Morally and strategically Israel should support the people in Iran who are protesting the sham election.
Interesting facts: "Israel Radio in Farsi, which broadcasts into Iran daily, has more than a million regular listeners."
Israeli president [Perez] applauds Iran street protesters
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2276278/posts
Probably so. Even if the demonstrators want to go back to the islamic roots of the ‘79 revolution, they still reject the military-mullah complex.
“Israel Radio in Farsi, which broadcasts into Iran daily, has more than a million regular listeners.”
how would anyone know that? If caught listening to Israeli radio, you will probably be executed in Iran.
(yeah, I know that Iran used to be friendly to Israel before 79 Jimmy Carter Revolution)
Anyway, I think the events have been good for Israel (and for the free world in general). Earlier, The Left (especially the Supreme Leader of The US) and Europeans tried to claim that Iran is not really that bad and Israel’s attack on Iran would have resulted in mass-demonstrations in US and Europe (organized by ANSWER, ACORN, Hezbollah, Hamas and half of the Democratic Party). Now those pro-Mullah mass-demonstrations are much more difficult to portray as good thing (not that MSM won’t try).
Next, I assume that the mullah will carry out their Tiananmen II operation in coming days, and Obama’s “Let’s Talk To The Mullahs - They Are Not Really Bad People” strategy has been shown to be an utter and embarrassing failure. Europe’s anti-semitic crowd has also been at least partially silenced by the brutal crackdown in Tehran.
This gives Israel a good opportunity to carry out the attack on Iran’s nuke sites (without massive retaliation from Obama White House and Europe).
Obama made a more forceful statement yesterday (although still not sufficient to my mind)
And today, Israel's President Shimon Peres backed the protesters in a strong statement:
"Let the young people speak. Let the women -- such a courageous group -- voice their thirst for equality.
You never know what will disappear in Iran first -- their enriched uranium or the wretched government. We hope it's the government," he said amid reports of continuing unrest in Tehran.
I fear that the article may be mistaken in another account. The west assumes that the typical Iranian on the street abhors nuclear weapons, but this may not be the case.
To explain, Iran finds itself in the same situation as did Japan prior to World War II. By all rights, it should have a “place in the sun” among the nations of the world, but it is mistaken in how to achieve this, thinking a combination of militarism and Shiite hegemony.
But nuclear weapons are a big unknown to most Persians, and I specifically mean Persians, because the Iranian minorities of Azeri, Arabs, and Baluchs are second class citizens, who matter far less in the national equation.
Persians were not a part of the post WWII nuclear world. They did not have a culture of nuclear war fear, that much of the world experienced. And thus, for most Persians, nuclear weapons are just a “big bomb”.
But they also are like Aladdin’s djinn. For Iran to have nuclear weapons means that it is forever safe from invasion, a long held Persian fear. It also means that the rest of the world must respect them, and “give them a place at the table.”
And this is likely the mindset of the typical Iranian on the street. As such, what kind of government rules Iran matters less, because the Iranian people want nuclear weapons.
How can they know how many listeners they have?
I agree with the point of the article.
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Thanks dervish. Israel must tread carefully here, IMHO. If Israel had a common border with Iran, it would be a good time to make preemptive strikes on all Iranian airports and airbases, the latter to destroy the Iranian airforce (such as it is) on the ground, the former to prevent the mullahcracy from fleeing for their lives. But they don’t have a common border. If they did, there’d probably have been no mullahcracy in power in Iran in the first place.