Saturday, February 16, 2008

Why Iranians Have Not Risen Up?

"why have not the Iranian people risen up and given the Ayatollahs and their poodles the Mussolini treatment, shot and hanged upside down from a lamppost? The Pharaohs of Tehran have now ruled Iran for 29 years, oppressing and impoverishing the Iranians and directing terrorism against the outside world..."

To be sure, the Iranian people are suffering under the mullah’s tyranny.

But they are also suffering from inaction and disillusionment due to reasons which include:

(a) The regime has all but eliminated any and every form of opposition inside the country by mostly murdering them. It seems there are no Mossadegh's, Lech Walesa's, or Kamal Ataturk's left in Iran, thanks to the regime's political murder machine.

(b) Vacillating or lack of meaningful support for democratic movement in Iran from the West, and in particular the ever-changing hot/cold US policy towards the regime. In the eyes of the Iranian people who seek a secular democracy, US Iran policy cannot be trusted since US sate department has been seeking more to make deals (e.g., Grand Bargain) with the terrorist regime, than to confront it in any meaningful way. Unfortunately, this misguided and inconsistent US policy has created, amongst Iranians, mistrust and lack of confidence about US support for a genuine democratic movement in Iran.

(c) Most Iranians are afflicted by a combination of fear, political apathy, regime media propaganda and brain-washing, depression, day to day survival battling soaring prices, etc.

(d) In addition to being frightened of the regime, the more affluent, the technocrats, the Bourgeoisie, etc. in Iran do not care about politics per se. They are too busy making huge profits on a real estate bubble economy and import/export with Gulf States, and with their indoor dinner parties, Caspian Sea and Kharg Island villas, etc.--This class has an undeclared "silent pact" with the regime: leave us alone, and we will leave politics alone.

(e) Most youth, high school and college age students are into everything but politics these days. Fashion and style, plastic surgeries to improve facial features (for males as well as females), fixation on clandestine sexual gratification, fad drugs, and other superficialities seem to have taken an upper hand to the bitter and painful realities of living in the hell that the mullahs have created for the young generation. The ones who can afford it, are dying to get out of Iran at any cost.

There are other reasons, but the above are just some major ones that come to mind.

Sunday, February 03, 2008

Don't Count On "Students" Changing Regime in Iran

It was only 2-weeks ago or so when Condi Rice said, again, that US is willing to discuss "normalcy" in relations with Iran if only Iran stopped enrichment, etc. (can you say, ‘Legacy’?). And President Bush, in turn, made the same old hollow "warnings" to the "Tehran Regime" in his State of Union address. But the contradiction in their Iran policy is so severe and pathetic that even Iran regime’s assistant foreign minister reacted to Bush's Iran references by saying that Bush "warnings" to Iran were "repetitive and boring rhetoric"!

As for the student demonstrations in Iran now and in the past, yes, these students are chanting "Death to the Dictator", but they have never have chanted "Death to the Islamic Republic of Iran". The reason is quiet clear to the people inside Iran: these students are supported by the reformist faction within the regime, i.e., Euro-mullahs faction led by Khatami and Rafsanjani. Since the parliamentary 'elections' are near in March, these 'students' are once again instigated by reformist to stage demonstrations not against the regime as a whole, but against the faction opposing reformists, i.e., Ahamdinejad and Khamenei et al. These reformist-instigated protests are designed to weaken the hardliners politically so that the reformists could come back into majority in the parliament come spring.

These 'student' protests are no call for revolution, I am afraid; indeed they are in fact for the strengthening and preservation of the "reformist" faction within the same regime. They are designed to preserve the regime, not to destroy it. So, it would be wishful and naive to see these protests as a sign that 'regime change' will happen from within Iran. There are no meaningful, genuine, or organized opposition that will pose a threat to the regime as a whole. The opposition that could organize a regime changing movement has been systematically arrested, and killed by the regime in the past 27-years.

As for “sanctions”, the first 2 have had no meaningful impact on the regime, and the coming third, and watered-down sanction, also promises to be as ineffective.

There is only one solution left for Iran regime change, but no one wants to talk about it. And that's not happening for the foreseeable future. In fact if Hussein Obama is elected, we will have an “Anti-Regime Change” in Iran with Hussein Obama drinking Persian tea and eating sweets with the Iranian mullahs shortly after he places his hand on the Koran (like it is purported that he did when being sworn in as a Senator) to swear in as the President of the USA.