Persian Night

Long time regime change fan Amir Taheri is set to unleash his formidable "Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution" and it is going to be must read for anyone interested in what is known in Foreign Policy circles as "the most important dossier in the world"

"Iran is the problem number one in the world. It presents a recipe of uranium, religious extremism, and limitless ambitions. It is the most energetic force in managing anarchy and financing wars. It is also accused of being behind the Lebanon turmoil and the emergence of Hamas, and of being the only threat to Iraq as well as to the Gulf nations. Add to this that it is about to give birth to its first nuclear weapon which will make it more dangerous."

Under theocratic command - Iran is not only a dangerous place for fun and free choice - it is also totally off the hook. And paranoid.

Expat Taheri makes it as clear as that see thru little black dress

"The Islamic Republic of Iran has three phobias - Women, Jews and
America."

Whoa! Forget sending in the Air Force or Marines - deploy Ashlee and Britney instead.

"Persian Night" undresses the bizarro body of beliefs, hopes and fears of the illegit, intolerant murderous regime in Tehran, and strips bare motivations, goals amid core tenets of a regime that fears the internet among tons of other things that are safe as milk in free societies.

Iran is a real challenge to Western liberal ideas like the " intrinsic worth of the individual, freedom of conscience and the rule of law." not that any of that bothers the regime, Taheri says. He describes the activities of the Islamic Morality Brigades, the state-supported Holocaust denial movement, Iran's practice of executing dissidents and gays - the rich tapestry of contemporary Iranian life that should make the country an international embarrassment except that just like the hottest stripper in town - mullahopolis feels absolutely no shame.

Great Satan, a former Iranian ally, is viewed as the fountain of all the world's evils and ills. Something wrong in the world? - It's all Great Satan's design, fault or objective.

Amazingly though - Great Satan is also portrayed as a helpless giant ho that
"cannot do anything."

The Mullahs arch enemy has had some moments of doofussness in regards to Iran to be sure:

Like when original gangsta Vulcan Deputy State Sec Richard Armitage (the cat who sank Valerie Plame's cover story to Novak eons ago) called Iran's faux electoral system "a sort of democracy" or when #42 said Iran is "the only country where progressive ideas enjoy a vast constituency" or when Great Satan's Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young called the Ayatollah Khomeini "a twentieth-century saint."

Mohammed Raza Pahlavi, the former Shah, who is usually dismissed by Western intellectuals as a brutal puppet, was the real progressive saint compared with his successor. Indeed, it is useful to remember that his liberal, pro-Western policies made Iran "the first Muslim nation to acknowledge women as citizens with equal rights."

And the Shah's 1960s-era pro-women reforms were what drove the Ayatollah Khomeini totally batty. One of the first acts of Khomeini's revolution was to readjust the status of girls in the new mohammedist society, like when Iran's Chief Justice moronically proclaimed,

"A woman's basic duty is to be a slave to her husband."

Hijab has become the most recognized symbol of the status of women in the new Iran, necessary because, according to Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr, the first president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, women's hair gives off "dangerous rays that drive men crazy." The regime has raised the ideological value of the hijab to extraordinary heights; as one Iranian woman supporter of the headgear noted,

"The superpowers know that the hijab is the foundation of Islamic
government and that to conquer the Persian Gulf and plunder its oil resources, they must first eliminate hijab."

Such risible commentary would be, well, risible, if they were not indicative of the sincere beliefs of a regime that is seeking nuclear weapons.

Since 44's Foreign Policy posse seems to think that something can be achieved with dialogue, and Great Satan's think tanks all rattle ye olde "grand bargain" jazz with Iran to settle the 35 year old issues of Little Satan and Palestine it certainly couldn't hurt to have some idea of exactly whom the heck Great Satan will be jawing with.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, elected in June 2005 with the all new - all original campaign slogan of "We Can!" recently espoused that,

"Our mission in the arena of foreign affairs is to present the idea of
Pure Islam as the only path for the salvation of mankind to all nations. We have to smash the existing models in the world."

"Persian Night" makes a very convincing case that negotiations with the Iranian regime is a waste of time; it would encourage optimism in the West but leave the Khomeinist regime intact and its objectives unchanged.


Real progress can only come from regime change from within. Iran is "a heaving volcano, ready to explode," from a variety of internal pressures", and the best role for Great Satan is to use her "immense bully pulpit" to publicize the cause of the oppressed people of Iran.

Can this be effective? The Soviet Union fell, Taheri argues, "so why not Iran, and why not now?"

Considering the mullahs and their computerized secret police fear society, they may could use a little help from their friends.

Pic - "Moon, beauty of the night" by Hamed Masoumi