[_DeadFred_]

Maybe ones who don't follow supreme religious leaders that called for the gunning down of 3000 men, women, and children in the streets. And then approve beatings/the murder of doctors that treated them.

Imagine that being your moral leadership. And 3000 is the official Iranian number. Some claim as high as 30,000. Those religious leaders are calling for more murder/death in todays Friday prayers. I don't know how anyone who calls for (or especially signs off on in a religious theocracy) murder can be called spiritual leaders or anyone could follow their 'teachings' .

Edit: Just highlighting the horrors/behaviors you are normalizing/waive away as 'shared by everyone' with your statement 'but what humans aren't like this'.

[lossolo]

I think you're conflating "rational" with "moral". The question was about rationality, and from their POV (given the goal of keeping the regime going) everything was rational.

[spwa4]

They have always done the same. Just attack everyone and then get the win by getting others to fight for them. Get the maximum reaction through PR/propaganda. It's how they came to power in the first place. It's how they got a massive leftist uprising to unseat the previous government.

Before and during 1979. They'd attack the security forces, deny their involvement and then blame the government for the response, which then was supposedly an attack (e.g. Khomeini would send armed men into protests then put out propaganda that security forces "fired at protestors"). Or argue that the response to their attack was disproportionate. Or argue that his forces "don't have any choice but to" ... etc. This has been the way their proxy forces fight (hamas, houthi's, hezbollah). Control and punish people who detail what their side does (they massacred their own soldiers and their own allies, not just once. This is why people argue they're not leftists: they massacred the leftist factions that helped them unseat the Shah government)

They never explain their own actions. If anything, they put them forth as rational. But more likely you'll never hear about them. Such as killing 30000 people in January when their propaganda efforts totally failed. That's what happened: due to devaluation a number of traders in the "Tehran Bazaar" (a set of streets with lots of stands) very publicly, including to tourists, complained that the government made their lives impossible through economic mismanagement.

They locked off the streets and started going through, killing everybody they possibly could, "clearing" the market as they called it. Men, women, a few children who were sent to buy bread for their families. A few hundred dead. (yes, the way the Iranian government fights has more than a few parallels to what the Nazi's did)

This then set off the large scale protests everywhere in Iran.

Btw: the Iranian tactics are obviously working to some extent. Hence it's probably rational to do this because

[tgma]

Part of the reason those tactics are so effective, even today, is there are leftist elements in the west who are eager to eat it up to substantiate their own agendas and echo it as truth. You can see it live on Hacker News people constantly spewing FUD and propaganda that the Islamic regime likes and is obviously false to actual Iranian people who are vaccinated and won't believe it once they have passed grade school.

[tgma]

There is a difference between calculating and rational.

There are certainly calculating elements within the regime. Not all of those elevate to rationality.

[_DeadFred_]

'gunning down 3,000 to 30,000 of your country's men, women, and children in the streets because they don't feel one gender should be forced to wear hats upon pain of abuse/rape/death is completely rational'

[AlecSchueler]

> Maybe ones who ...

Ok but could you point to anyone or any people and tell me that they're rational? I didn't just ask for a possible condition of rationality and "maybe" feels like a very flimsy foundation for the acidity of what you're saying.