While I’m a secular nationalist and therefore opposed to the Islamic Republic on ideological grounds and my wish is to see the system evolved or changed organically from within Iran, without foreign interference, to become more free and pluralistic in nature, I am very much against those who wish to export “regime change” to Iran and destroy Iran in the process and turn her into a Western puppet. The reasons why I don’t trust the “regime change” crowd and their intentions, can be found in this documentary quoted above. Just replace the historical characters with modern ones, from the politicians to the journalists, and you see the same plots, same settings, same storylines, same dirty tricks at play today. It’s amazing how nothing has changed after 67 years, the playbook is exactly the same. They successfully plotted a “regime change” in Iran back in 1953 and destroyed Iran in the process, and they’re plotting to destroy Iran yet again, in 2020. Just watch the documentary to see what I mean. Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it!
At best, you sound like a "Melli Mazhabi" guy or better say muslim nationalist section of Dr. Mossadegh party. Muslim Nationalists aka Nahzate Azadi party were among people who supported murderous mullah, Khomeini to take power. Head of Muslim nationalist party, Dr Bazargan was the first prime minister of Islamic regime around 1979. Shortly after revolution, he found out what a big mistake he made and he resigned after 6 months. If you are at his camp you should know better what this regime has done to Muslim Nationalists. The system will not evolve or reform. We saw it in 99, 2009, 2018, and 2019. The regime only recognizes force. Here you seems like supporters of regime from reformist camp insisting on reforming. Every Iranian nationalist wants the regime change to be done by Iranians and not by foreigners. That will be the first priority but regime is busy and expert in killing and jailing every single opposite voice within Iranian borders and neighboring countries. 1953 was not a regime change. It was a way to remove our popular prime minister from office. The regime was constitutional Monarchy before and after operation Ajax. In 1953 we had a nationalist, independent and popular prime minister, a functional parliament, a broken economy and a weak young king. Now we have an anti-Iranian zealot and religious dictator called Supreme Leader, a dictatorship called "rule of mullah", a weak and unpopular so called president, a dysfunctional parliament, and a crushed economy. The difference is so obvious to any keen eye, unless a person intentionally want to not see it. Many supporters of the regime keep insisting on reforming the existing regime and only prolonging the days of it's existence, while many of them know full well that the regime won't evolve as we observed it times over and over again. Once again, I think the regime won't evolve or reform, so a regime change is a must for Iranians. Priority goes to Iranian citizens to get rid of this regime. (Which I agree with you)
This was published today. It says what has been said before, by those who have actually visited Iran. Particularly by those who have any pretense of having 'seen it all'. It is for the latter category, especially, that Iran has things they may not find anywhere else. And for everyone else, it is still a place that is simply not what anyone who gets their views from the propaganda narratives about Iran imagines. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-25/pico-iyer-on-being-a-tourist-traveling-in-iran You need to wonder why this observation is, in fact, so true:
Has the "inevitable war" started yet? Just checking, as I usually avoid this thread. I certainly do not the time to read a single IM post, much less the 2000+ post thread (I see his lasted is rather concise, though).
With Trump administration sanctioning anything Iranian, one area they have totally forgot to “counter Iranian influence” in, is cultural. While Iranian movies have always been popular in the region and beyond, the domestic Iranian music industry has been booming for the last few years and amazingly many Persian songs have suddenly become very popular, and sometimes the number one hit, in places like Iraq, the Persian Gulf area, Central Asia and even in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. So much so that many hit Iranian songs are being copied in Turkish and other languages. So Iran is basically starting to do what Turkey had done for a long time, winning Arab hearts and minds through film and music and it seems to be working. You see a lot of comments on these videos from Arab fans from Iraq to all the way to Algeria, saying they’re learning Persian just to understand the lyrics of Persian songs... This original Persian song has been a hit in several countries and copied in several languages like Turkish. Here is recently-released Turkish adaptation of the same song, which has become a hit in Turkey and Eastern Europe. This hit Persian song has been the most played/popular song in Iraq for a year now. 99% of the comments on the video are actually in Arabic.... Another original Persian hit song that’s become very popular in the Arab world
This original Persian song has had almost 100 million views on YouTube and has been copied in a dozen languages. Here is the Turkish adaptation of the same song, which has become a hit in Turkey. Some other new popular Iranian bands preforming live in Iran
Some people protesteth too much. And for no reason. Just a couple of week ago, when one of the posters here (who I believe you had repped for that comment) was saying no one is interested in Iran (or something of the sort), and as I quoted from articles that underlined the obsession with Iran in the US foreign policy, I also was tempted to mention the number of people viewing this thread, at the time a little more than 40,000. Since then, even with Covid-19 and the 'race protests' being the dominant issue in the news, I just noticed that the number of viewers in this thread has jumped to more than 57,000.
How do you check number of viewers? I remember there was an icon in the old bigsoccer to see number of time a thread got viewed as well as the number of active posters viewing that thread, but I can’t recall seeing that function on the new bigsoccer. secondly are you conflating total views with number of active viewers on the thread? I would be amazed if this thread (outside of the time war appeared imminent) had tens of thousands of active viewers at any given time.
The number of viewers is right there on the forum. It shows the following for now (57,768) and was around 40-45,000 a few weeks ago. Pre-match: The inevitable war with Iran Q*bert Jones III, Jun 21, 2019 ... 79 80 81 Replies: 2,009 Views: 57,768 Umar 18 minutes ago p.s. the hot topics obviously have more viewers, but on a comparative basis, this thread is doing fine. It is doing better, for instance, compared to these and many others: Trump Presidency X-like American History X, but without the laughs superdave, Jan 7, 2020 ... 54 55 56 Replies: 1,388 Views: 53,156 chad Yesterday at 11:57 PM or News: How Steel Tariffs Create Jobs American Brummie, Mar 1, 2018 ... 11 12 13 Replies: 305 Views: 11,454 Dyvel Yesterday at 8:46 PM or Dow jones plunges 512 points in one day; nasdaq down 136; s&p down 60 American Brummie, Aug 4, 2011 ... 66 67 68 Replies: 1,682 Views: 52,492 feyenoordsoccerfan Yesterday at 7:54 PM
Views is every time anyone (including posters) goes to the thread. So each time you post, that’s one view and each time you come back to the thread that’s one view. Active viewers was the measure of how many people were in the thread (or forum) at the time. That was a really useful feature but it appears to have been switched off when the last big update happened.
I am not sure how the numbers work, but I didn't mean to suggest that 'views' are active viewers right now, which is why I made the comparison between total views from a few weeks ago compared to now (the difference being the number of more recent views). In any case, the issue is not all that serious, merely in the nature of 'snark' back at 'snark'. Except, even when it comes to 'snark', I try to have some basis in fact.
There are 3-4 regular posters in this thread and probably a handful of lurkers. About the same number of Americans that care about Iran.
A different perspective on why Americans "don't care about Iran". Mine would be more 'verbose' with a somewhat different take.
To say the American public are as obsessed with Iran as US policymakers (and, in particular, those who are influenced by the neocons), wouldn't be entirely accurate. Attitudes of the American public are formed by the propaganda they are fed and the focus of the propaganda is not always on Iran. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/which-country-is-americas-biggest-enemy/ Enemy of the State Which Country Do Americans See As Their Biggest Foe? Last year, in 2019, the numbers were similar. Today, the polls I have seen, show China on top, Iran and Russia next, with North Korea dropping to 4th place. But, regardless of these fluctuations, Iran will remain among the top 4, as long as that is what some people who systemically control what Americans are told, like to feed to the American people.
So if you ask someone on the street about which countries they consider enemies, of course Iran would be on that list. That doesn’t mean the general public cares, or even thinks about Iran. It means they saw a blurb on their social media feed. No one cares about Iran.
The only Iranians I don't like are the bad guys. Having said that...I don't like our bad guys either!
I never accused the American public to be deep thinkers. If tomorrow, they were told that Grenada was the #1 enemy of the US, you would soon find Grenada on the list too.
You like the people who tell you who are the 'good guys' and who are the 'bad guys' to be the ones who have been telling you that story. And don't 'care' for anyone else interrupting their narrative.