> other things do happen in the country aside from what is reported on in western media
Of course they do. The forced expulsion of Afghan workers and refugees didn’t get a lot of coverage, but it’s prominent in regional sources.
OP isn’t arguing there isn’t any good in Iran. Just that the corrupt theocracy has pursued unsustainable goals cruelly and incompetently, and in a way that has turned Iran into a unique menace to the region through its embrace of similarly-totalitarian proxies who couldn’t give fewer shits about their populations.
To the extent there is a propagandized version of the story, it’s the one that ignores what every Iranian refugee and what every one of Iran’s’ neighbours say. The irony of that is Iran behaves as a revanchist imperial concern, the precise philosophy many enlightened types in the West claim to reject.
Of course they do. The forced expulsion of Afghan workers and refugees didn’t get a lot of coverage, but it’s prominent in regional sources.
OP isn’t arguing there isn’t any good in Iran. Just that the corrupt theocracy has pursued unsustainable goals cruelly and incompetently, and in a way that has turned Iran into a unique menace to the region through its embrace of similarly-totalitarian proxies who couldn’t give fewer shits about their populations.
To the extent there is a propagandized version of the story, it’s the one that ignores what every Iranian refugee and what every one of Iran’s’ neighbours say. The irony of that is Iran behaves as a revanchist imperial concern, the precise philosophy many enlightened types in the West claim to reject.