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Iranian Students Protest as Anger Grows

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Re: Iranian Students Protest as Anger Grows

#61
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 faili…

Why are people even debating this ? Mossad themselves admitted to supporting protests on the ground. Pompeo even boasted about Mossad agents "walking beside" protesters - they were fully confident that they would successfully engineer regime change. "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://…

People are debating it because this debate has very little to do with facts and a lot to do with group loyalty and feelings.

I think the facts are pretty clear but that won't change people's minds

Re: Iranian Students Protest as Anger Grows

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why don't we apply the same reasoning to the other authoritarian theocracies in the region that are just as oppressive? This whole idea that Iran is somehow uniquely bad just stinks to high heaven, and we have caused the people of iran to suffer for decades for it. I don't think Iran is the uniquely evil state between the two of us. (Not that the US is the cause of all evil, of course, but we certainly have caused…

> why don't we apply the same reasoning to the other authoritarian theocracies in the region that are just as oppressive? 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…

> 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.

Re: Iranian Students Protest as Anger Grows

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why don't we apply the same reasoning to the other authoritarian theocracies in the region that are just as oppressive? 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…

> 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 destabiliz…

Hiding behind proxies doesn't absolve the Iranian regime of culpability for their aggression. Hezbollah alone fired tens of thousands of Iranian rockets at Israel just in 2023-24. There's no mystery about who provided the weapons or for what purpose. Calling any Israeli action against Iran "unprov[ok]ed" is absurd.
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