Iranian and American Hardliners--More Alike Than You'd Think
After reading this article about what Iranian hardliners are saying on social media, I was struck by how much the hardliners in Iran and the hardliners in the U.S. mirror each other and feed off each other. The hardliners in Iran (inadvertently) strengthen the hardliners in the U.S. by giving them something to point to and say, "See, we can't trust the Iranians--they are going to violate the JCPOA and build missiles that threaten us." Meanwhile, hardliners like John Bolton (inadvertently) give the Iranian hardliners something to point to and say, "See, we can't trust the Americans". The similarity between American and Iranian hardliners even extends to their alarm at our trade imbalances with China. Our hardliners and Iranian hardliners might actually get along if they took their collective heads out of their asses and tried--really tried-- to see things from each others' point of view. But if they were accustomed to trying to view the world from other countries' points of view they would probably not be hardliners in the first place. Here are some excerpts from the article, but I recommend reading the whole thing.
