I was disappointed to discover that my most favorite blogger, Tony Greenstein, has accepted the "protests" in Iran as mostly legitimate and the Iranian government crackdown against it unjustified and terrible.
I have seen accounts of the death and damage caused by these "protests" and concluded they aren't protests at all, riots would be a better term, but perhaps better yet is a terrorist insurgency led, backed, and funded by US and Israel. I take as my key piece of evidence the Iranian seizure of 50,000 Starlink terminals used by the foreign backed insurgency to communicate with their foreign handlers. A key way that Iran stopped the terrorism was by blocking Starlink reception, thanks to on the spot help by Russia.
Tony rants against Max Blumenthal (of Grayzone) and David Miller, from whom I've learned these stories, both of whom I esteem highly, now more than Tony himself perhaps (though Tony is indispensable too). Tony seems to be from an older generation, like David Silverstein (of Tikkun Olam), who still like to criticize the targets of Empire like Russia and Iran as terrible, instead of seeing them correctly as the victims and targets of Empire, and the Really Existing resistance to Empire. And I wouldn't believe a word said against the Really Existing resistance countries here either, because we're living in an echo chamber of propaganda even from supposedly independent sources. Nor is it my job to criticize the Really Existing resistance countries--I refrain from doing that knowing full well that it manufactures consent for US war, the most terrible outcome of all, which is why the Western media won't stop doing so, and making more and more exaggerated claims (Tony buys into some earlier ones, which could be close to the truth, but I see them as the predictable response to western backed proxy terrorism). Finally, even if the Islamic Republic isn't perfect, it's entirely none of my business. It is to the people in Iran to deal with it and without any foreign interference, which sadly will never happen, and that is the real core of the problem.
Tony even dismisses the Israeli admission that they are deeply involved as braggadocio. I'd be as inclined to believe it understatement.
