Impressions about Iran

Rumour of U.S Strike on Iran next Friday...

**Intelligence sources in Moscow claim to have information that a US strike against Iranian nuclear installations has been scheduled for April 6 at 0040 hours. The Russian sources say the US operation, code-named ``Bite,`` will last no more than 12 hours and consist of
missile and aerial strikes devastating enough to set Tehran`s nuclear program several years back.***

#30 by arjun2,

The iranians wouldn`t be foolish enough to pick up American forces in this way....

Really? I though they were `foolish` enough to pick up the entire US embassy staff of 90 plus their cook and hold them for over a year just for an apology .. or perhaps you forgot :)

What`s different now?

How Iranians view the movie 300...here is a little article explaining Iranian view ponit.

Bad history, worse timing
Warner Brothers could not have found a worse time in history to release movie like ``300``

Hamed Vahdati Nasab
March 13, 2007

As an archaeologist and as the author of one of the petitions against the movie 300, I would like to shed some light on some of the aspects of the movie 300. At the time of this publication the petition that started on March 4th, 2007 has exceeded 38,000 signatures.
Briefly, the movie portrays the famous battle of Thermopylae between the Persians and the Greeks that occurred in 480 B.C. During that battle, the Persian Imperial army had to cross a narrow gorge in order to reach the Greek mainland. The gorge was held by almost 300 Spartans backed by 4000-7000 Greek soldiers, and they managed to hold Persian army for few days.

Although there have been claims that the Persian soldiers numbered more than1 million, in actuality the correct number would have been somewhere around 200,000 since at that time, it would have been logistically impossible to mobilize 1 million army.
The movie demonstrates both Persians and Spartans on the eve of the battle. Interestingly enough, the way the film depicts the Spartans is more or less historically accurate, especially when it comes to their clothing, attitude, and internal historical political issues. However, when it comes to the Persian side, the film portrays an army of beasts, monsters and demons whose leader is a naked gender-confused King wearing a ridiculous number of piercing and chains!

There have been numerous claims pointing out that this movie is in a science fiction genre; therefore, these petitions are too passionate and needlessly serious. Science fiction by definition means “a genre (of literature, film, etc.) in which the setting differs from our own world (e.g. by the invention of new technology, through contact with aliens, by having a different history, etc.)”(Prucher, 2006).

According to this definition one might ask, how can we call the movie a fiction while it shows the actual events, places, and characters with their real names? And why is this so-called fiction only applied to demonize the Persian side? Everybody agrees that the battle of Thermopylae did happen, Leonidas was the name of the Spartan king, and Xerxes was indeed the Persian king. In the movie Persians were called by their actual names, and the only fictional part is to show the Persians as monstrous savages!

For these reasons, I am hesitant to call the movie 300, just a fictional movie. Insulting Persians by twisting the historical facts is as unjust as making a movie about Dr. Martin Luther King, picturing him as something different and calling it just “science fiction!”
Calling Persians barbarians and slave drivers is another unethical aspect of the movie 300. It is a proven scholarly fact that the Persian Empire in 480 B.C was the most magnificent and civilized empire. Persia was established by the Cyrus the Great, the author of the first human rights declaration. By pursuing a policy of generosity instead of repression, and by favoring local religions, the Persian Empire was able to inspire its newly conquered subjects to become enthusiastic supporters.

Frankly, it is fair to say that given the historical evidence, Persians were among the few nations who did not have slaves especially when it came to building their magnificent palaces. Clay tablets discovered by University of Chicago scholars in 1947 demonstrate that these royal palaces were built by workers who compensated based on their skills. This was in contrast to Egyptian and Roman architecture built on the backs of thousands of slaves.
While I’m certainly not a conspiracy theorist, I must say that Warner Brothers could not have found a worse time in history to release movie like 300. Given the conflict going on between Iran and some western countries, this could be translated as more support for inaccurate generalizations about Iran, and anything but a message of love between the West and Iran.

Dr. Hamed Vahdati Nasab is an Archaeologist at the Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, Georgia, USA. Comment

Re: # 39 Indian idea of not geting involved in other countries.

Baitullah ‘flees to Afghanistan’

ISLAMABAD: Intelligence agencies have informed the Interior Ministry that Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Taliban in Waziristan, fled to Afghanistan on Friday. Sources told Daily Times on Tuesday that the intelligence reports mentioned that Mehsud had several meetings with “INDIAN SPIES” and former Afghan premier Gulbadin Hekmatyar in Afghanistan this week. The reports said that Hekmatyar had met Mehsud at an undisclosed location, while ``Indian Integelliancs Officers``met him at Mazar-e-Sharif. The sources said that the intelligence agencies could not get the details of the meetings and Mehsud’s close aides in Waziristan were unaware of his whereabouts.

Incidently pipe and railway line exploded in B.Stan.

Never understood why have relations with ``friend`` when he helps sabotage acts , we can be better without friends. India can have one office in Kabul but no need tyo have 6 offices and raw people running around with bags full of explosives. Cut trade between India and A.Stan and put Ban on indian air flight to A.Stan over our skies.

Some stupids want to import Indian movies. It really difficult to understand what is going on.
India is going to arab summit as invitee by Palestain govt including Hammas. Few days back Indian army overlord JJ Singh flew to Israel and had ``friendly`` discussion. People like YLH should leave Gandhi and write letters to Arab news papers and expose Indian attitude of crying for palestaninas and then partying with Israels. General should have told bluntly to Arab retards you can have India or Pakistan your choice. Last time General gave ultimum to Worthless Islamic group meeting and they cancelled Observers status to India though Russia was invited which aginst spirit when they are doing same as in Kashmir.
Time has for intellucts to pay attention to Pakistani interest than getting obsession on Mr. Gandhi.

Iranaian have problems with ``majority Arabs in Kuzestan``. Iranians are recist and they cry regarding rising Arab population in Kuzestan ( they whine arabs have too many children). As Iranian Chamaddi is cream colored they feel superior to arabs. But Arab and Jew are same blood and look at so many Intelluctual giants, artists, newspaper editors or senetaors in usa and big people arab+ jews have produced. Iranians are dumb compared to arabs, even with big population and help from israel they could not defeat Saddam Husain, or Taliban. Only America tamed both still they are about to go war with usa. They can become good friend with USA and screw Arabs and give heart and panic attack to arab autocrat. Instead of being friend with Pakistan, only country helping and read to usa to stop they are making big walls separating walls against spirit of Brother hood.
Iranians are strange people they hate arabs as they are similar to jews and have african blood. They so much oil wealth but still its backward county than Pakistan in every respect. They need to start self criticism.

#35 why are you indians obsessed by skin color and by what you think pakistanis think of you? the average pakistani assumes the average indian is like one of those bollywood film stars anyway.

#37 there used to be this azeri foreign student when i first came to the US. ``Iranian bad people. They call us azerbaijan people khar...donkey`` he would say angrily, looking for sympathy. :-)

regarding the azeris in iran..........

sometime back i read that there were violent protests in iran/teheran when a persian newspaper carried a cartoon depicting azeris as a stupid cockroach.

#34 by ranjit

You must be kidding!
If a person of my limited resources can get a fairly good picture of ethnic relations in Iran, imagine what the US can do.


Despite all the issues in Iran, no one can deny the cultural influence that Persians have over the central and south Asia. I will primarily talk about Sindh. Pretty much every historic building in Sindh constructed before the British the last one thousand years, was inspired by Persian architect. The famous Sindhi tiles initially were just a crude copy of the Persian ceramic tiles. Similar Sindhi Ralli or the Quilt is of Persian origin. The famous necropolis in Makli, District Thatta heavily borrowed Persian architectural designs. Most sufi or the beggars that are revered in Sindh came to sindh from the current Iran. Because these beggars were Persians, they were treated differently than the regular Sindhi beggars and are now known as Sufis.

People can talk about Sanskrit and Persian being sister languages however; the Persian language influence over the north Indian languages is not due to sisterhood but because of the Indian rulers of Persian origin who ran the Indian court system in Farsi.

Both Hindi and Urdu borrow heavily from Farsi. Pretty much all fruits in both Hindi and urdu still have Persian names. Anaar, Angoor, Saeb are just a few examples. Words like barbaad, bardaasht and thousands other commonly used in both Urdu and Hindi are of Persian origin.

Balochi, Sindhi, Pushto languages would not be complete w/o the Persian’s help. They rely on Persian Grammar, composition and vocabulary enormously. Persian influence is undeniably huge on all central Asian languages too.

One clarification: In my previous post I used Irani when I was actually talking about the Farsi speaking or the Persian. 90% of Irani in the US are Persian or Farsi speaking and are racist to the core.

A sentence excerpted from Robert Fisk`s essay `savages`:

After Graham is wounded in Kabul, the Afghans - in the words of his Irish-born army doctor - have become ``murtherin villains, the black niggers``.

That is for the Pakistani chowkeys who keep referring to their light skin vis-a-vis the dark Indians

Re:HP#32

[..The issue before the US is whether a military action against Iran would sufficiently destroy the thin fabric of Iran nation and plunge Iran in to a Persian speaking versus the non Persian speaking civil war or not....]

HP, you are overestimating the depth of knowledge in the US state department or the pentagon. The US barely knew that there were shias and sunnis in Iraq who would fight after Saddam, as they imagined that they would be welcomed as liberators. I doubt if anyone in the US has any knowledge about the ethnic mix in Iran and its ramifications after a military strike.

Re: # 32

Most of the oil and natural gas is in regions inhabited by Arab minority. The Azeris, Kurds, Baluchis would lose out if they went independent. I can see the Azeris wanting to join Azerbaijan if it emerges something better than a banana republic. The Kurds face complications because of Iraq and Turkey. It looks like the Sunni Baluchis who are the most restless.

On second thoughts, my comparing Iranians with Pakistani and Indians, was wrong. I think Indians and Pakistan in general are not racist. They may have some hang ups about ethnicities and may have some regional biases but really both Indians and Pakistanis suffer so much from the inferiority complex that it is hard for them to conceive that they could be better than some folks other than of Indian or Pakistani origins. So the subcontinents racism is confined to its own people. Iranians on the other hand are a full blown case of racial hatred, if 1) you are not Persian speaking and 2) you are not White. If it is up to Iranians to decide who could live in this world or if you ask them to define superior races, Iranians would be unable to think beyond themselves and the Whites.

The current Iran is Iran because the name was changed when Hitler claimed the superiority of the Aryan race. It was inconceivable for Iranians to let the German claim go by without asserting that they are the true Aryans. Though there certainly are doubts about the validity of this claim.

The current Iran is barely 51% ethnic Persian speaking. A good number of people that are identified as Iranians are of many other ethnicities such as Azuris, kurd, turk, Baloch, and arab. Persian language is forced upon people so almost 100% can understand and speak it but they really are not Persian.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Iran has systematically attacked and subjugated other ethnic groups in Iran. Though now Azuris have begun to assert themselves in areas outside of Tehran. Ethnic clashes and uprisings are kept under tight control and often the outside world is not aware of what is taking place inside that country.

Like many other countries where ethnic differences, cultural, political and economical, are not resolved through a democratic dialog between the ethnic groups, Iran too would see a severe civil war if the central authority is some how physically removed from Tehran.

We saw that phenomenon in Iraq where once the central authority was eroded by the US occupation, it was simply a matter of time for the ethnic and sectarian violence to erupt and continue unabated.

In reality all countries where several ethnicities are combined under one flag and are governed from the top down rather than the top up method, eventually a loss of the central authority would cause major civil wars. We saw that in the former Eastern Europe. Closer home Afghanistan is another good example. Pakistan remains at the verge of a full blown ethnic regrouping but is mostly sustained by strong central force the Army. So if the army in Islamabad is somehow taken out, it will be seriously difficult to keep Pakistan as one country.

We also saw this when India was partitioned when the central British authority was weakened by the second WW and there was no force left, that could have worked with all groups to keep the country united.

In Pakistan’s case, the only redeeming feature is that historically both Sindhi and Punjabis have more things in common than the issues that divide them. In Pakistan, before 1971 Bengali reached that point because they really had nothing in common with people in West Pakistan.

Similarly before partition a Sindhi or Pathan or even a Punjabi had very few things in common with South or East Indians and the decision to form Pakistan was an easy decision to make.

Coming back to Iran, there is a strong urge in the US to find a way to remove the central authority in Iran to plunge that country in to a serious ethnic and sectarian violence like the way it was done in Iraq. The issue before the US is whether a military action against Iran would sufficiently destroy the thin fabric of Iran nation and plunge Iran in to a Persian speaking versus the non Persian speaking civil war or not.

Imo, if the US is able to remove the establishment in Tehran, Iran would very quickly slide towards a civil war.

The problem is usually not with the people of a country or community. It is invariably with what its citizens or members are willing to put up with as their leaders, for whatever reasons, be they rooted in fear, ideology, archaic mindsets, or most frequently simple apathy. The Iranians let those mullahs romp all over themselves; just like the Pakistanis let those khakis drag them around like an ox with rope running through its nose – often making inane snorts to exclaim its claim to manhood. Impotent people plus lousy leaders spells catastrophe for the whole population.

#28 by zeemax on March 27, 2007 11:16am PT


(Hint: Dozens of Iranians are held in Iraq on charges of espionage by the coalition)


nice try, but the iranian diplomats were arrested by the American forces, not british forces. The iranians wouldn`t be foolish enough to pick up American forces in this way....

You and your trick questions, Zee! LOL

Question:

Should Iran release the 15 Brit mariners caught in their waters?

(Hint: Dozens of Iranians are held in Iraq on charges of espionage by the coalition)

If yes, why?