Will Iran follow the Soviet example? - Heritage Florida Jewish News
The nuclear deal with Iran has, inevitably, been accompanied by a large amount of crystal ball gazing among its defenders and opponents as to how the legitimization of Tehran’s nuclear capacity will impact its behavior. Will the Iranian regime emerge from the deal as a responsible international actor—an outcome on which President Barack Obama himself is betting—or will it seek to rub salt into the wounds of its gullible Western interlocutors by fanning existing... In 1980, when president Ronald Reagan entered the White House a few months after the invasion of Afghanistan triggered renewed fears of wider Soviet aggression, few thought to suggest that the USSR would cease to exist early on in the next decade,... At most, it was granted that the period of detente that began at the end of the 1960s had exposed Soviet society to a modest, if unprecedented, awareness of the advantages of Western democracy. “Soviet young people crave blue jeans and rock music, while their elders try to ape the latest Western fashions,” noted one contributor to the Foreign Affairs journal in 1980. “None of this promises a new Russian Revolution, but it does guarantee... Will the same fusion of “consumerism and cynicism”—hallmarks of Western life—lead Iran to become a more open society. Source: www.heritagefl.com
