#iranian-activism

#iranian-activism

Whether they were saying their prayers, or mouthing the anthem, it was clear to anyone watching on that the players had received the message from home that they needed to demonstrate symbolic solidarity with their homeland, currently under siege. Catherine Ordway, an Australian lawyer, academic and sport integrity consultant who has worked with numerous international sporting bodies, told DW.

Pahlavi pledged to lead a transition to a 'free and democratic Iran.' He called on President Trump to continue the American-Israeli military operation against Iran, in the hope of displacing a regime he decried for placing a 'sea of blood' between itself and its people.

Imagine the pressure. You want to compete at your best, but then before even the game starts you have to decide how you're going to stand, how you're going to look and what you're going to do. I just think that's so unfair. The players were confused about what to do. If they salute and sing the national anthem, they are embraced and endeared by the government. If they do that, the fans, the Iranian people hate them.

Carrying banners showing the face of the country's slain leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, people on Monday held a new portrait that of his son and successor, Mojtaba Khamenei. Other similar scenes on state media showed pledges of loyalty from several cities across the country, with people chanting, Death to America and Death to Israel, as security forces looked on.

The US-Israeli war on Iran is exposing deep divisions among Iranians in the diaspora and in Iran. From inside Iran to the diaspora, Iranians are deeply divided about their country's future. With Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gone and Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former shah, waiting in the wings, what do conversations about regime change reveal about the spectrum of what Iranians really think?

As recent demonstrations showed, a sizable segment of the Iranian people already opposes the regime. But when President Trump told them to 'take over your government,' it seems unlikely he considered how the regime responded to those protests, or other movements for a more open Iranian society.

The Iranian announcer was grieving the loss of a "father," as he put it, while for Alinejad and so many other Iranians in exile and at home, the vaporized ma[n represented something entirely different]. Such torrential downpours, from loyalists and dissenters alike, often follow the deaths of notorious and long-ruling dictators-Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Saddam Hussein.