I’m fine with considering a nation my enemy if they declare themselves to be my enemy, even if I have no previous beef with them. Why not take them at their word? There are a billion reasons not to attack them, but there’s no reason to simply dismiss their words as “just rhetoric”. They are saying that they would at the very least ostracize us if not attack us if they could.
The last time we ignored a country like that they attacked Ukraine. Unlike a lot of other countries that declare themselves to be America’s enemy, most Americans couldn’t give two shits about Russia before the Ukraine war started. And they made good on that anti-western rhetoric to justify an unjustifiable invasion. So ignoring death wishes as “just rhetoric” doesn’t seem to have a good track record.
We are the equivalent of “Russia” in this; we attacked them. We certainly haven’t ignored them, we’ve been a constant threat to them for decades. We are the problem far more than they are.
What level of response is justified on that scenario, though? If a country declares that they are your enemy, do you increase surveillance on them, increase your defensive posture towards them, or just go ahead and attack?
The US didn’t impose Mossadegh on the Iranians. Nor the Ayatollahs.
And the US didn’t “impose” the Shah on Iran either, the US supported a counter-coup to put the Shah back in power after Mossadegh’s coup, but Mossadegh would have likely lost power anyways.
The U.S. supported a coup that put the Shah on power, the actions of the Shah once in power were brutal, are you seriously telling me that is unjustified for Iranians to feel anger towards the U.S. for its responsability in installing the Shah?.
I’ve already noted that attacking is not warranted in that situation. At the very least, I’d be wary of going there as a tourist because a lot of them occasionally capture tourists to hold hostage. Even in countries that don’t themselves have a track record of doing so.
At the very most, I’d be wary of doing deals with them as I would be afraid that they would renege on them to score political points. The only example I can think of is Russia (which is of course, defended by tankies as being justified by the west “encroaching” on them by not turning their backs on Russia’s embattled neighbors.)
You are aware that the guy who was doing the couping whas the Shah’s general who was there because the Shah was in fact already the leader of the country? And that this “coup” was about deposing Mossadegh after he had suspended the constitution and seized dictatorial authority?
Yes, the US supported this, because who wouldn’t support kicking out the dictator who just seized power?
Not as upset as they should be at Mossadegh, or at the guys who overthrew the Shah and became a hundred times worse.
Because it was an internal Iranian matter?
Or is the U.S. now the arbiter of who can or cannot be the ruler of Iran?
Because, furthermore, the externally imposed regime turned out to be extremely brutal?
Try and put yourself in the average Iranian shoes, a foreign power meddles in your country’s internal political life, would you be happy about that?.
The regime brought to power thanks to that foreign power turns out to be horrible, would you be grateful to that foreign power?.
Why is a foreign backed coup better than an internal one? are you seriously so blind to other people’s national pride?
And I fully expect, in some (hopefully better) new regime in Iran, for people to chant “Death to the Ayatollahs!” or however the current regime gets to be called by that time, that’s neither here nor there.
Because the Shah never massacred thirty thousand people in the streets, or have his morality police beat teenage girls to death because they showed some hair. I get that moral relativism is all the rage, but I’m not going to pretend that the Shah’s government was anywhere near the same ballpark as the Ayatollahs are.
A foreign backed coup to put someone like the Ayatollahs in power would be much worse than a domestic coup to put someone like the Shah in power, obviously.
Whether a coup is “foreign” or not matters a lot less than what government it imposes.
And by the way, many Iranians view the Ayatollah regime as foreign as well.
…and the KGB trained Basij tortured many orders of magnitudes more. What’s your point? Should we ignore that fact because they’re opposed to America and “colonialism” and thus the Good Guys?
We are not comparing the Sha with the current regime, the chants in question started after the fall of the Sha’s regime, when all those things hadn’t happened.
In any case, it seems like you don’t understand how galling it can be for a foreign power to instigate a coup in your country, I will stop trying to make you see how somebody can be so incensed by it that they chant “down with $foreign power” regularily.
I have no idea what you’re talking about. I was simply correcting for the record the claim that the US propped up a dictator out of nowhere. No, two dictators were fighting each other and the US had one they favored.
I certainly never expressed surprise or confusion about Iranians chanting “Death to America”.