I've only met a few Iranians and almost all of them were gay and were sent here by their parents so that they wouldn't be murdered by the Iranian government. I don't think that is an accurate representation of the average Iranian so I really wouldn't have any basis for an opinion of the average Iranian. That said, the best case scenario when it comes to their demonstrations is that they will lead to an overthrow of the theocracy and given their history, I don't think that's totally out of the question.
The only difference is that in 2009, the protests came from within Iran. Whereas now, although Iranians do want to protest, it's obvious there is a lot of orchestration going on.
I have known Iranians from Iran, Iranians abroad, Arab Iranians and American Iranians my whole life: no one is sending their kids abroad because of a fear of being killed for being gay. Those kids are being sent abroad because their parents are rich and want them away from crime, drugs, etc or want them to get a better education or job or learn English or some of them just want to party and drink. It's just common sense. If you understand what imperialists and mullahs have jointly done to Iranians over 80 years and what life is like today there, you would understand that only a rich person in Iran today has the luxury of thinking about buying an airline ticket and sending their kid to a more expensive country so they can continue to be themselves except now they can get together in large gatherings too. Iranians are worried about their next meal and whether they are going to be murdered in a nuclear holocaust by Americans/proxies or descend into a Syria-like wasteland through a civil war between a hand-picked American-backed military dictator and domestic extremists. This is the us foreign policy in the region, everyone knows it. This foreign policy is designed to extract as much wealth from everywhere into the pockets of already-rich Americans without the American public touching the money in between. The few people you ran into must have been an anomaly.
It's possibly true that they were all anomalies, but I wasn't trying to suggest that they were "ordinary" Iranians, they were absolutely rich kids and unless they were lying about it (possible I suppose) the reason their parents decided to send them here was because they were gay and they didn't want anything bad to happen to them. Like I said though, I don't consider that a representative sample, it's just who I happened to have met. Also, when I say "Iranians" I mean specifically those who were at least born in Iran, not those who merely have Iranian heritage.
Interesting... this definitely isn’t the sentiment in Iran, although it is a message the regime has tried to spread through state propaganda TV. What is your source, and who would you speculate is orchestrating it? State TV would say Saudis or Israel. As far as the gays being sent abroad goes, i agree it’s not the norm, but gays have three choices in Iran: 1) completely hide this aspect of your life from everyone and hope it never goes public 2) confess/get caught, and admit you’re gay, leading to a government forces transgender operation (i believe Iran is one of the trans capitals of the world for this reason) 3) execution So while it is an odd, rather fringe aspect of Iranian people for someone to focus on, it could be based in fact.
It is definitely the sentiment in Iran, and it is also precisely why the protests have not spread rapidly. I would suggest you ask some people who were actively part of the 2009 protests or Iran-based journalists. I'm sure the mullahs are saying it, but they say that for everything so it's kind of meaningless. Just like in the Arab Gulf, everything is Iran's fault. Better yet in the United States, where everything is Russia now lol. McCarthyism tactics are on full blast in all these countries for over 5 years now. To those wondering, it was not always like this. Iranians and Arabs have their issues, Shiites and Sunnis have major disagreements, but hate propaganda has never been this abundant in any of the 3 countries, ever. I will bump this post in a year when it happens, but this whole thing right now is about finally making a particular middle eastern alliance public > an alliance that the Arab public would not accept. UNLESS you can convince people that Iran is more criminal than the other country. This is all about building EXACTLY the same case/alliance for war with Iran as they did with Yemen. Remember, exact thing happened in Yemen before. But everyone knows, the mullahs are going to be more resilient than Gaddhafi, Saddam, Assad, Hadi, Saleh, etc. Everyone has tried a lot to weaken the mullahs, but when they failed they resorted to starving poor Iranians through sanctions, hoping that their mass deaths would be convenient for their plan. Didn't work. Just made the income inequality between the mullahs and people greater. I don't have a source other than, this is what has happened in every Middle Eastern country in the last 80 years that is not friendly to the United States. When I say not-friendly, I don't mean hostile. I just mean things like: wanting to tax heavily, not fast-tracking American conglomerates into the market, giving advantages to local businesses. These things can end a country. The hostilities start afterwards typically. You name a country, and I'll show you when it happened and how eerily similar it is. When a pattern recurs that often, you can safely assume it's the policy. Either an American strongman crushes the poor and sells local markets to big conglomerates, or you cease to exist except in name (like Syria, Iraq, Libya). The only country that has escaped this strategy recently is Tunisia, and all the intelligence services of all the countries I'm discussing have been caught attempting to do the same thing in Tunisia just in the last year. No functional, representative democracy in the Middle East, not even in Israel anymore. That is policy. The other most glaring example of course is Iran circa 1979 >> the plan failed here too. Sucks for the Iranian people. There is no chance they will have anything different than Egypt's "election" of Morsi. The next "president" of Iran has already met with foreign intelligence services imo.
I just find it strange to state that ITS PRETTY OBVIOUS that these protests are being orchestrated when, unlike the 2009 protests that had leaders and were concentrated in Iran, these protests started in the smaller city of Mashhad by working class people and then spread across the entire country. Iran is also unlike most other ME countries we’ve intervened in in which over 80 million people (majority younger, pro-western/secular educated people) have smart phones and actively pursue to emulate aspects of western culture in their private lives. My source is coming from dozens of family members still in the country.
One interesting thing about the positions being taken by the right here is the extreme reaction they had to protesting here in the US to Anti-facism protests post election but are perfectly fine cheerleading these protests in which people are actually dying has happened among a great deal of arsen has taken place. Here in the US... it’s the start of communist takeover. Over in the Middle East... it’s the best thing that ever happened.
Trump should have deported those protesters and replaced them with illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants have jobs and contribute to the economy. This is the land of opportunity: use it or lose it. Is that what you want to hear?
Thanks to the people here with informative posts. Less thanks to the people that can seemingly pick a side in almost anything. By assuming a few things that they do not know for sure are fact, and proceed to argue about it.
