Apparently there have been IRGC and basij curfew patrols shooting at buildings / windows of people who sing or shout anti regime songs and slogans.
Apparently they are also (at least in some cases) dressing as women to avoid airstrikes.
There has been very little photage and info coming out of Iran though.
I still believe the Iranian government is more afraid of it's people than of the US and Israel - the US and Israel can bomb leadership and materiel, but without ground troops, regime capitulation is unlikely, unless the populace can themselves overthrow the govt (though that is hard to do when there is a major imbalance in who has guns).
This is all likely true. Although I feel people undersell how they work together.
Iranians broadly hate their government, yeah. But the thing that gets them rioting is economic failure. Which the strikes have exacerbated.
Social media is swarmed by people saying it’ll be like Iraq and Iranians will hate the US for its actions. I’m not convinced. My small anecdata of Iranian friends with contacts in Iran agrees with me.
I think we could see regime change within a decade.
> But the thing that gets them rioting is economic failure
I believe Iranians want to be able to decide their own fate, with the dignity that all humans deserve. Without criminal domestic religious zealots and without foreign meddling and bombing.
The previous protest was followed by the killing of Mahsa Amini, in morality police’s custody because of improper hijab. It’s not only economic hardships. But you’re right that war has made the situation worse, obviously.
> But the thing that gets them rioting is economic failure. Which the strikes have exacerbated.
Past riots were related to women rights or election fraud. The last one were related to the economic situation, but there is a large young population in Iran which aren't religious anymore, and living in an oppressive theocracy
> I’m not convinced. My small anecdata of Iranian friends with contacts in Iran agrees with me.
I am having a very hard time believing anyone would be favourable to the country currently lobbing bombs at them from halfway around the globe. Regardless of how much they dislike their current regime.
Maybe this fuels some "everyone loves America, the good guys" fantasy, but, as someone who's come from a country where the people did not like the regime, I am very skeptical foreign interference will be seen positively or even neutrally.
Or maybe this is an attempt at making the war seem somehow just and led on humanitarian and democratic principles, as opposed to what it actually is.
Let's put it this way: Have you seen someone's brain on the sidewalk lately? No? Lost a loved one / a friend / a classmate? Perhaps when people see this (as I have) they find more favorable views of the aerial bombing campaign.
For reference, it has been verfied [~] that the regime killed ~220 students just in the recent uprisings of this January. That's a whole school full of students, all under-18. And then you have to ask, why would a teenager be on the streets, given that they knew, everyone knew, that snipers and machine guns will be there? Just 5 days ago they hung an 18-year-old who was arrested this Jan. They also hung a 19-yo wrestling champion very recently. The collateral damage of these bombings, which must be denounced and is reprehensible, still has not reached these levels either in brutality and in number. [1]
[~] (my internet connection is not good enough to find the sources, I'm using dnstt in a very unreliable network)
[1] AFAIK, Around 180-190 students have died in the recent conflict. Some 160-170 was due to an erroneous airstrike by the US military on the first day of the war, and their school was within 30 meters of a military base (!). Furthermore, some of the other students who have died were the children of the assassinated regime officials.
Tel Aviv perhaps? Wartime is the worst time to stage a revolutionary for anyone,specifically because its a induces a state of emergency, and any activities can be construed as aiding the enemy.
My anecdata is from just two families whom I am hearing from indirectly and have never met in person. The takeaways are:
1) they HATE their government more than anything in the world. They’ve seen the government killing its own people.
2) the consensus of civilians is that strikes by and large are hitting IRGC targets. They do not feel civilian targets are being targeted even though the nature of it has resulted in civilian deaths.
3) they don’t feel inclined to give trump the slightest amount of trust or good will. They just want regime change by any means.
Russia had two revolutions in 1917. In the first one, pretty much everyone who mattered was unhappy with the regime. After some clashes between protesters and internal security forces, the emperor abdicated. A provisional government formed by established politicians took control, but it had to share power with workers' councils. The country became fragmented.
The provisional government was center-left, the army was mostly controlled by the right, and the workers' councils leaned towards revolutionary left. The right wanted to use the army to arrest Bolshevik leaders. The government declined, fearing a military coup. The right saw the government siding with the left and made an actual coup attempt. The government had to rely on the workers' councils to stop it. Which then emboldened the Bolsheviks to stage a revolution of their own a bit later.
But because the right was definitely not on board this time, the second revolution was only partially successful. Instead of a controlled regime change, the Bolsheviks got a civil war that lasted five years and killed millions.
"You think the French monarchy was overthrown because they didn't try hard enough?"
Yes, actually I do. Are you aware how long the process of transformation was and how little actual violence did the royal troops mete out? Most of the blood during the French Revolution was shed among the revolutionaries themselves, later. Not by the old regime which barely resisted what was happening, being confused more than anything else.
The French monarchy was remarkably limp-wristed in its reaction to the post-1789 developments, probably because, in the beginning, not even the revolutionaries themselves expected to actually dismantle the monarchy. There was no civil war similar to Cromwell's England, nor massacres in the streets similar to modern Iran. In the largest event of that early period which could be called "a battle" (Storming of the Bastille), a grand total of 114 royalist soldiers made their last stand. Which is tiny for a country the size of France.
It took about a year for the situation to progress from the first session of the Estates General to the royal family attempted flight from Versailles, and 2,5 more years for the King to be executed. A classical case of the frog being boiled very slowly. The royal regime was indecisive and offered close to zero violent resistence.
(If you want to learn about an actual abortive French revolution which was suppressed with actual brutal violence by the royalists, look up Fronda of 1648-1653.)
In contrast, current rulers of Iran have 0 doubts about what is going to happen to them - and within minutes - if they get caught by the street crowd that hates them.
But the vector under a theocratic government constantly points towards failure. So you have one known vector thats disaster and one unknown vector that just mightbbe disaster.. if in doubt throw the dice ?
Why wont a general strike work? Not enough support? People have never had freedom, so dont understand they have 100% ability to bring down govt if they wanted?
Due to years of corruption and mismanagement, leading to high inflation and high prices most people are below poverty line and living pay check to pay check and they won’t be able to literally feed themselves
This is the thing that is so curious about the concept of the general strike/siezing the means of production.
The workers already have seized the means of production. I mean truly. Owner does not have the keys. Some manager unlocks the building for the day. Workers show up to the farm. Everything gets done every day whether the owner is there or across the globe or some dubious llc entity. The only thing the owner functionally does, is to be an address on file to send their cut of the profits. Nothing more than a specially designated furnace to burn a subset of the monthly revenue, at least in terms of their actual interaction with their business and their businesses interaction with themselves.
Socialism is as easy as people waking up, going to work as usual, and not mailing that check to the owner. And having the owner go to the police, who in turn tell them "Awe shucks." These are the only conditions for socialism in 2026. Same as they were in 1926. So tantalizingly possible if people were just on board with it and not beholden to capitalism. Propaganda is why there are a subset of workers who will continue to diligently burn revenue for the owner, and why police will ultimately make the choice to sacrifice their own lives for the petty profits of this ownership class versus consider their own position in this world.
Usually socialist revolutions fail because nobody can agree on who the new leaders should be. Workers seize control of the means of production...and then what? Who determines what they should do with it? Who do they look to for guidance? If you elect/appoint/select someone, now they are the new capitalist. If you don't, the machinery sits idle while various factions fight amongst themselves.
We saw this with Occupy Wall Street and the CHAZ in the U.S - these protests didn't fail because they were crushed, they failed because local police basically let them win and then once they won different factions had different ideas of what to do next. We also see it at the state level with the Soviet Union (where a strong dictatorship did eventually emerge - the communist revolution didn't mean everybody was equal, it just meant some people were more equal than others) and in Vietnam (which became intensely capitalist less than 15 years after the communists won.
The function of the business owner, CEO, or other executive figure is simply to be a symbol of which direction the organization needs to go. They don't do any work themselves, and they are selected for their ability to look pretty and shout platitudes that other people follow. But that symbol is needed to actually get the people moving in one direction.
>Workers seize control of the means of production...and then what? Who determines what they should do with it? Who do they look to for guidance? If you elect/appoint/select someone, now they are the new capitalist. If you don't, the machinery sits idle while various factions fight amongst themselves.
And then what is you do what you would have done at work yesterday, today. Same job description as you had previously. Your manager? Same as they were yesterday too. Everything exactly the same. Just some guy you never see is not getting their passive income. No machinery would sit idle for the same reason no machinery sat idle yesterday: people showed up to run it.
This is sort of how it worked in Cuba. Factories were nationalized and people went from working for the man to working for the public. And then the man had no government that would listen to them either. They had to go to the US government, argue that this was some great taking if left unanswered would sure happen all over the US and the rest of the world, and a hasty invasion designed by the US for these business owners to feign any political responsibility was designed, executed, and pushed back on the beachhead by the Cubans. Today the nation of Cuba remains sanctioned because of these owners from decades ago and their descendants, who still represent a significant political influence in south florida congressional districts, still feel like they were robbed by the people they were exploiting.
My small anecdata of Iranian friends contradict yours. They are against both the US-Israeli bombings and the Islamic regime. How should be decide whose anecdata is the most trustworthy? Maybe we can use common sense instead and agree that people don't want to be bombed to death regardless of other circumstances?
When a regime starts killing thousands of it's own people it's a sign of weakness, not strength. Iran's theocracy was teetering above the abyss before the U.S. started bombing them.
Now, they're probably good to go for a couple more decades. Trump is precisely the kind of threat Iranians have been warned about since the revolution. When a regime spends almost half a century preparing for something and it finally happens, it earns them considerable forgiveness. Also, nothing unites people quite like a foreign threat, especially one dumb enough to bomb schoolgirls in its opening salvo.
By scuttling the JCPOA for no apparent reason and now invading Iran right when it appeared the regime was crumbling, Trump has single-handedly reinvigorated Iran's theocracy and given them the public support they need for the final push towards nuclear weapons. That's what's so sickening about this invasion. It has acted in diametric opposition to the the policy goals it was purportedly pursuing.
Every Iranian I know support the current US/Israeli war against the Islamic Republic.
They say things like "no matter what it takes, no matter how many of us die, we must be free again, this time we will win against the terrorist regime" (paraphrased).
Are these Iranian friends and their children the ones at risk the next time the US or Israel "accidentally" double taps civilian infrastructure?
The regime will kill you/your loved ones and brand them as criminals if you protest against them or break an unreasonable law, the US and Israel will kill you and brand you as terrorists because you happened to be Iranian and in the wrong place.
My family in Tehran fear the bombs but support the US continuing to do so. I think the bombing campaign needs to end, so I disagree with them on that. Based on what little we know coming out of Tehran (we only get a few min of landline phone calls from Tehran once a week), the issue is splitting families due to the mental strain it's having. That being said, the overall feeling is very much still pro-US.
I think people outside of Iran/Iranians vastly underestimate the disdain for the Iranian regime. Go watch the movie "It was just an accident" to get a basic feel for how much they hate the regime, then amplify that tenfold.
I was living in Tehran during the 2011-2012 protests, British embassy incident etc (I was ~13 then).
I once attended a military "fair"(?) where they'd show off their equipment and had some anti-US "games", eg one involving throwing a shoe at a target with Obama or maybe Bush's face printed on it, and observed people enthusiastically taking part in it.
My impression was that while people hated and feared the regime, they still broadly shared the anti-foreign intervention stance, particularly against the US. I'm having a hard time believing that they'd still be pro-US after Trump threatened genocide against them.
If you look at the chances, there's a far greater chance of dying in the hands of SUV mounted machine guns firing at crowds than precision bombs that mostly hit regime forces
Iranian here! I want to see the regime answer for its crimes. They act like an occupying force, taking the country hostage.
With that being said I don’t like/want the war. I understand and sympathize with the emotional response from my compatriots because they see the oppressors are getting the bloody beating they well deserve. But I don’t really think that the current war brings anything good for the people. I wish it did but it doesn’t look like it. I wish the regime would fall but they haven’t and we now have ~2000 more innocents dead on top of thousands that government killed in January.
I am guessing you're not a supported of Reza Pahlavi?
How in your mind do we get to the regime answering for its crimes? What is going to dislodge them? If they are not dislodged and continue to indoctrinate more people where does this go? If they have more weapons where does it go?
Is any chance that some elements within the current regime will change sides? What percent of soldiers or militia are die hard fanatics vs. people who will jump ship if there's a good chance of that "ship" sinking?
In fairness, the claim is that all the Iranians are offering their own lives for the poster's goals.
Of course, that only brings us to, "It's easy to claim others are offering their lives for your goals."
I guess it's probably best to just realize everything you see on the subject of any given war is probably propaganda. And judge the value of it through that lens.
The big question is what comes after. I don't think many disagreed with Saddam or Gaddafi but history shows that this doesn't necessarily lead to good outcomes.
Did you see on the news how many people were mourning for Khomeini on the streets ?
Clearly your sample of Iranians is very biased.
I am not pro theocratic regimes, but not only does the US/Israel _not_ have the right to wage this war, but this war will only make the regime stronger.
Nothing more unifying than getting bombed, especially in martyrdom cultures.
> Every Iranian I know support the current US/Israeli war against the Islamic Republic.
That seems a little bit suspect, how many Iranians do you know? I have difficulty believing that less than around 20-30% of them support the regime. There seems to be a baseline of around that fraction of people who support the status quo.
It isn't so hard to find people who support full-on communism. Any reasonable sample should be turning up a lot of really weird opinions.
That’s not the reality. Pro regime “white simcard” people have been spreading their propaganda since start of the war on twitter, instagram and elsewhere.
Which is a big reason why Iran has been able to do so well in the information war. Lies in public to appear in control and totalitarianism for their own citizens to keep them in the dark.
I'd hazard a guess that the big reason Iran is doing well in the information war is because the US/Israel combo launched an apparently unprovoked sneak attack in the middle of negotiations without thinking about the catastrophic global economic consequences it could unleash or how the attack, if executed, would help in any way. Trump still hasn't even found a crazy lie that sounds like a sane reason.
It is hard to spin that in a positive light. It looks a little unreasonable. Even without a propaganda effort by the Iranians there is a great scratching of heads in the west trying to figure out why we're embarking on this crazy crusade.
Although I hear the IRGC's lego game is on point so that is interesting.
Respectfully, I don't agree with you. There's no question that the IRGC and Iranian regime wanted to build nuclear weapons. They were planning to do this by constructing so many missile sites and launchers that no one would bother trying to stop them. Yes, the world could have done nothing and just watched, but that would have only delayed the problem and made it worse later.
Just imagine what a nuclear-armed Iranian regime would do, not just to their own people but to their neighbors and the rest of the world.
Good? The US and Israel both have nukes. Iran probably should have them too, it needs the tools to defend itself and maintain its sovereignty despite the actions of these lunatics. It is clear that rains of conventional ballistic missiles and the threat of taking out the global economy isn't enough to make Israel consider negotiations.
If we wanted to worry about nuclear proliferation, negotiation was the path to take. There was a JCPOA and it seems like Khamenei Sr turned out to be serious about Iran not developing nukes in his lifetime. They've been a year or two away for more than a decade as I recall. Senseless violence isn't going to do anything to encourage disarmament - that is another part of why the Iranians have such an easy battle ahead of them in terms of propaganda.
If we're going to worry about Iran getting nukes, assassinating the anti-nuke guy and pummelling them as Trump is will not help the situation in the slightest. The only path where they survive as a state is the one where they build nuclear missiles.
I don't blame you, and you're entitled to your view. However, it's easy to sit in a comfort zone and support a totalitarian regime you never experienced living under.
That sounds brutal, and I’m sure there were tons of abuses by security forces during the protests, but I am a bit skeptical of Iran International as a source:
> We're receiving war footage from iran. They aren't completely disconnected.
As I said, satellite is a thing.
I also don't doubt there may be some traditional land-based BGP access going on too, maybe using "borrowed" prefixes. But I do not think it is as much as people think it might be.
I also doubt there are 50,000 "white SIM" active today... I suspect that Wikipedia "unofficial figure" reflects pre-war. Most have very likely been disconnected or blocked.
Looking at it from an alternative angle, the Iranians are not stupid.
They know leaving the internet online would be beneficial for their adversaries, perhaps especially as Israel is one of them, and Israel's use of cyber is no secret.
So by killing the internet, they have an instant air-gap firewall.
Making the most of the levers they have fighting asymmetric warfare.
This isn't just a wealthy country like the US doing war rations. Iran's economy was already in crisis before the war, where businesses stopped selling products because their currency was fluctuating so much they couldn't set prices without losing money. It means tons of small businesses shutting down and people going hungry. Which puts even more pressure on Iran's social services which are were already in a terrible state. Now the US blockade means significantly less tax money coming into the government.
Their country is very much on the edge of chaos which is why they are brutally controlling their citizens.
> But the framing here is not “clever, innovative IRGC”
I am not seeking to frame anything here. Nor am I interested in getting involved in the broader areas on discussion on the subject.
The first few words of my original post made it clear "Looking at it from an alternative angle". An alternative way of wording that would be "devil's advocate".
I am just supplying a perfectly reasonable alternative perspective, I am not asking anyone to agree or disagree with it, I am just making a "food for thought" statement.
I see it, and hadn't fully considered it. Turning off the Internet has more utility than just suppressing the populaces ability to communicate, it also blackholes that compromised mail server used to track the movement of political leaders, any online drop-boxes/Telegram/Whatsapp channels used by cultivated informants/spies are now out of order.
Ehhh I suppose but I think that’s a weak point. The purpose of shutting down the internet is undeniably to prevent the people from coordinating rebellion and the help control the narrative of the war.
It’s proven time and time again that Mossad always find a way to infiltrate into even most secure Iranian network. This is mostly done to control the narrative and keep the pro regime supporters morale up.
> It’s proven time and time again that Mossad always find a way to infiltrate into even most secure Iranian network.
Sure, but why make their life easier ?
Taking your line of argument, you would also need to say "well, the US are going to bomb us anyway. We might as well just post all the GPS coordinates of sensitive sites up on Twitter".
I'm an Iranian American. There is no Internet. Only people who work for the government have limited Internet. We can't call phone numbers in Iran. They can call our phone in the US (they will get a sms or call shortly after ending the call saying that we the government was monitoring the conversation) and these calls are very expensive for them. This situation is not sustainable. There are many businesses in Iran that rely on Internet. Millions of Iranian live outside of the country and haven't been able to talk to their family and friends. Not sure how long will this internet blockade will continue.
Iran has been rolling out the National Information Network (essentially a whitelisted internet) since the Green Revolution [0] back in 2009-12.
Iran has a surprisingly robust domestic ecosystem of hyperscalers [1] and telco infra [6][7] built out over the past decade with limited outside involvement and a severe sanctions regime, and have even started exporting Iranian IT services to Uganda [2], Kenya [3], South Africa [4], Venezuela [5], Russia [8], and China [8].
Iran also uses a two-tier SIM card system - ideologically vetted individuals get a "white" SIM which gives full ingress/egress outside the NIN and others have a normal SIM that can be blacklisted from egressing outside the NIN.
Notice how Iranian websites have a page saying "Transferring to Website" - that's the gateway page for the NIN.
Starlink or any other sort of satellite internet, but these are relatively easy to jam and detect. There are ways to minimize that but obviously not available to civilians.
The issue is, if you control the Network DMZ, it's extremely difficult to bypass. In Xinjiang and Tibet (which has a similar setup) they used to use smuggled Kazakh, Nepali, and Indian SIM cards but that was cracked down.
A lot of the info from inside Iran that is not regime connected is coming from areas in Iranian Kurdistan where an Iraqi SIM could be smuggled or accessed somewhat easier than other areas.
P2P is only as safe as it's nodes. Iran has around 1 million IRGC, Army, and Foreign Shia Militia deployed in a country of around 90 million.
Mind you that organization has been severely degraded, but that only scares civilians even more as functionaries are much more trigger happy (rape [0], summary execution [1], torture [2] are already the norm).
Iran has been under export controls for dual use technology for decades. Getting the amount of GPUs needed to conduct bitcoin mining was nigh impossible.
Bitcoin and Crypto as a shadow financial system was enabled by Qatar and the UAE where there are dedicated deal desks that work on ExAmerica trades.
This is why the IRGC striking Qatar and the UAE was such a bad move. Even companies in the PRC try to follow American sanctions regimes because trade with Japan+SK+ASEAN is higher priority than trade with Russia or Iran.
This is the sort of thing the Arsenal of Democracy should be building against. We should be deploying tools to give people voices in hostile places, to get messages out, to collaborate.
See age verification, anti-pornography, and anti-VPN laws popping up like weeds all over democratic countries. Governments everywhere are pushing for more control over who and how people communicate over the Internet, so they can mute certain voices without shutting down the internet like Iran when they deem it necessary
and during that time those people waging war against Iran, murdered one Irainian child every 30 minuits, not counting the other children murdered by the genociders in Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine.
predictable down vote
but listen up, Iran has made a tactical move in this, but the implication is that
they, like Afganistan are consideriing a strategic move, and many others are watching.
more down voting, which is an excellent demonstration of how the internet is used
by those that "own" it
you made me smile, because everyone IS crazy, but many of them are still decent and kind and can see there own crazy enough to make room in the world for others crazyness. and then there are the those who espouse the madness of a genocidal cultic insanity, or perhaps even more distubing, play a cunning game of distraction and apology for murder
and hate
Apparently there have been IRGC and basij curfew patrols shooting at buildings / windows of people who sing or shout anti regime songs and slogans. Apparently they are also (at least in some cases) dressing as women to avoid airstrikes. There has been very little photage and info coming out of Iran though.
I still believe the Iranian government is more afraid of it's people than of the US and Israel - the US and Israel can bomb leadership and materiel, but without ground troops, regime capitulation is unlikely, unless the populace can themselves overthrow the govt (though that is hard to do when there is a major imbalance in who has guns).
This is just spreading rumors. You have to do better than "apparently".
This is all likely true. Although I feel people undersell how they work together.
Iranians broadly hate their government, yeah. But the thing that gets them rioting is economic failure. Which the strikes have exacerbated.
Social media is swarmed by people saying it’ll be like Iraq and Iranians will hate the US for its actions. I’m not convinced. My small anecdata of Iranian friends with contacts in Iran agrees with me.
I think we could see regime change within a decade.
> But the thing that gets them rioting is economic failure
I believe Iranians want to be able to decide their own fate, with the dignity that all humans deserve. Without criminal domestic religious zealots and without foreign meddling and bombing.
The previous protest was followed by the killing of Mahsa Amini, in morality police’s custody because of improper hijab. It’s not only economic hardships. But you’re right that war has made the situation worse, obviously.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/10/iran-at-least...
> But the thing that gets them rioting is economic failure. Which the strikes have exacerbated.
Past riots were related to women rights or election fraud. The last one were related to the economic situation, but there is a large young population in Iran which aren't religious anymore, and living in an oppressive theocracy
They'll have company soon
https://gtnm.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-theocratic-authorita...
> I’m not convinced. My small anecdata of Iranian friends with contacts in Iran agrees with me.
I am having a very hard time believing anyone would be favourable to the country currently lobbing bombs at them from halfway around the globe. Regardless of how much they dislike their current regime.
Maybe this fuels some "everyone loves America, the good guys" fantasy, but, as someone who's come from a country where the people did not like the regime, I am very skeptical foreign interference will be seen positively or even neutrally.
Or maybe this is an attempt at making the war seem somehow just and led on humanitarian and democratic principles, as opposed to what it actually is.
Let's put it this way: Have you seen someone's brain on the sidewalk lately? No? Lost a loved one / a friend / a classmate? Perhaps when people see this (as I have) they find more favorable views of the aerial bombing campaign.
For reference, it has been verfied [~] that the regime killed ~220 students just in the recent uprisings of this January. That's a whole school full of students, all under-18. And then you have to ask, why would a teenager be on the streets, given that they knew, everyone knew, that snipers and machine guns will be there? Just 5 days ago they hung an 18-year-old who was arrested this Jan. They also hung a 19-yo wrestling champion very recently. The collateral damage of these bombings, which must be denounced and is reprehensible, still has not reached these levels either in brutality and in number. [1]
[~] (my internet connection is not good enough to find the sources, I'm using dnstt in a very unreliable network)
[1] AFAIK, Around 180-190 students have died in the recent conflict. Some 160-170 was due to an erroneous airstrike by the US military on the first day of the war, and their school was within 30 meters of a military base (!). Furthermore, some of the other students who have died were the children of the assassinated regime officials.
> No? Lost a loved one / a friend / a classmate? Perhaps when people see this (as I have)
Sorry to hear that. Are you currently in Iran now? Or have contact with people in Iran?
> Are you currently in Iran now?
Tel Aviv perhaps? Wartime is the worst time to stage a revolutionary for anyone,specifically because its a induces a state of emergency, and any activities can be construed as aiding the enemy.
My anecdata is from just two families whom I am hearing from indirectly and have never met in person. The takeaways are:
1) they HATE their government more than anything in the world. They’ve seen the government killing its own people.
2) the consensus of civilians is that strikes by and large are hitting IRGC targets. They do not feel civilian targets are being targeted even though the nature of it has resulted in civilian deaths.
3) they don’t feel inclined to give trump the slightest amount of trust or good will. They just want regime change by any means.
If Israel and America can keep it in their pants and stop bombing civilians.. then yeah the government is very unpopular.
If.
Unpopularity won't overthrow a government that is willing to drown every protest in blood.
You think the French monarchy was overthrown because they didn't try hard enough?
It's blood against blood, but it's quite rare for people to rise up while there's an external enemy. Russia 1917 is the only example I can think of?
Russia had two revolutions in 1917. In the first one, pretty much everyone who mattered was unhappy with the regime. After some clashes between protesters and internal security forces, the emperor abdicated. A provisional government formed by established politicians took control, but it had to share power with workers' councils. The country became fragmented.
The provisional government was center-left, the army was mostly controlled by the right, and the workers' councils leaned towards revolutionary left. The right wanted to use the army to arrest Bolshevik leaders. The government declined, fearing a military coup. The right saw the government siding with the left and made an actual coup attempt. The government had to rely on the workers' councils to stop it. Which then emboldened the Bolsheviks to stage a revolution of their own a bit later.
But because the right was definitely not on board this time, the second revolution was only partially successful. Instead of a controlled regime change, the Bolsheviks got a civil war that lasted five years and killed millions.
And to steel man your position, when the Russian revolution happened the bolsheviks promised peace, an end to the war.
"You think the French monarchy was overthrown because they didn't try hard enough?"
Yes, actually I do. Are you aware how long the process of transformation was and how little actual violence did the royal troops mete out? Most of the blood during the French Revolution was shed among the revolutionaries themselves, later. Not by the old regime which barely resisted what was happening, being confused more than anything else.
The French monarchy was remarkably limp-wristed in its reaction to the post-1789 developments, probably because, in the beginning, not even the revolutionaries themselves expected to actually dismantle the monarchy. There was no civil war similar to Cromwell's England, nor massacres in the streets similar to modern Iran. In the largest event of that early period which could be called "a battle" (Storming of the Bastille), a grand total of 114 royalist soldiers made their last stand. Which is tiny for a country the size of France.
It took about a year for the situation to progress from the first session of the Estates General to the royal family attempted flight from Versailles, and 2,5 more years for the King to be executed. A classical case of the frog being boiled very slowly. The royal regime was indecisive and offered close to zero violent resistence.
(If you want to learn about an actual abortive French revolution which was suppressed with actual brutal violence by the royalists, look up Fronda of 1648-1653.)
In contrast, current rulers of Iran have 0 doubts about what is going to happen to them - and within minutes - if they get caught by the street crowd that hates them.
But the vector under a theocratic government constantly points towards failure. So you have one known vector thats disaster and one unknown vector that just mightbbe disaster.. if in doubt throw the dice ?
Why wont a general strike work? Not enough support? People have never had freedom, so dont understand they have 100% ability to bring down govt if they wanted?
Due to years of corruption and mismanagement, leading to high inflation and high prices most people are below poverty line and living pay check to pay check and they won’t be able to literally feed themselves
This is the thing that is so curious about the concept of the general strike/siezing the means of production.
The workers already have seized the means of production. I mean truly. Owner does not have the keys. Some manager unlocks the building for the day. Workers show up to the farm. Everything gets done every day whether the owner is there or across the globe or some dubious llc entity. The only thing the owner functionally does, is to be an address on file to send their cut of the profits. Nothing more than a specially designated furnace to burn a subset of the monthly revenue, at least in terms of their actual interaction with their business and their businesses interaction with themselves.
Socialism is as easy as people waking up, going to work as usual, and not mailing that check to the owner. And having the owner go to the police, who in turn tell them "Awe shucks." These are the only conditions for socialism in 2026. Same as they were in 1926. So tantalizingly possible if people were just on board with it and not beholden to capitalism. Propaganda is why there are a subset of workers who will continue to diligently burn revenue for the owner, and why police will ultimately make the choice to sacrifice their own lives for the petty profits of this ownership class versus consider their own position in this world.
Usually socialist revolutions fail because nobody can agree on who the new leaders should be. Workers seize control of the means of production...and then what? Who determines what they should do with it? Who do they look to for guidance? If you elect/appoint/select someone, now they are the new capitalist. If you don't, the machinery sits idle while various factions fight amongst themselves.
We saw this with Occupy Wall Street and the CHAZ in the U.S - these protests didn't fail because they were crushed, they failed because local police basically let them win and then once they won different factions had different ideas of what to do next. We also see it at the state level with the Soviet Union (where a strong dictatorship did eventually emerge - the communist revolution didn't mean everybody was equal, it just meant some people were more equal than others) and in Vietnam (which became intensely capitalist less than 15 years after the communists won.
The function of the business owner, CEO, or other executive figure is simply to be a symbol of which direction the organization needs to go. They don't do any work themselves, and they are selected for their ability to look pretty and shout platitudes that other people follow. But that symbol is needed to actually get the people moving in one direction.
>Workers seize control of the means of production...and then what? Who determines what they should do with it? Who do they look to for guidance? If you elect/appoint/select someone, now they are the new capitalist. If you don't, the machinery sits idle while various factions fight amongst themselves.
And then what is you do what you would have done at work yesterday, today. Same job description as you had previously. Your manager? Same as they were yesterday too. Everything exactly the same. Just some guy you never see is not getting their passive income. No machinery would sit idle for the same reason no machinery sat idle yesterday: people showed up to run it.
This is sort of how it worked in Cuba. Factories were nationalized and people went from working for the man to working for the public. And then the man had no government that would listen to them either. They had to go to the US government, argue that this was some great taking if left unanswered would sure happen all over the US and the rest of the world, and a hasty invasion designed by the US for these business owners to feign any political responsibility was designed, executed, and pushed back on the beachhead by the Cubans. Today the nation of Cuba remains sanctioned because of these owners from decades ago and their descendants, who still represent a significant political influence in south florida congressional districts, still feel like they were robbed by the people they were exploiting.
It would work at sufficient scale and sacrifice
My small anecdata of Iranian friends contradict yours. They are against both the US-Israeli bombings and the Islamic regime. How should be decide whose anecdata is the most trustworthy? Maybe we can use common sense instead and agree that people don't want to be bombed to death regardless of other circumstances?
> Apparently they are also (at least in some cases) dressing as women to avoid airstrikes
Didn't help anybody in Minab.
Can you provide a source for any of this that is not just American or Isreali propaganda? Because I know you can't
When a regime starts killing thousands of it's own people it's a sign of weakness, not strength. Iran's theocracy was teetering above the abyss before the U.S. started bombing them.
Now, they're probably good to go for a couple more decades. Trump is precisely the kind of threat Iranians have been warned about since the revolution. When a regime spends almost half a century preparing for something and it finally happens, it earns them considerable forgiveness. Also, nothing unites people quite like a foreign threat, especially one dumb enough to bomb schoolgirls in its opening salvo.
By scuttling the JCPOA for no apparent reason and now invading Iran right when it appeared the regime was crumbling, Trump has single-handedly reinvigorated Iran's theocracy and given them the public support they need for the final push towards nuclear weapons. That's what's so sickening about this invasion. It has acted in diametric opposition to the the policy goals it was purportedly pursuing.
Every Iranian I know support the current US/Israeli war against the Islamic Republic.
They say things like "no matter what it takes, no matter how many of us die, we must be free again, this time we will win against the terrorist regime" (paraphrased).
Are these Iranian friends and their children the ones at risk the next time the US or Israel "accidentally" double taps civilian infrastructure?
The regime will kill you/your loved ones and brand them as criminals if you protest against them or break an unreasonable law, the US and Israel will kill you and brand you as terrorists because you happened to be Iranian and in the wrong place.
My family in Tehran fear the bombs but support the US continuing to do so. I think the bombing campaign needs to end, so I disagree with them on that. Based on what little we know coming out of Tehran (we only get a few min of landline phone calls from Tehran once a week), the issue is splitting families due to the mental strain it's having. That being said, the overall feeling is very much still pro-US.
I think people outside of Iran/Iranians vastly underestimate the disdain for the Iranian regime. Go watch the movie "It was just an accident" to get a basic feel for how much they hate the regime, then amplify that tenfold.
I was living in Tehran during the 2011-2012 protests, British embassy incident etc (I was ~13 then).
I once attended a military "fair"(?) where they'd show off their equipment and had some anti-US "games", eg one involving throwing a shoe at a target with Obama or maybe Bush's face printed on it, and observed people enthusiastically taking part in it.
My impression was that while people hated and feared the regime, they still broadly shared the anti-foreign intervention stance, particularly against the US. I'm having a hard time believing that they'd still be pro-US after Trump threatened genocide against them.
If you weren’t born in that part of the world I would doubt your impressions especially at age 13
Your viewpoint is comes from a different place than that of natives or diaspora
That's a fair point
If you look at the chances, there's a far greater chance of dying in the hands of SUV mounted machine guns firing at crowds than precision bombs that mostly hit regime forces
Source for the latter occurrence?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0mgndkklvmo
Iranian here! I want to see the regime answer for its crimes. They act like an occupying force, taking the country hostage.
With that being said I don’t like/want the war. I understand and sympathize with the emotional response from my compatriots because they see the oppressors are getting the bloody beating they well deserve. But I don’t really think that the current war brings anything good for the people. I wish it did but it doesn’t look like it. I wish the regime would fall but they haven’t and we now have ~2000 more innocents dead on top of thousands that government killed in January.
I am guessing you're not a supported of Reza Pahlavi?
How in your mind do we get to the regime answering for its crimes? What is going to dislodge them? If they are not dislodged and continue to indoctrinate more people where does this go? If they have more weapons where does it go?
Is any chance that some elements within the current regime will change sides? What percent of soldiers or militia are die hard fanatics vs. people who will jump ship if there's a good chance of that "ship" sinking?
It's very easy to offer the lives of others for your goals.
"Some of you May Die, But it's a Sacrifice I am Willing to Make"
In fairness, the claim is that all the Iranians are offering their own lives for the poster's goals.
Of course, that only brings us to, "It's easy to claim others are offering their lives for your goals."
I guess it's probably best to just realize everything you see on the subject of any given war is probably propaganda. And judge the value of it through that lens.
That’s interesting; how many of them are currently in Iran or have close family in Iran?
The big question is what comes after. I don't think many disagreed with Saddam or Gaddafi but history shows that this doesn't necessarily lead to good outcomes.
It's always good to state if the Iranians you know are currently residing in Iran, for clarity.
Your paraphased quote also implies that there must be actual regime change for the deaths to be worth it (ie, no IRGC).
If only they had internet so that we could ask them!
It's scary that your 1-minute old comment got insta-downvoted.
It isn't scary it's obvious. Majority of people on HN are american. Obviously the government would want to control the narrative here.
It's easy to say that when you're a shah supporter living in the west.
Do you ever think what would happen to them in the West if they weren't vocal opponents of the Iranian state?
Did you see on the news how many people were mourning for Khomeini on the streets ?
Clearly your sample of Iranians is very biased.
I am not pro theocratic regimes, but not only does the US/Israel _not_ have the right to wage this war, but this war will only make the regime stronger.
Nothing more unifying than getting bombed, especially in martyrdom cultures.
> Every Iranian I know support the current US/Israeli war against the Islamic Republic.
That seems a little bit suspect, how many Iranians do you know? I have difficulty believing that less than around 20-30% of them support the regime. There seems to be a baseline of around that fraction of people who support the status quo.
It isn't so hard to find people who support full-on communism. Any reasonable sample should be turning up a lot of really weird opinions.
Noteworthy: It’s not that no one in Iran has no access. Actually some have internet access via “white SIM cards” (1). Reportedly 50,000 or so.
Essentially, they’ve created a two-tier system controlling who can access the internet.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_SIM_Card
> Noteworthy: It’s not that no one in Iran has no access. Actually some have internet access via “white SIM cards”
Erm, dude, you did look at the graph on the Mastodon post linked to, right ?
You see that bit where it falls off a cliff to 0% netblocks ?
"white SIM card" or not, you're not getting internet if there's no BGP routes being announced.
The only way around 0 BGP announcements would be satellite...
I suspect your "white SIM card" was a pre-war status-quo ...
That’s not the reality. Pro regime “white simcard” people have been spreading their propaganda since start of the war on twitter, instagram and elsewhere.
Which is a big reason why Iran has been able to do so well in the information war. Lies in public to appear in control and totalitarianism for their own citizens to keep them in the dark.
I'd hazard a guess that the big reason Iran is doing well in the information war is because the US/Israel combo launched an apparently unprovoked sneak attack in the middle of negotiations without thinking about the catastrophic global economic consequences it could unleash or how the attack, if executed, would help in any way. Trump still hasn't even found a crazy lie that sounds like a sane reason.
It is hard to spin that in a positive light. It looks a little unreasonable. Even without a propaganda effort by the Iranians there is a great scratching of heads in the west trying to figure out why we're embarking on this crazy crusade.
Although I hear the IRGC's lego game is on point so that is interesting.
Respectfully, I don't agree with you. There's no question that the IRGC and Iranian regime wanted to build nuclear weapons. They were planning to do this by constructing so many missile sites and launchers that no one would bother trying to stop them. Yes, the world could have done nothing and just watched, but that would have only delayed the problem and made it worse later. Just imagine what a nuclear-armed Iranian regime would do, not just to their own people but to their neighbors and the rest of the world.
Good? The US and Israel both have nukes. Iran probably should have them too, it needs the tools to defend itself and maintain its sovereignty despite the actions of these lunatics. It is clear that rains of conventional ballistic missiles and the threat of taking out the global economy isn't enough to make Israel consider negotiations.
If we wanted to worry about nuclear proliferation, negotiation was the path to take. There was a JCPOA and it seems like Khamenei Sr turned out to be serious about Iran not developing nukes in his lifetime. They've been a year or two away for more than a decade as I recall. Senseless violence isn't going to do anything to encourage disarmament - that is another part of why the Iranians have such an easy battle ahead of them in terms of propaganda.
If we're going to worry about Iran getting nukes, assassinating the anti-nuke guy and pummelling them as Trump is will not help the situation in the slightest. The only path where they survive as a state is the one where they build nuclear missiles.
I don't blame you, and you're entitled to your view. However, it's easy to sit in a comfort zone and support a totalitarian regime you never experienced living under.
Have a read: https://www.iranintl.com/en/202603102323 https://www.iranintl.com/en/202602031576
That sounds brutal, and I’m sure there were tons of abuses by security forces during the protests, but I am a bit skeptical of Iran International as a source:
https://web.archive.org/web/20260116190959/https://www.thegu...
> propaganda since start of the war on twitter, instagram and elsewhere.
That propaganda can also be spread by people who do not have "white simcards" simply by virtue of the fact they live outside Iran.
This includes, for example, the various posts made by Iranian embassies around the world.
Come on, this is a technical forum, I really shouldn't need to spell that out !
I was specifically referring to pro-regime supporters inside Iran who have free internet access thanks to "white SIM cards."
> Erm, dude, you did look at the graph on the Mastodon post linked to, right ? You see that bit where it falls off a cliff to 0% netblocks ?
Not sure if we're all looking at the same plot, but I see things hovering above zero, not exactly at zero.
We're receiving war footage from iran. They aren't completely disconnected.
> We're receiving war footage from iran. They aren't completely disconnected.
As I said, satellite is a thing.
I also don't doubt there may be some traditional land-based BGP access going on too, maybe using "borrowed" prefixes. But I do not think it is as much as people think it might be.
I also doubt there are 50,000 "white SIM" active today... I suspect that Wikipedia "unofficial figure" reflects pre-war. Most have very likely been disconnected or blocked.
Looking at it from an alternative angle, the Iranians are not stupid.
They know leaving the internet online would be beneficial for their adversaries, perhaps especially as Israel is one of them, and Israel's use of cyber is no secret.
So by killing the internet, they have an instant air-gap firewall.
Making the most of the levers they have fighting asymmetric warfare.
It’s very economically harmful to be disconnected. That’s the downside
> It’s very economically harmful to be disconnected. That’s the downside
I mean, sure. But then being at war is also economically harmful. :)
This isn't just a wealthy country like the US doing war rations. Iran's economy was already in crisis before the war, where businesses stopped selling products because their currency was fluctuating so much they couldn't set prices without losing money. It means tons of small businesses shutting down and people going hungry. Which puts even more pressure on Iran's social services which are were already in a terrible state. Now the US blockade means significantly less tax money coming into the government.
Their country is very much on the edge of chaos which is why they are brutally controlling their citizens.
> But then being at war is also economically harmful.
Especially being at war with practically all the countries around you.
I guess. But the framing here is not “clever, innovative IRGC” so much as oppressive regime fucking over it’s people to retain control.
> But the framing here is not “clever, innovative IRGC”
I am not seeking to frame anything here. Nor am I interested in getting involved in the broader areas on discussion on the subject.
The first few words of my original post made it clear "Looking at it from an alternative angle". An alternative way of wording that would be "devil's advocate".
I am just supplying a perfectly reasonable alternative perspective, I am not asking anyone to agree or disagree with it, I am just making a "food for thought" statement.
I don’t see any alternative angle though. Nobody thinks the IRGC is doing this for fun.
> I don’t see any alternative angle though
I see it, and hadn't fully considered it. Turning off the Internet has more utility than just suppressing the populaces ability to communicate, it also blackholes that compromised mail server used to track the movement of political leaders, any online drop-boxes/Telegram/Whatsapp channels used by cultivated informants/spies are now out of order.
Ehhh I suppose but I think that’s a weak point. The purpose of shutting down the internet is undeniably to prevent the people from coordinating rebellion and the help control the narrative of the war.
It’s proven time and time again that Mossad always find a way to infiltrate into even most secure Iranian network. This is mostly done to control the narrative and keep the pro regime supporters morale up.
> It’s proven time and time again that Mossad always find a way to infiltrate into even most secure Iranian network.
Sure, but why make their life easier ?
Taking your line of argument, you would also need to say "well, the US are going to bomb us anyway. We might as well just post all the GPS coordinates of sensitive sites up on Twitter".
Bombing civilian infrastructure didn't turn the Internet back on? I don't believe that.
That’s unbroken 6 weeks of no direct access for almost everyone
Of course information does still get in and out, but that is severely throttled
42 days, for anyone else not accustomed to thinking in terms of large numbers of hours.
I'm an Iranian American. There is no Internet. Only people who work for the government have limited Internet. We can't call phone numbers in Iran. They can call our phone in the US (they will get a sms or call shortly after ending the call saying that we the government was monitoring the conversation) and these calls are very expensive for them. This situation is not sustainable. There are many businesses in Iran that rely on Internet. Millions of Iranian live outside of the country and haven't been able to talk to their family and friends. Not sure how long will this internet blockade will continue.
It isn't an outage it is an intentional block. Iranian ISPs actually stop announcing all IPv4 prefixes into BGP.
Is Iranian infra centralized on the similar fashion like in Belarus?
It's way more centralized.
Iran has been rolling out the National Information Network (essentially a whitelisted internet) since the Green Revolution [0] back in 2009-12. Iran has a surprisingly robust domestic ecosystem of hyperscalers [1] and telco infra [6][7] built out over the past decade with limited outside involvement and a severe sanctions regime, and have even started exporting Iranian IT services to Uganda [2], Kenya [3], South Africa [4], Venezuela [5], Russia [8], and China [8].
Iran also uses a two-tier SIM card system - ideologically vetted individuals get a "white" SIM which gives full ingress/egress outside the NIN and others have a normal SIM that can be blacklisted from egressing outside the NIN.
Notice how Iranian websites have a page saying "Transferring to Website" - that's the gateway page for the NIN.
[0] - https://citizenlab.ca/irans-national-information-network/
[1] - https://www.arvancloud.ir/fa
[2] - https://tvbrics.com/en/news/uganda-and-iran-to-boost-ict-co-...
[3] - https://mail.techreviewafrica.com/public/news/1361/kenya-and...
[4] - https://www.samenacouncil.org/samena_daily_news?news=64545
[5] - https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2025/08/06/752585/Iranian-fibe...
[6] - https://zmc.co.ir/
[7] - https://www.rayafiber.com/en/home
[8] - https://www.kharon.com/brief/iran-sanctions-maximum-pressure...
Is there a reasonable workaround for this?
Starlink or any other sort of satellite internet, but these are relatively easy to jam and detect. There are ways to minimize that but obviously not available to civilians.
The issue is, if you control the Network DMZ, it's extremely difficult to bypass. In Xinjiang and Tibet (which has a similar setup) they used to use smuggled Kazakh, Nepali, and Indian SIM cards but that was cracked down.
A lot of the info from inside Iran that is not regime connected is coming from areas in Iranian Kurdistan where an Iraqi SIM could be smuggled or accessed somewhat easier than other areas.
That’s interesting. Could they somehow do peer-to-peer anonymously until the packages reach the border?
P2P is only as safe as it's nodes. Iran has around 1 million IRGC, Army, and Foreign Shia Militia deployed in a country of around 90 million.
Mind you that organization has been severely degraded, but that only scares civilians even more as functionaries are much more trigger happy (rape [0], summary execution [1], torture [2] are already the norm).
That makes covert P2P much harder.
[0] - https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/12/iran-security...
[1] - https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/01/iran-authorit...
[2] - https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde13/0673/2026/en/
How does internet shutdown affect bitcoin mining in Iran?
Iran has been under export controls for dual use technology for decades. Getting the amount of GPUs needed to conduct bitcoin mining was nigh impossible.
Bitcoin and Crypto as a shadow financial system was enabled by Qatar and the UAE where there are dedicated deal desks that work on ExAmerica trades.
This is why the IRGC striking Qatar and the UAE was such a bad move. Even companies in the PRC try to follow American sanctions regimes because trade with Japan+SK+ASEAN is higher priority than trade with Russia or Iran.
This is the sort of thing the Arsenal of Democracy should be building against. We should be deploying tools to give people voices in hostile places, to get messages out, to collaborate.
See age verification, anti-pornography, and anti-VPN laws popping up like weeds all over democratic countries. Governments everywhere are pushing for more control over who and how people communicate over the Internet, so they can mute certain voices without shutting down the internet like Iran when they deem it necessary
and during that time those people waging war against Iran, murdered one Irainian child every 30 minuits, not counting the other children murdered by the genociders in Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine.
predictable down vote
but listen up, Iran has made a tactical move in this, but the implication is that they, like Afganistan are consideriing a strategic move, and many others are watching.
more down voting, which is an excellent demonstration of how the internet is used by those that "own" it
- "Everyone is crazy and the way you can tell they are crazy is to see if they tell me I am wrong".
- "You are wrong! Everyone is not crazy"
- "You see? I told you. Everyone is crazy"
you made me smile, because everyone IS crazy, but many of them are still decent and kind and can see there own crazy enough to make room in the world for others crazyness. and then there are the those who espouse the madness of a genocidal cultic insanity, or perhaps even more distubing, play a cunning game of distraction and apology for murder and hate