|
|
|
|
|
|
by phobosanomaly
2122 days ago
|
|
|
Ok, I'm going to throw out an oversimplification here, but I think it's representative of a common college-educated American's image of Iran vs. KSA. Iran is a large, middle-income country full of lots of regular folks who wrestle with weird internal politics much like we do. Sure, they're a theocracy, but we also overthrew the only democratically elected leader they've ever had. I think Iranians are pretty easy to relate to. The US is full of Irainians who moved here because they weren't willing to buy into the theocracy. KSA is a tiny, yet massively wealthy country full of spoiled princes drag-racing Ferraris and employing de-facto slaves who is currently committing war crimes in Yemen with weapons we sold them. A lot less sympathetic, and I'm not familiar with a large Saudi expat population that fled because of disagreement with the politics of the ruling monarchs. |
|
|
Iran - as with Iraq and others in the region - is of course seeing a similarly rapid population expansion.
> middle-income country
Iran isn't a middle income country. Their GDP per capita places them at #95 (below Iraq) - around $5,500 - they're a very impoverished low-income nation. That's comparable to Jamaica, South Africa and Guyana, far away from middle income. To break into the middle income group you plainly have to approach the global average on GDP per capita (or higher), around $11,000 and above will get you into that discussion. Poland and Chile are middle income nations, with roughly $15k in GDP per capita.
> Sure, they're a theocracy, but we also overthrew the only democratically elected leader they've ever had
Mohammad Mosaddegh was not democratically elected at all. He was specifically appointed by a king (the Shah of Iran) and feudal lords that ruled the Majlis. It's one of the great propaganda myths of modern times that Mosaddegh was somehow democratically elected, while it's a total fraud of a premise. Iran has never been democratic, not even remotely close, not at any point in their entire history.
Even Wikipedia openly supports the fact that Mosaddegh wasn't democratically elected, and instead he was appointed:
"On 28 April 1951, the Shah appointed Mosaddegh as Prime Minister after the Majlis (Parliament of Iran) nominated Mosaddegh by a vote of 79–12."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Mosaddegh#Appointment...
The Majlis itself was not democratically elected. It almost exclusively consisted of large land owners that were de facto feudal lords.
This would be like Jeff Bezos, Donald Trump or Barack Obama (a former President or similar) appointing the new President after the US Senate voted on who to nominate. Absolutely nobody would think that was a democratic process. And it wasn't a democratic process when Iran did it.
Today, the same people that claim Iran was a democracy in 1951, simultaneously claim the US is not a democracy. It's a rather hilarious spin if one is capable of being objective about the propaganda behind that myth-building push.