Can’t believe there’s no thread about this yet.
The people are fed up with the current regime, and are trying to force them out.
The regime is killing innocent protestors. Over 300 people killed so far. Internet has been shut down for the country, likely so they can massacre large groups without it being reported on.
Trump has vowed that if Iran starts killing innocents, the US will get involved to protect them.
I really hope the regime falls. It would change the entire Middle East - the leading sponsor of terrorism would be gone. Hamas would lose most of their support. Same for Hezbollah. The world will be a better place without the mullahs running Iran.
However, since Iran has oil, maybe there’s a slight chance this one might stick?
I was on a Teams call Thursday with a colleague who’s from Iran, now living in Canada, and he mentioned some of what he had heard was going back home. He speculated that part of the reason for the limited awareness is the fact that Tehran has pulled the plug on the internet domestically, and it’s hard to get professional journalism to work given the lack of communications out.
It probably doesn’t help that the US is currently distracted with its own instances of state-sanctioned murder.
My colleague had some warm remarks about our Glorious Leader’s pledge to support Iranian citizens. I didn’t react to them, per my longstanding practice of keeping politics out of work-related calls (it came up as watercooler chit chat in a team huddle).
Diaspora perspective can differ a lot from those in the homeland. Especially those where the bulk of the diaspora come from the losing side of a war or political upheaval. Overseas Cubans and Vietnamese for example can be very pro-US when the majority who remained in the homeland are not like that at all.
In this case, I don’t know how well he fits within the archetype of Iranian diaspora. He’s in his late 20’s, maybe 30ish, and one of his degrees is from Iran. My sense is that his move was influenced by career, and until recently attending school in Canada was a great path to a Canadian work permit and residency.
Iran is a lot more organised than Libya (Gaddafi was legitimately crazy) or Syria (Assad was a despot) ever was so I don’t see any kind of catastrophic collapse happening.
Parallels would be something like Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. The previous bad guys just get supplanted by new faces (drawn from a plentiful supply of people in the background who supported the previous regime).
Trump isn’t helping matters by his rhetoric. They do not like the US there (for obvious historical reasons) so any threats of attack will actually strengthen the hardliners.
The main problem right now in Iran is economic. If you want moderate changes (which I do think are achievable) you focus on improving the economics for the bottom half of the population via sanctions relief. The tough part here is doing it in such a way that the west does not get blamed for the economic problems that have arisen in Iran (which are not driven purely by sanctions but also by economic mismanagement).
I mean, yeah, we overthrew Iran’s government and replaced it with one that would give us access to their oil, but we’re different now! We haven’t done anything like that for nearly a week!
What surprises me is that Reza Pahlavi is speaking out and there seems to be a fair amount of support for him to return in an influential position. I guess some protesters are too young to know how his father ruled.
read an article from GlobalPost (endorsed by the people at Tangle.com) about this. I have a feeling that there will be some form of regime change given that water scarcity has hit an extreme level that is adding fuel to these protests.
Note: the article says that analysts believe that the current drought is exposing the current regime’s extreme mismanagement and corruption far more than being a (primary) cause for the protests.
I saw reports this morning that over 2 days, government forces slaughtered over 12,000 people.
Where is the international outcry? Where are the people standing up for freedom for the oppressed?
I think death counts are up in the air right now, but it certainly sounds like one of the largest massacres in recent history. The international community is generally hesitant to charge into battle against ME dictators for lots of reasons, but this one might be an exception.
Of course, Americans are the typical party to get involved, but they are dealing with having just captured another country, as well as their own spiral towards civil war, so they don’t much attention to spare.
I know that you, FA, are pretty obsessed with Israel and Gaza. If this is your roundabout way of asking why people have shown more outrage towards Israel, the answer is because they originally considered Israel a good guy and ally, that deserved military support.