This has got to be one of the best articles on Wikipedia. If you have any supportive bone in your body towards military/political action against Iran, you must read this! Show it to all your pro-war friends!
Read the whole thing and then ask yourself these questions:
Are western powers deliberately censoring words coming from Iran?
And when voices do come out of Iran, are those words being distorted?
Is anti-Zionism, a purely political movement against the present STATE of Israel, being misconstrued as antisemitism?
Do you find yourself, for the most part, agreeing with the Iranian government’s uncensored foreign policy position on Israel?
I’d agree somewhat. Their government is incredibly corrupt, and if I lived in the country my parents were born in, I would be seeing that a revolution against the current administration of Iran was underway.
Noble, but I don’t think it would help them much. I imagine if the current regime is overthrown, a pro-American-Israeli establishment might be put in place. Really, the Iranian people are between a rock and a hard place.
After reading some research on the CIA Cold War operations in the Middle East, I’m starting to doubt that the Iranian regime is really such an enemy of the US. Consider this: US installed the shah in a CIA coup and CIA created his secret service SAVAK which obviously was under US control. Then, in 1979, Khomeni comes to power, denounces this brutal oppressive CIA-backed SAVAK… but does not abolish it, simply renaming to SAVAMA. Does that make sense if Khomeni is anti-American? Then there’s the hostage crisis, which results in the US giving billions to Iran (and a spectacularly botched up “rescue” operation). Then, within a year, there’s the war with Iraq - provoked by Iran, since Iran and Iraq had previously reached a peace treaty, during which Iran-Contra happens - in effect, US is actually suppliing weapons to its “enemy”. Also 1979 is the year of the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan - a country bordering both Iran and the former USSR, after the mujaheddin provocations - who else sponsored them, if not CIA via Iran? Seems like continuation of the Great Game played by the British and Russian Empires in the Asia albeit under different guises.
Really, how do we know that America and Iran are “enemies”? Because the government and the media tells us so? What if they only pretend to do so in order to hide some other nefarious goals?
Even worse, I’m really getting paranoid. I guess growing up with all the memories of the WWII and distrust for Western Empires (and Catholic Church) plays a role in it, but the situation in the world looks eerily familiar in some ways to 1930s. Except that now all Western powers (US and Europe) are the ones going to be the Nazis. That doesn’t look good for the world.
“Iran is the true winner of that war. They only had to sit tight and smile as the West delivered on a golden plate all the influence Iran had always sought in the Middle East. The US and its allies will soon be gone from Afghanistan and Iraq, leaving Iranian-backed Shias dominant in both countries, their influence well spread across Syria, a chunk of Saudi Arabia and other countries for decades to come. Historic Iranian ambitions have been fulfilled without firing a shot while the US is reduced to fist-shaking. How foolish was that?”
See what I mean? The state-run media actually admits that Iran is the “winner” as if it’s not obvious to anyone who knew what “democracy” in a place like Iraq would mean. But they want you to think it’s simply Bush’s stupidity. Really, how stupid is it, unintentionally strengthening your “enemy”?
Sometimes I suspect that the relationship between the US-led world and Iran is similar to the one that exists between the US and President Chavez of Venezuela. Both desperately need boogeymen to keep their own citizens terrified.
Yes, Iran is a country on the brink of bankruptcy despite its immense resources and industrious people, yes the government there is corrupt by any standard, yes, the young people simply have no future whatsoever. But the present saber rattling with Israel and the US is a godsend for them: we need to be united, we are surrounded by enemies that won’t hesitate to wipe us out. For Israel, whose citizens are starting to be tired of a never ending drole de guerre with pretty much the whole Middle East, is a godsend: look there’s a terrible enemy who’s pursuing a nuclear weapons program to wipe us off the map, we need to stay focused. For the US, which suffered thousands of casualties and bled themselves to death over Iraq and Afghanistan without nothing, and let me tell you, nothing to show (remember when we were promised dirt cheap Iraqi crude?) it’s a godsend: see, see, the world’s definitely not safe for democracy! There are madmen everywhere, we need to stop them right now! (Why they aren’t threatening Kim Jong-Il, who definitely owns a nuclear arsenal and has the means to vaporize Tokyo, Seul or the US bases in the area, is beyond any logic).
What is beyond me is the mindless behavior of the European “allies”. Europe has LOTS to lose from both sanctions and all out war with Iran. We buy raw materials and produce from them and they buy our trucks, machinery and chemicals. Ever noticed which brand the trucks carrying around Iranian long range missiles are? At least when the US was about to invade Iraq French President Chirac tried to (feebly) defend his country’s large interests in the Iraqi oilfields. But now it seems they are competing which each other to show themselves more submitted to the US and Israel.
Meh, don’t be so pro-Iranian because you are against US government wars.
They supply groups like Hezbollah with all kinds of weapons, they are probably making a nuclear bomb (yes, they probably are - they’d be insane not to), they are a theocracy, and they want to spread their type of theocracy to other Islamic countries. Mahmoud is insane, the clerics are insane, and Khamenei is also insane.
Don’t get caught up in so much anti-Zionism and anti Western imperialism that you start sympathisizing with the nutjobs that are the Iranian government. They’re just as bad.
Of course, all statists are bad. But where is the proof that Iran as a nation is the aggressor?
Ever heard about the CIA sponsored death squads in south and central America?
Gimme a break. No one is sympathizing with the Iranian government, but I think many of us would sympathize with the Iranian people, who are caught in the middle, and likely to be the first ones to die in any conflict between the US/Israel and Iran.
And as far as calling Khamaeni and Ahmadinejad insane, what would you call Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton? Are they not psychopaths themselves?
I don’t agree completely. You don’t have to be so simplistically polar. Iranian government is just as bad. Zionism is a force based nationalist statist racist movement. There are plenty of libertarians against it (Murray Rothbard for example):
I would say Hamas and some of those groups are not always that great, Hezbolah in Lebanon tends to be part of actual politics, a defensive force, and not as much of nut jobs, but the rest associated with Hezbollah are nutjobs. Iran’s government is seriously corrupt, and disgusting, but not mass murderers.
By the way, is Justin quote I’m responding to appearing? I have a feeling it isn’t.
It’s not mindless. They’re not just “allies”, it’s one global empire with the same political/financial elite, they just feign differences to fool the population or potential enemies. Whoever is officially in power doesn’t matter, right-wing or left-wing, hawk vs. dove - it’s all an elaborate game of deception. The real policymakers are usually not in the spotlight. Read this, it’s very illuminating.
not necessarily, the original zionists were all about purchasing land, and homesteading abandoned land under common law practices. these are acts consistent with voluntarism. so im just making the point that what you said about Zionism isn’t true in a ‘necessary’ sense.