[Zagadka]

The pro goverment propagandists are trying to make it an American fault,

Technically, a lot of the problem comes from lack of international development due to sanctions, which include the ones some idiot canceled a treaty to force.

... this is going to become about Israel, isn't it.

[mikema63]

JEWS!

Some of these problems are definitely generated by the US and it's sad to see Trump undoing the progress we'd made diplomatically with the country.

[noir]

@Zagadka Don't get your stand. Iran is under sanctions for many decades now, the tipping point is the result of the money they spend on various spots after Obama deal.

The Iranian imperialis wars are not in the the conscious of the Western public opinion. In the region it's diffrent. The Arab cartoonist, Imad Hajuj shows a Mullah letting fire while his robe is caught in fire.



These images were probably not shown in the Western MSM

[skinster]

What to make of Iran’s demonstrations
Starting Dec. 28, 2017, Iran has witnessed anti-government protests in several cities and towns. The character and the demands of the demonstrations have varied greatly and seem to have already evolved over the course of a few days. From the beginning, Iranian government officials have stated that people have a right to demonstrate, but that acts of sabotage would be dealt with forcefully.

The first few protests focused mainly on economic issues. Demonstrators were peaceful and marched down streets chanting slogans. These initial protests seemed to occur without major incidents. Vandalism has increasingly become part of some of the marches, with big garbage cans and police cars set ablaze. By the night of Dec. 31, 2017, protests took on the form of armed attacks on government buildings and police stations. By Jan. 1, hundreds had been arrested and 12 people had been killed.

Corporate media hype
Predictably, the U.S. and other Western media have provided highly sympathetic and strongly exaggerated coverage to the demonstrations. Across the limited spectrum that constitutes U.S. ruling class politics, there is broad unity on the goal of regime change in Iran. They have an immediate solidarity with anything that could weaken the Iranian state. The one exception would be if there were an explicit socialist or anti-imperialist revolutionary opposition movement in Iran, of course, in which case the Western capitals would positively oppose it.

But in the here and now, the Iranian state’s independent political relationships and military interventions have been a persistent thorn to U.S., Saudi and Israeli designs in Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, Bahrain and Gaza. In Iraq and Afghanistan, Iranian influence has only grown since the U.S. invasions and occupations — a phenomenon that U.S. foreign policymakers would like to reverse. Their grandest ambition is to return Iran to the U.S. sphere of influence, as it was between 1953 and 1979, when it served alongside as Israel as the pillar of U.S. national security strategy in the region.

Therefore, watching Western media coverage about Iranian politics in 2018 is about as objective as the Spanish crown’s assessment of Inca politics in the 1500s or the British colonizers’ dispatches on political struggles in Africa in the 1800s.

Following this corporate media coverage today, one is led to believe that these demonstrations reflect the will of the vast majority of the people. But there are few facts so far to support such a narrative. Corporate media reports put the number of total protesters at “tens of thousands.” But video clips posted on social media suggest quite modest turnouts, ranging from dozens to no more than hundreds. But even if there have been tens of thousands of protesters, for context, we have to keep in mind that Iran has a population of 80 million.

To be sure, protests speak for far more beyond their immediate participants, but this is not so easy to determine. (In February 2003, the millions of U.S. anti-war protesters constituted the largest protest in recorded history but the polls showed 60 percent of people supported military action. In October 2011, the size of Occupy Wall Street movement’s protest activity peaked at a few hundred thousand protesters; at that point 60 percent of the population did not yet have an informed opinion about the movement, but a plurality of those paying attention supported it.)

Western media report these demonstrations in Iran as being the largest demonstrations since the mass demonstrations that followed the 2009 elections. This is technically true, even if we consider the likely more accurate estimate of “thousands” not “tens of thousands.” But the 2009 demonstrations were attended by hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people. Even then, the people protesting the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not represent a majority of the population, as large as the turnout was. The recent demonstrations are not comparable to those in scale.

On Saturday, Dec. 30, 2017, massive demonstrations took place in 120 cities. But these were demonstrations in support of the Islamic Republic, not in opposition to it. Ironically, they were planned in advance of the recent round of opposition protests, and in commemoration of mass demonstrations in 2009 by supporters of the Islamic Republic. The turnout for the Dec. 30 demonstrations was huge, totaling in millions across the country.

Several U.S. media organizations – e.g. CNN, New York Times – have used photos of the pro-Islamic Republic mass demonstrations for their articles on the opposition protests. These kinds of false media practices serve the purpose of giving their audience the impression that the anti-government demonstrations have had huge turnouts, even in cases where they later publish buried corrections.

It is possible, although not likely, that anti-government protests will grow massively in the coming days. But, factually, as of this writing, the turnout to opposition rallies is but a minute fraction of the recent pro-Islamic Republic turnout, or the opposition turnout in 2009.

The character of the opposition
When analyzing an opposition movement anywhere in the world, there are certain questions we must ask. What is the political character of the opposition movement? Does it have an anti-capitalist character? Is it a working-class movement? Does it represent an expansion of the country’s independence or does it promote its submission to the dictates of multinational corporations?

U.S. ruling class institutions ask these same types of questions and, based on the answers, provide or withhold support. The Trump administration, U.S. politicians, and the corporate media understandably have quickly determined this to be an opposition movement they can throw their support behind. There is not an organized leadership, nor are there clearly defined political demands. But the U.S. ruling class has determined, correctly, that, irrespective of the wishes of individual participants, this is a movement that will serve imperialist interests.

A movement whose most popular demand is opposition to Iran’s support for Palestine cannot be progressive. A movement whose idea of improved economic management is merging the country’s economy into the world capitalist system, dominated by the U.S. and its junior imperialist partners, cannot be progressive. Merely having legitimate economic and political grievances does not make a movement progressive.

Here in the U.S., some of the supporters of Trump’s fascistic policies are workers with legitimate grievances against the capitalist economy, the political system and the Democrats. They feel squeezed and threatened by a system that has eroded their living standards and threatens to throw them into the ranks of the unemployed and the homeless. Yet, in the absence of class consciousness, they buy into Trump’s racist, sexist and bigoted solution to the real problems. Despite having legitimate grievances, they are reactionary.

Incidentally, much like Iran’s Green movement in 2009, and the social base for the current anti-Islamic Republic movement, Trump’s reactionary movement finds most of its supporters among the middle strata of society, not the working class.

What are the protests about?
At least initially, the primary demands appear to be economic. It has been speculated that the rapid rise in the price of eggs and poultry, an estimated 40 percent rise in recent weeks, has triggered the protests. Similarly, the Rouhani government’s proposed budget for next year includes cuts in fuel subsidies and cash subsidies, which may also have contributed along with high inflation and unemployment.

For years, the omnipresent media broadcast TV channels, most prominently among them the BBC and Voice of America, have promoted the idea that economic problems in Iran are primarily, or at least partly, due to the virtually unlimited support that the Islamic Republic provides Palestine. According to this propaganda line, as long as there are economic needs in Iran, no support should go to Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen,… Rumor has it that truckloads of solid gold are headed from Iran directly to Gaza and Damascus on a regular basis!

This view was reflected in a commonly repeated chant at several protests. It is really the return of a common chant of the 2009 Green Movement: “Not Gaza, not Lebanon, I give my life for Iran,” or the even more chauvinistic variant: “Not Gaza, not Lebanon, Sacrifice both for Iran.”

As the days went on, overt demands for the overthrow of the political system were expressed through the chant: “Down with the dictator.” It was widely reported that at some protests, the demand for the return of the Shah’s regime was openly chanted.

The very first demonstration was in Mashhad, in northeastern Iran near the border of Afghanistan. This was followed with a protest in Qom, in central Iran. Both Mashhad and Qom are holy cities in Shi’a Islam, the two biggest destinations for pilgrimage. This would suggest, and there are other reports to this effect, that the protests were launched, not by people wishing to overthrow the Islamic Republic but, by people critical of President Rouhani’s administration and in favor of a stricter form of Islamic government rule.

People with strong grievances, quite possibly with different and diametrically opposed political orientations, may have been drawn to the protests. But, as the protests went on, irrespective of the wishes of the individual participants, a more or less clear right-wing, pro-West line started dominating.

Is Iran’s economy really in shambles?
Western media coverage of Iran routinely portrays the economy as being in “dire straits.” “Deteriorating,” “depleted,” “going downhill” are common descriptors. This kind of characterization often serves as the background for the analysis to follow.

But an objective analysis of any country’s economy should be based on facts and trends, not subjective characterizations. The World Bank, which can hardly be accused of having a pro-Iran bias, writes: “The Iranian economy bounced back sharply in 2016 at an estimated 6.4 percent. Latest data available for the first half of the Iranian calendar year 2016 (ending in March 2017) suggest that the Iranian economy grew at an accelerated pace of 9.2 percent (year over year) in the second quarter.” This is hardly an economy that is about to collapse.

Iran’s is not a traditional, agrarian economy either. Nor is it a single commodity oil economy. As one example, auto manufacturing in Iran has surpassed annual production of 1.5 million, by far the largest in the region and 12th in the world. The economy has been growing steadily for well over a decade, with the exception of the peak effect of the sanctions – 2014-2015 – when it actually contracted by 2 percent.

Economic growth does not mean, of course, that people do not suffer economic hardship. It is not just a question of the total size of the economy but also the distribution of the wealth and the resources. Iran has a capitalist economy with a large and strong state sector. The size of the state sector somewhat moderates the harsh effects of the market on the working class. Still, it is a capitalist economy, which, by its very nature, causes the accumulation of wealth and extreme differences between the living standards of the capitalists and the working class.

In aggregate economic terms the number of people living in poverty has dramatically decreased since the 1979 revolution. Prior to the revolution, according to UN data, 55 percent of the population lived below the poverty line. Today, the World Bank states: “Poverty is estimated to have fallen from 13.1 percent to 8.1 percent between 2009 and 2013.”

But the substantial growth of the economy in the years since the 1990s, following the end of the Iran-Iraq war, has not been shared equally by all classes, as might be expected in any capitalist country. There exists now a class of the super-rich, the members of which are part of, or have close ties to, the political establishment. Some members of this new super-rich layer of society make it a point to show off their wealth. They drive around in hundred thousand dollar cars, live in unimaginably opulent mansions that have elevators for their automobiles, and dress in fashionable clothes comparable to Hollywood celebrities.

For the working class, and even more so for the middle class, the opulent lifestyle of this class creates strong resentment at the obvious social injustice. The presence of this parasitic class renders the existence of some progressive social safety policies superfluous. That periodically large-scale embezzlement cases are exposed in high-profile trials reinforces the impression that all the wealth is being stolen by the government and those close to it.

Thus, to the extent that protests are motivated by the economy, it is not absolute poverty or the worsening of the living standards. It is the growing gap between the filthy rich and the rest of society.

It is instructive to look at two issues that have reportedly prompted anger about the government’s proposed budget. Next year’s budget is scheduled to increase the price of gasoline. But this is not a country in which energy prices are breaking the backs of workers. In Iran, gasoline is heavily subsidized. The price of gasoline is among the lowest in the world. Currently, the government spends approximately $100 billion per year on subsidies for fuel, bread, sugar, rice, cooking oil and medicine.(Wikipedia)

Another point reportedly driving the anger at the economy is the planned reduction in the government’s cash subsidies. About 90 percent of the population receives direct cash subsidies. The way this works is that, every month, the government deposits money directly into citizens’ bank accounts. This amounts to about a $30 billion annual government expense. Many of those wishing Iran to implement what they see as sound economic policies like in the U.S. do not realize that subsidies for food, fuel and medicine are considered a gross violation of market economic principles. Cash subsidies for 90 percent of the population? Not a chance.

Again, Iran is not an impoverished country where people are just fed up with poverty, hunger and destitution. While parts of the working class suffer through real and painful hardships, as far as capitalist economies go, particularly in oppressed countries, Iran is not a country in deep economic distress, no matter how many times we hear that Iran’s economy is in crisis.

Role of agents
There is no doubt that the protests themselves reflect the frustrations of part of the population. There are many real problems and legitimate grievances.

Given the long history of involvement of foreign agents in Iran, however, it would be irresponsible to dismiss this element. After the 2009 protests, several agents in possession of weaponry were arrested. Foreign agents (likely working for the CIA or the Mossad) successfully carried out several assassinations of nuclear scientists within Iran. The United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, all sworn enemies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, regularly contribute to anti-government forces and are not shy about acknowledging those efforts.

No foreign agent or foreign-funded organization can create an opposition movement where there is not an existing potential for such. But they can have an impact on its direction, how it is perceived domestically and internationally, and the direction in which street actions are led, particularly where there is no clear leadership or ideological cohesiveness among the protesters.

An example of a possible action by agents is a grizzly video which surfaced of two people lying on the ground, bleeding to death in the town of Doroud, in the province of Lorestan. This is a town with a population of about 150,000. Government officials have claimed that the police had nothing to do with these two deaths, nor had they even shot any bullets in Doroud. It seems improbable that in Doroud, the police would just shoot two people and leave their bodies on the street to bleed to death. Could this be a case of agents assassinating people to create martyrs for the movement?

Similarly, armed attacks on police stations and government buildings cannot be the work of ordinary people. Ordinary people do not have arms in Iran. So, while the importance of social discontent as the root cause of protests should not be dismissed, the role of armed agents cannot be discounted either.

Trump, U.S. officials express support
President Trump tweeted on Dec. 30, 2017: “The entire world understands that the good people of Iran want change, and, other than the vast military power of the United States, that Iran’s people are what their leaders fear the most….” Note Trump’s inclusion of the U.S. “vast military power’ as a not so subtle threat.

The U.S. State Department said in a statement: “Iran’s leaders have turned a wealthy country with a rich history and culture into an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed and chaos.”

Just so that we do not think these are empty words, we can look at comments U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made in June to Congress: The U.S. is working toward “support of those elements inside of Iran that would lead to a peaceful transition of that government.”

Of course, the support Tillerson refers to is a violation of international law. No country has the right to actively support opposition forces, or the transition of power, in another country, peaceful or not. But active work towards the overthrow of the Iranian government did not just start with the Trump administration. It has been U.S. foreign policy for decades, with only brief periods of intermission.

Tasks of the anti-war movement
Understanding the line-up and character of the different forces in Iran is not an easy task for people in the U.S. It is not just that people have limited information and knowledge about what is going on in Iran. It is that the U.S. government and the corporate media deliberately misinform and obfuscate in the interests of the U.S. ruling class.

Further, unfortunately, a big chunk of liberal and progressive organizations routinely follow the lead of the State Department in deciding what is a democratic movement and what is not. Many will jump at the opportunity to defend a “pro-democracy” movement in a country targeted by Washington. But they never quite find the time to take any action on victims of U.S. acts of aggression, say in Yemen, where arch-reactionary Saudi Arabia, with the material and moral support of the U.S., has driven the people into the abyss of death by starvation, infectious diseases and aerial bombings.

But the main task of revolutionaries and progressives in the U.S. is not to simply analyze developments in Iran, or elsewhere. Our task is to do what we can to stop the vast military that Trump boasts of from inflicting more death and destruction on the people around the world. Our task is to understand and teach others that the U.S. imperialist establishment, by its very nature, can never be an ally to the forces of revolution and progress.

The future of Iran is not to be decided by Trump, Tillerson and Haley, nor Clinton, Obama and the rest. The people of Iran have the right of self-determination. They are the ones who will determine their future based on their views, preferences and struggles. U.S. Hands off Iran!
https://www.liberationnews.org/what-to- ... rationnews

[noemon]

@Zagadka Don't get your stand. Iran is under sanctions for many decades now, the tipping point is the result of the money they spend on various spots after Obama deal.

Yeah Zag, did you not know that Obama created Hezbollah when he permitted Iranians to access their own frozen money, and that this happened only after the Obama deal? I mean in what kind of rock have you been living under?

[/sarcasm]

[Rich]

The Twelvers are less Muslim than the Sunnis. Because they are less Muslim, they're the most blatant idolaters for starters the Islamic Republic from its inception has grandstanded as the most Muslim of governments. Hence the hostage crisis, the fatwas against Salmond Rushdie and support for Sunni Palestinian nationalists. From the go get the Islamic Republic has sought to be America's number one enemy. Its no good them or their cheer leaders complaining if America treats them as such.

Israel needs to find a way to deconflict with the Shia. The way to do that is reoccupy Southern Lebanon, refound the Free Lebanon State and completely cleanse it of Muslim terrorists. This will remove the border with Hezbollah.

[Politiks]

@Rugoz

The issue isn't the risk of a violent failure to revolution, the risk is a revolution that is too successful. Iranians can easily topple the current regime if they really wanted to, the biggest issue is, what do you replace the government with. Despite it's flaws, the government has good institutions and has built up pretty much all of the infrastructure Iran uses. If Iranians violently rise up then you may end up with all of those institutions and infrastructure being completely thrown away.

Not only that but, as anaswad has stated above, it'll lead to a power vacuum so not only will Iran have to start from scratch, there's a large chance it'll never be able to return to it's former self ever again.

The best decision is to slowly faze out the mullahs and remove power from the government while simultaneously keeping our current status. This may not be good for your country which would rather have another Iraq than a first world democratic Middle Eastern country not dependent on the West or Western aid but it is good for us and in my opinion that's what fucking matters.

@Zionist Nationalist

You think I'm referring to the effects such actions will have on Iran? That's cute. I'm talking about the effect it'll have on the West, the consequences it'll have on the West and I assure you it'll be very negative consequences and that your country will not benefit at all from it. The mullahs pose no threat to the West, just because they don't want the West's hands in their countries doesn't mean that they're out to get the West, the only thing you'll bring with violently taking over Iran an Iraq style clusterfuck bigger than anything you've ever seen and especially since both Russia and China are involved as well (they would never allow US troops to be so close to their respective countries). You might end up with WW3 while you're at it.

So basically no gains from attacking Iran outside of a bigger Iraq and potential WW3. Of course you'll still believe you should take over Iran and you'll believe in it till the end. No matter how much you get manipulated and screwed over by your "side" and "tribe" you'll still support them until your suffering eventually ends either at the hands of your tribe or at your own hands. You are the type of person who would never get disillusioned no matter what.

They will replace the current Mulah dictator with a Monarch. The Mulah took out the Shia now the Shia will substitute the Government. Almost every current institution in Iran predates the current Islamic Government. You talk as if those nut job Muslims build Iran and was nothing there before they arrived when that couldn't be far from the truth.

Dictators usually fall for the same reasons, just because he's a religious figure doesn't mean the same rules wont be applied. Hunger, poor health services, inflation, overpriced food, corruption all those things usually are the the start of every protest.

Iran became a Islamic theocratic regime in 1979, was a open Democracy before that. That means there's plenty of people 50-60 years old in Iran that still remembers how is to live in a Democracy. IMO took way to long for Persians to really demonstrate what they feel. I think this will get worse, ran isn't Saudi Arabia or Qatar,

[SolarCross]

I hear the last shah's eldest son "crown prince" Reza Pahlavi would be up for the job of a restored monarchy.

[Oxymandias]

@Rugoz

I don't think it has none persay. I highly doubt that the New York Times would just make an article without any backing whatsoever. However it is very simplified and limited in the information it conveys about the protests and that is clearly evident from both the length, amount of sources, and detail that was put into the article itself. Simply compare news articles regarding Iran to those regarding the US. The amount of depth and verbosity put into US political articles overwhelms Iran political articles.

It is an achievement. I have a hypothesis around here that everyone here is capable of being rational and reasonable. Simply certain biases present in all of us disallow for our truly rational selves to blossom.

Local governments are slowly gaining greater and greater autonomy and the regime, despite it's survivability, is slowly losing it's ability to project power and suppress the democratic urges of it's population. I can see in the near future that the Islamic Republic of Iran would end up as a government in exile or simply a figure-head for the actual democratic government behind it.

@noir

Noir, the only reason you dislike @anasawad is because he said things you didn't like, not because he was wrong about the things he said. Given he has greater knowledge about Iran's current situation than you do and that he has an actual idea as to how Iran could evolve you don't like him, because in this situation and in his ideas, the mullahs aren't violently overthrown and Iran isn't another Western supporting dictatorship like the Saudis.

@Politiks

Do you know what you're talking about? First off, Shia is an Islamic sect, the sect that the mullahs and a majority of Iran's population subscribe to so the question is, what Shia will subsititute the government? Is it the Reformists, Socialists, Constitutionalists, Libertarians, Fascists, Nobles, who? Second, that's completely false and you're going to have to back this up with something other than "I said so". If the Shah really did create the institutions that Iran has now, we would've been far better off. Third, pre-Revolutionary Iran was Islamic. It had a majority Islamic population and it has historically been an Islamic majority society for a majority of it's history. Just because 1950s Iran had women in mini skirts and men in suits doesn't mean they weren't Muslim for Zarathustra's sake!

Who are you talking about? Which dictator? Ayatollah isn't a dictator, he doesn't even have the amount of power that a standard dictator has which is good cause he sucks. Iran wouldn't be as secular as it is now if he had a heavy hand in everything and local governments weren't allowed autonomy. Thank you Politiks for explain Protesting 101. As if that wasn't obvious from the start.

Did you just call the Imperial Monarchy of Iran during the 1950s - 1970s an "open democracy". You know there's this thing called Wikipedia, it's a really useful resource for people who faint every time they're 20 feet from a Muslim and clears alot of ignorance from people's minds quite easily and quickly I might say. You should check it out because Iran was the farthest thing from a democracy during the 1950s -1970s that you could get. The current regime is more democratic than that because at least the goddamn Ayatollah has actual elections. Yes, they're rigged as fuck, but at least there is an election. When Iran was a monarchy, there were no elections and the Parliament was useless as a form of representation.

If you asked a 50-60 year old in Iran how life was like before the revolution they would almost certainly have said that they hated it. It seems to me that you're living under a rock. Well all Americans are in regards to what actually goes on in Iran.

You're making all of this up in your head going against even goddamn history.

@SolarCross

That's assuming that the Iranian population would even support it. Pahalvi dynasty isn't even a traditional Persian dynasty. They don't even come from the traditional aristocracy of Iran. They were put into place by the British and the US after Iran was released by Russia in order to have a pro-Western dictator who was against the Soviets. They have no legitimacy, they are not from the long and winding dynasties and Shahs of Iran, even actual monarchists in Iran don't want them.

[Igor Antunov]

IRGC was deployed today. Crushing is commencing.

[Oxymandias]

@Igor Antunov

IRGC was deployed days ago. Some of the IRGC even joined in on the protesting.

[skinster]

[Trooper]

Margot Wallström: Sweden FM opposing U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley's call for urgent Security Council action on Iran; she says it doesn't qualify; but two weeks ago she backed Security Council action against U.S. embassy move.

Federica Mogherini, responsible for the foreign policy of Brussels, speak instead of “monitoring” the situation in Iran. The move is a dramatic turn for Mogherini who has spoken out in favour of the Iranian regime in recent disputes regarding the U.S.-Iran deal which President Donald Trump has routinely slammed. In early December, Federica Mogherini and the EU slammed the Trump administration on Iran saying: “The Iran nuclear deal is a key strategic priority for European security but also for regional and global security.” In 2015, on a visit to Iran, she declared that ballistic missile tests were not a violation of the nuclear deal and said: “We expect Iran to fulfil all its international obligations.” When current Iranian president Hassan Rouhani was reelected last year, Mogherini was one of the most prominent voices in Europe to congratulate him. On Twitter, she wrote: “I congratulate President @HassanRouhani for strong mandate received.”


The EU foreign policy chief even took the time to fly to Tehran where she personally attended the inauguration of the Iranian president and was caught taking selfies with members of the Iranian parliament.




Western feminists are silent. The American National Organization of Women (NOW) is silent. The American Association of University Women is silent too. The most deafening silence is that of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid al-Hussein, a Jordanian prince, and the Human Rights Council's committees.

A year ago, the female members of “the first feminist government in the world” of Sweden marched in front of Iranian President Hassan Rohani wearing hijabs. Faced with the attacks of the liberal leader Jan Björklund in the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet, Ann Linde defended her hijab by saying that she was not ready to violate Iranian law.

[Atlantis]

There is no chance for the protests to succeed. The regime hasn't even started to show its claws. There is even some reason to believe that the protests were originally started by the hardliners to discredit the reformers in government. The Mullahs know that reform is a slippery slope and that once the floodgates are opened, there is no holding it.

Either the protests peter out or the regime will come down hard on the opposition. Unlike the Czar's regime before the revolution or the Soviet regime before the collapse of the SU, the Mullahs have no compunction about using utmost violence to crash any opposition to the regime. After all, they know that god is on their side. What's a little massacre or two to uphold the rule of the almighty ...

[Rugoz]

I don't think it has none persay. I highly doubt that the New York Times would just make an article without any backing whatsoever. However it is very simplified and limited in the information it conveys about the protests and that is clearly evident from both the length, amount of sources, and detail that was put into the article itself. Simply compare news articles regarding Iran to those regarding the US. The amount of depth and verbosity put into US political articles overwhelms Iran political articles.

It is an achievement. I have a hypothesis around here that everyone here is capable of being rational and reasonable. Simply certain biases present in all of us disallow for our truly rational selves to blossom.

Local governments are slowly gaining greater and greater autonomy and the regime, despite it's survivability, is slowly losing it's ability to project power and suppress the democratic urges of it's population. I can see in the near future that the Islamic Republic of Iran would end up as a government in exile or simply a figure-head for the actual democratic government behind it.

- Well it's an opinion piece, not an article.
- Spoken like a true enlightenment philosopher
- Any more information on this? I only found this http://www.jstor.org/stable/40971477?se ... b_contents which I cannot even access for some reason.

[Oxymandias]

@Atlantis

You're right that the protests were lead by hardliners but it wasn't started by them to discredit reformers, it was to discredit the mullahs. The hardliners were angry that they didn't win the elections and sponsored the protests but they didn't start them. The protests were going to happen any way regardless of hardliner sponsorship and they did happen.

Actually reforms are in the works currently and the government is beginning to implement some of the reforms put forth by the protesters. The Mullahs also aren't idiots. They won't massacre the population for just some protests and delegitimatize their own goddamn rule. There are already comparisons with their regime and the previous one and they know for a fact that massacring the opposition just like the Shah previously did would just be asking for another revolution or at least the overthrowing of the government. A revolutionary government knows how to deal with revolution.

The Iranian population also believes God is on their side and according to the Quran, they would be justified in overthrowing the current authority if that authority is unjust which it is, in their opinion.

@Rugoz

If it's an opinion piece then I can excuse it (unfortunately javascript doesn't work on New York Times on my computer for some reason :\) however that makes it less valid as an accurate source of information in my opinion. If it's an opinion piece written like a news article, it certainly means that the NYT doesn't have the sources to write a in-depth article.

Hey, you seem pretty enlightened yourself. Why don't we, as two enlightenment philosophers, discuss politics and the nature of all things over some fondue and white wine?

Great find! I've actually met Kian before at a lecture during my time in New York. Great guy by the way, he actually was a part of OSI at one time and is a political adviser just like me so we had a lot to talk about particularly in regards to Iran and it's future. The idea of decentralizing Iran and local governments having greater power was a topic that we explored in great depth. I never actually knew he decided to write a book on it.

You can't access it because it's on jstor. In order to read articles on jstor you have to pay for those articles which I recommend you don't do. I have a jstor subscription once and although it was pretty neat, you can get the same exact experience from ResearchGate. ResearchGate is essentially a version of jstor for academics and university students but normal, regular people are able to join. Here is the ResearchGate link for that book you wanted:

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... atic_state

[noir]

It all depends now what the Germans will do. They were the principle agents who pushed Obama for the Nuclear deal. As a result, Iran has had more money to spend on imperial aggression and terrorism. Iran of working to forge a “Shi’ite crescent” of influence running through Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain to the Houthi forces in Yemen’s war, as part of a battle for influence with rival Saudi Arabia, and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Many Iranians, however, resent the foreign interventions and want their leaders to create more jobs at home, where youth unemployment reached 29 percent last year.

Althouth this the Build, but in Germany the respectable and serious MSM are tied to the economical political elite. Spiegel reports on German economy worried about Iran.

Google translate

Good comment by Richard Volkmann: " wherever it is actually burning today in the middle east, it was the mullahs, not Israel or the west that burned the fire Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen - there is no political and humanitarian disaster in the middle east, in which Iran would not be a That the old year with a large demonstration wave against the tehran unrechtsregime is the best harbinger of an improvement in the situation in 2018. Thomas from the east sacken brought this to the correct formula, " a better future Can the whole region only have without the aggressive regime in tehran."



“European leaders – who have their eyes on lucrative business opportunities with Iran – have issued only lukewarm statements of support.” Actually they haven’t even given lukewarm support, just succour to the regime.

http://www.thetower.org/5803-unrest-in- ... ar-accord/

Unrest in Iran: All Roads Lead to the Nuclear Accord

The nuclear deal was sold with the promise that the regime would use its windfall for domestic purposes. In an interview with Al Arabiya in July 2016, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said that “the vast majority of these resources are likely to go to the Iranian economy, which is in a terrible state, and address certain debts of the Iranian government.”

• But instead the money was spent on foreign military campaigns, including sponsoring the mass-murder of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Houthi insurgency in Yemen, and terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. This is the root of the protests: marchers are chanting “Not Gaza, Not Lebanon, I give my life for Iran”
• The Trump administration and Congress must act now to cut off the financial hubs the regime uses to fund its human rights violations: the Central Bank of Iran, which ensures the regime has the resources to commit these atrocities, and the Supreme Leader’s own personal business empire EIKO.

Did the nuclear accord improve relations between the West and Iran?
• Absolutely not. The deal is used as a deterrent by Iran to shield itself from criticism. European states have signed lucrative business deals with the Islamic Republic and, in turn, have responded with moral ambiguity to the unrest in Iran, calling on “all sides” to show restraint.

Acording to pro Iranian goverment piece above ("What to make of Iran’s demonstrations"), the war mongering imperial policy is "independent political relationships and military interventionswhich should bring the support of Western "anti-war movement".

Very sophisticated propaganda piece that probably works. Very clever use of Marxist jargon.

What to make of Iran’s demonstrations

By Mazda Majidi Jan 01, 2018

The one exception would be if there were an explicit socialist or anti-imperialist revolutionary opposition movement in Iran, of course, in which case the Western capitals would positively oppose it.

But in the here and now, the Iranian state’s independent political relationships and military interventions have been a persistent thorn to U.S., Saudi and Israeli designs in Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, Bahrain and Gaza. In Iraq and Afghanistan, Iranian influence has only grown since the U.S. invasions and occupations — a phenomenon that U.S. foreign policymakers would like to reverse. Their grandest ambition is to return Iran to the U.S. sphere of influence, as it was between 1953 and 1979, when it served alongside as Israel as the pillar of U.S. national security strategy in the region."

A movement whose most popular demand is opposition to Iran’s support for Palestine cannot be progressive. A movement whose idea of improved economic management is merging the country’s economy into the world capitalist system, dominated by the U.S. and its junior imperialist partners, cannot be progressive. Merely having legitimate economic and political grievances does not make a movement progressive.

Here in the U.S., some of the supporters of Trump’s fascistic policies are workers with legitimate grievances against the capitalist economy, the political system and the Democrats. They feel squeezed and threatened by a system that has eroded their living standards and threatens to throw them into the ranks of the unemployed and the homeless. Yet, in the absence of class consciousness, they buy into Trump’s racist, sexist and bigoted solution to the real problems. Despite having legitimate grievances, they are reactionary.

Incidentally, much like Iran’s Green movement in 2009, and the social base for the current anti-Islamic Republic movement, Trump’s reactionary movement finds most of its supporters among the middle strata of society, not the working class.

For years, the omnipresent media broadcast TV channels, most prominently among them the BBC and Voice of America, have promoted the idea that economic problems in Iran are primarily, or at least partly, due to the virtually unlimited support that the Islamic Republic provides Palestine. According to this propaganda line, as long as there are economic needs in Iran, no support should go to Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen,… Rumor has it that truckloads of solid gold are headed from Iran directly to Gaza and Damascus on a regular basis!

This view was reflected in a commonly repeated chant at several protests. It is really the return of a common chant of the 2009 Green Movement: “Not Gaza, not Lebanon, I give my life for Iran,” or the even more chauvinistic variant: “Not Gaza, not Lebanon, Sacrifice both for Iran.”

People with strong grievances, quite possibly with different and diametrically opposed political orientations, may have been drawn to the protests. But, as the protests went on, irrespective of the wishes of the individual participants, a more or less clear right-wing, pro-West line started dominating.

Given the long history of involvement of foreign agents in Iran, however, it would be irresponsible to dismiss this element.

Tasks of the anti-war movement


But the main task of revolutionaries and progressives in the U.S. is not to simply analyze developments in Iran, or elsewhere. Our task is to do what we can to stop the vast military that Trump boasts of from inflicting more death and destruction on the people around the world. Our task is to understand and teach others that the U.S. imperialist establishment, by its very nature, can never be an ally to the forces of revolution and progress.

The future of Iran is not to be decided by Trump, Tillerson and Haley, nor Clinton, Obama and the rest. The people of Iran have the right of self-determination. They are the ones who will determine their future based on their views, preferences and struggles. U.S. Hands off Iran!

[Rugoz]

You can't access it because it's on jstor. In order to read articles on jstor you have to pay for those articles which I recommend you don't do.

The institution I work at provides access, but apparently not for that kind of research.

[Oxymandias]

@Rugoz

Which institution do you work for?

[Atlantis]

Actually reforms are in the works currently and the government is beginning to implement some of the reforms put forth by the protesters. The Mullahs also aren't idiots. They won't massacre the population for just some protests and delegitimatize their own goddamn rule. There are already comparisons with their regime and the previous one and they know for a fact that massacring the opposition just like the Shah previously did would just be asking for another revolution or at least the overthrowing of the government. A revolutionary government knows how to deal with revolution.

It's not possible to compare the Shah's regime with that of the Mullahs, even if both use repression. The essential difference is that the former was supported by a small educated and Westernized elite, while the latter can draw on the support of the religious masses. Whatever limited reform there may be, I don't believe it will satisfy the aspiration for political and social liberties of the opposition.

Anyways, I don't see any force in Iran that could win against the Revolutionary Guards. They can easily control the country by locking up dissidents and clamping down on social media.

As previous sanctions have shown, they won't bend to external pressure either, no matter how much Trump may be huffing and puffing. On the contrary, external pressure will give the hardliners the pretext they need to suppress the opposition even more ruthlessly.

The Iranian population also believes God is on their side and according to the Quran, they would be justified in overthrowing the current authority if that authority is unjust which it is, in their opinion.

The protests are motivated by demands for secular freedom (aside from greater prosperity) and not by religious sentiments. The interpretation of God's will is the exclusive domain of the Mullahs who see it as their prerogative to replace political leaders as they see fit.