Comment by mrbombastic
9 hours ago
You often find expat communities have the exact opposite viewpoint as those that remain, part of the reason they are expats. See cuban expats, nicaraguan expats, not to say they are wrong but they are not a monolith representing all of a civilization. Presumably those standing around the bridges don’t want them bombed.
I’m just giving my personal experience as a data point.
All my in-laws are in Tehran: aunts, uncles, cousins. Everybody is anti-regime.
It’s hard for us to understand in the west. Speaking out against the regime is not possible.
These people who congregated on the bridges were phoned up by the regime as a marketing stunt. Perhaps they were family members or friends of the IRGC. Perhaps they were forced to go, because you can’t say no to the regime. They hang protesters.
I saw someone in another thread compare it to the USSR. Or maybe North Korea.
I’m not saying that there aren’t regime supporters, there definitely are. But you have to be very suspect whenever you see videos of “grassroots” supporters of the regime and remember that opposition voices are not allowed.
They're often from the families of the privileged or elites under the old, america friendly regime.
Indeed, the entitlement complex is probably why so many of them (in the iranian diaspora) were happy to rally behind an actual monarch.
This is not a normal thing to do for somebody who has supposedly adopted western values.