Comment by BariumBlue
5 days ago
Apparently there have been IRGC and basij curfew patrols shooting at buildings / windows of people who sing or shout anti regime songs and slogans. Apparently they are also (at least in some cases) dressing as women to avoid airstrikes. There has been very little photage and info coming out of Iran though.
I still believe the Iranian government is more afraid of it's people than of the US and Israel - the US and Israel can bomb leadership and materiel, but without ground troops, regime capitulation is unlikely, unless the populace can themselves overthrow the govt (though that is hard to do when there is a major imbalance in who has guns).
This is all likely true. Although I feel people undersell how they work together.
Iranians broadly hate their government, yeah. But the thing that gets them rioting is economic failure. Which the strikes have exacerbated.
Social media is swarmed by people saying it’ll be like Iraq and Iranians will hate the US for its actions. I’m not convinced. My small anecdata of Iranian friends with contacts in Iran agrees with me.
I think we could see regime change within a decade.
> But the thing that gets them rioting is economic failure
I believe Iranians want to be able to decide their own fate, with the dignity that all humans deserve. Without criminal domestic religious zealots and without foreign meddling and bombing.
The previous protest was followed by the killing of Mahsa Amini, in morality police’s custody because of improper hijab. It’s not only economic hardships. But you’re right that war has made the situation worse, obviously.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/10/iran-at-least...
> I believe Iranians want to be able to decide their own fate, with the dignity that all humans deserve.
They certainly do, the domestic religious zealots/terrorists on the other hand murdered over 30,000 protesters in 2 days to stop that from happening.
> Without criminal domestic religious zealots and without foreign meddling and bombing.
The domestic religious zealots have essentially ensured that foreign military intervention is required to some degree for Iranians to have the ability to decide their own fate. At this point it's likely most Iranians support some form of foreign intervention.
> I’m not convinced. My small anecdata of Iranian friends with contacts in Iran agrees with me.
I am having a very hard time believing anyone would be favourable to the country currently lobbing bombs at them from halfway around the globe. Regardless of how much they dislike their current regime.
Maybe this fuels some "everyone loves America, the good guys" fantasy, but, as someone who's come from a country where the people did not like the regime, I am very skeptical foreign interference will be seen positively or even neutrally.
Or maybe this is an attempt at making the war seem somehow just and led on humanitarian and democratic principles, as opposed to what it actually is.
Let's put it this way: Have you seen someone's brain on the sidewalk lately? No? Lost a loved one / a friend / a classmate? Perhaps when people see this (as I have) they find more favorable views of the aerial bombing campaign.
For reference, it has been verfied [~] that the regime killed ~220 students just in the recent uprisings of this January. That's a whole school full of students, all under-18. And then you have to ask, why would a teenager be on the streets, given that they knew, everyone knew, that snipers and machine guns will be there? Just 5 days ago they hung an 18-year-old who was arrested this Jan. They also hung a 19-yo wrestling champion very recently. The collateral damage of these bombings, which must be denounced and is reprehensible, still has not reached these levels either in brutality and in number. [1]
[~] (my internet connection is not good enough to find the sources, I'm using dnstt in a very unreliable network)
[1] AFAIK, Around 180-190 students have died in the recent conflict. Some 160-170 was due to an erroneous airstrike by the US military on the first day of the war, and their school was within 30 meters of a military base (!). Furthermore, some of the other students who have died were the children of the assassinated regime officials.
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My anecdata is from just two families whom I am hearing from indirectly and have never met in person. The takeaways are:
1) they HATE their government more than anything in the world. They’ve seen the government killing its own people.
2) the consensus of civilians is that strikes by and large are hitting IRGC targets. They do not feel civilian targets are being targeted even though the nature of it has resulted in civilian deaths.
3) they don’t feel inclined to give trump the slightest amount of trust or good will. They just want regime change by any means.
If Israel and America can keep it in their pants and stop bombing civilians.. then yeah the government is very unpopular.
If.
Unpopularity won't overthrow a government that is willing to drown every protest in blood.
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> But the thing that gets them rioting is economic failure. Which the strikes have exacerbated.
Past riots were related to women rights or election fraud. The last one were related to the economic situation, but there is a large young population in Iran which aren't religious anymore, and living in an oppressive theocracy
They'll have company soon
https://gtnm.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-theocratic-authorita...
My small anecdata of Iranian friends contradict yours. They are against both the US-Israeli bombings and the Islamic regime. How should be decide whose anecdata is the most trustworthy? Maybe we can use common sense instead and agree that people don't want to be bombed to death regardless of other circumstances?
But the vector under a theocratic government constantly points towards failure. So you have one known vector thats disaster and one unknown vector that just mightbbe disaster.. if in doubt throw the dice ?
Why wont a general strike work? Not enough support? People have never had freedom, so dont understand they have 100% ability to bring down govt if they wanted?
Due to years of corruption and mismanagement, leading to high inflation and high prices most people are below poverty line and living pay check to pay check and they won’t be able to literally feed themselves
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It would work at sufficient scale and sacrifice
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This is just spreading rumors. You have to do better than "apparently".
> Apparently they are also (at least in some cases) dressing as women to avoid airstrikes
Didn't help anybody in Minab.
You’re right and that’s the sad part. They have their underground cities but haven’t bothered to build shelters for civilians. They care for the school children as little as the US bombs do.
Can you provide a source for any of this that is not just American or Isreali propaganda? Because I know you can't
When a regime starts killing thousands of it's own people it's a sign of weakness, not strength. Iran's theocracy was teetering above the abyss before the U.S. started bombing them.
Now, they're probably good to go for a couple more decades. Trump is precisely the kind of threat Iranians have been warned about since the revolution. When a regime spends almost half a century preparing for something and it finally happens, it earns them considerable forgiveness. Also, nothing unites people quite like a foreign threat, especially one dumb enough to bomb schoolgirls in its opening salvo.
By scuttling the JCPOA for no apparent reason and now invading Iran right when it appeared the regime was crumbling, Trump has single-handedly reinvigorated Iran's theocracy and given them the public support they need for the final push towards nuclear weapons. That's what's so sickening about this invasion. It has acted in diametric opposition to the the policy goals it was purportedly pursuing.
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