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Well, maybe. Thing is, political/economical systems are kind of path dependent. It's easier to go from democratic to authoritarian than the other way around, for reasons that I should hope are obvious[1] The reality is that 70 years while a lot for a single creature, is not very long in historical terms. Things from very long ago can have a continuous effect that is hard to stamp out as groups and cultures form in society that benefit from the existing or new structures.

It's just not realistic to treat countries, organizations, or other large groups of people the same as if they are individuals, any more than it makes sense to treat a computer program like a transistor.

Of course, in the USA at least, there is a pervasive culture of pretending the past doesn't matter, but this is childish. Two books I can recommend if you want to expand your ability to think this way are Why Nations Fail and Prisoners Of Geography.

[1] But since common sense isn't so common: a democracy can vote to become authoritarian, but an authoritarian place can only usually become democratic by force. Also, a democracy, to survive, needs an economy that is dominated by a relatively large, not relatively small number of interests, so they will check and balance each other and no single interest can capture the whole system. But once you become authoritarian it is easy for the economy to decline, simplify and become less diverse (and thus even better fit for authoritarians). It becomes an attractor. Have you not noticed that authoritarian states have a tendency to suppress development/innovation sometimes when it seems "irrational" to pass up economic gains? This is to avoid creating more powerful elites that would compete with the existing elites. Once you own a huge enough part of the pie, it becomes more important to keep yourself on top than to make the pie bigger.

> Well, maybe

Was that maybe answering the first questions of the GP? The following:

> So We should have just supported them developing intercontinental ballistic nukes while they have continued to chant death to America and called for the destruction of Israel to wipe it off the map for decades and heavily find terrorist groups

Dropping a "maybe" after that is worrying to me. For me it's a definite no, we should not allow such behaviour. I feel as if you should have a definite answer on something like that or you can't really have a debate on it, as it's the core issue.

On a related note, how do you feel about the Ukraine / Russia conflict and US involvement?

I think it was to this.

> If only we had left them alone they’d have developed into a perfectly rational democracy like all the other Middle East / western Asian countries guided by principles of freedom and womens rights would have flourished?

What makes you think that? I'm still curious the answer to the first question though.

All paragraph after, makes it more likely than nuclear subject.

> It's easier to go from democratic to authoritarian than the other way around, for reasons that I should hope are obvious

I'm not actually sure this is correct. Consider: every democracy in the world used to be an authoritarian state. But not every authoritarian state used to be democratic.

> Have you not noticed that authoritarian states have a tendency to suppress development/innovation sometimes when it seems "irrational" to pass up economic gains? This is to avoid creating more powerful elites that would compete with the existing elites. Once you own a huge enough part of the pie, it becomes more important to keep yourself on top than to make the pie bigger.

Which, in the long run, leaves authoritarian regimes vulnerable to more prosperous and thus better-armed democracies. Which is why Germany and Japan are two of the biggest examples of large authoritarian states that were transformed into democracies.

> I'm not actually sure this is correct. Consider: every democracy in the world used to be an authoritarian state. But not every authoritarian state used to be democratic.

This is a very good question, but I think the real answer lies elsewhere in your comment:

> Which, in the long run, leaves authoritarian regimes vulnerable to more prosperous and thus better-armed democracies.

My interpretation of history is that democracy and the industrial revolution is like panspermia: it is rare and hard for it to happen on its own, but once it has somehow happened, it does tend to spread easily through "conquest" (literal or indirect/metaphorical)

But without some outside competitor or existential threat, it is very hard for an authoritarian, static system to become a more democratic, dynamic system, for the reasons I mentioned.

Thus, by installing an authoritarian government in a place that used to be democratic, we condemned them to likely stay authoritarian until EXTERNAL factors are able to force things otherwise. And that is outside of the population's control and could go on for a very long time. Especially if the ruling elite have some accomodation with the global system that allows them to avoid the competition you speak of, like an unspoken deal to keep fossil fuels flowing in exchange for being left alone.

Interesting points. I have a few responses.

I think you might be slightly underrating the internal stability of democratic institutions. Nascent democracies like the Weimar Republic are vulnerable to the "vote to become authoritarian" failure mode (though even the Weimar Republic "voted to become authoritarian" via the dubious mechanism of a minority government and a political culture where every major party engaged in street violence), but a well-established democracy has a fair amount of internal stability. France, for instance, has successfully reestablished democracy even after foreign conquest and the military coup of 1958. The US and UK have been even more stable.

> Thus, by installing an authoritarian government in a place that used to be democratic, we condemned them to likely stay authoritarian until EXTERNAL factors are able to force things otherwise. And that is outside of the population's control and could go on for a very long time. Especially if the ruling elite have some accomodation with the global system that allows them to avoid the competition you speak of, like an unspoken deal to keep fossil fuels flowing in exchange for being left alone.

I assume you're talking about Iran again here. Iran's democracy was already in the midst of an internal collapse towards authoritarianism even before the coup, though. Mossadegh suspended Parliament and invoked emergency powers in the face of internal opposition. Even the coup itself arguably had more internal than external causes (see: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/2014-06-... as archived at https://archive.ph/wdEy8).

But if you look at things more broadly, there are examples of authoritarian regimes giving way to democracies for largely internal causes, in countries such as Chile, Argentina, Spain, Portugal, and South Korea. So there's some evidence for democracy also being a stable attractor, though this is far from universal if you look at countries like Russia, Afghanistan, or most of the Arab world.

Nothing we did truly changed their path and they can complain about us destabilizing their new democracy 70 years ago but they control their destinies...

If they lost their democracy, they don't control their destinies. All the executed, prisoners, 10 y.o. girls, etc. seem to have very little control.

In the 1970s the nuclear power industry was bragging in US magazine ads about how Iran was becoming a nuclear power

https://imgur.io/gallery/IzEWU8o

The UK (and US) overthrew Mossadegh and Iran's parliament in the 1950s and installed a dictator (who the US had to beg to come to Iran at one point, the diplomatic record is now open). They got the right wing mullahs as support (Mossadegh gave women the right to vote) and the CIA worked with the SAVAK secret police to wipe out the secular left. Finally towards the end of 1970s Iran threw itself off the boot of imperialism, but as the CIA had wiped out the secular left, the patriotic moves came from the mullahs the US had backed (and bazaari merchants too).

So Iran throws off the boot of imperialism, and suddenly the US can decide it won't let Iran develop nuclear power any more (but no such rule for the orthodox Jews making the aliyah to west Bank settlements, they can have not just nuclear power, but weapons).

I also understand that this was done to protect the assets of British Petroleum (BP) from nationalization.

For some reason, we did not object so vehemently when Venezuela did this with PDVSA.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9...

...I did not know this:

"On 21 March 1935, Reza Shah changed the name of the country from Persia to Iran."

> chant death to America

While literally true, Marg bar Amrika is used to mean something closer to "Down with America". Just like saying damn isn't wishing eternal suffering upon someone. It's an expression.

> Nothing we did truly changed their path

A literal coup didn't truly change their path?

Spot on! The issue with Chomsky and his supporters is that they seem to completely paint the US as a monster, and authoritarian nations like Iran as completely innocent.

It is funny as hell that Iranians will happily chant "Death to America" in Tehran but many of their STEM graduates can't wait to get to the US on a student visa and work on moving to a green card. IMO, all green card applications from hostile nations like China, Russia, Iran, must be very heavily scrutinized, with most of them getting rejected.

It's like the people of Iran have a variety of opinions about America or something.

How did you jump from X individuals do this hence we must ban A-Z type of individuals.

Because X here is a very large number. Almost all Chinese nationals are very pro-CCP. The results are being seen in Canada, where a lot of the Chinese diaspora has started "Confucius Centers" as a way to support the CCP and spread their ideas.

In a few years, these people will be Canadian citizens. Pretty cool, eh? (/s)

Same with the Iranians. Many of them are in support of their government and their anti-America and anti-Israel agenda. Of course they seem to forget that, once the aroma of the US dollar hits their nose.

> It is funny as hell that Iranians will happily chant "Death to America" in Tehran

It’s very likely that you would chant the same, if living in Iran. As the joke goes, the guy in the USSR could freely complain… about the President of the USA