This was not inevitable. This is a war Israel chose. It could have been prevented. Diplomatic talks were ongoing when the bombers took off for Iran. Israel’s continuing, illegal, unjustified airstrikes are unlikely to achieve their stated aim – permanently ending Tehran’s presumed efforts to build nuclear weapons – and may accelerate it. They must stop now. Likewise, Iran must halt its retaliation immediately and drop its escalatory threats to attack US and UK bases.
This conflict is not limited, as was the case last year, to tit-for-tat exchanges and “precision strikes” on a narrow range of military targets. It’s reached a wholly different level. Potentially nothing is off the table. Civilians are being killed on both sides. Leaders are targets. The rhetoric is out of control. With Israel fighting on several fronts, and Iran’s battered regime backed against a wall, the Middle East is closer than ever to a disastrous conflagration.
Reasons can always be found to go to war. The roots of major conflicts often reach back decades – and this is true of the Israel-Iran vendetta, which dates to the 1979 Islamic revolution. The so-called “shadow war” between the two intensified in recent years. Yet all-out conflict had been avoided, until now. So who is principally to blame for this sudden, unprecedented explosion?
Answer: three angry old men whose behaviour raises serious doubts about their judgment, common sense, motives and even their sanity.
Had nothing to do with the overthrow of the Iranian democracy in 1953.
Didn’t the CIA do that
To install Pahlavi as Shah, absolutely.
This was in an effort to keep Iran from selling oil to the USSR.
So it justifies the crimes of the mullahs? Why do you want it to seem that America is the devil and the mullahs are OK? Can’t them both be bad in your mind?
Khomeini hijacked the revolution that ousted the Shah and turned it from a triumphant moment and chance for change into a “under new management” situation.
Khamenei now presides over this theocratic regime and continues to oppress Iran.
The lion’s share of the proletariat were religious conservatives. He didn’t hijack the revolution, he was a foundational pillar of its execution.
Show me a Middle Eastern government more liberal than President Masoud Pezeshkia’s Independent Reformist coalition. Half their neighbors are Kingdoms, ffs. The other half are military dictatorships. Iran is one of the few proper democracies on the continent. It’s theocratic because the majority of its constituents are conservative theocrats sending up religious politicians to the parliament. Iran is no more theocratic than Pakistan or Mississippi.
I don’t have time or will to dive into all of this but this one part: “It is theocratic because the majority of it’s constituents are conservative theocrats” There are no non-theocratic politians in Iran, they do not get approved for standing in an election. Every candidate, on every level, has to be approved by the Guardian Council. Who elected that council? Well, half of the council are clerics, appointed the Supreme Leader. The other half are jurists, who are selected by the Majilis from list approved by the Chief Justice. Who appointed the Chief Justice? The Supreme Leader.
Meaning all 12 positions of the body that decides who can stand for election are either appointed by the supreme Leader or appointed by someone with direct allegiance to the Supreme Leader.
Take the president for example: Pezeshkian would legally not be able to stand for election if he wasnt a Shia Muslim or didn’t affirm that the Supreme Leader is the ultimate authority in matters of religion and social issues. Meaning by law, both social and religious reforms can only be done with the consent of the supreme Leader.
The constituents send up theocratic politicians because there are no other politicians. A theocrat has the ultimate power of determining who is and isn’t a viable candidate.
Ahmadinejad has taken a number of opportunities to take subtle swipes at the clerics, including Khamenei, questioning in public for example whether their edicts are directives or suggestions. He has also tried to consolidate more power for the presidency, trying to create a parallel foreign ministry and by making political appointments he’s not entitled to make.
Hardly the only President to wrestle for power against the Leadership Council, but this was such an obvious historical bullet point it was easy to find citation on. These are not Theocrats in any meaningful way and they break from religious leadership as they see fit. What’s more, Khamenei himself came to his office over the objections of numerous members of the Assembly of Experts, having to argue for special dispensation precisely because he was neither a marja’ or ayatollah prior to assuming office. It does not seem as though Iran lacks for partisan wrangling or strict adherence to religious dogma.
Such weasel words. You might as well claim no one in the US can stand for election without being approved by a sitting President or someone with direct allegiance to a sitting President. Then wave your hands at the national party apparatus and the various partisan elected county clerks.
No politician rises on their own accord. They all require networks of supporters and compatriots to climb into higher office.
I asked you to show me a Middle Eastern government more liberal than President Masoud Pezeshkia’s Independent Reformist coalition.
All you could rebut with is whining at the nomination process being not to your taste.
I don’t think you actually know or care for the state of Iranian democracy one way or another. All you seem to care about is that they’ve replaced a Western friendly military dictatorship with a religiously inclined elected parliament.
Pick up a copy of John Locke’s Social Contract and hit yourself with it.
In the United States, the president does not approve candidates and he doesn’t appoint anyone who approves candidates.
| A government more liberal than Iran in the middle east.
You might as well ask for the most slave friendly state in the antebellum South. They’re shit. The 2009 elections might have yielded a more liberal parliament, but those elections got fudged and when people took to the streets, the state murdered 1.500 of them. If there ever was any democracy, it died that year.
Not a single man will ever be able to run in Iran on a platform that doesn’t rely on the Shariah to dispense justice, that does not demand the subjugation of women or liberalizes society in any meaningful way. Iran had a democracy. It got couped, replaced with a monarchy and now Iran lives under a theocracy with a democratic theater in front.
So? US foreign policy has done a number of the whole world. It’s not an excuse for Khamenei and his goons to uphold this regime.
If you don’t want to be governed by conservatives, quit lining all the progressives against the wall and shooting them.
Blaming Khamenei for governing like a conservative Muslim, when you’re in a region absolutely choked with religious conservative governments, seems to miss the forest for the trees. Especially after the US was instrumental in undermining and dismantling all the modernist secular democracies from the first half of the 20th century.