It is a source run by expatriate Iranians of the diaspora.. the fact that so many people just discount their point of view it's pretty frustrating. If you speak to Iranians that you work with it's pretty illuminating
It’s similar to how so many people dismiss Cuban American views on Cuba just because the cuban americans were mostly the ownership class that had to flee the revolution.
If Ravid isn't even willing to say that someone told him on background, it sounds like bullshit or speculation. Guys like Ravid are intentionally or no part of the myth making around Mossad where they are simultaneously everywhere int he Middle East and nowhere at once.
> Interesting that the same western media outlets which spent two years nonstop questioning and disputing and refusing to accept Palestinian death tolls out of Gaza, even when they were backed by human rights groups and monitors like Airwars and studies in The Lancet, are totally fine uncritically accepting totally unsourced and huge, huge numbers out of Iran.
> This is what media propaganda and bias looks like (and, no, before the trolls descend, of course I’m not questioning that lots of innocent people have been brutally killed in Iran).
Mehdi Hasssan worked for Al Jazeera which is funded by Qatar and is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood with a very specific political agenda. You'll notice they barely are covering the Iran News
You are silly. Qatar is not even of the same faith as Iran. I would know, since I was stationed in Qatar. Also Al Jazeera does not cover Iran in detaisl since the Persian area is not part of the middle east and certainly is very different (religiously, in culture, etc) from the Gulf. But at least al-Jazeera tries and its journalistic integrity is great at a time where quality journalism (ahem Bari Weiss) is in dire need. Israel has murdered more journalists in Ghaza than all othe rnations combined in the last year, and has a total ban on covering the atrocities that the IDF is committing (including the starvation of children, a war crime). Your outrage is where, Mr Hypocrite? Or do we let our religiosity define our view of the world, instead of Facts Mr Redwood? I fully support taking out the leadership of Iran and Israel asap. I know we will do one atm, and hopefully the other soon. Apologists for those who murder protestors, or innocent children, is unacceptable. Edit: Redwood is Israeli and I just wasted my time on a Hasbara. Dang it
That's like saying that Hamas and the IRGC aren't affiliates because they're from different religious sects. What binds them is an interest in political religion and a shared antipathy to the west.
Mehdi is a great journalist and speaker. He doesn't jump the gun. One of my favourite debates from him is on Intelligence Squared, on the conflation between anti-zionism and anti-semitism, from 2019:
> Interesting that the same western media outlets which spent two years nonstop questioning and disputing and refusing to accept Palestinian death tolls out of Gaza, even when they were backed by human rights groups and monitors like Airwars and studies in The Lancet, are totally fine uncritically accepting totally unsourced and huge, huge numbers out of Iran.
Note that this works both ways: "Interesting that the same western media outlets which spent two years nonstop covering Gaza are totally fine not even having a single article about the massacre committed by the islamist iranian regime. And, no, before the trolls descend, of course I'm not questioning that lots of innocent people have been killed in Gaza.".
And "Interesting that the same protesters who spent months protesting on US and EU campuses for Gaza are not protesting to defend the protesters massacred en masse by the iranian regime. And, no, before the trolls descend, of course I'm not questioning that lots of innocent people have been killed in Gaza".
We don't know if the numbers are true but we're literally talking about half the death in two years in Gaza in a few days in Iran. I don't know if people realize the level of horrors we're talking about here.
The crucial difference is that the US is in no way supporting Iran but was and is heavily supporting Israel. So a protest in the US to stop that support is wortwhile. A protest to stop non-existent support is pointless.
It is always different when a foreign group kills children/starves over extended time like Israel did to Palestinians, as opposed to a dictatorship (think Syria before its revolution succeeded or Iran right now) kills their populace. Syrias civil war cost 600-800k lives by many figures. It is difficult to cover civil unrest or civil wars within the same group, vs. genocide or wars between nations. Think just of how hard it is to cover Israel/Palestine given Israel's ban on journalism and a free press covering Ghaza. Now imagine a nation as big as Iran where the state controls the media. How do you expect accurate coverage in a matter of days
His point is obviously to try and downplay what is happening in Iran, otherwise he could have just actually be a journalist and figure out what is happening in Iran to prove or disprove the reports.
There is zero journalistic integrity to be found in his post.
"Western media" is not an organization it's a description of a group. Trust should be connected to organizations or businesses.
This is such a dangerous manipulation technique that uses the output of one media source like Fox News as an attack on the reputation of all. CNN and the BBC have reported on Israel's offensive and the massive suffering and death multiple times.
Actually, if anything, that makes it trustworthy because Saudi would like the regime to stay so that they can stay out of the oil markets and keep the prices high.
EDIT: Sorry... that is too strong... "state aligned influence media". Note that the headline might be true, or it might not, but that source is quite glowy.
I've read a ton of philosophy and something I don't really understand is that one nation killing another is more immoral than when a nation does this to their own domestic population.
Sure you will get some nay-sayers who say 'a life is a life', if moral particles existed, they might be correct.
But for some reason, humanity doesn't seem to care as much.
What makes intra-state politics more acceptable to use violence?
> something I don't really understand is that one nation killing another is more immoral than when a nation does this to their own domestic population.
I don’t know that anyone thinks a state’s violence against its citizens is less immoral. It’s more that countries are more hesitant to get militarily involved in the domestic affairs of another country because it would mean essentially declaring war against that state. But in a conflict between states, an outsider can more easily support one side militarily without declaring war against the other side.
“A country that violates the rights of its own citizens, will not respect the rights of its neighbors.”
That’s from my readings of philosophy.
But yeah, I do recognize the same sentiment as you found. I think philosophy itself is an answer: most philosophies explicitly champion dictatorships, under whitewashed terms. Ever heard something like “society is a big organ transcending individual needs”? We got it from Hegel.
> I don't understand how you could make this claim.
After studying Plato, Hegel, Marx, Rousseau, fascist ideologies, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. This list is by no means exhaustive, just a few majors from the top of my head.
Sure, they didn’t just say “shoot people for power.” That’s a very shallow modern view. Instead, they champion extreme forms of altruism and its only logical expression: statism, which holds that man’s life and work belong to the state, to society, to the group, the race, the nation, the economic class.
> How does this statement by Hegel champion dictatorships?
The statement alone surely doesn’t. His philosophy does. For him, state is a sacred authority that transcends individual will.
Because the international order is fundamentally anarchic, while domestic orders are (supposed to be at least) nomic, structured by law and rights. Yes, there are attempts at creating international law, but these amount to treaties more than a structured, visible, governing law.
> I've read a ton of philosophy and something I don't really understand is that one nation killing another is more immoral than when a nation does this to their own domestic population.
> What makes intra-state politics more acceptable to use violence?
Acceptable? It's more about the consequences or lack thereof, the incentives
History has shown that pretty much nothing happens to the regime unless two coalitions of countries invade from both sides simultaneously, and that's like, not going to happen
>I've read a ton of philosophy and something I don't really understand is that one nation killing another is more immoral than when a nation does this to their own domestic population.
Who holds this opinion?
>But for some reason, humanity doesn't seem to care as much.
All of humanity cares less about when a government uses violence against its citizens than wars?
How can you possibly make this generalization when each internal conflict is different just like every war and how difficult it is to measure sympathy
that's because they weren't shooting crowds already assembled in the streets and going into hospitals nationwide to find the injured. Nazi Germany was aiming to maintain plausible deniability in the concentration camps for as long as possible, while parallel competing plans for what to do with the population were being explored and failing. (there were other solutions before and alonside the final solution)
For comparison, estimates of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre death count are usually put in the 300-1,000 range by journalists and human rights groups.
This is certainly the end of peaceful Iranian protests. Whether it leads to a violent revolution or a static police state like North Korea remains to be seen.
"Iranian security forces deployed unknown chemical substances amid deadly crackdowns on protestors in several cities earlier this month, eyewitnesses told Iran International, causing severe breathing problems and burning pain.
They described symptoms that they said went beyond those caused by conventional tear gas, including severe breathing difficulties, sudden weakness and loss of movement...
...According to the accounts, in some cases gunfire began at the same time, or immediately after, protesters lost the ability to walk or run and fell to the ground.
Several witnesses said that moments of immobilization became points at which shooting intensified, particularly when protesters collapsed in alleys or while trying to flee.
Reports came from multiple cities, including Tehran, Isfahan and Sabzevar."
> Whether it leads to a violent revolution or a static police state like North Korea remains to be seen.
The official name of Iran is "The Islamic Republic of Iran" and it is a country ruled by sharia law. Countries ruled by Sharia are already totalitarian states.
How is this possible without explosives? Even with vehicle mounted machine guns it seems like a crazy high number. Did the protestors get boxed in somehow? And across so many locations, that seems to require a crazy amount of coordination to kill so many in so little time.
The coordination is the thing here, that's many units being instructed to carry through in the same manner.
As for the numbers:
Interior Ministry reports say security forces confronted demonstrators in more than 400 cities and towns, with more than 4,000 clash locations reported nationwide
it's on the order of 100 deaths at each of 400 locations (clearly not uniformly distributed, some locations would have had many more deaths).
As to the how, the article suggests some deaths immediately occurred in crowds - firing, dispersing, funneling, crush injuries, etc. leading to many intakes to hospitals and treatment tents etc ... followed by execution of the injured.
It's grim stuff.
Some years past the waves of the Rwanda massacres saw almost a million people killed in bursts across 100 days, mostly with machetes and hand guns.
The numbers reported here are absolutely feasible, the reporting is certainly questionable; bad things happened, but was it at the claimed scale?
It's absolutely terrible but at the scale of a large country it's not logistically hard to get to that many deaths in a couple of days. Iran is a big country with population around 93 million.
The article says "36,500 killed in 400 cities". That's 91 people per city.
This is a little different, this is probably an issue anyone of any side politically can agree is bad. A government is killing their own people in the tens of thousands. It is foolish to even waste time pointing fingers outside of the country in question in my eyes because its irrelevant, their current government is killing citizens in the right here and right now.
> "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." [0]
However, it also says:
> "Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it." [0]
When people, or communities, or companies, show you their true colors, believe them. Watch out for all those flocking in to explain how this is different…
IE as the right is becoming more anti-Israel, you find a lot more pro Islamic Republic stuff there these days. The boomer and zoomer right are very different beasts.
I don't follow the left as closely these days, but imagine there are a myriad of opinions on the matter.
Roger Waters is a boomer but reflects the zoomer left well. (To be clear I will be forever grateful to him for his music but he should really stop talking when it comes to the Iranian and Ukrainian people)
right, Russia/Ukraine is another thing which isn't as neatly left/right as people think.
I used to read the English version of Russia today, and it was almost comical to seem them oscillate articles that fit the "Based Mother Russia of Traditional Values" trope, then right next to it nostalgic Tankie stuff or the anti "Western Imperialist" think pieces. It's like they didn't even know who their useful idiots were anymore.
This is depressing because we will go to war over this and it’s going to be five years before people realizing they were tricked by “babies in incubators” propaganda.
Take a good look US, because once you're down far enough the fascist drain, that's the cost of trying to claw your way back out. And there's no hope of external intervention given nuclear arms
This is not a comment of support of the Iranian regime, or against the people of Iran to have which ever government they see fit.
But these numbers are simply not credible. It's 40 beheaded babies all over again.
Remember the governing ideology of the US and Israel sees the continued existence of Iran as an existential threat. Their aims may align with the protestors temporarily but I think a permanently fractured, Syria type situation is much more palatable to them than a rapid transition to a more democratic system that leaves the country intact. There is no guarantee a post-islamic Iran would step into line, and it would remain a regional power that would be much harder to justify continued sanctions against.
A part of me suspects the incredibly conspicuous endorsement of the protestors by the US/Israel regime is an attempt to discredit them. A zombie regime under the Mullahs will likely to continue to implode economically, which means they are less able to defend themselves from US/Israeli attacks in the future. A clean change of government with domestic US pressure to lift sanctions would be their nightmare scenario.
Iran is the 17th most populous nation in the world, with 93 million people. These protests seem to be occurring across the entire nation. Another comment mentioned over 4,000 separate clashes. Other sources have already corroborated a lower bound in the mid-thousands. I think the burden is on you to refute these numbers by showing that the sources are deliberately misleading or finding a flaw in the methodology. Simply saying that you find them "not credible" and that some people might have a political motive behind sharing them is not an argument.
Note, I'm not saying that they have been confirmed, but I do not think that you have given sufficient cause for rejecting them out of hand.
This is the organisation most commonly cited in news reports, they estimate ~5200 protestors confirmed killed (+ a few hundred more for security personnel killed)
They are a group of anti-regime Iranian dissidents based in the US. I don't know why they would seek to provide a deliberately low estimate.
hm, I think we should re-evaluate sanctioning or civilian pressure campaigns, since the guise is for them to coax or turn on the government for regime change, but the government can just hire mercenaries from outside the country.
How about plain civil disobedience? Like just stop working? It would need to get pretty extreme before the government had the audacity (and even capacity) to actually track you down to your home and arrest (or kill) you. Although this kind of coordination might be difficult with government control of communication media.
One person dies to ICE, the whole country is in outrage; 37k people massacred in cold blood - barely a peep.
I hate how irrational our species is and how unempathetic we are to situations not immediately in front of us.
And Trump should not have promised assistance. How many more people are dead because they were encouraged by said promise? Some of these deaths can surely be attributed to him.
Funny you whine about irrationality while ignoring the very clear rational reason why Americans are outraged over government agents executing a random civilian in their own supposedly free country over what's happening in another country that is known for being violently oppressive.
We should be angry about both situations but most people truly don't give a fuck about the latter. It is not just the Iran situation though.
We make decisions all the time that result in immense amount of unnecessary suffering because of a total lack of rationality.
Our food consumption choices alone have created the objectively largest and most horrific engine of suffering in the history of this planet, all for the pleasure of our taste buds. The average person is directly responsible for this.
It is the irrationality and lack of empathy of the average person that bothers me. Unless you show them a video of protestors being massacred in Iran, or take them to a factory farm, they don't care. And even then, they often don't care. Why?
Suffering is roughly sortable and it is certainly within the power of most people to drive down the greatest sources of suffering, and pressure their government to do so when it is not directly within their power.
The US shipped the carrier battle group in the region out to support the Venezuela operations, and is deporting asylum seekers back to their deaths this week.
Nobody in the US has any idea what is happening in Iran. Judging by the weird, not very HN like threads on this post, sounds like we are going to.
The fact that he said that and then DID NOT topple the government in Iran is insane.. completely irresponsible, or rather responsible.. for those deaths.
The irony is that now those who are still alive in Iran might remember this and update their notion of US trustworthiness accordingly.
The outrage over the ICE death is from leftists already opposed to ICE. Those same leftists support the Palestinian cause. Iran funds Hamas and Hezbollah directly. Iranian/Russian money has also been traced to some college protests and obviously supports leftist causes.
They're not going to be outraged over the people they support killing protestors who want to topple the thing they support.
Also, just to be fair, there's also some right-wing obvious Russian agents weirdly not condemning the Islamic Republic...
Such a ridiculous take. Get off your hate wagon. Also I argue no "leftists" support opposing ICE or Palestine out of "leftism". Only hateful bigots would support the execution of our people on our streets, or denying Palestinians their rights to exist and to freedom, free from a zionist ideology that has no respect for property or for life. Maybe if our "right wingers" and "Zionist" friends put humanity first and not politics or racist judaism first, they would not sound as hateful as you do now bud. Your comment is vile, and I can only imagine the hate you have in your bones. Although I will exclude right wingers here, since they are as of late huge supporters of the palestinian cause.
??? There's an obvious trail of money from Russia and Iran that influences current world events. Which is why there's no outrage over Iran murdering tens of thousands of protestors.
I'm on the side of the Iranian protestors, not the murderous Islamic regime and terrorists, nor their murderous Russian allies.
What's vile is not being opposed to the murder of 36000 people.
I am very much against Iran bud. However, I am very much against Israel too, and your comment merged those protesting the murder of Good and more recently Mr Preti and left a very bad taste. Do you support in equal fervor the trail of money from rich religious donors in the US towards starving children in Ghaza for the Zionist project? or are you protesting the murders committed by the IDF against helpless children? The fact you are bringing religion into your argument is vile too. Iran's regime is built on oppression, but this is very much not a religious struggle. It just tells me you are very much ignorant on the subject. Dictatorships (Iran, Russia) are not religious by nature. They use culture or religion to drive their oppressive agenda, but you are falling for tricks that leads me to believe you support the protests in Iran not out of wishful helpfulness, but out of bigotry. But maybe you are equally supportive of other struggles for freedom like the Palestinian struggle.
Religion? Iran's legal name is "the Islamic Republic of Iran" and it is widely called the Islamic Republic. I just used this name to differentiate from the Iranian people or Iran as a country filled with people who don't necessarily support the regime.
But you keep bringing up Zionists which gives a clue as to your persuasions, especially since they have no role in any of the events discussed here unless you believe the "Jews run the world" conspiracy theories.
Anyhow, the horseshoe is real and the Russian/Iranian money trail is real...
That answers me. Bigotry is strong with this one. I am not wasting my time or engaging with hate. you must be a foreigner since we all call them Iran. You are using the term the Iranian leadership likes, maybe you are an Iranian or Israeli agent after all! Zionism was used because your care for protests does not apply equally it seems to innocent protestors. You are siding with evil in some instances, and against it in others. It tells me where your heart is, and it is not in the right place. There is no nuance to starving children like Israel did. I cannot engage with you any more given we disagree on facts. But maybe the purchase of tiktok can finally help your propaganda. You lost me. I am very much once again against Iran and Russia (you are not listening) but I believe there is hypocrisy at play here
> “President Trump ordered the Treasury and our OFAC division to put maximum pressure on Iran and it worked,” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said when asked whether US sanctions on Iran were effective.
> In December their economy collapsed. We saw a major bank go under. The central bank has started to print money. There is a dollar shortage. They are not able to get imports and this is why the people took to the street,” he added.
I can't comprehend how a population can kill that many of their own people. They aren't even an "other" people, which has been the most common scapegoat lately. Same skin color, same religion, same language, same homeland.
I can easily comprehend it, the history books are full of people killing large numbers of their own people. They just find some irrelevant differentiating factor that allows them to label the other as the outgroup and bring out the guns, the tanks, the ovens and the bombs.
Also, they know the alternative is that they will be dragged in the streets and killed. Iran is long past the point where a revolution can be peaceful and conciliatory; if the regime falls, there will be a redde rationem where most people connected to enforcement and decision-making will be very summarily judged by the people they abused for decades.
This is a figure for the whole of Iran. So it includes not just the Persian-majority areas, but also the minority-majority areas (Azeris, Kurds, Balochs, Arabs, Armenians, etc). It would not surprise me if the death toll in the minority-majority areas were higher, and hence they contributed a disproportionate percentage of the total, since security forces would likely find it easier to do that to people of a different ethnicity and/or religion (some of these minorities are predominantly Sunni, Christian, etc) than to people more like themselves.
The Khmer Rouge executed between half a million and a million Cambodians between 1975 to 1979[0]. These were the intentional killings, estimates range to as many as 2 million Cambodians or 25% of the population died as a result of Khmer Rouge polices.
The end of the regime was brought about by an incursion into the Vietnamese border town of Ba Chúc, resulting in the massacre of more than 3000 civilians. Vietnam invaded, toppled the Khmer Rouge and brought an end to the executions although civil war would continue for much of the next decade.
For these actions Vietnam was extensively sanctioned[1]. The parallels with ongoing conflicts today are hard to ignore.
> I can't comprehend how a population can kill that many of their own people.
The notion of some well-defined "people" is a fiction that ruling powers use to keep humanity's innate tribalistic tendencies pointed outward at their adversaries.
The truth is that the powers-that-be consider themselves to be above "the people", and will dispose of you as soon as you become inconvenient.
It looks like you were downvoted, but you’re absolutely right. “Their own people” is a silly trope - people are always “othered” by something - if not race (I guess what is mean by “thier own people”), then by religion, political persuasion, etc.
“ While most of the killings were carried out by IRGC and Basij forces, reports received by Iran International indicate that proxy forces from Iraq and Syria were also used in the crackdown. The deployment of non-local forces suggests a decision to expand repression capacity as quickly as possible.”
I think the point is that its believed they were foreigners who were part of iranian proxy forces (e.g. iranian backed militias in iraq), so weren't doing it for money but out of some sort of loyalty to the iranian regime or ideology.
Usually mercenaries mean people doing it for money not ideology who get paid significantly more than your average soldier.
It’s not necessarily the primary factor, but it’s worth noting that Iran is actually a relatively diverse country by the region’s standards. There are significant Kurdish, Azeri, Balochi, etc. minority groups, for whom the idea that they’re in the same “homeland” as the Persians is not necessarily given.
Iran is made of many different ethnicities, and there were reports of Arab militants that were brought in by the regime (it’s not hard to imagine given how reliant those organizations are on Iran for support).
It’s generally not very hard to incite violence across groups in the Middle East, especially when you consider how bad the outcome might be for the losing side. Case in point, the Alawites who lost control of Syria and are now persecuted by the new government.
From the previous uprisings, the regime usually sends Arab mercenaries like Hizbollah. They don't speak Farsi and have no connection to the people of Iran.
The source (Iran International) is backed by Saudi money and has a bias to dunk on Iran.
That said, I'm sure the death count numbers from the Rasht Massacre are staggeringly higher than the initial tallies of 2-5k.
It is a source run by expatriate Iranians of the diaspora.. the fact that so many people just discount their point of view it's pretty frustrating. If you speak to Iranians that you work with it's pretty illuminating
It’s similar to how so many people dismiss Cuban American views on Cuba just because the cuban americans were mostly the ownership class that had to flee the revolution.
> It is a source run by expatriate Iranians of the diaspora
Including the Mossad, which is kinda an important footnote you might not want to omit: https://xcancel.com/BarakRavid/status/1560685368780939265/
According to a twitter comment by a reporter who didn’t back the claim with any evidence.
With respects to Mordechai Vanunu, I can understand why he didn't try leaking documents.
If Ravid isn't even willing to say that someone told him on background, it sounds like bullshit or speculation. Guys like Ravid are intentionally or no part of the myth making around Mossad where they are simultaneously everywhere int he Middle East and nowhere at once.
There are other sources, like this: https://time.com/7357635/more-than-30000-killed-in-iran-say-...
Mehdi Hasan on X:
> Interesting that the same western media outlets which spent two years nonstop questioning and disputing and refusing to accept Palestinian death tolls out of Gaza, even when they were backed by human rights groups and monitors like Airwars and studies in The Lancet, are totally fine uncritically accepting totally unsourced and huge, huge numbers out of Iran.
> This is what media propaganda and bias looks like (and, no, before the trolls descend, of course I’m not questioning that lots of innocent people have been brutally killed in Iran).
https://x.com/mehdirhasan/status/2015563834329801071
Mehdi Hasssan worked for Al Jazeera which is funded by Qatar and is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood with a very specific political agenda. You'll notice they barely are covering the Iran News
He also worked for MSNBC.
You are silly. Qatar is not even of the same faith as Iran. I would know, since I was stationed in Qatar. Also Al Jazeera does not cover Iran in detaisl since the Persian area is not part of the middle east and certainly is very different (religiously, in culture, etc) from the Gulf. But at least al-Jazeera tries and its journalistic integrity is great at a time where quality journalism (ahem Bari Weiss) is in dire need. Israel has murdered more journalists in Ghaza than all othe rnations combined in the last year, and has a total ban on covering the atrocities that the IDF is committing (including the starvation of children, a war crime). Your outrage is where, Mr Hypocrite? Or do we let our religiosity define our view of the world, instead of Facts Mr Redwood? I fully support taking out the leadership of Iran and Israel asap. I know we will do one atm, and hopefully the other soon. Apologists for those who murder protestors, or innocent children, is unacceptable. Edit: Redwood is Israeli and I just wasted my time on a Hasbara. Dang it
That's like saying that Hamas and the IRGC aren't affiliates because they're from different religious sects. What binds them is an interest in political religion and a shared antipathy to the west.
I see you're a one track mind. You ignore muslim on muslim violence. Okay
Mehdi is a great journalist and speaker. He doesn't jump the gun. One of my favourite debates from him is on Intelligence Squared, on the conflation between anti-zionism and anti-semitism, from 2019:
https://youtu.be/K1VTt_THL4A?si=BRgS6kbEMvLvrjyW
> Interesting that the same western media outlets which spent two years nonstop questioning and disputing and refusing to accept Palestinian death tolls out of Gaza, even when they were backed by human rights groups and monitors like Airwars and studies in The Lancet, are totally fine uncritically accepting totally unsourced and huge, huge numbers out of Iran.
Note that this works both ways: "Interesting that the same western media outlets which spent two years nonstop covering Gaza are totally fine not even having a single article about the massacre committed by the islamist iranian regime. And, no, before the trolls descend, of course I'm not questioning that lots of innocent people have been killed in Gaza.".
And "Interesting that the same protesters who spent months protesting on US and EU campuses for Gaza are not protesting to defend the protesters massacred en masse by the iranian regime. And, no, before the trolls descend, of course I'm not questioning that lots of innocent people have been killed in Gaza".
We don't know if the numbers are true but we're literally talking about half the death in two years in Gaza in a few days in Iran. I don't know if people realize the level of horrors we're talking about here.
The crucial difference is that the US is in no way supporting Iran but was and is heavily supporting Israel. So a protest in the US to stop that support is wortwhile. A protest to stop non-existent support is pointless.
It is always different when a foreign group kills children/starves over extended time like Israel did to Palestinians, as opposed to a dictatorship (think Syria before its revolution succeeded or Iran right now) kills their populace. Syrias civil war cost 600-800k lives by many figures. It is difficult to cover civil unrest or civil wars within the same group, vs. genocide or wars between nations. Think just of how hard it is to cover Israel/Palestine given Israel's ban on journalism and a free press covering Ghaza. Now imagine a nation as big as Iran where the state controls the media. How do you expect accurate coverage in a matter of days
Just as interesting that Mehdi who never spent a second questioning the reports from Gaza is questioning the reports from Iran.
His point is that those Gaza numbers had much more backing than these numbers. Yet they were questioned endlessly.
His point is obviously to try and downplay what is happening in Iran, otherwise he could have just actually be a journalist and figure out what is happening in Iran to prove or disprove the reports.
There is zero journalistic integrity to be found in his post.
"Western media" is not an organization it's a description of a group. Trust should be connected to organizations or businesses.
This is such a dangerous manipulation technique that uses the output of one media source like Fox News as an attack on the reputation of all. CNN and the BBC have reported on Israel's offensive and the massive suffering and death multiple times.
"Study disputes Gaza genocide charges, finds flawed data amid Hamas-driven narrative"
https://www.foxnews.com/world/study-disputes-gaza-genocide-c...
#--------------
"Gaza death toll has been significantly underreported, study finds"
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/09/middleeast/gaza-death-toll-un...
"More than 70,000 killed in Gaza since Israel offensive began, Hamas-run health ministry says"
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8e97kl240lo
Actually, if anything, that makes it trustworthy because Saudi would like the regime to stay so that they can stay out of the oil markets and keep the prices high.
If you want a more neutal organization https://time.com/7357635/more-than-30000-killed-in-iran-say-...
It looks a LOT like a CIA front.
EDIT: Sorry... that is too strong... "state aligned influence media". Note that the headline might be true, or it might not, but that source is quite glowy.
That's crazy.
That's like ~40% of the deaths in the current gaza war, except over just 2 days instead of 2 years.
I've read a ton of philosophy and something I don't really understand is that one nation killing another is more immoral than when a nation does this to their own domestic population.
Sure you will get some nay-sayers who say 'a life is a life', if moral particles existed, they might be correct.
But for some reason, humanity doesn't seem to care as much.
What makes intra-state politics more acceptable to use violence?
> something I don't really understand is that one nation killing another is more immoral than when a nation does this to their own domestic population.
I don’t know that anyone thinks a state’s violence against its citizens is less immoral. It’s more that countries are more hesitant to get militarily involved in the domestic affairs of another country because it would mean essentially declaring war against that state. But in a conflict between states, an outsider can more easily support one side militarily without declaring war against the other side.
“A country that violates the rights of its own citizens, will not respect the rights of its neighbors.”
That’s from my readings of philosophy.
But yeah, I do recognize the same sentiment as you found. I think philosophy itself is an answer: most philosophies explicitly champion dictatorships, under whitewashed terms. Ever heard something like “society is a big organ transcending individual needs”? We got it from Hegel.
>most philosophies explicitly champion dictatorships
I don't understand how you could make this claim.
"society is a big organ transcending individual needs”?"
How does this statement by Hegel champion dictatorships?
> I don't understand how you could make this claim.
After studying Plato, Hegel, Marx, Rousseau, fascist ideologies, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. This list is by no means exhaustive, just a few majors from the top of my head.
Sure, they didn’t just say “shoot people for power.” That’s a very shallow modern view. Instead, they champion extreme forms of altruism and its only logical expression: statism, which holds that man’s life and work belong to the state, to society, to the group, the race, the nation, the economic class.
> How does this statement by Hegel champion dictatorships?
The statement alone surely doesn’t. His philosophy does. For him, state is a sacred authority that transcends individual will.
Because the international order is fundamentally anarchic, while domestic orders are (supposed to be at least) nomic, structured by law and rights. Yes, there are attempts at creating international law, but these amount to treaties more than a structured, visible, governing law.
> I've read a ton of philosophy and something I don't really understand is that one nation killing another is more immoral than when a nation does this to their own domestic population.
Which books say that?
> What makes intra-state politics more acceptable to use violence?
Acceptable? It's more about the consequences or lack thereof, the incentives
History has shown that pretty much nothing happens to the regime unless two coalitions of countries invade from both sides simultaneously, and that's like, not going to happen
>I've read a ton of philosophy and something I don't really understand is that one nation killing another is more immoral than when a nation does this to their own domestic population.
Who holds this opinion?
>But for some reason, humanity doesn't seem to care as much.
All of humanity cares less about when a government uses violence against its citizens than wars?
How can you possibly make this generalization when each internal conflict is different just like every war and how difficult it is to measure sympathy
> one nation killing another is more immoral than when a nation does this to their own domestic population.
I don’t think that’s a particularly established moral position.
I can’t even imagine how this could be done. Nazi concentration camps would have had trouble killing that many in 2 days.
that's because they weren't shooting crowds already assembled in the streets and going into hospitals nationwide to find the injured. Nazi Germany was aiming to maintain plausible deniability in the concentration camps for as long as possible, while parallel competing plans for what to do with the population were being explored and failing. (there were other solutions before and alonside the final solution)
For comparison, estimates of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre death count are usually put in the 300-1,000 range by journalists and human rights groups.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests...
But note that the Tianenmen Square massacre was only one part of a larger nationwide protest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Chinese_protests_by_regio... . There's no telling how many were killed or disappeared outside of Beijing.
This is certainly the end of peaceful Iranian protests. Whether it leads to a violent revolution or a static police state like North Korea remains to be seen.
Seems the regime is OK shooting their way out of this problem. How big are these protests? 30K isn't exactly a small number of protestors.
Not just shooting, chemical warfare:
"Iranian security forces deployed unknown chemical substances amid deadly crackdowns on protestors in several cities earlier this month, eyewitnesses told Iran International, causing severe breathing problems and burning pain.
They described symptoms that they said went beyond those caused by conventional tear gas, including severe breathing difficulties, sudden weakness and loss of movement...
...According to the accounts, in some cases gunfire began at the same time, or immediately after, protesters lost the ability to walk or run and fell to the ground.
Several witnesses said that moments of immobilization became points at which shooting intensified, particularly when protesters collapsed in alleys or while trying to flee.
Reports came from multiple cities, including Tehran, Isfahan and Sabzevar."
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202601235991
> Whether it leads to a violent revolution or a static police state like North Korea remains to be seen.
The official name of Iran is "The Islamic Republic of Iran" and it is a country ruled by sharia law. Countries ruled by Sharia are already totalitarian states.
How is this possible without explosives? Even with vehicle mounted machine guns it seems like a crazy high number. Did the protestors get boxed in somehow? And across so many locations, that seems to require a crazy amount of coordination to kill so many in so little time.
The coordination is the thing here, that's many units being instructed to carry through in the same manner.
As for the numbers:
it's on the order of 100 deaths at each of 400 locations (clearly not uniformly distributed, some locations would have had many more deaths).As to the how, the article suggests some deaths immediately occurred in crowds - firing, dispersing, funneling, crush injuries, etc. leading to many intakes to hospitals and treatment tents etc ... followed by execution of the injured.
It's grim stuff.
Some years past the waves of the Rwanda massacres saw almost a million people killed in bursts across 100 days, mostly with machetes and hand guns.
The numbers reported here are absolutely feasible, the reporting is certainly questionable; bad things happened, but was it at the claimed scale?
I don't think killing that many people requires much coordination when one side has guns (let alone machine guns) and a lot of soldiers
It's absolutely terrible but at the scale of a large country it's not logistically hard to get to that many deaths in a couple of days. Iran is a big country with population around 93 million.
The article says "36,500 killed in 400 cities". That's 91 people per city.
I reckon that would require say 6 gunners in each city. Plausible.
They executed every protestor that was arrested or in the hospital (estimated at ~28k.)
Should this be flagged? I was told HN is not a place for politics and that "if it's on the news, it's not for HN".
Or does that logic only apply to US-based developments?
This is a little different, this is probably an issue anyone of any side politically can agree is bad. A government is killing their own people in the tens of thousands. It is foolish to even waste time pointing fingers outside of the country in question in my eyes because its irrelevant, their current government is killing citizens in the right here and right now.
Then can I start posting the news about Gaza Genocide from tomorrow or somehow that's not allowed?
> "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." [0]
However, it also says:
> "Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it." [0]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The idea that we can "avoid politics" while talking about the industry is ridiculous anyway...
When people, or communities, or companies, show you their true colors, believe them. Watch out for all those flocking in to explain how this is different…
Sad that the left and US college students are ignoring the realities on the ground here. Qatar too. Just read the rag Al Jazeera
Is “the left” in the room with us right now?
The college students and the left support the Iranian regime.
That’s quite the claim. Do you have any examples?
Check out https://www.reddit.com/r/NewIran/
There’s a subreddit for almost anything, why should we think that is broadly representative of US college students? Do you have a poll or something?
How can I know if this subreddit is populated by college students, let alone leftists?
It's not, it's populated by Iranians wishing to take down the regime but frequently they reference college student posts from elsewhere, in sadness
No, no we don't. Nor do we want to get involved in a civil war in Middle East on behalf of Trumps, Saudis, and Israelis.
Are these really left and right issues?
IE as the right is becoming more anti-Israel, you find a lot more pro Islamic Republic stuff there these days. The boomer and zoomer right are very different beasts.
I don't follow the left as closely these days, but imagine there are a myriad of opinions on the matter.
Roger Waters is a boomer but reflects the zoomer left well. (To be clear I will be forever grateful to him for his music but he should really stop talking when it comes to the Iranian and Ukrainian people)
right, Russia/Ukraine is another thing which isn't as neatly left/right as people think.
I used to read the English version of Russia today, and it was almost comical to seem them oscillate articles that fit the "Based Mother Russia of Traditional Values" trope, then right next to it nostalgic Tankie stuff or the anti "Western Imperialist" think pieces. It's like they didn't even know who their useful idiots were anymore.
The internet is fragile. Access can be so easily cut off for the masses in dire times.
This is depressing because we will go to war over this and it’s going to be five years before people realizing they were tricked by “babies in incubators” propaganda.
No. Shut up. This has been confirmed by countless Iranians
We prepared for this :)
https://battlefield.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_for_Tehran
He’s talking his book
Take a good look US, because once you're down far enough the fascist drain, that's the cost of trying to claw your way back out. And there's no hope of external intervention given nuclear arms
the only way out is limited government and abolishing the IRS
Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46754132
I don't believe these numbers.
This is not a comment of support of the Iranian regime, or against the people of Iran to have which ever government they see fit.
But these numbers are simply not credible. It's 40 beheaded babies all over again.
Remember the governing ideology of the US and Israel sees the continued existence of Iran as an existential threat. Their aims may align with the protestors temporarily but I think a permanently fractured, Syria type situation is much more palatable to them than a rapid transition to a more democratic system that leaves the country intact. There is no guarantee a post-islamic Iran would step into line, and it would remain a regional power that would be much harder to justify continued sanctions against.
A part of me suspects the incredibly conspicuous endorsement of the protestors by the US/Israel regime is an attempt to discredit them. A zombie regime under the Mullahs will likely to continue to implode economically, which means they are less able to defend themselves from US/Israeli attacks in the future. A clean change of government with domestic US pressure to lift sanctions would be their nightmare scenario.
Iran is the 17th most populous nation in the world, with 93 million people. These protests seem to be occurring across the entire nation. Another comment mentioned over 4,000 separate clashes. Other sources have already corroborated a lower bound in the mid-thousands. I think the burden is on you to refute these numbers by showing that the sources are deliberately misleading or finding a flaw in the methodology. Simply saying that you find them "not credible" and that some people might have a political motive behind sharing them is not an argument.
Note, I'm not saying that they have been confirmed, but I do not think that you have given sufficient cause for rejecting them out of hand.
https://www.en-hrana.org/day-twenty-eight-of-the-protests-ar...
This is the organisation most commonly cited in news reports, they estimate ~5200 protestors confirmed killed (+ a few hundred more for security personnel killed)
They are a group of anti-regime Iranian dissidents based in the US. I don't know why they would seek to provide a deliberately low estimate.
hm, I think we should re-evaluate sanctioning or civilian pressure campaigns, since the guise is for them to coax or turn on the government for regime change, but the government can just hire mercenaries from outside the country.
don't know a solution but this one isn't it
How about plain civil disobedience? Like just stop working? It would need to get pretty extreme before the government had the audacity (and even capacity) to actually track you down to your home and arrest (or kill) you. Although this kind of coordination might be difficult with government control of communication media.
>the government can just hire mercenaries from outside the country.
Machiavelli in Discourses on Livy says you are inviting an overthrow of your government by doing this.
The mercenaries can flip sides if the opposite faction pays them and offers them better terms... or maybe the mercs just flip.
Hard to say how true this is.
But hey, help is coming.
Narrator's voice: "Unfortunatelly, they will be waiting forever, becase that help will never come."
help will come ... but with scare quotes.
One person dies to ICE, the whole country is in outrage; 37k people massacred in cold blood - barely a peep.
I hate how irrational our species is and how unempathetic we are to situations not immediately in front of us.
And Trump should not have promised assistance. How many more people are dead because they were encouraged by said promise? Some of these deaths can surely be attributed to him.
Funny you whine about irrationality while ignoring the very clear rational reason why Americans are outraged over government agents executing a random civilian in their own supposedly free country over what's happening in another country that is known for being violently oppressive.
We should be angry about both situations but most people truly don't give a fuck about the latter. It is not just the Iran situation though.
We make decisions all the time that result in immense amount of unnecessary suffering because of a total lack of rationality.
Our food consumption choices alone have created the objectively largest and most horrific engine of suffering in the history of this planet, all for the pleasure of our taste buds. The average person is directly responsible for this.
It is the irrationality and lack of empathy of the average person that bothers me. Unless you show them a video of protestors being massacred in Iran, or take them to a factory farm, they don't care. And even then, they often don't care. Why?
Suffering is roughly sortable and it is certainly within the power of most people to drive down the greatest sources of suffering, and pressure their government to do so when it is not directly within their power.
But people are irrational.
"Help is on the way" from the US is often not a great propositon. Doubly so today.
https://reason.com/2026/01/23/the-trump-administration-plans...
The US shipped the carrier battle group in the region out to support the Venezuela operations, and is deporting asylum seekers back to their deaths this week.
Nobody in the US has any idea what is happening in Iran. Judging by the weird, not very HN like threads on this post, sounds like we are going to.
1 person gets an abortion, the whole country is in outrage. Millions of young men get mutilated at birth - barely a peep.
The fact that he said that and then DID NOT topple the government in Iran is insane.. completely irresponsible, or rather responsible.. for those deaths.
The irony is that now those who are still alive in Iran might remember this and update their notion of US trustworthiness accordingly.
Do you think that the people encouraging ice protests share some culpability in the deaths of the other protesters?
The outrage over the ICE death is from leftists already opposed to ICE. Those same leftists support the Palestinian cause. Iran funds Hamas and Hezbollah directly. Iranian/Russian money has also been traced to some college protests and obviously supports leftist causes.
They're not going to be outraged over the people they support killing protestors who want to topple the thing they support.
Also, just to be fair, there's also some right-wing obvious Russian agents weirdly not condemning the Islamic Republic...
Such a ridiculous take. Get off your hate wagon. Also I argue no "leftists" support opposing ICE or Palestine out of "leftism". Only hateful bigots would support the execution of our people on our streets, or denying Palestinians their rights to exist and to freedom, free from a zionist ideology that has no respect for property or for life. Maybe if our "right wingers" and "Zionist" friends put humanity first and not politics or racist judaism first, they would not sound as hateful as you do now bud. Your comment is vile, and I can only imagine the hate you have in your bones. Although I will exclude right wingers here, since they are as of late huge supporters of the palestinian cause.
??? There's an obvious trail of money from Russia and Iran that influences current world events. Which is why there's no outrage over Iran murdering tens of thousands of protestors.
I'm on the side of the Iranian protestors, not the murderous Islamic regime and terrorists, nor their murderous Russian allies.
What's vile is not being opposed to the murder of 36000 people.
I am very much against Iran bud. However, I am very much against Israel too, and your comment merged those protesting the murder of Good and more recently Mr Preti and left a very bad taste. Do you support in equal fervor the trail of money from rich religious donors in the US towards starving children in Ghaza for the Zionist project? or are you protesting the murders committed by the IDF against helpless children? The fact you are bringing religion into your argument is vile too. Iran's regime is built on oppression, but this is very much not a religious struggle. It just tells me you are very much ignorant on the subject. Dictatorships (Iran, Russia) are not religious by nature. They use culture or religion to drive their oppressive agenda, but you are falling for tricks that leads me to believe you support the protests in Iran not out of wishful helpfulness, but out of bigotry. But maybe you are equally supportive of other struggles for freedom like the Palestinian struggle.
Religion? Iran's legal name is "the Islamic Republic of Iran" and it is widely called the Islamic Republic. I just used this name to differentiate from the Iranian people or Iran as a country filled with people who don't necessarily support the regime.
But you keep bringing up Zionists which gives a clue as to your persuasions, especially since they have no role in any of the events discussed here unless you believe the "Jews run the world" conspiracy theories.
Anyhow, the horseshoe is real and the Russian/Iranian money trail is real...
Here's some examples: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/24/uk-protest-gro...
https://time.com/7005190/iran-gaza-protests-nuanced-reality/
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/iranian-government-actors-se...
https://www.timesofisrael.com/nancy-pelosi-calls-for-fbi-pro...
That answers me. Bigotry is strong with this one. I am not wasting my time or engaging with hate. you must be a foreigner since we all call them Iran. You are using the term the Iranian leadership likes, maybe you are an Iranian or Israeli agent after all! Zionism was used because your care for protests does not apply equally it seems to innocent protestors. You are siding with evil in some instances, and against it in others. It tells me where your heart is, and it is not in the right place. There is no nuance to starving children like Israel did. I cannot engage with you any more given we disagree on facts. But maybe the purchase of tiktok can finally help your propaganda. You lost me. I am very much once again against Iran and Russia (you are not listening) but I believe there is hypocrisy at play here
The protest was due to economic hardship from the sanctions, https://www.iranintl.com/en/202601200029
> “President Trump ordered the Treasury and our OFAC division to put maximum pressure on Iran and it worked,” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said when asked whether US sanctions on Iran were effective.
> In December their economy collapsed. We saw a major bank go under. The central bank has started to print money. There is a dollar shortage. They are not able to get imports and this is why the people took to the street,” he added.
And incited by Mossad, https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-881733
> “Go out together into the streets. The time has come,” the Mossad wrote.
> It continued, “We are with you. Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field.”
> The statement was a rare open acknowledgment from the Mossad regarding ongoing operations in Iran.
It was obviously a regime-change operation by US and Israel.
I can't comprehend how a population can kill that many of their own people. They aren't even an "other" people, which has been the most common scapegoat lately. Same skin color, same religion, same language, same homeland.
I can easily comprehend it, the history books are full of people killing large numbers of their own people. They just find some irrelevant differentiating factor that allows them to label the other as the outgroup and bring out the guns, the tanks, the ovens and the bombs.
Also, they know the alternative is that they will be dragged in the streets and killed. Iran is long past the point where a revolution can be peaceful and conciliatory; if the regime falls, there will be a redde rationem where most people connected to enforcement and decision-making will be very summarily judged by the people they abused for decades.
This is a figure for the whole of Iran. So it includes not just the Persian-majority areas, but also the minority-majority areas (Azeris, Kurds, Balochs, Arabs, Armenians, etc). It would not surprise me if the death toll in the minority-majority areas were higher, and hence they contributed a disproportionate percentage of the total, since security forces would likely find it easier to do that to people of a different ethnicity and/or religion (some of these minorities are predominantly Sunni, Christian, etc) than to people more like themselves.
The Khmer Rouge executed between half a million and a million Cambodians between 1975 to 1979[0]. These were the intentional killings, estimates range to as many as 2 million Cambodians or 25% of the population died as a result of Khmer Rouge polices.
The end of the regime was brought about by an incursion into the Vietnamese border town of Ba Chúc, resulting in the massacre of more than 3000 civilians. Vietnam invaded, toppled the Khmer Rouge and brought an end to the executions although civil war would continue for much of the next decade.
For these actions Vietnam was extensively sanctioned[1]. The parallels with ongoing conflicts today are hard to ignore.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Crimes_against_hum...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian%E2%80%93Vietnamese_W...
> I can't comprehend how a population can kill that many of their own people.
The notion of some well-defined "people" is a fiction that ruling powers use to keep humanity's innate tribalistic tendencies pointed outward at their adversaries.
The truth is that the powers-that-be consider themselves to be above "the people", and will dispose of you as soon as you become inconvenient.
Bringing it home…
Renee Good. Alex Pretti.
It’s not just that they were killed but so much of the country including, most relevantly, the administration, believe they should have been killed.
It’s not hard to other any set of people.
It’s not necessary to bring American politics into things that happen anywhere in the world.
It looks like you were downvoted, but you’re absolutely right. “Their own people” is a silly trope - people are always “othered” by something - if not race (I guess what is mean by “thier own people”), then by religion, political persuasion, etc.
A lot of it is being done by mercenaries brought in from Afghanistan and Iraq
How do you know? Do you have links for that information? And if true they’d be regular murders brought in, not mercenaries.
In the article it says
“ While most of the killings were carried out by IRGC and Basij forces, reports received by Iran International indicate that proxy forces from Iraq and Syria were also used in the crackdown. The deployment of non-local forces suggests a decision to expand repression capacity as quickly as possible.”
Mercenaries are murderers for hire.
Also, read the article. :)
I think the point is that its believed they were foreigners who were part of iranian proxy forces (e.g. iranian backed militias in iraq), so weren't doing it for money but out of some sort of loyalty to the iranian regime or ideology.
Usually mercenaries mean people doing it for money not ideology who get paid significantly more than your average soldier.
It’s not necessarily the primary factor, but it’s worth noting that Iran is actually a relatively diverse country by the region’s standards. There are significant Kurdish, Azeri, Balochi, etc. minority groups, for whom the idea that they’re in the same “homeland” as the Persians is not necessarily given.
Iran is made of many different ethnicities, and there were reports of Arab militants that were brought in by the regime (it’s not hard to imagine given how reliant those organizations are on Iran for support).
It’s generally not very hard to incite violence across groups in the Middle East, especially when you consider how bad the outcome might be for the losing side. Case in point, the Alawites who lost control of Syria and are now persecuted by the new government.
From the previous uprisings, the regime usually sends Arab mercenaries like Hizbollah. They don't speak Farsi and have no connection to the people of Iran.
When is Greta's naval fleet arriving?