{"id":392,"date":"2009-06-22T20:54:35","date_gmt":"2009-06-22T20:54:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2009\/06\/the-next-iran.html"},"modified":"2009-06-22T20:54:35","modified_gmt":"2009-06-22T20:54:35","slug":"the-next-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/06\/the-next-iran.html","title":{"rendered":"The Next Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The fact that Iran could “promote” its own democracy should be enough of a refutation in and of itself to the neoconservative agenda. — LOG<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

true indeed, even if the Green Revolution falters. In the end, the seeds of the regimes destruction are being sown. The best they can do is put it off for a while. The question is, what will replace it? I suspect that the neoconservatives – who both rushed to assert that Ahmadinejad’s victory<\/a> was preferable even as they now fault Obama for not interfering<\/a> – will find much fault with Iran v3.0, regardless of the outcome. They will surely find occasion to sing “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb bomb Iran<\/a>” again the moment it becomes clear that the “new” Iran is no less patriotic or nationalistic thanthe “old” Iran, that it still takes its religion of Islam seriously, still sees nuclear capability as an essential element for its own national security, and still actively promotes its own regional hegemony in its backyard, a backyard that has at least one aggressive (and nuclear-armed) antagonist prone to extreme hostile rhetoric.<\/p>\n

I hope the Iranian nation awakens from the nightmare that the theocracy has imposed upon it in the name of Islam. But the outcome of the election, or the Green Revolution, is largely irrelevant to the question of how our civilization should engage theirs in the future – recognition of mutual interest, or implacable hostility.<\/p>\n

The simple truth is that the neoconservative agenda fundamentally has a single note – armed intervention for regime change. The consequences of such an agenda in Iran would have been equally likely to result in Neda’s death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fact that Iran could “promote” its own democracy should be enough of a refutation in and of itself to the neoconservative agenda. — LOG true indeed, even if the Green Revolution falters. In the end, the seeds of the regimes destruction are being sown. The best they can do is put it off for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":165,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[301,57,124,26],"class_list":["post-392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-gash-of-civilizations","tag-green-revolution","tag-iran","tag-pli","tag-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Next Iran - City of Brass<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Next Iran - City of Brass\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The fact that Iran could “promote” its own democracy should be enough of a refutation in and of itself to the neoconservative agenda. — LOG true indeed, even if the Green Revolution falters. 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City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}