r/AlternateHistoryHub • u/MrsWolfgang AHH Fan • 1d ago
Contest Submission What if Iran was still monchary today?
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u/Accomplished-River12 1d ago
Iran allied with Israel
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u/Tech-Film3905 1d ago
Dont be so sure. The Shah, even as a puppet installed by the US, would say critical things of Israel and the Israel lobby during his final years. If he had lived longer, he would have been far too skeptical of Israels ambitions in the region
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u/khengoolman 1d ago
I’m sure he would have been “gravely concerned” about the “Gaza conflict”
Like all of Europe
Meanwhile his family would be all over the Epstein files
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u/AikaGranzchesta KGB Officer 1d ago
It means that the entire Axis of Resistance (Iran and its self-made proxies) would not exist, but by extension that would mean that Israel would not be moving closer to the Arab nations, who have always opposed Iran. Lebanon would probably be a peaceful place today, Palestine is harder to say but Hamas wouldn't have taken over Gaza, or if they did would not have the strength they have today. And then a bunch of other things would change, for example the Arab Spring might have never happened.
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u/colola8 1d ago
Arab spring would have happened anyway.
Because Saddam Assad ghadfi mubarak bin Ali are all in power so.2
u/DeepState_Auditor 1d ago
the Arab spring happened all over ,even in Yemen.
It wasn't any particular leader1
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u/Ambitious_Citron8302 16h ago
I think the proxies would be replaced with Sunni proxies sponsored by an Arab state. Wonder how the rise of ISIS would play into that. Or also how 9/11 and the War on Terror after it would play out given there would be an Arab state sponsoring Sunni proxies that would very likely have involvement in the attacks.
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u/Rami-961 1d ago
You act as if Israel never had colonial desires to begin with. If these proxies didnt exist, all itd mean is that Israel would have had easier time occupying and invading It was never been a peaceful nation
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u/Jazzlike-Plate-935 1d ago
No. Having proxies and assets in foreign countries actually has some roots in the times of Mohammad Reza Shah and in a way it's embedded in Iranian foreign policy when it comes into less-powerful regional neighbors of ours.
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u/AikaGranzchesta KGB Officer 16h ago
When did he do this? I know he intervened in the Omani Civil War, but that was to support the existing government against Arab nationalist groups.
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u/october73 1d ago
Is the scenario that Shah stays in power because he was a better ruler who wins popular support? or because he was a better dictator who actually succeed in oppressing his people?
If former, probably close to the path Turkey took. Secular reform followed by some religious backlash/backsliding. Maybe Hereditary nature means better continuity of secular ideals that can hold ground.
If latter, probably shitty. He and the successors would have to fight back religious reactionary forces with more and more harsh measures, which would only fuel the said force. Probably leading to eventual collapse.
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u/Highground-3089 1d ago
actually succeed in oppressing his people
right, cause the islamists are doing a terrible job at that. must be why they shut down our internet in january protests. they were actually looking out for us.
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u/Sjoerdiestriker 1d ago
right, cause the islamists are doing a terrible job at that.
I don't think the point u/october73 was making here was that the current Iranian government is bad at oppressing people. I think his point is that in our timeline the Shah's oppression didn't manage to prevent revolution, and is suggesting one scenario where the Shah could stay is if he (for better or for worse) was even more successful at oppression than he already was.
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u/Microsoftoffics 1d ago
Islamists or just Muslims? The shahs shouldn't have been there in the first place.
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u/Xezshibole 1d ago edited 1d ago
They would still by vying for Sauds for regional leadership but it would not be nearly as knife fight like they're currently been going at it.
The Sauds are the current regional leader in the Middle East and despise revolutionaries or rivals powers who espouse/represent anti-monarchal ideas. Aka Iran in a nutshell.
Iran vs then Saud backed Saddam
Hezbollah vs then Saud backed Hariri in Lebanon
Hamas vs Saud backed Fatah
Houthus vs Saud backed Yemen
The then Iran backed Syria vs Saud backed Syrian rebels.
It hasn't been a pleasant relationship, no.
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u/avbitran 1d ago
The US invades Iraq
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u/MaintenanceProper525 1d ago
I swear, I always find you saying this. For once can't it be Argentina invaded Falklands? Or Germany invaded Poland? Or some other silly thing?
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u/Icy-Response6124 1d ago
The Shah would have entered the post-Cold War era where the neighbouring Soviet menace no longer exists, and redirected his army (which was the 5th strongest army in the world) towards threatening the petrodollar kingdoms… the same as the Islamic Republic itself did but with an alliance with the US.
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u/PlayfulMethod3512 1d ago edited 1d ago
Would have been way better than Islamic republic. Iran used to be in par with top 20 countries during Shah. Now, it got one of the worse currencies and everyone(including Iranians) hate the regime. Hope we get a new change.
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u/LoooolGotcha 1d ago edited 1d ago
20? lmao you mean 60
edit: originally it said “20” and it made it sound like years
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u/PlayfulMethod3512 1d ago
Iran's GDP was like 17-18th in the world and lots of tourists used to come back then. It was called the Paris of Middle East for a reason. What we all can agree is that Iran used to be way better, and hopefully the country gets back to its glory.
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u/Sjoerdiestriker 1d ago
It was certainly a nice place to go to as a tourist, and in a less bad state than it is in now, but we shouldn't forget that this was still a horrible dictatorship with a secret police that tortured and executed on a large scale.
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u/BavarianStallion 1d ago
Let's not romanticize the Shah. He was a dictator who imprisoned and tortured political opponents through his notorious SAVAK secret police. Economic growth doesn't excuse brutal repression. The Islamic Republic being terrible doesn't make the Shah's regime a golden age.
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u/PlayfulMethod3512 1d ago
The shah def made mistakes, and I believe these mistakes need to be corrected once the new regime rise. However, compare the brutality with Islamic Republic, and tell me which was worse?
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u/Somnin 1d ago
Both were equally bad
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u/aesn1394 1d ago
Not even close. The current regime are like demons compared to the shah.
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u/Somnin 1d ago
The shah was ruthless. He publicly executed his own citizens daily. The monarchy and the Islamic republic are pretty much on par with each other
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u/aesn1394 1d ago
The shah didn't kill anywhere near what the Islamic regime has done so far and that's from the sources of the regime themselves. And at the end he could've he killed tens of thousands just to say but left (again, corroborated by organs within the regime). The regime killed at minimum 40k ppl in two nights just to stay in power. The living standards of Iranians was on par with some countries in western europe. The regime has dragged the Iranian economy through the mud, and disgraced its pre Islamic culture snd history. The shah was a saint compared to the current regime
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u/PlayfulMethod3512 1d ago
Thank you for sharing this. Many people who don't know the actual situation of Iran decide to spread bs. One guy said Islamic Republic is better lol
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u/aesn1394 1d ago
Some of these guys are either IRGC bots or are western leftists that just think whoever is anti west must be good. Im not saying the shah was good, he had MANY problems. Im gonna go as far as saying maybe he should've been a bit more ruthless to stop the revolution but he didn't and I kind of dislike him for that leafing to the regime. But he was much better compared to whatever the fuck we have now.
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u/PlayfulMethod3512 1d ago
Literally who are these people? Shame on anyone who support the IRGC? Shame on anyone who support this evil regime
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u/BavarianStallion 21h ago
You don't have to be an IRGC bot or a supporter of the Islamic Republic to condemn Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's brutal dictatorship.
Rejecting one oppressive regime doesn't mean endorsing another. It's a choice between the plague and cholera.
Is a murderer who kills five people somehow morally acceptable because another kills fifty?
Iran deserves better than either.
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u/thgr8Makar0sc 1d ago
It wasnt that good, the people revolted for a reason, Islamists werent the only faction rebelling they just won the fight
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u/Highground-3089 1d ago
communists exist everywhere. they're always plotting to overthrow the current government. no matter how successful it is.
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u/Comfortable-Dig-6118 1d ago
Unrelated you can't really measure the difference Islamic republic was permanently sanctioned by western world so we can't know how much better it would have been without sanction
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u/AikaGranzchesta KGB Officer 1d ago
That's because as soon as they took power they began massacring political opponents in the thousands, attacked the American embassy, and carried out murders in Western countries. If the Shah did any of this he would also be sanctioned.
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u/Station-Suspicious 1d ago
The shah absolutely jailed, killed, and suppressed political opposition, in the thousands. The only difference was that the shah was willing to sell his country out to Western Countries
while the Islamic republic, with all it’s own political repression, decided to also target western countries influence in Iran, which is what made them the global pariah they are
International law is only in play when western interests are supplanted. If you play ball with the USA or it’s allies, you can basically do whatever you want
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u/AikaGranzchesta KGB Officer 16h ago
The Shah killed around 500 political opponents over thirty years. The Islamic Republic killed thousands in its first year, and over 10,000 by 1988. The Shah also nationalised Iran's oil supply, he just waited until Iran had the ability to support its own oil industry, instead of when they were still reliant on the British.
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u/Microsoftoffics 1d ago
Romanticizing dictatorship now? The current ayatollah regime was installed by the same Iranians that overthrew the shah. Islamic republic is better domestically should there weren't any sanctions.
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u/WhiteSepulchre 1d ago
Sure dude Israel and America would leave Iran alone for sure if the government they couped was still in power.
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u/PlayfulMethod3512 1d ago
They never leave Iran alone US is one of the reasons why Shah's empire fell through but the new regime needs to be smart. You can't be against US or any country if you think about it. Part of having healthy international relationship is good relationship with every country possible. Going against American politics is almost never a good thing(for better or worse). I live in US so trust me I seen both sides
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u/icancount192 1d ago
Thousands of dead Iranians in protests exactly like the islamis state kills people today. Corrupted government, exactly like today. Backwards countryside, exactly like today. Anti-government protests in big cities, exactly like today.
The Pahlavis were shitty despots and were replaced by shitty theocrats.
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u/SupermarketNo3496 1d ago
I mean this scenario is kind of meaningless without you describing how it came about. Did an act of Allah erase the 1979 revolution and all the tensions that sparked it? Did the Islamic Republic one day decided to invite them back like Charles III? I think you’re referring to the Pahlavi dynasty, but did you mean a scenario where an aspiring military officer takes over and founds a new dynasty, the same way the last one started?
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u/Petka14 1d ago
Sort of a shia Saudi Arabia, Western friendly. Unless the talk about modernisation from the former Shah wasn't just lip service, then it could be better than what I'm describing lower
The population is around equally fucked, maybe less extremist but less educated overall. Probably the development would be dumped into big cities to create the visibility of progress, but rural places would get neglected
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u/aesn1394 1d ago
As an Iranian, the shah was FAR from perfect. Compared to this current regime, he's looking more and more like a saint. I know some of you (especially western leftists) keep bringing up him being a western puppet, but currently when many Iranians can't afford food bcs the Islamic Regimes horrendous policies, we'd much rather take a pupper that makes our lives more stable. When you can't feed your family, you really don't care if your leaders are a puppet or not. Also before you say western sanctions have caused Irans poor economy, the regime, especially through the IRGC has many ppl that actually benefit from the sanctions and cause loads of financial corruption, since they become the only ppl to import good into the country.
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u/brimister 21h ago
Forget food. Tehran will likely have to be abandoned because they have no water for the city. The Regime has so grossly mismanaged the civic infrastructure of a country that is so wealthy, it deserves to be overthrown for that reason alone - let alone all of its other crimes around the region.
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u/Habibi961 1d ago
America’s sanctions is what’s destroying the economy in Iran for the past 40 years?
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u/aesn1394 1d ago
America's sanction are 50% the problem at most right now over here. The IRGC have their own import export mafia that completely control everything and the central bank. They could've kept things stable and actually kept the currency competitive. Instead all they do is funnel the money amongst thenselves, squeeze ppl out of their money and send massive amounts to Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis and pay for importing proxies from Iraq to kill ppl in Iran. Not to mention building massive missile silo cities under the mountains, leading to drying up rivers and draughts. Also they could've shifted or slightly adjusted their foreign policy instead of landing Iran into all this sanctions. They talk about using nuclear energy for peaceful means and energy. We hsve hours of power outages, even pre war. A country with loads of natural resources btw. They've mismanaged the fuck out of everything.
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u/Habibi961 1d ago
50% of ur economic issues over a 40-50 year period is also quite alot, im no supporter of irans regime, I hope you win ur fight on ur own against ur regime and get real democracy.
I just feel like it’s worth pointing out, that US sanctions have made a gigantic effect, it’s litterally in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and now we will never know if Iran would have developed differently without all the sanctions, could have been a totally different country.
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u/joesoldlegs 1d ago
Missile silo cities? How does that work
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u/aesn1394 1d ago
They have their entire missile stock piles under mountain in Iran and the launchers are housed there too. In order to keep all the personal from enemy fire, they hsve entire mini cities built into those mountains to house them. Think of them as bunkers but using natural boundaries. They also have thousands of miles of tunnelling to move munitions. An environmentalists group was captured around 2007 around a construction area in Iranian Boluchistan province. They had discovered them building these cites that was causing massive harm to the local water supply. They were all arrested and some even killed to keep them quiet
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u/Silly_Animator 20h ago
I mean that is the point of sanctions. They don’t collapse the economy but if they shave off 1-3% of economic growth every year for 40 years it devastates the country. Look at Iran compared to Saudi Arabia, North Korea compared to South Korea, or Cuba compared to the Dominican Republic/Puerto Rico. It’s the long game.
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u/PuzzleheadedNotice58 1d ago
Surely we'd have to imagine the 1953 coup not happening, leading to the 1979 revolution not happening.
In that case, we'd have to imagine Churchill and Mosaddegh agreeing the 50/50 oil revenue split (that Churchill turned down irl - this is the pivotal event leading to Operation Ajax).
With the UK and Iran remaining friends, Iran would still be a UK-like Constitutional Monarchy and the CIA would never have been called in, nor perhaps would the Iranian secret police have oppressed Iranians bad enough to trigger the 1979 revolution.
Iran would presumably have been a staunch Western ally, and 2026 would look very different.
In short, Churchill chose poorly.
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u/TowerApprehensive154 21h ago
Hundreds of thousands, perhaps a couple million of my fellow Iranians would not have died directly or indirectly by the regime. Our environment would not have been decimated by deliberate ecocide. Our pride and national identity would not have been trampled by islamofascists. Our resources would not have been sold to the lowest bidder to fund hezbollah and hamas. Our national currency would not become the least valuable in the world. Our passport would become one of the strongest in the world. We would’ve been able to take part in international exams and sports like a normal nation.
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u/VeraciousOrange 14h ago
Hello my friend, How would you feel about the Monarchy being restored? The old Shah's son and his children have been living in the United States and have expressed interesting in returning to their homeland after the regime falls. I always thought it has been a wasted opportunity by the Trump administration to not attempt to reinstall them as constitutional monarchs, perhaps similar to the Brazilian Imperial model.
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u/TowerApprehensive154 12h ago
Hello there. Reza Pahlavi has almost UNIVERSAL approval among Iranians who oppose the regime. The only factions that don’t support himm are separatists, MEK terrorists, and marxists. The rest, while not all monarchists, have agreed he’s the only person who has never worked with the regime in any capacity and the person who truly cares about Iran. I myself am not a monarchist at all, but I trust his leadership because nobody but him wants what’s best for Iran: the regime gone and our glory restored. I repeat, no one wants that as much as him, the regime has created a lot of false opposition figures who appear to be against the regime but in fact work with the IRGC behind closed doors. It’s a matter of trust that has been completely eroded in opposition figures because we hear and see them mingling with regime lobbies. Reza Pahlavi is the only consistent voice in the opposition who has always maintained the regime is an illegitimate occupying force and needs to go.
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u/VeraciousOrange 12h ago
I'm an American, obviously culturally I am opposed to monarchy at home, buy for a nation who has had its history so deeply eroded and undermined like Iran has by its own regime, perhaps a monarch with strong connections to Iran as it was will be the best unifier for the nation. There are ways for monarchy to be opperated where the monarch can still have the power to enact the actions the country needs to rebuild while still not being a tyrant. I believe Iran could be a shinning light in a very dark light of the world. I believe historically it has been, and that this horrendous period of its history does not taint the rest of Iran's history, nor necessarily its future. I believe restoring the Shah could be the key.
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u/TowerApprehensive154 12h ago
I agree completely. Monarchy does not necessarily equate tyranny. Iran desperately needs a leader who truly loves Iran and the Iranian identity, not imported Islamofascists who view Iran as a resource to be expended for their jihadist wet dreams.
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u/VeraciousOrange 11h ago
I mean, I have read the Constitution of Iran. Under the Islamic Republics Constitution your nation can never know peace as your nation is constitutionally required to continue the Islamic Revolution in all other nations that oppose Shia Islam. The support of terrorism and nuclear proliferation are therefore constititutional mandates. This regime is beyond negotiating with, and I weep for the pain that they have put the Iranian people through and the pain thst is necessary to put them through to remove the regime.
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u/TowerApprehensive154 11h ago
Thank you. Believe me, you are in the minority when it comes to non-Iranians and their grasp of the dire situation we are in. Again, thank you for your understanding and compassion❤️🫂
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u/EngineeringOk3547 1d ago
- Iranian still Shia religious
- No Houthi, No Hezbollah, No wahhabism counter reaction
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u/Majestic_Juice5961 1d ago
The Wahhabism would still be there.
And the houthis and hezabolah would still be there aswell.
These are organisations that existed and functioned without Iranian support for years.
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u/Tech-Film3905 1d ago edited 1d ago
Not true. The Wahhabis and Zaydis both existed before the Islamic Republic. Saudi promoted Wahhabism across the region, and especially within Yemen before 79. Yemeni grievances against Saudi Arabia already existed. Saudi also annexed 3 of Yemens provinces
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u/Historyp91 1d ago
I mean, it kind of still is; the Supreme Leader holds pretty much monarchial power and is treated essentially as a monarch.
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u/thgr8Makar0sc 1d ago
More like a Pope but yes
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u/Mean_Cable9299 21h ago
Iran would be a power house with strong military and economy...oh my poor country colonized by buch of Islamists to achieve the goal of creating a 60th fake Arabian state, such a waste of potential for us, the Iranian people...
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u/jsa1993 20h ago
"oh if only we could be a slave to the zionist empire! We'd be thriving with democracy and freedom like Libya!"
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u/Mean_Cable9299 19h ago
We Iranians have the right to hate Islamism and its crimes without you foreigners feeling the need to use our suffering for your own goals. Why should all the lives and dreams of my people have been spent on the Palestinian cause?! Anyone who doesn't want to pay for pan-Arabs is a Zionist?!! Fuck Islamofascim and Islamic colonial mindset of yours
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u/hardcoremaggiesimp 13h ago
the zionists feed their people make them prosper have cheap consumer goods such as cars and fridges true patriotic iran starves its own people
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u/More-Tonight-3658 1d ago
What if Iran was still democracy today? Like if western powers didn't replace its democratically ellected socialist government with monarchy...
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u/BookkeeperAmazing665 1d ago
Um.. first off mosaddgeh wasn't a socialist And secondly iran was already a constitutional monarchy before the ousting of mosaddgeh. And Thirdly mosaddgeh in his last months was behaving like a dictator, doing things such as dissolving the parliament by means of an illegal referendum which he suspiciously won with like 99% Im not a mosaddgeh hater and obviously US and UK are culprits in this situation, however the 1953 crisis is not as black and white as people make it out to be.
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u/snakepliskin97 1d ago
It would have had to become even more extraordinarily oppressive than it already was to survive in 1979. The Shah was utterly despised and brutal, especially with his SAVAK secret police.
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u/niceandBulat 20h ago
I think the ME would be a lot more peaceful now. They like strongman politics. It could also mena that Israel would have more clout than today since the Pahlevis were and still are very Pro-US
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u/Tech-Film3905 1d ago edited 1d ago
It would be like Egypt, privatizing and selling off everything and having an authoritarian Mokhaberat crackdown system. It would also have zero sovereignty and Israel/US would just secretly back proxies to attack them so they can milk more concessions from them. US and the west were never going to allow for a sovereign Iran. Thats why they toppled their secular democratically elected leader in 1953.
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u/Jazzlike-Plate-935 1d ago
It would also have zero sovereignty
You don't know what you're talking about. The Shah wasn't a US OR Soviet puppet.
In Iranian foreign policy, we have terms called positive and negative balance policies (or balance of power ig), where you give specific privileges to, let's say, SUPERPOWER NO. 1, but you also give some other privileges to SUPERPOWER NO. 2 in order to keep both superpowers happy. And the balance you need to maintain in order to achieve this IS SO, SO DELICATE that it's hard to even describe. So this is the positive balance policy (which the Shah had in mind, and it worked for the most part, as he managed to keep both the Soviets and the Americans happy).
But then, in 1953 Dr. Mossadegh came out of nowhere and introduced an alternative called the negative balance policy in which you give no rights or privileges to any foreign superpower. (E.g. no oil for the Soviets OR the Americans.)
This ultimately backfired on him and led to the coup d'état by you know who.
The Shah simply favored the Western way of life for Iranians. He wasn't a US puppet.
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u/Dave_A480 1d ago
Then the US, Israel and Iran are still allies with each other.... The US helps defend Iran against pro-Soviet Iraq in the 80s, so that war is much shorter.... Saudi Arabia is much less important globally....
If Israel managed to achieve peace with Egypt and Jordan in this world, nobody has heard the word 'Palestinian' in a long ass time, because there is nobody left bankrolling the 'resistance'.
On the other hand without Iran as a threat for the Arabs to unite against, maybe they are still futility trying to destroy. Israel.
Lebanon has an actual functional government (No Hezbollah).
The Syrian civil war was much shorter....
Yemen doesn't have Houthis.
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u/Steridire 1d ago
"Because there is nobody left bankrolling the 'resistance'"
What do you mean by 'resistance'?
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u/Von_Speedwagon 23h ago
The Palestinians would still be fighting for resistance, they don’t just magically disappear because Iran doesn’t help
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u/FactBackground9289 Your local russian 1d ago
Eh, it'll be a okayish country for the region it's in.
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u/bigbanksalty 20h ago
Realistically the best way for the Shah to stay in power would have been to try and co-opt part of the opposition into his government, which was far from easy. Most likely it would have to be the liberals, with Iran shifting towards a constitutional monarchy and his powers eroding towards a figurehead, though he’d probably regain a lot of influence behind the scenes and if would be far from a free and fair democracy.
There are probably no western sanctions so the Iranian economy is likely far better off then OTL and it remains if not a US ally then not outright hostile to US interests in the region. There is maybe no Iran-Iraq war, since the main cause was Saddam’s fear of the now Shia Theocracy in Iran exporting its new ideology to Iraq. Though Saddam was also far from a friend of the Shah and it’s still possible he does invade it probably goes worse then OTL because the Iranians were suffering from a purged military and chronic shortages of spare parts for American and British equipment they were using.
The Iran-Saudi Proxy Wars are probably still a thing, though the character of the groups Iran backs may or may not be different from the groups they back now, it’s hard for say how pragmatic or ideological its government would be in who it chooses to back where. Though it’s safe to say the Middle East is probably pretty different
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u/OwnPurple148 13h ago
Better than it is now but only because of the lack of sanctions and bad press. The Shah would have died soon after the revolution anyway, and his son and heir has repeatedly shown himself to be nothing but a puppet for the highest bidder without a competent bone in his body. We’d likely see the same amount of corruption and repression as we have now but just with better PR.
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u/FineYoungVegetarian 11h ago
Then it would be a respectable country., that Dictator Trump would beg to visit for the photo op.
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u/Filligrees_Dad 1d ago
No HAMAS, no Hezbollah, no Houthis.
Oil would be cheaper.
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u/MediumGlittering7505 1d ago
And people would still be under another dictatorship that by itself is a slave to the biggest nations to keep that dictatorship alive.
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u/menina2017 1d ago
Yeah but at the expense of who? The cia helped overthrow the guy who wanted the nationalize the oil profits. Greed is part of why we’re in this mess.
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u/NoArm7707 23h ago
CIA didn't want it that way
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u/Visible_Celery_1728 20h ago
other way around buddy. CIA didn’t want the elected guy ‘mosadeggh’ and overthrew him and then they installed the shah
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u/CombatRedRover 13h ago
Mossadegh was a prime minister who dismissed parliament - which means he was structurally no longer prime minister - and then stayed in power.
I'm sick of that ridiculous narrative about what a great democratic leader Mossadegh was. He threw a coup and was removed from the dictatorial position he had assumed.
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u/Visible_Celery_1728 13h ago
mostly agree but it doesn’t white wash British and American interests in the region which were solely around BP oil and iran nationalising their own oil.
and instead of post coup- having another election they just planted a pro western authoritarian monarchy instead.
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u/CombatRedRover 13h ago
The Shah was already head of state at that point. He wasn't planted, he was already the Shah.
Edit: the entire popular discussion of this circumstance is loaded with truckloads of bullshit language like that.
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u/leftscapular 10h ago
In ur effort to seem impartial, you end up defending a monarchy. Absolute Redditor historian moment.
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u/CombatRedRover 9h ago
In my BEING impartial, I'm pointing out that a "democracy" that doesn't follow the rules is just as much a tyranny as any dictatorship.
In Plato's "The Republic", what is the "bad" version of democracy, again? And how was Mossadegh not an example of that?
Democracy is nothing more than what is popular. There are a lot - a LOT - of good things that come with it. But without rules, without bumpers to keep a democracy within its predetermined structure, you get tyranny just as surely as you do with a direct dictatorship.
"Oh, but you got the Shah instead of Mossadegh!"
Yup. And given Mossadegh's policies that he was pushing as a (popular) dictator, Iran would have collapsed decades earlier, wouldn't it?
Or are you going to ignore that, too?
Devolving policy and politics to the level of electing a prom queen is not functional or effective. Not matter "ur" point of view.
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u/leftscapular 2h ago
Self proclaiming impartiality is pretty hilarious. Kinda exposes ur true ulterior opinions. It’s ok to admit ur biased, it’s funny that my comment hit you like a truck so hard you literally fell on referencing Plato for 7 paragraphs.
Just because you can vaguely paraphrase one of the most popular figures in all of history, doesn’t mean ur unique in understanding it. Everyone know what Plato meant, except I never was glorifying democracy—look at trump.
Again, do a little more digging on the shah, maybe you’ll learn why self proclaiming “BEING” (in all caps btw) impartial is a little hilarious.
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u/WatcherOfTheWay 1d ago
It wouldn't be in the shit islamic mess it is and the world would be a better and safer place and people likely wouldn't have issues with Muslims.
The islamic regime has a lot to answer for.
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u/xyreos 1d ago
I personally think the ME would be a lot more peaceful. I mean, we all know organizations like Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houtis are all financed by Iran.
Also, it could probably compare to a western country in regards to civil rights, like other islamic countries with a decent secularization.
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u/Medical-Tank-960 1d ago edited 1d ago
It would eventually have to turn into a constitutional monarchy by the late 2000s or else the Arab spring could spill over and cause a civil war between monarchists, republicans, and Islamists.