Fetrat or not: Russia Likes Iran's Current State of Affairs
Sam Ghandchi
http://www.ghandchi.com/3172-russia-iran-english.htm

فترت یا نه: روسیه وضعیت کنونی را در ایران می پسندد

http://www.ghandchi.com/3172-russia-iran.htm

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Some Iran analysts resemble current situation in Iran to a period around WWI before the rise of Reza Shah to power, referred to as the era of *fetrat*. That was when the last Qajar king, Ahmad Shah, was officially in charge of the country, but cynicism and polarization was widespread in the government and among the people; and rampant corruption by state officials and Islamic mullahs devoured all aspects of Iranian life, and the country hardly functioned at all while everything was in a state of wait and see. My late father who was a young boy in the era of *fetrat* told me that dead bodies of people who passed away in a pandemic of chelora at that time were left on the streets and nobody would pick up the bodies and corpses were dumped in an area which was years later, overhauled at the time of Reza Shah in 1920s and was called baghe-sangelaj or baghe-melli and long after Reza Shah in 1950, it was officially opened as park-e-shahr and in 1960 an area full of flowers was added to it. I still remember park-e-shahr which I would visit when I was a teen-ager in 1960s, especially during events called 'garden party' that were somewhat similar to county fairs in the U.S.

Let's return to *fetrat* era of 1910's. One major difference of *fetrat* era and today's Iran amidst the current Corona Pandemic, is that IRI government continues to suppress the people with high number of political prisoners who are dying of Corona virus inside IRI jail cells, and before corona pandemic, just 5 months ago in November 2019 we witnessed a street massacre of protesters by IRI, and IRI continues externally to threaten Iran neighbors as well which ended up in Flight 752 tragedy three months ago.

Amid all these disasters, one thing is sure that Russia is happy with the current state of affairs in Iran as they have been in the last 41 years because Russia continues to see IRI as a symbol of a state executing old Soviet theory of non-capitalist road which benefits Russia while being executed by non-Communists, and in the case of Iran, carried out by Islamist generals and ayatollahs. It may be ironic, but the system in Russia itself, today, can also be named "non-capitalist road" as it is a semi-communist state but run by non-communist authoritarians like Vladimir Putin who plans to rule Russia for another 24 years if he can live to the age of 83. George Washington was in good health after two consecutive terms as US president and at that time it was legal to have more terms as president and he was well-respected to be elected for a third term but he avoided doing a third term to set a good precedence. Even Roosevelt who did four terms during the WWII was an exception because of the War situation and even afterwards, US Congress changed the law of allowing more than two terms, but Mr. Putin today loves to mention Roosevelt to justify changing Russia's Constitution in this regard. Autocrats such as Putin and Erdogan use any excuses to justify their stepping over democracy.

Hoping for a democratic and secular futurist republic in Iran,

Sam Ghandchi
IRANSCOPE.COM

http://www.ghandchi.com/index2.html
March 12, 2020

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