Death to America

[JimmySpeaks]

57 minutes ago, Offthemat said:

 

POSTED ON AUGUST 19, 2025 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN IRAN, TRUMP FOREIGN POLICY

  

IRAN’S CRISIS DEEPENS

Iran has been out of the news since a U.S. attack devastated its nuclear program in June. What has been going on, out of the view, as far as I have seen, of the American press?

The London Times headlines: “Reformers urge an end to uranium enrichment as crisis grips Iran.”

Iranian reformers who back the country’s president have called on the government to suspend uranium enrichment in order to reach a deal with the US, as the country faces widespread power and water shortages.

If you run out of water and electricity, you are in deep trouble. One should note that if Iran had a civilian nuclear power program–which it doesn’t–electricity wouldn’t be an issue.

“The aftermath of the recent 12-day war with Israel, coupled with runaway inflation, industrial stagnation, the collapse of the national currency and capital flight, has created a more acute risk of economic paralysis than ever before,” said the Reform Front, which comprises 27 activist groups.

Emphasis added. These warnings are especially significant because they come from “an important pillar of support for the relatively moderate president Masoud Pezeshkian.”

Suspending enrichment and allowing the UN’s nuclear watchdog complete oversight of Iran’s activities would allow for “comprehensive, direct negotiations with the United States and normalisation of relations”, the coalition said.

Without a normalization of relations with the U.S., conditions in Iran are dire:

“The context [for the reformists’ statement] is that Iran feels an existential threat because of the number of crises that have been coalescing,” said Ali Fathollah-Nejad, a German-Iranian political scientist and director of the Centre for Middle East and Global Order.

“There’s this deep economic crisis that’s been around for years leading to a socioeconomic crisis with the bulk of the Iranian population living in poverty, and more lately we have seen electricity and water shortages,” he said.

The regime’s unpopularity has led to calls for other changes, as well:

The reformists’ statement also called on the government to release dissidents and to relax rules on dress codes for women, which could curry favour with a population largely opposed to the repressive Islamist regime.

The mullahs so far have rejected calls to abandon their nuclear ambitions, but restarting weapons development will take a long time, given that the U.S. bombing “heavily damaged Iran’s nuclear facilities,” while Israel’s targeted strikes eliminated important military leaders and nuclear scientists.

So Iran is in a state of economic collapse, with runaway inflation, increasingly worthless currency, and basic necessities like water and electricity intermittently unavailable. Thus, a large majority of Iran’s people want to get rid of the mullahcracy. But totalitarian regimes can take a long time to die: see Venezuela. We can only encourage the Trump administration to keep up the pressure, in hopes that Iran will, sooner rather than later, rejoin the real world.
 

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/08/irans-crisis-deepens.php

The people that scream death to America can’t survive without America.  

[Caveira]

12 minutes ago, El Luchador said:

We don't know if she was pretty but young, yes. Young enough to play with dolls. Aisha was 6 when they married, 9 when they consummated.  

Ha.  Didn’t realize I spelled That wrong 

[Undefeated]

15 hours ago, Caveira said:

Didn’t Mohammad date a pretty young girl?

I think most of Muhammad’s marriages were political. Aisha’s father was one of the most powerful men of the time, and Mohammad was just a shepherd claiming to be a prophet. Marrying her definitely boosted his influence. Even before that, his marriage to Khadijah - who was old enough to be Aisha’s mother, maybe even her grandmother in an age when girls married super young - was clearly political too, since she was a wealthy merchant. I’m sure politics played a role, and probably desire as well.

I don’t know if Abu Bakr had other daughters, but if he did, I don’t get why Muhammad went for Aisha instead of, say, a 20-year-old daughter (if there even was one). Anyway, I’m not really an expert on Islamic history, so these are questions you should ask someone who’s actually a Muslim or claims to know the history.

But no matter how I look at it, whether it was politics or desire, what Muhammad did still makes a hell of a lot more sense than believing a woman had a baby without ever having sex.