Loved Being Liberal.

Though the Iranian public officials are better educated than ours, on a whole.

The majority just want to go to work, raise a family and smoke a hookah.

More alike than you'd think!

...who just want to earn a decent living, take care of their families, avoid being harassed by religious nuts, and leave the world a little bit better than it was when they came into it.

Many Iranians are pretty normal people.

Uh, most.. man, man most.. mostest, in fact.

In either country.

The problem is always the politicians, religious fanatics, military leaders, etc. who stand in the way of people getting along with each other.

nt

I have quite a few Persian friends, both here and in Iran. Where the two circles meet, certainly to a great degree does show how both peoples are similar- human beings trying to live, with the same goals, hopes, etc. But it does not show that it is the nut cases who are also alike and so different from normal human beings.

Taken literally, that diagram says that people who are Iranians and Americans are all sexist, homophobic, etc.

Pretty friggin' stupid.

...it's still the policy of Iranian leadership that Israel has no right to exist (a ridiculous position). And, their leadership has stated in the past that it would be worth the sacrifice of over 20 million Iranian citizens in a nuclear exchange if the outcome was the destruction of Israel.

Yes, their basic citizenry isn't all anti-American like the hardliners who run the country are. But, we're not negotiating with the citizens. And, the citizens have no say over who their leaders are.

Bottom line:

1. Iran is building a bomb.

2. Without total access to their entire system for monitoring, we can't establish that they're NOT building a bomb.

3. They're never going to grant us (Europe and the US) total access for monitoring.

4. Their mode of operation would be to "leak" a bomb to a terrorist organization for deployment against Israel. This would allow them enough deniability that antisemitic fuckwads like Russia and China wouldn't be much help in punishing Iran for the acts of the supposed non-state actors.

I'm not lobbying for military action. I'm just saying that the conditions above must be assumed as we negotiate. Just because tons of the Iranian leadership were educated at western universities (most in the US) doesn't mean they're going to be receptive to reason and act with "restraint and modernity". Western educated or not, these guys have an agenda. A very irrational and anti-Israel agenda.

We really blew it when we installed the Shah way back in the 50's, and we're paying for it now.