On the program, pbs claimed that during the early stage of the war against Iraq, Iran was fairly supportive(afraid?) of the U.S. government. Now, the new Iranian government is much more aggressive simply because U.S. troops got tangled up in Iraq. My question is, just how crazy is the current Iranian government?
If the new U.S. president comes at the end of 08 and decided to pull the troops out of Iraq, would Iran get involved in the civil war inside Iraq? How much does it mean to Iranian to have a piece of Iraq? What kind of local resistance would the Iranian face if they got involved? How would the Sunni population in Iraq act regarding Iranian involvement in the civil war? How would the Sunni population inside Iran act if Iran got involved in the civil war of Iraq? Would the conflict between Shia and Sunni play a big part in the civil war in Iraq? How would Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey react if Iran really want a piece of Iraq?
I'm asking all these questions is because I would like to know more background on the conflicts. The balance of power in Middle East has always influence the price of oil, our economy, and our policy. I don't want to see any more U.S. soldiers continue suffer through an expensive and almost endless war. However, if the Iranian government is really that crazy and wanted a big pie in Iraq. If U.S. left Iraq, I would assume there would be more than just a civil war in Iraq. Could it become an all out war throughout the entire middle east? Would the supply of oil decrease, and oil price go higher?
Am I right, or am I nuts? Or do Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey don't care much about Iran's ambitions? Or could the Iranian government cool down, and talk to the new president like in the hostage crisis?
What else am I missing?
Last edited by skjhlkj on Sun Nov 25, 2007 1:28 pm; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 7:52 am Post subject: Re: How crazy is the current Iranian government?
Look at it like this.
If Canada were in a state of anarchy, occupied by a foreign force that had called you 'evil incarnate', openly threatened you and your interests - what would be your opinion and actions?
Personally I'd take the lesson of north korea to heart and get a few nuke warheads as quickly as possible. Saying that, it important to note that Iran is ALLOWED to enrich uranium. Provided the UN says they can find no nuke weapons programme, they're in the right. Israel, India and Pakistan are much bigger and more dangerous transgressors in the non-proliferation stakes.
A lot less heat and a bit more intelligence is what's needed. _________________ Arcane Domain
Joined: Dec 06, 2005 Posts: 833 Location: Stopped at the border.
Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 8:12 am Post subject: Re: How crazy is the current Iranian government?
I'm not entirely sure that much of what Iran has done, Ahmadinejad denying the holocaust for instance as well as ambiguous nuclear positions, hasn't been carefully placed rhetoric to draw out a situation that reveals the Saudi's poor reserve position. They know that with increased Middle-East tension comes higher oil prices and with higher oil prices inevitabley comes a call for the Saudi's to increase production to help off-set the economic impact. So far Saudi Arabia has been able to fudge past the higher production calls that have come with rhetoric of their own. I think Iran still hopes that they can reveal the Saudi position short of a shooting war. Unless the US actually decides to invade that revelation is more valuable to Iran than nuclear weapons. By undermining the Saudis Iran can undermine the US. Everything that the US has going in the Mid-East (not withstanding the Qatari connection) relies on the Saudi lynchpin both to hold it in place and to fuel it. _________________ "Hope encourages men to take risks; men in a strong position may follow her without ruin, if not without loss. But when they stake all that they have to the last coin (for she is a spendthrift), she reveals her real self in the hour of failure."
Joined: Aug 11, 2005 Posts: 665 Location: Eastern NC
Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 8:44 am Post subject: Re: How crazy is the current Iranian government?
skj
You've come to the wrong website. Most of the poster here think Iran is a saintly paradise, countering the evil America. Stick with the pbs show, it's based on fact, those don't fly well here.
Joined: Mar 26, 2005 Posts: 3690 Location: over here
Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 9:55 am Post subject: Re: How crazy is the current Iranian government?
garyp wrote:
Look at it like this.
If Canada were in a state of anarchy, occupied by a foreign force like China that had called you 'evil incarnate', openly threatened you and your interests - what would be your opinion and actions?
Added China so we can imagine better.
Personally I don't think there's such a big difference between America and Iran.
Iran sort of says it wants to wipe out Israel, while America is supporting Israel in sort of wiping out the palestinians. Both countries use aggresive and oversimplified (should I say childish?) rhetoric.
Both not great at democracy, though Iran has much more to choose from in elections, in both countries a religious/extremist minority are calling the shots.
Judicial system both quite harsh, though there are relatively more deathpenalties in Iran, the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world. The US has better individual freedoms, though less so than 10 years ago.
America supports "freedom" fighters in Iran, while Iran supports "terrorists" in Iraq/Lebanon.
All in all, I'd still much rather live in America if you made me choose, though for the world indeed the US (neocons)seems much more dangerous; Iran has never attacked a sovereign nation, while the US supported the abusive regime of the Shah. While I don't subscribe to the Islamic society/current Iranian president nor support terrorism, nor like to see atomic weapons spread, I do feel
sympathy for Iran rather than the US in their war of words.
And when we're talking about nukes, the US would do better to pay attention to a much more instable and militant islamic country that happens to be an ally and that already has atomic weapons: PAKISTAN.
Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 9:56 am Post subject: Re: How crazy is the current Iranian government?
Fishman wrote:
skj
You've come to the wrong website. Most of the poster here think Iran is a saintly paradise, countering the evil America. Stick with the pbs show, it's based on fact, those don't fly well here.
Joined: Mar 26, 2005 Posts: 3690 Location: over here
Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 9:58 am Post subject: Re: How crazy is the current Iranian government?
Fishman wrote:
skj
You've come to the wrong website. Most of the poster here think Iran is a saintly paradise, countering the evil America. Stick with the pbs show, it's based on fact, those don't fly well here.
Joined: Apr 27, 2007 Posts: 4262 Location: The Great Sonoran Desert
Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 10:08 am Post subject: Re: How crazy is the current Iranian government?
skjhlkj wrote:
Am I right, or am I nuts?
What else am I missing?
At this point you are neither right nor nuts (can those two words be used together or should I have used "or"?...I digress)...
It appears you need to:
1) Make a decision to jump down the rabbit hole...the hardest part
2) Read everything you can lay your eyes on WHILE planting zucs...for the next 90 days straight...
3) ask the question again _________________ "There must be a bogeyman; there always is, and it cannot be something as esoteric as "resource depletion." You can't go to war with that." Emersonbiggins
"... hope is a rotten-thighed whore" Niko Kazantzakis
Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 10:47 am Post subject: Re: How crazy is the current Iranian government?
I don't think Iran is a "saintly paradise", more a theocratic dictatorship with the semblance of a secular democracy. It's certainly a national entity and like all national entities it has an interest in its regional geopolitics, resources and strangely enough, stability.
I also don't think the mullahs and their elected representatives are "insane". The reference to Ahmadinejad denying the holocaust for example is western propaganda, as is the notion that he said he would like to "wipe Israel off the map". As usual the neocon sound bytes play well and echo around the world while the reality is somewhat more ... nuanced.
What I do find utterly insane is the blatant propagandizing of yet another "Hitler" in the middle east needing to be "regime changed" - all because he's an independent president of a country, like Iraq, that has been cursed by an overabundance of "our" oil.
I have no doubt that Iran is already involved in the war in Iraq in support of the Shiia insurgency but also of the US installed puppet regime's Shiia majority. And why shouldn't they be? Their neighbour has been illegally invaded by an extremely aggressive western military power that has already slaughtered 1 million people and threatens to ignite the entire Persian Gulf oil producing region by attacking Iran. The Saudi's of course are doing the same in supporting the Sunni insurgency. The only difference is that the Saudi regime has been more or less compliant to US interests.
As for Iranian influence in Iraq if the US forces ever leave ... well one argument mounted against the invasion was that if democracy was ever allowed to become a reality in Iraq it would only have increased Iranian influence in the region simply because a democratic regime there would have a Shiia majority friendly to Iran. The current sectarian balkanization was predicted precisely because of this simple fact. Anything other than a bloody long term insurgency, much like that in Palestine, would not allow the US military to stay the course indefinitely seeing as installing yet another murderous right wing military dictator like the Shah of Iran was not a politically viable solution.
So what's left if the US is forced to retire from the battlefield? Probably a failed state with a rump nationalist movement of secular Iraqi's fighting off radicalized fundamentalists split down broad Shiia/Sunni/Kurd/tribal lines with millions of ordinary men, women and children caught in between. And of course Iran and Saud vying for influence, along with everyone else interested in Iraqi oil.
It's an awful bloody mess and was always the most insanely criminal way to deal with the advent of peak oil. If the US hawks have their way though and their domestic populace swallows the poisonously ludicrous propaganda being fed them, then it can only get much worse ... by an order of several magnitudes. But the US way of life is apparently "non-negotiable" and while Persian Gulf oil remains the greatest strategic prize in history we are probably set for an oil end game war that "will not end in our lifetimes" ... unless MAD becomes a reality. _________________ Polemos is lord of all things,
it has shown some to be gods and some mortals,
it has made some slaves and others free.
Everything originates in its strife ... Strife is justice
and all things both come to pass and perish through strife.
Heraclitus
Last edited by zeugen on Sun Nov 25, 2007 11:24 am; edited 2 times in total
Joined: Oct 23, 2004 Posts: 5516 Location: New Jersey
Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 11:09 am Post subject: Re: How crazy is the current Iranian government?
Twilight wrote:
Do some reading on what the Iran-Iraq war was like. There is no appetite to go through something like that again.
Good point. The US encouraged Iraq to attack Iran and go after its main producing oil fields, but the military operations bogged down and eventually Iraq was pushed back to its borders.
However Iran's oil refinery infrastructure was badly damage in that war and never recovered very much. _________________ It's already over, now it's just a matter of adjusting.
Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 12:14 pm Post subject: Re: How crazy is the current Iranian government?
skjhlkj wrote:
...I'm asking all these questions is because I would like to know more background on the conflicts. The balance of power in Middle East has always influence the price of oil, our economy, and our policy. I don't want to see any more U.S. soldiers continue suffer through an expensive and almost endless war. However, if the Iranian government is really that crazy and wanted a big pie in Iraq. If U.S. left Iraq, I would assume there would be more than just a civil war in Iraq. Could it become an all out war throughout the entire middle east? Would the supply of oil decrease, and oil price go higher?
Am I right, or am I nuts? Or do Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey don't care much about Iran's ambitions? Or could the Iranian government cool down, and talk to the new president like in the hostage crisis?
What else am I missing?
Iran's Mullahs control the government, not Ahmadinehad, who is a yapping little lap dog with no real power. He was elected as an Iranian Populist who made a lot of promises to the poor who, in Iran, are really poor and unsophisticated people. The real government is the Council of Twelve and the person with ultimate power is the Supreme... (can't remember his title right now).
Iran's leadership keeps it's cards close to its chest. They are very distrustful of the West.
One of the best books to read on the whole Middle East, including Iran, is A History Of The Modern Middle East by William Cleveland which explains everything in unbiased fashion. It also explains the differing political , religious and nationalist factions in the Middle East. It's an absorbing story of interaction and conflict with the West and the different approaches each country has taken.
The roots of Iranian distrust go back to 1953 and the toppling of Mossadegh by the CIA. Mossadegh had nationalized Iranian oil and paid fair price for it to the Brits (BP). But the Brits weren't happy and complained loud and long to the Americans who decided to take covert action.
This led to the re-instatement of the monarchy in the person of Shah Reza Pahlavi who tried to forcibly Westernize Iran. The Shah saw Iran as extremely backward compared to the West. And Iran has always had a lot of backwardness within it's complex culture (some segments of it's polity are extremely sophisticated). But he was not a good leader and was not intelligent like Turkey's Ata Turk who was able to turn Turkey into a more Europe oriented country. The Shah created many enemies within Iran because of his brutal methods to force progressive change upon the diverse people. This eventually led to the Iranian Revolution and the reign of the Mullahs under Sharia Law.
On the heels of that revolution came the Iran-Iraq War instigated by Saddam Hussein who saw Iran's emergence as a Shia Islamic-led government as a threat to the mostly secularist, Sunni-led Iraq with its mostly Shia population. Iran lost a million men in that war and it was a major defining event for the nation. Iran saw the US mostly support Iraq in that conflict. So it's distrust of the West is well-founded.
Iran wants to create a peaceful, non-antagonistic neighbor next door when the Iraq War ends. And they don't want to see a permanent American presence in the region. The way that events have played out so far, it looks like Iran is emerging as a winner, even though most of it's work has been done for it by the bungling of the US prosecution of the war.
The entire Middle East seems to be a mosaic of long standing cultural hatreds and tribal bickering that is difficult for a Westerner to get a feel for. And the biggest of the divides is the Shia-Sunni split that goes back over a thousand years. The Saudis hate the Iranians and vice versa but Sunnis and Shia also cooperate when it serves their mutual purposes. For example, there is a big cultural divide between the Syrians and the Iranians but those two countries also cooperate regularly.
Iran appears to have backed off any covert aggression against US forces in Iraq. It has been accused of providing exceptionally powerful IEDs and military advisors but it not known exactly how or how much the government is involved. The Council probably has given some sort of covert sanction but none that could ruin its position of plausible deniability (just like us!).
They are laying low. Because they can see that the surge has been a tactical success but a strategic still-birth. Iraq is in stalemate and probably nothing of tremendous significance will happen there for the next 14 months while Georgie finishes his term. They don't know what the next US elections will bring so it's a wait-and-see approach they are taking. My sense is that they can see that the American public is very unsupportive of the war so they will not try to do anything that upsets that status quo. They are playing a long-term game.
With the price of oil rising, Iran and other oil producers will have the money to concentrate on internal problems, development and things like that. No one wants to ruin that trend by a wider war.
Everyone in the Middle East is fearful that some event will spark a wider regional conflict. Iran doesn't want to be the source of that spark yet it remains supportive of Iraq's Shia majority and there are strong cultral/political/economic links between them that cannot simply be turned off and on at will.
Saudi Arabia and other Sunni countries simply want a peaceful Iraq as well. The enmity exists between Iran and Saudi Arabia but it doesn't go deep enough that either country wants conflict. Saudi Arabia, as a staunch US ally, cannot afford to be seen as battling another Islamic country - it's unhappy population of young men could easily turn against it.
Everyone in the region want the trouble in Iraq to settle down. And they want the US to leave, but not abruptly.
So deals can be made. And the chess game is still being played.
Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 1:06 pm Post subject: Re: How crazy is the current Iranian government?
Quote:
Saudi Arabia, as a staunch US ally, cannot afford to be seen as battling another Islamic country - it's unhappy population of young men could easily turn against it.
Don't forget the factor that the Wahhabists in KSA are not very fond of the Shi'a outside or inside their nation and have treated them, at many times, as pure enemies. Any war with Iran and KSA will have a problem with their Shiite population most likely more than Sunni (although both are a possibility). And does anyone wanna guess where the Shiites live in KSA? Right around the oil fields. How convenient!
Quote:
The real government is the Council of Twelve and the person with ultimate power is the Supreme ... (can't remember his title right now)
You mean "Supreme Leader"? Sounds too culty, at least to me. His name is Ali Khamenei. And we know that Khamenei is dangerous. Read this:
Quote:
Additionally, Khamenei has stated that he believes in the importance of nuclear technology for civilian purposes because "oil and gas reserves cannot last forever."[16]
That terrorist bastard. How dare he recognize the limits of this capitalistic world. _________________ I want to put out the fires of Hell, and burn down the rewards of Paradise. They block the way to God. I do not want to worship from fear of punishment or for the promise of reward, but simply for the love of God. - Rabia
Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 2:05 pm Post subject: Re: How "aggressive" is the current Iranian govern
I changed the wording of my question because it was probably a little misleading. I first used the word "crazy" because the news report I got from TV and newspaper. Most of our news report painted an image of evil and almost insane for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And if I didn't know any real political and historical background, I would say he is insane for saying "holocaust is a myth."
I asked the question on just how aggressive is Iran on Iraq because everything I heard from the news was bad. It seems that Iran was very aggressive and wanted a piece of Iraq.
What I really wanted to know is the real "truth" and "motivation" behind all this fuss. I think it's impossible for any news reporter to support or defend anyone that deny holocaust. But at the same time, the news today is so superficial and distorted, it is impossible for anyone to know the real story.
I guess my real question is why did Iranian government got involved? How much influence do Iranian government want over Iraq? Do they want to have a piece of Iraq, or just have political influence over Iraq? How would other neighbor country (especially Sunni) feel about this? How destructive is the conflict between Sunni and Shia? Could the middle east countries contain the conflicts between Sunni and Shia within Iraq, or would the conflict widen to other country? Do middle east countries prefer conflicts to gain territory, power, and oil? Or do they prefer peaceful cooperation with contained conflict?
I think a lot of you guys already answered the question, I just wanted to clear thing up a little bit.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
News
Discussions
Resources
Members
Forum FAQ
Search
Usergroups
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
