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 intent seems pretty clear to me: leave Israel so Israel ceases to exist. They’re not saying, “we’ll kill you wherever you flee,” that would be genocide, they’re saying, “as long as the Israeli state exists, we will attack it and make life suck for everyone who chooses to stay.”
I think if they had the chance, they’d make good on that threat.
I never claimed the propaganda was a nothing burger, I claimed it’s directed at the Israeli state, not Israelis or Jews themselves. Even if Israel were completely secular, there would still be opposition, because Muslim extremists don’t care what religion occupies the Holy Land, as long as it’s not Muslim, it is the same.
Agreed 100%, which is why Israel’s strike is dumb. The power proper solution is regime change, and giving the people there a reason to support their government isn’t the way to achieve that.
Unfortunately, I think that’s the best possible outcome in Iran. Iran used to be prosperous when they were friendly with the west, and I’d love for them to do so again. But that can only happen with a regime change.
The JCPOA was a step in the right direction, a D we should’ve followed it up with trade deals. IMO, the best way to fight against extremism is through prosperity and trade, so we should be making very attractive deals with countries in exchange for not having or eliminating nuclear weapons (prosperity in exchange for peace). Unfortunately, that’s impossible with Trump in power, and I doubt Iran’s leadership is interested after the US broke the trade deal.
“Either you must choose ‘gradual death’ in hellish life in shelters or save your lives from the 24-hour missile rain and flee as soon as possible from the lands usurped by your ancestors, so that you may survive.”
I think the use of the word “ancestors” makes it clear they’re talking to a people of a specific ancestry ie. an ethnicity. They are telling Jews to leave or they will be killed. This is ethnic cleansing. And lets not be so naive that Iran wants Arab-Israelis to leave. They stated that they want ethnic cleansing.
So the original plan 1948 plan of Jerusalem being internationally controlled and open to all religions isn’t acceptable? Well they are extremists, but they extremists like this can’t have any military power because they’re just going to do endless war since they’ll never get what they want.
If the infrastructure helps keep the regime in power (like systems to monitor people’s activities) then why would want it to remain in place? If Iran can’t see a gathering of people on security cameras, that helps a resistance movement, doesn’t it?
It was never going to be a fast thing. This regime took diplomats hostage which is the biggest no-no in all of diplomatic relations. It’s hard to improve things through diplomacy when you can’t trust a nation enough to have diplomats set foot in their country. Also they’d need to stop their “death to Israel, death to America” stuff. Kinda hard to trust a country that does that. Sure trade increases prosperity, but it also increases access to technology which helps their military. You’d look pretty stupid if you started trade with a country calling for your death, then they used that to improve their military to attack you. Also they’re an oppressive so there’s ethical issue with enriching an oppressive regime. Yeah we enrich the Saudis who are oppressive, but only because we’re stupidly dependent on their oil and don’t have any choice. When we have a choice should we enrich an oppressive regime hoping trade will make it less oppressive? Doesn’t seem like trade with China made their regime less oppressive.
It’s not a given that trade and diplomacy could be improved with this regime, a lot of that was up to them.
Anyway that’s all moot now.