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Make Friends with Iran

Captain.Sassy said:
I've heard this claim alot. What's the evidence that it was fraudulent? Again, honest question.
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Sort of irrevelent, considering the way the Iranian Regime has cracked down on it's opposition.
Of course you will probably try to defend and/or excuse that next....
 
dudalb said:
Sort of irrevelent, considering the way the Iranian Regime has cracked down on it's opposition.
Of course you will probably try to defend and/or excuse that next....
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Nope. I think it was a clumsy and heavy-handed response.

How is the evidence of whether or not the election was fraudulent irrelevant?
 
Ziggurat said:
To begin with, the mullahs have an expansionist authoritarian religious ideology which is at odds with almost the entire world. Their only real allies are Syria (a Shia minority-ruled dictatorship) and Hezbollah (Shia terrorists). Every other "ally" is only an ally because of shared enemies (Venezuela, for example). Western liberal democracy is viewed as intrinsically threatening to them because it seduces Iranian youths who want to emulate permissive western behavior.

But more immediately, Iran has an interest in acquiring nuclear weapons, they are hostile to our ally Israel (a hostility entirely initiated by themselves), and they have an interest in encouraging regional instability. Such instability helps prop up oil prices, which they want as high as possible, while we want oil prices as low as possible.
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FAir enough. I'm not sure I agree with the ideological differences constituting hard and fast conflicts of interests, and I'm not sure that I see Iran as necessarily 'expansionist'.
 
Captain.Sassy said:
FAir enough. I'm not sure I agree with the ideological differences constituting hard and fast conflicts of interests
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Incompatible ideologies always lead to conflict. Always. The nature of the conflict can vary quite a bit (it need not be war, it need not necessarily even involve violence), but conflict of some sort always happens. And the ideology of the mullahs is incompatible with western liberalism.

and I'm not sure that I see Iran as necessarily 'expansionist'.
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The mullahs see their brand of Islam as expansionist. It shares some similarity to communism in that they don't consider an expansion of the state of Iran to be a requirement, it's perfectly acceptable to them to have their ideology simply replicate itself within existing states. But they definitely want their brand of Islam to spread throughout the world. In fact, they think it is destined to.
 
Captain.Sassy said:
I've heard this claim alot. What's the evidence that it was fraudulent? Again, honest question.
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There's a lot of objective statistical analysis that shows that the "election" results are, at best, suspicious. If you want to believe that Ahmadinejad won fair and square, it's up to you.
 
ravdin said:
There's a lot of objective statistical analysis that shows that the "election" results are, at best, suspicious. If you want to believe that Ahmadinejad won fair and square, it's up to you.
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I read an article in Wired that said the statistical analysis was ambiguous. I could be convinced. Give me a link.
 
Captain.Sassy said:
I read an article in Wired that said the statistical analysis was ambiguous. I could be convinced. Give me a link.
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No. I'm not interested in being drawn into an argument over the validity of the polling results and I honestly don't care if you are convinced or not.
 
I think the current regime in Iran needs the West as an enemy to justify it's existence.
Couple that with the rather strong opposition to the current government and you see that they will never play nice with the West.

All their rhetoric is aimed at painting the West as an enemy of Iran. Even the way they are playing the nuclear issue is aimed at keeping the West in the role of arrogant bully.

'We are developing nuclear capability for peaceful purposes. And no we will not let in inspectors to verify this and put you at ease'.

Thus putting Western powers in a position of having to use sanctions and pressure.
 
Ziggurat said:
You should perhaps start with figuring out what it would mean to be friends with Iran, because you don't seem to have a clue. Iran is hostile to us because their interests are at odds with ours. Speeches cannot and will not change that. A democratic revolt in Iran might do the trick, but the mullahs will never, in fact can never, be our friends, no matter how nice we try to be.
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Wrong, Israel is the reason, but you knew that.
 
Eddie Dane said:
I think the current regime in Iran needs the West as an enemy to justify it's existence.
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Not really. It is not as if Iran is short of people to be it's enemies. Most of the middle east to start with.
 
MaGZ said:
Wrong, Israel is the reason, but you knew that.
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Not really. Iran never lost any territory to Israel. Oh it doesn't like the place but the list of countries iran doesn't like isn't a short one. I understand they are somewhat upset about our support of the Shah.
 
Yes make friends with Iran and the entire Islamic world. Do this and the war with AQ will come to a end. American foreign policy is driven by the Jews. Iran knows this, Bin Laden knows this, all the countries in the world know this.

Dump Israel.
 
MaGZ said:
Yes make friends with Iran and the entire Islamic world. Do this and the war with AQ will come to a end.
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How clueless are you? Al Qaeda kills more muslims than non-muslims, and the Islamic world is divided. Who would you have us make friends with? And other than throwing Israel to the wolves (which you probably see as a good in itself), how do you think that could even be accomplished? Because you're just clueless if you think Israel's destruction will bring peace to the middle east.

Al Qaeda will not stop fighting until they are either defeated or they achieve their desired Caliphate. Your ignorance and bigotry mask the truth in front of your nose.
 
Ziggurat said:
To begin with, the mullahs have an expansionist authoritarian religious ideology which is at odds with almost the entire world.
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You mean those same 'mullahs' that have been telling the Ayatollah to stop repressing the people and actually start allowing more freedom?

I'm not condoning their theocracy, and I'm not condoning their international alliances, but these people are still humans and can be reasoned with. Their current (political) leadership is the obstacle, and needs to be undermined-- every single attempt to be typically hard-line back at them cements the power base of Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, and keeps setting back any possibility of resolutions or diplomatic relations.

As to the OP, though, that tactic wouldn't fly. It would alienate the millions of people over there who are currently fighting for more say in their governance, as well as the millions of Iranian people who have fled the country since the revolution. Instead, opening basic diplomatic relations and encouraging commercial interaction (food, clothing, iPods, McDonalds, etc.) between the two nations would make for a whole lot more pro-Western sentiment and get more positive results in the long run. It won't be pleasant at first, and it's probably not going to make the angry speech much less angry for the first couple of years, but the pay-off would be worth it.
 
Ziggurat said:
How clueless are you? Al Qaeda kills more muslims than non-muslims, and the Islamic world is divided. Who would you have us make friends with? And other than throwing Israel to the wolves (which you probably see as a good in itself), how do you think that could even be accomplished? Because you're just clueless if you think Israel's destruction will bring peace to the middle east.

Al Qaeda will not stop fighting until they are either defeated or they achieve their desired Caliphate. Your ignorance and bigotry mask the truth in front of your nose.
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Let's just break with our support of Israel and see what happens. Just think how much money and American lives it will save.

Where's the harm?
 
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