Word: satanizing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...beloved paranoid curmudgeon, the Iranian Archie Bunker. He blames everything - the weather, the economy, the moral vagaries of his family - on the British. This has been a constant theme in Iranian public life for at least 100 years, although the U.S. has supplanted Britain as the Great Satan, the source of all Iranian miseries, since the revolution of 1979. (See pictures of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman whose death has rallied the opposition...
...wonder why. Certainly the BBC's Persian service, the most popular source of news for better-educated Iranians, was a real problem for the regime. Khamenei and various flunkies also blamed the U.S., especially the CIA, for the unrest, but the attacks on the Great Satan were muted - a curious development. Was it due to Barack Obama's initial, temperate response to the rigged election results? Was it a recognition that Obama's Cairo speech and New Year's greeting to the Iranian people had made him popular across the Persian political spectrum, a less convincing Satan than George...
...Obama to rally other countries behind a tougher sanctions-and-deterrence plan that will further isolate Iran. But that may be exactly what the current regime wants. "Look, for the past 30 years, the Supreme Leader - first Khomeini, now Khamenei - has blamed all our problems on the Great Satan," a prominent conservative told me. "If you take away the Great Satan and we still have problems, how does he explain it? Almost everyone here is in favor of ending this war with America. But no one has less incentive to make peace than the Supreme Leader...
...against which it was constructed will fatally undermine the Iranian political system. Ahmadinejad's critics charged during the campaign that his provocative antics had undermined Iran's standing in the world, but he certainly functions to restrain any movement toward rapprochement, keeping in place the fear of the "Great Satan" that has been an organizing principle of Iran's authoritarian clerical regime...
...politics and prejudice stood in the way of his appointment then - after all, when Iran beat the United States 2-1 in the 1998 World Cup, a victory that saw millions of Iranians fill the nation's streets in celebration, Ghotbi was in the employ of the Great Satan, scouting on the nation of his birth. Now, Ghotbi's chances for success are slim, though he is bullish about his players. "The Iran team is oozing quality from every pore," he said earlier this week. On the basis of their limp display this weekend, though, the Iranians, and the American...