Iranian Students Protest as Anger Grows
wsj.com
wsj.com
This is unfortunate and gives the regime a chance to say "see, these people are puppets of the monarchy".
I feel like the people who want a monarchy installed are trying to fish in troubled waters.
Honestly very hard to say, I don’t know what to believe about the Iran situation. I think it’s pretty much impossible to get a good understanding of it from a western country
It really isn't. Inflation at a fraction of Iran's prompts governments to change in any democracy.
1) Iran's government has not done a good job of running the country and is therefore genuinely unpopular among a significant percentage of the population.
2) Iran's current government has powerful enemies (US, UK and of course a country in the Middle East all really hate the Iranian regime) and those enemies are actively trying to destabilise it.
So it's really hard from the perspective of being in a western country to work out how much of the protests are genuinely endogenous to Iran and how much is an intelligence operation, because it's clearly not 0%
Intelligence assets are generally covert. It's incredibly difficult to engineer a protest–particularly in a repressive regime–out of nothing. Like half of the CIA's history in the Cold War was trying and failing to do this.
"Go out into the streets together. The time has come. We are with you. Not just from a distance or through words. We are also with you on the ground." -> Mossad.
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-883524
https://english.aawsat.com/world/5224901-israel%E2%80%99s-mo...
I think the facts are pretty clear but that won't change people's minds
But like I said, I'm not there, so I don't know the truth and there's no way for me to find it out.
My basic point is just that you can't trust what you read in the papers because the Soviet Union is not the only state to engage in propaganda
It's never purely one or the other. But it's also never predominantly foreign action. Again, it's incredibly difficult to do that, and not for lack of trying.
No. It may have been difficult to do so in the past for the CIA (or other foreign powers) because they had limited avenues to directly influence foreign citizens as they had limited control over foreign media or foreign communication platforms (to control the flow of information).
Today, a large part of both communication and media in nearly all countries happen over the internet, a medium that has been usurped by western tech companies. The role of online social media (like Facebook and WhatsApp) in fomenting riots and genocide is well documented and researched (e.g. genocide in Myanmar).
Look at all the meaningless so called "youth protests" (youth who obviously have grown up consuming media and, communicating on the internet) that have happened in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh or the "colour revolutions". (India was the only exception where it didn't turn violent because its then leaders knew how to genuinely deal democratically with the protestors, but it still resulted in India's democratic fall as it allowed a right-wing authoritarian leader to capture power). In Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh the protests became directionless violent "revolutions" to overthrow an elected government, and illegally transfer power to a bunch of inexperienced "leaders". Then (like what has happened in Bangladesh) they seek to exclude and ban certain political leaders and / or political parties from participating in a new "democratic" election, ensuring an easy win for the opposition. It is then claimed what a success this "democratic" youth revolution has been (and used as fodder to brainwash the youths in some other country).
Youths are easy targets here because they are hooked to the internet and are politically naive.
China was quite astute in this aspect to ensure that their internet didn't fall into the hands on western tech companies. They made sure that their own tech companies dominated in China, and were ruthless in not allowing western tech companies to compete successfully. This is why the west has found it so hard to foment any similar "online social media" revolutions there. And why the west were so obsessed about getting control over TikTok. (Note that this has nothing to do with "democracy" - it's a political necessity that if you want to be a sovereign country and do not want a foreign power to have influence in your country, it is essential to ensure that foreigners don't control your media or communication platform. This is why everyone's talking about "digital sovereignty" and banning teens from social media).
(Sadly, it isn't just the "west" - every country is now using the internet against nations they consider hostile, and doing some form of information warfare to influence foreign elections).
Regime isn't the messaging target. Foreign actors are. And rightly or wrongly, desperate people will choose the icons they have, and the set to choose from is generally those that are helping and those the current regime despises. The first set is scarce. So we're left with the second.
It has been roughly 40 days since the massacres began, and something similar happened in 1979 during the revolution, which was largely sparked during the mourning period (chehelom) for the Qom Massacre.
The cynic in me feels that this must have been recognized by policymakers given how critical the motif of martyrdom is in Persianate culture as Ali Shariati, Ahmed Fardid, and Jalal Al-e-Ahmad - the three pillars of modern Iranian philosophy and culture, as well as the Shia undertones of the 1979 Revolution - have elucidated.
Edit: can't reply
> This just shows how bad the situation for our philosophy and culture have become in the last century...
Yep.
I don't agree with their beliefs, but you cannot decouple a large portion of modern Iran from Shariati/Fardid/Al-e-Ahmad's motifs, which themselves are largely derived from Iqbal and Heidegger.
This just shows how bad the situation for our philosophy and culture have become in the last century...
I really wouldn't call these charlatans "pillars of modern Iranian philosophy and culture"
1. "Occidentosis: A Plague from the West" by Jalal Al-e-Ahmad
2. "Red Shi'ism vs. Black Shi'ism" by Ali Shariati
3. "Martyrdom: Arise and Bear Witness" by Ali Shariati
4. "The Purification of the Soul" by Ahmed Fardid
Most modern Iranian Shia philosophy is largely a synthesis of Heiddiger and Muhammad Iqbal ("Saare Jahan Se Aacha, Hindustan Humara"), as these Iranian philosophers were largely from Khorasan and Dari speaking so most were acquaintances with Iqbal, who popularized Heiddiger's thought across Persianate society.
Basically, if you synthesize Heidigger's concept of authenticity with the Persianate motif of martyrdom with a dose of Persianate chauvinism and Shia theology, you have what became Khomeinism.
It's basically Maoism but with the Marxist-Leninist and Confucian undertones replaced with Shia and Persianate undertones.
I also can't help but notice how both Mao/Li/Chen and Shariati/Fardid/Al-e-Ahmad were all members of the rural elite who faced dislocation when immigrating to urban society in the early 20th century.
Edit: can't reply
> Are there specific translations you’d call out
We had English translations at Widener Library [0]. There might be similar ones online. Idk, I don't want to get on a list.
> Wait, is this Farsi? I think I can parse it with my rough knowledge of Hindi
Muhammad Iqbal was both an Indian freedom fighter, the creator of the Pakistan movement, and one of the first modern Persianate scholars.
Back during that era, most Persian scholarship was centered amongst the South Asian community. Additionally, educated Koshur and Paharis (irrespective of religion) from that era were heavily Persianate in outlook (eg. Even Koshur Hindus back then would consider studying a BA Persian as an alternative to a BA Sanskrit).
As such, Iqbal's works were very common amongst the madrassa-turned-western educated Iranian intelligentsia of the early 20th century.
[0] - https://library.harvard.edu/collections/middle-eastern-colle...
> Saare Jahan Se Aacha, Hindustan Humara
Wait, is this Farsi? I think I can parse it with my rough knowledge of Hindi.
And specifically they are "dying" to bring back the clown prince, son of a foreign puppet that was deposed by their parents/grandparents.
Afraid the zionist controlled media has already set the stage for an Iraq level invasion, using their propaganda machine, to install the guy they control.
What they are begging for is change. What they know practically is basically two forms of government in modern memory. It would not be unusual to advocate for the other alternate you know or your grandparents have told you about.
None of the Arab-Spring populations had democratic rule since, arguably, Carthage. Iran is different [1].
More importantly, Iran was recently a secular society. It has memory of education and freedom. Many Arab countries have been fundamentalist for their entire modern eras.
(To be clear, every first democracy arose from the ashes of a string of fallen autocrats. I'm arguing for Iran being different from Egypt, Tunisia or Gaza.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_classical_Iran
The US recently worked to oust the secular leader of Syria to replace him with an ISIS leader. Actually al-Sharaa was on the US wanted terrorist list, only removed three months ago. Many such stories.
Foreign media records them and says they are trying to depose the theocracy, propaganda to justify a military incursion.
Wild claims of civilians being killed by the regime, with zero evidence, manufactured from thin air. (WMD's in Iraq, White phosphorus in Syria)
Average person now thinks it's their duty to to send American sons to die in the sandbox for another generation.
The only winner here, israel.
There's a lot of uncertainty as to how many though.
Hell, the ayatollahs even gave communist housing a shot. They failed, just like they failed at everything, but they gave it a shot.
So you can ask the direct question: just like Venezuela was way better off with oil extraction before Chavez/Maduro ... and also in Iran you can easily say the situation was better before ... so is oil extraction and participating in the global economy not a lot better, at least for anyone actually living there?
Notably, the book was written before the Arab Spring revolutions, and yet, it predicted them rather accurately. The main thesis of the book is that a revolution arises when most of the men and most of the women in a country can read.
[1]: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/a-convergence-of-civilizations...
we could always stop punishing the people of Iran for their government...
The world doesn't revolve around the West. Nobody in America caused the IRGC to engineer a water crisis. Nobody asked for them to murder students in an internet-connected age, like the single thing you do not do if you want to calm things down.
Sanctions have made Iranians poorer. But so has their gerontocratic theocracy pursuing autarky and misguided nuclear ambitions at any cost. Khamenei can't hold open elections because he knows he'd lose.
They're either our allies, aren't pursuing nuclear weapons and/or aren't actively destabilising everything in their vicinity.
America calling for regime change in the Middle East is fraught, and I'm honestly not yet on board with direct action (though that's about as influential as what shade the moon is tonight). But Iran is "uniquely bad." It's also uniquely imperialistic in the region, up there with to Israel.
Iran hasn't had a direct conflicr with anyone but Iraq and Israel in the last fifty years, last I checked, and the conflict with Israel was in response to unproved aggression.
If you're talking proxy wars, how are Iran's proxies any worse than UAE's, or Turkey's, or the Saudi's? And Israel has certainly been orders of magnitude more destabilizing.
I'm entirely unconvinced.