[NYP] For some 46 years, until 2025, Iran enjoyed a North Korea-like reputation in the heart of the Middle East: unpredictable, reckless, dangerous, self-destructive, nihilistic and inevitably, one day, nuclear.
But was it really ever all that formidable?
The mullahs came into power after the removal of the Shah and subsequently the interim secular socialists.
They did so by taking American hostages, murdering opponents, executing former supporters and transforming the most secular and modern of the Middle East Muslim nations into the most medieval — one that routinely hanged homosexuals, adulterers and almost anyone who questioned the authority of the ayatollahs.
In other words, these were gruesome people, but they didn’t necessarily have a competent military. |