Well, if you want to continue digging a hole for yourself by saying that the Iranian regimes support for Hezbollah had nothing to do with Khomeini’s beliefs and was simply a desire to strike back at Israel and the US you can but no serious expert on Iran or Lebanon will agree with you.
To anyone who thinks he’s right, I’d recommend reading up on Khomeini and read both his writings and speeches.
I’m sorry, but that is an asinine argument. You think the “counter demonstrations” which were organized by the government are “proof” of how popular the Mullahs are.
By that standard than the Shah was even more popular since his regime had much larger “demonstrations” supporting him.
Now, just so we’re clear, you think that the Mullahs are better than the Shah despite the fact that the Mullah:
A. During the 80s put ten to fifteen times as many political prisoners in jail as the Shah ever did.
B. Stoned women to death for adultery. Something the Shah never did.
**C. **Set up and gave law enforcement powers to the Committee for the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue and gave them the authority to set up sting operations to catch, torture, and execute Iranians for being gay. By contrast, Iran of the 60s and 70s under the Shah was far more gay-friendly than the US of that time period.
**D. **Caused virtually all of Iran’s Jewish population flee and then forbade the remainder from leaving and took dramatic steps to prevent them from doing so. Occasionally locks up various Jewish leaders on trumped up charges of being spies. Also dramatically cracked down on Iran’s Christian minority. This is a dramatic reversal of the Shah, where Jews and Christians were treated much better.
**E. **Aggressively has tried to hunt down and persecute every member of the Bahai faith, causing them to have to go into hiding lest they be murdered. While the Shah hardly treated them equally, he was never remotely this horrible.
F. Has imposed a number of morality laws on the Iranian people dramatically restricting their personal freedom. The most famous of which has been laws requiring women to wear the Chador. The Shah never did anything remotely like this.
Now, with all of that, you have the gall to claim that the Mullahs are “better” than the Shah and you’re only evidence for this is the “counter demonstrations” that occurred during the Green Revolution. This despite the fact that those “counter demonstrations” were smaller than similar ones the Shah had.
Frankly, I’m confused that you feel this way.
I thought you were a leftist.
Leftists generally don’t like governments that stone women for adultery, hunt down and execute gays, persecute religious minorities, require women to cover their hair and throw hundreds of thousands of political prisoners in jail.
Why are you giving Iran such a pass and saying it was better than the previous regime which did nothing of that(except for the political prisoners, except in that case it was far, far fewer).
Please list me what horrors the Shah inflicted on the Iranian people that weren’t inflicted on them by the Islamic regime.
If you think most Iranian-Americans support the Shah you know even less about them then you do about Iran. For starters, the Iranian Jews of Beverly Hills and other parts of LA are lots of things, but they’re not going to be enthusiastic supporters of the Shah. The same is true for Iran’s Armenian expatriates.
Moreover, most Iranian-American Muslims aren’t fans of the Shah. My father hated the Shah and left Iran with myself and my mother before he fell.
I’m sorry, but you’ve made the extremely foolish decision that because for a brief period in 2006 there was a large amount of good will for the Hezbollah amongst Lebanese Sunni and Christians. That’s comparable to assuming that because the IDF was popular among the Lebanese Shia during the initial Israeli invasion in the 80s they’re popular now.
Now, since you’re a big believer in polls, you might want to check out polling done by the Pew Research organization just a few months ago.
It found that 84% of all Lebanese Sunnis and 79% of all Lebanese Christians had unfavorable views of Hezbollah.
Sorry, but your information about “the mighty Hezbollah” is grossly outdated.
I would recommend talking to actual Lebanese Christians and Sunnis before foolishly assuming you know how they feel and assume they view the Hezbollah the same way you do.
By “the thing they do best” do you mean kill Jews or intimidate anyone who disagrees with them?
Anyway, fair enough, you freely admit that you don’t care about them being a violently bigoted organization.
I’m sorry that I assumed you were an opponent of bigotry. You seem to be indicating that you have no objection to bigotry. My mistake.
