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The Iranian government is approximately sane. They need their religious fervor in order to (1) sustain their already low TFR, (2) incentivize high births among the intelligent [who otherwise would leave or not have so many kids], and (3) encourage bravery among the men who will certainly be dying against Israel this century. It doesn’t hurt that (4) it also promotes alliances with other Muslims in the region. Without Islam, Arabs would be a lot less resistant to the idea of America and Israel completely destroying them. If you were dictator of Iran and had the best interest of Iranians at heart, IMO you would be forced to retain the religious component of their governance, even without considering the huge gains in life satisfaction that come with religiosity. (And even the veil — women having to wear a modest veil likely increases their happiness given the longterm problems that come with the culture of appearance-obsession that plagues Western women).
The idea that “secularism” is sane for Iran is silly. The idea that democracy is remotely viable should be disproven per the long history of America interfering with democracies.
You're seriously arguing that the Iranians are happier with Shia fundamentalism imposed upon them? Bold I must say. Why all the mass protests over the years I wonder? (Including some specifically over veiling.)
Are you aware that Iran already has a famously high rate of plastic surgery?
Are you aware Iran has a famously high rate of brain drain?
Are you aware the Islamic government actually instituted policies to decrease the TFR and increase female education? (Whoops.)
Are you aware that Persians are not Arabs?
Are you aware that the extremist version of Shia Islam the Iranian Islamic regime adheres to increases conflict with basically all of its Sunni neighbors?
"Approximately" is doing a hell of a lot of work in the "approximately sane" evaluation.
Why all the mass protests in America or France? This signals that people have opinions, it isn’t a valid indicator of predicted happiness of social policies. I mean, toddlers and teenagers protest everything from authority, but they seldom are able to predict the longterm outcome of their desired proposals. This is the sin of democracy, that people mistake mass opinion for predictive ability.
Are you aware that Iran has half our suicide rate, one eighth of our drug overdose rate, a heavily subsidized and expansive healthcare system, and one third our intentional homicide rate? Probably not. Perhaps you’ll accuse them of cooking the books.
Yes, hence why I mentioned it: this doesn’t apply to the religious cohort, which is why they have an interest in maintaining their religious “extremism”. Otherwise they will all leave.
Of course but when it comes to the risk that Israel poses in the region, you can’t ignore that Iran being Islamic is helpful for speaking with other Islamic nations.
How does it compare to the US's homicide rate when broken down by race?
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You just obviously have no idea what you're talking about when you try to directly compare protests in the US or even France to those in Iran, before now or these ones. The dynamics are totally different when it's an actual police state.
Ah, this is the "Maduro is the true conservative" perspective. Do you know what "cherry picking" is?
They have hyperinflation ffs, among many other critical economic failures. Trying to find a few metrics where Iran might have a good stat doesn't overturn the obvious reality that it's a shithole country because it's been held back by economically illiterate leadership for nearly 50 years.
Ahahahahahaha. Iran has been and continues to be hated and feared by nearly all of its Sunni neighbors. You're trying to cherry pick an instance of slightly improved relations with the Saudis to defend the insane proposition that Iran's version of Shia Islam makes it easier to deal with its Sunni neighbors. Gulf Arab states have collaborated with the US and Israel against Iran.
Did you know that Iran and the Taliban have nearly gone to war a time or two?
What's next? ISIS has an easy time dealing with other Islamic states thanks to Islam?
Protestant and Catholic countries have always had better relations due to Christianity as a commonality?
These are pretty significant indicators. Especially if we want to “free” an “oppressed” population and deliver them American-Grade™️ Values. If our values lead to worse results for the average person than the average person in Iran, we should rethink our ability to improve other nations and instead consider why we’re doing so poorly. Their life expectancy is also tied with ours (and at a better trajectory) and they have half the obesity. The question of course is what they would look like without sanctions, with an extra 1 trillion.
The proposition is that, while an Islamic Iran has something important in common with its Muslim neighbors, a non-Islamic Iran would lose that card altogether and could never leave pariah status. This may not be a factor today but it may be a factor in the future. Consider from the Atlantic Council —
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/iran-saudi-arabia-china-deal-one-year/
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It's not imposed upon them, it's home-grown. They chose it in 1979.
Are you aware of the basic facts of the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution?
Familiar with buyer's remorse?
Capable of understanding its' been nearly 50 years and the theocratic regime does not have democratic legitimacy, since it's an illiberal, sham democracy?
Sure, lots of Death-To-America rallies, lots of Westernized Iranians who hadn't fled (among others) getting killed. Basically consolidation of power. Worked, too.
They don't need democratic legitimacy. With most of the people they have religious legitimacy, and for the malcontents they have the sword.
They executed a lot of commies and other insufficiently Islamic co-revolutionaries. Lots of the country immediately regretted taking out the Shah. That was decades ago and things only got worse.
Ok, so you agree then that the present regime is imposing Shia theocracy on its populace?
This hasn't been true for a long time.
They're a Shia theocratic regime ruling over Shiites. No imposing necessary.
So, why then are there millions of Iranians calling for regime change? This is just the latest, most serious iteration in a series of protests calling for reform.
Logically, you're making a pretty circular argument.
"The regime is legitimate because it's homegrown. Homegrown protests be damned."
"Iran is a Shia theocracy because it's made up of Shias. It's not imposed."
I don't know how many there are. But it's a country of 90 million. There could be a discontented 10% calling for regime change, and that would be 9 million people, and still the vast majority of the country could support the regime. Muslims just seem to like fundamentalist Islamic rule.
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Being dead-set on making it certain that Iranian men will be dying against Israel within the century does not sound like a sane choice. Then again, gotta get rid of the excess men in a polygynist society somehow... unless...
The sane choice is to prepare for the inevitability of conflict with a regional power that is committed to warring against you, and in fact just assassinated a number of your scientists.
Signaling that you're developing nukes && that you want to wipe a particular neighboring power off the map is a great way to have your scientists assassinated. Could try not doing at least one of those.
"And then one day, for no reason at all, Israel started preparing for war against Iran..."
Israel has been trying to trick us into believing that Iran is years away from nuclear weapons for 30 years now. Iran opened itself to outside observers during the nuclear deal era. Meanwhile Israel has killed an almost inconceivable amount of women and children in Gaza while illegally stealing land in the West Bank. “And then one day, for no reason at all, Iran started preparing for war against Israel…”
Ah, yes, another one of those elaborate Jewish deceptions. If true, I would expect a sane government to not antagonize such a crafty people. Especially if you and your Muslim friends have a very poor century-long track record of destroying them.
For every ounce of commitment to warring against Muslims that Israel displays, there is tenfold commitment Muslims display to warring against Israel. The relationship between certainty of war with Israel and Muslim theocracy is exactly backwards from how you're attempting to portray it.
"Ah yes, another one of those elaborate Jewish deceptions..."
The reply said Israel, not Jews. And I've heard that Iran is on the verge of nukes for decades as well.
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No? There's absolutely nothing elaborate about these "Jewish deceptions" (not the phrasing I'd use personally) at all. I could have whipped together the diagrams and "evidence" provided to the UN on this topic in MS paint with a five minute deadline, and even the Obama whitehouse made a version of it to make fun of Netanyahu. They've just been lying consistently on this topic because it is obviously in their national interest to have the US go in and take out one of their regional enemies without them having to do it themselves.
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But at least half of this is circular. Iran would not need to worry about being crushed by Israel and the US if they credibly overhauled themselves into an enlightenment-values democracy: Iran is viewed as a threat by the US and Israel because they're antisemitic religious fundamentalists. That only leaves 1) and 2), and even then 2) is somewhat defanged in that if Iran were not a fanatical dictatorship, fewer intelligent people would leave.
Sure, none of this means that Iran would suddenly be welcomed by the West with open arms overnight if it stopped being a Muslim dictatorship now. It may be that they've backed themselves into a sharia-shaped corner. But sanity alone cannot have gotten them in the position they are now, even if there are rational reasons to remain tyrannical fanatics once they've started behaving like tyrannical fanatics.
And the US wouldn't have had to worry about being attacked by Osama bin Ladin if we'd credibly overhauled ourselves into an Islamic theocracy. These are not reasonable things to ask.
Well, no. But that still makes coffee_enjoyer's argument that the Iranian government is "approximately sane" circular. They only get in their current situation by starting out sincerely mad (i.e. religious fanatics). Religious fanaticism is not a policy they adopted out of rational self-interest in the face of military threats that existed of their own accord; their preexisting religious fanaticism, rather, is the reason they became the target of such threats at all. Whether their fanaticism has "perks" which help it deal with the threats that the fanaticism has brought down upon them is neither here nor there.
None of this necessitates that there was ever a possible world where they spontaneously purge themselves of that mindset and negate the threats. (I do of course think there are relatively plausible timelines where Iran got increasingly secular and liberal in the 20th century instead of the pendulum swinging back - certainly they are more plausible than a timeline where 90s America spontaneously develops a love of sharia law - but that is not the point.)
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America has interfered in democracies before, even in Iran before (1953). In Ukraine, we funded pro-EU news in the lead up to the coup of Yanukovych, which was an illegal coup where a mob forced the democratically-elected Yanukovych to flee and the procedure for legal impeachment was never followed. We supported this anti-democratic mob activity in Ukraine diplomatically. Chavez was elected and popular in Venezuela, and we tried to coup him in 2002. At the same time, we have committed ties to absolute monarchies, the polar opposite of “enlightenment-based democracies”, and indeed those countries are fine and thriving.
And Israel is not anti-Arab or anti-Palestinian? From a purely consequential standpoint it is the Israelis who have more blood on their hands. It is also Israel who attacked Iran first. Israel is also becoming more religious extremism, while Iran seems to be becoming less so.
The intelligent seculars will leave no matter what, as intelligent seculars around the world always try to leave for better countries. But the high TFR intelligent netionalist / religious families will stay.
I wasn't talking about a consequential standpoint at all, or indeed a moral plain. I meant that in plain, pragmatic terms, what happened was "Iran became ruled by fanatics who believe it is their holy duties to crush the Jews -> Israel viewed Iran as a threat -> the imams have a credible case that it's now necessary to keep the religious fervor up so that they have enough soldiers in case it comes to open existential war" - as distinct from "Israel becomes a threat to Iran for no articulate reason -> its government ponders a logical solution to this -> it decides to become a fanatical theocracy in order to motivate its soldiers in the event that it comes to open existential war".
In other words, I'm not saying that the US - or Israel - have some sort of inviolable taboo against antagonizing enlightenment-values democracies - I'm saying that their motives for antagonizing Iran in particular are downstream of the nature of the current regime and prevailing and ideology making it come across as a threat to the US and Israel. Therefore, in that particular case, removing those factors would have negated the basis for the tensions that Iran lives in fear of today.
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Iran and Israel have adverse geopolitical interests. That isn’t going to change just because Iran isn’t being ruled by fanatics anymore. Iran having a government with popular support that actually has its shit together could very well turn out to be worse for Israel, especially in the long run. Israel probably knows this, and you would probably see an effort to break it into different countries by ethnic group the second the Islamic Republic is gone.
How so?
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This is so obviously not true.
Israel and Iran do not have natural reasons to be rivals, let alone enemies. The Islamic regime chose for ideological reasons the foreign policy it did that frames Israel and the US as its major adversaries.
There’s three countries that have a shot at being the regional power that controls the Middle East: Israel, Iran and Turkey. That’s why they all hate each other! You notice that they weren’t constantly at each other’s throats back when Iraq was still a major military power.
Why did Iraq and Iran go to war in the 80s? What changed?
Does Turkey have a history of being a rival of Israel? What changed?
Why on earth did you leave out Saudi Arabia? Were they traditionally at odds with Iran? What changed?
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As far as Israel goes, it wouldn't even take that. All Iran needs to do is stop threatening and attacking Israel and they can easily end up in basically the same position as Egypt, Jordan, and even Saudi Arabia.
Israel haters (and we all know why they hate Israel so much) have this fantasy that Israel is actually expansionistic, but there's no reasonable basis for such a conclusion.
As far as the US goes, I doubt it would take that either. The US has dealings with non-democracies on a regular basis.
Iran could have been an oil-rich Turkey in a slightly different universe.
Iran went down on its current path because its democratically elected secular government expropriated BP, whereupon the UK and the US organised a revolution (quoth Wikipedia):
Do Iranians have any reason to believe that if they let a revolution/civil war happen, the first condition the US will impose on its chosen winner will not amount to giving back control of their oil plus 46 years of interest? If there is one thing revealed preference shows, it's that the one class of grudge the US never forgives or forgets are slights against allied petroleum corporations. It was a pretty open secret that the US hate-boner for Venezuela was rooted in how it likewise expropriated US petrocompanies, and Trump (who has a talent for blurting out things that were supposed to remain plausibly deniable in polite company) just abducted its president with his apparently only real demand being that he be given their oil.
You say this like it's shameful. Protecting citizens from banditry is among the most noble duties of a nation. It's not an 'open secret,' or at least it shouldn't be -- it's a far more honorable casus belli then ideology or great power politics or rumored possession of WMDs, to be sure.
Countries that invoke might-makes-right to rob foreigners have no room to complain when those foreigners' nations invoke might-makes-right to seize restitution and inflict punishment. In fact, the world would be far more prosperous if those norms were consistently and strictly enforced. Not like it's ever a good idea, just some combination of stupidity (ideologically motivated or otherwise), short-sightedness, and corruption, as Venezuela's poverty demonstrates: they own their oil now... but they can't refine it and no one who can is dumb enough to invest in the nation.
No, the whole problem is that the US didn't do enough to punish the theft. Individual criminals tend to be dumb, high time preference, and low executive function, and that seems like an apt analogy to me. Studies show such people respond best to rapid, consistent and highly visible punishment. Letting things drag out for decades and using such indirect methods as funding protestors sends the wrong message and only multiplies the misery of the population.
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We seem to be watching enlightenment-values democracy slowly falling over, though. (Picking either one by itself is probably OK though).
If the next century is basically America receding from 'global interventionist superpower' to 'very rich but very disorganised country on a different continent', Europe mostly becoming a set of Muslim-minority secular-in-name-only states and Isreal having serious problems solving the disconnect between the Harethi and everyone else, then Iran's current strategy might look pretty smart.
That's a big 'if' of course but I'd give it maybe 40% odds?
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