One thing is for sure. Iran even under the vicious sanctions and western demonisation and constant covert sabotage by foreign powers, became a richer, demonstrably better educated amazingly modernised and developed nation. Just look for the wealth of videos and documentaries by foreign tourists and bloggers.

Have you seen what Tehran looks like now? Well, before the bombs! Incredible. 

For infrastructure, health, education, city facilities it shits on most western cities. The mall of Iran is one of the most advanced commercial centres in the world. They took the infrastructure of the country almost to Japanese and Chinese standards, while the UK and US are collapsing in on themselves under the pressure of capitalist exploitation and neglect.

Also honestly who can look at what is happening in America or England right now and throw shade on Iran's institutional crimes? Seriously! Think about the high percentage of quality education. 70% of STEM degrees and PhDs are held by women. There are far more educated people in Iran than we ever had under the Shah. I will quote directly from Wiki:

“Iran's education system is centralised and free at all levels from elementary through secondary school, with 94% of the adult population being literate as of 2016, rising to 97% for young adults aged 15–24.

Today, women constitute approximately 60% of all university students in Iran, with some sources noting they make up to 70% of STEM graduates, marking a nearly 21-fold increase in female higher education participation since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.  This surge has driven the youth female literacy rate (ages 15–24) to approximately 99%, a dramatic rise from 36% in 1976, effectively eliminating the gender gap in basic literacy for younger generations.”

As for even things like the hijab, that was so relaxed in recent times as to no longer be enforced. As millions of videos of women walking around fully uncovered bear witness. But people prefer to keep seeing things as they were back in the time of Khomeini. Think on it. Iran is being led by people who every single one holds at least a PhD. Even the military leaders all have degrees and doctorates, while the US is being led by what? A bunch of fucking certified morons who can barely string a cohesive sentence together. You just have to look at the sophistication of the Iranian responses and spokes-people and how they speak, how they lay out the arguments as opposed to the nonsensical word-salad the west dishes out. The west's double-speak is way, way out there in stupid land.

Khamanei was slowly walking back most of the harsh laws. You know I am an atheist and fully opposed to theocracy.  I have read the Bible, the Qur'an, the Torah, the Tao Te Ching, I read almost all the major philosophers there are, back in my twenties, but still I look at Iran, where health and education are free, the country has thrived in financial terms. Homelessness is more or less nonexistent; while in the US they just made homelessness illegal, making homeless people into criminals. It is one of the most advanced countries in technology, architecture, education, medicine and on and on.

I can no longer square all that with the picture they keep selling us in the west of a backward oppressed country.

Under the Shah education was a joke. 90% of our people could barely read. Do you know he built thousands of schools all over the country but none were staffed, and do you know what happened to those buildings? The army used them for artillery and tank target practice. All so the Shah could go glad-hand money people and show off about how he was modernising and improving the lot of the poor. Absolute performative theatre.

I'm certain you won't remember how incredibly awful the majority of Tehran was then. Once you came slightly south of the centre, it was slums, ruins and massive poverty. Prostitution was everywhere.

I saw it all, At least a lot of it (Please read the rather long essay I sent you to see some of what I saw).

We were privileged and shielded. Cushioned massively by our class.

What they don’t tell you in the media, the movies and TV in the west, is that there was an absolutely solid reason for the revolution.

It irks the shit out of me that everyone just calls it an "Islamic" revolution. It was a popular revolution, a reaction to crushing poverty, exploitation, lack of social justice, iron control of political opinion and information, torture, and so much more horror.

I hate to burst the bubble but the only reason we ended up with an Islamic system is cos the Yanks pushed the Iraqis into invading the country giving an excuse for Khomeini to make his move and take over the government. After the revolution we had Bakhtiar as prime minister. He was a social democrat of sorts, and would have done a lot of good for the country if left to his own devices. But he was driven underground and I think (not sure) assassinated.

Anyway. Sorry about the sermon. But I feel the cousins have all grown up with no real memory or experience of Iran under the monarchy. Add to that their exposure to the constant especially American self aggrandisement and general certainty about their superiority, and the classic American unawareness of their own obscene lack of respect for the rest of the world, plus the endemic tendency to violence as a first resort, I can only feel sorry for their education.

I have literally studied the history of the country in depth and I have talked to people who knew the actual stuff, in depth

If I had only listened to and believed the western propaganda I would probably feel the same more or less about the situation as the majority of our people.

But I know history, I also know the smell of bullshit well enough to know if the western media say black to think white

The evidence of the improvements in Iran is overwhelming, while we've sat and watched the west decimate their health system, their education and infrastructure. I can tell you stories of my experiences when I was teaching at university in London, in a matter of less than 4 years after I graduated; they had more or less dismantled a great educational system to replace it with a business model. Same in health, transport and so on. Everything that made England a good place to live has been eroded to shit. Under the Thatcher/Reagan axis of evil, they literally took the whole social system apart and replaced it with the Amazon model.

I am sick to my core of the blindness of the western belief in their supremacy and their fucking constant crowing about their freedoms, the fucking racist stupid bullshit genocidal politics they practice all over the world.

Anyhow, "In Conclusion"; to use a schoolboy device; I want to say, emphatically that I no longer believe any of the propaganda, misinformation and disinformation about what is going on inside Iran. I’m not even sure about stuff that we think we know definitively. War or not, if only I had the wherewithal I would be tempted to go see for myself. I want to hear it from the horse’s mouth. Because I have seen too much, far, far, far too much opposing evidence that not all is as they tell us, including first hand accounts from Iranians who have been back there. 

Look I’m not naïve, I know that no theocratic government is gonna be all Disneyfied lovie-dovie teddy bears. I know that there is much oppression. But to commit a sin of whataboutism, I want to pose the question: What are we seeing here openly exposed finally? The massive hypocrisy of democratic capitalistic "freedom" has finally been stripped naked to show the ugly, vicious beating heart inside the hype. We have finally seen in full multicolour rendering, how we have been able to live so well all these years, consuming and owning more things than all of humanity in the millennia before us. What little a percentage of the world actually have these playthings and what the rest of the vast world had to pay in blood for us to have them. 

I have come to the only sane conclusion I can. The time is more ripe than ever in living memory for an international shuffling of cards, and that can only mean one thing. Massive popular uprising. That sadly is almost an absolute impossibility. What is, at least remotely, possible is that the west goes through a full collapse leading to a major shift in the world power balance politically and socially. And it seems to me Iran may well emerge as the instrument of that collapse. Now that is one thing I can put my support behind.