Fardad Farahzad | فرداد فرحزاد on X - "The Iranian uprising has become an awkward dilemma for much of the left. It is openly pro-Western, unapologetically secular, and explicitly hostile to political Islam. There is no favored “exotic victim” to romanticize, no anti-American slogans to recycle, no colonial guilt to put to use and for that very reason, exposes how selective so many proclaimed solidarities really are."
Sam Allam on X - "Of course. Imagine a free Iran uniting with Israel. That would be the worst nightmare for social justice activists, leftists and Islamists all over the world. A free Iran would cut off their revenue streams and destroy decades of their long-term investment"
Easy. They just blame Israel and the West
Meme - "Two Iranian leftist students celebrating Khomeini's takeover in 1979. Girl to the right was eventually executed by the IR. Girl to the left escaped to Sweden. Tens of thousands of leftists were executed by Islamists after Khomeini came into power."
The CIA Didn’t Create the Islamic Republic - "In much of the popular telling, modern Iranian history follows a simple arc. Iran had a democracy. In 1953, the CIA and British intelligence overthrew it by removing Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq. The Shah returned, ruled as a Western-backed autocrat, and a quarter-century later the Islamic Republic emerged as the delayed consequence of that original sin. This story is compelling. It offers moral clarity, a clear villain, and a straight line from foreign intervention to theocratic rule. But it is also incomplete. The habit of compressing this history into a morality tale—foreign intervention destroys democracy, which later returns as religious extremism—is emotionally satisfying but analytically false. Iran’s modern tragedy is not that its politics were hijacked once. It is that they never stabilized at all. Iran did not move from democracy to theocracy because of a single covert operation. What unfolded between Mosaddeq’s rise in the early 1950s and Ayatollah Khomeini’s return in 1979 was a far longer process marked by weak institutions, unresolved political tensions, and repeated failures by Iran’s own elites—liberal, royalist, leftist, and clerical alike—to build a system resilient enough to endure crisis. Understanding that history requires first understanding why Mosaddeq occupies such a central place in Iran’s political memory. Mosaddeq came to office in 1951 through constitutional means, backed by a broad nationalist coalition demanding Iranian control over its oil... Mosaddeq governed a political system that was weak long before foreign intelligence services intervened... Under mounting pressure, Mosaddeq narrowed rather than broadened his coalition. He sought emergency powers, attempted to bring the armed forces under his direct authority, and dissolved parliament through a referendum marred by boycotts, intimidation, and implausible margins. By mid-1953, Iran no longer had a functioning legislature. A leader committed to constitutionalism was governing largely by decree. Support fractured. Sections of the middle class drifted away. Senior military officers grew hostile. Clerical allies recoiled, worried about disorder and the growing influence of the communist Tudeh Party. Ayatollah Abul-Qasim Kashani, once a key partner in the nationalist movement, openly broke with Mosaddeq. These developments were not the product of foreign manipulation alone—they reflected a domestic political breakdown. Foreign intelligence services did intervene. Britain and the United States authorized a covert effort to remove Mosaddeq, and that fact is not in dispute. What is often overstated is how decisive that intervention proved to be. The initial attempt failed. Mosaddeq rejected the Shah’s dismissal decree, arrested its couriers, and the Shah fled the country. Both Washington and London believed the operation had unraveled. What followed succeeded not because foreigners controlled events, but because Iranians took charge. Large crowds filled the streets. Clerics mobilized openly. Military units switched sides. State authority shifted rapidly. Mosaddeq surrendered. Contemporary U.S. embassy and CIA cables describe the speed and scale of these developments as unexpected, driven less by foreign direction than by loyalty to the monarchy, fear of instability, and exhaustion with political deadlock. Mosaddeq was a tragic figure, but not a mythic one. He devoted his life to constitutional politics, yet under strain, he weakened the very institutions meant to sustain it. His removal was shaped by foreign interference, yes, but it was accelerated by domestic divisions that had already hollowed out the system. The return of Mohammad Reza Shah in 1953 did not immediately produce the authoritarian state later associated with the 1970s. The Shah came back cautious and constrained. For several years, Iran retained political parties, parliamentary life, and a degree of pluralism unusual in the region. This period contained genuine possibilities. Those possibilities were gradually squandered... The Shah’s White Revolution reshaped Iranian society. Literacy increased, infrastructure expanded, and women entered education and the workforce in unprecedented numbers. These changes were real and significant. But they were not matched by meaningful political representation. Parliament lost credibility, courts lacked independence, and dissent was managed by security services rather than processed through politics. Modernization without representation breeds expectations it cannot satisfy. A younger, educated society encountered progress without voice and order without legitimacy. By the late 1970s, Iran had no trusted mechanism to negotiate conflict. When crisis came, it could only be resolved in the streets. The Islamic Revolution did not overthrow a functioning democracy; it replaced a system that had lost the confidence of nearly every constituency. Liberals lacked organization, the left lacked trust, nationalists lacked unity, and the monarchy lacked credibility. Only the clergy possessed nationwide networks, disciplined leadership, and a moral language that resonated across classes. They did not seize a stable order. They stepped into a vacuum. From Mosaddeq to Khomeini, Iran’s trajectory was not a straight descent from democracy into dictatorship triggered by a single foreign plot. It was a prolonged failure to institutionalize governance, manage compromise, and ground legitimacy beyond personalities. Foreign interference mattered, and it left lasting damage. But it did not determine everything that followed. Domestic actors mattered more—and none succeeded in building a political system strong enough to endure repeated crises. Reducing this history to the CIA or foreign interference may be emotionally satisfying, but it badly distorts and oversimplifies reality. External interference mattered, yet it did not erase Iranian agency or determine the outcome. What failed, again and again, were domestic institutions and political actors unable—or unwilling—to build a system capable of surviving pressure, defeat, and compromise. The Islamic Republic was not imposed from abroad; it emerged from a vacuum created at home. Treating foreign powers as the sole authors of Iran’s fate turns structural failure into conspiracy, and prevents any serious reckoning with how revolutions are actually born."
Why has the BBC ignored the Iranian uprisings? - spiked - "Christmas coincided with the outbreak of the most serious anti-regime protests in Iran since the women’s rights protests of 2022. Insofar as reports proliferating on social media can be trusted, the current unrest has since eclipsed those protests by far, both in their geographical spread – reaching pretty much every city in Iran – and in the sweeping political demands of the protesters. These include an end to the rule of the ayatollahs and growing calls to restore the monarchy that was removed by the Islamic Revolution of 1979. There are reliable reports of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard being deployed to break up demonstrations in their own inimitable way, of local government offices being broken into, and of several protesters being shot. It has also been reported that police have, in some instances, retreated in the face of superior numbers of demonstrators. More wishful reports should probably be treated with scepticism until proved authentic. We do not yet know if it’s true that mullahs have been discarding their turbans in order to blend into the population, or if the ayatollahs are retreating to their fastness in Qom. Or if Tehran airport has been closed, either to receive emergency defence shipments, from Moscow and elsewhere, or perhaps to facilitate the evacuation of the supreme leader and his coterie. That the situation is confused, however, is no reason not to report events that are not only dramatic and unusual at the very least, but could also potentially be of global importance. Trying to clear up confusion is, in any case, part of the media’s job. Yet the mainstream media in the West, especially in the UK, and most conspicuously the BBC, with the international reach it so prides itself on, have so far been largely missing in action where coverage of the Iranian protests is concerned. Let me reiterate: it is entirely reasonable for news outlets in general, and for the BBC in particular, to take care in their coverage of unrest abroad, lest it be interpreted as taking sides. It should of course be wary of either becoming an unwitting participant in the protests and / or acting as a mouthpiece for a government with its own interests. But a careful approach need not, indeed should not, preclude efforts at objective reporting: the sort of reporting, in fact, on which many media outlets – in prime position, the BBC – have built their reputations. A week on from the start of the demonstrations, there remains a yawning gap where reporting on Iranian developments might be. The gap was first noted on social media, at a time when it was still just about possible to think that the protests were a transient phenomenon that should not be exaggerated and might soon peter out. It might then have been argued that excessive focus on the protests could be interpreted as incitement, and that those Western media and governments who might welcome regime change in Iran would be well advised to keep their hopes to themselves. As the days went by, the protests escalated, and the son of the late shah entered the fray on social media. The gap where mainstream-media coverage of Iran should have been only became more glaring. The question is why... The BBC and other outlets have broadcast copious reports about Gaza, including practically graphic accounts of bombed hospitals, hungry children and heroic aid workers, many of them based on footage filmed by local people or citizen journalists. By all means point out that foreign journalists are barred, but in this day and age, there are fallbacks. And there is lots of footage from Iran on social media, but it is for the most part not being transferred into the mainstream media. The BBC, of all news providers, has less reason to plead lack of first-hand information than most. It has a Persian Service, which has been a thorn in the side of the Iranian authorities to the point where its reporters and their families in Iran have been threatened. But the existence of BBC Persian should place its London-based operation in an incomparable position at least to gather and verify information coming from Iran, even if its reporters and sources must remain anonymous for security reasons. What has been heard from BBC Persian, however, since the protests began?... the risk that, say, the Arab Spring might have failed was never an excuse for not reporting what was going on. Outlets don’t usually place an embargo on certain outbreaks of unrest in case they come to nothing. That is not how news works."
בר שם-אור Bar Shem-Ur on X - "Take a look at CNN’s headlines. The Israeli military has assessed that at least 5,000 people were killed by the Iranian regime and shared that information with U.S. officials. Iranian opposition outlets, such as Iran International, report that the death toll may be as high as 12,000. So why does CNN choose to highlight the much lower estimate from a single human-rights organisation and then add that the numbers can’t be independently verified? When it came to Gaza, CNN had no problem amplifying inflated casualty figures from openly pro-Palestinian groups and even from Hamas sources themselves, often without emphasizing that those numbers also couldn’t be independently verified."
Brian Rosenwald on X - "Eh. The media not covering this has to do a) a lack of reporters in an authoritarian country, b) the inability to gauge if this is just another wave of protests or whether the regime could topple. And c) most Western outlets don’t have a lot of knowledge of Iran either. And this
Isn’t new fwiw. The Western media and the U.S. government was caught off guard when the Shah fell too."
ثنا ابراهیمی | Sana Ebrahimi on X - "So which is it, Brian? Was Gaza covered 24/7 because Western media conveniently had reporters on the ground? (No they did not) Or because editors "understand" Gaza but somehow can't grasp Iran? (Majority of Americans don't know that "Palestine" has never existed as a country) Then explain this: during the 12-day Israel–Iran war, BBC, NYT, CNN ran nonstop coverage. Daily updates. Endless analysis. No confusion, no hesitation, no "lack of access" or "lack of understanding" excuses. What changed? Iran did not suddenly become harder to understand. Reporters did not suddenly disappear. The only thing missing now is Israel's direct involvement. And there's the pattern. When Israel is in the frame, legacy media locks in. When Iranians are being killed in the streets of Tehran, silence. This is intentional. Legacy media is not failing by accident, it is choosing what matters."
Eylon Levy on X - "Despite the absence of foreign journalists in Gaza, and therefore dependence on local Hamas fixers, Gaza was Channel 4’s #1 story for two years. Now, magically, Channel 4 says it can’t report on Iran’s uprising."
Sarah Ettedgui on X - "Interesting that when it comes to Iran, legacy media suddenly discovers the limits of reporting without access. Blackouts. Verification problems. Responsible restraint. Yet Gaza has been reported on, in granular and emotive detail, for years without independent access, without free press on the ground, and often relying on figures and narratives produced by Hamas, a listed terrorist organization that exercises total control over Gaza, suppresses independent journalism, and has every incentive to weaponize information… So perhaps the issue is not access, but selectivity?"
Eylon Levy on X - "Act 1: Channel 4 reporter explains they can’t cover Iran because there are no foreign journalists on the ground.
Act 2: Academic points out the obvious hypocrisy, because they obsessively covered Gaza.
Act 3: She blocks him."
The BBC’s meagre coverage of Iran protests has been disgraceful - "It has been the silence which has been so telling as hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets in Iran to oppose one of the most dangerous and deadly dictatorships on earth. While brave Iranian people have come out to revolt against the misogynistic theocratic leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – leading to dozens being killed and thousands being arrested – the usual suspects who will protest every time an IDF soldier or a Trump official sneezes, have kept schtum. Greta Thunberg hasn’t mentioned getting on a boat. Jeremy Corbyn has instead been tweeting manically about America’s “invasion” of Venezuela. Perhaps they are confused. The Iranians shouting “Azadi, azadi, azadi”, translating as “Freedom, freedom, freedom”, want an end to the terrorist-supporting theocracy they appear to adore and want the Western freedoms they abhor. It seems like they cannot understand these people rejecting jihadist Islam. The demonstrators of Iran, who have had more than their fill of Islamic “decolonisation”, upend this entire worldview. Mirroring the silence of our keffiyeh-wearing faux-freedom fighters is the sad fact that it took the BBC over a week to put the story of the new revolution in Iran onto its home page – the publicly funded, most-read news website in the country. It is, thankfully, there now. Writing on X about why the BBC has barely mentioned this uprising that has been going on for nearly two weeks, the BBC’s veteran World Affairs editor John Simpson put this down to how it was “very difficult to get correspondents in. The BBC is banned, and so are most others. It’s a bit like Gaza.” This, of course, prompted much hilarity as the BBC quoted every cough and spit from Hamas when it came to its Gaza reporting. As Michael Prescott’s memo, first reported in The Telegraph, found: “Claims against Israel seem to be raced to air or online without adequate checks, evidencing either carelessness or a desire always to believe the worst about Israel.”... This is about priorities and mindset: three months after there was a ceasefire between Gaza and Israel, the “tab” for the Israel-Gaza war is third on the BBC website – ahead of news from the UK, the War in Ukraine, the Rest of the World and Politics... Iran is sometimes called “the head of the Octopus” because of all the places where it has tentacles in its open war against the West since Ayatollah Khomeini took control in 1979. It links the Israel-Palestine conflict, via its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah; to Venezuela, through which it gets both drugs and weapons to fund its terrorist groups; to the attacks on British shipping by another proxy, the Houthis; to the Russian war on Ukraine, which it supplies weapons for. Iran also has a big impact on Britain itself: last July, Parliament’s intelligence and security committee warned that the UK faced a “rising” and unpredictable threat from the country. Last year, security minister Dan Jarvis revealed that since 2022 MI5 have uncovered at least 20 assassination plots linked to the Islamic Republic against British nationals and residents. There have been multiple stories about pro-Iranian camps radicalising children in the UK. Iran, which has killed young women for showing too much hair, has shown us the danger of extremist Islam and has attempted to export it here. Some might say it has already succeeded."
Meme - "The way John Simpson is telling on himself and the BBC here."
John Simpson: "Very dificult for news organisations to get correspondents in, The BBC is banned, and so are most others. It's a bit like Gaza. So"
John Biggins: "Yet scores of videos are appearing on social media. Does the BBC?Guardian et al not look at social media?"
John Simpson: "Social media videos have to be carefully checked before reputable news organisations can use them."
"So basically the BBC needs some Hamas Gazans in Iran, then they would have reliable and entirely credible source of information."
A left winger tried to claim that the media had not ignored the story, even though so many journalists were defending the media ignoring the story
AP on X - "Barely minutes after the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital bombing in Gaza, major papers had already “verified” information claiming Israel was responsible and detailing casualty numbers, even though no one actually knew anything at the time. It was later revealed that the explosion was caused by a failed Hamas rocket and that there were not many casualties. Meanwhile, it has been over a week of protests in Iran. We know that many people are being killed, yet we still do not know how many or how severe the situation truly is. How is it that The New York Times and others, who seemed to know everything instantly in Gaza, suddenly do not know anything now? And why did they choose to invent details about Israel, but refrain from doing so when it comes to Iran?"
The Persian Jewess on X - "Today a bunch of celebrities who have deliberately remained silent on the protests in Iran will show up to the Golden Globes wearing a red pin in solidarity with Radical Islamist terrorists and call it “human rights activism.” Unreal."
Why Am I Seeing Free Palestine Groups Now Attacking Iranian Freedom Groups? : r/NoStupidQuestions - "I would have thought that the FP groups would have been there to back the Iranians. Some have said that the Mullahs have supported the Palestinians against Israel, so the FP groups are afraid of losing them."
"Iranian regime falling helps Israel, the US, and the west in general. And a large part of the hardcore "pro-palestine" groups are either anti-western leftists, islamists, or hyper palestinian nationalists."
Visegrád 24 on X - "An elderly Iranian woman screams after being hit in the face with a projectile fired by the regime’s security forces: “I’m not afraid! I’m not afraid! I’ve been dead for 47 years!”"
Whale Psychiatrist ™️ on X - "Iranians right now are actually doing what white American liberal women think they are doing by blocking ICE vehicles with their Subarus"
Chris Freiman on X - "Many on the left have suddenly developed a very conservative attitude about the dangers of radical disruptions of the established order in the case of Iran (and Iran only)"
ثنا ابراهیمی | Sana Ebrahimi on X - "The left has a long history of romanticizing dictatorships. They don't oppose dictators, they want their side holding it. During the Islamic Revolution, Marxists (MEK) and Communists (Tudeh Party) didn’t resist the Islamists, they collaborated with them. Different slogans, same addiction to authoritarian control. They don’t hate tyranny. They just want to manage it, and live off other people’s labor while doing so."
Josh Rainer on X - "Every time you hear someone say Mosaddegh was “democratically elected” you know you’re listening to bullshit. There were no elections for prime minister in Iran. The Shah had sole power to appoint/dismiss them at his will. This is communist propaganda. It’s why they always talk about 1953 but never 1979 and Carter. “CIA coup” Operation Ajax is wildly overstated. US/UK had minimal impact. This was Iran managing their own affairs. Mosaddegh staged his own coup against the Shah, gave himself emergency powers and dissolved parliament with a rigged referendum. His support was mainly from the Soviet-backed communist Tudeh party. The Shah constitutionally dismissed him. Operation AJAX failed. CIA even conceded defeat in memos and Kermit Roosevelt exaggerated his rogue role for credit. 1979 Carter attacked the Shah for human rights violations for suppressing communist-Islamist riots and sanctioned him with arms embargoes that destabilized Iran. He legitimized Khomeini through diplomatic communication and discouraged the military from defending the Shah. Iran went from ally to enemy, and we had to rely on Israel instead. Mosaddegh was my great-grandmother’s first cousin and she considered him a stain on the family name for being associated with communists."
Bad Hombre on X - "Crazy how the same people now saying "let Nigerian Christians fight ISIS alone," "let Venezuelans remove Maduro alone," and "let Iranians topple their regime alone" demanded we give Ukraine everything—including US troops—for 4 straight years. Only difference is that now Trump is President."
Amjad Taha أمجد طه on X - "The British Prime Minister @Keir_Starmer hasn’t mentioned the Iranian uprising even once. He’s spoken about Gaza 105 times, Syria 43 times, and Yemen 15 times. Zero words on the Muslim Brotherhood operating in the UK. Keir Starmer sounds less like the British Prime Minister and more like the Imam of Foreign Affairs. #Iran #IranProtests #IranMassacre"
Khaled Hassan on X - "This ia how the UAE and its people now see Britain, a liability to the world. Imam Keir Starmer apparently didn't tweet at all about the Iran people's struggle for freedom. Not even a couple of words of encouragement. As I have been saying for years, Labour is a national security threat and it has been for years."
Melissa Chen on X - "Oh thank heavens for the Iranian people that the EU is “concerned” and are “monitoring the situation” while sipping espresso at Brussels HQ. Whatever would they do without the Eurocrats?! Please spare us the meaningless drivel and performative nonsense that you "stand with" the people of Iran. Who the hell cares where you stand when there’s no action? What concrete measures have been taken to help the Iranians being butchered on the streets of Tehran? Hell, where's the outright condemnation of the Iranian regime without the weasel words? Instead, we get this vapid platitude parade and limp-wristed virtue signaling where "standing with" means… tweeting empty words. Maybe if the EU was less afraid of offending tyrants, the Iranian people wouldn’t even be in this situation. Von der Leyen and her ilk love to posture as champions of human rights abroad while cracking down on dissent at home - censoring critics, flooding borders with unchecked migration, and eroding freedoms under the guise of "unity." Hypocrisy much? If Europe truly gave a damn, it'd stop "monitoring" and start mobilizing - cut off the IRGC's funding, arm the protesters if needed, or at least label the regime's thugs as terrorists without hedging. But no, that might require actual courage, and Brussels has none to spare."
Hen Mazzig on X - "It took 15 days + hundreds of Iranian deaths for UN chief António Guterres to make a statement about the protests. It took 1 day for him to publicly mourn Iran’s former president after a helicopter crash. We know where Guterres stands. It’s clearly not with the Iranian people."
Dr. Maalouf on X - "“Virgin female prisoners should be raped before execution so that they do not go to heaven.” -Ayatollah Khomeini (founding leader of the Islamic regime in Iran). Just a reminder that this is the evil that Iranians are fighting."
Stephen R. C. Hicks on X - "Correction: AK did not say this, though he did set the stage for it:
* He did issue a fatwa authorizing mass executions.
* Some of his followers asked about women, particularly those who were virgins: Should they too be executed? The question arose because in some rulings in Islamic tradition exceptions were made for apostate women and virgins who were candidates for execution.
* So AK modified the mass-executions fatwa, reportedly saying something like “Virgins are not to be executed.”
* His more execution-enthusiastic followers found a loophole. They would marry the women, have sex with them, and then execute them."
Kamel Amin Thaabet on X - "As millions of Iranians stand up for their freedom, the silence of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Ben Rhodes, Wendy Sherman, Robert Malley, Jen Psaki and all the rest is deafening"
Vladislav Davidzon on X - "The foreign policy Obama wing of the Democratic party did everything possible to normalize relations and make peace with the Ayatollahs - so now that the Iranian people are about to bring down the regime they are keeping quiet - at least some of them might have private pangs of shame.
The security architecture that Obama admin attempted to build in Middle East was based on creating parity between Suuni and Shia blocs in order that Americans could pull out of the region. This plan was based on many delusional assumptions and required the normalization of the ayatollah regime - what is happening now is not what they wanted to say the least"
Nicole Lampert on X - "In the last four days our Middle East Minister @HFalconerMP has tweeted or retweeted four times about Gaza - including this from a charity associated with the Muslim Brotherhood (Hamas is Muslim Brotherhood) - and there has been NOTHING about Iran. WTF is going on?"
Alexander Bard on X - "The reason why Leftists sympathize with Palestinians and ignore Iranians is because the Palestinians play the victimhood card and the Iranians refuse to. And the victimhood cult is all The Left ever knew. Also, the Iranians look a lot better. The Left only likes ugly as fuck."
David Knight Legg on X - "For all the college students: this is what real anti-fascism looks like. One of the most consequential protests in a generation: Unarmed Iranian people are risking everything to fight the secret police and rid themselves of 45 years of Islamo-fascist ayatollahs and their sick reign of terror."
