My friend Hussein has just got back from Iran. Over the course of 21 days he travelled the country, visiting Tehran and Isfahan. He hadn't been back to Iran since he was a child and managed to get by on his passable farsi. He said that he was able to travel freely as a British citizen and encountered zero hassle from officials whilst on his trip. There was generally good standard of living and people seemed to be well educated--apparently, observance of religious law is far from universal and dependant on where you are in the country. The roads and infrastruture were patchy, but on the whole the buildings were modern. In fact, he liked it so much that he's buying a house there.

Cranius wrote:My friend Hussein has just got back from Iran. Over the course of 21 days he travelled the country, visiting Tehran and Isfahan. He hadn't been back to Iran since he was a child and managed to get by on his passable farsi. He said that he was able to travel freely as a British citizen and encountered zero hassle from officials whilst on his trip. There was generally good standard of living and people seemed to be well educated--apparently, observance of religious law is far from universal and dependant on where you are in the country. The roads and infrastruture were patchy, but on the whole the buildings were modern. In fact, he liked it so much that he's buying a house there.

Thanks for this Cranius. I don't know anyone who has been to Iran. It is good to hear from people who have.

Agreed. Let us humanize our alleged enemies whenever possible. An Iranian farmer and an American farmer share about 95% of the same DNA, no matter who they pray to or not pray to.

I've heard as much as well. I have a friend would is Persian, she always talks about how much the Islamic regime is a perversion of true Persian culture and that it's wont last more than another 10 years. The middle-class in Iran is very large and getting a bit sick of being pushed around by religious loonies for the sake of -relative- economic stability. But Lela also told me there are a lot of very poor and badly educated people in the countryside that are very conservative.

Iran is a little like Turkey but the lunatics run the army instead of the "democratic" secular Ataturkists .

Andrew L. wrote:Thanks for this Cranius. I don't know anyone who has been to Iran. It is good to hear from people who have.

I'll try and e-mail him and get a description from the horse's mouth. Some of the details of our conversation have eluded me, as I was slighty tipsy and we were trying to concentrate on spit-roasting a whole lamb--a task that was made more difficult by the exploding concrete paving-slabs that we had mistakenly used to line the charcoal pit.

Gramsci wrote:But Lela also told me there are a lot of very poor and badly educated people in the countryside that are very conservative.

Baluchistan, on the Pakistan border is meant to be like this. But there is something like 85% literacy across the country, compared to 4% at the time of the Shah.

My dad visited Isfahan about ten years ago. He claims Iran is the most beautiful country he ever visited, and I think he visited them about all.

Surprisingly green and dandy, from what I got from the photographs.

Having said that, I recently saw a documentairy about street prostitution in Tehran. Apparently they have a big problem with heroin addiction over there.

I was surprised, it all looked so ordinairy. I mean, you know.

Cranius wrote:Baluchistan, on the Pakistan border is meant to be like this. But there is something like 85% literacy across the country, compared to 4% at the time of the Shah.

Unfortunately the only book most of them will have read will have been the Qu'ran. The level of translation of non-muslim books into middle-eastern languages has dropped to nearly nil.

Agreed. Iranian cinema is very strong, though and suggests a confident intellectual class.

Many reports of troop movements along the Iraq-Iran border as well...

Strike could come earlier than thought

Other military and intelligence sources are expressing concern both privately and publicly that air strikes on Iran could come earlier than believed.

Retired Air Force Colonel and former faculty member at the National War College Sam Gardiner has heard some military suggestions of a possible air campaign in the near future, and although he has no intimate knowledge of such plans, he says recent aircraft carrier activity and current operations on the ground in Iran have raised red flags.

Gardiner says his concerns have kept him busy attempting to create the most likely scenario should such an attack occur.

"I would expect two or three aircraft carriers would be moved into the area," Gardner said, describing what he thinks is the best way air strikes could be carried out without disengaging assets from US fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Two air-craft carriers are already en route to the region, RAW STORY has found. The USS Abraham Lincoln, which recently made a port call in Singapore, and the USS Enterprise which left Norfolk, Virginia earlier this month, are headed for the Western Pacific and Middle East. The USS Ronald Reagan is already operating in the Gulf.

full article here:

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/US_mi ... _0511.html

Cranius wrote:Agreed. Iranian cinema is very strong, though and suggests a confident intellectual class.

Very true, I'm sure you've read this. but The Guardian has very good reporting on Iran. Big, big smack problem there.

I would say that Israel would never allow Iran to gain nukes, they'd bomb any bases into dust without a second thought. They do have nukes, and I'm sure wouldn't think twice about vaporising a major Arab city if threatened, and I can't blame them to be honest.