Comment preview: I'm fucking gutted. I just typed out a massive explanation of why the comment you copy pasted is disingenuous whilst I explained everything you need to know about both Ayatollah's and Ahmadinejad, explained their lives and rise to power within context of t ....

Comment preview: The invasion happened not long after the Iranian revolution. The new Iranian leadership was far from consolidating power and was afraid of a counter-revolution or coup. The Iranian military was build up under the Shah with large support from the US. The mi ....

Comment preview: No, there is very little truth to this. The Iranians nationalized British oil assets in the late 40s/early 50s. The Iranians had a democratic process for their government which was fairly established. When they kicked the British out, they didn't have the ....

Comment preview: To be fair, [Iran's secret police started brutally suppressing Iranians with American support.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAVAK) Way before the Shah was overthrown in the 1979 revolution [the CIA and Israel's Mossad were training and supporting SAVAK in ....

Comment preview: The revolution in Iran was genuinely popular. It covered a cross section of the population with liberals, secularists, women, orthodox muslims and others all uniting in opposition of the shah. In this sense we should not be mislead by the ideological nar ....

Comment preview: Everyone seems to fucking forget this. I'm an American, I hate Americans and our stupidity for the most part. Iran hates us, because we overthrew their DEMOCRATICALLY elected government, installed a dictator who was friendly with the US. They overthrew him ....

Comment preview: Muslims, more specifically Arab Muslims, are the latest victims of capitalisms war and exploitation. If you look at something like the Iraq war, which by all means was a capitalist conquest for market shares of oil, it's not hard to see the kind of effects ....

Comment preview: Probably because it is the popular (mis)understanding about the Carter presidency, first promulgated shortly after Reagan defeated him in the 1980 election. It's what people who don't know history say about Carter in an attempt to appear informed. There ar ....

Comment preview: This is just as misleading as the other one. The fact is, there are lots of really religious people in Iran who support the goverhment (something rich, educated, liberal Iranians try to pretend isn't true), and the fact is that a lot of people that were ki ....

Comment preview: Why's this guy being downvoted? I'm from Iran, this is actually true. Israel has on many occasion offered Iranian Jews housing and cash to immigrate to Israel, but almost all of them have turned it down. Rightly so, why join/live in a large military base t ....

Comment preview: >Saddam saw it as an opportunity to take out an enemy and solidify Iraq's dominance in the region. Kind of. Saddam and other Arab leaders were terrified of the possibility of the Iranian revolution spreading among Shia populations in the region and thre ....

Comment preview: Expat Iranian here. Though I haven't lived there in over 2 decades, I have been following some of the trends and issues that Iranians are concerning themselves with, which are large and numerous. These issues range from their desire for more in life and re ....

Comment preview: Before the revolution Iran was ruled by Shah Reza Pahlavi. Power was clustered among a close network of the Shah's relations and friends. During the 1970s the gap between Iran's rich and poor grew. Distrust of the Shah's economic policy and resentment of h ....

Comment preview: TBF Iranians were never quite Afghan in their culture and social norms. There's to this day a more "liberal" urban class in Iranian society. It's actually sorta interesting, how a nominally fundamentalist theocratic top leadership and the rest of Iranian s ....

Comment preview: Good list. Here's another thing you should add: The Iranian government employs people to post Iranian propaganda on the internet. **"In 2010, the Basij focused significant attention on combating perceived threats to the regime from the Internet. Thousands ....

Comment preview: They actually used to have a great government, and elected a professor and a poet as President. He was leading Iran in a better direction, towards democracy, modernization, and self-determination. At least he was much better than the theocrats that eventu ....

Comment preview: >Of course, some Iranians will ponder about my years spent in the US. I believe that many of them are so disappointed with where the country is going and are so disappointed by their current "insider" politicians, that they will appreciate having me as ....

Comment preview: Well it turns out I had about half of it copy and pasted: ______________________________________________________ This comment is the very definition of disingenuity. In order to understand this matter properly, one must understand who Seyyed Ruhollah Khome ....

Comment preview: Saddam started attacking tankers and shipping in the gulf. He wanted the Iranians to escalate the conflict and close the straits of hurmoz. If Iran did that Saddam hoped this would bring the US into the war. Iran didnt take the bait tho. some more context, ....

Comment preview: Can we stop with the "OMG IRANIAN REVOLUTION LOOK AT HOW GOOD EVERYTHING WAS!!!11" circlejerk please? This picture, and any others like it of Iranian women in Western dress, are from a small subset of elites from urban centers at the time. Everywhere els ....

Comment preview: There are plenty of unsuccessful rebellions, and generally speaking rebellion infers violence, but not always. That said, a rebellion is a term for any refusal to continue the status quo. A teenager can be considered rebellious, though they do not insist t ....

Comment preview: There are two reasons for instability in the region: 1) The British drew the maps of the middle east with no regard at all to ethnic, tribal and religious distinctions 2) The west (mainly the US and UK) have supported and help plant brutal dictators throug ....

Comment preview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Iran#Islamic_Republic_.28since_1979.29 Some tidbits: >On March 16, 1979, Habib Elghanian, the honorary leader of the Jewish community, was arrested on charges of "corruption", "contacts with Israel and ....

Comment preview: Israel is believed to have possessed operational nuclear weapons as early as 1967. Whilst Iran's nuclear program stems back to the 1950's, it was purely for energy purposes, the potential for them to develop weapons was predicted in a CIA proliferation ass ....

Comment preview: Sure! The Syrian-Iranian alliance is an odd one, given how the Syrian Ba'ath party is secular, Arab nationalist and the Iranian regime is decidedly not, but it was born out of a mutual concern for Saddam's Iraq. When Saddam fell, it proved to be resilient, ....