|
The Right To Choose
In the thread on Iran's upcoming election (1, 2, 3) Parviz is onto something when he rants (his description) in comment 106:
I despair sometimes at the expectation some posters have of the need for Iran to fight Capitalism and U.S. regional hegemony on its own and ad aeternam. The attitude seems to be: To Hell with your economic development; to Hell with your 25 % unemployment (in one of the world's potentially wealthiest nations); to Hell with 50 % inflation caused by sanctions that have closed many factories and created an annual imported inflation rate of 50 %; to Hell with your underdeveloped South Pars gas field which Qatar is siphoning off at your nation's expense because they are at peace with the U.S. and Iran isn't; to Hell with human rights that would be boosted by peace between the U.S. and Iran resulting in cultural exchanges and the positive influences of a tourist boom; to Hell with your best brains who leave for better job opportunities in Capitalist countries (even China and India) because jobs don't exist at home ………. Further afield, to Hell with Pakistan and India that desperately need funds and peace to develop the IPI natural gas "Friendship Pipeline", and to Hell with Europe that desperately needs a major energy supply alternative to the Big Bad Russian Bear.
NO! Iran, you are expected to remain under-developed, because if you adopt Capitalism and FDI your people will 'suffer' …..
He is right in that some, including me, sometimes forget that while lauding this or that opposition to the empire in some foreign country, we may also seem to argue for the oppression of the people of that country.
It is a people's choice to make what social/economic/political system they want. If they make the wrong choice – as long as it does not lead to war – it is their problem.
For example: We should condemn the delivery, with U.S. support, of heavy weapons to South Sudan and a Darfur rebel leader meeting top Israeli defense official. Those moves will likely lead to further civil war in Sudan. But to condemn that is not a reason to defend the Sudan regime under Omar al-Bashir. The enemy of my enemy is not automatically my friend.
While we laud Iran's independence in foreign policy, we have no right to tell its people what to choose.
While I am a strickt adherer to non-interference by states in other states in the Westphalian sense, I support the right of people everywhere to make their choices on an as-objective-as-possible base.
r’giap 7) Wall Street did to US what US demand for oil almost did to Saudi, using ‘flexible’ credit, zero down, interest only ARM’s to *overpump* the supply of US working income and savings. Worker savings is almost exactly like crude oil. There is a reserve, a pool of worker wealth, and they’re pumping from that reserve, the fractional reserve banks and money and mortgage lenders. Wall Street as OPEC USA.
In effect, Wall Street “stranded” the greatest pool of worker wealth in the world. Now they’re adopting another oilfield strategy, with ‘high pressure injection’, to fracture the US economy and push any last stranded pockets of worker wealth to their pumps (essentially zero interest rates push fixed income out, as retirees are forced to cash in their CDs and spend down their principal, the same with reverse-mortgages and panic mortages on already paid off homes). It’s a desperate measure, trying to ‘fracture’ a ‘stranded’ money pool, and one with diminishing returns.
Like re-chewing that bubblegum you stuck under your desk.
They (mortgage brokers and banks) raped US through raw greed, but the Fed under Alan Greenspan did it, I believe, for an ulterior motive. The Fed has “60 of the brightest PhD’s” as Greenspan crows, and every one of them knew the dot.con bomb foisted on Americans, followed by the signal 9/11 event, brought a “Peak-Money” crash to the Great American Wealth Fields, one that pumping for another decade
would bring the banksters little reward. They were facing huge downside losses.
So Fed dropped credit to zero, overpumped our fields, got their spike in profits,
and stranded the remaining flow for, it looks like now, about five to seven years.
They took their profits and ran, and left US like the Monroe Doctrine left Cuba.
Stranded.
The odd and counter-intuitive outcome, if you read on California’s budget woes, is that Obama is gonna have to present the Great American Wealth Fields to the world investment community, the same way Saudi King Abdullah presents Ghawar / Safaniya.
“Everything is fine. We have total domestic security. We have tight control of wealth production. There is unlimited investment available and all are welcome.”
But behind the scenes, it’s high-pressure injection and fracturing like it’s 1999,
and if a “Buy American” holds sway in the Obama Plan, America will soon *be* Cuba, because the majority of USA non-Gov, non-Defense, non-Finance GDP was from China and Dubai. Dubai, from inside reports, is seeing -40% to -50% crash in R/E values,
with another … who knows, Dubai is a charade. China, if we block all Chinese and
Russian imports with “Buy American”, and EU and SA are flat line, who are we going to sell anything to, besides further adulterated tranches of re-fi chopped liver?
USA could become just another natural resources and ag production 3WD backwater, except this go-around, 95% of Americans live in the Ghetto, where, in the 1930’s, 95% of Americans lived on the Farm. Ghetto or Farm, just another name for Gulag.
Posted by: Free Alice | Feb 16 2009 20:47 utc | 12
Last weeks debate about iran and the alternatives for iran “going forward” as the corporatists say got me thinking about how Iran got to where it is today.
Firstly let me say that as a relatively objective observer who personally believes even a continuation of the current Iranian oligarchy would be better for all Iranians in the long term than what USuk has to offer, I would never support any outside interference to prevent the Iranian people from deciding for themselves.
Anyway, over the weekend I did some reading on the events of 1978 and 79 to try and learn exactly what did happen during the Iranian ‘revolution’ and I ended up with a very different take on how it came about than I had before.
One of my primary resources was a new series of documentaries running on BBC2 called “Iran and the West” – in particular Part 1 entitled “The Man who Changed the World”. That episode looks at exactly how the Iranian revolution did happen and how it was that Ayatollah Khomeini did end up in charge.
I share Giap’s reservations about the BBC’s agenda, so I approached the doco with a very hairy eyeball. After discounting the anti-islam ‘spin’ and general pro-amerikan empire rhetoric and just considering the facts, the BBC doco had considerable merit as a primary source because it featured many interviews with major players from all sides. Actually that is not quite correct there weren’t many people from the Iranian left interviewed – most of them are long dead, killed by either pahlavi or komeini, but that doesn’t impact on the reality of what amerika and the shah did. The doco features interviews with prez carter and zbignew brazinski from the empire as well as similarly heavy hitters from pahlavi’s side and Khomeini’s entourage.
Conventional wisdom about the Iranian revolution goes that the Iranian left organised strikes throughout 1978 which began to get traction after Ayatollah Khomeini asked/instructed/entreated his followers to support the left and join in the strikes and protests.
This action got so bad, that by early 1979 the shah got scared and he fled overseas just as he had done back in 1953 when the army had threatened a coup.
After the shah left, Ayatollah Khomeini arrived from Paris and his supporters were very effective in persuading the army whose lower ranks were comprised of poor draftees from the same rural areas where Ayatollah Khomeini drew his main followers, not to attack them.
Then Ayatollah Khomeini began his move against the left whose structure was well documented and known, eventually obliterating them and leaving the mullahs in charge.
Like all good yarns it contains many truths but one thing puzzled me, that was that many other vassals of the amerikan empire had also managed to consolidate the urban leftists with conservative rural people suffering under the jackboot of one of the empire’s puppets.
How many attempts have there been in Latin America to throw out the puppet regime since Castro won in Cuba?
I reckon it would come to hundreds, and although in many cases the left and the catholic church united against the ruling cabal, the only success was Nicaragua when the Somoza government collapsed under the weight of it’s internecine conflict. Old man Somoza had gotten too greedy and had lost the support of the other oligarchs.
Everywhere else the empire had successfully quashed the people’s will. Why did Iran pull it off? And how? Iran wasn’t just another colony/client, it was the most valuable colony/client of the lot.
This state was incredibly important to the empire and had been the basis of negotiations between amerika and the Soviet Union right from the start of talks between Stalin and Roosevelt during WW2. In fact as a sign of Soviet good will and an acknowledgement of Russia’s readiness to make the gift of Iran to amerika – a down payment for amerikan weapons and fuel to fight the nazis, the first meeting between Stalin and Roosevelt was in Tehran during December 1943.
Most people with a passing knowledge of WW2 are aware of the Yalta talks and even Potsdam, where the finishing touches to the post war world were negotiated, but for whatever reason the foundation conference where Roosevelt and Stalin went head to head and nutted out the basic quid pro quo (incidentally causing great consternation for Churchill who imagined he was going to set the agenda, but who was largely ignored in Tehran) is now forgotten.
Sorry about the digression but it is necessary in order to convey exactly how important Iran was/is to the amerikan empire. Yet somehow despite the best efforts of many very experienced imperialists Iran escaped the clutches of amerika’s greed.
Over the years two theories as to how this came about have been mooted. The first and least supported is that the Iranian left was simply too strong. Years of savak infiltration and oppression had caused the Iranian left to evolve into an incredible machine that could mobilize at the grass roots even while it’s structure was inviolate to Savak’s attempts to destroy the left and it’s leaders. The real problem with that theory is that if the left was that well organised, how was it that the islamic fundies rolled it up like an old carpet once they took power?
The second theory much favoured by both Carter’s supporters and opponents was that Jimmy Carter refused to allow the CIA to play rough, that both Nicaragua and Iran were ‘lost’ because Jimmy had scruples.
Sorry but this doco featured interviews with CIA heavy hitters and the shah’s wife Farah Pahlavi who both talked about how Jimmy Carter had suggested that Khomeini be assassinated. This takes us to the crux of the matter. I was the shah who vetoed the suggestion of rubbing Ayatollah Khomeini out because, he said, that would make the man a martyr.
Looking back on it, Ayatollah Khomeini’s movement had plenty of supporters yet it was very much a one man band. When Ayatollah Khomeini finally went to Iran he had to go to his family to find trusted staff. Well that’s what was claimed, of course it didn’t hurt from a greed perspective, to keep it all in the family, but there is no doubt that before Khomeini was established in Iran and had created an Iranian power structure, that the movement was completely dependant on Khomeini.
Remember Khomeini had been in exile for 14 years most of then in Iraq – Najaf. Saddam had also offered to ‘rub him out’ but pahlavi had vetoed that also. There was no redundancy, that is if Ayatollah Khomeini died the organisation would likely have collapsed, at least in the short term.
So why did Mohammad Pahlavi (the shah) veto a hit on Khomeini? I believe this was a deliberate act by a man who knew he was dying. One of the other factoids to surface in the documentary was that Pahlavi knew he had a fatal cancer (pancreatic) for at least 3 years before he died in 1980. His physicians told him of the diagnosis in late 1977, and he swore them to secrecy, although one doctor did tell his wife at about the same time.
A sick man with a great deal of blood on his hands made a decision to try and rehabilitate himself in the eyes of his god. Pahlavi wasn’t a straussian, he believed the ‘noble lie’ of there being one god and his name is allah, probably just as much as any of Khomeini’s followers.
This also explains why/how it is that carter’s next ploy for ensuring the empire retained Iran also failed.
When it became apparent that things were going real bad real fast in Iran, Carter dispatched an amerikan army general – robert huyser, who had trained many of the iranian military senior leaders, to crank the boys up – to get a coup up and running.
That hit a brick wall. Despite all the lectures iranian generals, admirals, and wing commanders had on being a big oligarch in a small vassal state 101 at the school of the amerikas, lectures which had specifically drummed into these guys that there should always be an accurate and up to date coup plan drafted and sitting in the bottom drawer -‘just in case’, no one had ever even done a basic ‘scoping’ report to identify the parameters of a potential coup. Why?
Because the shah had ordered them not to. Obvious when you think about it. Any such plan would likely have set idle minds whirring, and it would have only been a matter of time before some ambitious general moved against the shah in exactly the same way that pahlavi’s father moved against, and threw out the shah which he had been employed to protect.
But general huyser really screwed the pooch in another way. He had gone around tehran meeting with generals and talking coups without touching base with the shah first. With typical amerikan imperial hubris, general huyser and ambassador sullivan had already considered pahlavi to be ‘yesterdays man’. They didn’t consult with him about the coup and the doco features an old interview with pahlavi where he claims that when huyser finally did come to see him he, (huyser) only asked the shah when exactly he planned on leaving Iran. That’s all and it went down like a lead balloon, huyser decribes copping the sort of angry penetrating glare that only a king of kings can dish out. Even now long after it matters huyser can’t grasp that his patronising attitude towards the shah cost amerika the nation of Iran and all those bbl’s of oil.
That stupidity gave pahlavi all the excuse he needed to order his senior military not to co-operate with the amerikans, that planning a coup was still verboten, even though pahlavi planned on an extended stay overseas for ‘rest and relaxation’.
After watching this doco and reading enough to be sure of it’s veracity, I am nowalmost certain that the iranian revolution was successful primarily because the shah made sure it would succeed.
Motives are tough to guess but I reckon pahlavi got an attack of the guilts.
Remember pahlavi knew exactly what an evil construct his monarchy was and once he discovered he was dying he did exactly what so many other greedy and cruel pricks have done on their deathbeds. He tried to buy forgiveness by setting the scene for a victory by the Ayatollah Khomeini.
So what? that is all history now, what has that do do with what Iran next becomes? No one has suggested that Iran should go back to being a monarchy, so who cares how it was pahlavis lost their gig?
I think this matters very much. If amerika gets the chance to grab Iran back and is successful, they will make damned sure that there can be no repetition of the events of 77 and 78.
Parviz; the real problem is, if amerika gets it’s paws on Iran again it won’t let go until either Iran has been bled dry, or the amerikan empire is no more. There won’t be another opportunity for Iran if it does get swallowed by the empire and this is precisely why all Iranians need to know exactly what is at stake.
Parviz I’m afraid that some of your claims are overly emotive and just don’t stack up. I have no doubt that life under the mullahs is nasty and oppressive but I also believe that there are plenty of other countries, nations which are part of the neo-liberal dream that have prostitution and drug addiction rates much higher than Iran’s.
I know that this subject has been flogged like a dead horse around various conservative web sites. That Ahmadinejad has caused Iran’s prostitution and drug addiction to outstrip ‘everywhere else’ but after scouring the net for hard data to support that contention I have to say those claims appear to be little more than emotive attempts to crank up Iranians.
Illegal prostitution or drug addiction cannot exist at a high level of participation, hidden away from society. Big business in those areas is always reflected in a gaudy and violent, crime-ridden culture; eg Patpong in Bangkok. Are there many districts like Patpong in Tehran?
Poverty and moral decay have become major social issues reflecting of the decay in morality amongst the elite in Iran, but it is important to get a realistic notion of these issues if a ‘new broom’ is going sweep them out.
In all the countries I have visited, poverty and crime have been highest in those nations where globalist policies are the most evident.
I repeat my original contention that I find it unutterably sad that the only alternative to the mullahs oligarchy in Iran is an amerikan trained technocrat with a neo-liberal agenda. However bad things are now, letting the laissez faire economists in during a period of global economic decline, guarantees things are going to become much worse in both the medium and long term.
No ifs, buts or maybes. Worst of all is that letting these pricks in is a one way ride. Iran got very lucky when the shah’s guilt and greed exceeded his loyalty to his fellow oligarchs. Considering that this has happened rarely if ever before, the chances of it happening again must be zilch.
Under those circumstances an objective assessment should conclude that the mullahs, the devils you know, have to be a better bet than where the devils are not known.
I recognise that for iranians having to live under these assholes, anything seems better, but objectively the best alternative is to develop a third way independent of amerika’s empire.
Doing so would mean that the sanctions would continue, but looking at this from a different perspective for a moment, surely the fact that amerika is only prepared to lift the sanctions if iran conceeds all it’s independence is proof of amerika’s bad intent.
Surely the horror that is Palestine or Iraq are adequate demonstration of what happens in one of the empire’s democracies should the elections not present amerika’s puppet with the brass ring. When hamas won in Palestine amerika set about destroying that entire society. In Iran the people voted for Mr Allawi but amerika felt he wasn’t doing as he was told so they stripped him of the mandate the election granted him and gave it to a more reliable puppet.
Unless iran boxes itself into a system where any transgression is immdeiately punishable with human death and misery, the amerikans will refuse to lift their siege of iran. Why would they? If iran does box itself in sufficiently amerika will create an excuse to change the rules in such a way that iran cannot possibly assert itself ever again.
Look at the NPT Iran has been careful to adhere to it’s conditions, religiously, yet amerika and the ampire’s puppets have found iran guilty of breaching the agreement despite there being no proof to support that contention and yet iran has been made to suffer. Why? In the hope that most iranians will arrive at the same conclusion as you have Parviz. That anything is better than another year of this siege, even complete acquiesence to amerika.
I have no dog in this fight Parviz it makes no difference to me what Iran decides to do, but I hope they don’t elect Khatami or anyone else who puts raprochement with amerika as their platform, because if such a person is elected and does manage to get the oligarchy to support rapprochement life will become much worse for most Iranians. If Seyed Mohammad Khatami or any other prez doesn’t persuade the oligarchs, rapprochement won’t happen.
Of course it must be Iranians who make this decision but equally they can only do that if they have all the facts, which I doubt is currently the case.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Feb 17 2009 5:36 utc | 18
Well, I had reached the end of my tether yesterday but woke up this morning delighted to see my rant transformed into a separate thread. My delight quickly turned sour on reading most of the responses:
#1. Slothrop, with your response (that had anti-German undertones) you totally missed the point. This thread has absolutely nothing to do with ‘intervention’. It’s about the choice developing nations must make between remaining economic backwaters and/or risking civil war, on the one hand, and exploiting their natural and human resources at the risk of increased foreign ‘Capitalist’ influence, on the other.
#2, I’m sorry, r’giap, but Communism isn’t the answer either. The Soviet Union belonged to the Nomenclatura which had its own foreign exchange shops for luxury goods while ‘the people’ queued for hours to buy food staples.
#3, Obamageddon, please stop comparing Iran with Cuba. Try Malaysia, for example, that is doing rather well from the Faustian Bargain. Mahathir told the U.S., the IMF and everyone else to go screw themselves while developing his nation at rocket speed, with consistent 7 % growth for 2 decades.
#4, irrelevant.
#5, jony_b_cool, totally agree with you.
#6, irrelevant.
#7, r’giap, aaaah, finally something to debate: In describing the evils of Wall Street (with which I fully agree) you write: “sometime, i am not sure what is the model for posters like parviz. if the west is known for anything at all – it is the constant & increasing inequalities of opportunity”
Firstly, who in Heaven’s name ever suggested “copying the West”??? If you think that’s what my rant was about you didn’t read either the original or the repeat properly.
And, regarding ‘inequality’, exactly what is the Islamic Republic, that you champion, known for? Here is the answer:
1. A nation that now belongs to a select theocracy;
2. $ 300 billion of capital flight;
3. Apartment prices in Iran that vary between $ 200/M2 and $ 10,000/M2. Yes, people here actually did pay $ 5 million for a 500 sq.m. penthouse, and in CASH, less than a year ago before the global crash. The nation is rife with beggars while those with connections drive $ 500,000 Mercedes (= including the 150 % import duty).
The above examples occurred largely as a result of U.S. hostility that placed Iran on a war footing, enabled the Mullahs to return the economy to the ownership of the Revolutionary Guards and prevented protest of any kind. By ‘opening up’ the economy through peace with the U.S. many of these ills will be eliminated or reduced as they were during Khatemi’s presidency when ‘the people’ were generally far better off.
r’giap, you sometimes sound like Hemingway fighting the Fascists in Spain. He lost, but Spain prospered.
#8 and #9, again Cuba which is totally irrelevant to Iran’s situation today.
# 10 and # 11, again ‘intervention’ which I never advocated.
#12, great post but off-topic.
# 13, Arnold Evans, thanks for a great post. You not only correctly differentiate between Iran’s economic and political weakness in 1951 and today, but also go on to accurately describe the quandary we Iranians face in trying to change the regime without becoming another Middle Eastern client state. The only thing you didn’t so was to come down firmly on one side or the other: Should Iran today make peace with the U.S., welcome FDI and open up its economy, or not? What would you do if you had the power, without knowing the end result, just based on what you know about Iran today?
#14, another Communist rant?
#16, Lysander, VERY on topic and a very fair assessment of my nation’s choices. But I think you underestimate Iran compared with the other nations you mention. 95 % of Iranians are in favour of nuclear energy. It is unstoppable. Almost 100 % of Iranians (on blogs and in Iran) were proud of the satellite launch, IN SPITE OF their hatred of Ahmadinejad, which is highly significant. Iranians are the world’s 3rd largest bloggers, according to a recent CNN report, which means that they are infinitely more politically aware than their Saudi and Egyptian counterparts. Iran kicked the U.S. out in 1979. When have either Egypt, S. Arabia or any other Persian Gulf nation kicked the U.S. out of anywhere?
#18, Debs, superb background. I saw the BBC docos too. But I want to answer your key question:
Why did Iran pull it off? And how? Iran wasn’t just another colony/client, it was the most valuable colony/client of the lot.
The answer lies in Iran’s history of foreign domination and its seething national resentment at the CIA 153 overthrow of the first ‘people’s government’ in Persian history. You assume that the alternative to Mullah domination is a U.S. puppet. Well, this flies in the face of Iran’s history and ignores the 3rd choice which Iranians already made in 1951, = a secular, democratic, modernizing force à la Mossadegh. I’m amazed that you, of all people, should so easily discount even the possibility that Iran will one day emerge strong and independent.
#Obsydia, Iran isn’t the U.S.. It isn’t Cuba. We are one of the richest nations in the world, with a highly educated population. We have either repelled or assimilated foreign invaders throughout our history (relatively far stronger invaders than the U.S. is today) and turned them into ‘Persians’. There is no way the declining U.S. Empire is going to win the biggest prize of all, in view of our people’s political awareness that constitutes a safety valve whenever people like the Shah get uppity and forget their roots. I’m ready for change, for peace, for FDI and for all those big, bad Western firms that want to help us develop our resources and spread the wealth as we had begun to do from 1997 – 2005.
Posted by: Parviz | Feb 17 2009 7:50 utc | 20
Parviz:
Thanks for your expression of appreciation of my previous comment.
I really think you underestimate the role of Israel’s security on US policy and thereby misunderstand the US’ possibilities for relations with Iran. At least for now – there is a possibility that the US’ perception can change and Iran could play a role in that change.
My first observation though, just to get it out of the way, is that it seems to me that there is a one-way flow of economic hostility. Iran does not ban US investment. The US bans US investment. Iran does not ban US trade. The US bans US trade. I don’t think this is for economic reasons, but part of the US’ role as protector of Israel.
A rule of thumb for understanding US Middle East policy is that countries that do or could potentially threaten Israel must be poor.
Malaysia is relatively rich. The US would not tolerate Malaysia located where Egypt is, because Malaysia located on Israel’s border would be a severe threat to Israel’s viability.
Turkey is relatively rich. Turkey has historically separated its foreign policy from any democratic influence. Erdogan in Turkey is a political genius who may, just may, be able to return Turkey to democratic rule even in foreign policy, which would be a major defeat for the US, but the US will do everything it can to prevent this. Fortunately for Turkey, the US’ options are limited because of the importance of containing Russia and Turkey’s necessity in assisting this. Turkey has a huge amount of leverage that may, just may allow it to be a democratic country with sovereignly determined foreign policy near Israel that is not undergoing US attempts to stifle its economy.
I’m very happy to see Khatami open Iran’s economy and make reforms. I’m very happy to see democratic reforms, as long as they don’t allow the West to sponsor a puppet opposition such as we see now in Zimbabwe.
The West though, is going to be hostile to Iranian economic growth. Period. Egypt is firmly, for now, under US control. But industrialization and technology are limited by the US because sometime in the future Egypt could potentially be independent and would be a threat to Israel.
So my short answer is that Iran is not going to get sanctions lifted without firmly putting Iranian foreign policy under US control, and even then, the fact that this control can be thrown off means that Iran’s technological progress will be limited to the degree the US is in any way able to limit it.
To meander on this topic. The mainstream hope/conception of the Israel Palestinian issue is that the people of the Middle East will eventually accept Israel and then the limits placed on their economies can be relaxed. Until this happens, the United States has, in its own view, a moral obligation to ensure that no neighboring state could in theory threaten Israel, which among many other things, means the US must prevent these states from having access to technology or an industrial base, to the degree that it can.
In this conception, the Palestinians will vote to accept the bantustans they are offered, and will be happy with them. Then the rest of the region will follow in accepting that the situation has been resolved satisfactorily then Israel’s neighbors will be allowed to develop. At this point Iran will also be allowed to develop and Turkey’s military can stop threatening a coup against any non-Western civilian government.
To get the Palestinians to vote for their bantustans, the US sees it as perfectly moral to threaten to starve them if they vote otherwise, and immoral to not starve them if starvation can secure a Jewish state. On the other hand most western policy makers just haven’t thought their conception of Middle East policy through.
Iran is the victim of this more than any Iranian investment laws. Removing corruption in Iran is good in itself, but it will not lead to good economic relations between the US and Iran.
The US though is slowly becoming less beholden to the dream of Zionism. Jews are a small proportion of the US population, but a large proportion of Americans who care enough about the region to have any information about it.
For a long time, the US perception of the Middle East has been largely colored by the views of the people in the US who speak English well and also care about the region, which is Zionists.
Today, non-Zionists have leveling the information imbalance and over time, Israel’s security as a Jewish state “may” (I think “will” but can’t guarantee it), stop being the US’ preeminent concern in the region, at which point the US will relax its restrictions on trade with Iran that are very expensive for the US. The US’ Israel-oriented policies on Iran alone probably cost the US several times more than its direct payments to Israel’s treasury.
In specific terms, Jews dream of there being a Jewish state. Non-Jewish American supporters of Israel, as far as I can see don’t believe in ethnic states, but do not see a practical alternative to protecting Israel as a Jewish state in order to avoid another Holocaust. Non-Jewish Americans have not been, but could be, convinced that it is possible to avoid killing all Jews in ending the Zionist enterprise. Jewish Westerners generally support Israel for emotional reasons and shape their fears accordingly but non-Jewish Westerners do not feel the same attachment and vastly outvote Jewish Westerners.
A rich Iran would be a threat to Israel, unless it is occupied or under a stable pro-US dictatorship. If Iranians can convince Americans that a rich Iran would not be a threat to Jews in Israel. If Iranians present non-Jewish Americans with a way to satisfy the need for justice for the Palestinians without massacres or expulsions of Jewish individuals, the US may in the next generation be able to accept that. Jewish Americans will not, but will be outvoted.
So to repeat the short answer though, there is no policy Iran’s leaders can follow that will cause the US to stop trying to stifle Iran’s growth.
Posted by: Arnold Evans | Feb 17 2009 16:58 utc | 35
Ash: Thank you for a relatively fair assessment. I believe, however, that you, as a foreigner and infrequent visitor, may have missed the underlying currents that are not that obvious at first glance:
You’re right, under the Shah there was zero political freedom. ‘Daddy’ (King of Kings, Light of the Aryans, bla-bla-bla) ‘knew best’. Corruption was rife ($ 5 billion of U.S. weapons imports in 1974 alone earned $ 500 million for “Mr. Ten Percent” General Toufanian, etc.,.). The nation was run by the famous “1000 Families” (mine fortunately wasn’t one of them).
However, Jews, Christians, Armenians and even Bahais prospered and there was zero religious persecution. (Bahais today are now executed on the spot).
Economic prosperity was broadspread. The problem was that the economy boomed so fast that the gap between rich-poor accelerated, creating resentment and enormous social mobility (The Shah scorned agriculture and championed production and manufacturing, causing a massive migration from the land to the cities and social disruption for which the country was ill prepared). When oil prices crashed in 1975 projects were placed on hold, the Shah cut back on everything including subsidies to the Mullahs (Biiiiiiiig Mistake), and a combination of the Shah’s insufferable arrogance and Israel’s fear of the world’s 5th most powerful military did the rest, which is history.
Today, the Mullahs have established many positives: The nation is militarily and economically stronger even than pre-Revolution (in the all-important category of asymmetric warfare rather than pure hardware), agricultural areas have been developed, Iran has uniquely assisted Palestine and Lebanon against Israeli Fascist expansionism and is a bastion against U.S. imperialism. This is why the Mullahs have so many cheerleaders on this Blog.
However, below the surface, the “1000 Families” have been replaced by the “1000 Mullahs”, kickbacks and overpricing on imports have risen from 15 % to 100 %, meaning that factories and equipment worth $ 100 million are ‘imported’ for $ 200 million and even higher, the nation is now virtually owned by the Revolutionary Guards who (mis)appropriate environmentally protected land and choice real estate at the point of a gun, there is a complete feeling of lawlessness and the Ministry of ‘Justice’ is a well-worn joke that people here believe should be called “The Ministry of Connections”. Where we once had educated and even female judges, such as Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, we now have uneducated ‘religious’ judges who literally ‘buy’ their appointments and whose decisions depend solely on the size of the bribe (which gives them a good return on their original investments). In a dispute you can actually submit your an original land deed and find it has been rejected by the courts in favour of a clearly bogus ‘substitute’ deed, without any transaction record, created by the well supported and well protected land mafia. This didn’t happen in the Shah’s time. What was yours was yours and basic principles of bureaucracy and legality were observed.
The result has been that Mullahs and Rev Guards bribed their way into destroying the delicate infrastructure of the North of Tehran by buying permits to build 20-storey apartments in narrow (4 meter wide) streets whose value suddenly increased from a few hundred dollars per square metre to several thousand dollars per square metre overnight! The nation’s natural resources are at the complete and sole disposal of the people who run the country and there is zero accountability. The Budget and Planning Organization was scrapped with Ahmadinejad’s arrival to eliminate the sole remaining instrument of control, and today nobody knows what is earned, how much money is onshore/offshore,
in whose accounts the money is or how it’s being spent. Ahmadinejad heaps lavish funds on the Baseej (Militia) and other security organs to keep them quiet. Capital flight is estimated at over $ 300 billion since the Revolution, whereas during the Shah’s time there was actually an inflationary capital inflow and a reverse brain drain.
Why I so fiercely attack Ahmadinejad and hope for a more moderate, pragmatic President to be elected is in order to prevent any further economic and domestic political weakening of the nation that could undermine the hard-won independence that everyone here praises so highly. To answer your question, tensions are rife in 4 major provinces: Azarbaijan, with its Turkish-speaking majority; Khuzestan, the oil-rich and totally neglected Sunni Arab-speaking south; Kurdestan, that was used as a pawn even in the Shah’s time and whose independence movement now senses an opportunity as a result of events in Kurdish Iraq; and Baluchestan, where the CIA is encouraging the Al Qaeda-offshoot Jundullah to cause trouble and where riots have broken out from time to time.
Of course, my posts have generated some personal insults from posters calling me a ‘capitalist tool’, a Trojan Horse for the Empire, someone “eager to bite the cherry of middle class consumerism just like the glossy magazines and TV shows present it” and even worse, so let me tell everyone where I stand:
The Shah did some great things and some terrible things. The Mullahs did some great things and some terrible things. I despise them both, because neither one of them cared about the people, only about staying in power. The Shah developed the economy at lightening speed to massage his own ego, the Mullahs have multiplied the Shah’s ills and corruption, all in the name of religion. And even some of you people (Debs, r’giap and several others) want to exploit Iran to fight a lone battle against America, Israel and Capitalism. I think you’re completely nuts.
Anyway, thanks, Ash, for your sane post, and it’s been a pleasure communicating with you.
Posted by: Parviz | Feb 18 2009 9:34 utc | 54
|
