The BBC has an excellent service called BBC Monitoring that gathers information in over 100 languages around the world and translates them into English. Unfortuately, it’s not free, but they do include information from those sources in many articles.
Yesterday I ran across this article on Iranian bloggers who are discussing the nuclear issue between Iran and the West.
As the tension mounts and the issue is sent to the UN Security Council. It is interesting, and I believe incredibly important, to hear what Iranians have to say on the issue.
They are, after all, the ones who would be suffering most if a military strike were to proceed against Iran.
The vast majority of the excerpts provided by the BBC are “positive”, ie.. they agree generally with the Western view that Iran is in the wrong… unfortunately, without having access to BBC Monitoring itself, it’s impossible to say whether these reactions are indicative of all Iranians, or even of all Iranian bloggers. So as always, chew some salt if you are so inclined.
Each block quoted below is from a different individual.
Also note that these bloggers *are* taking a certain amount of risk by publishing these comments on a publicly available site.
Why is it that our planes crash, our buildings collapse at the slightest tremor, our cars burst into flames, we don’t have even a half-standard football stadium in the entire country, but when it comes to nuclear energy, it’s a national issue?!… Anyway, it smells of war. God help us. Our people have suffered a lot over these past 100 years.
…
What has brought the government to this point today is that it’s realised that it’s not capable of fulfilling even 55% of its campaign slogans… so it wants to deflect domestic public opinion by creating constant international crises in order to pretend that it’s foreigners who are preventing the government from fulfilling its promises.
…
What’s the world to do in the face of this problem? Like most Iranians, I’m opposed to any kind of solution that inflicts suffering on the people.
…
I’ve talked to a lot of Britons and Europeans too. They too say that it’s Iran’s right, because Israel has this technology too.
…
I doubt it’ll be possible… after referral, Iran will cease its voluntary cooperation measures and inspectors will probably not be allowed into Iran. Who says Iran is different from Iraq?
…
Today, my American professor told me: You Iranians should count yourselves lucky that we attacked Iraq, because if we hadn’t attacked them, we’d have attacked you by now!
…
God help us. And it’s only been five months [since Ahmadinejad became president]. We still have three years and six months to go – if it isn’t extended.
Powerful words.
The International Community, and the US and Israel in particular, need to think long and hard about how any sanctions or military action would affect the Iranian people. We saw with Iraq that sanctions did little to improve the political situation, but it *did* stop the nuclear/wmd threat from growing. We have all seen the result of “regime change” by force. Luckily, I simply don’t see that as a possibility while the US is still 20,000+ men deep in Iraq.
It seems inevitable now, especially now that China and Russia have softened their position. Looks like this is due to some hard US Intelligence on a weapons programs… evidence that was good enough to cause the Iranians to hand over sensitive documents pertaining to research into forging nuclear warheads
The real wildcard here is the Iranian response to sanctions and/or a strike. Is Ahmadinejad more or less likely to respond with force than Saddam was? Saddam knew his limitations. I’m not sure Ahmadinejad has quite the same modus-operandi. Would he launch a response of his own in the form of a strike on Israel? Would he attempt to block oil shipments from Iraq, or the Persian Gulf… thus throwing the world economy into potential turmoil?
I must stress. Iran is *not* Iraq. Iran has many many more levers to pull and no matter how much “better” our Armed Forces are… the effects of an attack on Iran on the World economy would be swift, and likely severe.