Chaos in Iran

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Probably time for its own thread
The police opened fire on protesters in Mahabad a few hours ago.
The Governor's Office is now burning.



Mahabad is in western Iran, close to the Iran/Iraq/Turkey border.
It's believed to be mainly Sunni.

There are major protests in many cities now, including Tehran.
Lots of women routinely hijab-less now.
More here
https://twitter.com/hashtag/IranRevolut ... htag_click

[ribrash]

Should we give a toss ?

[PHXPhlyer]

My toss given.
Any people attempting to overthrow a brutal, repressive regime have my toss.

PP

[Undried Plum]

If you think this lot are bad: you shoulda seen the last lot.

I was there at the time of the Revolution of Flowers. It was bad bad bad. I was on the Shah's side, and it was very very uncomfortable to be there, lemme tell ya.

P'rhaps I should write about my four sojourns in Iran before I get kicked off the forum on some petty pretext by the malicious one.

Mebbe later.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Well, Ribrash,
that's a fair question in some ways, but it's rather difficult to answer until we know why a revolution in a key area of the Middle East, especially in one of the major sponsors of terrorism, and one of Russia's very few supporters, is something you might not give a toss about.

[Undried Plum]

The biggest and baddest sponsor of terrorism? C'mon!

Who dat?

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

It would be nice if you restated me accurately, UP.
I am well aware of your views, which is specifically why I said "one of", not "The.." anything.

[John Hill]

Iran is of course adjacent to Afghanistan so perhaps the forces of The Empire (with that experience behind them) may wish to step in and save Iran too?

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

I don't think they can afford another one

In fact, I'm pretty sure they could not afford any of their recent fiascos, hence the current financial mess.

Very largely, if not completely, the Iranians are going to have to do this on their own.

[Undried Plum]

Re#7: Good rebuttal, F3.

I apologise for my careless and wrongful misrepresentation of what you actually said.

[Undried Plum]

Iran is of course adjacent to Afghanistan so perhaps the forces of The Empire (with that experience behind them) may wish to step in and save Iran too?

The Empire (the only extant one) has never had good intentions towards Iran (or Persia). Only malice.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Re #10: Accepted, and thank you.
Personally, I regard the biggest recent act of terrorism to be the US invasion of Iraq, and so did the Secretary General of the UN.
However, just because the US is (e.g. Ukraine) or is not (e.g. Iran, as yet) involved in something, does not mean the US is automatically the bad guy.
Given how this started, I don't see any US involvement. Religious police worldwide do not seem to need any help committing random acts of senseless murder.

Anyway, is another internal Iranian revolution about to happen?

[Undried Plum]

Anyway, is another internal Iranian revolution about to happen?

I hope not.

I was there when that one happened. It wasn't nice to be there when that one happened. My Iranian Navy boss, pbuh, was summarily blown to bits by 9mm smg fire behind a breeze block wall in that one. I remember it well.

Revolutions are not nice things, in any country.

They're splashy.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

I doubt the young lady recently beaten to death by the religious police for not wearing her hijab right thought the status quo a nice thing either.

History seems to show that any internal revolution or civil war is spectacularly nasty. I've just been reading Beevor's 'The Battle for Spain'.
The trick seems to be replacing the existing evil regime with a good one, rather than a different evil regime.
In the latter case, then it isn't worth it. However, one can never predict what will result from a revolution.

[Undried Plum]

When I was there during the 'Revolution', the girls popped flowers into the muzzles of the American guns.

That's why it was called the Revolution of Flowers.

[John Hill]

The Empire (the only extant one) has never had good intentions towards Iran (or Persia). Only malice.

Of course and that is why the Empire has been 'helping' in Iran for a century or more.

[Rwy in Sight]

I doubt the young lady recently beaten to death by the religious police for not wearing her hijab right thought the status quo a nice thing either.

History seems to show that any internal revolution or civil war is spectacularly nasty. I've just been reading Beevor's 'The Battle for Spain'.
The trick seems to be replacing the existing evil regime with a good one, rather than a different evil regime.
In the latter case, then it isn't worth it. However, one can never predict what will result from a revolution.

Maybe one of the wiser posts in this forum, both for the people of the specific country and the need to get a better (at least with the First World / EU US, Australian, NZ, Japan standards) rather than a worst or an equally bad one. I guess plenty of Libyans missed the stability offered by the late colonel's regime)

[barkingmad]

But be careful for what you wish;

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/12/ ... d-it-start

Iran may be amongst the last to 'fall' but will their lot get any better, especially with the so-called big powers eyeing up the spoils of a fallen regime?

[llondel]

The problem is that when they have a "free and fair" election after a revolution, all the disparate groups in temporary alliance see it as a winner-takes-all competition where one of them will gain ultimate power including the means to fix any future election in their favour.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

The Iranian Parliament just voted to consider all 15,000 protesters currently under arrest for the Death Penalty.
Note that the actual text calls on the Judiciary to harshly and rapidly punish them. Only 5 have so far been sentenced to Death.
Effectively, it's the regime demanding more Death sentences, rather than all of them, which would have probably been done by a new law or new state of emergency.

Reports coming in that Iranian government agents are now being lynched in the streets one by one.

Yesterday's update from the ISW
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgr ... ovember-16

ISW reports the protest in Sanandaj as
An undetermined number of protesters set fires and established obstacles in Sanandaj streets during evening protests.

This video is from there, today.
"An undetermined number" looks like a heck of a lot to me...