The excuses given by the oppressive Islamic regime to explain the violence against protesters (and deaths) are so “appalling” that it’s “laughable,” says British-Iranian-American journalist Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani.
“I mean, people are supposedly throwing themselves off buildings. People are supposedly throwing themselves in front of buses, it’s like something from Final Destination, the outrageous egregiousness in the kind of excuses that the regime is palming off to the rest of the world,” she tells Andy Levy on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal.
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Iranians have protested many times before, but the protests happening now—sparked by the murder of 22-year-old Iranian woman Mahsa Amini by morality police—are different, says Modarressy-Tehrani: “The regime’s backlash to these protests has been swift, aggressive, and for the most part had been unsuccessful.”
“[The regime] has imprisoned over 12,500 people, that we know of, in the last five weeks; they have killed over 250 people. They have murdered over 28 children, again, that we know of. So the level of response that we are seeing from the Islamic regime certainly also should tell you and tell the world that these are very different protests,” she says. “Iranians that you are hearing from directly in Iran are saying it is a revolutionary movement, it has morphed beyond protest.”
The Iranian resistance is something that Americans can even learn from, says Modarressy-Tehrani.
“We really should be drinking some of that freedom fighter Kool-Aid here,” she adds.
Plus! She tells Andy what Iranians really want from the U.S. and, no, it’s not any kind of intervention.
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