Iran Elections Thread

[Straha]

That does not defeat the point, however. As things stand now, the conditions you outline are extant. If Iran however were to actually start wielding nuclear threats at their neighbours, that changes the rules of the game completely. If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, expect to see the Gulf States lining up behind a regional security treaty and the United States to be part of that arrangement, which implicitly places them under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. It does not have to be stated outright what we would do or not do, only that the mere implicit threat exists.

I don't think I made myself quite clear in my reply to you, I apologize. Before I directly respond to you let me clarify what I think on Iran's Nuclear Ambitions: I don't think Iran is going to build Nuclear arms in the short term. It would be incredibly foolish, pointless, and more of a liability than anything else. There's no quicker way to unite the whole world against you then deploying Nuclear weapons without super-power backing, and Iran already discriminated against enough as it is without making things worse for itself.

I do think, however, that Iran is actively seeking out the surge capacity to build Nuclear Weapons in six to twelve months time with little to no notice ahead of that build time. As long as the rest of the region knows that Iran has that surge capacity, but is choosing not to use it, it can not only wield the threatened Nuclear sword, but be protected from Western military crackdown as well.

So, to address your point: As long as Iran doesn't acquire Nuclear weapons, and show them off, I don't think that the United States would be willing to extend the Nuclear Umbrella to the Gulf States. As long as the clear and present danger of Nuclear Weapons doesn't exist in the eyes of the people of the United States, the people of the United States wont be willing to countenance putting their collective butts on the line for this. That leaves the

That being said, I do think a U.S. backed regional security treaty is almost inevitable, and that could provide the foundation for the U.S. very rapidly extending its Nuclear Umbrella to the region.

Recall that one of the reasons Iran ultimately agreed to a ceasefire in the war against Iraq was their mere perception that the U.S. was about to actively intervene in the war on Iraq's side after the USS Vincennes accidentally shot down an Iranian passenger plane. We of course had no such intent, but as far as the Iranian regime was concerned, U.S. military involvement was imminent.

I do recall that. Actually, I got into a debate with Stuart and Wilkins over in History over just that event, and on its impact across the Middle East. They argued that, while it was effective in Iran-Iraq that it didn't leave a lasting impression with the Gulf (more or less, I don't want to put words into their mouth but they made some very salient points), and I argued that it did.

That being said, the United States wasn't about to intervene, it had intervened. The U.S. Navy engaged in naval battles with Iran, was convoying Iraqi ships to protect them from Iranian attack and mines, and attacked numerous Iranian naval installations. The Vincennes incident put it over the top to the Iranians because it made them think the U.S. would be ruthless in its new role, but as far as the Iranians were concerned the U.S. had intervened quite directly.

And since the consequences of using nuclear weapons against any of their neighbours would be catastrophic, what does it gain Tehran to do so or even threaten to do so? Given the regime's observed propensity towards risk-aversion, Tehran is not likely to risk a general war or a nuclear war over a group of tiny islands anymore than Communist China was willing to risk war over Quemoy and Matsu.

I don't think Tehran is going to threaten the use of Nuclear Warfare willy-nilly. They'll use the threat very quietly, and very selectively and very pointedly. Abu Musa and the Tunb islands were just the first things that came to mind. Another very prominent example would be Bahrain. A direct threat against Bahrain over its perceived oppression of the resident Persian and Shia population and over its housing of the U.S. Fifth Fleet would not surprise me in the least. Nor would threats for similar reasons against Kuwait or Qatar.

That changes if Iran actually explodes a bomb. This will not at all be the same thing as the Bush maladministration lying us into a wholly unnecessary war against a country that had nothing and for which all the evidence for their having anything was clearly false. This would be Iran presenting a clear threat to its neighbours and threatening the stability of the Middle East oil supply, and those are objectives which the public would support a war over —especially as there is already a popular perception that the Iranians are dangerous.

And that's just it. To the U.S., the U.K., the E.U. and the rest Iran needs to explode a bomb to deserve fear and attention. To the Gulf States they just need the threat to have a bomb whenever they damn well please to be feared.

The Osriak Option will not work in this case

I agree with you, and said as much before. But an Osriak style solution may be tenable, and if there is any group of people to put it into action it's the Israelis.

[Elfdart]

Proof that we looked the other way?

The fact that a member of Congress repeatedly went on the floor of the House and offered support for the IRA, while holding fundraisers for them through NORAID -and all with zero repercussions.

[Patrick Degan]

That does not defeat the point, however. As things stand now, the conditions you outline are extant. If Iran however were to actually start wielding nuclear threats at their neighbours, that changes the rules of the game completely. If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, expect to see the Gulf States lining up behind a regional security treaty and the United States to be part of that arrangement, which implicitly places them under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. It does not have to be stated outright what we would do or not do, only that the mere implicit threat exists.

I don't think I made myself quite clear in my reply to you, I apologize. Before I directly respond to you let me clarify what I think on Iran's Nuclear Ambitions: I don't think Iran is going to build Nuclear arms in the short term. It would be incredibly foolish, pointless, and more of a liability than anything else. There's no quicker way to unite the whole world against you then deploying Nuclear weapons without super-power backing, and Iran already discriminated against enough as it is without making things worse for itself.

I do think, however, that Iran is actively seeking out the surge capacity to build Nuclear Weapons in six to twelve months time with little to no notice ahead of that build time. As long as the rest of the region knows that Iran has that surge capacity, but is choosing not to use it, it can not only wield the threatened Nuclear sword, but be protected from Western military crackdown as well.

So, to address your point: As long as Iran doesn't acquire Nuclear weapons, and show them off, I don't think that the United States would be willing to extend the Nuclear Umbrella to the Gulf States. As long as the clear and present danger of Nuclear Weapons doesn't exist in the eyes of the people of the United States, the people of the United States wont be willing to countenance putting their collective butts on the line for this.

The problem with that strategy is, to paraphrase Dr. Strangelove, that the whole point of a nuclear arsenal is lost if you keep it a secret, or not actually build one at all after hinting that you've done so or could do. And at some point, the Iranians will be forced to engage in a test-detonation to prove first to their own satisfaction that they have a working weapon and to demonstrate to the world that it now has nuclear weapons. The first part is absolutely crucial since they must be certain that they would have functional devices instead of ones that would fizzle. The "surge capacity" would be no security for the regime because they could not make credible any threat that they've got weapons available for immediate use if they don't actually have them on hand. In the game of nuclear poker, you do not dare attempt a bluff with an empty hand.

That being said, I do think a U.S. backed regional security treaty is almost inevitable, and that could provide the foundation for the U.S. very rapidly extending its Nuclear Umbrella to the region.

Agreed.

Recall that one of the reasons Iran ultimately agreed to a ceasefire in the war against Iraq was their mere perception that the U.S. was about to actively intervene in the war on Iraq's side after the USS Vincennes accidentally shot down an Iranian passenger plane. We of course had no such intent, but as far as the Iranian regime was concerned, U.S. military involvement was imminent.

I do recall that. Actually, I got into a debate with Stuart and Wilkins over in History over just that event, and on its impact across the Middle East. They argued that, while it was effective in Iran-Iraq that it didn't leave a lasting impression with the Gulf (more or less, I don't want to put words into their mouth but they made some very salient points), and I argued that it did.

That being said, the United States wasn't about to intervene, it had intervened. The U.S. Navy engaged in naval battles with Iran, was convoying Iraqi ships to protect them from Iranian attack and mines, and attacked numerous Iranian naval installations. The Vincennes incident put it over the top to the Iranians because it made them think the U.S. would be ruthless in its new role, but as far as the Iranians were concerned the U.S. had intervened quite directly.

It is more the case that we intervened not to the particular advantage of Iraq per-se but rather to keep the Gulf shipping lanes open. The Vincennes incident however appeared to be changing the game substantially.

And since the consequences of using nuclear weapons against any of their neighbours would be catastrophic, what does it gain Tehran to do so or even threaten to do so? Given the regime's observed propensity towards risk-aversion, Tehran is not likely to risk a general war or a nuclear war over a group of tiny islands anymore than Communist China was willing to risk war over Quemoy and Matsu.

I don't think Tehran is going to threaten the use of Nuclear Warfare willy-nilly. They'll use the threat very quietly, and very selectively and very pointedly. Abu Musa and the Tunb islands were just the first things that came to mind. Another very prominent example would be Bahrain. A direct threat against Bahrain over its perceived oppression of the resident Persian and Shia population and over its housing of the U.S. Fifth Fleet would not surprise me in the least. Nor would threats for similar reasons against Kuwait or Qatar.

Threatening Bahrain either quietly or overtly because it is the U.S. Fifth Fleet base would be a very stupid move on Tehran's part. It would practically guarantee a U.S. preemptive strike in order to protect American assets and personnel and the regime know it. Similar risks over threatening either Kuwait or Qatar obtain as well. Whatever else can be said of the regime in Tehran, they have not been demonstrably stupid.

That changes if Iran actually explodes a bomb. This will not at all be the same thing as the Bush maladministration lying us into a wholly unnecessary war against a country that had nothing and for which all the evidence for their having anything was clearly false. This would be Iran presenting a clear threat to its neighbours and threatening the stability of the Middle East oil supply, and those are objectives which the public would support a war over —especially as there is already a popular perception that the Iranians are dangerous.

And that's just it. To the U.S., the U.K., the E.U. and the rest Iran needs to explode a bomb to deserve fear and attention. To the Gulf States they just need the threat to have a bomb whenever they damn well please to be feared.

Won't work. Again, that's playing a bluff in nuclear poker with an empty hand —dangerous and stupid. It's already not working with the present perception of Iran's nuclear programme as it is. A nuclear threat is credible only if it's demonstrable that it actually exists as a working mechanism. Just wielding a threat will drive the Gulf States firmly into our orbit, which is counterproductive to their purposes as it strengthens, not weakens, our hand in the Persian Gulf region.

[Lord of the Abyss]

These arguments against them trying for nuclear weapons assume that their purpose in doing so question isn't to prevent an attack or outright invasion by America or an ally/puppet. And before anyone retorts that Obama, or America in general wouldn't do so; we conquered their neighbor, and aided that neighbor earlier in attacks upon them. We've been their enemy since before the Islamic Republic government even existed. And Obama is just one President who'll be gone in 8 years at most. And the Iranian leadership isn't known for it's positive outlook towards America's motives; regardless of what you may think, I doubt they consider such an attack an irrational worry.

If the Gulf States don't perceive it as a threat against anything but invasion, they won't be driven towards us by Iraq having such weapons; rather the opposite since they won't want to be pressured into picking a fight with Iran by us. The same argument goes for us putting the Gulf states under our nuclear umbrella; that's only a deterrent if they intend nuclear backed conquest, otherwise it's irrelevant. For that matter, Iran NOT having nukes hasn't stopped us from threatening them with nuclear attack; Bush made a point of "not taking nuclear attack off the table". I'm sure someone will say something like "that was just rhetoric"; I expect that dismissing it as such is more difficult when you are the one facing implied annihilation.

[Guardsman Bass]

Proof that we looked the other way?

The fact that a member of Congress repeatedly went on the floor of the House and offered support for the IRA, while holding fundraisers for them through NORAID -and all with zero repercussions.

Bullshit. The Justice Department actually did try to go after NORAID (which is hardly the same thing as state sponsorship of the Provisional wing of the IRA, but I wouldn't expect you to notice the distinction).

As for King (who hardly went unwatched- he regularly complained that he believed the FBI was opening his mail to IRA and Sinn Fein leadership), one assholish congressman using his political pull in an area with a heavy Irish-American influence does not equal active state sponsorship of terrorism.

[Big Orange]

Gary Brecher (the guy who hates aircraft carriers) has his opinion on the civil disorder in Iran, always good for a laugh:

THE WAR NERD/ JUNE 18, 2009
War Nerd: Iran’s Cedar Show, A.K.A. Don’t Get Excited, the Protestors Are Just Letting Off Some Steam
By Gary Brecher

It took me a while to figure out why everybody was nagging me to do a column on the Iranian elections. Everybody seemed to think it was all mysterious and world-shaking. Finally I realized, you’re all het up because every news service in the US and England has been selling these riots like a new Star Wars episode, and people are just trying to figure out what’s going on and what it all means.

Well, I can answer that in one note: nothing much is going on, just letting off steam; and what little is happening isn’t mysterious at all. Basically, this is simple steam release, something the Mullahs have to allow now and then when the kids, and there are a lot of young adults in Iran, need to remind everybody they’re tired of being bossed around. There’s a huge, huge difference between that kind of “revolution” and the kind that has a real foundation in tribal differences or religion or city/country, the real fault lines. What’s going on in Iran now is a lot like the big fizzle in Lebanon after Hariri’s assassination in 2005. So if y’all will permit me to digress, let me take you back to the Cedar Revolution that supposedly “gripped” Lebanon. All that really happened was that some of the few Christian/Sunni elite Lebanese kids who hadn’t emigrated yet got so pissed off at the Syrians for just blowing Hariri away in broad daylight that they came out and waved the Lebanese flag–the one with the Cedar tree on it. Well, you’d have thought the Berlin Wall had fallen all over again. The same Anglo news networks that are declaring an outbreak of democracy in Iran now were screaming into microphones all over Lebanon, just so touched by these rich Christian/”Phoenician” Lebanese kids announcing that no durn Hezbollah Iranian-puppet thugs were gonna repress their craving for freedom…and discos, and wearing about a quart of perfume, and all the other accessories that go with what they call a Western orientation in the Middle East.

These are the kind of people Anglo news crews glom onto like horny refrigerator magnets: young, well-dressed, a lot of them speak English, and they talk about nice familiar stuff like “freedom” and “democracy.” They make great TV. But they can’t win a war. You win wars with poor people, numbers and toughness and discipline. Hezbollah proved it had the numbers by producing counter-demos with a million people cheering the Syrians and asking Allah to zap the West and Democracy and that Cedar Tree. If democracy means “we got more people with us than you do,” that should’ve proved Hezbollah beat the Cedar All-Stars, but that story never came out much. Hezbollah’s demonstrators weren’t the kind of people the BBC or CNN really felt comfortable around. It’s hard for a Western news crew to relax with a huge crowd of agitated lower-class Shia. Their way of making a point is by getting bloody, showing off wounds and cuts and shaving nicks, whatever they’ve got. Nobody at CNN wants that to be the future; nobody wants to go to commercial with a bunch of shrieking Shia mothers like hysterical Hefty Bags proudly saying they hope their 14 or so sons become martyrs, and the sooner the better. No, what you want for an upbeat TV story is a bunch of taller, skinnier, paler, English-speaking rich kids.

Which brings us to Iran. Iranians aren’t Arab, but they are Shia, and excitable. Keep that in mind. Different countries explode at different temperatures. There are places where yelling is a declaration of war. If a Norwegian raises his voice, Hell is about to break loose. If a Canadian yells at you, get a restraining order. But Iranians will scream at each other over how to cook an egg, and be all chummy and laughing the next minute. They used to keep that hysterical side in control with opium–the whole country was on the pipe until the sixties–but it’s harder to get now, so they just keep yelling.

So when Iran has a national election, it’s going to be loud. People are going to yell in the streets, people are going to shoot guns off, sometimes in the general direction of the opposition, and anybody who gets hit is going to tweet his bloodstains, youtube his bulletholes, and send it all over the world.

And if the people doing the demonstrating are mostly that same Cedar-Rev demographic: rich young city kids–then duh, they’re also the ones who are going to be web-savvy tweet freaks. In fact, Iran has probably the biggest dissident blog network in the world. I don’t read Farsi–I wish I did–but I read this pretty decent book, I Am Iran, about the anti-mullah blog scene there. Check it out if you want a better idea of who the opposition is, the people flooding the streets in Tehran. They’re sick of it, which is easy to understand; living in the Islamic Republic of Iran must be a lot like going to a Catholic school where you never, ever graduate, where kissing is a felony and not wearing the uniform is a crime against God. Hell yes, they’re sick of it, and they have every right to be.

But, to get coldblooded about it, so what? They’re not going to overthrow the state. I don’t usually like that word, “the state,” but I’m using it here because it works better than “Ahmedinajad.” He’s the official bad guy here, the classic bigmouth runt who wants Israel turned into a gravel pit and America turned into a colony of Venezuela. Hell, he’s all kinds of obnoxious, down to the ratty beard and beady eyes and the way he dresses like a hungover Soviet janitor.

But he’s not the Islamic Republic of Iran.

He’s only the president. The way the Iranian government is put together, the Prez is more like a noisemaker, official annoyer-of-the-Anglos, than a decider. Way, way above him is the “Supreme Leader,” sort of an Ayatollah version of the Pope, Khomeini’s official successors. Right now the Supreme Leader is Ali Khamenei. He doesn’t talk to the press, or make official trips to hug Chavez. He just sits there in his big black turban and says “No” every time somebody asks for a little relaxation of all this pious crap. He’s seen’em come and go, these reformer types; he crushed Rafsanjani, Khatami, anybody who even suggested that the way Khomeini laid it down in 1979 might not be good enough for all eternity.

See, that’s the pattern I’m talking about: the people who matter in Iran won’t talk to foreign news crews, and the people who will, the ones in the streets right now…well, they may be brave, noble people, but they don’t have a chance in Hell.

That’s because the IRI government is a bunch of rival militias, intelligence agencies, and religious committees. There’s even a legislature, although nobody takes that seriously. If you remember the way the Iranian side was organized in the Iran/Iraq war, you might have a better idea how the people at the top like things to run: always with rival forces competing for power. That’s because Khomeini was thinking coups in 1979. So alongside the regular Army he set up the Revolutionary Guards, hardcore jihadis loyal to the Supreme Leader, not the Army Brass. To make sure the Revolutionary Guards weren’t vulnerable to a sudden decapitation by the army or anyone else, their cadres were placed with every agency, like Islamist commissars, and they set up militias in every city in Iran.

You get the same thing in any new militarized state, even tiny Hellholes like Duvalier’s Haiti, with the Ton=ton Macoutes balancing the army, bypassing the official channels so they could kill at Duvalier’s command.

Then there’s the Basij, a million or so amateur thugs who do what the Revolutionary guards tell them to do. When you see cop types firing into demonstrating crowds in footage from Tehran, it’s usually the Basij. The hottest hate of all right now is between the city kids, sick to death of being whacked around by Shia nuns, and the Basij, a bunch of redneck bigots with guns and clubs. That’s not to take away the amazing suicide courage they showed when they fought the Iraqis. I mean, the Pasdaran elite used the poor Basij suckers as human landmine detonators: “Here, go walk across that field for us please. You can’t lose; either Allah welcomes you to Paradise or you live and get to do it again!”.

Lots of people are brave, after all. Most young male humans are brave, when they’ve got a gang leading them on and backing them up. The Basij are brave and so are the kids marching in the Tehran streets. Like a lot of people in the same tribe who hate each other, they’ve probably got more in common than they wanna think about right now, starting with that whole martyrdom thing the Shias get off on. The Basij died like flies in the minefields, and the demonstrators are on twitter right now showing off their bloody wounds. Iranian to the core, both of them.

But they don’t feel a lot of common ground right now. There’s what you might call a culture clash between these pious thug dudes and the city people, the marchers and tweeters and bloggers. If you want an idea how snotty this kind of Iranian feels about the other kind, read that woman’s comic book (whoops, you’re supposed to call them “graphic novels”) Persepolis. There’s her and her high-school friends slipping Iron Maiden LPs under their chadors.

Kind of a sixties thing, kind of a hippie thing, if Kent State was happening ten times a day. But then Iranians are tough, brave people; you couldn’t scare them with just one Kent State. The problem is, not that many people were actually willing to die for the hippies. They all grew up and went into real estate.

That kind of divide doesn’t cut deep enough to make a war. Even those Lebanese Cedar Revolution camera hogs had a real ethnic/religious grudge, but from what I’ve been reading about Iranian election demographics, the divide between rioters and loyalists is pretty damn blurry. Here’s a link to the best of the articles I’ve found on the way the elections break down in class, ethnic, regional, and age terms. I warn you though, it’s written by a professor, and they train those bastards to write as bad as possible. It’s worth checking out, though, if you can slap yourself awake.

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/esfahani/www/ ... Resume.pdf

He takes 45 pages to say that Ahmedinajad won in 2005 because he was the ‘populist’ candidate, meaning he promised to bring the oil money home to ordinary people, instead of opening it up for a scary free-market scenario. It wasn’t an ethnic divide; it can’t be, in Iran, because the ethnic Persians are way bigger and stronger than the other groups (Kurds, Azeri, Arab) put together. Kurds barely even vote–their rate is 20% lower than Persians’, just like “minorities” here. The people who back Ahmedinajad are mostly Persian, and so are the protestors who want him gone. You can’t even call it a city/country divide, which I’ve been tempted to do, because according to this Iranian professor Ahmedinajad got a big vote in the cities as well as the villages. The only dividing lines he can find are pretty shallow ones, like hippie/straight back in the day: Ahmedinajad’s supporters have larger family sizes, and a cluster of other things that go along with conservative attitudes no matter where you are. And that’s about it; he says you can’t even claim that education levels matter much, because–and I love this bit:
The most visible impact of higher education is a sizable increase in the share of

invalid ballots, implying that the educated are more likely to display their disenchantment with the system

through invalid ballots than through non-participation.

That’s the key here, if you ask me. This isn’t a revolution, it’s a lot bummed-out, frustrated people wriing “Fuck You Goddamn Mullahs!” on their ballots in their best overeducated handwriting. They’ve got good reason to be pissed off–imagine being stuck in a giant Catholic school where girls have to wear black ghost sheets every day when you’re hitting 30–but it’s not the kind of fault-line that makes revolutions. What we’re seeing only looks big or historical for two reasons: one, it’s fuckin’ Persians, damn it, and they live large. They fight like this over whether rose-water ice cream is what Allah eats in Paradise or tastes like grandma’s cologne spilled on freezer scrapings (my vote, cuz I’ve tried the filthy stuff). Persians are like that amp in Spinal Tap: they go to eleven. And on the Persian scale, this is a two or a three, fun for a while but no biggie.

The other reason this seems big is that a lot of people on our side of the world have been waiting a long, long time to see Ahmedinajad take a big fall. They’re hyperventilating just thinking about what a great movie this is, with the people rising up to send the loud-talking shrimp back to midget wrestling. They’re so desperate they’re putting cellphone videos on the nightly news, desperate for some sign that Iran’s having its democracy rapture.

It ain’t gonna happen. Hell, for all I know Ahmedinajad actually did win the election. I admit it’s kinda weird how they counted almost 40 million paper ballots in a few hours, but who knows? Maybe they hire a better class of precinct worker there, math teachers or something.

Even if he fell, the IRI, the real system, would barely wobble. The President is a mouthpiece; the real power is purposely divided up by a half dozen creepy Islamic gangs that never talk to the BBC or CNN. All of them are seriously armed; they’re mixed up in everything from religious seminars to land deals; they’re sleazy but smart, a bunch of mean old survivors.

So the yelling will die down, the daredevils will get laid, if you can get laid in an Islamic Republic, by showing off their riot scars, and da regime, if you want to call it that, will let the pressure ease, release a little steam. If things get serious, and I doubt they will, somebody will take the big fall for Allah and the team. It might be Ahmedinajad, even. But there are about a million guys like him waiting for their chance to step up. The IRI will last a long time, whether the BBC or CNN face that fact or not.

It’s good discipline for a war nerd, facing depressing fact like that, reminding yourself that these people, whoever you’re looking at, don’t want what you want, don’t think like you do. Me, I thought the Shah was pretty cool, with those F-14s and trying to revive the great days of the real Persians, before Islam dulled them down. (And by the way, the Pagan Persia/Islamic Iran thing is still a sore point: on the government soap operas, the bad guys always have old-Persian names like Darius and the heroes are always something totally Arab/Quranic like Mohammed. Then there’s the Nowruz traditions, jumping over a crypto-Zoroastrian fire, also very cool and very frowned-on by the Islamic hicks.)

The point is, the Iranians disagreed with me: they kicked the Shah’s ass out, set him adrift with his cancer and picked Khomeini, who to us looks like Dracula’s mean uncle. To them, that freakin’ nosferatu was comfort food for the soul. I can’t see it; if there was a poster of that old demon on my bedroom wall I’d sleep with a garlic necklace and a shotgun. But they got their own world. Some of them may be pissed off with the mullahs, but what if some of them like it? I don’t know, CNN doesn’t know–and for every dissident blogger or tweeter they interview, there might be ten silent-majority types wanting those damn hippies in the streets of Tehran gassed.

Imagine the other way around; imagine Iranian Islamic tv covering, say, a classic culture-war US election like Nixon in 1972. You’d see Persians in expensive turbans blanket-covering every demonstration, every love-in (well, maybe not those so much), every draft-card burning…and then the US government announces that Nixon just stomped McGovern in the biggest landslide ever. Who’d believe it? That is, unless you knew that for every loud camera-hog hippie you saw on tv there were about a hundred fat nobodies wishing Kent State was a daily event.

Until those Ahmedinajad silent-majority hicks start tweeting, we’ll never have a clue what they think. And like Nixon’s people, or Forrest’s dragoons, they’re not really the Twitter type.

The Exiled

[Ziggy Stardust]

I raised an eyebrow at the first paragraph.
I expelled an unbelieving sigh at the second.
I wondered if he was on drugs in the third.
When the fourth came around, I realized he is just a racist moron and stopped reading.

[Nephtys]

Which brings us to Iran. Iranians aren’t Arab, but they are Shia, and excitable. Keep that in mind. Different countries explode at different temperatures.

Oh those rascally Iranians! He makes it sound like a trip to Chuck-e-cheese will make everything all better.

[Starglider]

When the fourth came around, I realized he is just a racist moron and stopped reading.

What, you don't think it's possible to generalise over the entire population of a country and say 'this culture is more prone to X and that culture is more prone to Y'? Wow, I don't think I've spoken to someone literally blinded by political correctness since I was at university.

That said a fair amount of these 'War Nerd' posts (and its parent publication in general) are deliberate trolling for publicity purposes.

[Straha]

I wont even touch on the War Nerd's over-simplification of... well... everything.

I'd much rather reply to someone intelligent.

The problem with that strategy is, to paraphrase Dr. Strangelove, that the whole point of a nuclear arsenal is lost if you keep it a secret, or not actually build one at all after hinting that you've done so or could do.

They aren't keeping it a secret. Look at what the Iranians are doing now, every couple months they proclaim as loud as they can that they have X Thousand centrifuges working as hard as they can in decentralized hardened locations. Then they declare that they would only ever use it for peaceful purposes, and never ever use it for weaponization. Ever.

Everyone else, however, knows that this set up only makes sense if you want to do want to build Nuclear weapons. (With the possible exception of Elfdart.) As long as everyone knows they can build a nuke, it's all that matters to them. Then they can just play the bluff game, and make it clear that the countries around them can't afford to be wrong.

It is rather similar to what Saddam Hussein did with making Iran think he had WMDs. Only thing was Saddam made it seem that he had WMDs, and he was rather too convincing at the end.

And at some point, the Iranians will be forced to engage in a test-detonation to prove first to their own satisfaction that they have a working weapon and to demonstrate to the world that it now has nuclear weapons. The first part is absolutely crucial since they must be certain that they would have functional devices instead of ones that would fizzle.

There is every evidence that Iran was part of the A.Q. Khan network, so they have semi-reliable devices. Further Tehran University had one of the finest Nuclear Engineering departments in the 1970s thanks to the Shah's drive for Nuclear power and that expertise is still around today.

Even so, imagine you're the King of Bahrain, and your science advisor comes to you and says "Don't worry. If the Iranians do have a nuclear weapon there's a good chance it'll just fizzle, and only explode with the force of five hundred to a thousand tons of TNT. That's not bad when compared to twenty thousand tons of TNT if the bomb works!" For large nations, that's a huge difference. For nations which are absolutely tiny (Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait) or very highly urbanized (the UAE) that's very cold comfort.

The "surge capacity" would be no security for the regime because they could not make credible any threat that they've got weapons available for immediate use if they don't actually have them on hand. In the game of nuclear poker, you do not dare attempt a bluff with an empty hand.

The entire point of "surge capacity" is that you don't have an empty hand. You have a hand that can be filled any time the Iranians want to. The fact that it can be the near or distant future doesn't change anything to the very long-term planning Gulf states.

It is more the case that we intervened not to the particular advantage of Iraq per-se but rather to keep the Gulf shipping lanes open. The Vincennes incident however appeared to be changing the game substantially.

Agreed, more or less.

Threatening Bahrain either quietly or overtly because it is the U.S. Fifth Fleet base would be a very stupid move on Tehran's part. It would practically guarantee a U.S. preemptive strike in order to protect American assets and personnel and the regime know it. Similar risks over threatening either Kuwait or Qatar obtain as well. Whatever else can be said of the regime in Tehran, they have not been demonstrably stupid.

Preemptive strike over what? The fear that Iran may have Nuclear Weapons? Tehran can call up Bahrain and say "We want you to know that, given your basing of U.S. Naval assets on your soil, we will consider attacks on you to be valid in response to perceived U.S. aggression, and that we will use the most powerful assets in our possession in case of conflict."

Bahrain will get the clear message that the U.S. fleet might be more of a liability than an asset. And if they turn to the U.S. all they can offer is "We will respond in the harshest possible way should a strike be carried out against you." Again, that's not going to help the King when he's dead. Further, the U.S. can't actually threaten to attack Iran until they actually show they have nuclear weapons, something which they may be able to hide until it's far too late. Until then there just wont be any political will for it, so Bahrain is left hanging in the wind.

[Ziggy Stardust]

What, you don't think it's possible to generalise over the entire population of a country and say 'this culture is more prone to X and that culture is more prone to Y'? Wow, I don't think I've spoken to someone literally blinded by political correctness since I was at university.

Did you even read his god-damned article asshole? He didn't make a broad generalization about Iranian culture and its relevance to the protests, he just called them a bunch of loud, angry drug addicts that we shouldn't pay much attention to. If during the Civil Rights Protests someone had written an editorial saying that black people weren't really angry, they were just letting off steam when they weren't drunk on malt liquor, would you say it is being "blinded by political correctness" to call that racist?

[Starglider]

Did you even read his god-damned article asshole?

Actually yes, whereas you are apparently incapable of reading more than four paragraphs of anything you disagree with.

He didn't make a broad generalization about Iranian culture and its relevance to the protests, he just called them a bunch of loud, angry drug addicts that we shouldn't pay much attention to.

Provokative tone aside (and it's not like we shy from that on this board), the basic point appears correct. The vast majority of the protestors are young, educated, male, relatively well-off city-dwellers - this isn't opinion, it has been confirmed by numerous sources. It isn't possible for that small subset of Iranian society to topple the government. Whether this unrest is going to snowball into other segments of society is a matter of opinion, but as this author points out in most relevant historical cases it burns out rather quickly, so the odds are against the protestors.

If during the Civil Rights Protests someone had written an editorial saying that black people weren't really angry, they were just letting off steam when they weren't drunk on malt liquor, would you say it is being "blinded by political correctness" to call that racist?

I doubt I would call it racist, I would simply call it wrong. The civil rights movement had a broad base of support across age, wealth, gender, and educational gaps, and it also had support from a lot of sympathetic whites. Furthermore if the US government was as oppressive as Iran's, it simply would not have succeeded despite those advantages. Sad to say, the current Iranian protestors have some way to go before they even match the organisation and appeal of the US civil rights movement, and they're going to need more than that to topple an entrenched, decentralised theo-fascist regieme.

[Straha]

Did you even read his god-damned article asshole?

Actually yes, whereas you are apparently incapable of reading more than four paragraphs of anything you disagree with.

The damn article isn't worth the internet bytes used to load it onto our computer screens, for a variety of reasons.

Provokative tone aside (and it's not like we shy from that on this board), the basic point appears correct. The vast majority of the protestors are young, educated, male, relatively well-off city-dwellers - this isn't opinion, it has been confirmed by numerous sources. It isn't possible for that small subset of Iranian society to topple the government. Whether this unrest is going to snowball into other segments of society is a matter of opinion, but as this author points out in most relevant historical cases it burns out rather quickly, so the odds are against the protestors.

Except he misses the entire damn point, and so do you to a lesser extent. I'll be generous to you and say a majority of the protesters on the streets were young, educated middle-class people (they were certainly not a grand majority male, as most of the pictures demonstrate. And the high female turn out is a massive sign of fault lines in the regime), something I don't necessarily agree with in whole. Regardless, the protest was carried out across the entire country, it was not (like the '99 riots were) localized to the Universities or Tehran, it was a national protest to a rigged election. Now, to the point of it only being city-dwellers, that's not true. There were reports of protests in villages across Iran. But nobody gave a shit about them, because no foreign media company being closely trailed by Iranian secret police and restricted to filing one report a day is going to go out to a podunk little village in the middle of nowhere and do a report on three hundred people being huffy when there's violence in the streets of Tehran.

As for the reports that it was only the middle-income educated people who gave a shit, again a blatant falsehood. Unions, Bazaris, and poor people all demonstrated and there were multiple reports of temporary strikes and slowdowns. Moreover, as has been cited multiple times in this thread, almost all the Grand Ayatollahs and a very significant number of the clergy have come out solidly against the election. Finally, a large number of politicians, many of them very strongly in the conservative anti-reform camp (like Larijani) have come out solidly against the election and Ahmadinejad as well. This is not a lot of "bummed-out, frustrated people wriing “Fuck You Goddamn Mullahs!” on their ballots in their best overeducated handwriting." this is an entire damn country demanding the right to their vote.

There are a number of other very questionable things about his post. Notably his assertion that "the ethnic Persians are way bigger and stronger than the other groups... put together." As anyone who looks as Iranian demographics knows (and can be very quickly verified) Persians have a bare, bare majority. They make up, if you're generous, 51% of the population. And while the Persians have a significant control of power in Tehran, the other ethnic groups are very powerful in their own right and have a number of powerful voices (including Khameini who is an Azeri.)

I could go on attacking that piece of crap article, but I wont. The War Nerd long ago lost my respect, and I see no reason to keep wasting my time on that article when I can better using my time reading a worthwhile book instead.

[Vehrec]

Provokative tone aside (and it's not like we shy from that on this board), the basic point appears correct. The vast majority of the protestors are young, educated, male, relatively well-off city-dwellers - this isn't opinion, it has been confirmed by numerous sources. It isn't possible for that small subset of Iranian society to topple the government. Whether this unrest is going to snowball into other segments of society is a matter of opinion, but as this author points out in most relevant historical cases it burns out rather quickly, so the odds are against the protestors.

To be fair, Youth is a common factor or Iranian society. I'm not sure what their education standards are, but I'm betting they're not bad at all. The only thing actually separating them from the majority of society is their socioeconomic status and where they live.

[CmdrWilkens]

You must be an idiot if you can't understand the difference between private donations reflecting the will of individuals and state donations reflecting the will of the state.

And what exactly is the difference? Are the victims any less dead or wounded?

Lets review:
I concured with the arguement (advanced by others) that Iran is an Aggressive State because the STATE sponsors terrorism
YOU argued that this standard (sponsorship of terrorism) would make New York and Boston "Aggresive States"
I pointed out, as you still seem to miss, that your argument only works if the GOVERNMENT of New York and Boston were sponsoring the terorism

That folks are dead whether private individuals or governments contribute cash to terrorist organizations is NOT the point. Your entire argument hinges on responsibility not result. The STATE of New York and the STATE of Massachucetts are not responsible for actions of private citizens which do not reflect sanctioned government activities.

[Patrick Degan]

The problem with that strategy is, to paraphrase Dr. Strangelove, that the whole point of a nuclear arsenal is lost if you keep it a secret, or not actually build one at all after hinting that you've done so or could do.

They aren't keeping it a secret. Look at what the Iranians are doing now, every couple months they proclaim as loud as they can that they have X Thousand centrifuges working as hard as they can in decentralized hardened locations. Then they declare that they would only ever use it for peaceful purposes, and never ever use it for weaponization. Ever.

Everyone else, however, knows that this set up only makes sense if you want to do want to build Nuclear weapons. (With the possible exception of Elfdart.) As long as everyone knows they can build a nuke, it's all that matters to them. Then they can just play the bluff game, and make it clear that the countries around them can't afford to be wrong.

It is rather similar to what Saddam Hussein did with making Iran think he had WMDs. Only thing was Saddam made it seem that he had WMDs, and he was rather too convincing at the end.

Yes. But you see, Saddam bluffed with an empty hand and that got him a rope around his neck in the end. While the Iranians may publicly posture about their nuclear engineering capabilities, that is a world of difference from actually putting up a sham about having an arsenal that doesn't actually exist and running the daily risk of the bluff being called. So far, for all their posturing, the Iranians have manoeuvered carefully and have not followed in Saddam's footsteps by trying to play a hand they don't actually have.

And at some point, the Iranians will be forced to engage in a test-detonation to prove first to their own satisfaction that they have a working weapon and to demonstrate to the world that it now has nuclear weapons. The first part is absolutely crucial since they must be certain that they would have functional devices instead of ones that would fizzle.

There is every evidence that Iran was part of the A.Q. Khan network, so they have semi-reliable devices. Further Tehran University had one of the finest Nuclear Engineering departments in the 1970s thanks to the Shah's drive for Nuclear power and that expertise is still around today.

That may as be. But as to how reliable any devices based on technical assistance from the Khan network may be, remember that North Korea was also part of this network and ended up producing two test-bombs that fizzled. In any case, even if the technical assistance from the Khan network is everything it's cracked up to be, the Iranians would still have to confirm that the designs they've got will function as expected and not simply take it on faith that they will. That inevitably means carrying out actual tests, which so far they have not done or shown the capacity to do.

Even so, imagine you're the King of Bahrain, and your science advisor comes to you and says "Don't worry. If the Iranians do have a nuclear weapon there's a good chance it'll just fizzle, and only explode with the force of five hundred to a thousand tons of TNT. That's not bad when compared to twenty thousand tons of TNT if the bomb works!" For large nations, that's a huge difference. For nations which are absolutely tiny (Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait) or very highly urbanized (the UAE) that's very cold comfort.

I rather doubt the situation would be quite as simplistically laid out, and I'm certain the prospect of an Iranian atomic bomb frightens the Sultan as much as it does anybody else in the region.

The "surge capacity" would be no security for the regime because they could not make credible any threat that they've got weapons available for immediate use if they don't actually have them on hand. In the game of nuclear poker, you do not dare attempt a bluff with an empty hand.

The entire point of "surge capacity" is that you don't have an empty hand. You have a hand that can be filled any time the Iranians want to. The fact that it can be the near or distant future doesn't change anything to the very long-term planning Gulf states.

True, to an extent. However, even a surge capacity has to be backed by an inventory of prepared, deliverable devices as insurance against a preemptive strike. Israel, in its early days as a nuclear power, for example, counted upon surge capacity but also had two deliverable nuclear weapons during the Six Day War, according to Avner Cohen's Israel And The Bomb.

Threatening Bahrain either quietly or overtly because it is the U.S. Fifth Fleet base would be a very stupid move on Tehran's part. It would practically guarantee a U.S. preemptive strike in order to protect American assets and personnel and the regime know it. Similar risks over threatening either Kuwait or Qatar obtain as well. Whatever else can be said of the regime in Tehran, they have not been demonstrably stupid.

Preemptive strike over what? The fear that Iran may have Nuclear Weapons?

No, the threat to a major U.S. military base and the assets located there. Threats to major U.S. allies in the Gulf region which we must guarantee the security of if those alliances are to retain any credibility. If Iran actually were to issue threats of a nuclear nature, the strike preparations would definitely be put into effect and ready to launch on orders from the White House.

Tehran can call up Bahrain and say "We want you to know that, given your basing of U.S. Naval assets on your soil, we will consider attacks on you to be valid in response to perceived U.S. aggression, and that we will use the most powerful assets in our possession in case of conflict."

Bahrain will get the clear message that the U.S. fleet might be more of a liability than an asset. And if they turn to the U.S. all they can offer is "We will respond in the harshest possible way should a strike be carried out against you." Again, that's not going to help the King when he's dead. Further, the U.S. can't actually threaten to attack Iran until they actually show they have nuclear weapons, something which they may be able to hide until it's far too late. Until then there just wont be any political will for it, so Bahrain is left hanging in the wind.

Bahrain has already been living with the possibility of that threat for nearly two decades now: the Iranians could launch missiles with chemical warheads against the country at any time. As for what the U.S. can offer, it's what it already is offering: a guarantee of the country's security backed by U.S. military power and the implicit threat of what we can do to Iran —for which they have no real response. Bahrain sees the U.S. fleet as an asset precisely because of the Iranian threat and that view is only likely to solidify if Iran starts casting threats.

And as for our not threatening to attack Iran until they actually show a nuclear weapons capability, don't count on the Iranians basing their thinking around that concept. They've already seen that it didn't help Iraq in the slightest and they already perceive the U.S. as being quite willing to attack the Islamic Republic at any time —as was the case with the Vincennes incident. As for there being no political will for a strike, don't count on that actually being operative in the decisionmaking process inside the White House if a crisis is seen to be serious enough to warrant American military action. As it is, however, the mere threat of U.S. military power, with or without any public statements on the matter, is sufficient to deter the Iranian regime, who aren't willing to risk a direct confrontation.

The issue is less the message the Sultan of Bahrain will get from the mullahs and more the message the mullahs will get from us.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Actually yes, whereas you are apparently incapable of reading more than four paragraphs of anything you disagree with.

Oh, yes, not wanting to read racist diatribes certainly makes me close-minded.

Provokative tone aside (and it's not like we shy from that on this board), the basic point appears correct. The vast majority of the protestors are young, educated, male, relatively well-off city-dwellers - this isn't opinion, it has been confirmed by numerous sources. It isn't possible for that small subset of Iranian society to topple the government. Whether this unrest is going to snowball into other segments of society is a matter of opinion, but as this author points out in most relevant historical cases it burns out rather quickly, so the odds are against the protestors.

Straha covers this far better than I can, so I won't waste board bandwidth hammering it in. However, I must add that just because the youth happen to be among the protesters in no way supports the author's claim that all Iranians are "hysterical" and "just keep yelling" because they don't have enough opium to calm them down. Not to mention several random Persian stereotypes he throws in later in the article.

I doubt I would call it racist, I would simply call it wrong.

Really? It's not racist to say black people should drink more malt liquor and stop complaining? Good to know.

The civil rights movement had a broad base of support across age, wealth, gender, and educational gaps, and it also had support from a lot of sympathetic whites. Furthermore if the US government was as oppressive as Iran's, it simply would not have succeeded despite those advantages. Sad to say, the current Iranian protestors have some way to go before they even match the organisation and appeal of the US civil rights movement, and they're going to need more than that to topple an entrenched, decentralised theo-fascist regieme.

So this means we should just ignore them, because they are a bunch of angry drug-addicts who wear too much perfume?

[Straha]

New Protests.

Nothing major, yet. But a new wave of protests shows that (again, unlike '99) people are still angry, and that won't go away.

[Straha]

Do you hear that sound emanating from Tehran? It's the braying laughter of the Italian Ambassador.

Iran summons the Italian Ambassador to Tehran Alberto Bradanini in protest against the violent suppression of anti-G8 protesters.

Bradanini was summoned to the Iranian Foreign Ministry on Friday to hear Tehran's concerns about the "violent suppression of justice-seeking protesters by the Italian police."

A Foreign Ministry statement included Iran's "strong condemnation" of the "suppressive actions…which are clear breaches of civil freedoms and fundamentals of democracy."

The Foreign Ministry's Director for West European Relations 'condemned the use of violence by Italian police against protesters and opponents of the Group of Eight industrialized nations (G8) summit in the city of L'Aquila, and demanded the compliance of the Italian government with its international obligations'.

Italy holds the presidency of the G8 Summit, which is being held in L'Aquila from July 8 to 10.

[CJvR]

LOL!

I hope the ambassador was diplomat enough to hold the laughter until he got out of the ministry.

[Straha]

I told the person who sent it to me that maybe the Iranians were explaining that if Berlusconni owns the Italian media then he shouldn't air stories about the protests because he can get away with saying everything's fine. That's about the only thing about that story that would make sense.

[Straha]

Rafsanjani just gave a speech which skewered Khameini and the hardliners. I'll post relevant articles and a transcript in a little while.

This is still going.

[Samuel]

Rafsanjani just gave a speech which skewered Khameini and the hardliners. I'll post relevant articles and a transcript in a little while.

This is still going.

1 month and 6 days. Wow.

[CmdrWilkens]

Here is the Washingtonpost.com story on what happened:

Election Crisis Fuels Doubt, Cleric Says
Iran's Former President Calls for Release of Protesters as Well as Fewer Restrictions on News Media

By Kay Armin Serjoie and Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, July 18, 2009


TEHRAN, July 17 -- Thousands of opposition demonstrators took to the streets in defiance of a government crackdown Friday after a powerful cleric, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, publicly called for the release of people arrested in protests following last month's disputed election and urged authorities to ease restrictions on the news media.

Addressing a huge crowd in a sermon at traditional Friday prayers, Rafsanjani issued an appeal for national unity but stopped short of endorsing the officially proclaimed landslide reelection victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an omission that served to further widen a rift within the country's Shiite Muslim hierarchy over the results of the June 12 election.

Among those attending the sermon at Tehran University were opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi, who ran against Ahmadinejad. Mousavi, 67, a former prime minister who says he was cheated of victory through massive vote-rigging, was making a rare public appearance since security forces cracked down on demonstrations in support of his claims and arrested hundreds of protesters and opposition supporters. Karrubi, 71, a Shiite cleric and former parliamentary speaker, was roughed up by plainclothes security forces on his way to the sermon, his Web site reported.

Shortly after the sermon, thousands of Mousavi supporters demonstrated around Tehran University.

Members of the elite Revolutionary Guard Corps and the pro-government Basij militia used tear gas and batons to disperse the demonstrators, eyewitnesses reported.

"After tear gas was used outside the university, the wind blew it in and [it affected] everyone, including Basijis and cops," a witness said. "People started coughing and tears started running out of their eyes. This irritated everyone, and people were saying, 'This is a shame and a disgrace that prayers are being tear gassed.' "

Holding up posters of Mousavi, thousands gathered on Enghelab, or Revolution, Street and shouted "Death to the dictator" and "Illegitimate government, leave," witnesses said. In his sermon, Rafsanjani, 74, who was one of the main founders of the Islamic Republic and served as president from 1989 to 1997, said the country faces a "crisis" and appeared to back the legitimacy of Mousavi's protest movement.

"I hope that today's Friday prayers will be a turning point for us to pass this crisis," he said, "and that once again we will be able to witness healthy competition and the choosing of whoever the people want."

He strongly supported several of Mousavi's key demands and called for a rebuilding of trust as he launched a proposal to solve the crisis. He called for more freedom of speech and less government control over the heavily restricted local and foreign news media.

"We should not limit our media, which have got legal permission for their activities," he said. "They should be able to work within the framework of the laws."

And he said unity should be achieved by allowing different political opinions.

"There should be a climate where people can speak their mind and where reason prevails," he said, asking for political groups to act within the law.

Rafsanjani made clear that he has consulted influential clerics and experienced politicians who share his views. But his comments suggested that he remains at odds with the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who in a June 19 sermon at Friday prayers urged all Iranians to fully accept Ahmadinejad's victory, strongly denounced the protests and rejected allegations of vote-rigging.

Erdbrink reported from Amsterdam.

Near as I can tell, and this is merely my interpretation, Rafsanjani is trying to line up a coalition still but knows he has enough support to keep from getting the ground cut out underneath him. In otherwords I don't think he would have said something like this, almsot sure to trigger even more protests, unless he was reasonably sure that he had enough support to begin making the next move. I don't know if the very mild nature of this pronouncement is a matter of trying to build a big slow wave or if it is meant to be a spark to expose those amongst the senior clerics who haven't committed themselves either publicly or privately.

[rhoenix]

Near as I can tell, and this is merely my interpretation, Rafsanjani is trying to line up a coalition still but knows he has enough support to keep from getting the ground cut out underneath him. In otherwords I don't think he would have said something like this, almsot sure to trigger even more protests, unless he was reasonably sure that he had enough support to begin making the next move. I don't know if the very mild nature of this pronouncement is a matter of trying to build a big slow wave or if it is meant to be a spark to expose those amongst the senior clerics who haven't committed themselves either publicly or privately.

My suspicion is that he's playing careful politics here - by taking pains to appear reasonable and rational, he's not only supporting the rebellious cause but also making the current Ayatollah and pseudo-President Ahmadinejad look radical and unreasonable. This should have interesting effects on those senior clerics you mentioned, as well as the "undecided" in Iran.