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Notes -
Fiery but mostly peaceful protests in Iran.
I don't quite want to take the position that the current unrest in Iran is bad, but I do want to consider it. There is a lot of discussion downthread about the insidious effects of pervasive and assertive civil disobedience on the legitimate exersize of state power, and I wonder why that same logic doesn't apply here. It's common in the American conciousness to assume that Iran = bad, but I get the impression that a lot of Iran's badness is exaggerated by Western media. Is the current government of Iran illegitimate? If so, why? Is it because Iran isn't a full democracy? The United States props up lots of countries that are less democratic than Iran. Is democracy in Middle Eastern countries even desirable? It doesn't quite feel right to categorically rule-out theocracy as a legitimate form of governance, even if most of us would find living under one alienating.
The elephant in the room is geopolitics. Iran is aligned with Russia and opposed to many US allies. It would be good for US geopolitical intrests for the current regime to fall. Does this somehow make angry mobs torching government buildings okay, another form of spooky moral action at a distance?
I am not an expert on Iran, so feel free to tell me if the Khamenei Regime is actually the second coming of the Khmer Rouge or Third Reich.
They're a totalitarian Islamic state that has hostility to the US itself ("The Great Satan") as one of their basic principles. They're a major sponsor of terrorism and have long been engaging in a (mostly) proxy war against a US ally. The groypers may support the latter but for most US citizens I suspect all of these are bad.
As for their legitimacy, that's a internal matter. My impression is that aside from the more Westernized Iranians most of whom escaped, were driven out, or were killed in or after the revolution, the Iranian people do support them, but I could be wrong. I have been assuming the protests are sponsored by the letters C, I, and A.
The large protests awhile ago in response to that woman being beaten to death in police captivity for not wearing her hijab suggests the regime is not as ideologically aligned with the public as they had hoped.
Additionally, the current unrest is based on material issues. Iran has a bad drought, bleak prospects for water security, is facing rising inflation on basic goods, their currency is devaluing and shop keepers are closing in protest.
I don't think you need to be on America's side to be a dissatisfied Iranian.
The never really were, Iran is what would have happened if the Bolsheviks had gotten stuck in the Soviet Twenties for fifty years.
I imagine the protests over the hijab girl being killed made everyone's private doubts public though.
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