Shah’s son appeals to media:
youtube.com/watch?v=6zv5VMShOyk
“light of information”…heh…
Historically any Gov’t that attacks it own people is not a Gov’t that has the well being of the people in mind. It is only seeking power and dominion over the people. My heart goes out to the Iranians and all others that suffer that civil attack and dominion. The only thing that can rectify it, is more blood. Are people willing to bleed in order to fight their masters?
North Koreans are not, they have be so brain washed by fear that they actually revere their master… Will the Iranians be different?
It would not be the first time masses of Iranians sacrifice themselves to overthrow an evil regime. It’s how the current regime came into power. Remember it was the European left’s wet dream to see the Shah pushed from his American/British supported throne by the students of Tehran in cooperation with the Islamic masses in the country.
One thing Iranians seem to hate more than being subjected to despots is foreign intervention - they’re too proud, too independent, this 5000 year old civilization, to be told by some new Island-powers what is right - so as long as America and Britain stay the hell out of it the Iranians might actually try to take their country back.
Fat chance of that happening, what happens in the middle East concerns every major player in the world, not just the US and Britain. The others are just more subtle or quiet, they let the big boys in first, then lick up the scraps afterwards. The middle east can never be soveriegn it won’t be allowed that much.
Kris, maybe you can educate me as to when Iran lost its sovereignty.
This is hardly about the west’s interference. Iranian media is controlled by the supreme leader and it’s become just like 1984, fake confessions and making the protesters out to be some thugs/thieves/foreign agents. Western media is the way to consolidate all the events into a few publications and find out what’s going on. The western media’s coverage is being labelled as intervention in a country whose government regularly shuts down and arrests the offices and staff of newspapers that say things it doesn’t like. It’s such a blatant diversionary tactic to shift the blame away from the crimes they’re committing on their own people, only the simple minded could ever give credence to it.
Things have quieted down for the time being given the stories of severe beatings, arrests and torture, and it’s also exam time for students. What this has accomplished at least, is to make this government illegitimate and opened the way for openly protesting against Khamenei. It’s also made him a political figure rather than a spiritual one, not that he wasn’t before, but it’s brought it out openly for everyone to see.
It lost it when it became a commodity unfortunately. Smaller countries tend to lose their own control when they control something of value
Please state things explicitly. When exactly did Iran lose its sovereignty. When did it become a commodity. How did it lose its sovereignty? Has the US lost its sovereignty since it relies on China buying up its government bonds? Or because it’s not self sufficient in terms of raw material? What is sovereignty?
Statements that rely on the reader completing them aren’t arguments.
Ok well, it does retain legal soveriegnty it is a country that has not been annexed by another. But when outside influences motivate the government, control laws and actions with money or threats then how soveriegn can that country be? You are right about the US. We are a nation controlled by those that hold debt over us. Once debt occurs then the other party has an interest in what happens to you. Keep in mind sometimes you want to be in debt to a particular person/ country/group. You being in debt to them gives you some sort of security against attack, You don’t harm an investment. Being in debt to China may have been a wise move, China now is invested in us, it will not harm its investment. It is a sound strategic move to become so indebted. It buys time while there are other things on the table. It puts any conflicting issues on the back burner in other words. So yes being indebted to China has caused loss of Soveriegnty to a point , we will be influenced by them in order to keep them pacified, for now.
Iran has maybe allowed too much debt or too much influence, too many hands in the cookie jar so to speak. It is no longer controlled by it own people. Those that lead are in debt or influenced by outsiders. Are the Iranian leaders in a position to remove the influence and debt? Or have they gone too far under the thumbs? I think they have a long way to go to become strong and independent again. A proud country fallen due to economics is far too common now. Now countries are invaded or protected not by armies as much as they are invaded by economics. Yes we still kill and will always kill but, we now kill not just life but indipendence in a new way.
Kris, what Iranian debts are you taking about? Iran still holds one of the greatest reserves of oil in the world, and even if theyve not spent the profits of that very wisely, I dont think theyre economically dependent on others like the US is. Actually their oil is what made the US ans UK overthrow their socialist regime at the half of the past century and replace it with the Shah. Now that was a compromise of their sovereignity, but I think they took it back with Khomeinis revolution. At the cost of much of Irans cosmopolitan culture, but they were successful in becoming and independent state and a threat to their short lived patriarchs. Iran never has been, as many the Arab countries are, vasals of the west.
Thats why I think foreign (anglosaxon) powers should keep out, because it just doesnt compute very well with an old and sophisticated culture like the Persian one to be ‘saved’ by countries who have sacrificed a lot of their economic power and moral standards.
What outside influences motivate the government? Who outside Iran controls Iran’s laws?! Actions with money, I’m going to assume you’re talking about sanctions. We’re part of a global market. If that’s your definition of sovereignty, then no country is free, because all countries are dependent on others for trade, which in turn influences their policies. All that talk of economic protectionism prolonging the recession last year.
As before, there’s trouble with the factual evidence for your comments. Iran hasn’t been controlled by a foreign power since the Mongol invasions. Similarly, Iran has never been controlled by its own people, save a brief democracy in 50-53. Iran has been a semi democratic theocracy since the revolution. The supreme leader makes all big policy decisions, and has control over the media and the security forces.It’s not a matter of it “no longer” being controlled by its own people, since it never was, as was demonstrated in Khatami’s 97-05 tenure, and as emphasised once again in this farce of an election.
In terms of debt, Iran’s debt isn’t extraordinary, having generally been held at around 20% of a GDP that’s majority funded by oil’s fluctuating price, bar the recession, so no Iran doesn’t have too much debt, nulling that argument.
This is a recent column by the always well informed Thomas Friedman on the US policy toward Iran.
''There has been a lot of worthless chatter about what President Barack Obama should say about Iran’s incipient “Green Revolution.” Sorry, but Iranian reformers don’t need our praise. They need the one thing we could do, without firing a shot, that would truly weaken the Iranian theocrats and force them to unshackle their people. What’s that? End our addiction to the oil that funds Iran’s Islamic dictatorship. Launching a real Green Revolution in America would be the best way to support the “Green Revolution” in Iran.
Oil is the magic potion that enables Iran’s turbaned shahs — “Shah Khamenei” and “Shah Ahmadinejad” — to snub their noses at the world and at many of their own people as well. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad behaves like someone who was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple. By coincidence, he’s been president of Iran during a period of record high oil prices. So, although he presides over an economy that makes nothing the world wants, he can lecture us about how the West is in decline and the Holocaust was a “myth.” Trust me, at $25 a barrel, he won’t be declaring that the Holocaust was a myth anymore.
The Obama team wants to pursues with Iran over its nuclear program, no matter who wins there. Fine. But the issue is not talk or no talk. The issue is leverage or no leverage. I love talking to people — especially in the Middle East — on one condition: that we have the leverage. As long as oil prices are high, Iran will have too much leverage and will be able to resist concessions on its nuclear program. With oil at $70 a barrel, our economic sanctions on Iran are an annoyance; at $25, they really hurt.
“People do not change when you tell them they should; they change when they tell themselves they must,” observed Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins University foreign policy specialist. And nothing would tell Iran’s leaders that they must change more than collapsing oil prices.
Mr. Obama has already started some excellent energy-saving initiatives. But we need more. Imposing an immediate “Freedom Tax” of $1 a gallon on gasoline — with rebates to the poor and elderly — would be a triple positive: It would stimulate more investment in renewable energy now; it would stimulate more consumer demand for the energy-efficient vehicles that the reborn General Motors and Chrysler are supposed to make; and, it would reduce our oil imports in a way that would surely affect the global price and weaken every petro-dictator.
That is how — as Bill Maher likes to say — we make the bad guys “fight all of us.”
Sure, it would take time to influence the regime, but, unlike words alone, it will have an impact. I believe in “The First Law of Petro-Politics,” which stipulates that the price of oil and the pace of freedom in petrolist states — states totally dependent on oil exports to run their economies — operate in an inverse correlation. As the price of oil goes down, the pace of freedom goes up because leaders have to educate and unleash their people to innovate and trade. As the price of oil goes up, the pace of freedom goes down because leaders just have to stick a pipe in the ground to stayin power.
Exhibit A: the Soviet Union. High oil prices in the 1970s suckered the Kremlin into propping up inefficient industries, overextending subsidies, postponing real economic reforms and invading Afghanistan. When oil prices collapsed to $15 a barrel in the late 1980s, the overextended, petrified Soviet Empire went bust.
In a 2006 speech entitled “The Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia,” Yegor Gaidar, a deputy prime minister of Russia in the early 1990s, noted that “the timeline of the collapse of the Soviet Union can be traced to Sept. 13, 1985. On this date, Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the minister of oil of Saudi Arabia, declared that the monarchy had decided to alter its oil policy radically. The Saudis stopped protecting oil prices, and Saudi Arabia quickly regained its share in the world market.
“During the next six months,” added Gaidar, “oil production in Saudi Arabia increased fourfold, while oil prices collapsed by approximately the same amount in real terms. As a result, the Soviet Union lost approximately $20 billion per year, money without which the country simply could not survive.”
If we could bring down the price of oil, the Islamic Republic — which has been buying off its people with subsidies and jobs for years — would face the same pressures. The ayatollahs would either have to start taking subsidies away from Iranians, which would only make the turbaned shahs more unpopular, or empower Iran’s human talent — men and women — and give them free access to the learning, science, trade and collaboration with the rest of the world that would enable this once great Persian civilization to thrive without oil.
Let’s get serious: An American Green Revolution to end our oil addiction — to parallel Iran’s Green Revolution to end its theocracy — helps us, helps them and raises the odds that whoever wins the contest for power, there will have to be a reformer. What are we waiting for?‘’
Jakob if they intend to use the oil reserve for their own use, then it would be an asset. But that is their product, having a huge reserve in today’s changing ways is not an asset, it can safely be put in the bebit column. If its not being sold it is costing money. With new oil being discovered and drilled in other parts of the world, their reserve is not secure as an asset. Folks will buy from other sources as they crop up. The US will begin drilling Russia too, then you have the potential of SouthAmerican Countries and other parts of Africa. Iranians may have money now, they may not ,as Rouzbeh points out, have much financial debt now but, I count right now that reserve as a debt. Which jumps them up there pretty high.
If it sits it not making money. Rouzbeh also points out that their Gov’t is not theirs, it is run by religion. Its not the Iranian gov’t. it is a religious gov’t. So they are not a soveriegn country controlled by only people from that country. It would be like if the US was controlled by Catholic priests… Priests answer to the Pope in Rome. So end of soveriegnty. Outside influence controls Iran and its laws,not the native Iranians. heck if a dictator ran it it , it would be soveriegn if the dictator and the rest of the gov’t were Iranian and ran it without outside influence. Rouzbeh is correct no country is free due to outside influence. Our human needs and wants enslave us to what others need and want. Sanctions in the world market control gov’ts to certain points.
Just like Obama is controlled by those that put him in office with their money and backing. The Democratic party along with other financial bigwigs own him . He must do what they tell him to do. He is not a leader as much as he is a follower. This is true for any Dem or Rep president.
Kris, the pope doesn’t apply as an analogy. The Iranian mullahs don’t answer to the Vatican or Mecca. They’re Iranian without doubt. They just don’t represent Iran. I don’t think you understand Iran’s religious establishment with regards to its people.
They’re religious muslims, but they’re not under the control of arabs. If anything, it’s the other way through the support of hamas and influence of Hezbollah.
Here’s something that might clear it up: A democracy is not a vassal of the government of Greece.
And oil’s price is only going to go up, it’s hardly a high risk asset. The price of oil has never been this high. The world continues to be too dependent on oil for any technology to replace it to any significant degree in the short-mid term. Nevermind cars, just think of all the ships, all the planes, the power plants. The plastics. Iran also has the second largest reserves of gas, only after Russia. It’s not short on high demand natural resources. I still don’t see merit in that argument.
On a different argument, Iran is not industrialising. It’s not creating jobs, and it’s isolating itself from external companies. It does trade, America’s trade with Iran actually doubled since 2008, but a large proportion of this trade is directly with the government. The people don’t benefit. Hence why it has the highest brain drain rate of 94 countries measured. It has a highly educated and skilled population, and unlike Arabs and even many Christians, these people are generally liberal and many are muslim by being spiritual, not by reading and reciting the quran.
It’s interesting, 30 years ago, Iran was the country to lead the resurgence of religion with its ‘dangerous’ rhetoric of an export of islamic revolution. Maybe it can now lead the region back to religious passivism, if not necessarily secularism.