On Iran, the Nuclear Bomb, Majd's Book 'The Ayatollah Begs to Differ' etc.

On Iran, the Nuclear Bomb, Majd’s Book ‘The Ayatollah Begs to Differ’ etc.

Reading an excellent book on the Islamic Republic (of Iran) by Hooman Majd I have begun to wonder about the post-Nuclear weaponized balance of power in the Middle East.

Majd’s book is quite a good cultural history of Iran circa 2007. I read a couple of other, more technical history books on Iran this past year that provide quite a different point of view. The comparison and contrast is quite interesting. I recommend Majd’s book for reading because of his first person interaction with the people and places he writes about. Majd is basically an American and yet Iranian too. He has translated for the past Iranian President Khatami, attended Ashura (it means the 10th in Arabic) and described how and why those Shiite dudes with themselves with chains to express grief for the death of Hossain about 1400 years ago.
Iran’s was a popular revolution against the Shah it seems. 2500 years of imperial rule because over-bearing. The communists too supported the fundamentalist revolution because it was the only one available-too bad for them; the Khomeinists liquidated them later.

One may develop many ideas about Iran reading these histories. In another book I read about the paradise (means walled garden in Farsi-Farsi is from the word Pars) a Zoroastrian was shown to and stepping through the doors he saw an orchard of legs sticking up from the ground before his host planted him too. Today Zoroastrians are one of four religions recognized in Iran.

Iran means Aryan. American views are biased toward the word Aryan because of Hitler who preferred to believe that Germans evolved from Aryans (aka Persians-a French term) as if being German wasn’t good enough.
Aryans as an originating hill tribe of all whit people isn’t a very good idea. The Aryans were/are just one named collection of white folks that emerged in Eurasia from proto-Caucasoid tribes maybe 60-70 thousand years B.C.E. The Australian aborigines are a proto-Caucasoid tribe. By 25,000 years B.C.E.

People were living in the far north even near Moscow. White people were disbursed across Eurasia and the pass into India through Afghanistan and Iran was just one trafficked location were some gathered and late in pre-history got the name Aryan. I have no idea what that means in Sanskrit if anything.

Because of thousands of years of foreign invasions and impregnation of the women including by Semitic Arabs of the other brand of Islam affiliated loosely with the descendents of Abraham through Ishmael (his first born son) by everyone from Alexander the Great’s Macedonian Greeks to Mongols and etc instead of pervasive Aryanism the Iranians are mostly mixed breeds. Yet Americans don’t really care much about race anyway instead caring about personal wealth and if they are intelligent national security, environmental health and God as well, so one need not make anything out of any genetic inheritance of the Iranians.

I did get the idea though that geography can determine political formation. England as an island nation with a stable population evolved a democracy or parliamentary representation through a balance of power of regional peer nobles vs. the king. Magna Charta would have been unlikely to develop in unstable Iran with hordes of warriors rampaging through now and then. Various forms of strong men or kings tend to emerge instead and the populace becomes docile under the ruling power.

One notable social evolution is that of serfdom, slavery, peonhood or vassal to the emperor of a large population that develops when a nation is moderately isolated and ruled over by not only royals but a large number of relatives/aristocrats. The black turbaned clerics of Iran are in theory all related as descendents from Mohammed-not relatives where other colors.
Russia had its tsar a thousand years, Chinese had its imperial rulers until 1911 when the Qing dynasty ended a 4500 years history of royal rulers, and the Saudis established a royal ruling tradition and numerous other historical examples exist of national developments in other than democratic directions.

One might wonder if the British conquest of India evicting the Mughal dynasty was the main reason democracy transferred to India grew readily as the transitional super-structure toward independent democratic geo-polity was created by the British in an era before suicide bombers were common. The United States in Iraq and Afghanistan has experienced much of the latter.

The Taliban (Sunni religious students) versus the Shia northern alliance (haq means rights as in individual rights in Farsi) in Afghanistan presented a religious as well as a cultural schism for conflict. The approach to political populism and individual rights differs in some Middle Eastern and central Asian countries.

The United States may experience several interesting intellectual challenges in the years ahead in attempting to pacify the restive political populace with numerous divergent political points of view in nations it feels obligated to politically dabble in with billions and billions of dollars. It might be a good idea for U.S. voters to hire a sniffer dog to give the Biden smell test to U.S. Presidential candidates for 2012 in order to weed out those that do not have a salutary, politically correct odor whatever that is in the Congress of the United States if that will help improve the quality of U.S. foreign policy on the road ahead.

So if Iran develops nuclear explosives to place atop its missiles capable of reaching Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iraq, Israel and elsewhere won’t it stimulate a possible infra-Moslem nuclear arms race to defend against possible extremist fundamentalist sectarian antipathy? Would Iran count on the United States to assure that the Middle East and Central Asian nations live with equality, fraternity, sorority and oil prosperity?

The Syrian troubles and recent revolutions during the ‘Moslem’ spring-summer revolutions alone seem good enough evidence that the United States might experience difficulty in halting the development or purchase of nuclear weapons from more nations in the Moslem world. Russia and other European nations as well as China may increase their own intermediate range cruise missile and ballistic missiles quick launch stocks and capabilities as well as anti-missile systems to defend against exoteric Moslem missile programs.

It is interesting that China developed an inshore canal network for trade goods and national shipping that made a coastal navy unnecessary. Chinese dynastic rulers back in the day crippled their blue water naval development and divided and conquered their own coastal defense fleets in order to pre-empt its possible use for revolting against the regime. The clever British were eventually able to develop flat bottomed boats that were ironclads with big guns as early as 1840 able to enter the shallow water of the Chinese river and canal network and the regime’s government trade monopoly and lead to the end of the imperial rule indirectly about 70 years later. Moslem powers of imperial and/or theocratic rule and communist powers too may experience similar challenges to containing concentrated political power in a global context placing governing hobbles upon shipping size and citizens travelling beyond the boundaries of the oppressive ruling authority-even it is simply that of concentrated wealth and very large shipping with minimal operating personnel.

With Iran’s history it is easy to understand why they might be interested in developing a nuclear capability for war, yet alternatively, that is a better reason to try to develop better relations with N.A.T.O. in order to share that nuclear umbrella.

Deleterious consequences of nuclear war for Iran far outweigh the potential benefits. Iranian development of nuclear weapons is a little like building a campfire in a dry barn full of hay-it isn’t a good idea.
Iranians have good reason to distrust the upper classes and the global rich in virtue of their history. Global history has instructed that concentrated power and wealth eventually runs amok oppressing the comparatively powerless. Authoritarian dictatorships in any form undermine individual liberty and transform human society into unphilosophical maggoty organisms coexisting under a reign of terror.

Iran as an Islamic Republic has a real principle of egalitarianism though tainted with civil economic and political oppression of women. Iranians politically tend to fear the economic segregation and opportunity apartheid what upper classes traditional force upon mankind everywhere and seem reluctant to let global corporations including those from America have carte blanche to run amok in their nation treating disadvantaged locals as cheap, disposable labor or stupid, moronic peons.
A majority of Americans too are downwardly mobile economically speaking in their own nation these days as wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated in the upper five or ten percent of the populace.

The U.S.A. prospered when it redistributed the land wealth following a revolution against King George the Third and the British aristocrats what owned the land. The U.S.A. falling into a depression in the first part of the 20th century after wealth became concentrated and taxes were too low fought its way out of it though a war got in the way (the Second World War) by F.D.R. raising taxes on the rich to 90%. Until recently following the Reagan-Bush-Obama tax cuts the United States was a prosperous, egalitarian rather than elitist nation. Because of the global war against communism though, President Eisenhower thought it best to keep a Shah in power rather than to let a potential communist power take over the Majlis or Iranian parliament even if improbable. The 1979 Iranian revolution ended the reign of the Shah.

Americans might have sympathized more with the revolution except they hate having their embassies made hostages and hold a grudge a long, long time. When little is happening in Smallville (a town Lot asked God to let him flee from the doomed city of Sodom) the intellectual content follows along after the rich demi-urge business leading on the summit of the shining ziggurat of a hill. It’s a fairly unintelligent, non-democratic discourse on political logic settling upon the mud phenomenalities below.

Well then, maybe nuclear war in the years ahead along with excessive global heating through anthropogenic climate change will become likely helping to let eschatological prophecy business get increased cash flow for bigger revenue streaming and political power acquisition. If one could live 300 years the future would be interesting to observe.

It’s unfortunate that it is so difficult getting things socially, ecologically, economically and politically to change positively for the good globally, and easier to blame people for going wrong as if a few bright leaders should have produced a sustainable, moral, egalitarian democracy in a recovering ecosphere for the people instead of the people themselves.