Yesterday, July 3, 2008, Robert Naiman of JustForeignPolicy.org posted a diary on DailyKos that meshed nicely with Jeffersons Bible’s essay, “Ignorance, Not Iran, Is the Enemy.”
Titled, “A Decent Respect for the Opinions of Mankind: Iran Literacy Quiz,” Naiman’s diary challenged readers to answer 11 questions about Iran, in these broad categories:
A. Have Iran’s leaders acted or declared their intentions to acquire nuclear weapons, arm and train Al Qaeda, destroy Israel, or “demand that God not inscribe the Zionist entity in the Book of Life.
B. Regarding nuclear weapons/nuclear enrichment, have Iran’s leaders declared that nuclear weapons are contrary to Islam; has Iran ever offered to negotiate nuclear matters with the West; do most Iranians support the notion that it is important for Iran to enrich uranium and reject the idea that Iran should pursue nuclear weapons?
C. Who has what power in Iran’s government?
D. How has the U.S. behaved toward Iran in the past, were those behaviours legal or productive, and how is the U.S. behaving toward Iran today?
Spoiler Alert:According to Naiman, here’s how Iran literati answer these questions:
A. Iran has repeatedly declared that it does NOT wish to develop nuclear weapons; there is no evidence that Iran trains Al Qaeda, rather, that would be contrary to Iran’s allegiances; Iran has never said it would attack Israel, other than in the event Israel attacks Iran first; and the stuff about the Book of Life is nonsense. In other words, all Category A. questions are correctly answered, False.
B. All Category B. questions are correctly answered, True.
C. In Iran’s complex governing system, Supreme Leader Khameini has ultimate power and authority over most decisions, including military and nuclear matters. President Ahmadinejad does NOT have such power and authority.
D. Naiman summarised this complex category by referencing several short videos. His words are worth quoting, particularly since they contain an action item:
10. In 1953, the democratic government of Iran was overthrown in a coup organized by the US Central Intelligence Agency, after Iran’s parliament voted to nationalize the country’s oil sector, angering the British (cf. “jackboot,” above) who responded to the Iranian parliament’s action by imposing a naval blockade of the country to prevent it from exporting oil; just as today Representative Ackerman’s House Concurrent Resolution 362 seeks to prevent Iran from importing gas by “imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran,” suggesting a blockade, an act of war.
True
FalseTrue. On the US role in the coup, see, among others, the book by Stephen Kinzer; a short video tells the story here. The text of Ackerman’s resolution can be found [ here.] You can ask your Representative to oppose it here.
About a dozen people took Naiman’s quiz and posted their results in a poll; most respondants answered at least 85% of the questions accurately.
Take the leap: