I find Iran to be a truly baffling civilization. Iranians are so educated and orderly, but the country punches so below its weight class in terms of prosperity.
Geographically speaking, over 80% of Iran’s land is classified as arid or semi-arid, and it is likely to face over 5°C of warming by the end of the century: the impacts of climate change will likely be more severe in Iran than the regional average. The region suffers from extreme weather including both droughts and flooding, seismic activity in the form tectonic uplift, particularly near the Makran coast, and constant attacks: economic attack by sanction, cyber attack on energy infrastructure, and lately even kinetic attack from neighbors. The fact that the regime hasn’t collapsed is a testament to Persian, Iranian and Islamic culture, and I hope its people find ways to prosper when the deck is so stacked against them.
Iran isn’t a breadbasket exactly, but it has more arable land per person than Germany, Italy, the UK, or Ireland. And vastly more than Japan. It’s relatively temperate now—future warming doesn’t explain its current situation. On top of all that, it has oil! In 1980, just after the revolution, Iran had a PPP GDP per capita above Taiwan, China, and South Korea. And only modestly behind Poland. Today those countries are far ahead. Same for Thailand, Malaysia, and Turkey.
The economic sanctions are a symptom not the cause.
It's nominal GDP per capita was above Taiwan, Turkiye, South Korea, and all of Eastern Europe.
If the stuff that happened to Iran in our timeline didn't happened in the 1980s-2000s, it probably could have seen an economic boom comparable to what SK and Taiwan saw in the 1990s - especially becuase the leadership in 1980s South Korea and Taiwan were equally as authoritarian as that in Iran back then.
Other similar losers from that era were the DRC, Syria (before the civil war it was roughly on par with Turkiye), the Ivory Coast (it was France's premier financial hub in Franafrique before the civil war), and Pakistan (it's GDP per capita was significantly above China's until the 1990s, and Pakistani advisors helped industrialize significant portions of the Gulf).
This is a disgusting comment. There exists no parallel here. The nazis engaged in a systematic, colossal campaign to exterminate as many Jewish people as possible. You are saying that this is somehow equivalent to Israel simply existing. Iran became hostile to Israel and to the US in 1979 with the Islamic Revolution.
Also, the US entered WWII because of Pearl Harbor, and engaged in a normal war against the Axis. Iran engages in terrorism by financing and arming terrorist groups that perform terrorist attacks on civilians. The US action in WWII defeated the nazis. The actions of the Iranian dictatorship caused deaths and terrors targeted at civilians in other countries and destroyed the lives of its own people in Iran.
The nazis engaged in a systematic, colossal campaign to exterminate as many Jewish people as possible, with a total of 6 million Jewish people murdered. They prioritized the killing of Jewish people, sometimes even over war objectives (as evidenced by letters where trains were used to facilitate the murder of Jewish people instead of transporting war supplies). Do you think Israel engaged in this kind of campaign to kill as many people as possible of any ethnicity?
The Gaza population has been increasing and almost doubled since Israel ceded the territory in 2005. Israel seeks to minimize civilian casualties when hitting valid military targets. Israel announces beforehand where targets will be hit, even though this obviously gives advantages to the enemy. Israel even just cancels their attacks if the civilian casualties would be too high. The ratio of civilians-by-combatants casualties in the Gaza war has been much lower than other wars in the urban environment.
I don't know what kind of rock one must be hiding under to not think that Israel was not trying to exterminate as many Palestinians as possible in the current genocide. It's all very well documented and indeed livestreamed. All levels of their society were calling for as much killing as could be done.
No amount low effort lawyering is going to erase cabinet ministers calling for ethnic cleansing, the use of food as a weapon, the rape of detainees, the celebration of the rapists, the double tap shooting of children by their hundreds, the killing fields of the fake GHF aid sites, the mass executions of medics and aid workers, the systematic destruction of water, health and education infrastructure....and on and on and on.
It is bizarre how you can be at the same time so arrogant and so wrong. If Israel were trying to "exterminate as many Palestinians as possible", Israel would simply perform semi-indiscriminate bombings in the wake of October 7th. This would kill many more Palestinians and would spend much less geopolitical capital. Instead, Israel spent two years performing a very targeted military campaign against Hamas. This resulted in many FEWER civilian casualties (in fact, it had a much LOWER rate of civilians-by-combatants casualties than average urban wars).
> They prioritized the killing of Jewish people, sometimes even over war objectives [...]
> Do you think Israel engaged in this kind of campaign to kill as many people as possible of any ethnicity?
Yes. There are political constraints on the amount they can kill per day without drawing too much pressure from their backers USA and Europe. They spent a lot of time finding the horrible sweet spot that allows western politicians to largely ignore constant, neverending, Palestinian deaths, allowing the killing to never stop.
This weird so-called ceasefire (Israel has continued to kill and assassinate Palestinians despite it, about 150 have been killed) that is going on right now seems more like something that Trump insisted on and Israel was forced into accepting, but is doing their best to end.
Oh and, I replied to your naive talking points for the benefit of a bystander who might be reading and still be swayed by that after 2 years of a live-streamed genocide. I do not intend to reply any further, as the discussion on all these things has been largely settled, as evidenced by Israel's shattered reputation among basically everyone under the age of 40 in even USA.
> > The Nazis prioritized the killing of Jewish people, sometimes even over war objectives [...]
> > Do you think Israel engaged in this kind of campaign to kill as many people as possible of any ethnicity?
> Yes.
You just said Israel engaged in campaigns of trying to kill as many Gazans as possible just like the Nazis did with Jewish people. Do you have any evidence at all of this? We live in the most information-rich era in history. Do you have an evidence AT ALL for this? Again, not a military campaign with military objectives that accepts more civilian casualties than what you'd like, but a systematic campaign with the OBJECTIVE of killing as many Gazans as possible?
I completely agree with you. We who wish well on Iranians can only hope the situation is speedily rectified and the regime will finally fall, ending the oppression, want, war and poverty they have inflicted on so many millions of people both within and without their borders.
Almost everything you’ve described, except for natural disasters, is an own goal. There’s literally no need for the country to be poor and on the brink of collapse. They are doing it to themselves.
Their government spends itself into poverty fighting proxy wars against Israel both directly and indirectly through sanctions. It’s a theocracy so economics is not the most important thing to their leaders.
It is a crying shame and the Iranians deserve better. At the moment 16 million people may find themselves without water in the near future. I'm lost for words.
If one positive thing could be found in this situation it might finally be the thing that brings down the regime. I think it's fair to say this year has been an annus horribilis for them.
They will still be empty eventually. It might still become a stable situation though. If you look at pictures from North Korea the only person who doesn't look malnourished is Kim Jong Un. Otoh water is different from food. Also it's the middle east. They might have to cut back on their aggression but their antagonists (who by now is literally everyone) won't.
Dont forget the mighty CIA.. so mighty they couldn't even stop trump from ruining it for the military industrial conplex with isolationism. Anything to prevent the realization that left policies are and where rejected by the people.. if you start introspection, the movement immolates.
Nothing baffling about it. Religion was used by a clerical class to marshall the lumpen masses with promises of free handouts in this world and paradise in the next. Their own thinking set (of the ruling clique) are bound by ideology - whether as matter of actual belief or means of governance - so they do not make any decisions based on national interest or reason. It is the ideology that does the 'thinking'.
(Sounds familiar? Warning bells for other locals, maybe? ..)
Most educated Iranians you know, btw, are (drum roll) in diaspora, for good reasons.
It's hard to manage a water supply and economy in Tehran when your top minds are busy running proxy wars in Lebanon and Iraq and funding or supporting ones in Syria, Yemen, and Gaza [1, 2].
It's sad to such a great people subjugated by their government.
Dams blocking the inflow to Lake Urmia that almost dried up nowadays were built by the Shah, for example. Man-made environmental damage and corruption aren't new by any measure, as well as unstable water levels and shortages in arid zones. See e.g. Aral Sea which fluctuated in the range of dozens of meters over centuries before finally drying up, which was enough to establish and subsequently abandon multiple settlements on the lake bed during the Mongol Empire.
It's an Islamic theocracy with nuclear as well as regional hegemonic ambitions; what about the corresponding impoverishment of its citizens is "baffling" to you?
There is nothing baffling about it. When the world's superpower targets you for destruction, it's impossible to prosper. What's baffling is how long they've been able to persevere.
Imagine if the US targeted germany or japan or saudi arabia for destruction. They'd be in far worse situation than iran.
Hacker News crowd does its emotional outrage voting but the similarities are uncanny: Khomeini's first famous speech when he got back was promising free water, electricity, and busses.
They are delivering on the free water promise by setting Qty=0.
