Quote Originally Posted by Papewaio View Post
Two points.

Iranians are on the main Persians not Arabs. It's like confusing an Englishman with an Italian.

Second point is read up how the Iranian revolutions were instigated. Read up the backstory on how democratically elected officials were removed from office by UK and USA in favour of ones who were pro their oil companies. These are well documented facts of a puppet state, not conspiracy theories.
Rather than beat ourselves over what we did decades and generations ago, why not accept that the world now is what it is now, and work with that? If we hadn't got ourselves het up over how the middle east wasn't a liberal democracy, we'd have never have implemented the neocons' fantasies, and Saddam, Gaddafi and Assad would still be securely in power, spitting defiance at the west, but keeping an effective lid on the far nastier undercurrents of the societies under their thumb. I don't want Iran or any other middle eastern country to become any more of a democracy, certainly if it involves our effort, than they currently are, if it means (and every instance points that way) that Islamism will take hold. I don't want us to install dictators any more. But neither do I want us to depose any dictators who are already around. They can have whatever they currently have, and if they want to change it, it'll have to be on their own effort alone, without anything from (and thus any fault assigned to) us. Every single instance of our trying to do good in that region has rebounded on us, and I want us to stop.