A lot of Chinese liberals in the diaspora used to say the same about China. Heck, some particularly brainwashed ones still do (Falun Gong ring a bell?), but in the case of China it has become increasingly difficult to deny the reality that the CPC isn’t going away any time soon and that the country and its economy aren’t going to collapse, contrary to what certain clowns in the media have been predicting for decades now.

And the same goes for Iran, it just isn’t as obvious yet. The CIA tried their best not too long ago to kick off a color revolution in Iran, they tried fake news, they tried NGOs brainwashing impressionable young people, they tried astroturfed social media campaigns, they tried arming terrorist and separatist groups. They tried “maximum pressure sanctions”, i.e. attempting to starve the entire country. The Islamic Republic is still standing and arguably its position has become stronger for having overcome these challenges.

I would advise you to form a more realistic picture of what Iran is actually like and how most people in Iran itself, not in the westernized diaspora, feel about it. Of course we as communists don’t have to like Iran’s government, but we should be realistic about it. We should have an analysis that is based in material reality and not in the crude caricature constructed by western propaganda.

As for the argument “country X kills its own people” that can be said about pretty much every country. It certainly can be said about the US. And especially for those that still have capital punishment (of which Iran is by no means the only one) but not exclusively limited to them. After all, when police kill someone that is also “a country killing its own people”. When a country that has the resources to take care of its people but instead leaves them homeless, hungry or without medical care, is that not “a country killing its own people”?

This is not an argument this is a meaningless, thought-terminating cliche. And i have personally never understood why people think it’s such an indictment, as if killing “your own” people is somehow worse than killing other countries’ people. Are the lives of people in your own country worth more than the lives of people elsewhere? Why is it phrased with such an emphasis on the “own people”? Why is “country X kills people?” not enough to evoke the same kind of emotional response? Would it be better if they just bombed people in other countries?