lmao
I think you're the one that has to explain!...why would we even DREAM of taking Pakistan etc?
A fair and relevant question. As one pro-Khomeini demonstrator explained to me in the early months of the '79 revolution, with the withdrawal of Britain from the Gulf, the paralyzing post-Vietnam angst of the United States, and the absence of the Soviet Union they saw an opening for their own imperial ambitions.
You may see them as fanatical Shia Islamists, but I saw your masters as calculating manipulators, men who took political science courses at Western universities to learn about dictatorships and totalitarianism. Not so they could avoid that fate, but so they could build a better one of their own.
Thus informed by their boasting, the Iran-Iraq war was no surprise to me. If the Iranians didn't turn their attentions on Pakistan instead, that's probably because (1) Saddam started the war first; (2) Pakistan is a much bigger and stronger state than Iraq was, and (3) their principal goal was Mecca, where pro-Iranian revolutionaries tried (but failed) to seize the Grand Mosque in late 1979. Basically, the Iranian mullahs wanted then (as the leadership does now) to dictate their form of Islam to everyone, and conquest of Arabia was the way to do it. With no U.S. troops in Arabia at the time, if the Iraqi Army fell the way would have been wide open.
Today small puny countries like England are many times richer than bigger countries like India and Iran. Size doesn't matter anymore.
Oppression, opportunity, freedom, and the destructiveness of war matter more. Your point?
If Iran is in Iraq today it is because Iranians and Iraqis have A LOT in common, believe it or not. To sunni arabs, shia muslims are all bunched up in a basket and are called kafirs. A few centuries ago Iran and shia Iraq were one. In the past century however, a lot has happened in the region. Iran was under the rule of the Pahlavi dynasty which tried to emphasize "persianism" unlike the previous dynasty who were Turkish speaking. In Iraq you had ultra nationalist leaders like saddam that tried to move closer to the sunni arab world and hated Iran. So effectively two brother countries became enemies after generations of hateful teachings on both sides.
Nationalism - people having a country to call their own - is not the enemy of peace. The desire to expand to rule others - imperialism - is. Empires must always either expand or contract. That means war. Thousands of years of history back this up.
With time people will rediscover past alliances and who knows, some countries in the region might again join up BUT NOT THROUGH WAR! Tajikistan and Northern AFG both speak Persian. The accent of ppl in Tajikistan is closer to the accent of Tehrani Iranians than Isfahan and Tehran who are both major Iranian cities! Tajikistan and Northern AFG are also very poor countries. Who knows, maybe one day when Iran's situation is better and we have a democracy, these countries will see it beneficial to them to join Iran!
Possibly. So why don't they seek to join Iran now? Personally I thought the Azeris would be the first to desire this when the USSR collapsed, but I don't see even a hint of that happening.
you're talking as if "the Persian empire" is on the verge of taking over the Asian continent when in reality we're more concerned with our out of control inflation -
Yes, economics is not your masters' best subject.
We haven't attacked ANY COUNTRY in well over 3 centuries and if we wanted to we don't have the power.
Tell that to the Lebanese who suffer under Hezbollah's collar, or the Gazans who feel Hamas' lash.
There is something else I've noted - and I'm sure others have to. Did you ever ask yourself where the '79 revolution went wrong? I argued with the pro-Khomeini demonstrators that they were a minority, the opposition to the Shah was broad-based, and the Iranian people would stop them. They laughed. They were, of course, correct. They knew, as I did not, that the Iranian people lacked the sort of steel to resist their thuggery; all think they are entitled to an easy, risk-free life.
That's why even Iranians who despise the mullahs' regime don't want invasion or bombing to remove it, isn't it? Yet matters are reaching the point where such action may occur - and because the mullahs tend to locate key facilities near civilian targets, that will mean a lot of civilians will be killed. Very uncomfortable, indeed.
So what do you think your moral duty is in all this, Nima?
