war and they convinced yo that the methods of the war are just social issues, dont be alarmed, these are not the droids your looking for.
given that iran is trained by soviet russia
your not going to get far
but this is what you need.
and any attempt that fails
removes them forever as they are killed
Kurds?
Serbs?
Montagnards?
Maqui?
one of the reasons hitler AND STALIN shipped populatinos to camps was that you had to remove about 1/3 of the population to cause enough disruption in the cohesian that they can never go back!!! not to mention you deposit natives that need to be rescued (Soviets in poland, germans in stendland, russians in georgia so we take the land)
it doesnt matter how they leave, it matters that homes are broken, theold information is not passed on by dads, and the new people imported dont have enough time to assimilate being imported faster and worked on by the other imports with expertise that lead and train them.
Bob Denard
Simon Mann
anyone besides me remember them?
doubtful, no one remembered utley, and willi, and others
BOB – a French soldier and mercenary. Sometimes known under the aliases “Gilbert Bourgeaud” and “Saé¯d Mustapha Mahdjoub”, he was known for having performed various jobs in support of Frané§afrique–France’s sphere of influence in its former colonies in Africa–for Jacques Foccart, co-ordinator of President Charles de Gaulle’s African policy
Simon – a British mercenary and former British Army officer.
of the two, bob is more interesting.
but they went to prison for trying to take over ginea
Mann was extradited from Zimbabwe to Equatorial Guinea on 1 February 2008,[2] having been accused of planning a coup d’état to overthrow the government by leading a mercenary force into the capital Malabo in an effort to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.
Bob was tried for two coup attempts 🙂
the later one was Operation Azalee
Opération Azalée (French for Azalea) was the name of an expedition by the French armed forces and French special forces which took place in 1995 to remove the provisional government of the Comoros that was led and put into power by famed mercenary Bob Denard Denard’s fourth Comorian coup
Born a Catholic, Denard converted to Judaism in Morocco, Islam in the Comoros, and finally back to Catholicism
history is more interesting than people want to know
Interesting piece on The Atlantic website about the urban-rural divide in Iran — “What the Iran Protests Were Not”:
More here.
Nothing will change in Iran short of invasion, and that will not happen, or a seige which also will not happen.
Meanwhile, the EU (and especially German SPD jerk Sigmar Gabriel) are criticizing Trump for wanting to dish Obama’s deal. Remember, abriel took a group of German businessmen to Iran two days after Obama signed the deal.
Absent an unlikely regime change, Iran’s fanatical Mullahs are leading the country toward nuclear retaliation.
Art:
I was in charge of the American embassy in Cotonou when Bob Denard flew a planeload of mercenaries into then-Dahomey and tried to overthrow the Marxist-Leninist president and his henchmen. The invasion should have succeeded: it failed for two very small reasons: the government moved the radio station into its new headquarters the Friday before the Sunday invasion, so they were unable to broadcast their invasion and takeover announcement, and the local strongman who was supposed to receive them got cold feet.
The irony is that the new office of the radio station was close to the airport. They marched right past it to the old office, which was vacant when they walked in around 0800 hrs.
On such small details do grand schemes fail or succeed.
What if someone “caused” a catastrophic accident in and among the nuclear processing locales? Say the centrifuges started wobbling or the materials became suddenly unstable & the underground labs got to glowing or something actually went ‘boom’ deep under all that reinforced concrete and bedrock.
More of a speculation to the boss’ question, “What could make a difference in Iran” A massive nuclear catastrophe that killed a bunch of civilians & made parts of their desert even less inhabitable.
IOW – I got nothing…except the firm belief that it has to be internal & it will have to be big in scale.
“because there is no way to clean a house of subversives born and trained by mom, schools, and state to be termites..
and only a tyranical system that is willing to do exterminations and clean house can remove them.
Ask indonesia
Ask, well you get the point.”
In this the artfdgrs is correct. Alas.
Iran is like many other countries, most in fact. They have no tradition of private property laws enforced by honest courts. They have no tradition of reasonably honest representative government.
Prosperity for the masses can never occur when property isn’t secure and corruption reigns at all levels of government. Without a respect for private property rights and reasonably honest government embedded in the culture you get autocracy, kleptocracy, dictatorship, kingdom, socialist/communist paradise, or some combination of those government forms.
There’s no hope for Iran and the people of Iran until some foreign power defeats them unconditionally and sets about the 50 year project of turning Iran into a free market democracy modeled after the Anglosphere. (Kind of like the U.S. did with Germany and Japan.) I don’t think that’s not going to happen. So, the everyday Iranians will have to play the awful cards they have been dealt by history as best they can.
David P. Goldman (AKA “Spengler”) recently published an article about Iran that I found rather shocking:
“Before we wax too eloquent about the democratic aspirations of the great Iranian people, we should keep in the mind that the most probable scenario for Iran under any likely regime is a sickening spiral into poverty and depopulation. Iran has the fastest-aging population of any country in the world, indeed, the fast-aging population of any country in history. It has the highest rate of venereal disease infection and the highest rate of infertility of any country in the world. It has a youth unemployment rate of 35% (adjusted for warehousing young people in state-run diploma mills). And worst of all, it has run out of water.” https://pjmedia.com/spengler/norm-not-democracy-norm-extinction/
As for the demonstrations only being economic in nature, that’s a stretch. Iranians aren’t stupid. They see the corruption of the regime and that nothing will significantly change so long as the ayatollahs continue with their various plans across the Middle East, in the US, South America, etc.
F Says:
January 11th, 2018 at 7:09 pm
On such small details do grand schemes fail or succeed.
* *
I have several books about these “for want of a nail the kingdom was lost” incidents.
And, of course, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.”
Yes, you’re right. Communications is a key, particularly when pro-democracy groups get accustomed to using the Internet and then have it taken away by the regime. But there is a fix, although it will take time to put in place.
That’s a system that allows direct people-to-people texting inside any country as well as to the outside. No country can control it and locating the devices would be exceptionally difficult. It bypasses the Internet and cell systems by using low-earth-orbit Iridium satellites. The devices are no bigger than cell phones and cost about what the less expensive smartphones cost. They’re becoming quite popular among wilderness hikers. international travelers, and cruising boaters, since they operate independent of cell systems and the Internet.
Here’s a description of a popular model.
https://explore.garmin.com/en-US/inreach/
I’ve love to have one but my stuck-at-home lifestyle offers no excuse to purchase one. I’d love to ramble the world, using one as my primary communication device and not fretting about getting SIMs for each country I visit. It’d also come in handy for these brave Iranians.
Great comments on a fascinating article.
Tangentially, great interview on Andrew Klavan Show at the Daily Wire. Klavan interviewed Hudson Institute’s Michael Doran to discuss his, Doran’s, article urging Trump to keep the “Iran Deal” Don’t scrap the Deal, but give it teeth going forward.
Very interesting: https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/25740/ep-443-how-be-warrior-truth
Doran’s opinion piece: https://www.hudson.org/research/14104-don-t-end-the-iran-deal-fix-it
“Many foreign companies expressed interest in working in Iran after sanctions were lifted, but they have found it very difficult to sign contacts with the NIOC. The Iranian government has established rules and policies that make it difficult and unattractive for foreign businesses.”
Which basically means all the European (mostly) companies that saw great profits to be made are disappointed the Iranians are tough hagglers.
Of course signing contracts in a non-juridical environment is highly chancey. Some mullah could always say a contract is void according to Allah’s will.
vanderleun Says: In this the artfdgrs is correct. Alas.
Most below is to the ether, not you Vanderleun!!
People like being right
I have been right enough on bad things to not like it
Truly I wish otherwise in this case..
without the daring do of men in a womans world
we will not have any such kind of anything
but oh, will the women wail when they see what they hath made… they refuse to look, accept it, or even entertain it… which means this train has no breakhandle, and there is only one end to it.
a long time ago, i said we lost
and people argued
let me ask if things have really taken any step back?
If you think so, then you dont know how such coupe/putsch work.
we have a huge population ready to kill and they have no idea that their (class) unemployement rate is now lower than it has ever been in US record!!!
heck, we hate literally over 10,000 foreign operatives in which communist states have colleges that put out over 200,000 of them PER YEAR
IF i really really pointed out whats in front of most of you you would lose sleep and be paranoid… seriously!!!
your just lucky (or unlucky) that they dont put it together for you and you dont get to see the picture!!! and to calm you down you get to find tons of stuff that gives you the contradiction you need to FEEL (the way you want)…
in 10 years the schools are much worse and so are the social justice (nazi) stuff, and the multiculturalism (blood and soil for natives), and so on are off the charts.
its just that most of you have no idea how far off the charts they are, for a decade i been flumoxed as to people complaining the news is a farce, then going to the news for their info and proof in their endless uselsss meaningless debates!!
and here is the punch line:
THIS not knowing was why good germans couldnt really stop the funky austrian they put in place. I find tons of people who are part of the cause have no idea how far its gone or what it actually MEANS.
they dont get that equality means their children wont have a better life and there is no way for them to get ahead no matter how hard the work or how good they are or how much they try… they look at me dumbfounded… you almost have to say… IF the law is equality, and ignoring laziness, and merit (which is white supremecy they are teachig), and competency is white too, and so on… what are they actually going ot do? create the inner city culture they develped on blacks where they dont want to succeed, do well, or even live in homes cause thats whiteys way (meanwhile, most dont know where the heck they are from and often very wrong when compared to their genetic history!!)
here is how you set up this discussion or move it to that:
they talk and everyone talks and if you get the chance they will talk bout their kids. dont go to the meme, go to the concern. Are they going to college? oh yeah, and on and on.. then ask Why? when they say they want them to do well.. you can then say, do well than all the otehr people they are equal to no matter what they do? Isnt this why you have your pussy hat?
thats about when the eyes glaze over…
we pretty much have a huge selection of people suggesting the same solutions as the nazi party, except that this time the jews are all whites, not just some whites of a religion… ie. the christians that saved the jews from the racists deserve the same fate in the racists eyes for doing so… duh…
i wish i was very wrong abou the demographics
democide, etc..
but since i read the military stuff on how that works and the courses
i know what is going on more as you can see it once you know it
if you dont know it
your about as safe as a dodo in a sailors hands
in this case a soviet sailor from 1917
There’s no hope for Iran and the people of Iran until some foreign power defeats them unconditionally and sets about the 50 year project of turning Iran into a free market democracy modeled after the AnglosphereM
which can never happen until Russia stops
it was to be a one country buffer zone just as the soviets had, and even putin recognized it and said it despite americans being too full and dense to even understand it.
turkey, iraq, iran, pakistan, afghanistan, india.
a wall.. a wall that stops the military equipment from traveling over land to these areas.
IRAN is the last state and the only remaining one that allows this. they have a land connection. so does serbia, croatia, etc… thats why they seized the port… then told america get out of that inland ocean…
but duh duh duh… no, its about oil.. when, who gets it, how does that wacko fantasy work when now we produce so much on our own (and obviously could have at any point in the past too if lands were not locked up so tight a frogs butt is a tunnel for a 6 lane highway)
read the biographies
they brag bout controllig the area after creating the house of saud with ibn… then they were the ones that trained the terrorists of the 50s- 70s.. ceucesceu bragged he turned planes into weapons in his auto biography, before 9/11 – and even arafat did similar, while now we know he was a KGB man full and so on. (so all that stuff with him from the past was really soviet russia using a proxy)
without iran, russia has no north korea to facilitate weapons and destabiliaztaion… but even if they locked that up, there are so man who “fled” russia to israel.. so, thats a big complication
and dont think kiril (KGB/FSB), running the world federation of churches stuff hasnt done its task in bastardizing that to odd things. for instance, you now have churches and society all trying to serve the same underserved gay population that young straight males are learning how to suck on popsickles so they can eat and have a room as they are not welcome (the assumptino is that allother places allow them and the church is the only refuge. so tobe helped, ooved, eat, and have a home or be liked, you have to become – functionally infertile).
meanwhile..
you been paying no attention to things like the paracels (tried tried tried).. the new weapons. the spy and viruses in our electronics. the operatives in our military that we cant get rid of. and the lowering of standards so that women who join, a percentage make extra money being prostitutes to the otehr soldiers (hey, what do you think teen vogue advising yuong girls about strething and anal leakage learn before they join up? thanks meade!)
nope russia wont allow it
in fact, this is so much a rule that otehr than proxies and so on up front, we wont let the two even accidently meet on the battle field and give the other the game by accident. think.. this is why they stay occupied and have their experts there.
you make that nuclear thing go go go
and your going to kill rusisan citizens
and they ar e not wishy washy like us.
nor do they allow pc, real feminism, etc
these they weaponized and refuse to accept
[or did you think the real reason was what the left says as its truthful about their what?]
“The turning point for the Shah was reached in several ways: President Carter put pressure on him to release hundreds of political prisoners in the name of human rights. ”
According to the Shah, who viewed his own mistakes most closely and bitterly, his basic mistake came in 1972, long before Carter. He stopped the stipends to the graduates and teachers of the religious schools in the country. They depended on these for their livelihoods. That was what switched their allegiance to Khomeini, who began sending them video tapes to play in mosques and schools all over the country from his HQ in Paris.
The Shah’s father, in the 1930s, had seized the lands owned by the schools. These were about 1/3rd of the arable land in Iran. Then he put the mullahs on a government stipend from the income of those lands. He thus gained the individual loyalty of religious teachers, because they depended on government for their existence. The day they started preaching sedition, their stipend could be stopped.
As oil money corruption in the supporters of the Pahlavi Dynasty grew in Iran, it ate the income of the government. Eventually the son of the man who had started the stipends had a choice between current friends’ demands for money, and stipends for the religious teachers, who’d never liked the Pahlavis. He chose his friends. That was what unleashed the deluge that ultimately washed away the Pahlavi Dynasty.
Carter and his CIA did a lot more than that.
neo,
Let me think about the history. We and the Brits destabilized Iran in 1953 for the Shah, then the Shah’s reign led to this theocracy. Then after 911, we went into the Middle East (neglecting the Taliban, the one true reason) in Iraq and destabilized Iraq and Syria leading to ISIS. I think we may have a pattern.
Houston, we have a problem. You use modernization as if it’s the same as secularization. Iran is a modern nation just like Saudi Arabia, what neither are is a Western secularized nation.
The UAE is made up of absolute hereditary monarchs, but Dubai has more modern architecture than the West, and has all the infrastructure, including an internet that is faster than that in the USA. Modern isn’t a synonym for secular. I wish it were…