Thread by @kshahrooz

1/ 🧵THE LIES THEY SOLD THE WEST- Pt. 1

The #IranRevolution has made clear that Iranians despise their regime.

Over the next few days, I'll look at some Iran commentators to assess what they conveyed to Western audiences over the years.

Today: Azadeh Moaveni
#IranLobby

2/ Ms. Moaveni is an author & regular commentator on Iran. She teaches journalism at @nyu_journalism and works at @CrisisGroup (I believe until recently under Rob Malley, President Biden's Iran Envoy.)
She has written for prestige publications such as @NewYorker @ @nytimes.

3/ And what does she write for those publications?
In 2016, she used the coveted real estate in the @nytimes op-ed page to attack chess champion @NaziPaiki's boycott of a tournament in Iran in protest against mandatory hijab.

4/ She didn't oppose the boycott on "your action is just but it won't help" grounds.
She argued 2 astonishing things: (i) the hijab is just "a light headscarf & modest outfit"; and (ii) most women wear the hijab by choice.

Is that what you're hearing from Iranian women today?

5/ And what did she write for the @NewYorker?
In an article much beloved by supporters of the regime in the West, she attacked the Trump State Dept (@SecPompeo) for saying “the women of Iran deserve the same freedoms that the men of Iran possess.”

6/ In that article, she continued attackign @SecPompeo for (i) a graph listing the # of women jailed for protesting the hijab (w/ decades in jail); (ii) comparing those women to American suffragettes (aren't they?); and...

7/ ...(iii) promoting regime change (exactly what protesters are now calling for.)
She objected to the promotion of Iranian emigres (i.e., Masih Alinejad, a woman Iran's regime has tried to kidnap/kill more than once), and claimed that Iran's feminists want "peaceful reform."

8/ Her writing comes alongside a trove of tweets celebraing the Iranian regime's achievements on women & mocking the claim that Iran is a gender apartheid state.

9/ Moaveni has minimized the importance of mandatory hijab as an issue (that's right: a regime making the most basic choice for you ranks "maybe tenth")

10/ Lest you think she's a partisan, Moaveni has also attacked the Biden State Dept (one that has accomodated Iran's regime in many way) for condemning the crackdown on women.

11/ Not satisfied with simply supporting Iran's hijab laws & undermining int'l efforts to oppose them, Moaveni connected the issue of the rights of women to ....." why Qasssm [sic] Soleimani", the Iranian terrorist general responsible many Syrian deaths, "was so ddeply admired."

12/ On more than one occasion, Moaveni celebrated that monster and claimed to convey the Iranian public's view that "he was a war hero who fought in the trenches who fought in the trenches to protect them..."

13/ This, incidentally, was one of the first things Iranian protesters did in Kerman (Soleimani's birthplace) when #IranRevolution broke out.

So much for "deep admiration".

14/ Moaveni greatest hits also include:
(i) celebrating the Iranian regime's "poise" in its propaganda (in which protesters in 2018 where painted as part of a US plot to destabilise Iran);..

15/ ...and (ii) "yawn"ing when National Geographic correctly pointed out that Iran's regime kills environmentalists on bogus spying charges -- justifying those deaths basd on the "political context".

16/ As we can clearly see, Iranians on the street want to change their regime. They openly shout 'Death to the Dictator' and 'Death to the Islamic Republic.
But Moaveni continued to portray "regime change" as a bad, imperialist project...

17/...and claimed that those in the Iranian-American community who, for years, have been voicing the Iranian people's desire for a new democratic regime as "a few loud voices" who are amplified by a "sycophantish media."

18/ The message to the American public then, is: you've been lied to for years about what Iranians want.

And the question to the @nytimes, @NewYorker, @CrisisGroup and @nyu_journalism is: what exactly have been your standards & how could Moaveni possibly meet them?
/END