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Iran is repressive, and fraught with problems, but it's not a dictatorship. There's a reasonably intricate bureaucracy, much of which is semi-democratic: for example, the supreme leader's preferred presidential candidate doesn't always win. The current president, Rouhani, is a moderate, and is not especially liked by the hard-liners. It's pretty crazy that your comment comparing it to North Korea and insinuating that someone would be tortured and executed for merging a Github PR is top rated.

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Whether the civil administration is elected is irrelevant to the threat that this person faces, although to be sure, the Guardian Council dictates who is an acceptable candidate. Rouhani does not have control over the IRGC, which has engaged in a years long campaign of arrests and threats of software developers with links to the West, e.g. Arash Zad, Naranji, and, most recently, Behdad Esfahbod, among others. Once in the hands of the IRGC, neither the President nor the courts can save someone, and the facts of the case matter little -- Rouhani can't even save his own brother. One would have to be profoundly ignorant of Iranian politics and the IRGC and Iranian state media's campaign of intimidation against software developers, the startup community, and other tech figures to not understand that this is the direct result of the security apparatus's propaganda and coercion, and that this person's decision is rational based on well-founded fears -- despite being unfortunate and regrettable.

> Behdad Esfahbod

Funny you mention him. He showed up on the linked thread, posting the final comment before it was locked:

> Just merge it.

If it quacks ...

The "supreme leader's preferred presidential candidate" may not always win, but he has to obey the supreme leader and his gang anyway. It's pretty close to a dictatorship, even if it's usually couched as "theocracy".

It's definitely a theocracy, but the president does have some measure of real power (e.g. for better or worse, the nuclear deal almost certainly wouldn't have happened had Rouhani not been elected). I'm not saying that the government isn't problematic, just that every problematic government isn't a dictatorship.

All presidential candidates must be approved by a religious council. It's democracy pastiche at best

That was where the "semi-" in "semi-democratic" came from in my original comment. It's in ways similar to Hong Kong's council elections.

I would be careful of using semi-democracy as a word. Democracy is power by the people, and the Iranian theocracy is ultimately not a democracy. There are too many caveats, too many powers under the authority of religious unelected people to call it a democracy. It’s a theocracy through and through.

What country doesn't have caveats to its democracy tho? I live in the UK and there are far too many caveats to call it a democracy IMO. At the end of the day it is subjective.

This is getting absurd: a representative democracy as many European countries have is not a close relation to the GP's "semi democratic" Iran. It's as "subjective" as being hit with a brick.

The UK is more complicated than that.

In the end, democracy refers to who hold power. In the UK, it's very possible for a minority to have the majority of the power or even worse due to various details, and a lot of power is just not accountable to the people. So depending on where you draw the line it makes sense.

It’s not semi because there is a completely parallel government and an executive branch that holds supreme power over everything even if they don’t administer the day to day dealings of the “normies”.

The IRGC could arrest the entire parliament and execute them at the public square and no one can officially stop them, not judges, not ministers no one.

Are you from Iran? I am iranian and regularly in touch with friends and family in iran and its a dictatorship. (I guess Theocracy works too). The ayatollah has complete unimpeded rule, he allows a moderate to be president because a vast majority of iranians are very unhappy with him and his government. If Rouhani wants to do something and the ayatollah disagrees, then whatever the ayatollah says goes, no questions.

The whole thing is a facade..

Like picking presidential candidates that have all been vetted to have acceptable viewpoints. "You can pick anyone that believes what I believe."

Laws, but if someone in the government suspects you of a crime or just doesn't like you, they through you into an interrogation cell and torture you until they get what they want.

There's no rule of law. And there's no democracy in Iran.

An Iranian wrestler was just given two death sentences for participating in peaceful protests regarding economic policies, so someone being jailed or executed for merging a GitHub PR is not wildly out of possibility.

You are leaving out a very important piece of detail. The reason he was sentenced to death is that he was convicted of murdering someone during the protest. You can argue that he is not the murderer and it was pinned on him. You might be even right. But it is undeniable that someone was murdered in the protest, and that his sentence was because he was convicted of his murder. Had there not been a dead body on the ground, he would not have received a death sentence.

If they're willing to implicate an innocent person, don't you think they might also fabricate a crime?

I thought he's comparing the law in Iran with a similar law in the US (CAATSA I think?) directed at North Korea.

I'd feel only marginally more safe violating the US's equivalent law. Breaking sanctions means prison and, at least according to Amnesty, US prisons engage in torture pretty routinely.

So, I probably wouldn't merge a North Korean PR.

Would you?

I happen to know that two popular machine learning libraries (MLPack and Vowpal Wabbit) have merged pull requests from North Korea. I know this because I was teaching a class on open source software development to North Korean students in 2015 (at PUST, a university in North Korea), and this was the final project for two student groups. The pull requests got merged fine, and the country of origin was never an issue.

FWIW, I am an American citizen and former military officer with a top secret clearance. I never broke US law, and I never feared any retaliation from the US government.

https://complyadvantage.com/knowledgebase/north-korea-sancti...

I was going by this which states that "importing technology" is covered by sanctions.

If encryption can get classified as munitions export (which, pre 1992 it was) I could imagine a PR from NK can fairly easily be classified as "importing technology".

IANAL but if I was taking a risk averse approach like this Iranian dude then I'd err on the side of caution and not merge.

I certainly wouldn't want to try and establish case law that a PR is not importing technology, either, even if, say, the lack of a financial transaction meant it technically didn't count. It's playing with fire.

I'd have to look it up to be sure, but I believe US law only restricts dealings with North Korea that are political or commercial in nature. Merging a PR shouldn't qualify.

More importantly, in the US, there is at least some semblance of fairness in the judiciary. To be clear, I'm not saying "fairness always wins". Not even close. A criminal charge would entitle the defendant to a trial by jury, though, and I find it hard to believe that a jury would convict a teacher for merely collaborating with a student in an academic setting, regardless of the letter of the law.

You taught in/to North Korea?! How was the experience?

Let's be honest, the reason Iran is a pariah state isn't because it's a repressive, tyrannical regime, it's because it doesn't fall in line with the US/UK demands. Saudi Arabia is worse, and their leaders get to hold hands with US presidents while they go for a stroll.

Iran could abolish all elections, create a Saudi-style dictatorship, become even more of a human rights abuser, but if it privatized its oil industry and let in Exxon/BP all would be forgiven.

I don't disagree with you - but I also don't see anyone arguing otherwise.

I see a lot of commenters railing against Iran's lack of perfect, free and fair elections, so just wanted to point out that that has nothing to do with their geopolitical problems. The world realpolitik game doesn't actually care if you're a human rights-abusing, tyrannical hellscape as long as you play ball with the oil companies.

> the supreme leader's preferred presidential candidate doesn't always win

Candidates for president must be "approved" by the Guardian Council. Supreme leader hand picks half of the Guardian Council, the other half is selected by Majlis. But majlis nominees are "approved" by the guardian council. The circular dependency was seeded by supreme leader.

If A = B & B = C Then A = C. He hand picks the nominees for president.

So is US. Last time I checked it was not possible for an outsider (third party candidate) to participate in US election.

Forgot about outsider, look what they did to Bernie Sanders. Both 2016 and 2020. Should I explain more? Let alone third party candidates like Jill Stein.

You have really bought the brand of bs the media is selling you don’t you?

Which religious council did Bernie have to be approved by? Or was it a political party? Your analogy is off base.

Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.

Noam Chomsky

I notice you didn't answer the question.

It's awfully suspicious how all of the other candidates except Warren dropped out and endorsed Biden overnight, right? Meanwhile, Warren, who was presumed to draw votes from Bernie, was all of a sudden awash in SuperPAC money despite her campaign having no chance.

Almost like someone made a few phone calls.

"Whataboutism" is not an argument, and neither are vague innuendos.

I was specifically responding to a comment talking about the 2020 primaries, and I talked about the 2020 primaries.

It's really an amazing system we have. The government and media tell you how free you are and how wicked all these other people are, and everyone just eats it up. Anyone who questions is ostracized and sidelined. Way more effective than a brute dictatorship.

Again, dragging another system entirely into the conversation is non sequitur.

Also, I just find it interesting you feel compelled to defend a dictatorship.

It's a comparison of different methods of social control. An interesting conversation, IMO at least.

"Bad guys bad!" is much less interesting, especially when it's only the bad guys you've been told to hate.

I would disagree with you except the result of the 2016 democrat primary was a lawsuit where the democrats argued and won on the basis that party nominations are not democratic even within the party.

https://observer.com/2017/08/court-admits-dnc-and-debbie-was...

That being said still not a theocracy.

The flavor difference is what's interesting.

In the US, the allowed opinions are actually a tiny band, socially enforced. You don't get to be an opinion maker unless you're in band.

Technically we're way freer, but practically? A little bit at best.

I think if you believe the America portrayed on the news you may come to believe that. But social enforcement whatever you mean by that is much different than being thrown in jail for protesting the government while in the us they've been rioting for 90 days almost without repercussion.

The real world difference is huge no matter how you try to portray it.

What? Almost every US presidential election since the early 19th century has had several candidates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden...

I don't understand this baseless whataboutism to defend a dictatorship.

Wow. It's really impossible to talk about anywhere else here, isn't it? It all has to come back to America, doesn't it?

Isn't the current President, Donald Trump, an outsider? He calls himself a Republican, but he wasn't involved with that party prior to deciding to run, and he certainly didn't seem to have the support of the party while running.

It's definitely a problem that you have to be in one of the two parties, but it's not impossible to come from outside and nominally join. Sanders is also a good example, coming close in 16 and 20, despite being, essentially, an independent or Democratic Socialist.

They didn’t do anything to Bernie Sanders; the big-tent party moved rightward after Raegan but it’s progressive wing didn’t break off. His placement in both primaries reflects that.

Disclaimer: I’m not an American, so I might be simplifying or not getting something right.

EDIT: looking at your comment again, I could understand cynicism about the Democratic/Republican political machines, but I don’t necessarily equate that to something like Iran’s Supreme Leader.

That's ridiculous. The Supreme Leader's Council of Guardians personally certify any and all Presidential candidates. They may choose to allow candidates from other factions from time to time for political reasons, but they're still choosing. In a Democracy, the leader don't get to decide who is allowed to run for office.

And while we're talking about him, the "Supreme Leader" serves a lifetime term. They personally appoint the heads of the military, the government, and the judiciary. They directly choose the ministers of Defense, Intelligence and Foreign Affairs, and Science. Their successor is selected by a body appointed directly by them. The same person has held the position since 1989.

That's a fairly pure dictatorship, but agreeing with that statement might cause an Iranian to run afoul of Iran's Les Majeste laws, and Iranians are routinely punished for questioning or insulting the Supreme Leader.

If anyone is interested in a different perspective (the Iranians you will interact with online know English, have affinity for the West, etc. These are not representative of majority of Iranians, just like many Americans aren't represented by the Twitteratti for example), there is a book by Hermann Hesse called The Glass Bead Game, where humanity has undergone a devastating Third World War and in attempt to keep it from ever happening again they install a council of ascetic Monks who have final veto power on any action of any state. The idea is that people who are experts in morality, who have no worldly attachments or things to gain by leveraging their power would be the best check on a society which routinely falls into war.

This is a very similar arrangement to Iran's "democracy" where the democracy runs but is checked by a figure whose "true" attachment is to God (or for non-believers at least to some kind of objective morality).

If you look from an average Iranian perspective, Ayatollah Khamenei is not just the leader of the country, he is also a venerable religious figure, an ascetic and someone who ostensibly cares little for worldly pleasures. If anyone were to have "guardianship" or veto power over a democracy, wouldn't he be a good guy to have it, from that perspective?

It's a lot of the same arguments you see for Trump. He doesn't need the money. He's not beholden to special interests because he's not a career politician, etc. Etc.

Just a different perspective. Many here allege torture and harsh imprisonment but these aren't inherent features of the system mentioned. They are things which could be fixed within the system as well. The same is true for American police brutality, for example.

The West is quite familiar with the concept of the "Philosopher King." I agree that if you assume a perfectly moral, incorruptible dictator, then they are a perfect government. It's certainly better than democracy.

It's also impossible to achieve, though, which makes it a bit moot. No single person is guaranteed to stay free of corruption, especially when granted tremendous, unchecked power. Creating a system that relies on this not happening is not a good idea. It's just too huge a gamble.

Also, comparing Ayatollah Khamenei, a formerly elected politician who controls around $100 billion of quasi-private wealth, to a council of ascetic monks, is a bit of a stretch.

OP is not wrong. It is a huge risk for the maintainer to merge the PR in it's current form or as a fork no matter how you classify the present Iranian government. Anyone knowing anything about Iran would sympathize with the maintainer.

https://venturebeat.com/2012/01/09/iran-sentences-us-born-de...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeed_Malekpour

> It's pretty crazy that your comment comparing it to North Korea and insinuating that someone would be tortured and executed for merging a Github PR is top rated.

Crimes of treason are handled by the revolutionary court. That court is allowed to hand out death sentences. People are strangled publicly in Iran. It's hardly a stretch to compare them to North Korea.

Iran isn't a dictatorship, but it does issue the death penalty for quite minor offenses. Iranians have been sentenced to death for protesting, for drinking, for adultery.

> Iranians have been sentenced to death for protesting, for drinking, for adultery.

And also...

https://m.dw.com/en/iran-defends-execution-of-gay-people/a-4...

“Homosexuality violates Islamic Law in Iran and can be punishable by death. Several thousand people have been executed for homosexuality since the 1979 Islamic revolution, according to some rights activists.”

Iran is absolutely a dictatorship.

The president is nominally democratically elected, but they are subordinate to the Supreme Leader. The Supreme Leader is appointed by and subject to the Assembly of Experts... but half of that body is subject to the whim of the Supreme Leader.

At best, it's "a dictatorship with extra steps".

Nearly fell out of my chair laughing when I saw "semi-democratic" XD

> the supreme leader's preferred presidential candidate doesn't always win.

Democracies don't have supreme leaders. Are you insinuating Iran is not an authoritarian regime where torture exists?

All presidential candidates must be approved by a religious council. It's not democratic they just let you pick which of the narrow approved candidates gets in.

facepalm

IRI is soviet in structure. Ignore the clerical garb and titles and just draw the diagrams, and substitute Plato’s Republic for Das Kapital.

The IRI and Das Kapital have nothing to do with each other. Moreover, Das Kapital is a treatise on economics, and says almost nothing on how a government should be structured, except that power should be held by the majority class. If you're going to make an argument for some other text Marx worte, AFAIK the only endorsement he ever made of a mode of political organization was that of the Paris Commune, which is, to put it mildly, completely unrelated to Iran's.

As for Iran having a similar structure to the USSR, you couldn't be further from the truth. To begin with, all parties are legal in Iran de jure, and are not obligated to hold internal elections. Whereas the Soviet system is that you have one party, which is legally required to hold multiple primaries, with the concept being that the party should be changed by the people (obviously this doesn't happen). The most powerful person in the USSR, the General Secretary of the CPSU, is not appointed for life, and is elected by successive representative bodies culminating ultimately in the Soviet, which has no equivalent in Iran. The principle of social control in Iran is the IRGC, whereas in the USSR it is admittance to the Communist Party. All in all, nothing in common.

I have a feeling that you have read neither the Iranian Constitution, nor Das Kapital. I'm not making an argument about whether either are moral, but they really have nothing to do with each other.

You did not read carefully. I said “substitute”.

I was there when the revolution happened, as it happens.

I read carefully. Das Kapital has nothing to do with the Iranian government of today or at any time, neither do the Soviets. The structure of the governments are incomparable, and that book talks almost exclusively about economics. It's completely devoid of sense.

By the way, Plato's Republic is in large part a critique of Democracy, just FYI. Its central thesis is that a just absolute monarch that is well-versed in philosophy and justness is the highest form of governance. If anything, I'd say in philosophy Plato's republic advocates most strongly for something you would call a Leninist/Stalinist state, and there is actually a direct lineage from Plato to Hegel to Lenin/Stalin, in that Plato essentially argued for totalitarianism by the right people. It's basically the only thing a Stalinist state has in common with the Iranian state, and is also directly delineated from Plato's Republic, ironically. It's even more ironic in that Marx's central thesis in this respect was to flip dialectical government on its head into a democratic "perversion" of Hegel and of Plato at the base.

In fact, the technocratic aristocratic meritocracy proposed by Plato in Republic is stunningly similar to what Lenin was advocating for in the Vanguard party, and not only that, but it failed exactly for the reasons for which Marx critiqued Hegel's version of the same concept! The history of philosophy is full of interesting plot twists.

> Das Kapital has nothing to do with the Iranian government of today or at any time

I wonder if repeated beating of a strawman constitutes a form of battery? Go easy on the poor guy!

The "the absolute wilayat al-'amr" [Article 57] [see note] is Plato's philospher king. It has no basis whatsoever in Shia Islam.

Khomeini was an ambitious and worldly mullah, and on entirely different plane than all the other actors in the revolution and IRI. He was definitively -not- a Marxists, and his evaluation of "economics" was "donkey science". He was a Muslim cleric with mystical [Aaref] tendencies/conceits/delusions.

"Be sure that Islam can provide justice, independence, freedom, economic equality without relying on the teachings of other schools of thought.” [Ruhollah Khomeini - Sahifa Nur]

He was (apparently, as I don't personally see it) a charismatic man. Or something. But whatever he was, you would not know the name of Ruhollah Khomeini were it not that that nationalist center and left, including no holds barred extreme left, chose to throw their weight behind him with the intention of riding on the robe of the Ayatollah to affect their intended goals. What a tragic error they made. (Communists were apparently treated far more leniently than groups that were Islamics. Put that your in your analytical pipe..)

Left never managed to gain the same foothold in Iran as it did in say East Asian nations. Marx was never gonna fly in Iran. Ever. They certainly tried. So the crypto-soviet of Islamic Republic of Iran is a means of addressing this substantial stumbling block. A few more generations of IRI and in my opinion Islam is likely finished in Iran.

Besides the actual left, the scions of the "aristocracy" [lol] of Mullah Families in Iran were all having rather substantial crisis of faith. The honest amongst them, examplar here is the heroic Kasravi [1] (RIP), who got his western education beyond his Muslim education, and then took off the robe and put on a suit. This is what he said about Islam (and they killed him for it):

One is the religion that that honorable Arab man brought one thousand, three hundred and fifty years ago and was established for centuries. The other is the Islam that there is today and has turned into many colors from Sunnism, Shi'ism, Esmaili, Aliollahi, Sheikhi, and Karimkhani, and the like. They call both Islam, but they are not one. They are completely different and are opposite of one another.... Nothing is left of that Islam. This establishment that the mullas are running not only does not have any benefits but it also causes many harms and results in wretchedness.

This scion of the "aristocracy of clerics" [2], Ali Shariati, who was a sensitive and intelligent sort, but obviously lacking in the intellectual integrity department [according to moi], was the piped-piper of psuedo-intellectuals, left wing wannabes, and conflicted Muslims who failed to grok how to square scientific and technological advancement with the (claimed) eternal guidance of Almighty. So they decided to politicize Islam and mix their intellectual, political, and economic notions [mostly left] with religion.

These are the people who are in power (minus comrades that met the bullet of the "saint", of course).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Kasravi

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Shariati

[p.s.]: Yes, that is the title of the awaited Mahdi ("Guided One", think Dune :)] but the entire doctrine of Khomeini Velayateh Faqih, means "the Supreme Leader" is the mullah-council annointed proxy.

p.s.s. I am personally convinced Shariati could have been Iran's Foucault IFF he had the integrity of Kasravi.

I agree with most of what you said, but that still doesn't adress my original criticism of the comment. It's just that I just can't see the parallel between the structure of the IRI and that of the Soviet Union. They're only really similar in that they are dictatorships by a ruling class, but the Soviet system is seriously much more flexible, capable of reform, and unlike the Iranian system in theory and in a world free of corruption, would actually be fully reformable by the people, and indeed was in the end - see Gorbachev, much to the willingness of the people. Whereas the Iranian system fundamentally is unreformable and has little pretense of democracy.

Actually, did the Iranian Revolutionaries really copy the structure of Iran, I'd bet Iran would be in a much better position right now - either similar to China, or much more democratic.

And yes, a big criticism I have of the Arab left too is their almost delusional characterization of Islam, but I digress.

Also, I was unsure which way the substitution was going, which is why I also made the other criticism, but now I can see clearly that you meant that the IRI is based on Plato's idea in the Republic, which I can see is defensible.

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