Calls for Ahmadinejad's head…from Iranians. "Guns, fireworks, tanks, [President] Ahmadinejad should be killed."
"Iran fuel rations spark violence," from the BBC:
At least one petrol station has been set on fire in the Iranian capital, Tehran, after the government announced fuel rationing for private motorists. Iranians were given only two hours' notice of the move that limits private drivers to 100 litres of fuel a month.Tehran is trying to rein in fuel consumption over fears of possible UN sanctions over its nuclear programme.
Iran fears the West could sanction its petrol imports and cripple its economy.
"Guns, fireworks, tanks, [President] Ahmadinejad should be killed," chanted angry youths, throwing stones at police.
Eyewitnesses have seen at least one petrol station in the outskirts of the west of Tehran on fire.
All over the city there are huge queues and reports of scuffles at petrol stations as motorists try to beat the start of the rationing and fill their tanks.
Finally…a crack. This is proof positive that the West's approach to Iran must be hardened. Tougher sanctions lead to tougher times. Tougher times lead to unrest. Unrest leads to change.
Crossposted from The American Israeli Patriot.
Cool
I hereby issue a fatwa that all Iranian gas stations (evil infidel technology) be burned.
Ayatollah Molotov
Reports are saying that Iran imports 40% of it's refined petroleum products. This is definitely an angle we need work. Not only does it take the struggle directly to the people (lack of motor fuels for personal use; goods and services will suffer, too), it will increasingly limit fuel supplies for the military.
I'm not sure where the 40% of refined product is coming from, but maybe we could put enough pressure on the suppliers to stop delivery that it would have an effect.
A naval blockcade would be a provocative step to take, but it would be very effective in keeping that 40% from entering the country and in restricting Pres. Tom from exporting crude oil to generate money.
Keep the pressure on them!!
Well at least they have some spirit , we are sitting and watching the government destroy the country with amnesty and appeasement and we do nothing but pant for Paris
We should help the Iranian people by launching Tomahawk missles against the single refinery Iran operates. This action would help them in the long run.
Well this certainly makes the job easy.
Step 1. Blockade gasoline imports to Iran
Step 2. Take out the refineries in Iran with precision smart-bombs.
Step 3. Make a separate peace with democratic Persians.
Step 4. Support as the new Iranian government whatever group sincerely denounces jihad by name.
Step 5. Commence demullahfication.
Considering that we already have three Nimitz-class supercarriers in the Persian Gulf, it's not a far walk to Step 1.
'A naval blockcade would be a provocative step to take, but it would be very effective in keeping that 40% from entering the country and in restricting Pres. Tom from exporting crude oil to generate money.
Keep the pressure on them!!
Posted by: livefreeordie!'
....just a note...most of Irans refined gas supplies come from a land pipeline from Iran to Russia....
...is would be a simple matter to take out the pipelines...
....despite all its bluster, Iran is showing signs of internal turmoil....but what else can you expect when you have a majority population of muslims....
...good or bad...we need to ban Muslim immigration...
I the conspiracy of the West is working, unfortunately. The West is gloating. How much suffering are these heartless killers in the West are willing bring about in the region? The so-called civiized world should be ashamed.
Progressive's typical Islamic timeline thinking:
Iran ignores the warnings of the IAEA and continues to develop its nuclear capacity.
THEN:
Iran's Mullah backed presidential puppet, Ahmadinejad, continually calls for the eradication of Israel and the US.
THEN:
Iran rations gasoline fearing additional economic sanctions, causing civil unrest amongst the masses.
THEREFORE:
It is all the fault of the heartless killers of the conspiratorial West.
"Islamillogical", to say the least.
The best solution for Muslim Iran is to leave them alone, without an external enemy typical to Isamic tradition they will turn on themselves. Just wait it out.
Can't say I'd miss seeing Amedinijad go, but the clerical rule will never cede power back into the hands 'of the people' willingly.
And I'm not so sure Iranians would want a secular liberal democracy.
I get the same gut feeling I had before Iraq '03 that the Iranian poeple are not going to be our friends or even be friendly to us after 30 someodd years of living under embargos.
I feel it would be far wiser to invest our hopes in a strike aimed at preventing Iran from acquiring enriched uranium.
There couldn't be a better time to embargo to reduce refined imports or, destroy a refining facility within Iran. What the hell are we waiting for?
Oh right. Our president is at muslim prayer service this morning and making nicey-nice with his local iman. He'll get right on that when he returns to the office.
"Tougher sanctions lead to tougher times. Tougher times lead to unrest. Unrest leads to change."
by Robert
I doubt it.
The Iranian people have been living with this "revolution" for almost thirty years and they still haven't tired of it. It will take another thirty years.
Thirty to forty percent of Iranians have been born since 1979. There is no sign of anything like what happened in the 1960s with baby boomers in America. They may tussle over things like tuition benefits but, if anything, the younger Iranians are even more fervent in their Islamic beliefs than their parents, most of whom still remember the shah.
The Iranian people are highly nationalistic. Make sanctions a public issue and you'll only drive them closer to Ahmadinejad. It's what happened with the nuclear program. The Iranians are proud of that program. They're not concerned about what it means for Iran's neighbors. It still makes them feel good to give the West a black eye.
Even if they got rid of Ahmadinejad that doesn't mean the Islamic revolution falters. They'd have to kill all the mullahs before that could happen. It won't. You have to wait for the great satan generation to bite the dust.
Leave them alone. Let them commit national suicide.
Do not confuse whining Muslims with a political movement.
Unrest in the midst of people like Washington, Adams, and Jefferson leads to representative republics.
Unrest in the Middle East leads to tribal warfare in the absense of a dictator.
Exsgtbrown,
Thanks for the info. I wondered how (and from where) the refined products entered Iran. Same with their exports, I had assumed some probably left via pipeline.
The good thing about the oil industry is that it requires constant maintenance in one way or other to work properly. Iran's production is plummeting since they spend more time and money causing trouble than exploring and developing new oil fields; the refining capacity is limited and could be easily made much more limited; pipelines and pumping stations don't move around very much and make nice targets.
Basically, they've run everything into the ground and currently are very vulnerable in several different sectors. I hope and pray that we exploit those vulnerabilities.
Quick. Send lighter fluid and matches.
Petrol station on fire? Funny they have some to spare. The Muslim/Arab way of making things better.
Restrict the flow of refined products imported into Iran. No point in giving them reason to blame us for their problems.
Let the Iranians trash their own facilities. It is only a matter of time.
First no Tomatoes and now no Gas. Up next, no Government.
A new progressive Middle East.
This is a political gambit by Ahmadinejad. He will let the Iranians panic for a month or so, then announce that the fuel rationing has been suspended. Everyone will be happy and he'll gain more support.
This is a political gambit by Ahmadinejad. He will let the Iranians panic for a month or so, then announce that the fuel rationing has been suspended. Everyone will be happy and he'll gain more support.
Unless we destroy their refining capacity and shut down their import capability in the mean time.
Then even if he lifts rationing there won't be enough to go around. And since he's blaming us anyway, why not take advantage? After all they declared war on us in 1979.
let 'um eat cake
This is also prompted by the fact that Iranian oil reserves are dwindling quickly. (Which is why Iran wants to take the oil in Iraq and is willing to make nuclear weapons despite U.N sanctions and continue killing American soldiers by-proxy.)
I wrote this, this morning, and once again, I'm trumpeting the necessity for an attack on Iran's Islamic regime and their nuclear centrifuges, among many other points:
Don’t Let Ron Paul Negate Your Common Sense
PMK says:
"The Iranian people are highly nationalistic. Make sanctions a public issue and you'll only drive them closer to Ahmadinejad. It's what happened with the nuclear program. The Iranians are proud of that program. They're not concerned about what it means for Iran's neighbors. It still makes them feel good to give the West a black eye.
Even if they got rid of Ahmadinejad that doesn't mean the Islamic revolution falters. They'd have to kill all the mullahs before that could happen. It won't. You have to wait for the great satan generation to bite the dust.
Leave them alone. Let them commit national suicide"
I think you are forgeting the punitive purpose for imposing sanctions or intentionally impeding the distribution of refinded products.
I think you would agree that we cannot wait much longer for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. Something must be done. We cannot rely on Iranian national suicide as our policy for addressing this threat. I am all for immediate destruction of nuclear facilities by whatever means. However, if Iraq is any indication of the time such attacks must be planned and hoops that have to be jumped through before such action is taken, some other methods should be considered.
If disruption of the economy leads to revolt with an end result of the thug-in-chief being ousted, then we ought to try that first. Agreed it may not work based on your theory, but it ought to be attempted given the alternatives. A successor to the thug-in-chief would also know that continuing with the nuclear program will lead to other sanctions or attacks. I think some action now is worth the risk.
It's odd, not so odd, that there was no riot's or discontent when the 'Religious Police' had a public orgasm at the expense of 'improperly attired' people. Most of you saw the picture's, those 'officer's' were getting off on that brutalty. Rationing gas on the other hand causees riot's, torching's, and call's for Beasty Boy's head.
Iranian's need more of both of those. Rationing's and beating's. Maybe they will get tired of being the whipping boy's/girl's of the Mad Mullah's, and 'do' something about it.
This is one of the reason's that government's are the enemy's of humanity. They are all in the same club, in that they will put their population's at risk, so that they can pursue the agenda's of power and money. George is doing that, Hugo is doing that, Putin is doing that, Islam in general is doing that. China is doing that. N.Korea is doing that. There are more, but you get the drift. Everyone one of these people, and their gov's, think YOU are expendable. Well, I got news for them.
The only place for absolute power to go, is down.
'Be nice to the little guy on your way up, because they are the same one's you meet on your way back down'. 'Let them eat cake', was the death song of French power, when the people got sick and tired of their sht. Iranian's must be getting sick of the mullah's and Beasty by now. Maybe the gas rationing will be enough to really set them off...
PMK:
You're right. Most people don't know that totalitarian regimes such as communism survive, despite their overall dysfunction, because large swaths of the population either benefit, directly or indirectly, from the regime (see the North Korean military, over 1 million strong, who are better fed and housed than the miserable rest of the population, and who kill the "enemies of the people" without a blink just for speaking against the Dear Leader, or the "intellectual" and artistic classes of the old Soviet regimes pampered like nowhere in free-market societies in exchange for their ideological loyalty--see, just for starters, the "divine" Alicia Alonso for Cuba or Sergei Bodnarchuk for the Soviet Union) or aquiesce in it out of fear.
Add nationalism and religious identity to the mix,in the absence of other markers of identity such as a profession or success in one's work, and you've got a society that feeds on totalitarianism and perpetuates it.
That's why I refuse to see the ex-communist states as "victims." That's also why I don't see the Iraqis under Saddam or the Iranians of today as victims. They are complicit in their own victimhood. The only real victims are the children and the dissidents in prison.
It's naive to read, in a single event at a Teheran gas station, more than a temper tantrum thrown by young males (watch the video--they rule Iran's world and especially the night anyway), dressed in Western garb and annoyed at the prospect of spending more on gas for the night's carousing than they'd planned.
It's not the Boston Tea Party, folks. It's not about Ahmadinejad or the mullahs, despite the slogans coming down the wire. At this point, it's just nuisance.
Posted by: walterc
This is a political gambit by Ahmadinejad. He will let the Iranians panic for a month or so, then announce that the fuel rationing has been suspended. Everyone will be happy and he'll gain more support.
Afraid not,
Iran has been trying for more than a year to avoid this situation, the Mullahs are aware that messing with the fuel hurts
Happily the Mullahs have put themselves into a very tight corner
I remember 1998, when Suharto hiked the price of fuel, it led to his downfall.
Leave Iraq Now,
How do you propose we eliminate their weapons program? You're for doing it by any means necessary but not the way it was done in Iraq. What then?
Their suppliers are the first avenue of attack. Russia and China are the chief culprits. Russia is assisting their ballistic missile program and who knows how they're being helped on the nuclear side. The French were building Saddam's reactor. What are they doing with Iran, which is one of their primary trading partners?
In any case, Iraq shows us that sanctions don't work unless everyone is on the honor system. The UN sanctions were violated routinely and UN officials were bought off in oil-for-food. Who is going to monitor the Iranian border? Maybe you can keep oil from moving out of the Persian Gulf, but that doesn't mean they won't be able to use conduits. Here we are trying to build up the Iraqi oil industry. Just imagine Iraqi frontmen selling Iranian oil. Iran is not an island. They have land borders with many countries. Are we going to monitor every country that also has a land border with Iran?
Replacing the thug in chief gets you nothing. All the power is with the mullahs. If they don't like what he is doing they'll get rid of him themselves. He'll resign and they'll hold a special election with candidates who are acceptable to the religious community.
As long as he remains, take that as a sign that the mullahs are happy with the job he's doing.
After insisting that no clerics run the government, Banisadr was elected president of Iraq in 1980. He was also popular with the people and he gave some the impression that he didn't really think the US was the great satan. People wondered if US-Iranian relations could be repaired. But Khomeini wasn't happy with his job performance and he first took control of the armed forces and later found a pretext for impeaching Banisadr. The man had to flee Iran to save his life.
The point is that no matter who is the public face of the Iranian government, the power resides with the clergy.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
If you think we should leave Iraq now then how willing would you be to fight inside Iran? I'm not because it's my view that the Iranian people have done nothing to deserve even one American soldier to put his life on the line for them.
You'd have to fight inside Iran because it's not Iraq in 1981, with a reactor that could be seen from the sky. There's no target or even set of targets that can be pinpointed. You saw our intelligence feats in Iraq and earlier in Sudan and Afghanistan. Remember the hullaballoo when US forces bombed a "wedding caravan"?
Try standing before the UN and explaining why the US hit the wrong city and maybe killed "fifteen thousand innocent people". Try explaining why we bombed "an aspirin factory" or "a shopping mall".
This is a job for the Iranian people. They have experience bringing down their own government. They did it before. Let them do it again.
Maybe they will get tired of being the whipping boy's/girl's of the Mad Mullah's, and 'do' something about it.
duh_swami
Of course they will. They'll blame the United States for deliberately causing their oil shortages and "waging a war on Islam". It's easier than taking responsibility for their own future.
That's why I refuse to see the ex-communist states as "victims." That's also why I don't see the Iraqis under Saddam or the Iranians of today as victims. They are complicit in their own victimhood. The only real victims are the children and the dissidents in prison.
Posted by: ovidius_naso
I see more of a mixed bag.
Most of the ex-communist states were handed over to Stalin by FDR at Yalta. Their people spent over fifty years in captivity. Those that tried to rise up (Hungary, Czechoslovakia) were invaded by the USSR.
The Sunnis under Saddam weren't victims, but the Kurds had more of a claim.
What I find puzzling is that most of these states, once the Iron Curtain came down, were able to recover. Those that couldn't, like Albania and Yugoslavia, had large Muslim populations. Coincidence?
The Kurds, after many years of infighting, were able to create a largely peaceful society that remained so even after Saddam was overthrown. The Arab Muslims weren't. Another coincidence?
Is it Islam or is it tribalism? It seems one strengthens the other. It's a vicious circle.
"Iranians protest fuel rationing"
It's a start, butt I'd feel a lot better if Iranians protested their governments violation of people's human and political rights.
"Iran fears the West could sanction its petrol imports and cripple its economy"
;
;
When did this become an option?
If only you could see the smile on my face!
I would love to see the look on imanutajobas face!
This isn't over yet though because he and his cronies will have to make examples and thats gonna pee a bunch of Iranians off.
One could be led to believe that the clock will have to be hurried along for the masters to achieve thier glorious plans.Lest they lose thier heads.
Ahhhhh how sweet it is.
Let them burn effigies of Rushdie for power.
The apoplexy of Islamic Rage Boy alone could power a fleet of Toyota pick-up trucks.
They just have to learn conversion.
(Plenty of gas in those centrifuges, I heard, also.)
Maybe they will get tired of being the whipping boy's/girl's of the Mad Mullah's, and 'do' something about it.
duh_swami
Of course they will. They'll blame the United States for deliberately causing their oil shortages and "waging a war on Islam". It's easier than taking responsibility for their own future.
Posted by: PMK
You got me there, muslim's have never been very good at taking responsibility for their action's. Why should they start now when they have such popular scape goat's, as America and Isreal...
Thx for the good news! We need it.
"let 'um eat cake
Posted by: CaptainGrevious "
.....would that be "yellow cake"...
"Nuclear fuel starts with uranium, a naturally occurring radioactive material. The uranium ore is mined and refined into a brightly-colored solid uranium compound referred to as "yellow cake"
As the last count from public radio's news 12 gas stations have been burned in effigy with just 603 gas stations to go. I hope the UN sanctions do not include BIC lighters.
It's hot inside and things might self implode. Good luck Iranian's and may your gas rationing "go" better than it has so "far".
MK