Previous meddling has damaged the region, and once again the the US and Israel don’t have Iranians’ best interests at heart
What does it take to shake illusions in western intervention? This is not a question designed to deflect from the barbarism being unleashed by Iran’s theocratic regime. Because it severed the country’s internet connection, facts are difficult to establish, but the respected Human Rights Activists in Iran has confirmed 544 have been killed and well over 10,000 arrested – those numbers are probably significant underestimates.
Here is a regime that consolidated its power in the 1980s by butchering leftists – helped, it should be noted, by both MI6 and the CIA, who supplied them with lists of alleged Soviet agents. Today, trade union activists are arrested and tortured, while women’s activists languish in jails. The economic disaster resulting from sanctions may have helped spark these latest protests, but millions of Iranians are fed up with living under fundamentalist rule – underlined by surveys confirming growing religious non-observance and opposition to the compulsory hijab.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
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