A friend I trust sent me this story, and it was quite interesting.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-kinzer/i-just-got-back-from-iran_b_643531.html

The reality is more prosaic. Although few Americans visit Iran, there is in fact no legal obstacle to doing so. I accompanied a group of American tourists on a thousand-mile, two-week trip through the country. We met no government or opposition leaders, but we were free to talk with ordinary Iranians, and did so at every stop. Because the government has made it difficult for Western journalists to work in Iran, traveling the country this way may now be the best way to gauge its people's mood.

The first thing that strikes Americans who visit Iran is how amazingly pro-American its people are. Nowhere else in the Middle East, nowhere else in the Muslim world, and almost nowhere else on earth do people so unreservedly admire the United States. Opinion surveys confirm this phenomenon, and I remembered it from previous visits. Nonetheless it was disorienting, in the heart of the purported axis of evil, to to be surrounded, as I was at Imam Square in Isfahan, by giddy female college students shrieking "We love America so much!" At a Persian garden in Kashan, I met a solemn elder whose only English phrase is "America very good," and who pronounced it with grave reverence.

Pro-American feeling in Iran is due mainly to Iranians' admiration for what the United States has achieved. Americans have what many Iranians want: democracy, personal freedom, and rule of law. Their desire for these blessings is not abstract or transitory. It is the product of their century of striving toward liberal democracy. Since the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, generations of Iranians have assimilated democratic ideals. Today their society is the opposite of their regime: open, tolerant, and eager to engage with the world. There is more long-term potential for democracy in Iran than almost anywhere else in the Muslim Middle East.

Pro-American sentiment in Iran is a priceless strategic asset for the US. A military attack would liquidate or at least severely weaken this asset. It would probably turn the most pro-American population in the Middle East into anti-Americans, further undermining the US position in the world's most volatile region.

The second thing I learned in Iran is that last year's explosion of anti-government protest is finished, at least for the moment. Governments use repression against protesters for the simple reason that it usually works. It has worked in Iran. Many people are unhappy -- it is impossible to estimate how many -- but no one I met predicted more upheaval soon. Life is reasonably good for most Iranians, and a possibly stolen election is not enough to force them from their homes to face beatings and arrest.

This suggests that if there are to be any negotiations with Iran over the next few years -- the amount of time it may take for the Iranian nuclear program to mature -- they will have to be with the current regime. Postponing a broad negotiating offer in the hope that the regime may fall is unrealistic.

Finally, I was struck -- though not surprised -- by the unanimity with which Iranians, even those who joined last year's protests and fervently support the reform agenda, reject help from the US or any other outside power.

"Many people don't like the regime, but they don't want the Americans to come and rule us," a shopkeeper in the Shiraz bazaar told me. "They would rather live under a regime they don't like than a regime placed in power by foreigners."

This sentiment is widespread and powerful in Iran. The reason is to be found in modern history. For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, Iran was ravaged by foreigners who subjugated its people and looted its resources. Whenever Iran has sought to modernize -- whether by building a steel mill in the 1930s or by nationalizing its oil industry in the 1950s -- outsiders have intervened to block it. This has made Iranians as sensitive to foreign intervention as any people in the world. It leads them to reject political forces that they see as sponsored, supported, or encouraged from abroad.

Some Americans would like to see Congress and President Obama embrace Iran's democratic movement vigorously and publicly. But not even the movement's own leaders want this support. Far from helping them, an endorsement from Washington would stigmatize them and de-legitimize their cause. Americans often assume that their support for like-minded friends in the world is helpful. In Iran, it would not be.

"Bush was very bad," mused a math teacher I found sitting beneath a fig tree in the town of Rayen. "Obama is a little better. But Iranian people believe that when America and England look at Iran and Arab countries, it is only because they want to steal what we have."

Sobering realities shape Iranian politics: There will be no regime change soon, and there is little the West can do to hasten it. Nonetheless, Iran may have more democratic potential than almost any other society in the Muslim world. Seventy percent of Iranians are under the age of 30. Change will come, but at Iran's pace, not America's.

In the meantime, centrifuges will keep spinning at Iran's nuclear plants. This looming crisis cries out for creative diplomacy, but Washington remains frozen in the paradigm of confrontation.

its very nice, but doesn't mean much... i'm sure the majority of Iranian people are very good people. my next door neighbor is from iran, and a very nice person. but that doesn't apply to the government there. they can lead tourists to where ever they want, just the same propaganda you always talk about.

I don't talk about propaganda, my friend. What I talk about is well-rooted in American and World history and philosophy.

I've seen lots of propaganda from you, though-lots of repeating MSM and regime talking points. Really, if you look into the history of American wars, what you and your media sources talk about is just as misleading and untrue as the propaganda that always precedes a war. (perhaps you missed where I posted a piece about the common mistranslation of what Ahmadinnijad said?) I've even quoted a decorated WWII General, Smedley Butler and recognized historians and leaders like Rothbard, Jefferson, Hazlitt, Spooner, and Buchanan. You're so wedded to your own version that nothing can get through. :( It took me a great deal of reading and study (primary and secondary sources, not just websites) before I came to my conclusion. From what you have said, I just can't say you have an informed opinion.


This particular piece in the OP was just an interesting little story. I don't vouch for its absolute truth or not.

I'm not interested in any prolonged, fruitless debate with you any more, though. I'll let you do the research yourself. (unless you want some source material, which I can supply you with)

yea, ok...thats all you talk about is propaganda...

remember to debate the topic and not the poster.

Kim

We aren't going to attack Iran.

I really don't get the hysteria coming from both sides of this.

Iran is playing the same game Saddam played. Talk up the capabilities and try to gain power within the middle east.

Do you really think they are going to launch some sort of half assed missile at Israel? Or at us? Or at anyone?

i do, at Israel... they are ham mas backers and allies, and even if they don't, i think they will sell some type of device to a terrorist group. either way, it would be bad. but i hope i'm wrong, but i think that the chance of radiation blanketing a major city or country is worth investigating.

Israel has atleast 100 nuclear weapons. Do you really think that the Iranian regime is going to throw everything they have away for nothing?

This is posturing by Iran. They are emboldened by a Shia government in Iraq and they are going to play the game as long as they can.

All they are trying to do is make the Saudis nervous.

i hope your right..

sorry, but it is not merely posturing. the reform movement leaders
are jailed tortured and killed purely based on their opposition.

non-violent protests are confronted with deadly force.

reporters and hikers are summarily jailed. stoning sentences are
still meted out.

it would be nice to have the persians free again in a secular
democracy but the imams are not going to relinquish their
political power and it will take another revolution. if we have
learned anything from the inquisition and the crusades it is that
religious extremists can not be trusted to behave in a rational
way with weapons of death and torture.

most certainly not with nuclear playthings. they will capitulate
or they will be disarmed. not by the u.s. alone but by the world.

Well... Secular religion haters have killed far more people than the crusades and inquisition put together. So if that is the standard of trust, I would argue you should be more concerned in other places.

Hitler and Stalin weren't bible thumping christians.

i said religious extremists. nothing wrong with religion as long as
you don't believe it is ok to harm others in pursuit of your own
religious beliefs.

but for those who have a religious zeal which allows them to condone
the mistreatment of others - deadly weapons is not an option.

stalin - ruthless megalomaniac dictator - there was a religious or more
aptly an anti-religious fervor to his personality cult however as the
first general secretary of the communist party. he abused anyone suspected
of religious observance. but there was definitely a religious aspect to
his purging.

see http://www.adherents.com/people/ps/Joseph_Stalin.html

hitler - religious (anti-jewish, anti jehovah's witness) idealogue. like stalin he showed intense hatred toward some religions. at the same time,
hitler also promoted a stalin-like personality cult which bordered on
religion. some call nazism a form of political religion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Nazi_Germany

at any rate it is not religion itself to blame but the combination with
extremism - a philosophy of superiority and inferiority and an absolute
belief that violence can be justified for the sake of the religious
movement. obviously such people must never have weapons.

I wonder if Iran's elections are "rigged"?

Irans prez is kind of battling their top clerics right now... he wants certain religious laws eased up on, and the older clerics are saying no. i'm not sure if they are rigged, but it seems he wants a change, no matter how small.