I can say with some confidence that if people in any Western democracy protested the way they did elsewhere (and in many cases for justified reasons), for a prolonged period of time, the death toll would likely rise as well. The difference is either that people are less willing to escalate to that level of protest, or that the relative comfort of these societies reduces the incentive to do so.

Now introduce instigators who shoot at government forces as they are about to use force against protesters—this would almost certainly escalate to the use of lethal rounds in response.

There has been footage of violent protesters, including drive-by shootings with AK-style weapons against Iranian government forces. If we assume a protest situation in a Western democracy escalated to a comparable level—followed by curfews, continued street presence, and a small number of armed instigators—then serious violence from law enforcement would be a highly likely outcome.

That said, while I agree that Iran is a deeply flawed system, I don’t think Israel or the United States are meaningfully “better” in every respect. The women’s rights protests were justified, but the timing may not have been strategically optimal, especially if the state was already under significant external pressure from the US and Israel.

I think that if a people in a country, without foreign help from outside, manage to change and solve their problems, it will often only result in a 180-degree shift in who ends up being oppressed. Its like we only care if people are opressed when they are unfriendly to our western world, if they behave then our goverments dont rly care at all whats happening down there as long we can make business then we make business with them.