This article is reliable. The author is Farnaz Fassihi. She has solid Iranian elite sources. She has lived and worked in Iran, has covered the country for three decades and was a war correspondent in the Middle East for 15 years.
This article is reliable. The author is Farnaz Fassihi. She has solid Iranian elite sources. She has lived and worked in Iran, has covered the country for three decades and was a war correspondent in the Middle East for 15 years.
We have seen how a post western regime change country in the region would look like with Iraq and Afghanistan.
Short version: it does not end well
Iran is one of the most ressource rich countries in the world with control over the most important sea for global oil and gas transport.
There is no way that a forced regime change from the outside wouldn’t lead to decades of proxy wars for the resources.
Also Israel has shown its regime change vision for Syria. Break up the country and pit peoe against each other so that a contender to regional hegemony can never emerge again.
Regime change is supporting a group inside the country to take power from the entrenched group. There is no reason that it would inherently fail. The current regime is young and deeply unpopular. All throughout history it occurs and succeeds.
When you have a pariah state like Iran, having a change of regime can give them a path back into the world community. The people in Iran are old enough to remember a time before the current regime and the liberty they enjoyed.
The situation is already proxy wars. If regime change leads to proxy wars nothing has changed. If it leads to an end to proxy wars then its good.
Before the Islamic revolution Iran was ruled by the Shah, who the US and UK couped into power against Irans last democratically elected president in 1953. The Shah terrorized his people with the support of the aforementioned and Israel, murdering, torturing and disappearing tens of thousand of people, which is why the whole revolution took off.
Claiming Iranians used to enjoy liberty under the Shah is peak apologism. That doesn’t mean that Iranians are enjoying many freedoms under the current regime, but there is no indication that the US would bring any “liberty” like they did not bring “liberty” to any place they intervened. Instead the go to are Fascist dictators mass murdering their own people like Pinochet, the Contras, the Shah…
Meanwhile a regime change forced by the US and Israel in Iran will not lead “back into the world community”. It will lead to another puppet dictator at best and more likely to the “balkanization” of Iran, so the destruction of the nation and creation of a system of eternally warring regional rulers like it was organized in Libya and Syria.
Are you trying to make the case that things are better now than prior to the Islamic revolution?
The claim that there was “liberty” before is false. Unless “liberty” means being under surpression by an US installed regime.
Liberty is a broad concept and can definitely apply here. Do you think women feel like there is less oppression now?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAVAK
A lot of the structures and part of the personell of SAVAK was then integrated into the current internal police such as the Evin Prtison
There was no liberty under the US backed regime and whitewashing them as a means to present the US and Israel as the better alternative is wrong.
Firstly that proves absolutely nothing since they still have the exact same thing as well as open morality police that go around beating women.
But im not trying to make the point that the next admin will be better because the us put them there. I’m saying that regime change is an opportunity for change.
It could be a path to improvement it could make things worse we dont know it all depends on who gets into power. Regime change is weakening the party in power so a minority group can seize power.
Knowing trump, this will go incredibility poorly but just because he is an idiot and fucked it up doesnt mean it wasn’t the right play at the time. If he didnt pull out of the nuclear deal and didnt attack Iran I wouldnt be sitting here thinking regime change is the best realistic option to off ramp regional tensions.
You are arguing against a complete strawman. The claim was that Iranians would “remember” “liberty”, which serves to whitewash the Shahs regime. I refuted that claim as it is evidently wrong. I don’t know why you think that an internal police murdering, torturing and dissapearing thousands of people would fall under any understanding of liberty.