Since the Iranian Revolution, there have been members of the Iranian government who tried to seek rapprochement with the the West, the most recent being Mir-Houssein Mousavi who lost the 2009 presidential elections. Your challenge is to get a moderate faction in power any time during or after the Revolution. How would this affect Iran, international relations, and the world?
Iran Moderating
- Thread starter Have Blue-117
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You need to have the west just as actively seek reproachment with Iran and come to them as an equal in order to get this to happen. Otherwise the fact is that the bad old days of the Shah are just too powerful of an example of how the west treats Iran. Iranians have wanted to be treated as an equal for a long time now (even if its an equal in opposition to the west) and if that does not happen then Iran is unlikely to moderate against us.
Well the US is going to stay fairly suspicious, but a good start for helping with that relationship would be to break with and cease the funding and training of Hamas and Hezbollah since America's relationship with the Middle East basically seems to revolve around the twin poles of oil and Israel. That's for moderating the current regime. Getting a more moderate one during or shortly after the Iranian Revolution would probably actually be easier. Iran's history isn't really my forte but IIRC it was made up of a real smorgasbord of groups and ideologies, the religious extremists just managed to help guide and ride the wave of general public feeling and then hijack the whole affair afterwards. Find a way for the other groups to not lose influence and the religious extremists take full control, although since they represent a fair number of the public they're still likely to be influential, and you could end up with a rather interesting mix.
The problem there that I see is that even a more domestically moderate Iran is almost certainly gonna be anti-western. The west was and is hated for putting the Shah in power and even comparative moderates didn't have very many nice things to say about us.
I agree with you in that getting moderates in power during the revolution will be much easier, but I wanted to know how because I'm not big on Iranian politics. I had also thought about moderates taking power sometime during or after the Iran-Iraq War but then again, I don't know how likely this is.
Your best chance is some sort of rapprochement during the Khatami presidency (1997-2005). At that point, the Iranians repeatedly tried to reach out to the US and, excluding issues in Afghanistan, the US repeatedly rebuffed them. Now, this isn't to say that there will be anything like a normalization of relations, but seeing how Iranian-UK relations have gone since the revolution, we might see a slow-but-sure move towards that direction.
But yeah, there's almost no chance of anything but an anti-Western government in Tehran, the only question is how overtly suspicious they are of the US and friends.
But yeah, there's almost no chance of anything but an anti-Western government in Tehran, the only question is how overtly suspicious they are of the US and friends.
A higher percentage Iranians have positive views of the US than of their 'good' 'ally' Pakistan.
Explain, please.
If a Democrat takes the White House in 1988, it is a chance to reverse the Reagan administrations policies of the past eight years of basically funding chemical warfare against the Iranians. A regime change in the White House would also allign with the ascenions of Grand Ayatollah Khamenei and President Rafsanjani who were trying to reach out a little more to the west (see the Lebanon hostage crisis). If there was President who wasn't Reagan's VP in the White House, there would be less bad blood and perhaps greater change could have been achieved.
I always thought Iran did moderate somewhat, but it took the horrendous Iran/Iraq war to do it. With the failure to capture anything in Iraq, the loss of so many thousands in those futile human wave attacks, and the drubbing their navy took in the 'Tanker War', a lot of the wind was taken out of the revolutionary sails. Iran never did seem to want to come to terms with the west even after that, but the fire really went out of them after the war. So, to get to the POD from the OP, maybe more disillusionment after the war? Something along the line of even higher losses, many more dissatisfied families...
The Gulf War sort of put Iran back on edge. The US/NATO buildup and then the remaining bases alienated them once more. No Gulf War and there could be a chance that Iran's seige mentality could break and open up sooner.
hey, there's a fairly simple POD... have April what's-her-name tell Saddam straight out, "No, you can't invade Kuwait! Stay out or we'll kick your fat butt out!", and no Gulf War...
That speaks more to how absolutely worthless Pakistan is as an ally than to what the Iranians think of us.
The problem is Bush is still a Reagan hold out and all his ties with Iraq (and Cheney's and Rumsfeld's) may have evaporated but there are still very strong Saudi Arabia ties, who Iran is more or less equally oppossed to at this point.
Unless the US is willing to sit down with Rafsanjani like they do with the Saudi Royal Family...
So very true. At one point Iran and the US were both at loggerheads with the Taliban, while the Pakistanis were basically its puppet master. Hindsight is a bitch.