The Pahlavists expect Bibi and his lapdog (🇺🇲) to "free" Iran in a way that would set it up to be a regional power that would not only counterbalance, but dwarf Israel's power. Even a non-nuclear Iran with a secular government would harangue Israel. They don't understand this is never going to happen

owned.

Thank you!

She says many people inside Iran have gov-issued "white SIMs" which can bypass the internet blockage, says lots of what we hear is propaganda. I'm not so sure, but who am I to argue?

Anyway, I'm not active on here ever but I do love a stream of consciousness post, thanks for reading!

She's a regular middle class person. A teacher. I know her through a university classmate, her cousin (who was sent back after Trump's H1-B be). She is perhaps the last person to respect and admire the US for what we pretend to be, and it makes me sick knowing we'll betray them.

She insists the supporters of the IR are an extreme minority, with many Basij being paid stipends to turn out and demonstrate.

Fwiw, I think the IR has to go. I also don't think the US/Israel deserve the honor of liberating the Iranian people, and I don't trust them to do it right.

My fiancee in Iran got a VPN today, we hadn't spoken since March 5th. According to her, lots of Iranians are still welcoming the strikes, even in Tehran.

She's in Arak, home to the heavy water reactor, bombed by Israel in June 2025 and again this week.

0.0044! This vindicates a recent trip to choose paint colors.

US/Israeli strikes have reportedly hit not just Tehran but alao Qom and Kermanshah

Khameini supposedly sheltered in the biggest mall in Tehran last time they bombed - I'm slightly skeptical, if there's anyone who's proved willing to bomb civilian areas...

A pro-regime demonstrator holds a huge kebab prop with two B-2 bombers on a skewer

B-2 kebab made by pro-regime demonstrator in Iran

also ft. Minecraft(?) piggy Trump

In the same way, regional powers in the Middle East and Levant prefer an Iran who is on her knees, sanctioned, with 90M citizens in chains. Israel, Saudi, and Turkey.

Israel, ofc, being an outpost of the western world whose goal is to prevent the rise of a regional power like Iran.

It was the same story after WWI when the Allies refused to carve out Greek-majority areas in Anatolia for the new country of Greece. The fear was that Greece would become too powerful, a rival for waning German powers in the Balkans and an obstacle to Russia by controlling the Bosporous.

The world owes Greece a debt in this same way. So what did they do in the 19th C when Greeks liberated themselves from the Turks?

Britain, France, and Russia sat a German on the throne of what the revolution that preceded it called a "Republic" and called it a day: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom...

The Iranians deserve to be free of the IR regime, but really the whole world owes a cultural, diplomatic, philosophical, religious debt to the Iranian nation.

He and his two bit cronies don't deserve to be their best shot for the foreign intervention they apparently need to topple the ayatollah.

Whatever comes from this, I hope the Iranian people finally get the peace, freedom, and prosperity they so sorely deserve.

I wish the US hadn't sunk its reputation in and amongst NATO and that European powers could be involved instead of what will probably be a US-Israeli operation - Dumb and Dumber, cruel and crueler.

I've found Iran to be a deeply rich, sophisticated nation full of poetic, sincere, and hopeful people. These are people optimistic about the world and the future in a way that I thought was extinct. I despise the prospect of the Trump regime and its bottom feeders putting their hands on Iran.

At this point, I believe an international military intervention is both necessary and justified.

I wish so badly we had anyone else in power - not just feckless, cowardly Trump, but Hegseth and Vance and the rest of these incompetent self-serving parasites. I wish it were an international force.

I haven't heard from her since the 8th when internet was cut. She went out to protest, 60+ aged parents in toe.

A cousin in Canada spoke with another relative over satellite phone, she is apparently safe, god willing.

I've spent the last few days seeing the same photos and videos you all have.

Her whole life, she's expected a war. Her parents lived through the Iran-Iraq war, nobody there expects to live to a ripe old age. Better to die for change than to live like this.

Imagine a regime that can provoke this sentiment from a schoolteacher who wears clothes with cartoon bears and kittens.

She has wished for years that the US or Israel would intervene and topple Kohmeini. I told her she sounded like a CIA asset. I was born too late to be patriotic - told her about Nisour Sq., Abu Ghraib and general prisoner abuse, our use of mercenaries to skirt oversight, etc.

She didn't budge.

We watched the Mahsa Amini protests in 2022 with high hopes - would Iran finally have the peace and freedom it deserves? My fiancee was hit by plastic rounds at a protest in her city of ~300k. The big change didn't come, but she stopped wearing a headscarf and the religious police had nothing to say

This was January 2025. Shortly after, while our application was processing and my check cashed by the feds, Trump forbade all immigration from Iran. The K-1 requires the foreign spouse to come to the US and get married here. Trump made this de facto impossible.

Her mom believed in us and convinced her dad. I flew her family to Istanbul and we spent two weeks together. It was perfect, it felt like that young innocent puppy love you're not allowed to have at 30, but there we were.

I proposed, we celebrated, and I went home to start the K-1 visa process.

In 2024, after years of chatting, video calls, etc, we finally decided to meet in person. This was no easy task - Americans need a 24/7 gov't chaperone to visit Iran, and Iranians couldn't get tourist visas to the US. Women in Iran need their father's approval to get a passport, even as adults.

My fiancee is in Iran. I'm in the US. I don't post here much, or anywhere, but I need to ramble.

She and I met online in 2020 and became fast friends. We talked every day - streamed movies together (mostly horror), shared music (Googoosh slaps), laughed at the cosmic improbability of our friendship

cs_italy

The Jewish cemetery - where they say the "safari" unit Vučić is accused of joining would have been stationed - rises up a hill, looks straight down busy shop-lined Vrbanja street as it crosses the Miljacka river.

There would be nowhere to hide. Fish-in-a-barrel type shooting. Heinous.

👀 I missed this story over the weekend Not even two weeks and there's a seemingly-credible accusation that Vučić himself took part in the "safaris"

www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2...