Fun With Headlines In The New Year – Iran

Found on Strategypage, this article looking at how the world is and speculating on how it might be

I found the bits on Iran to be interesting in light of their recent adventurism in Iraq. President Rouhani says Iran never bows to superpowers but their history tells a different, and much longer story.

From Strategypage this:

First there is Iran, which has been a regional superpower for thousands of years but fell on hard times after the 7^th century because of a succession of damaging visits by invaders. First came conquest by the Arab revival (the initial wars of conquest by newly converted Moslem Arabs). This was humiliating because Persians never thought such a thing possible. That was followed by a devastating visit by the Mongols (1219-1221) after which came a series of exhausting wars with the Ottoman Turks and finally the Western nations and all their new tech and ideas.

The protests in Iran which have reportedly resulted in over 1500 deaths by the regime include some interesting demands by the protesters who are acutely tired of the Islamic dictatorship and are proposing some interesting changes:

Even more disturbing was that some of the protesters are calling for Islam to be banned and replaced with something else, like Zoroastrianism, the ancient Persian religion that Islam replaced, violently and sometimes incompletely in the 7^th and 8^th centuries.

Replacing Islam with almost anything would be a big help to Iran or anyone else. RTWT, mainly the first link. It's lengthy but covers most of the world and in a lot more detail than you get from CNN for sure.