Still await your views to the very important question of what is to be done for Egypt and Jordan and whether the Great Arab Shia revolution of Hizbollah that has defeated the US; Israel and militias of Arab client states is a model to follow.

In NDCs like Iran was in 1979 the two co-existed in much the same way as they did in Bolshevik Russia and Nazi Germany in the 1930s.The raison d’etre of elites is to preserve their place at the commanding heights of the socio-economic pyramid and enhance their prestige.These priorities come well in advance of making any democratic concessions to their domestic populations.

Enhancing their prestige means modernizing,making alliances and building up the means to defend the state against external threats.

Elites in NDCs always run the risk that any support they enjoy from powerful sponsors may be withdrawn if they overstep the boundaries strictly delimited by these sponsors.

Such was the case with the Shah’s Iran and their erstwhile sponsors the US and Israel.

The face of modernization in the Shah’s Iran actually belonged to his PM Amir Abbas Hoveda.Hoveda
extolled the virtues of a “Shah and Peoples Revolution” that would industrialize without recourse to the class warfare that had been engendered by the process in Western states.He renounced nationalism and chauvinism in favour of the advance to the Great Civilisation along the road charted over the 3 previous decades of economic planning,investment in infrastructure and higher education.

With Iran’s oil,possibly the largest natural gas deposits in the world,solar energy and nuclear power complemented by innovation in petrochemicals and pharmaceutics Hoveda envisaged a technological revolution driven by state/private investments.

That Hoveda as a member of Iran’s elite saw no contradiction between this vision and the police state run by the Shah becomes clear in Abbas Milani’s biography.Evidently each Wednesday,in a scene that probably reprised Stalin’s meetings with Beria,Hoveda would meet SAVAK chief Sabeti where the latter would discuss his murderous plans for any women demonstrators his police could arrest.

Elites have worked like this down the ages and doubtless they would find it extremely amusing today to discover that people assume that because they ran police states they must abjure from holding up modernization as a desirable course on which their countries should embark.

Surely that model is worth persuing in those 2 places.

What actually took place was somewhat more sinister.The events that transpired bear no comparison with Afghanistan and Iraq because the US never contemplated putting troops on the ground in Iran.Although a bungled operation with which we are all familiar as a standard feature of US interventions did occur when Carter sought to extricate the American hostages.

Denying that autocrats like the Shah are capable of promoting modernization is rather like suggesting that Stalin never sought an industrial take-off in Soviet Russia.Modernization is not a monopoly enterprise carried out solely by democratic leaders.

The history of Anglo-US subversions is certainly not one of omnipotence but if my memory serves me right they did manage to pull off something like what happened in Iran in 1979 in the very same place in 1953 didn’t they?

Funny thing was Khomeini was on the streets in 1953 too.Demonstrating against Mossedegh.Like those who sponsored him later,Khomeini and his MB friends despised Mossedegh just like they and the Americans and British would come to despise the Shah-and for the same reason.

You are right about the US-Iranian convergence of interest. At present the Iranian proxies are consolidating with US assistance, eliminating even their Shia rivals along the way. But you seem to overlook the fact that the invasion and the occupation wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for the material assistance of other Arabs in the region. Don’t forget where most of US forces are based and where the attacks were launched from. It was not Iran, but Qatar, Saudi, Kuwait, Bahrain and UAE.

What happened in 1979 was not Iran freeing herself from US domination but a dark ages conspiracy engineered by the Carter administration in collusion with the British to prevent a fast modernizing Middle Eastern state mounting a challenge to US dollar-based hegemony.

Those Brits and Americans must be truly omnipotent if they could pull off something like that. I bet thats why the invasion and occupations of Iraq/Afghanistan have been such a breeze.

The problem with this kind of narrative peddled by US-UK left is that it projects their own history of unrelieved failure on to a people which did challenge, confront and defeat their oppressor. But when someone starts holding up the Shah as the face of modernization, then that makes any further argument rather superfluous.

That those in power conspire is undeniable; but that is not to say that they always succeed.

Ok , how about the the Great Arab Shia revolution of Hizbollah that has defeated the US; Israel and militias of Arab client states.Surely that model is worth persuing.

But then the idea of embracing the “rule of faith and persuasion” by 200,000 mullahs extolled by Iranian President,Bani-Sadr,at that time,and volunteering for the Cambodianization of one’s country will not likely have many takers among free-thinking people anywhere.

Only in fairy stories do white knights on horseback come to save us.In the real world such saviours often have unlikely sponsors who do not as it turns out have a nation’s best interests at heart.

The people of Egypt and Jordan and indeed of most Arab countries have learnt to be wary of such figures and they need no lectures from outsiders or indeed from people named after characters in fairy tales!

Or do you prefer the Status Quo in the Arab World?

Do you , or do you not accept that to improve the lot of the Arab World Egypt and Jordan require a revolution?

Its a simple enough question , now lets have your bluster….

Er,did you just miss your cue yet again?

You were telling us how the Arabs were all jealous of the Iranian revolution.

In your infinite wisdom you neglected to provide any evidence whatever that the cultural,economic,political and social transformation undertaken by the Khomeini regime produced anything that might positively recommend it to any of its Arab neighbours.

Perhaps you could enlighten us also,oh Venerable One,as to just who else,apart from the Anglo-US elites who sponsored it,might profit from adopting the Khomeini course?

The silence is deafening!