U.S. politicians have consistently underestimated every potential and real U.S. foe. Underestimating Iran will be particularly egregious . . . and tragic. From William Schryver at metatronink.substack.com:
USS Dwight D. Eisenhower
Notwithstanding the abundant evidence to the contrary that has emerged over the past several years, most westerners, and Americans in particular, continue to deride Iran as a backward nation of mindless fanatics.
The idea that Iran could pose any credible threat to the American military, its incomparable weaponry, and its mighty warriors … well, it is dismissed as an absurd notion by almost anyone sufficiently pretentious to speak authoritatively of such things — most of whom could not come within 1000 miles of locating Iran on an unmarked world map.
Few understand what it means to be among the few extant “civilizational powers” — nations such as Iran, China, and Russia — that have somehow managed to retain for millennia both their ancestral geographical integrity and cultural cohesion.
Iran is indisputably the most underestimated of the “civilizational powers”. This is partly a byproduct of recency bias, given that the people the Greeks popularized as “Persians” have recently passed through a civilizational nadir of sorts.
But Iran (the ancient name of the region — The Land of the Aryans) has been rapidly ascendant in recent times, accelerating in the 21st century, and has now become the dominant power in the Persian Gulf region.
Iranians are an intelligent, resourceful, and justifiably proud people with a long and impressive history.
