You are acting like people dont upload videos anymore.

The people filming protests in iran are probably not in range of their home starlink connected wifi. They are almost certainly filming stuff offline then uploading it later, not livestreaming.

Yes, a "regime" is basically a country where they wants to have control but can't for some reason

I don't think I've ever read an article using the term "US regime," as that usually refers to an undemocratic or authoritarian government. You might want to clean up your information diet if you're reading lots of articles over the years with that term...

Yes it is a value judgement, but Iran's government is nothing if not oppressive and authoritarian. Until recently the US had taken pride in being nothing like a regime, but that may change in the coming years.

Regime refers to who holds power in a nation. It encompasses power holders in both formal and informal institutions which span beyond just the government. The major distinction is democratic versus autocratic regimes, with regime on its own referring specifically to the autocratic version. There are plenty of autocratic regimes which we (assuming everyone on the internet is American or at least from the West) are friendly with, like Jordan's.

It is 100% that.

...

Very, but at the same time the Iranian leadership have been a really shitty government and ran the country into the gutter. People have genuine grievances.

The only way to believe this is if you're a Westerner being fed a purely US-centric media diet. Otherwise you'd know all the ways that the Iranian government has been failing their people recently and for a long time now, and how unhappy Iranians are with their government. You people act like people can't be upset at how they're being treated by their own government without being incited by an external actor. That's honestly quite the dehumanising and insulting way of looking at it.

Also, if the US wanted to do a regime change, they'd just move in militarily a la Venezuela and Trump would be talking about it non-stop. He's not the subtle type, I promise. We'd already know if they were involved.

> How likely is it that those "protestors" are US and Israel propped

It's almost sure that both US and Israel are meddling with the current situation. That doesn't mean the situation isn't also started by and wanted by the population.

For a comparison point in the past, the civil rights and antiwar movements in the US were grass-roots movements started by local people with legitimate claims. At the same time, opponents of the US like USSR were involved in stirring these movements, because of course they would.

There isn't much you can infer about the legitimacy of a movement by learning that the movement is helped by foreign intelligence agencies.

The best way you can avoid this kind of confusion is 1) make a society in which malicious actors don't have many latent issues to stir, and 2) make it so your country's intelligence agencies aren't malicious actors. There isn't much else to do.

Every country needs to be able to defend itself from Russia, too, apparently.

mobile phones are primarily a military technology

What an insane take.

In my experience 80% packet loss makes most common protocols basically unusable. Yes you can still get data out...but many apps will just fail due to timeouts and other things.

Iran has a thriving black market through its borders

It's weird how Apple and Google don't get it, while SpaceX does.

They "operate" in Iran because of OFAC issues general licenses under the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations (31 CFR Part 560) permitting non-commercial personal communications, including satellite internet for free expression. Starlink activation in 2022 protests and recent events exploited these, as Musk sought formal exemptions for "internet freedom."

And no Tesla factories in Iran I suppose helps too :)