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Trump, Netanyahu and Khamenei – three angry old men who could get us all killed
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2025
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Khamenei maybe an angry old man considering his country is facing an existential threat but Netanyahu is a wanted war criminal and Trump is a rapist with nefarious ties to the notorious Epstein
Stop pretending like Khamenei isn't a criminal. He's not just an angry old man because they're "facing an existential threat" he's a fuckwad through and through and no Iranian would shed a tear if he was shelled. Israel certainly started this iteration of the conflict but Khamenei and the regime has a rap sheet far longer than Trump's.
Khamenei is a priest. 'Nuff said. Israel is a theocratic state. Religious people attacking each other, with normal people in the middle. Once more, Rome did it first, 900 something years ago.
What do I know? My parents came to Denmark fleeing from this shitty regime. What do you know?
Of course I have family in Iran, even though I don't know them too well. How are you reading that I'm happy that terrorist (Israeli) bombs are falling on people? Regular people are always the losers in warfare, no matter the circumstances. Just wouldn't be sad if it happened to fall on Khamenei - nor if a missile landed on Bibi's house.
Israel is undoubtedly the most evil regime in the world but upholding another evil regime oppressing 90+ million people just because they lay claim to standing up to Israel - without producing any particularly strong results - doesn't seem like the tradeoff to go for. Two wrongs don't make a right. Iran can still be on the right side of history without Khamenei and his goons.
Again, what does that have to do with not supporting the regime? They're not there to protect the people.
Of course not, USA and Israel won't ever let Iran thrive - but it can't be any worse, like in Syria. New crappy regime to replace the old, but a slight improvement nonetheless.
I am, but I won't claim that I'm not first and foremost Danish - apart from when it comes to food.. But I do feel like I'm allowed to have a strong opinion on the regime.
My Iranian ass spending minutes to get my VPN working so I can access lemmy and watch people whitewash the man responsible for all my misery only to shit on Netanyahu and Trump:
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi?
Ali Khamenei.
Had nothing to do with the overthrow of the Iranian democracy in 1953.
Didn't the CIA do that
To install Pahlavi as Shah, absolutely.
This was in an effort to keep Iran from selling oil to the USSR.
So it justifies the crimes of the mullahs? Why do you want it to seem that America is the devil and the mullahs are OK? Can't them both be bad in your mind?
Khomeini hijacked the revolution that ousted the Shah and turned it from a triumphant moment and chance for change into a "under new management" situation.
Khamenei now presides over this theocratic regime and continues to oppress Iran.
The lion's share of the proletariat were religious conservatives. He didn't hijack the revolution, he was a foundational pillar of its execution.
Show me a Middle Eastern government more liberal than President Masoud Pezeshkia's Independent Reformist coalition. Half their neighbors are Kingdoms, ffs. The other half are military dictatorships. Iran is one of the few proper democracies on the continent. It's theocratic because the majority of its constituents are conservative theocrats sending up religious politicians to the parliament. Iran is no more theocratic than Pakistan or Mississippi.
I don't have time or will to dive into all of this but this one part: "It is theocratic because the majority of it's constituents are conservative theocrats" There are no non-theocratic politians in Iran, they do not get approved for standing in an election. Every candidate, on every level, has to be approved by the Guardian Council. Who elected that council? Well, half of the council are clerics, appointed the Supreme Leader. The other half are jurists, who are selected by the Majilis from list approved by the Chief Justice. Who appointed the Chief Justice? The Supreme Leader.
Meaning all 12 positions of the body that decides who can stand for election are either appointed by the supreme Leader or appointed by someone with direct allegiance to the Supreme Leader.
Take the president for example: Pezeshkian would legally not be able to stand for election if he wasnt a Shia Muslim or didn't affirm that the Supreme Leader is the ultimate authority in matters of religion and social issues. Meaning by law, both social and religious reforms can only be done with the consent of the supreme Leader.
The constituents send up theocratic politicians because there are no other politicians. A theocrat has the ultimate power of determining who is and isn't a viable candidate.
Ahmadinejad has taken a number of opportunities to take subtle swipes at the clerics, including Khamenei, questioning in public for example whether their edicts are directives or suggestions. He has also tried to consolidate more power for the presidency, trying to create a parallel foreign ministry and by making political appointments he's not entitled to make.
Hardly the only President to wrestle for power against the Leadership Council, but this was such an obvious historical bullet point it was easy to find citation on. These are not Theocrats in any meaningful way and they break from religious leadership as they see fit. What's more, Khamenei himself came to his office over the objections of numerous members of the Assembly of Experts, having to argue for special dispensation precisely because he was neither a marja' or ayatollah prior to assuming office. It does not seem as though Iran lacks for partisan wrangling or strict adherence to religious dogma.
Such weasel words. You might as well claim no one in the US can stand for election without being approved by a sitting President or someone with direct allegiance to a sitting President. Then wave your hands at the national party apparatus and the various partisan elected county clerks.
No politician rises on their own accord. They all require networks of supporters and compatriots to climb into higher office.
I asked you to show me a Middle Eastern government more liberal than President Masoud Pezeshkia’s Independent Reformist coalition.
All you could rebut with is whining at the nomination process being not to your taste.
I don't think you actually know or care for the state of Iranian democracy one way or another. All you seem to care about is that they've replaced a Western friendly military dictatorship with a religiously inclined elected parliament.
Pick up a copy of John Locke's Social Contract and hit yourself with it.
In the United States, the president does not approve candidates and he doesn't appoint anyone who approves candidates.
| A government more liberal than Iran in the middle east.
You might as well ask for the most slave friendly state in the antebellum South. They're shit. The 2009 elections might have yielded a more liberal parliament, but those elections got fudged and when people took to the streets, the state murdered 1.500 of them. If there ever was any democracy, it died that year.
Not a single man will ever be able to run in Iran on a platform that doesn't rely on the Shariah to dispense justice, that does not demand the subjugation of women or liberalizes society in any meaningful way. Iran had a democracy. It got couped, replaced with a monarchy and now Iran lives under a theocracy with a democratic theater in front.
Stacking the antebellum South against Bleeding Kansas and asking which state is the most slave friendly? It's an easy answer. One of them had men and women fight the encroaching slavers off at gunpoint and declared itself a free state. And they did it while waving a few bibles, which I'm sure is the real sin involved.
Those damned abolitionists were too fucking religious. Therefore, they were just as bad as the slaughterhouses full of mutilated slaves next door.
How did the far more secular Iraq fair when the Texas-born Southerner George W. Bush came calling?
It's so crazy to see you bring up the American slave system, in the midst of a US-backed jihad on Iranian soil by their proxies in the ethno-nationalist state of Israel. Gee, why would Iranians be so hostile towards these foreigners and so intent on policing themselves against their influence? Is it because every attempt to reach out a hand in pursuit of peace and prosperity, the response is another bombing run?
Iran had a secular democracy. Then all the secularists got butchered and purged by the Shah. The survivors were the Islamists. And when they regained their strength and revolted, the nation that emerged was a sectarian state, born out of the blood and fire of a western backed civil war.
The west is still at war with Iran for all the Iranians' efforts at peace. And it seems the western raison d'être for this half century of butchery is "Damn, y'all are too Muslim"?
Fuck off.
So? US foreign policy has done a number of the whole world. It's not an excuse for Khamenei and his goons to uphold this regime.
If you don't want to be governed by conservatives, quit lining all the progressives against the wall and shooting them.
Blaming Khamenei for governing like a conservative Muslim, when you're in a region absolutely choked with religious conservative governments, seems to miss the forest for the trees. Especially after the US was instrumental in undermining and dismantling all the modernist secular democracies from the first half of the 20th century.
I mean screw the men responsible for your misery, but Iran is objectively the good guy when it comes to Palestine. We don't have quite as much opportunity to shit on Khomeini now that Assad isn't around, but we still hate him don't worry.
From what I understand from your message it looks like to me that this is all something like a game for you people to virtue signal.
Edit: Funny how you got Khomeini and Khamenei mixed up. It shows how much you know and care about the matter.
No? What do you even mean by whitewashing him? The atrocities he commits just aren't relevant to the topic at hand, so they're not brought up.
Wow, TIL. I thought their names were both Khomeini but that makes more sense.
Not every conflict has a good guy, there are no good guys, the Khamenei regime is evil and so is the leadership of Isreal. Just because the latter attacked the former does not make them innocent, let the bastards burn and pity the civilian.
You are out of touch if you think Trump is worse than Khamenei
EDIT: Lemmy, wake me up when Trump orders to kill the protestets, because by every passing day most of you look more and more delusional to me, lost in your own hate. Feels weird defending trump, but there is a day and night difference between the two. See what Iranians themselves are saying.
I'm not sure what did you mean by this. Violently attacking police officers usually results in the same thing anyways. Read the first lines from that article, he's not talking about normal protesters and neither was that government official. Very poorly worded and stupidly timed.
Because someone didn't wear a gender discriminatory dress that the president enforces upon it's population? Dude, get reality checked. Trump is a piece of shit, but he's pretty far from such extreme levels of evilness. When I'll see news like "Trump administration executes Harvard students for protesting", then I'll re-consider my views
Lots of people in this site are sympathetic to any tyrant as long as they aren’t ruling over a western country.