DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — When Ellie, a British-Iranian living in the United Kingdom, tried to call her mother in Tehran, a robotic female voice answered instead.
“Alo? Alo?” the voice said, then asked in English: “Who is calling?” A few seconds passed.
“I can’t heard you,” the voice continued, its English imperfect. “Who you want to speak with? I’m Alyssia. Do you remember me? I think I don’t know who are you.”
Ellie, 44, is one of nine Iranians living abroad — including in the U.K and U.S. — who said they have gotten strange, robotic voices when they attempted to call their loved ones in Iran since Israel launched airstrikes on the country a week ago.
They told their stories to The Associated Press on the condition they remain anonymous or that only their first names or initials be used out of fear of endangering their families.
Five experts with whom the AP shared recordings said it could be low-tech artificial intelligence, a chatbot or a pre-recorded message to which calls from abroad were diverted.
It remains unclear who is behind the operation, though four of the experts believed it was likely to be the Iranian government while the fifth saw Israel as more likely.
Only the second most terrifying story I’ve read today
The article criticized the closing of the Internet by Tehran, but the Internet is clear vulnerability that can be exploited in times of war.
It’s also something that allows people to organize to overthrow an oppressive authoritarian regime.
But this particular authoritarian regime is apparently good because they want to wipe Israel off the map, so I guess we need to pretend everything they do is for the best.
Motherfucker: who started the war
Are greater power responsible for the actions of their proxies?
Before you answer, remember the answer to that question applies to both sides in this conflict.
What proxy? Israel bombed Iran unprovoked directly, no proxy there.
The most prevalent proxies are the houthis and Hezbollah, which Iran has been arming, financially supporting, and influencing for about two decades now so they can attack Israel without getting themselves into an all out war with Israel and the USA, which they know they would likely lose.
Argue all you want about whether or not Israel should have bombed Iran, but calling it unprovoked is extremely disingenuous.
By that logic, half the world has the right to bomb the USA for arming proxies all over the world, though.
Also, why are you jumping to defend the actions of a state currently committing genocide against Palestinians?
Hamas is also an Iranian proxy. They attacked Israel in a very big way.
Is Iran responsible for what Hamas does with the weapons and munitions they supply them?
Is the US responsible for what Israel does with the weapons and munitions they supply them?
Do you have the same answer for both of these questions?
Yes, Iran is responsible for supplying weapons to Palestinians in their legitimate right of violent defense against an occupying force. Don’t you like international law or what?
Yes, the US is responsible for keeping the weapon deliveries to a genocidal apartheid state.
Are you, by any chance, trying to somehow equate Israeli genocidal violence to Palestinian militant defence against a genocidal occupying force?
Yes to both.
Iran sucks, Israel sucks too.
I don’t want Israel wiped off the map. I just want Netanyahu to crawl in a hole and off himself like his hero Hitler.
Why did the authoritarian regime wait until now to turn off the Internet?
Something we can’t know at the moment. Their state media has taken some hits, so it’s possible they lost capabilities in monitoring internet traffic.
Well according to the Democrats, I should always support the lesser of two evils, so now Iran is good. /s
For real though, it’s called critical support. You can support Iran’s right to defend against genocide while simultaneously criticizing their human rights abuses.
So it’s ok for you to give “critical support” to an authoritarian regime, but super bad for someone to give “critical support” to Israel for fighting against an authoritarian whose proxies massacred villages? Why isn’t Iranian proxies massacring villages, Iran itself firing missiles at civilian populations (including a hosptial) something you don’t consider to be genocide?
How do you determine which genocide you support and which genocide you’re against?
Attacking civilians doesn’t automatically make it a genocide. If that were true, then pretty much every war ever was a genocide.
So why is the Israel-Hamas war considered a genocide? Is it a numbers thing? Most other wars throughout history had many more civilian casualties than there’s been in the Israel-Hamas war.
What makes the Israel-Hamas war a genocide and for example, the Vietnam war not be considered a genocide?
Because Vietnam was a war of ideologies, not a land grab intended to wipe out the current occupants so they could be entirely replaced by a “superior, chosen” people not of the ethnicity of the current residents.
This is such a mindblowingly stupid attempt at a gotcha question. Ffs, you literally had over a million Vietnamese fighting on the same side as the US in the ARVN during the course of the war. The belligerent parties in a conflict both being composed of largely the same peoples fighting each other tends to preclude it being described as a genocide.
Not menitioning the events of October 7 and the fact that Hamas is still holding Israelis hostage is a rather glaring omission there.
Iran has stated many times their goal to wipe Israel off the map. Is that not them saying they only want their “chosen people” living in the area? So under your definition of genocide, Iran is committing a genocide. If the fact that Israel was attacked on October 7 is irrelevant, then the fact that Israel attacked Iran in this iteration of hostilities between them is also irrelevant. Iran has the officially stated goal of wiping Israel off the map, Iran has killed Israeli civilians, therefore Iran has committed genocide (according your definition of it).
Kindly refrain from putting such stupid words in my mouth, and keep them in your own, where it seems they rightly belong, thank you.
You asked about Israel and Hamas, then instantly conflated this particular conflict with a broader conflict to come between Israel and Iran, which are not the same thing. That’s beyond moving the goal posts, we’re no longer even discussing the same events. You’re also conflating Israel with Jews as a whole here. Calling for the state of Israel to no longer exist and calling for all Jewish residents within its borders to be either killed or displaced are two rather distinct things.
I know of no definition in which a single attack in isolation, or merely killing civilians during a war, is considered to constitute genocide. Even if this were the case, the civilian casualties in the many conflicts between Israel, Hamas, and more or less all of Israel’s neighbors in the region have been decidedly lopsided. Israel suffers far fewer civilian deaths than those they inflict on others, so even if we were to entertain the notion that Hamas’ resistance to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories constitutes a genocide and we accept that the Iranian regime is in some major capacity responsible for such actions because they provide funding and support to Hamas (which, lol, even Israeli media admits Israel did, too), just going by the casualties, we’d have to conclude that Israel is either a decidedly more genocidal regime, better at genocide, or both.
Israel continues to interfere in the affairs of other sovereign nations, support settlers stealing other peoples’ land and is actively engaging in a brutal genocide. If the Israeli state were to be dismantled and Israel ceased to exist as a nation, I could only say that it’s past time for it to happen. And before you put more hysterical words in my mouth, note well: Israel no longer existing as a sovereign theocratic ethnostate and the Jews who currently live in the region being in any way harmed are two entirely separate things. Calling for a particular state to no longer exist is not a call for genocide, in and of itself.
Tl;dr: Get lost with your hasbara attempts, they’re woefully transparent.
I think both Iran and Israel are guilty of atrocities, and Israel has been worse recently in their treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. I don’t think either amounts to genocide, since genocide has the intent of eliminating a race from existence (e.g. Jews in the Holocaust). I don’t think Israel wants to eliminate Palestinians (the people), they just want to eliminate Palestine (the country). I don’t think Iran wants to eliminate Jews or Israelis, they want to eliminate Israel (the country).
Nah… take the Iranian government, then take the Israel government… and throw them both into the Thunderdome!
Pay-per-view that shit! (And use the proceeds to help innocent rebuild their lives)
It’s a war, not a game. One of the problems we have is people considering this conflict involving a lot of human suffering like it’s a sport and taking sides and generally acting like complete psychopaths around it. The anti-Israel crowd seem to want Palestians to suffer more so they can continue to have more propaganda to prove Israelis are evil.
I want the Israeli people being held hostage by Hamas to be released and the war there to be ended as soon as possible to stop the suffering of Palestinians caught in the middle of a war and to stop the suffering of those hostages. I want Iran to give up it’s nuclear program and stop supporting terrorism across the Middle East so that war will end so Iranians and Israelis won’t be killed or maimed by exchanges of missiles and air strikes.
It is possible to have empathy for Israelis, Palestinians, and Iranians you know. Though if you do the psychos on all sides who think of this like it’s a game will all hate you.
But fuck’ em, they’re psychopaths.