Most of them are opposed to the expulsion of any illegal immigrants, yet self-censoring their criticism of Iran’s policy discredits their criticisms of Trump’s similar one, while acknowledging the “Weapons of Mass Migration” pretext upon which Iran’s policy is premised justifies Trump’s.
Every independent nation in the World is entitled to expel illegal and /or undocumented immigrants if that is what the statutes of their governance decree. The only exceptions to this is granting temporary visa status to immigrants proven to be seeking protection from inhuman persecution (political, religious, cultural, racial, military) in their nation of birth. Most nations accept an annual quota of persecuted immigrants as well as those who apply officially and arrive with authorised documentation with intention of seeking full citizenship by legal means. Unfortunately such structured policies have not been immediately activated in European and North American nations and have resulted in an "open door" situation which the receiving nations now regret.
I fully agree with you, but many Iranian supporters across the world and especially in the West believe that "nobody is illegal" and very strongly oppose deportations under any circumstances. They therefore don't know how to react to Iran's deportation policy.
The leftist-aligned anti-zionists I know do not support Iran. Until very recently they were obsessed by Iran’s conservative gender codes and sexual mores. They have only very recently developed a modicum of sympathy for the country as a whole, not just its “oppressed women and sexual minorities,” due to it being on the receiving end of Israel’s aggression.
It is true that they support “open borders” and oppose deportation, but the reason they haven’t spoken against Iran’s deportation of Afghans is not a blind loyalty to Iran. It’s merely that they have a limited attention span and tend to focus on just one or two things at a time.
Your larger point, however, is correct: their commitment to the “open borders” concept is due to never having thought through the complexity of the issue. It is a romantic notion, infused with partisan anti-Trumpism.
(I am talking only of the Americans here. If you have in mind the followers of Mélenchon in France, or equivalent tendencies in UK, you could be right.)
You say "this poses a dilemma for many of Iran’s supporters, most of whom oppose Trump’s similar policy."
I'm not sure that where you get the idea that most of those "supporting" Iran (i.e. opposing Israel) are in favor of illegal immigration and against deporting illegal immigrants. I have no idea what the breakdown is, but I am sure that there are very many like myself who are against both illegal immigration and Israel.
I've been following that community for 12 years already and it's my belief that most of Iran's supporters across the world are leftist-aligned and therefore by default against the expulsion of any illegal immigrants.
I see it all the time on social media, top influencers criticize Trump in one post for being "fascist", "racist", "xenophobic", etc. for his immigration policy while praising Iran for whatever reason in their next post.
I'm like you, I'm critical of Israel and am against illegal immigration, but I've come to conclude that we're in the minority among those across the world who can be described as supporting Iran or at least being sympathetic to it in some contexts.
Perhaps you are right, you are certainly following this most closely than I am. My "support" for Iran doesn't obviously mean that I support all of their domestic policies, in fact they are essentially irrelevant for me since this is an internal matter for Iran (and Iranians).
One thing you'll notice if you dig deeper into it is that many of the top Alt-Media influencers who support Iran are proud leftists and anti-Trumpers.
They don't know what to do now though since critiquing Iran is a "cancellable offense" among their ilk just like supporting illegal immigrant deportations.
That's why I'm very curious to see what they'll do, but thus far, there's been silence, they're conspicuously ignoring this and are afraid to comment on it.
The history of humanity is one of migration. People have always migrated in an effort to improve their lives but additional motivations today are the negative effects of climate change and armed conflict.
There are more than 281 million legal and illegal immigrants in the world. When countries need more manpower they welcome migrants but when they become economically or politically inconvenient to the host country they are discredited and deported.
The migrants themselves have little choice. They are victims of government policies, whether we’re talking about the the U.S., U.K., Iran, Tunisia or any other country. Last year 78 were drowned in failed attempts to reach the U.K. alone.
While we continue to categorize each other as desirable or undesirable, and refuse to recognize that people have a common interest in working together to improve a deteriorating global environment, the chances of civilized human survival on planet Earth will only diminish.
You support assassination of Hamas head in Teheran?
You support the treason and abandon of Palestinian after encouraging them to revolt against Israël ?
You support the treason and abandon of Hezbollah at worst Israelian attack?
You support assassination of Nasrallah at the moment of a sudden meeting with Iranian envoys to explain tha Iranian abandon to a furious Nasrallah?( CF Thierry Meyssan).
You support abandon of Syria and surrender without fighting of all Iranian positions in Syria to the Takfiris?
You support the refusal of a defensive alliance with Russia.
You support the refusal of Russian assistance by Pezeskian those last day?
You support what Pezeskian said( and didn't) in his interview with Carlson this week?
I support Iran's right to manage its socio-economic and political affairs however it wants together with the right to practice a multipolar foreign policy. I'm critical of its foreign policy on occasion, as you know, but it nonetheless has the right to do whatever it wants. I'm against meddling and subversion.
I agree that Pezeshkian is a very weak leader, and indeed suspect that the death of his predecessor was an assassination by Israel or groups allied to Israel. He is making the same mistake as Assad, who thought that "moderating" Syria's opposition to the Israeli-American-Arab axis and distancing himself from Russia and Iran was going to moderate their opposition to him, when in fact they were only attempting to maneuver him into a weaker position.
Charming! Expecting ideological coherence from the ultra-left! Their main motive is emotional, not logical: they hate the USA with all their heart, soul and might. Whatever the USA does is wrong and whatever its enemies do is right by default. Although many in this faction include feminists, gays, vegans and animal rights activists since the Iranian regime is existentially anti-America it does not bother them that this regime, “the enemy of mine enemy,” itself oppresses women, executes homosexuals, and slaughters and eats cows and sheep during their religious festivals. Therefore whenever the USA expels illegal immigrants that is always bad behavior whereas if Tehran does the same to illegal Afghan immigrants such actions are held to be beyond reproach.
You have to moderate your point of view. You have a big part of left and far left which love USA. They love it like cat female in heat. Disgusting. This part, hate Russia, Iran, Venezuela.
All leftists are objective allied to globalist oligarchy. It's an old trotskist song : they share with them the hate of state-nation and they think that in helping oligarchy to destroy states and frontiers, they will promote their own internationalist agenda.
But in this leftism, you have two big trends:
Those who think they will be able to use and control fundamentalist Muslims for destroying their own states and they sham to promote LGBT+ which Muslim hate to death. It's the Melenchon trend. They hate not USA but US impérialism. They like China, Venezuela, Iran but they beware Russia.
And you have those which want to destroy the structure of society itself. Those promote madly LGBT+ and selling of babies as alpha and omega of democracy and sham to promote the "religion freedom" of Muslim fondamentalists in hating them secretly. It's the trend neocon-sionist. They are USA neocons whores and they rabidly hate Iran, Russia and Venezuela.
Truthfully both our extreme left and extreme right here in the USA are too emotional. Many MAGA enthusiasts idolize Trump. I voted for him but I remember his showmanship background with Vince McMahon in “pro wrestling” and take much of what he says with a grain of salt. Sometimes he is saying extreme things just to rile up his detractors. One thing which is giving me more hope is a revival of interest in Stoic philosophy here in the USA. This could help restore some sanity to our politics.
Viewed from abroad , 5 months of power , Trump looks like a huge mess.
His narcissism, his rudeness, his versatility , his ignorance and his incompetence
are astonishing .
For decades, centuries, people like Trump ARE the horrible face of USA but usually they are hided behind the curtain of respectability of people on the political scene.
It the first time that USA shows to the word one of the kind of freaks who rule this land in commanding to the officials.
We knew that they exist but Hollywood don't show them. TV neither. The horrible, rude, arrogant, greedy, inhuman US Bizness man which Steinbeck was talking around in Grapes of Wrath.
It looks like the end of an Carpenter's film when the man finally transforms in an evil beast of multiform.
Berlusconi were the final phase of Italia, Liz Truss that of UK, Sarkozy that of France, Merz is that of Germany. Is Trump the final phase of USA. Not a cause. Just a symptom.
I will recommend Dr. Francisco Gil-White’s Substack “Management of Reality” in which he has a several part series examining Trump. Gil-White questions whether the attempted assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania, was real or else staged like a World Wrestling Entertainment match. Several of the Secret Service agents who fumbled their response to that shooting have just been demoted but the Secret Service man in charge of the overall security operation, Sean Curran, was immediately promoted to become Director of the Secret Service as soon as Trump was inaugurated. In the iconic “Fight fight fight!” photo of Trump the man to the right of Trump slightly behind him is Sean Curran. Unlike the other agents who are struggling to shield Trump he is standing apart, smiling and looking directly at the photographer who was taking the photo as if mugging for that shot. It all looks curiously staged. But I think it was the incident - coupled with Biden’s dementia and Harris’ verbal incoherence - that won Trump the election. Gil-White’s “Management of Reality” postings are mind blowing: it seems like we are the prisoners in Plato’s Cave viewing an artificial but unreal “reality.”
Iranians themselves would do well to voice their criticism (if they are indeed critical -- many are not). To the extent that xenophobia is one (important) factor in decisions regarding immigration in any country, Iranians are themselves subject to it abroad. The hypocrisy of not criticizing this expulsion will bite their compatriats in the future. And more importantly their voice criticism would help break the AMC dogma against criticizing Iran.
Though I should note that outside of the AMC, which is still a *tiny* part of the media, Iran and Iranians are largely demonized. But your point is constructive criticism.
Iran is host to one of the largest refugee populations in the world (3-4M, primarily from Afghanistan. https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics ). It should not be surprising that there is widespread resentment towards Afghan refugees. Whether logical or not, Iran's economical malaise has outweighed the sense of camaraderie towards refugees from a neighboring country (whose situation is objectively worse than Iran).
The same economic malaise is of course what enabled Afghans to find jobs in Iran, primarily in construction. They are treated poorly. Many families are being thrown out who have lived most of their lives in Iran and whose children were born there. I find it painful to watch. At the same time, this has been coming for a long time. For reasons beyond my knowledge, many of them were undocumented and the wide and porous border between the two countries showed no signs of stopping or reversing the migration.
State Social democracy died with Mitterand, Blair and Schroeder.
State left radicalism died with Tsipras in Greece and Podemos in Spain.
There's no more credible state marxism of any kind.
Arriving the destroyers : trotskysts.
You call them "woke" in USA.
I think that with the fail of Obama, some people in USA decided that this country is definitely not reformable and that consequently it must be destroyed.
And you have the same in Europe.
These people thrive on the dung of all frustrations. They raise armies of frustrated, self-conscious, degenerates, wanabee inquisitors and corporals.
I understand that, I'm a native English speaker after all, but it's difficult to discern tone from text alone and I interpreted it literally. I'm regularly accused by Alt-Media trolls on X of all sorts of things, nowadays most commonly being a Zionist, so I felt it necessary to clarify my purpose in writing this piece in case you or whoever else mistakenly thought that I was criticizing Iran for this policy.
Every independent nation in the World is entitled to expel illegal and /or undocumented immigrants if that is what the statutes of their governance decree. The only exceptions to this is granting temporary visa status to immigrants proven to be seeking protection from inhuman persecution (political, religious, cultural, racial, military) in their nation of birth. Most nations accept an annual quota of persecuted immigrants as well as those who apply officially and arrive with authorised documentation with intention of seeking full citizenship by legal means. Unfortunately such structured policies have not been immediately activated in European and North American nations and have resulted in an "open door" situation which the receiving nations now regret.
I fully agree with you, but many Iranian supporters across the world and especially in the West believe that "nobody is illegal" and very strongly oppose deportations under any circumstances. They therefore don't know how to react to Iran's deportation policy.
The leftist-aligned anti-zionists I know do not support Iran. Until very recently they were obsessed by Iran’s conservative gender codes and sexual mores. They have only very recently developed a modicum of sympathy for the country as a whole, not just its “oppressed women and sexual minorities,” due to it being on the receiving end of Israel’s aggression.
It is true that they support “open borders” and oppose deportation, but the reason they haven’t spoken against Iran’s deportation of Afghans is not a blind loyalty to Iran. It’s merely that they have a limited attention span and tend to focus on just one or two things at a time.
Your larger point, however, is correct: their commitment to the “open borders” concept is due to never having thought through the complexity of the issue. It is a romantic notion, infused with partisan anti-Trumpism.
(I am talking only of the Americans here. If you have in mind the followers of Mélenchon in France, or equivalent tendencies in UK, you could be right.)
AFAICT, they ignore it.
It's not only NATO propagandists which use the double standard.
With all these jesters from AMC, daring criticise Iran is a crime.
They will soon experience a backlash when Iran will appear openly in its new Westernized guise.
But as usual, they will look somewhere else..
As said Arthur Koestler: " it's not because they work on an other pavement that they don't do the same work. "
Could it be Iran does not want potential Taliban sympathizers in country when the war with the USA get down to street level?
Nice writing today, Andrew.
You say "this poses a dilemma for many of Iran’s supporters, most of whom oppose Trump’s similar policy."
I'm not sure that where you get the idea that most of those "supporting" Iran (i.e. opposing Israel) are in favor of illegal immigration and against deporting illegal immigrants. I have no idea what the breakdown is, but I am sure that there are very many like myself who are against both illegal immigration and Israel.
I've been following that community for 12 years already and it's my belief that most of Iran's supporters across the world are leftist-aligned and therefore by default against the expulsion of any illegal immigrants.
I see it all the time on social media, top influencers criticize Trump in one post for being "fascist", "racist", "xenophobic", etc. for his immigration policy while praising Iran for whatever reason in their next post.
I'm like you, I'm critical of Israel and am against illegal immigration, but I've come to conclude that we're in the minority among those across the world who can be described as supporting Iran or at least being sympathetic to it in some contexts.
Perhaps you are right, you are certainly following this most closely than I am. My "support" for Iran doesn't obviously mean that I support all of their domestic policies, in fact they are essentially irrelevant for me since this is an internal matter for Iran (and Iranians).
One thing you'll notice if you dig deeper into it is that many of the top Alt-Media influencers who support Iran are proud leftists and anti-Trumpers.
They don't know what to do now though since critiquing Iran is a "cancellable offense" among their ilk just like supporting illegal immigrant deportations.
That's why I'm very curious to see what they'll do, but thus far, there's been silence, they're conspicuously ignoring this and are afraid to comment on it.
They look somewhere else. :)
As usual.
The history of humanity is one of migration. People have always migrated in an effort to improve their lives but additional motivations today are the negative effects of climate change and armed conflict.
There are more than 281 million legal and illegal immigrants in the world. When countries need more manpower they welcome migrants but when they become economically or politically inconvenient to the host country they are discredited and deported.
The migrants themselves have little choice. They are victims of government policies, whether we’re talking about the the U.S., U.K., Iran, Tunisia or any other country. Last year 78 were drowned in failed attempts to reach the U.K. alone.
While we continue to categorize each other as desirable or undesirable, and refuse to recognize that people have a common interest in working together to improve a deteriorating global environment, the chances of civilized human survival on planet Earth will only diminish.
If I can allow me, what do you "support" in Iran?
You support assassination of Hamas head in Teheran?
You support the treason and abandon of Palestinian after encouraging them to revolt against Israël ?
You support the treason and abandon of Hezbollah at worst Israelian attack?
You support assassination of Nasrallah at the moment of a sudden meeting with Iranian envoys to explain tha Iranian abandon to a furious Nasrallah?( CF Thierry Meyssan).
You support abandon of Syria and surrender without fighting of all Iranian positions in Syria to the Takfiris?
You support the refusal of a defensive alliance with Russia.
You support the refusal of Russian assistance by Pezeskian those last day?
You support what Pezeskian said( and didn't) in his interview with Carlson this week?
I'm curious
Thank you
I support Iran's right to manage its socio-economic and political affairs however it wants together with the right to practice a multipolar foreign policy. I'm critical of its foreign policy on occasion, as you know, but it nonetheless has the right to do whatever it wants. I'm against meddling and subversion.
Sure Andreï.
But there is a difference between supporting the right of Iran to do what politic it wants and supporting this politic.
I agree, and I support the former while being critical of the way in which the latter has recently unfolded.
I agree that Pezeshkian is a very weak leader, and indeed suspect that the death of his predecessor was an assassination by Israel or groups allied to Israel. He is making the same mistake as Assad, who thought that "moderating" Syria's opposition to the Israeli-American-Arab axis and distancing himself from Russia and Iran was going to moderate their opposition to him, when in fact they were only attempting to maneuver him into a weaker position.
Charming! Expecting ideological coherence from the ultra-left! Their main motive is emotional, not logical: they hate the USA with all their heart, soul and might. Whatever the USA does is wrong and whatever its enemies do is right by default. Although many in this faction include feminists, gays, vegans and animal rights activists since the Iranian regime is existentially anti-America it does not bother them that this regime, “the enemy of mine enemy,” itself oppresses women, executes homosexuals, and slaughters and eats cows and sheep during their religious festivals. Therefore whenever the USA expels illegal immigrants that is always bad behavior whereas if Tehran does the same to illegal Afghan immigrants such actions are held to be beyond reproach.
You have to moderate your point of view. You have a big part of left and far left which love USA. They love it like cat female in heat. Disgusting. This part, hate Russia, Iran, Venezuela.
It's not as simple and easy that you think.
Thank you, Sir. But I have yet to meet any. Here in the USA our own left seems to be eaten up with hatred of their own country.
You welcome.
All leftists are objective allied to globalist oligarchy. It's an old trotskist song : they share with them the hate of state-nation and they think that in helping oligarchy to destroy states and frontiers, they will promote their own internationalist agenda.
But in this leftism, you have two big trends:
Those who think they will be able to use and control fundamentalist Muslims for destroying their own states and they sham to promote LGBT+ which Muslim hate to death. It's the Melenchon trend. They hate not USA but US impérialism. They like China, Venezuela, Iran but they beware Russia.
And you have those which want to destroy the structure of society itself. Those promote madly LGBT+ and selling of babies as alpha and omega of democracy and sham to promote the "religion freedom" of Muslim fondamentalists in hating them secretly. It's the trend neocon-sionist. They are USA neocons whores and they rabidly hate Iran, Russia and Venezuela.
Truthfully both our extreme left and extreme right here in the USA are too emotional. Many MAGA enthusiasts idolize Trump. I voted for him but I remember his showmanship background with Vince McMahon in “pro wrestling” and take much of what he says with a grain of salt. Sometimes he is saying extreme things just to rile up his detractors. One thing which is giving me more hope is a revival of interest in Stoic philosophy here in the USA. This could help restore some sanity to our politics.
I don't know USA enough to have a good vision.
Viewed from abroad , 5 months of power , Trump looks like a huge mess.
His narcissism, his rudeness, his versatility , his ignorance and his incompetence
are astonishing .
For decades, centuries, people like Trump ARE the horrible face of USA but usually they are hided behind the curtain of respectability of people on the political scene.
It the first time that USA shows to the word one of the kind of freaks who rule this land in commanding to the officials.
We knew that they exist but Hollywood don't show them. TV neither. The horrible, rude, arrogant, greedy, inhuman US Bizness man which Steinbeck was talking around in Grapes of Wrath.
It looks like the end of an Carpenter's film when the man finally transforms in an evil beast of multiform.
Berlusconi were the final phase of Italia, Liz Truss that of UK, Sarkozy that of France, Merz is that of Germany. Is Trump the final phase of USA. Not a cause. Just a symptom.
I will recommend Dr. Francisco Gil-White’s Substack “Management of Reality” in which he has a several part series examining Trump. Gil-White questions whether the attempted assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania, was real or else staged like a World Wrestling Entertainment match. Several of the Secret Service agents who fumbled their response to that shooting have just been demoted but the Secret Service man in charge of the overall security operation, Sean Curran, was immediately promoted to become Director of the Secret Service as soon as Trump was inaugurated. In the iconic “Fight fight fight!” photo of Trump the man to the right of Trump slightly behind him is Sean Curran. Unlike the other agents who are struggling to shield Trump he is standing apart, smiling and looking directly at the photographer who was taking the photo as if mugging for that shot. It all looks curiously staged. But I think it was the incident - coupled with Biden’s dementia and Harris’ verbal incoherence - that won Trump the election. Gil-White’s “Management of Reality” postings are mind blowing: it seems like we are the prisoners in Plato’s Cave viewing an artificial but unreal “reality.”
Iranians themselves would do well to voice their criticism (if they are indeed critical -- many are not). To the extent that xenophobia is one (important) factor in decisions regarding immigration in any country, Iranians are themselves subject to it abroad. The hypocrisy of not criticizing this expulsion will bite their compatriats in the future. And more importantly their voice criticism would help break the AMC dogma against criticizing Iran.
Though I should note that outside of the AMC, which is still a *tiny* part of the media, Iran and Iranians are largely demonized. But your point is constructive criticism.
Iran is host to one of the largest refugee populations in the world (3-4M, primarily from Afghanistan. https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics ). It should not be surprising that there is widespread resentment towards Afghan refugees. Whether logical or not, Iran's economical malaise has outweighed the sense of camaraderie towards refugees from a neighboring country (whose situation is objectively worse than Iran).
The same economic malaise is of course what enabled Afghans to find jobs in Iran, primarily in construction. They are treated poorly. Many families are being thrown out who have lived most of their lives in Iran and whose children were born there. I find it painful to watch. At the same time, this has been coming for a long time. For reasons beyond my knowledge, many of them were undocumented and the wide and porous border between the two countries showed no signs of stopping or reversing the migration.
State communism failed with USSR.
State Social democracy died with Mitterand, Blair and Schroeder.
State left radicalism died with Tsipras in Greece and Podemos in Spain.
There's no more credible state marxism of any kind.
Arriving the destroyers : trotskysts.
You call them "woke" in USA.
I think that with the fail of Obama, some people in USA decided that this country is definitely not reformable and that consequently it must be destroyed.
And you have the same in Europe.
These people thrive on the dung of all frustrations. They raise armies of frustrated, self-conscious, degenerates, wanabee inquisitors and corporals.
I'm not blaming anyone, I'm simply drawing attention to the dilemma that many of Iran's supporters are now in as I explained.
I understand that, I'm a native English speaker after all, but it's difficult to discern tone from text alone and I interpreted it literally. I'm regularly accused by Alt-Media trolls on X of all sorts of things, nowadays most commonly being a Zionist, so I felt it necessary to clarify my purpose in writing this piece in case you or whoever else mistakenly thought that I was criticizing Iran for this policy.
Thanks, I sincerely appreciate that!