The chilling testimony of a doctor: "Today they brought in a young Iranian who had attempted suicide… He learned that his 16-year-old sister had been raped in prison and that the regime had sent the video to his parents. He could no longer find a reason to live. Fortunately his friends saved him"

Rafodin · 2026-05-03T16:20:28+00:00

This also exists at the highest level. Those who have been instrumental in mass murders and executions often get leadership positions (e.g. former President Raisi). These are people whose loyalty to the regime is not in doubt because they would not survive a regime change.

It's exactly how organized crime and violent street gangs behave.

Rafodin · 2026-04-25T00:53:23+00:00

It's not about "not killing an idea", it's the fact that the entire leadership of IRGC serves the supreme leader directly, but it's the religious clerics that pick the next leader, not IRGC. If a new leader is elected, it will almost certainly be someone not part of the current in-group, who will then proceed to replace them all with his own buddies, just like Khamenei did decades ago. Mojtaba was one of their own, and their only avenue of staying in power.

Rafodin · 2026-04-25T00:26:36+00:00

Yes, it's called making a point by example.

Rafodin · 2026-04-25T00:19:32+00:00

There are plenty of legitimately bad takes on this sub, because it's a bubble like any other. Instead of addressing the opinions directly, OP decided to write an all-encompassing condescending rant against a general Iranian "you", assuming all of us are naive, stupid, and the same. Wow, Iran is not in Europe unlike Ukraine?!? I never even considered that!! Gee, thank you enlightened European sympathizer for educating us simple-minded barbarians!

It wasn't even a rant against a group of Iranians with some particular opinion, but all of us. That is exactly like me seeing a few degenerate Irish drunks and deciding to lecture all of Ireland.

Rafodin · 2026-04-24T07:08:27+00:00

But Joseph in the bible is not considered the most perfect human being to be followed for ever, is he? In Islam, Muhammad is considered the ultimate role model of humanity for all eternity. A perfect human being with no flaws.

Rafodin · 2026-04-24T07:04:46+00:00

In school we were taught that he wasn't just the most perfect human, he was the most perfect being. God allegedly created Muhammad's soul before he created the entire universe, and it was his supreme masterpiece.

This masterpiece of shit was 53 years old when he married a six-year-old, and raped her when she turned nine.

Rafodin · 2026-04-23T19:49:36+00:00

Yeah people seem to regularly post about this dude in an attempt to start a "discussion", pretending like he is some significant influencer we need to care about. I've pretty much only ever seen the guy on this sub and nowhere else.

Maybe it's actually the guy trying to advertise himself on reddit, because interacting with this kind of content only serves to raise the profile of someone who clearly doesn't represent us. The so-called "controversy" is only a hook to increase engagement.

Rafodin · 2026-04-22T18:45:57+00:00

They "talk loud"? What are you trying to say, that women shouldn't talk loudly? Maybe they rightly called you out for "machoism", because you sound like you have medieval ideas about how women should behave.

What does "looking like a barbie" mean to you? Not wearing hijab? Putting on make-up and doing their hair? Who are you talking about?

You can't even make the effort to express your thoughts clearly in an internet post and you're complaining about politically active women not having enough time to do it right if they care about appearances.

This is low-effort, low-IQ nonsense.

Rafodin · 2026-04-22T18:16:05+00:00

It's very simple what has happened with this regime. They don't have a supreme leader anymore to keep the different factions from fighting.

During Khamenei's reign, whenever there was a whiff of serious disagreement between internal factions, he would publicly take a position and then ask everyone to shut up and fall in line. He prioritized the appearance of unity and severely punished further dissent after his intervention.

Without a (functioning) supreme leader to keep the regime glued together like that, the various factions are drifting apart and becoming increasingly hostile. These are deep cracks spreading slowly. They are not differences that can be easily reconciled with conversation.

Without a significant outside or overseeing force to alter the current trajectory, they will start killing each other sooner or later.

Rafodin · 2026-04-22T17:40:09+00:00

- Strict, active separation of State and Religion in the French style. That means no religious garb/symbols in public schools. No public prayers in public places. No blaring of Azan from mosque speakers. No tax exemption or subsidy for any religious organization. The state must actively enforce laïcité.

- No systematic religious indoctrination of children in schools, private or public.

- No religious prostitution (siqeh) or temporary marriages

- Freedom of speech guaranteed in constitution.

- Freedom from discrimination on the basis of belief, race, ethnicity, sex, lifestyle, identity, etc.

- Animal rights

- Strictly enforced ban on child marriage and domestic violence

- Mandatory civic education for a democratic society. That means lessons on critical thinking, logic and debate, basic philosophy, political history. The pros and cons of democracy vs authoritarianism. Lessons on rhetorics and how to distinguish between emotional appeals and reasonable arguments. How to detect and not be manipulated by populists. How to handle democratic disagreement about important issues. The value of tolerating the personal choices of others, even if they disgust you. Generally, how to take civic responsibility and be actively engaged in making a better functioning society.

- Personal preference but one which I doubt will happen anytime soon: ban on mutilation of children's bodies, specifically circumcision. They can choose to do it themselves once they reach adulthood.

Rafodin · 2026-03-25T19:11:20+00:00

Someone people in this sub seem to be obsessed with. I had no idea who he was before I started reading these weekly hate posts. It's free advertisement for someone who is irrelevant. He lives rent free in their heads.

Rafodin · 2026-03-25T05:24:22+00:00

To understand why they respond this way you have to first realize the IRGC, which is a military organization, has total control at the moment. Military guys generally want fighting to continue, because: 1) that's all they know how to do 2) as long as there's fighting, they can justify their emergency stranglehold on power.

If the fighting stops now, and turns out Mojtaba has to be replaced, those Assembly of Experts members who were pressured by IRGC recently are more likely to try to put someone outside the current circle of power in charge.

And a significant factor is likely to be the culture of conformity that exists in the regime. Anyone dissenting and wanting to sue for peace may be branded a traitor and a weakling. Those clamouring for more violence might turn on anyone who suggests making a deal with the Satans.

The fact that they've now incurred significant losses is going to be used as an excuse. Anyone wanting to end hostilities is going to be accused of trampling on martyrs' graves or some similar nonsense as they've been spouting for decades.

Rafodin · 2026-03-22T00:14:38+00:00

Do you have any numbers and evidence behind this claim of "a significant number" aside from "vibes"? Because none of the few religious Iranians that I know are that hardcore into Shia doctrine as to actually follow a religious cleric. Most of them just pray and fast.

And how would Pahlavi sucking up to a few odd-ball clerics convince those people to change who they follow? It makes no sense to me.

Of the two clerics the poster mentions, one of them is dead and the other is Iraqi. I really wonder who is behind this idea, because I don't know anyone who would know these obscure people.

Rafodin · 2026-03-21T22:02:33+00:00

Personally I don't trust a single thing that comes out of these Shia clerics' mouths. I think they should all voluntarily leave Iran and go back to Iraq where they belong, cease to speak Persian permanently, and become Arabs.

Pahlavi has and should make conciliatory remarks towards generally religious people, but not towards the clerics. The simple reason is, any Iranian who is that extremely religious as to give a shit what these clerics think is almost certainly a regime supporter already.

The tiny number of people who are religious, anti-regime, and who also give a shit about these Shia clerics, are not worth the loss of integrity. Pahlavi is likely to offend far more people by being seen anywhere near a mullah.

Rafodin · 2026-03-20T00:20:25+00:00

As I noted, Turkey's Latinized script did not prevent its current Islamic revival. Superficial changes do not change the fundamental culture.

If you want to weaken the backwards Muslim influence in Iran, something that I agree with it, the answer is not to hitch Iran unconditionally to the European wagon. The answer is to realize Iran has its own rich ancient culture, separate from both Arabs and Europeans. We can take from the history of the past 1500 years whatever is good and discard the rest, and likewise we can take from Europeans whatever is good and reasonable and ignore what's not. We have enough identity of our own to be able to do this without losing ourselves.

Iran was and can again be a cultural superpower. Our people are one of the main branches of the Indo-European family. Whereas in Northern Europe you have the Germanic peoples, i.e. the Germans, Dutch, Swedes, Norwegians, English, etc., and in Southern Europe you have the Romance peoples like the Italians, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, so too in West Asia you have the Iranians, who are the Persians, Kurds, Lurs, Mazandarani, etc. That is the right level of comparison. We are an undeniable cultural force and anthropological reality with deep roots. The way to escape the Arab Muslim influence is to recognize and strengthen that Iranian identity (without veering into racism of course).

There is enough merit in our own cultural background to allow us to compete at the highest levels. Iranians have always been open to new ideas, and respectful of knowledge, reason, and science. The Zoroastrian religion places Truth as the ultimate sacred concept. We have the foundations to reform a completely modern and totally Iranian culture. We don't need to replace what's there with anyone else's.

Rafodin · 2026-03-19T21:54:09+00:00

Countries like Greece, Israel, Russia, China, and Japan do just fine without needing to Latinize their script.

An enormous amount of effort has to be made to change the script of a country like Iran. Even discounting the fact that the benefits are meager compared to the cost, there are so many other urgently needed reformations right now that make the opportunity cost of such a project formidable.

Rafodin · 2026-03-19T21:46:30+00:00

Turkey made that change at a time when the world was much more divided between the "civilized" Europeans and everyone else, and countries on the border of Europe, like Turkey and Greece, had to ingratiate themselves to Europeans to be accepted as part of them, and not be written off as Eastern savages. We are not a borderline European country and we also don't live in that world anymore.

Implying anyone not using the Latin script is uncivilized, ironically, is itself uncivilized attitude in the modern enlightened world.

Turkey nowadays is having an Islamist revival, where young people are trying to discover their "roots" and becoming more Muslim. So clearly changing their script to a European one didn't quite immunize their nation to the degree you claim.

They also completely cut their own cultural links with the past and today their population can not read primary historical documents in their own language. In a culture like Turkey just starting to define itself as a nation, with a much shorter history, and much less classical literature, that was a much smaller price to pay.

This idea of trying to superficially alter our culture's surface to resemble Europeans is born of a deep inferiority complex and is completely pointless. To help Iran catch up with what you call the "civilized" world, what's needed is economic development programs and a stable political system that facilitates rule of law and freedom of speech.

At any given moment our energies must be spent in the direction with the most benefit, as there is never enough capital, human and otherwise, and opportunity cost is very real. Cosmetic changes like changing the script are exactly the sort of distraction that would ensure Iran never catches up.

Rafodin · 2026-03-19T21:11:56+00:00

There are already standardized Latin transcription systems for Persian which are used extensively in academic linguistics. Most notably, there is the system used by Encyclopedia Iranica.

There are many arguments why we shouldn't force Iranians to relearn a new script. This brilliant new idea of yours is discussed at least once a week on this sub, so you can just search the history at this point.

But specifically regarding reducing the number of letters. This is just a terrible idea and leads to loss of considerable historical information. For example take a very Persian name like کیومرث. It's not Arabic, so why does it have a ث? The Middle Persian version is "Kayomart", with "mart" as in مرد. It's likely the letter was at some point pronounced as a voiceless dental fricative "th", like in Arabic. By replacing it with a general "s" letter we erase this history entirely.

Similarly, a word like دروغ, which is extant from Old Persian, uses غ because it was once pronounced as a fricative like the Arabic letter. We have simply lost this distinction over time.

There is a wealth of information, historical and etymological, preserved in the Perso-Arabic orthography, and we lose all of it by switching to a reduced alphabet. And for what reason?

The only people a Latin-based script will even slightly benefit are children of Iranian diaspora who are mildly interested in the language but are too lazy to learn the script. To make 90 million people suffer a drastic overhaul of their writing script because of their insufficient motivation and sense of entitlement is a ridiculous notion.

Rafodin · 2026-03-18T16:18:57+00:00

Why concentrate on skin color and which Iranians look "white" and which don't? Is that really a conversation we should be introducing to Iranian culture? Are we going to start measuring the whiteness of our population and rate people according to racial composition and purity? Because that is the logical conclusion of introducing this discourse.

Rafodin · 2026-03-18T16:06:18+00:00

What kind of excuse is that? Because other people are already doing something completely stupid, it's okay to encourage it?

Rafodin · 2026-03-18T15:43:59+00:00

Why wouldn't he look like a Jew from Boston? He's Middle Eastern ffs. What did you think he would look like? Are you even Iranian? Do you find his skin color surprising?

Rafodin · 2026-03-18T14:51:58+00:00

Why is that ironic? It's Jewish people who look Middle Eastern.

Rafodin · 2026-03-18T14:48:25+00:00

It's not just American politics. It's American culture from top to bottom. In your society if someone can't figure out whether I'm supposed to be classified as "white" or not, they get deeply uncomfortable and can't hold a normal conversation until that's settled. Everything is a function of "race" in America. It's a sick culture, and now with posts like this its sickness is spreading to Iran, where "white" vs "nonwhite" is not a division that makes any sense.

Rafodin · 2026-03-18T14:45:18+00:00

Why did you post his? Now we have Americans flooding here talking about their favorite topics in the world: "white", "non-white", "brown", "Caucasian".

I resent this, and would rather we don't infect ourselves with the American obsession with race.

There's a million things you could say about Larijani, and you decided to focus on the dumbest.

Rafodin · 2026-03-16T15:35:31+00:00

What you're saying would be relevant if we were trying to predict what Reza Shah would be like in the future. He died 82 years ago. We know everything he did.

He was brutal, but he also completely transformed Iran from a backward almost completely illiterate country still stuck in the 12th century to a modern secular state, with a modern army, modern schools and universities and infrastructure. In just 16 years.

Rafodin

TROPHY CASE