Every time there’s a new cycle of news that harkens back to the January protests in Iran, like there is now with the executions today in Esfahan, there’s a fresh round of attacks on my platforms from people who cry foul about how I don’t “speak about January” or about the “innocent protestors being executed” and only care about the war.

Those people don’t know that in late January, the very first chance I got to connect to the internet, I posted my reflections on the Jan protests, from the perspective of having been in Tehran during those days, having lived through two weeks of internet shut down, and about the things I saw and heard.

Dispatches from Tehran

Reflections on the Events of Jan 8-9 in Iran

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7 months ago · 5 likes · Sara

But their problem isn’t why I don’t speak up (which I do), but why I don’t deny the evidence before my eyes and repeat their talking points. And that’s something I will never do; so they are free to complain.

After January, it took a long time for those of us who searched for the facts to know what had really happened on those awful days, which is why my original post is the way it is. But since then so many videos and first person accounts have emerged that prove a few key points about the protests that fly in the face of the simplified narrative pushed by the Western and Zionist media.

Most importantly, the videos have since proven that there were armed agents and provocateurs among the crowds. They killed innocent protestors, bystanders, and passersby and blamed it on the police; They shot at the police from amongst the crowds to bait the police into shooting back; and they provoked and carried out the mob killing, maiming and burning of police and security personnel, or anyone who looked like them, in the most gruesome ways. [video of burning of police in Esfahan CW] Many innocent people were caught in crossfire. Also most recently, even the pro-Zionist Persian speaking media has retracted their claims of tens of thousands killed and have admitted that the verifiable number is much closer to the official number released by the Iranian government, i.e. just over 3000 (which is already very high, so why do you exactly need to lie and inflate it, especially if you claim to care about Iranian lives at all?).

Still, a tireless chorus of loud and obnoxious pro-Zionist voices have been active since day one trying to establish the idea that Iran gunned down tens of thousands of protesters in a span of days for no reason other than the regime’s intolerance towards dissent and its devilish thirst for the blood of anyone who dares to “criticize” it. Funnily enough, many of these obnoxious voices support the Pahlavi regime who is well-known for treating dissenters and critics exactly that way.

But for instance one such enlightened “critic” from January, who was executed in Esfahan this morning—who was sentenced to death for his involvement in the killing of four police officers in one city square in Esfahan—had previously in a public video pledged his support for the terrorist group MEK and was captured in his home/bomb-making lab/weapons storage with all his stash put on display and confiscated in front of the cameras. So at this point, if you’re a serious person, you should not be repeating those outrageous claims about the number of the dead, or about the “protestors” being unarmed, or about how the “innocent” protestors are now being executed just for “speaking up against the regime”.

***

I have spoken in the past and continue to do about the outright criminal economic policies pursued by the current Iranian administration which led in the first place to the Jan crisis—with the help, nonetheless, of the American maximum and sanctions and the blockade of the Iranian money in the UAE. I continue to hold that the head of the central bank of Iran and the finance minister, among others, must be impeached, tried and held accountable for their complicity in the killing of several thousand innocent people.

And I also really don’t see any good logic behind executions, especially public executions, when they clearly have failed to have any kind of deterrence and only serve to refresh the collective wound. But I know the law enshrines an eye for an eye policy in such cases with the added symbolism, due to the public nature of the crimes, of holding the executions at the same square where those four police officers were killed. I suppose one can criticize this law and the symbolism and other choices that have led to the events today in Esfahan. But some are opting to make that into the main issue; And as things are currently, with literal armed agents killing innocent people on the streets of our cities and the very real threat of a repetition of that in the near future and also the bombs and the continued economic crisis and continued betrayal of the economic team of the government…yeah, I find such positions deeply hypocritical and hard to take seriously.

***

Mossad has been hard at work trying to dumb down the acceptable discourse around what happened in January so that the voice of reason and the facts of what happened could never be heard. All we have been hearing for six months has been the shrill cries of regime change agents that parade as political activists and Iran experts. At this point, you are either someone who accepts the Mossad narrative wholesale and takes their side or if not you must find in yourself a capacity to comprehend things beyond the black and white narratives of “regime bad” and “regime killed its own citizens”, which inevitably leads to “please bomb bad regime”, and instead admit that the situation on the ground was far murkier and messed up than you’ve been told and it should never have been weaponized for any kind of political agenda.

P.S. From Esfahan’s Alikhani square case of the killing of four police officers (perpetrators executed on July 28): [CW] “The accused in this case tied the police officers to the board with rope, and after injuring them with stones, they poured gasoline on them, and while the officers were still alive, they set them on fire and then dragged them on the ground and inflicted numerous on their bodies with knives and machetes. They dragged them on the ground and cut their bodies into pieces even after the officers were killed.”

Hi friends,

Last week, with my friend Ben (murphys_boy on IG) we started a series of lives to talk about every day life in Iran.

The first live was done last Friday and the recording is posted on IG: WATCH HERE

Our conversation was interrupted and we’re picking it up again tonight at 8pm Tehran time. And this time we’ll be going live on Substack! So make a note of your local time and tune in if you can! We’d love to have you.

Also, if you’re interested in every day life in Iran, don’t miss my latest video showing the summer night life in Tehran: On IG, on Telegram, and on Facebook.

The juice/milkshake/ice creams shops are some of the most popular hangout spots in all cities and especially in the summer. They have the best summer fruit juices and wild mixes often with creative toppings :)

Please share my videos on your platform of choice and help spread a more authentic image of Iran and counter Western propaganda.

As you know by now, the war has started back up and is concentrated mostly on the area near the Strait of Hormuz. I’ve been posting on my various platforms as well as on Substack about some of the US criminal attacks on our civilian infrastructure in this recent round of war. Also icymi, here’s a clip of an interview that’s been going viral on Iranian social media with volunteer forces guarding the Strait of Hormuz: on IG and on Telegram. These are the iranians that the Western media will never show you.

July 4 was the beginning of two days of public farewell to Seyyed Ali Khamenei and his martyred family members at Tehran’s Grand Mosalla, followed by one day of funeral processions through the streets of Tehran (and then other cities, until eventual burial in the city of Mashhad). I attended the Mosalla ceremony on the morning of the opening day. Here are some highlights from the day and some reflections afterwards. There’s so much to say about him and our complex relationship to him and all the thoughts and feelings on these days. I hope to share more over time. More photos and videos are posted to my IG page.

Seyyed Ali Khamenei, the leader we grew up with, seemed always like a fixed part of this world. He was regarded with hate and fury by some and love and adoration by others, and for those like myself who tried to keep a distance from the madness, he was a source of confusion and frustration, or indifference at best. But he was, nonetheless, all that many of us knew for a long time.

And now Seyyed Ali is forever divided into before and after the moment of 9:40am of Feb 28, when several bunker buster bombs tore a hole into his and his family’s place of residence. 37 years is almost the entire lives and more of a majority of Iranians. But compared to the rest of time, 37 years is just a blip.

The world around us feels like it’s not entirely held together with him gone, yet, it is—the wheels turn and time marches forward and a new dawn arrives every day where we must struggle to figure out the new reality we live in—which I’m convinced is disorienting even to his haters.

I fall into a hole inside my mind circulating around the moment of 5am on the morning of Mar 1 when the news was delivered to us. The hole that’s left by the bunker busters is not just in ‘The Bayt’, the leader’s home, but inside our collective psyche too. What does it make us as a people, for our leader—however we may have felt about him—to be assassinated by the most oppressive and corrupt forces in this world, in his own home, together with his entire family?

If he was the target of that crime, we are the survivors of it and we’ll never be the same people again. After all, we belong to a long stretch of a nation that has built its entire identity around refusing to forget the battle of Karbala for 1400 years and has made “Hayhat minna al-dhilla”—never to humiliation—its rallying cry.

Who are we now after this horrific attack on our highest-level political figure? Will we continue to stand up? or else we’ll be accepting humiliation. I don’t know if Seyyed Ali chose this fate or if it was forced upon him or any other scenario, but it feels like he is asking us now from the other side to answer this question for ourselves. And his final act, and the question it carries, will no doubt echo in the halls of history for a long time coming.

For me, the hole inside my mind deepens and the gap widens when I think of the fact that we didn’t and don’t know who he really was before Feb 28. Was he the “obstinate old man” deemed by some to be the source of Iran’s isolation, hardships? Was he the despot that the arbitrary injustices throughout the years should be traced back to? The “head of the snake” and the vampire who fed on the dissidents blood per the Mossad-backed Iran International Persian-speaking TV station? or was he the only political figure within the Iranian landscape willing to stand on business on anti-imperialism and pay the cost for it too, while others were too happy to sell out—per his most devoted following?

The truth is Seyyed Ali was never given to us plainly as he was. So much manipulation from all sides has hidden his truth from us and I don’t know how hard he tried or didn’t to counter that and reach us. And now after the bombing and the destruction of his home, his library, his documents and archives, we might never find out the raw truth—which is something I will never forgive.

But while a lot of him may have been erased, what happened at 9:40am of Feb 28 2026 can never be. It will sit forever like a sore thumb against a massive backdrop of obfuscation and an absence of facts. And I feel sorry for those who grasp onto their old ideas of him despite it crumbling before their very eyes, just so they can hold on to their pre-existing political identity—but at what cost? Because if Feb 28 is any indication, those old ideas cannot stand the test of time, no matter how hard Khamenei’s contemporaries try. He has placed his bid on the residents of the future.

Seyyed Ali is leaving Tehran in two days and we remain, but not for very long, because future is a long time, and he has carved his mark on it with his own blood. Regardless of where this country decides to go from here, especially in the short term and over the span of our short lives, in the long run it will be Seyyed Ali’s blood showing the way. We only get to choose if we walk towards or away from it. But we will surely be judged for our choice in accordance to his.

This is neither a wish, nor a political statement. It’s just what anyone who knows how history works and how collectives are held together can see. And I know that Seyyed Ali knew this very well. He will forever stand tall above our epoch, larger than history and his haters. And his martyrdom will forever challenge and erase all previously held narratives and assumptions about him.

p.s. Many on social media have asked me if Iranians are “forced” to attend the ceremonies. This is such a wild “cope” and an outright lie by the Western media. Not only are people not forced to attend, but also almost the entire week has been declared a holiday in Tehran since several weeks ago and work places have closed so that those Tehranis who wish to leave the city can do so with ease, while those who want to stay or travel to Tehran from other cities for the processions can also do so. If anything, a great deal of work has been put into crowd control mechanisms to avoid stampedes and accidents to the mourners (which has always been an issue in the past) and minimize inconveniences to both mourners and residents going about their lives.

For the first ten days of the month of Muharram (Islamic calendar), streets and neighbourhoods all over Iran become sites of the most elaborate mourning ceremonies and rituals commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Hussein and his family in the battle of Karbala; a historical event that to Shia muslims symbolizes the ultimate battle of good vs evil.

A rough backstory to the battle of Karbala: In 680 AD, Imam Hussein, the third Shia Imam and the grandson of Prophet Mohammad, rose up against the corruption and the tyranny of Yazid, the second Umayyid ruler, who inherited the throne from his father Muawiyeh (in the region known as Bilad al-Sham in Arabic or the Levant). To strengthen his rule, Yazid demanded allegiance from Hussein. Pressure mounted but Hussein refused with a statement along the lines of “Someone like me will never pledge allegiance to someone like Yazid”. He chose to stand his ground even if military confrontation was inevitable. His 72 loyal companions, including his closest family members, stood by his side, even as Yazid’s army besieged and cut them off from food and water. By the end of the tenth day, known as the day of Ashura, all except some women and small children were brutally massacred and the rest were taken captive. Shia Muslims believe Imam Hussein chose this battle against Yazid to set an example for future generations about the necessity of resisting oppression and evil, even if you’re outnumbered and martyrdom is certain. Imam Hussein is considered in Shia faith as the model martyr, with the title “Seyed al-Shohada”, and the story of the battle of Karbala is a pillar of the martyrdom philosophy.

Ceremonies in Iran start on the first day of Muharram and peak on the day of Ashura. There are re-enactments of the battle of Karbala with detailed stories from the day of and several art forms are dedicated to retelling the tragedy. Different regions in Iran (as well as throughout Iraq and other Shia-dominant areas across the Muslim world) have their own local traditions for this day and month which have developed over centuries. Most commonly in Iran on the 9th and the 10th days, processions of mourners known as ‘dasteh’, made up mostly of young men, march through the streets, moving in rhythm, carrying symbols from the battle, accompanied by music and singing, the low reverberance of chest beatings, and the clattering of soft chains against shoulders (all are performative; no one is hurt in the process).

All day long on the 9th and the 10th days, which are statutory holidays in Iran, ‘dasteh’ performers pass through and families pour onto the streets to watch. The communal space created is often very open and inclusive, people stand around to watch, support, pray, mourn, sing, donate; and meals, fruits, snacks, tea, juice, etc are served to all. A literal ton of free food is given out to the public on these two days by donors for the love of Imam Hussein.

The Muharram ceremonies are one of the oldest and most important traditions in Iranian culture. Performances are organized at the grassroots levels and paid for by local donations. There’s a lot of depth, creativity, and meaning in how they’re carried out and several thinkers, artists, and writers have devoted lifetimes to studying these traditions and symbolisms.

This was the first Muharram that I attended as an adult. Maybe the war had triggered in many a desire to return to the roots, as the crowds were significant. After all, Iran’s leader, Ali Khamenei, in his final speech before martyrdom, had responded to Trump’s warning to Iran to “surrender unconditionally or else” with a reference to Imam Hussein’s famous saying “Someone like me will never pledge allegiance to someone like him” [even if I get killed for it]. And the rest is history.

While haters and self-haters have for many years disparaged the Iranian Muharram traditions, I personally feel bad for anyone who can’t appreciate the love for justice and honour, and the wisdom, beauty, and community embedded in all of this.

I recently chatted with Sina Rahmani on the East Podcast about Iran, the war, and the diaspora. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

My internet got cut off at one point, so the episode is cut into two parts. Stay tuned for part 2!

All we ever wanted was to live life.

A diaspora activist with the last name “Hejazipour” complained on Twitter that the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has no business talking about Iranian pride, because he’s not Iranian, evident in his last name which means “from Iraq”.

The irony is that “Hejazipour” itself means son of Hejazi, i.e. from the land of Hejaz, the old name for the place now known as Saudi Arabia.

To be clear, Araghchi is just as Iranian as the next person. But this comment on his last name from a Pahlavi supporter is a symptom of the kind of “liberty and democracy” this fascist gang is wishing for Iran. They can’t wait to start their campaign of ethnic purge and purification, execute all political opponents, and redefine what it means to be Iranian—just as grandpa Pahlavi did when he initially came to power in the early 20th century.

It also shows how little such people understand Iran, its history and its people. Iran and Iraq have had very close cultural ties throughout history and used to be part of the same empire for centuries. “Araghchi”’s name is an interesting one because on the one hand it could imply roots in Iraq, on the other, the “chi” suffix is Azeri/Turkish in origin, and implies someone who navigated those boundaries, which is a very Iranian core thing; bridging cultures in a highly mixed and intertwined region that has never seen a concept of purity in culture or ethnicity or language. Iranians throughout the time have understood themselves as people who built bridges between their neighbours and even lands beyond, and facilitated trade and mobility of goods, ideas, people, and cultures, from the east to the west and back.

To make matters more complex, one has to consider also that the word “Iraq”, or “Aragh”, is Persian in origin and parts of Western Iran used to be called Aragh, the remnants of which is evident in the Iranian city of Arak. In fact, it was the Pahlavi shah who Persianized the name of the city to Arak, so that it didn’t sound Arabic. This was in line with Pahlavi’s race-based ideology and concept of Iran (reflected in the name Pahlavi that they chose for themselves) that hinged on carving out a Persian identity that had no overlaps with Arabness—an impossible and eventually doomed project. Aragh or Iraq is said to have meant ‘plateau’ in middle Persian. The region that is now the country of Iraq used to be called the Arab Iraq and the Western Iranian region, where the city of Arak is, was called the Ajam Iraq—Ajam, being an old word used for non-Arabs, specifically Persians. So Araghchi, could simply mean from the city of Arak.

But yeah, if Pahlavi or his ideology ever comes back to power in Iran, even the people from Arak could potentially get deported to Iraq for the crime of being Arabs.

If you know anything about Iran you know that Iranians be making jokes about political issues and current affairs like it’s nobody’s business. Even in the darkest of times the jokes and the memes don’t stop pouring in—including during the 12-day war.

In the recent month, with the whole country being overtaken by shock and grief, it may have been one of the most jokeless times in recent memory. But as moods start to lighten and as the interminable spectacle of negotiations makes a comeback the jokes are also starting to trickle back in.

The global focus is once again shifted to Trump’s pressure to stop Iran’s nuclear program and have the 400 or whatever kg of enriched uranium handed over to the US. Now, a lot of Iranians are critical of the enrichment program and don’t necessarily feel strongly about it; at the same time, I think having a sense of sovereignty, dignity, and not wanting to be told what to do by a bully are innate human instincts and strong Iranian traits (that is, if you’re not a diaspora sellout).

So, one running joke has been about apricots—and their sweet kernels being a favourite snack in Iran. We joke that Trump must not know we are a people who eat the apricot and fight over who gets the kernel (i.e. nucleus), what makes him think we’ll give up our nuclear program just like that?

During Trumps first term, he tried to intimidate Iranians once again by leaving the JCPOA, imposing a campaign of maximum pressure on Iran, and at one point sending the Lincoln carrier to the Persian Gulf, as he has done now. Apparently back then, with the news breaking of the carrier being in the Persian gulf, Iranians turned to jokes once again and started posting pictures of the carrier on the domestic equivalent of craigslist with ‘for' sale’ ads describing it as a “lightly used” second-hand vehicle. Before there even being a war, Iranians were auctioning off its spoils.

I try sometimes to reflect on what it actually means to be part of an ancient nation and civilization, which has been around forever and has never been colonized. A nation without a date of establishment or independence and a long stretch of historical memory that makes the Mongol invasion seem like last week. I think having this baseline of giving zero fucks, laughing in the face of troubles, and refusing to back down in the face of intimidations must stem directly from that history and from being firmly rooted in one’s own land.

CBC is reporting that 350,000 have attended the Iran rally in Toronto that’s calling for regime change and military strikes on Iran.

Let’s set aside for a minute CBC’s unreliability when it comes to Iran—or any country under imperialist aggression.

Let’s also set aside the question of who this crowd is likely to be made up of, and what percentage are zionists of all stripes, not just Iranians.

And let’s also set aside the monarchists and MEK’s long established and documented tactics of bullying and harassment to intimidate otherwise thinking folks into suspending all critical thought and becoming pawns in the dangerous games of geopolitical destabilization.

Let’s, for the sake of the argument, say that there are just that many Iranians in and around Toronto who’d go to the streets in order to lend their bodies and their voices to the cause of legitimizing such violent and reactionary demands as regime change and military intervention on the country they claim to care about.

How should we understand this crowd?

I understand them the same way I have understood all traitors throughout Iranian history (of which there have not been a shortage of and this crowd is neither the first, nor will it be the last).

I also understand them through one very insightful saying in our language which describes a certain strand of lunacy: “They have smelled kabab. They don’t know they’re grilling donkeys.”

The crowd has been promised beautiful things. A swift regime change that only takes out the reygime. A military strike so smart, so beautiful, like everything else trump has done, that minimizes civilian and infrastructural damage and effectively just kills all heads of state and brings liberation, democracy, human rights. A bomb that only annihilates the shackles on the person’s hands without inflicting so much as a scratch on their body. I suppose, like the bomb Israel dropped on the Evin prison in the summer that liberated hundreds of political and non-political prisoners and their visitors and prison staff and passersby by simply killing them.

Yes, the diaspora has been promised a country better and “greater” than the one they have sold to the devil along with their brains and souls.

But what they smell is of donkeys (i.e. idiots) being grilled. It is them who are being used in this game and then tossed aside.

The saying reminds me of the Marxist concept of audience as commodity; that if you’re not paying for a product that you consume, it’s because you ARE the product. 350,000 or however many Iranians have been promised kababs. They don’t know they and the people of Iran are the ones being grilled for the consumption of the masters to whose rule they’re submitting themselves. Yes there will be kabab, but it will not be for you.

That is, if they can have their way.

Finally, I’m not at all surprised by whatever the size of the crowd may be. With just enough money funnelled into campaigns to fabricate reality, lie, manipulate, and mentally abuse a population and take them politically and economically and intellectually hostage, enough people can become exactly this stupid.

Anyways, long live Iran. We’ll survive this too.

He’s a London-based Aviation businessman and most of his conversations with Epstein in the released emails are related to aviation trade and Iranian politics, though with an unmistakable air of trust and comradery.

In other documents, we see that Ittihadieh is also the founder of a charity called OMID with branches in the UK, US, and Iran. OMID foundation which was able to bypass US sanctions on Iran and be funded directly by external sources, focused on....you guessed it, providing support to teenage girls and young women from rough backgrounds and broken homes. The charity was active in Iran from 2003 until a few 4-5 years ago when it was shut down after being raided by the Iranian security apparatus.

The charities activities were halted and deemed illegal after. In a short doc that ran on State TV about the org, it was claimed that they educated the young women to have “open sexual contact” and a “liberal Western lifestyle” which clashed with providing professional support for vulnerable and traumatized women. It was also claimed that they trained the women to become political dissidents and take part in protests for regime change. And there was a horrific story about two young women committing suicide together under the patronage of the charity.

At the time, the claims were dismissed and the crackdown was condemned by many Iranian feminists and activists as typical state paranoia, suppression of non-governmental and civil society actors and repressing of differing lifestyles and personal freedoms by the state.

Today, after Ittihadieh’s Epstein link has come to light, I heard about it from a friend who used to work at the Tehran office of this org as a social worker. She said that once the org had shut down, the youth she worked with had found the courage to share with her some of their stories. They’d said that they were routinely asked to dance at European embassies’ parties for money and had details to share of sexual abuse by management and sponsors of the org. She also said that after the shutdown, she’d heard rumours about the org trafficking girls abroad, which she and her colleagues had dismissed as a ridiculous conspiracy. Now, after the files have been released, she tells me, “I feel like we were the naive ones”.

Disclaimer: I don’t claim to know the full truth about the org’s activities and I’d like to acknowledge that there are contradicting narratives and we don’t have a clear proof of any wrongdoings. There are only suspicions and allegations that are strengthened by Ittihadieh’s connection to Epstein.

I’ve seen severral cases so far of Israeli faces being spotted among circulated images of the victims of Jan 8-9 crackdown in Iran. One case was of a dead member of Israel’s 8200 intelligence unit; another is Naftali Bennet’s son.

I’ve also seen several cases so far of young people claimed dead by the diaspora groups and media, literally coming out to announce themselves very much alive.

This repeating pattern tells me a few things:

1. Israeli intelligence operations are very much involved in generating these lists, numbers, names, and photos. They’re doing a sloppy job too and are using photos of their own instead of something less recognizable.

2. To garner more Western sympathy, they seem to be specifically opting for faces that are whiter looking—whiter than average Iranian while still passing as Iranian—and that’s likely how they ended up with using a certain type of Israeli face. The Israeli complexion strikes a happy balance between being somewhat believable as Iranian, while at the same time not being too brown and therefore off-putting for white westerners.

3. This shows how dumb they think Iranians are. And of course the Iranian diaspora/opposition constantly proves them right.

4. The dishonest reporting and the little care shown for the truth of who and how and how many of our people were killed is a reflection of how little israel, and the fashy Iranian opposition that it has created in its own image, actually care about the dead Iranians.

P.s. Iran has officially released the names and identifications of the 3117 that they announced killed during the crackdowns in January. There’s reason to suspect the number is higher than reported (but not tens of thousands higher, maybe a few hundreds), but the list being released is, I believe, a positive step—at least those included in the government’s lists can be trusted to be actually dead, even not all names are included.

To understand why a majority of Iranians repeat the same nonsensical talking points when it comes to iran, you should take a look at the amount of hate and vitriol Samira receives regularly from the rest of the diaspora. It’s this kind of pressure and smear campaigns, not unlike what Zionists do to pro-Palestine activists, that pushes people to conform and get with the right wing program of war and sanctions.

A few days ago, Samira posted a video regarding a hate comment she had received from one certain formerly Vancouver-based leftist turned fascist (a frequent occurrence in the Iranian diaspora). The comment is so truly unhinged it really requires its own special kind of attention.

This guy, himself Iranian, picks on Samira’s last name—an Arabic name with the recognizably Islamic ending of “eddin” (meaning, “of religion”). The literal meaning of the name is the “reviver of the religion”. Now this isn’t anything special in iran. The entire Persian language was reworked after islam (i.e. 1400 years ago) and too many words, phrases, names, and concepts have either an Islamic or Arabic root or both. Trying to find Arabic origin words in Persian is like looking for Latin origin words in English.

So Samira, like many of us Iranians, has an Arabic or Arabic-adjacent last name, albeit a more recognizably religious one due to the suffix.

The commenter, bright as he is, claims that the meaning of her last name shows that she is trying to revive Islam in Canada and that proves that she is part of the lobby of the Islamic republic in the west.

The irony: the dude’s own name is Mohammad. Just like millions upon millions of Iranian men with that name.

It’s funny and sad and makes you feel you’re losing your mind all at once. The Iranian diaspora is truly out of its mind. It’s a community bent on purging itself by being internally racist and Islamophobic, but it doesn’t even work and comes across as pathetic. Because we’re all, more or less, different shades of brown and different shades of Islamic and have been for more than a thousand years and this or that government isn’t going to change that very much. Even if some fancy denying it and denying their roots to make their jihad more palatable to the white western gaze.

Many of you have asked me about what’s been happening in Iran. Of course all of you know that I don’t know. All I could tell you is what I think has been happening. I will tell you that, but first, I should make an important clarification:

No one, and I mean, no one, knows what really happened on Jan 8. More importantly no one truly knows how it came to happen, how it was allowed to happen and how it eventually stopped from happening. At least normal people without access to classified intelligence wouldn’t know.

The Iranians that you’re asking for information from are also getting their news from the media and word of mouth rumours. And the most important media channel that a lot of Iranians especially anti-government ones consume runs from Tel Aviv. Do your own deduction. There are no reliable narrators here. When it comes to Iran the media wars couldn’t be more real, toxic, and impossible to penetrate.

So all we are left with to help make sense of a very complex situation are two essentially opposing narratives that share no common grounds, some videos that prove neither, and a lot of strong convictions about what must be the reality, itself rooted in a lot of unresolved trauma and prolonged gaps in knowledge. But trust me when I tell you, none of the people who are posing as experts on Iran have the facts. The only thing that we know for a fact is that a lot of people were killed on the streets on Jan 8-9-10 and it was a true tragedy and disaster. I don’t even see the point of quibbling over the numbers. It’s indisputably in the thousands. Unless you’re looking for a number big enough that would have the power to get the B2 bombers off the ground, the exact number is unlikely to get us any closer to a clear picture of events.

Now on the two narratives.

If you’re the type who, when Mossad says “our agents are among the protestors in Tehran”, you tend to believe them, naturally you’ll be asking some questions, like: who were the people who were killed, by whom, how, and why. And you’ll be looking for responses and accountability.

But if you’re the type who can’t bear engaging with complex realities, you might try to resort to the very common Iranian mantra of “kar e khodeshoone”: they did it themselves. A conspiratorial thinking many decades old, which colonized people sadly always resort to--as a way of making sense of the senseless.

A vague ‘they’ exists in any and all situations which can’t even be clearly defined or identified, because any definition, identification, or articulation will make it less all-encompassing and all-powerful and take the edge off a strong narrative that functions like a drug.

So if you’re in that camp, you don’t ask questions. Instead you look for a villain to condemn and a saviour to save you from it. You curse Khamenei--as does the person who’s filming that viral video of the body bags at Tehran’s morgue over and over--as the figurehead and representative of everything that you can’t define, describe, or articulate, but you definitely hate. And you look to Trump and his B2 bombers.

Does that person filming at the morgue know what happened on the night of Jan 8 in dozens of Iranian cities and towns centres? Does he know how countless busses, bus stops, traffic lights, banks, mosques, schools, ambulances, fire trucks in tens of cities came to be damaged, destroyed, burned down? How and by whom countless grocery and convenient stores that carry people’s necessities amidst a severe cost of living crisis, or the entire traditional bazaar district in the city of Rasht with upward of 500 storefronts, were set on fire? Does he know who intentionally set fire to a medical clinic in Rasht where that young nurse was burned alive? Does he know how a few hundred residential units, hundreds upon hundreds of private citizen’s vehicles, medical facilities, even a handful of libraries and churches...were damaged, destroyed, and deliberately burned? Did Khamenei do all that? Does he know who killed the 2-300 police and security forces? Did Khamenei kill them too? Khamenei burned the Rasht bazaar and the mosques and the hundreds of government buildings? If Khamenei did that, then why does the disgraced former Ontario MPP and a staunch Iranian Zionist, Goldie Ghamari, share and rejoice in videos of mosques being set on fire? Why does she say proudly that she’s a “Zoroastrian” and believes in cleansing with fire?

I assure you the guy who took the video of bodies at the morgue doesn’t know the answer and doesn’t care to ask these questions. I can assure you, even now that the internet is back in Iran, normal Iranians by virtue of being Iranian and having been in proximity of events, can’t tell you what happened on that cursed night, when the clown prince called his supporters to the streets to eventually become fodder for Zionist media wars.

Sure, I was in Tehran on Jan 8 and before and after. Do I know what happened? No, the only things I have are what I’ve seen, what I’ve heard, reports and facts I’ve sifted through and my own faculty of deduction, and of course the way I see and understand the world independent of all of this.

What I saw when I was briefly on the streets early on Thursday night, was streets that were eerily quiet, especially for a Thursday night (which is part of the weekend here and the equivalent of Saturday nights in the west), I saw scattered groups of 3-4, decked out in black wearing face masks--an outfit that I later learned is instructed by the Pahlavi and zio influencers--and I saw crowds of security forces standing in waiting. I don’t know what happened after. I know that I felt very unsafe. The vibes were way off and I felt like if I were to get stuck between the masked groups, who were toppling garbage bins, starting fires on the side streets, and blocking the roads, and the security forces, no one will care who I am, why I’m here, what I believe, what side I am or I’m not on; And I dashed home as fast as I could.

This was my entire encounter with the streets that night. The vibes continued to be off the next day or two from what I saw and felt. Something bad had happened and was perhaps still happening. The internets, even domestic internet and at one point all phone lines were completely down. All very unprecedented.

By Saturday when I went back to my gym I started hearing from people who knew people whose kids were killed. No one had seen much personally, but everyone had heard a lot of things. The younger people had had their friends on the streets and knew many who got a beating by police batons, some were arrested, some sustained scattergun wounds.

From the people I know who happened to see the streets that night, I heard different versions of how things were off that night. One friend had noticed in one part of town the police were essentially doing nothing and despite their usual tactic of blocking disparate crowds from joining and getting bigger, they were standing back and watching. At least for parts of the night it was like this, until the crowds got much bigger. Another friend in a small town said something similar. Large crowds that included families out protesting and chanting early in the night and everything being peaceful. But later in the night the city was completely trashed, many places burned and no security forces in sight. From several people who happened to have gone out, I heard that they felt unsafe when heard shootings that were unclear where they were coming from, and had left. Another story I got second hand was from a neighbour of my parents who had seen a group of young men setting grocery stores on fire and had tried to stop them. She was crying while saying to my mom: “I tried to tell them this is for the people, it belongs to the people, why are you doing this?”

Of course, as always with any confrontation with the government the mainstream narrative among Iranians (inside and outside the country) is the whole “they did it themselves” mantra. But I for one can’t overlook the strange and unprecedented aspects of this latest round of events. And why should I? Who does that benefit?

I think for instance that the last time there was a mosque burning in Iran, it may have been during the Moghul invasion seven hundred years ago. I think either normal Iranians or security forces have no reason to intentionally and systematically destroy public and private properties, especially private properties and that as a people we are generally very caring of our living environments and against destruction. I also know that the only people in this world who’s shown themselves fully capable of burning medical facilities, ambulances, fire trucks, mosques, and killing large numbers of people for sport or political gain have their HQs in the one and only persona non grata entity that’s been occupying the lower Mediterranean shores of West Asia. Do your own deduction.

I’m attaching in the comments a video of the damage and destruction caused to my beautiful city Isfahan on Jan 8, which breaks my heart, and also a video of municipality workers cleaning up the damage that same night until sunrise, just to minimize disturbances to people’s normal lives--which also breaks my heart cause these are some of the lowest earners, most marginalized and least socially and politically regarded sectors, yet here they are working with dedication for the good of the people. These are my people. Not the Pahlavi, not the braindead diaspora, not the fascists who raise the Israeli flag or ask Trump for bombs.

I’m just glad that my last post here was about my unadulterated hate for the filth that is the Iranian diaspora. I rested easy for two weeks knowing that was my last message to the world. Absolutely f*** anyone who raises the Israeli or the Pahlavi flag or asks US/Israel to bomb and “free” Iran and f*** the lil Pahlavi too.

I saw this post first thing after reconnecting on my Instagram feed, which encompassed exactly how I feel about the diaspora. So much hysteria and braindeadness. I might go back offline again to protect what’s left of my sanity.

As bizarre as it is, we now fully live in a world where the Canadian Prime Minister has more anti-imperialism in him than the average diaspora Iranian. Trust your own brain and don't be bullied by fake identity politics into a compromised stance. To take a compassionate stance right now is to organize against the US empire and for more restraint on its domination, be it in Europe, the America's, or West Asia.

How to properly apply nuance to the Venezuelan situation (applicable to the case of all countries under imperialist aggression):

1. Some/many Venezuelans are jubilant about a US-led violent coup in their country to remove the government and make their country a client state of the US.

2. Some/many Venezuelans are quite unhappy, upset, enraged, about US aggression against their country and would much rather have their sovereignty respected regardless of whether they support or oppose their government.

3. Quite literally no one knows which group is a majority or represents the “true voice” of a nation. If one group is louder than the other especially in online spaces, the other group is more likely to be inside Venezuela with less representation globally, but instead tries to have its voice heard by participating in their country’s elections—which the first group deems illegitimate.

4. Until there’s a situation where fair and transparent elections can be held (and I don’t mean imperialist run elections or elections where all options cannot represented), you or I or even Venezuelans themselves have no way of knowing what the majority wants, if there can even be a majority, or what positions represents the want of “the people”.

Putting all the above together we can state that:

Some/many Venezuelans are happy about the US intervention and the removal of Maduro from power, while some/many Venezuelans are angry and plan to fight it; yet, none of that means anything about the legitimacy of US actions, because there’s no justifying war crimes and imperialist aggression.

This second part might go over some of your heads, but I don’t believe that even if, hypothetically, it was proven that a majority of Venezuelans want US intervention, that that’d would give the US government the right to commit crimes or violate US and international laws, neither would it create any rights for Venezuelans to have demands on the US government, just the same way as when an entire country decides to be racists and fascists; democracy is not a pass for fascistic and imperialistic demands. Just because a large number of people want something, it doesn’t mean that’s a right thing. Laws exist for a reason after all.

So, I hope everyone stops deferring to the spectre of happy Venezuelans to justify crimes and stop justifying the actions of an out of control crumbling empire.

Side note: countries under imperialist aggression are the only ones that are presumed to have a singular “people”. You never hear about “the people of Canada” all wanting a certain thing or “the people of France” or “the American people”. That’s because “the people” as a separate entity from the government and as a monolith who all want the same thing, is an imperialist construct, created to advance imperialist, often counter-revolutionary agenda.

We’re caught between the criminal US sanctions and a corrupt oligarchy that benefits from them, and has in fact come to be mainly due to the sanctions in the first place. The sanctions have weakened the central bank and the government, and have instead empowered an unaccountable private sector to take on the roles of the government and they’re now powerful enough that can appoint an oligarch-friendly government (the current one) or take the economy hostage to pressure the government to act in its interest. (This is a complex subject, but if you already know how neoliberalism works anywhere, this isn’t too different from it; just that sanctions add an extra propelling force for the implementation of neoliberal structural adjustments).

This is a very complex and developing situation. A segment of shopkeepers have gone on strike since a couple of days ago in protest to the instability and volatility of the markets. And now the Mossad, the network of diaspora monarchists, the terrorists of the MEK who are buddies with the Zionist lobby in Canada and so on are all riding the waves of these scattered protests, hoping for them to lock the country into internal turmoil so that Israel can carry out its next attack. Meanwhile, the orange man and Satan-yahu hold joint press conferences to cheerfully discuss their intentions for the next war on Iran.

So, yes, we are doomed. But none of you re-sharing a silly AI generated image for the millionth time is helping.

Not to be too dramatic and I know it’s highly unlikely, but just in case I die under the next round of Israeli bombing of Tehran, all I ask is that you remember me for my undying, unadulterated hate for the Iranian diaspora; especially the ones in Canada (and the US and Germany and…); especially the ones who advocate for sanctions; especially the ones who make themselves instrumental to Zionist campaigns that have one aim and that is to destroy our beautiful country and kill our people.

post note: this ended up being one of my last posts on social media before the Jan 8-9 protests and the internet shutdown.

The word magic derives from magus too, because Zoroastrianism and ancient Persia, had rich traditions of alchemy and mysticism. These priests were “wise men” in the sense that they understood the mysteries of the universe and the stars and that is how they knew about baby Jesus. The word magus is still used to this day in Arabic to means Persian/Iranian (مجوس).

Christmas in Iran is traditionally only celebrated by Armenians, but all Iranians celebrate the Winter Solstice (Dec 20-21) which we call ‘Yalda’ (yes, same word as Yuletide). We gather together with family, eat pomegranates, watermelon, and nuts, tell stories and do a reading from the Hafez book of poetry for the fortunes of the year ahead.

Here are some photos and videos from Yalda celebration in Tehran.

After months of drought in Iran, Nature has flipped the script. There’s been flooding in the Southern and the Western regions over the past week. Here is Iran’s Hormuz island in the Persian Gulf with its famous red soil. This is the Silver Beach area where the sand normally has a glowing dark grey colour. But the red dirt flowing down from top of the cliff has mixed with the sand and made new patterns.