Comment by caminante

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.

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.

"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.

> 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/

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

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.

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

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It’s Shia Sunni, it transgresses economics.

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

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.

"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...

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"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

> 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.