Overview
- Opinion pieces report continued mass street protests across Iran in their third week, describing largely unarmed crowds facing lethal force, arrests, and beatings by security forces including the IRGC.
- Critics say prominent progressive activists and campus communities that have rallied for other causes have offered little public support to Iranians confronting the regime.
- Examples cited include Columbia professor Hamid Dabashi labeling the unrest an Israeli-instigated revolt and a purported DSA-linked X account praising Ayatollah Khamenei, both presented as illustrative of a broader trend.
- Casualty figures circulated in commentary range from at least 2,000 to as many as 12,000 killed, though these numbers remain unverified and are contested in the information fog around the crackdown.
- Writers frame the response through a ‘red–green’ lens connecting parts of the Western Left with Islamist actors, linking today’s discourse to the 1979 revolution and to recent pro-Hamas and pro-Hezbollah protest currents in the West.