Asleep on the love seat

And it seems like you’re incapable of actually having a conversation about this topic.

Stop trying to reduce to this personal ethic. “The Iranian people” are not a monolith. Some of them agree with this view of the world, others don’t. They will manage it themselves.

You gotta stop imagining that everything is about moral correctness. The reason it matters what Yanks think about what other people should do isn’t because it’s a moral question but a practical one - Yanks will take their personal beliefs and then put 250k tons of depleted uranium bombs behind it.

When I say I don’t support undermining Iranian national security, I am not saying that I would bomb civilians the way the US does when it says it doesn’t support something. I don’t think a foreign military should intervene to impose its view on the world.

But I for damn sure would engage in dialog and discourse about the topic and support my position with reasoning, history, and evidence.

Luckily I don’t have to because there are millions of Iranians already having that discussion with a much better grip on the situation than I have.

My role in this discourse here is to argue with Western liberals and disabuse them of their bullshit moral superiorty driven by the empire’s propaganda machine so they stop supporting the empire’s agenda.

Because you’re arguing a counterfactual to signal virtues instead of actually engaging in the analysis of the real world.

I mean you did compare them and you’re still comparing them. You’re saying they’re both bad. That’s literally a comparison.

China is selling arms to anyone and everyone that wants them. Is that meddling or mercantilism?

By comparison, the US is committing mass murder almost daily.

No, they’re not both “bad”. The US is atrocious and China is selling weapons to bad people.

This is what did it for you, Bernie? Not the Princeton research? Not the genocides? Not the decades of unauthorized wars? Not the 100-mile zone? Not the “enemy combatant” designation? Not free speech zones? Not the WikiLeaks revelations? Not the Snowden revelations? Not the disaster capitalism? Not the commitment to invade The Hague if ever brought up on charges?

A $10M donation did it? That’s what makes you wonder?

Literally the only way the Iranians were able to throw off the imperial yoke was to establish the theocracy. That’s the historical reality. The Iranians already went democratic and they got fucking owned by the imperialists. Why do we think it’s going to be different this time when the US just fucking bombed them less than 12 months ago?

The Iranian missile program is one the most efficient in the world. It is completely indigenous, not relying on foreign governments to keep their deterrence systems in place. Each piece of material produced in Iran is produced by Iranian workers, and can be up to 90% cheaper than equivalent munitions of their adversaries. The idea that missile production is why Iranians are in trouble is ridiculous. It’s literally one of the key reasons Israel and the US don’t feel confident enough to go for a full frontal assault on the country. The job of the government is national defense and Iran was doing a good job at that until last year when Israel dealt a devastating blow, and the only thing that stopped Israel going further were the Iranian’s missiles.

If you think Iran is helping Israel in order to create the political theater they need to control their people, you are lost in delusion.

Great, so in a hypothetical, you can feel morally superior to me. I’m OK with that.

Why are you dismissing the will of millions of Iranians who don’t want regime change? Why are you such a chauvinist that you think you speak for all Iranians?

Ooooh, you’re an imperialist! Got it.

No. The Iranian government is not in the business of killing as many people as they can. That’s Israel and the US. And the way we know that the news reports about what’s happening in Iran are lies is because the claim is that Iran is able to kill 10x as many people per day as Israel was able to kill in Gaza at the height of their offensive.

Maybe you think you don’t agree with American imperialism, but this is what you sound like:

I disagree with the great Satan, but I believe all of his lies

It’s been openly stated in Western media why the Iranian people are protesting - economic hardship. It’s also been stated that the reason for the economic hardship is US economic sanctions. And it’s also been stated that the reason for the sanctions is to goad the Iranian people into demanding regime change. And it’s also been stated that the reason to goad the Iranian people into regime change is to reestablish the dominance of US interests over Iran.

https://apnews.com/live/iran-protests-updates-1-12-2026

Associated Press. In black and white.

You would do well to actually consider the real world instead of arguing about vacuous morality while only consuming Western propaganda.

And yes, groups like the Human Rights Activists of Iran are Western propagandists, funded by the CIA and US State Department through the NED, with headquarters in Fairfax, VA, about 15 miles from CIA HQ.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/revealed-the-cia-backed-think-tanks-fueling-the-iran-protests/290638/

No. I said IF it was their will I would still be against it because it would be contradictory, but YOU are the one claiming to know definitively what their will is and that therefore I am against it. I do not claim to know the minds of all Iranians like you do. The limited evidence I have access to is that the popular will is divided among several factions and understanding the factions at this distance is almost impossible given the direct and indirect foreign interference at all levels.

My statement is an assessment of the state of the game. IF it were the will of a super majority if Iranians to overthrow their government, THEN I would not support it because my assessment of the state of the game is that IF the government is overthrown THEN the USA will subvert the will of the Iranian people. It is structurally contradictory.

I think the Iranian people understand this. I hope they do. You clearly don’t

Again. You have established as fact something that is not fact. I am saying that regardless of their will, their will is not going to win the day but instead either USA’s will or the current Iranian government’s will is going to win the day. The people will either defeat their government and create the conditions for the USA to subvert the will of the people or the people will not defeat their government. Those are the two options available based on the facts on the ground.

I cannot speak against the will of the Iranian people because no one knows the will of the Iranian people right now. There are different factions on the ground protesting and counter protesting and there are foreign governments distorting all of the information about who is protesting, how many are protesting, what their demands are, what they want, and what they’re doing.

You are stating as fact that the will of the Iranian people is regime change when it is clear that there is not one single will of the Iranian people.

And while you claim to want to support the will of the Iranian people, you have no problem with supporting actions that will absolutely subvert the will of the Iranian people by subjugating them to foreign governments.

It’s not funny. It’s sick and it’s sad.

You’re such an idealist. You have no idea what the people’s will is. Each person has their own will and collectively the people of Iran have contradictory wills. There are people in Iran counter protesting the protestors. There is no single unified will.

Equally, these sorts of demonstrations being distorted through propaganda and covert ops is a known weapon. Color revolutions are a known phenomenon and the actors who drive them are known, and their mechanisms are known. The CIA used NED for decades to do exactly this sort of thing in many countries.

So no, your formulation is a strawman and a deliberately misleading bad faith interpretation of the situation and the position I am presenting

If you say so. Meanwhile China has been talking about peaceful reunification for 50 years and haven’t dropped a bomb in over 30 years.

So I wouldn’t compare them to Russia, they are much much much more committed to peace than Russia. In fact, they’re more committed to peace than the US, UK, France, NATO, India, etc. Of all the nations in the world, China is easily used one of the most peaceful.

Well, they are already getting brutally suppressed, what difference would it make?

Have you seen Gaza? Libya? Somalia? Syria? Iraq? Afghanistan? That’s the difference.

There are no chance of regime change right now, so batter take a chance for improvement than wait like a good sacrificial lamb for better days that will never happen as long as the mollah are in power.

Incorrect attribution of cause. The problems in Iran are caused first and foremost by the siege - brutal sanctions from the US and Europe have caused 10x more deaths than violence from the government. When the seige is broken, then Iranians will have the safety they need to actually prosecute the revolution they need for self-determination.

I acknowledge that the protestors want their government to meet their needs. I do not support overthrowing the government at this time because regardless of the people’s will, the government will be replaced with a US puppet and that will not allow the Iranian’s will to be expressed.

I never claimed the protesters are being controlled by them. Go ahead and read everything I have written in the topic. That’s not my claim, it’s never been my claim, and I am not arguing from that position. I do not believe the protesters are being controlled by them.

And that’s the line the government is also using while trying to suppress the protests, making the protesters out to be some puppets.

The government is speaking in Farsi, not in English. The government is saying that Israeli forces are on the ground making the protests worse. Turning them violent. Killing police officers and burning buildings. They are not saying that all of the protestors are being controlled by foreign agents.

You are absorbing the propaganda of the regime change ghouls.

You buy low and sell high. But buying low requires money. So here’s how you do it:

Your labor power is yours. It has a cost to reproduce: sleep, food, shelter, clothing, medicine.

1. You can trade your labor power for more than it costs to reproduce. That could be a job, or it could be gig work. But the critical thing is the price, and that means you have to be very good at selling.

2. Somebody out there (Amy) has more money than they know what to do with. Somebody else (Beau) has something they need to sell. A third person (Charlie) wants to buy the thing Beau wants to sell but Charlie is not aware of Beau. You can go to Charlie and offer to sell them the thing for more than Beau is selling it for. If they agree, you go Beau and ask Beau to lend you the money and in exchange you’ll give Beau a portion of the profits. The critical thing is the price, because you still have to reproduce your labor to do this, and since price is critical, you have to be really good at sales.

There might be other ways.

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-881733

This has nothing to do with the government dismissing the protests. Mossad is literally stating they are on the ground. Remember that they were also on the ground with a persistent presence during the attempted decapitation attacks last year. It’s not like the Iranian government is just making shit up about active Israeli attacks.

And it’s not like their making shit up about US CIA interference either. The major “human rights organizations” that have been in the news talking about the situation are almost all funded by the NED, a known CIA carve out that has openly taken credit for color revolutions in other countries.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/revealed-the-cia-backed-think-tanks-fueling-the-iran-protests/290638/

There things are well documented, have been well documented for decades, and we have evidence for them from as little as 6 months ago.

You can’t just keep acting like there’s no such thing as history and no such thing as context. This is not an offseason sporting match between two teams in a closed stadium. Iran is under active siege, in a “frozen” active conflict with Israel, and has been relentlessly attacked for years on end. And when color revolution is a weapon in the arsenal of empire, you’re being willfully blind and signing up millions of Iranians for total subjugation by occupying forces.

No. You’re upside down. It’s not that the Iranian people have the support of an evil regime. It’s that if the Iranian people succeed in toppling their government, Israel will dominate the Iranian people and the Iranian people will not be able to express their will. And when the Israelis and USians put their puppets in place, if the Iranians protest, the they’ll be brutally suppressed and the death toll will be massive.

The only solution is to topple the aggressors the first. Then and only then is mass Iranian self determination able to be secured.