Islamist militants strike heart of Tehran, Iran blames Saudis

The Iranians are kidding themselves if they think they will be the only arab kid on the block with a bomb. Saudi Arabia will acquire one for sure. Egypt will follow, then Jordan. They'll form a lose alliance with Israel to keep Iran in check. That's how much they trust Iran.

Syria and Iraq are too paralyzed at the moment to develop/buy a bomb. But it is only a matter of time before they do.

Thanks Iran.

 

1- Iran is not an Arab country and if you don't know even that much, you shouldn't be commenting on any issue relating to the region.
2- The rest of what you wrote is neither here or there since (a) Iran isn't building nuclear weapons; (b) Israel has nukes and so does Pakistan; and (c) what many of these states do will depend in some measure on what they are told to do.

 

Thank you for your response, and your perspective as well. I hope you're correct about Iran's pursuit of a peaceful nuclear energy program. I doubt we'll see it in our lifetime, but hopefully this madness will pass, and future generations will never have to endure, or witness what's happening now.

 

Iranian Monitor:

Iranians are not Arabs? You are right. I misspoke. They are Persian and proud of it.

You say they are not building a bomb?

Nothing in the mideast is written in stone. It is written in sand and disappears when the wind changes. The Iranian government (not its people) will build a bomb when it suits them and terrorize its neighbors.

 

Iranians not being Arab is a bigger deal than many people outside this region realize. So let me take some time to explain things.

Not counting the Jews in Israel, there are 3 main groups in the region, each of whom can be divided into different subgroups. These are the Arabs, the Turks, and the Persians.

The Turks were culturally Iranicized when they arrived to the region from their Central Asian homeland and when they established the Ottoman empire, they basically mixed and mingled with all sorts of other people while preserving their language. The Ottoman empire, however, despite being at war with Iran for many centuries and carrying the "sunni banner" against the "shia banner" upheld by Iran, was itself considered a Persianate state. Our issues with the Turks are strictly in the nature of geopolitical rivalry and are in the same nature of the rivalry that existed between Iran and the other rulers of the Anatolian peninsula before the arrival of the Turks. After all, Iran fought for centuries over almost identical territory with Rome and the Byzantine empire as well. Yet, neither side of that divide truly hated one another. With the Ottomans, who used Persian as the lingua franca of their empire and adopted many Persian customs and practices, the issue was even more clearly a simple fight over who will be the "boss" and not more.

The Arabs, on the other hand, burst into the scene from their homeland in Arabia following a period when wars between Iran and the Byzantine empire had left both empires exhausted. They were able to capture the Persian empire along with much of the Byzantine empire, bringing a new religion with them. Those areas which had been part of the Persian empire but whose inhabitants weren't ethnically or culturally Iranian (e.g., Mesopotamia or Iraq), like many others which had been ruled by the Byzantine empire which were now ruled by the Arabs (e.g., Syria/Lebanon, or Egypt etc), quickly became not just Muslim but Arab as well. Iran, proper, however rejected Arabism and much of Iranian identity (after Iran became Muslim) evolved precisely in juxtaposition of Arab identity. Eventually, the Bedouin Arabs lost their place in the Islamic world, while culturally Persian norms and traditions once again came to dominate the region. Wahhabi culture, itself, is in some measure, a reaction to that fact. A reaction of the Bedouin Arabs losing their political and cultural sway over the lands they had conquered and converted to Islam. That is one of many reasons why the two just don't mix and confusing Persians/Iranians with Arabs is a big deal.

Of course, beyond the above which is the real reason why this distinction is significant, there are also more easily explained differences. Iranians mostly speak Persian or some other so-called "Indo-European" language; the Arabs speak a Semitic language. Iran itself means "Land of the Aryans" but the term Aryan is simply synonymous with "Iranian" and shouldn't be confused with how the term gained coinage in the west. The overwhelming majority of Iranians are Shia; the overwhelming majority of Arabs are Sunni. The Arabs who happen to be Shia are often viewed among Sunni Arabs as "Iranian fifth columnists". Indeed, while the original Sunni-Shia divide had nothing to do with the Arab-Persian divide, subsequent events made Shia Islam closely associated with Iran. In terms of "race", there are also more or less visible differences between the Arabs in Arabia and the Persians in Iran. But Arabs, more generally, are not really a race as you will find Arabs who are blonde and Arabs who are black. You have some of that variance among the Persians as well, since ultimately all the people in this region have lived close by and mixed and mingled with all sorts of other people. But fundamentally, Iranians trace their history differently than Arabs, to pre Islamic Persian empires and subsequently to people who often were at odds with the Arabs. The Arabs see Iranians as "ajam" and have their prejudices against us and we have the same prejudices against them. So confusing the two will basically leave you clueless as to a lot that happens in this region.

 

Iranian Monitor;

Thank you for your post. I do business with many Iranians in Los Angeles and I knew better than to describe them as Arab.

Sorry.