Immortals
Elite Member
We should have adopted the China position after Mao died, China recognized the path it was on would lead to a weak China and its ultimate destruction at the hands of the West. So it pivoted to economic reforms and less belligerence and antiglobalization and anti west.
The results were outstanding, the turn towards capitalism allowed China much needed Western investment. The West’s economic dependence on China for its growth brought in much needed leverage to gain technology transfers to create their own domestic companies and base that could one day rival the west. A prosperous economy can support a large military budget to modernize and grow.
This is the pragmatic nature the Islamic Revolution should have brought. Not this narrow short sighted thinking that West would need Iranian oil forever and that West will collapse in under half century.
Iran was simply not long term thinking. Chinese were the ones actually playing chess, while Iranians were playing checkers and U.S. was playing WAR.
Well today China is strong enough to stand on its own economically and military and has considerable leverage over the worlds economies.
Iran has little leverage, poor economy, and not enough capital to modernize its armed forces. It also lacks key technologies in upgrading and enhancing its domestic production of goods and services. There is no major Iranian semiconductor company or major GPU/TPU company. Iran has not only fallen behind on key technologies of 21st century, but also the ones that will shape the 22nd century as well.
As I said, when your enemy is strong you need to play the long game. Burning bridges in 1980 was short sightedness. Continuing the Iraq war in 1982 instead of accepting the ceasefire because you wanted a holy war to capture Karbala was again short sightedness.
Iran could have learned a thing or two from the China playbook and been quite successful today.
