Iran’s Protests: From Women’s Rights To Regime Change

What was originally a women’s rights cause inside the borders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, has birthed an international neo-orientalist regime change movement and anyone denying this obvious reality is delusional.

The ongoing protests and riots inside the Islamic Republic of Iran over the course of the past month have now somewhat simmered down in scale. Initially, the demonstrations were representative of legitimate Iranian grievances over the existence of the country’s ‘morality police’ and legal obligation for women to cover their hair. The death of Mahsa Amini while in police custody came as a shock to the nation at large. It is something that the Iranian Government itself has vowed to investigate and has expressed grief over.

Although it does not appear that Mahsa Amini was directly murdered or beaten by the police, as originally suggested, her death in custody was an outrage nonetheless. The Iranian Government’s policy of even having such morality police in place to arrest women like this is a legitimate reason to take to the streets in protest.

There was also the added layer to this tragic death, that was Mahsa Amini’s Kurdish identity. Initially it appeared as if her arrest may have had something to do with anti-Kurdish bias, on behalf of individual police officers, however, there has been no such evidence to back up such assertions. Nevertheless, the majority of the large demonstrations, immediately following Mahsa Amini’s death, took place in the Western Kurdish-Iranian territories. Young Amini’s Kurdish identity proved enough to invoke outrage on an ethnic basis inside Iran, something that Kurdish militant groups in neighboring Iraq had sought to capitalize on. In the initial protests there were a number of injuries, at least one death and tens of arrests, and it is not clear who started using violence first, but the result was a violent crackdown from the Iranian authorities.

Meanwhile, as these demonstrations began to grow and Iranians throughout the country were coming to the streets in protest of the mandatory headscarf (hijab) policy, as well as the existence of the morality police, violent provocateurs also decided to join. Iran’s instant reaction to this was to crackdown on rioters and violent individuals who had chosen to set police officers on fire, stab them in the heart, and slit their throats.

Suddenly, an internal Iranian issue had become an international campaign to demonize Iran, as the demonstrations turned into violent riots. Social media celebrities who have never uttered a word about politics in their life, like Jake Paul, suddenly appear by making videos in which they portray a mythical version of the Iranian Government and society.

“It’s horrific, it’s savagery, these young women being murdered for showing their hair, murdered for showing their hair, it is savagery, it’s horrific, it’s medieval, it is not who we are as a society today,” said Jake Paul. One may ask, why focus on someone like Jake Paul? Because this language right here is the crux of what Western leadership wants you to think about the Iranian Government and the system that operates in the country. Why does the West seek to cultivate our view of Iran’s Government in this way? Because once you dehumanize the government, the Islamic Republic’s system and its supporters — the majority of its population — you can justify killing and imposing murderous sanctions upon Iran, in the name of “civilizing” the “barbarians”.

The above quotation from Jake Paul is perhaps the most straightforward of any celebrity take, yet almost all of them assume a similar stance, with very similar verbiage and tone. Then there are the bot armies on Twitter; which the social media platform has not cracked down on and has allowed to produce the world’s second largest hashtag trend.

In addition to this, there are the fake-narrative creators, such as Masih Alinejad, who is a full time employee for US state-owned TV and regularly meets with American neo-conservative war hawks, such as Mike Pompeo. Alinejad has been put forward as a leader of this so-called Iranian revolution, yet is clearly working on behalf of US interests — she quite literally works for them. Alinejad also received at least 628,050 USD, between 2015 to 2021 from the US agency for Global media, she regularly shares stories that gain great traction and later turnout to be false or at least only partially true.

It is also clear that not only have the Shah worshipping privileged Iranian expats jumped on board to welcome Western ideological neo-colonialism in Iran, but all the usual suspects have jumped in as well. It has become apparent that the riots in Iran have been encouraged by groups such as; the Komola, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), and the MKO/MEK terrorist-cult. In addition to this, the British State-owned propaganda network, BBC-Persian, US State-owned Voice of America-Farsi and the Saudi-financed ‘Iran International’ channel have been at the forefront of encouraging the Iranian counter-revolutionaries.

All of the above only scratches the surface when it comes to the anti-Iran, pro-regime change campaign from within the West, which ranges from erratic nude protesters at demonstrations to the “Israeli women stand with Iranian women” multi-million dollar ad campaigns. You name it, the West is bringing it, the full force of Western governments are behind a movement that is led from the United States, claiming to come to civilize Iran and remove its government, all so that Iranian women don’t have to wear hijab.

It’s interesting that under the Western installed dictator, known as the Shah, the ideas of Western modernity and secularism were promoted so heavily, yet Iranian women have greater education rates now than under the West’s puppet. Some propaganda will have you believe that under the rule of Reza Shah Pahlavi women were all walking around in short skirts and eating ice cream, it is very likely that you may even have seen some photos showing such women in revealing clothes. The reality, however, was that these were images of what the direct beneficiaries of the Shah’s autocratic rule looked like, whilst the bulk of the Iranian population were poor and oppressed.

The reason why Iranian women during the revolution in 1979 were all wearing hijab, was not because they had all embraced social conservatism — although clearly many had — but instead it was a statement against the West’s puppet Shah, that had forced Western so-called “civilized” values on the Iranian people. Those who were most responsible for leading the revolution were Islamic socialists and communists, meaning that many of the revolutionaries were far from the traditionalistic Islamic mentality that we see from many of the scholars that operate inside the Islamic Republic today.

The West does not have a problem with Iran’s Islamic laws, for if it did, then it would seek regime change in Saudi Arabia, instead of begging Riyadh to pump more oil, as it is currently doing. The West couldn’t care less about women’s rights either, nor does it care about the Iranian Kurds, the MEK cult member’s ambitions, the Shah supporters, the Iranian liberal expats, or anyone else for that matter. When the West dominated Iran and had its favorite autocrat ruling it, the US Government moved White settlers into American gated settler communities, set up next to Iranian slums where the people were starving. A situation eerily similar to that seen in occupied Palestine today.

For the West, this chapter has been a wonderful opportunity to demonize the Iranian Government, virtue signal to the world and then justify further sanctions, and ending the talks to return to the Iran nuclear deal. The Iranian Government will not fall due to these demonstrations and this isn’t a revolution. At this point, it is a foreign-funded/inspired riot movement that seeks instability. Those genuine demonstrators who still believe that this is about the hijab, the morality police, and Mahsa Amini are doing more harm than good. The murder of police, calls for US-backed regime change and attempts to impose Western ideals on the Iranian people will not achieve a thing, other than Iranian security services putting the demonstrations down violently. The Iranian Government has demonstrated on countless occasions that violence will be met with overwhelming violence, whilst the internet is cut off.

On every single level we are being lied to about the Iranian demonstrations and riots. When you find yourself on the side of the US Government, a terrorist cult, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, then some reflection is required. Why is your movement supported by these bad-faith actors, what purpose does your advocacy actually serve? Is the hijab and morality police worth destroying the country over, when such issues could be approached in a much more rational manner? Is that even what this is truly about? None of this is to say that there are no legitimate grievances here, there most certainly are, from women, from Kurds, and there is much that the Iranian public would like to see changed. However, the truth is that those still on board with this movement are aiding the West against their own country out of an emotional attachment to a cause which is no longer being represented with this campaign. It has been co-opted and its continuation is based upon the support of Iran’s enemies which would love to see a new Libya, Syria, or Iraq in Iran. If you believe this is desirable over the current system, you need only visit and speak to those living in the above mentioned countries that experienced the wrath of the West’s “human rights”, “freedom”, “democracy”, and “women’s rights” campaigns.