US-Iran peace agreement discussion, part 4

[RedTagAlan]

Thread 4 for those following and commenting on the above subject.

Regarding the Starlink during the protests in January in Iran.

Former British diplomat Alastair Crooke during January did multiple interviews stating that Iran was given the technology to jam starlink terminals by either Russia (who have jammed them during the Ukrainian conflict) or China.

Iran suspected that the organisers of the unrest were using Starlink to communicate with external actors.

So Iran turned off the Internet, the protesters continued to use Starlink to communicate and Iran were able to track these signals and detain the protesters.

I think you are talking about political censorship specifically. I'm talking more generally of censorship. There has been a big shift away from polite debate in general, an increase in polarisation of views. I view this as very negative.

Article 19 refers to freedom of expression. Because these treaties were ratified before the Internet was invented, the UN, instead creating new ones have made rulings such as the following.

"The right to life... concerns the entitlement of individuals to be free from acts and omissions that are intended or may be expected to cause their unnatural or premature death... States parties must take all necessary measures to ensure access to essential goods and services... including access to medical care."
https://www.oursplatform.org/resource/right-to-life/

"Internet shutdowns carry profound consequences for safety and health... preventing hospitals from contacting doctors in emergencies, disrupting the supply chain of medicines, and blocking access to emergency services... When an internet shutdown disrupts healthcare services, it places lives at immediate risk."
https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/01/1166813

It absolutely applies to developing nations. As I said earlier, not having access to Internet is in itself not an issue but if a hospital does have Internet and it is an essential tool to facilitate the protection of life, it cannot be intentionally disrupted.

Your second article says this :

“Access to information is an integral part of the universal right to freedom of expression,” UNESCO said, stressing that internet connectivity is also essential for other rights, including education, freedom of association and assembly, and participation in social, cultural and political life.

It called on governments to adopt policies that facilitate access rather than erect barriers to connectivity.

Internet disruptions also fuel misinformation. When journalists, media outlets and public authorities are cut off from digital channels, verified information becomes harder to access, creating space for rumors and unverified content to spread."

Key part seems to be this : "It called on governments to adopt policies that facilitate access rather than erect barriers to connectivity.".

And that pretty much is all it can do.

In my opinion, the way to handle this would be a reverse VPN. That is, a VPN coming out in restricted countries, so people in the free world can see for themselves what the internet in the not free world is like.

The first link you posted surprised me, because I can open it. But checking the about page, I see why. It's more womens rights rather than human rights.

Who we are - OURs - The Observatory of the Universality of Rights (oursplatform.org)

That is not me dismissing it. No, that is me saying it is not directly relevant because it has no force of law behind it.

And that is the danger of sending/ smuggling transmitting devices into such environments. Because they can be triangulated and found. And the people with them.

As opposed to the old cold war way of transmitting radio over borders. Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia for example.

But the problem with the likes of RFA is that it is congress funded. And Bannon done a job on that in Trumps first term where he changed it from being a propaganda service acting against communist states, into being a red scare propaganda network used against the US citizens. That is, feed scary commie stories into Breitbart.

I know you're not and maybe my links are not great. As I said, it's a grey area. It comes down to the founding principle of the right to life. Any intentional act, by anyone, that may violate that principle, either directly or indirectly, would be deemed a violation of state responsibility under international law. Of course, in times of war, there are separate rules which apply but even then, if shutting off a service results in the death or risk of death to civilians, it is deemed a war crime and that could include the Internet if it is an integral tool to sustain life.

I think that there are a lot of very nice and clever arguments being made here, and I am impressed at people’s detailed knowledge of law and history.

However, it kind of obscures the clear point that Iran slaughtered thousands of her own citizens in cold blood (they had no weapons to fight back). You can argue whether it is closer to 6,000 or 40,000, but even 6,000 is extraordinary.And the reason we have such uncertainty as to the number is that Iran is very good at controlling information flow, as a lot of autocratic regimes are.

As for the Starlink terminals, again I can see the legal argument re interference, but allowing Iranians something we all (or most of us) take for granted cannot be a bad thing, regardless of where they are coming from.

I'm not advocating for the Iranian government or IRGC but I'm not sure about your comment about them not having weapons to fight back. "We sent guns, a lot of guns. They were supposed to go to the people so they could fight back against these thugs." Trump in an interview in April 2025 on Fox news. The US then later tried to claim that the Kurds, who were supposed to deliver the weapons, kept them. The Kurds at first denied they knew anything about such a deal then different groups started blaming each other. Whether the weapons were delivered or not is unknown. For years, Tehran has blamed domestic unrest entirely on foreign actors and Trump unwittingly vindicated their claim. Iran made a very specific announcement of how many were killed and it was thousands. Which figures are correct, who knows. Was Iran's response to the uprisings brutal, absolutely. Were they valid peaceful marches or organised violent riots. I suspect the latter in light of Trumps statement. As for the starlink terminals, they won't have been delivered just so the Iranians could enjoy the Internet like us. Additionally, if the starlink terminals managed to be delivered, who is to say the weapons weren't.

BBC February 2026 Machine guns to machetes: Weapons that massacred thousands in Iran

Warning: The following story contains graphic details of violence which some readers might find upsetting.

A BBC News Persian analysis of hundreds of videos and photographs taken during recent protests in Iran confirms the security forces' use of a wide range of weaponry, including machine guns, sniper rifles and shotguns.

Protesters were reportedly killed in many of the more than 200 cities where protests had been recorded. While the exact death toll remains unclear, the level of brutality and the deployment of lethal weaponry evidenced in pictures, witness accounts and reports by human rights groups and the media show thousands have been killed across the country.

The crackdown on protests - which began over the economy but rapidly escalated - employed a level of violence unprecedented in modern Iranian history.

"This is the largest mass killing in contemporary Iranian history and one of the largest in the world," Payam Akhavan, an Iranian Canadian former UN prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, in The Hague, told BBC News Persian.

The Iranian government has blamed the killings on "rioters and terrorists".

But BBC News Persian analysis shows security forces used a number of different weapons on protesters, including:
machine guns
sniper rifles
assault rifles
shotguns
handguns
pellet-firing paintball guns
tear gas
machetes
knives
batons
large wooden clubs
green laser sights and pointers (for blinding and targeting)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0mgndkklvmo

We need to wait for some legal precedent on the web being a human right. There is none so far as I am aware, but I am in a web restricted country, so it's probably not odd that I don't know.

Quote " As for the Starlink terminals, again I can see the legal argument re interference, but allowing Iranians something we all (or most of us) take for granted cannot be a bad thing, regardless of where they are coming from."

It really does matter where they come from. Because if it is a state, then it is a state interfering in the domestic situation of another state. And it is doing it in an underhand secret way. That is not what democracy is supposed to be about. Democracy is supposed to be about open government being answerable to the electorate. And yes, playing fair might be like starting a game where the other side have a 10 point advantage, but in my view, it is important that it is done fair by the side who claim the moral high. Otherwise we are no better than them.

On the murdered protestors and the Iranian Government. Absolutely get them out of power, if that is what the UN sec council decides. But do it properly. Get a full coalition together, massed militaries of the world and tell the Iranian Government to piss off. Have a full plan of what the new government will look like. Have a constitution ready to go. Do it properly.

Now here is the thing though about doing it properly. With a population of about 93 million. what % of those will have to be "dealt with" ? That is killed. It is a theocracy after all. So it is not a matter of just life or death for their fighters. It's a matter of where they spend eternity, because that is what they believe.

Lets say 10% who wont give in. 9 million who will be killed. Who will need to be killed if the reborn state is to have any chance at all.

Good luck finding anyone not called Netanyahu to sign off on that.

Or there is the alternative. As we had with the JCPOA. Open the door a little and let them in from the cold. On a rewards basis. Who knows, doing it that way, and in 10 years when the door is a few inches open, they might even hand over whoever ordered the killings to the ICC. Or try them internally.

One thing for sure. If that door remains tight shut, and welded from the inside, eventually it will need a battering ram to smash it down.

@Squeezingwildoranges there's a great deal of evidence of the types of weapons used against the protestors. Where is the evidence that IRGC soldiers equally suffered widespread deaths if we are to believe the claim that guns may have reached protestors?

@Squeezingwildoranges ,

‘I'm not advocating for the Iranian government or IRGC’

I kind of feel you are making excuses for them whatever the disclaimer.

’but I'm not sure about your comment about them not having weapons to fight back. "We sent guns, a lot of guns. They were supposed to go to the people so they could fight back against these thugs." Trump in an interview in April 2025 on Fox news. The US then later tried to claim that the Kurds, who were supposed to deliver the weapons, kept them. The Kurds at first denied they knew anything about such a deal then different groups started blaming each other. Whether the weapons were delivered or not is unknown.’For years, Tehran has blamed domestic unrest entirely on foreign actors and Trump unwittingly vindicated their claim.’

Again, every dictatorship blames foreign actors for internal dissent. Twas always this.

‘Iran made a very specific announcement of how many were killed and it was thousands. Which figures are correct, who knows. Was Iran's response to the uprisings brutal, absolutely. Were they valid peaceful marches or organised violent riots. I suspect the latter in light of Trumps statement.’

I think, if you are going to claim they were armed riots, you need to provide some kind of evidence from a reputable source. I am not saying the odd protester wasn’t armed or that some protests didn’t become violent with Molotov cocktails being thrown. But they were mown down by snipers on roofs etc. This was a slaughter, not riot control.

‘As for the starlink terminals, they won't have been delivered just so the Iranians could enjoy the Internet like us. Additionally, if the starlink terminals managed to be delivered, who is to say the weapons weren't.’

The U.S and Israel did have a clear goal of regime change and then backed down when they were needed, which was disgraceful. Is regime change of brutal regimes a bad thing? Personally I don’t think so, but I can see why others do. I would love to see the west oust the Taliban from Afghanistan, for instance. The main problem, to me, is we are good at killing but very bad at nation building, which takes commitment and patience.

How about a wee rant to continue my post above.

Where is the perfect/best/ most thought out constitution ?

This has baffled me for a while. The world produces 10's into thousands of political scientists every year. Add to that economists. And philosophers too. And lets throw in senior religious leaders.

So where are the constitution templates ? When I say constitution, I mean the set of rules for how a country works re representation/leadership/ congress/ parliament etc. I don't mean rules about who can have guns.

Would it not be easier if there was maybe 3 or 4 templates, and say to people, " what one do you want" ?

Existing stable countries could get the ball rolling. The UK might say, oh, we had a referendum and we will have constitution number 3 please. That way there will be something to offer, to fight for even. Something to make the authoritarians shake in their boots.

But what do we get instead ? We have the madman Trump doing a war when he cant even decide for sure why, beyond nukes. But even what he says on nukes is inconsistent.

Go back to communism. They had Marx, and his communist manifesto. One of the most influential pamphlets ever written. And it is a really terrible ill thought out document. But people waved it and revolted. It changed the world.

How about giving the oppressed people of the world something to wave at their oppressors ? WE WANT CONSTITUTION NUMBER 2 !. ( WITH SUBSECTION 3-B CHANGED! )"

Instead of that, what do people have. Wave a photo of Trump and yell " NO NUKES !"

What does that do for the people ?

Attached.

Where did anyone say the IRGC equally suffered widespread deaths. The official Iranian statement is that some were killed but I have no idea how many or if that is true. Even if the protestors were armed, they wouldn't have been as well armed as the army. As with the uprising against Gaddafi, I'm guessing the organisers were hoping there would be defections from the army but that doesn't appear to have happened, or it hasn't been admitted there were.

I'm simply stating facts and giving my opinion on them.

Usually it is true and in this case, Trump publicly admitted it as did Pompeo.

I never said it was simply control. It was a brutal suppression. Once again, I'm going on what Trump admitted to and like I said, if the starlink terminals got through, it is more than logical to deduce weapons did too.

What makes you think they could have succeeded with a regime change in Iran. They tried but failed. Please tell me any single instance the West has instigated a regime change in the name of altruism or desire to help the general population. We did oust the Taliban and installed a puppet leader, Karzai. How well did that work out? The Taliban are back. After millions killed and trillions spent, the situation in Afghanistan is exactly the same.

The suggestion was that the protesters may have been armed but we see no evidence of that? Personally I prefer to believe eyewitness testimony particularly of Iranians working in hospitals, morgues etc than what the IRGC say. They are a terrorist organisation after all.

Don't really know how to answer that but it was a good read. What's the chair?

I would say the situation in Afghanistan is worse.

But hands up. I did support that war at the time. And eventually it led me to think a lot about self determination. What happens when a good majority of the people want to live in a theocracy ?

Things do potentially get complex then.

For sure one could say the people are brainwashed into a religion, but wowser, what a can of worms that is to open. Are we to have UN re-education camps, to de-program them from their religion, removing their right to religion ?

That would be interesting for sure if applied to another Theocracy, the Vatican. The UN could call that facility " de-programming camp 101". With Vance as camp commander.

I can't say what the chair is. That's not the chair anyway.

I really should not have posted it. But hey, what right do I have to pontificate to others if I am not willing to take a risk.

My thing really is that there should be an end plan. A reason. And with that, I have to say the empty chair is a bit of a red herring. Because I honestly can't remember what the guy who was supposed to sit in that wrote. But I do remember at the time that I disagreed with some of it. Sorry for being cryptic :-)

As a thought on the soft skills, politics, economics etc, V the hard skills. Engineering/ physics etc. And I don't mean soft in a derogatory way. Soft skills - Every country has a different system. Some evolved, some were invented. And I think some standardization is needed. Hard skills- go into a carpark. And see how all the cars have been morphing into the same shape. A shape dictated by physics.

Can we not apply that car shape reason to politics ? And let the shape be dictated by the needs of the people ? And try a few to see what works best ?

It is obviously your choice who you believe. I listen to as many sources as I can until I form an opinion and I don't simply dismiss what anyone says just because I don't like them. What do you think Trump and Pompeo meant then?

I would not want to live under a theocracy but that is me. I know there are people in Iran and Afghanistan who don't want to either but I have no idea what portion of the population that would be. The problem with the West is that they seem to think that their lifestyle and values are the only ones that should count and any country that does not emulate them must be oppressed. I hear members of the Islamaphobic far right talking about banning the hijab because women are forced to wear it. How do they know? They talk about morality laws as if we don't have them, they are just different. A woman can walk into a supermarket wearing just a bikini top in the UK but wouldn't be allowed to do it in Dubai. However, if you tried to walk around a supermarket stark naked in the UK, you'd be arrested. They're all morality laws, just different.

@RedTagAlan ,

‘Can we not apply that car shape reason to politics ? And let the shape be dictated by the needs of the people ? And try a few to see what works best ?’

No, politics isn’t physics. Even economics isn’t physics, much as many economists would like to pretend.

Politics is about compromise and competing agendas. Politics is all about optimisation based on constraints. But what do you optimise and what are the constraints. I am not a philosopher but I have read that one of the big schisms in thinking was when the west pursued individual rights vs the east giving a higher priority to the good of society at the cost of individual rights.

We can’t say who is right and it changes both through time and geography.

I think that is partly why democracy is a good system. People vote on what is important to them at that particular moment in time.

@Squeezingwildoranges ,

‘I would not want to live under a theocracy but that is me. I know there are people in Iran and Afghanistan who don't want to either but I have no idea what portion of the population that would be. The problem with the West is that they seem to think that their lifestyle and values are the only ones that should count and any country that does not emulate them must be oppressed.’

I think that is a dangerous level of moral relativism.

Whilst there is a compromise to be had around the centre, I think that we can say what, on average makes humans happy and that we have more of that in the UK than they have in Afghanistan. Especially women!

And we can say that people like to have choices and aspirations. Again I think that can be shown to be true.

Quote " No, politics isn’t physics. Even economics isn’t physics, much as many economists would like to pretend."

That is why I differentiated the soft and hard. It's a basis of my entire premise. We do not know what shape works best in what situation. So let's get some empirical information.

Quote " Politics is about compromise and competing agendas. Politics is all about optimisation based on constraints."

This is why I like unstable government systems. I don't mean fatally unstable. I mean multi Parties and coalitions to form government. But I think that is too far off the thread.

Quote " We can’t say who is right and it changes both through time and geography."

There are metrics to measure things by. The Scandinavian nations usually top those tables. No Idea why geography changes ? If you mean borders, then yes, they can change.

"I think that is partly why democracy is a good system. People vote on what is important to them at that particular moment in time."

That people vote for what is important at the time is a massive failing of democracy. Especially when ambitious people who want power lie about what the most important issues are.

How can you possibly make a statement that our lives are better than theirs. If you are a religious Muslim, you may be quite happy living a life that you feel is moral and pure. I wouldn't, but I'm certainly not going to say, look at me, I can drink wine, eat roast pork and wear a bikini in public. They might not want to do any of that. They might look at us and think we are morally bankrupt and going to hell. I mean, make people happy. There isn't even consistency in the West as to what makes people happy.