Tuesday open thread: May you merrily roast in hell
This past weekend, Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi died when his helicopter crashed in inclement weather.
Raisi was known as the "Butcher of Tehran". In the 1980s, he carried out the executions of thousands of Iranian political prisoners before their sentences were due to be up.
Today, we think of the Iranian Revolution as a monolith run by the mullahs who came to rule over the country. But it was anything but. Moderate Islamists, secularists, democrats, and even Communists participated in the revolution. But, much as with the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917, it was the followers of Ruhollah Khomeini who, due to their unabashed brutality, were able to seize the reins of power and condemn all those who also fought to expel Shah Reza Pahlevi to an eventual death.
Iran during the Shah was not a paradise. It was an autocratic kleptocracy. However, in that sense it was no different than today's Islamic Republic. And, as the picture fronting this piece shows, outside of the political realm, Iranians had more social freedoms. Certainly women did so.
The mullahs have done nothing to improve upon the Shah's regime. In fact, they have done much to worsen conditions for the citizens of the country. The US embassy hostage crisis doomed the republic to an almost-50 year enmity with the United States. Iran went from a part of the US coalition to a pariah in the West and in the Middle East. It has fomented crises and disruption in Lebanon, Israel, Saudi Arabia. Its only friends are other autocracies, who can't replace what it lost when it fell afoul of the US.
Some on Twitter are crying about the American sanctions, moaning that a lack of spare parts condemned that helicopter to crash. Firstly, why couldn't Iran get updated aircraft from its good friends in Russia and China? Secondly, an American Nighthawk would have crashed just as easily under the conditions in which Raisi flew. Did he think he was protected by Allah, and no ill would befall him? No amount of modern technology can vitiate boneheaded decisions.
Iranians both in the country and in the diaspora reveled over Raisi's death. In Tehran sweets were handed out and fireworks set off. No one save for his followers are mourning him. May this be another step in freedom for the Iranian people. May they soon be able to throw off the medievalist death cult yoke.
This is your open thread.
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