What makes Iran so secure against a successful invasion?

[Kuciwalker]

Tangent question: I know very little about nuclear weaponry, but isn't Israel sufficiently close to Iran that an attack powerful enough to wipe it off the map would drown half of Iran in fallout as well? I know that the one meltdown in Chernobyl supposedly led to fallout as far away as Finland in the subsequent years.

Not to mention Israel's nuclear retaliation...

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Oerdin


Hmmm, rivals who fought several wars but not really bitter enemies.

Right...

When Shah Ismail made Shi'ism the state religion of the Safavids he ensured that his Sunni subjects either converted or died or were relocated away from the borders with the Ottomans and Uzbeks.

This in turn meant that the Ottomans had a ready supply of recruits willing to fight the 'heretics', even if the Ottomans hadn't assumed the Sunni Caliphate. It also ensured that the Ottomans actively persecuted Shi'ites in their empire.

The Ottomans could always pose as ghazis, or Muslim holy warriors when fighting Christians in Europe or warring against Constantinople, but this image became tarnished when they declared war on the rival Muslim states of Mameluke Egypt and the Safavid Empire.

Trade continued between the two Empires, but that does not lessen the ideological divide between the orthodox Ottomans and the 'heretic' Safavids.

With the emergence of the Safavids as a dynastic state after 1501, the Ottomans confronted rivals whose beliefs directly challenged their version of Islam. By the middle of the sixteenth century, Ottoman concern about the popularity of Safavid ideas among their subjects increased their hostility towards Iran. Anti-Iranian Ottoman fatwas of this era reflected such anxieties and were targeted against the Qizilbash in particular, a trend that continued through the long Ottoman conflict with Abbas I. Sectarian hatred in Ottoman anti-Safavid polemics and fatwas was most obvious during wartime, but such enmity was only one facet of the complex relationship between the two countries during this period. Interdynastic relations between the Ottomans and Safavids were also marked by numerous congratulatory letters, embassies, and gift exchanges.

http://www.iranheritage.org/safavidconference/soas/abstract48.htm

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Elok
). The Iraqis were and are divided by ethnic and religious differences, and they waste a lot of energy distrusting and attacking each other; that same distrust also makes some Iraqis relatively friendly to the U.S. If we invaded Iran, we'd be facing a group of people whose hatred was focused almost entirely on us. Or is there a sizable ethnic division in Iran?

There is, but it splits differently than the Iraqis. In Iran the ruling group is speakers of Farsi - they make up about 51% of the population, and are almost all Shiite Muslims (of varying degrees of piety). The rest are largely Azeris, Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis, and smaller minorities. There HAS been unrest over the last 4 or 5 years in all the major ethnic regions.

But, compare the 50% who are Shiite Farsi to the only 25% of Iraqis who are Sunni Arabs. Look at how much trouble we've had with Sunni Arabs in Iraq, and now imagine them having twice the share of the population. So if we went into Iran, even if the the minorities were not opposed to us, we'd STILL have a bigger problem on our hands than in Iraq (even discounting for the secularist minority among the Farsis)

Now the question of what happens in IRans internal politics if we DONT go in, is a matter of some considerable debate.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


Look at how much trouble we've had with Sunni Arabs in Iraq, and now imagine them having twice the share of the population. So if we went into Iran, even if the the minorities were not opposed to us, we'd STILL have a bigger problem on our hands than in Iraq (even discounting for the secularist minority among the Farsis)

You're absolutely right- and even Western leaning secular regimes such as Reza Pahlavi's were avowedly nationalist, recapitulating a theme that stretches back in Iran history (or mythology) to great Iranians such as Cyrus the founder of the Achaemenid Empire and Ardashir the founder of the Sassanid Empire and Shah Ismail founder of the Safavid Empire.



Interestingly enough, the United States had a copy of Firdausi's Shahnameh which it gave to Iran in exchange for a Willem de Kooning portrait of a woman that the Shah had bought.

[Ted Striker]

And this nationalism goes back centruries, even as Molly mentioned, among the pro Western groups.


It's better to court these elements and support them idealogically and support their influence without getting directly involved in the internals of the country.