Protests grow as Iran’s government makes meager offer amid tanking economy
Bolder protests are being recorded across Iran amid an increasing deployment of armed security officers as the government’s efforts to contain an unravelling economic situation fall flat.
Footage circulating online showed huge protests on Tuesday night in the city of Abdanan, in the central province of Ilam, where several major demonstrations have taken place over the past week.
Thousands of people, from children accompanied by parents to the elderly, were filmed walking and chanting in the streets of the small city while helicopters flew overhead. The protesters appeared to have vastly outnumbered the security personnel deployed to contain them.
In the city of Ilam, the province’s capital, videos showed security forces storming the Imam Khomeini Hospital to root out and arrest protesters, something rights group Amnesty International said violates international law and again shows “how far the Iranian authorities are willing to go to crush dissent”
Look.
I have very little time for Religion.
If YOU want to believe in an invisible magical flying wizard for your day to day morality and ethics, good for you, just leave me the fuck out of it.
So if I have little time for Religion, you can guess my open contempt for a Theocracy.
I believe the Iranian Theocracy is a mutation of civilisation but I also acknowledge why it came about, which was because of a CIA coup that put into power a terrible dictator who murdered, tortured and imprisoned everyone so that the only ones left standing were radicalised Muslims.
You can not be critical of the Iranian Theocracy without pointing to America’s despicable coup as the catalyst for this mutation.
Don’t like the Theocracy? Don’t play God in other peoples nations for oil then!
The Iranian Theocracy is a pathetic sick regime that kills little girls for not wearing headscarves FFS, but any change to that Theocracy MUST be decided by the Iranian people themselves, certainly not more external machinations, that’s why I support the Iranian people in their current protests against the Mullahs.
I think the manner in which America has strangled the Iranian economy is outrageous and that reform would be occurring within Iran far faster if they had been allowed to grow economically and the usual dynamics of a rising wealth reform things internally on their own. All the sanctions have done is make things unbearable to the point where violence will break out instead of reforms.
So.
I stand with the Iranian people while standing against American Imperialism.
In solidarity with the Iranian people ✊
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The Iranian regime is progressive in a fundamental sense: it is uncompromisingly anti-imperialist. Western reporting on so-called “adversary” states is overwhelmingly propaganda. Context is routinely stripped away, facts are distorted, exaggerations are normalised, and outright falsehoods are common. The purpose of this propaganda is clear: to manufacture consent for invasion, regime change, and the theft of resources—especially oil. Don’t fall for it.
The reality is that a substantial proportion of Iranians support their political system, a fact Western media works tirelessly to obscure because it undermines the regime-change narrative.
If you want serious analysis, listen to scholars like Professor Marandi. Here is an interview with George Galloway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0Hi2DdbFp0
I have lived and worked in Iran under the Islamic regime, I have attended large political protests in Tehran, and I have liberal middle class and largely secular friends in the country. Yet I find myself more in sympathy with your view of the current situation than with Martyn’s.
Martyn – Iranian people deserve peace. The Iranian Government needs to go.
Yes, indeed
Add to this their looming water crisis due, partly, to government incompetence, partly severe drought.
The city of Tehran, 10 million inhabitants, is on the brink of running out of water. There is talk of evacuating the city, and I cannot imagine how such a thing is possible.
Totally agree on the open contempt of Theocracy. Just our views on God differ. But hey the left is a big tent. We should all stand with the rights of people to determine their future.
My fear though, this is happening in the Kurdish dominated areas. Historically the Kurd’s get the bash from this contemptuous Theocratic state.
Unless this spreads far and wide and the dominate Persian population embrace the need for change – I’m picking little will change.
But we can Hope and Pray (well us who believe in God can pray – you do you) cause this government of ours lacks any interest in the rights of people.
Iran has been sanctioned by the US for the past 40 years or so. The purpose of the sanctions is to make life so hard for Iranians that they protest and overthrow their government themselves, or more likely, create a pretext for the US to orchestrate a coup. For what it’s worth, I think it is the Iranian people’s commitment to their faith that will prevent the US from overthrowing the Iranian government, no matter what we in New Zealand think about the Iranuan government and its religious practices.