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Afghan Government Turns To Iran For Internet
Barlaam writes "Renesys describes new evidence that the Iranian national telecommunications provider, DCI, is selling (uncensored?) Internet connectivity to customers in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan. 'The Internet connectivity outreach that we now see in the global routing tables seems like continuing evidence of Iran's long-term strategy: aggressively pursuing bilateral infrastructure and investment projects with its neighbors, in ways that will increase Iran's regional influence after the Americans have moved on.'"
Someone trying to make a buck off of providing alternate internet routes. How unusual.
As for the article itself, you have got to be kidding me - "aggressively pursuing"? Why not just post a photo of the cheque from the US State Department?
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
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They might not be being a *good* neighbour - I mean, doing this is going to be in Iran's interest - but it's in the interest of Iraq and Afghanistan too to have internet feeds from multiple political entities. Regardless of how America is treating them now, it is not a good idea for Iraq or Afghanistan to be 100% reliant on them.
of course it will.... This is brilliant for Iran. Having spent a semester in college watching Kazakhstan, like Kazakhstan, Iran sits neatly between all the new development in the Eastern EU and the huge markets in China. I don't believe Iran has any interest in starting wars... most of the leaders spent 15-20 years fighting the Shaw and Iraq. Being connected will keep the US off their backs even more than trying to develop nukes. When they become a hub for telcom and transportation in the region, it gets a lot harder to justify to Russia and China (both UN Security Council veto members) to attack Iran and cut their OWN feet off for no good reason. Iran's government is still one of the most "secular" in the region... which is a good starting point. The guy at the top is not representative of what his people necessarily want (like our last guy that liked to pick fights) But, of course, when you have a "big stick" all but threatening to attack ANYBODY will get behind the leader.
We in Iraq already have several links into the country coming from FLAG Cable, Iran , Turkey , Kuwait , Saudi , Jordan......besides the VSAT terminals which is still widely used here.
Turkey was the first to sell internet to iraq via fiber links since sometime ago....iran's link is rarely used here.
While I agree that the west has fucked with Iran a lot, the analysis the article makes isn't the crazy, anti-Iranian spin you're making it out to be. Iran absolutely wants to become the regional hegemon of the middle east, and this is a way to increase their ability to do so. Whether or not that's innocuous is up for debate. I lean on the side that feels Iran being a hegemon is ok as long as that means they give way to control by their democratized populace instead of being run by secret police and a theological council. But having a government that's run on a religious level calling shots over a sphere of influence is a step backwards to incorporating the middle east into the larger world.
You might not have an issue with the Ayatollah asserting his unilateral authority against the general will of the people (see the Green Revolution), but I do. Remember: the CIA-made puppet government was overturned by scholars and students acting in Iran and abroad, with the population expecting democracy afterwards. Then the theocrats gained power by thuggery (each street had a block captain to point the thug squads in the right direction) and the scholars started disappearing. I don't want those people making regional security calls Monroe-doctrine style
I am become
The Shiite muslims overthrew an externally-imposed government after the Iranian President was assassinated - possibly at the request of the US, but that information won't get released for 10 more years at the very best. I regard the state of affairs in Iran as basically part of a standard pattern that repeats throughout history - when a government is created through violence, it will maintain itself through violence and it will usually collapse through violence. This cycle will be repeated endlessly until enough people take the risk of being peaceful.
(It is the main reason I mistrust the 2nd Amendment - you will never have enough people willing to take the risk of being peaceful when they perceive there to be a quick and easy way out of their problems. The only way out of the quagmire is neither quick nor easy and depends on the renunciation of force, not the use of it.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Neighbors? Let's see. I'm from England. That makes my neighbors Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall (it has it's own parliament, so yes it counts), Norway, Denmark and France. Now, children, can anyone tell me which of these has NEVER invaded one or more of the others?
Would I be peaceful if I saw a Russian tank rolling down my street? For starters, I probably wouldn't care. NO country has ever successfully invaded England except when requested to do so by the majority in England. (Strange but true.) Thus, if there was a successful invasion by Russia, it could only be by the democratic will of the nation. As a believer in democracy, I will NOT dictate to my countrymen what I believe to be the right choice for the nation. If the majority wish a foreign takeover, then it is their right to make that choice and I would be utterly in the wrong to oppose it.
Would it be helpful for me to not be peaceful? Well, the Russians defeated the German invasion by throwing themselves at tanks and lobbing petrol bombs down the hatches. The death toll on the Russian side alone ran into the tens of millions as a result. You will also notice that Russia (a country riddled with violence at the best of times) also took a steep turn downwards at that time, becoming infinitely more rabid than it had been before. Those tens of millions who died "saved" Russia from what? They stopped a Fascist dictatorship but only at the cost of creating a Communist dictatorship every bit as large and unpleasant as the one they stopped.
This achieved what?
C'mon, you seem to have an answer, so what is it? What did these (unquestionably brave and heroic) Stalingraders die for, in the end, that they could not have created by living? And had the Russian Revolution been one of peace, rather than bloody conflict and nihilism, would Russia not have been the better-able to stop Germany long before it ever got to Stalingrad? If the autocrats and the populace had worked together, rather than in endless cycle of destruction, modern Communism would never have happened.
Even World War II was merely a byproduct of the senseless destruction of World War I and the mindless destruction wrecked by the Treaty of Versailles. If the nations had been less bent on revenge and more bent on preventing future conflict, Hitler would never have happened at all. In more modern times, the Rwandan massacre was the product of the French colonialists creating divisions and antagonism. That massacre has resulted in subsequent revenge massacres. This is unlikely to stop any time soon.
Now look at a different conflict, that in Northern Ireland. The cycle of violence was largely broken by both sides, resulting in peace that would not have been imagined possible in our lifetimes a mere 20 years ago. Sure, there's some groups still stirring up trouble. You can't stop a flywheel instantly. But so long as nobody works to put energy into that flywheel, the energy coming out will die out. The epiphany by both sides that they could actually work together AND achieve their goals has resulted in something that no amount of wars has ever achieved.
Did the US invasions of Grenada or Haiti produce anything comparable to Stormont? What about those of Iraq or Afghanistan? No?
Ok, what about other conflicts? ETA declared a ceasefire. Not sure if it was entirely sincere, but they did it and the Spanish government ignored it. Result, the violence did not end. One side fighting rather than two didn't change a damn thing. What would have happened if the Spanish government had opted instead for a Stormont-like deal and decriminalized the Basquist politicians? I don't know. I don't pretend to know. What I do know is that they didn't and their decision didn't work - and that like decisions throughout history have never worked. Insanity is doing the same thing, expecting different results.
Maybe Spain wasn't capable of cohesive peace that time round, that had the government done something different it wouldn't have altered the outcome that much. I don't have the in
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)