As details of the death toll for January’s protests continue to emerge, three students explain why they are resisting a return to normality
More than 45 days after a brutal January crackdown that left thousands of Iranian protesters dead, students across several universities are protesting again. As Iran’s new academic term began on Saturday, students in Tehran gathered on campus, chanting anti-government slogans, despite a heavy security presence and plainclothes officers stationed outside university gates.
The Guardian spoke to protesting students about why they were rallying despite the fact that thousands had been killed and tens of thousands arrested in the January demonstrations.
“Our classrooms are empty because the graveyards are full,” said Hossein*, 21, a student at the University of Tehran. “It’s for them – our friends, classmates and compatriots, who were gunned down in front of our eyes, that we decided to boycott the classes.”
I think most people are hoping for an attack on military targets like last year. No-one is calling for “bombing cities”. That’s a tankie fantasy. A fantankasy
People said the exact same thing about Libya in 2011. ‘Just military targets.’ ‘Just a no-fly zone.’ It’s genuinely impressive how the same script can be rolled out over and over.
What it actually meant was destroying Libya’s air defenses and command systems. Once that was done, NATO pushed regime change, the state collapsed, and the country was handed over to militias, foreign powers, and jihadist groups. That’s the model.
When people say ‘only military targets,’ they’re repeating the same script. You don’t bomb a country’s defenses unless your goal is to weaken it. Once that happens, it’s open season: invasion, proxy forces, destabilization. These strikes are never isolated. They’re step one.
Well you’re partly correct, in that you seem to agree that it is, indeed, possible to limit yourself to target military targets… Instead of it being a cover for ‘bombing cities’ which is what was claimed here.
But that’s separate from what happens in the vacuum later.
You can look at the support for the Kurds in Syria as a good counter example - arming them and giving them intel and air support helped them defeat IS. Or working together with the résistance in WW2 to defeat the nazi’s.
Syria? The country currently controlled by terrorists massacring minorities is a good example of what you want? Also the USSR did 90% of the work of defeating the Nazis while America continued to trade with and fund them through ford IBM and other enterprises. I think the US should just stop intervening but they never will as the massive violence and immiseration is necessary to sustain their empire.
I think you don’t have the slightest idea of what life would be like under the boot of IS (pretty comparable to Iran in most regards, imo) or even what life was like under Assad. Can you let me know how the current Syrian government is ‘massacring minorities’? Because that seems like quite the overstatement. Sure they’re islamists but Turkey seems to have the leash on pretty tight.
Funny tangent you’re going on in the second half. USSR kickstarted German conquests allying with them at the start of WW2. And when they were inevitably stabbed in the back they had to call on the US to supply them so they had a bit more than their bare hands to fight back. I’m sure you
can’tsee the resemblance to the situation the Iranian people find themselves in.Ah you’re one of these people. Ok conversation with you will not be productive. Continue believing what you want all the best.
Hey as I’m currently enjoying some WW2 flight sim, here’s a relevant fun fact to close with :-)
What plane did the top USSR ace use to kill most of his nazi’s?
Do you think the plane would have been able to do it without him in it?
The biggest death toll in the Iraq war didn’t come from the US explicitly bombing civilians, it came from the US destroying the infrastructure and military of Iraq, leading to a failed state which melted the economy, led millions to destitute poverty, and created the conditions for the appearance of ISIS.
The US doesn’t need to bomb civilians to murder them, they already murder half a million civilians worldwide every single year through economic sanctions, in which Iran is plastered.
Well no. The biggest death toll in the Iraq Adventure ® came from the civil war that erupted between (mainly) Sunni and Shia militias. Instead of singing kumbaya and rebuilding the country together they started murdering eachother to settle old scores and try to grab power. Which is to be expected, and was expected, actually.
But that doesn’t mean that should be the final argument in the question of how you help a people liberate themselves from their oppressors, as that would just mean you accept the status quo and the fact the oppressors won.
Honestly, fuck you for playing dumb and doing propaganda for the empire. Zionist scum, vile piece of fascist garbage, white supremacist imbecile. You know what you’re doing.