China is changing, slowly but surely. The amount of instability in the regime is growing, newer generations are slowly opting out of mainstream values, protests about inequality are growing... These things take time. Look at Putin: the more you demonize and isolate him, the stronger he gets with internal public opinion. Same with China -- which is why the leadership is bent on provoking in the South China Sea: they need newer enemies to distract public opinion.

Well, in the Iranian situation there is already more democratic than China. I hope that because the Iranian liberals were the ones that negotiated this deal, although with permission of the Supreme Leader, it will bolster the liberal's standing in the country even further and increase their credibility and their openness to the rest of the world.

I am not sure that this is true. This guy was in jail for six years just because of blogging http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/29/irans-blog... (this was also featured on the HN front page, happy down voting). Also Iran is not that far from Saudi Arabia - with a very strict and literal interpretation of Islam serving as the ruling ideology.

The Iranian people in general though are not like the Saudi people. Persia may have become Islamic but there is a stronger current of secularism there. Also the Shiite version of Islam in general is not so strict like the Sunni. Iran was very liberal before the Islamic regime took power by force. I think we will see it open up a lot more and you will see a lot more reform than Saudi Arabia in the coming years.

Here they say that the judicial system of Iran is based on sharia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_system_of_Iran . So it doesn't quite matter if you get flogged or stoned because of Shia or Sunni interpretation of Sharia.

Yes they are hypocritical to criticize Saudi and its sharia. But generally you will find the persians are not as strict as arabs. Now they have an over the top Islamic regime, but historically this is abnormal. You are aware Iran was much more liberal before this Islamic regime. They had 3 million demonstrators in 2009 to protest the presidential sham elections as well. This regime does not have huge populist support and it knows it so it went with this new liberal president after Ahmedijinad. I think the US can do better with the regime without an adversarial relationship. They can be better allies than Pakistan and the US should NOT land on any one side of the sunni/shia divide so making Saudi Arabia and its ideology exclusive allies is a BAD idea.

You are correct that Persia has a very rich history. However I think that it is difficult to predict as to how this country/culture will evolve in the future.

Also the protests of 2009 were held in the cities, I am not sure that they had universal support. (Can anybody explain why Obama was neutral during the Iranian protests but supported the Arab spring protesters ?)

Persians will not follow a super strict Islam like Saudi and other Sunni countries do. It will just not happen. You are aware they were quite liberal in the 1950's before the recent fundamentalists. Even now in Iran they recognize 4 religions, Muslims (sunni and shia), Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians. Compare that to Saudi in which there is one religion, sunni islam.

And yes the educated cities is where the main opposition to the islamic regime is. There is support for the regime amongst the more religious fundamentalists. The islamic regime is considered by many as uneducated religious fundamentalists who have gained power by force.

There is some difference from Arab countries where Islam is synonymous with government.

I have met only a few Iranians in the US. Naturally they will not support the islamic regime, but you do get a sense of the culture and how Islam is an add on. They consider themselves much more european.

Regardless of all this, the US should not become only Sunni nation's allies. Read the wikipedia on Religion in Saudi Arabia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Saudi_Arabia. It is chilling.

We do not want to get involved in their thousand year clash on whom to follow, the father-in-law or the son-in-law. It would be excellent if the US can give more importance to Iran to counter Saudi influence in the region. Obama has done wonders.

Republicans are really stupid if they continue to villify Iran and let support for Saudi Arabia and Pakistan go unquestioned. Iran was ready to support US efforts in Afghanistan. I think the Bush families oil connections with the Saudis got in the way.

> fully globally integrated market economy

You should hear the hoops rich Chinese have to jump through to expatriate their capital. Fully globally integrated market economy my ass.

And despite all those hoops, they still manage to move quite a lot of their money overseas. I'm glad they're not able to move more money faster because I don't think my local real estate market can handle any more incoming foreign capital.