Watching this made my cry thinking about how the empire manufactures consent to sacrifice the lives of these wonderful people in order to promote its interests in the region.
It’s also quite interesting that she travelled to Iran right as the protests were breaking out. I wonder if she will be releasing some footage of that in the coming weeks.
I’m not sure I’d say Mashad is the most conservative part of Iran. I’ve been multiple times to visit the Shrine of Imam Reza (AS) and although there’s definitely a religious identity, I think parts of Sistan-Balouchistan are more conservative if I’m to believe my mother’s account of them.
It’s extremely poor outside the major city, and those areas are mostly Wahabbi influenced Sunnis. I’ve heard stories of child brides still existing there because of how backward and impoverished the area is.
To be fair, the video doesn’t say “most conservative part of Iran”, it says “Iran’s most conservative city”. I am not super familiar with Iran’s geography, but i have a basic understanding and i would assume that there are not many big cities in Sistan-Balochistan, given that it’s sparsely populated and somewhat of a desert.
I think rural areas being more conservative than cities is relatively(but not entirely) universal
There’s like one I believe, Zahedan.
There are three or four above 100k people apparently: Iranshahr, Chabahar, and yes, Zahedan the provincial capital is fairly sizeable. I don’t know how conservative they are, or even by what metric you would measure that.
I know Zahedan has a state of the art medical school and I’m pretty sure Chabahar has one of the countries most important ports. Otherwise I’m ignorant of the culture. All I know is that rural Balouchis are sometimes considered backward.
Port cities aren’t usually very conservative. Given their international connections and regular presence of people from various parts of the world, they tend to be more cosmopolitan.