"Foreign coup attempt" is an extraordinary claim that is not backed by publicly available evidence. Indeed, it's not even backed by the statements by Iranian government officials, who are on record upholding the killings [1]. Furthermore, Iranian Ministry of Health officials have upheld these estimates of the death count. Eyewitness accounts uphold the fact that the Iranian government has perpetrated mass killings of protestors [2].

It is understandable that a person who distrusts the United States government would be led to believe the statements of a government in opposition to it. Indeed, the United States is engaged in an illegal war in which it is the aggressor. However, the statements of the Iranian government attributing protestor deaths to foreign-backed paramilitaries is not backed by any credible set of facts.

1. https://reliefweb.int/report/iran-islamic-republic/iran-deat...

2. https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/01/16/iran-growing-evidence-of...

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vintermann 6 days ago | parent [-]

> "Foreign coup attempt" is an extraordinary claim that is not backed by publicly available evidence

It is not an extraordinary claim, and it's backed by absurdly strong evidence. As I said, it was pretty ridiculous that Mossad openly said not just that they wanted regime change (as the US also did), but that they were actively assisting in it. And in addition to the thousands of protesters who have been reported dead, hundreds of policemen or revolutionary guards have also been reported dead.

An ordinary, popular protest, even a damn angry one - even one armed with handguns! - does not kill hundreds of policemen. If you think that's possible, you don't understand the power difference between civilians and people with a full time job and training to use violence on civilians. Even if you would ignore the public statements (which I won't let you!) you simply do not succeed at killing so much of the state's violence apparatus without serious material and organizational support.

And anyone who's been following Iran for a while knows that yes, Mossad actually has shockingly many native agents in Iran (e.g. the murder of scientists wouldn't have been possible without it) and in addition there are political cults like MEK, and supporters of the dictator son Pahlavi, who are certainly organized and certainly not pacifist in their fight against the government.

It's your loyal party line messaging which is detached from reality.

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linkregister 6 days ago | parent [-]

"It's backed by absurdly strong evidence"

(fails to produce any sources for unfounded claims, followed by a lot of rhetoric)

Note the failure to rebut the provided sources in my comment.

I accept that it's unlikely that you'll examine your own priors. My response is for the benefit of people who haven't had the chance to read extensively and travel, who might take your claims at face value.

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vintermann 6 days ago | parent [-]

You're good at trying to seem authoritative with your footnotes and links, but in this age of chatbots it's important to be able to see through that because it's trivial to bluff. Any idiot can be good at it. That's rhetoric. But you'd better get with the times: I think you'll find it's better to write like a regular human these days, rather than like a corporate news anchor or a chatbot, if you want to convince the commoners --- excuse me, I mean the "people who haven't had the chance to read extensively and travel".

The evidence I "provided" was evidence I think you already admitted. You do not deny that the US and Israel openly (and to repeat myself, insanely - it's so bad you'd almost think it was a deliberate attempt to sabotage any legitimacy) took credit for the attempt to replace the government of Iran to an unprecedented degree - why don't you find an example of an attempted revolution where a foreign country claimed to "be with you on the ground"?

I could have linked to the insane tweets with [1] and [2] myself, but why bother. I trust people to find them themselves if they're in doubt.

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linkregister 6 days ago | parent [-]

Never engaging with the credible evidence presented, claiming that heads of state said something they didn't. Other readers can be trusted to see through your lies.

	▲	vintermann 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Oh can they? You seem to have a pretty low opinion of them. I guess no head of state just threatened to nuke Iran either, and that is a preposterous lie. You have not presented evidence. You have just linked authorities. The direct statements - those are evidence.