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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: michael97123 who wrote (246454)	10/24/2007 11:29:18 AM
From: Lou Weed	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<<The bigger point is that the US cant figure out how to deal with these guys for maximum benefit to US interests. I missed the show. Did they address that?>> One of the main driving points in the show was precisely this issue and how it got screwed up by this admin's complete dismissal of any Iranian involvement in post Saddam Iraq. They interviewed Khatami's VP quite a bit. Iran could have been an enormous help with regard to a political solution in Iraq.....just as they were in Afghanistan. The non-response by the WH to the fax from the Iranians right after the fall of Baghdad looms as quite a huge blunder in hindsight. In fact the show pointed out that Iran had to step in to resolve a big issue to set up the first Iraqi congress....can't remember the exact issue? Point being they even helped out there regardless of the current state of our relationship with them. The majority of Iraq's population is Shiaa....if a democracy is to be set up then the ruling power will always be theocratically and ideologically linked to Iran. They showed lots of photos of Iraqi Congress officials shaking hands with Ahmedinijad (sp?). To shun any help from the Iranian side was just another in a long list of of huge mistakes born of the incompetence and arrogance of this current administration. pbs.org BJ

To: michael97123 who wrote (246454)	10/24/2007 12:21:36 PM
From: KyrosL	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

We need to understand that from Iran's perspective, we have much more Iranian blood on our hands than they have US blood on theirs. The CIA was instrumental in overthrowing the fledgling Iranian democracy in the early 50s and installing the Shah. From an Iranian perspective the Shah's repression was made in the USA: en.wikipedia.org The Islamic republic would never have happened, if Iranian democracy was allowed to develop in the 1950s -- it seems almost all post-WWII US interventions abroad result in disastrous unintended consequences sooner or later. No wonder that even Iranians that hate the Islamic republic, view the US with suspicion, consider the US at least partially responsible for the Khomeini revolution, and support the Islamic republic's pursuit of nuclear power. Saddam's Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s resulted in another Iranian river of blood for which Iranians consider the US partially responsible. Saddam was our good buddy then, and we advanced billions of food credits, which he used to purchase arms and manufacture poison gas that killed 700,000 Iranians. en.wikipedia.org