Iran Update
An update on the on-going campaign to attack Iran by Shrubbery and the Mayberry Machiavellis.
As Juan Cole points out, since 2003 Iran has been trying to arrange direct talks with the United States over various items of mutual interest.
While Dr. Cole notes that the “Iran as the banker of terrorism” was discredited some time ago, early this morning on the BBC World Service Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns was repeating the meme once again.
CNN reported today that Iran wants the US to stop the bluster, and let’s talk. The Christian Science Monitor points to the reality that the biggest sticking point on the Iranian side is the lack of a US security guarantee for Iran.
If you think back, that is the main sticking point in relations with North Korea: everyone thinks the Shrubbery is unhinged and apt to nuke them at any time. You don’t build nuclear weapons on a whim; they are expensive and dangerous to your own country when being designed and tested. You build them because you are convinced you will be attacked.
The Iranian government is not a wonderful, peace-loving friend of kittens and small children. They are just as nasty and bigoted as every other group of religious fundamentalists. They were forced to shut down a state-controlled newspaper over a cartoon depicting ethnic Azeris as cockroaches. The paper wouldn’t have printed the cartoon, if they didn’t believe the government would approve. The cartoon caused street demonstrations by Iranian Azeris who make up Iran’s largest minority at about 24% of the population. What’s really amazing is that they apparently forgot that the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is an ethnic Azeri, and probably was “not amused” being compared to a cockroach.
The Azeri tend to be concentrated in the northwest and are the majority ethnic group in Azerbaijan.
While Iran provides freedom of religion for Zoroastrians, Christians and Jews, the Bahá’í are officially banned, and believers are persecuted as Muslim heretics, reportedly unto death in some cases.
