Iranian Students are reportedly holding 3 Hebollah hostage demanding release of 80 students

Interview with Iranians in Tehran | 6.13.2003 | DoctorZin

[DoctorZIn]

I just heard from friends in Tehran.

They are telling me that the Students have taken three memebers of Hizbollah hostage. They are demanding the release of the eighty students that had been arrested by the regime four days ago.

They are very optimistic that things are going to change soon. They can hear the protests and see the courage of the people to stand against the regimes forces.

It was also reported that the students had taken over the televison station in the city of Shiraz.

Also of interest, most of them watch LA based Iranian TV for news. These are the same satilite stations that are struggling to stay on the air for lack of support among US business or government. It appears they are doing for Iran waht we can't even do for Iraq. In case you don't know this, the US still does not have broadcasts in Iraq, while the Iranians do.

Finally, the Tehranians were asking “why they haven’t heard from President Bush?.”

[DoctorZIn]

...Yeah, right. They're our friends. Hey, I've got an idea . . . Let's give 'em some Stinger missiles!
If I'm asleep, doc, you're in a coma. These people are our enemies. Or did you forget the 444 days? ...

To say all Iranians are our enemies is like saying all Americans are liberal nuts. Have you read what the students are calling for? I have read more persuasive pro-American comments from Iranians than anything I have read from us.

To trash an entire country becasue of the lunacy of a few is lunacy itself.

Accorning to recent polling in Iran, the vast majority want friendly relations with the US. If the numbers were reversed I might understand your hostility. But this is a nation held hostage by a few unelected radicals. To an insult to all freedom loving people to compare the students with scorpions. These students are risking their lives for the very freedoms we enjoy.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

[timberlandko]

I've read several reports, and heard news blurbs, mentioning the influence of "Western" Satellite Television on the mood of the mob ... I recall a mention of a "Senior Cleric" complaining of the "Lies and Negativism", and exhorting The Faithful to abjur from such.

[DoctorZIn]

...These people are our enemies. Or did you forget the 444 days? ...

I understand your anger at the hostage taking. So are all Americans.

But the entire nation did not hold hostage our people in Iran. The same people who took the hostages also stole the government from the people. They were not elected. They took control, left in the vacumn of the fall of the Shah.

The people of Iran did not act swiftly enough to stop it. But after 25 years under this regime they are acting now.

Support them, don't insult them.

[LibWhacker]

To trash an entire country becasue of the lunacy of a few is lunacy itself.

This is where we differ. It's not "a few." If 99 or 90% hate you, the country is your enemy.

The only thing worse than Sunnis are Shiites, even so-called "moderate" ones.

[cake_crumb]

"Wait, you said fast referring to the State Dept."

I was trying to be nice when I deleted the part about getting State the heck out of there. Guess I should have left it in. I'm still ticked about State's idea of letting Ba'athist thugs run things in Iraq again...then getting all mad and calling it FASCIST when Defense said "NO". How stupid can they get?? (rhetorical question)

[jacquej]

Thanks, Ernest. That is a very positive take on it! I enjoyed a more recent article there as well.

[DoctorZIn]

...This is where we differ. It's not "a few." If 99 or 90% hate you, the country is your enemy...

I agree about your frustration of socalled moderate Iranians...

But the vast majority of Iranians are ProUS. The radicals are a small minority.

To not support the ProUS efforts in Iran is crazy. It's in our own interest to see a regime change. Our president is calling for such a change.

I don't undestand your reasoning.

[Steel Wolf]

You should take that proverb to heart (incidentally, it did not originate on the internet).

You're kidding? My dusty, old book of Old Internet Proverbs must be wrong, then.

So you guys think a democratic Iran will automatically become fast friends with America, just like France.

Huh, who said that? I'd say that if the reformist topple the Islamists, then a secular, democratic Iran would stop exporting terrorism, modernize its economy, and stabilize the region in a positive way. No one is saying they'd become Great Britian.

How many Iranians have you known anyway?

I've known several, and worked with some, mostly due to their Farsi skills or area knowledge. They've all struck me as reasonable, hardworking, and level headed. Most of them left Iran in the late seventies, and they all seemed hate the Iranian government more than the Chinese hate the Communists.

[Steelerfan]

The students who took our people hostage in the Carter years are now the government officials who are supporting terrorism throughout the Middle East. The Iranian students of today oppose the government and these officials. Seems clear we should be supporting the students to me.

My question is how? I have been reading Leeden's pieces on NRO and they emotionally appealing. But don't you think there is some merit to the argument that if we openly encorage or support the students that we are only going to reduce their support among the majority of Iranians? Aren't we going to make them look like the stooges the Iranian governement in already portraying them to be? And everything I am reading and hearing suggests we are not in a position politically or militarily to intervene directly.

I am not asking these as rhetorical questions. I just do not see what we can do except hope that the majority of Iranians become so frustrated at seeing their children treated this way that they do something about it. Is there anything concrete you can see that we could do to help?

[LibWhacker]

I understand your anger at the hostage taking.

I was at the university during that period. Our universities were lousy with the scum. NOT ONE of them spoke out against it, here or abroad. Indeed, almost without exception they revelled in it. And I had the misfortune of knowing or meeting hundreds of the bastards.

They're all muslims, get it? I swear, I do not want us to lift a finger to help them. Bush is right to ignore them.

[breakem]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/927436/posts Here's the thread, with the comments about Iraq/Iran TV, I posted on the Dennis Prager show. The "reporter" was Reverend Ken Joseph Jr. who was in Iraq last week.

[Travis McGee]

Great reports, please keep us posted!

[DoctorZIn]

...They're all muslims, get it? I swear, I do not want us to lift a finger to help them. Bush is right to ignore them...

I can't speak to your experience 25 years ago. I share your anger about what happened. But the students are NOT radical islamists. If you read the reports they make statements as "death to the mullahs."

They want a secular democracy. They want an end to Isalmic rule. Do you not want this? How can you not support their efforts to free their nation?

[Steel Wolf]

I was at the university during that period. Our universities were lousy with the scum. NOT ONE of them spoke out against it, here or abroad. Indeed, almost without exception they revelled in it. And I had the misfortune of knowing or meeting hundreds of the bastards.

So, using your logic here, if I visited an American college during the war, and all I saw were anti-war rallies, communist professors, and peacenik students, I could rightly assume that America is 99% pro-appeasement/apologist/liberal. You could meet hundreds of Americans who revelled in socialist dogma walking across campus, that must mean that the entire nation must be Disneyland for Marxists.

[LibWhacker]

I don't undestand your reasoning.

Well, apart from my preference to bomb not help them, Iranians cannot direct such hatred at America and expect us to shrug it off and forget about it.

It's is not the case that I want to see democracy fail in Iran. Rather, it's the case that I don't give a sh!t. If they stop supporting terrorism, fine. If not, our military will take care of it. Either way terrorism stops relatively soon and we're not stuck waiting for these deceitful swine to stop it out their sense of good will toward mankind (which I can tell you with 100% certainty does not exist in the vast majority of those mf-ers).

[jabotinsky]

What if...

W came on TV and stated the following...

As a country that has always fought for the freedoms of the oppressed, I warn the dictatorship in IRAN not to lay a finger against peaceful protesters who seek only freedom. Should the dictatorship continue to attack the Iranian people, the US armed forces will have authority to inflict disproportionate damages against the clerical regime.

The US fully supports the Iranain peoples struggle for freedom.

I aint a bettin man, but this backing would unleash hundreds of thousands on the streets of Iran, for they would know that the mullahs would be targeted for their barbarity.

I know there are those who say that the US will never attack iran, but why not send in targeted attacks against the "bonyads" - jihadi foundations that oppress the people. attack the regime as we did in iraq.

God willing W will be inspired to free yet another country.

[grapeape]

"Finally, the Tehranians were asking “why they haven’t heard from President Bush?.”"

Because, if president Bush were to say anything, it would be the dumbest move in the history of revolutions. I don't want to go on a long diatribe but if one studies revolutions the conclusion of glaringly obvious. All of us need to stay out of that revolution unless outside forces start to step in and that is unlikely due to the fact that the rest of the middle east has major problems of its own.

[TomB]

Apparently the blogger I linked to in my previous post isn't happy to be getting all those hits from a "Republican discussion group".

Neo-Con Hits

My posts on the student protests in Tehran have attracted a whole bunch of hits from Republican discussion groups like this. I can see they're excited to see unrest in a member of the "Axis of Evil". Too bad they can't read Farsi though. Otherwise they wouldn't need the likes of me to tell them that no matter what the dispute is inside Iran, the vast majority don't like George W. and they certainly don't like the pathetic pawns that America supports and funds, like Reza Pahlavi (son of the late Shah) and the terrorist MKO. I guess it's more pleasurable to be naive though... keep happy. :-)

A note to Alireza Doostdar. If you would bother to read all the posts here, you see the opinions run the gamut. However, I have yet to see much discussion of Iran being a memeber of the "axis of evil". Instead, I see a lot of support for the students and hope for the future of a democratic Iran, wether or not it becomes an ally of the US. I sincerely hope you translate farsi better than you understand english.

And doesn't the fact that people are bothering to read your translations mean that they actually care to get all the information they can?

[PeoplesRep_of_LA]

The State Dept has more problems than we know, since everything I hear sounds like beaurocratic incompetency at best, open beaurocratic resistence and hostility at worst.

Regime change for the unelected tyrants in Washington. Depose Boutcher! Depose that guy that went to Israeli Leftists and said how against Bush the State Dept was in supporting Sharon's idea of "fighting" terrorists.

[LibWhacker]

Well, you're right, that wouldn't be a valid conclusion. However, I'm not basing my inferences on a brief visit to one college. So the analogy fails. How many instances of dissent during those years amongst Iranians abroad can you come up with? It's been a long time, but I can't think of one.