I just woke up and saw the news, and you were the most recent poster in the #free iran tag. Do you have internet? What's going on? Is it working? How are the people? Can you fight? Will this work?
I pray earnestly to God that this will work.
This was asked in February. I have no idea what was happening back then. Time has been kinda merged together and warped since January. But today, May 9th, we don't have access to the internet, no. Only national heavily blocked and censored internet that is monitored. The regime have made the internet hierarchical, made it available to a select few to advertise their propaganda for them. The rest of us get barely and very temporarily connected by combining weird complicated ways like using configs and using vpns at the same time. Most of the time that doesn't work either so we have to illegally buy international internet from those who are illegally getting past the firewalls or whatever and are selling it to us ordinary people. I'm probably using up the last of my internet to write this.
What's going on? After an almost two months of war, and the elimination of many political and IRGC figureheads which we are all very thankful for, the ceasefire happened and it's literally like time froze. Like everything changed and nothing changed.
(Let me get one thing clear for anyone reading this who's empathizing with IR simply because they were the target of Trump and Netanyahu, anyone who sees things so foolishly black and white from the comfort of their free world. We are under no illusion that they must've been saints to help us. No, this is real life and there is no such a thing as saints. And let's be honest, no saint would've dirtied their hand like this anyway. But a necessary evil would. And those two, whether we like it or not, were our necessary evil. Yes of course we don't agree with them on so many levels, of course we don't condone any of their actions that has been against human rights. However, they've delivered. They actually succeeded in killing Khamenei, the dictator of Islamic Republic. They've rid us from the murderer tyrant, something we never could've done on our own. You need to remember that just because it's Israel attacking doesn't mean the other side is automatically innocent. There's such a thing as more than one evil existing in the world. Open your goddamn minds people. If you think otherwise then you've never lived in such a desperate tragic reality. And I know the war had casualties, but they were minor and mostly the regime's. And the school tragedy is not something we take lightly either but when you're standing where we are, you know that that's also IRGC's fault. The blood of those kids is on their hands. Did you know the regime purposefully launched its missiles from public places like schools so that when the other side had to retaliate they had to track and target where it was shot from, not anticipating such a dirty move from the IR regime? But we did. We know their corruption to its root. So can you blame us for having needed outside help, even if it wasn't genuine, after being oppressed for 47 years under a bloodthirsty regime? Can you blame us when you know we have nothing to defend ourselves with against IRGC? You think there's been a night that we went to sleep with dry eyes in the past few months? You, whoever you are who disagree, might have the luxury to choose your savior. We don't.)
So what's going on now is IR political figureheads (yes these bastards are like fucking malignant cancer, they grow back) are lying their ass off about everything to keep the loyalty of their apologists. Iran's national tv has turned into an even bigger propaganda machine that sees its people as sheep ready to be slaughtered for the “noble” goal of keeping the islamic revolution alive. And that's no exaggeration, IR has declared many times that their goal is preserving islam and not its people.
At nights, they gather a hundred or so of their supporters and apologists (or those who can be bought with money) in the streets and squares and start chanting 'death to America' and 'death to israel' and how they're undefeatable. Around them are plainclothed men, some with their faces covered, and they're all holding guns, looking around menacingly. Since there's no “enemy” outside, we know they're holding weapons to kill us again if necessary. They gave guns to teenagers who can't even handle the thing. And we have to walk the streets without showing fear and rage and tears.
We're empty handed, we can't fight. And we can't live either. The economy is shit. Everything is too expensive, and I mean impossibly expensive. We can't make ends meet. It's breaking people.
They're also executing all the innocent people they managed to arrest in January in total internet blackout and there's no one who cares outside.
And I have no idea if it will work. You can kill the man, but you can't destroy a sick rotten ideology that permits you to slaughter people if they disagreed with you. That's the problem.
And that's it.
I've honestly stopped believing in god, anyone would in this godforsaken land, but thank you sincerely for your well wishes.
