💉💉💉Kumara📎Republic↙️↙️↙️: I want to see the back of the Ayatollah regime, and big ups to the Iranian public fighting for human rights. If they can do a successful Persian Spring, good on them, but they face an uphill battle against a powerful IRGC & clergy.

Blocked.

I mean it’s not a game?

I just can’t think of an election in my lifetime where the Republican winning was the better option. George H. W. Bush gave us Clarence Thomas. His son gave us the Iraq War.

Yeah, like I’ve spent a long time trying to imagine the “hey guys sit this one out it’s no big if the republicans win it” election.

The closest thing to a “good Republican” was Eisenhower, who destabilized Iran for 75 years and led to death squads in Guatemala for decades.

I want to see the back of the Ayatollah regime, and big ups to the Iranian public fighting for human rights. If they can do a successful Persian Spring, good on them, but they face an uphill battle against a powerful IRGC & clergy.

External regime change like the CIA did on Mossadegh in 1953 is the whole reason the ayatollahs seized power in 1979, & still fraught today. The Dubya option of bombing Iran would be much costlier in money & human terms than Iraq, given Iran is bigger, more populous & stronger.

A Machiavellian option would be to concoct a border war between the IRGC & the Afghan Taliban. While that might weaken both, it could further destabilise the region & give neighbouring nations an excuse to join the Nuclear Club, or justify their continued membership of it.

Sanctions have been imposed on Iran since the 1979 Revolution, which have managed to affect its economy but have barely dented the Ayatollah regime itself. Weapons embargoes are an obvious no-brainer, but sanctioned regimes can still get weapons from other rogue states. www.npr.org/sections/mon...

Why sanctions don't work — but could if done rightwww.npr.org Sanctions backfire. So why do we keep using them?

If external options to depose the Ayatollahs are too fraught, that leaves the internal options. There was a window of opportunity with Khomeini's death and the appointment of Mohamed Khatami, but Khatami was overridden by Khomeini's successor Khamenei & the unelected clergy.

The same went for Hassan Rouhani in the 2010s. Ayatollah Khamenei is nearing retirement, and whoever succeeds him will have to go through the Assembly of Experts, which is hand-picked by the Ayatollah himself & effectively stacked with loyalists. www.bbc.com/news/world-m...

Iran's Supreme Leader: Who might succeed Ali Khamenei?www.bbc.com Rumours about Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's health have thrown the spotlight on his possible successors.

That, coupled with even more Khamenei loyalists in the IRGC, makes the possibility of an Iranian Gorbachev a tall order. Short of secretly arming the anti-Ayatollah protesters - another fraught option - the Iranian public still face a big but not impossible obstacle to a democratic Iran.

Post