So is homosexuality. Yet Ahmadinejad looks pretty faggy to me…
I’m just wondering how the fellas from Cook County ended up running the Iranian elections.
Seriously though? I think this is Iran’s problem to solve, but I hope that Obama’s mind gets real clear real quick about the possiblity of a nuclear Iran. If this isn’t a harbinger of real bad things, I don’t know what is.
You kidding? You see how he dresses? Hell, I didn’t even know they had Salvation Army stores in Iran!
Practically nobody is happy about the nuclear power issue, just like practically nobody is happy about the election. The question is, what can anybody do about it?
Tumbleweeds.
The answer appears to be ‘not much.’ All the Iranian candidates were in favor of continuing nuclear development, from what I read, so even if Moussavi were elected cleanly, they’d still be working on that. If there was a site to bomb, Israel probaby would have done it. I guess Russia and China are doing business with Iran, so maybe if they were opposed to the program, they would have the ability to do something - but I don’t think they are.
Iraq is not being “called” a failed state, it"*is[/] a failed state with all that implies. Did you read the 12 criteria?
A critical issue for a succesful government is to be independent from outside forces and to have the monopoly of the use of force internally, neither of which is true in Iraq. Look just read the criteria.
You cannot be serious. If you are serious this shows some serious historical ignorance. Or you are just playing dumb and being disingenous.
In 1951 Germany and Japan were totally peaceful and safe for natives and foreigners. To compare that to Iraq today is just preposterous.
BBC TV is reporting hundreds of thousands out in the streets of Tehran and possibly into the millions, or at least A million. The reporter is saying he’s beginning to hear the word “revolution” bandied about.
So what are the possibilities of how this may play out, how possible are each of them, and what would be the ramifications?
Ahmadinejad’s forces could put this down with brutal force.
Moussavi could be killed.
The religious council could make a good enough show of an investigation that it mollifies the crowds. Or it otherwise just peters out.
The religious council could rule that there is enough doubt about the procedures that a run-off election will be held. That one is rigged less sloppily and Ahmadinejad still wins under a cloud but less dark of one.
The religious council could do whatever the Iranian equivalent is of throwing Ahmadinejad under the bus and then just give Moussavi the orders instead.
The religious council (The Assembly of Experts, I guess) throws out Ayatollah Khamenei and puts in someone who declares the election null and void and a new election is held. Time explores that possibility and points out the importance of Ayotallah Rafsanjani in these maneuverings.
Revolution overthrowing the Ahmadinejad but leaving the council in place.
Revolution that kicks out the council as well replacing it with a religious body that has less power.
Any other choices? Any one willing to handicap it?
Foamy!
sigh You’re missing the point**(s).** Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary Guard have marginalized Khamenei and the Guardians. (See post #89 and links therein.) Which means Iran has several divisions cross-cutting against each other:
-
At the highest level, the Guardians on one side against the Revolutionary Guards on the other.
-
At the grassroots level, the hardline religionists vs. the secular reformers. We can’t really know which has more popular support, but we can be sure each has significant popular support and they’re about evenly matched. Which is a formula for extremely bloody war-to-the-knife civil conflict.
-
The idea of “Iranian” (as distinct from Persian) national identity vs. Kurdish, Arab, and Balochi nationalists/secessionists – the latter being quiet at the moment, but if they sniff an opportunity we’ll be hearing a lot from them. Which is a formula for, etc. See Rwanda and Burundi. And Iraq, for that matter.
-
The Sunni-Sh’ia split – not so important in Iran as in Iraq, as Iran is 89% Shi’a, but that doesn’t make it politically insignificant, and see above. War to the knife. Think, really think, about that phrase.
-
And, of course, economic-social-class divisions, as everywhere else.
So, as complicated as the situation is, we can’t really know what forces civil war will unleash.
But we can be sure it will be anything but pretty.
Iran is just as volatile as Iraq, and five times as big.
It is in everybody’s best interest to keep the situation as quiet as reasonably possible.
So BG, playing out the hand assuming that it is indeed true that Ayatollah Khamenei has less power than most experts make out and has been fed highly filtered information - how do you see this playing out? Do you see this resulting in a prolonged bloody civil war in which various factions all knife each other into a pool of blood? Or do you see any other potential ways for this to play out?
Quite frankly, I think this point is not only stupid but intellectually untenable. So, in essence, we must all be completely without sin before we can ever cast doubt of the validity of other countrie’s elections? Say what you will about both of the instances you quote above but massive fraud wasn’t/isn’t a factor. Moreover, it is unreasonable to think that an election with over 100M voters will be 100% perfect.
Getting back to the issue at hand I’m not sure there is anything that the US can or even should do at the moment. Military intervention is just not an option, nor should it be. I think more information is needed.
Of course, were Israel suddenly use this as an opportunity to take out the nuclear facilities (if such a thing is possible) then the powder keg might just explode.
You are probably the only one who (almost) believes that.
Now please stop the chest-thumping arguments. This is a thread to discuss the Iranian elections and resulting crisis. Why don’t you restrict your ridiculous opinions about Iraq to the appropriate threads? In this one we have considerably more interesting material to chew on.
True, at this point there is no proper understanding of what is happening. Even if there were the political will, and a compelling reason to intervene, there are not many powers capable of intervening.
Not the UN, which is likely to experience deadlock on this issue for the immediate future.
Not the US. Obama is playing it smart and safe - at a time when Iranians may actually need the support of the US. In fact, by calling for non-violence and patience among Iranians, Obama is positioning the US in this crisis as unequivocally non-interfering, in contrast to the last time there was a revolution in Iran.
Israel might be crazy enough to try something in this chaos but they are as aware as anyone else of the potential for the tinderbox effect. EU, NATO, Russia and China are out of the question.
At this point I see national leaders and organizations just trying to grasp what exactly is happening and gain an understanding, should the current regime fall, of who will possibly claim or snatch power. There is no real alternative leadership in Iran and mob-based committees are famously poor performers. Fanatical Islamists wield a lot of clout in most aspects of society and are very likely to remain a part of whatever government emerges after this crisis. This is a time for information-gathering.
No. The Guardians will not seriously try to challenge the Revolutionary Guard, is my guess. At the top level, it’ll all be smoothed over behind the scenes. At the grassroots level, there will be demonstrations but no revolution. I think there are a lot of Iranians who remember the revolutionary frenzy of 1979 and, even if they remember it with a certain fondness the way some Boomers remember the '60s, would rather not go through anything like that again so long as they live. At present, the Iranian people are well-fed enough and have a not completely unjustified sense of real participation in their government. Things would have to get a lot worse before they seriously considered rising up. If I were a young, secular Iranian, I would take a “Time Is On My Side” attitude. The old mullahs can’t last forever. The Revolutionary Guard can – but is comparatively tolerable.
Well if people wouldn’t have taken it on a dishonest tangent I wouldn’t have had to respond. Don’t piss on my head and tell me it’s raining.
But in the future here’s a good tactic. Don’t tell me to shut up and challenge me if you don’t want me to respond. In otherwords if you don’t want me to talk about it then don’t say something about the topic. Pretty simple right? Notice how the last few responses where people asked me to shut up were what I responded to? And if they hadn’t told me to shut up I wouldn’t have continued that line of discussion? Funny how that works right?
So don’t try to lie to me, and I won’t call out the lies. The context was very specific, he made a comparison, and that was that. I didn’t misinterpret it at all. It’s just a cognitive bias issue where people are personally attacking me because they don’t like what I am saying. He responded directly in context. Any other conclusion is well simply…dishonest. If I am talking about a particular subject and someone directly responds to it with a tangent, don’t tell me the original subject is not part of it.
So let’s go with YOU shut up. If YOU shut up, I will have nothing to respond to. I am not the one who keeps carrying it in this thread, and I have no reason to deal with your BBQ Pit rude bullshit here, I’m sorry if you have a problem with it, you’ll notice that I am the one who started a separate thread. So YOU need to take it to the other thread.
Insult me to my face and try to tell me something that isn’t true is, and I will respond every time. So here’s your chance to shut up.
Quite incredibly, Pat Buchanan and I actually agree on something:
You think they have that sense? The millions of protestors in Tehran beg to disagree. And if food weren’t a problem for a lot of people, Ahmadinejad wouldn’t have been handing out potatoes to farmers (for which he is derided as “President Potato”).
Why do you say they’re evenly matched?
Nice, I agree with Pat Buchanan on foreign policy issues a lot actually.