Qassem Soleimani and the Bastardful History of U.S. / Iran Relations | BEHIND THE BASTARDS

[@Hrothmeir]

Coincidentally listening to this on Jan 3rd 2024 (I've been going in order), and a terrorist attack has killed over 100 people in Kerman.

[@TheCrimsonS4ge]

Right now one of the biggest fragilities in the Iranian government is the lack of a clear successor to Khamenei. In hindsight, I think that it is very likely that Soleimani was being groomed for ultimate leadership over Iran. Maybe his assassination was a good strategic move by the US because if Ali Khamenei dies soon and they don't have a strong, popular successor, this could potentially cause a lot of problems for Iran.

[@andreasvandersal9837]

Very interesting

[@QEDmirage]

It's funny to watch this from the future, where Anna's take hoping the US just kinda takes the airstrikes on the airbase in stride...happens! Because boy that Trump fellow is fickle

[@THEE_Kisywisy]

Soleimani’s life story was pretty inspirational. Born into the lowest caste but works his way up the ranks to be one of the most powerful military leaders in the Middle East. He played a huge part in taking down isis (working with America, uk etc). I think he’s was a super good looking guy lol he was like an Islamic Sean Connery DON’T JUDGE ME!! IM A WOMAN IN MY FORTIES AND I’M SURE I CAN BLAME HORMONES IF I NEED TO DEFEND IT IN A COURT OF LAW

[@kingofthend]

Glad you think the representative of the regime that murders women for showing some hair is hot. Supported assad while he was gassing syrian civilians as well. Certain left wing circles really show their real faces when it comes to the middle east.

[@Feisty_Elfgirl_5258]

I have been on the side that we should only send old people into war. If all the world's soldiers were grandpas and nanas I think many leaders would be more will to give peace a try. (but not peas. canned peas are gross)

[@THEE_Kisywisy]

CANNED PEAS ARE AMAZING. MUSHY PEAS, GARDEN PEAS… MMM GIVE [canned] PEAS A CHANCE ✌️☮️🕊️

[@ZZARevolution]

With all respect Robert, the attempt to portray this balanced 'morally grey' picture of Soleimani is just so insanely disconnected from how it is experienced here in Iran. And Anna Hossnieh especially has an absolutely disgusting take on Soleimani, constantly bashing US while subtly whitewashing Soleimani's actions and completely disregarding the way the majority of Iranians in Iran actually perceive him. It's infuriating. I could hardly watch this, and I only did so I could get the full picture and inform you and everyone else who might be misled about this man through this podcast. Your own perspective during this podcast ultimately suggests the idea that this regime is reformable, that IR and US could sit at the table and say "oh you know what, let's actually stop killing your people and our own people after 44 years of massacre!" No Robert! Let me take all illusions away from you. Thousands have died at the hands of this regime and IRGC in particular. Rape, executions after sham trials, murder, torture. They do this every fucking day. They do the most cruel things you could possibly imagine to stay in power. There is no balanced perspective between US and IR. This is not freaking France and Germany we are talking about here. We ourselves compare IR to ISIS in our slogans! We ourselves call for IRGC to be put on the EU terrorist list through our social media campaigns. Outside Iran, check institute.global/policy/irgc-global-tracker to see how much IRGC's terrorist activities go way beyond the Middle East region. Inside, at least 500 people died in the last 6 months. Only near the end did you finally mention some of Soleimani's actions inside the country, like the 2019 protests with at least 1500 deaths. These might just be numbers to you, but let's make this more tangible. We have to pay for the bullets of our loved ones to get their bodies back. They poison our schoolgirls and then blame the opposition outside Iran. They intentionally target our eyes and genitals with pellet shotguns. This is just the tip of the iceberg I'm giving you. Like I don't know if you can truly fathom the insane barbarity we are dealing with here and the monster that was Soleimani. This is the equivalent of a high ranking SS officer and he must be regarded as such. We fucking HATED Soleimani. Despite the regime and their Western mouthpieces' attempt at making the international community think otherwise. We were happy when he got killed. We burned his portraits and statues and continue to do so during our protests. There's even videos circulating about this. And I'll even back this up with statistics for those who prefer objective data. In a poll conducted by GAMAAN and another conducted by reformists Soleimani only had 6-7% support from Iranians (ergo, only the religious regime supporting nutcases). In a GAMAAN poll from 2021, in response to the question, “Which USA president’s foreign policy has most benefitted the Iranian people?”, only 7% selected Joe Biden versus 29% who chose Donald Trump. 49% said neither president’s foreign policy benefitted the Iranian people. Why do you think that is? I can tell you it's not because we hate lgbt, women rights, climate change advocacy, etc! It's because for some stupid reason only those damn neocons happen to fall in line with our requests of the international community. And a lot of people outside Iran, including Iranian-Americans like Anna, have zero understanding of this. Amongst other misconceptions in the podcast, the MOIS competition with IRGC also has absolutely zero to do with the pre-revolution. Everyone of that time period who had any power was murdered or has fled. They're just two terrorist mafia groups competing for a little piece of the cake. It's just as meaningless as when Western experts pretend there's some conflict between so-called "reformists" and hardliners in IR. They're both shit and they're both just pawns: the reformists are just used to fool Western countries into believing that IR is not all that bad or to silence the protesters by giving the allusion of making concessions. We are talking about a totalitarian state, there is no plurality. Finally, I urge you to take a critical look at Anna Hossnieh. I've checked her social media. We have suffered so fucking much in these 6 months (and before) and this revolution has been our biggest hope for true change. Whereas many have worked so hard to echo our voices and use their platform to help us, Anna has not posted ONE single thing, absolutely NOTHING about the Women Life Freedom. Her name on Twitter just says 'free palestine'. This is just unbelievable. And it gets worse. Because on her podcast 'Ethnically Ambiguous' she actually gave a platform to a NIAC member, an organization which is infamous for being a regime mouthpiece both by the diaspora and Iranians in Iran. They're not even allowed to join protests organized by the diaspora, that's how much we hate them. We try to have them boycotted at every event they're invited to. They have a large history of spreading disinformation, downplaying the regime's crimes and pushing for sanction relief. The ex-Niac director Trita Parsi still pretends to be on the side of the revolution all while pushing for the opposite policies that we are actually fighting for in our campaigns. (Check the Daily Beast article "The Shady Family behind America's Iran Lobby" for more info on NIAC and peak into why we hate them). Needless to say, I have 0 trust in Anna's allegiance to the Iranian people's fight for fundamental human rights and a secular and democratic future. I'm sorry, but we don't need any more self-blaming nonsense. We are begging everyone in Western countries for maximum pressure and maximum support. A morally grey picture of "well Soleimani did some good and some bad, but hey, so did we!" is the last thing we want the international community to believe. If you'd live here you know the comparison is apples and oranges. I respect your attempt and effort into researching everything, but the result just paints a distorted picture of who this man actually was to Iranians, our current uprising (which had already started in the 2019 protests and arguably even before) and our requests from the international community.

[@bobbie3713]

maximun pressure meaning what? more sanctions?

[@ZZARevolution]

@@bobbie3713 Examples of more pressure: blacklisting IRGC (eg. Canada and EU still haven't done so), this can increase defection and shows the world what IRGC really is; -sanctions and better enforcement of sanctions, including oligarchs affiliated to the regime following the Russian model + investigations into family members of the clerics of the regime who live in freedom and study in Western countries, the very freedom that they deny our own people (chances are high the billions that the mullahs have on their bank accounts through corruption find their way to them too); -severing and boycotting diplomatic relations, incl. expelling of diplomats (again following Russian model); -explicitly and unambiguously acknowledge that what Iranians are fighting for is regime change, that this is a revolutionary uprising, not a fight for reform; -start talking about a plan B for the nuclear threat, since the JCPOA is meaningless and undermines our efforts to increase pressure on the regime and the support for our movement to overthrow it; -start an independent investigation into school poisonings of schoolgirls. Don't wait for permission. You will not get it. -consider at what point the R2P measure should be taken. How many more deaths and brutality until the Right to Protect a people against its government is required and consider how many people would be on the street if we could actually protest without the risk of being killed, kidnapped, tortured, etc. 80% is against this regime according to recent polls. We don't want military intervention, but blue helms are a serious alternative if these violations of our rights continue. -As I'm writing this to you we are organizing another social media campaign against the gathering scheduled to take place on March 16th at the Centro Cultarele Imam Ali in Milan, where a book about Qassem Soleimani is set to be presented, an event which glorifies him as a hero. I can't tell you the amount of times that we have to fight and beg for help against shit like this. Regime mouthpiece events happen pretty much every week. It would help if governments are more pro-active about cancelling and investigating these things. I doubt any country would tolerate pro-Putin or pro-Hitler propaganda gatherings. Security agencies have even acknowledged that diaspora dissidents are being monitored by regime affiliates. Cutting all these tentacles will help pressure and delegitimize the regime. -These recent polls from GAMAAN should give you a better idea of things we request, if you don't want to take my word for it: twitter.com/gamaanresearch/status/1621861867176984577 Examples of more support: -actively engaging with our new opposition council that was formed on the 10th of February (Alliance for Democracy and Freedom in Iran), which consists of some of the statistically most popular opposition figures and who have just recently released a charter that outlines our ambitions and requests from the international community. They are our true representatives and echo our voices on the international stage. They have recently been invited in various EU parliaments and events like the Munich Security Conference. This engagement needs to continue and be intensified. So far it's mostly been conservatives who have hosted their invitation. That is not ok, we need bipartisan support. -find ways to provide internet access and continue sanctioning companies and countries that disrupt or help disrupt our access (recently a German company was sanctioned for this, but they just moved their activities to Namibia). Without internet we cannot succeed. Elon Musk activated Starlink, but if no one actually funds the Starlink satellites like the Western governments did with Ukraine, it's absolutely useless. Logistics are a bigger problem with Iran of course, but regular satellites are also banned in Iran, yet I suggest you look up what the average roof looks like in Iran (everyone has about 3 satellites, we have a network of smugglers). So this is no excuse. The problem is funding. -find ways to create strike funds. Our economy is an absolute disaster, yet the only way for a non violent revolution to succeed is to paralyze the economy. We cannot strike without money. But the solution is not sanction relief, because only the regime ends up with this money. Our opposition council has ways of transferring the money to the right people. Engage with them. Aside from our opposition council you can also check this policy initiative from the NUFDI think tank (they also echo what we are demanding) that was released just a few days ago. It outlines some of the policies we have been fighting for in our social media campaigns and is in line with our opposition (contrary to NIAC). You can also check their conference from a few days ago or the Munich Security Conference or the Conference on the 10th of February in Georgetown. All of these should give you a better idea. Thank you for your interest.

[@bobbie3713]

@@ZZARevolution I support your fight and i hope you win, but I dont think attacking the hosts of this episode is conductive to that, i think your efforts are better spend elsewhere. Women, Life, Liberty!

[@ZZARevolution]

@@bobbie3713 Not sure if my other message answering your question got through, I can't see it for some reason. Anyway, this was not a personal attack on the host. He's not Iranian, he did his best to research everything. I pointed this out in the last sentence. I have less sympathy for Anna, though. And I will definitely point it out when I see disinformation being spread and inform people about what exactly is wrong about it. I did my best to provide a thorough overview of the situation and how the reality in Iran contrasts with this video. Perhaps it was aggressive, but I hope you understand that I have reasons for that. If even half the people watching this get to read it, that's now 150 people who have a better understanding of our situation. Don't worry, this was just a minuscule portion of what I do for the revolution, someone just happened to share this video with me. Thank you for your support! Zan Zendegi Azadi

[@poliguy2192]

@@bobbie3713 there were multiple clear lies in this podcast and the entire rhetoric of this video was that this guy the head of irgc was not that bad. And this is just one instance of left-leaning podcasts being low key or even Openly apologists for the regime. At this point "anti imperialist" talking points have become more harming than imperialism talking points itself when the center of the message never ever pushes support for the people in their fight against dictatorship.

[@yeti25934]

Lmao, astrology is garbage