BibleForums Christian Message Board
General Category => In General => Topic started by: Sojourner on March 03, 2026, 01:34:25 PM
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Prior to the Islamic revolution in 1979, life in Iran was vastly different than it is today. The Shah -- King Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was facilitating sweeping social and economic changes that modernized and westernized the ancient nation. Cordial relations with western countries, industrialization, an increase in educational opportunities and women's rights highlighted the administration. And while no formal diplomatic ties with Israel were in place, Iran was one of the first Muslim nations to recognize Israel's right to exist, and a pragmatic, peaceful coexistence between the two was the status quo. A stark contrast to the tension and animosity that exists today.
Eventually however, extravagance, corruption, and increasing authoritarian power exercised by the Shah left a large segment of the population disgruntled. Presumptuous actions by the Shah, such as banning religious garb in public, fueled discontent among the more traditional-minded Iranians who disliked the growing westernization of Iran. In February of 1979, revolutionary fervor swept the country, overthrowing the Shah who fled for his life, and the government was replaced by an Islamic republic, led by radically Muslim leadership. Below is a link to an article chronicling the 40 year reign of the Shah, which ended with the dramatic transformation that exists today. https://www.businessinsider.com/iran-before-the-revolution-in-photos-2015-4?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us (https://www.businessinsider.com/iran-before-the-revolution-in-photos-2015-4?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us)
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Iran now:
The Mullahs were having a vote on who the next Supreme Leader (TM) was going to be.
Israel bombed the meeting.
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Candidates throwing their hat in the ring would do well to realize the title "Supreme Leader" comes with a bullseye attached. The job should come with excellent life insurance and a burial plot.
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Candidates throwing their hat in the ring would do well to realize the title "Supreme Leader" comes with a bullseye attached.
Even voting on a candidate has become dangerous.
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I don't see Iran continuing without a fundamental change to its leadership. I hope the Iranian people take advantage of the opportunity they're being given to facilitate that change. There has to be at least one rational, ideologically moderate person that is qualified and suited for leadership among the people. (One that Israel and the US could support).
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And if not, the CIA .. oh, they already did that? Oh, well
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I don't care what happened in 1953. I care what's happening now.
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I don't care what happened in 1953. I care what's happening now.
I'm saying the US better not mess it up **again**.
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I'm saying the US better not mess it up **again**.
Don't worry, Israel is involved. Everything is going to be fine.
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I don't care what happened in 1953. I care what's happening now.
I'm saying the US better not mess it up **again**.
That.
I am still waiting for the plan.
You can't bomb regime change.
At some point bombings will stop, Iran is crippled, but 5-10 years later Iran is back being its usual ugly self.
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I don't care what happened in 1953. I care what's happening now.
I'm saying the US better not mess it up **again**.
That.
I am still waiting for the plan.
You can't bomb regime change.
At some point bombings will stop, Iran is crippled, but 5-10 years later Iran is back being its usual ugly self.
The Shia and Sunni can just keep killing, they’ll just have to do it without nukes and without much military infrastructure
Maybe Obama can send them a few more pallets of cash
Now my pretribulational evangelical friends are depressed because Trump just pushed back the return of Jesus by 10 years by killing the Ayatollah antichrist
At least that’s what it says on page 6, tab a, illustration b of the chart….
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I don't see Iran continuing without a fundamental change to its leadership. I hope the Iranian people take advantage of the opportunity they're being given to facilitate that change. There has to be at least one rational, ideologically moderate person that is qualified and suited for leadership among the people. (One that Israel and the US could support).
Goldie Ghamari has said that the only person the Iranian people trust is Reza Pahlavi (son of the ousted Shah). He has said publically that if he resumes power he will hold elections immediatly. I think that is something the US and Israel can both get behind.
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Reza Pahlavi seems a likely candidate to assume leadership once the old regime has been shattered and the dust settles. (Though the possibility exists that nefarious actions by China and Russia could hinder progress). The Iranian people benefited from the governance of Reza's father, and I hope he has a plan to replace Iran's acrimonious, antagonistic theocracy with a functional republic similar to the one the Shah was building before the Islamic revolution. Hopefully, the current generation can learn from the mistakes of the past and rebuild a better Iran. It'll be nice to have the billions in oil revenue spent benefiting the people instead of financing global terrorism.
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I am still waiting for the plan.
You can't bomb regime change.
If the plan is to make Iran no longer be a threat, that's good enough for me.
You're making the better be the enemy of the good.
Having the world's sole Jewish state live or die by the whims of an Islamic fundamentalist totalitarian apocalyptic regime is not acceptable.
Furthermore, most of Europe's capitals are in the range of Iranian ICBMs. It's really quite amazing that they generally seem completely unconcerned by this development.
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Reza Pahlavi
Yeah, he could be a unifying figure that both Iranians and the west could live with.
People seem to forget that under the Shah, Iran and Israel were allies. And could be again.
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At some point bombings will stop, Iran is crippled, but 5-10 years later Iran is back being its usual ugly self.
I'm also fond of a Camus quote.
'Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children.'
Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which Islamic fundamentalists murder people. But we can reduce the number of people murdered by Islamic fundamentalists.
Destroy Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile program that they constantly threaten Israel and the US with? Hells yeah!
Kill their lunatic leaders who murder unarmed protesters in the street, execute gays and rape victims, and oppress religious minorities? Sure why not.
Weaken their military so that they're no longer a threat to their neighbors? Most definitely!
Weaken their economy so that they don't have extra $$$ to fund terrorism around the world? Absolutely!
I don't care if it only buys 5 or 10 years. That gives Israel and the west 5 or 10 more years to prepare. What happened over the last 5 or 10 years? Missile defense systems became available, both for short range and long range missiles; Israel has a system that can intercept ICBMs in outer space, and another, short range system, that fires laser beams at short range missiles. And in 5 or 10 years the Iranian government can collapse all on its own.
Plus this war has an effect on other bad actors like China and Russia. China in particular gave tens of billions of military hardware to Iran, and it seems to be all junk. Do you think China is weighing an invasion of Taiwan with much more caution now? I do.
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I don't care what happened in 1953. I care what's happening now.
Remember the old adage, 'those who fail to learn from history...😶
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I don't care what happened in 1953. I care what's happening now.
The point of the post was to point out how different Iran was before the revolution--and could be today if the nation were governed by sane, responsible leadership instead of the religious fanaticism that so detrimentally altered its political and social landscape.
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Remember the old adage, 'those who fail to learn from history...😶
There's no connection between what happened in 1953 and what's happening now.
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Remember the old adage, 'those who fail to learn from history...😶
There's no connection between what happened in 1953 and what's happening now.
(https://media4.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExd3NkZGQzZWx5dTFjM3E5Z244bW03bHN6NDM4dXE3bDFrbXQwOHg2OSZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/YVPwi7L2izTJS/giphy.gif)
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"Something happened in 1953, so we shouldn't work to disarm or overthrow an apocalyptic, religious fundamentalist, genocidal lunatic regime" is quite the take.
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"Something happened in 1953, so we shouldn't work to disarm or overthrow an apocalyptic, religious fundamentalist, genocidal lunatic regime" is quite the take.
That's not the take. The take is "we'd probably not be in this mess..." and if we're going to go to war with Iran, we ought to do so properly.
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That's not the take. The take is "we'd probably not be in this mess..."
There's nothing we can do about what happened in 1953.
and if we're going to go to war with Iran, we ought to do so properly.
I agree. Smash the Mullahs completely.
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That's not the take. The take is "we'd probably not be in this mess..."
There's nothing we can do about what happened in 1953.
We can do something about it today, and the Americans and Israeli's are. But that's because those things did happen in 1953, so to say that 1953 has no connection with what's happening today is bizarre. Obviously it does.
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But that's because those things did happen in 1953, so to say that 1953 has no connection with what's happening today is bizarre. Obviously it does.
Every action has unknowable consequences. The allies aiding the Soviets during world war 2 led to the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. Does that mean we shouldn't have helped them?
You do the best with the information you have in front of you.
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But that's because those things did happen in 1953, so to say that 1953 has no connection with what's happening today is bizarre. Obviously it does.
Every action has unknowable consequences. The allies aiding the Soviets during world war 2 led to the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. Does that mean we shouldn't have helped them?
You do the best with the information you have in front of you.
That means we can interrogate the past. No one here is talking about divining the future.
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That means we can interrogate the past.
I don't know what that means.
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and if we're going to go to war with Iran, we ⁸ought to do so properly.
The current state of the East Wing perfectly epitomizes the recent "haste makes waste" war stategy.
"For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?" Luke 14:28
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At this point the goal should be regime change, not "a better deal". The current leadership has inflicted a tremendous amount of human suffering, both in their own country and in the region.
There's never going to be a better opportunity than there is right now.