Biz Ag said:

---

"Grand" Ayatollah?

Is that like "Big Kahuna" Ayatollah or something similar?

---

Close. Ayatollah is Muslim for poobah. Literal translation is just grand poobah.

If Salman Rushdie could get one for a total nothing burger, Trump should be able to earn one for dropping bombs. Only seems fair.

nm

AggieVictor10 said:

---

agaberto said:

---

And that is why iCE is picking up ALL Iranians. We at are at war. Iran is in is much trouble.

---

What do you think we should do with them?

---

Alligator Alcatraz

Judging by the near miraculous performance of the Israeli and US forces against Iran, the Ayatollah need only look in the mirror to see the enemy of God. This looks like Old Testament style "my enemy has been delivered into my hands by Jehovah" victory.

Yeah, they're always saying "God willing" whenever they're making threats or whatever. God must be wondering what else He could do short of pushing the smite button to make the point that He is very clearly NOT willing...

Queso1 said:

---

Do you think a regular Joe could get a fatwa by saying something about the ayatollah's momma?

---

Probably not. Say something about his goat however.....

4 said:

---

I just do not understand why we are playing around with this regime.

Why are we even pretending that they will negotiate for peace?

A) Their stated goal is war. They don't want peace

B) A liar's word is worthless. They lie about EVERYTHING


Why would we let them off the mat? Why give them a breather? We should have finished them off last week.

---

in fairness there might be some shadow plans being implemented in response. Time will tell…

FIDO*98* said:

---

Queso1 said:

---

Do you think a regular Joe could get a fatwa by saying something about the ayatollah's momma?

---

Probably not. Say something about his goat however.....

---

My grandpa had a pet baby goat, and he named him Ayatollah.

Kozmozag said:

---

The only way to get rid of the regime is outside forces overthrow them. The people will never succeed on their own. My question is what do the 90 million Iranians really want. Are they 50/50?

---

Khomeini wouldn't have been able to dethrone the Shah but for Jimmy Carter, who pushed the Shah to leave (literally) the country and then facilitated Ayatollah's flight from Paris to Tehran. But it went way beyond '2 weeks' of negotiations to the beginning of the disastrous, bigoted Carter presidency in truth.

Quote:

---

At the time, a senior Iranian diplomat in Washington observed, "President Carter betrayed the Shah and helped create the vacuum that will soon be filled by Soviet-trained agents and religious fanatics who hate America." Under the guise of promoting" human rights," Carter made demands on the Shah while blackmailing him with the threat that if the demands weren't fulfilled, vital military aid and training would be withheld. This strange policy, carried out against a staunch, 20 year Middle East ally, was a repeat of similar policies applied in the past by US governments to other allies such as pre Mao China and pre Castro Cuba.

Carter started by pressuring the Shah to release "political prisoners" including known terrorists and to put an end to military tribunals. The newly released terrorists would be tried under civil jurisdiction with the Marxist/Islamists using these trials as a platform for agitation and propaganda. This is a standard tactic of the left then and now. The free world operates at a distinct dis-advantage to Marxist and Islamic nations in this regard as in those countries, trials are staged to "show" the political faith of the ruling elite. Fair trials, an independent judiciary, and a search for justice is considered to be a western bourgeois prejudice.

Carter pressured Iran to allow for "free assembly" which meant that groups would be able to meet and agitate for the overthrow of the government. It goes without saying that such rights didn't exist in any Marxist or Islamic nation. The planned and predictable result of these policies was an escalation of opposition to the Shah, which would be viewed by his enemies as a weakness. A well-situated internal apparatus in Iran receiving its marching orders from the Kremlin egged on this growing opposition.

---

"Free assembly" was just another idiotic idea in a muslim country from the Carter administration brain trust. Think about how absolutely pathetic it is that $4 million in CIA funding being cut, over human rights abuses' by the Shah is what led to many of the clerics there turning on him.

Quote:

---

The Carter Administration insisted that the Shah disband military tribunals, demanding they be replaced by civil courts. The effect was to allow trials to serve as platforms for anti-government propaganda. Carter pressured Iran to permit "free assembly", which encouraged and fostered fundamentalist anti-government rallies. The British government and its MI6 intelligence agency also heightened the Shah's precariousness. The government-controlled BBC presented Iranians with a dossier of twenty hour newscasts detailing the location of all anti-Shah demonstrations and consistent interviews with the exiled outcast Ayatollah Khomeini, making a religious scholar few Iranians knew about into an overnight sensation.

When the Shah was unable to meet the Carter Administration and British demands, the Carter Administration reportedly ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to stop $4 million per year in funding to religious Mullahs who then became outspoken and vehement opponents of the Shah. Unfortunately, the Shah's efforts to defuse the volatile situation in Iran failed, despite the grant even of free and democratic elections. Confronted with lack of US support and unleashed Mullah fury, the Shah of Iran fled the country.

---

And of course, for the record we also know that the Shah (Reza's father) was largely installed by the CIA in 1954. The irony of successively worse Iranian governments/regimes having been installed successfully by the US since the mid-50's is a bit mind numbing to consider.

Quote:

---

"From time to time," he continued, "I gave talks on the operation to various groups within the agency, and, in hindsight, one might wonder why no one from the Cuban desk ever came or read the history."

The coup was a turning point in modern Iranian history and remains a persistent irritant in Tehran-Washington relations. It consolidated the power of the shah, who ruled with an iron hand for 26 more years in close contact with to the United States. He was toppled by militants in 1979. Later that year, marchers went to the American Embassy, took diplomats hostage and declared that they had unmasked a "nest of spies" who had been manipulating Iran for decades.

The Islamic government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini supported terrorist attacks against American interests largely because of the long American history of supporting the shah. Even under more moderate rulers, many Iranians still resent the United States' role in the coup and its support of the shah.

Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, in an address in March, acknowledged the coup's pivotal role in the troubled relationship and came closer to apologizing than any American official ever has before.
"The Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons," she said. "But the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs.

---

I post all of that just because the resentment of the US/UK in Iran is largely derived from those periods, and while it's easy to hate the mullah's and all the terrorism they have sponsored, to exclaim that any regime change be entirely organic 'this time' is in many ways myopic given our clear culpability as a nation state to the previous 2 revolutions there.

Biz Ag said:

---

"Grand" Ayatollah?

Is that like "Big Kahuna" Ayatollah or something similar?

---

Wake me up when he's the Ayatollah of Rock n' Rolla.

This post should have more stars. Great morning reading. Carter is revealed more and more as a fool who was easily manipulated.

Then as now, his inability, or unwillingness to hire decent people was the real problem, imho. Take fellow-Georgian, communist sympathizer Andy Young, who played a key role in supporting both Khomeini and Mugabe as they violently ascended to power thanks to his boss.

Quote:

---

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, soon to be dictator of Iran, was "some kind of a saint," U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young told Carter administration colleagues as the Islamic Revolution unfolded in Iran. In a November 1978 memo, ironically titled "Thinking the Unthinkable," the United States Ambassador to Iran William Sullivan, called Khomeini a "Gandhi-like" figure.

Less than three months later 40 years ago this month Khomeini returned to Iran from Paris. Within two months, the country would be declared an Islamic republic, forever changing both the Middle East and the world.

---

People think fake news is a modern phenomenon, but I am convinced this drivel also influenced the Carter administration as much or moreso than the Biden-Obama ones.

Quote:

---

The day after Khomeini's return to Iran, Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, even wrote, "Islamic revivalist movements are not sweeping the Middle East and are not likely to be the wave of the future."

But Iran's revolution would prove to be a watershed moment, inspiring jihadists like current al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and others, by showing that an Islamist government was achievable. The upheaval of 1978-1979 was a harbinger of the Middle East to come.

The intelligentsia and the press got it wrong, as well.

---

Young even kept up the support of Mugabe to the point of refusing to let the Rhodesians find a negotiated political end to the war

When moderate African Bishop Abel Muzorewa was elected in the 1979 election in what was described as "undeniably mobilized a genuine outpouring of… pic.twitter.com/aqmM3GJ4X2

— Will Tanner (@Will_Tanner_1) December 30, 2024

And btw, Young defended Mugabe at least up through 2008 as a fundamentalist Roman Catholic who doesn't steal. He was orders of magnitude worse than Susan Rice/Ben Rhodes/Samantha Power.