Maryam Naghsh Nejad

Economist @ CHERE UTS. views are my own.

[Sana Ebrahimi Ledene @__Injaneb96]

🚨Most people are missing the real story here. And it’s terrifying:

You can bomb them into the Stone Age.

You can sink their entire navy.

You can turn their ghost air force into scrap metal.

None of that is the point.

Everyone already knew the Islamic Republic couldn’t go toe-to-toe with the United States militarily.

Nobody thought Iran had military superiority over America. Nobody.

What nobody knew, not even the Islamic Republic itself, was how much leverage they could extract without having the military power to back it up.

What nobody knew was that they could threaten the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and force the entire world to take the threat seriously.

What nobody knew was that they could pressure America, the most powerful country on Earth, to pressure its closest ally in the region.

What nobody knew was that they could openly demand protections for their terror proxies and have those demands become part of international negotiations.

What nobody knew was that they could do ALL OF THIS while having no air force or a navy that would be able to survive a direct confrontation with the U.S. military.

Think about what message that sends.

You’re effectively telling every hostile regime on Earth:

“You don’t need military superiority over America to have leverage over America.”

And here’s the truly terrifying part.

Iran isn’t acting in a vacuum.

China is Iran’s biggest economic backer and its most important strategic partner.

So what lesson is Beijing learning from all of this?

That one of the world’s most important naval chokepoints can be used as a pressure point against the United States.

That they don’t need to confront America directly.

That they don’t need to challenge the U.S. Navy head-on.

That all they may need is a partner sitting on a critical global chokepoint capable of disrupting energy markets and forcing Washington into difficult choices.

Imagine the precedent.

If America can be pressured through Hormuz today, what stops China from seeing that same pressure point as a useful tool tomorrow?

What stops Beijing from leveraging its relationship with Tehran during a future crisis?

You don’t have to believe China would explicitly order Iran to do anything.

The fact that the possibility even exists should concern anyone paying attention.

Because this isn’t just about Iran.

It’s about what America’s adversaries learn from this.

And the lesson America’s adversaries may be learning is that they don’t need military superiority over the United States if they can leverage the economic and strategic chokepoints that the world depends on through their ally, the Islamic Republic.

Tell me you don’t see how dangerous that is.

Tell me you don’t see how damaging it is when America’s rivals conclude they don’t have to defeat the United States militarily to force it to react.

Tell me you don’t see how that fundamentally reshapes the global balance of power.

[Masih Alinejad 🏳️ @AlinejadMasih]

“You deserve to be blinded, you ugly puppet of America and Israel. Leave Germany. Go to America. Go to Israel.”

These were the words shouted at Kosar Eftekhari in Berlin by people marching under the slogan of “Free Palestine” and violently attacked the victim of Islamic Republic regime.

Kosar is an Iranian woman who was shot in the eye by the regime’s IRGC for peacefully protesting during the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising. She lost one eye, but never lost her courage.
I know her personally. She is kind, peaceful, and incredibly brave. Her only “crime” in Germany is using her freedom of speech to say “Free Iran” and to speak out against terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
But instead of solidarity, she was mocked for her blindness. People laughed at her face, insulted her appearance, and praised the very regime that maimed her, chanting for Ali Khamenei while bullying one wounded woman standing alone in the street.
Imagine surviving the bullets of a dictatorship, escaping to Europe, and then being publicly humiliated for daring to speak against your oppressors.

Thanks to the German police for protecting Kosar and defending their right to freedom of speech.

I call on all activists, university, students, college campuses and defenders of democracy to stand with Kosar in peaceful protest, to shout “Free Iran,” expose the Islamic Republic’s terror, and condemn its proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah.

No woman who survived the bullets of a dictatorship should be bullied into silence in the streets of Europe.
We the women of Iran are wounded but unbowed to our oppressors.
💔✌️
@kosareftekharii

[Neil Stone @DrNeilStone]

Unbelievable to see @kosareftekharii, who was literally shot in the eye by the regime in Iran, be abused on Germany by entitled clueless Western "activists" who think they know better

Disgusting

I stand with Kosar

🇮🇷🇮🇷

[Masih Alinejad 🏳️ @AlinejadMasih]

A nurse in Iran helped wounded protesters. The security forces killed her. Then abused her body. Then used her finger to unlock her phone and sent the images of sexual abuse to her husband.
Listen to her story and please on’t stop talking about Iran.
💔

[Jeff Storobinsky @JeffStorobinsky]

.@Elex_Michaelson Anchor of @CNNTheStoryIs w/

NPR Reporter @ArezouRezvani

The mood inside Iran

4.21.26

[ABC News @ABC]

Even as a fragile two-week ceasefire between Iran and the U.S. holds, many Iranians at home and abroad say they still face an intensifying wave of threats from the Islamic Republic regime as it continues cracking down on dissent. https://t.co/dfWRRHAP3L

[tyro @DoubleEph]

Finally finished this. The first ~300 pages were quite heavy going mainly because I don't really have a good baseline for the 16th century where the story begins. It was just Qezilbash this, Safavid that - one damned thing after the other.

But from the late Qajar era to the rise of Reza Khan and the Pahlavi era the story gets super interesting and very hard to put down till it ends around 2009. Professor Amanat spent 20yrs writing the book and it really shows.

Some things I previously knew but now have a much (much) better understanding of include (but not limited to):

- The Wilāyat al-Faqīh and the specific ways in which Khomeini manipulated them for his own power grab
- The ousting of Mossadeq, thoroughly and properly contextualised
- The fall of the Shah and the very specific errors he made that left an opening for Khomeini (as I say below in the thread, my leading contender for the 20th century's greatest conman)
- The ways in which the Shia motifs of messianism and martyrdom are so deeply woven into the Iranian polity such that, even though the revolution of 1979 is shocking for the fact that for at least 5 centuries the clerics had actually never held power, I got the sense that it was long in coming

My conclusion is that Iran has not known any chill in its history. To borrow a Nigerianism - the polity is always heated. When there's not a revolution going on, the groundwork for the next one is being laid. If things are quiet or going relatively quietly, Iranian leaders seem to take this as an affront and then say or do something crazy to raise the temperature back to the 'normal' boiling point. I was taken aback by the strong similarities between the current conflict and the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

With my highest possible recommendation (you can start on page 315 when the Qajars are on their way out). A remarkable achievement of scholarship and research

[Abul Rizvi @RizviAbul]

Prisoner data for end June 25 out today. Total prisoners up 6% on June 24. Prisoners born overseas were 14%. Of these 2.2% NZ born; 1.2% UK born; 1% Vietnam born; 0.8% Sudan; 0.5% China; 0.4% India. 0.3% Iraq; 0.3% Lebanon; 0.3% Iran; 0.3% Philippines.

[Karim Sadjadpour @ksadjadpour]

Former senior U.S. Treasury official @miadmaleki (who grew up in Iran and knows the country well) on the potential economic impact of a U.S. naval blockade of Iran:

[NetBlocks @netblocks]

X poll, 2026 edition: should social media companies suspend the accounts of governments and officials who shut down or censor the internet?

[David Vance @DavidVance]

Spread the word…

[Shooshana @Shooshanahp]

Total regime change in Iran.

[Ali Emami 👊🏼👊🏾👊 ⚡️👑⚡️👊🏿👊🏻👊🏼 @aliemamiofnyc]

regime change

[Dr. Eli David @DrEliDavid]

“A very productive Regime Change!” 💪

[Nima. Monsefi. نیما منصفی @NimaGEOINT]

من دو مورد سابقه اقدام به خودکشی داشته‌ام و هر دو مورد هم ناموفق بوده.
اولی بعد از دستگیری و آزار و اذیت‌های جنبش مهسا در دانشگاه یزد؛ (لینک توییتش در کامنت هست)

و دومی هم همین پارسال که کوت شده. در هر دو مورد هم با شانس و شاید بزدلی به خیر گذشت.
نیاز به جلب توجه ندارم. همون موقع پست‌هام دیده شدن. اما:

🛑 اگه کسی اینا ر در منوتو و اینترنشنال می‌بینه، الان وقت دعوت از تحلیل‌گر سیاسی و ژئوپلتیک و استراتژیک نیست، همه حرفاشونو تا الان زده‌اند.

🛑 از دیشب بیشتر از ۵۰ پیام با این مضمون در اینستگرام دریافت کرده‌ام.

روانشناس دعوت کنید. به حال اینا رسیدگی کنید.

این نوع صحبت از خودکشی ادا نیست. واقعا فاصله تصمیم و اجرا به مویی بنده.
اینجا نوشته بودم چقدر کم…

[David Vance @DavidVance]

For additional emphasis…

[Omid Djalili @omid9]

Iran’s internet blackout - imposed by the regime - is now the longest in the history of any country ever. Short explainer from CNN host, political analyst, lawyer and civil rights advocate @VanJones68 - share widely.

[The Australian @australian]

The two-week ceasefire announced by the US and Tehran has left Iranians feeling scared and abandoned, knowing renewed protest against a vengeful regime will likely end in their deaths. Read more: https://t.co/plTxOUPQuA

[Masih Alinejad 🏳️ @AlinejadMasih]

This is for you president @realDonaldTrump! You call them “reasonable” we call them killers.

You call it regime change, we call them terrorist .

Under Masoud Pezeshkian, a massacre took place in Iran.
Mohseni Ejei is still executing protesters, and Bagher Ghalibaf still controls a parliament that passes laws used to kill women for showing their.

This is not a regime change, this is called dictatorship.

[Liza Rosen @LizaRosen0000]

BREAKING: Mohseni Ejei, head of Iran’s judiciary, orders faster executions of detained protesters in Iran.

No one in the media seems to care, please share if you do!