this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2026
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They were celebrating the death of Khamenei.
"They'll greet us as liberators like they did in Iraq!"
Famously people LOVE being bombed. Come on
Did I say that anywhere? Is it so hard to believe that people actually don't like the regime AND don't like being bombed? That people were fucking Happy about the old cunt kicking the bucket while being upset about children dying? Is that too complex a thought?
My point is that you're repeating propaganda. There have already been pro-government rallies since the war broke out. I said that it's bad to highlight only those who celebrated his death, and not those who do support the government, because, again, being bombed turns you against the one bombing you, and unlike what ghouls would have us believe, no sane person within Iran wants to be bombed, regardless of whether this collapses the regime or not.
As for how popular/unpopular he was, the Iranian diaspora hates him, and many Iranians within Iran also do, but he was the head of the Twelvers (most Shia Muslims belong to that branch), and his state were the ones defending the people of Iran from Israel and the US. The notion that no one likes him at all is propaganda, too. The sooner we stop parroting imperialist propaganda the better.
There are pro-government rallies and there are anti-government rallies. Because like any country, Iran is not a monolithic block in which all people feel the same about everything.
I still have contact with people in Iran. They are in a very weird state between happyness and terror. They mourn the senseless death of 160 children, they cheer for the long awaited death of IRI goons. They fear the bombs on civilian targets and are indifferent to bombs on IRGC and Basij sites.
"his government was defending the people of Iran from Israel and the US" is propaganda in itself. Just from a different government. I don't know where you live, but for the Iranians I've come to know, many of the things that I took for granted just aren't normal. Dancing in the streets, wearing whatever I want, eating in public during Ramadan, saying your government is shit - all of that carries penalties in Iran. Almost everyone I know there has had one or more members of their family beaten or punished for such infractions.
And now they are faced with choosing between two powers who both tell them: "We are liberty, we are self determination, just help us", while both of them just want to subjugate them.
I know people from different countries that also supported regime change, it doesn't mean they have a mythical insight we don't, it just means they don't understand the pattern.
Again, any Iranian who is aware of what happened to Iraq or Syria isn't cheering. You have to be extremely gullible to believe this time the US and Israel will liberate you, and extremely illiterate in how your own government works to believe killing a religious leader is enough to make it collapse. But let's say all Iranians in unison believed western propaganda: we still shouldn't be pretending it's a good thing they're being bombed. They're destroying HOSPITALS. SCHOOLS. ROADS.
Iranians can take over their own government in their own terms if you give them space to breathe. End all sanctions immediately and stop falling for imperialist propaganda.
Please just read what I wrote. I do not think this war is a good idea. Iranians are getting slaughtered by two fronts, it's not "western propaganda" to say that people are happy to see their overlords die.
Consider that the people you have contact with might not actually be representative of the average Iranian, and that's coloring your perception of the situation. Everyone you know is not a random sample, it's literally limited by who you get to know.
I am aware, that this is a limited sample of Iranians. It's better than what most people on lemmy have.
It's not just a limited sample, it's a biased sample. That makes it worse than useless for gauging public opinion.
You wouldn't keep contact with the kinds of people in Iran that respected and supported Khamenei; they wouldn't want to talk to you and you wouldn't want to talk to them. This is the equivalent of people who think Thing is popular because everyone in their social circle loves Thing, and thing Other Thing is unpopular because everyone they know hates Other Thing. Worse than useless.
What I want to say is that Khamenei was neither universally loved nor universally hated. Iran, like any society, is multifaceted.
I think that dismissing the joy parts of Iran felt after Khamenei died as mere propaganda is dumb. And labeling all of these people as Mossad agents or dumb imperialists is also dumb. To me and the Iranians I know, it's good that he died. The way he died isn't good, the intervention isn't good, does that make me an imperialist?