US businessman visits Iran

[polly7]

http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/iranus-sabre-rattling/us-businessman-visits-iran.html

A very interesting video.

Lecture by Rick Steves

In another talk, Steve's made the following observation:

"It's a good idea to get to know people before you start bombing them."

That would have saved us a lot of problems over the years, wouldn't it?

Some facts:

1. Iran has a population of 66 million people - twice of Iraq's
2. Unlike Iraq, Iran has not had its military beat up for the last twenty years as Iraq did before we invaded it
3. Iran is not three separate people - Sunni, Shiite, and Kurds. It's one people and they are Persians, not Arabs.

[Blue Meany]

1. Your mostly right, but Iran has more ethnic cleavage than

you suggest. You don't have the Shi'i/Sunni/Kurdish split into roughly equal segements as in Iraq. But around half the population are Arabs, Baluchis, Kurds, Qashqais, and Azeris (Turks). However, in the Iran-Iraq war we did not Iranian Arabs defecting, probably because their Shi'i identities over-road their lingquistic identities. That is probably not too much of an issue. However, there's more tension between the central govt. and the Kurds and Baluchis. And the Azeris separated from Iran and formed their own Soviet state in 1946, which, though it was short-lived, suggests that such a division would be possible again.

I think we would be damned stupid to get in a military conflict with Iran. But this is how strategists in the govt. may think about it. They are always thinking about breaking up countries by exploiting ethnic and religious cleavages--and from this perspective, the cold war with the Soviet Empire was a stunning success.

[polly7]

2. Sorry, I should have put quotes around that. It was from an earlier

article mentioned on the same page.

Around 56 minutes into the film, the speaker tells of how a woman came out from her home to ask Mr. Steves to tell the world Iran as a people is very united. The interview is fascinating, funny and revealing. I loved the part near the end where he talks of giving the thumbs up to his driver and having the driver tell him that was akin to giving someone the finger in the West ... after that they gave each other the thumbs up all the time and joked about it.

[AngkorWot]

3. Good thing we're not going to bomb them.

[FarCenter]

4. Population is 77,891,220 (July 2011 est.)

according to CIA Factbook. It is 51% Persian.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ir.html