Another Possibility For Iran May Shine Through

Many recent news stories and my own postings have focused on the sheer folly of allowing the madmen in Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. Other stories have focused on the difficulty of targeting nuclear facilities that are widely dispersed, some underground, with reports also that the US military has been drawing up plans to destroy these facilities if all else fails. A great sense of urgency and foreboding accompanies these possibilities, as the recent comments and actions of Iran’s leadership combine with the mindless violence of certain Muslims everywhere to convince us that people like President Ahmadinejad would even sacrifice Tehran in a nuclear exchange to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

Amidst all these scary scenarios come some other possibilities; it has been my contention all along that the great majority of Muslim peoples (while harboring similar resentments) do not support the violence of the Islamofascist terrorists, and realize that these acts of violence may well end up consuming them and their religion.

Over the weekend two reports appeared that offer some hope that the nightmare scenario may be avoided. One is presented in its entirety; the other is an excerpt.

From SMCCDI: daneshjoo.org (Student Movement Coordinating Committee for Democracy in Iran)
SMCCDI News
Iranians show massive rejection of the Islamic regime at the occasion of its 27th birthday
SMCCDI (Information Service)
Feb 11, 2006

Millions of Iranians inflicted another heavy slap to the face of the shaky and unpopular Islamic regime by boycotting its "27th anniversary revolution celebration" by staying home, or far from the official gatherings.

The regime's desperate leadership was hoping to bring millions in the streets by playing their nationalistic or religious feelings. But in Tehran, which was supposed to become a show room, the regime was unable to muster more than 70 or 80 thousand professional demonstrators and government employees and schools' students. Many of them, such as most governmental employees, are known to be forced to participate in official gatherings and others are fanatics or paid demonstrators. Hundreds of buses had transferred thousands of such demonstrators to the Capital.

For reference purposes, there are more than 12-million inhabitants in Tehran, the capital of Iran.

The SMCCDI Coordinator, who was interviewed by the Persian service of "Voice of America" (VOA) Satellite TV, slammed the Islamic regime for its dark records and the threats posed to the People of Iran and the world.

In part of the live interview from Washington DC, Aryo B. Pirouznia, who was speaking at the occasion of the Islamic revolution's anniversary, stated: "The dark event plunged Iran in the situation which we're now and has more in its package due to its fanatical and backwarded ideology... Without doubt, millions of young Iranians are wondering how this happened and why the elder generation facilitated the take of power of a group which took from Iranians all their social and economic liberties and plunged the country into the barbarian age..."

"The younger generation of Iran, which is composed by millions of individuals, has long turned its back to the Islamic regime and it’s looking toward modernity, secularity and nationalism... This claim can be easily backed due to the lack of popular participation in the today's official rallies, as well as, the refusal of Iranians to participate in those anti-cartoons' violent demos..." Pirouznia added.

On the question of the prospect of a unified Iranian opposition, he stated:" You have more and more Iranians that are breaking their silence and protesting openly against the regime.. The problem till now has been the negative influence exerted by some of those so-called opposition leaders that are not even able to reach the minds and souls of millions of young Iranians who are fed up with the same usual slogans... A clear National and Secular program, along with persistency and consistency is needed and hoped by millions of Iranians.. They don't want just talks or those looking simply to seize the power by making controversial deals...The road should be open now for active and trusted opponents as Iranians have clearly shown the rejection of the same usual faces and their old methods..."


Excerpt from Jihad Watch
February 11, 2006

“Suppose you were an Iranian, an ethic Persian and a Muslim, and were one of the thousands involved in the nuclear bomb project. And you were not a fanatical supporter of the Islamic Republic of Iran, but were rather disturbed by it. Yet you for some reason allowed your sense of national pride to take precedence, and liked the idea of Iran's refusing to abandon this project, even though you had plenty of evidence that not merely Ahmadinejad, but every Iranian leader in recent history, had made clear that such weapons, if acquired, would be used against Israel. Ahmadinejad does not say something new; he just says it more often and more directly, and with greater evident delight. And you have had your own experiences, or your relatives have, or your friends, with the sheer craziness of the people running Iran. But you wanted Iran to survive….

So you are that Persian nationalist. You are working on this project for the greater glory of Iran, the Persian civilization that goes back to Cyrus and Darius, that once held much of present-day Iraq, and that today contains a kind of Persian Empire because within its domains, scarcely 50% of the population is Persian. The current Persian Empire is now known as Iran. More than one-third consists of Azeris, in the north -- that part of Iran that the Soviet Union seized for a while after World War II (until Western pressure made the Red Army retreat), a place whose population resents Persian domination and has more in common with the inhabitants of Azerbaijan. There are the Baluchis, who have similar resentments. There are the ethnic Arabs of Khuzistan, and its main city, Ahwaz, where so much of Iran's oil comes from, who have again and again demonstrated their resentment, even hatred, of their Persian masters. The forces of entropy and collapse are there, waiting to be stirred by a great outside force coming in to humiliate and reduce, and possibly end altogether, the power of the central Iranian state.

If the Americans, or others, decide to attack because Iran refuses to stop its nuclear policy, or if the outside attempt to end that project altogether will require extensive collateral damage because the attackers have not been informed as to exactly where to attack, and have to attack, therefore, hither and yon, it is likely to be the kind of attack the consequences of which may end, forever, the state of Iran in its present borders. It will be a little like Turkey, reduced after World War I from its former imperial state to, essentially, Anatolia and a European sliver.

If Iranian nationalists do not work to help the Western powers stop this nuclear project, and help to sabotage it altogether in any way they can, then Iran may end up with the loss of Khuzistan, the Azeri lands, and the Baluchi lands. And let us not forget all the lands inhabited by ethnic Kurds so contemptuous of the Persians and so eager to emulate the Kurds now enjoying at least autonomy, and perhaps a good deal more, in northern Iraq -- then Iran may be no more. Greatly reduced in size, greatly reduced in population, deprived of its gas deposits in the north and the oil in Khuzistan, Iran would become much less important to the world, and the ethnic Persians would be left with little ability to sustain the state. They would be without that oil and gas wealth, and with hostile populations rising against the central state.

Is that nuclear project worth it?
Why?

Would any Iranian who wished to preserve Iran as a power really protect, rally around, support that nuclear project out of some misguided notion of nationalism?”