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A Shah With a Turban

(New York Times) Thomas L. Friedman - * Since Iran's president has raised the subject of "myths," why stop with the Holocaust? Let's talk about Iran. Let's start with the myth that Iran is an Islamic "democracy" and that Ahmadinejad was democratically elected. Sure he was elected - after all the Iranian reformers had their newspapers shut down and parties and candidates banned by the unelected clerics who really run the show in Tehran. * Sorry Ahmadinejad, they don't call it "democracy" when you ban your most popular rivals from running. So you are nothing more than the Shah with a turban and a few crooked ballot boxes sprinkled around. * And before we leave this subject of myths, let me add one more - the myth that anyone in the world would pay a whit of attention to the bigoted slurs of Iran's president if his country were not sitting on a dome of oil and gas. Iran has an energetic and educated population, but the ability of Iranians to innovate and realize their full potential has been stunted ever since the Iranian revolution. * "The West has lost its leverage," notes Gal Luft, an energy expert at the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. Europe is addicted to Iran's oil and to Iran's purchases of European goods. At the same time, the Iranian regime has been very clever at petro-diplomacy. * After the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, "the Iranians knew they needed an insurance policy," added Luft, "So they did two things: They concentrated on developing a bomb and went out and struck gas deals with one-third of humanity - India and China," the world's two fastest growing energy consumers. As such, it is very unlikely that China would ever allow the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran.
2005-12-26 00:00:00
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