Its collapse would rip out a core pillar of their influence and fundamentally change global power dynamics.
The "terror in the Middle East" you're referring to, is that just them helping Palestinians to resist the relentless Israeli onslaught? Helping Afghans and Iraqis to expel American occupiers?
Libya and Syria are lawless hellscapes forged by the United States and Israel. Their allied Arab satraps in the region use slave labor to construct luxury towers and playplaces for the uber rich. Where does that figure in your formulation?
Edit: Oh I get it. A special jewish word for jewish propaganda. Your a racist AND a propagandist. Of course you don't care, you appear to just be here to spread your propaganda and talk at people, not be part of a discussion on the map of Iranian protests. Hope you catch a ban.
I don't care one whit about your internet justification for your racism. Your shamelessness about it is on you. Should I use the term taqiyya if I feel someone is lying about something related to Islam or repressive backwards Islamic theocracies? Hell no, that sort of subtle use of language in that way is for racist intentions.
Fun fact, this thread is about Iran. You can oppose both the Israelis and the horrific repressive theocratic leaders in Iran. A free Iranian people shouldn't be repressed because it conflicts with your agenda for the region.
"HN is not a political forum" or "if you expect to see it on the news, it probably should not be on HN" is invoked all the time when there's a post about the US, but never when the story is about any other country.
I'll take the current state of HN over every other forum on the internet.
You can pretend you are the reasonable one here, but you're not. As someone who has been watching this for a while you look to me like a sea lion. Treating your position with disdain is the more rational of these two position.
You have no place in polite society. Get lost.
Do I have evidence of a high level criminal conspiracy to which I have access to none of the tools or methods that could possibly obtain evidence, evidence that if it did exist would surely put my own life in danger?
No, no I do not.
Edit: Ok so this is clearly being brigaded, there's not way my post got flagged less than a minuted after posting.
ICE, CBP, etc., and the other agencies that have been deployed in what this Administration calls an “immigration crackdown” or “mass deportation effort” or a number of other variations which emphasize that it is a new and more forceful policy, were not carrying out either what that campaign is publicly characterized as by the administration, or the campaign of domestic terrorism against the American population, including murdering citizens on the street, that it actually is, under previous presidencies.
> If I recall correctly last year the current admin just beat the Obama admin on people deported in a single year.
Aside from demonstrating that the purpose of the campaign is not efficiently increasing deportation of people actually illegally present in the United States (a point that critics of the policy have no problem at all agreeing with), I’m not sure what point you think that comparison makes.
This is not what people are protesting in the US, though it is a convenient talking point used by MAGA to dodge the issue of ICE deporting US citizens without due process, or straight up murdering them.
Just by being involved, I imagine they’re in serious danger. So far, more than 550 people have been killed and 20k detained by security forces.[1]
Godspeed.
Edit: these death numbers are from an older protest and are inaccurate. Please see article / comments below :)
The numbers you quoted are from the end of the article, which is about the previous demonstrations in 2022.
(In fairness, it's confusing because BBC News articles put almost every sentence into its own paragraph, which I think is intended to help low literacy people read them. But it does make it hard to follow the connections between sentences that really ought to be together in a paragraph, like in this case.)
Shouting in the streets won't end the regime. The regime will either just wait it out, or clamp down with violence. The people will need to take more direct action if they hope for any change to come out of this - which unfortunately likely means more death.
Without weapons, the people of Iran will have a difficult time overthrowing the regime. This may highlight to some folks abroad the importance of the US's 2nd Amendment, and an armed civilian population - things we take for granted in the US, and some wish to abolish.
It's a nasty, depressing situation. The regime needs to end. The people of Iran, and the people of the world will be far better off without this regime.
I hope the best for the people of Iran.
> This may highlight to some folks abroad
> the importance of the US's 2nd Amendment,
> and an armed civilian population
The idea that everyone can show up at the protest with their AR-15, somehow defeat the state's security forces in armed combat, and that the result will be some enlightened republic is an American fantasy, informed by what's at best a selective reading of American history.
If it comes to that you're much more likely to end up under some warlord. Afghanistan and especially Africa are full of people who are well armed and where exactly that's happened more often than not.
I don't think this highlight that at all. Judging by what has happened so far, the people who have the guns join the tyranny rather than oppose it. Why would it be any different in Iran?
Random personal small arms that a bunch of people just happen to have at home are not enough to win a revolutionary war against a professional military.
Self defense pistols and hunting rifles don't win wars, artillery does.
They're absolutely enough to tip the scales in favor of those within that professional military who would rather support the prospective revolution. Such people will definitely exist given a widespread revolt against a violently oppressive regime.
Yes random small arms make quite a difference in many scenarios. I can say this with zero commentary on whether one feels society broadly should have more guns.
September 9, 2025 - Protesters storm the Nepalese parliament, ransacking it and setting it on fire. Homes of leading politicians are also torched and the politicians themselves attacked.
Soon thereafter, the prime minister resigned along with other ministers and the president dissolved the parliament and scheduled a new election.
I think that counts as a successful rebellion or revolt.
I know a LOT of folks in the US that are regular citizens with plate carriers, night vision, thermals, suppressors, and forced-reset triggers.
A lot of them have better training that most leg infantry, and many are veterans.
I actually hope western countries stay out, lest it gives support for nationalists to rally
Iran will never have a happy store as long as it remains an "interests" for greater powers.
It's an important note that middle America is also currently speedrunning unsustainable levels of groundwater extraction and inefficient consumption by agriculture and industry.
They've just not yet hit dust .. but they have achieved significant depletion and the projections aren't good.
Interestingly both the Saudi's and the Chinese operate sizable ag operations in the US and export that s/water/food/ back to their home countries.
What countries backed the mullahs against Iran's secular and left opposition, helping SAVAK kill the opposition?
In 1979 the US was working to prevent anti-anti-Russian forces from coming to power, not the mullahs.
Iranian clergy as an institution starting coming into political power, really, around the time of the Russian-Persian wars, were one of the highest ranking Shia scholars in Iran issues a fatwa supporting the war against Russia.
Isn't there the possibility of just asking for a non-autocratic figure?
Its a very western view that Democracy is the pinnacle form of government. I dont think all cultures align that way.
> Its a very western view that Democracy is the pinnacle form of government.
Not only a Western view: South Korea made a very successful transition from an initially authoritarian government to a real liberal democracy, and a very similar story in Taiwan. But the key there is "liberal", as in "classical liberal": protection of foundational rights actually matters a whole lot more than whether people are physically able to vote for a candidate on an election ballot. The latter is generally useless without the former, but it does help make popular sovereignty more robust once the former is in place.
I do agree that democracy generally fails in the middle east or anywhere there is a sizable amount of people that do not believe in democracy.
However, the current Iranian system is autocratic but it works really hard to mask it to appear democratic, so obviously the appearance is important to them and presumably for the people
Mosaddegh had nationalized Iran's oil industry in 1951, which had been controlled by the British owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP).
So in August 1953, the CIA and MI6 organized protests, bribed military officers and politicians, and spread propaganda to destabilize Mosaddegh's government.
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had fled during the initial coup attempt, returned and ruled as an authoritarian monarch with strong US backing until the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
In 2013, the CIA released declassified documents confirming American involvement, and in 2000, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright acknowledged the US role, calling it a "setback for democratic government" in Iran.
Elections were about as democratic in Iran as they are in North Korea.
By the time the Shah dismissed the Prime Minister, Mosaddegh had dissolved parliament, was jailing his opponents, his party had turned against him and he was ruling by decree like a dictator.
Comparing Iran's elections to North Korea..? Iran had a functioning parliament, multiple parties, and real political competition.
And "the Shah dismissed him" glosses over the fact that this dismissal was literally part of the coup plot coordinated with foreign intelligence agencies! Read files that CIA released.
And even if you think Mosaddegh was sliding toward authoritarianism, what replaced him? 26 years of the Shah's rule backed by SAVAK, a secret police that tortured and killed dissidents. The coup made things dramatically worse, not better.
Mosaddegh requested emergency powers from parliament and parliament granted them. That's how constitutional systems work during crises. Many democracies have done this (FDR's wartime powers, for example). Requesting powers through legal channels isn't the same as seizing them.
> It's misleading to call the subsequent developments a "coup" when that government was de-facto undemocratic to begin with
This argument doesn't hold up. A coup is defined by how power is taken through force, bribery, and foreign intelligence operations and not constitutional processes. The CIA literally codenamed it Operation Ajax. Declassified documents describe it as a coup. The US government has officially acknowledged it as a coup. You're arguing against the people who planned it.
> Genuine democracy was never even in the picture.
You are basically settin an impossible standard. By 1953 standards, very few countries qualified as "genuine democracies" (the US still had Jim Crow). Iran had an elected parliament, multiple parties, a free press, and a prime minister chosen through constitutional processes. Was it perfect? No. Was it more democratic than most of the region? Yes
Even if we accept that Mosaddegh's government was imperfect, what replaced it? An absolute monarch ruling by decree with a secret police force. If your standard is democracy, the coup objectively made things worse, which is a strange outcome to defend.
Except that there was no legitimate emergency and no crisis, in fact there was just the opposite: Mossadegh had just instigated an insurrection against the then-legitimate government and thereby forced the Shah to not only put him back in power but also to let him appoint a defense minister and a chief of staff - a clear violation of the prevailing norms at the time which delegated this appointment to the Shah. The request for an explicit grant of power of "dictatorial decree" then came immediately after that. This was a clear established pattern of trying to weaken Iran's existing institutional norms and center power on himself, not unlike the whole Germany 1933 playbook. That's very much not how democratic systems work.
As for "no emergency and no crisis", Britain had organized an international embargo on Iranian oil, frozen Iranian assets, threatened military action, and was actively working to destabilize the government. Iran's economy was being strangled. Dismissing that as "no crisis" is basically ignoring basic historical facts.
On the military appointments, yes, Mosaddegh sought control over the military, breaking from tradition. But given that the Shah and military officers were actively conspiring with foreign intelligence to overthrow him (which we now know from declassified documents) his concerns about military loyalty weren't paranoia. They were correct.
The Hitler comparison is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Hitler dismantled democracy and ruled for 12 years. Mosaddegh was removed by a foreign backed coup and spent his remaining years under house arrest. One of these is not like the other.
And in parliamentary systems, prime ministers who resign can return to power without new elections if they command enough support. It's happened in the UK, Israel, Australia and elsewhere. There's no constitutional rule that resignation is permanent and irreversible.
The question is whether Mosaddegh was constitutionally appointed and had parliamentary backing. In July 1952, the answer to both was yes.
Even if they don't love him, a vast majority would prefer him over the Ayatollahs.
EDIT: Found the poll, last taken in 2024: https://gamaan.org/2025/08/20/analytical-report-on-iranians-... . The Shah is preferred by just 31%, but no one else even gets double-digits.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46378818
>we want most political stories to be flagged on HN, for a critical reason: if they weren't, then HN would turn into a current-affairs site, and that would not be HN at all.
See all the instances of "we do not want most political stories":
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Guess this is one of the exceptions!
If your antisemitism runs so deep you are willing to sacrifice the Iranian people to hurt the Jews, you are not a friend of the Iranian people.
This "criticism/suspicion of Israel is just hatred of Jews" thing doesn't work on anyone except the sort of person willing to continue supporting Israel after it carried out a genocide in Gaza. So you may as well save the keystrokes.
This is what I get in the console for a working map, running Firefox 148.0a1:
Download the React DevTools for a better development experience: https://reactjs.org/link/react-devtools react-dom.development.js:29905:19
cdn.tailwindcss.com should not be used in production. To use Tailwind CSS in production, install it as a PostCSS plugin or use the Tailwind CLI: https://tailwindcss.com/docs/installation cdn.tailwindcss.com:64:1711
You are using the in-browser Babel transformer. Be sure to precompile your scripts for production - https://babeljs.io/docs/setup/ babel.min.js:3:3121456
Partitioned cookie or storage access was provided to “<URL>” because it is loaded in the third-party context and dynamic state partitioning is enabled. 2
Cookie “__cf_bm” will soon be rejected because it is foreign and does not have the “Partitioned“ attribute. settings
Source map error: Error: NetworkError when attempting to fetch resource.
Resource URL: https://unpkg.com/@babel/standalone/babel.min.js
Source Map URL: babel.min.js.mapcdn.tailwindcss.com should not be used in production. To use Tailwind CSS in production, install it as a PostCSS plugin or use the Tailwind CLI: https://tailwindcss.com/docs/installation cdn.tailwindcss.com:64:1711 You are using the in-browser Babel transformer. Be sure to precompile your scripts for production - https://babeljs.io/docs/setup/ babel.min.js:3:3121456 Source map error: Error: NetworkError when attempting to fetch resource. Resource URL: https://unpkg.com/@babel/standalone/babel.min.js Source Map URL: babel.min.js.map
Protesting the Iranian government is perfectly legitimate. Binding that with supporting a return of the equally brutal and corrupt shah is depressing.
Given there are only three categories, I'd expect large to be on the order of hundreds of thousands, but I don't think that is the case here?
That said: please also protest any inference from foreign power, whether they are an oligarchy, a dictatorship or another theocracy/ethno-state. If the current Syrian situation is believable, a revolution/coup from the base show better results than one supported by the US/Russia or local powers.
Israel wants nothing more than another failed state filled with sectarian violence.
You don't have to defend them. The ability for a Jew to have safe haven in a world populated by people such as yourself is very important. I value it very much.
> Zionist project won't last
That's what your father and grandfather said. Wishful thinking on your part.
Israel is a terrorist organization funded by my money. As such I have every right to shut it down, along with the millions of other Americans who have had enough.
Now begone to Reddit, foul fiend.
Not here, that is clear. Not on Reddit either but that is the better place for pointless discussions like this one.
What about all the ICE and school shootings, mass shooting maps for USA? That would be definitely helpful.
This post is example of American hypocrisy, double standards and propaganda.
If Iran does not have oil or natural resources these clowns do not even care.
The last thing we need is Israel or any other nation deciding they want to be the new rulers of Iran. That will work out just as well as the US's involvement in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Let's hope that any regime change in Iran happens with as little bloodshed as possible and that the new regime actually represents the population instead of only some powerful (domestic or foreign) faction. Khamenei seems to have prepared for a run to Russia [1] together with 20 members of his family so let him climb aboard that plane and leave sooner rather than later.