Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe faces new charge in Iran.

Awful as the Mad Mullahs undoubtedly are, the Shah's thoroughly evil secret Police (Savak) who were enthusiastically encouraged by the CIA were not exactly the People's Choice.

Incidentally @Chris Wilson, do you have any basis for your assertion that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, along with her husband is "dodgy as hell" or is it just some spiteful nonsense that your deranged mind has made up?
 
stockhausen said:
Awful as the Mad Mullahs undoubtedly are, the Shah's thoroughly evil secret Police (Savak) who were enthusiastically encouraged by the CIA were not exactly the People's Choice.

Incidentally @Chris Wilson, do you have any basis for your assertion that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, along with her husband is "dodgy as hell" or is it just some spiteful nonsense that your deranged mind has made up?
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A personal opinion based on what's transpired and what I have read, both on and between the lines.
 
Reading between the lines when those lines are written by a third party is a dangerous pastime..
 
stockhausen said:
Awful as the Mad Mullahs undoubtedly are, the Shah's thoroughly evil secret Police (Savak) who were enthusiastically encouraged by the CIA were not exactly the People's Choice.

Incidentally @Chris Wilson, do you have any basis for your assertion that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, along with her husband is "dodgy as hell" or is it just some spiteful nonsense that your deranged mind has made up?
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What is interesting is all the hysteria about her being British.

The truth is she was born in Tehran, lived in Tehran / Iran for 30 years, and infact only became a British citizen in 2013 and was arrested in Iran in 2016.

Her parents are in Iran, and were born Iranians, hence why she travelled to Iran, amongst other 'journalistic' sorry 'family' reasons.
 
Trig said:
Imagine what it would be like if we didn't play with others that arent on a similar level to us, bit like Starfleets non-interference prime directive kinda thing lol
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We should have done that from the start tbh. Giving away tech to some of these middle eastern countries, who still have basically a medieval society was a mistake.

They got hold of nuclear power now, so soon they will be using nukes to threaten and bully their neighbours. OFC they will also be some horrific nuclear accident at some point.
 
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And there in lies the problem, we've grown up to the point where we don't 'need' nukes anymore, but when these backwater places get hold of them, either by buying them from ex-USSR generals and the likes to those that have actively developed their own 'because we had them' and its just asking for trouble.
 
Nasher said:
. . . Giving away tech to some of these middle eastern countries . . .
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Is that what we did then?
Gave away technology?
That would be when we decided that donating the means to kill people was a philanthropic policy would it?

We gave away nothing, our "Defence" firms SOLD it; rather dealers like selling drugs, there's money in it, to hell with the consequences :rolleyes:


ps - actually, we took money for goods to supply weapons that we then decided to welch on the deal when it wasn't to our proxies.
 
Nasher said:
We should have done that from the start tbh. Giving away tech to some of these middle eastern countries, who still have basically a medieval society was a mistake.

They got hold of nuclear power now, so soon they will be using nukes to threaten and bully their neighbours. OFC they will also be some horrific nuclear accident at some point.
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I'm far more worried about the potential for a leakage type accident than military use of nuclear weapons and sadly far more likely with the approach to health and safety and general instability of many of these countries - the steps from nuclear power to a nuclear weapon are non-trivial never mind a useful delivery system.

Even Iran is highly unlikely to make use of a nuclear weapon, despite the bluster, but there is always the risk with a country like that a more extreme, less rational, faction rises to power. Their goals are far more political.

North Korea is probably the only one I'd be worried about in terms of using a nuclear weapon - even these days and even the top ranks, despite some having been educated in the west, have a mindset far more pre-1945 in this respect than the way most people outside of NK have the implications and consequences of nuclear weapons defined post 1945.

Trig said:
And there in lies the problem, we've grown up to the point where we don't 'need' nukes anymore, but when these backwater places get hold of them, either by buying them from ex-USSR generals and the likes to those that have actively developed their own 'because we had them' and its just asking for trouble.
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Unfortunately not a road you can just reverse.
 
Blackjack Davy said:
Err, no, the Shah was an authoritarian dictator who the West loved because they thought he was their nice safe puppet in charge of extensive oil fields. He was a constitutional monarch and they had an elected prime minister who had the misfortune to declare himself a socialist which rubbed the yanks up the wrong way so the CIA arranged to have him assasinated and put the Shah in his place. Except of course the people weren't too happy with that so they rose up against it and hence their bitter enmity of all things western and the USA in particular and also the reason America hates them just as much in return, if only they would fall into line and behave like a good little US puppet...
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Oh look, it's the British™ version of reality again, filled with lies and huge omissions.

Blackjack Davy said:
extensive oil fields
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...That the British were the main pillagers of. Britain spent many years stealing Iran's oil, and Britain still hasn't paid reparations*.

Blackjack Davy said:
they had an elected prime minister who had the misfortune to declare himself a socialist which rubbed the yanks up the wrong way so the CIA arranged to have him assasinated and put the Shah in his place. Except of course the people weren't too happy with that so they rose up against it and hence their bitter enmity of all things western and the USA in particular and also the reason America hates them just as much in return, if only they would fall into line and behave like a good little US puppet...
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The reality is that the British were primarily in charge of the area, and were loving all of the oil they were stealing for years. The Iranian people didn't like that, and so they elected a "socialist" man who promised to nationalise Iran's oil, to rightfully stop Britain's theft. Britain didn't like that, and they'd hoped the yanks would step in, but the yanks were busy and didn't pay much attention initially. Britain were too cowardly and incompetent to handle it all themselves, so Britain decided to make up a story (i.e. lie) about Iran seeking to ally with the Soviets. That lie is what got the CIA active. For the Americans, they saw it as scoring a proxy win over the Soviets. But the British had their own ends e.g. the continued economic rape of Iran.

During the times of the revolution, Britain was included with the USA as both were seen as "great satans". The main reasons why Britain is no longer included in that is because 1) the aforementioned British cowardice, and 2) Britain is no longer "great", obviously lol.

* Boris? Keir? Lizzy? Guess not.
 
It hasnt improved things in Iran though. They went backwards massively and became a religious dictatorship. Whos main objectives appear to be oppress women and attack Israel.

Ive met Iranians working in the UK on visas and they were desperate not to go back.
 
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I have seen this in the news again with Richard Ratcliffe protesting via hunger strike.

Why aren't our government making more of an effort to sort things out? They could get her released if they really wanted, surely? The thought that Iran can detain a British Citizen for no good reason/on false charges is worrying.

Now I haven't read about this a great deal, but reading between the lines, was Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe quite possibly up to no good?
 
Robbo said:
I have seen this in the news again with Richard Ratcliffe protesting via hunger strike.

Why aren't our government making more of an effort to sort things out? They could get her released if they really wanted, surely? The thought that Iran can detain a British Citizen for no good reason/on false charges is worrying.

Now I haven't read about this a great deal, but reading between the lines, was Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe quite possibly up to no good?
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The reason our government isn't doing more is fairly simple.

Boris is a good part of the reason she's still being held.
When he was Foreign Secretary he showed his usual level of ability and (in)competence and stated that she was in fact doing something that she wasn't allowed to do, despite that not being the truth, and he's basically boris'd his way along since, so it's not in the interest of anyone in his government to fix his mess because it reminds people that he's a useless chancer who can't in fact do his job, whatever that job is at the time. This is a pattern that has been followed since his first journalism job where he completely misquoted and mischaracterised what one his relatives said in in a scholastic paper to fit his own bit of "journalism" and then doubled down.

Unfortunately since Trump threw out the agreement with Iran over their nuclear capabilities, and IIRC our government didn't really try to stop them, our relations with Iran have been worse than usual

Basically she's there at least partly because someone boris'd it up.
 
Werewolf said:
The reason our government isn't doing more is fairly simple.

Boris is a good part of the reason she's still being held.
When he was Foreign Secretary he showed his usual level of ability and (in)competence and stated that she was in fact doing something that she wasn't allowed to do, despite that not being the truth, and he's basically boris'd his way along since, so it's not in the interest of anyone in his government to fix his mess because it reminds people that he's a useless chancer who can't in fact do his job, whatever that job is at the time. This is a pattern that has been followed since his first journalism job where he completely misquoted and mischaracterised what one his relatives said in in a scholastic paper to fit his own bit of "journalism" and then doubled down.

Unfortunately since Trump threw out the agreement with Iran over their nuclear capabilities, and IIRC our government didn't really try to stop them, our relations with Iran have been worse than usual

Basically she's there at least partly because someone boris'd it up.
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Don't forget that the UK owes Iran something like 400 million quid, which the UK admits, but apparently because of the sanctions they are not allowed to give it back. I suspect that She won't be leaving until they get the money.
 
Werewolf said:
The reason our government isn't doing more is fairly simple.

Boris is a good part of the reason she's still being held.
When he was Foreign Secretary he showed his usual level of ability and (in)competence and stated that she was in fact doing something that she wasn't allowed to do, despite that not being the truth, and he's basically boris'd his way along since, so it's not in the interest of anyone in his government to fix his mess because it reminds people that he's a useless chancer who can't in fact do his job, whatever that job is at the time. This is a pattern that has been followed since his first journalism job where he completely misquoted and mischaracterised what one his relatives said in in a scholastic paper to fit his own bit of "journalism" and then doubled down.

Unfortunately since Trump threw out the agreement with Iran over their nuclear capabilities, and IIRC our government didn't really try to stop them, our relations with Iran have been worse than usual

Basically she's there at least partly because someone boris'd it up.
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How do you know that what Boris said wasn't the truth?

Look at her employment history there us a very high chance that she was infact contacting Iranian journalists and trying to influence them.
 
Uther said:
Don't forget that the UK owes Iran something like 400 million quid, which the UK admits, but apparently because of the sanctions they are not allowed to give it back. I suspect that She won't be leaving until they get the money.
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Unfortunately Iran don't care about that. If they cleaned their act up, and became less hostile, then international sanctions would be dropped and they'd get their money back.
 
Former Foreign Secretaries from both parties are saying the debt needs to be paid...

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/nov/13/labour-and-tory-calls-to-repay-iran-debt

To me, this looks like Boris up to his Bullingdon Club antics...

He came in, wrecked everything, and is now refusing to settle the bill.

I suspect he's holding off paying up (and delaying getting this woman released) until he can net the most free PR for what amounts to nothing more than paying what is owed.

I'll put money on him demanding plaudits when he eventually "fixes" a problem, by using other people's money to pay for a situation he had a hand in making worse.
 
What exactly was her job? Seems very murky.

Im very sorry for her but I don’t really see how we can give them back 400 million gbp. If you want to go to iran give up your Iranian passport so you will be protected.
 
inferno said:
What exactly was her job? Seems very murky.

Im very sorry for her but I don’t really see how we can give them back 400 million gbp. If you want to go to iran give up your Iranian passport so you will be protected.
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What don't you really see about it?

3 different foreign secretaries have assessed that the money should be paid, so I'm interested to hear a more authorative interpretation.
 
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