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Comment by tuveson | Hacker News Reader

> But even in the US, no one I've ever had the option to vote for (and who had even a remote chance of winning) would ever consider lifting these sanctions. So I am similarly powerless to change this situation.

Not saying Obama’s foreign policy was perfect, but he did do the Iran nuclear deal which lifted some sanctions, and started the process of normalizing relations with Cuba. Like so many other things, these were immediately undone by his successor…

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Obama acknowledging that the US overthrew an Iranian democracy for the benefit of oil companies definitely helped and could have ushered in a new era of understanding. Sadly, America then decided to elect someone with a toddler’s understanding of history and geopolitics which destroyed all that opportunity for a generation.

If you are referring to the Mosadegh story, that “apology” started with Bill Clinton and Madeline Albright trying to appease the current regime in Iran. Sadly, the “apology” itself is meddling with the historical facts. The Mosadegh government was no more or no less democratic than any other Prime Minister in that era. He had prorogued the parliament and waged a war against the Constitution and tried to elevate himself over the law and depose the ruling monarch. The Soviets and their affiliates and comrades on the ground supported the move (hoping to remove him next and extend the Bolshevik revolution to the Persian Gulf,) and the US and many Iranians did not want him to succeed.

In any case facts of the story are so brazenly changed in the apology’s telling of the story that regardless of which side you are on, in and of itself is a political interference against the will of the Iranian people. Please also note that the golden era of Iranian prosperity was the decade and a half when he was removed from power by the monarch.

Proroguing in parliaments is nothing new or anti-democratic. Canada had its parliament prorogued for the first 4 months of this year yet I didn't see calls for violent US-backed regime change and political suppression like there was under the American puppet Shah. Same with deposing a monarch (getting rid of monarchy is "anti-democratic" now?).

More information on the "Iranian golden age of prosperity" you mentioned:

>During that time two monarchs — Reza Shah Pahlavi and his son Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi — employed secret police, torture, and executions to stifle political dissent. The Pahlavi dynasty has sometimes been described as a "royal dictatorship",[1] or "one-man rule".

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

> Proroguing in parliaments is nothing new or anti-democratic.

He prorogued the parliament and was calling for a referendum to overthrow the monarchy against the Constitution. He was terminated by the monarch per Constitution, but he would not leave the post which resulted in uprising from both sides.

> During that time two monarchs — Reza Shah Pahlavi and his son Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi — employed secret police, torture, and executions to stifle political dissent. The Pahlavi dynasty has sometimes been described as a "royal dictatorship",[1] or "one-man rule".

Yeah if you read biased and debunked media and the Mullah supporters and comrades[1] (which is the source of Wokipedia) during the Cold War era, and by the way both sides conspired to get rid of the monarch for different reasons, you might believe such propaganda. If you'd talk to the actual industrious people who experienced it, you might get a very different perspective. Double digit annual GDP growth, #1 is number of international students in the US (not per capita, absolute.) So yes, golden era, indisputably.

[1] Interestingly, we see the same Marxist-Islamist alliance has now hit the West.

Are you seriously claiming that SAVAK wasn't a thing, or that it didn't employ torture? Or are you saying that the "golden era" justified such measures?

If you want to really argue this, you need to bring out specific claims one by one, as many have been either fake or overblown, or misattributed to SAVAK (acknowledged by the terrorists who taken over and are in charge now.) But in general, I do not believe it was anything out of the ordinary of the statecraft employed by the US or Britain in the Cold War era or arguably even the Bush era. In fact, post hoc, it is obvious they were too soft, as they released all these terrorists in the wild and let the country taken over. It is a failure of SAVAK and the security apparatus.

So yes, I would unequivocally argue to any extent the intelligence apparatus was actually operating, not only golden era objectively justifies those measures, but even for lots of the troublemakers themselves, turns out letting criminals loose to take over the country actually makes things worse; many of such Marxist-terrorists who claimed they were mistreated under the old regime were treated much much worse, or lost their lives, during the first years of the Mullah regime.

Strange that a massive revolution would break out in a country in the midst of such a golden era.

Strange that the mighty USSR broke down 10 years after that.

In retrospect, the astute mind would recognize the two may have just been interrelated. In fact, one may have been part of the plan to accomplish the other.

Got it, the Iranian revolution was part of the US’s plan to bring down the Soviet Union, makes total sense.

Trudeau was allowed by parliamentary rules to end parliament sessions for the year.

Mossadegh was not allowed to do it.

Long term foreign relationships cannot be built on top of four year presidential terms. Besides Israel, I'm not sure any country has continuity between recent administrations.

> Long term foreign relationships cannot be built on top of four year presidential terms.

Yes indeed, I agree.

Although: long term foreign relationships certainly can be un-built on top of four year presidential terms. See: current US president and rest-of-the-world.

Not just un-built, but poisoned for generations.

It's very rare that international relations get poisoned for generations without some ongoing work from both involved parties. Populations tend to forget things on the timeline of a decade or so.

The US can rebuild most of what they destroyed. It's gone now, and some of it they were already on the process of losing and can't get back. But no country is beyond reconstruction.

The Cold War would like to have a word with you. Yes, we gave them a McDonald's in the 90's, but things have only gotten worse over time.

And yet look at Vietnam-US relations.

As someone who grew up in Russia in the 90s, that McDonald's actually did wonders! The problem is that y'all figured that if you help people who say that they are "democrats" maintain control over the country, it'll all work out, somehow. What actually happened is that many of those people were grifters, some others idealistic incompetents who thought they had all the answers after reading Ayn Rand. On the whole, the people - who were very enthusiastic about the changes in late 80s - by mid-90s felt like they've been robbed, quite rightly so (read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatization_in_Russia for some examples), by people now firmly associated with the West and with words such as "liberal". This is the big reason why Western-style liberal democracy very quickly became a marginalized minority political opinion in Russia, and why the likes of Putin could easily take power by promising people that they'll fix the mess.

You’re taking public comments ways too seriously.

Relations clearly aren’t poisoned since the EU and US are still closely collaborating on several fronts such as policy towards China and Ukraine.

Don’t mistake harsh words intended for domestic voters with reality.

It takes a week to remodel a kitchen and an hour to demolish it.

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