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An iranian expat here. I have been following the news closely, mostly getting my data from my friends in Iran before the internet shutdown and after it was (sort of) lifted.

The death toll is way above this number, you have to consider the fact that Iran is a big country with many small cities, and in my city alone (which is very small and rarely has any protest going on) many people have died (i don’t have the exact numbers but it could be anywhere between 100 to 200) and when you put this into perspective you will understand that in scale of the entire country a lot of people have died.

I have heard that not only they killed people on the street but they have chased those who fled and killded them at their places or hidings, let alone the killing of the injured ones in hospitals.

It’s is a big tragedy and people are reluctant to talk about it because those who are committing this massacre are MUSLIMS and support PALESTINE so this is a moral dilemma for the left lovers! because they see Mullah’s regime as one of their biggest allies when it comes to attack West/Israel/Free market

It’s a shame that all those activist that would shred themselves for Palestine are absolutely quite about Iran

It’s very strange to go “why isn’t the left doing anything about this conflict when they cared so much about Palestine?”

My government doesn’t fund Iran.

I think when westerners like myself notice the disparity in response amongst western progressives between the Palestinian and Iranian situations, they're talking more from a social lens than the geopolitical one.

A lot of my peers have been incredibly active on social media the last couple years supporting Palestinians. They've been mostly completely silent on Iran, the imbalance is notable.

I think western leftists complain about Palestine a lot because the west is attacking Palestine and they want their government to stop that. While the situation in Iran is very sad, it also has nothing to do with my government and there would be nothing to be achieved by protesting, unless I think they need even stricter sanctions.

Further, the american government across several administrations imposed sanctions which led to premature death of Iranians, worsening conditions. It instigated the Iran/Iraq war carnage. It also bombed Iran contributing to civilian casualties. Even if it were to stage “regime change” in Iran, give the american government’s track record in Afghanistan and Iraq, the resulting government would likely inflict even more hardship upon the people of Iran. This is why some on “the left” view the united states as the primary contradiction.

Again, what am I supposed to do about it? If one lives in one of most western countries, one’s government has sanctioned Iran to the gills.

Even the government can do little more, except engage in war.

Compare this to Palestine, where direct action and protest is much more tangibly impactful.

European governments could expel Iranian ambassadors as a start.

> European governments could expel Iranian ambassadors as a start

why should they, those ambassadors represent millions of Iranians who showed in support of their country on Monday, Jan 12

I guess there is still remaining trade volume that could be further reduced by sanctions. While it is a tenth of what is typically traded with other countries in the region, I would say it is still 1000 times higher than the trade with North Korea. Having said that, the example shows that cruel dictators can still survive in isolation (particularly if the rest of the world still continues to be split on basic human rights)

"More than 36,500 Iranians were killed by security forces during the January 8-9 crackdown on nationwide protests, making it the deadliest two-day protest massacre in history,"

Too bad that this is also a first time in history, following massacre of protesters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_and_execution_of_Nicolae...

> Again, what am I supposed to do about it?

Encourage your government to invade/incite regime change I guess...?

I have never been able to work out where the line lies between intervention and colonialism tbh.

Encourage my government to invade Iran?

But only Iran?

Shouldn't we attempt regime change in, for example, the US?

It would be great if you could hand us the list of the evil countries that we should invade.

Well, they already did that and fucked it up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

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Getting past the point that this is a discussion of something meaningless in the first place (posting as social activism), why might left leaning people talk more about an issue they might tangibly have impact on over one they can have no impact on?

They are not equivalent topics!

I think the biggest difference is simple the fact that Israel has much closer ties with the US. The foreign policy of the USA has been the carrot and stick model for a long time and it seems Israel always gets the carrot on the back of national security. Iran, we have little to no relations with so there isn't anything the USA can to do excise power without serious military action

> A lot of my peers have been incredibly active on social media the last couple years supporting Palestinians.

So it took from 1947 (if not longer) to 2023 to have this population become aware of the problem. Still up until a few months ago, at least here in France, it was very unwelcome (and even politically persecuted, via house searches and terrorism charges) to even mention the idea of a genocide in Palestine.

I remember over a decade ago quoting israeli settlers, newspapers and politicians arguing a genocide was ongoing. But at the time, calling it a genocide here in France placed you in the loony bin in the eyes of most people. Given some time, the iranian revolution of 2025-2026 will be well-known.

Beyond the differences outlined by other commenters (that western governments don't support Iran, but do support Israel), there's this difference that few feel compelled to get over-active on this issue because every one already feels concerned: all the TVs are talking about it, and even the right-wingers are on board. Overall, everyone (apart from some islamists) are convinced that the Iranian government is criminal. Now what can we do?

Continue spreading awareness ; your peers may get on board! But better, get informed and involved. There may be, for example, a kurdish-iranian diaspora near you organizing solidarity protests and proposing courses to understand the politics of Iran, get versed in jineology, or understand the basic tenants of democratic confederalism. There's also other diaspora. I would just encourage you to be careful with the "Reza Pahlavi" crowd, who support a fascist regime change in Iran and would encourage just as much horrible crimes as those we witness today, if they weren't done in the name of islam.

…and they’ve been completely silent on the 20k per day, every day, who die from lack of access to clean and fresh water.

People actually don’t really care, and almost all outrage about everything outside of lunch being served late is performative.

The Soviet Union used to routinely criticize dissident Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov for having nothing to say about American atrocities.

"I don't know anything about them, I don't care about them, what I talk about are Soviet atrocities." he replied.

I wonder how many of the people arguing that "more leftists should be out protesting Iran" agree with the Soviet Union's criticism of its dissident?

My guess would be zero.

The Soviet Union was famous for engaging in whataboutism; they covered-up the true toll of Stalin’s purges (along with the human cost of their policies), and constantly oppressed Eastern Europe for almost 50 years. They are/were not a good example of anything.

> the Palestinian and Iranian situations

It's simple. One is a genocide. The other is not.

The more "israelis" ( or is it "iranian expat" ) like you try to pretend to be "westerners" and skew the conversation, the more obvious it becomes.

It's simple. One is a defensive war and the other is slaughtering of people by an oppressive regime.

The progressives are ok with the second. They do not support values like freedom or human rights. In their world as long as you are "oppressed" then you can murder and worse because you've been wronged historically. Because they've decided the Jews in their historical lands are the oppressors and the Arabs are oppressed then it's ok for Arabs to murder Jews, murder their own, and oppress their own people just like it's ok for the Iranian regime to murder Iranians.

The truth hurts.

This is pretty much entirely false. Maybe you don't actually know or talk to any progressives? Or the ones you're around are very bizarre. Or maybe you're extrapolating from impressions you've gotten on Twitter?

Russias' narrative about its special operation in Ukraine is also about a defensive war. I'm curious to know about your stance on this Russian-Ukraine conflict.

> One is a defensive war

So what the germans did in ww2 was a defensive war also? Funny how the people whining endlessly about genocide are so eager to defend it.

> Because they've decided the Jews in their historical lands

First of all, it was never the "historical lands" of the jews. It belonged to the canaanites whom the jews decided to steal it from. Read your torah. Secondly, europeans larping as jews are not part of the torah and hence have no claim to that land.

> the other is slaughtering of people by an oppressive regime.

Is that the "oppressive regime" defending itself from constant israeli attacks? Hmmm...

Another israeli trying to get the US involved in more wars for their selfish interests.

it's about preaching to the choir. I think it's an atrocity what happened to those Iranian supporters. But what's the point in posting about it? Everyone else thinks it's an atrocity. We have no power to change things in Iran.

One other point -- I think the left has effectively shifted the conversation on Israel very quickly. I think immediately following Oct 7 atrocities, public support was overwhelmingly with Israel. By raising awareness of the situation, it has now become more slanted towards "peace in Palestine." I see no reason a similar type of shift couldn't occur on any issue if a coordinated effort to discuss it and raise awareness existed.

And by doing so, it would likely cause change and or discussion by those in power.

> it would likely cause change and or discussion by those in power.

The reason this is an absurd comparison is because on the Palestine issues, it’s a desire to stop using / selling weapons into a conflict and on the Iran issue “causing change” would be starting another war in the Middle East.

> By raising awareness of the situation, it has now become more slanted towards "peace in Palestine."

"the situation" changed from "more than a thousand Israelis murdered by Hamas" to the total destruction of Gaza, the death of tens of thousands and worse.

It's not exactly surprising that there was a shift in where public support is directed.

Sorry I think the GP's point is correct. I feel the same about how we hear very little about modern-day slavery, but lots about much more minor workplace issues in the west. I'm not saying don't discuss modern workplace issues, and don't battle for even better working conditions -- but the silence is deafening. If American children were working 12-16 hour days in sweatshops, it would be nonstop in the news.

By not speaking out, it lessens the moral standing of those making a huge ruckus over certain issues, but remaining silent on arguably far more serious ones.

The power to cause change in democracy rests mostly in influence over decision makers who hold the power and money. The ability to get the news and media and celebrities talking about an issue is what gives protestors and those shouting on the left power to change things. Ultimately politicians and the elites want to be "in the right" to hold onto their power and money.

As an example, suppose 80% of the population was suddenly in an uprising about atrocities in Iran, and the next major election hinged on this subject. If some political party takes the right actions, they win the presidency house and senate. Do you think nothing would happen? Trump has literally said he wants to annex Greenland -- anything is possible if leaders feel they have political mandate.

Sitting in comfortable silence or talking about relatively easier issues just allows the more complex issues to go unsolved.

Again, nothing against pushing for peace for people in Palestine, but claiming that we should just ignore things in Iran reduces the legitimacy of the cause.

The pro-peace activist in WWII, who knew of concentration camps, but never mentioned it, and even told others not to discuss it. They claimed there was no point, nothing could be done. But the legacy wasn't the pro-peace activism, it was denial of the glaring situation they ignored.

This has never been about (western) morals which is why the masked violent crowds don't care about Russia, or China, or Saudia Arabia or Iran. This is about taking down the west because the west is evil. They also don't care about crimes against humanity perpetrated by Palestinians: https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/0282/2025/en/

This crowd is also not calling for "peace in Palestine". That would be something everyone would obviously get behind and could lead to a constructive discussion about how we get there. They are supporting violence against Israeli civilians and calling for the destruction of Israel and the murder of its populace.

It also has nothing to do with "US aid to Israel" since we see the exact same behavior in other western countries that do not aid Israel at all. For Americans to question how their aid money is used (e.g. why is it going to Egypt) or who the US does business with (e.g. why with Saudi Arabia or Qatar) is perfectly legit but it's obviously not what's going on here.

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This is a wild take. You think the arab spring, Syrian revolution, Libyan revolution, Iraq war, interventions in Somalia and Sudan etc.. we're all CIA operations at the behest of Israel? Seriously?

I agree with @epsters perspective - while it may not have been done at the behest of Israel, it is increasingly becoming clear that most of these so-called "revolutions" exploited the naivety of the youth and incited them through planned (CIA? MI6? Mossad?) social media campaigns on platform all controlled by the west. Throw in a violent, committed group into the mix of these naive young idiots when they are protesting, to deliberately target and provoke the police or the army, and you have the recipe to start a civil war in any country and potentially destabilise it. The aim (from what is apparent in Ukraine, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal etc.) seems to be to replace experienced politicians with inexperienced politicians who can then be easily influenced and manipulated (over a period of time) to completely flip government policies to match the interest of the foreign powers behind the incitement.

I mentioned many conflicts and many countries so this is very broad to cover in one comment but i will try, briefly. I have heard many theories given over the years to justify these interventions - democracy, capitalism, liberalism, oil, minerals, gas-pipelines, gas-fields, neoconservatism, neoliberalism, neo-colonialism, fighting terror, WMDs, fighting rogue states, checking expansionism, checking communism, countering soviet union, countering russia, countering china, oil contractors, defense contractors, petrodollar, maintaining global reserve system, global security, stability, American national security, European security, national security of Gulf allies, shipping lanes and trade routes and finally Israeli national security. How many of those goals were achieved? What did America get out of the Iraq War? Was Libyan intervention a net win for France ? Or Europe? My question is after 20 years, how much of those theories still hold up. Don't get me wrong, many of those things mentioned were indeed motivations and played a part in many of the cases. But ultimately most of these theories crumble in the face of 20 years of evidence. Except the Israel Theory. Reading Israel's national security strategy (outlined in documents like the "Clean break" report and the "Yinon Plan") Suddenly all the seeming 'naive' and 'futile' actions of the west , all the failed intervations, human catastrophes, blowbacks and disasters; they all make sense.

I am not saying all the people, protestors/fighters, parties, involved were mossad/cia agents or all of them arose out of covert action. I am saying that is what shaped them, and ultimately determined their outcome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yinon_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean_Break:_A_New_Strategy_...

I think you're completely right, and the fact that most people don't realize this makes me think that even most 'smart' people are pretty stupid when they have to think outside of what the media tells them.

I don't think they're stupid and i don't fault them. I made extraordinary claims and it took me 20 years of seeing extraordinary evidence to face reality.

Completely crazy. Not only had the war in Iraq hurt Israeli security, rather than improving it, Israel opposed the war knowing that it would be damaging rather than beneficial. What you have is not "the Israel Theory", what you have is a conspiracy theory.

Netanyahu came before Congress in 2002 to strongly urge the invasion of Iraq. What universe are you living in?

Ariel Sharon was the prime minister of Israel in 2002. Netanyahu was a civilian. You seem to be unable to tell these two very different people apart. I suggest going easy on the green stuff.

>Israel opposed the war knowing that it would be damaging rather than beneficial

Here's a video of Benjamin Netanyahu doing the opposite of opposing the Iraq war in front of Congress in 2002.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVPauUOVrmk

>Not only had the war in Iraq hurt Israeli security, rather than improving it

I am aware there was internal debate in Israel on relative benefits of taking out Iraq's conventional military capability, its economic potential, remnants of its WMD program and breaking apart Iraq's territorial integrity versus the risk of Iraq falling under Iran's influence. Evidently Netanyahu's faction prevailed in the debate. Though both sides would have preferred taking out Iran first before going after Iraq.

>what you have is a conspiracy theory.

You can call it whatever you want. The true test of a theory is if it fits the evidence and its ability to predict events. Do you have a better theory of why Americans and Europeans repeat the same failed policies over and over in the middle-east?

Here's my prediction on Iran : I don't know what Trump will do ,if he will ultimately accede to Israel's wishes, but if a 'civil war' breaks out or If Trump or any future American regime decides to invade Iraq. It will conservatively lead to a decade of war, one million deaths, millions of refugees (from Iran, Iraq). If the Islamic Republic collapses I am doubtful on whether Iran will survive as an integral nation. But Israel will get what it wants. which will be - taking out Iran's nuclear program, breaking Iran apart and Israel becoming the regional uncontested power (until Turkey or Egypt emerges but thats the next round). Israel will likely formally annex more of Syria, and Southern Lebanon as well or create a buffer zone rump state. Palestinians will never see sovereignty. They will be ethnically cleansed or live in a glorified bantustan. Iraq may not survive in its current form. It will be a bloody, expensive mess for everybody else. Likely American lives will be lost. I struggle to see how a regime change would be achieved without US boots on the ground. The Iranian people will be all but certainly worse of. Just like the people of Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, etc.

Like I said to the other person here, Netanyahu was acting in a private capacity as a civilian, not a representative or office holder of the government of Israel. It amazes me how you conspiracy nutters can't tell the difference.

You don't have a "theory". You worked backwards from your conclusion that "Israel = bad" and created an entirely false narrative that only sounds plausible in your own deluded head. Furthermore, you have absolutely no proof, obviously, for your conspiratorial ravings, so the most charitable description of your thoughts on the matter would be a "conjecture" not a "theory".

And I'm sorry but I don't care about your predictions.

> You worked backwards from your conclusion that "Israel = bad"

I did work backwards. from the evidence. I didn't start with "Israel is responsible for everything". In fact i used to dismiss that theory as "low iq" and believe "that it's complicated". It is complicated, but not as complicated as i used to think.

Saying Netanyahu was "just a civillian" and had no political influence in the Bush admin, in Israel or the Israel Lobby is particularly comical he is the current primeminister and longest running leader of Israel. That period was just a brief interlude when he was not serving in a formal capacity. His vision of the middle-east is exactly what the middle-east is today.

edit : I partially take back 'Libya' - i think the Libya affair is less influenced by the Israeli interests. But still, even though Gadaffi had given up his WMD program and become a friend of US and Europe, he was still a foe of Israel. So he still never could become a friend of the west. Funny how that works isn't it. Almost Like Europe and the US can't have a relationship independent of Israel's interests.

Your brain is fried. To think one tiny country is controlling and directing all world events is just laughable.

>To think one tiny country is controlling and directing all world events is just laughable.

No. i think one tiny country directs American foreign policy in the MENA region, and Europe by-and-large follows its lead. You haven't countered the substance of my claims. You frankly seem low-information on the matter.

What "imbalance"? It is disingenuous to equate the two political situations as the same:

1. Palestine is a settler-colony of Israel, where the Israeli-right currently in power is conducting a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza ( https://www.btselem.org/publications/202507_our_genocide ) while continuing to steal their land and deny them basic rights. ( https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/6/who-are-israeli-set... ). The oppressors and the victims are clear in the Israel - Palestine conflict, and thus it is easy to take a firm moral stand supporting one over the other.

2. What is happening in Iran is either (at best) a power struggle and violent conflict between two groups - the supporters of the Ayatollah and the supporters of the Shah (backed by the west), or (at worst) the start of a civil war. In this case, apart from sympathy for the victims of violence on both sides, it is hard to take a firm political stand for one side because both have a tainted record. (How The CIA Overthrew Iran's Democracy In 4 Days - https://www.npr.org/2019/01/31/690363402/how-the-cia-overthr... ). Note that these so-called "revolutionaries" in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal too went on a rampage when law and order collapsed there, looting killing and doing senseless destruction ultimately destabilising their whole country. (Now Bangladesh is conducting a farce "democratic" election that deliberately excludes a major political party, the Awami League, because the so called "revolutionaries" fear that they will not be able to defeat them electorally. Something similar happened in Ukraine too). When both sides choose violence to capture power, and are hell bent on excluding the "other" from any future "democratic" setup, who really is the one with the "democratic" values and the real victim?

There is no doubt in my mind that the stand of the west (US / UK) here is totally hypocritical (and morally repugnant) if you praise the opponents of Ayatollah as "freedom fighters", while with the same breath you denounce the Palestinians as "terrorists" for daring to fight their Israeli colonial masters for freedom!

1. Palestine is not a settler-colony of Israel.

2. The opposition in Iran is not orchestrated by the west.

1. Israel-Palestine:

- History of Settler Colonialism in Palestine - https://www.globalresearch.ca/history-settler-colonialism-pa...

- Israeli Settler Colonialism Is The Obstacle To Peace - https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israeli-settler-colonialism-i...

- From Balfour to the Nakba: The settler-colonial experience of Palestine - https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/balfour-nakba-settler-...

2. Iran-US/UK:

- How The CIA Overthrew Iran's Democracy In 4 Days - https://www.npr.org/2019/01/31/690363402/how-the-cia-overthr...

- They don’t care if you die: How Iran’s protests became a bargaining chip for oil and power - https://www.rt.com/news/631163-irans-protests-oil-and-power/

You wrote "Palestine is a settler-colony of Israel". Nobody on either side of the conflict believes that. Your response here is a non sequitur.

> The oppressors and the victim are clear in the Israel - Palestine conflict

Only if you zoom in and focus on one tiny sliver. If you look at the bigger picture, Israel is surrounded by dozens of countries 100s of times its size, that have all been ethnically cleansed of Jews, many of them in different stages of open or proxy war with Israel, militarily or politically.

If you look at the even bigger picture, it was Israel that decided to pick fights with all those countries.

Those countries literally attacked Israel on the day it became a state, and many times thereafter. Israel is definitely not perfect, but their neighbors have been trying to wipe them out for no good reason for a long time.

What was the process that made Israel a state? What was there before Israeli state was? Who were the allies of that country?

I'd suggest the Wikipedia article as a very good starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Israel#Ancient_Isra...

Did they have states in 1209 BC? I'm pretty sure the modern Israel state is a modern invention, that just happens to take its name from former states. The modern state of Greece isn't the one from Jesus's time either.

Well, if you're only going to count modern states, the only previous one to occupy that area was the Ottoman Empire. After that, there was a British Mandate, but that wasn't a state. Modern states only started after the Treaty of Westphalia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Westphalia

Unlike the west, the Arabs or Persians have never nurtured any hatred of Jews till the British (and later the Americans) forcefully backed the creation of a Jewish state in the middle-east. Even today, muslims around the world don't give a damn about Jews or antisemitism unless it is in the context of Palestinians. This is in stark contrast to the christian west, which still harbours a lot of antisemitism and is the factory that still generates most of the modern Jewish conspiracy political tropes (some of which do find their way to religious fundamentalists in the east too). The Israeli-right, ofcourse, has a vested interest in painting Arabs and muslims as antisemites, because otherwise "Israel" can't showcase itself as a "victim". I do believe the Israelis are victims too though not in the way the Israeli-right depicts it - early Zionists never realised that the bigger plan of the western superpowers in forcing them to the middle-east (instead of giving them their own country in Europe) was part of their "divide and rule" policy for the middle-east. Frankly, Israel and Palestine will never be at peace because it is not in the interest of western superpowers. (The Israeli-right have latched on to this too, and are trying to exploit it to increase their own power and influence in the region. Unfortunately for them, that is undesirable for the west and worse, they did it in a way that brings unwanted attention to the west - the Trump and Blair lead Board of Peace is the western response to cut Israel down to size, in the coming future).

There was plenty of oppression against Jewish people in the Middle East before Israel became a country. Blame whomever you want, but the Jewish populations there were targeted for discriminatory taxation and various other forms of oppression.

The Jizya tax on non-muslims in many Islamic empires was never a "discriminatory" tax. This is a common anti-muslim trope and an example of distorting history by considering it through modern political lens. In most muslim empires, this tax was only imposed on non-muslims who wanted to be exempt from serving in the military but still be a citizen of the Islamic empire they were part of. Those who chose to join military service were exempted from payment. Only free adult, non-muslim males were required to pay it and women, children, elders, the disabled, the insane, religious workers, hermits, slaves etc. were exempt. Some muslim rulers also exempted the poor amongst the non-muslims from paying it.

Muslims weren't required to pay a similar tax to the government because they were already obligated by their religion to pay a certain percentage of their wealth every year towards charity (Zakat).

This trope was popularised as part of the "divide and rule" policy of the British to generate animosity between muslims and non-muslims in many a British colony and today is commonly spouted in the anti-muslim tirades of many a right-wing religious fundamentalists.

This is not true, Jews, like many other groups, have been oppressed and humiliated by the Islamic Arab world for well over a thousand years. I truly can not believe you can say this with a straight face if you have spent any amout of time in Arabic speaking circles. The disgust towards Jewish people is open and constant, and I am not talking about attitudes towards zionism.

Today, Jews are denied entry to many Muslim countries - not just Israelis, anyone who looks Jewish.

The excuse that “some other people of this religion did something bad” does not justify hating and ethnically cleansing everyone who shares that religion.

As for the ban on Jews by some Arab / muslim countries - remember that the west was actively encouraging Jews, with zionist movements all over the world, to migrate to the middle-east any occupy muslim-Arab land. Sure, it began with a narrow focus with only Palestine. But who knew where it would stop if it was successful? Most of these countries are former western colonies who immediately understood what the west was trying to do by sending foreign Jews to occupy their land - the "divide and rule" policy was how they were subjugated too in the first place, to become colonies, and the newly independent Arab states understood that by driving Jews to the middle-east, their former masters wanted to use the Jews to foment a conflict between Jews and Muslims which they could then use to break the newfound unity amongst the Arab states and use as an excuse for interventionist politics. It had (and still has) nothing to do with antisemitism and everything to do with making sure that former imperialists doesn't exploit any political vulnerability in their country and endanger their (then) newfound independence.

It is not as those Arab nations are some phenomenon of nature. The process of Arabization was, and perhaps is, itself one of settler colonialism and oppression. The fact that the colors of the caliphates are explicitly flown in areas outside of Arabia is proof enough of that.

Most western a world governments don't fund Israel and yet people there seem to "care" a lot. I don't think your argument holds water. Many western governments trade with Iran and support the oppressive regime there in direct. The US also funds Egypt which is another oppressive regime where there's no human rights. It supports Saudi Arabia that chops up journalists.

Your logic doesn't hold because it never held. The reason people "care" about Palestine is that they've been manipulated to care.

The logical thing would be for the American population to stand with Israel when it's being attacked. That would be the normal default. Like the rest of the world supported the US when it was attacked on 9/11. What we're seeing is the collapse of logic and truth and the win of propaganda campaigns and lies.

> My government doesn’t fund Iran.

And iran doesn't control the US like israel does. And iran doesn't force censorship on americans like israel does. And iran isn't commiting genocide like israel does. When's the last time iran order the US government to attack peaceful college protestors on american college campuses? Israel has. And the US government obeyed.

You are talking about US.

UK doesn't fund Israel, yet they've had most demonstrations there - still do. Clearly it isn't about the violence (whether in Iran or Israel). It's about Israel.

The RAF does a lot of flights over Gaza so the UK is actually involved, and the big focus in the UK is on Elbit systems who makes parts for the planes that bomb Gaza. The UK government isn't materially supporting the Iranian regime as far as I can tell

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There have been protests in countries that do not “fund” Israel too, so it’s not about funding only.

The protests have also been against the Israeli government so you’d anticipate at least protests against the Iranian government if not against one’s own government which they protest because of funding.

But we don’t see those protests against the Iranian regime. It reminds me of US protestors protesting the removal of Maduro contrasted with near total approval from expat Venezuelans in various countries.

Something doesn’t square.

Most western countries already don’t do business with Iran. These are extremely different situations. The whataboutism is just bizarre.

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In the simplest ways also, to "fix" the situation in Iran, potentially a war has to start.

To "fix" the situation in Palestine, a war has to stop.

That's inherently very different.

And Donald Trump and republicans in general already want to murderfuck Iran and always have, and don't need or want my support to justify such an act, and already bombed Iran once this admin.

I don't support all that 100% but it's not like I have any advice on the matter. I certainly don't have better ideas of where to bomb Iran or how to help a populace 8000 miles away rise against their oppressors.

> To "fix" the situation in Palestine, a war has to stop.

Curious then, why, instead of tearing down photos of the hostages, we saw precious few protesters urging Hamas to return the hostages they kidnapped in order to stop the war they started.

Any possible response to this comment would either be full of lies or an extreme violation of site rules. Well done, nice trap.

Thanks for your service.

Yes, OUR government does fund Iran. Read about the Iran Nuclear deal under Obama, we gave them billions, more than we have given Israel.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-united-states-iran-an...

https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/03/politics/us-sends-plane-iran-...

To add context: the funds were not “given” as one might give humanitarian funding. The funds were Iranian financial assets that were frozen after the Iranian Revolution, accrued interest over the subsequent decades, and were returned as part of a legal settlement. I stake no position on whether this should have happened, just providing more specific color to the situation.

that is true, but it was still a large sum of money given to an authoritarian murderous regime, was it not?

That's an extraordinarily loose definition of "gave"

Your government doesn’t fund Israel, either.

Not only do we fund israel, our leaders have been wasting trillions fighting wars on behalf of israel. The newest target israel want the US to take out is strangely enough - Iran...

US does not fund Israel. US has a strategic interest in Israel, just as much as it has in Germany, South Korea, Japan and many other places which host a huge US military presence. Unlike those outposts, the support to Israel is given in American military equipment.

Most Western governments fund Israel. The US funds it the most.

Where’s the data to support your extraordinary claim?

You could start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_supplying_ar...

You’ve given a list of countries selling weapons to Israel. If I sell you my car, I am not “funding” you.

What an exercise in utter futility.

You could also read https://www.cfr.org/articles/us-aid-israel-four-charts

These are just Google results.

> It’s a shame that all those activist that would shred themselves for Palestine are absolutely quite about Iran

That's not a fair position, those people don't have the duty to make every wrong right. As an Iranian expat how much of your time and money did you invest in fixing Iran? Apparently there are 2 million Iranians in US and just over a million in Europe and a million more in the rest of the world. What did the 4 million strong Iranian diaspora did on that matter?

That's really an unfortunate statement. I see this talking point from pro-Netanyahu accounts, showing empty university campuses and I wonder if they are demanding right to kill more people under their control(since Iranians killed more people per day and Israel is mission out) or trying to smear the protesters(which I don't see how it make sense, you don't become hypocritical of you don't invest your time and money in every issue).

I am not sure if they are asking them to more or less suicide when they go meet their relatives.

I know iranians in Spain, my country. It is lilely they are not perfectly organized but everyone deserves a life as normal as ours.

I support the fact that he comes here to disclose some more information if possible.

> because they see Mullah’s regime as one of their biggest allies when it comes to attack West/Israel/Free market

you are looking it differently, I disagree, I am one of those who supported Palestine.

Reason we are silent, because our governments already did what's needed from our side: heavily sanctioned the Iran, if I go and protest, what do I ask? To sanction Iran? They would laugh at me. Obviously, I am not going to protest and ask our government to go to war with Iran, which kills even more people.

Why is it different for Israel? Because our government supported it, we didn't sanction them, that was what we were asking for, while brutality was even higher than Iranian regime.

Not trying to downplay casualties, but just looking at relative numbers and methods, I don't see Iran bombing own people or killing 10% of its own population

Not to whataboutism this, but I've barely heard pro-Palestinian crowd talk about the stuff Syria did to the Druze, the Alawites, and now to the Kurds.

Multiple of my friends on Instagram still post daily about the atrocities in Gaza, but haven't posted anything about the atrocities in Aleppo or Kobane. Nor did they post anything when the STG was massacring the Alawites or the Druze last year.

So I find it hard to believe that it's about the sanctions or whatnot.

You are right, I also see less protests and difference in general, when it comes to other issues. I want to be transparent here and share my views (as an immigrant and living in the West, coming from other part of the world)

I personally protested for Sudan, Syria and Venezuela. Of course you might say I am just giving you excuses, but on a personal level I feel different for each one of them when protesting, my expectations also different:

* Sudan - IMO it was funded by UAE, our gov. can sanction them, but they have excuse: "Do you have proof???"

* Syria - Their excuse: "What are you talkin about, we don't cooperate with ex-Al-Qaeda, what can we do there?"

* Venezuela - "Dude, we are doing it, just shut the f... up and watch how awesome we are in conducting these operations"

* Gaza - I think initially we were naive thinking our government will help, but in reality it turned out it was same government, so it resembles more to Venezuela case rather than other cases.

> if I go and protest, what do I ask? To sanction Iran? They would laugh at me.

That's a very weird take I see repeated over and over again

You don't protest only to get your government to do something, the protests against Israel expectedly did not meaningfully change US relations with Israel yet you still presumably went out

you can express solidarity with Iranians, you can protest the massacre, or just make people be aware there are thousands dying

I do protest the massacre, but I don't know what to expect as a result. What do I ask our gov. to do?

Sanction them? To stop sending them weapons? Isolate them diplomatically?

Surprisingly, all is done already

That's a pretty self defeating approach that in general is not compatible with protests of any kind (Israel included). I don't think there were any protests in the history of the world that couldn't have died using the logic of "nothing will change"

As long as Iran has multiple countries it can sell its oil, there is still pressure to apply

The real reasons there are no protests are in my opinion the same ones people generally suspect

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> How are you not ashamed to write this to an Iranian?

Don't try to guilt trip me, I said not trying to downplay, but you picked part of my sentences. If Iran goes same ratio as Israel did to Gaza, it should kill 9 million people, that's what I wanted to convey

> Just admit you hate Jews and don't give a damn about anyone else in the middle-east

I think you are just trying hard to label me as anti-semite

Don't know about who exactly are the 'leftists' you are referring to but here's my take :

Palestine : Dont send bombs. Send Aid. Lift blockade so Palestinians dont suffer.

Iran : Dont send bombs. Send Aid. Lift sanctions so Iranian people dont suffer.

Interested to hear your take regarding the same.

Lifting sanctions just helps the mullahs flex their power on Iranian civilians. Lifted sanctions means more suffering for Iranian people and people abroad suffering from Iran-funded terrorist groups.

'To help the civillians we must starve them with total economic sanctions until they overthow their government' comes off as cynical and depraved (in hindsight of similar actions in Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan and also Iran ) and i no longer subscribe to it.

> Lifting sanctions just helps the mullahs flex their power on Iranian civilians

I am not sure how you're imagining this. Showing that they can buy an American iPhone, for example, is a worse "flex of power" than killing 30k protestors? I just don't get what is the supposed power flex without sanctions gonna be.

The purpose of sanctions is (everytime) actually different. It's to break the civilians so they would revolt against the government. So with sanctions, you're hurting civilians by definition. It might be "for the greater good", but it's certainly amoral approach in my book.

This is such an absurd analysis that it is bewildering anyone would post it.

Lifting the sanctions doesn't suddenly make their government, regulation or economy stable. Their biggest companies are all government-owned and famously corrupt and mismanaged.

This is criticism given from most of the region when the topic of lifting sanctions comes up. Nothing I said is novel or extreme.

In fact, we have direct evidence of what happens when those sanctions are lifted from when it was done under the Biden administration. They expanded their nuclear program and expanded funding to their regional proxies to carry out terror campaigns. The Houthis attacked global shipping lines and October 7th happened. That's not theoretical.

Btw, I'm of Iranian descent.

And why should liberal countries trade with genocidal regimes, so that they don't kill their own people? Is that seriously what you're proposing - appease the bully?

Do you believe and call on the United States to bomb Iran. Which is the only real offer on the table.

This created absolute hell in Syria, Libya and other nations. Democracy was certainly not delivered.

Are you calling for the US to bomb Iran? Or are you against that?

Syria was an absolute hell under Assad for dissidents, can't blame America for that. Iraq and Libya maybe, though Saddam and Gaddafi weren't exactly great leaders to their people either.

Anyway, IMO the thing about Iran is that it's mostly Shia, and the population isn't that religious, especially not in cities. Unlike Syria, Iraq and Libya of the past, they aren't ruled by a secular dictatorship, but religious extremists. So, while US intervention in Iraq, Libya and so on created space for religious extremists to rise, I think getting rid of Iranian government could actually do the opposite - give a chance for secular opposition to rise.

Iran is nothing like Syria or Libya.

> those who are committing this massacre are MUSLIMS and support PALESTINE so this is a moral dilemma for the left lovers

I'm not sure if you're making this argument in good faith, but just in case. The iranian government has no love for socialists/anarchists many of whom have been executed (especially in the years after the islamic revolution) or live in exile.

From what politically active iranian comrades told me (in exile), the social movement in Iran is very much alive and there is an underground left-wing scene (for example an anarchist/punk scene). Likewise, the Jin Jiyan Azadi movement following the execution of Mahsa Amini is very much on the left wing, inspired by Rojava's democratic confederalism.

From a western european perspective (eg. me), the dilemma is not the one you presented. Sure some fringe groups have campist [1] tendencies, but that's far from representing the Left as a whole (which has historical links with the anti-islamist left-wing in Iran). The dilemma would be: how to support a people's revolution without supporting our own western empires making the situation even worse? The most moderate/imperialist liberals have learnt the lessons from the Taliban's comeback in Afghanistan and the return of black slavery in Libya: we can do better than bomb a foreign people.

Still, the demonstrations here in France supporting the uprising in Iran (at least those who are not organized by the fascists trying to bring the Shah's son to the throne) pretty much have the same crowd as the pro-palestinian demonstrations. I'd be curious, apart from obvious propaganda, where you'd find the idea that left-wingers wouldn't support overthrowing a tyrannical government.

(cue history course about the history of secularism and why opposing islamophobia is not incompatible with opposing islamism or any theological tyranny)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campism

How are the regime able to do this? Do a majority if Iranians support them? Too afraid? The only job is the government job? Why choose to partake in the massacre even if you are on Team Ayatollah? Do those guards not consider the people the kill as Iranians?

They have a large, very capillary police-like force that answers to the national government, trained to have no problem with killing people.

The Iranians have been protesting that force in one way or another for more than a decade.

> this is a moral dilemma for the left lovers!

I think your optics are skewed as to what is seen as "the left" in US centric ways. In my east european part of the world the perspective isn't shaped by ethnicity at all (except when the organized right does anti immigration manifestations), but with disgust of what authoritarians do around the world. The world seems to be in a simmering stage, and the fact that we have our Serbian neighbors continuously protesting for more than a year, dampens ideals of being able to effect change through protests.

You sound like a good candidate to go home and to fight. Don't volunteer US kids. We should have absolutely nothing to do with your ethnic wars.

So they would be better people if they didn't care about anything? Maybe, instead of getting mad that Palestinians are getting support that you think normal Iranians should get also, you could be constructive, and offer Americans some advice on how to pressure the Iranian government to stop the killing?

I can't say I've ever seen anyone claim Iran as an ally. As usual, plastic smoking perpetually online right wing trolls conflate support for the people in Palestine with support for Iran/Hamas/Hezbollah/whatever the right wing picks as it's bogey man of the day. You are not as serious person.

>It’s a shame that all those activist that would shred themselves for Palestine are absolutely quite about Iran

Did you consider if there are any differences between the two situations? The money I earn is not being seized to fund the Iranian regime. Government and other organizations in my country are not declaring a blank check in support of the Iranian government; they're not suggesting it's hate speech to merely question the Iranian government's actions and no one is being investigated, arrested, or deported for being skeptical of the Iranian government or it's violence.

lol @ “west/israel/free market”. I think you have an aliasing bug.

Why would leftists (or anyone) be confused who the bad guy is here? Generally as a rule of thumb for international conflict you can count on the left to be on the side of the underdog, no matter how naive a view that may be in a given circumstance.

> Why would leftists (or anyone) be confused who the bad guy is here?

Because there are literally pro-Palestine protests that have supporters of Iran's supreme leader[1].

I've seen a lot of comments and sentiment from leftists in support of Iran.

What bug(s) do you have, that you didn't know this?

[1]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-04/international-reactio...

Because someone held a flag in austrailia 8 months before this current Iranian conflict, you assume “the left” (globally!?) is in support of the Ayatollah?

Even more rich because Iran is currently massacring their /leftist/ population who were protesting for rights like /free markets/. How does that dissonance feel to you?

> you assume “the left” (globally!?) is in support of the Ayatollah?

Where did I imply that, justonceokay? And no, I don't think every leftist supports the Ayatollah. Do you think every leftist, globally, doesn't support them?

I was as vague as you were, in referring to leftists. I gave a concrete example of there being confusion about who the bad guys, since you questioned why leftists (or anyone) would be confused.

Correlation isn't causation, but the estimate of number of causalities in Iran, as reported by US mainstream media, seems to go up daily as the number of victims of Israeli genocide increases! There couldn't possibly be a connection here...

I disagree. There are deeper aspects in this tragedy.

I don't want to be called "leftist" because I don't want to belong to any tribe. But I do embrace a lot of the humanist ideals of the so called "progressives" and I think they might have some moral ground in here. But feel free to call me whatever you want.

In my perspective, the oppression in Iran is different from what is going on in Gaza. It is more like what happens in Belarus, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Turkey and Myanmar: it is an authoritarian government killing and oppressing their own people. I am not American but if the American government wants to kill innocent people in Minneapolis that is an American problem that the Americans should solve, because I respect the US sovereignty.

OTOH, I am ok with western interference in Gaza because Zionism is a racist project from one ethnicity against other, it is the racist government of a racist people committing genocide against another ethnicity. It isn't an internal issue of a sovereign state as much as apartheid wasn't an internal affair of the South African regime.

> a lot of the humanist ideals of the so called "progressives"

To the best of my knowledge this is not progressive but christian in origin in our westerner societies... never mind you are not a christian. In the west it has been like that historically.

Right... although you wouldn't know it if you took a look at the current Christian right in the US: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/is-empathy-a-sin-some-...

There is some discussion about creating a new term, "Christ-like" to differentiate from the current Christian right. A number of years ago there was a saying WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) that epitomizes the new Christ-like term.

Or just call the current christian right "CINOs". Christian in name only.

I have also heard the term "Christ follower".

> Zionism is a racist project from one ethnicity against other

Wait till you learn about the people they are fighting....

So?

> So?

I'm pointing out how laughably wrong your argument is when 20% of Israeli citizens are arabs while Palestinian territory is 100% jew free now that they got the last hostage out.

> Zionism is a racist project from one ethnicity against other, it is the racist government of a racist people committing genocide against another ethnicity. It isn't an internal issue of a sovereign state as much as apartheid wasn't an internal affair of the South African regime.

And did you come to this worldview before or after October 7?

Buddy I'd join the right wingers if they weren't wrong about abortion, freedom of religion, gay rights, trans rights, economics, racism, public safety, environmentalism, cars...

Do you support the Ayatollah on abortion, freedom of religion, gay rights, and trans rights? Some right wingers might want to, but as of now he's the only world leader actively executing people just for homosexuality.

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It’s certainly not -200. I stopped reading after that.

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This is my only comment on this entire subject. Why are you being so defensive? A death toll cannot possibly be negative no matter how defensive you are.

> This is my only comment on this entire subject.

Sure it is... You insta-responded to my comment as if you are part of a propaganda campaign.

> Why are you being so defensive?

Pathetic propaganda tactic. You sure seem like an honest commenter here.

> A death toll cannot possibly be negative no matter how defensive you are.

A death toll can't be negative? You can't kill -100 people. TIL. You are why I visit hn. Get to learn something new every day.

I came on here to say that point but you said it much better then i ever could. For the record i am unapologetically pro israel, and their actions in Gaza while regrettable were largely unavoidable.

What is striking is that the death toll in Iran from a couple of weeks of demonstrations is half as much as what Gaza suffered in 2 years of a devastating war. Even taking into account the difference in population this is shocking.

Well done to my fellow Hners for trying to gaslight op that the 2 are not comparable, when everyone here knows what is really behind this anomaly.

You have all my sympathy. Even Israelis understand the difference between the regime and the people of Iran. From a practical point of view how do feel the West should respond? Would you welcome American airstrikes? What do you feel about the looming possibility of another conflict with Israel?

A lot of people died that did not have to, they are certainly comparable. Russia and Ukraine are a better comparison; Putin says that Ukraine doesn't exist and that he was forced to by NATO, etc.

The IRGC had "no choice" if they wanted to remain in power; but they did have a choice.

A massive proportion of the modern extremist violence around the world I've seen has been Islam. Not all Islam is bad but there's elements like Jihad, and Sharia law, that other religions don't seem to have in modern times.

The US liberal party worked with the conservative party to cause the conditions that furthered unrest. Sanctions.

And the US liberal party did similar attacks on the Palestinian people so it's consistent.

Iran and North Korea are evidence that with modern technology, and a ruthless enough autocracy, there is possibly no way out from under it. Technological progress only makes this problem worse. It should highlight the urgency for anybody who loves freedom, human rights, and democracy, to fight the swing towards authoritarianism in the 'free world', before there is no way back.

> with modern technology, and a ruthless enough autocracy, there is possibly no way out from under it. Technological progress only makes this problem worse.

US may not have autocrats, but it does have ruthless enforcers of "law and order" with access to advanced weapons. Its probably safe to say thst whatever the stated reason is for the 2nd amendment, it is going to be difficult or impossible to meet its objective if needed.

Yes, there are advanced weapons. 2nd amendment folks are "outgunned," but it's still an important deterrent, because it makes these kinds of massacres more costly. If the government is hunting these people down, and they have nothing left to lose, they might just take a few with them if they're armed.

One could ask, who is giving Iran and North Korea this technology? Most of it they aren't developing themselves.

Why do you say that? Iranian engineers are incredibly talented.

My cynical take is that this is the reason we're selling so many GPUs to certain foreign governments. Sure, AI is great for vibe coding and making cat videos but it's also amazing for tracking individual sentiment, influencing opinion on social media, creating fake news, and detecting threat networks. "Smart cities" are also Panopticons.

This is horrific. Iranians/Persians are some of the brightest and warmest people that have a culture spanning back thousands of years. May the young people in Iran persist and overcome this brutal regime of terror.

Unfortunately that history includes nearly perfecting the use of torture thousands of years ago. https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/torture-achaemenid-pe...

Irrespective of the accuracy of estimates it will be in the thousands, and most tragicly it will be very young men and women most of whom university educated, the very people that would be the country's tomorrow.

The Wall Street Journal says at least 10,000 people were killed: https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/irans-protest-crackdow...

Horrifying.

Towards the end it says..

Amiry-Moghaddam of Iran Human Rights said the death toll could be higher than 20,000, based on evidence reviewed by his organization.

With such a large difference between these estimates, it makes 36500 seem suspiciously precise. Comes across like a significant digit violation.

This is where using "between" instead of a somewhat precise number, even if your formulas and calculations resulted in it.

There is a word for this: “approximately”

IHR is CIA-backed, and are thus prone to inflate these counts to justify an invasion.

The CIA is definitely operating in Iran. Nobody reasonable will deny that. Mossad is too, guaranteed. How inflated their numbers are, I don't know, but even just the confirmed numbers of dead both officially and unofficially are too high.

At this point they need to split the country so people who want to live differently can do so. Maybe that would prevent needing to bomb the Iranian government into oblivion.

> IHR is CIA-backed

Can you provide us with any evidence of that?

According to this right-leaning source (Revealed: The CIA-Backed NGOs Fueling the Iran Protests - https://ronpaulinstitute.org/revealed-the-cia-backed-ngos-fu...):

Most of the human rights organisation in Iran, cited heavily by western media, are backed by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which some countries (and some right-wing political organisations) believe is used by the CIA (if not funded and a front for it). Human Rights Activists in Iran is based in Fairfax, Virginia (where the CIA HQ is). (Apparently, they've received up to a million dollars in funding from the NED). The Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran (ABCHRI) has also been associated with the NED. The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) is also based in New York City and Washington, D.C, and also funded by the NED (according to the Chinese).

According to their website NED is based in washington dc. The CIA hq is not in fairfax, it is in Langley. Even if they were in the same city that is an incredibly weak argument. Custom ink (the shirt company) is also in fairfax. Are they a cia front too?

Langley is part of Fairfax County. Much of northern Virginia is unincorporated Census Designated Places within counties.

Additionally, a large portion of NGOs are based in Fairfax county due to the proximity to DC.

The NRA headquarters is in Fairfax, and Maria Butina lived down the road from the NRA headquarters.

A fun game to play is following the source. For instance, when events in Xiajiang were getting nonstop coverage, nearly every article that came out would cite either the adrian zenz paper or an NGO's article, which would cite the paper.

Sometimes you'd have to go a few NGO layers deep. I repeated this experiment a few dozen times, about half would lead to an office park in Fairfax County. One time it was an Australian NGO that had the US DoD as a sponsor.

There is an entire industry around intelligence laundering and consent manufacturing.

Fairfax is pretty close, about 30 miles or 3-4 hours driving.

what?

DC metro traffic is hell!

Ah, the 30 miles threw me off.

3 hours for 30 miles is probaby an error, or an exaggeration, but knowing the traffic on the Maryland side of that metro area, it really is quite bad..

Can we see your documentation for this claim?

What part? NGO/thinktanks operating within a 30 minute drive to the nation's capital?

One such example is James Leibold, a scholar of Xinjiang ethnic policy. He would report on Xiajiang and the claimed genocide. He is an australian. He worked for the Jamestown Foundation based in DC.

On the Board of Directors for the Jamestown Foundation is a man named Michael G Vickers, who was previously the Under Secretary of Defense for intelligence, and worked at the CIA during the Soviet-Afghan War(The one where the US funded the Mujahadeen who immediately began throwing grenades into schools for girls).

Vickers was even featured in the book, "Charlie Wilson's War", about Operation Cyclone and the events which would eventually lead to blowback via 9/11, the war in Afghanistan, and the second Iraq war.

This is just one example. Any time you see articles like this, follow the sources. They either wont cite anything, or will cite a thinktank/NGO staffed by career intelligence workers and funded by similar groups.

https://jamestown.org/analyst/james-leibold/

https://jamestown.org/our-team/?department=board

https://jamestown.org/analyst/michael-vickers/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_G._Vickers

The NED is a CIA-cut out says the New York Times: "The National Endowment for Democracy, created 15 years ago to do in the open what the Central Intelligence Agency has done surreptitiously for decades"[1].

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20161118042417/https://www.nytim...

Either way the question has to be:

a) HOW was the data acquired? b) WHO obtained the data?

Ask @DataRepublican on X, she compiles and posts these NED traces ... on X.

This is in line with decades of behavior of cia et al on all fronts in all parts of the world.

They are right to ask for a source. I should provide them more often, if possible with statements coming straight out of the horse's mouth. These days, our politicians are so cocky they tend to announce to the whole world their conspiracies.

The source (Iran International) is backed by Saudi money and has a bias to dunk on Iran.

That said, I'm sure the death count numbers from the Rasht Massacre are staggeringly higher than the initial tallies of 2-5k.

There are other sources, like this: https://time.com/7357635/more-than-30000-killed-in-iran-say-...

Which also refer to unnamed sources and "U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency"(read CIA)

Why lie about this when the first paragraph is explicit about its source?

> As many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on Jan. 8 and 9 alone, two senior officials of the country’s Ministry of Health told TIME

The US paid for similar information from Iraq about WMDs just before it kicked off the invasion.

Meanwhile, the US is rearranging its forces in the middle east. What a coincidence.

>two senior officials of the country’s Ministry of Health

And their names are never called.

It's pretty common practice if naming them will get the people who shared the info in trouble. Depends on whether you think Time is a trustworthy source I guess

Time always was a propaganda leaflet.

Remember "bomb serbs to heel" or "sinister world of saddam"

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It is a source run by expatriate Iranians of the diaspora.. the fact that so many people just discount their point of view it's pretty frustrating. If you speak to Iranians that you work with it's pretty illuminating

The “Iranians that you work with” in the west are highly self-selecting. They’re like Cubans in Florida or Vietnamese—people who fled in the aftermath of the revolution and are extremely antagonistic towards the regime. My family left Bangladesh the year after the dictator made Islam the official religion. My dad is apoplectic about the Islamist parties being unbanned recently after the government was overthrown. By contrast many of my extended family, who came much later for economic reasons, are happy about that. The people who disliked the Islamization of the country and had the financial means to do so left while the people who were fine with it stayed.

My daughter’s hair stylist is Iranian (she was an accountant in old country). When Jimmy Carter’s wife died, she said “I’m happy she’s dead.” I’ve never seen anyone else say a negative thing about the Carters personally. Even die hard Republicans who think he was a weak President don’t hate him as a person. But this is not an uncommon sentiment among the Iranian diaspora.

> But this is not an uncommon sentiment among the Iranian diaspora

Iranian-American here, I have never heard a single Iranian badmouth Carter or his family in my entire life. This is the first time I'm hearing of it.

> extremely antagonistic towards the regime

On the other hand, this point is very accurate, I can confirm. There's a reason we left, after all. To my earlier point: this is consistently the direction of our anger - towards the regime - not the Carter administration.

> people who fled in the aftermath of the revolution and are extremely antagonistic towards the regime

Iranian who left Iran here. Do you have stats or reference for this critical piece of information?

It’s as if someone’s says, since Bangladesh is predominantly muslim, the majority aligns with what the Islamic regime does for ideological reasons and would try to undermine the account of atrocities.

But one shouldn’t believe this before seeing some polls, stats, etc.

Anecdotally this does seem to be true in US. I know several Iranians in US, from completely different social circles, but all of them strongly anti-clerical and not shy about it.

Also, as a Russian who left Russia, it's certainly a familiar pattern.

Note, by the way, that this doesn't really imply anything about whether those people are wrong to be antagonistic.

> Also, as a Russian who left Russia

I've noticed there's two distinct 20th century Russian diaspora groups in the US. Those who came here prior to the fall of the USSR, and those who came after.

In talking with the ones who came after the fall, life wasn't glamorous but got truly unlivable in the wake of the collapse.

In talking with the ones who came before the fall, they wanted to make money.

There's a group here, largely those expats kids in my experience, that swears they had things better back in Russia and ravenously consume Russian media. I used to encounter them a lot in Sheepshead Bay.

> I used to encounter them a lot in Sheepshead Bay.

My friend is one but wasn't always like that. He was never critical of Russia or the USA and was pretty quiet until befriending some Russian dude in his apt building during the blackout of hurricane Sandy. Now he frequently criticizes and rants about capitalist USA then sings praise of Russia. We keep telling him to go back but he doesn't. He's unfortunately "that guy" in our group of friends now -_-

> It’s as if someone’s says, since Bangladesh is predominantly muslim, the majority aligns with what the Islamic regime does for ideological reasons and would try to undermine the account of atrocities

That’s true. Bangladeshi people strongly supported amending the constitution to make Islam the official religion. Islamization of the country has accelerated since we left, and now it looks like the Islamist parties will get a seat at the table in a coalition government.

My spouse (Bangladeshi) and I (not) went to a rally in Jackson Heights when the first protests were going on and we were surprised by how pro-Islamist the crowd leaned, from their signs and chants. We jumped on video with my in-laws at one point and they were even like "oh no you guys should leave, these young people are Islamists".

It seems to be true across the Muslim world. My father is from North Africa, and any time we've been back there over the past decades it's very clear a large swath of the youth are embracing the more religious political movements.

I have family around Jackson Heights and one is reposting stuff from Jamaat-e-Islami (the main Islamist party) on FB.

It’s very odd. I saw lots of younger Bangladeshis supporting the overthrow of the Awami League government (the most secular of the parties). I wasn’t sure if it was people who just didn’t realize it would leave a vacuum for Islamists, or or people who wanted that. It seems there’s some of both.

My boss was a BNP supporter (at one point I deduced) and regularly used to tell me that Chhatra league was as bad or worse than Shibir.

Growing up with my militantly secular dad, I've always been shocked to even meet BNP supporters in the wild.

He always told me he didn't support any one party outright but he also told me Pakistan was a great country so I could put two and two together. He also called Prothom Alo communists.

I agree that actual studies would be good.

All I can do is throw my anecdotes into the pool: I mostly have met two types of Iranians: Those that fled in the 80's post-revolution, and those that come to the US for university (90's, 00's, and 10's).

All of them have been anti-regime.

I have met a few that came for other reasons (not education and not the 80's stock). Yes, those are either pro-regime or neutral.

My guess is that what rayiner says is correct: The majority of the Iranian diaspora in the US is self selecting and not representative of the full population.

> The people who disliked the Islamization of the country and had the financial means to do so left while the people who were fine with it stayed.

You say it yourself, the ones who "had the financial means to do so left" - so it's very disingenuous to then state "the people who were fine with it stayed." What about those who couldn't afford to leave?

"People who were fine with it stayed" surely you must be joking right?

How come they blame carter instead of REAGAN over this shit?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_October_Surprise_theory

> After 12 years of varying media attention, both houses of the United States Congress held separate inquiries and concluded that credible evidence supporting the allegation was absent or insufficient

President Nixon was an outspoken friend of the Shah. It was Carter administration that stabbed him in the back and negotiated with Khomeini in the first place. The hostage crisis happened about 9-10 months after Khomeini was in power and only towards the end of that crisis you could argue Reagan was in the picture at all. The love for Islamists by the Democrats in power never ended and Clinton, Obama, and Biden all were desperate in appeasing the Mullah regime. It's the ousting of the Shah and appeasing the Mullahs that garners the hate.

Clinton using executive orders and legislation to keep Russia and Iran from cooperating on defense was a desperate act of "Mullah" appeasement? It was the iranians that called for the Negev summit?

Yes, it is all relative. It is appeasement compared to war and much heavier sanctions that ended up being necessary. Clinton and even Bush II administrations were hoping internal change would come up during Khatami era and hoping for him to be Gorbachev. Regardless of Bush II harsh rhetoric, the real animosity only really started after Ahmadinejad was installed in Iran. You are correct that Clinton was still not as friendly as the other two, who very explicitly played into their hands.

In any case I was simply responding to OP's "why" question and that their theory on blaming Reagan allegedly vs Carter on a narrow point, highlighting that particular case is temporally much later, and has no relevance to the underlying reason Carter is hated over there.

Fine, show some quotes from "Mullahs" where they acknowledge this supposed appeasement.

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Do you mean doesn’t wear a headscarf?

Depends on what you want to hear. The Iranian family in my neighborhood whose father was a doctor fled after Islamist police cut their daughter to pieces in their own home for dressing inappropriately. That's the sort of non headscarf wearing Iranian elite you'll find with an opinion critical of the current regime. I don't know about ostentatious clothing.

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There was no need for the 15 year old boy who told me this traumatic story of how his sister was killed in his own house to make that story up, because just the fact that they're a liberal family coming from Iran would have been enough information for them to get a visa to stay in The Netherlands based on political persecution.

This happened during Clinton, if you're counting history in US presidencies. And also it doesn't even matter if their sister really was killed. Islamic regimes like the one in Iran are despicable, and would have been even they didn't support goons killing girls for dumb religious regions.

The fact that the person you're responding to even still has a functioning HN account after their post history leaves me shocked and honestly appalled at the moderation of the site.

I've been told off repeatedly and threatened with all kinds of consequences by dang and I haven't come close to postings like this.

yes, thank you for correction. it should say "women who don't wear headscarf...".

I could not edit it myself because HN banned me for exposing their Mossad propaganda, yesterday

Actually it's because you can't edit comments after a certain period.

That's true for everyone.

You're not shadowbanned.

In the USA, congressional testimony about babies in Kuwaiti hospitals being killed by Iraqi soldiers was revealed to be fake to justify US military involvement in Iraq invasion of Kuwait https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony There were multiple falsified reports about WMD and nuclear weapons development to justify US intervention in Iraq https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-feb-17-na-niger... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant)

Given the veracity of the current administration, the repeated history of the US government lying to justify military interventions (Vietnam Tonkin Gulf incident looks fake going back a little further), I think people who know a little bit of history and are paying attention have legitimate reason to want more than just one source. Whatever the number is in Iran it's terrible but there's no military intervention outside countries can do that's going to change that given Iran is already sanctioned to the gills and it's a huge country that presents many challenges - the people there are going to have to do it themselves.

"It is a source run by expatriate Iranians of the diaspora.. the fact that so many people just discount their point of view it's pretty frustrating. If you speak to Iranians that you work with it's pretty illuminating"

Well - the data they publish can be correct; or it can be a made-up lie. We simply don't know.

So why should we assume the data they publish should be correct? How did they reach that number? And why is that number more precise than earlier reported numbers? And, why is that number so different to the other numbers told before?

What if they say tomorrow it is 50.000 suddenly?

It’s similar to how so many people dismiss Cuban American views on Cuba just because the cuban americans were mostly the ownership class that had to flee the revolution.

And they ignore that Cuba has had a steady stream of poor Cubans leaving for here spanning decades all saying the exact same things.

On the other hand, there is the opposing side that's also tough to ignore where they're coming from.

Leftists, with Western pro-Khomeini protests, not just in Iran, with the usual involvement from the KGB, and the CIA opposing, brought Khomeini to power with claims that he would bring a communist revolution. As per tradition in a communist revolution, first thing he did once in power is execute communist allies. Of course, Iran is still allied with the KGB (now FSB) and Moscow, currently delivering weapons and weapon designs for use in the war against Ukraine.

You could also point out that Iran is kind-of socialist, in the sense that the state controls, at minimum, 70% of the economy, and all those "companies" are directly controlled by the government.

So socialists are still at it, supporting the ayatollah, for example:

https://marxist.com/iran-for-a-nationwide-uprising-down-with...

Note: yes, I get what the title says, but read. IN the article you'll find an insane rant about how Israel and the US are really behind the revolution and how despite that the regime really held back, and this popular revolution, if it fails will bring back national Iranian pride, and the revolution failing will be the final push that ayatollah's need to actually bring the communist revolution to Iran

I read the whole thing and you are smoking crack. They are calling for the overthrow of the Islamic regime and (explicitly) for the death of the supreme leader. As far as their theoretical argument goes, it's that the masses in IRan are ready to have a revolution but that they lack the organizational skills and roadmaps that communists beleieve themselves to have. They also argue that external support of a revolution is strategically bad because the incumbent regime will use it to portray the Iranian students/working class as tools of foriegn powers.

> It is a source run by expatriate Iranians of the diaspora

Including the Mossad, which is kinda an important footnote you might not want to omit: https://xcancel.com/BarakRavid/status/1560685368780939265/

According to a twitter comment by a reporter who didn’t back the claim with any evidence.

With respects to Mordechai Vanunu, I can understand why he didn't try leaking documents.

If Ravid isn't even willing to say that someone told him on background, it sounds like bullshit or speculation. Guys like Ravid are intentionally or no part of the myth making around Mossad where they are simultaneously everywhere int he Middle East and nowhere at once.

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There are not even 7,000 Mossad agents, period. 7,000 is the highest estimate publicly available for the TOTAL number of employees in the Mossad, and 95% of them are not agents - just like most US intel are not field agents. Real numbers for agents are far, far lower without a doubt.

Also - Israel got burned so bad with the idiotic Pollard affair, there is zero chance Israel would put so much of their assets in the US when they have a 7 front war. They are many things, but they are not idiots, and they clearly care far more about their immediate security interests than what the US thinks.

These theories make absolutely no sense, my dear fried.

"Mossad agents" would by definition not be "Mossad employees"

You've got that backward. Intelligence Agents are employed by intelligence agencies. Intelligence Assets aren't.

I think you're confusing "agent" and "officer".

An agent is specifically some third party acting on your behalf. It's the same when we speak of real estate agents.

Wiktionary says, regarding 'agent':

> Someone who works for an intelligence agency: whether an officer or employee thereof or anyone else who agrees to help their efforts (for ideology, for money, as blackmailee, or otherwise).

That said, I also asked ChatGPT and it says you're right.

What's special about how they are doing it that makes the theory centered around Mossad? If it's happening, that seems like it would be business as usual for all intelligence agencies operating in all countries.

The number is probably in the middle. Diaspora Iranians are the most anti khomeini people out there

And those filling the streets of most Iranians cities 3 weeks ago, i'd say...

It's clear that at least a couple of thousands Iranians have died in protests. Khamenei even said so in a speech a few days ago. but its not 36,000.

Actually, if anything, that makes it trustworthy because Saudi would like the regime to stay so that they can stay out of the oil markets and keep the prices high.

It’s Shia Sunni, it transgresses economics.

Nothing ever transgresses economics.

Not really. Saudi Arabia and Iran struck a China brokered deal several years ago and have been meeting regularly since. In fact, they recently met and put out a statement condemning Israel’s attacks on Iran.

If you want a more neutal organization https://time.com/7357635/more-than-30000-killed-in-iran-say-...

It looks a LOT like a CIA front.

EDIT: Sorry... that is too strong... "state aligned influence media". Note that the headline might be true, or it might not, but that source is quite glowy.

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Mehdi is a great journalist and speaker. He doesn't jump the gun. One of my favourite debates from him is on Intelligence Squared, on the conflation between anti-zionism and anti-semitism, from 2019:

https://youtu.be/K1VTt_THL4A?si=BRgS6kbEMvLvrjyW

Just as interesting that Mehdi who never spent a second questioning the reports from Gaza is questioning the reports from Iran.

His point is that those Gaza numbers had much more backing than these numbers. Yet they were questioned endlessly.

His point is obviously to try and downplay what is happening in Iran, otherwise he could have just actually be a journalist and figure out what is happening in Iran to prove or disprove the reports.

There is zero journalistic integrity to be found in his post.

"Western media" is not an organization it's a description of a group. Trust should be connected to organizations or businesses.

This is such a dangerous manipulation technique that uses the output of one media source like Fox News as an attack on the reputation of all. CNN and the BBC have reported on Israel's offensive and the massive suffering and death multiple times.

"Study disputes Gaza genocide charges, finds flawed data amid Hamas-driven narrative"

https://www.foxnews.com/world/study-disputes-gaza-genocide-c...

#--------------

"Gaza death toll has been significantly underreported, study finds"

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/09/middleeast/gaza-death-toll-un...

"More than 70,000 killed in Gaza since Israel offensive began, Hamas-run health ministry says"

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8e97kl240lo

Mehdi Hasssan worked for Al Jazeera which is funded by Qatar and is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood with a very specific political agenda. You'll notice they barely are covering the Iran News

He also worked for MSNBC.

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That's like saying that Hamas and the IRGC aren't affiliates because they're from different religious sects. What binds them is an interest in political religion and a shared antipathy to the west.

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You don't have to write multiple comments to respond to one post. Just the one should suffice.

Thanks for pointing that out. Duly noted

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> Interesting that the same western media outlets which spent two years nonstop questioning and disputing and refusing to accept Palestinian death tolls out of Gaza, even when they were backed by human rights groups and monitors like Airwars and studies in The Lancet, are totally fine uncritically accepting totally unsourced and huge, huge numbers out of Iran.

Note that this works both ways: "Interesting that the same western media outlets which spent two years nonstop covering Gaza are totally fine not even having a single article about the massacre committed by the islamist iranian regime. And, no, before the trolls descend, of course I'm not questioning that lots of innocent people have been killed in Gaza.".

And "Interesting that the same protesters who spent months protesting on US and EU campuses for Gaza are not protesting to defend the protesters massacred en masse by the iranian regime. And, no, before the trolls descend, of course I'm not questioning that lots of innocent people have been killed in Gaza".

We don't know if the numbers are true but we're literally talking about half the death in two years in Gaza in a few days in Iran. I don't know if people realize the level of horrors we're talking about here.

The crucial difference is that the US is in no way supporting Iran but was and is heavily supporting Israel. So a protest in the US to stop that support is wortwhile. A protest to stop non-existent support is pointless.

You can still protest to signal support for usa to keep its hardline stance on Iran or to increase measures.

You can also protest to make sure the horrors aren't forgotten and to signal to those suffering in Iran that they aren't alone.

Sure, but you can understand why US citizens and European citizens don't feel the same urge to go out and protest something that their taxes don't directly contribute to.

> You can still protest to signal support for usa to keep its hardline stance on Iran or to increase measures.

If you care about the wellbeing of Iranian people, you have to acknowledge that a "hardline stance" of sanctions also contributes to their suffering. I'm not sure why you'd expect to see people out on the streets asking for more of that.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-1...

> You can also protest to make sure the horrors aren't forgotten and to signal to those suffering in Iran that they aren't alone.

True, but as a citizen you have much less moral responsibility to protest that than a situation your government and taxes are supporting. Which probably explains why you don't see as many people out on the streets about that.

I'd say it's also tricky in such situations to protest and not have your protest co-opted to justify aggression. Chomsky made this point on Iran: "Suppose I criticise Iran. What impact does that have? The only impact it has is in fortifying those who want to carry out policies I don’t agree with, like bombing."

https://www.ft.com/content/afc74988-8c96-11e2-aed2-00144feab...

> Sure, but you can understand why US citizens and European citizens don't feel the same urge to go out and protest something that their taxes don't directly contribute to.

The point i was responding to was whether such protests [for Iranians] are pointless, and i asserted there can certainly be a point to them.

Different people care about different things. I doubt the "tax dollar" explanation for Gaza protests because they seem just as popular in countries that dont provide aid to Israel, and people seemed to care a lot more about Gaza than say Iraq, despite much much more tax dollars going there and much more people dead. Nonetheless people are going to care about different issues to different extents for whatever reason and I'm not objecting to that.

> If you care about the wellbeing of Iranian people, you have to acknowledge that a "hardline stance" of sanctions also contributes to their suffering.

I do not have to. Or more specificly such sanctions have complex impacts and it can be unclear what the overall net result is, especially over the long run.

Sanctions against Iran of course do not solely have to do with the human rights situation and are also being applied for various geopolitical reasons.

> I'd say it's also tricky in such situations to protest and not have your protest co-opted to justify aggression. Chomsky made this point on Iran: "Suppose I criticise Iran. What impact does that have? The only impact it has is in fortifying those who want to carry out policies I don’t agree with, like bombing."

That sounds like a long winded way to justify not caring about atrocities when doing so would be inconvinent. Quite frankly i find that morally rephresible.

If you only care about human rights when its politically expedient to do so, do you really care about human rights?

> That sounds like a long winded way to justify not caring about atrocities when doing so would be inconvinent. Quite frankly i find that morally rephresible.

> If you only care about human rights when its politically expedient to do so, do you really care about human rights?

I don't really see how you reached that conclusion from the quote. He's not saying it would be inconvenient, he's saying such an action could lead to a worse outcome for the people of the country. If he didn't care about their human rights, and was happy for them to be bombed, he'd go ahead and do it. You might disagree with his reasoning, but it's not showing lack of care.

Well to take it literally the quote is "policies I don’t agree with".

It raises the question, is it really because he cares about the people of Iran, or is it because he has preconcieved notions of what policies he likes and dislikes and is trying to post hoc justify his views.

It seems a really hard position to justify on the facts. The death toll from these protests has already surpassed most armed conflicts. And the human rights abuses are hardly limited to just the deaths. I think at some point if you just stand around and do nothing while gross violations occur, you become complicit.

It is always different when a foreign group kills children/starves over extended time like Israel did to Palestinians, as opposed to a dictatorship (think Syria before its revolution succeeded or Iran right now) kills their populace. Syrias civil war cost 600-800k lives by many figures. It is difficult to cover civil unrest or civil wars within the same group, vs. genocide or wars between nations. Think just of how hard it is to cover Israel/Palestine given Israel's ban on journalism and a free press covering Ghaza. Now imagine a nation as big as Iran where the state controls the media. How do you expect accurate coverage in a matter of days

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You both have been breaking the site guidelines badly. We ban accounts that do that. Please don't do it again.

Also, please don't use HN for nationalistic/ideological/religious flamewar (or any flamewar). It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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A bit hypocritical, coming from you.

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You both have been breaking the site guidelines badly. We ban accounts that do that. Please don't do it again.

Also, please don't use HN for nationalistic/ideological/religious flamewar (or any flamewar). It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

For comparison, estimates of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre death count are usually put in the 300-1,000 range by journalists and human rights groups.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests...

But note that the Tianenmen Square massacre was only one part of a larger nationwide protest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Chinese_protests_by_regio... . There's no telling how many were killed or disappeared outside of Beijing.

Actually, there is plenty of telling, and the largest (only?) massacre outside Beijing was in Chengdu, with 8 to 400 people killed depending on who you believe:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu_protests_of_1989

There was plenty of rounding up student leaders and executions afterwards, but I don't think even the wildest anti-communists would claim a death toll in the thousands for this.

"Actually, there is plenty of telling"

To this day, the official version is, nothing happened there and then. If you talk about it online inside china, or using chinese services outside of it, it will automatically be blocked.

So yes, people did get out, but till this day they will have to face persecution or other disadvantages and some want to to visit family again or not have them face consequences.

In other words I don't know about any numbers, but how can you claim to know, when the chinese government did all it could to prevent acurate information?

One interesting thing about that incident I only learned recently is the chinese leadership was reluctant to use force and prevaricated for ages.

In the end they decided it was worth the risk and I guess they were right, because China survived that period without any rotation of elites and became more prosperous and powerful as a result, avoiding all the chaos of the former Soviet countries

most of the victims during 1989 Beijing massacre were NOT at the actual square, people should already stop using this simplified term which leads to confusion

but yeah, compared to what Israelis do in Gaza or Iran, even whole Beijing numbers are negligible considering China population

That's crazy.

That's like ~40% of the deaths in the current gaza war, except over just 2 days instead of 2 years.

Unfortunately I would not be surprised if the real death toll is even higher. I have first-hand information. We are talking about indiscriminate shooting with heavy machine guns into peaceful protests, happening in every city of the country. The rule of law has completely broken down. The wounded avoid hospitals because they are afraid of getting killed there.

There was a lot of death in 2 days but the revolution started about a month ago so it's not just those two days. I think you could compare Gaza to a single Iranian city, but Iran is much larger than this. Another important distinction is that - no matter what your beliefs are - civilians aren't the target in Gaza, but they clearly are the target in Iran. If the civilians had weapons, it would be a different story.

> civilians aren't the target in Gaza

"We killed about 80,000 people by mistake" isn't the exculpation you think it is.

That has to be true first.

No one who is sane is saying that. IDF is saying – we killed 40.000 combatants who were hiding in ciivilan infrastructure, so unfortunately 1:1 civilian deaths happened, becaue of the terrorist urban warfare tactics hamas and palestinian islamic jihad are using.

Except of course, the IDF high command officially gave the order to "give up all restraint".

were you serving in the last two years and received this order? none of my friends or family have.

Members of the IDF were regularly posting open admissions and even videos of actual war crimes to social media. It was so common, the IDF had to beg them numerous times to stop.

This was the primary method for groups like the Hind Rajab foundation, to locate these war criminals while they were vacationing in other countries to have them arrested on war crime charges.

They didn't need orders, they simply were never told no.

Aha, so you are saying israelis don’t need orders to have no restraints to commit war crimes. It’s like an innate thing right? This is by-the-book demonisation of a people. Part of standard definition of antisemitism.

No need to argue with people who hate.

> saying israelis

No, the IDF has been built up as an occupation force. Therefore, they do occupation force things, like shoot through fences at children, destroy ambulances, post on instagram "I am blowing up this block of civilian housing in revenge for my friend" which is two explicit war-crimes.

I think Israel as a nation has to contend with the level of violence they have permitted to happen to those who they have dehumanized as they've continued to maintain an apartheid state, seize land, and kill without any kind of accountability.

https://www.icj-cij.org/node/203447

"On 9 October 2023, Mr Yoav Gallant, Defence Minister of Israel, announced that he had ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza City and that there would be “no electricity, no food, no fuel” and that “everything [was] closed”. On the following day, Minister Gallant stated, speaking to Israeli troops on the Gaza border: “I have released all restraints . . . You saw what we are fighting against. We are fighting human animals. This is the ISIS of Gaza. This is what we are fighting against . . . Gaza won’t return to what it was before. There will be no Hamas. We will eliminate everything. If it doesn’t take one day, it will take a week, it will take weeks or even months, we will reach all places.”

Do you see how it refers to Hamas? What should this quote prove? To me it proves that high command gives fighters motivational speeches, nothing else.

Also, the measures concluded in the end of the document are about ensuring this was a motivational speech for soldiers that are going to fight Hamas terrorists, not a vague statement.

Do you also believe all people in Gaza are Hamas?

If not, I don't see him making that distinction, by stating to block all food from entering Gaza and dropping all restraints for attacking Hamas.

I did not had he impression there ever were restraints when dealing with Hamas. So restraints were always for bystanders. Which were dropped.

There's no sense asking questions you already know the answer to. Of course those babies are Hamas. If they aren't in baby boot camp right now, they will be 20 years from now. Until then they use their mothers as human shields, so the women have to die as well, obviously. They were breastfeeding Hamas combatants in violation of sanctions.

1 Samuel 15:3 was always the official policy; they are no longer pretending otherwise because they don't have to. Nobody's going to stop them and for anyone that tries, there's the Samson Option.

A more-fun line of questioning that outs the demons among us is asking what someone would do if they had access to a time machine. One particular demographic will consistently and proudly tell you they'd use it to go back in time and murder one specific infant. Not teenager, not young adult--given free range of choice they always opt to kill their opponent at their most helpless, as an infant that cannot fight back--which says all it needs to.

No thing wrong with. They fought Hamas.

Are also all the children in Gaza Hamas? Even the babies?

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@mods this is unacceptable behavior (but such threads are full of this), blind fanatics on both sides

Flag and move on (if you can, I feel your frustration). @mods does not notify anyone.

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Said home was forcefully taken though. Legally / internationally Israel was allotted certain land (without the inhabitants getting a say) after WW2, but they quickly decided (on their own) that it wasn't enough and they started invading / colonizing land outside of what they were given.

If you're wondering why palestinians are angry, there's your answer.

>but they quickly decided (on their own) that it wasn't enough and they started invading

And the 6 Arab armies were just hanging around in there, yeah?

> Said home was forcefully taken though.

Prove it.

> becaue of the terrorist urban warfare tactics hamas and palestinian islamic jihad are using

This is ridiculous.

I don't want to be a Hamas apologist; they're certainly brutally cynical enough to use civilians as shields, but in the case of Gaza, what else would you expect them to do?

Urban areas are strong defensive structures, and 75% of Gaza is urban. Where else would you expect them to fight? It would be unrealistic to expect Hamas to take on the IDF in open farmland so they could be annihilated by Israeli air power.

So they started a war they knew would cause mass death to their civilian population. How is that not the same thing?

You can't give all the blame for the deaths to Hamas. They gave Israel a monstrous provocation, but the decision to kill tens of thousands of civilians, and collective punishment by denial of food, water and medical care was the Israeli government's.

If party A is using a human shield, and party B decides to kill the human shield to get revenge on party A, then who is culpable for the death? I don't think it's an entirely obvious answer. I don't think anyone who can easily and automatically put all the blame on party A or B has really thought it through.

> civilians aren't the target in Gaza

The "Where's Daddy" program in Israel tells the opposite story. They take anyone designated a target, track them home, then send rockets to their home to take out their family.

There's dozens of documented events like this happening to doctors working to save casualties, finding out their entire family was killed.

After seeing the highly targeted attacks in Iran that Israel was capable of, makes you think that targeting families of aid workers was the point.

You're being down voted by supporters of Zionist genocide against Palestinians, but this is exactly correct.

Supporters of Israel ignore inconvenient facts and patterns of behavior.

Civilians aren't the target in Gaza?

The target in Gaza is, very clearly, to get rid of the civilians. Not only in Gaza but in the West Bank.

They want to annex all that if they have to kill civilians they will kill civilians. In fact, they don't even hide it, just go to check the statements from members of the Israeli government.

That's the reality 'no matter what your beliefs are', by the way.

> Another important distinction is that - no matter what your beliefs are - civilians aren't the target in Gaza

"No matter what your beliefs are"? Some people believe that Israel is trying to make the people in Gaza starve. If that was true, how would they not be a target?

With the amount of sanctions against Iran right now we could say that Iran is being starved as well, but we can't blame Israel for everything. Almost everyone participates in the sanctions but citizens aren't the target.

> we could say that Iran is being starved as well, but we can't blame Israel for everything

Funny that you say that, because the reason Iran is under sanctions is that Israel wanted it. Obama had agreed to a lift on the sanctions in exchange for a strict control on Iran's nuclear program; Trump and his cohort of rabid zionists remote controlled from Tel Aviv reneged on the agreement and restored the sanctions.

Everything that happens it the world is because Israel was secretly behind it. Right?

It's not a secret at all:

https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/09/1021192

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Netanyahu%27s_2015_ad...

Do you not understand cause and effect? You think Netanyahu said Iran is trying to build nukes, then the world sanctioned Iran, then they started trying to build nukes? Is that what you're saying?

Also, you think Iran is only sanctioned because of their nuclear weapons program?

> civilians aren't the target in Gaza

They are and so were doctors, journalists and such.

> no matter what your beliefs are - civilians aren't the target in Gaza

“By December 2025, the Gaza Health Ministry had reported that at least 70,117 people in Gaza had been killed. The vast majority of the victims were civilians, and around 50% were women and children. Compared to other recent global conflicts, the numbers of known deaths of journalists, humanitarian and health workers, and children are among the highest. Thousands more uncounted bodies are thought to be under the rubble of destroyed buildings. A study in the medical journal The Lancet estimated that traumatic injury deaths were undercounted by June 2024, while noting an even larger potential death toll when "indirect" deaths are included. The number of injured is greater than 171,000. Gaza has the most child amputees per capita in the world; the Gaza war caused more than 21,000 children to be disabled.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide

Russia has more than likely killed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians since February 2022 but what is happening in Ukraine is not termed a genocide. Why? Because by and large it is Russian military personnel killing Ukrainian military personnel (and vice versa, of course). Why is what is happening in Gaza being termed a genocide? Because the Israeli military* is targeting and killing civilians. I'm not the one saying that, genocide scholars (among others) are the ones saying that.

“The Gaza genocide is the ongoing, intentional, and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip carried out by Israel during the Gaza war. It encompasses mass killings, deliberate starvation, infliction of serious bodily and mental harm, and prevention of births. Other acts include blockading, destroying civilian infrastructure, destroying healthcare facilities, killing healthcare workers and aid-seekers, causing mass forced displacement, committing sexual violence, and destroying educational, religious, and cultural sites. The genocide has been recognised by a United Nations special committee and commission of inquiry, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, multiple human rights groups, numerous genocide studies and international law scholars, and other experts.”

One cannot blockade an entire population and not be targeting the civilians in that population.

“An Israeli blockade heavily contributed to starvation and confirmed famine. As of August 2025, projections show about 641,000 people experiencing catastrophic levels and that "the number of people facing emergency levels will likely increase to 1.14 million". Early in the conflict, Israel cut off Gaza's water and electricity, but it later partially restored the water. As of May 2024, 84% of Gaza's health centres have been destroyed or damaged. Israel also destroyed numerous cultural heritage sites, including all 12 of Gaza's universities, and 80% of its schools. Over 1.9 million Palestinians—85% of Gaza's population—were forcibly displaced.”

* with the backing of primarily the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany

Gaza Health Ministry is actually Hamas Health Ministry

Ahem, Gaza Health Ministry?

https://www.euronews.com/2025/04/03/hamas-run-health-ministr...

There are hundreds of videos of tower blocks being bombed, where people are standing a distance away with cameras set up, ready and waiting, because they’ve been warned and evacuated. These are not the actions of an army trying to target civilians.

No amount of warning will save children from starving if the access roads and relief convoys are blocked.

I'm quite frankly quite appalled at the amount of apologists in this thread. Warning civilians is not an excuse to genocide them.

No war is good, and starting an urban war you are obviously going to lose, and executing it over two years among an incredibly dense population is barbaric.

I'm quite frankly quite appalled at the amount of apologists in this thread.

The war has lasted over 70 years.

I’m appalled at the lack of balanced comments in here. Acknowledging the humanity of the people on both sides. That both deserve to live in peace. That both have suffered deaths and injuries from the other side. That both can claim the other side has committed war crimes.

Demonizing one side is neither rational, moral, nor conducive to resolving the situation.

don't be surprised, the Israeli Palestine conflict is team sports for people worldwide from social-economic background where football or soccer is considered banal

wikipedia has been hijacked to present one-sided view of the conflict

https://www.timesofisrael.com/edit-wars-over-israel-spur-rar... https://www.reddit.com/r/Jewish/comments/1pvs1b6/as_a_wikipe...

Problem even discussed and acknowledged by Jimmy Wales: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6U_aQWaxOTE

Your sources are Times of Israel and r/Jewish?

https://www.piratewires.com/p/how-wikipedia-s-pro-hamas-edit...

https://www.inss.org.il/publication/wikipedia/

https://jewishjournal.com/cover_story/380074/gaming-the-wiki...

"Gaza Health Ministry had reported" do you think this is an unbiased, accurate source?

And only civilians, instead of half of them being armed and trained militants.

It almost makes Israel look like they are not there to wipe out Palestine

Or that international pressure succesfully prevented worse.

International pressure when US is shielding and blocking literally any move against means effectively nothing. Sure, you or me can say we will for example never buy products from Israel but thats about it.

And such move will not change anything in this behavior just make some israeli farmer (maybe still employing some palestinians/arabs) lose some income.

Or that it unnecessarily dragged out a conflict by hamstringing Israel and thus empowering Hamas.

This is a country of 90 million, compared to Gaza which was 2million

These are 30,000 human lives. Their value doesn’t diminish because of a larger supply.

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Is this a racist comment on how those "animals" like to breed like crazy?

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It's the typical claim of people who haven't read the definitions of genocide and think it requires murdering everyone.

I've read a ton of philosophy and something I don't really understand is that one nation killing another is more immoral than when a nation does this to their own domestic population.

Sure you will get some nay-sayers who say 'a life is a life', if moral particles existed, they might be correct.

But for some reason, humanity doesn't seem to care as much.

What makes intra-state politics more acceptable to use violence?

> something I don't really understand is that one nation killing another is more immoral than when a nation does this to their own domestic population.

I don’t know that anyone thinks a state’s violence against its citizens is less immoral. It’s more that countries are more hesitant to get militarily involved in the domestic affairs of another country because it would mean essentially declaring war against that state. But in a conflict between states, an outsider can more easily support one side militarily without declaring war against the other side.

It's also just a matter of logistics and support.

If Aliceville attacks Bobtopia, there are existing military and civilian organisations in Bobtopia that can take foreign aid and use it effectively. The population of Bobtopia are generally going to support their homeland or at least be neutral, and are available for conscription so they'll do all the dying and international forces don't have to.

If Bobtopia just starts massacring its own people, then:

A) You have to dismantle those same military structures along with many of the civilian ones, and you're now in charge of building an entire government from the ground up.

B) Some of the population, e.g. the ones who were doing the massacring, are now shooting at you instead. Some of their victims are probably going to shoot at you too.

C) You can't exactly conscript Bobtopians during a civil war you started and have them be an effective fighting force, because they're not unified, don't have a government, and often hate you. If you try to work with Bobtopian militias, you'll find yourself embroiled in Bobtopian politics.

This all holds true regardless of who has to declare war on whom.

Historically there was sometimes the idea that citizens are the property of the sovereign to use or dispose of as he sees fit. A lot of historical international law had the view that states have absolute feeedom to conduct their internal affairs however they saw fit.

Luckily we have largely moved past that view.

I think as a purely practical matter, moral outrage is shaped by who controls the information space. If you are a country being invaded, you probably have an organized, well funded communication department to tell your side. If you are an Iranian protestor, not only do you not have that, you don't even have internet at all because the state cut off all means of communication.

>Luckily we have largely moved past that view.

Have we? I don't think the UN is going to invade Iran over this, especially after it went so well the last time with the US. And sanctions for Iran are already at the "you don't get anything" level, i don't think they can be ramped up any more. Morally sure, people now believe this is wrong while in the distant past they may have not cared, but practically not much has changed. The best we can hope for is an organized resistance that other large nations can funnel money and arms to.

I still think there is a huge ideological difference between thinking something is wrong but not doing anything about it vs thinking something is A-ok.

Strongly worded letters might not mean much, but at least they are on the right side of the issue, even if only symbolically.

The UN can't invade anything as it has no army. It's a forum for talking.

Because the international order is fundamentally anarchic, while domestic orders are (supposed to be at least) nomic, structured by law and rights. Yes, there are attempts at creating international law, but these amount to treaties more than a structured, visible, governing law.

There is big difference between somebody starting a war to destroy you and you fight back. Vs people want to live free and their own government kills them so they can be in power.

> one nation killing another is more immoral than when a nation does this to their own domestic population.

I don’t think that’s a particularly established moral position.

“A country that violates the rights of its own citizens, will not respect the rights of its neighbors.”

That’s from my readings of philosophy.

But yeah, I do recognize the same sentiment as you found. I think philosophy itself is an answer: most philosophies explicitly champion dictatorships, under whitewashed terms. Ever heard something like “society is a big organ transcending individual needs”? We got it from Hegel.

>most philosophies explicitly champion dictatorships

I don't understand how you could make this claim.

"society is a big organ transcending individual needs”?"

How does this statement by Hegel champion dictatorships?

> I don't understand how you could make this claim.

After studying Plato, Hegel, Marx, Rousseau, fascist ideologies, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. This list is by no means exhaustive, just a few majors from the top of my head.

Sure, they didn’t just say “shoot people for power.” That’s a very shallow modern view. Instead, they champion extreme forms of altruism and its only logical expression: statism, which holds that man’s life and work belong to the state, to society, to the group, the race, the nation, the economic class.

> How does this statement by Hegel champion dictatorships?

The statement alone surely doesn’t. His philosophy does. For him, state is a sacred authority that transcends individual will.

>For him, state is a sacred authority that transcends individual will.

State authority exists in democracys therefore that's not an argument for dictatorships

>they champion extreme forms of altruism and its only logical expression: statism

Why is statism the only logical expression of extreme altruism? Jesus Christ was the ultimate altruist and is not a state. I can dedicate my life to only helping others over myself as an individual .

You're arguments and example are extremely poor because you showing evidence related to governments and states but your original claim was to one specific type of government, a dictatorship.

For Hegel, state is something vastly different than for modern democracies. Sure, democracies can be pervasive as well but, to my knowledge, nowhere near Hegel’s level, not today.

Jesus Christ wasn’t a politician so we don’t know. But we do know that religious politicians, past and modern, rarely respect freedom.

> you showing evidence related to governments and states

Not just states but statism, a system in which man’s life and work belong to the state, and the state may claim it by compelling him to sacrifice it. This provides the theoretical hardware for dictatorial control.

>I've read a ton of philosophy and something I don't really understand is that one nation killing another is more immoral than when a nation does this to their own domestic population.

Who holds this opinion?

>But for some reason, humanity doesn't seem to care as much.

All of humanity cares less about when a government uses violence against its citizens than wars?

How can you possibly make this generalization when each internal conflict is different just like every war and how difficult it is to measure sympathy

He doesn’t need a list of people he can quote for his observation to be true.

And it’s not far fetched either: With a state‘s power structure ultimately resting upon (enough) support from society, there is an implicit legitimacy assumed in their actions.

The same can not be said about mass executions of citizens by an invading foreign power structure. Which is why you see the typical propaganda rush to make the victims look like perpetrators.

I share your opinion. There's nothing worse than a State killing its own citizens, the ones the state had pledged to protect.

But actually, the largest mass killings in history have been always performed by States against their own citizens and not by enemy states:

- Great Chinese Famine (CCP): 20-30 million dead. - Holocaust (NSP): 6 million - Holodomor (USSR): 3-5 million - Congo mass killings (Colonial Regime + Private parties): 1-5 million - Cambodian genocide (Maoists): 2 million - Armenian genocide (Young Turk / CUP) ...

The list continues, and remains mainly dominated by assassination's of the State against their own citizens. Majorly communist and totalitarian regimes.

Missed the biggest one by British Raj around 100 million [https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/2/how-british-col...]

> Holocaust (NSP): 6 million

Most dead Jews were not German citizens and neither were the Poles who died.

They were citizens of countries the Nazis conquered.

> I've read a ton of philosophy and something I don't really understand is that one nation killing another is more immoral than when a nation does this to their own domestic population.

Which books say that?

Because the Palestinians raped and killed thousands of innocent people, causing the war.

Whereas the Iranian people just want human rights and didn’t do anything to their leaders.

Are you seriously asking this or are you just fucking with us? It’s blatantly obvious why it is different.

> What makes intra-state politics more acceptable to use violence?

Acceptable? It's more about the consequences or lack thereof, the incentives

History has shown that pretty much nothing happens to the regime unless two coalitions of countries invade from both sides simultaneously, and that's like, not going to happen

I can’t even imagine how this could be done. Nazi concentration camps would have had trouble killing that many in 2 days.

At its peak i think (based on googling) the nazis killed about 14,000 per day, which would put it in a similar ball park on a per-day basis. However they kept up the level of killing and didn't stop after just a few days.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/2846/

In Babi Yar, over two days, 33,771 Jews were killed, and this was prior to the 'peak' in Operation Reinhard:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar

The Nazis were still killing people in other places at the same time, so the deadliest day is probably much much higher.

The scale of the Holocaust is hard to imagine. Even just looking at very specific suranmes, there are 23,000 killed with the surname Rosenberg, 12,000 with the surname Adler...

https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/names/search-results-na...

The difference is that the nazis moved people from their homes onto trains, then the execution was a formalized program of removing property, valuables, execution and incineration. In Iran the military unloaded machine guns into crowds and left the locals to deal with the bodies, and it happened throughout the country instead of at specific locations.

Nazis were … prolific.

The death camps were a practical end result of how much manual labor was required to line thousands of people up and shoot them dead. That’s what they were doing in Poland, to such extremes that is was literally more efficient to build gas chambers.

They wouldn't struggle, even before the gassing systems were built. In Babiy Jar (September 1941), about 33 thousand Jews from Kyiv were shot in two days by SS Einsatztruppen.

This is about what dedicated murderous goverments can pull off using conventional means.

that's because they weren't shooting crowds already assembled in the streets and going into hospitals nationwide to find the injured. Nazi Germany was aiming to maintain plausible deniability in the concentration camps for as long as possible, while parallel competing plans for what to do with the population were being explored and failing. (there were other solutions before and alonside the final solution)

They also, in many camps, used the inmates as slave labor.

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Do you believe that there’s a single person (or small group) who chooses what’s on the front page?

have you heard of algorithmic bias?

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I spoke to a few people living in Iran, and they definitively confirmed that 100+ people died. They obviously don't have the exact number, so that 36,500 figure might be exaggerated, but there are more than enough videos online to verify the 100+ claim if you really want to.

Sure you did.

The internet has fried people's brains.

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Some mainstream coverage of this, at last.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jan/27/i...

I’m confused by the “at last”, it’s been consistently covered on The Guardian:

iran site:theguardian.com

There is a narrative that has been floating around and it seems like a Russian psyop designed to sow discord (not accusing you of being a bot personally), “the lefties are friends with Iran and don’t complain about their attrocities”, which is objectively false.

Indeed if you look at independent aggregators the latest article on Iran is more “left leaning” reported: https://ground.news/article/at-least-6-126-people-killed-in-...

Legitimate question - why am I not seeing this in the news? This is horrifying but where is the coverage?

FWIW, it's reported in Dutch news - https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2026/01/26/dertigduizend-doden-sla... - with reference to this time.com article - https://time.com/7357635/more-than-30000-killed-in-iran-say-... - and a lot of caveats about how the figure can't be verified.

What news are you reading? This is featured in virtually every Western media outlet. Maybe it's not so prominent in public discourse because it's sharing screentime with ICE's raids and NATO's rapid collapse.

There is also the issue of not being easy to confirm anything out of Iran right now, which is certainly concerning.

The word "iran" is currently mentioned exactly zero times on https://nytimes.com. Plenty of baking tips though.

The NYT's top story is still focused on the killing of a single protestor in Minneapolis. They aren't highlighting Iran because a massacre of this scale will be seen as justifying Trump's imminent strike on Iran, and leftists are gearing up to protest that, just as they did the Maduro operation

You seem to imply that bombing Iran to the ground is a good outcome.

> bombing Iran to the ground

In what world is that happening? Specific strikes against the regime is vastly different that carpet bombing the country.

The BBC have been covering it in the UK. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cjnwl8q4ggwt

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/25/world/middleeast/iran-how...

The New York Times' The Daily podcast had a very good episode on it a couple weeks ago. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/podcasts/the-daily/iran-p...

I checked the reputable newspaper in my country. The only mention of it was on 23/1 where they reported 5000 casualties. EU is going to put together a range of (economic?) sanctions against the regime. US "armada" (quoted from the article) is underway.

It was probably the headline article for a couple of hours on the site. I don't remember extended coverage either so I looked it up.

I barely see international coverage on NYtimes anymore. Just DC bullshit. I get more world news on the BBC pidgin instagram account. Almost 200 people were kidnapped in a village in Nigeria the other day, that type of thing used to be front page news around the world.

And there are many other legitimate questions: where are the celebrities speaking up to defend the cause of the iranian protesters? Where are the students in western universities protesting against what the iranian regime did? Where's the International Court of Justice's condemnation of iranian politicians? Where's the flotilla led by Greta Thumberg in support of the iranian people?

There are, IMO, very grave and very serious double standards at play here because I don't think we're going to see any of those.

The biggest difference is "our" role in it. For western countries, the economic and diplomatic relations with e.g. Israel is a lot stronger than with Iran. It makes much more sense to speak up if you feel your country or one of their allies does something you disagree with.

That is only pragmatic, right? Speaking up might actually change things by putting these relations at stake. For Iran, there might not be much left to do from a western perspective except military involvement. Starting another war is not something a Greta led flotilla might want to do.

I think this is something that a lot of supporters of the Gaza protests tell themselves, but I am not sure that it's actually true. The US and other Western countries sell weapons to Saudi Arabia and have extensive economic ties to that country. Saudi Arabia recently engaged in a bombing campaign in Yemen that looked very similar to Israel's campaign in Gaza. And yet there were no protests. Also, you can influence your country's policies towards another country whether or not the two countries are allies. Years ago, there was a mass protest movement in the west against the genocide in Darfur for example. Nobody said "we don't have a lot of economic or diplomatic ties to Sudan so there's no point in protesting".

I think the real reason has to do with 1) there was an existing, organized pro-Palestinian movement that had experience protesting; 2) many organizations on the left saw the Israel-Gaza conflict as fitting very nicely into their larger anti-imperialist ideology in a way that other conflicts don't; 3) everyone more-or-less knows where Israel is on the map and has some familiarity with it; 4) there were a lot of really shocking images and video from Gaza

> Saudi Arabia recently engaged in a bombing campaign in Yemen that looked very similar to Israel's campaign in Gaza. And yet there were no protests.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpiW-r-zfW8

I've seen a bunch of protesters about the war in Yemen outside the bomb factories around me.

Fair enough, I did not know that. Maybe add to your list of reasons that attention is divided over so many conflicts nowadays. Probably there have been conflicts all the time, but with Ukraine, Greenland, Minnesota, Gaza and Venezuela getting a lot of attention it feels like a lot. Note that I don't think the conflicts are remotely comparable with each other, but they each take up a lot of mindspace at least for me.

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The last few years has made me extremely cynical. I am beginning to think we don't see the protests because the bad guys are brown and Muslim, and people in those circles are not allowed to criticise brown Muslims. I've seen a weak defense that "our government isn't funding this," but our governments aren't funding the Sudanese Civil War in which 150,000 have died to date, and there is still radio silence in those same circles.

Sorry, I don't understand your last argument.

You are criticising protesters who claim to not talk about the Iranian exactions because their government is not funding it, by pointing out that they are not protesting against the Sudanese Civil War either? I may have misunderstood but their government is probably also not funding that war so it's consistent isn't it?

If you look at some of the most active groups in the pro-Palestinian left, like the PSL in the United States, you'll see that they have a very long history of praising horrific, oppressive regimes (even North Korea!) that oppose the United States, and dismissing accusations of crimes against humanity when perpetrated by those regimes. The PSL is a minuscule political party, but they're highly involved in organizing these protests.

Basically no one is allowed to protest own government complicity in anything, especially not Palestinian kinda look like genocide situation, unless they protest literally every single atrocity everywhere.

Any sane person knows we shouldn't take any of the protestors seriously (they're all hypocrites, the lack of protests over this is proves it). Both Gaza and this are obviously tragedies but they only care about one

I cant believe Greta as a platform in 2026; people are dumb i guess

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They're brown, unknown people. What did you expect?

because Iran's information control is working - the horrific images and numbers only arrived in the west once the protests were already mostly disbanded. It's not ongoing like e.g. the war in Gaza was, so it can only capture a moment of attention, not a sustained slot.

The loss of life is extremely tragic, every single loss is devastating and is a family suffering forever.

Hoping that people of Iran get freedom, peace and prosperity.

> Hoping that people of Iran get freedom, peace and prosperity.

Yes, but not the kind delivered in an American/Israeli bomb.

This is certainly the end of peaceful Iranian protests. Whether it leads to a violent revolution or a static police state like North Korea remains to be seen.

Seems the regime is OK shooting their way out of this problem. How big are these protests? 30K isn't exactly a small number of protestors.

> How big are these protests?

Very likely in the millions.

Not just shooting, chemical warfare:

"Iranian security forces deployed unknown chemical substances amid deadly crackdowns on protestors in several cities earlier this month, eyewitnesses told Iran International, causing severe breathing problems and burning pain.

They described symptoms that they said went beyond those caused by conventional tear gas, including severe breathing difficulties, sudden weakness and loss of movement...

...According to the accounts, in some cases gunfire began at the same time, or immediately after, protesters lost the ability to walk or run and fell to the ground.

Several witnesses said that moments of immobilization became points at which shooting intensified, particularly when protesters collapsed in alleys or while trying to flee.

Reports came from multiple cities, including Tehran, Isfahan and Sabzevar."

https://www.iranintl.com/en/202601235991

Those are the exact symptoms of tear gas inhalation. The source you are reading is going for a spin.

Anyone who closely rewatches the surveillance footage of Mahsa Amini (at the fashion police) a few times, will quickly realize she was executed with a puff of gas, and the descriptions from Nazi concentration camp witnesses, and the description of the father of the weird cherry red bruises, and how she collapses on the footage combined with the behavior of 3 clearly complicit perpetrators before and after her collapse will quickly understand they used hydrogen cyanide, administered with some type of arm or sleeve-mounted bracelet.

The footage was clearly released to potentially reveal these sensitive facts, as the local police were thusly trying to prevent carrying the blame for her death, by showing the parts requisite for understanding.

If you need a more detailed description just reply to this comment and I will give more detail analysis of the footage.

> Whether it leads to a violent revolution or a static police state like North Korea remains to be seen.

The official name of Iran is "The Islamic Republic of Iran" and it is a country ruled by sharia law. Countries ruled by Sharia are already totalitarian states.

Coming soon to a city near you!

How is this possible without explosives? Even with vehicle mounted machine guns it seems like a crazy high number. Did the protestors get boxed in somehow? And across so many locations, that seems to require a crazy amount of coordination to kill so many in so little time.

The coordination is the thing here, that's many units being instructed to carry through in the same manner.

As for the numbers:

  Interior Ministry reports say security forces confronted demonstrators in more than 400 cities and towns, with more than 4,000 clash locations reported nationwide

As to the how, the article suggests some deaths immediately occurred in crowds - firing, dispersing, funneling, crush injuries, etc. leading to many intakes to hospitals and treatment tents etc ... followed by execution of the injured.

It's grim stuff.

Some years past the waves of the Rwanda massacres saw almost a million people killed in bursts across 100 days, mostly with machetes and hand guns.

The numbers reported here are absolutely feasible, the reporting is certainly questionable; bad things happened, but was it at the claimed scale?

Exactly. These numbers don’t seem that impossible if one considers that the state‘s force rests upon (enough) ideological support within society. Given that, the distribution of regime supporters will be rather even across the country, and therefore sending in death squads wont mean bussing them in from Teheran but rather sourcing them locally.

You might check how the Mongols managed to do it on a much vaster scale 800 years ago. For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Gurganj

The museum of the city has a paper with the order that every soldier would have to kill 400 people, by sword. Of course they were already captured but there were about 1 million people in that city. The city is still perfectly leveled after 800 years. Only a couple of buildings were left standing.

Mongols were very well coordinated. Iranian crowd control has had 45 years and several insurrections to train.

There were a lot of people with machine guns.

Quite a lot of detail in the nyt article https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/25/world/middleeast/iran-how...

Datapoints :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre 400-1500 civilian deaths by 50 British soldiers armed with bolt action rifles (tried to get machine guns on site but thankfully couldn't)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Severloh Possibly single handedly killed an hard to estimate count of US soldier, but possibly in the hundreds (he had people supplying him ammunitions).

Crowds are just easy to thin with repeating firearms and a good supply of ammo...

> And across so many locations, that seems to require a crazy amount of coordination to kill so many in so little time.

No different from any other military operation to be honest. I'm not sure why you're incredulous about the death toll when a military is ordered to shoot to kill.

The IRGC[0] and Basij[1] are not small organizations, deliberately targeting large crowds of unarmed civilians with automatic weapons will create massive casualties in a very short period of time, no explosives needed.

> Did the protestors get boxed in somehow?

That did also happen.[2]

> And across so many locations, that seems to require a crazy amount of coordination to kill so many in so little time.

The IRGC's primary purpose is to protect the regime, I'm sure they would have plans in place for suppressing protests.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Revolutionary_Guard_Co...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basij

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/01/25/ira...

I don't think killing that many people requires much coordination when one side has guns (let alone machine guns) and a lot of soldiers

It's absolutely terrible but at the scale of a large country it's not logistically hard to get to that many deaths in a couple of days. Iran is a big country with population around 93 million.

The article says "36,500 killed in 400 cities". That's 91 people per city.

I reckon that would require say 6 gunners in each city. Plausible.

They executed every protestor that was arrested or in the hospital (estimated at ~28k.)

They executed everybody on the streets and looked young enough. Not just protesters.

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The protesters were armed.

I would guess the actual numbers to be about 20-30% of this (which is still a lot). Consider the source.

Iranian hospital workers estimated 20.000 deaths. They looked at their entrances and the morgues.

This is a tragedy.

I'm very against foreign forces intervening in such situations they can do more harm than good.

On the other hand, effective dictatorships (hell executive in democratic countries too) are good at controlling police and military.

E.g. take Belarus when it went through a wave of protests few years ago. I always think, if the people would really be against the regime, wouldn't members of the police and military know that?

Receive pressure from families and friends, even non direct one, clearly showing that the public thinks otherwise and they can easily topple those regimes? The moment your armed forces and police stops obeying orders those regimes are cooked. Yet they don't.

Which means that either there is no such an internal pressure or the regimes are extraordinarily good at selecting and incentivizing people to maintain the status quo.

Still, I think this is no excuse for foreign intervention and you should not do others what you don't wish on yourself. But at the same time if those regimes are indeed so effective, how do you get to help them?

I wish that at least instead of unilaterally, drastic measures were first sanctioned and carried out by UN, like it used to happen few decades ago in Africa.

But now it is always unilateral and stuff like what happened in Venezuela has been a tragedy imho where de facto a single country decides to topple the leadership of another one. Again, I don't wish we do what we don't wish for ourselves.

And I wouldn't want my country attacked and it's leadership decimated because somebody more powerful thinks so.

"Which means that either there is no such an internal pressure or the regimes are extraordinarily good at selecting and incentivizing people to maintain the status quo."

Or there is pressure and discontent, but simply not enough to topple the regime as it needs way more than 50% support for a internal regime change.

I have childhood memories of such a succesful change in eastern germany. Most people had enough for a long time, but they knew the sovjet tanks would come if they revolted. After it seemed the sovjets were busy on their own and won't come but rather did democratic reforms themself, but the GDR refused and stayed stalinistic - then the people went to the streets. And at some point those in power just gave up. Not really a consciouss choice, but they were visibly insecure and confused, so weak and fell. (But it was a close call, some wanted to bring out the machine guns as well)

The iranian mullahs were insecure, but they choose the violent path of dominance.

Not the same situation, as they did not rely on a foreign power like in GDR, but it seems they lost majority support a long time ago, but have a loyal enough religious base to use the weapons.

And yes, military and police who have family members on the streets will defect at some point and it seems that also happened in Iran, just not enough.

"Still, I think this is no excuse for foreign intervention and you should not do others what you don't wish on yourself. But at the same time if those regimes are indeed so effective, how do you get to help them? "

german here. Thanks for invading nazi germany and killing hitler. was very very nice. Thanks again

Germany started a war, Iran or Venezuela did not.

> Which means that either there is no such an internal pressure or the regimes are extraordinarily good at selecting and incentivizing people to maintain the status quo.

It depends a lot on how much power the people have. The more advanced and diverse an economy and the more qualified and educated the population are the more power they have. On one extreme you have countries like Angola with an economy consisting virtually only out of exporting oil. These countries only need a few qualified engineers for their resource extraction which they pay well and everyone else is entirely replaceable. That leads to extreme inequality between the leading political class that absorbs all the money and pays the military with it. As long as they pay and treat the military well enough they can just suppress the rest of the country. If people act up they can literally just kill everyone part of the rebellion. The political class, the military and the rest are just entirely disjunct classes of people with different incentives. The family of the militaries profit enough from the system to not excert pressure on their family member working for the military. It's the hand that feeds them.

On the other end you have countries with highly developed, specialized economies and a population that is educated enough to understand at least a few things about politics. There ordinary people have extensive training and work experience. You cannot just replace them. They can protest and go on strike and if you start killing everyone the economy will quickly start crashing down. Just pulling a few cogs out of the massively complex machine will stop it from working. And at that point it's not just a problem for the working population but also for the owning class and the pressure will propagate all the way up through the hierarchy. Also people can just leave. They have the economic means to and their qualifications mean that other countries have an interest in attracting already qualified people without having to pay for their education and traning first. That's what happened to east Germany and why they built the wall.

There are some methods of social control that can help to control a population beyond that. The key ingredient is surveillance, mutual control and seeding distrust. One person alone can never challenge the system. People need to organize. You can try to find the organizers via surveillance quick enough and get rid of them before they get dangerous. Also if a significant portion of the population is secretly informing the government people might be to afraid to organize as they distrust each other. That's how the Stasi worked in East Germany. For an extreme case of that see the Inminban[1] system in North Korea where people are bundled into groups where all surveil each other and report any dissident behavior. Failing to do so will lead to collective punishment for the whole group. It's a really perverse system that plays people against each other and their own interest aligning the incentives for the individual with the government rather than their class.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inminban

Iranians are educated people. So are Belarusians or Russians.

Nazism happened in Germany, a country that had the highest education and literacy standards of the 1920s, they were higher than in modern United States.

I really don’t understand why in the West there is nobody in the streets to protest but there was so many people for Palestine… Where are the people?

I’m not sure if this is an honest question or not, but I’ll treat it as such, even though you could answer your own question quite easily. The West is not complicit in the actions of the Iranian regime in any way that is similar to the situation with Israel. We are not arming the Iranians with the weapons they turn on civilians: very much not the case with Israel. Israel is treated like a normal state, whereas Iran is an international pariah and the subject of crippling sanctions. I could go on. The point is that westerners protest the actions of Israel because we believe we are part of the problem and that our protest might make a difference.

In fact, we believe - quite rightly - that if the US had conditioned military assistance to Israel on appropriate care for civilians, then the awful tragedy that unfolded in Gaza could have been averted. Similar levers for changing the behaviour of Iran do not exist.

If the US alliance with Israel is the reason why this conflict generated so much protest activity, then why didn't the pro-Palestinian left object to US ally Saudi Arabia's bombing campaign and blockade in Yemen? The US arms the Saudis. Much of what happened in Yemen is very similar to what happened in Gaza (airstrikes that hit civilians, hunger caused by blockading imports, etc)

And there have absolutely been examples of mass protest movements against regimes that are hostile to the US that are committing crimes against humanity. Years ago I went to a huge demonstration about the genocide in Darfur on the national mall in Washington. Raising awareness of what is happening and putting pressure on the Iranian regime (and on Western governments) can have an impact regardless of whether or not the West is hostile to Iran.

>In fact, we believe - quite rightly - that if the US had conditioned military assistance to Israel on appropriate care for civilians, then the awful tragedy that unfolded in Gaza could have been averted.

What you saw in Gaza was ALREADY incredible levels of care and restraint (that has cost many Israeli soldiers their lives) to minimize civilian harm, when fighting against an enemy that benefits from increasing said harm.

I'll say it again and again till people wake up, this is the endgame of all religion. It doesn't matter which one, they all breed hate and encourage the othering of out-groups. This is why the middle east will never know peace while their governments are Theocratic.

> The West is not complicit in the actions of the Iranian regime

What about the 1953 CIA/MI6 coup that overthrew Iran's elected prime minister?

Because the far worse Palestine massacre was perpetrated by an ally of the West, defended by western politicians and opinion makers, financed with western money and armed with western weapons. Then it makes sense to protest against your country's complicity.

Protesting in your country against an enemy country that has been subjected already to all kinds of sanctions and military attacks makes little sense.

Did you also think that protests of the Darfur genocide were pointless?

Not sure. Did you participate in them? What were they asking for?

People have been protesting in the UK.

Fourteen arrested after protest at Iranian embassy: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y3g8glgxvo

Protester climbs on to balcony of Iranian embassy in London: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy09yvd57x2o

Silent protestors gather in solidarity with Iran: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4g1me23x7o

I've been to the protest in Berlin, it's mostly Iranian diaspora there with all my "used-to-be-friends" that turned with Gaza stuff silent as ever.

There's nothing western governments can do to stop this. There are no demands western people are making to their western governments. While for Palestine, people want our governments to stop giving bombs to the attackers.

Iran gave the weapons to the attackers.

I'm pretty sure Iran and Israel are enemies. Israel picked a fight with every single country in the region, to my knowledge, except for the other USA allies.

Because the western governments support Israel, thus a protests' goal is mainly aimed at changing that. How many westerns governments support Iran?

I don't remember my government sending bombs to the Ayatollah so they can keep carpe-bombing Tehran.

Protests serve to force your government to take action. i honestly at this point don't see what could mine to to stop this. Given the sanctions are not working, the only option to change Iran is maybe a direct intervention like Syria. And that sure worked great.

Because the people who funded and organized the pro-palestinian marches were backed partly by China and Iran.

There probably isn't the same awareness. This is the first I'm hearing of a massacre in Iran. It's so hard to keep up with the news these days and for many it's just recommended to avoid it because it's all outrage generation now. The EU has been massively occupied with threats to invade Greenland for the past month along with the subsequent media attention, so that has saturated the news cycle.

There has been protests organized by the Iranian diaspora in Germany.

Oh, no, not this false dichotomy again!

People protest to affect political change in their own countries. For example, that's why Americans now protest against ICE and not against the secret police in Turkmenistan. In my country, the government recently signed a secret arms deal with Israel to sell it weapons. Weapons that are then used to maim children. I don't like that. Major politicians have said that Israel should be "thanked" for what it's doing in Gaza. I don't like that either. Hence, why I protest. If the Sionazi regime in Israel was isolated in the same way as the Islamic regime in Iran or the Taliban regime in Afghanistan people would protest less because there would be less political change to affect.

People are vandalizing Jewish restaurants, synagogues and monuments; terrorizing Jewish people and students; and murdering random Jewish grandmothers on the streets to affect political change?

Please.

This has been said before on here, but the main reason here is because in the West (particularly the US and Germany) there was a large group among the general populace supporting the genocide in Gaza, but in the West there is no large group supporting the massacre in Iran. The latter is an extremely fringe position to hold on the level of flat-earthers. People either don't care or are against it. When there's such a consensus, there's less controversy, less to talk about.

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Palestine had a ton of easily accessible video evidence, and not just from the victim's side but also lots of "hot takes" from the Israeli side as well, lots of talk from Israeli civilians and government officials about how there are no innocent civilians in Gaza and other deranged plainly genocidal remarks. In other words, there can be no reasonable doubt about what was going on and the only question really is who's side you're on.

With Iran, there's not a whole bunch of similar material, the death count estimates vary greatly from source to source, and we've got an untrustworthy president beating a war drum which probably makes people a bit more skeptical.. Atrocity propaganda to persuade a democracy to enter a war is something attentive people will be familiar with; incubator babies being tossed on the floor, dissidents being fed feet first into industrial grinders, people remember these stories preceding other wars and remember that evidence for the claims never materialized. Then there's the whole geopolitical angle where the Trump administration in fact supports Israel and Iran happens to be one of Israel's most powerful regional opponents. There are plenty of reasons to temper feelings of certainty.

Who designed this abomination of website? The "infinite" scroll is preventing me to get to the footer links.

The source is certainly unreliable, a quick scan of the wiki sources give you that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_International

But does the number even matter? Whether its 4000 or 35000 the conduct has been unacceptable.

The real question is the solution, is reporting like this designed to be used as the backdrop to foreign intervention? How many people will be killed then?

"one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic" - Not Stalin

The invasion of Iran by the US is a fantasy. They'd much rather fantasize about invading Canada.

Foreign intervention doesn't just mean full out invasion though

Why intervene? Iran was already struggling badly as a nation. Killing 2-30k civilians will not help improve a failing state.

What does this have to do with tech?

From Hacker News guidelines:

> That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

There is a long history of major world events like this being discussed on Hacker News and it is accepted as on topic. There is also a long history of people who haven't read the guidelines asking what they have to do with tech.

That article does not explain how the alleged data was acquired.

Our Editorial Board has now obtained more detailed information provided by the IRGC Intelligence Organization to the Supreme National Security Council.

Other state institutions have also received differing figures from other security bodies. However, given the scale of the killings, deliberate concealment, and what appears to be intentional disorder in the registration and transfer of bodies – along with pressure on families and, in some cases, the quiet burial of victims – it appears that even the security agencies themselves do not yet know the precise final death toll.

In a report presented on Wednesday, January 21, to the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee seen by Iran International, the number of those killed was listed as at least 27,500.

According to sources within Iran’s Interior Ministry who spoke to Iran International on condition of anonymity, a consolidation of figures received from provincial security councils by Tuesday, January 20, showed the death toll had exceeded 30,000.

Two informed sources from the Supreme National Security Council also told Iran International that in two recent reports by the IRGC Intelligence Organization, dated January 22 and January 24, the number of those killed was listed as more than 33,000 and more than 36,500 respectively.

It was made up. "Iranintl" is literally a propaganda site.

Yes it does:

> [...] newly obtained classified documents, field reports, and accounts from medical staff, witnesses, and victims’ families.

The Islamic Republic represents what happens when Islamism achieves full, unchecked state power. The outcome is monstrous.

The internet is fragile. Access can be so easily cut off for the masses in dire times.

He’s talking his book

The new Nayirah Lie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

Even if there is exaggeration or inaccuracy in the reporting, the repression happening in Iran is certainly real and not a complete fabrication.

"It's fine if we lie because we're the good guys"

Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46754132

I can't comprehend how a population can kill that many of their own people. They aren't even an "other" people, which has been the most common scapegoat lately. Same skin color, same religion, same language, same homeland.

The Khmer Rouge executed between half a million and a million Cambodians between 1975 to 1979[0]. These were the intentional killings, estimates range to as many as 2 million Cambodians or 25% of the population died as a result of Khmer Rouge polices.

The end of the regime was brought about by an incursion into the Vietnamese border town of Ba Chúc, resulting in the massacre of more than 3000 civilians. Vietnam invaded, toppled the Khmer Rouge and brought an end to the executions although civil war would continue for much of the next decade.

For these actions Vietnam was extensively sanctioned[1]. The parallels with ongoing conflicts today are hard to ignore.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Crimes_against_hum...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian%E2%80%93Vietnamese_W...

They are “othering” the people actually, using very clear ideological and religious lines. That’s what I see and hear from the regime ad campaigns, propaganda, etc.

I can easily comprehend it, the history books are full of people killing large numbers of their own people. They just find some irrelevant differentiating factor that allows them to label the other as the outgroup and bring out the guns, the tanks, the ovens and the bombs.

Also, they know the alternative is that they will be dragged in the streets and killed. Iran is long past the point where a revolution can be peaceful and conciliatory; if the regime falls, there will be a redde rationem where most people connected to enforcement and decision-making will be very summarily judged by the people they abused for decades.

There was a post a while ago, I think it was here, pictures from Iran in the early 1970's. It looked absolutely amazing.

The whole Middle East has been battered ever since the end of WWII, in one region or the other, and the wave of conflict is nowhere near the end.

This is a figure for the whole of Iran. So it includes not just the Persian-majority areas, but also the minority-majority areas (Azeris, Kurds, Balochs, Arabs, Armenians, etc). It would not surprise me if the death toll in the minority-majority areas were higher, and hence they contributed a disproportionate percentage of the total, since security forces would likely find it easier to do that to people of a different ethnicity and/or religion (some of these minorities are predominantly Sunni, Christian, etc) than to people more like themselves.

> I can't comprehend how a population can kill that many of their own people.

The notion of some well-defined "people" is a fiction that ruling powers use to keep humanity's innate tribalistic tendencies pointed outward at their adversaries.

The truth is that the powers-that-be consider themselves to be above "the people", and will dispose of you as soon as you become inconvenient.

It’s not necessarily the primary factor, but it’s worth noting that Iran is actually a relatively diverse country by the region’s standards. There are significant Kurdish, Azeri, Balochi, etc. minority groups, for whom the idea that they’re in the same “homeland” as the Persians is not necessarily given.

A lot of it is being done by mercenaries brought in from Afghanistan and Iraq

How do you know? Do you have links for that information? And if true they’d be regular murders brought in, not mercenaries.

In the article it says

“ While most of the killings were carried out by IRGC and Basij forces, reports received by Iran International indicate that proxy forces from Iraq and Syria were also used in the crackdown. The deployment of non-local forces suggests a decision to expand repression capacity as quickly as possible.”

Mercenaries are murderers for hire.

Also, read the article. :)

I think the point is that its believed they were foreigners who were part of iranian proxy forces (e.g. iranian backed militias in iraq), so weren't doing it for money but out of some sort of loyalty to the iranian regime or ideology.

Usually mercenaries mean people doing it for money not ideology who get paid significantly more than your average soldier.

Now you see how easy it is for humans to "other" people to kill them

Iran is made of many different ethnicities, and there were reports of Arab militants that were brought in by the regime (it’s not hard to imagine given how reliant those organizations are on Iran for support).

It’s generally not very hard to incite violence across groups in the Middle East, especially when you consider how bad the outcome might be for the losing side. Case in point, the Alawites who lost control of Syria and are now persecuted by the new government.

From the previous uprisings, the regime usually sends Arab mercenaries like Hizbollah. They don't speak Farsi and have no connection to the people of Iran.

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Most obvious bait ever

It's definitely bait but there is definitely not the same reaction to this among that group of people and when one asks the question "why?", there aren't a multitude if explanations that come to mind.

I guess that Iran felt like the strongest opponent to Israel, its history was not widely known by the protesters, and so it takes a little more to distance yourself.

There's maybe some disquiet in realizing that they're not someone you can side with, too.

And for sure some of the outlets followed by the protesters have ties to Iran, sadly.

Is Iran funded by and supplied weapons by the US and Europe?

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It’s not necessary to bring American politics into things that happen anywhere in the world.

It looks like you were downvoted, but you’re absolutely right. “Their own people” is a silly trope - people are always “othered” by something - if not race (I guess what is mean by “thier own people”), then by religion, political persuasion, etc.

But hey, help is coming.

Narrator's voice: "Unfortunatelly, they will be waiting forever, becase that help will never come."

looks like it hasn't moved in a bit

https://www.cruisingearth.com/ship-tracker/united-states-nav...

help will come ... but with scare quotes.

"Iran International", isn't registered anywhere in the US or traceable to any reputable source, it has no reporters in Iran but claims to have access to "classified" documents of IRGC. This wreaks of desperation at a failed coup

IRGC is not involved in internal affairs, it's Iran's special forces and focuses on strategic defense forces.

You confused the Quds Force with the IRGC. IRGC is involved in nearly everything in Iran.

Quds force is a the expeditionary force division of IRGC. IRGC are uniformed military officers and operate under armed forces regulations not police or civilian law enforcement.

Take a good look US, because once you're down far enough the fascist drain, that's the cost of trying to claw your way back out. And there's no hope of external intervention given nuclear arms

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Another resounding moral defeat for Abrahamic religion. How much longer till everyone is fed up with the crusades?

hm, I think we should re-evaluate sanctioning or civilian pressure campaigns, since the guise is for them to coax or turn on the government for regime change, but the government can just hire mercenaries from outside the country.

don't know a solution but this one isn't it

How about plain civil disobedience? Like just stop working? It would need to get pretty extreme before the government had the audacity (and even capacity) to actually track you down to your home and arrest (or kill) you. Although this kind of coordination might be difficult with government control of communication media.

> How about plain civil disobedience? Like just stop working?

An amazing level of privilege. In half of the world, if you stop working, you will very soon die of hunger.

Work–to–rule, then. This was actually included in the CIA sabotage manual.

Part of the motivation for these protests was the inflation making it hard to afford everyday living. Not working means even less money.

The government’s income is made up of oil money not tax money. At some point, people may choose death by regime’s bullets than by hunger.

This works in a country like India but even in Indian history, the movement can die down (it died down in chauri chaura as it became violent and Gandhi didn't like it being violent iirc) though my history about this can be a bit off and I can be wrong tho

Regarding Iran, most of their money is from Oil. As throwawayheui57 says. So I don't really think that they would care much for civil disobedience

I have heard that Iranian shops are either closed or running in the least minimum operational way (barely open/working)

Tough times. I hope for a better future for people of Iran.

>the government can just hire mercenaries from outside the country.

Machiavelli in Discourses on Livy says you are inviting an overthrow of your government by doing this.

The mercenaries can flip sides if the opposite faction pays them and offers them better terms... or maybe the mercs just flip.

Hard to say how true this is.

What happened to Trump threatening to invade? This is the one situation that intervention is called for.

No situation justifies external interference, especially not by the US, which has done more than its fair share of invading and then just making things worse for everyone, like in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Define “external”?

External to the planet?

The hemisphere?

The continent?

The lands previously a part of a former empire?

The lands that a country lost to a war?

A country border drawn arbitrarily (straight!) by an English Lord hundreds of years ago?

A country border not everybody agrees about?

A country border defined to keep out intervention more than to protect?

A country border that is porous and is walked across daily by people that aren’t even sure where it is?

Etc…

At some point you may release that humans live on both sides of lines that often exist only on maps, and serve only to keep people servile to autocrats.

Autocrats whom make sure that their schools teach the importance of borders.

Justifies? What a privileged position.

It is great shame that fascist US regime is the only real hope and ally of Persian people today, but it is what it is.

(Israel too, but Israel alone cannot do much).

(But I'm sure EU will send a strongly worded letter any day now)

The US armada took a while to reach the Gulf. The air strikes will most likely happen this weekend.

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Yeah but at least they don't live under the fascist US regime. /s

brought to you by unbiased quality sources on par with those which claimed WMD in Iraq... /s

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"Help is on the way" from the US is often not a great propositon. Doubly so today.

https://reason.com/2026/01/23/the-trump-administration-plans...

The US shipped the carrier battle group in the region out to support the Venezuela operations, and is deporting asylum seekers back to their deaths this week.

Nobody in the US has any idea what is happening in Iran. Judging by the weird, not very HN like threads on this post, sounds like we are going to.

The fact that he said that and then DID NOT topple the government in Iran is insane.. completely irresponsible, or rather responsible.. for those deaths.

The irony is that now those who are still alive in Iran might remember this and update their notion of US trustworthiness accordingly.

Do you think that the people encouraging ice protests share some culpability in the deaths of the other protesters?

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Also, we already have Iran on sanctions and every possible diplomatic hostility short of war. What should we rationally ask for from our government? Invasion?

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We should be angry about both situations but most people truly don't give a fuck about the latter. It is not just the Iran situation though.

We make decisions all the time that result in immense amount of unnecessary suffering because of a total lack of rationality.

Our food consumption choices alone have created the objectively largest and most horrific engine of suffering in the history of this planet, all for the pleasure of our taste buds. The average person is directly responsible for this.

It is the irrationality and lack of empathy of the average person that bothers me. Unless you show them a video of protestors being massacred in Iran, or take them to a factory farm, they don't care. And even then, they often don't care. Why?

Suffering is roughly sortable and it is certainly within the power of most people to drive down the greatest sources of suffering, and pressure their government to do so when it is not directly within their power.

But people are irrational.

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Such a ridiculous take. Get off your hate wagon. Also I argue no "leftists" support opposing ICE or Palestine out of "leftism". Only hateful bigots would support the execution of our people on our streets, or denying Palestinians their rights to exist and to freedom, free from a zionist ideology that has no respect for property or for life. Maybe if our "right wingers" and "Zionist" friends put humanity first and not politics or racist judaism first, they would not sound as hateful as you do now bud. Your comment is vile, and I can only imagine the hate you have in your bones. Although I will exclude right wingers here, since they are as of late huge supporters of the palestinian cause.

??? There's an obvious trail of money from Russia and Iran that influences current world events. Which is why there's no outrage over Iran murdering tens of thousands of protestors.

I'm on the side of the Iranian protestors, not the murderous Islamic regime and terrorists, nor their murderous Russian allies.

What's vile is not being opposed to the murder of 36000 people.

I am very much against Iran bud. However, I am very much against Israel too, and your comment merged those protesting the murder of Good and more recently Mr Preti and left a very bad taste. Do you support in equal fervor the trail of money from rich religious donors in the US towards starving children in Ghaza for the Zionist project? or are you protesting the murders committed by the IDF against helpless children? The fact you are bringing religion into your argument is vile too. Iran's regime is built on oppression, but this is very much not a religious struggle. It just tells me you are very much ignorant on the subject. Dictatorships (Iran, Russia) are not religious by nature. They use culture or religion to drive their oppressive agenda, but you are falling for tricks that leads me to believe you support the protests in Iran not out of wishful helpfulness, but out of bigotry. But maybe you are equally supportive of other struggles for freedom like the Palestinian struggle.

Religion? Iran's legal name is "the Islamic Republic of Iran" and it is widely called the Islamic Republic. I just used this name to differentiate from the Iranian people or Iran as a country filled with people who don't necessarily support the regime.

But you keep bringing up Zionists which gives a clue as to your persuasions, especially since they have no role in any of the events discussed here unless you believe the "Jews run the world" conspiracy theories.

Anyhow, the horseshoe is real and the Russian/Iranian money trail is real...

Here's some examples: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/24/uk-protest-gro...

https://time.com/7005190/iran-gaza-protests-nuanced-reality/

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/iranian-government-actors-se...

https://www.timesofisrael.com/nancy-pelosi-calls-for-fbi-pro...

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Every political group hates every other one. Every time "anti-hate" groups come to power there is a purge often followed by genocide. Singling out one specific emotion is irrational.

If Palestine had full US backing they would push Israelis in to the ocean and claiming otherwise is dishonest. UAE is the largest backer of Palestine, they have no qualms backing genocide in Sudan. So it's just as reasonable to claim jihadism has no respect for property or for life.

This isn't whataboutism, if this money wasn't flowing you wouldn't hear about it.

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The US Navy has an entire battle group headed to the gulf along with aircraft being moved to Qatar. Something is brewing.

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Trump keeping his word would raise gas prices though. A problem when he's managing his 15 other unforced errors currently killing the economy. It's not easy being Tariff Man.

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> But these numbers are simply not credible.

Why do you think that?

> Remember the governing ideology of the US and Israel sees the continued existence of Iran as an existential threat.

Obviously Israel would see the Iranian regime as an existential threat when they quite openly advocate for the destruction of Israel[0] and have a nuclear weapons program.

> Their aims may align with the protestors temporarily but I think a permanently fractured, Syria type situation is much more palatable to them than a rapid transition to a more democratic system that leaves the country intact.

Israel would almost certainly prefer a stable intact Iran with normalized relations.

> There is no guarantee a post-islamic Iran would step into line, and it would remain a regional power that would be much harder to justify continued sanctions against.

Israel and the US don't want to destroy Iran, they want Iran to stop funding terrorists and stop threatening regional stability.

> A clean change of government with domestic US pressure to lift sanctions would be their nightmare scenario.

Why should the US lift sanctions while Iran continues to fund terrorists and attempts to develop nuclear weapons?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Israel_in_Irani...

Iran is the 17th most populous nation in the world, with 93 million people. These protests seem to be occurring across the entire nation. Another comment mentioned over 4,000 separate clashes. Other sources have already corroborated a lower bound in the mid-thousands. I think the burden is on you to refute these numbers by showing that the sources are deliberately misleading or finding a flaw in the methodology. Simply saying that you find them "not credible" and that some people might have a political motive behind sharing them is not an argument.

Note, I'm not saying that they have been confirmed, but I do not think that you have given sufficient cause for rejecting them out of hand.

https://www.en-hrana.org/day-twenty-eight-of-the-protests-ar...

This is the organisation most commonly cited in news reports, they estimate ~5200 protestors confirmed killed (+ a few hundred more for security personnel killed)

They are a group of anti-regime Iranian dissidents based in the US. I don't know why they would seek to provide a deliberately low estimate.

Confirmed != estimated. This source does not make any estimates. They are investigating every death individually. Given the lack of transparency, the true number of deaths is likely higher than the number which can be confirmed at this time.

As of writing this comment, the subtitle says "The number of deaths currently under investigation stands at 17,031." They do not claim that this is the total number of deaths either.

30,000 is not confirmed but cannot be ruled out.

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> It's 40 beheaded babies all over again.

No official source ever claimed this. You are disgusting scum for promoting this lie.

Lying and trivializing the brutal murders of Israeli children and tens of thousands of Iranians civilians is utterly reprehensible.

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https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/24/iran-rejects-un-rig...

what's wrong with it?

Is “the left” in the room with us right now?

The college students and the left support the Iranian regime.

"The left", i.e socialists, communists, anarchists, etc, are supportive of a theocratic dictatorship? Not sure whats more unlikely here, a unified "left" or that they'd be unified behind a dictatorship with fascist principles.

That’s quite the claim. Do you have any examples?

Check out https://www.reddit.com/r/NewIran/

How can I know if this subreddit is populated by college students, let alone leftists?

It's not, it's populated by Iranians wishing to take down the regime but frequently they reference college student posts from elsewhere, in sadness

There’s a subreddit for almost anything, why should we think that is broadly representative of US college students? Do you have a poll or something?

Are these really left and right issues?

IE as the right is becoming more anti-Israel, you find a lot more pro Islamic Republic stuff there these days. The boomer and zoomer right are very different beasts.

I don't follow the left as closely these days, but imagine there are a myriad of opinions on the matter.

Roger Waters is a boomer but reflects the zoomer left well. (To be clear I will be forever grateful to him for his music but he should really stop talking when it comes to the Iranian and Ukrainian people)

right, Russia/Ukraine is another thing which isn't as neatly left/right as people think.

I used to read the English version of Russia today, and it was almost comical to seem them oscillate articles that fit the "Based Mother Russia of Traditional Values" trope, then right next to it nostalgic Tankie stuff or the anti "Western Imperialist" think pieces. It's like they didn't even know who their useful idiots were anymore.

No, no we don't. Nor do we want to get involved in a civil war in Middle East on behalf of Trumps, Saudis, and Israelis.

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Israel has killed more than double that in Gaza, and that’s only what’s been confirmed as many bodies are under rubble and millions are left living in tents: https://aje.io/5b4h1e

Note that these numbers come straight from the Hamas run health ministry which does not track civilian vs combatant deaths and has questionable accuracy.

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This is a little different, this is probably an issue anyone of any side politically can agree is bad. A government is killing their own people in the tens of thousands. It is foolish to even waste time pointing fingers outside of the country in question in my eyes because its irrelevant, their current government is killing citizens in the right here and right now.

HN mods removed US News of a government killing its own people in Minnesota. The only difference is the quantity. You're being hypocritical.

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> "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." [0]

However, it also says:

> "Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it." [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The idea that we can "avoid politics" while talking about the industry is ridiculous anyway...

it should especially considering questionable biased sources

When people, or communities, or companies, show you their true colors, believe them. Watch out for all those flocking in to explain how this is different…

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adequate username

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Disgusting to make that joke on a forum that strives towards reason and enlightenment. Disgusting to make light of 36,500 regular people potentially dead while seeking freedom and justice.

Thank god they’re only potentially dead.

The potentiality is in the numbers which need more citations to verify, not the aliveness.

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What does Israel have to do with this article? From what I gather, Iran International is owned by Volant Media, based in the UK, with funding from Saudi Arabia.

>What does Israel have to do with this article?

Because others are asking why people are protesting for Gaza and not Iran.

> What does Israel have to do with this article?

In terms of interests, this article benefits Israel, that's what they have to do with this article.

awesome ! more than 2 years into genocide in Gaza and not a single word on HN. And now a fake news published by a zionist website (iranintl.com is financed and supported by Israel) gets on the first page ! so disgusting.

I heard the number was much higher than that, they massacred 6 million iranians during those protests.

I mean, this is the nail in the coffin, I'm removing my hacker news account, this is even worse than reddit in propaganda.

... Ok? This is not an airport. You do not need to announce your departure.

Bye

36,500 dead, 300,000 injured, In 2 days? People are buying this? Unarmed protesters tend to flee when the shooting starts and armed protesters shoot back. And all this without heavy weapons? Do people remember what Gaza turned into get to that toll?

The actual final toll number is certainly in the thousands But all the numbers being touted in the western press reek of desperation. Lot of the sources are western-backed anti-iranian ngos ( lot of them with cia, mossad and other intelligence ties) which themselves cite dubious sources. IranIntl is itself Saudi-backed and a Mossad asset according to Axios's Barak Ravid, who is himself worked for Israel's Unit 8200. Netanyahu seems to try rope the US into war in the short window before the US mid-terms and the Monarchists seem similarly desperate to show traction to the Trump admin. With Epstein and whatever else that is hanging over Trump's head this is a very dangerous trap.

No different than any other war, the powers that be line up to psy op the public to support it. Interesting to see who the players are that are willing to amplify this overt propaganda. Sadly, looks like HN is front and center, right along with Reddit and basically every other mainstream US-based tech/news aggregator.

There is no major US social media company that doesn't have members of the Israeli military among its executives, HN included.

I find myself wondering what people would think if we swapped "Israeli" for "Chinese" in your reply. And why this double standard exists in all our minds.

Clearly you can't run a country when your elites owe their first allegiance to somewhere else.

The iranian government is criminal, but it's absolutely not believable. The 6 months of the Anfal campaign where Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons killed between 50 and 100k people, the 2 years of the last gaza war with the carpet bombing killed 80k people, the tien an men massacre was in the hundreds, 4 years of civil in birmanie killed 80k people too

The silence of MSM (particularly the BBC) is eye-opening.

>The silence of MSM (particularly the BBC) is eye-opening.

Daily reports from the BBC, and the rate of them is increasing

https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/cjnwl8q4ggwt

Some of the headlines-

New Iran videos show bodies piled in hospital and snipers on roofs

'I saw people getting shot': Eyewitness tells of Iran protest crackdown An Iranian who got out of the country describes scenes of chaos as security forces opened fire in her home town.

Photos leaked to BBC show faces of hundreds killed in Iran's brutal protest crackdown

Just leaving this here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat

Whenever I see mentions of the protesters asking for the Sha to come back, I can't but to worry for the future of Iran even if the protests succeed.

Fun fact, the clergy was a crucial part of the coup, backed by CIA. The same people in power now, btw.

Fun fact, the same people who preach democracy to you all day,

plotted and went about to oust one of the most democratically legitimate leaders of his country by night.

Let that sink in for a moment.

I’m was under the impression that this was a well known fact. Let what sink in? What are you trying to say?

Just busy being edgy I guess. There's nothing fun about the fact either.

I am almost sure that every single person who plotted the 1953 coup is dead. Maybe one of them survives somewhere aged 103 and no longer knowing their name.

Should Macron be judged by what Napoleon III. (or for that matter, I.) did? Surely there is some kind of continuity between those French heads of state, they even fly the some colors and sit in the same palace.

What makes you think the CIA/Mossad fundamentally operate differently today?

Oh btw, since we're on the topic of false flags:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair

Because of the sheer incompetence and cruelty of the islamic regime I wonder if Mossad even need to do anything at this point. Islamic regime is doing their work for them to upset the population and destabilize the country.

Did you think that running a dictatorship is a stable endeavor? No foreign intervention even needed when you build your house on sand.

IIRC Iran suffered from the worst brain drain in the world. That alone would doom the ayatollahs in the long term.

It matters less than before. The US is no longer the dominant force it used to be in the 1950s, and the UK (which was part of the anti-Mossadegh plot) is completely gone from the world stage.

The world of 2026 cannot be reduced to a CIA/Mossad theatre where everyone else is a NPC and must suffer whatever they cook up there. Other people have agency and do their things. EU, India, China, Iran, Russia, Qatar, all influential players.

Well, whatever you'd like to believe, of course.

When it comes to value for money/size, Qatar alone has a lot more influence than the US. Recently it forced the EU to relax its ESG standards in exchange for gas imports.

Sure some people love to live in the past, but it is not the past anymore, of course.

Trump chickening out of every world confrontation is a nice example of the diminishing capability of the US to bend the rest of the world to its will. US can probably keep its influence in Latin America, but in the Old World, the balance of power has shifted.

Is Trump de facto more powerful than Mohammad bin Salman? IDK.

I never understood why some people get so fixated on one event in 1953, as if nothing else mattered after that.

Sure, it had a nontrivial effect. But it also happened in a time when Stalin and Churchill were still alive, there were 6 billion people fewer on the planet and the first antibiotics and transistors barely entered production. Korea was poorer than Ghana etc.

It is 2026, three generations have passed, and not everything can be explained and excused by a 1953 event forever. But it is convenient for autocracy advocates in general.

It reminds me of the worship of the Great Patriotic War in Russia. Again, as if nothing that happened later matters.

The question is, how can you be sure anything you see in the (controlled) news is not another instance of covert plots, false flags, and psyops [0]?

How, precisely how?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_operations_(Unit...

How can I be sure that you aren't a bot or vice versa?

Don't worry, you're not the only person who can't answer this question.

Nobody can, that I know of.

I don't worry much here, given that HN isn't a very lucrative space to infest with bots. We will hold out for a few years here.

I am no longer on Facebook or Twitter/X, where that question is very relevant.

Hn is loaded with bots and this thread in particular is full of things that somehow have less political literacy than the typical American 8th grader.

The current Ayatollah bullshit cannot be explained without that coup d'état. People flocked to the religious zealots because the alternative was a Western satrap.

Sorta-kinda.

It is a bit like explaining the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia (1948) by the Western betrayal at Munich in 1938. It was a factor. But not The Factor. Just one of many.

In case of Iran, there, too, were other factors at play. The general drive of the Shah to be the Iranian Atatürk-like Modernizer, which clashed with the conservative rural population. The abilities of Khomeini, who pursued his goal of overthrowing the monarchy with absolute zeal. (Would Turkey be nowadays a modern state if Atatürk himself faced a similar opponent?) Willingness of France to shelter Khomeini and willingness of some Western intellectuals to fawn over him. Naivete of the Iranian Left that joined Khomeinis movement and hoped to come up on top, only to eventually get slaughtered for being "enemies of God".

Etc.etc. It is somewhat intellectually lazy to just drag out Mossadegh and leave the conversation, like GP did. It also masks other unpleasant facts.

For example, in my opinion, the Western intellectual class of the 1970s made a serious mistake by supporting Khomeini and cannot even bring itself to acknowledge it. I think this was at least as consequential to the eventual birth of the Islamic Republic as the Mossadegh coup. But the more people talk about the latter, the more they tend to forget about the former.

It's the nature of fascist countries to be fixated on the past

timothy snyder describes it as the "politics of eternity"

People in general tend to be nostalgic, but yeah, a specific sort of politician will use it for their own purpose.

This is depressing because we will go to war over this and it’s going to be five years before people realizing they were tricked by “babies in incubators” propaganda.

No. Shut up. This has been confirmed by countless Iranians

We prepared for this :)

https://battlefield.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_for_Tehran