Comment by redwood
2 days ago
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
2 days ago
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.
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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.
> 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.
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"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.
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Do you mean doesn’t wear a headscarf?
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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.
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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.