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It must be heartbreaking for Western leftists: here they are, all hot and bothered about the Bad Orange Man pasting another monstrous dictator, and what do the ungrateful little brown foreign masses do? They celebrate! It’s almost like they want to get rid of their dictators.
To the, no doubt, astonishment of ABC journalists, local Iranians are actually relieved.
As strikes on Iran by the United States and Israel intensify, Australia’s Iranian diaspora has described feeling relief at the killing of the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader, yet anxiety for relatives caught inside an escalating war.
“People are allowed to feel relief, even celebration, when a dictator dies,” said AK, an Iranian architect based in Australia.
“That’s not blood lust. That’s the release of 45 years of grief.”
This being the ABC, of course they have to do their damnedest to find a negative angle.
Each morning, AK, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons, wakes hoping internet access has been restored to Iran’s 92 million people.
Instead, she wakes to images of bombed streets and damaged landmarks from her childhood.
Among them is Golestan Palace, the UNESCO-listed former residence of the Qajar dynasty, reportedly damaged during the strikes.
Which doesn’t mean that the palace was recklessly targeted. Sadly, this is war: it’s what happens when even the most precision bombs are dropped on cities where dictatorial regimes crowd their infrastructure. The palace was in fact damaged by debris and the shock wave from a strike elsewhere.
Local Iranians are also clear that while nobody wants war, in the end, it was the only option left to end the repression and bloodshed by the Islamic regime.
“If at times Iranians say they want war, it is only because of the 47 years of oppression and captivity imposed on us by the Islamic Republic,” [Shahrzad Orang] said.
“For decades, people tried every possible path – protests, reform, dialogue – but none of those paths worked.”
And it wouldn’t be an ABC report without misinformation: in this case, neglecting to provide full, critical, details.
At least 787 people have been killed across Iran during the attacks, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society.
One of the deadliest reported incidents was the bombing of a girls’ school in Minab, southern Iran, where authorities said more than 160 people had died.
Yet, crucially, the ABC neglects to mention reports that the bombing was the result of a misfired Iranian missile. While that hasn’t been confirmed, neither has the US nor Israel claimed responsibility. It should at the very least be beholden on the ABC to mention the conflicting reports, especially in light of its woeful misreporting when a misfired Hamas rocket struck a Gaza hospital early in that conflict.
What am I saying? This is the ABC, after all. They still haven’t retracted, let alone apologised for, their thoroughly debunked, four-part ‘Russiagate special’.
