All due respect my dude (and I tend to respect you as a poster, for all the good that does you), but that’s some *serious *whitewashing of the Shah’s reign. He was, to borrow the words of a prominent modern geopolitical scholar, a bad hombre, a really bad dude, and his rule was marked by the (at the time) highest rate of death penalties in the world, no civilian courts, routinely imprisoned and tortured political opponents and a pervasive secret police on par with the Stasi - and helped directly by the CIA.
Also it lasted 20+ years, not 20 minutes.
I dunno about you, but I rather think if my country got dictator’d, my friends were jailed and my favourite teacher got tortured and shot; I would likely consider that beef-worthy towards the endictatoring party for at least a *little *while.
Or possibly 20 years of systematic torturing, jailing, killing democratic voices and leftist leaders sort of put a lid on all that stuff. Recovering from a dictature is not easy, all the moreso that a dictatorship tends to normalize behaviours and methods anathema to democracy, both among the rulers and the rulees.
E.g. there’s a reason the lofty ideals of the French Revolution rather quickly devolved back into “OK, bear with me guys : what if a Sun King, but in a spiffy uniform and a neato hat instead ?”
It’s very easy from established democracies to judge other countries and say “well if they wanted to be democratic they would be by now”
Its extremely HARD to establish a durable democracy, and is harder when you are poor, dealing with sanctions and recovering from a 20 year long reign of terror.
Also, having the self-proclaimed defender and symbol of democracy instigating a coup against your democratically elected government and then supporting the aforementioned 20 years of terror tends to discredit democracy juuuust a little bit in the eyes of the victim society, don’t you think?.
That’s because I doubt they did. And the reason I doubt they did is because America is saying they did.
I certainly condemn whoever did attack that tanker. If that does turn out to be Iran as a state actor, consider my condemnation as read.
Some portion of the SDMB: “False flag! The Saudis did it! Dick Cheney did it! It’s the Brits’ fault, even though it didn’t happen! Trump just wants war!”
Some other portion of the SDMB: just trust the CIA. They wouldn’t lie to anyone.
Ravenman, you seem to be under the impression that despite the massive lies and disastrous invasion that has plunged the region into crazy bloodshed that will last a generation, we should still trust American sources on these issues. Because you’re the good guys? I guess?
I don’t think he’s even arguing that; I think he’s trying to say that the US can fuck with Iran, but the moment Iran tries to fuck with us back, that constitutes an “escalation.”
Ravenman, sorry, bub, but as I said earlier in the thread, countries don’t let you just take them over the way they used to.
Let’s not forget that the U.S. unilaterally, over the objections of the EU, withdrew from the Iran nuclear framework, and let’s also not forget that the US has threatened to punish any and all foreign companies that do business with Iran. Moreover, have been pressured not to buy oil from Iran, virtually placing the country in an economic choke-hold. Oh, and there’s that bit about the President’s hand-picked cabinet expressly advocating for regime change.
Yeah, it’s a mixture of the Iranians being in “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry!” mode - justifiably angry, in my opinion, due to Trump’s actions - and keeping the pressure on to ensure they have a strong hand when it comes to negotiations, as they will not want to be pushed into accepting a deal that is worse than the previous one.
I continue to marvel? despair? that we have to weigh the veracity of the American President against the friggin’ Iranian National Guard and we still can’t reliably say which is more trustworthy.
I haven’t called “false flag” or anything else in your silly caricature of what’s been argued. And you have most definitely given out a “come on, who you gonna trust? Us or those crazy Iranians?” vibe. Yes, your post was soooo outrageous.
- and this incident is an Iranian tit-for-tat response.