On February 28 the US and Israel launched an unprovoked missile strike on Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and several Islamic Republic officials and sparking further strikes across the Middle East. The Strait of Hormuz, the pivotal oil shipping route, is closed. Washington’s claim of attacking to provoke “regime change” in Iran is dubious at best.

But the Iranian people have been largely left out of the geopolitical discourse. Just last month, huge revolutionary protests saw the regime massacre up to 40,000 people. So when the Iranian diaspora shared their mixed feelings about this week’s strikes, why were they shouted down as “US propaganda agents”?

Writer and doctor Hessom Razavi joins the podcast to give his take on the complicated feelings of many Iranians, his own family’s story of persecution in Iran, and explain why calls for adherence to the “rules-based order” are meaningless right now.

Read more:

• US intervention in Iran is not benevolent. But Iranians do not have the privilege of choice
• I’m an Iranian doctor in Australia. The eyewitness accounts sent to me of medical brutality in Iran are chilling
• As in Iraq, America wants regime change in Iran. It’s a smokescreen for US hegemony
• If you can’t get online in Iran, do you still count as human?
• The Art of War, with Donald Trump

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