Iran: the collapse

According to the following Reuters article from 2020, there are tons of Israel and US flags in Iran. Why?

Business is booming at Iran's largest flag factory which makes U.S., British and Israeli flags for Iranian protesters to burn.
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Supposedly things have changed. The following picture is said to be from an Iranian mosque. Hint, the shoes aren't on those flags! That's disobedience to the regime!



So it's not a hard leap to think

1) Israel flags were mass produced for burning and stepping on
2) It's no longer cool to do 1.
3) Let's get more radical and take Israel flags and wave them.

 

This is going to hit China and.. well, I guess just China. I don't recall importing anything from Malaysia anytime recently.

 

Iran is Persian and Shiite, Palestinians are Arab and Sunni.

I’ve always felt it was the regime that hated Israel and made it an enemy, because why would Iran care more about Palestine- Israel than, say Egypt? I’ve never thought the people writ large care much.

 

We do know that Israel likes to destroy Mosques. They have destroyed more Mosques in the last few years more than any geopolitical entity on the planet. We also know that the Mossad has agents embedded within Iran from the 12 day war, as well as the admission of American officials. So if Mosques are being destroyed in Iran right now deductive reasoning would have the claim that the most likely answer is that they are the most likely to be destroying Mosques in Iran right now because A) they destroy Mosques and B) they are involved in the protests right now in the country where Mosques are being destroyed. You definitely can't claim that they are destroying Mosques in Iran. But you can claim they are the most logical culprit absent more information, which we don't have right now.

I saw a video of someone completely covered and masked burning an American flag during protests in Minneapolis last week and people followed him and he refused to talk to protestors and everyone concluded he was most likely a Fed. We know that Feds get involved in these things all the time. Feds were present at January 6th for example.

Labeling logic as hate as always is strange and weird.

 

******** off Nazi

 

I didn't say they were destroying Mosques in Iran. Jeez. Learn nuance. I said they have destroyed Mosques in the past few years, moreso than any other entity. And that they have a presence in Iran. I also said, you can't prove they've been destroying Mosques in Iran.

I understand that not everyone is going to approach things from a logic based point of view. I wasn't making any claims at all. I was just saying things that we can prove and things that we can't prove.

Is there another geopolitical entity that has destroyed more mosques in the world in the last few years than Israel? No.

That's a fact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destr...during_the_Israeli_invasion_of_the_Gaza_Strip

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Hilarion_Monastery

^^^^^read a little

The Nazis did deliberately destroy a lot of buildings in Poland to destroy Polish heritage if you are looking for a precedent.

 

Interesting debate and discussion. Im not sure I would be the right person to ask, but I will give it an honest shot and I will try to answer this as objectively as I can. Im a strictly secular person, born and brought up in Scandinavia/Sweden (a very agnostic/atheist society), and I would say that most Iranians living in the West distance themselves from religion and many (probably an overwhelming majority) hold a very antagonistic view not only of the IRI, but of Islam alltogether. This amplifies with second and third generations Iranians.

However, if I were to look at this objectively I can not with a straight face say that diaspora Iranians, many of which were rich and upper class that benefited from the Shah's rule and fled the revolution, are representative of the Iranian society at large.
A large portion does rever Shi'ite culture and it is indeed for them deeply embedded in Iranian culture. This is more pronounced in the rural areas of Iran. Especially when it comes to certain aspects or "ethos", for the lack of a better word, such as martyrdom and sacrifice.
There is a portion of the protests that have turned into aimless violence, which have included the killing of officers, health care workers, ambulance workers on top of the burning of mosques and other religious symbols. I would say they constitute the fringe of society and dont have a large support base inside Iran.

 

Unless Mossad found a way to infiltrate an agent into being the President's helicopter pilot and put him on a suicide mission, I'm waving the bullshit flag on that.

 

He argues an inside job due to internal power struggle, not Mossad

 

Ugh -- sorry. I need to read more closely. I see you said IRGC. That said, I still think it was just bad piloting. YMMV.

 

Well... I guess the thought provocative assumption that the protests were infiltrated are no longer a "conspiracy theory"

 

the 2009 post-election protests were huge per the videos coming out of Iran at the time

yet the Basij were able to use violence and terror to put the genie back in the bottle rather effectively

at that time the protestors appeared to be more affluent, north Tehran, middle class, etc.

the Basij seemed to be lower class and not particularly cosmopolitan and didn't seem to mind their task

I curious how much things have changed in the intervening years

 

Based on my personal experience with the diaspora from the Balkan country my family left, I wouldn't be surprised if the Iranian diaspora is out of touch with how things really are in the old country. The idea of Iran held by a middle-aged Iranian immigrant living in Toronto is not going to have a lot in common with a 20-year old Iranian living under that repressive regime.

And there are several examples I can think of where a people became alienated from their historic religious institutions due to corruption and abuse by those institutions. Ireland, for example.

 

Logically, it doesn't really make sense for the hypothetical Mossad instigators in Iran to burn down Iranian mosques. Doing that is likely to turn some Iranians against the protestors, which wouldn't serve Israel's interests.

If you're going to espouse a conspiracy theory, you at least need to explain how the actions of the theoretical conspirators benefits their particular interests.

 

We're all speculating here since none of us are on the ground - so saying all those acts are 100% done by angry locals is just as speculative.

That being said, I'd like to speculate that the dramatic incidents like mosque burnings (including Quran) can be used to shape a narrative abroad, regardless of who actually caused them.

When images circulate that make the regime look like it’s collapsing from within, that can build international acceptance for harsher policies, intervention, or even war. That’s how foreign‑policy narratives often work: visuals of chaos create the sense that a government is losing control, which makes outside pressure seem more justified.

Maybe none of this is about the Iranian people but about convincing Americans to support an all out war on Iran.

 

I'm not claiming the mosque-burning is 100% indigenous. I don't have any evidence who's behind it, and neither do you. But defaulting to it being the fault of Israel says something about you. It's almost like a parody of an anti-Semite.

And Americans mostly don't know what to make of what's going on in Iran. There's very few of them who could come up with a theory as to what mosque-burnings indicated, one way or the other. You're really reaching here.

 

That's kind of my point - the objective is domestic public opinion to support a military intervention in Iran

 

That's what I just said - can't you read?

Really? You'll have to do better than this if you're going to try to paint me as anti-semite. I won't bother entertaining this with someone who can't differentiate "Israeli government" from "Judaism" - keep being a drone lacking critical thinking parroting a tired narrative that no longer works

Consider me shocked

 

You have no evidence that these mosque burnings are anything other than what they appear to be. Again, the fact that you default to believing it's the Jews who must be responsible is very telling about how your fevered mind works. There isn't a Mossad agent behind every corner, plotting against you.

 

10000 miles away but not in Minnesota

 

Your elites don't give a crap about you. More Americans needs to wake up.