Hideously Devious
The social, political, religious contortions of a state intent on conveying its dedication to religious devotion above all other matters, subjugating its people in a system of crude and backward legislation to ensure they are kept as thralls to the governing body of devoutly fanatical clerics knows no parallels. Other than, perhaps the deep convictions of ideologies which owe their raison d'etre to brutal control of every facet of human life, depriving their populations of the most basic of human rights and freedoms.The Iranian Islamic Republic presents as a fundamentally fascist state led by theological belief in the divinity of the single true manifestation of God, whose 12th Imam, the Mahdi, will deliver the country and the entire world into the end of days. Because of the imminence in the minds of the Ayatollahs of the Apocalypse, they have no fear of bringing self-destruction down upon themselves with the unleashing of a nuclearized bomb dropped on another state capable of responding in kind.
Iran has no reform movement. All those who claim to be reformists are merely a soupcon less fanatical than the rigidly fundamentalist hard-liners modelled after the deceased Ayatollah Khomeini. The revolutionary Iran of today is as dedicated to establishing itself as the primary fount of Islamist wisdom as is possible, usurping Saudi Arabia from its throne of first among the Islamist nations of the righteous.
And where Saudi Arabia funded al-Qaeda and its affiliates through its Wahhabist madrassas, Iran is funding and training Shia-inspired terror as a counterpoint to the Sunni jihadists. When the nuclear genie was unleashed by Pakistan as the first Islamic country to achieve nuclear fusion, similar ownership became the goal for Iran, all thanks to the enterprise of a nuclear-sharing North Korea.
Should the country's Supreme Leader ultimately face the possibility that the country's population rejects totalitarian Islamism, the population will also have to face the prospect of surrendering its ambitions to attain the nuclearization of weaponry which has had such a deleterious impact on the international community, let alone its Middle East neighbours.
For a country whose people struggles because of poverty, while billions in oil revenues are poured into nuclear plants is it too much to hope that reason may yet prevail, if the existential hells of the Islamic Republic are overcome? The hurdles of the powerful theocracy against the emerging secular power struggle, the power of the Revolutionary Guard, the military police, the Basiji, all standing ready and prepared to beat back the assault on Islamism gone amok.
Ayatollah Khamanei veers between conciliation and threats, pacification of his powerful enemies in the theocracy, and criticism of his chosen political candidate, desperately attempting to reach a balance that eludes him as his ill-chosen and ill-bred designs to retain and consolidate his power simply further enrages the population that recognizes how horribly manipulated they are.
If a bloodbath ensues the rigidity of the theocracy will be supported by fear. If a compromise is reached the population will succumb to acceptance, with a lessening of the human-rights-abusing noose. Either way, not very much will have changed.
Labels: Middle East, Technology, Traditions, Troublespots
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, June 21, 2009
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