Arian
ELITE MEMBER
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- Oct 21, 2011
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This is the first time I let this out here, frankly speaking, Iran was looked at as the leader of Islamic world, after Arab leaders have had let us down many times. My favorite channels were Al-Manar & Al-Alalam. And I myself was a pro-Iranian as well as my extended family. We followed up every single speech of Al-Khaminai & Hassan Nasrallah. But it turned out we were all foolish and got deceived. Right now, I have never seen a pro-Iranian in Arabic forums, only Shea Arabs. Surprisingly, one Egyptian member here turned to be a pro. But those are very few.
But I think you're seeing it black and white. Iran's popularity was at peak in 2008, before post-election protests. After that, and following Iran's selective approach to the uprisings in the Arab world, Iran's popularity decreased but there were also times that Muslims got proud of Iran's achievements. For example in 2009 even after the protests, when Iran sent the Omid satellite into the orbit many Muslims, in particular Arabs, congratulated Iran for that. I was reading comments left by Arabs on Al-Jazeera at that time and using google I realized that the majority of them had a positive view about it. Also, according to reuters and other western media before the Arab spring, Iran's popularity among Arabs was increasing while the US popularity was decreasing.
If you want my honest opinion, the Syrian uprisings turned out to be a temporary defeat for Iran because many Arabs got disappointed by Iran's selective support for Arab revolutions, but on the other hand, there were things that helped Iran save face. For example, NATO's unsuccessful interference in Libya and the number of civilians get killed in the revolution somehow justified Iran's support for Syria against the US/NATO attack. Also, if the Syrian regime doesn't fall and the situation becomes calm, surely Iran will benefit a lot from this. This will lead to Iran gaining popularity again in the Arab world because we all know that people forget things soon. If Syria doesn't fall, then after some time, when emotions are becoming less involved, people would realized that this was a great failure for the USA and NATO which would be interpreted positively by the Muslims around the world I think.
About 10 years ago, Iran had done nothing significant 10 years ago. So I think now there are more reasons to be pro-Iran for some Arabs than before. (Don't forget Hizbullah's resistance against Israel that was called a victory by many experts around the world).