They don’t care about the regime, they only want it to be aligned with the US and Israel. The Saudi absolute monarchy regime (something that is way worst than the Iranian one) that is directly coming from middle ages, doesn’t get the same journalistic treatment in the US. Women rights in Iran are lightyears ahead of what is happening in Saudi Arabia. But who cares? Talking about Iran regime change only is pure hypocrisy when your best friend in the region can kill anyone by just deciding it.
Actually, Saudi Arabia doesn't beat woman to death for not wearing a hijab (although they're not great either). Saudi is ranked 56 on the Gender Inequality Index, whereas Iran is 113. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_Inequality_Index
3 years ago Saudi Arabia set into its law (on the international women’s day) that a male relative always have control on a woman. A few years ago only, women were allowed to drive but as of today they are very few female drivers. But that’s not the point, the point is the hypocrisy to point at a political regime because he his not aligned with your views while having as a best friend the worst absolute monarchy.
> A few years ago only, women were allowed to drive but as of today they are very few female drivers.
Maybe. But overall Saudi Arabia has been undergoing pretty dramatic changes in recent years: Women can now drive, are no longer required to wear a hijab, are allowed to work, can meet with male friends/non-relatives without the police stopping them, etc. Yes, it's still a far cry from what women are allowed to do in western countries, and absolute change is still slow, but relatively speaking it's still quite impressive and gives me (and apparently people there) hope.
Yes, quite a few actually. I do have to mention, though, that the women I talked to were from the cities, usually very well educated (studied abroad, spoke English / grew up with Netflix, etc.), and/or used to tourists. I didn't dare talking to women in the smaller, more rural towns as I wasn't sure about repercussions (for them). Plus there would have been the language barrier, anyway.
Overall, there seemed to be a rather pronounced divide between the cities and the country side:
In the cities you did see the occasional woman without hijab, some women working (particularly in the hospitality industry), and a few women driving (though still not many). Meanwhile, in more rural areas tradition strongly prevailed. So none of the things I mentioned are really commonplace yet (not even in the cities) – it's just that at the very least they're legal now and people (women) are making their first baby steps towards enjoying their newfound freedom.
You can find many videos of people walking around cities in Iran - not only are plenty of women not covering their hair, there's plenty of dyed hair too. Dress is a bit more conservative than western countries, but not by much, and women are obviously free - and feel safe - to leave the house unescorted. Iran has liberalized a lot compared to the post-revolutionary period.
Mahsa Amini was famously beaten to death by Iran's morality police in 2022 for the crime of not wearing a hijab. Even modern-day Iran is incredibly oppressive to women, and is currently ranked #113 on the Gender Inequality Index.
Israel hasn't really engaged in regime change. If anything the opposite. There was a single failed attempt to get the Christians into power in Lebanon. But mostly sort of the devil I know. We have Hussein in Jordan. We had Assad in Syria. Egypt had its own turmoils but not much Israeli involvement. The PA and Hamas were also viewed as a stabler alternative to chaos. Saudi and the emirates pretty stable. Turkey (not quite middle east but whatever) also have their internal turmoil. Iran has been stable as well.
This is true but that happened mostly after Hamas already took Gaza. Israel would have greatly preferred for the PA to control Gaza. The regime change in this case was done by the Palestinians themselves. The Israeli right wing did to some extent strengthen the division once it was in place. The Wikipedia article reads like a propaganda piece and I would not trust it at all. I've lived in Israel through this period so I have a pretty good first hand knowledge/experience of the events.
The PA didn't really come close to negotiating peace and given Hamas were not able to. See Hamas' suicide bombing campaign during the Oslo peace process. The PA, somewhat as a response to Israeli policy, decided to pursue trying to force Israel to yield via a combination of armed and political struggle and not negotiate with it. Strangely enough security cooperation did continue throughout (and the PA is basically supported by the IDF otherwise it would likely have been toppled). This all happened after the Oslo peace process collpased due to Hamas.
Bush pushed for an election as he wanted to have solved the middle east situation before his presidency was over, against both Israel and PAs wishes. Then Hamas won and Bush again pushed PA to do a coup which failed and PA was kicked out of Gaza.
You think Europe would really behave any different?
Israel is the wedge and leverage to eliminating governments of Iran, Pakistan, China and then India and weakening Russia further.
Colonialism hasn't gone anywhere, evidence? Europe fully protects settlers and their ambitions despite what they say publicly. It is a long road but the most realistic one they have.
> Israel is the wedge and leverage to eliminating governments of Iran, Pakistan, China and then India and weakening Russia further.
China and India? and Russia? Israel doesn't care about them.
Israel is using America and Europe to gain control of the middle east, so they want to eliminate Iran (and just like with Iraq, they want the US to do it for them).
Pakistan is somewhat friendly so not really a threat to Israel's control over the middle east.
US and Europe do not benefit from this. Europe actually suffers as instability in middle east causes a refugee crisis in Europe.
Europe probably would behave differently to be honest, but we’re so far away from either of us finding out if we’re correct or not that its not worth talking about.
What we should instead focus on is digital sovereignty.
Everything from Tiktok bans to banning social media for teens. Who's going to fight US wars if your canon fodder witnessed Israel's inhumane behaviour as teens growing up. Nothing todo with China.
There's good reason to believe lots of western apps have back doors, if not backdoors served to countries like Iran from app stores.
Also car tech and cameras. Literally a wet dream if I worked at a three letter agency, real time surveillance of streets which is actually extremely difficult normally. Can't think of how many times I've wanted a recent picture of a street or house miles away, with 360 car cameras you can track people, see changes maybe from just minutes ago.
I don't know why these countries don't block or mandate these features are completely turned off.
> There's good reason to believe lots of western apps have back doors
A common sentiment in this thread. My gut and practical experience both tell me this is true on some level, but how do folks distinguish tinfoil hat conspiracy from legitimate speculation?
>but how do folks distinguish tinfoil hat conspiracy from legitimate speculation?
Plausibility and evidence, for which there's plenty in this case.
Although it seems less likely to me that Western apps have backdoors and more likely that Western law enforcement and intelligence have free access to the data, but it's probably both.
> Plausibility and evidence, for which there's plenty in this case.
I don't know i agree. The article didn't cite any evidence, and Iran would have lots of motivation to lie here. E.g. it could be a face saving move, trying to shift blame for the war going badly from a failing military to being the fault of traitors who installed whatsapp. It could be a ploy to prevent citizens from having e2e encrypted comms, lest they plot a revolution (from what i understand Iran has blamed whatsapp for protests in the past). It might just be a desperate regime with a crumbling military that is out of options and willing to grasp at any straw no matter how slight.
Not to say that i think its impossible. Israel has certainly pulled off crazier things in the past, but right now we have zero evidence and lots of potential motives for Iran to make shit up.
I wish there was a law which mandated update, service and telemetry servers were on different cidrs.
There are frequently updates lists Windows telemetry IPs you can block using ipsets. But a Microsoft always seem to mix these IPs with legitimate services.
While I want to reduce the number, I can't but help think how we essentially create them in the first place by destroying the countries which create the economic conditions they flee from.
Asylum seekers are not fleeing bad economic conditions, or at least they are claiming not to. Also, we didn't create refugees from Syria or Ukraine - Syria and Russia did.
That is literally the ultimate ambition of this war.
There's a long list of middle eastern countries where we've installed our stooges.
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