Understanding Iran’s Protests: Is the Regime Finished?
The Captain
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Thanks, Captain, for the potent knowledgable video link. One of my lifelong closest friends was an Iranian foreign exchange student at my High School in Los Angeles in 1968, and he has been my main source of reliable reporting on Iran for decades, although he only briefly visited there as the Shah became ever more controlling and nuts, and then worse still under the mullahs.
He told me that the notion that this time the street rebellion actions are simply grim, determined, and after a bit of thinking said irreversable was a deadly but accurate discreption.
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I have high hopes for the populace of Iran, but even higher doubts. The crowd is unorganized and lacks weapons. The regime is strictly controlled and is armed.
I know these handicaps have been overcome before, but get his is one of those cases where the rulers in power think they speak with/for/by God, so they’re unlikely to respond to public protest. Sometimes even bad people can be shamed into relinquishing power, witness India & the British, the French Revolution, the People Power revolution in the Philippines, even the Russian Revolution.
But when you go up against those who are convinced of their righteousness and think they’re chosen by God, you don’t get any kind of resonability. (Ask Barry Goldwater, as his famous quote illustrates.)
I would like to think that these protests will come to something, but I am a pessimist. (An irony: the crowds are changing for Rena Pahlavi, the (despised) Shah’s son, to lead the movement once the mullahs have been deposed.)
It’s hard to negotiate with the Ultra Orthodox Israelis, the Mullahs of Iran, and of course Christian Nationalists here and elsewhere. It’s a quandry, for sure.
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Protests and revolts succeed when the repressive forces refuse to kill the protesters. Some Iranian repressive forces have done so but the regime has yet to bring out the big guns. The Hungarian 1956 revolution had succeeded locally until Russia sent in the tanks that killed thousands on a weekend. Two of my cousins (late teens back then) had disappeared for a couple of days. Asked “Where were you?” “Collecting corpses.” They escaped to Austria and got refugee status in Canada..Nicolas has a piece of a demolished Stalin statue.
The Captain
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It is even harder to negotiate with the US particularly right now.
Who says anyone is negotiating?
Ultra Orthodox Israelis are 14% of Israel. Keep speaking with authority about Israel as if the nation is evil. Know what you are talking about first.
As of late 2023/early 2024, the ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) population in Israel is about 13-14% of the total population, numbering around 1.3 to 1.4 million people, with projections showing significant growth to 16% by 2030 and potentially over 20% by 2048 due to high birth rates.
Meanwhile, millions of Arabs, led by the Arab nation folks are dead because of Iran and Russia. Woops, Americans should not talk the truth on either side. Makes us look weak.
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Thank for the tip. Mrs. Goofy is Jewish. We have been to Israel. We are on mailing lists, and do keep up on the news.
The ultra-orthodox in Israel form a significant place in determining policy, and like the (entire) government in Iran pull the country to the right, creating laws and actions which are not the wont of the majority of the population.
In Iran they have managed to take control of the entire government, even though they form a small part of the population. (Take a look at some pre-revolution photos of Iran for a look at how they lived before the religionists took over.)
My point is that we shouldn’t count on “demonstrations in the streets” to change anything in Iran. (Yes, similar to the US right now.)
I have hope for change in both, but am prepared to be disappointed.
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Other than some angry rhetoric in the heat of the moment which policy by hte ultra orthodox is a problem and WHY?
The Arab nation is causing the entire problem. The Israelis have given up on any negotiations. Your comment is because non-religious Jews look down on religious Jews.
You are not answering for the 35% plus of Jews who support Netanyahu because he is clear and decisive, as opposed to trying things that won’t work. The PA has not had an election since 2006. There is no working with a government that hasn’t had free elections. American Jewry believes a bit of self-blame can be self-responsibility..That has been tried in Israel and continues to be tried by world Jewry. It won’t work with the PA. It has nothing to do with being Jewish. It has to do with not being Muslim.
Iran’s problems stem from a receding power into a Russian embrace. Followed by millions of Arabs dead and policies that are hell to live with.
Israel and the West need a reality check, but they are not Iran. Crazy equivalency.
The US is a dying democracy that is going way off the rails. But we said that about FDR.
In the US, the entire power structure is being aligned wrongly. Taxation is intertwined with any power structure we create going forward. The decision-making currently going on is aligning the power structure very poorly, wrongly. We won’t achieve what we need. We are going to fail.
This could go either way.
The American pluralism makes it hard to believe.
Smaller populations that are of a nation culturally are less inclined to all out civil war. It is still possible for the mullahs to walk away from the coming violence.
In a sense the Shah had. If the mullahs see no path forward, they do have value systems for their children. They will probably walk off the job. None of them on either side are Putin. We have to wonder if Trump is that ruthless.
Sounds like the US.
Imagine how the ICE protests get reported in foreign countries and how the general public might be perceiving us.
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It seems to be happening…
The Captain
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Fascinating. Thank you Captain. I had not seen that crux piece of news and commentary.
The simple facts of extreme corruption and abuse of power under the mullahs combined with disastrous long term folly (allowing your capital city’s water system to collapse from lack of long term planning) SCREAMS out the vulnerability of the current regieme.
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It’s an interesting video. It’s certainly slickly produced, almost as good as anything the CIA or the Argo Studios could put out.
But there are several claims made for which I can find no corroboration, including that 50,000 of the state military is secretly planning and plotting to disobey orders, or that there have been targeted killings of Iranian leaders or their homes. (To be clear, some police/military have been killed and homes destroyed, however there are no credible reports that those are because of “targeted actions”, implying a coordinated effort on the part of the mob.)
I also have to say that the General they trot out is 1) straight from Central Casting and 2) the most remarkable English speaker available, better than 90% of native English speakers to be sure.
So, while I would like to embrace the sentiment and hope that the protestors do, in fact, win this battle and shuffle the Iranian leadership off to some retirement dacha in Moscow, it’s going to take more than one pre-manufactured and highly produced (not to mention entirely one sided) video with a lot of clips of angry street protests to convince me that this is real.
I sincerely hope it is. This video looks like propaganda, absent any confirming information anywhere.
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If anyone can find out then it’s no secret. They posted the following…
In this episode of MrWARLOG, we analyze the unverified but terrifying reports of a “Secret Army” forming within the Iranian Armed Forces (Artesh). A leaked video of a Colonel pledging loyalty to the “Lion and Sun” (Reza Pahlavi) signals that the end of Khamenei might come from inside the barracks, not just the streets. While protesters establish a counter-intelligence network to “mark” IRGC commanders’ homes, the regime faces a total mutiny in its airspace and energy sectors.
uTube reports:
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Goofy, learn about 21st century uTubing. One needs to separate the wheat from the trash. uTube is a business. The video sounds reasonable but only events we can see are facts
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