Brave.
Dumb, but brave.
Things are getting spicy in my old neck of the woods — but, honestly when are they not spicy?
The Persian commoners apparently Have Had It with the Mad Mullahs of Tehran, and have fired up CarBQ season.
If you’ve been following Persian Politics for any length of time this isn’t perzackly new — Iranians tend to have minor uprisings every now and then, get hammered by the mullahs pretty hard, and then seethe for a while.
This one, however, feels a little different. RUMINT is that Supreme Leadership Authority of the Islamic Republic of Iran — a/k/a Grand Poobah Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei asked Russia for asylum, but Pootie-Poot turned him down.
That’s new — to the best of my knowledge, the mullahs haven’t felt the need to run before. And Russia dipping out … ouch.
If reports are to be believed the mullahs called in Hezbollah thugs to bring the hate against the Iranian people, but that was probably a mistake. The mullahs have been sending millions — if not billions — in payments to Hezbollah, and to the families of Hezbollah thugs who got killed fighting Israel.
Which is pretty much par for the course, but the mullahs made an attempt to pacify the Iranian people by offering each Iranian family $7 — seven dollars — per month for expenses. When the Iranians got a case of the hips about that, the mullahs brought in the same folks they’ve been giving each $600 to $1,000 dollars a month.
Not the best optics, guys. Your citizens are starving because you’ve been sending money to outsiders, and now you bring in those same outsiders to kick the whey out of your citizens.
The POTUS made protective comments1 in support of the Iranian people; Crown Prince-in-exile Reza Pahlavi is whipping up emotions to a high hover; I’m pretty sure that the Paki ISI2 is doing their part to keep things at a boil, and Elon Musk is giving them free Internet.
Sigh.
I’m of multiple minds on the subject. On one hand, the mullahs3 have been a major sponsor of State terrorism since 1979, and anything to put a crimp in that is good.
On the other hand — it’s the Third World. How a coup shakes out is anyone’s guess — and they frequently don’t shake out to our benefit.
On the gripping hand: the folks revolting against the mullahs right now? Their grandparents put the mullahs in charge. The people of Iran got stump-broke by the very people the Iranian crowds of 1979 intentionally and knowingly brought in and installed in the highest levels of their government.
I miss the Tehranis4 I knew in the 1970s. Lovely, kind, whip-smart people, who were well on the way to being a center of stability for that part of the world … if Mohammad Reza Pahlavi could have kept his SAVAK animals on a short leash.
I will watch the developments unfold with interest, and no little amount of nostalgia.
I hope that the people cut a whole bunch of mullah throats, and I hope that the Iranian Crown Prince learned enough during from the United States during his 47 years in exile to actually make good on his promises to allow the Iranian people to choose their form of government — and that the Iranian people don’t hand everything back to theocratic bugsnipes.
But “hope” isn’t a plan.
In the meantime, this image is going viral:
That lovely young lady better hope that the mullahs get turfed off to the Choir Eternal, or that she’s got exfil plans already set up, because this image of defiance is everywhere — and if her side loses, she’s toast.
Interesting times, indeed.
Ian
EDIT: things are … escalating. The Iranian Embassy in London just had the regime flag torn down and the pre-regime flag raised in its place.
That’s new — I don’t recall major protests outside of Iran in past periods of unrest. Whoo.
Ian
Wish he hadn’t done that.
“Ian, you can’t use the word ‘Paki’, it’s a slur!” Yes. I know that. Which is exactly why I use it when talking about that particular agency. New here?
Remembering that if a djinn were to somehow grant me the ability to cut the throat of every single mullah with a single slash of my knife — to lay each and every one of them (good ones, bad ones, and the indifferent) in their graves in an instant — the beatific smile upon my face would be the last thing they saw.
But not the rural folks. Bloody hell they were backassward religious fanatics.
Well I'm not quite old enough to have done any stomping around in Old Iran, but I did run into several of their sailors in my earliest days in the fleet. They were at FLEASWTRACENPAC learning how to operate the sonar systems for the Iranian versions of the Spruance class, the four vessels that the USN eventually bought and nicknamed "the Ayatollah class." Like Spruance but optimized for hot weather and AAW.
A few of the lower ranks were OK in a very culturally weird way, (Bathing seemed very optional, and men holding hands in uniform was "the thing") but their senior guys and the CWO in charge of the det, where another story.
When the revolution went down, they were all offered asylum by State. They turned it down, in a screaming revolutionary fervor, shouting "ISLAM, ISLAM!" So DOD and State let them go, they boarded a plane, and flew home. Where they were marched off the plane, lined up on the runway, and machinegunned to death for being "contaminated with western ideals."
So I'm not as much of a fan of the average Hasib.
I’ve been following things with interest, and some background level of knowledge. Part of me wishes that NCA wouldn’t have made those protective comments, as it sounds very much like we’re starting to bump up against the red line he drew. I don’t really see any sort of kinetic option working well for us.
The other thing is that I hope very much that we keep our (or at least the CIA’s) noses out of the regime-change aspect of this. We’ve had a long and not very fruitful history of meddling in that neck of the woods. In the end, we had nothing to show for it other than a bunch of torqued-off locals. Once Iran ceases being “The Islamic Republic of” and they’ve begun a stable transition, I’m all for giving what aid makes sense. But if there’s even a public perception that our thumbs are on the scale, that whole situation will go pear-shaped for another 50 years.