Do we hope for, or even expect, a secular Iran?
With freedom of religion and no-religion?
Or what?
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I hope for it, of course, but don’t know if we can expect it. It is very unclear right now what - if anything - Trump is going to do about it.
On a positive note, at least the UN is saying it is near collapse! If he just doesn’t intervene to bail them out, they might actually go under!
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Yes! I hope ardently that he will not bail them out!
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The UN must be destroyed!
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One can only hope. I think it may be possible to return to a 1970s Iran where clerical power was diminished and, while people were still religious, it was restricted publicly. I’ve seen it said that they were very Western with fashion, nightlife, and some exposure to education, but at the same time mosques were full.
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Rhetorical questions - but please do answer them if you can. If any reader can …
Why did the Shah’s rule collapse? (The Google AI version is not reliable. Eg. economic inequality is universal, as it needs to be.)
How did the ayatollahs build their Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps? It took time. Was there any strong objection from the people?
Much as we deplore the cruelty of the present Iranian regime and sympathize with the protesters gambling their very lives, how can we rely on so volatile a population?
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Good questions. I’m nowhere near educated enough on any of it to even speculate on the answers. I just know we need to keep 7th century barbarians from taking over the 21st century!
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There’s an article in the Jerusalem Post, “The Silence of the Graveyard: Why the West Abandons Iran to the Ayatollahs”. In it the author brings up the beginnings of the “moral inversion” of the West, going back to Foucault’s romanticization of the Islamic revolution. Interesting.
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I have found and read the article, Liz. The author, Johanna Mamane, is right of course that to find excuses for not feeling and expressing pity for the victimized people of Iran is outrageous.
But whether President Trump was affected by such pretexting, we don’t know and I doubt it strongly. I read the scrappy reports of a US naval approach to the shores of Iran as an indication that nothing, nobody - including Qatar - will divert him from his intentions. He may vary and adjust his plans, but surely not cancel them! I dread learning that he is letting that murderous regime continue and I don’t expect to.
Hope not to.
We wait to see what happens.
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Lindsey Graham - with whom I often disagree but this time mostly agree - begs Trump to act against the tyrannical murderous torturing ayatollahs of Iran:
"When asked about what the protesters should do, President Trump said, keep protesting. Help is on the way. If this regime is still standing the day after will be [the beginning of] 100 years of chaos. I have every confidence that President Trump will do what he promised to the people. Help is on the way. Keep protesting. If this regime falls, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, they all go. It’d be the biggest change since the fall of the Berlin Wall.”
There’s more - find it here:
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As a native of South Carolina, I find Lindsey Graham embarrassing. He’s right some of the time, but I would love to put him out to pasture.
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