It's a more sinister piece of propaganda than that though, at least in that it IS citing true facts. For all the quotes save for those from the newly elected president(which I just haven't searched) there exists written and video evidence of the attributed quotes and none of the leaders quoted would deny them.

The propaganda part is in completely leaving out the reasons for the overthrow of the Shah, who was running a brutal regime of his own over the Iranian people. If the American support for the Shah wasn't enough reason for mistrust of America, there was the American backing of Saddam in the Iran-Iraq war that saw hundreds of thousands of Iranians killed in Saddam's war of aggression. That war included some of the most prolific use of chemical weapons in, well, pretty much ever and the use was entirely against the Iranians. The public support for anti-American sentiment didn't come out of a vacuum.

That said, the mistrust cuts both ways and with Iranian leadership promising death to America and Israel for the last couple decades while steadily building up the infrastructure required to build nuclear weapons is legitimately cause for concern too.

Sorry, I think that got long and preachy.

Ahmadinejad threatens to remove Israel from the map. Ayatollah Khamenei does the same. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard(which reports directly to Khamenei) virtually founded and continually provides training, arms and funding to Hezbollah which it must be observed routinely attacks Israel.

I'm not trying to say Israel is some pure and innocent virgin. I'm pointing out some basic facts that are routinely denied by a great many people and I felt the need for the truth to be out there. I also fail to understand why pointing out facts like this requires anyone to come out and basically state that Israel deserves it, or at the very least that they started it and are the ones in the wrong.

It's quite possible for there to be 2 wrongs and no need to lesson the sins of either.

The Iranian leadership and the overwhelming majority of all Iranians would be offended and upset at being called a democracy, even the moderates. They are proud of being an Islamic theocracy and the Iranian constitution since the revolution and overthrow of the Shaw has been that way.

The supreme leader doesn't go around with a heavy hand visibly running everything because he's smart enough to play the more subtle role he does. Picking and choosing who gets to lead this or that is the game. If you remember back a couple of years to the last Iranian elections you saw several of the would be candidates arrested or jailed. You saw their followers arrested, jailed and intimidated. The elections were still held though none the less. Iranian politics are way more complicated than all that, but it's a start.

Don't correct my inaccuracy with another one. Iran is NOT a democracy, it is an Islamic theocracy. My referencing Ahmadinejad as a 'dictator' was only used in the same sense that folks use when referring to Bush, Cheney or Obama as 'dictators'. None of them came to power through a coup or by birth right, and each stepped down in normal course.

Calling Iran a democracy though is just wrong, and is about as accurate as referring to America as a dictatorship, In Iran the presidential candidates must ALL be approved by the Islamic council or nobody gets to even try to vote for them. The highest position of power in the country is not the President, but the Supreme Leader who is appointed by a small group of Islamic 'experts'. There is no room in the Iranian system for the election of an non-Muslim, or even a Sunni muslim, to even attempt to hold the position of President let alone Supreme Leader.

The Syrian moderates have given up on getting any help from the outside world, they are faced with fighting Assad's army and his use of Chemical Weapons alone, or with the assistance of Al Qaida fighters. As America and the rest of the world are all choosing to just continue to do nothing it is just reinforcing the desperation of the Syrian opposition in it's search for allies that will do anything to help them.

The only real meaningful assistance the outside world can give Assad's opposition is the implementation of a no-fly zone. That would be an act of war though, so the majority of the world has been railing in opposition to it, doubly so if America might be involved because it's fun to hate the empire. The Russians and Iranians don't want it because Assad is their man and they will oppose anything that evens the playing field. Even America's war hawk Kissinger crowd are against a no fly zone because because as bobknight33 observed seeing anti-american forces fight and kill anti-american forces is hardly something they want to slow down.

No the only people who want to a no-fly zone implemented over Syria are the Syrian opposition themselves and the very, very few of us who care about them and believe it would be to their benefit. It'll unfortunately take a landslide shift in public opinion to get enough of push for any nation to actually step up and provide meaningful help. I'm afraid the reality is we get to watch either a slide into Somalia like anarchy, or a continued escalation of ruthless repression from Assad that his chemical weapon attack was a precursor to.

Hello again,

Just commented to a video and later noticed it was one of yours. Would've just commented to you instead had I noticed first. I have to say I still don't entirely understand where you come from in all this. Plainly and rightly you mistrust any American claims of humanitarian concern. However, in my view you seem to be misreading Obama's cues. If anything he's appeared very reluctant to go into Syria, as it'd be domestically very unpopular. As far as the Kissinger type pushers in America go, seeing Al Qaida sponsored rebels bleeding themselves out against Russian and Iranian backed Syrian military forces and even Hezbollah forces seems like a dream come true. I can hardly see cold hearted long game analysts in America wanting anything but to just grab popcorn and enjoy the show as their enemies mop each other up. I also see Obama's reluctant attitude as exactly what is being read by Assad and Putin in their responses and almost willful scorn for Obama's red line and apparent giddy eagerness to abandon the threats he'd tied to it. I just don't see the eagerness and enthusiasm for a march to war from America that you do. With an agreement to remove chemical weapons from the area, America is freed of the only possible concern it had about anything happening in the area. That seems evidenced by America's seemingly eager acceptance of it, and tacit recognition of Assad's control of the country out into 2014 in order to implement the agreement.

As for the angle I care about, what is your assessment of the UN inspection and their report? Unless you count them to be on the take of Western powers, or duped and stooged within the war zone where somehow America managed to influence them more than Assad I don't see any ambiguity to the findings. Samples from rockets, soil, and victims alike all tested positive for Sarin gas. The rockets found with Sarin on them had Russian engravings and the craters they could project trajectories from pointed towards a Syrian military base. I'm not sure how you reject all of that by pointing at 'counter evidence' gathered and presented solely by Syrian and Iranian sources.

And while the sift embraces this as fact, it still demands to see the evidence that Russian and Iranian made weapons have been used by Assad against his own people for the last how long?

@bcglorf
there are a few things i dont understand about your position.i hope you can clear them up for me.

1.you state that there is conclusive evidence that it was the assad regime that executed the use of chemical weapons and that only russia and the syrian government are stating otherwise.
could you supply this evidence for us?
because as far as i can tell the only entity providing evidence is isreal and i have to admit being skeptical of their claims.they have been wrong before and often.

2.now lets address the hypothetical that it IS assads regime that is responsible for the chemical attacks.
how does this give the united states the right to unilaterally use military force?
where is the diplomatic option?
why are we not even attempting to bring the players on the ground in syria to the negotiating table?
sanctions?embargoes?
why are we jumping right over steps 3 and 4 and diving into bombings?
how is killing innocent civilians considered "humanitarian"?

3.if the reasoning that we are being given is that a syrian intervention is based on "humanitarian" grounds and that the assad regime has perpetrated "crimes against humanity" (which is possible).where is the united states deriving this moral authority?
when we consider that the united states itself used:phosphorous and depleted uranium in iraq,which IS indeed considered a war crime.
in fact the united states has pretty much broken international law in every conflict since 1950 in regards to war crimes.
so where is our supposed moral authority?

4.if we dismiss the questionable intelligence in regards to chemical weapons in syria AND we ignore the utter hypocrisy in using banned weaponry and we focus on JUST the crimes against humanity defense for intervention.that somehow the united states is doing all this for "humanitarian" reasons.
then we must ask the question:
"if the united states is such a beacon of moral purity and is the defender of the weak and helpless that it will strike at any sovereign nation that dares to kill its own citizens.why is it that the united states turned a blind eye in other countries that perpetrated almost mass genocide against its own people"?

what makes syria more special than the millions of human beings who were allowed to be murdered and slaughtered by its own government while the united states sat back and did nothing,and many times supplied the very weaponry USED to murder those people?

the hypocrisy is staggering.

the implication is that the united states is NOT interested in a stable syria but exactly the opposite.
maybe this thought is troubling for americans but i submit that if that is the case then they have not been paying attention.

*edit-as for your "iraq is the way it is due to saddam hussein" assertion.
really?reeeaaaally?
you do realize the united states armed saddam.we didnt pull the trigger when he went after the iranians and the kurds but we supplied the gun.
you do realize that we never left iraq after the first gulf war.
are you aware that even as reprehensible and venal saddam was,iraq had running water,hospitals,schools.even with the continued bombings and sanctions iraq had a functioning government?

are we to believe ,by your assertion,that iraq is in the state it is right now due to saddam hussein and america bears ZERO responsibility?
we have occupied iraq for TEN YEARS.saddam was executed 7 yrs ago.
the united states has failed on an epic scale in regards to iraq.

remember that whole "we will be greeted as liberators"
"the oil we confiscate will pay for the war"
maybe i am reading your commentary wrong but i cant wrap my head around your assertion.
it just does not hold up under the simplest of scrutiny.

Freedom of Information provides a way for peeps to feel warm and cozy about their government acting unilaterally to ends deemed necessary by a small cadre of monkeys, while providing the mechanism for unchecked bullshit to continue unhindered.
OH, it also makes for marginally effective tabloid journalism, creating overnight sensations through banal, pompous delivery seasoned with an over-abundance of narcissistic swagger.

"CIA releases information"......Oxymoronic??! Haven't peeps with the ability to dissect newsspeak and "official statements" known that the CIA orchestrated the Iranian coup for over 30 years?

For the tiny morsels cretins like Cenk use to further distract increasing numbers of folks with regurgitate editorializing, the huge chunks of abuse of power sit rotting on a Nation's dinner plate, served nightly by whores of media everywhere. Cenk, yer a tool.

Well, it's not an Iranian stadium, but still darn impressive

This video has been declared a duplicate by the original submitter; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof declared by pumkinandstorm.

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Iranian-Soccer-The-Sportsman

One of my all time favorites, but... http://videosift.com/video/Iranian-Soccer-The-Sportsman

This is as outrageous and unjustified as Israel's last attack in September 2007 in Syria. You remember, the one Syria denied even happened for several months. The one the UN IAEA inspectors confirmed in 2011 almost certainly did destroy a nuclear reactor under construction there.

Israel considered it within it's rights to stop North Korean weaponry being delivered to Syria then, and today, stopping Iranian weapons reaching Hezbollah.

Can you honestly say Israel has no legitimate right to concern over Syrian arms shipments to Hezbollah? Do you honestly believe that Israel should be expected to simply take on faith and trust that Assad, or elements in his military, won't ship chemical weapons to Hezbollah?

Maybe we should send the schematics for this 7th grader's project to the Iranian Space program.