Haha yeah. That’s how Reagan won the cold war all by himself after all.
I thought we agreed at the beginning of this thread that all the US stuff belongs in the other thread. I even linked it for you.
So on to discussing Iran, the rather brutal video posted by struan up above is of a girl called Nada dying, there are other video’s of the attack but she was shot by a Basij while standing around protesting, her father, fellow students and lecturers were all around her.
She’s become something of a symbol as her name apparently means ‘voice’ in farsi and shows the brutality of the Basij.
Also interesting are reports that Rafsanjani is trying to convene the council of experts, which is the only body with the power to remove the supreme leader. He’s doing this from Quatar as most of his family in Iran have been arrested.
Further hope for the protesters comes from the Press TV (the govt. TV channel) admitting that accusations of vote rigging were true to a degree. They said that in 50 of the 160 areas where the opposition said that more people voted then were registered the accusations were true. I think this will have a large affect on those who may have believed the government.
Also you all have to see the video on the front page of the BBC news website. It’s pretty awesome.
If anyone wants a link to that Press TV report - well here it is. Hey, it’s “only 50 cities”
Anybody who is in position to get a feel of how “the Arab street” is taking this across the region so far?
Yep, that “only” was the critical bit.
Meanwhile, this Jerusalem Post article is the best I can find regarding the reactions across the Arab world.
They’ve now placed most of te blame for fomenting this unrest on the UK and are expelling the BBC’s main reporter there, Jon Leyne. A pity, because he really did seem to bend over backward to be fair in his reporting.
Has anyone else considered that if there was a really radical regime change in Iran, that we might just have a golden opportunity for a reapproachment between Iran and the US due to the current US President? I know, it’s a BIG ‘if’…but, well, it could be an ‘if’ that seriously brings about a radical change in the ME and in future American relations there.
Or, it could simply fizzle, or blow up in all our collective faces. Pretty terrifying, all in all…
-XT
To be blunt, I won’t be confident of regime change until mullahs are being hanged in the streets and/or driven into exile. Otherwise it’ll be a lot of noise that’ll gradually fade away before the country reverts to business as usual, with government propaganda sanitizing the historical record.
And it turns out she wasn’t even a protester. BBC is saying now she was nearby, sitting in a car with her music teacher, when she got out to stretch her legs.
Not only do I think it’s possible, but I think it is kind of puzzling that you think it would be an ‘if’ rather than an absolute certainty.
I don’t think that regime change is at all certain at this point…in fact, I think it’s a rather low order of probability right now (though higher than I would have thought, say, a month ago).
-XT
I meant rapprochement is certain if there is regime change.
Why ? A change of government doesn’t automatically mean the new government will like us, or that we will suddenly start treating them better.
Ah…well, the big if I was referring too concerned regime change. So, there was some confusion there. I probably could have worded my post better, but I was posting while doing a major VLAN deployment on the customers site (after being on site something like 30 hours)…always a bad thing.
-XT
The Iranian people don’t hate us as a whole.
Really stupid of the government if that’s true.
That doesn’t mean that a new government won’t. And the people as a whole DO support, for example, Iranian nuclear weapons, which we insist that they aren’t allowed to have. And our hostility towards them has little to do with their present government; we were their enemy before it existed.
Yes, incredibly so.
Doesn’t mean that it has to be that way going forward.
But it doesn’t mean it won’t be either. You said that “rapprochement is certain”; not merely possible.
From CNN : Mullahs join march to protest election results.
So the government has succeeding in squelching significant street protests with its use of force. And up to date no significant calls for general strikes. What are the paths from here? What are the likely outcomes?
Perhaps Rafsanjani will get the Assembly of Experts to remove Khamenei. As a group they are in his camp but having the spine to take that step may a bit much for them. Yet that is the only good path I see left as Khamenei has painted himself in with no option to significantly compromise now. At least it is the case that compromises that may have been acceptable before now will not be enough and ones that were possible before are now specifically excluded and agreeing to them would be impossible for him.
Well Khamenei has one option for a somewhat face saving compromise. In the face of country wide shut down from general strikes he could get Ahmadinejad to resign of his own free will and of his own idea “for the good of the country” and then be “forced” to call for new elections or to appoint a compromise new administration. But not gonna happen.
The alternative is that protests slowly fizzle into a repressed resentment in which the population feels they have no choice but to live with the knowledge that the democratic facet of their government is a complete farce and that there is nothing they can do about it but to wear the yoke. A fight behind the scenes continues in the Religious Council even as Khamenei prevails and more members of Parliament passively resist full cooperation with the President. Regionally Iran is weakened and discredited some as a model modern Islamic state. In turn their proxies also will lose some face and some credibility with the Arab street. Perhaps the initial reaction to such a circumstance will be greater bluster and saber rattling to try to change the narrative but the actors interested in marginalizing Iran will find greater agreement and less resistance to actions designed to isolate the government further as they, even while the option of sitting down to talk is explicitly kept open. After the bluster the persistent voices of discontent within the Council and within Parliament get some real engagement to occur and some actual reforms to happen in order to try to move the state forward.
Or it becomes a completely repressed state along the lines of what was Taliban controlled Afganistan. The nuclear program proceeds. Israel slows it down by bombing the suspected sites and all Hell breaks loose. I don’t think that fits the op’s “non-shitty version” request though.
Any other possibilities? What do you think are the probabilities?