NationStates Jolt Archive

It has come up a number of times now in all the talk about war with Iran that the US would merely be supporting Iranian opposition and rebel groups, which would overthrow the government.

I must say that I call bullshit.

There is no meaningful opposition in the country. The few groups that do exist are fighting each other. There are Kurds, and other groups of different religion and ethnicity in some regions - but those wouldn't want anything more than independence.

The Iranian exiles (http://www.payvand.com/news/04/jan/1166.html) can't even boast an Ahmed Chalabi. And that is saying something.

There is the son of the Shah, but not only have most Iranians never heard of them, but the guy has absolutely no ambition to get involved too deeply. Occasionally he calls for a "referendum", but that's as far as it goes. He's doing quite well, thanks to the wealth his daddy pocketed at the expense of the Iranian people.

Then there is the rebel group which allegedly gave the Americans some of the info about the Iranian nuclear program. That one is listed on the index of terrorist organisations (http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2003/23311.htm).

The often quoted study that says that most Iranians actually like the US was taken in the Clinton era. You can be absolutely 100% certain that this is no longer so. Every week more people join the government-organised protests against the West, and Iranians are nationalistic folk.

There was an article in the Economist not so long ago, but I'm afraid they want money to read it over the web.
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=5558884

People should understand that Afghanistan was a special case. It was possible there to simply support the rebels and win because the country had been in a real civil war for decades. The rebels had armies, leaders, strategies.

Neither in Iraq nor Iran does such an opposition exist.

So either the West fights it alone, or there won't be a fight. People should give up their hopes about Iranians waiting to be liberated.

Very true. Unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran is a natural and fairly homogenous entity with a long history of independent nationhood. No-one cobbled it together from conquered bits, no-one drew an arbitrary border around a bunch of warring tribes. Nationalism and national unity are a natural part of the political scene, the same as they are in any Western country. There are no large minority groups anyone could use a proxy.

Its political system is very advanced too, and the nation has a long political tradition. It is frankly patronising to suggest that there, as elsewhere outside the West, the political scene is sufficiently underdeveloped to make an overthrow possible, the only materials necessary being a few guns and suitcases of cash. That's rubbish. The system there is as resilient as anything in Europe and the US. It's a waste of time and money.

Very true. Unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran is a natural and fairly homogenous entity with a long history of independent nationhood. No-one cobbled it together from conquered bits, no-one drew an arbitrary border around a bunch of warring tribes. Nationalism and national unity are a natural part of the political scene, the same as they are in any Western country. There are no large minority groups anyone could use a proxy.

Its political system is very advanced too, and the nation has a long political tradition. It is frankly patronising to suggest that there, as elsewhere outside the West, the political scene is sufficiently underdeveloped to make an overthrow possible, the only materials necessary being a few guns and suitcases of cash. That's rubbish. The system there is as resilient as anything in Europe and the US. It's a waste of time and money.

True in many respects but I will say that the previous form of government was overthrown very quickly. I think that this one could suffer the same fate.

True in many respects but I will say that the previous form of government was overthrown very quickly. I think that this one could suffer the same fate.
The previous form of government was imposed, however. It was as unpopular as Saddam Hussein was to the Iraqis, if not more so. The current system is acceptable to the Iranians. There is gradual reform, but no-one wants the instability that arises from revolutionary change. The current system, left to its own devices, will evolve into parliamentary democracy over the course of a generation or two. This is fairly widely understood to be inevitable, and so there is no appetite for the bloodbath and collapse that accompanies attempts at instant change. Why fail now when you can work towards a goal and succeed a quarter century hence?

Yup ol shrubby cocked it up good there.

I remember a few years ago a report from some guy in the BBC. He mentioned that if left alone, Iran would reform itself. He showed showed a series of photos of protests. Some were at the time of the revolution where he explained this was an anti-US protest and noted that the crowd was mixed of young and old. He showed a recent photos of an anti-US protest and it had only older men involved. He said they didn't have the youth anymore. In fact he reported in the hills around Tehran, the young were heading up there to party. In the years past nobody would consider it because if you were caught, the punishment was really bad.

So dear ol shrubby has moved attitudes back a decade or two.

bump

Why fail now when you can work towards a goal and succeed a quarter century hence?
I'm concerned the handlers of the US president don't think so much in terms of quarter-centuries as they do in fiscal quarters. If there's any long-term thinking being applied to this situation, it's not being trumpeted anywhere I'm hearing about it.

There was an article in the Economist not so long ago, but I'm afraid they want money to read it over the web.
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=5558884

Working at a university has its benefits, one of which is that I practically never have to pay for published material. Here's your article.
PITY those Americans, George Bush among them, who long for their ideas about democracy to take root in Iran. Mindful of the mistake that his and earlier administrations made in backing Iraqi exile groups that turned out to enjoy scant support back home, and aware that, for Iran's democracy-seekers, gifts from America carry the taint of collusion with the enemy, Mr Bush has often encouraged Iranians to strive for "the freedom they seek and deserve"--and pretty much left it at that. Until this month, that is, when his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, asked Congress to pledge $75m to the cause.

That is a big increase on the $10m previously budgeted. It is also a statement of intent by an administration often accused of having no clear policy on Iran. Helping to establish a "different system", a goal identified by a senior American official after Ms Rice's testimony, is a short rhetorical step from the "regime change" to which some American hawks want Mr Bush to commit.

So America's challenge now is to find suitable NGOs, trade unions, human-rights groups and students to receive the $20m they have been allocated. (The other $55m will help disseminate Persian-language broadcasts and propaganda on the internet.) Iran's internal opposition lacks a Nelson Mandela; Iranians in the diaspora (1m in the United States) cannot even boast of an Ahmed Chalabi, the neo-conservatives' failed favourite to run Iraq.

Citing infiltration of Iranian NGOs by government agents, the same official predicted that the awards would go to groups based outside Iran. Anyone doubting that his call for unity among expatriates will be hard to realise need only surf the 20-odd Los Angeles-based Persian-language television channels which can be viewed by owners of satellite dishes in Iran. From brilliantined monarchists and religious eccentrics who have not seen Iran since the 1979 revolution, to youthful music presenters who have not seen it at all, they have little in common save their dislike for the Islamic Republic.

Even supposing the promise of cash moves the diaspora to unite, the credibility of its leading lights is low. Though he has astutely backed calls for a referendum on a political system to replace the Islamic Republic, Reza Pahlavi, the personable but reputedly unambitious son of the last shah, is little spoken of in Iran.

As for the People's Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), which sided with Saddam Hussein during his war with Iran in the 1980s and is officially considered a terrorist organisation by the United States and the European Union, it is widely despised by Iranians back home, millions of whom lost relatives in that war. The group fosters a cult of personality around Maryam Rajavi, wife (probably widow) of its long-time leader. There is growing support in the United States and Europe for removing the terrorist label attached to the PMOI, which is widely credited with having exposed several of the nuclear-research facilities the Iranian government had kept secret for many years. But that may not endear it to people in Iran either.

Ms Rice cannot even count on the relatively pro-American sentiment that most ordinary Iranians evinced during the calmer Clinton presidency. While no reliable opinion poll has been carried out on the subject, anecdotal evidence suggests that Iranians' scepticism of American motives has risen since the invasion of Iraq. Mr Bush's determination to prevent the Iranians from becoming producers of nuclear fuel that would, if they wanted, enable them to make a bomb has piqued nationalists. This month, bigger-than-usual crowds gathered in Tehran, Iran's capital, to commemorate the revolution's anniversary and shout "Death to America!"

The president's nationalist tailwind

The combination of a protracted international crisis and last summer's election of a hardline president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has allowed Iran's conservative establishment quietly to bury the reform movement of Muhammad Khatami, Mr Ahmadinejad's predecessor. Their most interesting newspapers banned and their leading lights silenced or jailed, the reformists have even fallen in line behind the hardliners' tough nuclear diplomacy. The once-vibrant student movement is moribund. In the face of "undemocratic actions", laments Mehdi Makaremi, a reformist columnist, student bodies content themselves with "issuing statements".

By banning adventurous newspapers and filtering websites, the authorities have denied publicity to political prisoners such as Akbar Ganji. Five years ago, this outspoken critic of the ruling theocracy was on everyone's lips; now, despite spending much of last year on hunger strike, he has slipped from public view. In a land of high unemployment and few effective trade unions, industrial unrest is rare; strikes are dealt with decisively, and often before they happen. A recent protest by bus drivers in Tehran, the capital, was pre-empted with hundreds of arrests; the disgruntled drivers, back at work, have been promised better conditions.

Not about to boil over yet

So Iran is not the hothouse of dissent that American hawks depict. It may indeed, in the words of one of its leading literary dissidents, be "bereft of any effective opposition, legal or illegal". But that does not mean that everyone is content: only that frustrations, inadequately addressed by Mr Khatami, express themselves in different ways. Threats now come from two currents, religious heterodoxy and separatist nationalism, that have intermittently irritated the Islamic Republic, a Shia state run by ethnic Persians, since its inception.

Two regions bordering Iraq, Kurdistan in the north and Khuzestan on the Persian Gulf coast, are rumbling. For the mostly Sunni Kurds, the Khatami presidency, which they hoped would usher in religious and political autonomy, was a disappointment; many now covet the quasi-independence being enjoyed by their Iraqi cousins across the border. Since the shooting last summer of a dissident at the hands of the security forces, and subsequent unrest in Kurdish towns, there have been reports of sporadic attacks on soldiers by Kurdish militants.

Iran's interior minister says he detects a British hand behind last month's explosions in the oil-rich, partly-Arab province of Khuzestan, which killed seven people. Last year, Khuzestan suffered sectarian rioting and other deadly blasts; these, too, were blamed on the British, who run a neighbouring chunk of southern Iraq. The British deny these outlandish accusations.

Iran's clerical establishment is increasingly exercised by the Nematullahi-Gonabadi order of Sufis, Muslims who neglect some Shia practices in favour of a mystic relationship with God. The order claims to have more than 1m members, many with deep pockets, in Iran and abroad. Last week the authorities destroyed a prayer hall erected by the Sufis in the shrine city of Qom; there were reports of serious injuries and some 1,000 Sufis were briefly arrested. Repression, say the order's supporters, will only increase its popularity. At last, music to George Bush's ears--though the Sufis may not qualify as an NGO deemed worthy of cash from America.

The OP is right. Any group that even accepts funding from the West is automotically deligitamized. Oh, God, I probably didn't spell that right.

What really scares me is Bush's hardcore stance against Iran's nuclear program. If Iran gets the program, America will look like a paper giant, and if they don't, it will be through war. Neither option looks good for us right now.

He's doing quite well, thanks to the wealth his daddy pocketed at the expense of the Iranian people.

More leftoid asinine nonsense about the Shah. The Shah was a good man who tried to modernize his country. Most of the "victims" of SAVAK were saboteurs, terrorists, communists, and other scum who were trying to overthrow the government. The Shah helped poor peasants with his land reform programs, helped rapidly develop the country (it may even have been First World by now if that fucker Carter hadn't backstabbed him), did not persecute homosexuals, permitted religious tolerance, and granted suffrage to women. However, because he was heavyhanded in dealing with scum who deserved the treatment they received, he is vilified as a latter-day Hitler.

So either the West fights it alone, or there won't be a fight. People should give up their hopes about Iranians waiting to be liberated.

No shit. In most dictatorships people are so thoroughly brainwashed they can only believe what they're told to believe.

More leftoid asinine nonsense about the Shah.
First:
Welcome to NS General.

Second:
What did I say about the Shah? I said that he was corrupt and pocketed tax money for himself.
I disagree with you on everything else you said as well, but that is the one thing I have to prove.

http://www.angelfire.com/home/iran/speech.html

First:
Welcome to NS General.

Thanks.

Second:
What did I say about the Shah? I said that he was corrupt and pocketed tax money for himself.

Hell, what politician doesn't?

Hell, what politician doesn't?
There probably are some.

But the point is that the Shah was not exactly a popular leader. The land reforms may or may not have been a good thing, but many others were certainly bad.
http://www.fsmitha.com/h2/ch29ir.html

It has come up a number of times now in all the talk about war with Iran that the US would merely be supporting Iranian opposition and rebel groups, which would overthrow the government.

I must say that I call bullshit.

There is no meaningful opposition in the country. The few groups that do exist are fighting each other. There are Kurds, and other groups of different religion and ethnicity in some regions - but those wouldn't want anything more than independence.

The Iranian exiles (http://www.payvand.com/news/04/jan/1166.html) can't even boast an Ahmed Chalabi. And that is saying something.

There is the son of the Shah, but not only have most Iranians never heard of them, but the guy has absolutely no ambition to get involved too deeply. Occasionally he calls for a "referendum", but that's as far as it goes. He's doing quite well, thanks to the wealth his daddy pocketed at the expense of the Iranian people.

Then there is the rebel group which allegedly gave the Americans some of the info about the Iranian nuclear program. That one is listed on the index of terrorist organisations (http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2003/23311.htm).

The often quoted study that says that most Iranians actually like the US was taken in the Clinton era. You can be absolutely 100% certain that this is no longer so. Every week more people join the government-organised protests against the West, and Iranians are nationalistic folk.

There was an article in the Economist not so long ago, but I'm afraid they want money to read it over the web.
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=5558884

People should understand that Afghanistan was a special case. It was possible there to simply support the rebels and win because the country had been in a real civil war for decades. The rebels had armies, leaders, strategies.

Neither in Iraq nor Iran does such an opposition exist.

So either the West fights it alone, or there won't be a fight. People should give up their hopes about Iranians waiting to be liberated.

you make quite valid points.

however,i do disagree on a few points.

firstly,we will act unilaterly...which is foolish,but we will.

i know quite a few iranian expats,and they are some of the nicest,and most intelligent people i have ever met.
yet they all hate the "regime"

and there is a huge class of people there,that cant throw off the yoke of religous tyranny,even though they are quite religous.

i do agree with your premise however,a violent act by the us will do no more then empower the radicals,as all the moderates,will be to afraid to stand up....for many reasons.

it is a no brainer that the us or an israili strike will just worsen the situation...possibly irrevocably.

any change will have to come from within,without the scent of the west creating it.

that said,if the us feels,or the israilis,we are in a pickle,there will be a pre emptive strike.

i feel iran is of no threat to the us as we speak,i cant speak for the jews,but they are allies,and you should know how that goes.
if they feel threatened,i have zero doubt they will act pre emptively,and i cant say i blame them,but as allies,we will have no choice but to back them.


what a fuckin mess.

The youth of Iran are definately pushing for reform in their government. They hold rallies and protests, and are increasing embracing Western culture.

But overthrow their government?!

They want reform. Not a revolution. Any attack on Iran or its government will be met with unified resistance.

It's like Thatcher. People rioted and fought street battles with police, everyone wanted her gone, but in good time, through established political processes. Invading the UK during the late 80s / early 90s to liberate us from her tyranny, oh yeah, that would have gone down just great.

More leftoid asinine nonsense about the Shah. The Shah was a good man who tried to modernize his country. Most of the "victims" of SAVAK were saboteurs, terrorists, communists, and other scum who were trying to overthrow the government. People who persecute (or worse) communists are not good people.

this bush policy suggesting that if we just toss a few nukes onto iran the opposition will rise up and change the government reminds me of an aesop's fable

the one where the sun and the wind take a bet on who can get a travellers coat off.

the wind blow and blows but the man just holds his coat tighter. then the sun comes out, warms the man up, and he decides to take his coat off on his own.

no country is going to abandon its legally elected government in the face of foreign attack. its not logical. its not good psychology. it hasnt worked in the past. the administration needs to give up its "if i think its right, it must be right" point of view.

"There is no meaningful opposition in Iran"Last elections the opposition won, the Iranian President asked the people to releect him.. and the Iranian people said "No".