Persia
In school I learned about a place called Persia. Nothing much was said of it other than it was a territory in this or that empire. My atlas was old and colored the place according to which empire claimed it. That was 80 years ago. Persia became Iran and long before Persia there was Mesopotamia. We forget that Iran has a very ancient history where Christianity is a newcomer to the stage.
I say that as a proud citizen of a country less than 160 years old.
You need a certain sort of inner strength to do that
When Khamenei came to power many of the people who aided his revolution against the Shah became hunted because they were secular.
I know one man, Bezad, who was chased by Khamenei's regime. For 10 years he never slept in the same house two nights in a row before he could escape to Canada. You need a certain sort of inner strength to do that.
He was an engineer. I was friends with his brilliant son and met the whole family. They were very aware and proud of their ancient heritage even as they were proud to be welcomed to Canada.
Vancouver has a big community of Iranian immigrants. A couple of weeks ago on Valentines Day there was a huge march here that was protesting the mullah's killing of thousands of people who were protesting the mullah's rule. It passed by my window, one branch of it, and filled the street with people marching by for half an hour.
I don't think that any of those people would be cheering Trump's attack. Lots of them probably have relatives in Iran who died.
But I stray from my point - Iranian's are a tough tough people who are not easy to push around. It's been said of Afghanistan that it's place where empires go to die. Similar can be said for Iran.
It's often been said that trump projects his own motives onto everyone. Kinda like a thief thinks that everyone is a thief. His projection can lead him to pretty bad action. He thinks that if anyone presented him with such strong aggression that he'd cave. He thinks surely the Iranians will cave when there are bombs falling from the sky.
Iranians are not known for caving.
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.