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The Secret To Iranian Drone Technology? Just Add Photoshop
garymortimer writes "Earlier this month, Iran's news agency provided visual evidence that its government had figured out to make a fancy new drone that could take off and land vertically. What they didn't tell us is that they used Photoshop to make it stop taking off from the roof of Japan's Chiba University, which built the aircraft and never had anything to do with Iran's alleged version of it."
What give the United States the right to decide who rules a country?
Define "they". The US had a role in the Shah, primarily as an attempt to combat what they saw as a communist friendly regime, but the primary instigators of the Shah were the British who were trying to protect British Petroleum (formerly the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company) oil rights and revenues. Most of the worlds present conflicts tie back to historical meddling by European powers in the 19th and 20th centuries. US meddling started with the attempt to control the spread of communism and has persisted in various forms since but the primary conflicts of the present day are due to the former European actions.
It is you who suffers from a lack of historical perspective, especially when you think you're so cute and intelligent for calling other people useful idiots. You imply the Mossadegh was a bad guy because he was friendly with the USSR, but you miss the fucking point that him being friendly with the USSR might be bad for the US, but it might have been good for Iran, you know, the country that he was leading.
The Shah was propped up by the United States, and his regime was brutal and corrupt. The Iranians supported Khomeini because of his anti-Western sentiment, which was there because, you know, we propped up a brutal and corrupt regime that had screwed their country over.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Maybe. Honestly, I think the action we took was entirely legitimate as a course of action against the Soviet Union, and you can be sure that the Soviet Union would never have had a qualm about it. Nevertheless, valid actions for one purpose can have long term consequences that cannot be adequately foreseen at the time.
The Shah's regime was better than some, worse than others. They had a brutal secret police and persecutions of various left wingers and such. On the other hand, Iran had a very decent economy, more or less equal rights for women, and a Western outlook. If the Shah had been a better ruler, Iran could have probably eventually ended up like a South Korea or a Taiwan (other Western-aligned but not-quite free states in the past) and pulled out of their strongman state into something more constitutional and democratic.
Unfortunately, the more liberal elements, which could have been easily been influenced by the overthrow of Mossadegh, had their own Iranian Spring, and it turned out that they were betrayed by Khomeini and the religious leaders. In many ways, there are parallels between Iran and what is happening in Egypt right now, where relatively liberal protesters overthrow one dictator, only to see the Muslim Brotherhood in power. Obviously, it doesn't have to go down the same way, but the same off-ramp to a sharia state has now appeared in front of the Egyptians just like it did for the Iranians in 1979.
There are plenty of people who are mad at the US for supporting dictators, but the reality is that sometimes the only thing keeping a country's own population from turning their country into a pariah state is someone whose hand is on the wheel keeping it in line. Even in the developed world, we're only one or two bad democratic elections away from turning into aggressively expansionist or aggressively isolationist states. Usually the people are against wars like that in a democracy, but you beat them down enough and make them wish for control and the glory of victory over some external enemy, and it wouldn't take much for the armies to start marching.
Iran isn't looking to attack. They're looking to make damn sure no one dares attack them.
Iran is definitely looking to attack. They're already attacking Israel with their own rockets by using their proxies in Hamas to do it.
Yes, Iran is not looking to start a war with the US or NATO. That would be moronic, and their leaders are not stupid. However, they are plenty interested in regional dominance, and they can't play that game until the US and the West can be deterred from a war with them.
Right now, Iran has the ability to shut down the Persian Gulf to shipping with anti-shipping missiles at the Straits of Hormuz, and the only thing preventing them from using that leverage against the Arab states and the West is the US guaranteeing the free passage of international waters through there. That is why the US has a very powerful naval presence in the Gulf. If Iran started firing on ships now, the US would probably launch air strikes on the missile sites and bomb Iranian military bases to end the threat. If Iran had nuclear weapons, the US would have to think at least twice about that course of action. The tension would be similar to something like the Cuban Missile Crisis because the US could not allow Iran to hold the world's oil hostage, but at the same time, they don't want to see mushroom clouds over Israel (or even the US, if Iranian ballistic missiles get to that point).
Let's be clear, two big states with nuclear weapons did not end wars in the 20th Century, all they did was move the wars away from the major powers into the smaller countries that were used as pawns. Iran doesn't purely want "safety" from the US, it wants a free hand to act.
No. You're confusing the willingness to arbitrarily use power in service of one's own goals with the right to do so, which can only come from consent of the governed, which the US most assuredly did not get from Iranians, or pretty much anyone else it has interfered with.
Please stop doing that.
Aside from being wrong, it blinds you to why other countries resent the US, and why they feel they have legitimate reasons to act against US interests.
Our rights-free meddling has almost entirely stripped the legitimacy from our foreign policy.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
There's a significant difference between "support" and "install by force."
As to why, once you really annoy them by imposing your will by force, they tend to respond. Not necessarily in ways you will see as reasonable or balanced. Like flying into buildings, killing thousands of people. At which point tertiary consequences arise, such as your own government going dumb-fuck-insane, stomping all over your constitutional rights, impeding travel, and generally fucking up life for everyone.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.