It looks like climate change killed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.
The area he was flying in has experienced extreme weather events over the last couple of years and the terrible weather his helicopter encountered suggests this was an accident rather than an assassination, which is a hard conclusion to draw when he had so many enemies.
There are just as many domestic enemies as international enemies who would all benefit from his death, but until clear evidence of sabotage is presented, the helicopter crash was accidental, what isn’t accidental will be the ramifications of his death.
Ebrahim Raisi was a religious fascist who caused appalling human rights abuses.
His nickname was the ‘butcher of Tehran’ and he oversaw an oppressive and brutal regime that has routinely committed terrible human rights abuses.
The killing of young women by his religious Police highlights the cruelty that regime treats women and anyone who disagrees with their demented theocracy…
Enforcement of Iran’s “hijab and chastity law” sharply increased under Raisi’s administration—he faced massive anti-government protests around the deaths of Mahsa Amini and Armita Geravand, both of whom died after allegedly violating the hijab law—and the country’s has restricted women’s rights to sexual and reproductive healthcare in attempts to raise the population.
Raisi was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2019 after the Treasury Department accused him of participating in decades of human rights violations, including the execution of children in Iran, imprisonment of prominent human rights lawyers and executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988.
Now, let’s be very clear the West enabled Raisi with their crippling economic sanctions and of course there wouldn’t be a radicalised Muslim Theocracy in the first place if America and Britain hadn’t caused a coup to invade Iran for their oil.
So everyone in this is awful, the big question is what happens next.
I think Iran will want a successful test of a nuclear weapon before Trump’s election in November in an attempt to project invincibility.
The current ethnic cleansing war crime being committed by Israel will present the new leadership with easy domestic wins if Iran use proxies to cause more conflict.
The economic pain from US sanctions will continue to drive Iran into the arms of Russia and China.
Raisi was another mutation of US Foreign Policy, few should grieve his passing, most should fear what happens next.
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There’s probably someone worse waiting in the wings.
Hahah, hilarious. But nothing to say about zionist collaborators like the Saud crime family. Interesting
Yup as soon as I saw this knew Mo would see this differently.
Unless the Israelis did it, your comments are just what aboutism.
Much like the gang that lead our country .A bald religious fanatic and two lunatics
Raisi sponsored terrorism. Luxon and his mob are not remotely similar.
Such gleeful comments at the death of Ebrahim Raisi, based on accusations by the US Treasury Department hardly mark a high point of journalism on TDB.
Let us have a serious study of Iran’s internal and external conflicts, and the roles played by particular classes and individuals within Iran and by other states in the wider world. We then might have a more balanced picture of Raisi who has wide support in Iran because he consistently advanced the interests of Iran’s poor. He was of course the total opposite of the Labour Party politicians who Martyn supports in this country. Raisi is a rigid social conservative, a strong opponent of US imperialism and Zionism, and a supporter of the interests of deprived and struggling people everywhere. By contrast the Labour Party politicians who Martyn adores are woke, slavish vassals of Anglo-American imperialism and enthusiasts for global capitalism who in six years of government did sweet all to save our people from being thrown into destitution and despair.
Martyn is free to denigrate Raisi, and eulogize Hipkins, but he is missing a big part of the plot here.
Geoff Fischer is obviously a believer in the maxim “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” To sanction a regime merely because it has come into conflict with U.S. imperialism is a perfect example of what has been called “the anti-imperialism of fools.”
It beggars belief that anyone could say that Raisi was “a supporter of the interests of deprived and struggling people everywhere” after even a brief review of the man’s career. It is important to remember that the regime Raisi headed was not a product of the 1979 Iranian revolution but of the counter-revolution that drowned that hopeful beginning in blood. Iran’s capitalists and landlords infinitely preferred a regime of bourgeois clerics than to see power pass into the hands of workers and farmers, which was at least a possibility in the period immediately after the overthrow of the Shah. Raisi became known as “the Butcher of Teheran” because of the part he played in the counter-revolution as part of a four-man committee that in four months in 1988 was responsible for the interrogation, torture and execution of between 5,000 and 30,000 political prisoners.
More recently in 2019 Raisi took a leading role in the bloody suppression of the widespread anti-government protests that were sparked by a fifty percent increase in the price of fuel, and in which at least 1500 hundred working people were shot by security forces. He again unleashed his state thugs against the people of Iran when in 2022 they took to the streets in large numbers following the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini who was arrested for the crime of not wearing the hijab. Hundred more died.
Raisi was also a notorious Jew-hater. In 2022 he commented that “there were some signs” the Holocaust happened but that the issue needed more research. After Hamas’s October 7 attack he hailed the pogromists for carrying out “a legitimate defence of the Palestinian nation.”
Terry’s last sentence is the most telling of the reasons behind his denigration of Ebrahim Raisi. Terry calls the Hamas/Islamic Jihad operation against the State of Israel on October 7 a pogrom. Raisi called it a legitimate act of Palestinian self-defence, which is not to say that everything which was done on that day was legitimate.
As Martyn admits, it was the US and UK that overthrew democracy in Iran in 1953, installing Shah Reza Pahlavi who ruled brutally in his bid to “modernize” and secularize Iran in the western model. The opposition to Pahlavi came from two quarters – the Shia religious movement and the Tudeh (Communist) Party and other left wing groups. Since the Shia Ayotollahs had a mass following, far greater than the Marxists, they were the leading force in the 1979 revolution – now known as the Islamic revolution. The revolution effected a bloody retribution against the Shah’s regime, and went on to successfully wage a civil war against the Marxists. (Most revolutions involve elements of civil war within the revolutionary ranks – Iran was no exception). A large number of Marxists/leftists fled to Iraq, where they allied with Saddam Hussein’s regime, fighting against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war and helping Saddam to suppress popular uprisings within Iraq. These Mojahedin-e-Khalq fighters were the ones Terry must be referring to when he mentions “the interrogation, torture and execution of between 5,000 and 30,000 political prisoners”. It is a stretch to call those who attacked their own country in alliance with Saddam Hussein, and who used US supplied nerve gas against their own people, as “political prisoners”. Never-the-less there is agreement that a large number of these prisoners were executed.
So Terry is not telling the whole story here. To be frank, the eventual fate of the Mojahedin should have come as no surprise. By joining in alliance with a brutal foreign dictator against the people of their own country they had acted in ways that would have aroused the indignation of any state, and they are widely loathed in Iran. That is not to justify what happened to them, but it does go some way to explaining the tragic events.
There is a large scale opposition within Iran to the Islamic regime. That opposition is primarily based in the educated middle classes, particularly, but not exclusively, among secularists. The opposition range from monarchists (supporters of the late Shah) through Marxists to liberal democrats, and are supported by a considerable body of Iranians in the Persian diaspora, principally in the US. They are militant and courageous (as were the Mojahedin, to be fair) and can also be quite brutal themselves. However the Iranian working class are not fools. They know very well that western liberalism – the liberalism of the Kardashians if you like – has worked to the detriment of working people around the world, and on the whole they consider themselves safer under a conservative religious government than under the kind of brutal liberal regime that the western powers had previously imposed upon them for a quarter century. Iranians on both sides know that the battle is not just over hijab. It is about whether their society should take the western road of neo-liberalism, or remain a fundamentally conservative society under religious leadership. This may be hard for westerners to grasp, but it shouldn’t be. Liberalism, neo-liberalism, call it what you will, is not every working person’s dream of paradise on earth.
I understand that Terry may be some kind of Marxist. If that is the case, then like all the other Marxists he should look long and hard at the legacy of Marxism around the world including Iran. At its best, Marxism has succeeded in turning undeveloped semi-feudal societies into fully fledged capitalist super-powers. At its worst it has delivered corrupt crony capitalist regimes. Iran chose not to go that way, but as I have said before, if the west desires to see a more moderate approach from Tehran then it needs to stop taking a belligerent stand itself.
Just so I’m clear, people here are defending Ebrahim Raisi as a person and a leader, and anything said against him (or any previous acts that he has been accused of) is just western propaganda? No evidence of it, it’s all just lies.
Mahsa Amini was a made up figure conjured up by the MSM
And the NZ Labour party are worse
And he is (was) the same as Christopher Luxon
I offer no judgement, I just wanted to be clear that that’s what the comments above are saying.
So you’re celebrating alongside the ‘israelis’ and Al Qaeda? Interesting, I offer no judgement.
Where did I say that? I was just clarifying what people said above. As usual you’re just making things up.
And to be honest I don’t give a shit about your judgement.
I know nothing of Raisi, I’d just like to comment on Bomber and several others worldview.
Iranian President Raisi Killed in Helicopter Crash – Foul Play or Bad Weather? https://youtu.be/-PHuXqQVMvk
@ P.Carran ,,,, The MSM reporting around Mahsa Amini’s death was certainly propaganda (a beat up about being beaten to death) ..
.. the response (of more sanctions ) was hypocritical given the millions of Iranian women who already suffer the collective punishment of western sanctions ,,,, this includes thousands or tens of thousands of them, who got a death sentence due to cancer drugs and other life saving medicine being denied by the ‘civilized west’..
But hey …. that’s just the way we roll …..
What happens behind the Zagros mountains is for Westerners a three millennium old question? Persian civilisation predates ours. I’m not sure noting Martyns’ tone and that of other comments that enough respect is being shown. We are assuming superiority of our own cultural, religious and political norms. I suspect they feel the same way about us.
Lets stop attacking other countries human rights while we are embarking on a road to deprive 20% of the population of their rights as the original inhabitants of this group of islands .It amazes me everyday that people call out other countries while we fuck over as many Maori as we can by not allowing them a decent living .Al while we allow 100 plus thousand indians a year to come in and take over our country because their country is fucked as a place to live .
50,000 Indian and 30,000 Filipino nationals migrated to NZ in the last period, a massive demographic change for the country. What are all of these people doing here? I thought India and the Philippines were these great success story emerging economies?
only if you are a rich prick the same as here .These people will be off to AUS as soon as they realise they are going to be used and exploited by the rich cunts here
Hold that thought when next you decide to weigh in on the Israel-Hamas war.
Ok I will hold a thought and then say that shows how f’ing bad Israel have become when they are in the same conversation as this tyrannical dickhead. Why? Because they have actually out done this murderous individual by an enormous margin.
The big question in situations like this is – is the guy that takes over going to be better or worse. I guess we’ll have to wait and see, but I can’t see them being much better. The people are getting pissed off with the country being run by religious nutcases, but the religious nutcases seem to have all the power at the moment. Oh well, maybe they’ll beat some other poor girl to death because she is not wearing the requisite clothes. From what I can gather, the problem is a rural/urban thing. The people in the countryside are simply conservative. The people in the cities aren’t so much. This much was clear when an old mate of mine went around Afghanistan and the rest of that – what is it West Asia – on the old hippie trail years ago. He actually listened to the people in the country and they were really dead set against the Shah. Too modern, too Western, too irreligious. Couple of years later came the revolution.
GS, I was walking past the mosque at Kilbirnie a few years ago when the faithful poured out after prayers. Apart from obvious ethnicities they were just like you and me. I’d wager that in Iran most people would mirror these followers of Allah. Your friend obviously observed them on their own patch. My observation is that how they think is not how we do. That said, who are we to judge.
America, what a gift, eye opener.
For the past five hundred years European capitalists have believed in their right to plunder the economies of other nations. Not in a surreptitious or opportunistic way, but overtly in ways that are ideologically sanctified, in the first instance by the theory of civilizing imperialism, and in the second instance by the theory of unconstrained global markets in goods, labour and capital. In every nation they have willing accessories who see opportunities to profit by collaboration with European capital and may even genuinely believe in its supposed civilizing or liberating qualities.
It is also the case that in every nation these global capitalists meet resistance, from established political elites, local capitalists, and popular movements. When it does meet resistance “global capital” (actually broadly European capitalists under US hegemony) resorts to demonizing the nations which resist its encroachments followed by economic sanctions, subversion, assassination, and ultimately all out war. That is the way it responds to China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Iran and other nations.
Iran is a clear cut case. First, the US and UK staged a coup in Iran against a democratic government and installed in its place the dictator Shah Reza Pahlavi, who handed over his country to the depredations of Anglo-American imperialism for a quarter of a century. When the Shah was finally overthrown in a popular revolution, western imperialism reacted with fury and the full scope of economic sanctions, subversion, assassination and demonization, stopping just short of open warfare – for now at least.
The demonisation takes interesting forms. For popular consumption it is all about hijab, as though hijab is something awful and oppressive and particularly Islamic. Yet no one has ever been able to show me an image of Saint Mary, the mother of Jesus, with her hair on show. No doubt some modern artist of a liberal persuasion will produce one, but then we would no longer recognise her as the mother of Christ. I say this not in defence of hijab, but in defence of rational examination of issues of cultural difference.
But let us leave aside the propaganda designed for misleading the masses in the west, and look at the issues that really concern western capitalists. Hijab, it seems, is a big issue in Iran as far as the west is concerned, a touchstone of freedom or oppression, yet it is not at all a problem when it comes to Saudi Arabia. What is the difference? The difference is that Saudi Arabia is integrated into the system of western capitalism and its military-industrial complex.
When you listen to what the capitalists of the west are saying among themselves, as distinct from what they are saying to their own public, they are not worried about hijab. They are concerned that large parts of the Iranian economy are managed by the Shia religious establishment, the Basij, the Sepah Pasdaran and the state itself. In other words the Iranian economy is structured in a way that allows little scope for the west to move in and take over in short order. That is unforgivable for the west.
The sad fact is that since the First World War western leftists and even Marxists have supported their capitalist class in its designs against the economies, nations and states of the rest of the world. The New Zealand Labour Party simply rolled over and let “global capital” seize control of the New Zealand economy, and with and political independence that New Zealand had. Now we have leftists like Chris Trotter and Terry Coggan cheer leading for the State of Israel and demonizing the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is all part and parcel of western capital’s war against the rest of humanity. None of the states listed above are paragons of democracy or popular rights, but they are a damn sight better than the kind of regimes which western capitalism would like to establish in their place.
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