7 ms·

Tehran’s Promise: The revolution’s midlife crisis and the nuclear deal

45 points by Thevet 11y ago

Jun8 11y ago
The reactions to the Islamist Revolution and the resulting disillusionment are complex. Two interesting/random points of entry could be: (1) Foucoult's widely derided (in France, not many translated to English) writings, with strong Orientalist tendencies, strongly supporting the Revolution, based on his many visits to Iran and interviews with key players (e.g. see http://newpol.org/content/revisiting-foucault-and-iranian-revolution http://newpol.org/content/revisiting-foucault-and-iranian-re... or http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo3534884.html http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo3534884... for a book on the subject) and (2) Persepolis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_(comics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_(comics)).
- guard-of-terra 11y ago
  From the outside it seems that the revolution is the ultimate end of habitability of Iran, end-of-world, barbarians-take-over-Rome quality. Let's stop progress, abolish human rights and heed to words written thousand years ago and interpreted by corrupt barbarians. Foucoult can write whatever nonsense sitting in warm Paris with all the freedoms and comfort readily available. I'm more scared by "Iran - then and now" series of pictures.
  - mistursinistur 11y ago
    "Iran - then and now" series are often misleading. They cherry-pick extreme examples from non-representative slices of the population. We've all seen photos of the stylish, 1970s Iranian 1%, but not of pervasive poverty and disenfranchisement that their brand of progress perpetuated on the other 99%. The Shah's elite may have looked American but this doesn't mean that they presided over progress or gave much thought to human rights.
    - x5n1 11y ago
      The Muslim world has never known how to do democracy right because of a number of reasons including tribalism, nepotism, elitism. They have never understood what it means to be a liberal democracy. Add to that the colonials wanting to continue this tradition because corruption is easier to exploit and we have the precarious situation in the Middle East which has now deteriorated to an unfixable point.
steve19 11y ago
> The hostile rhetoric hasn’t changed. At Friday prayers, as > on previous visits, I heard thousands chanting “Death to > America.” This year, twenty times. > .... > “ ‘Death to America’? This is politics and not related to > people’s thinking,” Or in other words Iran is a country where large portions of the population hold very different conflicting beliefs, like many other countries including the USA. What I find interesting is that Kerry's willingness to gamble that the future generation/future ruling class will be pro-American (or become pro-America because of this deal).
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago
  > What I find interesting is that Kerry's willingness to gamble that the future generation/future ruling class will be pro-American (or become pro-America because of this deal). It definitely is interesting, but not entirely surprising. If you look at what Iran has endured at the hands of the US, yet look at westernisation within Iran, the significant pockets of western-leaning young people, and an Iran which is militarily structured to fight defensive wars, it looks like Iran's anti-US rhetoric is just that, rhetoric, a political coping mechanism to unify the country through hard times, but not intrinsically the soul of a culture that's thousands of years old, that anti-US rhetoric could, then, start to dissipate when said hard times and foreign pressure would end. And this diplomatic deal is the first step on exactly that path. I mean, look at it from Iran's perspective, let's reverse it. It's a bit silly but bear with me. Imagine the UK had some business conflict over oil in the US. Iran then helped overthrow Harry Truman, and installed a pro-iranian dictator who spread Iranian culture in the US, to improve this business relationship. That alone would be insane and ample fuel for anti-Iranian rhetoric for decades to come. The dictator's rule (a pretty shitty one) went on for decades until he was overthrown and a new leader emerged in the US, directly followed by Iran funding Canada and arming it, which attacks the US and starts a bloody war of almost 8 years, all during our lifetime. When Canada appears to lose Iran backs it even more, and when Canada uses chemical weapons killing an equivalence of more than half a million Americans, both military and civilians, Iran tells Canada exactly where US soldiers are located, and was later found indeed having shipped chemical and biological weapons to Canada. And when a civilian US airplane flies above US territory and gets shot down by an Iranian cruiser, killing 290 innocent people, Iran never apologises and there are zero consequences, as if it never happened, to give you a sense of the relations. When the war eventually ends, Iran invades various countries neighbouring the US, like Canada and Mexico, that just years earlier had been allies. Not just that but under false pretences, deemed an illegal invasion by the United Nations and abhorred by virtually the entire world population. (makes the US wonder, if Iran attacks a former ally, resulting in the death of hundreds of thousands, tortures and a ruined, failed state, based on forged-evidence... there's perhaps only 1 thing that can deter Iran from attacking you. The ultimate deterrence, a Nuclear weapon, only ever used by Iran by the way, twice). Not just that but Iran keeps backing other countries like, China (read Saudi Arabia), who is a bit further away and who is a huge rival in the region. This is followed by Iranian politicians and media left and right calling to bomb the US, invade the country, hell even with a presidential nominee in Iran joking 'bomb, bomb, bomb, bom the US', referencing the Iranian Beach Boys classic Barbara US (this analogy is getting stretched pretttty thin by now, I know). Followed by Iran leading the world into sanctioning the US (furthering existing sanctions that had been on the US for decades) which causes deep issues, and when someone from Iran finally wants a diplomatic solution, hawks in Iran invite the president of China over to give a speech about the US's danger to the world, a speech laden with lies contradicting China and Iran's own intelligence on the US. But throughout all this, the US becomes more Iranian every day, anti-Iran hardliners in the US aren't representative of the larger country, the US doesn't invade or attack other countries and seeks diplomatic solutions, it structures its military to fight defensive, not offensive wars, and throughout it all Americans on the whole stay pretty sane and normal people. It'd be no surprise then that someone in Kerry's position, Iran's state secretary, would think that easing up on all of the above could lead to a more pro-Iranian US. Now flip the whole story and it may make a lot of sense. Or you may have lost me in this silly comparison :) Of course it's a lot less black and white than this, but the notion that Iran's relationship with westernisation isn't zero (or close to zero) given their experiences with the west, sparks a lot of hope. And beyond that it's important to consider that while diplomacy isn't perfect, I can scarcely imagine the alternative, and haven't heard any sensible proposals either.
1971genocide 11y ago
Iran's problem is a completely US manufactured crisis. I do not understand how people are so myopic to history. FACT: # Iran had a democratic secular government in 1950. # However this govt was not friendly to a British oil company ( BP ). # The British requested american help to protect the interest of British multinationals. # The grandson of Theodore Roosevelt personally helped overthrow this democratically legitimate government. # The hated shan was put in power whom the iranian people really did not like. The shan went back to trading oil for weapons with the Americans/UK. # From the perceptive of an iranian it must suck to know that your government was overthrown by some foreign entity just for the sake of a oil company. The iranian/persian who are among the oldest of civilizations ( 5,000 years ). # Of-course this leads to a revolution and a anti-american ayatollah is put in power. # Americans are nothing but vindictive when it comes to geo-politics and arm Saddam to his teeth giving him chemical weapons. # Saddam Invades Iraq just while the Iranian are recovering from a revolution to now have to face against a terrible dictator who wants to invade their country. # Iran had to indure a 8 year war in the 1980s, a war that took a huge toll. The battles fought looked like something out of WW2. # Next america invades the country to their left and their right and puts a huge amount of ground troops in the south and allies with all of Iran's neighbour. Most of whom hate the Iranians just because they are not the SAME wahhabi muslims as them. # Iran ofcourse wants a nuclear weapon to stabilize the huge power imbalance they face. They never interfered or invaded a neighbour for 1000s of years and now suddenly they are treated like the scum of the earth. # The biggest loser in all of this has been the Iranian and poor sunnis civilians who are having to deal with the blunt of ISIS and the likes.
- guard-of-terra 11y ago
  Why did they force religious rituals on everyone, by force? As far as I am concerned this has no excuses and you can't blame USA for that. Islamism strips Iran of any but very rudimantary sympathy. "the year after the Islamic Revolution.., girls were obliged to wear the veil and segregated by gender" No excuse for that!
  - 1971genocide 11y ago
    That has nothing to do with international geo-politics. And if we are talking about what governments of countries force on their people lets start with the Saudis first. And I would like to remind you to in america you have similar level of bigotry with Christians. Iran has slightly more bigotry - does not mean you invade them.
cletus 11y ago
What makes me sad is just what complete disarray the GOP is in. I'm sure at some point the GOP actually stood for something. Now? It just seems to have been completely co-opted by religious conservatives. Presidential candidates are cut from that cloth or, worse, they're just puppets for particular private interests (eg Scott Walker is nothing more than an empty vessel for the Koch brothers). Compounding this is the huge political power that Israel has in US politics. Whatever your opinion about Israel, I think it's fair to say that Israel has been disastrous for US foreign policy in the Middle East for every country's relationship to the US other than Israel. Earlier this week I was reading that the Obama administration may hasten the release of Israeli spy Jonathon Pollard in an effort to appease Israel. Israel has found unlikely allies in the Jewish lobby (who tend to lean left) and religious conservatives. Iran is a problem the US made by repeatedly and disastrously screwing with the region. The support of the Shah fomenting the Iranian Revolution, using Saddam Hussein as a proxy to fight Iran (killing hundreds of thousands on both sides) and invading Iraq a decade ago. The invasion in particular was the last straw. The lesson the "axis of evil" could take away from this was that having nuclear weapons (like North Korea) was the only guarantee of survival. So of course Iran wants the bomb. Whose fault is that? Yet the GOP in particular seems ready to sacrifice everything for a policy that isn't working just to appease Israel. Well, Israel is just going to have to learn to live in that region because someone there getting nuclear weapons is a question of if not when. We've come a long way since Eisenhower could (and did) tell Israel to get out of Sinai. The fact that Obama is even trying to stand up to Israel is amazing to me. I honestly hope he succeeds because I think engagement with Iran is the only sustainable course forward.
- gizmo686 11y ago
  Not that I understand the heavy opposition we have seen to the deal (beyond the normal partisan politics), but the explanation that the GOP is trying to appease Israel seems lacking. Specifically, that begs the question of why Israel (or rather, Netenyahu et al) oppose the deal. I find it difficult to believe that they would be willingly to obstruct the path to keeping Iran from a bomb just to satisfy their own internal politics, so presumably there is something else to the disagreement.
  - 11y ago
Animats 11y ago
One can hope, but remember the Arab Spring and its collapse. Iran is a theocracy, and theocracies can't lighten up too much or they lose first their reason for being, then their power.

45 points by Thevet 11y ago

Jun8 11y ago

The reactions to the Islamist Revolution and the resulting disillusionment are complex. Two interesting/random points of entry could be: (1) Foucoult's widely derided (in France, not many translated to English) writings, with strong Orientalist tendencies, strongly supporting the Revolution, based on his many visits to Iran and interviews with key players (e.g. see http://newpol.org/content/revisiting-foucault-and-iranian-revolution http://newpol.org/content/revisiting-foucault-and-iranian-re... or http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo3534884.html http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo3534884... for a book on the subject) and (2) Persepolis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_(comics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_(comics)).

guard-of-terra 11y ago
From the outside it seems that the revolution is the ultimate end of habitability of Iran, end-of-world, barbarians-take-over-Rome quality. Let's stop progress, abolish human rights and heed to words written thousand years ago and interpreted by corrupt barbarians. Foucoult can write whatever nonsense sitting in warm Paris with all the freedoms and comfort readily available. I'm more scared by "Iran - then and now" series of pictures.
- mistursinistur 11y ago
  "Iran - then and now" series are often misleading. They cherry-pick extreme examples from non-representative slices of the population. We've all seen photos of the stylish, 1970s Iranian 1%, but not of pervasive poverty and disenfranchisement that their brand of progress perpetuated on the other 99%. The Shah's elite may have looked American but this doesn't mean that they presided over progress or gave much thought to human rights.
  - x5n1 11y ago
    The Muslim world has never known how to do democracy right because of a number of reasons including tribalism, nepotism, elitism. They have never understood what it means to be a liberal democracy. Add to that the colonials wanting to continue this tradition because corruption is easier to exploit and we have the precarious situation in the Middle East which has now deteriorated to an unfixable point.

steve19 11y ago

> The hostile rhetoric hasn’t changed. At Friday prayers, as > on previous visits, I heard thousands chanting “Death to > America.” This year, twenty times. > .... > “ ‘Death to America’? This is politics and not related to > people’s thinking,” Or in other words Iran is a country where large portions of the population hold very different conflicting beliefs, like many other countries including the USA. What I find interesting is that Kerry's willingness to gamble that the future generation/future ruling class will be pro-American (or become pro-America because of this deal).

IkmoIkmo 11y ago
> What I find interesting is that Kerry's willingness to gamble that the future generation/future ruling class will be pro-American (or become pro-America because of this deal). It definitely is interesting, but not entirely surprising. If you look at what Iran has endured at the hands of the US, yet look at westernisation within Iran, the significant pockets of western-leaning young people, and an Iran which is militarily structured to fight defensive wars, it looks like Iran's anti-US rhetoric is just that, rhetoric, a political coping mechanism to unify the country through hard times, but not intrinsically the soul of a culture that's thousands of years old, that anti-US rhetoric could, then, start to dissipate when said hard times and foreign pressure would end. And this diplomatic deal is the first step on exactly that path. I mean, look at it from Iran's perspective, let's reverse it. It's a bit silly but bear with me. Imagine the UK had some business conflict over oil in the US. Iran then helped overthrow Harry Truman, and installed a pro-iranian dictator who spread Iranian culture in the US, to improve this business relationship. That alone would be insane and ample fuel for anti-Iranian rhetoric for decades to come. The dictator's rule (a pretty shitty one) went on for decades until he was overthrown and a new leader emerged in the US, directly followed by Iran funding Canada and arming it, which attacks the US and starts a bloody war of almost 8 years, all during our lifetime. When Canada appears to lose Iran backs it even more, and when Canada uses chemical weapons killing an equivalence of more than half a million Americans, both military and civilians, Iran tells Canada exactly where US soldiers are located, and was later found indeed having shipped chemical and biological weapons to Canada. And when a civilian US airplane flies above US territory and gets shot down by an Iranian cruiser, killing 290 innocent people, Iran never apologises and there are zero consequences, as if it never happened, to give you a sense of the relations. When the war eventually ends, Iran invades various countries neighbouring the US, like Canada and Mexico, that just years earlier had been allies. Not just that but under false pretences, deemed an illegal invasion by the United Nations and abhorred by virtually the entire world population. (makes the US wonder, if Iran attacks a former ally, resulting in the death of hundreds of thousands, tortures and a ruined, failed state, based on forged-evidence... there's perhaps only 1 thing that can deter Iran from attacking you. The ultimate deterrence, a Nuclear weapon, only ever used by Iran by the way, twice). Not just that but Iran keeps backing other countries like, China (read Saudi Arabia), who is a bit further away and who is a huge rival in the region. This is followed by Iranian politicians and media left and right calling to bomb the US, invade the country, hell even with a presidential nominee in Iran joking 'bomb, bomb, bomb, bom the US', referencing the Iranian Beach Boys classic Barbara US (this analogy is getting stretched pretttty thin by now, I know). Followed by Iran leading the world into sanctioning the US (furthering existing sanctions that had been on the US for decades) which causes deep issues, and when someone from Iran finally wants a diplomatic solution, hawks in Iran invite the president of China over to give a speech about the US's danger to the world, a speech laden with lies contradicting China and Iran's own intelligence on the US. But throughout all this, the US becomes more Iranian every day, anti-Iran hardliners in the US aren't representative of the larger country, the US doesn't invade or attack other countries and seeks diplomatic solutions, it structures its military to fight defensive, not offensive wars, and throughout it all Americans on the whole stay pretty sane and normal people. It'd be no surprise then that someone in Kerry's position, Iran's state secretary, would think that easing up on all of the above could lead to a more pro-Iranian US. Now flip the whole story and it may make a lot of sense. Or you may have lost me in this silly comparison :) Of course it's a lot less black and white than this, but the notion that Iran's relationship with westernisation isn't zero (or close to zero) given their experiences with the west, sparks a lot of hope. And beyond that it's important to consider that while diplomacy isn't perfect, I can scarcely imagine the alternative, and haven't heard any sensible proposals either.

1971genocide 11y ago

Iran's problem is a completely US manufactured crisis. I do not understand how people are so myopic to history. FACT: # Iran had a democratic secular government in 1950. # However this govt was not friendly to a British oil company ( BP ). # The British requested american help to protect the interest of British multinationals. # The grandson of Theodore Roosevelt personally helped overthrow this democratically legitimate government. # The hated shan was put in power whom the iranian people really did not like. The shan went back to trading oil for weapons with the Americans/UK. # From the perceptive of an iranian it must suck to know that your government was overthrown by some foreign entity just for the sake of a oil company. The iranian/persian who are among the oldest of civilizations ( 5,000 years ). # Of-course this leads to a revolution and a anti-american ayatollah is put in power. # Americans are nothing but vindictive when it comes to geo-politics and arm Saddam to his teeth giving him chemical weapons. # Saddam Invades Iraq just while the Iranian are recovering from a revolution to now have to face against a terrible dictator who wants to invade their country. # Iran had to indure a 8 year war in the 1980s, a war that took a huge toll. The battles fought looked like something out of WW2. # Next america invades the country to their left and their right and puts a huge amount of ground troops in the south and allies with all of Iran's neighbour. Most of whom hate the Iranians just because they are not the SAME wahhabi muslims as them. # Iran ofcourse wants a nuclear weapon to stabilize the huge power imbalance they face. They never interfered or invaded a neighbour for 1000s of years and now suddenly they are treated like the scum of the earth. # The biggest loser in all of this has been the Iranian and poor sunnis civilians who are having to deal with the blunt of ISIS and the likes.

guard-of-terra 11y ago
Why did they force religious rituals on everyone, by force? As far as I am concerned this has no excuses and you can't blame USA for that. Islamism strips Iran of any but very rudimantary sympathy. "the year after the Islamic Revolution.., girls were obliged to wear the veil and segregated by gender" No excuse for that!
- 1971genocide 11y ago
  That has nothing to do with international geo-politics. And if we are talking about what governments of countries force on their people lets start with the Saudis first. And I would like to remind you to in america you have similar level of bigotry with Christians. Iran has slightly more bigotry - does not mean you invade them.

cletus 11y ago

What makes me sad is just what complete disarray the GOP is in. I'm sure at some point the GOP actually stood for something. Now? It just seems to have been completely co-opted by religious conservatives. Presidential candidates are cut from that cloth or, worse, they're just puppets for particular private interests (eg Scott Walker is nothing more than an empty vessel for the Koch brothers). Compounding this is the huge political power that Israel has in US politics. Whatever your opinion about Israel, I think it's fair to say that Israel has been disastrous for US foreign policy in the Middle East for every country's relationship to the US other than Israel. Earlier this week I was reading that the Obama administration may hasten the release of Israeli spy Jonathon Pollard in an effort to appease Israel. Israel has found unlikely allies in the Jewish lobby (who tend to lean left) and religious conservatives. Iran is a problem the US made by repeatedly and disastrously screwing with the region. The support of the Shah fomenting the Iranian Revolution, using Saddam Hussein as a proxy to fight Iran (killing hundreds of thousands on both sides) and invading Iraq a decade ago. The invasion in particular was the last straw. The lesson the "axis of evil" could take away from this was that having nuclear weapons (like North Korea) was the only guarantee of survival. So of course Iran wants the bomb. Whose fault is that? Yet the GOP in particular seems ready to sacrifice everything for a policy that isn't working just to appease Israel. Well, Israel is just going to have to learn to live in that region because someone there getting nuclear weapons is a question of if not when. We've come a long way since Eisenhower could (and did) tell Israel to get out of Sinai. The fact that Obama is even trying to stand up to Israel is amazing to me. I honestly hope he succeeds because I think engagement with Iran is the only sustainable course forward.

gizmo686 11y ago
Not that I understand the heavy opposition we have seen to the deal (beyond the normal partisan politics), but the explanation that the GOP is trying to appease Israel seems lacking. Specifically, that begs the question of why Israel (or rather, Netenyahu et al) oppose the deal. I find it difficult to believe that they would be willingly to obstruct the path to keeping Iran from a bomb just to satisfy their own internal politics, so presumably there is something else to the disagreement.
- 11y ago

Animats 11y ago

One can hope, but remember the Arab Spring and its collapse. Iran is a theocracy, and theocracies can't lighten up too much or they lose first their reason for being, then their power.