u/SentientSeaweed

For thirty-six years, Ali Khamenei prepared Iran for a confrontation he believed would eventually come.

This documentary traces the doctrine he built, the forces that challenged it, and the war that ultimately reached his own home.

He could have moved. He didn’t.

Did Khamenei simply accept the risk—or did he understand what his death could set in motion?

Iran Worried U.S. Might Be Building 8,500th Nuclear Weapon - The Onion

prominent intellectuals in the imperial core write an open letter to Iran’s political prisoners

I’m struggling with this open letter, signed by people I admire deeply—individuals who’ve dedicated their lives to Black liberation and anti-colonial struggles.

But I just can’t reconcile my instinctive reaction to the letter with the respect I hold for the signatories. Prominent intellectuals in the imperial core are using their voice at this hour primarily to criticize a government under active bombardment. While I believe that no government is beyond reproach or criticism, I have a lot of questions and cautions about this open letter.

The overall framing of is of two equally opposing sides—two blades of the same scissors. This is a wholly unfair representation of what is in reality a profound asymmetry of power. On one hand, a country that has been subjected to crippling, decades-long economic sanctions, now fighting kinetically an existential anti-imperial struggle; on the other hand is nuclear, AI-powered empire, with its inexhaustible money, munitions, supply lines, coalitions, surveillance, and near total grip on international political, legal, information, and economic infrastructure.

The severity of the imperial onslaught seems to be minimized in the letter. This is perhaps for the sake of brevity, but it should not stand without critique. What the letter describes as “current, indiscriminate waves of US-Israeli military assaults” undersells what’s actually happening in the “six months into a war”. Unprovoked Tomahawk missiles and B-2 bombers that targeting a an elementary school that killed 180 children and teachers, the country’s spiritual leader and his family, more than a third of the country’s political, military, and scientific leadership, civilian infrastructure, including water, farmlands, electric grids and power plants, an unarmed navy ship at sea full of young cadets returning from a peacetime maritime exercise in international waters. This after decades of attacks that went unanswered by Iran, including Israel’s repeated assassinations of Iranian scientists, assassination of Qasem Soleimani, strikes on Iranians generals in Syria, strike on Iranian consulate in Damascus, assassination of Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil; the US shot down civilian aircraft of Iran Air flight 655, killing 290 passengers and crew, including 66 children. There were endless cyber attacks, covert and overt naval sabotage and so much more—all of it without response from Tehran.

The letter does not identify who the prisoners are or why they were arrested. In neglecting to do so, there is no engagement with the very real security threats, proven foreign interference, terrorism, and espionage, which Iranian authorities cite as reasons for some arrests and prosecutions. I have no doubt there are some who’ve been wrongly imprisoned, but we also know that many of those who were rounded up confessed to working with the Mossad, and recently a group who gruesomely disembowled a young reciter of the Quran are among those who are imprisoned.

There are currently 2 million incarcerated people in the United States, the largest prison population anywhere on earth. It is estimated that 4-6% of them are innocent—that’s 80,000-120,000, about two NFL stadiums full of innocent lives behind bars. Setting that percentage against Iran’s estimated 15,000 political prisoners, that’s roughly 600-900 individuals. They deserve fairness, but to center them in what is perhaps the most existential anti-colonial struggle of our lives feels misguided.

I would also argue that comparing Iran’s prisons with Israel’s decades-long, systematic, colonial detention of indigenous Palestinians is another form of false equivalence. So is the comparison with America’s ICE detentions, separation of families and loss of children in the process (who are most likely trafficked). It is not remotely fair to put a revolutionary government, barely a few decades out from under colonial boots and still under sanctions, in the same “carceral” category as two settler colonial states. One cannot ignore the enormous disparity of political, military, and historical circumstances.
The people held in Iranian jails are overwhelmingly Iranian citizens, prosecuted under the state’s own criminal and national security laws, regardless of whether one thinks the laws are unfair. Palestinians held in Israeli administrative detention are non-citizen subjects of a military occupation, detained and re-detained indefinitely under military decrees without charge or trial. People in US detentions are another category—non citizens held under civil immigration laws pending removal proceedings with access to immigration courts, however corrupt they may be. These are three distinct legal relationships—1) a state and it’s own citizens; 2) a state and migrants crossing its borders, and; 3) an occupying power and a stateless occupied indigenous population. The letter collapses them all into a single architecture of “carceral states everywhere,” creating an analysis that is not supported by the underlying facts. It creates rhetorical equivalence that treats “administrative detention,” “political imprisonment,” and “immigration detention” as though the political stakes of each were the same, when the questions of sovereignty, citizenship, and self-determination underneath them are not.

The phrase that knocked me off balance was this: “...we reject the false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism.” I note that @agent_of_change addressed this in a recent post, which he identified as the “load-bearing phrase” of the letter. Indeed, it does so much heavy lifting and I’m at a loss why the word “hollow” would have been inserted. It’s so clearly deliberate, but why? How can Iran’s insistence on sovereignty and dignity be called “hollow,” despite the grave and terrible cost to themselves? They could have taken the easy path a long time ago and bowed to empire, like some of their Arab neighbors have done. They’ve chosen self-possession and loyalty to their ancestors and children instead. That can be called many things, but hollow is not it.

Have I Mentioned It’s Great That Lindsey Graham Is Dead? – Caitlin Johnstone

The whole post is worth reading, but these are my favorite snippets:

> You can tell a lot by how people bury their dead—indeed this is how we begin to mark civilization—and Iranians really bury their dead. They're still burying Husayn ibn Ali, centuries hence. Remembering is rebirth in this way. It keeps the dead living, it keeps the expiring inspiring.

> I realize, as I get older, that funerals are not for the dead, they're for the living, they stitch people together around a wound rather than leaving a wound festering.

> This is a tale of two funerals, and—as sad as I feel seeing, especially, the little coffin—don't mourn for Khamenei and his family. Or—since this is honestly impossible for me, what am I saying—mourn for them like Hussein and his family, who are still living and still inspiring resistance against tyranny. As the Quran says, "Do not think of those who have been killed in God's cause as dead. They are alive, and well provided for by their Lord."

بنازم به غیرتش
شیر زن ایرانی و باعث افتخار

Iran’s funeral diplomacy: The Quran verses that ranked allies, rivals and sent Saudi Arabia a message | Middle East Eye

The Little Coffin That Silenced a Hall: Iran Turns Farewell Into a Global Stage - Kashmir Observer

Day two: Millions gather in Tehran to bid farewell to Sayyed Khamenei | Al Mayadeen English

I have a network-wide ad blocker, so I learned after posting that the previous link had scam ads. I apologize.

This link is to a YouTube channel that shows news clips from Iranian TV.

JERUSALEM, June 23 (Reuters) - A former Israeli prime minister acknowledged on Tuesday that Israel had smuggled Starlink internet receivers into Iran to help anti-government protesters, though he ‌said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government failed to follow through on the plans.

**Naftali Bennett, who served as prime minister from 2021 to 2022, told an audience at the JNS International Policy Summit in Jerusalem that he had initiated a "process of acquiring and smuggling into Iran tens of thousands of Starlink receptors ⁠that would allow continuity of the internet and social networks".**

Starlink, owned by Elon Musk's SpaceX, provides satellite internet connections. **Iran has previously accused Israel and the United States of smuggling in the devices to undermine its security.** Starlink is not licensed to operate in Iran but Musk has previously said the service is active there.

**Bennett said the devices were intended to enable protesters to coordinate and ultimately topple the Iranian government.**

"Unfortunately, the current incompetent Israeli government stopped doing that," he said. "And when the protest ⁠happened, that infrastructure was not there."
Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to questions on Bennett’s remarks and SpaceX was not available for comment outside U.S. business hours.
Iranian authorities have shut down the public’s access to the internet during periods of unrest, including during deadly nationwide ⁠protests in January and throughout the U.S. and Israeli war with Iran that began at the end of February.

Reuters has previously reported that some Iranians turned to Starlink during internet blackouts.

Bennett, leader ⁠of a right-wing party and one of several opposition politicians vying to replace Netanyahu in an election due by October, said Israel and other Middle East states ⁠need to "join forces to repel and ultimately topple" Iran's government.

"It's a rotten, old, disconnected, incompetent regime, and it will fall like the Soviet Union fell," he said, to applause.