War: We had a few friends at our place
Tuesday (which was a public holiday here). We played
Cluedo, we
cooked some Chinese food together, we talked a lot about
cooking, satire, ... We enjoyed our time.
The only worrisome thing that came up a few times, was a
possible war on Iran, and one of our guests (Matin) had
heard it may even happen in two weeks time. I, having not
followed the very recent turn of events but only the
developments about the Democrats getting control of the US
Congress and Senate, found that ridiculous and impossible.
But after another guest (Arash) explained the way he thinks
some things will happen, I agreed that they may. We saw that
the only way of getting Iran and the US into a war would be
an attack by Israel. The Israeli government may be under
pressure for the various things enough to do something like
that. After all, they seem to be very angry at what
happened in Lebanon, and they may like to do something
about it.
Let me tell you what will happen from this side. The
bombs or the rockets or whatever they will be that will only
be targetted to nuclear facilities will also kill several
civilians, because of people living with their families near
the facilities, misfires, and various other reasons, let
alone future Chernobyl-like
effects.
From that moment, Iran will enter a war state. Having grown
up in a war (how many of the readers of this blog can claim
the same?), which was interestingly another war with Iran
which also had the US on the other side of the table, I can
easily tell you how that will feel like.
Random scenes that come to my mind: the very brilliant
people (who usually are very sensitive) will get hot and go
to war voluntarily and get killed. Several others who are
scared of war and the draft/conscription will hide (or get
hidden by worrisome moms) at home and will not see the light
of day for months. The borders will be closed. There will be
refugess to countries like Afghanistan and Turkmenistan who
used to send refugess the other way around, to Iran... The
effects would be irreversible. Think about the Iranians
scattered in the world today in the West, you will have
Iranians everywhere: in Arab countries, in Central Asia, in
Caucasia, in South Asia, in Eastern Europe, in North Africa, ...
The government will have much tighter control because of a
war state, which they will keep the same way the US
goverment has kept the post-9/11 state by introducing the Homeland
Security Advisory System (Did you know that the current
threat level is Orange/High Risk of Terrorist Attacks for
all US domestic and international flights? What does
“High” really mean?). The Iranians will have a
much harder time than presently, although I guess it will
take quite a while for us to get to the level Iraq is now
experiencing. I guess instead of the sect-related Sunni/Shia
conflict Iraq is having now, we will have a
ethnicity-related Persian/Azerbaijani/Kurdish/Baloch/Turkmen
conflict.
And of course, more innocent Americans will
get killed!
It may be so sad for observers, but it will be hell for us
random free software developers who will not be able to
leave the country once the Iranian government declares a
state of war (even if it's only one simple rocket from
Israel, with no US involvement).
I hope I can sleep tonight.