Iran Discussion

This thread exists to discuss Iran. The thread's scope covers the nation's history, culture, domestic politics and international relations.

If you're new to OTC, it's worth reading the Introduction to On-Topic Conversations and the On-Topic Conversations debate guidelines before posting here.

As with other OTC threads, off-topic posts may be thumped or edited by the moderators.

As of April 2024, the OTC Israel and Palestine thread is locked indefinitely and that discussion should not migrate to other threads. Aspects directly relevant to Iran are on-topic here, but this should not be used as an excuse for wider conversation about Israel and/or Palestine.

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(Updated April 15 2024 to add mod pinned post)

Edited by Mrph1 on Apr 15th 2024 at 11:22:13 AM

advancing the front into TV Tropes

Gonna try and move the Iran discussion over here from elsewhere.

Iran elected a reformer president in 2013 who ran on a platform of civil rights and improving relations with the West, they even reflected him in 2017.

The problem is the obvious fact that elections in Iran only impact a limited amount of the Iranian government, but Iran very much did make a move towards more peaceful relations, that’s how the nuclear deal got signed, because Iran abandoned the hardline views that lead to it briefly (we think) having a nuclear program.

The entire nuclear thing is a mess, because the US has been claiming Iran is after nukes since the moment the Iranian people overthrew the US’s pet dictator (who the US and UK installed after the Iranian government looked at nationalising the country’s oil), then the US invaded Iraq claiming WM Ds that didn’t exist and loudly declared its desire to invade Iran once it was done with Iraq. So there’s a real possibility that Iran attempted a nuclear program because it feared a US invasion that would claim Iran already had a nuclear program, once the threat of invasion went away with Obama’s election it became possible for Iran to stop thinking it needed a nuclear deterrent to keep the US away.

That comes down to what sanctions you are talking about. Sanctions aimed at the general population are only reasonable if the general population can act to bring about the change sanctions are after, the Iranian people don’t have the ability to stop the IRG funding terrorism, hell the Iranian President probably doesn’t have that ability, only the IRG leadership and the Supreme Leader have real power there.

Also what are the sanctions over? A nuclear program that looks to not exist and may well have only existed for a few short years? Funding of terrorist groups across the Middle East? That one is hard to buy considering the US’s close relationship with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Support for Assad? Considering the US’s current closeness with Russia that’s also a hard reason to believe.

Which is where we hit the big problem, the motive behind sanctions matter a lot, if the US is sanctioning Iran for human rights violations then it needs to target the perpetrators not the victims, if the US is sanctioning Iran because it’s still upset the Shah got overthrown, then it maybe needs to get over it. People react to sanctions differently depending on the motives behind the sanctions.

Sanctions should exist to encourage positive behaviour, if the US is sanctioning Iran over the removal of the Shah or because Saudi Arabia wants Iran destroyed then all the US is doing is encouraging Iran to become more hardline.

Edited by Silasw on Apr 27th 2020 at 11:01:43 AM

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn

Continuing with the topic of Iran from the General Politics thread:

What happened with Japan was more a case of Gone Horribly Right for the Americans for the following reasons:

• The reconstruction of Japan was the work of one person, in this case Douglas MacArthur, rather than the U.S. government itself. As far as I understand (correct me if I'm wrong), he was interested in rebuilding the country to avoid repeating the same mistakes that led Japan to the situation it ended up in, and to avoid future political and social instability, while the U.S. government was more interested in using Japanese territory as a giant military base in the Pacific because of its close proximity to Russia and China.
• In the long run, rebuilding Japan ended up being counterproductive for the U.S., since Japan would become the U.S.'s biggest trading rival until the 1990s, which in turn caused many American industries to go bankrupt due to the strong Japanese competitors.
• Because of this, it seems that the policy of the U.S. regarding rebuilding countries is now only to do so in a way that serves the interests of the U.S. government, rather than for the benefit of the local people, as was the case with Iraq.

You’re conflating the interests of the US business community with the interests of the US itself, the US’ strategic, geopolitical and security interests were served perfectly by how Japan we rebuilt, it’s the go-to example of well done nation building.

As for Iraq, you’re vastly overestimating the amount of thought that went into it, there wasn’t a convoluted evil plan of “we will rebuild Iraq only so it boosts US business interests, but also in such a way that it can never ever be an economic rival”, it was very much just throw at the wall at the last second, they genuinely went in going “it’ll be fine, we’ll shoot the bad guys, they’ll have election and then everything will be fine after a couple months and we can leave”.

Edited by Silasw on Apr 28th 2020 at 3:38:36 PM

Complete with a fairly hostile region to boot

Watch me destroying my country

That's right, and there the fact the ME nations aren't exactly very kind with Japan, their attitude with either the U.S. or their shigatta nai POV.

Let's not forget this all started from a discussion in a different thread where an attempt was made to blame the sanctions for Iran's terrible initial response to COVID-19.

There are plenty of reasons to call bullshit on the sanctions. Silasw listed some of them already. But this is not one of them.

Iran's initial mistakes with the pandemic are a culmination of a growing internal power struggle within Iran. One not helped by the increased ties to mainland China in recent times and the sanctions. So while the sanctions certainly aren't helping Iran during this mess, the responsibility for it lies on Iran's piss-poor leadership that prioritized a power struggle over their people.

Edited by M84 on Apr 28th 2020 at 9:50:50 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised

Strangling a state's economy naturally harms its capabilities and weakens its society, that is the entire purpose of sanctions. To make everything harder which pushes the government to stop doing whatever offends the source of the sanctions. Which is devastating (and deeply immoral) during a pandemic.

And it's not like Iran's government is the sole source arguing this, former US Senior Diplomats have called on the US administration to lower sanctions because the sanctions make obtaining crucial medical supplies much harder.

The US isn't the sole actor responsible for how bad it is but we have absolutely have a large amount of responsibility.

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn

The problem is that you've tried to make it seem as if it's the most responsible. And it's not. The Iranian government is.

Edited by M84 on Apr 28th 2020 at 10:28:05 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised

Maybe we aren't "most" responsible but if that's the best one can argue then it's very much damning by faint praise.

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn

The point is that trying to claim the USA is the most responsible detracts from the Iranian government’s own culpability in this mess. You can and should say the sanctions are not helping one bit here, but do not point to them first when looking for reasons why Iran has been hit so hard by COVID-19.

As several other nations including the USA itself have shown, being hit by sanctions is not the main factor in whether or not you get fucked in a pandemic.

Disgusted, but not surprised

When was Iran supposed to be building a stable, capable government, if they have been under sanctions for decades now?

Here's a Reuters article from April 2 concerning Iran's initial mistakes.

Reuters: Elections, ties with China shaped Iran's coronavirus response

Edited by M84 on May 1st 2020 at 3:10:32 AM

Disgusted, but not surprised

That doesn't engage with their point, they didn't ask "how did Iran mess up", they asked how Iran was supposed to become stable and competent when they've been under punishing sanctions.

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn

I really don't understand why people are so eager to blame the USA for Iran's response to COVID-19.

Edited by M84 on Apr 30th 2020 at 10:14:56 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised

Because AMERICA BAD.

Because a lot of the mess in the Middle East is a direct consequence of British, French and US meddling, and they are still doing it.

Charming strawman.

No, it's more like, "America is bad when it sabotages a state because of its psychotic and irrational hatred".

I'm not sure what about "a superpower maintaining crippling sanctions during a pandemic is an atrocity" is so unclear.

No one's blaming the US for Iran's choices, we're blaming it for making a bad situation much worse.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Apr 30th 2020 at 7:52:47 AM

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn

When the subject of why Iran's COVID-19 response was so poor was brought up in the other thread, your first response was to blame the sanctions.

Disgusted, but not surprised

Iran’s mishandling (understatementЯus) of COVID-19 is a further sign of the mismanagement-as-usual by that regime of dark retrograde clerics.
One of the most impressive moves by the Obama administration was the relaxing of sanctions against Iran. It made more evident to Iranians that their daily plight was not caused by those sanctions but by the regime, which was now somewhat deprived of the convenient pretext of “blame Murrcah!”

The current US administration is now useful to the clerics by delivering them that pretext again, while making it clear to international observers how toothless US sanctions actually are, how lesser the US has become. Though many in the US are yet to get the update; then again some hapless Brits are still certain after all these years, that past greatness is just around the corner, what with Brussels no longer holdin… Never mind that.

Iranians now have to live with the permanent threat of death from the plague, on top of the precariousness, misery, and repression they’re accustomed to.
Lest we forget, this pandemic came from more of the same by the mismanagement-as-usual of the CCP, yet another hint that authoritarianism isn’t all that swell and grand. And while some may call it a “regession to the mean”, more like a mean regression I’d say.

Now if one must say something bad about the USofA (a tradition since Boomers were experimenting with free love, mad weed, and cheap booze), it seems this administration made the opposite of Teddy Roosevelt’s its new MO: Speak bigly and carry a mushy rotten carrot.

Just as my freedom ends where yours begins my tolerance of you ends where your intolerance toward me begins. As told by an old friend

Of course, because the sanctions have been making everything worse.

Except the US isn't a scapegoat, the sanctions have deprived Iran of crucial medical gear because companies are not willing to work with them out of fear of running afoul of the United States. It would be 100% accurate for the Clerics to say that the Americans are hurting you, because we are.

Sanctions are not necessarily bad if they serve to advance a concrete objective, but when they're just meant to attack a society, as Trump's are, then they're just immoral. And counterproductive.

All they've accomplished is killing Iranians and discrediting reformers.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Apr 30th 2020 at 12:44:56 PM

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn

Fourthspartan 56 you wrote:

After the easing of sanctions by the previous US administration, there was no improvement for Iranians, because these sanctions weren’t the cause of their predicament to begin with, the regime is.
In most third-party countries one never had any trouble trading with Iran, sanctions or no sanctions. These days everyone is in trouble, so everyone will look for number one, some countries being more bastardly than others; see here for illustration, here too. To keep in character, the Orange House will make special noise about it Iran-wise because of course it will.

You are adding yours to the mix alright, but not by that much; no longer all that important. The overwhelming part of the hurting in Iran is homegrown, from the top down; has been so for quite a while, and now ever more so.
It is no justification for the Orange House and its groupies evildoing, but their actual effects aren’t all that.

Just as my freedom ends where yours begins my tolerance of you ends where your intolerance toward me begins. As told by an old friend

This is incorrect, the source I posted earlier in the thread has this to say:

Our sanctions are negatively impacting their ability to fight the outbreak. Whatever issue you have with Iran's government that cannot be acceptable from any standard that even slightly values the lives of Iran's people, or values containing the pandemic.

This claim is also wrong, the article I provided gave several examples of how US sanctions under Trump are strangling the Iranian economy.

It's frankly counterfactual to claim otherwise, the evidence is clear. A superpower applying "maximum pressure" to the economy of a middling regional power does bad things to the latter's economy.

I'm unsure how logically you can assert that it doesn't have "that much" effect, even without my source the effects of US economic power directed to a government it dislikes should be obvious.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Apr 30th 2020 at 2:52:28 AM

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn

And you have to take into account that China is using Iran only as a buffer between the Middle East, and therefore Europe and the Western nations, and the western part of China in case of a war.

Edited by luisedgarf on Apr 30th 2020 at 10:02:24 AM