Pictory

Jimmy Carter should be the man sent to Iran for Direct Talks

US President Hussein Obama should send President Jimmy Carter to Iran to hold direct talks.

President Jimmy Carter is a good American. He is a former President, a former Navy man, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

He would be an asset to American foreign policy.

His actions will usher in a new era of peace in the Middle East.

It was Jimmy Carter that brought peace between Egypt and Israel.

More than ever, Iran and the US need a man like Jimmy Carter.

Richard Tehrani...

Richard said:

How can anyone say the Great Iranian Revolution was "illegitimate"?

Because if revolution was any Great or any legitimate, you (and I) would be in iran and your name had remained "abdollah" and you did not have to cloak yourself as Richard.

Ironically the word the Great in your comment as an adjective for Iranian Revolution has the same meaning that the same word has in Alexander the Great for Iran; a sign of destruction and defeat.

Another Lost Iranian in Paris

Thank you! I wish I could make a difference, but I can't. I have so much to say when I read the current news, news of a hundred and forty odd children on death row (top per capita position in the world), when this girl was arrested when holding hands with her fiance' and then found raped and dead, when that woman was stoned; and when I think about where we could be had we been content with the previous regime, or accepted PM Bakhtiar. Someone presses on my throat when I see how easily we sold our country. And I get angry at iranian people who made such a big gamble with their own future. According to a UN report, iran, S. Korea, Taiwan, and Turkey were in the same ball-park of development in 1978; and now after 30 years our country is so far behind and likes of S. Korea has prospered and turned into a manufacturing center of the world.

We gambled and we lost. We simply were neither informed nor wise nor cared as much about our country and our indigenous culture. Sigh!

Shah

J A V I D S H A H !
... and the beat goes on.

Sheeps, following the flock.

Sheeps, following the flock. Think of it as human nature at its most primitive. No logic or cause, only imitate! Very sad, but its in all of us.

It was a Legitimate Revolution

How can anyone say the Great Iranian Revolution was "illegitimate"?

You mean to write that all those people in the streets screaming, "Death to the Shah" were imaginary?

Wake up. No one is listening to your wrong point of view.

Even the countries that supported the Shah write that he was a dictator in their history books.

It has been over 30 years. The Pahlavis both father and son were never been able to rule Iran for 30 years continuously. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled Iran in 1953. He left the country to Dr. Mossadegh until he was re-installed by foreign powers. The foreign powers later concluded that that was a mistake.

In the end, the biggest taritors against the Iranian people are the monarchists who legitimize the theft of the Iranian treasury by the Pahlavis.

The Pahlavis should return the money they stole. The money, once returned should be used to rebuild the city of BAM.

Revelution

The Iranian revolution was planed & supported by foreign powers. There where Palastinian gourillas in Iran. Financial support, radio propaganda, all came from foreign countries. That by itself proves that the revolution was Iligitiamte.

Per world bank report, in the period from 1970 to 1978, Iran had the highest GNP in the world, which was 11.4%, almost equivilant to todays China, but in a smaller scale. True that there was big difference between the classes of people, but some of that has to do with Iranian culture.

The Shah made two mistakes, one: he did not allow political participation from early 70's. and two; he did not used the military to stop the revolution. Knowing the foreign influence & the pain that would come to people, he should have fought hard & stayed. And then applied gradual political participation, as he said he would and tried in the last months. Democracy is a process, not an overnight event.
Whom ever who said marg bar shah, in this video, paid a very high price. It was like destiny had turned their words toward themselvs.

> Napolean

I wish I had the time to compile all your comments and print them. This would be an informative writing for foreigners and ignorant iranians who'd like to know more about the revolution, and our country in general.

Damet garm, there are 100s of families who think the same way, all around the globe.

Javid Shah

1979

Revolution of 1979 was solely based on nothing but fraud, lies, and deception, that makes it far more illegitimate than Bolshevik revolution and alike. It achieved nothing, zilch, zero. It ONLY brought disaster on iran and iranians no matter how much opinionated revolutionaries keep insisting on its fraudulent legality. Revolution simply was as legitimate as the oxford phd diploma of mr kordian in IRI. LOL!

Differentiating the Revolution from its aftermath

Nothing takes away the legitimacy of Iranian Revolution of 1979. It had political, economical, and cultural background, and was supported by the vast majority of people. No amount of history rewriting takes away the legitimacy of the Revolution.

One must separate the legitimacy of the Revolution from what happened after the Revolution. Do slavery, genocide against American-Indians, and imperial wars against Mexico that separated large chuncks of its territory, not to mention all the crimes that the US has committed since WWII, take away the legitimacy of the American Revolution and the beautiful Constitution and Bill of Rights? Absolutely not.

Besides, why was it that the reactionary religious forces took over after the Revolution? Because the Shah thought that the secular forces - the National Front and secular leftists - and even moderate religious groups like the Freedom Movement were the main threats to his rule. So, he tried hard to suppress them. At the same time, he refused to let Iran undergo a political evolution whereby the people would become more educated politically. Worse, he eliminated even the pretence to political diversity by establishing the fascist Rastakhiz Party, and eliminating the cartoonish parties of Iran-e Novin, Mardom, and Pan Iraniast.

So, where did people have to go, when political and economical crises overtook Iran in 1977-78?

It is easy to use beautiful and always 100% correct hindsight to try to discredit something. But, those of us who were adults in the late 1960s and 1970s know what the conditions of Iran were. Even people like Amir Asadollah Alam, the Shah's confidante, say as much in their memoirs.

Mammad

sickofkhomeinists

Thanks man, but I think we have already too much of him here. No need to add to our misery. :-)

You're welcome Irandokht

You're welcome Irandokht jan. Thank you for posting those links. Cheers, dokhtare Iran.

dear sick...

Thanks for the address of that webpage. The site was really interesting. I didn't find Q on that site, but those kids have done a great job.

I found these petitions on their site:

No War on Iran Petitions
Freedom is not Free (10,000 Against War Campaign)
No Iran War (Petition to UN General Assembly)
No US Intervention in Iran (Open Letter to Americans)
Don’t Nuke Iran (Moveon.org) Petition
Stop Iran War (Gen. Wesley Clark petition)
Diplomacy, Not Attacks (Bill Richardson petition)
No War on Iran! No Nukes! (United for Peace & Justice)
Words, Not War, With Iran (Words not War)
Stop the War (Ceasefire Campaign)
No War with Iran (Peace Action Education Fund)

Human Rights in Iran
Free Women’s Rights Defenders in Iran (Meydaan.com)
Petition for Women Human Rights Defenders in Iran (Front Line)
We Support the Iranian Gay and Lesbian Community (Petition to Persian Gay & Lesbian Organization)
Save Delara Darabi (Petition to Iran)
Stop Child Execution Petition
Stop Executions by Stoning

IRANdokht

Zion

Khomeini's grandson (i.e, Q) never ceases to amaze me. You can check his writings at iraniantruth.com

Gets it? Not in this lifetime.

no retractions my over-zealous friend, here=America and the point about inevitability is clear. Try reading it again.

Part of what you're helping me do is to make more people active against bigots, fascists and warmongers who have been the most vocal thus far in our community including online places like this. And you're doing a great job. As I noted before, it was pretty much just me at first. Now there's plenty more who will speak out to the point of documented confusion on your part.

This could explain your sudden desire to "take notes" on what people are doing.

Another gem is Zion's new-found hobby of gathering "admissions" for some presumed fantasy "trial". Perfect delusion from someone who can't grasp their own utter powerlessness and hence projects into some future scenario where they will be given some "power" to use against others. Of course people like that are always afraid that the tables could be turned on them which explains Zion's fake online persona.

You're right, it's not quite Gestapo because Gestapo actually had the power to harm and to intimidate. Two things distinctly lacking here by our friend. It's more like Gestapo technique wannabe.

But hey whatever it takes to make your life meaningful, Zion, I'm supportive of it. Go ahead and "record" to your heart's desire. Maybe your archives will one day rival the real Gestapo!

PS. Any historical discussion will be put on hold until you can explain to me the question I asked you earlier: How many lives would have been saved had there been no Israel (in response to you asking the same question about Iranian revolution.) Good luck.

Surprised...not.

Thanks Ali and xyz for refuting the usual hallucinations of our friend. Always fun to read the struggles afterwards:

Most Iranians (even here), agree with me on the REVOLUTION...I am proud of our revolution which could at best have been postponed by a foreign intervention but nothing could have stopped it

and the immediate retraction:

I was talking about Iranian Americans agreeing that the revolition was a historical inevitability. I don't have any statistics for Iranian.com and I agree with you on this (way less than 50% of Iranians on this site are "proud" of the REVOLUTION.)

The typical pathetic good old compulsive liar we've come to know and love. :-)

Another gem:

Revolutions can turn bloody. The French revolution was practically a blood-bath compared to Iran, but everyone now agrees that it was not only inevitable but a positive step.

Let's not get into whether the French revolution had to turn bloody as an inevitable but positive step. We have Great Britain that did not go through any such measure and was always ahead of France and the continent regarding modernity and democracy. The funny part is the comparison with your proud revolution. In almost any respect the ideals of your revolution were the diagonal opposites of the French revolution! If you are looking for a European counterpart of your glorious revolution and its ideals, I suggest you look at Florence under Savonarola.

Finally only you can label a simple quoting of your own words as a "fascist Gestapo technique". Yet another Q gem.

...

Few months back an iranian organization inside iran tried to poll, they landed in jail.

And no, I do not keep track of all the links that I read. But it is absurd to look at iran of today and deny that more than a few percent are content. Do you have any proof to the contrary? Do you know any polling taken inside iran that proves to the contrary, with the same guarantee of reliability that you are asking me for?

And I am not speaking of any American who talks to iranians. I am talking about what I have witnessed when talking to regular iranians, cab drivers, shop-keepers, and even rank-and-file employees of the government. I only ran into a single "reeshou" who praied khamenei.

As for ethnic groups, yes khamenei is a turk, but the prime requirement of being pro-IRI is to not have any identity, iranian, turkic, or otherwise; one should only be part of ommate-islam, period. These people are slaves of their ambitions and ideology, nothing else.

xyz, so this is a "faith based" statistic?

Dear Anonymous xyz,

You don't even have the name of the organization or the their methology or anything that can be verified. Really, is that supposed to be convincing anybody?

Fine, you don't remember it. But can you please provide some proof for this:

"IRI does not allow for any neutral body to take polls in iran,"

I'm curious since -as I already said- there are several recent polls by right leaning American groups. I see no evidence that one cannot conduct a poll in Iran. Again, if you can prove it, I will take it back.

"Frankly for those who visit Iran" is EXACTLY the problem. You think just because American visitors talk to their family members in North Tehran you can make a scientific prediction? No, that's not how it works.

"so it is close to impossible for that 50% to be anything but against this whole charade."

Please... 50% are "against the whole charade" You speak as if the IRI doesn't have major supporters in every ethnic community. Khamenei himself is an ethnic Turk, an ethnic Arab was the head of Iranina military. It's absurd that we're even discussing your opinion. The bottom line is you don't have the data and you are also wrong that no one can get it.

Q...

I already said that I did not have a link for it. This group was an iranian group, with no political affiliation, either to US organizations or leftists or monarchists. The lady, an iranian, was interviewed few months back on C-Span.

Yes, you can argue about validity of such polls, but you cannot argue against it either for as long as IRI does not allow for any neutral body to take polls in iran, the same way that they did not allow one-million-signature for women's rights to go forward. Do you really think IRI would imprison such pollsters (as they did with another group) if they thought that the result would come in their favor.

Frankly, for those who visit iran, I think 14% pro-IRI/revolution is too high. Finding anyone pro-IRI/revolution is pretty rare in iran these days. About 50% of iranians are made of ethnic or religious minorities (including sunnis), so it is close to impossible for that 50% to be anything but against this whole charade. Of the remaining 50%, the only ones that remain committed to the revolution are mostly those who have financial ties to the regime or are blindly religious. My own guess is that the number is closer to 10%, made mostly of the groups that I mentioned.

Ali P,

I was talking about Iranian Americans agreeing that the revolition was a historical inevitability. I don't have any statistics for Iranian.com and I agree with you on this. I have said many times that the most vocal people are right wing reactionaries. But within the greater diaspora, I see things changing.

Young people is perceisely who I'm talking about actually. First of all people who are old enough to have experienced the revolution first hand, were probably participating in it. Statistically over 90% of Iranians supported the revolution at the time.

But many of the ones who left Iran now call it a mistake. I dont' think a majority of them think that it was inevitable, but they would call it a mistake and occasionally express regret for making it happen.

The young people on the other hand, consider the revolution a historical event, a justifiable and popular reaction to a US-supported puppet dictatorship. There is little personal feelings to get in the way of a sober-minded historical analysis of the Iranian revolution for them. Revolutions can turn bloody. The French revolution was practically a blood-bath compared to Iran, but everyone now agrees that it was not only inevitable but a positive step. Increasingly, I see that young Iranians in colleges think of the Iranian revolution in this sense. This is my personal experience with them. Iranian.com is a different demographic and majority of people here are staunchly anti regime. However even many of them make a distinction between the revolution and the subsequent IRI whom many consider going back on the original ideas of the revolution.

By the way, I don't think this site gets many young participants.

Anonymous xyz: That is a lie. I challenge you to produce evidence and am willing to bet you don't have it. "79% of Iranians disapprove of the REVOLUTION" ? only 14% approve? I sincerely doubt but you can easily prove me wrong by showing me your source.

Most surveys available online are done by right-wing US funded organizations using biased and confusing questions hoping to show that Iranians would support a regime change, but they usually get disappointed when they don't find such a thing and actually their own numbers show very different things. That's why the state department pulled funding on these "surveys" a while ago. But I don't think any of them, biased as they were, showed that the Iranians disapprove of the Iranian revolution.

In the past myself and others have pointed to some of these surveys but interestingly the Tehrangelesi's never believed them thinking IRI is manipulating them somehow. That's why I'm curious which source you are quoting.

So, xyz, I give you the benefit of the doubt. Show me where you're getting your numbers from.

Sickofgossip & Majid

Dear hamvatans, Thank you, well said! :)

Ali P.

I am also sorry for jumping in, but I had to neutralize consistent lying of islamists, even in the face of the last 30 years of day-in day-out disaster. They think that by pressing the same lies of 1978, things will go their way and people forget the murders of our youths and looting of our country for the past 30 years.

You said:

I have no polls or statistics on how "most Iranians" feel about the revolution

Well, I do. Last summer a poll was taken by phone into iran from turkey. I do not have any link but here are the statistics.

79% disapproved of the revolution and the islamic republic, 14% still support the revolution and the islamic republic, and 7% showed no tendency one way or the other.

Considering that iranians tend to fear the IRI, it is more likely that part of that 79% actually do not like the revolution or the result of it but for out of fear. Nonetheless how that meager 14% is claimed to be "most iranians" is beyond me!

To: Q

I apologize for jumping in here, in advance.

Addressing Zion, you state:" I am proud of our revolution", and then add:"Most Iranians (even here), agree with me on the REVOLUTION."

 I have no polls or statistics on how "most Iranians" feel about the revolution, but you have to admit- and I am surprised that you have this impression after being here on this site for so long- based on the comments made on this site, way less than 50% of Iranians on this site are "proud" of the REVOLUTION.

 I would also like to add, most Iranians were either not born, or were too young to play a role for, or against the revolution, but ended up suffering through the results of the revolution. As one of the members of this generation, not only am I not proud of it, I find it a dark period in our history.

Respectfully,

Ali P.

Zion, you misguided little child

once again, you think you understand Iran and Iranians but in reality you end up putting your foot in you big mouth. Most Iranians (even here), agree with me on the REVOLUTION. Many think it was hijacked and went astray, but no one denies it was bound to happen. You're just out of your league on this one.

It's so cute how you try to use fascist Gestapo techniques, "highlighting" my words, and "keeping it as evidence" as if this is your fantasy world where you actually have power. So pathetic and amusing.

That statement is a 100% true and your post is a joke. There's no coming out of the closet, Zion, there's only advertising oneself as seriously ignorant and you have done the latter.

Finally coming out of the closet?

Q, my dear, you were never the only one to be calling me on anything and not much has changed. Believe it or not, you are not the only jerk around, or the only idiot. And as far as jerks and idiots go, you are not particularly special either.

It is good that you finally chose to come fully out of the closet. I'll keep this admission of yours for the record.

'I am proud of our revolution which could at best have been postponed by a foreign intervention but nothing could have stopped it.'

(I hope other Iranians are as proud of you and your revolution. Just a question: If you are so proud, why are you not in Iran working to protect it. Why staying in the West?)

Zion, I'm glad you're now mistaking others for me

I am proud of our revolution which could at best have been postponed by a foreign intervention but nothing could have stopped it.

Your reasoning on your first comment is flawed as usual. Unlike what you and some other "chosen" people think, the world does not revolve around you. This revolution was a historical necessity which was irrelevant to you and Israel.

By your own flawed reasoning of what this revolution has "given rise to", we would have to agree that the establishment of the state of Israel was a grave historical mistake!

So, why don't you take it over to Zionist.com and give them some of your wisdom about what they have "given rise to", OK?

PS. You really HAVE no business on this site, but for the record, I don't mind you staying here. It seems like everytime you get into an argument, at least 10 people become convinced that people who talk and argue like you really don't give a rat's ass about Iran or Iranians. That's a valuable lesson that can't be taught easily.

Remember back when it used to be just me who would call you on your self-serving "fatwas" about what Iranians should or shouldn't do with their lives?

Now look around! Your contributions are much more positive than you think. Even if you're not proud of them, I am!

napoleon....

you're ABSOLUTELY RIGHT ON THE MONEY!!!! everything you wrote is exactly right.....keep up the good work,,,if all iranians thought like you we would not be where were in today.

shahdoone.....

who cares if he owned 1 village or 1000!!! you're still spewing your bs on every subject!! all u do is try to put down the pahlavis; everyone knows they had their issues, but reza shah brought iran out of the dark ages into the 20th century in less than 25 years! and you're still trying to question his legacy!

> comments say it all

thanks to Napolean and SickofIri/SickogGossip. I back your comments 100%. Dameton garm

Hooshie joon

You rested your case just in time because apparently your imagination was running away with you

;-) 

IRANdokht