My general impression, that I don't know how to back up, is that the last Shah of Iran was overthrown, fled the country and died in exile in part because Iranians viewed him as a puppet of the US. Sanctions against Iran in some form or another go back decades, likely rooted in those events.

I think Iran perceives itself to be fighting for its right to self determination. I don't think this is likely to be resolved without that being understood and addressed.

I never hear anyone addressing that, which may explain why this is such an intractable situation.

Keep in mind that an extraordinary amount of current population of Iran are in their teens or early adulthood. They can only be tampered for so long before they start to fight back (as an example, look up the resistance against hijabs in Iran).

The best thing us outsiders can do to help them out is to provide them with an unlimited access to the information, not the opposite. The amount of young people that are willing to sacrifice their own chance at a good life for something as meaningless as self-determination can only be made smaller by making the education more accessible.

In principle, there's nothing wrong with being patriotic. In practice, there's very little to be patriotic about when your national identity pulls you down and becomes another hurdle that you have to deal with -- a hurdle that other young people don't have simply because they were born somewhere else.

I'm not talking about patriotism. I'm talking about the Iranian view that America came into their country to interfere with their self determination, they kicked us out and we are still interfering with their self determination via sanctions -- like an abusive parent that continues to stalk an adult child who fled home.

Given that the US gives Iranian Nationals no means to get free of the black mark against them for simply having been born there, they don't have to feel any loyalty whatsoever to their country to be intensely against what the US is doing to them.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20302694

I don't think the problem is "oppressive regime", Saudi Arabia is a much more oppressive and intolerant regime than Iran and USA is fine with that.

of course that's not USA's problem with Iran, it's Iranians problem. it's an impossibly difficult problem to solve, and the more economically stable the regime is, the more resources they can spend on their survivability. Saudi Arabia will probably never have a chance to overthrow, they have too much resources to detect and squash any resistance.

Iran on the other hand is in a unique position of instability that they just might have a small chance of brighter future, small chance that will end the moment the sanctions will be lifted.

maybe because SA doesn't threaten US allies as much as Iran

Although there are facts in your point, it's not all of it. China is also under sanction, and also under domestic internet filtering. Iran also has its own internet filtering. The point here is to reach out to Google and Apple and ask them to brainstorm on this problem, maybe we find a way to stop limiting humanity over politics.

Sanctions only strengthen the regime, while economic prosperity strengthens the progressive people and weakens the regime. Both regimes desperately need an enemy to survive.

huge misconception. used to be true, until surveillance tech came along. overthrows never came from progressive people, who believe in peaceful ways, it came from the lowest people in society who no longer have anything to lose. overthrowing is an act of desperation, the last thing people will do, only when the situation is no longer bearable.

Regardless of surveillance tech a coup or putsch [1] is not [always] executed by the "lowest people" in society.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

Americans need to realize that if they don't anything now about their oppressive regime, they might never be able to.

I think that is what the current US administration is trying to instigate at the end of the day.

Good thing the people don't have guns in Hong Kong. Otherwise it could get ugly.