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Comment by inglor_cz | Hacker News Reader

"Say what you want about the Iranian government"

I will. For example, it is a nasty group of medieval characters, extremely corrupt even by contemporary standards, and willing to kill and maim their opponents at every opportunity. Hanging people from cranes, bloody hell.

"most obvious CIA-sponsored color revolution"

Yeah, because millions of people are just stupid remote-controlled robotic zombies who will, upon a command of the CIA, go into the streets against Basij thugs who are willing to shoot at them.

Do people outside the West have any personal agency themselves in your view, or are they all just mindless puppets of the Big White Man in the White House?

This is not to deny that the US has some interest in getting the ayatollahs overthrown. But I find the opinion that everyone in the world just obediently dances by someone's flute quite dehumanizing.

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In a world we prefer algorithmic newsfeeds to editorialized news? It is quite possible.

Not saying it is what's happening.

But pretending our brain isn't subject to manipulation isn't the way to our own betterment.

For people whose Maslow's hierarchy of needs is almost fully satisfied, yes.

In Iran of 2026, neither food nor even water is secure. That is very low on the same hierarchy. I would say that this is a much stronger motivation for discontent than anything on the heavily censored local Internet.

> Yeah, because millions of people are just stupid remote-controlled robotic zombies who will, upon a command of the CIA, go into the streets against Basij thugs who are willing to shoot at them.

Not the CIA anymore. Today, it's done by "semi-governmental" organizations such as the NED[1, 2] or RFE/RL[3] or in this case, its persian-language incarnation Radio Farda[4].

You can agree with their overt goal of strengthening pro-democratic forces in authoritarian countries, (though the question remain: with what authority and who sets the objectives they are promoting?)

Even then, the list of countries in which they don't operate should raise some questions: No activity in Israel, Argentina or the Gulf states, even though those countries are also generally regarded as autocracies (Gulf states) or are currently experiencing a massive slide towards authoritarianism (Israel, Argentina). It just happens that those countries are all allies of the US...

[1] https://www.ned.org

[2] https://socialism.com/fs-article/betrayal-from-venezuela-to-...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Libert...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Farda

We did listen to the RFE, as well as London, during the Communist years.

Yeah, the West is not a bunch of angels. But among people who view the world as one big conspirational system, there is a visible lack of understanding that many of the domestic regimes are worse than that.

If any country maintains a massive secret police against internal dissent, it is a good indication that the Dear Leader is hated by the population.

As of 2025, most European countries do not maintain a massive secret police against internal dissent, though some particular events are worrying. But prior to 1989, there were massive secret police systems all over the former Eastern Bloc.

"with what authority and who sets the objectives they are promoting?"

Does it matter? Why?

The Iranian system in particular derives its authority from Allah, and? Did Allah actually confirm their authority? Nope.

> Yeah, because millions of people are just stupid remote-controlled robotic zombies who will, upon a command of the CIA, go into the streets against Basij thugs who are willing to shoot at them.

What a lazy and ignorant attempt of spinning this. That's on the same level as the "so many people would know, no one could keep it a secret" fact check drivel. You don't need people to be stupid, "remote-controlled" nor robotic zombies. You just need to keep on funding assets, recruit new people and the seeds will form a groundwork sooner or later.

I recommend picking up a book on this some time: https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/cia-intervention

Some of these operations werde decades long.

> But I find the opinion that everyone in the world just obediently dances by someone's flute quite dehumanizing.

Basically no one means this when they speak of regime change operations and people participating in it.

I know a few activists who were involved in sending dialup numbers to fax machines during the Arab Spring during the Internet blackout in Egypt and most of them are pretty much aware that they were mostly pawns for Western governments.

Iranian economy is absolutely terrible, their government hangs people like there is no tomorrow, the ayatollahs dip their beaks into every viable business and steal like crows, the official ideology of the system is a primitive medieval theocracy pushed on educated and modern people. Plus the very same government, after spending a lot of money on arming itself, proved incapable of beating back an aerial assault of the "Little Satan" back in June.

If I lived in Iran, I would need no CIA to be angry about the status quo.

Not at all what I was saying and I know all that. The Iranians have all reasons to be angry at their government. No one disputes that.

> Basically no one means this when they speak of regime change operations and people participating in it.

They do though. Spinning the 2014 Maidan Revolution as a fully illegitimate CIA-backed coup (with the implicit conclusion that it's against the will of the people) is one of the main rhetorical pillars used to justify Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Well, can't argue with facts, unless you believe the fact checkers.

> it is a nasty group of medieval characters,

Still better than having western corporations loot the hell out of your country, like they did to Russia in the 90s, or what AICO did after it got Mossadegh out of the way.

> robotic zombies who will, upon a command of the CIA, go into the streets...

Money goes a long way, even in countries that aren't poor. For a country as heavily sanctioned as Iran, the CIA could buy out all of their politicians and all of their journalists several times over. We already saw this with "arab spring" in Egypt. Five-eyes and company con terminally online city kids into thinking the country is behind them, city kids protest and weaken the government, the peasants take notice and realize, "Hey, if these spoiled kids can topple the government, just imagine what we can do!", so instead of getting gay rights and feminism, they get the Muslim Brotherhood.

Can you please write more about Russia in the 90s and western corporations? What happened there?

This happened: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/03/22/1087654279/how...

I don’t see any involvement of evil western forces. Local clever guys took their chances. Happened in every part of broken Soviet Union. So many amazing stories about smart guys taking material possessions of disappeared KGB.

The story of Eastern Germany is much more interesting. Capital from West Germany was directly steering the process.

>> it is a nasty group of medieval characters,

> Still better than having western corporations loot the hell out of your country, like they did to Russia in the 90s, or what AICO did after it got Mossadegh out of the way.

Really? By what measure? Just look at how many people fled the Islamic Republic vs. Shah's old regime. The diaspora has absolutely exploded since Khomeini's revolution, and the people fleeing are mostly the best educated ones. Iran has the highest brain drain in the world.

Don't want to exonerate the regime - they are an Islamist dictatorship. Though, so is Saudi Arabia and I'm not hearing about mass flight from there. Maybe just a little bit because one is sanctioned and the other is not?

Of course they were the best educated. Their parents could afford the best educations money can buy after selling their country out to western corporations. The Shah was a puppet. His entourage, puppets.

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