Guest post: The CIA or the Koran
Originally a comment by Rev David Brindley on Fans on a walk.
As Richard Dawkins said about religion “You’re only a Christian because you were born in America. Had you been born in Israel you’d be a Jew, in India a Hindu or in Iran, a Muslim”
When you only know your country as a theocracy, you grow to think theocracy is normal, just as Brits accept an expensive monarchy and Americans a dysfunctional electoral system.
Iran is only a theocracy because the British feared losing their oil fields when Iran’s nascent democracy proposed nationalisation of its resources. Britain, aided by the USA, overthrew the Iranian attempt at democracy and reimposed the brutal Palavi family. That the only way Iranians could rid themselves of the brutal police state Iran had become was to support an Islamic revolution is totally the fault of the UK and USA. I doubt the Iranians who supported the revolution realised that they would replace one form of repression with another.
Since the war with Iraq, Iran has kept within its borders, has not attacked its neighbours. Israel alone is responsible for the current situation, aided and abetted, as usual, by the USA. Iraq didn’t attack Israel, but is now forced to defend itself, just like Ukraine, but with less help from the rest of the world.
Netanyahu is a war criminal who is doing anything he can to cling to power, because just like Trump, as long as he is in government he is immune from prosecution.
As for “The far right side of history”, that again is Israel and USA.
I hold no brief for Iran or Islam, but I can understand how the one is the unifying force for the other when it seems the whole world is against you.
The only light that may come from the death and destruction in Iran could be the self destruction of MAGA and the GOP returning to actual policy. So, just as Palestinians were robbed of land, homes, and businesses to assuage European guilt, so must Iranians pay for America’s failings.
Right on, Your Reverence. “Iran has the misfortune to have approximately 9% to 10% of the world’s proven oil reserves. This makes Iran the fourth-largest holder of oil reserves globally. Specifically, Iran possesses around 157 billion barrels of proven crude oil reserves.”
This also goes to show that the people appointed to office through democratic elections are commonly not democrats themselves. They commonly enough do not want the popular will to prevail. Rather, their own.
(Australia’s very own former PM Paul Keating, I submit as a prime example.)
The only way around this that I can see is to appoint politicians the way we appoint jurors; from a bunch of names chosen at random, say off the electoral roll, and then selection made from that pool. Both, after all, are important decision-makers, and jurors in some US states have the power of life and death. If I was in the habit of hanging round courthouses, buttonholing all and sundry and plying them with arguments as to why I should be appointed to ‘serve’ on a jury, I would be swiftly shown the door, or arrested for being a public nuisance. But politicians do it all the time.
The only way round this problem that I can think of is to either: 1. appoint politicians the way we appoint jurors, or 2. vice versa. And that IMHO is a lay-down misere.
https://www.worldatlas.com/industries/the-world-s-largest-oil-reserves-by-country.html
I hold no brief whatsoever for the UK’s former bullying of Iran – we’re still called the Little Satan even though our imperial power has collapsed since those days – nor of the USA’s and Israel’s present actions. I’m relieved that the UK has not had to get involved even in a token way i.e. our bases weren’t used as that would have been incredibly unpopular here.
But although Iran has not brought its armies across borders, it has been backing Hamas and Hezbollah, and has called for the utter destruction of Israel, so I can certainly see why Israel would like to wipe out its nuclear capabilities. Iran’s meddling in Middle Eastern politics has made it a thorn in the side of Saudi Arabia, and other Arab nations who have been more co-operative recently with Israel. I’ve seen it said that there is some silent support of Israel’s actions among the Arab countries, who fear an overly powerful Iran.
The differences between Israel and Iran are purely ideological – there is no fight over resources, they don’t share a border, and another regime in Iran like eg Turkey’s would have no reason to be at odds with them.
If only we’d left the dear old Kaiser in place in 1918, the poor downtrodden Germans wouldn’t have been forced, forced I tell you, into launching another world war.
While I don’t deny that the US and UK behaved abominably and their actions led to the situation we see today, I do not believe ALL the blame is on them. For a theocracy to take over, there had to be something in the society that nurtured and promoted a theocracy. We have meddled in all the countries of the world at some time or the other; some of them became theocracies. Some of them were theocracies before we started meddling. Theocracy has a powerful appeal to people who believe in a god that can solve all problems; without that, the US could meddle without leading to theocracy. It might lead to tyranny of another sort, of course. But it might not.
The reality is, the world is complex, societies are complex, religions are complex…and we can’t put any of it down to any one cause. If the US and UK had meddled at another time in the nation’s history, would it have turned out the same way? In Iran, I think it is likely. The situation there was fertile ground for theocracy. If we had not meddled, would the democracy have thrived? I suspect not, but there is no way to be sure, since we did meddle, and the democracy was removed before it had a chance to demonstrate whether it had staying power or not.
There are thousands of possible counterfactuals, of alternative histories, of what might have beens. At this point, I’m not sure how helpful it is to render any situation down to a simplistic us v them.
We might also notice that our country could be heading the same way, without undue meddling (I say undue, because there likely has been some Russian meddling to destablilize us, but that just shows how easy it is to destablilize a democracy). Democracy is unstable. Theocracy can maintain because they have few scruples, are willing to kill anyone who gets in their way (especially women), and have convinced people they have god on their side.
It’s time for us to face that, to realize how easily we can slip into the same rabbit hole. Bombing Iran might actually take us further into that rabbit hole by continuing to permit the currently lawless dictatorship to do whatever the hell it wants, not only to the people in the country that voted for it, but to anyone in the world they decide they don’t like.
As Ophelia is fond of saying, we’re doomed.
Well it’s not exactly that I’m fond of saying it, it’s that I keep finding things that point in that direction.
I imagine Trump & his team watching Top Gun: Maverick which features a knock out blow on installations in a unnamed country, but you guess Iran. Exciting stuff to watch with Tom Cruise in that expensive hardware. And of course the USA is safe thousands of miles away with its great military power – any retaliations will be minor attacks on bases. But in the long run it may not affect Iran that much.
There is the myth of the decisive battle – but there are very few decisive battles. Latest news is that Iran had moved some of its enriched uranium from the sites. Iran is a huge place with a complicated geography of mountains and deserts and plenty of hiding holes, and they had had plenty of notice that the USA was about to attack.
Trump is now talking of regime change, the sort of thing that requires you to invade a country and take over the political institutions as the Allies did at the end of WWII (or as William the Conqueror did in 1066). That’s a very unlikely event. Trump, with his TV attention span, wanted something smart and showy and of course has no thoughts of long term consequences, and I daresay many of his electors have about the same attention span.
I’m listening to a podcast with David Runciman and Dan Snow about the myth of the decisive battle – the allure that you can once and for all settle an issue with one daring strike. In fact most wars are wars of attrition involving blockades; finance; supplies and are sieges rather than decisive battles.
https://www.ppfideas.com/
The podcast was done the day before the USA strike on Iran – which I suppose is what inspired it.
If only people would just accept our decisive strikes and lie down. It’s so stubborn the way they keep on not obeying.
The comment that leads this is mostly nonsense. “Since the war with Iraq, Iran has kept within its borders, has not attacked its neighbours.” displays a level of ignorance about middle-east affairs it is hard to believe isn’t motivated. Iran has funded a network of terrorist organizations that have been instrumental for decades in keeping countries around the region from developing. Lebanon would not be the mess it is, or Yemen, or Syria, without the Iranian terrorist network having perverted their politics for decades, all so it could persecute the Jews – many of whom were chased out of those very countries to Israel.
Meanwhile, back in reality, the question of how much damage the strikes did to Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon in the next few months remains. It seems likely that the bombs loosed on Fordow did substantial damage and perhaps collapsed the facility. On the other hand, we can all see the satellite photos of trucks lined up outside Fordow in the days prior to the bombing, which presumably hauled equipment and materials to other sites.
Assuming that this information was available to Israel in real time and that Israel could overfly Iran with impunity at that point, why did Israel not bomb those trucks? Did Israel instead follow those trucks to wherever they were headed with, as Iran claims, the 60% enriched uranium from Fordow?
https://www.jns.org/iranian-media-uranium-moved-from-fordow-pre-strike/
The fog of war can be impenetrable. We may learn as strikes happen on previously unknown facilities; we may learn as Iran uses its stockpile of 60% uranium to build a dirty bomb to irradiate population centers in Israel or America. We may never learn.
The best any of us can hope for is the Iranian people to overthrow the mullahs. All of us surely remember the protests after the murder of Mahsa Amini and the chants of “Women, Life, Freedom” by the soon-crushed protestors. We may remember the song “Baraye” going around the world and being performed by popular Western bands like Coldplay.
Are we going to forget all of that now that Israel has entered the frame? Is judenhass more important than women, life, or freedom?
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