8 ms·

Iran Removed From All Major Travel Sites

80 points by yread 13y ago

discardorama 13y ago
"Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Who's putting up a wall now? It's funny that when it came to USSR and China, we believed that people-to-people contact would improve relations. Why doesn't the same apply to Cuba and Iran?
- dspillett 13y ago
  I'd suggest that in the case of Iran it is a responsibility issue rather than a politics one. While they have just elected a more west-friendly president there are large parts of the country that are dangerous for outsiders. I'd guess the companies in question might prefer to lose a few sales rather than have the "you booked it, didn't you check where you were going first?" / "you should have warned as at booking time, it is all your fault!" argument. I'm not sure where Cuba fits in with my little theory though.
  - yread 13y ago
    > there are large parts of the country that are dangerous for outsiders [citation needed]
    - readme 13y ago
      Perhaps outsiders should really say 'americans' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Americanism#Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Americanism#Iran Not all Iranians dislike Americans, but to say that there aren't any who would like you dead, is naive. The door swings both ways, though! BTW, as citizens of a democracy, we are all responsible for the geopolitical actions of our government. I mean, why would Iran dislike us? We didn't go help the UK overthrow their government and install a dictator or anything... OH, WAIT A SECOND. It's not like we invaded both their neighboring countries and set up permanent military bases.... OH, WAIT... The US does not have the moral high ground, but to think that just because you disagree with the government that most Iranians will just look past that... I don't think that's a safe bet.
      - discardorama 13y ago
        The Iranians are much better at distinguishing between the "government" and the "people"; they expect the same in return.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
        readme 13y ago
        I did not say we should support our government. I said that we are responsible for it. This is something that too few Americans understand and the reason why we currently have a shitty one.
      - tome 13y ago
        > It's not like we invaded both their neighboring countries and set up permanent military bases Yeah, both their neighbouring countries who they were mortal enemies with. They should have been pleased about that, if anything. Their influence in Iraq has skyrocketed, one of the many reasons the Iraq war was such an idiotic idea.
  - discardorama 13y ago
    >> there are large parts of the country [Iran] that are dangerous for outsiders. Are you kidding me? Have you seen the Rick Steve's special on Iran? I'm bringing RS up because anecdotal evidence wouldn't fly much around here. But please open your mind and take a look. Every account I've read of travel in Iran has been very positive. It is a much safer country to travel in than, say, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc.
    - astrodust 13y ago
      Probably safer than some parts of Oakland and Washington D.C., too.
      - mpyne 13y ago
        DC is actually fairly safe nowadays (except perhaps for Northeast or Anacostia, but no one is going to end up there by accident).
        astrodust 13y ago
        Relative to historical periods, yes, but it's still a war-zone compared to what I'm used to. The 2010 statistics indicate a homicide rate of 21.9 per 100,000 population. That's as bad as Brazil, worse than Kenya, and slightly worse than The Democratic Republic of Congo. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona..., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Washington,_D.C. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Washington,_D.C.). For perspective, the city I live in has a murder rate of 1.9, only slightly higher than the national average.
        true_religion 13y ago
        You can't really compare cities to entire countries unless those countries are city-sized. For example, while Brazil has a per capita homicide rate of ~23 per 100,000 the state of Alagoas has a homicide rate of 60.3, and the Federal District has one of 34.1. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Brazilian_states_by_murder_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Brazilian_states_by_mur...
- Daniel_Newby 13y ago
  For the same reason the US courtier class orchestrated the Vietnam Holocaust: the adult supervision class has to choose their battles. If a situation is not an existential threat to the US, the courtiers are given it as a playpen. Better to feed Iran into a meatgrinder than another city like Detroit.
untog 13y ago
Surely the sites mentioned (Kayak, Expedia) just use third-party data from airlines and such to provide listings? If so, it's unlikely they are the ones removing Iran from the tables.
- andrewcooke 13y ago
  so why does hipmunk still work? [edit: i looked at ita. it says that it supplies kayak and google flights. google flights shows flights to tehran (i checked). kayak does not (according to the article). that does not seem to support the idea that ita is filtering data, unless it is doing so at the client's request.]
  - untog 13y ago
    I have no idea. This StackOverflow post gives a good rundown of where the data comes from: http://stackoverflow.com/a/4612221/470339 http://stackoverflow.com/a/4612221/470339 "you probably want to connect to somebody a bit more down the food chain, with a better API." Obviously I have no idea how anyone does it, but it seems plausible that it is the data providers rather than consumer-facing sites. Look at the ITA site: http://www.itasoftware.com/ http://www.itasoftware.com/
    - apaprocki 13y ago
      I still see full flight data to IKA on my terminal, so it does not appear to be filtered from data providers (plural). I suppose there could be one provider that filtered it and a few sites depend on them.
cpursley 13y ago
Economic sanctions are an act of war. It's the citizens that are hurt the most.
- claudius 13y ago
  The citizens that elected rather unfriendly presidents and governments.
  - discardorama 13y ago
    You mean, like George W Bush? Or O'Bomber?
  - astrodust 13y ago
    "Elected" implies choice. Both sides have more than their fair share of those that coasted in because of ineffective opposition.
  - cpursley 13y ago
    The US is proving to be a rather bad actor. Drones. NSA Spying. Indefinite detention. Should the rest of the world place economic sanctions on the US?
    - InclinedPlane 13y ago
      This is stereotypical "point spread" moral relativism. The standards with which American citizens hold their government to should of course be quite high, but by no means should we take failure to meet those standards to be in remotely the same league as the sorts of activities the Iranian regime undertakes.
      - ferdo 13y ago
        How many countries has Iran invaded in the past 20 years? How many civilian dead in foreign countries can be laid at the feet of the Iranian military? Please recall that the US backed Saddam against Iran once upon a time.
arcadeparade 13y ago
It's very sad to see innocent people punished because their government has a backbone.
- tome 13y ago
  Their government are an evil, theocratic, messianic cult who care nothing about their people but do care about promoting barbarism internally and terrorism externally to further their dispicable agenda. There are few more evil governments on the planet right now. If you want to be sad about the punishment of the innocent Iranian people, be sad that Khomeini's thugs murdered, jailed or otherwise incapacitated all the real liberals during that country's revolution.
  - eeky 13y ago
    > Their government are an evil, theocratic, messianic cult who care nothing about their people but do care about promoting barbarism internally and terrorism externally to further their dispicable agenda. There are few more evil governments on the planet right now. This is a discussion on Iran, not Israel.
  - ihsw 13y ago
    Good and evil are such comforting terms, but hardly applicable. Do you honestly see no good in Iran, or evil in the rest of the world? Iran and Israel have been the only major sources of stability in the region in the past twenty years, surely that's certainly good. If they hadn't had to endure sanctions then Iran would be one of the shining examples of prosperity in the middle east, however a bloody Shi'ite vs Sunni showdown would have likely occurred by now.
    - tome 13y ago
      I'm not talking about Iran, I'm talking about the Iranian government. It is certainly evil to the extent that any "good" that there might be in it is completely irrelevant. Unfortunately the government is verging on totalitarian, so the people of Iran barely have a say. It's not a good thing that such a despotic, tyrannical regime has been stable, nor was it a good thing that Iraq under Saddam was stable. It is deeply sad for the Iranian people who are generally well educated and cultured that they have such a government. The west [EDIT: I really mean the UK and US] has a substantial case to answer in bringing about the Iranian revolution, but it is more of a shame that Khomenei expunged the liberal and secular movements after that revolution.
latchkey 13y ago
https://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=SFO;t=IKA;d=2013-08-08;r=2013-08-12 https://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=SFO;t=IKA;d=2013-08...
- ape4 13y ago
  Maybe OPs searches didn't work because of the accent on Tehrān
3327 13y ago
I agree let them be countries are sovereign and if nukes are the problem why not international proliferation ? Although a simple comparison the jist of it is no different than being in a standoff: 2 people pointing guns at each other and one side demands, "give me your gun".
- astrodust 13y ago
  In this case it's more like two thousand guns pointed at one guy.
- madaxe 13y ago
  If nukes are the problem, why is Israel not sanctioned to hell and back? Have nukes, refuse to sign NPT. Because nukes aren't the problem. Protecting US interests by destabilising Iran is the problem.
  - tome 13y ago
    Israel is not in breach of international law with its nuke program exactly because it is a non-signatory to the NPT. Iran is a signatory and it has obligations under that treaty that it is not fulfilling. And being vigilant on Iran is not just protecting US interests. It's protecting anyone who believes in freedom and liberal values. If Iran had nuclear weapons then it would be the second most awful world power to have them. It would be much worse in practice than NK having them though, because it actively sponsors terrorism around the world.
    - djKianoosh 13y ago
      what good is that treaty if both those knuckleheaded countries can dance around it like this?
    - 3327 13y ago
      How do you know they would be the second most awful people to have them ? You are led to believe they are awful and if they have them they will use. What if they are not? What fact do you have? I have no agenda I am nor pro Iran nor against, because I simply do not have enough facts or knowledge. I hear from the media they are terrible and almost as bad as North Korea... But what if they are not right? Can a US publication come out and say: "Hey Iranian leaders might feel they need nuclear weapons because otherwise they are helpless against an invasion by supreme powers just the Iraq and other nations were". Can a US news outlet make such a claim? Maybe some editorials here and there but the reality is present media is not entirely different than cold war Soviet media. Besides the obvious differences that you and I can both see, differences on agenda setting are not that great when it comes to SPECIFIC issues like Iran. What would have happened if Iran was left alone? Who knows. What if US policy was to say: fine go make nukes but know the obvious, if you do anything stupid WW3 will be fought over the middleeast (and probably will be the case regardless or somewhere in Asia). >Iran is a signatory and it has obligations under that treaty that it is not fulfilling. This point I completely agree with. IF they are a signatory they are obliged...However, does the US adhere to every deal they signed ? Does any nation ? We bend our own constitution when we see fit. We detain people for infinity without charging them in black prisons. We fly an army of killer robots over any nation we please as long as they do not have the might or spine to respond and our tied to our foreign aid lifeline - where 1/7 people killed are children and 50% are innocent (according to a recent report also covered 2 days ago here on HN). So who are we to tell them about obligations and sticking to the rules?
VBprogrammer 13y ago
This travel diary and the Iranian people I've met through Work and University really made me question the mainstream medias depiction of Iran. http://c90adventures.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=80:iran&catid=37:category-for-malaysia-trip&Itemid=18 http://c90adventures.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view...
- tome 13y ago
  Really? You don't think it's possible for a decent people to be ruled by an abhorrent government?
  - znowi 13y ago
    Yes, it's possible - the Obama administration :) Shall we declare the US a no fly zone?
    - pekk 13y ago
      Nobody has declared Iran a no fly zone. Edit: to clarify, 'no fly zone' has a specific meaning that doesn't apply here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-fly_zone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-fly_zone
    - r00fus 13y ago
      Nice jab - but this predates Obama - in fact, go all the way back to the Philippine/American War [1] - and I'm sure it goes back even further. That war however, had news media support, yellow journalism at it's finest. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine%E2%80%93American_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine%E2%80%93American_War
- madaxe 13y ago
  Nice, hospitable, open people, good standard of living, great skiing. And a despotic government with no interest in war, just the subjugation of their own - and they'd still be a democratic secular republic if it weren't for the CIA orchestrated coup in '53 that resulted in the 79 coup, overthrowing the shah puppet govt.
nfg 13y ago
A pity if this is a concerted campaign, as I've mentioned here before visiting Iran is pretty straightforward if you're not from the US/UK and very worthwhile - blog post with some info here: http://www.sarahandniall.com/2011/08/iran.html http://www.sarahandniall.com/2011/08/iran.html And one by my partner on traveling as a foreign woman in Iran: http://www.sarahandniall.com/2011/09/traveling-as-woman-in-iran.html http://www.sarahandniall.com/2011/09/traveling-as-woman-in-i...
znowi 13y ago
This is a part of an ongoing campaign of the US to take over Iran. Havoc in the Middle East is the ground work for the coming coup/invasion.
msoad 13y ago
Three months ago when we were trying to book from California to Tehran it was impossible to find flights. It seems google brought back Tehran to their list now but many others don't have it yet. Sucks to be innocent victom of a conflict that you didn't do anything for it. I can not even do a anything to change either.
- coldarchon 13y ago
  >Sucks to be innocent victom of a conflict that you didn't do anything for it. I can not even do a anything to change either. Are you now living in a country run by democracy? You should know what you can do by now, or consider moving back ..
- rdl 13y ago
  Aren't flights from UAE to Iran super frequent and cheap? I'd just fly to DXB or AUH (ideally, Etihad, one of the underrated airlines in the world) and then book the Iran leg independently, maybe even on arrival.

80 points by yread 13y ago

"Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Who's putting up a wall now? It's funny that when it came to USSR and China, we believed that people-to-people contact would improve relations. Why doesn't the same apply to Cuba and Iran?

dspillett 13y ago
I'd suggest that in the case of Iran it is a responsibility issue rather than a politics one. While they have just elected a more west-friendly president there are large parts of the country that are dangerous for outsiders. I'd guess the companies in question might prefer to lose a few sales rather than have the "you booked it, didn't you check where you were going first?" / "you should have warned as at booking time, it is all your fault!" argument. I'm not sure where Cuba fits in with my little theory though.
- yread 13y ago
  > there are large parts of the country that are dangerous for outsiders [citation needed]
  - readme 13y ago
    Perhaps outsiders should really say 'americans' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Americanism#Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Americanism#Iran Not all Iranians dislike Americans, but to say that there aren't any who would like you dead, is naive. The door swings both ways, though! BTW, as citizens of a democracy, we are all responsible for the geopolitical actions of our government. I mean, why would Iran dislike us? We didn't go help the UK overthrow their government and install a dictator or anything... OH, WAIT A SECOND. It's not like we invaded both their neighboring countries and set up permanent military bases.... OH, WAIT... The US does not have the moral high ground, but to think that just because you disagree with the government that most Iranians will just look past that... I don't think that's a safe bet.
    - discardorama 13y ago
      The Iranians are much better at distinguishing between the "government" and the "people"; they expect the same in return.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
      - readme 13y ago
        I did not say we should support our government. I said that we are responsible for it. This is something that too few Americans understand and the reason why we currently have a shitty one.
    - tome 13y ago
      > It's not like we invaded both their neighboring countries and set up permanent military bases Yeah, both their neighbouring countries who they were mortal enemies with. They should have been pleased about that, if anything. Their influence in Iraq has skyrocketed, one of the many reasons the Iraq war was such an idiotic idea.
- discardorama 13y ago
  >> there are large parts of the country [Iran] that are dangerous for outsiders. Are you kidding me? Have you seen the Rick Steve's special on Iran? I'm bringing RS up because anecdotal evidence wouldn't fly much around here. But please open your mind and take a look. Every account I've read of travel in Iran has been very positive. It is a much safer country to travel in than, say, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc.
  - astrodust 13y ago
    Probably safer than some parts of Oakland and Washington D.C., too.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      DC is actually fairly safe nowadays (except perhaps for Northeast or Anacostia, but no one is going to end up there by accident).
      - astrodust 13y ago
        Relative to historical periods, yes, but it's still a war-zone compared to what I'm used to. The 2010 statistics indicate a homicide rate of 21.9 per 100,000 population. That's as bad as Brazil, worse than Kenya, and slightly worse than The Democratic Republic of Congo. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona..., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Washington,_D.C. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Washington,_D.C.). For perspective, the city I live in has a murder rate of 1.9, only slightly higher than the national average.
        true_religion 13y ago
        You can't really compare cities to entire countries unless those countries are city-sized. For example, while Brazil has a per capita homicide rate of ~23 per 100,000 the state of Alagoas has a homicide rate of 60.3, and the Federal District has one of 34.1. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Brazilian_states_by_murder_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Brazilian_states_by_mur...
Daniel_Newby 13y ago
For the same reason the US courtier class orchestrated the Vietnam Holocaust: the adult supervision class has to choose their battles. If a situation is not an existential threat to the US, the courtiers are given it as a playpen. Better to feed Iran into a meatgrinder than another city like Detroit.

untog 13y ago

Surely the sites mentioned (Kayak, Expedia) just use third-party data from airlines and such to provide listings? If so, it's unlikely they are the ones removing Iran from the tables.

andrewcooke 13y ago
so why does hipmunk still work? [edit: i looked at ita. it says that it supplies kayak and google flights. google flights shows flights to tehran (i checked). kayak does not (according to the article). that does not seem to support the idea that ita is filtering data, unless it is doing so at the client's request.]
- untog 13y ago
  I have no idea. This StackOverflow post gives a good rundown of where the data comes from: http://stackoverflow.com/a/4612221/470339 http://stackoverflow.com/a/4612221/470339 "you probably want to connect to somebody a bit more down the food chain, with a better API." Obviously I have no idea how anyone does it, but it seems plausible that it is the data providers rather than consumer-facing sites. Look at the ITA site: http://www.itasoftware.com/ http://www.itasoftware.com/
  - apaprocki 13y ago
    I still see full flight data to IKA on my terminal, so it does not appear to be filtered from data providers (plural). I suppose there could be one provider that filtered it and a few sites depend on them.

cpursley 13y ago

Economic sanctions are an act of war. It's the citizens that are hurt the most.

claudius 13y ago
The citizens that elected rather unfriendly presidents and governments.
- discardorama 13y ago
  You mean, like George W Bush? Or O'Bomber?
- astrodust 13y ago
  "Elected" implies choice. Both sides have more than their fair share of those that coasted in because of ineffective opposition.
- cpursley 13y ago
  The US is proving to be a rather bad actor. Drones. NSA Spying. Indefinite detention. Should the rest of the world place economic sanctions on the US?
  - InclinedPlane 13y ago
    This is stereotypical "point spread" moral relativism. The standards with which American citizens hold their government to should of course be quite high, but by no means should we take failure to meet those standards to be in remotely the same league as the sorts of activities the Iranian regime undertakes.
    - ferdo 13y ago
      How many countries has Iran invaded in the past 20 years? How many civilian dead in foreign countries can be laid at the feet of the Iranian military? Please recall that the US backed Saddam against Iran once upon a time.

arcadeparade 13y ago

It's very sad to see innocent people punished because their government has a backbone.

tome 13y ago
Their government are an evil, theocratic, messianic cult who care nothing about their people but do care about promoting barbarism internally and terrorism externally to further their dispicable agenda. There are few more evil governments on the planet right now. If you want to be sad about the punishment of the innocent Iranian people, be sad that Khomeini's thugs murdered, jailed or otherwise incapacitated all the real liberals during that country's revolution.
- eeky 13y ago
  > Their government are an evil, theocratic, messianic cult who care nothing about their people but do care about promoting barbarism internally and terrorism externally to further their dispicable agenda. There are few more evil governments on the planet right now. This is a discussion on Iran, not Israel.
- ihsw 13y ago
  Good and evil are such comforting terms, but hardly applicable. Do you honestly see no good in Iran, or evil in the rest of the world? Iran and Israel have been the only major sources of stability in the region in the past twenty years, surely that's certainly good. If they hadn't had to endure sanctions then Iran would be one of the shining examples of prosperity in the middle east, however a bloody Shi'ite vs Sunni showdown would have likely occurred by now.
  - tome 13y ago
    I'm not talking about Iran, I'm talking about the Iranian government. It is certainly evil to the extent that any "good" that there might be in it is completely irrelevant. Unfortunately the government is verging on totalitarian, so the people of Iran barely have a say. It's not a good thing that such a despotic, tyrannical regime has been stable, nor was it a good thing that Iraq under Saddam was stable. It is deeply sad for the Iranian people who are generally well educated and cultured that they have such a government. The west [EDIT: I really mean the UK and US] has a substantial case to answer in bringing about the Iranian revolution, but it is more of a shame that Khomenei expunged the liberal and secular movements after that revolution.

latchkey 13y ago

https://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=SFO;t=IKA;d=2013-08-08;r=2013-08-12 https://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=SFO;t=IKA;d=2013-08...

ape4 13y ago
Maybe OPs searches didn't work because of the accent on Tehrān

3327 13y ago

I agree let them be countries are sovereign and if nukes are the problem why not international proliferation ? Although a simple comparison the jist of it is no different than being in a standoff: 2 people pointing guns at each other and one side demands, "give me your gun".

astrodust 13y ago
In this case it's more like two thousand guns pointed at one guy.
madaxe 13y ago
If nukes are the problem, why is Israel not sanctioned to hell and back? Have nukes, refuse to sign NPT. Because nukes aren't the problem. Protecting US interests by destabilising Iran is the problem.
- tome 13y ago
  Israel is not in breach of international law with its nuke program exactly because it is a non-signatory to the NPT. Iran is a signatory and it has obligations under that treaty that it is not fulfilling. And being vigilant on Iran is not just protecting US interests. It's protecting anyone who believes in freedom and liberal values. If Iran had nuclear weapons then it would be the second most awful world power to have them. It would be much worse in practice than NK having them though, because it actively sponsors terrorism around the world.
  - djKianoosh 13y ago
    what good is that treaty if both those knuckleheaded countries can dance around it like this?
  - 3327 13y ago
    How do you know they would be the second most awful people to have them ? You are led to believe they are awful and if they have them they will use. What if they are not? What fact do you have? I have no agenda I am nor pro Iran nor against, because I simply do not have enough facts or knowledge. I hear from the media they are terrible and almost as bad as North Korea... But what if they are not right? Can a US publication come out and say: "Hey Iranian leaders might feel they need nuclear weapons because otherwise they are helpless against an invasion by supreme powers just the Iraq and other nations were". Can a US news outlet make such a claim? Maybe some editorials here and there but the reality is present media is not entirely different than cold war Soviet media. Besides the obvious differences that you and I can both see, differences on agenda setting are not that great when it comes to SPECIFIC issues like Iran. What would have happened if Iran was left alone? Who knows. What if US policy was to say: fine go make nukes but know the obvious, if you do anything stupid WW3 will be fought over the middleeast (and probably will be the case regardless or somewhere in Asia). >Iran is a signatory and it has obligations under that treaty that it is not fulfilling. This point I completely agree with. IF they are a signatory they are obliged...However, does the US adhere to every deal they signed ? Does any nation ? We bend our own constitution when we see fit. We detain people for infinity without charging them in black prisons. We fly an army of killer robots over any nation we please as long as they do not have the might or spine to respond and our tied to our foreign aid lifeline - where 1/7 people killed are children and 50% are innocent (according to a recent report also covered 2 days ago here on HN). So who are we to tell them about obligations and sticking to the rules?

VBprogrammer 13y ago

This travel diary and the Iranian people I've met through Work and University really made me question the mainstream medias depiction of Iran. http://c90adventures.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=80:iran&catid=37:category-for-malaysia-trip&Itemid=18 http://c90adventures.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view...

tome 13y ago
Really? You don't think it's possible for a decent people to be ruled by an abhorrent government?
- znowi 13y ago
  Yes, it's possible - the Obama administration :) Shall we declare the US a no fly zone?
  - pekk 13y ago
    Nobody has declared Iran a no fly zone. Edit: to clarify, 'no fly zone' has a specific meaning that doesn't apply here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-fly_zone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-fly_zone
  - r00fus 13y ago
    Nice jab - but this predates Obama - in fact, go all the way back to the Philippine/American War [1] - and I'm sure it goes back even further. That war however, had news media support, yellow journalism at it's finest. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine%E2%80%93American_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine%E2%80%93American_War
madaxe 13y ago
Nice, hospitable, open people, good standard of living, great skiing. And a despotic government with no interest in war, just the subjugation of their own - and they'd still be a democratic secular republic if it weren't for the CIA orchestrated coup in '53 that resulted in the 79 coup, overthrowing the shah puppet govt.

nfg 13y ago

A pity if this is a concerted campaign, as I've mentioned here before visiting Iran is pretty straightforward if you're not from the US/UK and very worthwhile - blog post with some info here: http://www.sarahandniall.com/2011/08/iran.html http://www.sarahandniall.com/2011/08/iran.html And one by my partner on traveling as a foreign woman in Iran: http://www.sarahandniall.com/2011/09/traveling-as-woman-in-iran.html http://www.sarahandniall.com/2011/09/traveling-as-woman-in-i...

znowi 13y ago

This is a part of an ongoing campaign of the US to take over Iran. Havoc in the Middle East is the ground work for the coming coup/invasion.

msoad 13y ago

Three months ago when we were trying to book from California to Tehran it was impossible to find flights. It seems google brought back Tehran to their list now but many others don't have it yet. Sucks to be innocent victom of a conflict that you didn't do anything for it. I can not even do a anything to change either.

coldarchon 13y ago
>Sucks to be innocent victom of a conflict that you didn't do anything for it. I can not even do a anything to change either. Are you now living in a country run by democracy? You should know what you can do by now, or consider moving back ..
rdl 13y ago
Aren't flights from UAE to Iran super frequent and cheap? I'd just fly to DXB or AUH (ideally, Etihad, one of the underrated airlines in the world) and then book the Iran leg independently, maybe even on arrival.