A democratic Iran
- Thread starter Cherico
- Start date
Flocculencio
Donor
Wasn't there that chap Mossadeqh (sp?) in the late '50's or something who seemed like a decent chap but got the smackdown?
Well, a lot of third-world leaders seemed decent chaps at first but ended up dictators of one sort or another. And if Mossadeqh actually tries to play nice, he might get overthrown and replaced by someone more radical.
I'd say one of the _better_ outcomes looks a bit like Egypt: an essentially one-party republic with rigged elections and a series of presidents-for-life-whether-natural-causes-or-assasination, but a good bit wealthier (the oil, but also because Egypt's economy has been unusually crappy even by the standards of oil-poor Arab countries).
Of course, there's always the Shi'a fundamentalists, and you can bet Khomeni won't be happy with a republic that allows women to take off their veils and toys with socialism and actually tries to do some land reform. Whether a balance of power can be achieved or whether the first genuine election has as unhappy a sequel as that in Algeria, I dunno. However, I'd say even as unrepresentative a republic as the one described has more legitimacy than the Shah: _not_ being installed by an Islamicist coup, less harking back to Darius and Xerxes, nationalizing the oil, playing footsie with the USSR and the NonAligned movement, saying bad things about Israel. (A safe way of gaining points, since geography means they don't actually have to fight a war with them).
Bruce
Well, democraticish. The decision process for who can be a candidate for political posts hinders me from saying it is a democracy.
Ibn Warraq
Banned
With all due respect, anyone who thinks that Iran is a "democratic country" either knows very little about Iran or has a dramatically different understanding of what constitutes a "democratic country" than most.
To my mind, any country ruled by a "Supreme Leader" for life who's not chosen by the people is no more democratic than the Democratic Republic of Germany.
Remember Khomeini government was at least inspired by if not modeled on Plato's The Republic which no one would call a paen to democracy.
I can guarantee you no one in Iran except a few government propogandists thinks its a democracy.
Well, it's not _my_ justification: I can't help it if other people having stupid justifications for going all Ugly American.
It's just that given the considerable paucity of solid democracies in the Islamic world west of India [1], and given the fairly feeble traditions of democracy available in Iran after WWII, I just don't think the odds are that good that they get it right on the first try...
Bruce
[1] Turkey is as close as it gets, and it's had some rather wobbly bits over the last half-century.
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
Yeah, you're absolutely right. If anything, all that 70 years of Communism will create is a much nastier dictatorship, very likely religious/nationalist.