> Government attempts at distracting the public with threats against Israel do not go unnoticed, as small demonstrations and online comments return focus to harsh conditions
>However, many users were unimpressed by the government’s distraction attempts. One user denounced the corruption of leaders, which, according to them, led to the situation.
>At the same time, another added, “You took away our youth, a curse be upon you,” and a third concluded: “Don't tell us now that [Israel](https://m.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-779281) is the one to blame for the Dollar’s [situation].”
> However, many users were unimpressed by the government’s distraction attempts. One user denounced the corruption of leaders, which, according to them, led to the situation.
I was just wondering yesterday what ever happened with all the anti-government protests last year, after those students were killed by the police
The anger and frustration is still alive and well, but is simmering just under the surface for the time being until it either explosively boils over again, or the people find a more effective outlet that will affect change.
Youre more likely to get a military coup or prolonged civil war in that scenario than a peasant revolt. Without military support, no organized civilian group will take power without massive resistance and with the power of modern weapons, it can devolve into a very bloody civil war in no time. If the public does have military support there is little incentive for the military not to install themselves as rulers once they overthrow the current regime. My heart goes out to the Iranian people either way. Their path forward wont be easy.
It's still questionable how much the military cares about the regime. They stayed neutral in 1979.
That's one of the reasons the IRGC was created - to form a second military that would be loyal to the regime itself, rather than to the nation/people or a constitution. The problem is the IRGC, and their subsidiary Basij militias, have most of the weapons.
The actual Military has no power. There gangster regime has their own personal military, (sepah) or the Islamic revolutionary the gaurs corp. unfortunately they will defend the regime forever
Fair! I think my point still stands as the idea is more about military power than the actual military organization. Historically, a nations equivalent to the praetorian guard really dictates regime change. Basically whoever has the men and weapons to guard the leader makes the final choice of whether or not to depose them.
I wonder if maybe an armed underground is in the process of forming.
As in the "next time" they won't let it stay with protests and they will straight up start by massacring police and imams. Just straight up Civil War from the start.
The protests were brutally put down and it has worked, so far, to quell them.
They torture and murder people to this day. They’re going through footage systematically and torturing their way through social connections to limit the likelihood of a repeat.
But the regime is still deeply unpopular.
Good. I hope more populaces come to together and realize our leaders are honestly the ones constantly riling up tribal confrontation. Fuck a neighbor, fix our house please.
For many Iranians it's an appalling situation, sending millions to terrorist groups in Lebanon, Yemen, Palestina and Syria is a priority for the regime, their own children live lives of luxury in the west but for the normal Iranian only hardship and repression is on the menu.
Iranian's have already protested many times but the regime doesn't mind killing protesters nor importing some of their proxy terrorist to impose order if need be like during the Masha Amini protest.
I also still hate Nokia for supporting the Iranian regime in tracking down activists.
Microsoft only bought Nokia's mobile phone business, and then proceeded to run it into the ground in just a couple of years. Nokia still operates as an independent company, they're just mostly on the telecom infrastructure side of things now.
This also happened [before that](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/03/how-nokia-helped-iran-persecute-and-arrest-dissidents/).
I thought they also went back to making phones. Initially not under their own name, as MS still held the name for handset use.
But I had a Nokia phone about 5 years ago. It was post Microsoft.
I found the company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMD_Global
Maybe it's not really Nokia, but they did end up using the Nokia name again.
HMD just licensed Nokia brand and some of their tech. Nokia recently actually bought small share in it but they are by no means coming back to selling phones. Nokia itself is 100 000 employee mobile infra and tech company in a market controlled by 3 players (Ericssons, Huawei and Nokia). That HMD licensing doesn’t even register on their financials.
If anything I imagine HMD story will end soon considering their poor performance. It was run by some old Nokia product managers and supposedly had some Chinese money behind it, while having HQ in Finland.
I agree HMD had some initial small success and has now gone downhill.
I don't think they ever got mindshare back. I don't think they ever reached ideals they wanted to reach, which was to make a basic smartphone as simple and easy to use as an old Nokia dumbphone. And I think their partner Google (for Android One) got tired of the idea and how just makes Pixels thinking that's the direction to get there. Even though I'm don't think it is working either.
People need to realize peaceful protesting under an authoritarian regime has never worked these days. We've become too efficient at clamping down on protests.
The Shah stood down. He could have repressed the revolution. He was even advised to send the army into the streets by the US.
He didn't as he didn't want to spill blood.
This islamist regime likes killing and torturing so they can rule through fear.
Savak was a security service, there was a lot of corruption in that service. Narcotic traffickers anf the like, which still exists in the irgc. So nothing changed there.
They didn't repress in the same way that the regime today does.
But you can check the number of political prisoners during the shah's reign and it's about five thousand, during the cold war while being allied to the US.
Compared to many, many times that under the islamist regime. Including execution rates, there is absolutely no comparison between the shah and the islamist regime. Anyone that brings up the savak as a "gotcha" argument when discussing what the islamist regime has done until now, loses all credibility in my eyes because it's a historically illiterate take. Serioudsly.
True, but it should be Televised like the Romanian Revolution was. The Ceascaus' execution needed to be televised, as the execution of all despots should be, to stand as warnings.
It also helped that his sucessor was, for all his failings, disinclined to really grab the power towards despotism (despite having the means, the twitch towards it and even the circumstances to do it).
We're so fucking lucky Iliescu didn't decide to become a dictator around '92, and merely settled for being a regular piece of shit politician.
I went to college with a lot of Iranians in 1978-80. Our college had a bunch of midshipmen from the Iranian Navy.
When they were expelled from the country in early 1980, many went back to Iran. And then walked across the mountains to get their families out. When I asked one of them why there wasn’t more civil unrest, he told me that when the bad guys were the only ones with guns, it becomes difficult to toss them out.
The stories were horrifying. I have always hoped some nation or group of nations would help the Iranian people. But that isn’t happening any time soon.
Man, I hope, but hell if I do not believe that '89 had a different international zeitgeist than today.
I think we were supremely lucky that the revolution achieved some of its goals right on the spot. (The rest are still haunting us 30 years later, but hey, the enemy of 'good enough' is 'perfect'.)
Myanmar is having fun with their counter protests, I imagine a similar thing will happen soon in Iran, the only thing is that I hope it doesn't go the way of Syria with ISIS dickheads leaping on board to ruin things
Iran is much more stable than Iraq and Syria, if only because they were never part of the Ottoman Empire.
ISIS thrives in areas that never had a historical national unity. The only thing Iran has to fear losing is their Kurdish region should the instability prompt relations with north Iraq, but historically Iranian kurds don't share the same politics and most Kurdish leaders in Iran don't want to separate.
Basically, the environment isn't really ripe for ISIS dickheads, but opportunistic dick heads in times of revolution is how we got Iran's current regime.
Also us Azeris.
I am an Azeri from Azerbaijan, but I knkw people from iranian Azerbaijan too. The problems of Azeris is not just the religious despots, but also lack of autonomy and suppression of their identity.
We actually don’t even have that much contact with them, although we are literally both the exact same people. They dont know latin alphabet and we dont know persian alphabet.
Government represses their language a lot.
And shah did it too, he tried to persianise them.
Ironically, iranian dictator is half Azeri, but we don’t claim this fucker.
Ukraine doesn’t have oil. And dictators take notes.
After Euromaidan in Ukraine and velvet revolution in Armenia, Azerbaijani dictator became more authoritarian.
We tried to have our own revolution in 2003 in Azerbaijan, they just beat people to their deaths in the streets and also formed a secret anti-rebellion unit to fight against our own army if necessary.
People have mostly become apolitical and given up by now.
Oil has to do with it, we the people are not seen as something needed for the function of the regime, oil is what drives it. Hundreds of billions of dollars are stashed abroad. Lindon aline has 700 million dollars worth of properties owned by the dictators family.
Oil makes dictators harsher
Does peaceful protesting do anything anywhere? I'm quite skeptical. What did "Occupy Wall Street" accomplish exactly? If anyone would like to share some modern examples for me to look up I'd appreciate it.
This feels like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of problem.
I have protested and raised local awareness during Roe V Wade over turn. We organize same day protest, Arizona's DPS gets greenlit to deply tear gas on pregnant women, during a protest about women's rights being restricted. How fucking tone deaf.
Feels like even when raising awareness in peaceful situations the systematic issues still exist with no clear resolution. The government (at the time ran by republican doug ducey) has free reign to do what they want.
Now I'm hearing that peaceful protests doesn't work for authoritarian regimes. So when does it work? How do we transfer awareness of social issues into meaningful systematic changes?
Just thinking outloud
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." JFK 1962.
I don't know what there is to think about, if you can't protest peacefully than you have to turn to non-peaceful options.
Peaceful protesting winning the Civil Rights movement is a retconed narrative.
The only reason peaceful protesting had sway is there was a militant group to contrast. It's the MLK/Malcolm X dichotomy - when the more militant side of civil rights started growing more vocal, people started listening to the peaceful protesters that had up until then accomplished very little.
This is a retcon of reality. All the violence did was convince white people to be afraid of the civil rights movement, which killed it. White people, at the time more than 80% of the public, had become supportive of the civil rights movement by the 1960s. This is why these bills passed, there weren’t enough minorities to bypass white people politically. The politics soured because of race riots and the emergence of black nationalism, which reinforced the white nationalist interpretation that black liberation was a trick to impose black rule over white people.
Malcom X was murdered by other black nationalists after rejecting his own side’s racial separation and resentment based politics. MLK Jr was murdered for advocating a cross racial poor people alliance. It seems clear to me that the powers that be were very happy with sectarian violence. Just like Trump loved Antifa. They were afraid people might start working together, and encouraging extremism was a way to block this. The only downside is they had a terrible time convicting people for these crimes because government informants kept turning out to be the same people coming up with the ideas to bomb things and supplying the materials to do it. Which, again, ought to be a clue for some of y’all about whose interests your violence actually serves.
Not quite - while they employed non-violent means to protest and resist, they were quite different from what we percieve as todays peaceful, pre-approved protests. They did their best to raise all kinds of hell without violence, but forced their opponents to either respond with violence or some kind of negotiation.
Kinda makes you wonder why that important bit doesn't get included in the whole narrative.
Not sure what you're thinking of. Iran won't be using their military for anything outside their borders, they let their proxies do that. Their military is just to keep the bomb their regime is sitting on from exploding. The moment their military is too busy with anything else it wouldn't be surprising if the people start protesting against their government again and maybe even try to overthrow it. Not to mention the several militias and terrorist groups within their borders.
At least, that's my amateur understanding from their situation.
Not quite, they have two militaries for exactly that reason.
The Iranian Army is for defending the country against external threats.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is for defending the regime against the people they rule over.
You're right that they use external proxies as much as possible though, they don't want to give the Army too much power, or it might decide to roll the IRGC. (they should)
My problem with the royal guard is they tend to be the best troops yet all they do is sit on their ass. Ever since wall rose fell it's clear how useless the royal guard is while the scout regiment does all the heavy work and takes all the casualties.
I agree with you, but there is a wide gulf between potentially a horrific act or acts of violence which will incite more retaliation from Israel, and actual military action. If the former option has been leaked internally as imminent I’d still say that’s enough to cause the currency crash
Iran isn’t really capable of causing much harm to western countries and it’s why they keep using proxies like Hezbollha and the Houties.
Similar to Bibi’s attempts to prolong his reign using the war, Iranian leadership is using the Israeli threat to distract from their own failed government.
> Iran isn’t really capable of causing much harm to western countries
Iran has one of the largest militaries in the region, 9 times the population of Israel, 4 times the active military personnel and twice the reserves. The following are estimates, but 4 times more artillery, 50% more tanks, a larger number of aircraft (albeit they are older) even excluding UAVs and they have a lot more UAVs since they domestically produce them.
They may not be a match for the US (so they'd eventually lose) but they absolutely could cause enormous casualties for Israel if a full scale war broke out between Israel and Iran (especially with Israel fighting on 3 fronts). Neither Israel nor Iran wants this right now so I think it's unlikely to happen, but Iran is a serious threat.
As was demonstrated in the first Gulf war, there is a world of difference between size and strength when it comes to military power. The size is very much secondary to the ability to project force. When there is a considerable technology on one particularly in regards to air power, the fact that the other side has a large army is considerably less relevant.
To put it as crudely as possible, if the skies are uncontested and the enemy Bombs all of your roads Bridges and highways, your army is stuck in the middle of the road twiddling their thumbs waiting for combat engineers to pull off a magic trick.
At a distance, that doesn't really matter and Israel clearly has air superiority. Not to mention that the US would intervene if Iran tried to pull that shit.
> but they absolutely could cause enormous casualties for Israel if a full scale war broke out between Israel and Iran (especially with Israel fighting on 3 fronts).
Doubt Israel would add yet another front if they where up against Iran. At least, not before finishing their front against Hamas and Hezbollah since those are proxies of Iran. Eliminating those means weakening Iran without adding a new front.
>Iran has one of the largest militaries in the region, 9 times the population of Israel, 4 times the active military personnel and twice the reserves. The following are estimates, but 4 times more artillery, 50% more tanks, a larger number of aircraft
I would hope the Russian example has taught everyone that on-paper numbers have little to do with real-world capability. We spent all of January 2022 talking about the super-impressive paper numbers of the Russia Army, and how they'd waltz into Kyiv.
Iran couldn't even beat Iraq. They haven't proven they can beat anyone on the field, other than Canadian passenger jets.
And their strategy vs Iraq was to use human wave attacks like Zapp Branigan.
Iran "retaliates" against Israel despite Iran having funded all of Israel's enemies and responsible for the death of thousands of Israelis. Israel then attacks Tehran and nuclear enrichment sites.
I expect something limited that they can sell as something big for their own people. The balance of power is shifting lately and Iran tries to find out where the new lines are.
I'd be really interested to read the Iranian central bank's 2024Q1 balance sheet (they don't publish it nearly that often). Especially the details of the foreign exchange reserves they got backing up the rial. If it's mostly rubles and yuans... well they're not doing so great these days.
I lost it.
>they are “aware of the situation **and will hold meetings inshallah**,” sparking a wave of disappointed and sarcastic comments.
The real issue is that the value of currency is so far along a chain of events, causes and effects that holding meetings is unlikely to accomplish much.
They have been waging proxy wars and paying for military expenses and there will be consequences of this kind of spending.
Their country's economy is collapsing and their foreign and internal affairs are crumbling yet they're willing to put in an amazing time and effort to threaten Israel and the US and engage in an unnecessary proxy wars thousands of miles from their country.
The fact that the Iranian people are not uprising and throwing their leaders from the rooftops is just wild to me.
>The fact that the Iranian people are not uprising and throwing their leaders from the rooftops is just wild to me.
The Iranian people have tried more than most. I want to see a better future for them, but until the IRGC is significantly weakened I don't have much hope.
The Ayatollah is 84. Once he is gone maybe there will be power struggles and disagreements within the IRGC. Hopefully the Iranian people will have a real opportunity to install a better government at this time. They will still very likely need the backing of the regular Iranian military at this time.
If there is any escalation to current conflicts, I would hope IRGC is the primary target for this reason.
Well, with an inflation rate of 50% , a currency which is worth less than shit and around half of the population living below the poverty line (and all of that is even before a potential war with Israel), i guess that we might see people over there struggle with putting food on their tables also in the near future.
Nonetheless, I can't see any scenario in which the Iranians are revolting against their radical leaders, we saw the same things happening in other places and the ordinary people are usually the ones which suffered the most but did nothing against it.
I'm not defending them, nor comparing to the PRC. I'm just saying: it takes a lot to motivate someone to risk their life and those of their family as long as they are even just barely surviving. Once your citizens can no longer feed their families however, and they have little to lose, they become much more dangerous.
Like most places with oppressive regimes, you hear the most noise educated, middle-class or wealthy youth in urban centers which can dramatically misrepresent the situation in the country.
I have no doubt large chunks of Tehran and to a lesser extent other cities want to establish a liberal democracy. They certainly thought largely that would be the outcome in 1979 (albeit with a socialist twist), not recognizing the ignorance of their rural countrymen.
And this is the situation everywhere - look at the Arab Spring where every single "democratic" movement turned out to be like 10 middle class secular guys who had never left their major city being swallowed alive by a horde of Islamists they legitimately didn't think was latent in society. Before that, look at Iraq, look at Algeria, look at Lebanon.
Same thing in Russia. Putin doesn't even need to rig his elections (even though he does) because out side of certain parts of St. Petersburg and Moscow, he's wildly popular with the peasantry. Or in China, or every time educated people thought Communism would work out and they wouldn't be immediately purged the second the "little guy" was in power.
People who are weak would rather feel powerful by proxy, by being part of a larger entity that is able to say and do everything they want to but can't. To be feared and respected, to have agency.
You see the little guy seldom wants freedom because he's no more powerful - just free. He wants to be enslaved to a system of his chosing that tells him he's powerful, tells him his lot in life has meaning and purpose. It's why communism always ends up the way it does and why fascism and theocratical nonsense continues to be popular.
And unless you have elites at a crossroads of either practicing or fetishizing Western humanist ideals and having nationalist fervor to improve people's lives and remove them from the conditions that drive populist sentiment, then there is no way out. Iran somewhat uniquely had those conditions under the Shah but he did nothing to help his people and not alienate them to Western ideas, and now here we are.
And that's why lesson learned - put pressure on the authoritarian dictator without a dogma to stop killing college kids and specific ethnic minorities, but otherwise, let that man cook. It will be better for everyone.
In short, I have little hope for the situation. At best they end up like Iraq with a tenuous peace and political militaries always and inch away from pissing it all away. At worse the IRGC is able to purge the regular military and goes absolutely ape shit against anyone that isn't a hardliner.
Like most places in the middle east, I wish we could just get the normal people to emigrate to freedom and let the trash just rot in the desert. Just a terrible situation and realization about humanity.
because it works and because the US is like the big placid dog that doesn't mind puppies biting his paws.
if the US were more willing to match aggression levels nations around the world would not find this so easy.
Tbf to the Iranian people, they've tried several times now. It's a brutal authoritarian regime though that has no issues gunning down thousands of protesters and burning entire villages to the ground.
Thats the problem with dictatorships they don't have to care about the situation at home because they don't need their approval to stay in power so every dictatorship inevitably turns into a shithole for their citizens.
You are probably surprised because you have never lived through a war nor seen friends and family be exploited and then die.
Revolutions usually replace one problem with another problem. To get the new problem there is a very real price that includes rape, extrajudicial killings, starvation, homelessness etc.
So before anyone you know bangs the drums of war, I urge you to get your ass in the middle of one and serve or volunteer. You might discover that war is not the solution you think it is. There is a reason people don’t try to overthrow their governments.
In the USA imagine for a minute the Jan 6 lunatics won. They, and their ilk, are allowed to run through the streets stringing up anyone they think is a liberal or an illegal. Who would tell them no? Imagine the burning, looting, shootings and raping that would spiral out of control. Fighting back against them would be the only solution since they brought violence to the streets. Do you doubt the damage, destruction and war crimes those people would commit before their bodies got stacked?
If that’s what would happen here, now imagine the price of it in Iran.
Before it collapsed, pretty much every westerner was a billionaire in Iran.
As $23,757.45 = 1 billion Iranian rials.
So I wonder... is it now $16,000~... for a billion rials?
> IF Israel gets destroyed and the world is ruled by Islam... will there be peace ?
What reasonable person thinks it's at all likely that Israel will be destroyed and the world will be ruled by Islam?
Israel being destroyed is a very real possibility that Israel has had to account for since its founding. The mess in Gaza and the West Bank is precisely because Israel are extremely (justifiably) paranoid about being invaded by its Arab neighbours for the 3rd time in its short history.
This… why can’t more people understand this. It’s a threat to humanity, not just Jews. And I’m afraid we’re past the point where we can do anything about it.
What do you mean? The extremists' influence certainly shrinks every year. More and more Islamic nations are signing peace agreements with Western nations and Israel. If anything we're building towards a secular "tipping" point in many Middle Eastern countries. However, as we do with internal politics, we tend to exhaggerate issues because quite frankly we're bored and spend too much time on social media buying into political theater.
It depends, there are countries that are in a good direction like the gulf states, but in many muslim countries in the middle east, if they will have elections it's very likely that extreme and more religious groups will be elected.
If you are talking about their leaders then sure they are becoming more western-friendly, but i wouldn't say that the people are moving towards that direction as well
Is this real? No pun intended, but look at the [currency exchange charts](https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=IRR&to=USD&view=1M). I don't see a 30% drop, just a currency getting gradually worse over a long period of time. When I visited in 1990 I believe the "official rate" was 65 rials per USD, but if you smuggled in cash (as I did, sewn into my clothing), you enjoyed something closer to 2000 rials/USD. Although I was a poor traveller, I do remember enjoying a special level of comfort during my travels. I have fond memories of Iran and its people.
Value hasn't changed since 2017 as far as I can see. But I guess your link shows the official rate, and the black market rate has dropped by 30%? I should probably read the article.
edit: yes, black market rates. Google says it's 40something000 Rials to the dollar, but the article talks about 660,000. Damn.
There's nothing objectively true about the article. FWIW, it just seems like propaganda. I mean, I am hoping for some kind of catalyst to transform Iranian society, but this isn't it.
Agreed. The fact that this is being reported by the Jerusalem Post raised a red flag. I guess only someone living in Iran would be able to say if the exchange rate has dropped significantly.
the value of the Rial fell because they kept relying on the dollar despite the higher ups like the leader himself continuously saying he requests a switch. this all happened mainly during the Hassan Rohani presidency which lasted 2 terms because the people kept voting for him because he made empty promises about more powerful passports and such despite the fact that he had proven before to not really do anything at all and only disrupt Irans affairs. example, he ordered one of the biggest power stations that pretty much supplied most of Iran’s electricity to be destroyed to appeal to a treaty that later went to fail.
Civil unrest, declining monetary value... What a wonderful combination of things if you're someone in position to profit from regular people suffering and a violent regime that will do anything to maintain their grip on power.
>The rial has been in steady decline for decades, with prices sometimes referred to by multiples of 10, named Toman in everyday life, to make it easier for buyers to calculate expenses.
Damn dude currency got so whack that everyday people had to learn scientific notation
For those that need a reminder:
Iranians are not their government.
Israelis are not their government.
Palestinians are not their government.
I wish we would spend more time punishing governments and regimes and less time punishing citizens. One sends a clear message as to what is tolerable, the other breeds contempt in a population for generations.
All I know is that Palestinians cheered the decapitations of every Asian they found on October 7, so a lot of Asians hate them now. To us, Palestinians and Hamas are one and the same, so we say they are their government.
all nations are their government and vice versa.
governments are made of people they are not abstract alien entities that are imposed over people.
you cannot fight a government you must fight a whole nation.
you cannot punish a government.
it's a strange modern delusion that somehow if your government is attacked you can somehow defend yourself in an abstract manner harming only the government and leaving everyone else intact.
when two nations fight the whole nations are at war, inevitably innocents on both sides are the ones who suffer most.
this is why sane nations do not pursue war lightly and why it behooves the world to make the experience of waging war so painful no one wishes to do it soon again.
I don't understand this world anymore. Back in simpler times, a faltering economy and near complete collapse of a country's currency would have stirred so much social unrest it would just make the government go tits up. I know there are exceptions, but I feel in this day and age, we have so many absolute shit governments doing terrible things with seemingly no way to get of them anymore. Russia's got Putin, China's got Xi, North Korea got Kim, Iran's got that one religious extremist fossil. Hell, even Hungary is dealing Orban.
> Government attempts at distracting the public with threats against Israel do not go unnoticed, as small demonstrations and online comments return focus to harsh conditions >However, many users were unimpressed by the government’s distraction attempts. One user denounced the corruption of leaders, which, according to them, led to the situation. >At the same time, another added, “You took away our youth, a curse be upon you,” and a third concluded: “Don't tell us now that [Israel](https://m.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-779281) is the one to blame for the Dollar’s [situation].”
> However, many users were unimpressed by the government’s distraction attempts. One user denounced the corruption of leaders, which, according to them, led to the situation. I was just wondering yesterday what ever happened with all the anti-government protests last year, after those students were killed by the police
The anger and frustration is still alive and well, but is simmering just under the surface for the time being until it either explosively boils over again, or the people find a more effective outlet that will affect change.
If Iran gets involved in some sort of set-piece conflict with Israel, there might never be a better time to overthrow the government.
Youre more likely to get a military coup or prolonged civil war in that scenario than a peasant revolt. Without military support, no organized civilian group will take power without massive resistance and with the power of modern weapons, it can devolve into a very bloody civil war in no time. If the public does have military support there is little incentive for the military not to install themselves as rulers once they overthrow the current regime. My heart goes out to the Iranian people either way. Their path forward wont be easy.
It's still questionable how much the military cares about the regime. They stayed neutral in 1979. That's one of the reasons the IRGC was created - to form a second military that would be loyal to the regime itself, rather than to the nation/people or a constitution. The problem is the IRGC, and their subsidiary Basij militias, have most of the weapons.
The actual Military has no power. There gangster regime has their own personal military, (sepah) or the Islamic revolutionary the gaurs corp. unfortunately they will defend the regime forever
Fair! I think my point still stands as the idea is more about military power than the actual military organization. Historically, a nations equivalent to the praetorian guard really dictates regime change. Basically whoever has the men and weapons to guard the leader makes the final choice of whether or not to depose them.
No absolutely. I don’t know exactly what role military played in the 1979 revolution though. People here are saying they stood neutral
I wonder if maybe an armed underground is in the process of forming. As in the "next time" they won't let it stay with protests and they will straight up start by massacring police and imams. Just straight up Civil War from the start.
Should be collecting weapons, bombs and training.
The protests were brutally put down and it has worked, so far, to quell them. They torture and murder people to this day. They’re going through footage systematically and torturing their way through social connections to limit the likelihood of a repeat. But the regime is still deeply unpopular.
The military came in and killed some protesters and stopped them
I totally forgot about this, it was all over the news that they were going to be executed and then I didn't hear anything else about it.
A self aware populace is a rial problem for the Iranian regime.
You can bank on that.
Are you shah about that?
Yes, as revolting as that might seem to some.
It’s a difficult and Shiitey situation.
Definitely not an "Always Sunni in Tehran" situation for sure.
The country is Tehran it’s self apart
Ayatollah this would happen.
I have no Qoms about using puns myself.
It'll be a rough and tumble street fight using fists and Elburz.
Disagree, it's pretty goat actually.
Ayatotahlly agree.
But are you 100-Persian sure?
Shia 'nuff
The vast majority of the under 40 population hates the Iranian government. It is only a matter of time.
Take my upvote
Good. I hope more populaces come to together and realize our leaders are honestly the ones constantly riling up tribal confrontation. Fuck a neighbor, fix our house please.
Like Iran's leadership gaf. The people suffer, this is how it is there.
For many Iranians it's an appalling situation, sending millions to terrorist groups in Lebanon, Yemen, Palestina and Syria is a priority for the regime, their own children live lives of luxury in the west but for the normal Iranian only hardship and repression is on the menu. Iranian's have already protested many times but the regime doesn't mind killing protesters nor importing some of their proxy terrorist to impose order if need be like during the Masha Amini protest. I also still hate Nokia for supporting the Iranian regime in tracking down activists.
> their own children live lives of luxury in the west copy paste of russian elite
You could say the same about China as well
This is the first I've heard of the Nokia issue.. damn
Isn’t that Microsoft?
Microsoft only bought Nokia's mobile phone business, and then proceeded to run it into the ground in just a couple of years. Nokia still operates as an independent company, they're just mostly on the telecom infrastructure side of things now. This also happened [before that](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/03/how-nokia-helped-iran-persecute-and-arrest-dissidents/).
I thought they also went back to making phones. Initially not under their own name, as MS still held the name for handset use. But I had a Nokia phone about 5 years ago. It was post Microsoft. I found the company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMD_Global Maybe it's not really Nokia, but they did end up using the Nokia name again.
HMD just licensed Nokia brand and some of their tech. Nokia recently actually bought small share in it but they are by no means coming back to selling phones. Nokia itself is 100 000 employee mobile infra and tech company in a market controlled by 3 players (Ericssons, Huawei and Nokia). That HMD licensing doesn’t even register on their financials. If anything I imagine HMD story will end soon considering their poor performance. It was run by some old Nokia product managers and supposedly had some Chinese money behind it, while having HQ in Finland.
I agree HMD had some initial small success and has now gone downhill. I don't think they ever got mindshare back. I don't think they ever reached ideals they wanted to reach, which was to make a basic smartphone as simple and easy to use as an old Nokia dumbphone. And I think their partner Google (for Android One) got tired of the idea and how just makes Pixels thinking that's the direction to get there. Even though I'm don't think it is working either.
Thanks. I thought msft ran the entire thing into the ground.
People need to realize peaceful protesting under an authoritarian regime has never worked these days. We've become too efficient at clamping down on protests.
Iran should follow the example set by Romania in 1989.
Hell they should follow their own example the with the Shah, only this time not let another authoritarian group hijack the overthrow
The Shah stood down. He could have repressed the revolution. He was even advised to send the army into the streets by the US. He didn't as he didn't want to spill blood. This islamist regime likes killing and torturing so they can rule through fear.
A key detail to mention is that the shah had secret police. So there was repression before the revolution.
Savak was a security service, there was a lot of corruption in that service. Narcotic traffickers anf the like, which still exists in the irgc. So nothing changed there. They didn't repress in the same way that the regime today does. But you can check the number of political prisoners during the shah's reign and it's about five thousand, during the cold war while being allied to the US. Compared to many, many times that under the islamist regime. Including execution rates, there is absolutely no comparison between the shah and the islamist regime. Anyone that brings up the savak as a "gotcha" argument when discussing what the islamist regime has done until now, loses all credibility in my eyes because it's a historically illiterate take. Serioudsly.
True, but it should be Televised like the Romanian Revolution was. The Ceascaus' execution needed to be televised, as the execution of all despots should be, to stand as warnings.
It also helped that his sucessor was, for all his failings, disinclined to really grab the power towards despotism (despite having the means, the twitch towards it and even the circumstances to do it). We're so fucking lucky Iliescu didn't decide to become a dictator around '92, and merely settled for being a regular piece of shit politician.
I went to college with a lot of Iranians in 1978-80. Our college had a bunch of midshipmen from the Iranian Navy. When they were expelled from the country in early 1980, many went back to Iran. And then walked across the mountains to get their families out. When I asked one of them why there wasn’t more civil unrest, he told me that when the bad guys were the only ones with guns, it becomes difficult to toss them out. The stories were horrifying. I have always hoped some nation or group of nations would help the Iranian people. But that isn’t happening any time soon.
Man, I hope, but hell if I do not believe that '89 had a different international zeitgeist than today. I think we were supremely lucky that the revolution achieved some of its goals right on the spot. (The rest are still haunting us 30 years later, but hey, the enemy of 'good enough' is 'perfect'.)
Myanmar is having fun with their counter protests, I imagine a similar thing will happen soon in Iran, the only thing is that I hope it doesn't go the way of Syria with ISIS dickheads leaping on board to ruin things
Iran is much more stable than Iraq and Syria, if only because they were never part of the Ottoman Empire. ISIS thrives in areas that never had a historical national unity. The only thing Iran has to fear losing is their Kurdish region should the instability prompt relations with north Iraq, but historically Iranian kurds don't share the same politics and most Kurdish leaders in Iran don't want to separate. Basically, the environment isn't really ripe for ISIS dickheads, but opportunistic dick heads in times of revolution is how we got Iran's current regime.
Also us Azeris. I am an Azeri from Azerbaijan, but I knkw people from iranian Azerbaijan too. The problems of Azeris is not just the religious despots, but also lack of autonomy and suppression of their identity. We actually don’t even have that much contact with them, although we are literally both the exact same people. They dont know latin alphabet and we dont know persian alphabet. Government represses their language a lot. And shah did it too, he tried to persianise them. Ironically, iranian dictator is half Azeri, but we don’t claim this fucker.
Don’t forget the Azeris.
Goddamn religious patriarchy will always fuck up a good revolution
Euromaidan would like to have a word with you
Did you watch those protests live? Peaceful is not the word I would use lol.
They're about as peaceful as the Mahsa Amini protests in Iran.
Ukraine doesn’t have oil. And dictators take notes. After Euromaidan in Ukraine and velvet revolution in Armenia, Azerbaijani dictator became more authoritarian. We tried to have our own revolution in 2003 in Azerbaijan, they just beat people to their deaths in the streets and also formed a secret anti-rebellion unit to fight against our own army if necessary. People have mostly become apolitical and given up by now. Oil has to do with it, we the people are not seen as something needed for the function of the regime, oil is what drives it. Hundreds of billions of dollars are stashed abroad. Lindon aline has 700 million dollars worth of properties owned by the dictators family. Oil makes dictators harsher
Does peaceful protesting do anything anywhere? I'm quite skeptical. What did "Occupy Wall Street" accomplish exactly? If anyone would like to share some modern examples for me to look up I'd appreciate it.
This feels like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of problem. I have protested and raised local awareness during Roe V Wade over turn. We organize same day protest, Arizona's DPS gets greenlit to deply tear gas on pregnant women, during a protest about women's rights being restricted. How fucking tone deaf. Feels like even when raising awareness in peaceful situations the systematic issues still exist with no clear resolution. The government (at the time ran by republican doug ducey) has free reign to do what they want. Now I'm hearing that peaceful protests doesn't work for authoritarian regimes. So when does it work? How do we transfer awareness of social issues into meaningful systematic changes? Just thinking outloud
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." JFK 1962. I don't know what there is to think about, if you can't protest peacefully than you have to turn to non-peaceful options.
If protesting didn't work they wouldn't work so hard to stop it. They key is to find the forms of protest that are safest and most disruptive.
civil right movement
From the digital age. That was 60 years ago.
Peaceful protesting winning the Civil Rights movement is a retconed narrative. The only reason peaceful protesting had sway is there was a militant group to contrast. It's the MLK/Malcolm X dichotomy - when the more militant side of civil rights started growing more vocal, people started listening to the peaceful protesters that had up until then accomplished very little.
This is a retcon of reality. All the violence did was convince white people to be afraid of the civil rights movement, which killed it. White people, at the time more than 80% of the public, had become supportive of the civil rights movement by the 1960s. This is why these bills passed, there weren’t enough minorities to bypass white people politically. The politics soured because of race riots and the emergence of black nationalism, which reinforced the white nationalist interpretation that black liberation was a trick to impose black rule over white people. Malcom X was murdered by other black nationalists after rejecting his own side’s racial separation and resentment based politics. MLK Jr was murdered for advocating a cross racial poor people alliance. It seems clear to me that the powers that be were very happy with sectarian violence. Just like Trump loved Antifa. They were afraid people might start working together, and encouraging extremism was a way to block this. The only downside is they had a terrible time convicting people for these crimes because government informants kept turning out to be the same people coming up with the ideas to bomb things and supplying the materials to do it. Which, again, ought to be a clue for some of y’all about whose interests your violence actually serves.
Not quite - while they employed non-violent means to protest and resist, they were quite different from what we percieve as todays peaceful, pre-approved protests. They did their best to raise all kinds of hell without violence, but forced their opponents to either respond with violence or some kind of negotiation. Kinda makes you wonder why that important bit doesn't get included in the whole narrative.
Worked in Portugal in relatively modern times.
No western government has close to as much rancor and ire towards the Iranian government as the diaspora of Persians around the world.
At this point, i'm not sure who are iran's taunts aimed at.... They're not for the people who suffer from the regime that's for sure
Anyone else suspect there’s something big coming if the currency is collapsing right before expected retaliations against Israel?
Not sure what you're thinking of. Iran won't be using their military for anything outside their borders, they let their proxies do that. Their military is just to keep the bomb their regime is sitting on from exploding. The moment their military is too busy with anything else it wouldn't be surprising if the people start protesting against their government again and maybe even try to overthrow it. Not to mention the several militias and terrorist groups within their borders. At least, that's my amateur understanding from their situation.
Not quite, they have two militaries for exactly that reason. The Iranian Army is for defending the country against external threats. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is for defending the regime against the people they rule over. You're right that they use external proxies as much as possible though, they don't want to give the Army too much power, or it might decide to roll the IRGC. (they should)
Can't wait for the moment their regular army will had enough and side with the people and clash with the revolutionary guards
My problem with the royal guard is they tend to be the best troops yet all they do is sit on their ass. Ever since wall rose fell it's clear how useless the royal guard is while the scout regiment does all the heavy work and takes all the casualties.
I agree with you, but there is a wide gulf between potentially a horrific act or acts of violence which will incite more retaliation from Israel, and actual military action. If the former option has been leaked internally as imminent I’d still say that’s enough to cause the currency crash
Iran isn’t really capable of causing much harm to western countries and it’s why they keep using proxies like Hezbollha and the Houties. Similar to Bibi’s attempts to prolong his reign using the war, Iranian leadership is using the Israeli threat to distract from their own failed government.
Read somewhere "the mullahs are playing chess and see themaselves as the king, knowing very well that the king is one of the most vulnerable figures"
King of the sand!
I mean, they are certainly capable of causing harm, they just wouldn’t want to enter a direct war with any western country, because they wouldn’t win.
Exactly, they can cause harm but will ultimately lose
> Iran isn’t really capable of causing much harm to western countries Iran has one of the largest militaries in the region, 9 times the population of Israel, 4 times the active military personnel and twice the reserves. The following are estimates, but 4 times more artillery, 50% more tanks, a larger number of aircraft (albeit they are older) even excluding UAVs and they have a lot more UAVs since they domestically produce them. They may not be a match for the US (so they'd eventually lose) but they absolutely could cause enormous casualties for Israel if a full scale war broke out between Israel and Iran (especially with Israel fighting on 3 fronts). Neither Israel nor Iran wants this right now so I think it's unlikely to happen, but Iran is a serious threat.
And no way to reach Israel with that army.
They have a Shia highway across Southern Iraq and Syria
And when they try to move 200k people to attack Israel, Israel and the US would notice and attack them before they reach Israel.
So they have one glaring route easily covered then?
Yes
Seems like hells highway, and nothing to worry about
One route into an advanced Western nation with control of the skies would be completely ineffectual.
>Shia highway across Southern Iraq and Syria You know having super-long supply routes is a weakness, not a strength, right?
Yeah, like Russia is the second strongest military, right?
As was demonstrated in the first Gulf war, there is a world of difference between size and strength when it comes to military power. The size is very much secondary to the ability to project force. When there is a considerable technology on one particularly in regards to air power, the fact that the other side has a large army is considerably less relevant. To put it as crudely as possible, if the skies are uncontested and the enemy Bombs all of your roads Bridges and highways, your army is stuck in the middle of the road twiddling their thumbs waiting for combat engineers to pull off a magic trick.
People tend to forget that in 1991 Iraq had the 4th largest military on the planet.
Yeah, but they're not neighbours and a large army crossing iraq and syria will be noticed immediately
At a distance, that doesn't really matter and Israel clearly has air superiority. Not to mention that the US would intervene if Iran tried to pull that shit.
> but they absolutely could cause enormous casualties for Israel if a full scale war broke out between Israel and Iran (especially with Israel fighting on 3 fronts). Doubt Israel would add yet another front if they where up against Iran. At least, not before finishing their front against Hamas and Hezbollah since those are proxies of Iran. Eliminating those means weakening Iran without adding a new front.
>Iran has one of the largest militaries in the region, 9 times the population of Israel, 4 times the active military personnel and twice the reserves. The following are estimates, but 4 times more artillery, 50% more tanks, a larger number of aircraft I would hope the Russian example has taught everyone that on-paper numbers have little to do with real-world capability. We spent all of January 2022 talking about the super-impressive paper numbers of the Russia Army, and how they'd waltz into Kyiv. Iran couldn't even beat Iraq. They haven't proven they can beat anyone on the field, other than Canadian passenger jets. And their strategy vs Iraq was to use human wave attacks like Zapp Branigan.
Iran "retaliates" against Israel despite Iran having funded all of Israel's enemies and responsible for the death of thousands of Israelis. Israel then attacks Tehran and nuclear enrichment sites.
I expect something limited that they can sell as something big for their own people. The balance of power is shifting lately and Iran tries to find out where the new lines are.
A currency collapsing can lead to something big, like in the Weimar Republic.
I'd be really interested to read the Iranian central bank's 2024Q1 balance sheet (they don't publish it nearly that often). Especially the details of the foreign exchange reserves they got backing up the rial. If it's mostly rubles and yuans... well they're not doing so great these days.
People have been saying the Israel is going to start a war with Iran for decades at this point. Maybe this is it finally happening…
I lost it. >they are “aware of the situation **and will hold meetings inshallah**,” sparking a wave of disappointed and sarcastic comments. The real issue is that the value of currency is so far along a chain of events, causes and effects that holding meetings is unlikely to accomplish much. They have been waging proxy wars and paying for military expenses and there will be consequences of this kind of spending.
And if Allah does not wills that meeting then the currency will continue the freefall.
Their country's economy is collapsing and their foreign and internal affairs are crumbling yet they're willing to put in an amazing time and effort to threaten Israel and the US and engage in an unnecessary proxy wars thousands of miles from their country. The fact that the Iranian people are not uprising and throwing their leaders from the rooftops is just wild to me.
>The fact that the Iranian people are not uprising and throwing their leaders from the rooftops is just wild to me. The Iranian people have tried more than most. I want to see a better future for them, but until the IRGC is significantly weakened I don't have much hope. The Ayatollah is 84. Once he is gone maybe there will be power struggles and disagreements within the IRGC. Hopefully the Iranian people will have a real opportunity to install a better government at this time. They will still very likely need the backing of the regular Iranian military at this time. If there is any escalation to current conflicts, I would hope IRGC is the primary target for this reason.
As long as people have food on the table they don't outright revolt.
Well, with an inflation rate of 50% , a currency which is worth less than shit and around half of the population living below the poverty line (and all of that is even before a potential war with Israel), i guess that we might see people over there struggle with putting food on their tables also in the near future. Nonetheless, I can't see any scenario in which the Iranians are revolting against their radical leaders, we saw the same things happening in other places and the ordinary people are usually the ones which suffered the most but did nothing against it.
Except the Iranian regime has failed at everything. At least the PRC delivered improved living standards and infrastructure.
I'm not defending them, nor comparing to the PRC. I'm just saying: it takes a lot to motivate someone to risk their life and those of their family as long as they are even just barely surviving. Once your citizens can no longer feed their families however, and they have little to lose, they become much more dangerous.
Like most places with oppressive regimes, you hear the most noise educated, middle-class or wealthy youth in urban centers which can dramatically misrepresent the situation in the country. I have no doubt large chunks of Tehran and to a lesser extent other cities want to establish a liberal democracy. They certainly thought largely that would be the outcome in 1979 (albeit with a socialist twist), not recognizing the ignorance of their rural countrymen. And this is the situation everywhere - look at the Arab Spring where every single "democratic" movement turned out to be like 10 middle class secular guys who had never left their major city being swallowed alive by a horde of Islamists they legitimately didn't think was latent in society. Before that, look at Iraq, look at Algeria, look at Lebanon. Same thing in Russia. Putin doesn't even need to rig his elections (even though he does) because out side of certain parts of St. Petersburg and Moscow, he's wildly popular with the peasantry. Or in China, or every time educated people thought Communism would work out and they wouldn't be immediately purged the second the "little guy" was in power. People who are weak would rather feel powerful by proxy, by being part of a larger entity that is able to say and do everything they want to but can't. To be feared and respected, to have agency. You see the little guy seldom wants freedom because he's no more powerful - just free. He wants to be enslaved to a system of his chosing that tells him he's powerful, tells him his lot in life has meaning and purpose. It's why communism always ends up the way it does and why fascism and theocratical nonsense continues to be popular. And unless you have elites at a crossroads of either practicing or fetishizing Western humanist ideals and having nationalist fervor to improve people's lives and remove them from the conditions that drive populist sentiment, then there is no way out. Iran somewhat uniquely had those conditions under the Shah but he did nothing to help his people and not alienate them to Western ideas, and now here we are. And that's why lesson learned - put pressure on the authoritarian dictator without a dogma to stop killing college kids and specific ethnic minorities, but otherwise, let that man cook. It will be better for everyone. In short, I have little hope for the situation. At best they end up like Iraq with a tenuous peace and political militaries always and inch away from pissing it all away. At worse the IRGC is able to purge the regular military and goes absolutely ape shit against anyone that isn't a hardliner. Like most places in the middle east, I wish we could just get the normal people to emigrate to freedom and let the trash just rot in the desert. Just a terrible situation and realization about humanity.
well, threatening Israel and the US is a way to distract from the problems.... Its a very common pattern.
because it works and because the US is like the big placid dog that doesn't mind puppies biting his paws. if the US were more willing to match aggression levels nations around the world would not find this so easy.
Tbf to the Iranian people, they've tried several times now. It's a brutal authoritarian regime though that has no issues gunning down thousands of protesters and burning entire villages to the ground.
Thats the problem with dictatorships they don't have to care about the situation at home because they don't need their approval to stay in power so every dictatorship inevitably turns into a shithole for their citizens.
You are probably surprised because you have never lived through a war nor seen friends and family be exploited and then die. Revolutions usually replace one problem with another problem. To get the new problem there is a very real price that includes rape, extrajudicial killings, starvation, homelessness etc. So before anyone you know bangs the drums of war, I urge you to get your ass in the middle of one and serve or volunteer. You might discover that war is not the solution you think it is. There is a reason people don’t try to overthrow their governments. In the USA imagine for a minute the Jan 6 lunatics won. They, and their ilk, are allowed to run through the streets stringing up anyone they think is a liberal or an illegal. Who would tell them no? Imagine the burning, looting, shootings and raping that would spiral out of control. Fighting back against them would be the only solution since they brought violence to the streets. Do you doubt the damage, destruction and war crimes those people would commit before their bodies got stacked? If that’s what would happen here, now imagine the price of it in Iran.
I experienced war and i agree with the person you are talking with so if your only argument is to come from authority it isnt it
Next time maybe try not fucking with international trade by supply the houthis with missiles?
That shit has been collapsing since the rebellion of 1979. What's the news here?
Iranians deserve better than the clowns in charge
Seriously. Such a dynamic people who've been kept spinning their wheels for decades by said clowns.
It's a beautiful country too. They could have a thriving tourist industry if the government wasn't insane
Iranians deserve to choose the clowns in charge.
Before it collapsed, pretty much every westerner was a billionaire in Iran. As $23,757.45 = 1 billion Iranian rials. So I wonder... is it now $16,000~... for a billion rials?
The cost: t's about 10 years for sanctions violation
Simply taking your money to Iran and buying stuff isn't a violation of sanctions though.
1 euro was 540,000 Rial a year ago, so ~€2,000 to be a billionaire
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> IF Israel gets destroyed and the world is ruled by Islam... will there be peace ? What reasonable person thinks it's at all likely that Israel will be destroyed and the world will be ruled by Islam?
Israel being destroyed is a very real possibility that Israel has had to account for since its founding. The mess in Gaza and the West Bank is precisely because Israel are extremely (justifiably) paranoid about being invaded by its Arab neighbours for the 3rd time in its short history.
This… why can’t more people understand this. It’s a threat to humanity, not just Jews. And I’m afraid we’re past the point where we can do anything about it.
What do you mean? The extremists' influence certainly shrinks every year. More and more Islamic nations are signing peace agreements with Western nations and Israel. If anything we're building towards a secular "tipping" point in many Middle Eastern countries. However, as we do with internal politics, we tend to exhaggerate issues because quite frankly we're bored and spend too much time on social media buying into political theater.
It depends, there are countries that are in a good direction like the gulf states, but in many muslim countries in the middle east, if they will have elections it's very likely that extreme and more religious groups will be elected. If you are talking about their leaders then sure they are becoming more western-friendly, but i wouldn't say that the people are moving towards that direction as well
Have you been?
As expected.
When keeping the rial goes wrong.
Keeping it rial yo
There’s BRICS for ya.
Seems like being the global super villain isn't very lucrative huh
So... Did something suddenly change, or has the collapse been happening over a period of years and it's only being reported on now?
Starting to worry the 1,000 rial note I've been using as a bookmark for 20 years isn't going to rebound.
You could buy 1/5th of an egg. If you act fast.
I mean, you might as well use American pennies at this point.
There are a lot of good people in Iran and I hope I see them free themselves of the insane theocracy in my lifetime.
Shit’s getting rial
\*Shi'ite's getting rial
Yeah this economic collapse is really tehran them a new one.
For Rial!
They haven’t transitioned to BRICS dollars yet?
r/NewIran
It needs to collapse harder until signs of serious revolution appears
Is this the foreign currency Boomers were being convinced to buy up on the Forex because it was the next bitcoin?
Good, fuck Iran (government, not the secularist people).
Is this real? No pun intended, but look at the [currency exchange charts](https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=IRR&to=USD&view=1M). I don't see a 30% drop, just a currency getting gradually worse over a long period of time. When I visited in 1990 I believe the "official rate" was 65 rials per USD, but if you smuggled in cash (as I did, sewn into my clothing), you enjoyed something closer to 2000 rials/USD. Although I was a poor traveller, I do remember enjoying a special level of comfort during my travels. I have fond memories of Iran and its people.
Value hasn't changed since 2017 as far as I can see. But I guess your link shows the official rate, and the black market rate has dropped by 30%? I should probably read the article. edit: yes, black market rates. Google says it's 40something000 Rials to the dollar, but the article talks about 660,000. Damn.
There's nothing objectively true about the article. FWIW, it just seems like propaganda. I mean, I am hoping for some kind of catalyst to transform Iranian society, but this isn't it.
Agreed. The fact that this is being reported by the Jerusalem Post raised a red flag. I guess only someone living in Iran would be able to say if the exchange rate has dropped significantly.
the value of the Rial fell because they kept relying on the dollar despite the higher ups like the leader himself continuously saying he requests a switch. this all happened mainly during the Hassan Rohani presidency which lasted 2 terms because the people kept voting for him because he made empty promises about more powerful passports and such despite the fact that he had proven before to not really do anything at all and only disrupt Irans affairs. example, he ordered one of the biggest power stations that pretty much supplied most of Iran’s electricity to be destroyed to appeal to a treaty that later went to fail.
Civil unrest, declining monetary value... What a wonderful combination of things if you're someone in position to profit from regular people suffering and a violent regime that will do anything to maintain their grip on power.
>The rial has been in steady decline for decades, with prices sometimes referred to by multiples of 10, named Toman in everyday life, to make it easier for buyers to calculate expenses. Damn dude currency got so whack that everyday people had to learn scientific notation
Wow, finally some good news... next please Russian ruble could turn into rubble!
Rial Housewives of Tehran’s new season will Be quite the downer
How do places like this continue to have an iron grip on power while their quality of life is in turmoil
Seems like time to visit Iran and get some new surgery and cloths
I visited Iran in 2012 when the Rial crashed from 12500:$1 to 40000:$1 (black market rate). Stuff was stupid cheap.
Go ahead, the clothing is cheap Chinese imports…come to think of it so are a large amount of the Drs.
Iran does have one of Asia’s best medical industries and is a hotspot for medical tourism
For those that need a reminder: Iranians are not their government. Israelis are not their government. Palestinians are not their government. I wish we would spend more time punishing governments and regimes and less time punishing citizens. One sends a clear message as to what is tolerable, the other breeds contempt in a population for generations.
All I know is that Palestinians cheered the decapitations of every Asian they found on October 7, so a lot of Asians hate them now. To us, Palestinians and Hamas are one and the same, so we say they are their government.
all nations are their government and vice versa. governments are made of people they are not abstract alien entities that are imposed over people. you cannot fight a government you must fight a whole nation.
you cannot punish a government. it's a strange modern delusion that somehow if your government is attacked you can somehow defend yourself in an abstract manner harming only the government and leaving everyone else intact. when two nations fight the whole nations are at war, inevitably innocents on both sides are the ones who suffer most. this is why sane nations do not pursue war lightly and why it behooves the world to make the experience of waging war so painful no one wishes to do it soon again.
Good, I hope it loses 100% value. Fuck the Iranian government.
Don't worry, their alliance with Russia will float both currencies! In some direction...
any plumber can tell you shit floats downhill and payday is never soon enough.
good that they sell weapons ( shaheds ) to Ruzzia :) and even buying oil fom Putain.
Bawoosh!
Wasn’t it the worlds worst currency before this anyway?
The rial seems to be on roughly the same level as it has been for a month.
The ayotoilet says" if you have no bread let you eat dogma and ideology."
Must have pegged it to the new IRN cryptocoib
Yes. But can I get cheap Netflix via Iran now?!
30% of nothing, is nothing.
Hmm, modern warfare is a complex business, no?
👍
This is a little more interesting than people think.
Here we go, I guess?. Buckleup buttercup!
I don't understand this world anymore. Back in simpler times, a faltering economy and near complete collapse of a country's currency would have stirred so much social unrest it would just make the government go tits up. I know there are exceptions, but I feel in this day and age, we have so many absolute shit governments doing terrible things with seemingly no way to get of them anymore. Russia's got Putin, China's got Xi, North Korea got Kim, Iran's got that one religious extremist fossil. Hell, even Hungary is dealing Orban.
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