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Hope for Iran? — 35 Comments

  1. Signs of weakness are a dictator’s worst nightmare, and wars are often catalysts for change. Netanyahu is playing on this and planting a powerful notion. Any large scale action by Iran may ultimately end in an internal uprising.

  2. The Iranian regime has long appeared to be strong, largely on account of its margin of wealth in oil and gas, its zeal for revolution well developed in its proxy armies carefully arrayed, and its great good fortune in Barack Obama who boosted these Ayatollah fiends at his every opportunity.

    Truth is, however, this has been a carefully cultivated illusion; a bluff which is now being exposed day after relentless day. The Islamic republic is weak when shorn of its deterrent force in Hezbollah. Without the threat of precision missiles to rain on Israeli society and civil infrastructure, Iran cannot guard itself. And the Israeli titan knows this. He knows he can crush this weakened enemy from afar and, Providence willing, the subjected Iranian peoples will finish the job, freeing themselves with only a modicum of helps from without.

    Netanyahu is a prudent man, a prudent governor by calling and necessity. I don’t think he has miscalculated. I think he is planning still, and speaking in this way is very much a part of the plan.

  3. Bibi is assuming the leadership of what’s left of the free world. Biden has abdicated for the most part.

    A couple from Persia (They refuse to call it Iran) lives not far away from us. They are proud of their heritage – at one point Persia was a great nation – and hate the theocrat’s. I hope there are many more Persians like them in Iran. However, breaking free from a theocracy is perhaps the hardest change of all. After all, the theocrats claim to represent Allah and his wishes.

    It occurs to me that Bibi’s speech may be a subtle warning to the Mullahs that their lives are now in danger. It could also be a message to those opposed to the Mullahs to get ready for a change.

    Things are moving very fast now thanks to the audacity and ingenuity of the Israelis.

  4. I’ll believe the government of Iran is weak only when it falls. I’ll believe Iranians aren’t anti-Israel when they stop making war on Israel. I’ve read countless articles about how ordinary Iranians detest their government and aren’t antisemites. I’ll believe it when I see it. Until then . . .

  5. “ Lebanese Prime Minister says he is willing to deploy forces south of the Litani River to enforce UN Security Council Resolution 1701. say whatever it is he thinks the world wants to hear.”

    There. Fixed it.

    (Or perhaps even more likely, “whatever it is that ‘Biden’ told him to say…”)

    Of course, the Israelis just might also be wondering exactly how reliable the Lebanese PM is—let alone the Lebanese Armed Forces…
    (Um, that was a rhetorical “wondering”—they don’t call them LAF for nothing…)

  6. From the Melanie Phillips link, that Barry Meislin supplied in a previous thread:

    In a speech a few years ago, Nasrallah said:

    “Lebanon was a Christian country, but we took it and now it’s ours. After we kill all the Jews in Palestine, we will just have begun. We won’t stop until every country on Earth is ruled by the law of Allah and the people of Islam, like our prophet promised.”

    What documentation is there for Nasrallah saying that? It sounds plausible. It would be a GREAT quote to throw in the faces of the Israelphobes, but I would want better documentation before I did so. Thus far, the only “documentation” I have found is an X posting, which is not exactly great documentation.

    I tried Advanced Google Search on MEMRI, to no avail.
    We have to be very careful about our documentation.

    https://x.com/realMaalouf/status/1837607041080480176

    https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/a-seismic-moment

  7. Lebanese Prime Minister says he is willing to deploy forces south of the Litani River to enforce UN Security Council Resolution 1701. Bit late, isn’t it? Does he have a military capable of pushing Hezbollah out?

    It’s only eighteen years too late. Israel could say that its incursions into Lebanon have the goal of enforcing UN Security Council Resolution 1701. 🙂

    My take on IDF land incursions into Lebanon is that IDF should concentrate on destroying tunnels and arsenals. Unfortunately for those who have a missile in their basements, houses will also be destroyed. It appears to me that Israel has a pretty good idea of where the missiles are stored.

    I had a dinner yesterday with Jewish friends in celebration of Rosh Hoshana, a little off date because of the need to have it on the weekend. They have relatives in Israel, including a nephew who has been with IDF in Gaza. Delicious Moroccan and Israeli food. A friend had a kippah with Donald Trump MAGA on it. 🙂

  8. Gringo, Islamist radicals do not hesitate to say that all people must be subjugated to Islam. This is a widespread teaching based in the Qur’an and other foundational texts of Islam. It is Muslims who do NOT advocate this who are not following their prophet closely. May their numbers increase.

  9. “They refuse to call it Iran”
    Why? It seems to be the name of the place.

    Guarded Domains of Iran 1501-1925
    Imperial State of Iran 1925-1979
    Islamic Republic of Iran 1979-

    Wikipedia
    “ The exonym Persia was the official name of Iran in the Western world before March 1935, but the Iranian peoples inside their country since the time of Zoroaster (probably circa 1000 BC), or even before, have called their country Arya, Iran, Iranshahr, Iranzamin (Land of Iran), Ary?n?m (the equivalent of Iran in the proto-Iranian language) or its equivalents. The term Arya has been used by the Iranian people, as well as by the rulers and emperors of Iran, from the time of the Avesta. Evidently from the time of the Sassanids (226–651 CE) Iranians have called it Iran, meaning the “Land of the Aryans” and Iranshahr. In Middle Persian sources, the name Arya and Iran is used for the pre-Sassanid Iranian empires as well as the Sassanid empire. As an example, the use of the name “Iran” for Achaemenids in the Middle Persian book of Arda Viraf refers to the invasion of Iran by Alexander the Great in 330 BC.[20] The Proto-Iranian term for Iran is reconstructed as *Ary?n?m (the genitive plural of the word *Arya); the Avestan equivalent is Airyanem (as in Airyanem Vaejah). The internal preference for “Iran” was noted in some Western reference books (e.g. the Harmsworth Encyclopaedia, circa 1907, entry for Iran: “The name is now the official designation of Persia.”) but for international purposes, Persia was the norm.”

  10. Bibi may be signaling that the mullahs should be looking over their shoulders at the Iranian people as well as for Israeli plots.
    This may cause a complication. One refuge against the hated Zionists might not be proof against a mob of locals. Or vice versa. A place managing both risks might be rare.
    And “location” ought to be the lesser of their worries. The finesse of the decapitating strikes of the last year or so implies the Mossad, or somebody else, has people on the inside. So location might not be relevant.

  11. It was Carter who caused the problem by installing Khomeini and withdrawing support of the Shah
    ==
    He did not install Khomeini. See PM Gholam Reza Azhari’s remarks to American officials in late 1978 on the Shah’s state of mind and what that portended.
    ==
    The Huyser mission was arguably ill-considered, but had their been a military coup in January 1979 to head off Khomeini, it might still have turned out a bloody failure.
    ==
    Khomeini’s movement had a lot of momentum at that point.

  12. J.J.,

    I know a father and son from Persia (that’s also what they call Iran) who now live in America. They are huge Trump supporters and think America is insane for having open borders.

  13. Kate

    Gringo, Islamist radicals do not hesitate to say that all people must be subjugated to Islam. This is a widespread teaching based in the Qur’an and other foundational texts of Islam. It is Muslims who do NOT advocate this who are not following their prophet closely. May their numbers increase.

    If Nasrallah’s alleged statement, “After we kill all the Jews in Palestine,” can be clearly documented, it becomes an excellent debating point to throw at the proPali/proHezb crowd. When they cry that Israel is committing “genocide,” the late head of Hezbollah openly advocating genocide against “all the Jews in Palestine” shows their “genocide” claims are not what they claim to be.

    (That 40k Gazans, and not 2M Gazans, have lost their lives is, of course, pretty good refutation of the “genocide” claim, also,)

  14. Nice bit of history of the name Iran, Chases Eagles.

    My guess is that my Persian (Iranian) acquaintances wish to distance themselves from the Islamic Republic of Iran, and because they have found that Persia is a less threatening, tension creating name under the present circumstances. I would never question their preferences, as they are friendly people and non-Muslims. Live and let live. 🙂

  15. I know people from Iran who use the name “Persian” to distance themselves from the Islamic Republic.

  16. Just about everyone knows that the majority of Iran’s people don’t want the theocracy that has ruled the country with an iron fist for over forty years. So far, they have been powerless to overthrow that regime.

    –neo

    Back during the Iraq War, I read lots of blogs and blog comments. There was one such writer who called herself IranGirl. She said, after the Shock and Awe Invasion of Iraq:

    Great! Do us next. Please.

    Within several months she stopped writing.

    Here’s to you, IranGirl. I hope you still alive, safe, and happy.

  17. Fouad Ajami has been dead ten years. He would have had a thing or two to say about this, and probably not hidden his feelings.

  18. The old Persian language morphed into Farsi, which is also spoken in Afghanistan and Tajikistan (written in the Cyrllic alphabet!).

    We’re Americans but the language, as far as I know, is called English.

  19. Ajami and Bernard Lewis are sorely missed. Of course, we did have Lewis around for a nice long time.

    My experience precisely Kate. I knew a few people from Iran who called themselves Persian, and that was why.

    I got to know several people from the Middle East when I taught ESL. Granted, they all chose to move to America, so not exactly an unbiased group, but they all despised the regimes in their home countries. They all claimed that sentiment was wide spread. I had a small group of twenty-somethings all from Hama. They were stunned, and pleasantly surprised, that I was aware of the massacre there.

  20. Same here. Childhood friends of husband whose families left Iran in the early sixties – long before the Islamic Republic came into being – referred to themselves as Persian. They were Christian so that might have had something to do with it, IDK.
    Also took a summer course in the early 80’s classmates were three girls, two sisters and their cousin – whose families had fled Iran after the revolution. They were Bahai and referred to themselves as Persians.
    ‘Cousin’. LOL. I once came to class late and saw one of the sisters in a car in the parking lot in a passionate embrace with a guy I had been introduced to as one of her cousins!
    That was my first introduction to differing cultural definitions of familial relationships.

  21. @ J J > “However, breaking free from a theocracy is perhaps the hardest change of all. After all, the theocrats claim to represent Allah and his wishes.”

    This may become a serious problem for the Clerisy of Iran.
    So far as I’ve read today, John Sexton is the only one mentioning this angle.

    https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2024/09/30/irans-axis-of-resistance-has-been-a-failure-n3795213

    I suspect there’s a religious component to this that isn’t really translating in secular US news outlets. Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, is a true believer. Other Islamic terrorist groups are run by true believers. They really think God is on their side when they murder Israeli civilians. So when an entire terror group’s leadership is wiped out in a matter of weeks, it isn’t just a military crisis it’s a crisis of faith as well. If Iran is stunned right now, that is part of the reason why. They lost Soleimani. They lost Nasrallah. They lost Haniyeh. They will lose Sinwar one day soon. They are losing.

    Maybe the Twelfth Imam isn’t coming to dinner after all.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_al-Mahdi

  22. it isn’t just a military crisis it’s a crisis of faith as well.

    AesopFan:

    Quite.

    A big difference between Islam compared to Judaism and Christianity is that Muhammad had no miracles except … his astonishing string of military conquests and those later by his followers.

    It’s hard Islamic doctrine that Allah is on their side and promises that Islam will rule the world one day.

    Muslims find their current power inferiority to the West and to Israel galling, infuriating even. Hence their extremity — including terrorism — in fighting.

  23. Molly Brown,

    We are friends with a couple from that region who met at a family function. They are second cousins. Beautiful, intelligent people with beautiful, intelligent children.

  24. Rufus,
    Your friend’s relationship sounds lovely, and perfectly legal, too!
    American families tend to live so far apart that we think the ‘cousin’ relationship means ‘first’ cousins only. But cultures where families live closer together don’t make a big distinction between second and third cousins. They’re all ‘cousins’.
    Then there is Hawaii, where ‘Uncle’ and ‘Auntie’ are terms of both affection and respect. So; if someone says; ‘She is my Auntie.’ it does not necessarily imply a biological relationship. Or if you get called ‘Auntie’ at the register you don’t need to show ID. LOL. I have a running joke with my husband that if I get called ‘Auntie’ more than once in a given week, I’m overdue to color my grey!
    Now that I have a daughter in law from a big Taiwanese family, I am trying to wrap my head around and remember all the names for the various permutations of brother, sister, uncle, aunt and cousin. It’s crazy complex!

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