In Mashhad, revolutionaries break into a mosque, confronting Basiji members inside and ransacking the site:

I saw this now you guys have to

Video from the evening of Jan 8 in #IslamabadGharb shows continuous gunfire as security forces confront protesters. As shots ring out, demonstrators retreat while chanting, “Don’t be afraid, we are all together.”
#IranMassacre

🔗 HRANA English (@HRANA_English)

If amerimutt leftists had a choice between an anti-imperialist dictatorship and a neoliberal democracy they would vote for the anti-imperialist one and move to live in the neoliberal one

With only two guns, people were able to capture the Ramsar police station on the night of January 8.

If only 5% of the people in the protests were armed, the regime would've fallen.

6 videos from Parand — protests and a barrage of gunfire by regime forces.

At 1:52 and 4:05
~2:41 — A father was hit. His daughter screams: ‘Dad! repeatedly

I see a lot of leftists seeing the word "Shah"/Iran's King and immediately assume a reactionary, psychopathic kleptocrat as most other regional rulers in the region were(Gulf monarchies, King Farouk I, Mobutu in Africa)

This is not a correct assumption.

Shah's political program "The White Revolution" was an extensive, uncompromising and extremely and unquestionably progressive political program. The Shah in one stroke confronted and attacked the landowners, traditional elites and conservative clergy at the same time. An insincere kleptocratic ruler simply does not pick fights with all three at the same time.

His plan included massive land reforms, literacy corps, women's suffrage, healthcare expansion and profit sharing schemes, something that you usually see in a post-revolutionary socialist country like Cuba, not a neoliberal puppet state.

He should mostly be seen as a developmental nationalist, his goal genuinely was the development of Iran's state and the creation of mature institutions and massive investments into state-capacity, and in that regard he confronted western interests multiple times with bim wrangling the countries national industries and resources out of western hands.

What his greatest failure was is that he had zero trust in political pluralism. His plan basically was "development first, politics later, under my supervision" his assumption was that the results and growth and modernization that he brought to Iran would be enough to legitimize his government, but as everyone knows, it didn't despite Iran having the highest economic growth rate and rises in standards of living for decades under his rule.

He saw the traditional elite, petite bourgeois (the bazaaris) and the landowners as obstacles to be bypassed not parties to be negotiated with, furthermore his SAVAK effectively shut down any legal opposition space and ensured that whenever the legitimacy cracked, only revolutionary channels were left to express frustration, which happened during the oil price crash in 1977.

His methods of paternalism, authoritarianism, repression and enforcing progress without representation were what caused his demise and the collapse was explosive.