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To: Yaacov who wrote (9074)	5/19/1999 8:48:00 AM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 17770

Yaacov, an excellent description of the actual play of events in Iran! As for the possibilities of attaining power in other circumstances, all I meant was that there are always conceivable scenarios permitting openings for a revolutionary cadre with broad popular support, for example, if there is confusion during a succession....

To: Yaacov who wrote (9074)	5/19/1999 8:59:00 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17770

The Shah, SAVAK, and the Iranian army made the mistake of believing that an insurrection could be controlled by repression, which only fuels more insurrection. Shah during kept seeking US autoriazation for use of force agaisnt the mobs in the streets, but Sallivan, the US Ambassdor in Tehran kept giving him confused signals. So he should have had the army gun down Iranian citizens for daring to oppose his regime? And the US should have urged him to do it? By what right did he rule Iran in the first place? By appointment from Washington DC? It is obviously impossible to say with any certainty, but if legitimate avenues of political dissent had existed under the Shah, it is entirely possible that Islamic fundamentalism - which was the one movement the Shah could not stamp out with repression - might not have become the sole venue for opposition, and might not have developed the political power it did. I have seen a similar situation in the country in which I live. Marcos drove all legitimate dissent underground, and the beneficiaries were the communists, who thus became the sole available outlet for the raging discontent. If the Filipinos had not overthrown Marcos, over the strong objections of Ron Reagan, the communists would have very likely taken over within a few years. When they got to that point, there would have been no shortage of ideologues urging the army to gun down the "mobs" in the streets. It would not have helped. Anti-American regimes all over the developing world have sprung out of futile attempts to support inept pro-American dictators. This is a product of the "Kirkpatrick Doctrine", the notion that developing countries were incapable of democracy, and therefore ought to have dictators who would place American interests above the interests of their own people. This idea (which existed long before Jeanne put her name to it), is one of the stupidest and most thoroughly un-American notions ever to emerge from our ivory tower ideologues, and has done immeasurable damage to US foreign policy. Iran moved, of its own accord, toward secularism in 1953. The US was not comfortable with the ideological position of that government, so we overthrew it and put in the Shah, who, as one Iranian complained, was not a descendant of God, but a sergeant in the Iranian army. By the time he fell, his credibility was below zero, and no amount of repression would have kept him in power, any more than it would have kept Somoza, Diem, Batista, Chiang Kai-Shek, Marcos, or any one of a dozen other doomed despots of the last 50 years in power. Apologies to all for a long and thoroughly off-topic post. PS. Thanks for this one: Shah replaced the Prime Minster Howaida and appointed his Army CHief of Staff, as advised by CIA station chief in Tehran, and marital* law was decalred.* which will provide boundless delight to the grammar and spelling lab.