kertejud2
01-14-2011, 04:56 PM
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/01/do-we-have-ahmadinejad-all-wrong/69434/
Is it possible that Iran's blustering president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, long thought to be a leading force behind some of Iran's most hard-line and repressive policies, is actually a reformer whose attempts to liberalize, secularize, and even "Persianize" Iran have been repeatedly stymied by the country's more conservative factions? That is the surprising impression one gets reading the latest WikiLeaks revelations, which portray Ahmadinejad as open to making concessions on Iran's nuclear program and far more accommodating to Iranians' demands for greater freedoms than anyone would have thought. Two episodes in particular deserve special scrutiny not only for what they reveal about Ahmadinejad but for the light they shed on the question of who really calls the shots in Iran.
A very interesting read. While it should be common knowledge that the clergy is the real driving force in Iran, it does shed light on what kind of man Ahmandinejad is. At best he's a true reformer who is stuck between a rock (the West and the need to try and appear strong on behalf of his people) and a hard place (the religious fundamentalists in Iran who have considerable support amongst the population); or at worst the crazed totalitarian we've been told he is who just wants to replace the Iranian Islamic state with the old Persian Empire and rule it with an iron fist, bloodshed be damned.
Really its just a new way to show why Iran is fucked up, rather than trying to make it seem like it isn't fucked in the first place.
Is it possible that Iran's blustering president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, long thought to be a leading force behind some of Iran's most hard-line and repressive policies, is actually a reformer whose attempts to liberalize, secularize, and even "Persianize" Iran have been repeatedly stymied by the country's more conservative factions? That is the surprising impression one gets reading the latest WikiLeaks revelations, which portray Ahmadinejad as open to making concessions on Iran's nuclear program and far more accommodating to Iranians' demands for greater freedoms than anyone would have thought. Two episodes in particular deserve special scrutiny not only for what they reveal about Ahmadinejad but for the light they shed on the question of who really calls the shots in Iran.
A very interesting read. While it should be common knowledge that the clergy is the real driving force in Iran, it does shed light on what kind of man Ahmandinejad is. At best he's a true reformer who is stuck between a rock (the West and the need to try and appear strong on behalf of his people) and a hard place (the religious fundamentalists in Iran who have considerable support amongst the population); or at worst the crazed totalitarian we've been told he is who just wants to replace the Iranian Islamic state with the old Persian Empire and rule it with an iron fist, bloodshed be damned.
Really its just a new way to show why Iran is fucked up, rather than trying to make it seem like it isn't fucked in the first place.