Wait until they learn that two things can be wrong at the same time!

Both Sides watch?

Well the Iranian regime is awful, but so are Israel and the US.

Iran is fighting against genocide that's better than the rest of the world.

Ten thousand dead protestors? Five times more than the casualties of weeks of US bombing, within a period of days, invisible in the era of satellite photography, localized entirely within your urban centers?

Yes!

May I see them?

No.

I'm against the brutal invasion of Iraq and I oppose Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction! Two things can be wrong at once!

Yeah that's what I mean ? They're defending themselves, they're fighting against the genocide, but they're mass killing protestors at home as well ?

My point exactly

No they're not what are you on about?

"Saddam's WMDs" were the completely fabricated excuse that America used to justify the invasion. I make a joke about "sure i oppose the US empire, but i also believe their propaganda about countries they want to destroy" and you just step right up to say "yup that's me, that's what I think". Jesus christ.

According to...the same people currently bombing them, who definitely have no motive to lie or history of doing it.

If a serial killer said "Sure I broke in and stabbed that guy and his kids to death, but only because I totally heard him beating his wife!" You would correctly assess that a person would have to be born yesterday to believe that. But when it's the most prolific lying serial killer empire in human history, suddenly they become trustworthy just because they own the news? This is war propaganda, no different from "we have to save the women and girls of Afghanistan".

I guess Amnesty International and the ICJ are propagandists ?

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/01/iran-massacre-of-protesters-demands-global-diplomatic-action-to-signal-an-end-to-impunity/

https://www.icj.org/iran-immediately-stop-mass-killings-of-protestors-and-other-atrocities-and-end-impunity/

I don't trust the numbers, but even human rights groups raised the alarm about the killings. Does Amnesty have a habit and history of lying ?

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/01/iran-massacre-of-protesters-demands-global-diplomatic-action-to-signal-an-end-to-impunity/

I'm not arguing about Saddam's supposed WMD, it's been established a lie decades ago. But the US, Israel and Iran all have shitty lying authoritarian murderous governments, and that's a fact.

But I'm talking to people on lemmy.ml, so I guess that shitting on the authoritarian fascist government of the US and Israel and bootlicking shitty authoritarian governments everywhere else is standard practice.

Does Amnesty have a habit and history of lying ?

They literally do, they were at the forefront of pushing the infamous Nayirah Testimony that helped manufacture American consent for the first Gulf War.

If you supposedly oppose both sides then why are you choosing to believe one of them?. The worst one, by sheer numbers? That's like believing Hitler about Churchill, why the fuck would you do that when there are sources that aren't any of the factions you claim to be against. You are giving lip service to the idea of opposing all three of these governments while actually swallowing the propaganda of one about the other. And what a coincidence, the one you're choosing to believe is the one who's propaganda you've grown up with and whose cultural biases you've internalized.

This little dance of "neither Washington nor Tehran, but actually Washington" is so fuckin tired dude. You're literally spouting the "Sure Israel is committing genocide, but Hamas beheaded 40 babies" line of bullshit. How many of these is it gonna take for you to develop even a lab rat's sense of pattern recognition?

I guess Amnesty International and the ICJ are propagandists ?

Yes.

The Nayirah testimony was false testimony given before the United States Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990, by a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl who was publicly identified only as Nayirah at the time, and presented herself as having been a volunteer nurse at a Kuwaiti hospital at the time of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. In her testimony, which took place two months after the invasion, she claimed to have witnessed Iraqi soldiers taking premature babies out of incubators in a maternity ward before looting the incubators and leaving the babies to die on the floor. Nayirah's statements were widely publicized and cited numerous times in the United States Senate and by American president George H. W. Bush to contribute to the rationale for pursuing military action against Iraq.

In January 1992, it was revealed that Nayirah had never been a nurse and that she was the daughter of Saud Nasser Al-Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States at the time the testimony was made. She and her father were members of the House of Sabah, the ruling family of Kuwait. Furthermore, it was revealed that her testimony was organized as part of a wider public relations campaign conducted by the Kuwaiti government-in-exile's Citizens for a Free Kuwait, which sought to encourage American military involvement against Iraq's occupation of Kuwait through coordination with the American public relations firm Hill & Knowlton. In the aftermath of the Gulf War, the Nayirah testimony came to be regarded as a classic example of modern atrocity propaganda.[1][2]

Nayirah's story was initially corroborated by Amnesty International, which published a report about the supposed killings

Oh well, the more you know, I guess.

A single occurrence can happen though, are there any other examples ?

They also corrected their statement later, condemning the Bush admin and accusing them of opportunistic manipulation:

Later, Amnesty International USA reacted by issuing a
correction, with executive director John Healey
subsequently accusing the George H. W. Bush
administration of "opportunistic manipulation of the
international human rights movement."[5]

https://newspapers.bc.edu/cgi-bin/bostonsh?a=d&d=bcheights19910128.2.41&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------

It's not like they deliberately misled and lied

Like my other comment, that's one occurrence, with no proof of intentionally misleading or lying. Provide me with more occurrences and I'll reconsider my position on Amnesty.

Yes Amnesy repeated the debunked hoax that Hamas raped women on october 7. They are a Zionist propaganda organisation. Also the Nariyah testimony and many more. Any time the empire needs atrocity propaganda, Amnesty is at their service.

I thought the ICJ link was for the International Court of Justice but apparently a bunch of clowns copied their name.

I love that you imply that you're immune to propaganda.

If Hamas beheads babies, then, they're fucking awful, if the US does it, I'd think the same. As long as there is evidence of it, my stance wouldn't change if it were my mom or Israel.

Hamas committed war crimes, Israel committed war crimes live streamed in 4k, the US committed war crimes, Iran and Hezbollah too. That doesn't make it okay, or lessens the act. Both can be the criminal and the victim, both can be wrong about different things.

Palestinians deserve to exist and have every single right to resist Israel, but that doesn't excuse war crimes.

Iran has every single right to defend themselves from aggression, but that doesn't excuse gunning down protesters in the street.

Israel is a fascist expansionist apartheid state, but that doesn't make every Israeli a supporter of these policies.

Propaganda is on every side, and turning a blind eye to the atrocities of one side because the other one has committed atrocities too is an insane take.

Can you share footage of the Iranian government gunning the peaceful protestors? We have endless footage of what's going on in Gaza, so we should have the same about Iran, no?

Their own foreign minister admitted to 3000 civilian deaths:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/foreign-minister-stands-official-3-062835012.html?guccounter=1

This is one of the videos analysed by Amnesty, you can clearly see and hear gunshots:
https://x.com/en_simayazadi/status/2010044411539763481

Another one where you see the security forces flailing guns in the protestors faces, you also hear gunshots:

https://x.com/mamlekate/status/2009223257912643796

Coincidentally, they shut down internet access across the country to prevent any more leakage in hopes of covering it up:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/01/12/irans-internet-blackout-concealing-atrocities

I don't trust the numbers from foreign agencies, but the fact they admitted to 3000 civilian deaths, is a sign that's not just western propaganda.

Also, big difference between Gaza and Iran: Israel has full support from the West, they can do what they're doing, live stream it and still have impunity. Iran doesn't, they know it, so, controlling what makes it out on the internet makes sense.

I'm sure you would definitely be giving this level of credit and forgiveness to an Iranian NGO that had been caught lying to help start a war.

But since you asked, they also spread the Hamas mass rapes hoax that helped justify the Gaza genocide that's going on right now.

I probably would yeah, I believe we all make mistakes. If they had a streak of intentionally or openly being deceptive and lying, like the NYT or any other propaganda outlet, that would be different, but you seem unable to provide me with evidence that they do. Key word being "intentionally" here.

And let's be honest, Israel didn't need Amnesty to genocide Palestinians. Even as an excuse. That genocide started in 1948, long before Amnesty even existed.

Their own foreign minister admitted to 3000 civilian deaths

Most of the over 3000 deaths, according to the IR, civilians and government employees and police officers murdered by the rioters.

Did you know the protests, initially peaceful, were caused by currency manipulation, and that Scott Bessent admitted that it was the US government's doing? Did you know that the Iranian government originally sided with the peaceful protestors, which meant the only way to make them violent was to first incite violence with rioters? Have you heard of the civilians murdered with guns, and even machetes? Have you heard about the mosques set on fire?

Hell, if everyone in Iran hates their government so much, how come millions went to the streets after the riots?

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iran-blames-us-and-israel-unrest-tehran-says-protests-are-under-control-0

Or now, even during the bombings, you can see people going out in defiance of the US and Israel, it's harder to find mainstream articles for regular days but here's one for Al Quds:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/13/explosions-near-tehran-al-quds-day-march-in-solidarity-with-palestinians

Amnesty

Amnesty International lied a few different times in alignment with US foreign policy. They repeated the lies about the Iraqi army killing hundreds of babies for no reason, and they repeated the lies about Gaddafi's troops mass raping civilians as a means of control, in both cases after the war had ran its course they went "oopsie! I didn't realize this absurd story wasn't real!" and now Libya is a failed state and a slave market.

Also, big difference between Gaza and Iran: Israel has full support from the West, they can do what they're doing, live stream it and still have impunity. Iran doesn't, they know it, so, controlling what makes it out on the internet makes sense.

Israel used to enjoy the support of most westerners and now they don't, controlling the access of information was just as important for them, and they had tech superiority and access to funding and government censorship in western platforms and even then we found endless footage. If Iran killed thousands of innocents faster than Israel did in Gaza we'd know. You think they couldn't have filmed shit and waited for the internet to be back on?

Lastly, there's another big difference in how these two states (Iran and Israel) are able to behave, that part of your analysis is true, but I believe you misidentify the reason: the Islamic Republic has been under siege its entire existence, even if they were insane psychos you can't rule a country by mass murdering protestors, it's absurd, it only makes people angrier.

Israel on the other hand can easily genocide Palestinians because they're segregated and because their civil rights and protections have been eroded over almost a century, and because their state propaganda dehumanizes Palestinians. This is unsustainable without the endless foreign support, but in the meantime they're able to carry on.

Governments aren't necessarily rational, but their decisions tend to make sense from an angle of self preservation. Iran doesn't receive endless foreign aid, on the contrary, they've been sanctioned so horribly by the US for years. They don't have the privilege that Israel does, and even then they have redistributive policies and developed their own industries to replace necessary goods that they weren't allowed to import (including medicine and home appliances). Iran needed to do these things to survive, so even if you think of them as a cartoonish villains just know they'd be much smarter than to open fire on a peaceful crowd anyway, most governments wouldn't destroy the good will they got after decades of welfare and other policies just like that.

Okay, that's a much better insight on how I'm being misled, complete with sources. Thank you for that.

Damn, you have those goal posts on rocket skates