Sadly, it’s not. The same group of people (students, intelligentsia, urban dwellers) protested during the Green Revolution in 2009 and were met with truncheons and bullets dying by the hundreds.
Unfortunately, the regime won’t be overthrown by middle and upper-middle class kids.
The protests earlier this year, deep in Iran religious redneck country, were arguably more dangerous to the regime. These protests erupted over a shortage of eggs, not some lofty ideals about freedom. Also, the casualty lists (unlike the Green Revolution) weren’t so lopsided as the rednecks took out many law enforcement personnel, including the Guardsmen.
What infuriated these students protesting the shooting down of the Ukrainian airliner is the fact that the regime killed their own best and brightest.
Any commercial flight leaving Tehran is chock full of PhD students, postdocs, engineers and medical doctors, many of the latter working in prestigious US hospitals.
For the students in Tehran, these were the people that made it, succeeded in the West yet remained loyal to Iran, but not the regime itself. And for middle class Iranians that’s the most heartbreaking part.
Another thing - it seems that the assassination of Soleimani was actually a part of a larger effort to prop up the unsuccessful Saudi war against the barefoot Houthis in Yemen.
Not saying I like the Ayatollah, but nothing that happened here is his fault. It’s incompetence in the military. Either stop all civilian flights, or if not then make sure that anyone in control of a missile launcher is notified in advance of any incoming or outgoing planes.
Israel and Iran are both friends with Russia, and China has been Russia’s best friend ever since Mao. You can’t be anti-China and allies with Russia. I never heard of other middle east countries that are pro-US having issues with China, but I would imagine that if the people there know what China is doing to their own Muslim population (Uighurs) they wouldn’t have a favorable view.
It sounds oddly similar to Occupy Wall Street
This is why the US sees sanctions as a useful tactic, the worse conditions get in the country the more people will lash out against the government.
I remember. And I remember how politicians said Obama let the Iranians down. I wonder, when these people suffer the same fate, if they will say the same about Trump?
There are several problems with this approach, namely the fact that the US is in alliance with enemies of Iran.
Saudi Arabia is the enemy not only of the regime but the entire country of Iran and other Shiites. Since their military is laughable despite billions spent on US hardware, it’s obvious the US is doing most of the heavy lifting in this military alliance.
The Grand Mufti of Riyadh regularly calls for their extermination in his sermons (in his ramblings the Jews are list first and Christians third) and US-Saudi alliance is not changing anytime soon, despite a token tweet in Farsi from Trump.
The country is under crippling economic sanctions and the Trump administration isn’t offering any positive incentive for ordinary Iranians to act.
Overthrow the mullahs and then what? US foreign policy is so aligned with the Saudis that even a post regime change government in Iran is bound to be considered adversarial by the US simply because they would still be Shiites - exactly the same thing that is happening right now in Iraq.
Also, the alternative to the regime are not some SJW liberals but Persian nationalists, including those protesting right now.
A new regime under Persian nationalists would be even more determined to settle scores with desert Arabs - Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE. Think of the Kemal Ataturk in Turkey after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, who in a matter of years aggressively secularized the country, changing the alphabet, giving women the right to vote while at the same time waging ruthless wars against non-Turks.
So no chance of this new regime aligning itself with The West? The Shah was aligned with the West & we were still allies w the Saudis & most other members of OPEC…
What does “the West” mean? How could they ally themselves to the US if they’re already allied to their enemies?
The Shah, in an effort to give Iran a pre-Islamic identity, emphasized his government as the successor of the Achaemenid Empire and considered Iran as the only natural power in the Gulf, despite supposedly cordial relations with Saudi Arabia. So in current political climate, even a return to the moderate nationalist positions of the Shah would inevitably lead to conflict with the Sunnis.
It’s crazy that this is going on in a country which is allies with the US and Israel.
Libya.
It seems like the US approach to managing thing in the middle east is more “order out of chaos” than anything. If everyone in the country is too busy killing each other when they aren’t trying to find something to eat then they won’t have time to fight with the US or Israel.
If that’s the case then the more disorder the better (for the US and Israel).
“More than a dozen Saudi service members training at U.S. bases will be expelled, a U.S. official confirmed to CBS News’ David Martin. The service members are being expelled after an investigation into the deadly shootings at Naval Air Station Pensacola”.
“The service members are not accused of having involvement in the shooting; but some are said to be linked to extremist movements and a number are accused of possessing child pornography”.
If you look at the Iranian news (Press TV or Fars News) their government is saying that they will have their Shiite militia allies attack US forces because they want to get them out of the region, plus a bunch of stuff about Israel. It sounds like things are going to get worse from this point forward. I suppose the Iranian leadership figures their time is up and they are ready for a full scale war.
Apologies, I mixed up the Grand Mufti with the Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Although with the fatwas the Grand Mufti issued about Shiites, Christian churches and child marriage it’s easy to mix the two of them.
Evangelical Zionist Christians seem to me like the equivalent of ISIS, and many of Trump’s people like Pompeo are into that shit. The planet is like an insane asylum, and the lunatics are in control.
I sympathize with people who join the military thinking that they are fighting for a just cause and trying to make the world a better place. They are being used and abused by those in power who don’t care about regular people. It’s like they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Some of them believe that by starting another world war it will bring back Jesus and they will all be “raptured” to heaven. This stuff has no basis in the bible either. It’s one set of war mongering religious fanatics against another.
So you think an attack that went wrong by a band of Mormons, shortly after the Civil War, on a bunch of Methodists that they thought were invading Utah is somehow evidentiary of today’s Christians being like ISIS?
Man, I guess. I grew up Catholic and married a Jewish lady. My fundamental Christian neighbors are fine. They certainly have never mentioned any crazy stuff like that.
The only problem I’ve had is they tend to drink my beer and replace it with Coors lite.