It is a source run by expatriate Iranians of the diaspora.. the fact that so many people just discount their point of view it's pretty frustrating. If you speak to Iranians that you work with it's pretty illuminating
The “Iranians that you work with” in the west are highly self-selecting. They’re like Cubans in Florida or Vietnamese—people who fled in the aftermath of the revolution and are extremely antagonistic towards the regime. My family left Bangladesh the year after the dictator made Islam the official religion. My dad is apoplectic about the Islamist parties being unbanned recently after the government was overthrown. By contrast many of my extended family, who came much later for economic reasons, are happy about that. The people who disliked the Islamization of the country and had the financial means to do so left while the people who were fine with it stayed.
My daughter’s hair stylist is Iranian (she was an accountant in old country). When Jimmy Carter’s wife died, she said “I’m happy she’s dead.” I’ve never seen anyone else say a negative thing about the Carters personally. Even die hard Republicans who think he was a weak President don’t hate him as a person. But this is not an uncommon sentiment among the Iranian diaspora.
> people who fled in the aftermath of the revolution and are extremely antagonistic towards the regime
Iranian who left Iran here. Do you have stats or reference for this critical piece of information?
It’s as if someone’s says, since Bangladesh is predominantly muslim, the majority aligns with what the Islamic regime does for ideological reasons and would try to undermine the account of atrocities.
But one shouldn’t believe this before seeing some polls, stats, etc.
Anecdotally this does seem to be true in US. I know several Iranians in US, from completely different social circles, but all of them strongly anti-clerical and not shy about it.
Also, as a Russian who left Russia, it's certainly a familiar pattern.
Note, by the way, that this doesn't really imply anything about whether those people are wrong to be antagonistic.
President Nixon was an outspoken friend of the Shah. It was Carter administration that stabbed him in the back and negotiated with Khomeini in the first place. The hostage crisis happened about 9-10 months after Khomeini was in power and only towards the end of that crisis you could argue Reagan was in the picture at all. The love for Islamists by the Democrats in power never ended and Clinton, Obama, and Biden all were desperate in appeasing the Mullah regime. It's the ousting of the Shah and appeasing the Mullahs that garners the hate.
Clinton using executive orders and legislation to keep Russia and Iran from cooperating on defense was a desperate act of "Mullah" appeasement? It was the iranians that called for the Negev summit?
Depends on what you want to hear. The Iranian family in my neighborhood whose father was a doctor fled after Islamist police cut their daughter to pieces in their own home for dressing inappropriately. That's the sort of non headscarf wearing Iranian elite you'll find with an opinion critical of the current regime. I don't know about ostentatious clothing.
It’s similar to how so many people dismiss Cuban American views on Cuba just because the cuban americans were mostly the ownership class that had to flee the revolution.
On the other hand, there is the opposing side that's also tough to ignore where they're coming from.
Leftists, with Western pro-Khomeini protests, not just in Iran, with the usual involvement from the KGB, and the CIA opposing, brought Khomeini to power with claims that he would bring a communist revolution. As per tradition in a communist revolution, first thing he did once in power is execute communist allies. Of course, Iran is still allied with the KGB (now FSB) and Moscow, currently delivering weapons and weapon designs for use in the war against Ukraine.
You could also point out that Iran is kind-of socialist, in the sense that the state controls, at minimum, 70% of the economy, and all those "companies" are directly controlled by the government.
So socialists are still at it, supporting the ayatollah, for example:
Note: yes, I get what the title says, but read. IN the article you'll find an insane rant about how Israel and the US are really behind the revolution and how despite that the regime really held back, and this popular revolution, if it fails will bring back national Iranian pride, and the revolution failing will be the final push that ayatollah's need to actually bring the communist revolution to Iran
I read the whole thing and you are smoking crack. They are calling for the overthrow of the Islamic regime and (explicitly) for the death of the supreme leader. As far as their theoretical argument goes, it's that the masses in IRan are ready to have a revolution but that they lack the organizational skills and roadmaps that communists beleieve themselves to have. They also argue that external support of a revolution is strategically bad because the incumbent regime will use it to portray the Iranian students/working class as tools of foriegn powers.
If Ravid isn't even willing to say that someone told him on background, it sounds like bullshit or speculation. Guys like Ravid are intentionally or no part of the myth making around Mossad where they are simultaneously everywhere int he Middle East and nowhere at once.
There are not even 7,000 Mossad agents, period.
7,000 is the highest estimate publicly available for the TOTAL number of employees in the Mossad, and 95% of them are not agents - just like most US intel are not field agents. Real numbers for agents are far, far lower without a doubt.
Also - Israel got burned so bad with the idiotic Pollard affair, there is zero chance Israel would put so much of their assets in the US when they have a 7 front war. They are many things, but they are not idiots, and they clearly care far more about their immediate security interests than what the US thinks.
These theories make absolutely no sense, my dear fried.
What's special about how they are doing it that makes the theory centered around Mossad? If it's happening, that seems like it would be business as usual for all intelligence agencies operating in all countries.
Actually, if anything, that makes it trustworthy because Saudi would like the regime to stay so that they can stay out of the oil markets and keep the prices high.
EDIT: Sorry... that is too strong... "state aligned influence media". Note that the headline might be true, or it might not, but that source is quite glowy.
Mehdi Hasssan worked for Al Jazeera which is funded by Qatar and is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood with a very specific political agenda. You'll notice they barely are covering the Iran News
You are silly. Qatar is not even of the same faith as Iran. I would know, since I was stationed in Qatar. Also Al Jazeera does not cover Iran in detaisl since the Persian area is not part of the middle east and certainly is very different (religiously, in culture, etc) from the Gulf. But at least al-Jazeera tries and its journalistic integrity is great at a time where quality journalism (ahem Bari Weiss) is in dire need. Israel has murdered more journalists in Ghaza than all othe rnations combined in the last year, and has a total ban on covering the atrocities that the IDF is committing (including the starvation of children, a war crime). Your outrage is where, Mr Hypocrite? Or do we let our religiosity define our view of the world, instead of Facts Mr Redwood? I fully support taking out the leadership of Iran and Israel asap. I know we will do one atm, and hopefully the other soon. Apologists for those who murder protestors, or innocent children, is unacceptable. Edit: Redwood is Israeli and I just wasted my time on a Hasbara. Dang it
That's like saying that Hamas and the IRGC aren't affiliates because they're from different religious sects. What binds them is an interest in political religion and a shared antipathy to the west.
Mehdi is a great journalist and speaker. He doesn't jump the gun. One of my favourite debates from him is on Intelligence Squared, on the conflation between anti-zionism and anti-semitism, from 2019:
His point is obviously to try and downplay what is happening in Iran, otherwise he could have just actually be a journalist and figure out what is happening in Iran to prove or disprove the reports.
There is zero journalistic integrity to be found in his post.
"Western media" is not an organization it's a description of a group. Trust should be connected to organizations or businesses.
This is such a dangerous manipulation technique that uses the output of one media source like Fox News as an attack on the reputation of all. CNN and the BBC have reported on Israel's offensive and the massive suffering and death multiple times.
> Interesting that the same western media outlets which spent two years nonstop questioning and disputing and refusing to accept Palestinian death tolls out of Gaza, even when they were backed by human rights groups and monitors like Airwars and studies in The Lancet, are totally fine uncritically accepting totally unsourced and huge, huge numbers out of Iran.
Note that this works both ways: "Interesting that the same western media outlets which spent two years nonstop covering Gaza are totally fine not even having a single article about the massacre committed by the islamist iranian regime. And, no, before the trolls descend, of course I'm not questioning that lots of innocent people have been killed in Gaza.".
And "Interesting that the same protesters who spent months protesting on US and EU campuses for Gaza are not protesting to defend the protesters massacred en masse by the iranian regime. And, no, before the trolls descend, of course I'm not questioning that lots of innocent people have been killed in Gaza".
We don't know if the numbers are true but we're literally talking about half the death in two years in Gaza in a few days in Iran. I don't know if people realize the level of horrors we're talking about here.
The crucial difference is that the US is in no way supporting Iran but was and is heavily supporting Israel. So a protest in the US to stop that support is wortwhile. A protest to stop non-existent support is pointless.
Sure, but you can understand why US citizens and European citizens don't feel the same urge to go out and protest something that their taxes don't directly contribute to.
> You can still protest to signal support for usa to keep its hardline stance on Iran or to increase measures.
If you care about the wellbeing of Iranian people, you have to acknowledge that a "hardline stance" of sanctions also contributes to their suffering. I'm not sure why you'd expect to see people out on the streets asking for more of that.
> You can also protest to make sure the horrors aren't forgotten and to signal to those suffering in Iran that they aren't alone.
True, but as a citizen you have much less moral responsibility to protest that than a situation your government and taxes are supporting. Which probably explains why you don't see as many people out on the streets about that.
I'd say it's also tricky in such situations to protest and not have your protest co-opted to justify aggression. Chomsky made this point on Iran: "Suppose I criticise Iran. What impact does that have? The only impact it has is in fortifying those who want to carry out policies I don’t agree with, like bombing."
> Sure, but you can understand why US citizens and European citizens don't feel the same urge to go out and protest something that their taxes don't directly contribute to.
The point i was responding to was whether such protests [for Iranians] are pointless, and i asserted there can certainly be a point to them.
Different people care about different things. I doubt the "tax dollar" explanation for Gaza protests because they seem just as popular in countries that dont provide aid to Israel, and people seemed to care a lot more about Gaza than say Iraq, despite much much more tax dollars going there and much more people dead. Nonetheless people are going to care about different issues to different extents for whatever reason and I'm not objecting to that.
> If you care about the wellbeing of Iranian people, you have to acknowledge that a "hardline stance" of sanctions also contributes to their suffering.
I do not have to. Or more specificly such sanctions have complex impacts and it can be unclear what the overall net result is, especially over the long run.
Sanctions against Iran of course do not solely have to do with the human rights situation and are also being applied for various geopolitical reasons.
> I'd say it's also tricky in such situations to protest and not have your protest co-opted to justify aggression. Chomsky made this point on Iran: "Suppose I criticise Iran. What impact does that have? The only impact it has is in fortifying those who want to carry out policies I don’t agree with, like bombing."
That sounds like a long winded way to justify not caring about atrocities when doing so would be inconvinent. Quite frankly i find that morally rephresible.
If you only care about human rights when its politically expedient to do so, do you really care about human rights?
> That sounds like a long winded way to justify not caring about atrocities when doing so would be inconvinent. Quite frankly i find that morally rephresible.
> If you only care about human rights when its politically expedient to do so, do you really care about human rights?
I don't really see how you reached that conclusion from the quote. He's not saying it would be inconvenient, he's saying such an action could lead to a worse outcome for the people of the country. If he didn't care about their human rights, and was happy for them to be bombed, he'd go ahead and do it. You might disagree with his reasoning, but it's not showing lack of care.
Well to take it literally the quote is "policies I don’t agree with".
It raises the question, is it really because he cares about the people of Iran, or is it because he has preconcieved notions of what policies he likes and dislikes and is trying to post hoc justify his views.
It seems a really hard position to justify on the facts. The death toll from these protests has already surpassed most armed conflicts. And the human rights abuses are hardly limited to just the deaths. I think at some point if you just stand around and do nothing while gross violations occur, you become complicit.
It is always different when a foreign group kills children/starves over extended time like Israel did to Palestinians, as opposed to a dictatorship (think Syria before its revolution succeeded or Iran right now) kills their populace. Syrias civil war cost 600-800k lives by many figures. It is difficult to cover civil unrest or civil wars within the same group, vs. genocide or wars between nations. Think just of how hard it is to cover Israel/Palestine given Israel's ban on journalism and a free press covering Ghaza. Now imagine a nation as big as Iran where the state controls the media. How do you expect accurate coverage in a matter of days
Unfortunately I would not be surprised if the real death toll is even higher. I have first-hand information. We are talking about indiscriminate shooting with heavy machine guns into peaceful protests, happening in every city of the country. The rule of law has completely broken down. The wounded avoid hospitals because they are afraid of getting killed there.
no, this is a comment about reality and ridiculous hateful claims of some people who probably have nothing to do with the conflict or any of its sides.
There was a lot of death in 2 days but the revolution started about a month ago so it's not just those two days. I think you could compare Gaza to a single Iranian city, but Iran is much larger than this. Another important distinction is that - no matter what your beliefs are - civilians aren't the target in Gaza, but they clearly are the target in Iran. If the civilians had weapons, it would be a different story.
No one who is sane is saying that. IDF is saying – we killed 40.000 combatants who were hiding in ciivilan infrastructure, so unfortunately 1:1 civilian deaths happened, becaue of the terrorist urban warfare tactics hamas and palestinian islamic jihad are using.
> Another important distinction is that - no matter what your beliefs are - civilians aren't the target in Gaza
"No matter what your beliefs are"? Some people believe that Israel is trying to make the people in Gaza starve. If that was true, how would they not be a target?
> no matter what your beliefs are - civilians aren't the target in Gaza
“By December 2025, the Gaza Health Ministry had reported that at least 70,117 people in Gaza had been killed. The vast majority of the victims were civilians, and around 50% were women and children. Compared to other recent global conflicts, the numbers of known deaths of journalists, humanitarian and health workers, and children are among the highest. Thousands more uncounted bodies are thought to be under the rubble of destroyed buildings. A study in the medical journal The Lancet estimated that traumatic injury deaths were undercounted by June 2024, while noting an even larger potential death toll when "indirect" deaths are included. The number of injured is greater than 171,000. Gaza has the most child amputees per capita in the world; the Gaza war caused more than 21,000 children to be disabled.”
Russia has more than likely killed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians since February 2022 but what is happening in Ukraine is not termed a genocide. Why? Because by and large it is Russian military personnel killing Ukrainian military personnel (and vice versa, of course). Why is what is happening in Gaza being termed a genocide? Because the Israeli military* is targeting and killing civilians. I'm not the one saying that, genocide scholars (among others) are the ones saying that.
“The Gaza genocide is the ongoing, intentional, and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip carried out by Israel during the Gaza war. It encompasses mass killings, deliberate starvation, infliction of serious bodily and mental harm, and prevention of births. Other acts include blockading, destroying civilian infrastructure, destroying healthcare facilities, killing healthcare workers and aid-seekers, causing mass forced displacement, committing sexual violence, and destroying educational, religious, and cultural sites. The genocide has been recognised by a United Nations special committee and commission of inquiry, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, multiple human rights groups, numerous genocide studies and international law scholars, and other experts.”
One cannot blockade an entire population and not be targeting the civilians in that population.
“An Israeli blockade heavily contributed to starvation and confirmed famine. As of August 2025, projections show about 641,000 people experiencing catastrophic levels and that "the number of people facing emergency levels will likely increase to 1.14 million". Early in the conflict, Israel cut off Gaza's water and electricity, but it later partially restored the water. As of May 2024, 84% of Gaza's health centres have been destroyed or damaged. Israel also destroyed numerous cultural heritage sites, including all 12 of Gaza's universities, and 80% of its schools. Over 1.9 million Palestinians—85% of Gaza's population—were forcibly displaced.”
* with the backing of primarily the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany
I've read a ton of philosophy and something I don't really understand is that one nation killing another is more immoral than when a nation does this to their own domestic population.
Sure you will get some nay-sayers who say 'a life is a life', if moral particles existed, they might be correct.
But for some reason, humanity doesn't seem to care as much.
What makes intra-state politics more acceptable to use violence?
> something I don't really understand is that one nation killing another is more immoral than when a nation does this to their own domestic population.
I don’t know that anyone thinks a state’s violence against its citizens is less immoral. It’s more that countries are more hesitant to get militarily involved in the domestic affairs of another country because it would mean essentially declaring war against that state. But in a conflict between states, an outsider can more easily support one side militarily without declaring war against the other side.
If Aliceville attacks Bobtopia, there are existing military and civilian organisations in Bobtopia that can take foreign aid and use it effectively. The population of Bobtopia are generally going to support their homeland or at least be neutral, and are available for conscription so they'll do all the dying and international forces don't have to.
If Bobtopia just starts massacring its own people, then:
A) You have to dismantle those same military structures along with many of the civilian ones, and you're now in charge of building an entire government from the ground up.
B) Some of the population, e.g. the ones who were doing the massacring, are now shooting at you instead. Some of their victims are probably going to shoot at you too.
C) You can't exactly conscript Bobtopians during a civil war you started and have them be an effective fighting force, because they're not unified, don't have a government, and often hate you. If you try to work with Bobtopian militias, you'll find yourself embroiled in Bobtopian politics.
This all holds true regardless of who has to declare war on whom.
Historically there was sometimes the idea that citizens are the property of the sovereign to use or dispose of as he sees fit. A lot of historical international law had the view that states have absolute feeedom to conduct their internal affairs however they saw fit.
Luckily we have largely moved past that view.
I think as a purely practical matter, moral outrage is shaped by who controls the information space. If you are a country being invaded, you probably have an organized, well funded communication department to tell your side. If you are an Iranian protestor, not only do you not have that, you don't even have internet at all because the state cut off all means of communication.
Have we? I don't think the UN is going to invade Iran over this, especially after it went so well the last time with the US. And sanctions for Iran are already at the "you don't get anything" level, i don't think they can be ramped up any more. Morally sure, people now believe this is wrong while in the distant past they may have not cared, but practically not much has changed. The best we can hope for is an organized resistance that other large nations can funnel money and arms to.
I still think there is a huge ideological difference between thinking something is wrong but not doing anything about it vs thinking something is A-ok.
Strongly worded letters might not mean much, but at least they are on the right side of the issue, even if only symbolically.
Because the international order is fundamentally anarchic, while domestic orders are (supposed to be at least) nomic, structured by law and rights. Yes, there are attempts at creating international law, but these amount to treaties more than a structured, visible, governing law.
“A country that violates the rights of its own citizens, will not respect the rights of its neighbors.”
That’s from my readings of philosophy.
But yeah, I do recognize the same sentiment as you found. I think philosophy itself is an answer: most philosophies explicitly champion dictatorships, under whitewashed terms. Ever heard something like “society is a big organ transcending individual needs”? We got it from Hegel.
> I don't understand how you could make this claim.
After studying Plato, Hegel, Marx, Rousseau, fascist ideologies, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. This list is by no means exhaustive, just a few majors from the top of my head.
Sure, they didn’t just say “shoot people for power.” That’s a very shallow modern view. Instead, they champion extreme forms of altruism and its only logical expression: statism, which holds that man’s life and work belong to the state, to society, to the group, the race, the nation, the economic class.
> How does this statement by Hegel champion dictatorships?
The statement alone surely doesn’t. His philosophy does. For him, state is a sacred authority that transcends individual will.
>For him, state is a sacred authority that transcends individual will.
State authority exists in democracys therefore that's not an argument for dictatorships
>they champion extreme forms of altruism and its only logical expression: statism
Why is statism the only logical expression of extreme altruism? Jesus Christ was the ultimate altruist and is not a state. I can dedicate my life to only helping others over myself as an individual .
You're arguments and example are extremely poor because you showing evidence related to governments and states but your original claim was to one specific type of government, a dictatorship.
For Hegel, state is something vastly different than for modern democracies. Sure, democracies can be pervasive as well but, to my knowledge, nowhere near Hegel’s level, not today.
Jesus Christ wasn’t a politician so we don’t know. But we do know that religious politicians, past and modern, rarely respect freedom.
> you showing evidence related to governments and states
Not just states but statism, a system in which man’s life and work belong to the state, and the state may claim it by compelling him to sacrifice it. This provides the theoretical hardware for dictatorial control.
>I've read a ton of philosophy and something I don't really understand is that one nation killing another is more immoral than when a nation does this to their own domestic population.
Who holds this opinion?
>But for some reason, humanity doesn't seem to care as much.
All of humanity cares less about when a government uses violence against its citizens than wars?
How can you possibly make this generalization when each internal conflict is different just like every war and how difficult it is to measure sympathy
He doesn’t need a list of people he can quote for his observation to be true.
And it’s not far fetched either: With a state‘s power structure ultimately resting upon (enough) support from society, there is an implicit legitimacy assumed in their actions.
The same can not be said about mass executions of citizens by an invading foreign power structure. Which is why you see the typical propaganda rush to make the victims look like perpetrators.
> I've read a ton of philosophy and something I don't really understand is that one nation killing another is more immoral than when a nation does this to their own domestic population.
> What makes intra-state politics more acceptable to use violence?
Acceptable? It's more about the consequences or lack thereof, the incentives
History has shown that pretty much nothing happens to the regime unless two coalitions of countries invade from both sides simultaneously, and that's like, not going to happen
At its peak i think (based on googling) the nazis killed about 14,000 per day, which would put it in a similar ball park on a per-day basis. However they kept up the level of killing and didn't stop after just a few days.
that's because they weren't shooting crowds already assembled in the streets and going into hospitals nationwide to find the injured. Nazi Germany was aiming to maintain plausible deniability in the concentration camps for as long as possible, while parallel competing plans for what to do with the population were being explored and failing. (there were other solutions before and alonside the final solution)
For comparison, estimates of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre death count are usually put in the 300-1,000 range by journalists and human rights groups.
Actually, there is plenty of telling, and the largest (only?) massacre outside Beijing was in Chengdu, with 8 to 400 people killed depending on who you believe:
There was plenty of rounding up student leaders and executions afterwards, but I don't think even the wildest anti-communists would claim a death toll in the thousands for this.
One interesting thing about that incident I only learned recently is the chinese leadership was reluctant to use force and prevaricated for ages.
In the end they decided it was worth the risk and I guess they were right, because China survived that period without any rotation of elites and became more prosperous and powerful as a result, avoiding all the chaos of the former Soviet countries
most of the victims during 1989 Beijing massacre were NOT at the actual square, people should already stop using this simplified term which leads to confusion
but yeah, compared to what Israelis do in Gaza or Iran, even whole Beijing numbers are negligible considering China population
How is this possible without explosives? Even with vehicle mounted machine guns it seems like a crazy high number. Did the protestors get boxed in somehow? And across so many locations, that seems to require a crazy amount of coordination to kill so many in so little time.
The coordination is the thing here, that's many units being instructed to carry through in the same manner.
As for the numbers:
Interior Ministry reports say security forces confronted demonstrators in more than 400 cities and towns, with more than 4,000 clash locations reported nationwide
it's on the order of 100 deaths at each of 400 locations (clearly not uniformly distributed, some locations would have had many more deaths).
As to the how, the article suggests some deaths immediately occurred in crowds - firing, dispersing, funneling, crush injuries, etc. leading to many intakes to hospitals and treatment tents etc ... followed by execution of the injured.
It's grim stuff.
Some years past the waves of the Rwanda massacres saw almost a million people killed in bursts across 100 days, mostly with machetes and hand guns.
The numbers reported here are absolutely feasible, the reporting is certainly questionable; bad things happened, but was it at the claimed scale?
Exactly. These numbers don’t seem that impossible if one considers that the state‘s force rests upon (enough) ideological support within society. Given that, the distribution of regime supporters will be rather even across the country, and therefore sending in death squads wont mean bussing them in from Teheran but rather sourcing them locally.
The IRGC[0] and Basij[1] are not small organizations, deliberately targeting large crowds of unarmed civilians with automatic weapons will create massive casualties in a very short period of time, no explosives needed.
> Did the protestors get boxed in somehow?
That did also happen.[2]
> And across so many locations, that seems to require a crazy amount of coordination to kill so many in so little time.
The IRGC's primary purpose is to protect the regime, I'm sure they would have plans in place for suppressing protests.
It's absolutely terrible but at the scale of a large country it's not logistically hard to get to that many deaths in a couple of days. Iran is a big country with population around 93 million.
The article says "36,500 killed in 400 cities". That's 91 people per city.
This is certainly the end of peaceful Iranian protests. Whether it leads to a violent revolution or a static police state like North Korea remains to be seen.
"Iranian security forces deployed unknown chemical substances amid deadly crackdowns on protestors in several cities earlier this month, eyewitnesses told Iran International, causing severe breathing problems and burning pain.
They described symptoms that they said went beyond those caused by conventional tear gas, including severe breathing difficulties, sudden weakness and loss of movement...
...According to the accounts, in some cases gunfire began at the same time, or immediately after, protesters lost the ability to walk or run and fell to the ground.
Several witnesses said that moments of immobilization became points at which shooting intensified, particularly when protesters collapsed in alleys or while trying to flee.
Reports came from multiple cities, including Tehran, Isfahan and Sabzevar."
Anyone who closely rewatches the surveillance footage of Mahsa Amini (at the fashion police) a few times, will quickly realize she was executed with a puff of gas, and the descriptions from Nazi concentration camp witnesses, and the description of the father of the weird cherry red bruises, and how she collapses on the footage combined with the behavior of 3 clearly complicit perpetrators before and after her collapse will quickly understand they used hydrogen cyanide, administered with some type of arm or sleeve-mounted bracelet.
The footage was clearly released to potentially reveal these sensitive facts, as the local police were thusly trying to prevent carrying the blame for her death, by showing the parts requisite for understanding.
If you need a more detailed description just reply to this comment and I will give more detail analysis of the footage.
> Whether it leads to a violent revolution or a static police state like North Korea remains to be seen.
The official name of Iran is "The Islamic Republic of Iran" and it is a country ruled by sharia law. Countries ruled by Sharia are already totalitarian states.
But does the number even matter? Whether its 4000 or 35000 the conduct has been unacceptable.
The real question is the solution, is reporting like this designed to be used as the backdrop to foreign intervention? How many people will be killed then?
"one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic" - Not Stalin
No situation justifies external interference, especially not by the US, which has done more than its fair share of invading and then just making things worse for everyone, like in Afghanistan and Iraq.
A country border drawn arbitrarily (straight!) by an English Lord hundreds of years ago?
A country border not everybody agrees about?
A country border defined to keep out intervention more than to protect?
A country border that is porous and is walked across daily by people that aren’t even sure where it is?
Etc…
At some point you may release that humans live on both sides of lines that often exist only on maps, and serve only to keep people servile to autocrats.
Autocrats whom make sure that their schools teach the importance of borders.
Take a good look US, because once you're down far enough the fascist drain, that's the cost of trying to claw your way back out. And there's no hope of external intervention given nuclear arms
"Iran International", isn't registered anywhere in the US or traceable to any reputable source, it has no reporters in Iran but claims to have access to "classified" documents of IRGC. This wreaks of desperation at a failed coup
IRGC is not involved in internal affairs, it's Iran's special forces and focuses on strategic defense forces.
This is not a comment of support of the Iranian regime, or against the people of Iran to have which ever government they see fit.
But these numbers are simply not credible. It's 40 beheaded babies all over again.
Remember the governing ideology of the US and Israel sees the continued existence of Iran as an existential threat. Their aims may align with the protestors temporarily but I think a permanently fractured, Syria type situation is much more palatable to them than a rapid transition to a more democratic system that leaves the country intact. There is no guarantee a post-islamic Iran would step into line, and it would remain a regional power that would be much harder to justify continued sanctions against.
A part of me suspects the incredibly conspicuous endorsement of the protestors by the US/Israel regime is an attempt to discredit them. A zombie regime under the Mullahs will likely to continue to implode economically, which means they are less able to defend themselves from US/Israeli attacks in the future. A clean change of government with domestic US pressure to lift sanctions would be their nightmare scenario.
> Remember the governing ideology of the US and Israel sees the continued existence of Iran as an existential threat.
Obviously Israel would see the Iranian regime as an existential threat when they quite openly advocate for the destruction of Israel[0] and have a nuclear weapons program.
> Their aims may align with the protestors temporarily but I think a permanently fractured, Syria type situation is much more palatable to them than a rapid transition to a more democratic system that leaves the country intact.
Israel would almost certainly prefer a stable intact Iran with normalized relations.
> There is no guarantee a post-islamic Iran would step into line, and it would remain a regional power that would be much harder to justify continued sanctions against.
Israel and the US don't want to destroy Iran, they want Iran to stop funding terrorists and stop threatening regional stability.
> A clean change of government with domestic US pressure to lift sanctions would be their nightmare scenario.
Why should the US lift sanctions while Iran continues to fund terrorists and attempts to develop nuclear weapons?
Iran is the 17th most populous nation in the world, with 93 million people. These protests seem to be occurring across the entire nation. Another comment mentioned over 4,000 separate clashes. Other sources have already corroborated a lower bound in the mid-thousands. I think the burden is on you to refute these numbers by showing that the sources are deliberately misleading or finding a flaw in the methodology. Simply saying that you find them "not credible" and that some people might have a political motive behind sharing them is not an argument.
Note, I'm not saying that they have been confirmed, but I do not think that you have given sufficient cause for rejecting them out of hand.
This is the organisation most commonly cited in news reports, they estimate ~5200 protestors confirmed killed (+ a few hundred more for security personnel killed)
They are a group of anti-regime Iranian dissidents based in the US. I don't know why they would seek to provide a deliberately low estimate.
Confirmed != estimated. This source does not make any estimates. They are investigating every death individually. Given the lack of transparency, the true number of deaths is likely higher than the number which can be confirmed at this time.
As of writing this comment, the subtitle says "The number of deaths currently under investigation stands at 17,031." They do not claim that this is the total number of deaths either.
I can't comprehend how a population can kill that many of their own people. They aren't even an "other" people, which has been the most common scapegoat lately. Same skin color, same religion, same language, same homeland.
They are “othering” the people actually, using very clear ideological and religious lines. That’s what I see and hear from the regime ad campaigns, propaganda, etc.
The Khmer Rouge executed between half a million and a million Cambodians between 1975 to 1979[0]. These were the intentional killings, estimates range to as many as 2 million Cambodians or 25% of the population died as a result of Khmer Rouge polices.
The end of the regime was brought about by an incursion into the Vietnamese border town of Ba Chúc, resulting in the massacre of more than 3000 civilians. Vietnam invaded, toppled the Khmer Rouge and brought an end to the executions although civil war would continue for much of the next decade.
For these actions Vietnam was extensively sanctioned[1]. The parallels with ongoing conflicts today are hard to ignore.
I can easily comprehend it, the history books are full of people killing large numbers of their own people. They just find some irrelevant differentiating factor that allows them to label the other as the outgroup and bring out the guns, the tanks, the ovens and the bombs.
Also, they know the alternative is that they will be dragged in the streets and killed. Iran is long past the point where a revolution can be peaceful and conciliatory; if the regime falls, there will be a redde rationem where most people connected to enforcement and decision-making will be very summarily judged by the people they abused for decades.
This is a figure for the whole of Iran. So it includes not just the Persian-majority areas, but also the minority-majority areas (Azeris, Kurds, Balochs, Arabs, Armenians, etc). It would not surprise me if the death toll in the minority-majority areas were higher, and hence they contributed a disproportionate percentage of the total, since security forces would likely find it easier to do that to people of a different ethnicity and/or religion (some of these minorities are predominantly Sunni, Christian, etc) than to people more like themselves.
> I can't comprehend how a population can kill that many of their own people.
The notion of some well-defined "people" is a fiction that ruling powers use to keep humanity's innate tribalistic tendencies pointed outward at their adversaries.
The truth is that the powers-that-be consider themselves to be above "the people", and will dispose of you as soon as you become inconvenient.
It looks like you were downvoted, but you’re absolutely right. “Their own people” is a silly trope - people are always “othered” by something - if not race (I guess what is mean by “thier own people”), then by religion, political persuasion, etc.
It’s not necessarily the primary factor, but it’s worth noting that Iran is actually a relatively diverse country by the region’s standards. There are significant Kurdish, Azeri, Balochi, etc. minority groups, for whom the idea that they’re in the same “homeland” as the Persians is not necessarily given.
“ While most of the killings were carried out by IRGC and Basij forces, reports received by Iran International indicate that proxy forces from Iraq and Syria were also used in the crackdown. The deployment of non-local forces suggests a decision to expand repression capacity as quickly as possible.”
I think the point is that its believed they were foreigners who were part of iranian proxy forces (e.g. iranian backed militias in iraq), so weren't doing it for money but out of some sort of loyalty to the iranian regime or ideology.
Usually mercenaries mean people doing it for money not ideology who get paid significantly more than your average soldier.
Iran is made of many different ethnicities, and there were reports of Arab militants that were brought in by the regime (it’s not hard to imagine given how reliant those organizations are on Iran for support).
It’s generally not very hard to incite violence across groups in the Middle East, especially when you consider how bad the outcome might be for the losing side. Case in point, the Alawites who lost control of Syria and are now persecuted by the new government.
From the previous uprisings, the regime usually sends Arab mercenaries like Hizbollah. They don't speak Farsi and have no connection to the people of Iran.
It's definitely bait but there is definitely not the same reaction to this among that group of people and when one asks the question "why?", there aren't a multitude if explanations that come to mind.
I guess that Iran felt like the strongest opponent to Israel, its history was not widely known by the protesters, and so it takes a little more to distance yourself.
There's maybe some disquiet in realizing that they're not someone you can side with, too.
And for sure some of the outlets followed by the protesters have ties to Iran, sadly.
hm, I think we should re-evaluate sanctioning or civilian pressure campaigns, since the guise is for them to coax or turn on the government for regime change, but the government can just hire mercenaries from outside the country.
How about plain civil disobedience? Like just stop working? It would need to get pretty extreme before the government had the audacity (and even capacity) to actually track you down to your home and arrest (or kill) you. Although this kind of coordination might be difficult with government control of communication media.
This works in a country like India but even in Indian history, the movement can die down (it died down in chauri chaura as it became violent and Gandhi didn't like it being violent iirc) though my history about this can be a bit off and I can be wrong tho
Regarding Iran, most of their money is from Oil. As throwawayheui57 says. So I don't really think that they would care much for civil disobedience
I have heard that Iranian shops are either closed or running in the least minimum operational way (barely open/working)
Tough times. I hope for a better future for people of Iran.
The US shipped the carrier battle group in the region out to support the Venezuela operations, and is deporting asylum seekers back to their deaths this week.
Nobody in the US has any idea what is happening in Iran. Judging by the weird, not very HN like threads on this post, sounds like we are going to.
The fact that he said that and then DID NOT topple the government in Iran is insane.. completely irresponsible, or rather responsible.. for those deaths.
The irony is that now those who are still alive in Iran might remember this and update their notion of US trustworthiness accordingly.
Also, we already have Iran on sanctions and every possible diplomatic hostility short of war. What should we rationally ask for from our government? Invasion?
We should be angry about both situations but most people truly don't give a fuck about the latter. It is not just the Iran situation though.
We make decisions all the time that result in immense amount of unnecessary suffering because of a total lack of rationality.
Our food consumption choices alone have created the objectively largest and most horrific engine of suffering in the history of this planet, all for the pleasure of our taste buds. The average person is directly responsible for this.
It is the irrationality and lack of empathy of the average person that bothers me. Unless you show them a video of protestors being massacred in Iran, or take them to a factory farm, they don't care. And even then, they often don't care. Why?
Suffering is roughly sortable and it is certainly within the power of most people to drive down the greatest sources of suffering, and pressure their government to do so when it is not directly within their power.
Such a ridiculous take. Get off your hate wagon. Also I argue no "leftists" support opposing ICE or Palestine out of "leftism". Only hateful bigots would support the execution of our people on our streets, or denying Palestinians their rights to exist and to freedom, free from a zionist ideology that has no respect for property or for life. Maybe if our "right wingers" and "Zionist" friends put humanity first and not politics or racist judaism first, they would not sound as hateful as you do now bud. Your comment is vile, and I can only imagine the hate you have in your bones. Although I will exclude right wingers here, since they are as of late huge supporters of the palestinian cause.
??? There's an obvious trail of money from Russia and Iran that influences current world events. Which is why there's no outrage over Iran murdering tens of thousands of protestors.
I'm on the side of the Iranian protestors, not the murderous Islamic regime and terrorists, nor their murderous Russian allies.
What's vile is not being opposed to the murder of 36000 people.
I am very much against Iran bud. However, I am very much against Israel too, and your comment merged those protesting the murder of Good and more recently Mr Preti and left a very bad taste. Do you support in equal fervor the trail of money from rich religious donors in the US towards starving children in Ghaza for the Zionist project? or are you protesting the murders committed by the IDF against helpless children? The fact you are bringing religion into your argument is vile too. Iran's regime is built on oppression, but this is very much not a religious struggle. It just tells me you are very much ignorant on the subject. Dictatorships (Iran, Russia) are not religious by nature. They use culture or religion to drive their oppressive agenda, but you are falling for tricks that leads me to believe you support the protests in Iran not out of wishful helpfulness, but out of bigotry. But maybe you are equally supportive of other struggles for freedom like the Palestinian struggle.
Religion? Iran's legal name is "the Islamic Republic of Iran" and it is widely called the Islamic Republic. I just used this name to differentiate from the Iranian people or Iran as a country filled with people who don't necessarily support the regime.
But you keep bringing up Zionists which gives a clue as to your persuasions, especially since they have no role in any of the events discussed here unless you believe the "Jews run the world" conspiracy theories.
Anyhow, the horseshoe is real and the Russian/Iranian money trail is real...
That answers me. Bigotry is strong with this one. I am not wasting my time or engaging with hate. you must be a foreigner since we all call them Iran. You are using the term the Iranian leadership likes, maybe you are an Iranian or Israeli agent after all! Zionism was used because your care for protests does not apply equally it seems to innocent protestors. You are siding with evil in some instances, and against it in others. It tells me where your heart is, and it is not in the right place. There is no nuance to starving children like Israel did. I cannot engage with you any more given we disagree on facts. But maybe the purchase of tiktok can finally help your propaganda. You lost me. I am very much once again against Iran and Russia (you are not listening) but I believe there is hypocrisy at play here
Every political group hates every other one. Every time "anti-hate" groups come to power there is a purge often followed by genocide. Singling out one specific emotion is irrational.
If Palestine had full US backing they would push Israelis in to the ocean and claiming otherwise is dishonest.
UAE is the largest backer of Palestine, they have no qualms backing genocide in Sudan. So it's just as reasonable to claim jihadism has no respect for property or for life.
This isn't whataboutism, if this money wasn't flowing you wouldn't hear about it.
Trump keeping his word would raise gas prices though. A problem when he's managing his 15 other unforced errors currently killing the economy. It's not easy being Tariff Man.
Israel has killed more than double that in Gaza, and that’s only what’s been confirmed as many bodies are under rubble and millions are left living in tents: https://aje.io/5b4h1e
Note that these numbers come straight from the Hamas run health ministry which does not track civilian vs combatant deaths and has questionable accuracy.
This is a little different, this is probably an issue anyone of any side politically can agree is bad. A government is killing their own people in the tens of thousands. It is foolish to even waste time pointing fingers outside of the country in question in my eyes because its irrelevant, their current government is killing citizens in the right here and right now.
> "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." [0]
However, it also says:
> "Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it." [0]
When people, or communities, or companies, show you their true colors, believe them. Watch out for all those flocking in to explain how this is different…
"The left", i.e socialists, communists, anarchists, etc, are supportive of a theocratic dictatorship? Not sure whats more unlikely here, a unified "left" or that they'd be unified behind a dictatorship with fascist principles.
IE as the right is becoming more anti-Israel, you find a lot more pro Islamic Republic stuff there these days. The boomer and zoomer right are very different beasts.
I don't follow the left as closely these days, but imagine there are a myriad of opinions on the matter.
Roger Waters is a boomer but reflects the zoomer left well. (To be clear I will be forever grateful to him for his music but he should really stop talking when it comes to the Iranian and Ukrainian people)
right, Russia/Ukraine is another thing which isn't as neatly left/right as people think.
I used to read the English version of Russia today, and it was almost comical to seem them oscillate articles that fit the "Based Mother Russia of Traditional Values" trope, then right next to it nostalgic Tankie stuff or the anti "Western Imperialist" think pieces. It's like they didn't even know who their useful idiots were anymore.
Disgusting to make that joke on a forum that strives towards reason and enlightenment. Disgusting to make light of 36,500 regular people potentially dead while seeking freedom and justice.
This is depressing because we will go to war over this and it’s going to be five years before people realizing they were tricked by “babies in incubators” propaganda.
This is mainly on the security forces who kill people, then on the corrupt government that removes people’s freedoms and their power to decide their fate by free elections, etc. then on regimes apologists who try to undermine the suffering and then if you want to find whoever else that is responsible.
It's completely on EU, Canada, and Australia. Why didn't the new self-proclaimed leaders of democracy and freedom, now completely independent of the US, do anything?
Too busy making deals with China and India for Russian gas, I suppose.
That number would inevitably lead to tons of videos with piles of corpses and cities covered with dead.
Like ones that appear when west-backed Julani killed Alawites.
But there is almost no such content - only rumors, unnamed sources and documents no one bother to check.
Unfortunately those videos exist. There are videos of relatives walking for hours from body bag to body bag to find the remains of their lost ones. There are videos of people with heavy machine guns shooting indiscriminately into peaceful protests. There are videos of executions. Everything has been recorded.
There is a reason why the Iranian government cannot activate internet and phones anymore. Once people can communicate again, they will count and document the true scale of events. Right now, it seems the Iranian government would rather give up on internet and telephones altogether than having anyone find out, which tells you just about how bad the situation is.
> There is a reason why the Iranian government cannot activate internet and phones anymore. Once people can communicate again, they will count and document the true scale of events. Right now, it seems the Iranian government would rather give up on internet and telephones altogether than having anyone find out, which tells you just about how bad the situation is.
I had talked to an iranian person who had misconfigured internet provider so I was able to talk to them on a forum. They mentioned that phone calls are still there in the daytime tho (they are cut at night), Sim,internet,starlink all are blocked
If someone's from Iran/related to it feel free to correct me but has there been any recent development where phone calls are completely shut off?
Horrifying.
Amiry-Moghaddam of Iran Human Rights said the death toll could be higher than 20,000, based on evidence reviewed by his organization.
That said, I'm sure the death count numbers from the Rasht Massacre are staggeringly higher than the initial tallies of 2-5k.
My daughter’s hair stylist is Iranian (she was an accountant in old country). When Jimmy Carter’s wife died, she said “I’m happy she’s dead.” I’ve never seen anyone else say a negative thing about the Carters personally. Even die hard Republicans who think he was a weak President don’t hate him as a person. But this is not an uncommon sentiment among the Iranian diaspora.
Iranian who left Iran here. Do you have stats or reference for this critical piece of information?
It’s as if someone’s says, since Bangladesh is predominantly muslim, the majority aligns with what the Islamic regime does for ideological reasons and would try to undermine the account of atrocities.
But one shouldn’t believe this before seeing some polls, stats, etc.
Also, as a Russian who left Russia, it's certainly a familiar pattern.
Note, by the way, that this doesn't really imply anything about whether those people are wrong to be antagonistic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_October_Surprise_theory
Leftists, with Western pro-Khomeini protests, not just in Iran, with the usual involvement from the KGB, and the CIA opposing, brought Khomeini to power with claims that he would bring a communist revolution. As per tradition in a communist revolution, first thing he did once in power is execute communist allies. Of course, Iran is still allied with the KGB (now FSB) and Moscow, currently delivering weapons and weapon designs for use in the war against Ukraine.
You could also point out that Iran is kind-of socialist, in the sense that the state controls, at minimum, 70% of the economy, and all those "companies" are directly controlled by the government.
So socialists are still at it, supporting the ayatollah, for example:
https://marxist.com/iran-for-a-nationwide-uprising-down-with...
Note: yes, I get what the title says, but read. IN the article you'll find an insane rant about how Israel and the US are really behind the revolution and how despite that the regime really held back, and this popular revolution, if it fails will bring back national Iranian pride, and the revolution failing will be the final push that ayatollah's need to actually bring the communist revolution to Iran
Including the Mossad, which is kinda an important footnote you might not want to omit: https://xcancel.com/BarakRavid/status/1560685368780939265/
Also - Israel got burned so bad with the idiotic Pollard affair, there is zero chance Israel would put so much of their assets in the US when they have a 7 front war. They are many things, but they are not idiots, and they clearly care far more about their immediate security interests than what the US thinks.
These theories make absolutely no sense, my dear fried.
EDIT: Sorry... that is too strong... "state aligned influence media". Note that the headline might be true, or it might not, but that source is quite glowy.
https://youtu.be/K1VTt_THL4A?si=BRgS6kbEMvLvrjyW
There is zero journalistic integrity to be found in his post.
This is such a dangerous manipulation technique that uses the output of one media source like Fox News as an attack on the reputation of all. CNN and the BBC have reported on Israel's offensive and the massive suffering and death multiple times.
"Study disputes Gaza genocide charges, finds flawed data amid Hamas-driven narrative"
https://www.foxnews.com/world/study-disputes-gaza-genocide-c...
#--------------
"Gaza death toll has been significantly underreported, study finds"
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/09/middleeast/gaza-death-toll-un...
"More than 70,000 killed in Gaza since Israel offensive began, Hamas-run health ministry says"
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8e97kl240lo
Note that this works both ways: "Interesting that the same western media outlets which spent two years nonstop covering Gaza are totally fine not even having a single article about the massacre committed by the islamist iranian regime. And, no, before the trolls descend, of course I'm not questioning that lots of innocent people have been killed in Gaza.".
And "Interesting that the same protesters who spent months protesting on US and EU campuses for Gaza are not protesting to defend the protesters massacred en masse by the iranian regime. And, no, before the trolls descend, of course I'm not questioning that lots of innocent people have been killed in Gaza".
We don't know if the numbers are true but we're literally talking about half the death in two years in Gaza in a few days in Iran. I don't know if people realize the level of horrors we're talking about here.
You can also protest to make sure the horrors aren't forgotten and to signal to those suffering in Iran that they aren't alone.
> You can still protest to signal support for usa to keep its hardline stance on Iran or to increase measures.
If you care about the wellbeing of Iranian people, you have to acknowledge that a "hardline stance" of sanctions also contributes to their suffering. I'm not sure why you'd expect to see people out on the streets asking for more of that.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-1...
> You can also protest to make sure the horrors aren't forgotten and to signal to those suffering in Iran that they aren't alone.
True, but as a citizen you have much less moral responsibility to protest that than a situation your government and taxes are supporting. Which probably explains why you don't see as many people out on the streets about that.
I'd say it's also tricky in such situations to protest and not have your protest co-opted to justify aggression. Chomsky made this point on Iran: "Suppose I criticise Iran. What impact does that have? The only impact it has is in fortifying those who want to carry out policies I don’t agree with, like bombing."
https://www.ft.com/content/afc74988-8c96-11e2-aed2-00144feab...
The point i was responding to was whether such protests [for Iranians] are pointless, and i asserted there can certainly be a point to them.
Different people care about different things. I doubt the "tax dollar" explanation for Gaza protests because they seem just as popular in countries that dont provide aid to Israel, and people seemed to care a lot more about Gaza than say Iraq, despite much much more tax dollars going there and much more people dead. Nonetheless people are going to care about different issues to different extents for whatever reason and I'm not objecting to that.
> If you care about the wellbeing of Iranian people, you have to acknowledge that a "hardline stance" of sanctions also contributes to their suffering.
I do not have to. Or more specificly such sanctions have complex impacts and it can be unclear what the overall net result is, especially over the long run.
Sanctions against Iran of course do not solely have to do with the human rights situation and are also being applied for various geopolitical reasons.
> I'd say it's also tricky in such situations to protest and not have your protest co-opted to justify aggression. Chomsky made this point on Iran: "Suppose I criticise Iran. What impact does that have? The only impact it has is in fortifying those who want to carry out policies I don’t agree with, like bombing."
That sounds like a long winded way to justify not caring about atrocities when doing so would be inconvinent. Quite frankly i find that morally rephresible.
If you only care about human rights when its politically expedient to do so, do you really care about human rights?
> If you only care about human rights when its politically expedient to do so, do you really care about human rights?
I don't really see how you reached that conclusion from the quote. He's not saying it would be inconvenient, he's saying such an action could lead to a worse outcome for the people of the country. If he didn't care about their human rights, and was happy for them to be bombed, he'd go ahead and do it. You might disagree with his reasoning, but it's not showing lack of care.
It raises the question, is it really because he cares about the people of Iran, or is it because he has preconcieved notions of what policies he likes and dislikes and is trying to post hoc justify his views.
It seems a really hard position to justify on the facts. The death toll from these protests has already surpassed most armed conflicts. And the human rights abuses are hardly limited to just the deaths. I think at some point if you just stand around and do nothing while gross violations occur, you become complicit.
That's like ~40% of the deaths in the current gaza war, except over just 2 days instead of 2 years.
"We killed about 80,000 people by mistake" isn't the exculpation you think it is.
"No matter what your beliefs are"? Some people believe that Israel is trying to make the people in Gaza starve. If that was true, how would they not be a target?
“By December 2025, the Gaza Health Ministry had reported that at least 70,117 people in Gaza had been killed. The vast majority of the victims were civilians, and around 50% were women and children. Compared to other recent global conflicts, the numbers of known deaths of journalists, humanitarian and health workers, and children are among the highest. Thousands more uncounted bodies are thought to be under the rubble of destroyed buildings. A study in the medical journal The Lancet estimated that traumatic injury deaths were undercounted by June 2024, while noting an even larger potential death toll when "indirect" deaths are included. The number of injured is greater than 171,000. Gaza has the most child amputees per capita in the world; the Gaza war caused more than 21,000 children to be disabled.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide
Russia has more than likely killed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians since February 2022 but what is happening in Ukraine is not termed a genocide. Why? Because by and large it is Russian military personnel killing Ukrainian military personnel (and vice versa, of course). Why is what is happening in Gaza being termed a genocide? Because the Israeli military* is targeting and killing civilians. I'm not the one saying that, genocide scholars (among others) are the ones saying that.
“The Gaza genocide is the ongoing, intentional, and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip carried out by Israel during the Gaza war. It encompasses mass killings, deliberate starvation, infliction of serious bodily and mental harm, and prevention of births. Other acts include blockading, destroying civilian infrastructure, destroying healthcare facilities, killing healthcare workers and aid-seekers, causing mass forced displacement, committing sexual violence, and destroying educational, religious, and cultural sites. The genocide has been recognised by a United Nations special committee and commission of inquiry, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, multiple human rights groups, numerous genocide studies and international law scholars, and other experts.”
One cannot blockade an entire population and not be targeting the civilians in that population.
“An Israeli blockade heavily contributed to starvation and confirmed famine. As of August 2025, projections show about 641,000 people experiencing catastrophic levels and that "the number of people facing emergency levels will likely increase to 1.14 million". Early in the conflict, Israel cut off Gaza's water and electricity, but it later partially restored the water. As of May 2024, 84% of Gaza's health centres have been destroyed or damaged. Israel also destroyed numerous cultural heritage sites, including all 12 of Gaza's universities, and 80% of its schools. Over 1.9 million Palestinians—85% of Gaza's population—were forcibly displaced.”
* with the backing of primarily the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany
https://www.timesofisrael.com/edit-wars-over-israel-spur-rar... https://www.reddit.com/r/Jewish/comments/1pvs1b6/as_a_wikipe...
Problem even discussed and acknowledged by Jimmy Wales: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6U_aQWaxOTE
https://www.inss.org.il/publication/wikipedia/
https://jewishjournal.com/cover_story/380074/gaming-the-wiki...
Sure you will get some nay-sayers who say 'a life is a life', if moral particles existed, they might be correct.
But for some reason, humanity doesn't seem to care as much.
What makes intra-state politics more acceptable to use violence?
I don’t know that anyone thinks a state’s violence against its citizens is less immoral. It’s more that countries are more hesitant to get militarily involved in the domestic affairs of another country because it would mean essentially declaring war against that state. But in a conflict between states, an outsider can more easily support one side militarily without declaring war against the other side.
If Aliceville attacks Bobtopia, there are existing military and civilian organisations in Bobtopia that can take foreign aid and use it effectively. The population of Bobtopia are generally going to support their homeland or at least be neutral, and are available for conscription so they'll do all the dying and international forces don't have to.
If Bobtopia just starts massacring its own people, then:
A) You have to dismantle those same military structures along with many of the civilian ones, and you're now in charge of building an entire government from the ground up.
B) Some of the population, e.g. the ones who were doing the massacring, are now shooting at you instead. Some of their victims are probably going to shoot at you too.
C) You can't exactly conscript Bobtopians during a civil war you started and have them be an effective fighting force, because they're not unified, don't have a government, and often hate you. If you try to work with Bobtopian militias, you'll find yourself embroiled in Bobtopian politics.
This all holds true regardless of who has to declare war on whom.
Luckily we have largely moved past that view.
I think as a purely practical matter, moral outrage is shaped by who controls the information space. If you are a country being invaded, you probably have an organized, well funded communication department to tell your side. If you are an Iranian protestor, not only do you not have that, you don't even have internet at all because the state cut off all means of communication.
Have we? I don't think the UN is going to invade Iran over this, especially after it went so well the last time with the US. And sanctions for Iran are already at the "you don't get anything" level, i don't think they can be ramped up any more. Morally sure, people now believe this is wrong while in the distant past they may have not cared, but practically not much has changed. The best we can hope for is an organized resistance that other large nations can funnel money and arms to.
Strongly worded letters might not mean much, but at least they are on the right side of the issue, even if only symbolically.
That’s from my readings of philosophy.
But yeah, I do recognize the same sentiment as you found. I think philosophy itself is an answer: most philosophies explicitly champion dictatorships, under whitewashed terms. Ever heard something like “society is a big organ transcending individual needs”? We got it from Hegel.
I don't understand how you could make this claim.
"society is a big organ transcending individual needs”?"
How does this statement by Hegel champion dictatorships?
After studying Plato, Hegel, Marx, Rousseau, fascist ideologies, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. This list is by no means exhaustive, just a few majors from the top of my head.
Sure, they didn’t just say “shoot people for power.” That’s a very shallow modern view. Instead, they champion extreme forms of altruism and its only logical expression: statism, which holds that man’s life and work belong to the state, to society, to the group, the race, the nation, the economic class.
> How does this statement by Hegel champion dictatorships?
The statement alone surely doesn’t. His philosophy does. For him, state is a sacred authority that transcends individual will.
State authority exists in democracys therefore that's not an argument for dictatorships
>they champion extreme forms of altruism and its only logical expression: statism
Why is statism the only logical expression of extreme altruism? Jesus Christ was the ultimate altruist and is not a state. I can dedicate my life to only helping others over myself as an individual .
You're arguments and example are extremely poor because you showing evidence related to governments and states but your original claim was to one specific type of government, a dictatorship.
Jesus Christ wasn’t a politician so we don’t know. But we do know that religious politicians, past and modern, rarely respect freedom.
> you showing evidence related to governments and states
Not just states but statism, a system in which man’s life and work belong to the state, and the state may claim it by compelling him to sacrifice it. This provides the theoretical hardware for dictatorial control.
I don’t think that’s a particularly established moral position.
Who holds this opinion?
>But for some reason, humanity doesn't seem to care as much.
All of humanity cares less about when a government uses violence against its citizens than wars?
How can you possibly make this generalization when each internal conflict is different just like every war and how difficult it is to measure sympathy
And it’s not far fetched either: With a state‘s power structure ultimately resting upon (enough) support from society, there is an implicit legitimacy assumed in their actions.
The same can not be said about mass executions of citizens by an invading foreign power structure. Which is why you see the typical propaganda rush to make the victims look like perpetrators.
Which books say that?
Acceptable? It's more about the consequences or lack thereof, the incentives
History has shown that pretty much nothing happens to the regime unless two coalitions of countries invade from both sides simultaneously, and that's like, not going to happen
Whereas the Iranian people just want human rights and didn’t do anything to their leaders.
Are you seriously asking this or are you just fucking with us? It’s blatantly obvious why it is different.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/2846/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu_protests_of_1989
There was plenty of rounding up student leaders and executions afterwards, but I don't think even the wildest anti-communists would claim a death toll in the thousands for this.
In the end they decided it was worth the risk and I guess they were right, because China survived that period without any rotation of elites and became more prosperous and powerful as a result, avoiding all the chaos of the former Soviet countries
but yeah, compared to what Israelis do in Gaza or Iran, even whole Beijing numbers are negligible considering China population
As for the numbers:
it's on the order of 100 deaths at each of 400 locations (clearly not uniformly distributed, some locations would have had many more deaths).As to the how, the article suggests some deaths immediately occurred in crowds - firing, dispersing, funneling, crush injuries, etc. leading to many intakes to hospitals and treatment tents etc ... followed by execution of the injured.
It's grim stuff.
Some years past the waves of the Rwanda massacres saw almost a million people killed in bursts across 100 days, mostly with machetes and hand guns.
The numbers reported here are absolutely feasible, the reporting is certainly questionable; bad things happened, but was it at the claimed scale?
Quite a lot of detail in the nyt article https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/25/world/middleeast/iran-how...
> Did the protestors get boxed in somehow?
That did also happen.[2]
> And across so many locations, that seems to require a crazy amount of coordination to kill so many in so little time.
The IRGC's primary purpose is to protect the regime, I'm sure they would have plans in place for suppressing protests.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Revolutionary_Guard_Co...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basij
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/01/25/ira...
The article says "36,500 killed in 400 cities". That's 91 people per city.
Very likely in the millions.
"Iranian security forces deployed unknown chemical substances amid deadly crackdowns on protestors in several cities earlier this month, eyewitnesses told Iran International, causing severe breathing problems and burning pain.
They described symptoms that they said went beyond those caused by conventional tear gas, including severe breathing difficulties, sudden weakness and loss of movement...
...According to the accounts, in some cases gunfire began at the same time, or immediately after, protesters lost the ability to walk or run and fell to the ground.
Several witnesses said that moments of immobilization became points at which shooting intensified, particularly when protesters collapsed in alleys or while trying to flee.
Reports came from multiple cities, including Tehran, Isfahan and Sabzevar."
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202601235991
The footage was clearly released to potentially reveal these sensitive facts, as the local police were thusly trying to prevent carrying the blame for her death, by showing the parts requisite for understanding.
If you need a more detailed description just reply to this comment and I will give more detail analysis of the footage.
The official name of Iran is "The Islamic Republic of Iran" and it is a country ruled by sharia law. Countries ruled by Sharia are already totalitarian states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat
plotted and went about to oust one of the most democratically legitimate leaders of his country by night.
Let that sink in for a moment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_International
But does the number even matter? Whether its 4000 or 35000 the conduct has been unacceptable.
The real question is the solution, is reporting like this designed to be used as the backdrop to foreign intervention? How many people will be killed then?
"one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic" - Not Stalin
External to the planet?
The hemisphere?
The continent?
The lands previously a part of a former empire?
The lands that a country lost to a war?
A country border drawn arbitrarily (straight!) by an English Lord hundreds of years ago?
A country border not everybody agrees about?
A country border defined to keep out intervention more than to protect?
A country border that is porous and is walked across daily by people that aren’t even sure where it is?
Etc…
At some point you may release that humans live on both sides of lines that often exist only on maps, and serve only to keep people servile to autocrats.
Autocrats whom make sure that their schools teach the importance of borders.
IRGC is not involved in internal affairs, it's Iran's special forces and focuses on strategic defense forces.
This is not a comment of support of the Iranian regime, or against the people of Iran to have which ever government they see fit.
But these numbers are simply not credible. It's 40 beheaded babies all over again.
Remember the governing ideology of the US and Israel sees the continued existence of Iran as an existential threat. Their aims may align with the protestors temporarily but I think a permanently fractured, Syria type situation is much more palatable to them than a rapid transition to a more democratic system that leaves the country intact. There is no guarantee a post-islamic Iran would step into line, and it would remain a regional power that would be much harder to justify continued sanctions against.
A part of me suspects the incredibly conspicuous endorsement of the protestors by the US/Israel regime is an attempt to discredit them. A zombie regime under the Mullahs will likely to continue to implode economically, which means they are less able to defend themselves from US/Israeli attacks in the future. A clean change of government with domestic US pressure to lift sanctions would be their nightmare scenario.
Why do you think that?
> Remember the governing ideology of the US and Israel sees the continued existence of Iran as an existential threat.
Obviously Israel would see the Iranian regime as an existential threat when they quite openly advocate for the destruction of Israel[0] and have a nuclear weapons program.
> Their aims may align with the protestors temporarily but I think a permanently fractured, Syria type situation is much more palatable to them than a rapid transition to a more democratic system that leaves the country intact.
Israel would almost certainly prefer a stable intact Iran with normalized relations.
> There is no guarantee a post-islamic Iran would step into line, and it would remain a regional power that would be much harder to justify continued sanctions against.
Israel and the US don't want to destroy Iran, they want Iran to stop funding terrorists and stop threatening regional stability.
> A clean change of government with domestic US pressure to lift sanctions would be their nightmare scenario.
Why should the US lift sanctions while Iran continues to fund terrorists and attempts to develop nuclear weapons?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Israel_in_Irani...
No official source ever claimed this. You are disgusting scum for promoting this lie.
Lying and trivializing the brutal murders of Israeli children and tens of thousands of Iranians civilians is utterly reprehensible.
Note, I'm not saying that they have been confirmed, but I do not think that you have given sufficient cause for rejecting them out of hand.
This is the organisation most commonly cited in news reports, they estimate ~5200 protestors confirmed killed (+ a few hundred more for security personnel killed)
They are a group of anti-regime Iranian dissidents based in the US. I don't know why they would seek to provide a deliberately low estimate.
As of writing this comment, the subtitle says "The number of deaths currently under investigation stands at 17,031." They do not claim that this is the total number of deaths either.
30,000 is not confirmed but cannot be ruled out.
https://www.cruisingearth.com/ship-tracker/united-states-nav...
The end of the regime was brought about by an incursion into the Vietnamese border town of Ba Chúc, resulting in the massacre of more than 3000 civilians. Vietnam invaded, toppled the Khmer Rouge and brought an end to the executions although civil war would continue for much of the next decade.
For these actions Vietnam was extensively sanctioned[1]. The parallels with ongoing conflicts today are hard to ignore.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Crimes_against_hum...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian%E2%80%93Vietnamese_W...
The notion of some well-defined "people" is a fiction that ruling powers use to keep humanity's innate tribalistic tendencies pointed outward at their adversaries.
The truth is that the powers-that-be consider themselves to be above "the people", and will dispose of you as soon as you become inconvenient.
Renee Good. Alex Pretti.
It’s not just that they were killed but so much of the country including, most relevantly, the administration, believe they should have been killed.
It’s not hard to other any set of people.
“ While most of the killings were carried out by IRGC and Basij forces, reports received by Iran International indicate that proxy forces from Iraq and Syria were also used in the crackdown. The deployment of non-local forces suggests a decision to expand repression capacity as quickly as possible.”
Also, read the article. :)
Usually mercenaries mean people doing it for money not ideology who get paid significantly more than your average soldier.
It’s generally not very hard to incite violence across groups in the Middle East, especially when you consider how bad the outcome might be for the losing side. Case in point, the Alawites who lost control of Syria and are now persecuted by the new government.
There's maybe some disquiet in realizing that they're not someone you can side with, too.
And for sure some of the outlets followed by the protesters have ties to Iran, sadly.
don't know a solution but this one isn't it
Regarding Iran, most of their money is from Oil. As throwawayheui57 says. So I don't really think that they would care much for civil disobedience
I have heard that Iranian shops are either closed or running in the least minimum operational way (barely open/working)
Tough times. I hope for a better future for people of Iran.
Machiavelli in Discourses on Livy says you are inviting an overthrow of your government by doing this.
The mercenaries can flip sides if the opposite faction pays them and offers them better terms... or maybe the mercs just flip.
Hard to say how true this is.
https://reason.com/2026/01/23/the-trump-administration-plans...
The US shipped the carrier battle group in the region out to support the Venezuela operations, and is deporting asylum seekers back to their deaths this week.
Nobody in the US has any idea what is happening in Iran. Judging by the weird, not very HN like threads on this post, sounds like we are going to.
The irony is that now those who are still alive in Iran might remember this and update their notion of US trustworthiness accordingly.
We make decisions all the time that result in immense amount of unnecessary suffering because of a total lack of rationality.
Our food consumption choices alone have created the objectively largest and most horrific engine of suffering in the history of this planet, all for the pleasure of our taste buds. The average person is directly responsible for this.
It is the irrationality and lack of empathy of the average person that bothers me. Unless you show them a video of protestors being massacred in Iran, or take them to a factory farm, they don't care. And even then, they often don't care. Why?
Suffering is roughly sortable and it is certainly within the power of most people to drive down the greatest sources of suffering, and pressure their government to do so when it is not directly within their power.
But people are irrational.
I'm on the side of the Iranian protestors, not the murderous Islamic regime and terrorists, nor their murderous Russian allies.
What's vile is not being opposed to the murder of 36000 people.
But you keep bringing up Zionists which gives a clue as to your persuasions, especially since they have no role in any of the events discussed here unless you believe the "Jews run the world" conspiracy theories.
Anyhow, the horseshoe is real and the Russian/Iranian money trail is real...
Here's some examples: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/24/uk-protest-gro...
https://time.com/7005190/iran-gaza-protests-nuanced-reality/
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/iranian-government-actors-se...
https://www.timesofisrael.com/nancy-pelosi-calls-for-fbi-pro...
If Palestine had full US backing they would push Israelis in to the ocean and claiming otherwise is dishonest. UAE is the largest backer of Palestine, they have no qualms backing genocide in Sudan. So it's just as reasonable to claim jihadism has no respect for property or for life.
This isn't whataboutism, if this money wasn't flowing you wouldn't hear about it.
However, it also says:
> "Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it." [0]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
what's wrong with it?
IE as the right is becoming more anti-Israel, you find a lot more pro Islamic Republic stuff there these days. The boomer and zoomer right are very different beasts.
I don't follow the left as closely these days, but imagine there are a myriad of opinions on the matter.
I used to read the English version of Russia today, and it was almost comical to seem them oscillate articles that fit the "Based Mother Russia of Traditional Values" trope, then right next to it nostalgic Tankie stuff or the anti "Western Imperialist" think pieces. It's like they didn't even know who their useful idiots were anymore.
https://battlefield.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_for_Tehran
Too busy making deals with China and India for Russian gas, I suppose.
Like ones that appear when west-backed Julani killed Alawites. But there is almost no such content - only rumors, unnamed sources and documents no one bother to check.
There is a reason why the Iranian government cannot activate internet and phones anymore. Once people can communicate again, they will count and document the true scale of events. Right now, it seems the Iranian government would rather give up on internet and telephones altogether than having anyone find out, which tells you just about how bad the situation is.
I had talked to an iranian person who had misconfigured internet provider so I was able to talk to them on a forum. They mentioned that phone calls are still there in the daytime tho (they are cut at night), Sim,internet,starlink all are blocked
If someone's from Iran/related to it feel free to correct me but has there been any recent development where phone calls are completely shut off?
So while the source is biased the numbers are not intrinsically unlikely.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots