Thoughts in Words

top 10 ignored things about Iran October 8, 2009

While I should be writing about the economy, I end up writing about Iran again. It’s just so much easier, because others do, and that saves me a lot of time. It always felt a bit off-topic somehow, I don’t even know why. Anyways … Juan Cole wrote this great list “The top ten things you didn’t know about Iran“. You can either go there and read it, or check out the rest of this post, where I will basically just making a short summary of his work, to create a better overview over those ten things, totally ignored by the public.

.

..
…
..

.

1) Irans leaders follow a doctrine of -no first strike- and the country has not launched an aggressive war in modern history.

2) Irans military budged is the 2nd smallest per capita in the persian gulf, and its total is smaller than that of sweden or the city(!)-state singapore.

3) If Iranian leaders were truly madmen, as some want us to think, they would have invaded their neighbors already. [claiming someone is irrational, crazy, mad, "a kook" and things like that, is an old propaganda trick.]

4) There was no threat of aggression against Israel, and the Iranian president explicitly said Iran would not be a threat to it.
[Cole mentions the famous ahmadinejad quote, and explains its meaning to be "this Occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time". I agree with him, that this translation is more a critique of the israeli regime, than a threat of aggression. Cole points out a comparison with the collapse of soviet union - its regime has also vanished. And I may add, that from an international point of view (East)Jerusalem is truly beeing occupied by Israel. Thus the quote doesn't even relate to Israel as a whole, but only to its annexation of of East-Jerusalem.]

5) Holocaust denial cannot be equalized with a threat of aggression against Israel either. [if you ask me, Israel is utilizing/abusing the holocaust to silence their critics, and hold any international action against them at bay. thus I can understand ahmadinejad wishing to take this power away from them. I think it is the only thing preventing a switch from "evil Iran" to "evil Israel" in the international community.]

6) IAEA, CIA and DIA have repeatedly assessed with fair confidence, that Iran has no nuclear weapons research program.

7) The new nuclear enrichment facility is still under construction, and will be inspected by the IAEA. [This means, that there was never some kind of secret facility producing weaponized materials.]

8) As long as the IAEA is inspecting the enrichment facilities, Iran cannot produce material for a bomb, and building a nuclear facility in secret would be extremely difficult [especially when everyone is watching you].

9) Sanctions against Iran primarily affect the people, not the regime. [thus they are pretty counterproductive, making people hate those who imposed the sanctions - not the regime.]

(10) I am pretty sure Cole split one point into two, because 10 is a better number for lists than 9. I can’t argue with that, hence my title also claims it to be ten … sorry :)