Hacker News Reader

Comment by droopyEyelids | Hacker News Reader

You can trace all their problems back to the 1979 Islamic revolution. If they would have simply kept the Shah as the ruler and stayed a client state to Britain, they wouldn't need to fund any of these militants, and would probably be a friend to western countries.

View on HN

Its been 46 years, there have been opportunities for peace along the way if they wanted it. It would have required compromises though.

Iran's not war not peace policy is an expensive one, both directly and indirectly (e.g. turning them into a parriah state). In the end it seems like its also been largely ineffective. Instead of keeping them out of war, proxies like Hamas ended up drawing them into one, and it ended up being a pretty one sided war not in their favour. Although i suppose prior to that point it was yielding geopolitical gains.

Iran in 1970s certainty wasn't a British client state, that's a dumb fucking claim. If anything they were a US client, not a British one. And even the claim that they were an US client is pretty weak. They were a pretty strong regional power back then and while they were clearly allied with the US, they had their own politics and strategies.

Analysis that looks at countries like Iran simply as tools of Superpowers is reductive Cold War area analysis that has gigantic blind spots.

They should bend the knee to white and western supremacy? Weird.

So what you’re saying is if they stayed quiet and supplicant to the British while they drained their oil resources while the extreme elites made all the money, everything would be okay? The Islamic revolution was a populist revolution, supported by the vast majority of the country because their lives were shit.

And if my ancient ancestor did not kill that fly we will be travelling to stars now. And why ffs one country should obey the other?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com