TEHRAN – “I can’t believe this is real,” wrote one Canadian citizen reacting to protests that took place in Toronto on Saturday. The demonstrations were not those of the famous truckers who flocked to the streets in 2022 protesting COVID mandate measures, nor were they the popular protests that have occurred several times since 2023, demanding Israel cease its killing of Palestinians in Gaza. Instead, it was a gathering organized by Iranian-born individuals, or second-generation Iranian immigrants, who held placards and chanted slogans calling for U.S. President Donald Trump to bomb their home country and make it “free” and “prosperous.”
Trump said repeatedly in January that he was planning to attack Iran in order to “help” rioters who had exploited legitimate economic protests and plunged the country into deadly and destructive unrest. The U.S. president openly encouraged terrorism by urging armed rioters—whom intelligence reports and testimonies indicate were backed by the CIA and Mossad—to seize government institutions, assuring them that “help is on the way.” He ultimately decided against attacking Iran after Iranian officials warned that any aggression, however limited, would be treated as a declaration of all-out war. Demonstrators who marched in Toronto called on Trump to make good on his promise and bomb Iran.
The reaction within Canada was one of shock and fear. As one user commented beneath a local newspaper’s X post covering the gathering: “Do these people really think Trump will improve the lives of Iranians by bombing them? Do they not know any history?”
The history he was referring to was likely that of Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan. There, Western states, with the U.S. at the helm, bombed countries or armed rebels and terrorists, claiming they were helping the people free themselves from “dictators.” The governments in all these countries were eventually toppled, but what followed was not freedom and prosperity; instead, there was unprecedented death, destruction, rape, never-ending chaos, and Western states that subsequently began looting their natural resources.
Others were less concerned with the apparently “bewitched” state of the so-called Iranian protesters, and instead raised fears that probably sound legitimate. As one user noted: “Are we sure these people are not a threat to Canada’s national security as well? What if they help Donald Trump annex Canada? They are asking for bombs on their motherland; they will sell out Canada much more easily.”
Trump has repeatedly said that Canada would be better off becoming the 51st U.S. state. While he is unlikely to take any steps to pursue that idea, Canadians still find his comments offensive, belligerent, and threatening.
Among Iranian users, the reaction included shock, but also disregard, and in some cases, outright anger. One commented: “We have been under sanctions for 47 years. You never once demonstrated against our dire economic situation. Yet you ask them to bomb us, and you are proud of it?”
Many of the pro-war protesters in Toronto were also draped with Israeli flags. That move, too, was condemned by Iranians inside the country. As one user remarked: “They are carrying flags of the regime that killed over 1,000 Iranians less than a year ago. That must tell you all you need to know about the mental state these people are in.”
The gap between the Iranian diaspora in the West and Iranians inside Iran has grown significantly over the years. Within Iran, a prevailing sentiment suggests the diaspora aims to “take revenge” against Iranians within the country for the difficult lives they have been forced to live in the West. One user commented: “When lawyers, doctors, and engineers move abroad and become waiters in a racist country, they naturally become angry because they realize they were lied to about life in the West.” Another added: “When you were here, you went above and beyond to leave. Now that you have left, you don’t even want the country to continue to exist anymore. I hate your supposed ‘patriotism’.”
Others believe the diaspora had been unbelievably “brainwashed” and completely divorced from reality. “There is not one shred of realism in these people,” wrote a user on X.
Either way, what is emerging from the protests in Canada, as well as some other Western cities, is a greater distance between the two groups of Iranians, and a newfound concern among citizens of the host countries that they, too, might fall prey to such pro-war sentiments.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: tehrantimes.com
