Ghazal Darling

British-Iranian. Observations from the belly of the beast.

[Ghazal Darling @ghazaldarling]

Here’s my speech, featuring the now-infamous ‘bikinis on the beach’ line!

[Middle East Eye @MiddleEastEye]

Speaking on stage at a London demonstration, Ghazal Diani of Iranians Against Imposed War said: “The US and the ethno-nationalist, genocidal state of Israel seek a failed, collapsed state in Iran,” and criticised what she described as efforts to justify intervention in the name of liberating Iranian women.

The protest comes a day after the UK government announced it would allow the US to use its UK bases in potential strikes on Iran, to force it to open the Strait of Hormuz.

[Palestine Pulse @Pal_Pulse1]

October 7 marks 3 yrs of ongoing genocide by Israel.
Today we publicly call out the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BoD) - a UK organisation who have been instrumental in influencing UK institutions in support of the Zionist project, Israel.#CapturedState #BoardOfZionism

[Aogəmadaēčā @Ostokhoni]

Iran has more gold medals in both than all the Muslim countries on the planet, combined. It practically beat every Asian country other than China/S Korea in both (beat/lost Japan). And that’s with 3700 sanctions and 1/35th the education budget of Germany (where it either nearly matched or beat it).

[Rabbi Jeff @RabbiJeffx]

An Israeli Foreign Ministry official just openly called for a terror attack on Ireland.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

It’s crazy this even needs to be said, but if you are a westerner your ONLY job is to oppose the abuses of the western empire. Not Iran. Not China. Not Russia, Cuba or North Korea.

If you live in the US or one of its allied nations, then you live under the single most tyrannical and murderous power structure on earth, and that’s where your focus belongs. You do not have any legitimacy in squandering any of your energy and attention criticizing human rights abuses in empire-targeted nations while living under a globe-spanning empire that is fueled by a nonstop river of human blood. It is not okay for you to use your western privilege to attack the nations your own government is working to help absorb into the power structure you live under.

Whenever I say this online I’ll get some Trotskyist or anarchist babbling about the need to express “solidarity” with Iranian political prisoners or whatever, but whenever I press them on what actual, material benefit those expressions of “solidarity” bring to the people they’re meant to help, they can’t point to anything solid. Whereas I can point to some very obvious ways in which contributing to an imperial war propaganda campaign can help grease the wheels for real material actions which hurt actual Iranians.

If you’re a westerner, you have an obligation to use your voice responsibly. If you are feeding into the latest “the people in the empire-targeted nation need liberation from their evil tyrannical government” war propaganda narrative with your expressions of “solidarity” and your blind insistence on treating all bad things as equally bad, then you are using your western voice irresponsibly, and you are morally culpable for the mass slaughter you help facilitate with your recklessness.

It’s not okay to be a citizen of the western empire and act like human rights abuses in an empire-targeted nation are of equal or comparable concern to the far more egregious abuses of your own leaders and their allies. It’s also not okay to be a fully grown adult and believe the use of force in empire-targeted governments is happening separately from their targeting by the empire, as though Iran would look the way it looks today if the US and Israel had not been working to collapse and control it for generations.

Iran has only survived the latest imperial onslaught because Tehran tightly controls what happens in that country. The only reason we didn’t see Xinjiang absorbed into the western power umbrella with the help of CIA-backed separatists is because Beijing waged a sweeping crackdown on the extremist factions who’d been launching attacks in the province. The only reason North Korea has gone relatively unmolested by the western empire in recent years is because its government obtained nuclear weapons. It’s baby-brained analysis to pretend such things happen independently of the US and its allies working to take control of unabsorbed nations and force them into compliance with Washington’s capitalist world order.

The western empire therefore makes the world a crueler and more abusive place not only by its direct acts of cruelty and abuse, but by the way it forces its targets to choose between (A) annihilation and (B) using extreme amounts of force to retain their sovereignty. The empire we live under is responsible for the vast majority of the dysfunction and misery in our world, and yet you as a westerner want to spend your time yelling at Iran? Fuck off, man.

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

Publishing this sentence during a genocide is journalistic malpractice @Reuters.

[Palestine Pulse @Pal_Pulse1]

#CapturedState #FreeSpeechUnderSiege
#EndZionistControlofUK

@DavidLammy @metpoliceuk @CPSUK @10DowningStreet

[Sulaiman Ahmed @ShaykhSulaiman]

PROFESSOR ROBERT PAPE, LARRY JOHNSON & RYAN DAWSON: IRAN WAR DAY 74 https://t.co/DJwUdiATcc

[Ghazal Darling @ghazaldarling]

@ShaykhSulaiman Dr Atousa Mahdavi on the other hand 🙌 that is a true Iranian Patriot. God bless you. Mashallah.

[Ghazal Darling @ghazaldarling]

@ShaykhSulaiman As an Iranian, I’d like to say this Iranian guy speaking shouldn’t be given air time. He’s a monarchy-supporting fascist and Islamophobe. Why is he on this Space?

[Jackson Hinkle 🇺🇸 @jacksonhinkle]

📍🇬🇧 A bus stop in London

[Sulaiman Ahmed @ShaykhSulaiman]

FIRST FOOTAGE OF U.S/ISRAEL ATTACK ON AN IRANIAN HOSPITAL

38s in, you can see a nurse trying to save as many children as she can.

[Ghazal Darling @ghazaldarling]

@BoardofDeputies @JLC_uk @PhilR_R @JewishChron @JewishNewsUK @JTAnews @JNS_org @JewishTelegraph @FCDOGovUK @YvetteCooperMP What about proscribing the terrorist USA regime that bombed a synagogue in Tehran last week?

[Ghazal Darling @ghazaldarling]

“Mr Pahlavi, do something else… take up a course on Japanese basketball weaving. Do something useful” 😅 gotta love John Bercow!

[Pasha Borjkhani @BorjkhaniP1847]

Iran News Alert
The Rt. Hon. John Bercow on Reza Pahlavi: "Well, I stopped believing in fairy tales before I became a teenager. This guy is now in his mid-60s. I have to say to him—just as our little secret between Mr. Pahlavi and me—mate, you are deluded. In political terms, you are off your chump! You haven’t got a clue. It’s not going to happen."

[Ghazal Darling @ghazaldarling]

We’ve completely won.
Which is why we urgently needed 21 hours of negotiations
to explain that to Iran.
We said we’d keep the Strait of Hormuz open.
So we’re now going to blockade Iran’s blockade.
And if that doesn’t work,
we’ll blockade our own blockade
just to be safe.

[Ghazal Darling @ghazaldarling]

@JohnnyNash77 He is the son of the *deposed* Shah of Iran, living in the USA for 40 years. How on earth does he represent Iranians in Iran?

[Ghazal Darling @ghazaldarling]

@viraameli Dear Vira, good on you for sharing this and exposing the BBC. I had a very similar experience when I was interviewed by Sky News.

[Ghazal Darling @ghazaldarling]

@fahad__650 @JackPosobiec What an awful and racist post.

[Ghazal Darling @ghazaldarling]

@JDMCishere @JackPosobiec @grok Whilst the law remains the same in Iran, it hasn’t actually been enforced for the past 4-5 years. I hear about 40% of women choose not to wear a headscarf in Tehran.

[Ghazal Darling @ghazaldarling]

@Charles86437366 @JackPosobiec It indeed is Tehran, coming from someone who has been there. You’re clearly a brainwashed fascist who believes all the dehumanising lies about Iran and its people. The government of Iran stockpiles weapons to defend itself from warmongering monsters… which any gov would do.

[Sadra @HajNooredin]

از خانم مرجان یشایائی، عضو جامعه کلیمیان ایران پرسیدم: چرا ایران را دوست دارید؟
در مقابل کنیسه‌ی رفیع‌نیا که چند ساعت قبل در حملات هوایی اسرائیل تخریب شد