Unrest in Iran

[Montmorency]

I had heard one of the usual government pronouncements that police violence in Iran was the result of some kind of outside agitators stirring things up.

I rolled my eyes, as I usually do at such things.

However, I got to thinking....

We have Saudi proxies (at least by some definitions) clashing with Iranian regulars in Syria and Saudi regulars clashing with Iranian proxies in Yemen. We know from previous episodes over that last three years that not all in Iran are content.

Might it ACTUALLY be outside agitators for once? Trying the RomeTW 'send 4 spies to force the town to rebel' ploy? I am not sure.

I'm sure it includes outside agitators.

Russia has opened the Pandora Box here with its cyberwar investments (and this is exactly what cyberwar looks like, not the sci-fi stock of explodifying aircraft or the power grid from afar). Everyone from China down is moving to partake of the Meddling Pie. We don't have a chance.

Unless the USA has massively upped its game the odds of them having a decent number of people that could infiltrate Iran is close to nil. Imagining that Saudi Arabia has such people - such as some of the 2% of Arabs in Iran - is much easier to believe. And they must be itching to bring the hurt home whilst Yemen is ongoing.

The Arabs in the southwest of Iran sure did disappoint Saddam Hussein in his expectation of Arab solidarity. Any Saudi interference probably isn't restricted along ethnic lines.

I am not a hawk and not American, but if something is going to change it will be in Iran and nowhere else. Iranians are different from other people in the middle-east they are much more free-thinking. Maybe I am overly optimistic and I am most certainly biased but still, go team Persia salafist those mullahs, hard deep and unsafe

You didn't mean it that way, but a Salafist takeover in Iran would certainly be a turn for the worse.

As for my other question, why do you hate Arabs so much compared to Persians?

Given Iran is the major power of 30% of Muslims they are surely our natural ally (not having to deal with the entire Middle East would definitely be better of course). The USA needs to get over that it utterly botched its relationship with propping up the Shah and frankly engage as suits its own interests.

Even for Israel, Iran is a smaller threat than everyone else that surrounds them; blustery rhetoric aside, Saudi Arabia has exported a lot more extremist religion than Iran has and apparently we are bestest mates. Hezbollah in Jordan / Syria is definitely supported by Iran but what with the whole embargoes for a few decades they take allies where they can.

A telling comment from a ___ over New Year's upon hearing of Russian material support for the Kim Jong Un regime: 'North Korea just wants nuclear weapons because America is trying to conquer it [sort of], and they have the right to manage to their own affairs and self-defense [arguably], so we shouldn't try to stop them from having nuclear weapons [there are other reasons to dislike a nuclear North Korea, and those who are helping them along...]. North Korea is defending itself, just like Israel defends itself from Iran.'

The obvious question to pose here is, does Iran similarly have a right to "defend itself" from Israel and the United States? Hezbollah is an Iranian creation, and the worst thing you can say about Iran's foreign policy is that it wants to control Syria and Lebanon, thereby access to the East Med coast, and are willing to fund international crime and terrorism to do it. This is a sticking point on the same level as nuclear proliferation, and a much better argument for a US counter to Iran than "they say mean things about Israel". And as far as I am aware, Iran has never directly attacked the territory of Israel, but Israel has directly attacked the territory of Iran. But the United States has been unfair and hypocritical in its disposition toward Iran, more so than is justifiable through Iran's fundamental governance or policies.

An ideal show of force in the Middle East, if such a thing exists, might have been to demand mutual deconfliction and normalization of relations between Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran as a prerequisite to full participation in the American order. We meet some of our objectives for the region, and we don't have all of the aforementioned playing us against Russia for profit. If the US guarantees the peace (between states), then the various parties have no business cultivating clients and proxies anyway. Probably not feasible today - maybe in 2002.

That has been the rap against CIA and 'No Such' for some time. It certainly has a good measure of truth behind it, as our brilliant HUMINT work prior to the invasion of Iraq under Bush43 suggests.

I would caution everyone, however, that groups like the CIA seldom publish their successes [wholly understandably I believe you will all agree], only their failures are noted.

CIA operations in the Vietnam War were "technically" very successful. So were CIA coups and assassinations. Unfortunately, CIA successes have tended to be much worse for the world than CIA failures.