SkylarkTempest
Active Member
Right, so please explain to me again why you think regular citizens are mourning one of the military strongmen keeping it that way and enforcing it with violence?
Do you think the Iranian people enjoy being basically held captive and threatened daily?
I'm just trying to get you to walk it through, man...
They're not being held captive and threatened daily. I think your understanding of Iranian society is something akin to North Korea. Yes, the government has taken an authoritarian turn since the late 2000s, but it is not an oppressive dictatorship. To give you a sense of scale, the Freedom House report rates Iran 17/100 but gives Venezuela 26/100. North Korea gets 1/100. Iran's a horrible place but it's closer to Venezuela than North Korea. If you're familiar with its recent history (namely the revolution), you'll know that many Iranians love their country, distrust or fear the West, and would gladly choose to remain if given the choice to move to the US. (They may, however, eagerly move to other Shia countries such as Iraq or Bahrain because c'mon, where are you going to go? Afghanistan? Iran, at least, is a developed nation.)
But what's your point? I think this exchange started because you didn't believe that hundreds of thousands of people turned out to mourn this dude because they chose to. There's no evidence to suggest that and quite a bit to the contrary.