Iran

alk11 said:

iran didn`t attack their neighbors!!!!
iran was victim of chemical weapons but they didn`t used it back!!!!!

let`s see who gave iraq all thet weapons !!!
do you wanna guess???

Has iran took territories of his neighbors???

ps
thank God i live in "good old Europe"

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And who is it that deny the existence of Holocaust?

Is it not Iran!

mindido said:

Guess I'll put this here. I was listening to CNBC last night and they were interviewing Matthew Simmons and some other guy about the potential effects if this Iranian situation gets out of control. Simmons had an interesting evaluation. He suggested that, during the last two supply shocks (1973 and 1979) oil prices tripled within three months.

Yikes! At todays prices that would put oil at around $200 per barrel or about $10 per gallon. Want to see an economy collapse fast?

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only 20 gallon barrels?.....what aren they used for Geos...........lol

Texan said:

alk11, simmer down son. Your little post and run tactics will not work against the great left and right minds of this thread.

Your tactis are kinda like showing up for a gun fight only with a knife.

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this is "Discussion"

so we discuss !!!!

I`m expressing my opinion and you talk about “simmering down”!!!
I didn`t write single untruth and I didn`t disrespect people with different opinion on this subject !!!

There is no “post and run tactics” - just work :I was working and couldn’t be online all the time……..

You want some reasons for why I'd trust Israel over Iran.
Fine, these come from the website you posted (which by the way was last updated in 2005 - kind of a lot has happened since then, they may need to get on to that) -

Israel:
Literacy:
male: 97.3%
female: 93.6%

Iran: Literacy:
male: 85.6%
female: 73%

Israel Government: Parliamentary Democracy

Iran Government: Theocratic Republic

Israel - Roughly half of the government's external debt is owed to the US, which is its major source of economic and military aid.

Iran - has been designated a state sponsor of terrorism for its activities in Lebanon and elsewhere in the world and remains subject to US economic sanctions and export controls because of its continued involvement.

Now, which one is likely to more likely to attack the US and its allies? The one that has a higher educated population who live in a democracy that owes a lot of its survival to the US, or one which is thought to help and harbour terrorists?

I agree that no-one should have nukes, that's not really the point. The US has nuclear weapons, and nuclear power plants, but the UN doesn't send in nuclear inspectors there. But there is sense in not making more of these weapons, particularly in a country which is thought to be a big fan of terrorists.

And the discussion continues... with hopefully less exclamation marks!!!!!!!!

alk11 said:

I`m expressing my opinion and you talk about “simmering down”!!!

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Hey alk, Tex and I don't always agree on political stuff at all....but I can vouch for the fact that he's OK with disagreement, and that he didn't mean "simmering down" the way it sounded. You really took him more seriously than he meant it. From what you've said it doesn't sound like American English is your native language so you may have misunderstood a way that he was just playing around. He acts tough and we all give him shit about it, but he doesn't mean it that way.

Holy cow! All of a sudden a bit of interest in this thread. Cool.

Preferred User said:

Min I had to Google that one. You're right. There is some ambiguity there though most Nuclear experts believe they're "in the club." And they are not particularly forthcoming about their nuclear program or capabilities.

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Preferred,

I had to pull that one from way back. So its still accurate? Figures. Israel has never been open, at all, about their nuclear capabilities. And I'm sure they want to keep it that way. Makes it so that any arab commander is going to have to keep that in mind when considering an attack on Israel. Can't blame the Israeli's for that.

Still, I just can't put their nuclear threat on the same level as Iran's. It's run by a fundamentalist nut case.

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Agreed, but I'm not sure the Iranian PM is a nutcase. In fact, I'd tend to bet that he's not. True loons usually don't make it that high up the food chain so calling him a "nut case" is somewhat counterproductive and encourages people to dismiss him. I don't think thats a good idea. Remember what Sun Tsu said about knowing your enemy?

The US might have actually been better off with Saddam in power. This guy scares me.

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We would have been better off if we'd left Saddam where he was. He was boxed in and nothing more than an annoyance. But thats spilled milk and we have to move on. Bush has squandered a lot of lives and treasure on his little forey into Iraq and he has possibly left us vulnerable. I'm pretty sure this is what the mullahs in Iran are sensing and trying to exploit.

And we should be aware of this PM and the mullahs, but not really afraid of them. They do have the ability to make life tough for us for a while (just as we can do to them) and I firmly believe thats their intention. They want to hurt us and I can't really blame them as we've done some pretty nasty things to them over the years.

So what do we do? As mentioned earlier, I believe that these mullahs are balancing on the head of a pin with their own people. We figure out some way to get the people to push them over the cliff (maybe help them with construction and/or operation of nuclear power plants or something else they want) and everyone wins (except the mullahs). Again, the key here, is to keep our wits about us. The one thing I am sure about is that if we attack now, that will put the vast majority of the Iranian people behind the mullahs. With a population of about 70 million, that would be a big mistake.

alk11,

which territories???

let see what CIA has to say about territories:

http://geography.about.com/library/cia/blcisrael.htm

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Oops, forgot about the Golan Heights. But the same is true of Golan as of the West Bank, both are strategic territories and Israel won't give them up without being sure they won't be used to attack Israel.

ps
thanks for your opinion & time !!!

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No problem, thats what this area of the forum is here for. And as Tex said, as long as your open and not dogmatic, you'll be OK. But, step over the line and make stupid or questionable comments, watch out! We'll come down on you like a ton of bricks. We want you to use your brain here. Don't just spout whatever someone else is saying.

p.s.

Don't mind Tex, he's always a bit gruff. I think it has something to do with the water down there.

endy,

Thanks for the info. I think that pretty well sums up why the Isrealis can be trusted a bit more than the Iranian government.

Now here's an interesting development. According to an Israeli army officer, Iran has recently acquired missiles from North Korea which are able to house nuclear warheads and reach Italy and most of eastern Europe.

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=ef222c43-12dc-4cce-85f5-b10b25ade954&k=10109

Looks like those oil prices won't be coming down anytime soon.

I wonder if they'll say that those missiles will be for peaceful purposes too.

How fucking dumb does this guy think we all are?

From CNN:

Preferred, it sounds just like he's toeing the "company" line. Wishful thinking, though.

(As for alk11's posts, I'll sort through them on this thread as soon as I'm done my thesis. Should be next week at some point!)

Interesting US State Dept report on terrorism. Here is CNN story: http://edition.cnn.com/2006/US/04/28/terror.report/index.html

Some bullet points taken from CNN:

• with al Qaeda's senior leadership scattered and on the run, autonomous cells inspired by al Qaeda's extremist ideology present a greater challenge because they are smaller, harder to detect and more difficult to counter.
  
• there are still indications al Qaeda is planning a spectacular terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
  
• The official acknowledged that Iraq has become "both a war and a cause," which has further radicalized Muslims.

Duke E. Pyle said:

I wonder if they'll say that those missiles will be for peaceful purposes too.

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Duke,

I imagine they can say it, but it certainly doesn't mean its true. I'm not familiar with the specs of those missiles but there are very few which are designed for "peaceful" purposes.

and Preferred,

How fucking dumb does this guy think we all are?

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Do you really need to ask? I think its become very apparent that the only time we hear the truth from these military guys is when they retire. Until that time, Ice is right, they speak the company line or wind up like Gen. Shinseki.

Iran military power:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8884648292925739980&q=family+guy&pl=true

don't let the music fool you. most of these stuff are available on eBay.

First of all let make myself clear:
I am an Iranian atheist who hates religion, all variations from buddhism to more stupid ones like christianity and islam, and I also love brunettes with big natural tits. Anyway, most of my family are still living in iran and just because of that I am not in favour of war.

Iran is no threat to anybody, not because they don't want to, simply because they can't. This powerful portrait of Iran is made by media combined with the stupidity of the iranian government (comments that monkey said about israel and holocaust). In some level, it is very similar to Bin Laden, US media portry him as powerful man in the middle east who has a secret underground organization called al-qaida, from my point of view it is very similar to James that guy is nobody he owns a donkey and pakistanies can capture him in a sec.

'Min' made a very good point, republicans always looking for an enemy, simply because war save the country's economy and also maintain their power. In this regard you should watch "Candian Bacon".

Now for the sake of argument let's assume that Iran is a really powerful country military-wise. In that case you may got surprised, but the first countries that should worry of powerful iran are arab countries on the region, specially UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudies.

kadabba,

Welcome! It's good to have someone around here with a bit more knowledge on the subject than we have. After all, we pretty much HAVE to rely on the media for what info we get.

I have a question that I'd like you to comment on. As you know, the Iranian PM has been making some statements that seem really off base (too many to list here but I'm sure you've heard the ones I'm referring to). It seems to me that the PM is really just a mouthpiece for the mullah's and that the mullah's (sensing that the Iranian population is not all that happy with them and are not that far away from getting rid of them) are just looking for a way to stay in power.

If life were to go on, as is, in Iran, the mullahs would probably be thrown out within a few years. But, if the mullahs can be seen to be standing up to the US (didn't they used to call us the Great Satan?) then their power (and control over the Iranian population) would be assured for some time to come. Does this make any sense to you?

I've heard no one else say this, as of yet, but its the only thing that makes sense to me.

Min (BTW that Eye-gor picture is awesome!),

I believe what you are saying to some extent is correct

This is the result of my observation of the situation:

I believe those comments (I am specifically refering to the comments PM made about Israel and jews) were mostly intended for internal use.

See we can categorize the active political parties in Iran to three major groups:
1- Hardliners: Led by current supreme leader Khameney, and controls the TV, major media, intelligence and Army.
2- Extreme Hardliners: Group #1 calls this group hardliners! this group is led by Mesbah Yazdi, a very powerfull and influential mullah who i believe is targetting the supreme leader position. PM is the puppet of this group, and also khameney (Supreme Leader)'s oldest son is an active and powerful memeber of this party. This group economically is very powerful, and currently they control the government and the majority in the parliament.
3- Liberals: At the moment their power is limited to few newspapers, and a minority in parliament. Some subsets of this groupd also have connection with opposition groups outside Iran. After George W. Bush get elected for some reasons this group become very weak. Strangely, when I look at history (last 60 years) whenever the republican gets elected in US then hardliners get the votes in Iran and become very powerfull and whenever democrates are in power, then liberals in Iran also gets powerful. very strange chain reaction phenomena!

Despite the price of the oil the economy in Iran is in horrible shape and that's an alarm for the "Islamic Republic". They know economical problem can lead the country to one of the colored revolution. Both group #1 and #3 were trying to reach to an agreement with Europeans. All the discussions were around the amount of the ransome. And I am pretty sure that they didn't want to be on the headlines and being in the centre of attention of US od A. Even internally they were debating on how to approach US and solve the past problems.

Group #1 and #3 both were shocked when they lost the election to group #2 (Of course they were acusing the group#2 for cheating but the rest is history). After the election group #1 still hold lots of power, but in Iran it is the government which make the communication with the rest of the world. After the election Khameney imposed the government one of his trustee to lead the nuclear discussion with European. That was a good maneuver, but government also has a counterattack and they started to redirect the attention of the talks to something else, so PM made those comments which from my point of view was a very smart move on their behalf.
See, Israel and everything related to it is a taboo in Iran and nobody, even the supreme leader, cannot touch the subject. After the PM's comments, supreme leader has two choices either agreeing with the comments or condemning them, and of course he choose the agreeing path (however it takes him about two weeks to make a comment regarding PM's comments) and that trashed all the discussion with European. After that he tried so many things but it wasn't usefull, for instance he issued a fatwa (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=fatwa) that building Nuclear Weapon is a great sin. Then interestingly Mesbah Yazdi (the leader of group#2) started arguing that theologically this fatwa can be changed in future, and apparently theologically he was correct!

Here is where I think you are correct, group #2 wants the war and they want it so badly to gain the power in Iran, they don't care even if Iran become a ruin like Afganestan or Iraq. What they don't want is US troops inside Iran. And I believe they can count on it!

Oops! sorry i didn't notice the post became so long, i guess i've got excited!

Thanks kadabba. It's always interesting to hear from someone on the inside.

I think Americans tend to think your president has the sort of power our president has in our country. Like Min, I keep getting the impression this guy might be out in front of the microphones, but its still the mulahs that have the real power.

You say you hate religion. I take it that puts you in a real minority in Iran? Do you have to be pretty careful where you say that?

kadabba said:

Min (BTW that Eye-gor picture is awesome!),

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kadabba,

Thanks! I kind of like it myself.

I believe those comments (I am specifically refering to the comments PM made about Israel and jews) were mostly intended for internal use.

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Agreed. Internal and to woo radical Islamist to the Iranians.

See we can categorize the active political parties in Iran to three major groups:

1- Hardliners: Led by current supreme leader Khameney, and controls the TV, major media, intelligence and Army.

2- Extreme Hardliners: Group #1 calls this group hardliners! this group is led by Mesbah Yazdi, a very powerfull and influential mullah who i believe is targetting the supreme leader position. PM is the puppet of this group, and also khameney (Supreme Leader)'s oldest son is an active and powerful memeber of this party. This group economically is very powerful, and currently they control the government and the majority in the parliament.

3- Liberals: At the moment their power is limited to few newspapers, and a minority in parliament. Some subsets of this groupd also have connection with opposition groups outside Iran. After George W. Bush get elected for some reasons this group become very weak. Strangely, when I look at history (last 60 years) whenever the republican gets elected in US then hardliners get the votes in Iran and become very powerfull and whenever democrates are in power, then liberals in Iran also gets powerful. very strange chain reaction phenomena!

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A couple questions. In most cultures extremists (of either leaning) have a hard time getting elected when times are relatively good. There are certainly exceptions, i.e., G.W. Bush, who cloaked himself as a moderate but has turned out to be on the extreme right. So how did the extreme right in Iran get elected? From what I've heard, there really aren't "free" elections in Iran. The mullahs decide who they like and then allow those people to run for whatever post. So whomever wins, they're under the mullahs thumb. Is that accurate?

Also, from what I understand, this is the reason that there is an undercurrent of unrest within the general population. Most Iranians are unhappy with this process and with the continuing tensions with the west. Is this accurate?

Despite the price of the oil the economy in Iran is in horrible shape and that's an alarm for the "Islamic Republic". They know economical problem can lead the country to one of the colored revolution. Both group #1 and #3 were trying to reach to an agreement with Europeans. All the discussions were around the amount of the ransome.

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Ransom?

After the election Khameney imposed the government one of his trustee to lead the nuclear discussion with European. That was a good maneuver, but government also has a counterattack and they started to redirect the attention of the talks to something else, so PM made those comments which from my point of view was a very smart move on their behalf.

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Please explain. It seems to me the PM's remarks were meant to basically shore up his partys support within the Iranian population and amongst fundamentalist Islamists.

See, Israel and everything related to it is a taboo in Iran and nobody, even the supreme leader, cannot touch the subject. After the PM's comments, supreme leader has two choices either agreeing with the comments or condemning them, and of course he choose the agreeing path (however it takes him about two weeks to make a comment regarding PM's comments) and that trashed all the discussion with European.

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A while back, in one of these threads, I recommended everyone with an interest read a book by Leon Uris called "The Haj". To me, it explained pretty precisely why your comment is true. That no arab government can overtly be viewed as having anything to do with the Israelis (even though we know some arab countries and companies do have some relations). If you've never read it, pick it up, I'd like to know your opinion.

Here is where I think you are correct, group #2 wants the war and they want it so badly to gain the power in Iran, they don't care even if Iran become a ruin like Afganestan or Iraq. What they don't want is US troops inside Iran. And I believe they can count on it!

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I'm glad you think that is correct because its the only thing that makes sense (to me) of what they've been saying. The question is, since group #2 wants the war and the Bushies are stupid enough to give it to them, how do rational people stop it? It seems to me that the only people that can do it are groups #1 , #3 and rational people in the US. Somehow, group #2 has to be thrown out. And only the people of Iran can do that. Is there any chance of that happening?

I will try to answer all of your questions:

As i said before I am secular and I am not happy with what is happening in Iran, but I do believe that the election was free, there might be some low percentage of cheeting but that's inevitable and exist everywhere.

Why group#2 got elected?

In order to understand why Ahamadinezhad is elected we need to understand the structure of the society in Iran. Last year Richard Rorty was invited to Iran and he had a speech in Tehran University, in that speech he said you cannot inject democracy into the society, democracy is a self-adaptive process and you cannot plan for it. He simply implied that you guys (Iranians) cannot have democracy, and of course that makes lots of intellectuals angry in Iran but I am totally agree with his insights. In Iran people are looking for a government that doesn't bother them and let them live! Ahamadinezhad was very unknown, and the only official post he had before election was being the meyor of Tehran for a short period of time, he also has PHD in Mechanical Engineering (Education considers as a very high value in Iran) from an accredited universtiy in Tehran. Most importantly he was not mullah (no turban!), before election when I was talking to people, they were saying (exact quote) "at least this guy doesn't have any turban and he is not connected to anybody". He is a perfect living example of populism. Actually i have the videos of some of his before election speeches for instance he said "I will bring oil money to everybody's home" or "Women can go and watch the soccer matches!" or "Who cares what kind of the dress our girls wearing, we need to put our focus on the economical issue" (take a look at this, two days ago in Tehran http://www.farsnews.com/plarg.php?nn=M175747.jpg ) or "I will not drive Benz(Official government car) unless everybody in iran drive a benz" this was why he got elected as simple as that. One of his rival promised people to give everybody $100 if he get elected, can you believe that? and he get 8,000,000 votes!!! Don't get me wrong the same thing could have also happened in US but if somebody makes such a comment the media will crush him, but as i said before media in Iran is in hand of government and cannot freely act. But why they didn't stop ahamdinezhad you may ask? because on that time khamaneye prefers him to his main rival Rafsanjani. Rafsanjani is very powerful and somehow I cannot categorized him, but he is definitely partly in group#3.

What did i meant by ransom?

Before everything get messed up European were promising Iran if you stop the nuclear process we are willing to give some free trade options instead and also we will provide you different way of accessing the nuclear energy which is more advance and cheaper. And the Iranian negotiator were keep bargaining about the amount. And that was their biggest mistake. And also European mistake that didn't solve the problem quicker.

Explaining Israel comment?

Again I need to prepare a long introduction before answering this. A month ago parliament in Iran agreed to $50,000,000 yearly aid for Hemas. This makes lots of people mad, even the non-educated in the remote area, why? Let me explaing it to you in more detail. I agree that considerable amount of the people in Iran (I hesitate to say Majority I think it needs an election) do not like Israel and this is a political problem in Iran, but as an Iranian I am ashamed to say that they also hate Arabs (this one is a social problem and government still struglling to solve this), and this is more a racial problem rather than political one, which I think needs lots of planning to get fixed. When I say majority I mean %99+, hates Arabs, you can test this and call an Iranian an Arab and watch his reaction! This is also vice-versa, Arabs call Iranian, outsiders. After Iranian adapted Islam, they created another version of it and called it Shi'a (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi'a) of course majority of the Shi'as say this is BS, but believe me it was invented by Iranians. Majority of Arabs (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Yaman, UAE, Pakistan, Palestine, Egypt, Syria) are sunni and they call Shi'as apostate (they call you infidel), and a huge subset of this sunnis are called Wahabis(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahabi all the 911 highjackers, all the suicide bombers, al-Qaida, Pakistan and Saudi basically US allies in middle east!) they believe if they kill a Shi'a they will directly go to heaven. Do you know three years before US invasion to Afganistan, Taliban beheaded (yes with sword) 12 Iranian diplomats in Iran embassy in Kabul (read guardian events on 1998 http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,557393,00.html) no really have you even heard of this before!

So you should understand the scenario in Iran is a bit different. Was those jewish comments for people? I don't think so. People hear these type of comments every day from the more important people in iran, but this was the first time a government official said it loud. Everyone in Iran were surprised about the world reaction to these comments, because Khomeini and other religious leader that have more power than ahamdinezhad were saying it literally everyday after the revolution. I believe those comments were mostly prepared to screw up the nuclear negotiations that government rivals were started. Larijani (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Larijani) was leading the negotiation and he is the trustee of Khamaneye, he was imposed to ahamadinezhad by khamaneye. Interestingly he was one of the presidential candidate who get the lowest amount of the votes because everyone knew his connection with khameneye, before election he used to manage the national TV in Iran.

About that book I would like to make you happy and promise you that I will read it, but there are lots of books in my priority list to read. For instance I prefer to understand more about pragmatism and also history of US but I will add it to my "Must Read" book difinitely.

How can we get rid of this regime? Hmmm! that's a good question, Iran probably is the only country in the middle east (beside Israel and not even Turkey) that its people is pro-west! but how can they get rid of this anti-west government i really don't know, all I know is war is not definitely an answer and make everything worse for the people of Iran but I believe it is comming, because US will get lots of benefit from this war (look what US government spokesman have to say about this http://mediamatters.org/items/200603100008 ). This war can harm China, India, Russia and also European, so why not? Who the fucking cares about the soldiers, or "uncivilized" people of iran and their ugly and dirty children!

"Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare?" Orson Welles' character, The Third Man(1949)

By the way listen to this one, Ahamadinezhad senior advisor yesterday said Emam Mahdi(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdi)'s sword will behead some of the mullahs and will destroy US as soon as he rise!!!!!!! So be warned!

We are living in a mad mad mad world, I wish, we, the liberal people (preferably atheist!), could have our own country in our own planet!