New Testingstan

It just seems so random from my perspective that I can't imagine it would've come from anywhere else.

I think in a way what bugs me the most about the Iran thing is the self-delusional self-righteousness around it

Like if it was "OK Iran is a rival country so we're going to oppose and isolate them and screw them over and plot against them cause that's just how the game is played" or "we're going to back our ally against their enemy cause that's how alliances work" that would be one thing

But no we want to feel like good guys doing it, like some kind of big damn heroes taking a stand against evil, like the real world is some kind of fantasy setting or saturday morning cartoon and our enemies are Mordor or supervillains, so you get all this "oh no evil theocracy huge threat to world security", and I bet a ton of ppl who spout that actually believe it.

they are an evil theocracy and something of a threat to world security, etc.

but the potential cost, both human and economic, is just too high to do anything about that at the moment, so closing our embassy and ejecting their diplomats is just provocative and if anything will cause them to push harder for nukes

so its counterproductive

It's almost as if everything the West could do to Iran to counter its nuclear ambitions and fight its regime, in the end only strengthened their resolve to have Nukes and cemented the Regime's power.



If a solution must come, it must come from Iran itself.

Iran's modern state is the direct result of more than a century of meddling by foreign powers in its internal politics.

Oxymoron wrote:It's almost as if everything the West could do to Iran to counter its nuclear ambitions and fight its regime, in the end only strengthened their resolve to have Nukes and cemented the Regime's power.

well, I'm not convinced that that's universally the case. but yeah, seems that way for the moment.

Oxymoron wrote:If a solution must come, it must come from Iran itself.

So, on a geological timescale, then.

Well, as they say, madness is continually doing the same thing while hoping for different results,

so I guess the reasonnable thing would be to try for more of the same, right ?

RyanThunder wrote:

Oxymoron wrote:If a solution must come, it must come from Iran itself.

So, on a geological timescale, then.

Or you could, you know, do the one thing that proved to be somewhat efficient in the past and give funds to the lawful bastions of political opposition, to defeat the current governement in the urns, and give momentum to a Lawful Revolution in the mind of the Iranian People.

Oxymoron wrote:Well, as they say, madness is continually doing the same thing while hoping for different results,

so I guess the reasonnable thing would be to try for more of the same, right ?

so

don't put fucking kleptocrats in charge

this isn't bloody rocket science

I'm not demanding that they be utterly subservient to the west. I just want that theocracy gone.

iran has no nuclear weapons program and does not want nuclear weapons.

you've been watching Iranian state news again, haven't you

btw i think there might be a relatively easy way to improve the iranian government but to consider it, we'd have to think about someone other than ourselves

iranians like islam. you aren't going to be able to take that from them with force and really you shouldn't anyway.

but their existing government has a few flaws that people inside iran recognize and argue the constitution and the practice don't line up. in other words, the current government is arguably misinterpreting their own constitution in a few key points and if that stopped, things could improve


imagine for a moment if we in america had our beloved democracies in all respects except one: the supreme court felt they had a supervisory role in the elections that gives them the right to disqualify any candidate for the hell of it

what would happen? well since the court justices are picked by the president and the presidential candidates are vetted by the court you'd have this closed system develop

the court only allows candidates to run who agree with them

so when election day comes, the people choose from a pool of people who more or less support the status quo

then when one of them nominates a new justice, he picks someone who agrees still so nothing changes



then if a candidate does make it into the election with different ideas.... congress passes a reform law... the president signs it....

then the court rules it unconstitutional because they said so, killing the reform



would this mean we'd have to uproot the whole system to fix it? is the problem with the idea of democracy? is the problem the instutition of congress or the presidentecy?

hell is the problem even with the core idea of having a supreme court?


i say no to all. the big problem is simply that the court is no longer accountable to the people and have placed themselves, with a bit of creative interpretation of the constitution (which they can do since that's their job), in a role to basically self-select, thus locking the power up


if we could get enough mass action together though to force the court to reevaluate this interpretation... thus opening the door for public oversight through the new more open elections

with the court then reined in, congress can go ahead and pass that reform bill again and let it pass. full democracy is back.




now i'm not expert on the iranian government but when i read this page:
http://english.khamenei.ir//index.php?o ... &Itemid=11

it made me think i'm on to something here.

We should not allow the enemy to do whatever it wants. The enemy manipulates the minds of people and removes the obstacles in the way of infiltrating the foundations of the Islamic Republic – including the Guardian Council. Currently, the Guardian Council is the focus of numerous attacks. The issue of "supervision of legislation" is baseless uproar whose goal is to undermine the Guardian Council.

a lot of what's said in that link are ok arguments (some of which i think could be used in a pro-reform context), but this kind of thing reads as the power structure realizing their self-perpetuation is at risk with some reform and seeking to kill it

if the powers that be see it as potentially undermining

well maybe that's not a bad thing

I'm not saying take islam away from them, though. I'm saying separate church and state.

also, if they wanted nuclear power they could get perfectly safe and effective CANDU reactors from Canada.

but no, they're supposedly developing their own

in a bunker

with like 20x the number of centrifuges they need to get the amount of fuel they need

seems legit

RyanThunder wrote:you've been watching Iranian state news again, haven't you

the world is almost unanimous on this, including the USA and Israel

their worries are "nuclear capability", which iran is very close to having (and that a shitload of countries do have; if you master electricity and medicine research, you're a short hop away from weapons capabilities)

but not nuclear weapons. check out the national intelligence estimate out of the united states. check out the words of leon panetta and ehud barak when they say "iran has not yet made the decision to build a weapon" (that's a lie btw, the decision is made: NO)

check out iran's history on the matter, accepting deals that would kill their capability ot build one too in exchange for energy and medicine assistance. this includes the IAEA enhanced protocols in... 2003 i believe and the fuel swap agreements in 2005 and again in 2009


check out the most recent IAEA report which tells that they've decided to do the fuel swap with themselves; they aren't stockpiling the potential weapons crap

indeed the simple fact that there are IAEA reports at all speak to the fact that they aren't actively building a weapon, since they couldn't build a weapon under the inspector's noses!

I must not be up to date then. my bad

Iran is a major exporter of raw uranium ore, AFAIK.

Having the capacity to refine more uranium ore into nuclear fuel than they themselves need would be a way for them to increase the added value of one of their export and so make more money - more money that don't come from selling oil is always a good thing for an oil-export economy.

They could also refine the Uranium Ores of nations who can't afford to have it refined for them by other nations than Iran, for political or monetary reasons.

There's no need for Iran to have a military nuclear program to exist to justify having more centrifuges than they need for themselves.

iran also wants to start exporting electricity and other stuff. they know they can't rely on the oil trade forever.

Oxymoron wrote:It's almost as if everything the West could do to Iran to counter its nuclear ambitions and fight its regime, in the end only strengthened their resolve to have Nukes and cemented the Regime's power.

If I was Iran I think I'd want nukes

Some deterrance in case the USA decides to regime-change my country one day.

I suspect one of the real reasons USA hates the idea of Iran getting nukes is precisely this - we don't want them to be able to deter us from regime-changing them.

Makes me wonder if nuclear proliferation in general might actually be a good thing. "God made man but the Colt made all men equal."

Jung wrote:Makes me wonder if nuclear proliferation in general might actually be a good thing.

oh god not this again

RyanThunder wrote:I'm not saying take islam away from them, though. I'm saying separate church and state.

also, if they wanted nuclear power they could get perfectly safe and effective CANDU reactors from Canada.

but no, they're supposedly developing their own

in a bunker

with like 20x the number of centrifuges they need to get the amount of fuel they need

seems legit

From Canada? Whose PM just told them to go fuck themselves?

Brilliant. If I was Iran, Id be doing the same thing, because no matter what they do, the West will see it as a threat. So you may as well harden everything so some will survive after the Israeli's bomb their totally legal program.

I hate politics, this is just a shit sandwich of our own making.

Aaron wrote:From Canada? Whose PM just told them to go fuck themselves?

The offer was given long before that motherfucker Harper sent the whole thing into a tailspin at the Americans' behest

Obviously it doesn't make much sense for them to see it that way /now/

IIRC, not so long ago (I don't know if it's still true), for the consumption of its own civil nuclear reactors, Iran had to have the uranium ore that it had mined in its own mines shipped in a foreign country to be refined into nuclear fuel, because it couldn't do it itself.

You imagine the humiliation, and why they would want to have a shitload of centrifuges of their own.

The reasoning is still valid. They don't want to depend on us, because we can and have meddled with them for decades. Iran is totally within its rights to develop nuclear power.

This is nothing more then America needing a boogyman to feed the military and irrational fear of Islam and brown people.

doesn't pakistan have nukes?

you don't see them launching any at israel

Good thing for Iran, Syria is probably going to provide the Next War for Uncle Sam, now that Afghanistan and Irak are winding down.

...

Fuck the militaro-industrial complex.

Zod wrote:doesn't pakistan have nukes?

you don't see them launching any at israel

Funny thing you mention that. India is actually the best closest ally of Israel.

And India would steamroll them, even without their superior nuke arsenal.