As details of the death toll for January’s protests continue to emerge, three students explain why they are resisting a return to normality
More than 45 days after a brutal January crackdown that left thousands of Iranian protesters dead, students across several universities are protesting again. As Iran’s new academic term began on Saturday, students in Tehran gathered on campus, chanting anti-government slogans, despite a heavy security presence and plainclothes officers stationed outside university gates.
The Guardian spoke to protesting students about why they were rallying despite the fact that thousands had been killed and tens of thousands arrested in the January demonstrations.
“Our classrooms are empty because the graveyards are full,” said Hossein*, 21, a student at the University of Tehran. “It’s for them – our friends, classmates and compatriots, who were gunned down in front of our eyes, that we decided to boycott the classes.”
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Why is it the responsibility of the US? I’m old enough to remember being (rightfully) shunned for doing the same fucking shit in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Why did the US invade Afghanistan? Why did they invade Iraq?
Do you believe the US is considering a ground invasion of Iran?
because of lies and oil as always. there wasnt any us intervention in the middle east in history that left the country better.
How do we improve things for the people of Iran?
you don’t do shit and stop lying about it.
We don’t. Stop being a chauvinist. The Iranian people, together, improve things for themselves. Our responsibility is to dismantle the Western imperialist machine that has killed almost 40 million people in the last 50 years through sanctions alone
Why would I need to dismantle the Western machine and not the Iranian one?
Because you don’t live in Iran and it’s not your responsibility. Your responsibility, depending on where you live, is to dismantle the closest link to you in the chains that hold the world in imperial bondage, which is the Western machine helmed by the USA.
Why would these be exclusive?
So you’re arguing that some interventions by the US that led to hundreds of thousands or millions of civilian deaths, long-term cancer and birth defects, total destruction of civilian infrastructure, and decades of neocolonial extraction are somehow justifiable?
Am I?
Did your conversation also cover the fact that the CIA/MI5/the Mossad intentionally put those Islamic radicals in power?
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/31/690363402/how-the-cia-overthrew-irans-democracy-in-four-days
Well, your copypaste doesn’t really say what you say it does but, yeah, even if that was the case how does it help the people of Iran?
Now that’s A+ gaslighting. It ABSOLUTELY says what I say it says.
We shoot a hole in a bucket then decades later engage in handwringing with gullible libs that would believe ANYTHING about why we need to intervene to shore up the problems we caused in the first place.
There aren’t too many sentences there. You can do this.
I get where you’re clumsily aiming at but the current situation is what it is. The Iranian people don’t gain shit when we limit ourselves to reciting history to eachother
At least I’m not clumsily implying that for some odd reason, we suddenly need to go act as world police as a response to what amounts to our own outrage-farming bullshit. Hilarious that you (or whoever you’re an unwitting or paid dupe for) think anyone would fall for this at all.
As an American I’ve long supported assisting rebels, but going to war is just as likely to backfire as it is to succeed.
Well you can give the small arms but then they’re up against an advanced military. They basically don’t stand a chance without at least air support
If you let them get nukes it’s basically game over
The US does that when it wants to create a civil war where previously there was no civil war. Civil wars are great for neocolonial intervention. You pump arms into the weaker side. They start killing. The whole defense complex now has to manage its existing counter-intelligence program against the US but now they also have an active hot conflict domestically. Lots of military-capable people die. Then the neocolonial empire comes in once the chaos has weakened everyone and they save the day!
There’s no civil war because the Iranian regime kills everyone that poses a threat. People are taking to the streets to demand basic rights and they get shot in the head by the thousands.
How do you suggest the Iranian people get out of this situation?
Again, I ask, why does the responsibility always default to the US? Why?
Responsibility?
By coming together with their government to defeat the imperialists?
Start shooting protestors and hanging gays?
Find and expose the foreign spies operating in Iran, continue to advocate on the world stage for the end to the crimes against humanity that are the collective punishment of sanctions, and engage in mutual aid to reduce the suffering caused by the crimes against humanity that are the collective punishment of sanctions.
What they shouldn’t do is align their interests with the US and Israel for the violent overthrow of the anti-imperialist Iranian government.
Yeah but what if you want to help your government to ‘expose the spies’ and they tell you to go hang some gays first? Do you side with teh empire or hang the gays?
Disgusting sentiment