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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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