Michael Totten - Iran Quotes

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Just north of Iran in Azerbaijan, which would be part of Iran today if Russia hadn't conquered it roughly 200 years ago, more than 99 percent of women dress like women everywhere else in the world. I spent a week there and saw fewer Islamic headscarves than I see in Seattle—just two during the entire week. I assumed the young women wearing them were probably foreigners. If they were locals, they were as far out of the mainstream as Zoroastrians are in America. There's a statue in the capital that shows a woman removing her headscarf. It has been there for more than 100 years.

Michael Totten
It is a brutally repressive sectarian theocracy that uses militias and international terrorist organizations to advance its ambitions. Iran is actually the biggest state sponsor of international terrorism in the world, and it has been our chief adversary in the Middle East since followers of Ayatollah Khomeini took 52 American diplomats hostage at our embassy in Tehran following the 1979 revolution.

Michael Totten
Want a trip into bizarroland? Take a look at the Twitter feed for Iran's 'Supreme Guide' Ayatollah Khamenei. No, his Twitter feed hasn't been hacked by Al Sharpton. Nor is this a spoof site. It's the real online megaphone for the Iranian dictator. This pasty old man doesn't give a flying fork about black people, especially those who live in the United States. When he and his underlings chant 'Death to America', they don't mean death to white America. They're talking about the whole country, from our black president at the top to undocumented immigrants on the bottom and everyone in between.

Michael Totten
Iran probably wouldn't be that aggressively secular if it had a genuinely representative government—unlike Iran, Azerbaijan spent more than a half century under communist rule—but it would almost certainly look like Lebanon or Turkey where there's a healthy balance between the secular and the devout. The Iranian government wouldn't need to send thousands of undercover 'morality police' into the streets in the first place if adherence to strict Islamic codes was what everybody actually wanted.

Michael Totten
Look at a map again. Iran is a powerful state in the middle of the same Eurasia where Putin is building his union. An alliance of some sort with Iran isn't strictly required, but it's certainly helpful. At the very least, Putin wants good relations with the Iranians. And he wants America and American-friendly regimes away from his underbelly for the same reason he wants them off his western flank in Europe, where he fears the West and its economic and military alliances might encroach.

Michael Totten
A mob set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran, stormed the compound and trashed its offices while Iranian security personnel stood aside. This is hardly anything new. The Iranian government has been violently contemptuous of worldwide norms of diplomacy ever since it seized power in 1979. The Iranian hostage crisis, where Islamist revolutionaries held 52 foreign servicemen and women hostage at the American Embassy for 444 days, was just the beginning. Four years later, Iran's terrorist proxies in Lebanon used to a suicide truck bomb to destroy the American embassy in Beirut. Ten years later they blew up the Israeli embassy in Argentina, also with a suicide truck bomb.

Michael Totten
Lebanon may not be the most crucial country according to narrowly defined American interests, but like Tunisia, it's one of the few Arab countries that has had a real shot at building something resembling a democratic system during the last couple of years. Lebanon is divided against itself, though, as it always has been, and Syria and Iran are aggressively and even violently backing the anti-Western and anti-democratic side. With no one supporting Lebanon's pro-Western and pro-democratic side, there was ever only one possible outcome.

Michael Totten
Iran has been funding terrorism for decades. Iran hasn't stopped funding terrorism for even five seconds since the day it started. We can safely assume that since Iran funded terrorism yesterday, and that since the sun came up this morning, Iran is still funding terrorism today. And unless the government is overthrown before midnight tonight, it's safe to assume that Iran will continue funding terrorism tomorrow. Iran's rulers haven't even pretended to stop, so let's just cut through the B. S.

Michael Totten
And at least the U.S. got something out of the deal. At least our people are still among the living when they come home... Iran committed three criminal acts against American citizens and paid no price. We put kidnappers in prison for a very long time in this country, but the Iranian government was rewarded. What's to stop that government from doing it again? Nothing. Why should the Iranian government stop? Kidnapping and ransoming hostages works. And the regime is already gearing up to do it again.

Michael Totten
A democratic Iran would be a natural ally of the United States while the Saudis, with their popularly backed medieval system, are natural enemies. At some point the U.S. will pivot, and the pivot will likely be permanent, but until the clerical regime in Tehran reforms itself out of all recognition or is overthrown from below, we're stuck with the awkward and ailing alliance we have. Let's try not to squander it further.

Michael Totten