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.