The Brothel Named Iran
I’ll bet you haven’t seen very much news about Iran during the past week or 10 days, have you? And yet there’s lots of news:
• First of all, there is still no end to the bazaar strike, even though the regime has taken very violent action against the strikers. A large part of the beautiful bazaar in Kerman has been torched (for that matter, regime thugs have taken to setting ablaze large sections of forest land in the region.) Nor will the bazaar strikes end soon, since this week marks religious celebrations that traditionally close the bazaars all over the country.
• The major natural gas pipeline between Iran and Turkey was sabotaged. Enormous damage was done, and the authorities have no estimate as to how long it will be until repair work is finished. Meanwhile the two countries announced plans for a brand-new pipeline.
• Saturday – Sunday night there was a serious fire at the old petrochemical plant on Kharq island. That island is very important to Iran, because it is at once the central point from which Iranian crude oil is exported, and one end of the major pipeline that carries crude and refined products to the mainland. So anything that goes wrong there has immediate consequences both for the national economy and for daily life.
• You may recall that a bit over a week ago, amidst the continuing strikes at major bazaars around the country, there was a double suicide terrorist attack against the mosque in Zahedan, killing nearly 30 revolutionary guards. That unhappy city is still in a state of virtual military occupation, of the most brutal variety. Innocent civilians have been gunned down for the crime of walking at night, and plainclothes killers have gone door to door among the homes of bazaar shopkeepers, killing anyone who answers the bell. Here’s an exceptionally well written report:
The IRI kills the Rigi brothers, a few weeks apart, without proper trial, without even considering the possibility that giving Rigi a death penalty together with a pardon and a life term in prison, will have served the country far better than his death. The IRI is behaving like a savage barbarian; one matching the rogue elements of Jundollah; primitive, uncultured, mercurial!
So Jundollah sends suicide bombers and IRI sends thugs to the streets of Zahedan, the city of kind people, open minded people, mountain and desert people, city of smuggled goodies, city of white Sunni mosques, and dusty parks. The thugs, (the) report says, have been kniving people. These knife thrusters would be of the same ilk that was unleashed on Tehranis in Ashura: they are most likely Ahmadinejad’s products from the “rehabilitation program” that found “convicted criminals” a useful job in the society.
According to local observers, these knife-pushers are the worst of all: they seem to target Balouchis randomly, and beat them up for no reason–further fueling the ethnic resentments and convictions that the Balouch are discriminated against.
• It has been a very hot summer, and the electrical grid in and around Tehran has given up the ghost many times, especially in recent weeks. Not only have citizens suddenly found their lights and air conditioning out-sometimes for half the day or night–but the two big automobile factories have already reduced production by one full shift a day. The president has publicly blamed the problem on foreigners, as is his wont, but his problems are local.
• As the regime increasingly wages war against itself, the comings and goings of seemingly powerful people have become almost impossible to sort out. There have been repeated purges in the ranks of the Revolutionary Guards, and the supreme commander, Gen. Jafari, has now publicly stated that many senior officers had actively sided with the opposition. Why then, the general was asked, had he not punished them properly (with torture and death)? His answer was telling: it’s better to convince them of the error of their ways.
This is a surprising answer, to be sure, but after all it is the same answer that the supreme leader has implicitly given to the much asked question: why have you not properly punished the leaders of the Green Movement, Mousavi and Karroubi? In both cases, the regime is afraid to move decisively against their opponents. Khamenei & Co. are real tough guys when it comes to torturing and killing students, political activists, homosexuals, Bahais, Christians and women. But even when it comes to their favorite targets — the women — they retreat in the face of strong protests, as in the recent case when they suspended the stoning of a poor woman unfairly accused of adultery. Her plight has attracted international attention, and the regime backed off.
“Regime Change” in Iran will end this miserable nightmare.
Dear Winston;
If the caring citizens of the other world and their congressmen and senators stopped “promoting regime change” in Iran, and respected the wishes of the Iranian people, and instead of hammering them with sanctions and closing their doors on them took a step back and respected the unfolding democratic process in Iran, the regime will have changed.
Unfortunately, the regime in Iran is much empowered by the hawkish policies of the US, pumped by the AIPAC.
naj, don’t waste our bandwith with long rambling introductions that everyone knows to be silly. Just get straight to the point: you think it’s the Jews’ fault.
Yup. The clever Jews empower the regime so that it might nuke Israel one day. I guess it’s a variation on what comedians like Jon Stewart refer to as ‘Jewish self-loathing.’ Then again, I’ll bet the poster believes that the Jews pump up the regime as a pretext to strike it and ‘control the Middle East’ (which has gone real well so far).
Michael, Kudos on another excellent article. You are way ahead of the curve in this area.
Would please you please give us your comments regarding the statements made by General Odierno regarding Iranian involvement in attacks on American troops in Iraq?
Thanks. MBY
I did, in an earlier post, Menachem. and there seems to be additional confirmation in the leaked pentagon documents.
Dear Dr Ledeen,
I am very surprised at the immaturity of your reaction; although I don’t know why I should be surprised, since the policies you put forth seem to suffer the same kind of simplicism!!
Best
Naj
Naj, Here’s an immature reaction for you: you are clearly an IRG agent being paid to work trolling web sites like this and posting nonsensical and absolutely wacky ideas. Your paychecks from your leader, Mr Monkey Face (that’s the guy who worships the little boy in the well in Qom) will end soon as his regime is being driven in to the ground… well, by him and perhaps a little help from the Mossad.
Naj, Ledeen is so far above you on every level one can cite, that it would be best for you not to try to cross swords with him and just to scurry into the little rat hole from whence you came and perhaps apply for a green card in whatever country the IRG has you stationed right now (I wouldn’t go back to your home country at the moment since Israel has already joined up with Saudi Arabia and built up a forward operating base to take out what remains of your nuclear industry — and that strike alone will cause the regime to fall). Just some friendly advice
Bye bye nauseous Naj,
– FF
Good reply Mike.
Naj,
Well, if it was the people’s wish to have this regime, then yes.. I think the west should stop promoting a different regime. However, I do think that any regime that publicly announces that another country should be removed from the map should be stopped at any price. In particular when they seem to pursue that goal by making nuclear weapons!
Naj, Hello,
Maybe, . . . you’d like to go to Iran, and sample the unfolding democratic process, there—beginning, of course, with long stops at those worshipful places where the sisters who are virgin and between the ages of 12 and 35 are calmly expected of the brothers—who are in pilgrimage, and otherwise find themselves to be without female amusement—to be in cooperation with those same brethren.
But Naj, really, by the posted article, and by your comments, you appear to prefer the seat of the fool—but more, selfish and cruel.
You don’t think for a moment that—as in many areas of the earth, in Iran, as easily—no doubt, by your kind and of very many of the Iranian men, there is a kind of immoral war against humanity, but beginning with women—do you?
And with your many puerile comments, to have ingenuously rounded out the picture of your very self, like he who lit fire to the church, said: “I wouldn’t have burned the church if I’d known the bishop was inside.”, “Thank you for citing my blog post.”; to many others, you appear as the narcissist who—as is sometimes said of such—is as “blind as bat” or, “a real Nimrod—he just doesn’t get it”, . . .
PhillipGaley,
Hi back.
The problem with you and all those other who have responded on my comment is that you don’t recognize “why” I came here to leave a comment: because Ledeen is citing from my blog. Of course, if you had read Ledeen’s article, and had followed the link to my blog, the first thing you will have recognized was that I am in fact a woman!
Oh well. Enjoy your ignorance. You all have a little too much testosterone to be rational educated minds. I pity you; but I accept a world in which you are a sizable inhabitant. And because of people like you guys. the world, not only Iran, will be a desolate place that it is.
@ “naj”,
say what you like, but we don’t put 12 year old girls in state run brothels to whore in the name of religion, and when we catch someone pimping 12 year olds we put them in prison.
Regime change in the USA will begin to solve a lot of problems everywhere.
“Almost” is absolutely right! First you’ll have to save up for that sex-change operation in order to graft on a… well I think you know what you’re lacking right now that stops you from being a “real cowboy”… but you always have your dreams… and Paris… What’s that phrase again, “a girl can dream, can’t she!”
You crack me up! 
China and Russia have a vested interest in propping this regime up as their main conduit of weapons and terrorism (and thus their proxy war) against governments friendly to the West. A regime that is shaky enough to be easily manipulated by these two powers while being propped up when necessary by the same might be an advantageous position for Moscow and Beijing.
Just for grins I let myself speculate about what a functional post Khomeinist Iran might look like. The ideal to me would be a social revolution equivalent to that of Restoration England. That drew the teeth from the both Calvinist Reformation sects, Puritan or Presbyterian, that had fueled the Civil war (less so for defanging the Scots Presbyters) and also established a basis for Toleration for an non-aggressive and subservient form of Catholicism (in Great Britain if not Ireland.) he bad news for England was that it left them ill equipped to respond to subversion by future messianic faiths, such as Marxism or Islam. It seems only fair that the Islamic world should experience the same transformation that the English bought at such a bloody price 350 years ago.
Right now Iran is 98% Moslem and %90 of that is Shia, almost all Twelvers. Allegience to the official cult is I suspect wide but shallow. What could Iran look like in 20 years if the mullahs discredited regime was cast out and a period of tolerance and free inquiry flourished?
01% Jewish
01% Tribal
02% Hindu
02% Buddhist
08% Sunni
09% Secular
10% Bahai
14% Zoroastrian
18% Christian
35% Shia (divided between 12s, 7s, 5s and Sufis)
We can dream.
Ayatollah Yazdi may well be “Ahmadinejad’s guru,” but he is also described as the theofascist regime’s brutalizing whip-cracker.
The bazaar closings, especially, suggest the regime in Iran is in a downward “death spiral.” But isn’t it possible that the ‘spiral’ the regime is in is still centripetal, consolidating toward a totalitarianism? Reading Sharansky and Arendt and Conquest and others, it takes a long time before a Left-totalitarianism implodes; they become stronger before they weaken. Right-totalitarianism never weakened from within until after it started to lose actual battles in war.
The theofascist regime in Iran is probably caught up in a death spiral since the summer elections of 2009, but if the spiral is centripetal instead of centrifugal, then the regime in power is still hardening, contracting, growing ever more repressive as it consolidates its dramatic and unexpected gains in the 2003 municipal, 2004 Majlis, and 2005 presidential elections. In this scenario of a centripetal spiral, it will be a long, long time before this regime begins to weaken.
‘Signposts’ point in two directions, at least. Knifings could be a signpost that the end of the theofascism is very near; or they could be a signpost that the end has not even begun, and that things will get much worse before they get any better.
Beautifully written. If the reports in this article are true, and Baluchis are targeted, how long before they rise in insurrection? Guerilla warfare is a natural to them. It would not be long before the CIA would finds ways to assist them. The viable and attractive ideological goal would be the transformation of Iran into a Confederation of semi-autonomous Provinces, modeled perhaps after the successful USA.
Er, one small question: after the first marriage, how does the 12 yr old remain a virgin for the next day’s marriage?
the world is going to hell in a hand basket.
things can always get worse ..I think they will. In the end Darwin will straighten things out, unfortunately the strongest aren’t normally the nicest.
…the P. stands for Pervasive
12 year old Virgins working in a brothel?
Has to be Islamic Republic on-the-job training for a future in paradise.
That’s what passes for civilization among mohammedans. But I guess that’s what you get when your so-called prophet is a child molester who even shocked the barbarian culture he came from. If it wasn’t shocking, the koran wouldn’t have had to explain away the marriage of Aisha.
You didn’t mention the demon possession of Mohammed, which Joel Robertson refers to in “The Islamic Antichrist”.
Plus, I am sure the reaction to that as any suggestion that Yassir Arafat died of A.I.D.S.
The reaction to Mohammed being demon possessed, my Muslims, would be the same as Yassir Arafat dying of AIDS.
In other words, more violent demonstrations than those which erupted after the Danish newspaper published those cartoons. Which, as I hope all recall, are not being published in a book about them.
The US is the largest supplier of Weaponry by far to the Middle East, nobody comes close. This is not a political statement, its just the way it is. The Global Military/Industrial complex is not limited to politics, they don’t care whose side you are on, War is business and business is good.
China and Russia tend to work with business groups, If Politics change in Iran, China and Russia continue doing business there as opposed to general US foreign policy which loses its Relationships when politics change.
During President Bush 8 years in office trade with Iran Grew by over 1000%, including the sale of cigarettes, clothing, cosmetics and various consumer goods. This should be occurring, despite political rhetoric we need to involve ourselves in more direct trade and less sound bites. Establishing Business ties should be priority, with less political ties.
This is an oft-stated cannard. Indeed, the US sells weapons to the reagion — hightech weapons. High priced weapons. Ff you look at the balance sheet we do reap the highest gross profit. However, the street level weapons — rifles, rpg’s, ammunition, etc — in short, the weapons most pleantiful and most used in the Middle East, are of Chinese manufacture. The Quantity of weapons (most used in warfare) is of Chinese manufacture and export, whereas the high price-tag weapons are sold to governments (allies) by the US.
There are statistics, damn statistics, and lies. Don’t take a single entry in Janes and extrapolate from that damning facts about the US.
If you please, I’d like some further clarification on this statement:
“The US is the largest supplier of Weaponry by far to the Middle East..”
Which countries specifically; as well as what type of weaponry?
alex
It may be true but – Russia is the biggest supplier of weapons to Iran. And the article is about Iran.
Ali Mostofi
Of course Iranians put Iran first, but that does not mean that they put religion first, as you suggest, it means they put Iran first.
And you got it wrong, the factories in China are Chinese – even in Chinese Wall Mart branch workers belong to communist party. Not to mention that in all major factories there is communist party unit. So get yourself educated – factories in China belong to Chinese, industrial and domestic products in Iran also belong to or are made in China.
This is along the lines of US armed Iraq..right?
I mean even as you stared at Saddams parades of thousands
of Soviet T-55 tanks, Soviet Migs, Soviet AK-47s, you
still repeated that lie..didnt you.
The US gave less than 1% of the arms. Less in fact that Denmark.
Thank you for citing my blog post.
However, I would to express it abundantly clearly that
NEO-RESISTANCE is adamantly ANTI-WAR; and condemns any form of military or political interventionism in the Iranian affairs.
I also wish to express my personal view, that part of the problem with Jundollah stems from American interventionism in my country.
Iran is not evil; Iran is self-interested, just as are other countries in the region. If self interest, and desire to defend ones national interest is evil, then the Us and Israel are also guilty of that charge. One exception is undeniable: that Iran has not engaged in any aggressive war. Unfortunately, Israel and the Us do not have their tracks as clean.
Kind regards
Naj
Naj, it is quite false to say that “Iran has nit engaged in any aggressive war.” Iranian troops are in Iraq today, killing Kurds and anyone else unlucky enough to be in the area of falling Iranian bombs. And Hezbollah have killed from Lebanon to Argentina…and Quds officers were captured by the hundreds in Iraq…
Wow! Quite some falsehood!
Did you and Dr Ahmadinejad receive your PhDs together?!
So long, sir.
Thats right Naj…Iran is self interested in building nuclear weapons.
The USA will be self interested when it destroys Irans military.
Fair is fair..right Naj?
Now, now, now. You are willfully ignoring the truth of Islam. If one person strikes another, the question of who is the aggressor depends entirely on the relative purity of their faith in Islam.
As an example, if a believer’s fist impacts a Jew’s face, the Jew is the aggressor who struck the believer’s fist with his face.
So, it is simply impossible for Iran to have attacked anyone. By definitions.
Naj, Moslems never wage “aggressive” wars. No matter how unprovoked and brutal, whether direct or using proxies (as the mullahs do), Moslem wars are decreed by God and advance the cause of Islamic Peace against infidels and hypocrites.
Naj,
3 points:
1 Iran sponsors Hamas and Hezbollah and supplies each with weapons and funds for military aggression.
2 Iran has designed and built EFP’s that have been used to kill allied soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
3 Iran is feared by it’s Arab neighbors due to it’s expansionist and aggressive aims.
The mullahs are killers, not only nationally, but internationally. Your analysis leaves out the facts listed above.
‘… Iran is not evil; Iran is self-interested, just as are other countries in the region. ‘
What is the self-interest in attacking the West and in particular Israel?
The argument can be made that it’s self-destructive.
The Iranians are looking at Nuclear War – is that self-interest?
In theory, yes. According to the religious ideology that they profess, being nuked – if it should lead to the destruction of Israel in return – is a practical, self-interested step that brings the return of the Mahdi. If you truly believe in the ‘Twelver’ ideology, then being nuked is a good thing.
Nag posted:
“Iran is not evil.”
Want to bet on that? The government of Iran advocates genocide of the Jews and is working to bring it about. That is evil.
“Iran has not engaged in any aggressive war. Unfortunately, Israel and the Us do not have their tracks as clean.”
I reckon taking over Lebanon through puppets doesn’t count as aggressive war in your mind. Iranian proxies making attacks on Israel does not count as aggressive war? Give me a break. As for Israel, all her wars have been in defense of the country and its people against enemies who want, at best, to ethnically cleanse the land of Israel of its Jewish inhabitants, that is, do to them what the Serbs were doing to the Bosnian Muslims before the US intervened there to stop it. More likely those enemies seek to carry out a genocide of Israel’s Jews, to finish the job the Nazis (much admired by the Arabs and Iranian theofascists) began. And those wars have been against countries and people who claimed beforehand that they were at war with Israel. What, anybody can make war on Israel but Israel must not fight back? Nope, sorry, it does not work like that.
As for America, Iran would have ended up as a Soviet puppet, if not annexed to the USSR, if not for America. It was America and Britain that levered the Soviets our of Azerbaijan in 1946. Had Mossadegh not been kicked out he would have turned to the Soviets for help, for he would have been terrified of losing his swag from the nationalized oil industry, and there was no one else to turn to, to offset American power. Every other Middle East nationalist who took over his country turned to the USSR, from Nasser to Qassem to Ghaddaffi. Why would Mossadegh be any different? To be really safe he’d need a Soviet military presence. Unlike Egypt, the common border with the USSR would have enabled the Red Army to roll in whenever the Soviets decided the time was ripe. What fun you would have had, ending up like Kyrgyzstan, or maybe Afghanistan.
Looking again at Israel, what did Israel ever do to Iran? Nothing. The Iranian government’s hatred and hostility to Israel arise solely from vanity and reactionary antisemitism. They can’t stand the idea that a bunch of people who ought to be dhimmis rule any land area, however small (Israel is about the size of New Jersey) in the region.
You justify Iranian actions by reference to national interest. Well that cuts both ways. US action is justifiable the same way. The US has spent decades trying to establish and maintain some kind of decent order in the world, one where people and nations can trade with each other and develop economically. Insofar as we can, we try to encourage liberty and consensual government, often a difficult task where people live in cultures that have always defined justice as “might makes right” or “we are right who are with the strong.” Iran, and a number of other countries, oppose this order-making effort because their rulers think they can get lots of power and goodies for themselves by overthrowing such an order. They are deluded. You are their apologist.
Iran’s fascist government is going to get nukes and provoke a nuclear war. That is what they say they will do. I see no reason to doubt them. Either the Iranian people overthrow the Pharaohs of Tehran before they can do that, or the Iranian people will be fried in the nuclear exchange. Don’t forget that Ayatollah Khomeini declared that he did not care if Iran burned, so long as “Islam” triumphed thorughout the world. That was the true voice of Pharaoh. If they are not stopped Iran will burn, but there will be no Islamic triumph. Do not apologize for Pharaoh, get rid of him while you still can.
Iran shouldn’t be an enemy of our nation, but it is. Why? Because we have meddled in their affairs since the C.I.A. orchestrated the overthrow of the popularly elected Mosaddegh in 1953. Mosaddegh’s crime was wanting to profit from the oil beneath their land, but we did BP’s dirty work. We propped up the Shah Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, and from what I gather, he wasn’t too popular. And the blowback of all our meddling was the revolution that deposed the Shah and allowed Ayatollah Khomeini to rule.
It was George Washington who warned us against foreign entanglements, and had his wisdom been followed, we’d not have this Ahmadinejad character there now. So much of our cold war posturing has come back to slap us in the face, you’d think we’d learn a lesson. Sadly, no we haven’t. We still meddle in other’s affairs and the blowback continues.
“Had Mossadegh not been kicked out he would have turned to the Soviets for help, for he would have been terrified of losing his swag from the nationalized oil industry, and there was no one else to turn to, to offset American power.”
-So we install the Shah in Mossadegh’s stead because the Russians might become buddies with Iran? The United States would have been best served had it heeded Washington’s warning to avoid “foreign entanglements” in his farewell address. So eventually the Iranian people kicked the Shah out and look what we got instead. Blowback is a MF-er!
Seems like Ahmadinejad is having problems with Russia
Ahmadinejad Says Russia Part Of Anti-Iran Campaign
“Russia is a great nation and we are interested in continuing friendship between the two nations but his (Medvedev’s) remarks are part of a propaganda drama that is to be carried out by the U.S. president against the Iranian nation,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech posted on his website Friday.
“In fact, Mr. Medvedev has kick-started this drama,” he said.
Even Time has a similar story.
Ahmadinejad’s statements unacceptable – Russian Foreign Ministry (Update 1)
Ahmadinejad alienates Russia
The row between Moscow and Tehran reflects long-simmering tensions that came to the boil on Wednesday when Ahmadinejad berated Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for buckling under what he said was US pressure for fresh sanctions.
The Kremlin swiftly chastised the Iranian leader for “political demagoguery” and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday described Ahmadinejad’s tirade as “emotional”.
Make of it what you will.
Hmmmm, the major natural gas pipeline between Iran and Turkey was sabotaged and Sunday night there was a serious fire at the old petrochemical plant on Kharq island. I wonder if the boys at the CIA have been busy this past week? I’ve always thought that we should be encouraging massive covert operations against Iran to destabilize its shaky government. That includes big acts of sabotage, attacks that would really put a dent into their fragile economy.
But I wonder if Obama really has the stones for doing this. He would look really bad if caught ordering these attacks and image matters A LOT to this guy. Remember, this is the same president who squandered the best opportunity to overthrow the government last year during the political riots after the election. This is also the big Nobel “Peace” Prize winner, so being caught conducting covert operations against the Iranians just wouldn’t do, especially to the Europeans.
So if Obama isn’t doing it, who is? If there are revolutionary groups within Iran that are actually willing to stand up and fight, we should be encouraging them with weapons and money in a BIG way. Homegrown fighters are the best and cheapest way to overthrow a government. If there really is an active and aggressive revolutionary group in Iran, we should be encouraging it in any way possible. It sure beats bombing their nuclear facilities.
For all the reasons you point to above, the CIA would be the last outfit that I would guess had anything to do with this.
What about a faction of the Revolutionary Guards? Others have pointed out that the regime’s death spiral could be leading to the advent of an even more totalitarian, if less cultist, than what we presently have.
I’d bet on that nefarious CIA employee named Lack O’Maintenance, and his sidekick Corruption N. Theft.
True, the mullahs could be replaced by, of all things, a general. I think it would be ironic that, in the 1980s, the mullahs in Iran fought a guy in a black beret, Saddam Hussein, and now there may be a chance that the mullahs could be replaced by a guy in a black beret. But, somehow I think the Iranian people are fed up with totalitarian regimes and are looking for something else. It may not be a pure democracy, but I don’t think they want to trade one dictator for another.
There’s also this group that has been operating in Iran for a very long time as their backs are up against a wall (or the ocean if you want to get technical). They’re called the Mossad and they’ve already sabotaged so many of Iran’s centrifuges that nobody knows how much longer any of them will keep working (they simply keep dying every time someone turns them on).
I suspect also that since Israel and the Kurds have a LONG and intimate friendship, that a pipeline sabotage could have been the work of a team made up of both.
The island fire? Well, remember after the Dubai incident, two “agents” left Dubai to Iran(!) of all places, by ship. Maybe they rounded up a little network and got busy…?
Now let’s wait and see which response Islamic apologists give: (a) flat denial of this Zionist lie or (b) “Well, western Christian women are incestuous whores anyway.” I’ve seen both responses in the past; wonder which they’ll use?
Kepp up the reporting Michael. I always learn something new from your posts. Who is setting forest fires and why? Can you give us more specifics on the reasons shop keepers are shutting the bazars? It must take courage and rage to do it.
It started as a protest against new tax hikes. TEA partiers.
Very, very interesting. Very.
Any idea who is responsible for these dastardly deeds against the rulers?
No…wait…don’t tell me. Let me guess.
Is it, uh, the, er, um…
Oh, I forget.
Just as well.
Who cares about Iran; if the people there want a free government isn’t it their job to procure it. Let us stop using American lives to “make the world safe for democracy” as that awful warmongering Woodrow Wilson declared one hundred years ago. Let us get out of the mideast and let those moslems fight their own wars.
but afew CIA agents putting sugar in the concrete mixers would not be bad.
Yeah! That’lll fix it. Get the f### out and leave it to the turds.
We’ll just head for the beach with our Chinese Chairs and pour the margaritas having earned Perpetual Peace and our Nobel Prizes.
Grab a Glass – there’s room for Everybody!!!!!
Sometimes I wonder if there is any hope at all for those people and I am not being facetious. Their culture is still rough, savage to those who follow it and certainly immoral on many levels. It is very discouraging. And what is also very sad, we have a president who will not help the ones in Iran who are actually willing to give their lives in order to have a better from of government.
iran needs more than regime change. It is an artificial country that should be divided into Kurdistan, Baluchistan, and Persia. Doing so would be better for them and for us.
Well, creating another “Kurdistan” like Northern Iraq will make the Turks enranged, but that will suit them well as their recent activities is like asking for trouble.
“Regime Change” in Iran will not end this miserable nightmare.
Its Islam that’s the problem. Any regime under Islam is a cruel one.
This sort of reminds me of the regime changes in Israel after Jeroboam broke away from Solomon. None of the changes produced a righteous regime. That only comes when the people, themselves, desire it and demand it. We have elections coming up this fall and a lot of political turmoil. There is no mandate to say we must choose good leaders. That will depend in its entirety on what we, as a nation, want. If we choose to return to the proven path we can — with some sacrifice. If we do then these other things won’t really matter because when a man’s ways please the Lord he will make even his enemies to be a peace with him.
What about the poor Palestinians suffering at the hands of those evil Israelis? We don’t hear enough about that. Or is it that we hear so much that there is no room for the media to report about the evils in Iran.
I wonder if there is a ‘temporary marriage’ available for the women on pilgrimage? They have needs, too.
Speaking of sabotage hitting the distribution points for the importation of refined oil was genius. My plan was to have SEAL teams disabling tankers, but that was to be an alternative to massive air strikes. In any case Iran is coming to a boil, faster please!
Each of our sisters who signs up will be bound by a two year contract with the province of the Quds’eh-Razavi of Khorassan and will be required to spend at least 25 days of each month temporarily married to those brothers who are on pilgrimage…Our sisters who are virgins will receive a bonus of 100,000 Tomans ($100 US) for the removal of their hymen.
Yipes, the sham of temporary marriage becomes even more transparent.
Don’t do it girls if, in fact, there is an element of volunteer-ism in any of this (which is hard to believe).
(Don’t prison guards in Iran go through the sham of temporary marriage before raping female prisoners ?)
Thank you for your articles and for the continual updates.
Imagine what a FREE press would do with all this information !!!!!
Unluckily we don’t have a free press any longer, we have only little stalins and little osamas all over the TVs, the papers, the “universities”…
The blight is spreading: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/cbc/100726/world/politics_cannon_afghanistan_leaked_documents_iran
It’s not just Iran anymore.
PS – This letter to the editor of the Calgary Sun, by yours truly, which was in the July 26, 2010 edition, generated the editor’s comment. Should I be surprised about the response?
Afghanistan conquerable
For those who say Afghanistan is unconquerable, I offer this as rebuttal: Kandahar was originally known as Iskandria. If that sounds similar to Alexandria, it is because the Persians use the word Iskander for Alexander. What I am saying, in a roundabout way, is
Afghanistan was conquered more than once, and that is precedent enough to conclude that it can be conquered again.
David W. Lincoln
(Are we trying to conquer Afghanistan, or save it?)
What about the remarks made by General Odierno that Iran is training and providing combatants to attack American troop in Iraq?
“…….that Iran is training and providing combatants to attack American troop in Iraq?”
Perhaps they see us as a threat. But I wouldn’t use that excuse to wage war on Iran. Besides, war with Iran is just what Ahmadinejad needs to deflect his countries attention away from all their problems and unite them in common cause. The U.S.A. needs to extricate themselves from that region. Leave them alone and they’ll turn on themselves.
The iranian opposition is not green. It is the silent majority that has saved Iran is cultural and puts Iran first.
The US wants this regime in power so that it provides fuel for US factories in China. All that the US needs to do is to ban HSBC in US for dealing with the Ayatollahs.
Did you see the latest?
They’re paying all those young folk out on the streets and the roofs to stay inside and make babies.
http://tinyurl.com/24fjlz3
Hmmmmmmm. Babies. Now that will save them.
Not.
Muslims don’t use birth control. They are using sheer population growth to outnumber and take over.
Their numbers are growing faster than Christians and Jews in Western lands.
I just want to thank our Christian friends who support Israel and the Jewish people in this difficult time.
We are all in this together with a common enemy whose goal is to destroy our Judeo-Christian society and enslave us to their cult of submission ( Arabic word Islam means submission).
I find it utterly fantastic that many liberal Christians and Jews actually defend the Muslims when they are attacking us.
http://jewishdailyreport.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/thank-you-christian-evangelicals/
-You’d best be “humping” Hershl and makin some babies or you guys will have even more problems! As for America, we’d do well to not support either Israel or the Palestinians in the occupied land. If Israel pulled back to their ’67 borders, then I think we’d have a reason to support that once proud nation.
better yet, david walters, they could go back to poland and then you’d be totally for them.
Michael
-Not that far….just to their mandated borders from 1948. Ethnic cleansing isn’t an American ideal
Yet, somehow, Americans did a far better job of ‘ethnic cleansing’ than Israelis ever had. In contrast, Jewish pioneers bought terrible land at inflated prices, going to live where there were few Arabs as a policy. Ben Gurion even agreed to the Peel Partition plan that would have made Israel a non-state. The Arabs rejected. Israel agreed to the 1947 UN mandated partition plan, but the Arabs rejected. Even ‘post-Zionist’ Israeli historians weren’t able to show that more than one-third of the Arabs who fled in 1948 were forced out. That added up to 150,000 expelled, mostly from areas where Arab irregulars had terrorized, murdered and mutilated both soldiers and civilians. As many as 900,000 ME Jews were basically kicked out of their countries, and will never receive any compensation from Arab/Muslim states.
What we get instead of facts from you are snide one-liners designed to prove moral superiority.
Amazing. The dumb, liberal Israeli governments since Rabin’s have BEGGED the PLO to take back nearly all of the ‘West Bank’ over and over. The Arabs said ‘no’, not if we have to recognize any Jewish state. Sharon force-pulled 9000 Jews out of Gaza, Hamas took over, destroyed everything, built one large terror training camp, began firing missiles and doing infiltrations and kidnappings (Shalit). Just amazing, your mindset.
You are thinking about Sunni populations. The Iranians had such a good population control effort their replacement rate dropped below ZPG. Now they are trying to increase the birth rate.
Predicting population growth is tricky. Lincoln predicted a US population of 270 million by 1930.
Bob
It is not just the population control. It is that the Iranian women started to study in the universities, started to be choosy whom to marry, wanted to go to work and as a result they started having less children and having them later.
Now Antarinejad want to change it so he wants less women in universities and some people in the Majlis want women not to work at all.
All for the glory of demographic imperative.
Naj: Whose self-interest are you talking about? Self-interest of small group of elite mullahs? They have sold their soul to devil and turned against their own land and people. They are taking Iranian people down to the deepest part of hell as they dance with their own demons.
Devil has a name. It is not relative. At this moment of history, as an Iranian, I believe Iranian government is evil. Damn if I speak openly about it. Damn if I am silent. I loose both ways.
Observer; I fully agree with you! Incidentally, the evil mullahs are whole heartedly bracing the kind of war puppets representing themselves and their ideology here! Actually, the mullahs WANT the war!
But, if you are an Iranian, how can you not be affected by the amount of ignorance and misinformation circling around here?
The vendetta of most individuals commenting here strongly parallels anti-semetism.
It’s not my kind of crowd to hang out with. And I came here only because I realized my writings are cited here!! Ironically, none of the people who are pulling a knife on me and spitting at me here have bothered to attack me at my blog!
fair enough. thanks for writing.
“In order to elevate the spiritual atmosphere, create proper psychological conditions and tranquility of mind, the Province of the Quds’eh-Razavi of Khorassan has created centers for temporary marriage (just next door to the shrine) for those brothers who are on pilgrimage to the shrine of our eighth Imam, Imam Reza, and who are far away from their spouses.” [emphasis added]
One can reasonably infer from this statement that the regime not only promotes but overtly encourages the practice of adultery.
Why then the hysteria about stoning supposedly adulterous women?
Sirius-
Since they are allowed to have up to four wives, the “temporary marriage” puts a nice patina of religious observance on their whoring around.
I am saddened that a GOLDEN opportunity to side with the Greens so long ago was not acted upon by our present mal-administration.. As far as I can tell from your latest post Dr. Ledeen, the power vacuum is beginning to show signs of an unmanageable character for anyone of any side in Iran now. Who will lead???
The Mullahs will probably not be overthrown for the simply reason the opposition does not have an organized military force capable of removing them, they do not care how many people they kill to stay in power, and they have enough support to recruit new hoodlums into their terror-repression forces. The idea that a popular revolt alone is enough to overthrown a tyranny comes from Robin Hood movies. (In real life King John had crushed the good guys.) The best the Iranians and world can hope for is that the US will elect an adult as President and that he will take action. And frankly we all know what the likelihood of that happening is. My guess is that the Iranian population will mainly age to indifference while today’s most dedicated freedom fighters will either emigrate, being killed or imprisoned, accept the situation or continue pointless efforts to overthrow the tyranny.
Naj, get out of my land and go back to your filthy Mohammedan house of death!
We will get our country back from your occupying tribal barbarians and that is a promise!
Iran will be free, secular, and democratic once again. As for you and your masters, time is running out and your enemies multiply every single second in thousands! watch out for people’s power you brain dead regime thug!
Great article, Michael. I ALWAYS wonder why the BIG span in news from behind the scenes. Iran frightens me like I’ve never been frightened b4; plus, AMERICA HAS NEVER HAD SUCH A SELF-ABSORBED PRESIDENT WHO ACTUALLY MAKES FRIENDS WITH THESE UGLY IRANIANS. Anyway, thanks again, Michael. I need to know what these creeps are up to. xoxo
All I am saying is give war a chance…
Disgusting! There are no morals or ethics in this “religion”. These underage virgins will be forced by their loving fathers to be raped in these “marriages” as they are forced to “marry” old men for family income.
Persia & Persians will only find PEACE if and only if we get this F….king religion Islam out of our homeland…
its a by product of arabs who attacked us certuries ago and left their shitty religion behind in our land…..
we need to clense our land from all of these trash so called moslem ideologies….
islam and us persians don’t mix…..
islam is a backward trashy faith that suits the arabs…they should keep it 4 themselves…..
Iran will only find peace once islam is totally destroyed……
long live…..
persia and Z + Z