It’s no guarantee, but it is a good opportunity. I’m half-Persian, and certainly not as closely connected as others, but it’s hard to see this as a bad thing. There’s a possibility I can go visit my family in Iran as a result of this. I haven’t had a good chance for that in like 4 years
Removal of the head of state is often a turning point. Either a regime becomes more extreme or the government collapses due to in-fighting as individuals attempt to gain control.
I would hold back on any hopes until we see how the current government handles things. Intervention from other countries does not always lead to positive outcomes.
> I can't think of any time when bombing the shit out of a country and killing their leader has actually worked.
Japan? Although their leader wasn't killed, but same logic. The more civilized a country is the easier it is to reform them into a good state, and Iran is a pretty civilized and structured nation, the dictatorship is the main issue.
Most people in Iran want a democracy and are capable of running it, you just have to let them. That isn't the case in most of these dictatorships that lacks such structure, but it is there in Iran.
I disagree. After the bombing, the Emperor himself broadcasted a surrender message [0] to the people of Japan. The occupation was also for more lighter than in Germany. Japan had full control of its administration and its government continued to operate. In that context whether we like or not, it very much worked.
The American occupation of Japan may have been less punitive than Germany’s, but it was arguably more invasive: Japan’s postwar Constitution was largely drafted by Americans, with minimal Japanese input. By contrast, West Germany’s Basic Law was written by Germans themselves under Allied constraints.
Japanese army officers stormed the emperor's palace and placed him under house arrest in an attempt to prevent him from broadcasting that surrender message. This was after the second bomb, a whole lot of them still had fight left in them.
The US did not have to occupy Japan and deal with rebels - the emperor surrendered unconditionally and the US fed the existing pro-democracy movement while rebuilding the country.
If you look at the US' history of interventions, the common thread is that nations with established pro-democracy movements tend to become stable democracies, and nations where democracy lacks popular support tend to turn into flimsy Republics that easily fall apart when American support is removed.
Occupation is so expensive that it's virtually unthinkable for even a medium-size country to be occupied. There are just too many civilians and too few soldiers.
Yeah, apparently I should have been explicit that I was talking about air strikes and not occupation.
We aren't going to occupy Iran.
Comparing this to defeated nations in WWII is also a massive stretch, I almost can't believe people seriously think that is a parallel situation.
There's a lot of propaganda out there to dissuade people from thinking that this looks a lot like Libya at best--and that is assuming that decapitation airstrikes can even make the regime fall (which I doubt).
Yes, this is an underrated point and why I’m holding out hope for a positive outcome. I’m convinced that, before the revolution, Iran was on the same trajectory as European monarchies that had become democracies. At that point, countries like Denmark had been democracies for less than 75 years.
And then France sent Khomeini back to Iran on a chartered Air France 747 & stifled that. France also built Dimona nuclear plant in Israel in 1963 and then tested multiple times nuclear weapons in Algeria from 1960-1966 in the Algerian Sahara & mountains & allowed Israel to observe these explosions.
From my understanding, it wasn't the bombing that motivated Japan to surrender even though this is commonly taught, it was the recent Soviet declaration of war and fear of invasion/occupation.
> Has there been a regime which has collapsed due to an external strike like this where it hasn't resulted in some decades long civil war nightmare?
People have already mentioned the post WW2 occupation of Germany and Japan.
There’s also the Roman occupation of Greece (and other Hellenistic territories), and even perhaps the Norman occupation of England. Not that either of these didn’t cause some strife and rebellion in both cases, but still there was a concerted effort to build up both territories.
The party was forbidden, the symbols were forbidden. They hung the main leaders, quite publicly. It became a huge taboo, the ideology effectively died (for decades). A strong democracy was established, older democratic parties took over.
Yes a bunch of previous nazis made it back into power and politics, but they didn't call themselves nazis or acted like nazis. But also, the country as a whole took a very different path after wwii.
A lot of symbolic actions were taken, but the majority (not "a bunch") of Nazis continued to hold positions of power in both the GDR and FRG.
Justice was never served for what the Nazis did. Both the US and the USSR scooped up Nazi scientists (Operation Paperclip), and with the advent of the Cold War, the West quickly decided that it cared more about contesting Europe with the Soviets than seeking justice.
If you ignore Berlin (which, I think, kept its four occupation zones) it were first four, three from January 1, 1947, and two from from August 1, 1948 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bizone)
>I can't think of any time when bombing the shit out of a country and killing their leader has actually worked.
This happened just weeks ago in Venezuela, though in that case the removal was by abduction and foreign trial. (The U.S. struck Venezuela and abducted its President at the time, bringing him to trial in the United States. I've just now asked ChatGPT for a research report on his current status, you can read it here[1].)
This led to immediate and definitive regime change, the U.S. now has an excellent relationship with the new President of Venezuela.
It's likely the regime will be denied use of heavy weaponry by the US and Israel. This means any actual popular revolt in some sense could be supported by massive air power.
Naval blockade and the military capacity to simply siege you from afar. Tactically , why America didn’t do more of that is … well who knows. I mean, what if we literally parked our carrier group off of Iraq and sieged them until
A) Put in a government we like
B) Population behave or quality of life will be bad, you see, the simple life is difficult with cruise missiles coming at you
If that’s as effective as sending 250k ground troops (which … actually wasn’t effective), one could make the observation that Trump is a military genius.
Someone please talk sense to me because I cannot believe what I am saying.
Trump seems to have thought it through a bit. Recent post:
>...This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country. We are hearing that many of their IRGC, Military, and other Security and Police Forces, no longer want to fight, and are looking for Immunity from us. As I said last night, “Now they can have Immunity, later they only get Death!” Hopefully, the IRGC and Police will peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots, and work together as a unit to bring back the Country to the Greatness it deserves...
The merge peacefully or die thing may motivate them.
Uh huh, and if you are an Iranian Policeman are you more concerned that the funny orange man yelling on the tv/phone is going to get you, or the mob forming outside your window? They might see it in their personal self interest to stay lock step with the former regime as a better form of self preservation than just surrendering to the population they've been abusing. It's not like the U.S. can offer them any actual immunity lmao.
I'd probably think about which side is going to end up in power and try to get along with whoever that is. The US's demonstrated willingness to kill the leader will probably have an influence there.
“Which side”? What other side is there in Iran? You think there’s some shadow government that can realistically topple the mullahs from within? The only way the Shah comes back is with US boots on the ground, which would be a disaster for other reasons. Until that happens this is just reckless action that makes the regime even more radical than it already is.
There are a lot of well educated people in iran who were unhappy. Iran killed more than 30,000 protesters last month, and there are who knows how many more left.
only time will tell. I give iran much better than average odds this is for the better. Though the average is really bad: bad results would not surprise me.
Few of Iran's neighbours are in a position to do this.
Afghanistan? No. Lacks means, motive, or organisation.
Iraq? Probably not, despite past history of conflict, too much internal strife.
Turkmenistan? Very unlikely.
Pakistan? Has the capability perhaps, but little motive AFAIU.
Azerbaijan, Aremenia, Turkey? Again, unlikely.
The most likely beligerents would be Israel (already involved, but not seeking occupation in all likelihood), and Saudi Arabia. But both those also seem unlikely. Both benefit by a weakened and submissive Iran, but occupation would be an extraordinary undertaking and highly problematic.
Non-bordering countries might be considerations (India likely tops that list) but again the upsides seem slight given costs.
Adding Iranian oil back to the market will lower prices everywhere, including Russia. I'm not so sure the extra-heavy Venezuelan oil will be affected as much.
India used to use Venezuelan crude before the 2019 sanctions [0][1]
India only shifted to using Russian oil in 2022 [2] after Venezuelan [3] and Iranian [4] oil sanctions were enacted, which was when both began increasing engagement with China.
It's a similar story for South Korea [5] and Japan [6].
This helps reduce prices for ONG, as India is shifting back to Venezuelan crude which gives slack which South Korea and Japan can take advantage of, as India, Japan, and South Korea represent 3 of the 5 largest oil consumers globally.
Reminder: extra heavy oil means that there is more processing required to get useful materials out of it, which in turn becomes higher operational cost. So, if Iranian oil entered the market, prices would go down making Venezuelan oil non competitive (I believe the break even price for Venezuelan oil was close to 80$). At this moment the numbers don't add up to make companies go back into Venezuela given the price, uncertainty and past expiriences.
It is too early to know what "Venezuela-style cooperation" looks like. It hasn't even been 6 months since the US kidnapped Maduro; the base case is that Venezuela's leadership does more or less what they were going to do anyway under US diplomatic pressure.
The US actually did something fairly similar in Iran; Trump had Soleimani blown up back in 2020. As we can see from the present situation, it failed to influence Iran in ways that the US thought were acceptable. It is rare for assassinations to have positive geopolitical ramifications.
In Romania it took some 10 years to reach some degree of functional democracy after the fall of communism and the execution on Ceaușescu, who coincidentally, just returned from the crowning of Khamenei, while learning, dictator-to-dictator, how to suppress a revolution: 1006 killed, though most of them not by the initial "Revolutionary Guards" reprisal but in the semi-civil war that followed.
And that in a country/region without Islamic radicals trying to take over. So far, apart from Israel, no Middle East country has managed to function as a democracy. Turkey, the only Muslim majority who has the faintest chance of joining the European Union, only keeps stuff under control due to the army enforcing a secular state, which the liberal patsies in the West can't take, because authoritarianism is bad and diversity in accepting radical Islam creeping into our homeland is our strength.
Also I'm getting downvoted and don't really understand unless I fall back to experience from 30 years ago, after the Romanian revolution and fall of =~ 50 years of dictatorial regime (not that before that was much better, with small interruptions).
At that time (1990), when everything seemed possible and a quick path to democracy and all that it brings (in the imaginary of the poor, oppressed people that we were) along with it, this guy came along: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Ra%C8%9Biu
He ran for president in the first free elections and made some 0.5% or something. I remember him for his words which go along the "it will take 20 years at least, for democracy to settle in Romania". He was right on. Now, 30 years after, we have a strong, frile democracy. Everyone can run for president but not everyone can win, even if they could: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4x2epppego
All things considered, I live a much, much better life now than 30 years ago during the communist dictatorship. Perfect? Far from it and perfection is a moving target. But we're definitely a solid democracy, and also definitely, it's a miracle the first 5-10 years didn't erupt in a full scale civil war. And the despised "revolutionary guards" had some involvement in making sure it didn't happen, so as much as you hate them, you need them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_clashes_of_T%C3%A2rgu_M...
Without doxxing yourself, why were you unable to visit? I have known Persian expats a few times in my life, and they were always able to visit without issue.
If they have said anything against the regime on social media, they would be wise not to visit. I personally know many Persian expats who meet family in Turkey and have been anxious about going back.
Honestly I’m not sure I should say, sorry. Recent years have been worse than normal though, with lots of human rights violations, protests, protestors being tortured/killed, foreign nationals being held in prison/killed, etc.
A friend of mine, EU member, hasn't been able to visit USA because he was cricizing us gov (under BIdden), still not allowed. Ban and censorship isn't specific to Iran, many western nations love it too.
There’s a difference between the ban where they don’t give you visa vs. censorship where they disappear you if you publicize your dissent. One must not conflate.
As another Iranian living the West, I wish he would have been captured alive and stood trial.
He should have answered for every single drop of blood on his hands.
My 21 year old cousin was captured during the Mahsa uprising, she was sent to Evin prison, tortured for months. After she was released, we brought her to Canada and she was hospitalized for over a year. She will never be able to live a normal life again.
Well he’s been slain like the dog that he was, alongside some family members - same as the families of those who were slain and tortured on his theocratic watch. Perhaps this is good evidence that Allah is just, even if Allah’s justice has to be delivered by the hands of the Israelis.
If Israel & the US prevail, Israel will treat Iran as the do their other neighbors, bombing them whenever they feel like it and murdering your relatives there. Take a look at Syria where they installed the head of Al-Qaeda/HTS. The IDF has carried out 600 attacks there since 2024 till present. They have attacked the following areas since 2023: Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Syria & Yemen.
Nope, every action protects Israeli citizens from the Iran terrorist regime. Thanks to Trump Iran will soon be Israel's ally again. Jews & Persians have centuries of mutual respect, the islamists were just a temporary curse
It's less a revolution and more a matter of catching the tide of shifting world powers — and seizing a rare shot at building something other than the last failed experiment.
New Iran, new experiment. You bet Iranians are euphoric right now. Some of the country's brightest intellectuals and political minds are sitting in Evin prison, and if all goes well, they're about to walk out and help shape what comes next.
My dad is worried about the power vacuum, and he's right to be. His biggest concern is the border states and the narrative that ISIS is being funneled into the country to destroy any chance of organized transition. I desperately hope he's wrong. And I don't think he'll ever fully heal — few who lived through the first revolution will.
> It's less a revolution and more a matter of catching the tide of shifting world powers — and seizing a rare shot at building something other than the last failed experiment
The Arab spring wasn't that long ago, was it? We all saw how that turned out, but I suppose hope springs eternal.
> You bet Iranians are euphoric right now
I'm guessing the 50+ dead elementary school kids may put a damper on celebrations a bit.
I think you are speaking about the last Shah's first son: Reza Pahlavi. You can read about his planned policy for Iran here: https://rezapahlavi.org/en
To quote:
> For the transition from the Islamic Republic to a national, secular, and democratic government
One idea is to transition to a secular democracy with a figurehead Shah like a northern European (or Japanese) monarchy. Also, my personal opinion: I think it is fine if they want to incorporate aspects of Islamic religious culture into their government. After all, it is their country. Example: The national parliament and political parties might be required to secular (at least in name), but they may wish to continue to support religious institutions using tax payer money, including masjids (places of prayer) and Islamic monasteries.
An interesting point of comparison: (1) Malaysia isn't really secular (but they may claim it); (2) Singapore is fully secular; (3) Indonesia is secular (or "pan-religious"), but is still largely guided by Islamic relgious culture in their democractic systems.
What he says he's planning and what he will do are not necessarily the same thing. The former Shah's regime was really bad and paved the way for everything that happened afterwards. Between the SAVAK (which tortured and executed quite a few of those in opposition to the Shah regime) and excesses like Persepolis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,500-year_celebration_of_the_... ) there was created an atmosphere in which the mullahs seemed like a viable alternative.
To return to a scion of the man who put that all in place would - in my opinion, of course - be a massive mistake.
Keep in mind that the Shah was a client of the United States and the United Kingdom and that his son isn't doing this out of the goodness of his heart but because he wants what he thinks is his birthright back (he's been pretty vocal about that since his late teens), and that he has been living off wealth stolen from the Iranian people and squirreled out of the country by his father.
Of course he would present this as a transition but just wait until his ass hits that pluche and see if it isn't going to take another revolution to dislodge him.
This comment is weird. The Shah's son != the Shah. Reza Pahlavi left Iran when he was 17. The Shah fell the following year. All of the issues that you raise are perpetrated by his father. His son was not responsible.
> What he says he's planning and what he will do are not necessarily the same thing.
Not much being said here. This is true for anybody anywhere anytime. You might as well write: true == true.
Yeah I'm not sure why people think that the Iranian government never considered any sort of continuity for what happens when their 86 year old ruler dies. It's not like they're ants that are all helpless without their sole supreme leader.
It's reported that Ayatollah Khamenei nominated multiple successors for his role and a number of other military roles, to guard against this policy.
"Last summer during the 12-day war with Israel, Khamenei had named three potential successors should he be killed. Reports earlier this month indicated that Khamenei had named four layers of succession for key government and military jobs, in an effort to ensure regime survival in the face of a US-Israeli attack."
That makes sense because the US/Israel goal is currently likely to murder every person nominated as a successor immediately, too, and it's a completely predictable strategy.
The fact a leader can be assassinated at any moment by the US probably changes the succession plan slightly... I imagine any potential successor is thinking hard about whether it's a job they actually want.
The problem is that you are not dealing with rational people here, you are dealing with extreme religous fanatics. They are either not afraid of dying and becoming martyrs, or they are afraid but dare not show it.
That's certainly how their own propaganda portrays them, however if you see the amount of corruption in that effective kleptostate, you'd understand they care much about life
This is "Our blessed homeland" type of mischaracterisation [1]. Their wanting to continue their state against and oversized enemy is irrational and religious fanaticism, our wanting to continue our state against an oversized for is noble and martyrsome.
I'm not saying either view is right, but reducing the Iranian government to irrational religious fanatics is intellectually uncurious and unempathetic.
You are possibly misunderstanding me. Firstly, I am not saying anything against the Iranian people in general. As far as I understand things, the majority of Iranians are moderate and tolerant, and have a strong desire to have a more liberal approach to the world. The current Iranian government, however, is under the rule of insane fundamentalists (with the emphasis on mental) who think nothing of machine gunning down protesters in the street. Even the majority of Iranian people don't want to be ruled by them. This is fact, not "blessed homeland" mischaracterisation.
I'm British, and whilst I don't think my government is perfect (their stance on digital privacy is insane) they are not murdering people, and we can vote them out at the next election if we want to.
it's quite common that autocratic states have periods of instability due to wars of succession. That's why many devolve into Monarchy like the Kim or Assad dynasties. That's why one of the possible successors was Khamenai's son
In both countries, the educated population likes the religious leader less than the uneducated population. In Germany, most Turkish immigrants are from rather basic backgrounds and most Iranian immigrants are from intellectual backgrounds. It makes a huge difference. In both countries of origin, the population is split much more evenly than what you see abroad. AFAIK, about 50% support the religious strongman in both countries.
I don't live in Germany (nor am I a German national), but I have special cultural interest in the history of Turks immigrating to Germany. I agree: On the whole, overwhelming Turks that immigrate/d to Germany are not highly educated. They come to work in manual labor jobs, not as engineers or medical doctors.
For Turkey, election results. For Iran, no hard numbers, just fuzzy memory about articles I've read. What is clear is that the regime has supporters and not just those who benefit directly / materially.
Of course. It has actually staunched supporters. One cannot kill innocents in the streets by just the promise of money. So there’s religious ideology involved. However the percentage matters a lot here and even 10% of 90 million is a large number.
A lot of the Persian diaspora is actually descendents of people who left in the 80s. There are certainly people who left 20 years ago or less but they're mostly secular as well.
If somebody tells you that they are Persian (I have met a few), you know their opinion right away: they prefer to associate with millennia of Persian history, not the modern (religious) state of Iran.
Can you help me to understand your meaning of "secular" here? My counterpoint that will explain: Many Persian Jews left during/after the revolution and moved to Los Angeles. Many of those families are practicing Jews. I would not describe people like this as "secular"; I would call them "religious". Do I misunderstand your point?
Note that the quote referred to people who left more recently and thus lived most if not all of their lives after the Islamic revolution. Quite often they'll drink beer or have their pizzas with ham just fine, women would not wear a hijab, and so on.
It depends on how well the regime brainwashed its people over the last 50 years. The majority of Iranians haven't any experience of anything else - I think around 55% are under 40 years old.
There's a US born professor Marandi who said in an interview a few weeks ago that the regime had put in place succession plans, including for himself.
I'm hopeful but skeptical that they will change for the better.
Well, in any case, it is a guarantee that Iran will be less of a danger for other nations if the regime falls, and that people inside of the country will suffer - because either pro-Western or any other government is bound to be a lot weaker, and there will be a lot more violence and economic disruption, eventually economic degradation. It should avenge the emigrants, and provide sufficient punishment for those in Iran for enabling this regime in the first place.
Let's not have illusions about it. There is no way to build a sustainable democracy in a country that never had such leanings and is not culturally/religiously predisposed to it, and can't be physically coerced into it with boots on the ground. Achievable goals are punishment, and neutering.
Another Ayatollah is being ushered in. This is no news. Khameni is old and without the missile, he would be dead soon. This sttike is just bonus to galvanize support for Ayatollah. So in a way Trump prolong the regime. And consequence from this: every other middle east countries now starting their nuke program. Good luck.
There would likely be millions of Americans celebrating the murder of their current president, should that happen. It doesn't mean it's reasonable, right, just, or civilized, nor would it indicate that it was a unanimously supported action.
"Just because they're a brutal dictator who murdered thousands of people."
Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of other reasons to be skeptical of American military adventurism, but killing this one guy in particular really isn't one of them.
>Yes our president has only needlessly murdered two innocent US citizens so far
Over a million people in the US died of COVID. It's impossible to know exactly how many of them would've lived if the pandemic started under a president with a saner response than recommending injecting disinfectant, but I'm willing to bet it's more than two.
Maybe the President should have taken that into account when lying publicly about the impacts that he admitted in private conversation, or mocking and undermining expert advice?
Excess death from Covid is a non-trivial topic. Sweden had a very different approach to covid response, and yet had a very average number of excess death. The post-covid investigation provider some clear insight of what was primary causes to excess deaths, and yet very little of those conclusions has became common knowledge.
The primary group that had excess death caused from covid was to people living in homes for elderly care, and the primary cause was a lack of initial process and gear by people who worked at those locations. They were not given enough time to keep up a higher standard of sanitation (often given less than 15 minutes between patients), and protective gear was lacking. They also heavily depended on mass transportation which was a primary location for the virus to spread. A better early response in that sector, including shutdown/restriction of mass transportation would had saved many elderly people from early death.
To note, this had nothing to do with masks, vaccines, or shutdown of schools, which is the main points usually brought up in popular discourse. Sweden would have had one of the lowest number of deaths, with the exact same use of masks/vaccines/shutdowns as it did, as long as the response in elderly care had been done better.
Parent is referring to the same president as the grandparent...
Trump has murdered 2 innocent U.S. citizens so far, and was president when COVID started. Trump's response to COVID was part of why he lost the 2020 election.
By your logic, Khamenei probably hasn't murdered anyone either, right? What a pitiful "argument".
While other Presidents would go as far as putting signs saying "the buck stops here" on the Resolute Desk, the current President's sign would say "the buck stops anywhere but here".
Let's also see what happens with New Mexico's investigation of the Zorro Ranch...
Self defense, my ass. Neither situation posed ANY credible threat to those agents, despite what ICE Barbie got up and said in front of a podium twenty minutes after the event.
The amount of ahistorical histrionics on here is deeply worrying for such an educated population. Your political news needs to change. Shouldn't have to say this but to people like you it's a necessity: not a Trump voter or supporter, just correcting misinformation.
solid and well written response except no one who is even slightly to the right would ever admit that we actually lived under Trump's rule during the COVID. entire right is now anti-vaccines, anti-all but it was the right that locked up our children and kept them out of schools and forced the vaccines on the population (could not go to the fucking gym without the proof of vaccination). so politically we have short-term memory in this country, especially the right politically. this is why the right is celebrating now America bombing the shit out of everyone while in October of 2023 were pitching that we need to vote right "to stop the endless wars."
and murdered a bunch of Venezuelans, a bunch of non-citizens in the USA, collected from American companies and residents billions in tariffs...
How about those Epstein files?
The death toll for the Venezuela raid is between 80 and 100, out of them only 10 were civilians. I feel bad for those 10 civilians but, for the rest, I feel no sympathy, as they were oppressors.
They killed nearly 100 Venezuelans at sea, accusing them of transporting drugs. To date, this regime has provided no evidence to corroborate those claims, in addition to the fact those were extra-judicial executions. We already knew that parts of their justificantions were false, especially the accusations against Venezuela of producing fentanyl. We also know that the US military committed war crimes at least once, when they blew up survivors of an initial bombing. Despite all these, Trump and his goon squad were seemingly quite pleased and joking about it. It's splendidly evident that they assign zero value to lives outside of their goon circle. That extends to every non-whites, political opponents and even women/girls who suffered sexual crimes.
There are zero reasons to assume this regime's victims, except for known tyrants like Maduro and Khameini, to be guilty at all. The regime has zero credibility when it comes to human rights. So those fishermen were most likely innocent victims and not drug smugglers.
In addition to all this, don't assume that this US attacks on Iran were because of his love and benevolence for the Iranian civilians. If it were so, he wouldn't have provoked the Iranian regime to crackdown on the protestors and kill around 30K of them. That farce was unnecessary for the liberation of Iran. Instead, he used them to create an excuse to carry out an attack that they had already planned.
So, as much as I understand the Iranians' joy in seeing the end of Khameini, I strongly suspect that this is just the beginning of another authoritarian regime over there, controlled remotely by the US regime this time, just as we see in Venezuela. Expect everything from human rights violations to mass scale plunder of their natural resources. All that we see now are just ploys to establish a worldwide neocolonial order under a very racist and xenophobic regime operating from the US. Let me remind you of the meme that this orange dictator posted that shows Canada, Venezuela and Greenland as part of the US territory. I don't see this end well for any civilians on this planet, including US citizens.
Most dictators are elected democratically, once. What makes them a dictator is them not relinquishing power. It's too late to protest after a dictator is officially a dictator. They know what will come and are usually prepared with an armed force loyal only to them.
When the sitting president of the United states repeatedly states he would like to have an illegal third term, that elections are fraudulent and must be under his control, continually takes actions testing the limits of what he can get away with in terms of authoritarian behaviour, and only backs down temporarily when he faces massive backlash, you can forgive people for being alarmed.
Add to this list the two children and an adult unnecessary killed by measles in Texas and New Mexico in 2025 after the disinformation campaign aiming to save the government a few dollars.
He sure does act like a dictator, ruling by executive order. He sent the US military to operate on US soil, by executive order... so yes, he is very much a dictator right now.
As an outside observer, I'd say it's by far not as bad as in Russia yet but they're heading towards a similar model. Due process has already been eroded, prosecution is more selective than ever, there are attempts to criminalize harmless minorities, a large government-controlled police force arrests anyone they want to (including journalists), government-critical press is bought, sued, and intimidated, Congress is held in contempt, court orders are ignored, and the FBI works directly on behalf of the president. That being said, they've still got a long way to go.
>> there are attempts to criminalize harmless minorities
> like what?
Among other minorities, they're going very strongly against transgender people and support groups and try to criminalize them. They're obsessed with transgender people for some reason. For example, Executive Order 14168, Executive Order 14183, Executive Order 14187, Executive Order 14190, Executive Order 14201, and by offering cash bounties to the FBI for "...information leading to the identification and arrest of transgender activists promoting 'radical gender ideology'."[Wikipedia] Pam Bondi described such activists as "domestic terrorist groups."[ibid] There is also a large initiative by the Heritage Foundation to make the FBI classify transgender people in general as domestic terrorists and introduce a new classification they call "Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violence and Extremism" (TIVE).
Why they are so particularly violent against transgender people and so obsessed with that topic is a complex matter. I suppose their hatred for this tiny group is based on a mix of religious fanaticism, Elon Musk's direct influence on the US government, extremely insecure masculinity, the need of Fascism for inventing inner enemies (because it doesn't have any stringent ideology), and the fact that this group is so small and insignificant that they cannot possibly defend themselves - unlike the US gay community, who have a large lobby by now and include people like Peter Thiel.
> identification and arrest of transgender _activists_
This isn't chasing trans, it's looking for people who promote 'radical gender ideology'. It's not activists who support trans either. Emphasis on _radical_ and _ideology_.
"Turn over your state's voter information to the Federal Government for ... reasons, or we'll keep up the ICE raids in your cities that have already led to death and injuries" would be one simple example. Oppression... or extortion... or both.
"We want to suppress voters under some false boogeyman of 'illegal voters'. You are refusing to give us data which we need to do this, so instead, we'll keep ICE in your cities who have been shown to have no issues with escalating violence, until you do."
I struggle to believe you cannot connect those dots.
In addition, why would ICE enforcement in a city go away because voter rolls are turned over? Is illegal immigration in Minnesota a problem worthy of active enforcement or not?
In other words, oppression of citizenry to advance the efforts of a government to suppress voting that it dislikes.
The current administration's "we need your voter rolls" has fuck-all to do with "requiring ID to vote".
> Like in literally every country
As a citizen of Great Britain, Australia and now the US, I'm well aware of this.
And it doesn't change the "you can vote without ID in blue states!" from being the absolute bullshit that it is, and again, has nothing to do with why DHS is demanding voter rolls from blue states.
Ask any minority. Lest you think it will be limited to minorities though, ask Alex Pretti, or even ask the NRA what they think about Trump saying that if he didn’t want to get shot, he shouldn’t have been carrying a gun.
In cases where it's feasible to do life in prison, I'm fine with that too. But for dictators, that's typically not realistic (Maduro notwithstanding). Better to kill them rather than let them continue killing others.
I actually oppose the death penalty as a punishment for crimes, but for practical rather than principled reasons: I don't want innocent people (and there's always a chance of innocence) to be killed, and it's more expensive than life in prison anyway.
Part of the reason I, like you, make an exception for world leaders is that it can be cathartic for the people who suffered under them. Of course, it depends on the circumstances. I'm not talking about giving Jimmy Carter the chair for failing to bring down inflation.
My personal view is that most dictators deserve to be stuffed into a suitcase, loaded into a canon, and fired into the side of a climbing wall. I guess that makes me immoral.
That said, for anything aside from a despotic world leader, I'm also against the death penalty.
I'm opposed to the death penalty as well, but this has nothing to do with why I'd prefer despots be left to live in obscurity rather than die a relatively quick, painless, and public death.
Sentence them to live alone and anonymously in an uncomfortable cell in an unremarkable prison without visitation, communication, or news of the outside world.
When is that? When he declares himself the supreme dictator of the US? Or when he nukes another nation because of his racism?
Look around and compare with the Nazis. There is already the demonization and dehumanization of a large demographic group. There are concentration camps and extralegal police forces around already. Just like in Nazi extermination camps, the people who disappear into these ICE facilities are near impossible to trace again. There are already fatalities in there from inhumane living conditions, very bad food, lack of medical care and occasional premeditated murders. Even among the civilians, they see differently abled people as a burden, just as the Nazis did. Just as in Nazi Germany, there is an expansion of military power at the expense of the civilians and flouting of international laws. And just as in Nazi Germany, smart people who can see the writing on the wall are already on a mass exodus.
If you still believe that you're in a democracy, you forgot what happened on Jan 6, 2021. Their ego is too fragile to accept anything except their victory. There is zero chance that the despots will risk getting impeached, trialed and punished by the Congress and face the severe consequences of absolutely horrendous stuff they've committed so far. Even if the public opinion is overwhelmingly hostile towards them, they'll just claim election fraud. They have started efforts for that on multiple fronts with truly bizzare incidents being reported.
And let's talk about the BIG massive elephant in the oval office (besides the obvious one). Trump is NOT the main character, even though I'm sure that he doesn't know that. Look at what their mouthpieces are saying, their dubious billionaire friends are doing and their unelected psycho-minions are pulling off. This isn't just a dictatorship. This is a multi-generational authoritarian regime with clear succession plans. You're all distracted by just the beginning of a long chain of misery. And the beginning isn't even the worst. This is one thing where this regime is unlike the Nazis or the Fascists. Those regimes were controlled by the figure head who formed it - making them vulnerable to decapitation. This one is acting more like a secret society that puts someone in the front to act as their symbolic figure head. Removing the figure head isn't going to end the regime.
You're waiting for an imaginary signal when every alarm around you is screaming at you. The time for 'if' is long gone. That ship sailed a while ago.
That's too low a bar. It hasn't happened yet, but he has already done enormous damage on multiple fronts, some irreversible like the disruption of global economy, trauma of ICE terror victims and the enormous loss of human lives everywhere. You're saying that all those aren't serious enough for you. But for the rest of the world including the entire Americas (NA and SA besides the US), the Caribbean, the middle east, Africa and even the EU, consider the US as a serious threat now.
Well, there are other things you can look at. For one, Khamenei was dictator of a regime that abducts women and recently murdered 10s of thousands of protesters in the streets. I'd reckon most, including Iranians, would not judge the killing of such an individual immoral, unjust or uncivilized.
I don't know whether I'm "kidding" or not, but I might as well post what immediately came to mind as I read this:
Sandra Bland et al.
ICE detainments
The excess 20k (as far as absolute numbers go) road fatalities in the US versus Iran.
And the excess I-have-no-idea-how-many-k who died under Trump's bungled COVID response (and who are going to die from Biden's bungled rail strike response)(and who died under Obama's failed healthcare half-measure)(and who died under Bush's bungled Katrina response and because of his pre-9/11 mismanagement).
Yes, yes, per-capita and all that. I'm not really making a rational argument here, just appealing to the truthiness of noticing that America has its own way of killing its citizens.
I'm not here to defend GW Bush. He did many stupid things. But I don't recall a lot of criticism around his "pre-9/11 mismanagement". Can you offer some specifics? The hunt for Osama Bin Laden started (at least) with Clinton and continued with GW Bush. Unfortunately, neither was able to stop him before the 9/11 attacks.
There was a cottage industry in elaborating the theory that Bush and his administration were unnecessarily caught flat-footed or even knew the attacks were imminent.
He seemed more interested in publicity and exaggerating his own bureaucratic importance than being objective—tendencies the political opposition and media were in no mood to criticize.
Everything that has and will happen due to poor working conditions after he broke the rail strike in 2022. The cause celebre was the East Palestine derailment, but conditions are still unconscionable, and it's hard to conceive of a situation where rail laborers are overworked and under-supported doesn't result in more, and worse, incidents like that one. And then, of course, there are the knock-on environmental and economic effects.
It's not the only objectionable thing Biden's administration is solely responsible for, just the one that came to mind.
They threw the justice and civility when they murdered people on the street. That ship has sailed and the party who's responsible for this escalation is the government.
It’s sad that I can’t be sure which government you are talking about right now, Iran or the USA.
I’m aware the scale of “murdered people on the street” is stark and so you are almost certainly talking about Iran but what ICE is doing (and the clear extrapolation) fits your comment IMHO.
You do know muslims arrived in Spain when they occupied it in the 8th century, right? It's not like they just arrived here recently. Most people in Spain today have muslim ancestry.
Perhaps, but there would be tens/hundreds of millions of people like me who didn't vote for Trump and don't like him, but would be absolutely enraged beyond perhaps anything in this country's history if another country blew up the White House and he was killed.
There are. There are also a lot who are celebrating in iran. In the us people who voted against trump accept he won and still believe his term will end as scheduled.
Exactly. This is just western media trying to project some morality to what was an internationally illegal act ... (and perhaps some in the media hoping against hope this publicity would please the dear, glorious leaders of Israel and the US to end the war).
Honestly, I am disappointed that your comment was downvoted. You raise a good, if uncomfortable, point. I too tire of the well-worn phrase: "XYZ is illegal under international law". To me, interntional law is only useful for medium-sized (population-wise) states and smaller. Once you are a nation with a large population, then you can afford a large military and do whatever you want. Sure, people won't always like what you do, but there is very little they can do to stop it. Look at all the crazy shit that US, China, and Russia has been up to in the last 10 years -- plenty of violations, but few teeth to stop it. Even Israel, which is a very small state, but backed by a global superpower, has done many terrible things in Gaza.
Preventive war (attacking to neutralize a future, non-imminent threat) is considered illegal under modern international law. The UN Charter restricts the use of force to UN Security Council authorization or self-defense against an actual, imminent armed attack, making preventive actions, which target potential future dangers, unlawful.
It also allows any one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, including the US, to unilateraly veto any binding resolution that imposes sanctions for violating said law, with no established rules or even informal expectations that they recuse themselves when conflicts of interest arise.
Israel and Iran are involved in active hostilities for a long time now, direct or by proxies. Furthermore, US and Israel are making the case for a preemptive war with the advent of the Iranian nuclear program (whether you believe it or not, that’s beside the point), and those are legal.
Ok, call it a "special military operation" if you want. A war by any other name would smell just as bad.
And what is Congress - or any other part of the US government - going to do about the pedophile not following rules? Stop him? How? Every potential check and balance has either been defanged or is controlled by his supporters.
Probably nothing. Also it’s not like the Democrats have much moral high ground to stand on here either (considering that Obama did more or less the same thing several times).
But congress can of course stop Trump from doing this and a whole bunch of other stuff. The problem is that it just chose not to and to give up much of its powers to the executive over the years (in practice if not legally) due to partisan reasons..
Why can't you be at war without officially declaring it? We have had lots of wars not declared by congress. Korean War, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, Iraq. This seems like a weird way to think.
Being required legally doesn't change the actual fact of war. Sure it is breaking the law. I don't see how Libya is the one in the long list to set this precedent of illegally non-declared war.
That's very moving! I can't say many international developments have filled me with optimism the past couple years. I want so badly for this to pan out for Iranians.
Badly? You seem a little obsessed. The few anti-regime Iranians (who live in Iran) I know do not want to get bombed into freedom & democracy. The Western hubris despite Iraq and Afghanistan is back in full force, I see.
If you personally know Iranians (Persian, Azeri, Armenian, Kurds, Assyrian, Arab, Baloch, Tajik, Afghan etc) living in Iran or if you have connection with the land, that's fine. Otherwise, I find this kind of "obsession" a bit disturbing to the point of justifying actions of unhinged leaders in a very avoidable, unpopular, & potentially devastating war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_savior
All I see is cameras panning around buildings, no humans in sight, and audio of cheering people. Not saying it's fake, but in the age of AI faking such a video is child's play.
Too low signal-to-noise ratio for me to acknowledge any of this. We'll see how it will pan out for the Iranian people in due time.
If I were in their shoes, I would be celebrating, too. But this is complicated. If they and their loved ones are already outside the country, they are not directly imperiled by the power vacuum. So the upside is maybe their homeland becomes hospitable again, but the downside is basically that it remains inhospitable.
I'm not saying that the diaspora doesn't care about the risks or have empathy for those that remain in Iran. I'm sure there are also many people who are deeply concerned. Just that being an emigre changes things.
There were allegedly 7 US personnel injured during the Maduro raid.
Decapitation airstrikes have been possible for decades. I suppose now we find out whether that was a good idea or not. Slightly surprised the Iran strike worked, if you remember the hunts for Saddam and Bin Laden.
> if you remember the hunts for Saddam and Bin Laden.
We didn't have Project Maven 25 years ago, and our leadership in the early 2000s were committed to boots-on-the-ground nation-building due to the afterglow of the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia.
The dispora means little though, the people in the country count as they live 365 days there without the convenient ability to comment from a distance and they are ones who would have to die for a turnover.
There are similar scenes in all Iranian cities. Literally the first morning video we could see Saturday morning before the internet shutdown, were ladies on their balcony jumping of joy that they had struck Khamenei's neighbourhood.
Do enjoy the moment while it lasts. Because the next ruler will be an American stooge. This isn't going anywhere, like the other "revolutions" in the middle east.
> Because the next ruler will be an American stooge.
And if that's the case, do you think that American stooge shall do worse than Khamenei who ordered his islamist guards to slaughter 30 000+ unarmed iranian protesters in a matter of days?
What can be worse than religious extremist sending their fanatics into hospitals to finish the wounded?
I'm in the EU and I see cars with iranian flags honking. Someone posted a video or iranians celebrating: not bearded men and veiled women (which is a sign of religious extremism: there are many muslims that do not have the islamist beard and many muslim women who aren't veiled) but regular people, celebrating.
I don't doubt that many bearded men and veiled women are very sad today.
But I side with the free iranians in exile who are celebrating what may be the end of four decades of sharia law ruling their country.
> And if that's the case, do you think that American stooge shall do worse than Khamenei who ordered his islamist guards to slaughter 30 000+ unarmed iranian protesters in a matter of days?
American seemed to have been fine with 30k people disappearing in Argentina:
> What kind of all sorts of bad did they do in the past while they ruled a country? Have they ever usurped throne for 36 years?
To take the second quest first, and focus on Iran since it's the topic du jour: you mean like how the shah usurped power from the legislature with US/UK help and ruled for 38 years?
This has nothing comparable with "other revolutions" in the middle east, it's quite the opposite in fact: a non-islamist population held under the tyranny of islamist leaders.
What's wrong about it? This is the goal - like in Syria: neuter the country by bringing in a pro-American government that will ensure country will stay weak and irrelevant, in exchange for letting it terrorise locals as they please.
Syria was an interesting one for me... Not in the typical american modus-operandi of destroying countries that are not american banana republics, but in actually supporting Al-Qaeda there...
US is full of people who've lost family members, friends, their own limbs, have PTSD and worse from when they fought Al-Qaeda... and now their own politicians are shaking hands and taking photos with them.
Then another shooting spree will happen and the media will be asking "what radicalized him?"..
The son of a Shah that was deposed by mass protests by well-educated students and intellectuals during the Islamic Revolution, who are now in their 60s.
It's moot anyways since the fundamentalist side of the coalition purged the leftwing intellectuals shortly after the latter had served the purpose of toppling the Shah.
They're not going to have a normal country. The United States under Trump isn't interested in a democratic Iran. They want a dictator they can control.
I think you’re right that it would be a puppet state under trump. But in three years it will be a puppet state under somebody else! And maybe that somebody would relinquish the strings.
Not disagreeing with you, but US-controlled dictators have better track record of not killing thousands of protesters or just random people in own populations.
Not perfect option, but still is an improvement even from your positiom.
Agree. See also military dictatorships in South Korea and Taiwan. Many terrible years and brutal killings by the gov't. Both gov'ts were strongly supported by the US.
Wow, I did not expect this type of reply. I reject it. In South Korea, there was incredible civil violence between protesters and police. I'm talking about stolen automatic weapons by protesters, then used against the police after decades of unchecked violence by the police against protesters. In hindsight, it looks like a low grade civil war. It was brutally hard and violent for South Korean to gain their democracy. (When you listen to South Korean boomers talk about how much their treasure and defend their new-found democracy, it will bring tears to your eyes. They really lived the violence and found democracy.) Taiwan needed the last dictator to die. Once his son took over, he quickly devised a plan to transition to an authentic democracy. (They had rigged election for years.) Still, they had 40 years of the "White Terror" where secret police kidnapped and murdered thousands of protesters.
Related: Indonesia also had a very violent transition into democracy, but the old dictators didn't kill as many innocent people as Taiwan or South Korea.
As I understand, the US had very little influence during the democracy transition of these three nations. Regarding Taiwan, the US provided security gurantees against mainland China, but did not interfere with the gov't. South Korea, similar security guarantee against the "Kimdom". Again, did not interfere with the gov't. Indonesia: Provided no security guarantee and did not interfere with the gov't.
I can only see the US insistence on many bad foreign decisions in the name of democracy done in the Middle East by multiple administrations, that without much knowledge of the situation in East Asia, I venture to guess it is not a coincidence that US allies turned into democracies
I also am not sure about Indonesia as an example of a US ally, I don't think it is similar to the other two
Effectively both SK and Taiwan were completely dependent on US for defense, I doubt this had no bearing
At some point you have to decide: if my country is held back by a brutal dictatorial regime where civilians can't hope to topple it, is there anything else to do other than get external help?
Libya is not a real country in a historical sense. It’s a bunch of tribes, Kadaffi was from one of the tribes that subjugated others. In Iraq it was a Sunni minority that rules over Shiite majority, and other minorities like the Kurds. In Syria one minority (alawiites) rules over others by force.
Also, these countries were not formed by themselves, but rather through deals with France and/or Britain.
Iran, while also diverse, has a thousands of years long history. Persians still see themselves as continuation of Persian peoples from the empire times, etc.
So, it is not very correct to compare it one to one.
Iraqis also see themselves as a continuation of Mesopotamian people, that was quite literally what Iraqi Baathist thought was centered around and used as the successful unification strategy. That's quite literally the justification the Baathists used to try 'reclaim' both Khuzestan and Kuwait. You quite literally couldn't be more wrong in how you categorize Baathist Iraq.
Iran has a much worse relationship with its minorities, where if you are of the wrong faith then you literally face state-sanctioned laws preventing you studying or working. In fact, things in Iraq became much worse for minorities after the overthrowal due to the adoption of Iranian cultural practices like Abrahamic elitism.
The cherry on top of all of this is that you probably don't realize that Persians in Iran only make up 60% of the country. You have Iranians who wholly reject Persian ancestry (Azeris, Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds...) but you don't even account for them, despite Iran having, what, three? entirely separate ethnic-based separatist insurgencies active across the country LOL
> That's quite literally the justification the Baathists used to try 'reclaim' both Khuzestan and Kuwait. You quite literally couldn't be more wrong in how you categorize Baathist Iraq.
Baathism is literally pan-arabism! Arabism as in Arab. Do you really think that making pan-arabism movement under the sauce of Babylonian legacy is going to work on Kurds and others? Of course not. Same applies to Syria that had their own flavor of pan-arabist party that kept Asad in power. Only recently, after the summer 2025 war with Israel Islamic Republic tried to connect itself to its Persian past, but of course it is too late for that.
> Iran has a much worse relationship with its minorities, where if you are of the wrong faith then you literally face state-sanctioned laws preventing you studying or working.
I am not sure how the practices of the Islamic Republic related to the current mood of the Iranians that oppose it.
> In fact, things in Iraq became much worse for minorities after the overthrowal due to the adoption of Iranian cultural practices like Abrahamic elitism.
You mean that Islamic Republic exported its own flawed ideology on the neighboring states through funding of various non-state actors? Wow.
> The cherry on top of all of this is that you probably don't realize that Persians in Iran only make up 60% of the country. You have Iranians who wholly reject Persian ancestry (Azeris, Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds...) but you don't even account for them, despite Iran having, what, three? entirely separate ethnic-based separatist insurgencies active across the country LOL
I think you conflate anti-regime insurgency vs. anti-persian one.
At no point in life I would wish for my fellow citizens to get killed by a foreign power. I’m already in my mid-40s, I’ve spent a day or two out in the streets, protesting (granted, not against governments that the West labels as dictatorial), but at no point has that option crossed my mind. More on point, I would regard the people thinking like that as traitors, because that’s what they are by definition, wishing for your fellow citizens to get killed by a foreign Power so that your political views can prevail is the very definition of treason to one’s people and nation.
> your fellow citizens to get killed by a foreign Power so that your political views can prevail
What does the assassination of DICTATORS have to do with all of this? Dictatorship is less about citizenship and more about a form of slavery. Resisting the killing of a dictator in any way, regardless of who is trying to kill him or why, is treason to a nation.
Iran is not an Arab country? Answering a more general question - all countries of former Yugoslavia are better after US intervention. Some Serbs would not agree, but it's on them
The absolute state of American public education...
No, Iran is not an Arab country! Arabic is a minority language in Iran, and Arabs are an ethnic minority there. Linguistically, culturally and even genetically, they aren't Arabs! Would you call Quebec an Anglo province?
It's not a deflection, it's an example of an intervention having a positive effect. I see no reason for Iran following Arabic rather than Balkan scenario - it's a totally different culture - much more modernised and much more secular
What story? Iraq is ruled by ISIS and Syria is ruled by a dude who's goal was to institute Sharia or ISIS v2. Those were both countries in the region where US intervention toppled a dictator and now is how it is.
Any country can be compared to any country and Arab countries are the geographically nearest ones to compare. It's miles more strange to compare it to the Balkans.
Oh, please. If you think the majority of all Iranians are in favor of US-Israeli bombings of their home country, you're seriously smoking some potent propaganda.
Most Iranians outside Iran fled from the current regimes terror, they are happy with this. My country took in a lot of Iranians when the current regime took over in the 70s and those are very happy about this. They are out on the street celebrating the attacks on Iranian leaders, not protesting against them.
That's the implication of "At some point you have to decide: if my country ..." since "you" can't refer to anyone other than the Iranians. They have not "decided" to get bombed by Zionists.
I'm not saying the Ayatollah wasn't a vile criminal, but it's always innocents on the ground who face the brunt of war.
I hope the citizens of Iran can have a peaceful transition and chart a better path for their country, but every single one of America's previous forced regime changes in the region (and across the world) has shown otherwise.
Nobody is happy about killing civilians. But Khamenei did more than that every day he was alive. Personally I feel there is some amount of immediate civilian casualty that is worth putting a stop to continuous suffering.
It's easy to excuse the collateral damage of people you will never meet, just remember that this reasoning has unleashed hell on Earth for countless innocent people, many kids, and it makes you sound like a ghoul.
Hope to hell that you or anyone you care about isn't on the receiving end of such sentiments.
It's not "easy" but it remains true. We can play the moral-decision game and I'll ask you whether killing one child is justified to save 5,000,000. If you answer "yes" then from that point it's just about agreeing on numbers.
What is the alternative you propose? Just to give a hypothetical-but-realistic example, let’s presume that khamenei’s continued existence results in 100 civilian deaths per day. Under that assumption, what one-time cost would you accept to end his life?
Whether or not one would accept deaths of civilians to get rid of Khamenei, I don't think anyone should accept a school full of children being blown up for no obvious reason. If there was somehow a reason why Khameni could not have killed without attacking that school, then those reasons should be plainly spelled out and evidence presented. As things stand with the limited information we have now, it just looks like a war crime with no strategic upside.
I remember that the alternative has also unleashed hell on Earth for countless innocent people.
At some point, you have to take the path that offers at least some hope for the future. To turn into something that has lost all hope - there is no fixing that.
While this is a minor point; whether or not it was an Iranian misfire doesn't move the moral responsibility away from the invaders. Unless the IRGC took advantage of the chaos to purposefully hit the school (seems unlikely) then the entire situation was teed up by the external aggression and can still pretty reasonably be blamed on them.
If you try to shield your armed forces using children, and then accidentally kill them because you used them as a shield, you can't blame someone else.
... I'm just going of Wikipedia here but it seems to have been a standard small city [0]. Attempting to educate Iranians in Iranian cities isn't really trying to shield armed forces. Is the expectation here that Iran should send their students out into the wilderness to make it more politically convenient for US/Israeli to launch unannounced strikes on them?
Apart from the fact that Iran is a bad place to be right now it actually looks like a pleasant city to visit. Sounds like they have lots of fruit, warm weather and have some interesting history vis a vis the Mongols. Very middle eastern.
Instead of looking at the entire city, just look at the google maps data for proximity of their armed forces to their school.
Look, maybe it was a school specifically for the children of army personnel, but that's a long shot. From the geolocation data, the school was right at their missile launch site.
They had choices.
Locate the school or the launch site elsewhere, for one.
Evacuate the school before they tried to launch munitions, for another.
Why does that seem unlikely? It makes people argue that the price is not worth it. After killing thousands of protesters you think they would shy away from killing some dozens of kids?
Weird that you're so delighted to shift the blame for the tragedy of children being blown up in school, even more so that you're relying on unsubstantiated claims to do it.
Since you know more than the rest of the world about this, please update Wikipedia with a reliable source for your claim as has already been requested by admins here[1].
> Weird that you're so delighted to shift the blame for the tragedy of children being blown up in school, even more so that you're relying on unsubstantiated claims to do it.
Where in my message does it seem that I am delighted?
No doubt the truth will eventually come out, what I have seen is that the school was sited unusually close to an Iran launch site.
You can judge me all you want for "being delighted", whatever the hell that means, but I'm not advocating that schools be used as shields for rocket launchers, am I?
Okay, I get it - for you this is a laughing matter; your goal is something other than discussion.
But I gotta know - you are talking about a regime that had no problem gunning down thousands of innocent citizens in the streets just a month ago, why are you so sure that they won't use other innocents as shields for their soldiers?
I'm not sure that Iranians in Berlin holding signs written in English are necessarily widely representative, nor entirely organic. Here's a comparable scene of what's going on in Iran for mourners of Ali Khamenei: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QQMGijEMJfc
I'm not saying this to be argumentative. I do not know what the "real" internal state of is in Iran in terms of support/opposition for their leadership, and I don't think there is anyway to find out this information. Our media will lie, and so will theirs. And people themselves will also lie, and not even necessarily intentionally. Imagine polling Americans (let alone expats long since removed from America) on what percent of Americans they think support Trump without knowledge of polls/votes to inform them.
As a result I think most of all media along these lines is much more likely to mislead rather than inform.
People should never treat the diaspora as representative of any population other than the diaspora.
This issue comes up with Cuba a lot. A lot of Cuban-Americans hate Castro. Why? Because they were the upper-middle class to wealthy under Batista.
This history becomes almost comically distorted. Senator Ted Cruz said that he hates communists because his father was tortured by... Batista [1].
So let me give you an example of the Iranian/Persian diaspora. In 2024 in particular we had a lot of protests against Israel's genocide in Gaza and American support for it. Many were on college campuses. One was on UCLA.
In April 2024, masked counterprotesters attacked the protesters and the police stood idly by and let it happen. The police later then used this violence as a reason to crack down on the protesters. So who were these counter-protesters? Persian diaspora [2].
Anyone celebrating this knows nothing about history and honestly nothing about Iran.
First, Khamenei isn't a singular autocrat like Basheer al-Asaad or Saddam Hussein. No decapitation strike is going to result in regime change. Did you notice the Iranian response change after Khamenei's death? No. Because there isn't one. The religious governmental institutions still exist. A temporary successor was appointed. The IRGC continues as is. Iran is a functioning state that will continue without its Supreme Leader.
Second, let's just say that the Iranian government does fall apart. That's going to be incredibly bad for Iranians as you'll either get a fail-state like Libya, Syria or Somalia (which is what Israel wants) or you'll simply get an American puppet.
Do you know who the American puppet in Syria is? Ahmed al-Sharaa, formerly an al-Qaeda leader. Do you think that's going to end well? Saddam Hussein was an American puppet. Until he wasn't. The former Shah. Augusto Pinochet. That's who you get when the US installs a puppet regime.
Maybe you think Iran will get a functioning democracy. They had one until the US overthrew it in 1953.
Do you really think the US cares about Iranians? Like at all? What exactly is being celebrated here?
"That's going to be incredibly bad for Iranians as you'll either get a fail-state like Libya, Syria or Somalia (which is what Israel wants) or you'll simply get an American puppet."
Iran is one of the oldest continuing political units in the world, clocking over 2500 years as an organized state.
I think you seriously underestimate the capabilities and know-how of the Iranians by expecting them to behave the same way as pre-state tribal polities like Somalia.
Why do you make comparisons to Libya or Somalia then, if you don't believe that this is going to happen. The defining characteristic of failed states is that central control crumbles and various local warlords step into the void.
Actually I do this a lot, I cite specific examples a, b to indicate a much more general category C that I have in mind. It's the 21st century and plausible that new types of failure-states unlike those seen historically will happen. So it's not necessarily a contradiction the other commenter had.
Would create a market for aged accounts (or give a shot in the arm to the existing market). I think the problem is reach - if a site has reach, it's going to attract gamification. The more trustworthy the site is considered (for example, by having a many-hoops sign-up process), the bigger a target for gamification it will be.
Agreed, it's a propaganda bot. But with Khamenei dead and Iran terrorist gov down we might have less of those paid actors here and everywhere on internet because their source of income will be gone
"Iran terrorist gov" so unserious. Yesterday's terrorist is today's US appointed leader. See: Syria. From US bounty to US approved. You can just as easily see Israel as the terrorist government attacking Iran unprovoked. They have been claiming Iran has been 2 weeks away from a nuke for decades.
I'm not picking a side, just saying people often create throw-away accounts for political discussions. But yeah an account can be anything. One never knows the underlying agenda people truly have.
My evil agenda is to encourage people to watch every season of Futurama.
I am old enough. Iraq is not perfect today but so much better than it was. Go talk to Iraqis and see for yourself.
It costs us some time, money and lives to get to this point. But Saddam (a tyrant who killed his own kind in masses with gas and started wars with neighbors) staying in power would have been way worse for the wider region.
I think the point being made is that there's wider fallout than just what's directly affected. If you go to Syria and ask Syrians how they feel about the affects on the wider region they might not so readily agree. Or even ask Iraqis in the border region who lived through ISIS rule.
Iraqi path to democracy isn't really that different from everyone else's.
People tend to forget that various extant democracies, including European ones,
mostly didn't precipitate out of thin air by everyone deciding to just be nice to one another. Many now-democratic countries had to fight a war of independence or a civil war, often with involvement of third parties, to get there.
France took about 80 years of violent upheavals from 1789 to 1871 to actually become a democratic republic for good. Germany was even worse. Unification of Italy was a long bloody mess. Poland barely survived the 20th century. Even Swiss direct democracy is an aftermath of a civil war, though in their case, it was a small one.
Democracy isn't an application that people just install and it starts working. It usually takes decades for it to take roots, as people have to slowly abandon the idea that it is just easier to massacre their opponents.
Even the US came to be after a war of independence with a major external factor on their side (the French) and only ended slavery through a nasty civil war.
Iraq isn't really an outlier in that context and Iran wouldn't probably be either.
> a tyrant who killed his own kind in masses with gas and started wars with neighbors
The US sent Saddam the Bell helicopters to gas the Kurds. US military aid increased after that happened.
The war with a neighbor was with Iran - the country the US just attacked, and which the US encouraged Iraq to fight. That's why Rumsfwld was over there shaking Saddam's hand.
Iraq was ruled by a sociopath that used chemical weapons against his own citizens. I didn’t agree with the invasion, but there is no doubt Iraq is better off today than it would have been without U.S. involvement.
That's an absurd statement. No doubt? Saddam would be pushing 90 now, odds are he would be dead anyway and who knows how that chain of events would have gone.
And you frequently fly over to Iraq and explain that to the people there right? They nod in agreement with you. “We had to bomb and occupy your country and kill your citizens just like Saddam did remember? Now you’re better off after our failed occupation left your country. We’ll bomb you anytime; sure it costs us money is and the reason neither of our countries have healthcare but who needs healthcare when you have bombs and propaganda. You’re welcome.”
shrug i developed a hobby of visiting countries that are in the news a lot and meeting the locals and talking about their day to day lives. Iraq, Israel/Palestine, North Korea, Venezuela, Saudi, Russia, etc.
I didnt exactly ask Iraqis that question directly and war certainly wasnt the only bad thing in their lives. e.g. a lot of guys would moan that they want to get married but "cant afford it".
but anyways OP's comment set my bullshit-o-meter spinning so fast i got vertigo.
I agree. The military component was a resounding success. The "de-Baathification" was a disaster and gets lumped into the decapitation of Sadaam's regime.
We'll never know the counterfactual, but it seems likely that the banning from public life everyone with ties to the current government was a large contributor to the collapse of the country and rise of the terrorist groups.
Always convenient to drop bombs and say “it would have been worse”. With absolutely no proof of that. It’s the stupidest American talking point and I despise other Americans who use that propaganda.
In the first gulf war, Bush Sr. refused to occupy the country. He viewed it as too difficult and too expensive. In the second gulf war, Bush Jr. declared victory from the deck of an aircraft carrier, occupied the country, hunted and executed its leader, and then opened the U.S. treasury to deal with the aftermath. Thousands of Americans died. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's died. The occupation was long and difficult, but its end was still premature and left a power vacuum that ISIS raged into, causing even more destruction. Perhaps Iraqi's can say they're better off today than under Hussein, but a terrible cost was paid. Most of the blood was Iraqi, but most of the treasure was American.
The financial drain on the U.S. was extreme enough to expose the world's preeminent superpower as being unable to bring the occupation of a somewhat backwards and minor dictatorship to a successful conclusion. Iraq is not a big country, in either population or area, but it was still too much for the U.S. to control, even with willing allies. This failure made the world realize there were severe limits to what the U.S. can do. Sure, it might defeat the military of a middle or even major power, but occupy and control it? Fat chance!
In the days ahead, the U.S. military is going to bomb anything that moves and looks like it might shoot back, as well as a lot of infrastructure and probably a decent number of civilian targets by mistake (or design). Trump has framed this invasion as being directed towards eliminating Iran's nuclear program, so expect a lot of facilities in close proximity to civilians (and many of those civilians) to be vaporized.
If Trump is listening to his generals even slightly, he will not try to occupy the country. He'll declare victory and move on to whatever outrage is next to maintain his "Flood the zone" strategy and keep the Epstein heat from finally catching up with him. If that's all he does, this will be another war like Bush Sr.'s. Expensive, but not ruinously so. U.S. deaths will be in the hundreds and not the thousands. Iran will most likely fall into the hands of another mullah or descend into chaos, becoming a long-term security quagmire that will probably continue to bleed the U.S. for decades to come. Even if democracy does take root in Iran, it likely won't be a democracy that's friendly to the U.S..
If Trump isn't listening to his generals (who reportedly advised against the invasion to begin with), he might try to occupy Iran. Iran has double the population and four times the land area as Iraq. Unlike Bush Jr., Trump has not even tried to stitch together a coalition to share the costs. It's unlikely that many countries would be dumb enough to sign on now. There's no NATO article 5 pretext to drag in other NATO countries. There isn't even a falsified pretext like WMD's to quiet the howling in the UN. Israel isn't the kind of help the U.S. needs because the U.S. pays most of Israel's military bills to begin with. In short, if Iraq strained the U.S.'s finances close to the breaking point, Iran will ruin them completely. There's absolutely no way the U.S. can afford to occupy Iran.
Even if Trump cuts and runs, this war will ensure American's can't afford socialized medicine for another generation.
Not a long time ago, the previous time when USA had bombed Iran, Trump claimed to have destroyed completely anything that Iran could use to make nuclear weapons.
It would be weird (or not?) to contradict himself now by claiming that they were able to make nuclear weapons.
I avoid listening to the current POTUS as it’s hard to make sense of his illogic, but his video said, “ they attempted to rebuild their nuclear program and to continue developing long-range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas and could soon reach the American homeland.”
Iranian regime-allied forces were a big part of why Iraq was such a quagmire.
The balance of power in the Middle East is shifting from the Sunni~Shia schism that it once was.
Most of the remaining powers are willing to actually engage in diplomacy with Israel & prefer secular groups to Islamist groups.
There's still personality conflicts, such as the one growing between the heads of Saudi Arabia & the UAE, but the general trend seems to be very promising.
Iraq was a quagmire because the US attacked them for no reason at all other than to further Israel's interests. We have no business in the Middle East. Period.
We went into Iraq because we had to station troops in Saudi Arabia in order to defend them against Iraq, and having US troops in 'the holy land' led to Osama Bin Laden leading to 9-11. People say the two aren't connected but if you learn the context at the time they were, just not in the basic way people want to understand situations.
A part, but not the only part. Factions like AQI and later ISIL/ISIS/IS were ideological enemies to both the US and Iran and its Shia militas. The invasion, regime change, and occupation in Iraq would have caused a mess even with a US-aligned regime in Iran.
Nah, if anything the Islamist groups are biding their time, waiting for the internationally-supported governments to lose the will to carry on before striking.
The governments, yes, but not the general population necessarily. And the governments can't survive without oil revenue and/or external support, so they'll be losing in the long run.
> Removing Saddam in itself was good but what it did the wider region was not good.
I believe this is the legacy of leaders like Saddam. They build a very messy future for their countries. Whenever such a leader is gone, somebody has to take over power. Dictators tend to concentrate as much power in their hands as possible. Forced removal of such a leader might accelerate and / or destabilize power transition. Which might end up in a very messy scenario.
Absolute power transition worked well with monarchy in the past, cause everybody knew who would be the next guy, there were rules and procedures. With dictatorship often times there are no rules. So power transition might turn into a complete chaos even with a natural death of a dictator.
That, combined with extreme short-termism and unbridled optimism. All three probably having a similar root cause.
And we see this across the board. A canonical one that remains prevalent: "If only people would've come out and voted for Kamala in 2024, we wouldn't be in this mess". But then if you follow the pattern, with the candidate she was and what she would've done, this would've secured an ultra-MAGA victory in 2028 (and likely already by 2026 midterms). One more extreme, more devious, more intelligent from the get-go than the current one. People like to cling to "but you don't know that for sure", which is true, but we do know that with about 90% certainty. Betting on 10% is an awful idea and is indeed what has gotten you to where you're at.
It's the single biggest reason for the huge power shift from the US to China. Almost anything that China does is based on long-term consequences. Pain today for gain over time. Of course there are counterexamples, but by and large this holds.
In this case, sure, many Iranians will be happy for a day - especially overseas. So that's what people focus on. People have entirely lost the ability to think realistically in years. Of course part of this is biological, we're monkeys. But there are many reasons to believe that this ability has greatly declined over the last 50 years, particularly in the West and especially in the US.
> Almost anything that China does is based on long-term consequences.
I'm not sure that's the case with Xi. Well, I wouldn't be surprised if he tries, but as far as I can tell from a distance, his value system produces unwise decisions long-term. 10+ years of Xi have slowed economic growth, produced antagonism diplomatically, I'm not sure that the Belt and Road is currently seen favorably. He hasn't figured out a way for local governments to be solvent without selling property, nor has he resolved the shadow debt. I think his policy of shutting down Shanghai and other zero-Covid polices destroyed the people's confidence in the CCP as steward of economic growth, as it became obvious that the government can just arbitrarily kill your business and imprison you in your own home or Covid center. I think that removing your top military leaders--who are the only ones with any actual combat experience--is helpful for a successful occupation of Taiwan. Certainly what Xi did with Hong Kong made peaceful re-unification with Taiwan very unlikely.
One would think on HN there would be sophisticated grasp of complex systems than Reddit or what have you, so either there are just as many politically dogmatic/biased people in tech, or political threads are dominated by non-tech users, or what?
Iraq right now is in roughly the same position as it was when Saddam Hussein was there but in the meantime a few million people died and the country went through a pretty traumatic period.
Estimates put the number of people killed due to the American invasion between half a million and a million. Saddam's brutality paled in comparison to the carnage the US invasion caused.
During the years which followed after the invasion, lots did, yes. This is first hand account btw. Now? I'm not sure as the country has mostly stablised.
is the civilian population being gassed in Iraq now? how about a brutal repressive regime backed by a secret police that tortured and disappeared thousands? is Iraq really the same as it was under Saddam?!!?!?!?!?!??!?!
ISIS also broke out of countries like Syria, which nobody messed with until after their civil war and the ISIS takeover. Which is to say that the problem isn’t the Iraq war - but Islam. It’s literally called ISIS - and you blame the US for it?
Everything is linked, Syrian civil War didn't happen out of nowhere.
There was an environment of instability in middle east, some is inherent to these countries, but a big part is because another cointry came in 2003 and decided to make of Irak a failed country by bombing all their infrastructures.
Iraq is not the victim here, my friend. Iraq has willingly implicated itself in multiple wars. Unfortunately for Iraq, it was one war too many. Iraq didn't back down, despite having alternatives. Iraq could've negotiated its way out of a war throughout the entire time, but chose violence instead.
I'm tired of people dunking on the west.
Iraq today is likely a better place to live in than Iraq under Saddam. That's thanks to a painful and costly intervention. Muslims continue messing it up for everybody everywhere, the way they always did, regardless of geography or circumstances, under any pretence and excuse under the sun. West gets blamed for it no matter what. Rinse and repeat. It's getting old.
Well, Iran is majority muslim. If somehow you've concluded that muslims are simply fundamentally violent and incapable of stable governance and that is the reason why the occupation of iraq failed then...
But I personally think that the reasons why you see violent insurgency after a regime change and foreign occupation is a little more universal to humans than specific to islam.
When Saddam Hussein was removed, the result was that basically all Iraqi Christians who hadn't fled were murdered. There are probably as many Iraqi Christians in the EU as there are in Iraq now.
Parts of Iraq are much better off, like Kurdistan. Other parts were utterly devastated by our operations, insurgency, sectarian violence, ISIS, and so on. Some people had religious freedom and now live in areas under theocratic control.
We created Saddam Hussein. He was our foil against Iran. We propped up a war that killed over a million Iraqis and Iranians in the 1980s for no net strategic result.
And why did we want to punish Iran? Because the fundamentalist regime overthrew our puppet (the Shah).
And how did the Shah come to be a dictator, essentially? Because we overthrew the liberal democracy Iran had in 1953 at the behest of the british because Iran had wanted to control their own oil and BP wasn't happy.
Even the fundamentalist regime in Iran is kind of America's fault. Saddam Hussein expelled Khomenei from Iraq in 1978 (IIRC) because when it became clear that Iran was lost, we wanted the fundamentalists to take over instead of the communists because we didn't want Iran to fall into the Soviet sphere of influence.
It's also a pretty similar story with Osama bin Laden.
As payback for Soviet support for North Vietnam, we supplied arms to the rebels in Afghanistan after the USSR invaded. Supplying Stinger SAMs to the mujahadeen was particularly devastating and these included Osama bin Laden.
Isn't it weird that all this foreign interference always go badly and all these former puppets somehow end up becoming huge problems for us later? When will we learn, exactly?
It's also worth noting that there was a strong desire in American policy circles to overthrow Saddam well before 9/11. 9/11 and the fake WMD story just became the excuse. For example, in 1998 a bunch of people sent a letter to then President Bill Clinton urging him to invade Iraq and topple Saddam [1]. Just look at the signatories on that letter and what part they played in the War on Terror.
It's because we do these things not for American interests, but for the interests of a small country that has captured our political establishment through campaign finance and blackmail.
Taking out Saddam allowed the Taliban to get right back to the raping of the Opium farmers wives and children. Not saying I approved of Saddam but I did enjoy the way he had originally curtailed the risk to his Opium revenue.
I work with and know a lot of Shia (non-Iranian) Muslims and listening to them talk about this assassination I'm convinced that the likelihood of attempted terror attacks against the US has increased significantly.
The non-Iranian part is key. Millions of muslims around the world viewed the Iranian theocracy as the only power in the world fighting for Islam. They are devastated.
The most interesting thing to me is that he was apparently assassinated while working at his office. It's not like the US/Israeli actions were a secret, yet he seemingly made no effort to secure himself. It's hard not to see this as an intentional martyrdom. So it will be interesting to see whether his calculations were correct, or whether the US' were.
The one thing I think must be true is that I can't imagine an 86 year old cleric was an especially effective leader. So assassinating him is quite the gamble. I'd love to know what the military's chatbots thought about this idea.
This Prophet believed/taught that school girls should be raped before they are executed for not wearing hats so that they can't get into heaven (believing God would judge a child for being raped).
Should a believer/teacher of such things even be called a prophet? Old boy was straight trash with a horrific morality.
I'd love to see a link to them. My cursory googles aren't finding it.
Look, not trying to defend the guy, but I don't like this sort of hyperbole. People have the wrong view on what Iran is like. It's ran by religious fundamentalists, which is bad, but it's also probably one of the more progressive muslim theocracies in the region. People tend to mix up shit that Saudi Arabia does with Iran.
In particular, Iran has a very progressive view on education. They have one of the best educated populations in the middle east (men and women).
The only one attributing a similar quote to khamenei is an x user. The rest appear to document that an exiranian official saying that counter revolutionary women sentenced to death are raped.
I hope you can see how these are pretty different things.
"Based on our findings, some of the various forms of sexual torture, such as the rape of virgin girls prior to their execution, were conducted in a systematic way and were based on the interpretation of an order by Ayatollah Khomeini (1979-1989), the Islamic Republic Supreme Leader at the time."
> women who were captured in battle with the kuffar (infidels) were akin to property and slaves of the army of Islam (a practice of the Middle Ages which had subsequently been accepted, at least theologically, as a part of Islamic war practices)
Look, bad and disagreeable, but not the claimed quote. This is a much better attack that doesn't use hyperbole.
I don't have it bookmarked but he did teach that and had his friend Lajevardi whom he supported and praised carry it out. And his Islamic enforcement police regularly engaged in it. And he has defended his Islamic enforcement police the Basij, whose job is to enforce his teachings, when they have conducted systemic rapes.
In addition to the routine/sactioned religious police rapes how many executions have there been under this moderate? How many women arrested for religious reasons? Under his leadership the death decree against Salman Rushdie was never lifted. How many died of torture in detention after he called for people to be punished? If this is moderation then what does fundamentalism look like?
Hmmm, this may have been a 'mis-interpretation' but it seems odd that it wouldn't, you know, be corrected with a public 'correct' interpretation in all these years and with so much rape being done by religious police serving directly under him. Instead of easily issuing a public statement he defended the rapists indicating that in fact, it was a correct interpretation.
https://wncri.org/2015/11/13/female-prisoners-virgins-raped/
> I don't have it bookmarked but he did teach that and had his friend Lajevardi whom he supported and praised carry it out.
Look, I'm simply not going to believe this claim without evidence.
You are presenting terrible practices in Iran that I disagree with, but that wasn't your original claim.
From the links you've given, rape was because political prisoners were believed to be slaves. That's a despicable and gross practice. It is not, however "school girls should be raped before they are executed for not wearing hats so that they can't get into heaven". The reason for the rape of prisoners was because the prisoners were viewed as slaves, not to keep them from heaven (from what I've read).
> If this is moderation then what does fundamentalism look like?
Relative to the region. Iran has been brutal to it's dissidents and enemies of the state.
However, if you compare the rights of women under Iran vs Saudi Arabia, you'll end up finding that women in Iran have more rights and freedoms. That's what relative means.
I'm not here to defend Khamenei. The reason I pushed back was because, as I said, you don't need to lie about someone you don't like. These are the facts you should present and represent. Talk about how Iran rapes political enemies. That is a horrible practice. But the extreme "He said to rape girls without hijabs and then kill them to keep them from heaven" is just a lie. Hell, you can pretty accurately say "He taught that political prisoners are slaves, which his government used to justify raping female prisoners". That's a true statement that makes him look horrible.
It looks like it was the previous Ayatollah who was Khamenei's religious teacher, but this one could easily have corrected things but instead chose to defend the practice/practitioners and never on the occasion of abuse over decades chose to correct the interpretation.
"such as the rape of virgin girls prior to their execution, were conducted in a systematic way and were based on the interpretation of an order by Ayatollah Khomeini (1979-1989)"
So his spiritual teacher ordered it with the vague cop-out by someone else that 'maybe it was misinterpreted' yet even though his Islamic police were raping for decades he never corrected what his teacher/spiritual leader said/meant.
Undisputed facts: it happened and the people doing it thought that it was sanctioned by the Ayatollah. Even though it happened for decades, this Ayatollah never corrected people that they had misunderstood. Did defend his Islamic police and did on occasions when they inflicted the violence after him basically saying “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?”.
Decades and decades of rape, and of government officials thinking this is the official Islamic position, and he NEVER chose to say otherwise even though his Islamic police were acting on it.
I'm throttled after this but I believe it was his official policy, and nothing indicates otherwise. There was systemic rape and he defended/protected those doing it and never corrected the believed edict from his predecessor. Also it is extremely rare to get these edicts externally. We only have what I pointed out because an insider (Ayatollah Montazeri) was trying to defend his reputation after word got out of the justification for rape by Khomeini.
I can't think of anybody, who has significant power, who isn't seen as horrible by somebody else, and often by quite a lot of somebody elses. With power people always end up trying to make the world a better place. The problem is one man's better place is another's dystopia.
"You're thinking about this just like a professional warfighter would"
I'd say the main contemporary dynamic of the times is hallucination. Not necessary by LLMs per se, but rather by the humans wielding them to mainline their own bullshit.
In a way Grump himself is just society's own embodied hallucination from decades of Republican marketing hopium. Some scraps of dignity are surely about to trickle down any day now, once those mean libuhruls are out of the way.
(the "warfighter" terminology-coddling obviously coming from the user prompt)
In every field where competence can be objectively measured, experience does not endlessly correlate with competence. There's always a growth phase but then there's a bell curve of age vs competence, that reaches a peak and then there's a constant decline from there. So for instance chess is primarily a mental game, yet the decline comes as early as one's mid thirties for world class players.
I'm fully willing to accept that for a field where scenarios are fuzzier and intuition more important, it may well be that peak on the bell curve comes somewhat later. But I think it's essentially inconceivable that one is near, or even remotely near, their peak, in their 80s, in anything.
That’s true, but it’s not always good—Americans have stark examples of the risks of octogenarian leaders whose experience leads them astray by discounting how much the world has changed since they were young.
I think of mental faculties and experience as two separate overlapping curves where there’s a sweet spot in the middle where both are high but either one being low can become a big problem.
They also just don’t have the same energy they used to so even if they have a good idea they’ll be less effective at motivating people to embrace it, and the younger people behind them are going to be acting with more thought to succession politics.
Biden's surely a poster child for the value of experience and connections in the Presidency. Whatever you think of him (and I would certainly agree that he should never have considered a second term), he was quite successful in furthering his agenda while in office.
Yes, I agree that he used his experience well for many things (and had competent staff he could trust to get things done) but I will say he made a huge mistake continuing to back Israel's actions in Gaza to an extent which I don't think someone too young to remember the Six Days War would have done. I think you could also make a solid argument that earlier in his career he probably would have had more energy to put into getting a few of the close votes in Congress over the line.
But as one whom the Ayatollah has sworn to eliminate, I can still state that man was sharp and brilliant and extremely well spoken. His worldview was internally consistent. He had vision and experience and knew how to motivate people. He was a one in ten million leader.
I give him that praise and more, even recognising that his stated mission was to exterminate myself and my children.
I love this basically pointing out that racists call it "Hasbara" and regular people call it "lying".
Don't agree it applies in this situation, but it's nice to see someone break down regular people don't give a special jewish name to something that already has a common name/definition, and that the common name better communicates the intended concept so the purpose of using the word is to convey something different than basic understanding.
of course. How do you think they systematically massacred so many people in so many cities during the protests. All those personnel are now devastated.
Exactly. Oddly enough most countries have politics split down the middle. A left and right. Up and down. Rarely even a 2/3 majority.
If you wanted to find people celebrating, you'd find people celebrating.
But my opinion is more often than not, you have two bad guys fighting each other for the top spot. They don't support Option B because they're dumb, they support B because Option A would sell his mom for power, while Option C would just become a puppet to A.
9/11 was the first major attack on the continental US in living memory. It was literally a world-altering event for most of the population, and it radically changed the geopolitical calculus of the average citizen.
Lots of american citizens demanded retaliation. Our counterattacks weren't sanctioned by congress, but they were by the people.
Meanwhile, the current president just started a war based on a temper tantrum and an attempt to distract the population.
I agree with you that the Iran strike is an effort to distract the public from Trump’s failure to bring down grocery prices like he promised: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_Dog
I was addressing the hypothetical of how Americans would react if Trump was killed by a foreign country in airstrikes similar to how the Ayatollah was killed. I think Americans would react like they did after 9/11, instead of celebrating like many are in Iran.
I agree. Half the country would be happy if an entity composed of Americans killed Trump, but most of those would be unhappy with a non-American entity doing it. Or at least I hope they would.
You may be right, but a lot has changed in the last quarter century. The 9/11 attacks came at a time when the Cold War had just ended and the dotcom boom had just given us a strong economy. There was a lot of resentment over the 2000 election but it didn't seem like the end of the world.
Since then public discourse has almost completely broken down. The President spends his days thinking of insults, and has deployed masked armed forces against civilians. As bitter as 2000 was, it's nothing compared to January 6 2021.
I imagine the details would depend on the circumstances. Say, a targeted assassination versus killing thousands of civilians. But I'm not so sure that things would look anything like 9/11.
if starting a war in the middle east gets you high approval ratings after campaigning as “presdent of peace” and crying like a little bitch trying to get nobel “peace” prize, the downfall of America is coming a lot sooner than most are ballparking (we are well on the way)
Bush’s approval rating benefited from the US being attacked, and then responding. Trump has the order wrong; preemptively attacking countries (even bad ones) doesn’t poll very well with Americans.
(This is ahead of Trump’s base being isolationist; it’s not even clear who wants this besides conventional hawks.)
Combined with the fact that the media will be confused about how to respond. You’ll have Iranian diaspora celebrating, like Venezuelans did after the capture of Maduro, making it impossible for the media to frame this simply in terms of “Trump is racist.” As a result, the whole thing will get memory holed, just like the Venezuela attack.
I didn’t say the attack on Iran was like 9/11. I was responding to OP’s hypothetical about what would happen if the situation was reversed and Trump was killed.
Now imagine if Bush & his family were assassinated by AQ on 9/11, and you’ll understand why the majority of Iranians inside Iran will not be celebrating.
I mean Pakistan is a nation founded on the idea that Muslims cannot live with non Muslims. /R/Pakistan is currently talking about this. What do you expect?
This is done by diaspora lead by US, they started destroying public resources first and created public unrest on top of falling Rial due to sanctions, this lead the govt take matters in to their hands. Cunning US indeed, always playing cheap tricks.
> The non-Iranian part is key. Millions of muslims around the world viewed the Iranian theocracy as the only power in the world fighting for Islam
Yup. My Bangladeshi relatives who have no stake in Iran are upset. I suspect the lady who cuts my daughter’s hair—who was an accountant back in Iran and celebrated when Jimmy Carter died—is over the moon.
I have seen major celebrations here in a major Dutch city. If anything, my bet is that overall balance of Muslim opinion on the West has probably shifted to be more favorable.
If you can not recognise that Muslims overwhelmingly support Islamist extremists, then maybe you should not tell others who have quite the experience in the matter, to keep their comments to themselves.
I’m quite sympathetic to the general assertion that the U.S. launches unprovoked attacks on random countries that didn’t attack the U.S. Iraq being the most egregious example.
Tehran is a thousand miles away from Tel Aviv. Iran has no rational self-interest in whatever is going on between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Iran got itself involved in that conflict because it inexplicably chose to involve itself in that conflict.
> Iran has been attacking the U.S. and its proxies for no reason for decades
Iran did not attack the US and Lebanese Shia did not attack the US. Israel invaded Lebanon and the US went in in August 1982. This allowed for the Istaeli allies to perform the Sabra and Shatila massacre. About six months later the US embassy was bombed. Then the barracks was bombed.
The US eas not attacked, the US sent troops into Lebanon, which helped allow for the massacres which took place, and Lebanese attacked the US barracks that came into their country a year earlier.
Israel murdered the indigenous population of Palestine, Iran possibly (zero proof has been produced) killed some Zionist spies. These are not the same, Israel is our enemy, not Iran.
Well that's an awfully Islamophobic take. Never has a condition been so aptly named.
This morning's terror attack in Austin was perpetuated by one wearing a "property of Allah" shirt.
The world need not continue to live with and accept Islamic barbarism, and the people of the US will not bend to the sword of the Mullahs or your Shia coworkers.
The "good" part is that Sunni Muslims probably won't have the same feeling, or do they?
But I agree with the assessment. I'd definitely avoid large public events. Darn the world is becoming more and more chaotic and we are just waiting for China to put up the last piece to make it into 19th Europe.
Sunni Muslims generally oppose Shias in Muslim-internal matters, and vice versa. But they both generally support the other in matters against non-Muslims.
> Sunni Muslims will be upset too, because Israel was involved.
Some will be.
I saw on X a video of some Taliban commander saying nobody should cry for Khamenei, because "Israel and Iran are two sides of the same unbeliever coin"
No I'm trying to say, when China decides to copy the behavior of US, especially when her economy turns downwards again, will be the last piece of the puzzle (that shows up the end of the old world).
Having said that, I also condemn Iranian regime killing (reportedly) 30000 protesters. So he probably had it coming.
I'm more concerned about what happens to US now, because I think the attack indicates a complete failure and collapse of the legislative branch of the US government.
> I'm more concerned about what happens to US now, because I think the attack indicates a complete failure and collapse of the legislative branch of the US government.
Why now? Why not when they took out Soleimani in 2020? Or when they invaded and took out Gaddafi in 2011? Can keep going all the back to Truman invading Vietnam.
I don't know. Have Congress and Senate always been this ineffective? I don't remember Obama, Biden or even Trump 45 act with this much impunity. I obviously can't go further back because I have been here since Obama's second term.
The Iran-Contra scandal from the Reagan administration comes to mind. Congress explicitly de-authorized the executive from funding the Contras in Nicaragua. The executive kept doing it anyway. Nobody faced any consequences, though Congress at least made a lot of noise about it.
That's kind of ineffective, but not to this level where Congress is just fine with blatant illegality.
Oh, there is no effective US Government beyond Trump's demands. he's decimated anyone that could challenge, and the general public was manufactured without the critical analysis to understand. The USA is over and gone, the US is a headless zombie nation operated by 7th graders, pedos, and drug addicts. All they need is a social following and loyalty, and they are part of the government.
The collapse happened when we elected a power drunk fool with a Project 2025 playbook to completely strip the separation of powers in favor of the Executive branch.
Now the war fool is trying to start as many conflicts as possible inside and outside the US to distract from his disturbingly heavy Epstein involvement to give him an excuse to take over polling sites in the US. No more wars my rear.
We have a chance to recover in the November elections by voting out his puppets and tools in congress. The question is whether or not we will take it.
Oh boy flying the flag of the Islamic Republic in the US would get so much blowback. Everyone knows how incredibly evil it is. It recently killed at least 20,000 protestors to stay in power.
While the comment you replied to was "extreme", it is impossible for any muslim to not know the difference when the difference defines everything about how they practice their religion.
Are you muslim? In the real world most muslims are not that religious and hardly follow what is taught to perfect precision. They would not be able to answer the difference except in vague terms at best.
Every single muslim, whether devout, practicing, lapsed or whatever, knows whether they are/were Sunni or Shia. They are literally born into it. It determines who is seen as the authority in matters of their faith, the way they pray, the sites they consider holy, the religious days they observe. Even Ramadan starts and ends on different days depending on which you are.
It's such a fundamental thing that I question whether you have any idea about what you're saying here.
I don't know much about Islam, but what's being described isn't uncommon for lapsed Christians. I know plenty of people in my orbit (including me) who went to mass on Christmas Eve and Easter as children, but literally wouldn't be able to answer if the curch they went to was Catholic or Protestant.
The difference between Islam and Christianity on this is so stark that I am trying so hard to not respond in a rude manner and tell people to read a book or something.
It's like if you didn't know a single thing about Mandarin but insisted on making claims about its grammatical rules because you know English grammar.
Well if you take religious interpretations to do the extreme they hate all 'non believers'. I am assuming that even the Sunni Muslim countries' average population might not be that happy with the bullying (their perception)
Promising to destroy Israel is a lot more than just "defiance". Israel's existence has no significant effect on Iran but Iran is strangely obsessed with destroying it to Iran's own detriment.
First, the Islamic Republic was not “the only power fighting for Islam.” It was fighting to expand Iranian state power under a religious banner. There’s a difference. The regime’s foreign policy has consistently followed geopolitical logic: expanding influence through proxies in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Gaza (Hamas and PIJ), Iraq (Shi’a militias), Syria (Assad), and Yemen (Houthis). That’s empire-building through asymmetric warfare, not some abstract defense of the global ummah.
Second, Islam itself is not a single centralized political bloc. The idea that “millions of Muslims” saw Tehran as their champion ignores deep sectarian and national divides. Sunni-majority states like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, and Turkey have spent decades actively countering Iranian influence. Many Arabs view Persian expansionism with suspicion for historical reasons that predate modern geopolitics by centuries. Even within Shi’a communities outside Iran, loyalty to Tehran is far from universal.
Third, the Islamic Republic’s model is explicitly totalitarian: clerical rule, suppression of dissent, morality police, imprisonment of reformers, execution of protesters. Calling that “fighting for Islam” collapses a complex global religion into one revolutionary state ideology. Many Muslims—Sunni and Shi’a—despise the regime precisely because it fuses religion with authoritarian control.
As for retaliation risk: yes, whenever a regime that funds proxy groups is hit, the risk of attempted attacks rises. That’s true by definition. But that risk has existed for decades already because of the regime’s own strategy of exporting violence. The question isn’t whether risk increases from zero. It’s whether removing a state sponsor that systematically arms, trains, and finances militant networks reduces long-term capacity for global destabilization.
Iran was not some neutral spiritual defender of the faith. It was a regional power using religion as a mobilizing ideology while building a cross-border militia network.
This is likely what the USA fascists want - some Islamic terrorist attacks (possibly false flag operations) will provide a justification for removing non-whites from the USA.
I was just saying this to someone this morning. Iran’s theocracy was the only one that has withstood the Middle East political wars in Jordan, Syria, Afghanistan, etc.
To rephrase it… if The Middle East was the UK, Iran would be British. If the Middle East was the US. Iran would be California.
Scotland is almost certainly innocent, though the Scottish people may not be.
Anyhow, the worst crimes of colonialism/genocide were mainly conducted by the English (including invading/killing plenty of Scottish, Welsh and Irish people).
Jordan political system is much older than Iran, as well as the Saudis and others. Iran theocracy is a new phenomena in the Middle East, ushering the implementation era of political Islam, later continued by ISIS, Hamas and the milder Qatar and current Turkey
Not debating who came first. I’m also not debating that Saudi’s are equivalent to the French to the Iranians (if they were England in my UK analogy, or Texas for the US one).
I also don’t think that, in general, there’s any animosity there just talking size and influence over the region. Iran and Saudi are/were it. It’s a really interesting dynamic of faith, tradition, authoritarianism, and manipulation.
That's what the French and the a Swedes thought when they had a Muslim population under 10 or 20 percent. Look at any area - any, your choice - where Muslims represent 50 or more or the population and tell me how tolerant they are.
Don't let your values and your tolerance blind you to believe that your values and tolerance are universal or axiomic.
> Modern Western Christians are centuries removed from experiencing religion-as-politics.
That's news for those of us that are living through the decades-long effort by christian dominionists to take over the US.
> Western atheists, who share Christian values
It's the other way around: Christians share basic morality with people operating on morality from first principles. Plenty of western christian values are orthogonal to morality.
> Muslims who move to Christian-majority lands do not assimilate or convert.
This is false and flat-out defamatory. It's also the type of statement that gets used before bad people do a bunch of bad things.
The Catholic Church exerted strong influence in Quebec until the 1950s. Of course since then Quebec has become the most secular region in North America.
Another good analogy would be, said theocracy is (was?) like a very bad piece of legacy code, impossible to refactor, until the entire feature gets thrown in the trash.
and millions of Orthodox Jews view Israel as defending Judaism. So what? Maybe all the people who are willing to shoot and kill for their holy book should be put into an area and bomb each other to death
Would make a good reality tv show and an excellent warning on the danger of religious fundamentalism.
>> Millions of muslims around the world viewed the Iranian theocracy as the only power in the world fighting for Islam. They are devastated.
> They are devastated but they are were totally quiet on the unarmed thirty thousands+ protesters the islamist iranian regime killed in a matter of days a few weeks ago.
One person's protestor is another's insurrectionist.
See also the folks on January 6: (now-pardoned) patriots trying to 'stop the steal', or crazies trying to overthrow the government?
Were the Jan6ers good guys or bad guys? Did they deserve to get punished? (Trump didn't/doesn't think so, which is why he pardoned them; Pence may have a different opinion.)
The fact that different countries have different punishments for the same crime is a cultural artefact. The fact that you find it unacceptable is personal opinion. In Singapore drug use (not even distribution) is punishable by up to 10 years in prison:
Moral relativism can be real and I can be against another cultures moral ideology. They’re allowed to have their beliefs and I’m allowed to think they are wrong and they deserve to be killed for having them. Protestors do not deserve to be killed for protesting. People who kill protestors for protesting do deserve to be killed. Is that all personal opinion? Yes of course, so what?
I believe the OP's point was precisely that there's no objective true and false equivalence - there's just forces trying to impose a narrative which one is which.
> If people keep their mouth shut when a regime murders 30 000+
This is done by diaspora lead by US, they started destroying public resources first and created public unrest on top of falling Rial due to sanctions, this lead the govt take matters in to their hands. Cunning US indeed, always playing cheap tricks.
US is a regime too, world largest one, with minions everywhere. They murdered around 1 million just in Iraq. This war is not only about nukes but also oil and trade routes. Iran did not try to spread Islamic in the west, they do not want to either.
My point is US should not try to interfere with other countries internal matters. International threats should be dealt with treaties.
The theocratic regime that rapes then kills school girls for not wearing hats was forced to gun down 30,000 of their own citizens, including many more school children.
The Supreme Leader before Khamenei preached that virgins need to be raped before execution so that they can't go to heaven. Sick people following a sick religion where their made up version of god would judge children based on if they were raped.
Yes they were silent about the Iranian regime's tyranny. Yes they are hypocrites.
So what?
It doesn't matter whether it suits you nor I. You calling them out has zero effect other than making you feel righteous. They don't hear you and even if they did they do not care a whit what you think.
They believe, with utter conviction, that martyrdom in service of Islam will be rewarded in the "hereafter". Their holy book tells them this explicitly. And there are millions of them.
They also believe that before they kill a schoolgirl because she won't wear hats, they should rape her so that she doesn't go to heaven. They believe that because Khamenei and his predecessor taught it to them (Google it if you don't believe me, they were literally taught the religious guidelines for how to murder girls and it included rape). In their made up religion they made up a God would judge children for being raped. What pieces of total shit.
>If people keep their mouth shut when a regime murders 30 000+ unarmed people
That 30k number came from the same source the WMDs did - paid informants who knew exactly what they were being paid to deliver.
Same sales pitch, different war.
The standards of evidence some people will accept when America is hell bent on starting a war is so low it blows my mind.
Ive noticed that these people who try to guilt trip meek liberals over the alleged deaths of 30,000 people in Iran used to sell a war of aggression will almost always downplay or try to sow doubt about the genocide in gaza which america supported.
It's very remarkably similar to the way some of the most extreme racists on the planet used to try and guilt trip liberals by accusing them of being anti semitic.
Why would you feel guilty for the actions of Iran’s government? That doesn’t seem like the appropriate reaction, even if you’re directionally “pro” Iran because they’re directionally opposed to Israel.
(Ultranationalist/reactionary states like Iran and Israel love this kind of absolute framing, because it allows the state to ratchet, rather than de-escalate, cycles of violence.)
The guilt trip is aimed by people who support the genocide at meek liberals who might be worried that they're not demonstrating "equal" concern about Iran.
It was the same shit back when they used to accuse meek liberals of being antisemitic for criticizing some of the most extreme racists on planet earth.
It doesnt matter how Iran frames things. This isnt a "both sides" issue. Youll only get iran's opinion if you read presstv, they dont flood english speaking forums.
I don't know what equal concern means, per se. It seems normal for people to express more or less concern about individual tragedies based on their background, etc. This is distinct from being unable to acknowledge that any given action is bad, which would be the territory of an ideologue.
(I get Iran's opinion because I have Iranian friends.)
I don't think doctrinal reformation is possible with Islam.
The Qur'an is totally prescriptive. It contains direct legal commands, judicial rules and explicit government principles which are all binding and considered as direct divine speech.
I think Westernisation and an increase in the number of "casual" muslims is and will continue to be the moderating effect.
Think of what is happening in Europe (as the clearest example) with the influx of Muslim immigrants who raise increasingly more assimilated children as the blueprint.
The cultural gulf between left and right in the US is expanding rather than being assimilated or adapting. There is nothing stopping the same thing from happening between immigrants and natives in the EU. Both cases involve fundamentaly irecconcilable values, and it just depends on which values prove more viral.
I'm not sure the left/right cultural gulf will last beyond Trump. I'm not even sure it's still alive now, with Trump's approval ratings in the toilet. The US political system takes time to cycle and isn't on the same schedule as the political pendulum.
It's an English language book aimed for Westerner readers. It purports to argue that the core strategy for spreading Islam - terror - is not compatible with Western values. It also states that other features of Islam are incompatible with Western values, such as repression of women. The book argues that since these ideologies are incompatible with Western values, they must be abandoned.
However, the abandonment argument is only valid if one already accepts Western values as an axiom - which being an English-language book most of the readers would agree with. These readers will perceive the book to promote the reform of Islam into a religion that resembles a modern Christian denomination, just with different idols and prayers and holidays.
However those who do not come from the perspective of modern Christian values and as axiomic, will reject the argument outright. This is the Muslim population who might read it.
You can call it 'Western' values or 'Christian' values or whatever in order to make it seem chauvinistic all you want, but the simple truth is that these values are often shared by many other religions and places. As an example, look at the success of the Indian Hindus and the Chinese / East Asian Buddhists in the United States and across the globe. For a reverse example, contrary to popular belief, Christians, Sikhs, and Jains in Hindu-majority India are actually richer and more educated on average.
Time and time again, if you go look at the data, you'll find that Islam is almost always the odd one out.
The Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Taoists, etc can all be made to get along with Christians or 'the West'. There is really only one pretty much universally problematic religion, and that's Islam. You can argue this point all you want, but the entirety of Islamic history shows it to be true. You can again (correctly, in some cases) point out various bad actions from Christians (or Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, etc), but the simple truth is this: it's pretty easy today, in 2025, to imagine how to get along with these people. In places with diverse populations and migrants from these places, there is barely any violent religious conflict. At most you get some fundies in a tizzy over someone else doing their thing.
The only one that consistently performs violence is Islam. And that's something Muslims need to figure out. They don't need to abandon their religion. And they certainly do not need to be harmed for their beliefs. But, they do need to figure out how to integrate with the rest of the world in 2025 in a pluralistic global society.
You seem to be mixing up "Western values" and "Christian values" whereas Christian values are very much against the accumulation of wealth, whereas "Western values" seem to be all about worshipping wealth to the exclusion of all other considerations and even worshipping those who deliberately exploit others to amass an ungodly amount of wealth.
If you think that small difference means that Western values are not Christian values, then you have no idea how large the gulf between your values and Islamic values are.
Do you value separation of state and religious authority? Women's rights? Minority rights? Human dignity? Equality before the law? Sanctity of life? Individual moral responsibility? Monogamous marriage? The objective study of history? Fair trial? Witnesses at trial? Tolerance of alternative viewpoints?
Most of these arguments on the effect of different religions tend to be a bit silly. Islam is much more related to Christianity and Judaism than either of those two are to each other.
Language, cultural history, and geography tend to play a bigger role on society than the monotheistic religions do.
As neither a Muslim nor a Christian, but have lived among both, the dismissive argument "A is more similar to B than C" should not mean "I don't need to be concerned about A or B or C".
> Radical Christians are no different from radical Muslims who are no different than radical Jews.
Be that as it may, by examining the frequency of terror attacks the percentage of what you call "radical Muslims" is high enough that they do not need to be termed "extremist Muslims". Whereas Jewish and Christian terrorist attacks are attested to such a small percentage of the population that the terms "radical Christian" and "extremist Christian" are effectively synonyms.
Pretty sure Palestinians would take issue with your opinion on that. And that’s not even considering historical records and precedent of any of those religions.
Bashing one monotheistic religion while trying to contort logic around supporting the others is a fruitless endeavor.
Those values seem to be exactly the ones being discarded by the Christo-fascists of the USA.
My point is that the so-called Christian values are nothing to do with the reported teachings of Jesus and instead are used to justify the exact opposite.
The ACTUAL teachings by Supreme Leader Khamenei (remember, the HIGHEST Shia authority according to some) include that school girls who are to be killed for not wearing hats should be raped, because the Muslim God judges children based on if they have been raped. With teachings like this, I'm OK with muslims not following the teachings.
I did not realize that the point of discussion had changed to specifically Christo-fascists of the USA. My point still stands in regard to the vast majority of Christians you will meet.
One thing that I can not stand about some modern fanatics is the representation of 1% of a population as if they represent the whole. Don't bring up Christo-fascists of the USA as representative of Christian values. That's highjacking the subject to your pet cause.
> Do you value separation of state and religious authority? Women's rights? Minority rights? Human dignity? Equality before the law? Sanctity of life? Individual moral responsibility? Monogamous marriage? The objective study of history? Fair trial? Witnesses at trial? Tolerance of alternative viewpoints?
Sorry, I thought you were pointing out the many issues with the current US administration and you were showing the difference between Christo-fascists and Christians who value the teachings of Jesus.
I prefer assassinations of leaders in wars over deaths of soldiers and especially civilians.
Considering how Israel had to raze entire cities to beat 'Hamas' or the US dropping nukes in WW2 instead of bombing the Japanese Emperor. This is decent as far as wars go.
> I prefer assassinations of leaders in wars over deaths of soldiers and especially civilians.
To me, this argument doesn't hold water. Think about some counterexamples: (1) Netanyahu and Gaza. Surely, 100K+ civilians died as a result of that war. (2) Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Vietnam. A staggering number of civilians died in that war. (3) GW Bush in Afghanistan and Iraq/2.
My guess: All of those leaders are responsible for more innocent civilian deaths in each conflict than Khamenei's entire reign.
To me, I am very conflicted about the assassination of Khamenei. Yeah, he did a bunch of bad stuff and was very destabilising in the region, but I need to draw the line at assassination. It was unnecessary. It is a slippery slope.
It was a criticism of the three wars you mentioned. I think a quick victory would have limited civilian deaths in all those situations.
Except the first one, because the goal of that war was killing the civilians. They could have assassinated Hamas leaders just as easily, but then there would be no reason to bomb all those hospitals and children.
To the extent that they're actually effective, I agree.
Trouble is, higher-ups are easily replaceable, and the rank-and-file True Believers may be even more willing to follow orders in the name of a dead tyrant than a living one.
Or not. Sic semper tyrannis. Best wishes to the people of Iran.
No, Hamas was never funded by Israel. In this instance, Hamas was funded by Qatar, and the Israelis were complicit by allowing it. But it's also important to remember that Hamas is the elected sovereign in Gaza, and this money was used in part to run Gaza's infrastructure. In the same way Taliban runs Afghanistan, Hamas runs Gaza.
The assumption in Israel was that it was beneficial to have Hamas retain something to lose, and not starve them dry outright. Of course that didn't pan out well, given what Hamas did in October 7th.
But saying Hamas was funded by Israel is an outright lie, and the irony it comes from the same people who blame Israel for not letting supplies into Gaza during war. So no matter if Israel does or does not, it's always to blame simply by being.
> the irony it comes from the same people who blame Israel for not letting supplies into Gaza during war.
Israel did in fact do that. In fact there were several months of Israel not allowing any food or supplies whatsoever into Gaza. That was about a year ago. (It's possible Israel may have been supplying rival groups unfriendly to Hamas with food/supplies/weapons in secret, but all regular humanitarian aid was shut off.)
> In an interview with Politico in 2023, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that "In the last 15 years, Israel did everything to downgrade the Palestinian Authority and to boost Hamas." He continued saying "Gaza was on the brink of collapse because they had no resources, they had no money, and the PA refused to give Hamas any money. Bibi saved them. Bibi made a deal with Qatar and they started to move millions and millions of dollars to Gaza."
That looks like Israel made every effort to promote the welfare of Gazan citizens. From your own link "Gaza was on the brink of collapse" and Israel saved them.
Nonsense. They wanted to stabilize Hamas rule so that the Palestinian Authority would not be able to govern there. A unified Palestinian government in the West Bank and Gaza is what they were opposed to. They feared diplomatic success on the part of the Palestinian Authority more so than any violence from Hamas. A major oops, but ideologically consistent with the Zionist goal of keeping a foot on the neck of Palestinians. There's not much else to Israel aside from that.
That's like saying the EU fundeh Hamas because they gave aid money to Gaza. If you squint at it the right way then maybe, but fundamentally it's disingenuous to call something like that funding.
But "the Jews .. uhm, I mean Israel .. had it coming and they did it to themselves" is always a favorite, isn't it?
If that was true, it would be like that. But it isn't, so it's not. EU is wide, and does not always speak with one voice, but it has a clear history of doing their best to avoid funding the proto-democratic forces in the region. Any support of religious extremists is considered a failure and acted upon.
America is as much a victim of israel as iran is. You act like we have a choice in this matter. We are forced to cut funding for food programs, education, healthcare, etc because of soaring debt. Yet, we'll take on any amount of debt for israel's wars. It's amazing how we've become a slave of such a small nation.
> Can you imagine other countries assassinating a foreign head of state and not getting immediate blowback?
It's simply a matter of power. Who is powerful enough to do the enforcing of laws or punishing of bad actors? Might makes right.
America is run by ideologues and the EU idealists. either way we are heading in separate directions. I don’t think the US can be described as a western country anymore tbh.
What are you talking about? Russia has effectively been blocked from the west while when the United States invaded Iraq nothing happened. Europe trades with the US like nothing ever happened while Russia will never return to what it was before without at minimum Putin being gone.
Europe even still trades with Israel when what they have done is Gaza has been declared a genocide by everyone. At the same time Russia can't even take part in the Olympics or the Eurovision song contest.
The west has no moral ground to stand on and hopefully people in the west will start to see that.
You raise a lot of good points here. Another unconfortable truth: Russia is withstanding the sanctions way better than anyone expected. I don't think that they can sustain it forever, but I do think they can make it (at least) another 2-3 years.
You can't see the french or Russians doing the same thing in Africa? Because I sure can. There's be some hand wringing and posturing but that's about it.
Not that it's ok for the US, or anyone else to do it.
Either this will end in a fractured state with different factions OR another Ayatollah will be in charge. Just my guess from seeing similar stories play out in other countries though....
Iran is not like other countries in the region. Despite its shortcomings, it's a cohesive society. I'm certain that there will be no fracturing and a central authority will emerge.
> I would also describe Jordan, Oman, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia as cohesive societies.
I don’t know much about the region; is it incorrect to say that the nations you listed (excepting Jordan) are collections of fiefdoms with a relatively weak central power? To OP’s point, that is not how I view Iran
Maybe .. the revolutionary guard is fed up though with ineffective empire rule? Like to be rubbed in the dirt face first repeatetly as inheritor of the mighty persian empire sucks bad enough, to reconsider the way things are run?
Sorry, but whatever israel & the us are doing, seems to work way better than - whatever has happened the last decades in iran?
As I understand it, the IGRC doesn't particularly rub happily with the clerical council, and it's not entirely clear to me who will win that the power struggle.
But the ultimate loser of the power struggle is clear: the Iranian populace at large, as all of the viable factions are quite committed to consolidating their power by repressing the population. The most likely situation, I think, looks a lot like Libya.
Islamic societies seem to be unable to form stable institutions. The recipe seems to be unable to synthesize this, no matter how many ressources are available and how benign the conditions. As a result the biggest formable state-institution remains the family clan and the family clan just does not cut it in preventing civil war. At best you get a clan-coalition masquerading as a military government with some democratic pets - at worst you get libya.But i guess after 52 countries, the results are in and the fact that other - non western powers are colonizing islamic countries now (china, russia) and everyone is scrambling for nukes post trump - the displayed weaknesses could end the region.
The Ottoman Empire lasted 600 years with only one major civil war, a feat not matched by any major Christian European country. England faced 3½ civil wars (counting the Hundred Years War as a ½ civil war here, because while it is essentially a dynastic dispute, it's not a dynastic dispute over England itself but rather English holdings in France) in the same timeframe. And this despite the Ottoman successor law being essentially "battle royale among eligible candidates" whereas standard European succession by this time is the seemingly clear "eldest son" yet somehow creating endless succession disputes.
Those "battle royales" were the reason for the stability. The process selected for sultans (or, occasionally, mothers of sultans) who were most effective at building a backing coalition, and generally ended in the killing or at least exile of all pretenders to the throne. The disruption the process represented also helped quell the willingness of factions within the government to try and repeat it too often.
The well-established succession processes practiced in the West guaranteed that at any given time, not only was there almost always at least one person who would benefit directly from the ruler's demise, there were often individuals for whom the ruler's premature demise was required for them to be inline for the throne. If you're the King's brother, for example, under male-preference primogeniture you need to make sure your brother doesn't have any kids.
“ the biggest formable state-institution remains the family clan”
This is not at all how Irani society is structured.
The rest of your comments generalizations are weak and ill-supported as well, at best they only apply to a subset of Arab countries in the Middle East.
Where did you hear that? The IRGC is the creation of the revolutionary clerical movement. It exists specifically to prevent outcomes like Egypt, where a powerful national armed service operates as a check on political Islam.
I think maybe the reformists are able to hold on now that the IRGC is being hammered. There might be more internal bloodshed but chances are that Iran might be a bit more open and more modern. Of course I have zero knowledge about how Iran politics works, so that was just a guess, not even an intelligent one.
BTW I don't actually think even the reformists will "accept Western ideas".
What country in the Middle East has actually gotten better after removal of a bad status quo, in the last 26 years? I really can’t think of any. Is even Iraq considered a success?
That's not how I am reading this. Here, the reaction seems mostly that Europe doesn't want to touch this mess. Which is weird, as Iran was clearly on our list of bad countries and Israel can do nothing wrong.
Local news publishes articles of Iranians in our countries being happy, political commenters indicating it can go both ways, and not much comments from politicians.
I can totally see why Europe doesn't want to touch this! I'm assuming that Europe doesn't mind the results, but also finds the means legitimately concerning. But they aren't in a position to do anything about the latter, so issue statements of concern about unilateral action, and quietly be relieved that somebody else gets stuck with the stigma.
Not even Russia really wants Iran to have nuclear weapons and a rocket technology that can hit targets 3000 km+ distant, though they obviously wouldn't attack Iran over that problem. The Middle East is notoriously hard to predict and governments change, while the nuclear capability endures.
Of all the countries that currently make any steps towards nuclear armament, Iran has by far the widest coalition of opponents.
Surely they will be sanctioning Israel like they sanctioned russia for attacking ukraine? After all aren't Canada and europe self proclaimed beacons of light?
Also weirdly they only came out in support once they saw that the operation was largely successful. It's almost like they prefer to ride on the coattails the same as they always have.
Yeah, because killing murderous dictators is helpful, and it doesn't matter that much who does it. In Europe, states aren't sacred – it is the freedom of people, and when people are freed, Europeans are happy even if it includes breaking the sovereignty of some terror state. I'm not saying I like Trump, but when he kills evil dictators, I can't complain. (There was 10k+ protesters killed in Iran recently)
There is huge potential hidden in Iran; it has always had a huge influence over the region and possibly the whole world.
Iran is not a sovereign state, the legitimate powers of government derive from the consent of the governed, without consent it’s not a sovereign state.
The power of sovereignty rests with the people who have given their consent in free and fair elections to have their leaders removed.
It does feel like we're on a slippery slope though. Normalizing and supporting the violation of international norms because 'they were bad guys and deserved it' is like turning a blind eye to corruption when its people you agree with. It doesn't lead anywhere good in the end.
I don't think killing democratic representatives has as big of an effect as killing authoritarians. You can't have cult of the leader without the leader, but in parliamentary systems you'd have to off quite a few people.
Typically jihadist denotes a militant sunni-salafist tendency, who are even more hateful against shia than non-believers.
This is reflected in e.g. Aaron Y. Zelin separating his surveilling of islamic militancy respectively into a jihadology and a muqawamology web site.
It is common for people in the occident to project the ideas they have about sunni-salafists onto the islamic republic, even though it is absurd. Same goes for the view that Khamenei supposedly were the one trying to achieve nuclear weapons, while his office has been the main blocker for this and secular nuclear researchers and political analysts in Iran has been the main proponents.
A year ago Ali Larijani said that if Iran was attacked they'd have no choice but to build deterrence through nuclear weapons, a proposal the US and Israel apparently thought was jolly good and since have crashed diplomatic alternatives to by the crime of aggression, not once but twice. The second time they also removed Khamenei, to really rub it in that they'd prefer for their allies in the region to have yet another nuclear armed neighbour.
Do you think that he was killed because of human right violations? I do not think so. The current US administration does not seem very concerned with those.
You realize that international law exists, right? Or are we now OK with devolving into a world where assassinating heads of state and cabinet members is applauded?
I don't think anyone should shed a tear for Khamenei's death, but I'm not convinced the current trend of regime decapitation is setting the world in a desirable direction.
I'm convinced that with current technology (namely, drones) any half competent state actor can easily assassinate any world leader, and I wonder if the recent US actions aren't going to make the practice commonplace, with dramatic destabilization risks. (For instance think about Air Force One being shot down during landing by an FPV drone controlled over LTE from somewhere in South America by a Cuban intelligence officer).
It's pretty obvious that these dictators etc. are legally civilians and that this kind of thing is against the laws of war.
Traditionally even people like the US president, who is technically commander in chief, kings etc. with formal military ranks but who are not real battlefield decision makers etc., have been regarded as civilians.
Iranian here! Lived most of my life inside Iran. I don't view US's actions as a favor to common Iranians. That's naive. No one wants war and bombing of civilians. Our misery is caused by a mix of religious extremism, theocracy and foreign intervention (in the past, Mossadegh, etc.) among other things. First and foremost I hold the regime responsible. For most of my life, I witnessed firsthand how they pushed us step by step closer to confrontation with the US, yet there's no single bomb shelter in Tehran or any major city for people to run to after 47 years of this shit. How would you feel in this situation?
Their opposition to Israel is not from a humanitarian and moral standpoint, it's purely religious. They have no shame admitting this. You just have to listen to one of the 5 state TV channels in Farsi. I even think Palestinians would fare better if not for these extremists on either side!
All that said, the supreme leader is the one who commands the murder of innocents in the streets, so he had it coming. Good riddance and he died like the rat that he was. But as to what happens next? No one knows. Also I personally don't think US is doing this because they want Iran's oil. I believe they want to put pressure on China to not get Iran's cheap (under sanctions) oil. That seems more plausible to me.
The US is doing this because Netanyahu visited Trump in the White House 7 times last year. It’s not about oil, protestors, or nuclear weapons: it’s about Israeli hegemony in the region.
Kinda sorta... The reality of the situation is much more complicated. The narrative and actions of the Islamic regime don’t quite corroborate "Israeli hegemony in the region" as the sole purpose of this conflict. Their narrative has not been one of defense in the past; it's always been offense. When they talk about Israel, they talk about Quds (Arabic name for Jerusalem), Quds' freedom, and annihilation of Israel. Even the foreign arm of the IRGC forces are named Quds! They operate in Syria and Lebanon, right next to Israel's border. That's why I said that their enmity with Israel is not from a moral standpoint or, evidently, even defending Iran. It takes two to tango!
Obviously, all this is not to say that Israel doesn't have a hegemonic stance. Probably even Arab nations have those dreams too!
You're seeing this vast field of geopolitical shit show through a tiny crack of news and social media from the last year.
I've asked this question to an Iranian colleague and his response was that it was extremely welcome and even though they know there will be collateral damage, it's better than suffering under a regime which have killed and will continue to kill many more people than what these strikes will do.
Any time we drop bombs we set ourselves up for more pearl harbors or 9/11s. Just stupidly foolish decision most people involved won’t have to see the consequences. Especially since we’ve destroyed our soft power. What is the next step? More stupidity. We are Americans we all cheer for spectacle regardless of reason. My fellow citizens are stupid and I don’t support the troops anymore or any military that has let all this happen.
If the hard-liners IRGC generals went with him then it might be a good thing for its economy. I have heard some rumors that China was frustrated that IRGC pushed against the deals and were not willing to accept foreign investments in key oil/infra projects because they sit on them -- and that was why China never put down any real investments after signing the deals.
Why would a regime that came to be, ultimately, precisely because of foreign meddling in resource extraction ever entertain more foreign meddling in resource extraction, especially when it's levered with "or else we'll kill you."?
I think the biggest problem of IRGC is that they grabbed a large share of economy but spent a lot of that in geopolitical expansion for the last 1-2 decades. This in turn contributed to a more fragile Iranian economy and high inflation, which makes them extremely unpopular among the people.
These comments are insane to me. Have any of you ever spoken with Iranians? Lived with them? Trust me, they were wishing for Khamenei to be removed for decades.
> Approximately 370,000 Hmong Americans live in the U.S. largely due to their alliance with the CIA during the Vietnam war.
Correct, but how does this invalidate OP’s assertion? Are you saying that there are no collaborators who were left behind in Vietnam after supporting the US?
If I recall correctly, even getting the Hmong here was a political lift that some opposed
yess, the experience so far makes it obvious. They will be democratic and their gdp will go up by 6900% now. There won't be devastation, people starving to death, meaningless hindsight or anything like that.
"There are reports of US/Israeli strikes on or near the homes of former Iranian pres, Ahmadinejad, former reformist presidential candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, and various leftist activists. If the US/Israel really wanted the 'people' to take back the country, they wouldn’t assassinate these folks"
Google isn't reliable. They'll present you whatever the current thing dictates, without any nuance whatsoever. Sure you can hunt down some exceptions here and there but post 2020, most publications are inviolacy captured by various interests that aren't yours or mine.
But of course there are regime critics but apart from those already captured by US/Israeli intelligence are either people without any perspective or those smart enough to know that a US regime change will worsen their situation even more, so they rather not participate in riots. At least that's what I've been hearing. It's just an anecdote, make of it what you want.
We’re talking about opposition here. Don’t straw man the “regime change”. So much mental gymnastics because you can’t accept the reality that the people of Iran may not fit the imaginary picture you had in your head based on what someone (very credible anecdote) told you.
Yeah Iranians who don’t want to be oppressed have no agency or human dignity, or deserve to decide their own faith. They must be either captured by US, lack perspective or not smart enough. That’s some 19th century imperialistic attitude right there. You might want to reflect on that.
In 1953, Iran was a secular and democratic country. They had elected a prime minister who decided to nationalize the oil industry. The US didn't like this and overthrew him. They imposed a brutal monarchical dictatorship. Popular discontent led to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The ayatollahs, to a large extent, existed because of US interference.
The same is true for all the instability in the Middle East, entirely manufactured by the West.
Action-reaction, cause-effect: You never know how a story will end. And after the 1979 revolution, the CIA and British MI6 provided the ayatollahs with lists of communists to exterminate, which they did. Imperialism always prefers to deal with theocracies rather than communists.
https://www.declassifieduk.org/how-britain-helped-irans-isla...
> Imperialism always prefers to deal with theocracies rather than communists.
Communist regimes are also a form of theocracy (proof can be found in the writings of any communist leader). It's just that, unlike other theocratic regimes, other countries have to deal with millions of starving refugees (because the communist faith requires banning food production or something like that, I don't know much about their religion).
Smart strategy by the administration - go after people who are universally hated (Maduro, Khamenei) so you can normalize breaking the law and no one will speak out against you or they're a supporter of said hated people.
And for anybody that didn't see this coming somehow, a planned four day operation has now turned into a 4 weeks long one. [1] Want to guess what happens in 4 weeks?
This may or may not lead to a weaker Iran. From FP:
“Iran is frequently portrayed as a political order bound tightly to individuals. Yet the architecture that emerged after 1979 was formed by a different logic, one founded in the revolutionary experience itself. Khomeini captured this hierarchy in a remark (https://abdimedia.net/en/ruhollah-khomeini/system-ahead-life...) often cited within Iran’s political elite: “Preserving the Islamic Republic is more important than preserving any individual, even if that individual were the Imam of the Age”—a reference to Shiism’s 12th Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi.
It is still unclear whether the system will always follow this principle. But one should expect a change in leadership in Tehran to be treated less as an ending and more as a chance for the country’s institutions to show they can survive.”
"As of late spring 2025 Russia has been producing around 170 Geran-2 drones per day, with indication that a total of around 26,000 Gerans were produced by Yelabuga drone factory"
In isolation the death of this brutal dictator is great news, but we have seen how previous decapitation strikes have not had the intended effect. And I can only hope the Iranian people somehow end up better for this entirely illegal war that the Trump administration has initiated, instead of facing up to a fractured leadership and a potential civil war.
The fall of the Iranian regime would be a strategic turning point not just for the Middle East, but globally.
For more than four decades, the Islamic Republic has been one of the primary state sponsors of terror. Hezbollah is not an organic Lebanese movement — it is an Iranian creation. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are sustained by Iranian money and weapons. The Houthis’ missile and drone capabilities exist because Tehran supplied and trained them. Shi’a militias in Iraq killed hundreds of Americans with Iranian-provided EFPs. Today, Iranian Shahed drones are striking Ukrainian apartment buildings.
This is not passive instability. It is deliberate, systematic export of violence as state policy.
At the same time, the regime has consistently pursued a nuclear capability while publicly calling for the destruction of Israel and “death to America.” Even if one assumes deterrence logic would hold, a nuclear umbrella for Iran would dramatically increase its freedom to escalate proxy warfare across the region.
The downstream geopolitical effects are not hypothetical. Without Iranian drone and missile transfers, Russia’s ability to sustain certain strike campaigns in Ukraine would be materially degraded. Without heavily discounted Iranian oil shipments, China’s energy calculus shifts, particularly under sanctions pressure. Without Tehran’s funding pipelines, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis become far more constrained actors rather than semi-state militaries.
There is also precedent for preventive action against nuclear programs. Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq’s Osirak reactor (Operation Opera) was widely condemned at the time; decades later, most analysts agree it delayed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions. Likewise, Israel’s 2007 strike on Syria’s Al-Kibar reactor (Operation Orchard) prevented the Assad regime from developing a covert nuclear capability. Both operations were controversial in the moment and regarded as stabilizing in retrospect.
Preventing a hostile regime from acquiring nuclear capability has historically proven wiser than managing it after the fact.
Yes, regime change carries risk. So does allowing the world’s most aggressive revolutionary theocracy to entrench itself indefinitely while arming proxies from Beirut to Sana’a to Moscow. The status quo is not stable. It is violent by design.
If a regime that funds terrorism on three continents, arms Russia during a European war, and openly seeks nuclear weapons is dismantled, history is unlikely to judge that harshly.
Israel's enemies aren't "terror", they're legitimate resistance to an actual terrorist entity. Israel and the US are the terrorists, not the people defending against them. This latest round of unprovoked attacks only opens the world's eyes even more to this reality.
Israel is surrounded by "enemies" because it's a European colony that was artificially constructed through ethnic cleansing and terror. I'm in the US, and it's crystal clear that Israel is the #1 threat to my way of life. There's a massive population that is done being gaslit about this.
> If the standard is historical continuity, Jews are indigenous to that land. Their sovereignty was interrupted by conquest. It was not invented in the 20th century.
Cool, I guess I need to find wherever my ancestors lived 3000 years ago. Turns out. I have a claim to it still!
His daughter, son-in-law, and the defense minister were also killed, as they were all in his residence at the time.
If he decided to stay for ideological reasons, they would not have been there.
My guess is that they might have misinterpreted the US's demands as starting positions while the US considered them to be final. Who would expect a country that can produce ballistic missiles to willingly give it up? It was a non-starter from the beginning.
It's definitely odd if he was just sitting in his compound. That's a very, well, known place for him. Surely Iran has plenty of secure underground bunkers for leadership to retreat to?
Fleeing is seen as dishonorable in many parts of the Arab world. Remember the Israeli lies about how Yahya Sinwar dressed in women's clothes and were trying to cross the border to Egypt? In reality he was out in the field with his men killing Israeli soldiers. He died a brave death and Khamenei will now have died one too.
No. The other poster already did a fine job about pointing out that Islamic terror groups typically use guerilla warfare which frequently involves fleeing, not wearing a uniform, hiding among civilians, etc.
If the United States truly supported regime change there should be a clear next leader favored to succeed the Ayatollah, otherwise this feels more like a favor to oil companies, raising prices temporarily, and a sound bite for political gain, without a care of what happens to the country later. Simply toppling a government seems quite risky without further planning. Just expecting "good" people to fill the leadership vacuum is a gamble that could easily backfire and lead to greater crackdowns on freedoms and death to those Trump told to go get the power.
Obviously has nothing to do with oil companies or oil, this is a war on behalf of Israel. Netanyahu visited Trump 6 times in the past year. Prominent Zionists and Israelis inside the US have been agitating for the US to do this for years, especially since Trump took office last year.
Wars are almost always about commerce, history has shown that. Ideology is used to back the motive publicly, but the reason for involvement is almost always trade or commerce. This case could be different, but it is not obvious to me that this case is any different. A simple example is WW1 where the US was forced to back the UK because of their large debt to US banks, despite them still being a colonist power at the time.
I am making no implications of Trump, very on purpose to keep this in point (it's hard), but explicitly stating that the policies of the United States are based on capitalism and always have been, while the narrative given and received is that of humanitarianism, which in my opinion is a side effect only. In this case hopefully a positive one, hence my concern for the reckless nature of the war (let's just call it what it is, not just an attack or military action).
There is no evidence this strike has anything to do with oil, our leadership is not even saying that we will be involved with the changes on the ground. Oil prices are extremely low and have been so for a while now, domestic production is huge and we just claimed Venezuela's for ourselves as well. We have plenty of oil and again, there is just no evidence that this is motivated in any way by oil.
It is purely because Iran is a rival and check on Israel. Most of the US oligarchy has strong ties to Israel and they have made huge donations to Trump so that he would do this for them. Take a look at Miriam Adelson, Sheldon Adelson, Larry Elison, Ronald Lauder. These are mega donors who have been agitating for regime change in Iran from the very beginning. Go watch the speeches that Trump has given IN Israel, this has been their aim the entire time.
This conflict is extremely religious in nature, a huge contingent of Christians in the US believe that Israel ruling the middle east out of Jerusalem means that the end times will arrive sooner. Similarly a large contingent of Jews believe that their Messiah will return when they control the middle east.
Watch the Tucker interviews with Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee, many of these people are true believers.
>A 2017 LifeWay poll conducted in United States found that 80% of evangelical Christians believed that the creation of Israel in 1948 was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy that would bring about Christ's return and more than 50% of Evangelical Christians believed that they support Israel because it is important for fulfilling the prophecy.
Yes, and the price of oil has gone up 10% last I saw. United states domestic oil sells at the same price. Maybe not planned, but a reality. On the flip side the possibility this affect the global economy, which includes the US, more negatively is probably true also.
Again though, you are presenting 0 evidence that these strikes have anything to do with oil. Meanwhile there's a mountain of evidence that this has everything to do with Israel and its ambition to dominate the region.
It’s so funny reading most comments here, knowing that they’d be celebrating and saying this is good if it was Netanyahu. But when it’s a maniacal islamist declaring his goal to be the destruction of US and Israel, it’s suddenly very nuanced.
No one liked the ayatollah, but if you think the president can go to war without congressional approval then you are unamerican. On top of that, the younger generation of the IRGC is more extreme than the current one, and there has never been a successful regime change by only using an air campaign. Dummies might point to Kosovo or Libya, but the opposition in those cases were armed. In Iran, the opposition is about to get slaughtered and oppressed further, unless we get boots on the ground.
An almost bigger irony is that most of those complaining would almost certainly have lamented in the past about leaders sending their nations poor to fight instead of going after each other directly. But now "that's illegal" (not just the war, but specifically the decapitation strikes)
If you do care the number of people will die bc of the sudden death of their leadership, then the reaction makes sense. Israel society will still function if its far right leadership was taken out suddenly, Iran society will collapse and become unpredictable and miserable if rev guard were suddenly removed without quick replacement or resolution.
Don't worry, if you say maniac and islamist enough times everyone will understand your view point and change their minds about what it means to blow up middle eastern countries.
They’re still bombing Tehran right now.[0] It’s not over. What is there to celebrate? I hope Netanyahu and Trump both die today but I’d prefer they were prosecuted not blown up with missiles. Do you think I should celebrate their deaths when the day comes? They’re both maniacal men who have beliefs and have gotten people killed for no reason.
Israel is at fault for spreading those false rumors, yes. Just like Iraq having "weapons of mass destruction". Same people lying to drag the US into unjust wars.
It's funny how being partisan makes one "know" all these unknowable, evidence-free hypotheticals about the other side.
Must be nice, to replace the difficult art of getting things done in politics with merely spectating at a soccer match. Team Green or Team Blue? Get your bumper stickers and profile emojis.
They can not sadly. As the monsters of america and israel have free license to kill anyone, they will kill anyone they want to make their god happy. In the case of iran, they already killed 100+ girls in a school even though they have perfect intelligence and precision attack tech.
The killings of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were so amazingly successful in stabilizing those countries that Americans keep repeating the pattern.
Also Panama's population and land area are an order of magnitude smaller than these Middle East states, and they were already an American client state in the past.
This is prime cherry-picked propaganda bullshit. What about Augusto Pinochet, to name drop a counterexample? How did that work out for the Chilean people?
What is happening to this world. There is so many intense events happening in a such short time. I feel like we are truly living in weird times. Trumpet is out here deciding the fate of countries future for his own good. Now, it so happens to be something that benefited the Iranians. But I do not think he did it for the people directly, rather a side effect.
I feel like I've lost the touch of which direction our future is going now, the worlds geopolitics is fluctuation too much. Maybe I should remind myself that feelings also gets amplified by constant stream of news and social media. I am certain 1990s, 2000s and early 2010s was worse times.
Exactly just because the dictator was horrible doesn’t give the US the right to attack other countries. I see no difference between Russia, Israel, America. They’re all hostile countries which should be sanctioned for human rights violations and violating international law.
I've begun to think of Trump as a forest fire. The consequences may be horrible, at least for the status quo, but it does provide an opportunity for new beginnings.
Good, Trump can now claim victory and shout some words in his third-world-dictator style, and american sailors move out of the region. Stock market is opening tomorrow and it doesnt want to see ugly things
Trump is for rent. Shutting down a competitor is 25M, "full service" is apparently ~100M. I'm not privy to what invading an oil nation costs, but I reckon it's akin to a hand job, so a nice golden wristwatch should probably do it?
Good to know! That's a relatively hefty sum, I wonder what's included? Do you get a free invasion with that, or is it just access to membership discounts? I guess time will tell!
All the angry people here coming out of the woodwork in this thread. Where were you just a month ago, when the Iranian regime murdered 30k of its own civilians within just a couple of days, during the recent wave of protests? This site is infested with woke moralists and islamists.
> Earlier, Trump addressed reports that Khamenei was killed in airstrikes today, saying, “We feel that that is a correct story.”
This doesn't sound like Trump's typical bluster, and it's even weirder that Trump didn't immediately go on TV to brag. I'm not saying this is fake news, but I'll wait for confirmation.
If true, and given how easy it seemed decapitate the regime I can't see another Ayatollah taking over, hopefully the people take over and institute a real secular democracy based on capitalism.
Without proper support and a huge nation building effort, the same fate as Lebanon, Syria, Lybia Iraq, Afghanistan is the more likely outcome after this evil dictator is gone.
Assassination doesn’t remove the system or rewrite the balance of power, nor does it reconstitute civil society.
How is it bad? Imagine a world where instead of sending hundreds of thousands young men to die, countries would just launch targeted attacks on the head of enemy's state.
Only because of professional courtesy between powerful assholes. I have far more sympathy for an infantry grunt from literally any country in the world than any head of state.
It's the stated reason why the United States has an impeachment process. So that they have a process for removing undesirable heads of state without resorting to assassination.
Sorry I phrased that poorly. I meant countries have no means to impeach a foreign head of state so impeachment only serves as a power check if the citizenry disapproves.
Not that I think heads of state fearing for their lives from airstrikes is necessarily good, being able to act with impunity is certainly bad.
There was a clip of one of Iran's missiles dodging 3 Patriot interceptors to hit the US base in Bahrain. I realized I just watched $12m wasted for nothing in less than 5 seconds.
This is the kind of brainrot that lets people like Trump get into power in the first place. Removing all agency from the American people by pretending that "both sides are the same". It's just pathetic.
You have built yourself a safe little cocoon, protected from the messy imperfect reality of the world, where sometimes you have to make compromises and you don't always get what you want.
So ? People didn't vote to spend billions on Israel wars.
Trump said he was against wars, that 2003 Irak war was a mistake, yet he's once again trying to make another country change government by dropping bombs on them.
Polls show that a majority of Americans are against that war.
What more do you want to understand that Americans didnt vote for it and are against it.
And if a choice between 2 people that have been thoroughly vetted by elites is your definition of democracy, you have a sad sad view of what's possible.
These people are here to either sow dissent between American citizens and the American government, or have been influenced by those whose goal is to sow dissent between American citizens and the American government. Qatar can not take on the US with military power, so they use soft power and "influencers".
The murderers are the people committing murders. That the victim was himself a ruthless tyrant doesn't change the fact that this is intolerable. The US can't be the only one allowed to bend the rules.
Don't come crying around when the next 9/11 inevitably happens.
In hindsight, from the perspective of the Middle East and Arab world in general: Obama’s tenure was a geopolitical nightmare, while under Trump’s first presidency the Middle East made a big step forward with the Abraham Accords.
You support organization that's on a UN international blacklist of organizations that intentionally harm children. Have some shame.
I will never forget the thousands of little children that IDF burned to death, cut off their legs and arms, separate they heads or just degutted. Bleh.
IDF taught me that you can cut off both legs of a toddler at the hips and it will still live and scream, and will not die instantly from shock and hypovolemia.
Fuck scum that support this organization for whatever reason.
It's unreasonable approach to blame UN and by that largely the whole world for Israel's own failings, like the whole failed approach to build a state based on brutal violence against other inhabitants of the land they stole. All they managed is to build a failed distopia that just brutalizes all its neighbors and non-citizen subjects.
You google for images of "israeli" or whatever and all you get is endless images of armed nutjobs. What other normal nation has that? Like no culture but blue/white flag and gun worship can be discerned from a simple generic search like that.
I realized how different the Iranian definition of "democracy" is compared to Western democracies when I was discussing Iranian elections with a regime supporter.
Me: "What about the Guardian Council having veto power over presidential candidates?"
Him: "Well, you can't let a goat herder be president!"
Say what you want about American democracy, but we do let any idiot run for president.
It's remarkable to me how many seem to forget there is "morality" apart from "legality". Even if this does violate some treaty somewhere, we need not wring hands over the death of an objective dictator.
> Even if this does violate some treaty somewhere, we need not wring hands over the death of an objective dictator.
We absolutely should. It's a key principle of international law that brutal regimes should not be disturbed, until an opportunity for a regime change brokered by international lawyers presents itself in a century or two. Moral legitimacy comes from international law, and international law only.
> President Trump announced the Iranian leader's death on social media, saying Khamenei could not avoid U.S. intelligence and surveillance. A source briefed on the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran told NPR earlier Saturday that an Israeli airstrike killed Khamenei.
This does not seem to me like very strong evidence? Trump just says whatever, and "a source briefed on [the attacks]" just means at least one person in USG thinks Khamenei was in whatever house they blew up. Am I missing some other confirmation?
Pretty much by definition, dictators do not allow themselves to be removed by the people through peaceful means, which is why it's easy to draw a line there. If someone's a dictator, it's morally okay to kill them. Always.
Why isn't Trump bombarding the Kremlin? Isn't Putin a much larger threat to world peace than any leader of Iran?
Also, it's never "morally okay" to kill anyone, ever; the fact that the US still has the death penalty shows how little they understand about morals and logic.
> Why isn't Trump bombarding the Kremlin? Isn't Putin a much larger threat to world peace than any leader of Iran?
Russia is not a threat to the US per MAD doctrine. If Iran had nukes, you might believe that they could actually be mad enough to use them and because Russia has nukes, no one would try this with Putin.
> Also, it's never "morally okay" to kill anyone, ever; the fact that the US still has the death penalty shows how little they understand about morals and logic.
Never, ever? Even self-defence? Or what would you do if you were living in a hunter-gatherer society that did not have the capability to imprison someone for life and you had a murdering psycho in your tribe? Expel him so he can come back and kill more people? Logic?
In my opinion the real problem for Iran lies in the north, on the border with Azerbaijan.
The Israeli-supplied Azeri military has already demonstrated its effectiveness when it curb stomped the unprepared and internally betrayed Armenian military and militias. Baku will eventually decide to intervene in the northern territories. If I had to guess, a "special military operation" into northern Iran is the most likely follow-up scenario goaded into and supplied of course by Israel/US. The goal will be to foment a civil war and begin the dismemberment process of Iran.
A little personal conspiracy theory I have is that after the last Israel/US intervention (when they mysteriously liquidated the only high-ranking and influential internal opposition of the Khamenei clan left) is that some sort of deal was worked out behind the scenes with the clan to get rid of the wizard-in-chief kinda like how Maduro was sold out. It is much easier to go to war with a country when it responds with only symbolic attacks and secretly promises to fight with one hand behind its back - provided cash and security flows for those at the top of course.
The Iranian diaspora around the world is celebrating. Here's the scene in Berlin:
https://youtu.be/NSbx_0mtk80?si=MJ_Bfvx8gVd1P1mm
They've waited a very long time for this moment!
I have no doubt that they didn't like that the regime, which is why they left.
But this assassination is no guarantee of change for the better. Far from it.
It’s no guarantee, but it is a good opportunity. I’m half-Persian, and certainly not as closely connected as others, but it’s hard to see this as a bad thing. There’s a possibility I can go visit my family in Iran as a result of this. I haven’t had a good chance for that in like 4 years
Removal of the head of state is often a turning point. Either a regime becomes more extreme or the government collapses due to in-fighting as individuals attempt to gain control.
I would hold back on any hopes until we see how the current government handles things. Intervention from other countries does not always lead to positive outcomes.
Has there been a regime which has collapsed due to an external strike like this where it hasn't resulted in some decades long civil war nightmare?
I can't think of any time when bombing the shit out of a country and killing their leader has actually worked.
All I can think of is examples of blowback.
> I can't think of any time when bombing the shit out of a country and killing their leader has actually worked.
Japan? Although their leader wasn't killed, but same logic. The more civilized a country is the easier it is to reform them into a good state, and Iran is a pretty civilized and structured nation, the dictatorship is the main issue.
Most people in Iran want a democracy and are capable of running it, you just have to let them. That isn't the case in most of these dictatorships that lacks such structure, but it is there in Iran.
The Americans had to occupy and place both Japan and West Germany under their military rule afterwards to make it stick, that's not a comparison
I disagree. After the bombing, the Emperor himself broadcasted a surrender message [0] to the people of Japan. The occupation was also for more lighter than in Germany. Japan had full control of its administration and its government continued to operate. In that context whether we like or not, it very much worked.
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito_surrender_broadcast
The American occupation of Japan may have been less punitive than Germany’s, but it was arguably more invasive: Japan’s postwar Constitution was largely drafted by Americans, with minimal Japanese input. By contrast, West Germany’s Basic Law was written by Germans themselves under Allied constraints.
Japanese army officers stormed the emperor's palace and placed him under house arrest in an attempt to prevent him from broadcasting that surrender message. This was after the second bomb, a whole lot of them still had fight left in them.
[flagged]
The US did not have to occupy Japan and deal with rebels - the emperor surrendered unconditionally and the US fed the existing pro-democracy movement while rebuilding the country.
If you look at the US' history of interventions, the common thread is that nations with established pro-democracy movements tend to become stable democracies, and nations where democracy lacks popular support tend to turn into flimsy Republics that easily fall apart when American support is removed.
Occupation is so expensive that it's virtually unthinkable for even a medium-size country to be occupied. There are just too many civilians and too few soldiers.
Yeah, apparently I should have been explicit that I was talking about air strikes and not occupation.
We aren't going to occupy Iran.
Comparing this to defeated nations in WWII is also a massive stretch, I almost can't believe people seriously think that is a parallel situation.
There's a lot of propaganda out there to dissuade people from thinking that this looks a lot like Libya at best--and that is assuming that decapitation airstrikes can even make the regime fall (which I doubt).
Yes, this is an underrated point and why I’m holding out hope for a positive outcome. I’m convinced that, before the revolution, Iran was on the same trajectory as European monarchies that had become democracies. At that point, countries like Denmark had been democracies for less than 75 years.
And then France sent Khomeini back to Iran on a chartered Air France 747 & stifled that. France also built Dimona nuclear plant in Israel in 1963 and then tested multiple times nuclear weapons in Algeria from 1960-1966 in the Algerian Sahara & mountains & allowed Israel to observe these explosions.
From my understanding, it wasn't the bombing that motivated Japan to surrender even though this is commonly taught, it was the recent Soviet declaration of war and fear of invasion/occupation.
> Has there been a regime which has collapsed due to an external strike like this where it hasn't resulted in some decades long civil war nightmare?
People have already mentioned the post WW2 occupation of Germany and Japan.
There’s also the Roman occupation of Greece (and other Hellenistic territories), and even perhaps the Norman occupation of England. Not that either of these didn’t cause some strife and rebellion in both cases, but still there was a concerted effort to build up both territories.
The canonical example is WWii Germany. Denazification actually sort of worked. But it required a lot of effort, resources and special circumstances.
West Germany wasn't denazified. The process was started after the surrender, but quickly and quietly stopped.
The party was forbidden, the symbols were forbidden. They hung the main leaders, quite publicly. It became a huge taboo, the ideology effectively died (for decades). A strong democracy was established, older democratic parties took over.
Yes a bunch of previous nazis made it back into power and politics, but they didn't call themselves nazis or acted like nazis. But also, the country as a whole took a very different path after wwii.
A lot of symbolic actions were taken, but the majority (not "a bunch") of Nazis continued to hold positions of power in both the GDR and FRG.
Justice was never served for what the Nazis did. Both the US and the USSR scooped up Nazi scientists (Operation Paperclip), and with the advent of the Cold War, the West quickly decided that it cared more about contesting Europe with the Soviets than seeking justice.
Germany was also split in two for fifty years.
fourty
(1945 - 1949 it was split in 4 occupation zones)
If you ignore Berlin (which, I think, kept its four occupation zones) it were first four, three from January 1, 1947, and two from from August 1, 1948 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bizone)
thanks
they brought the Nazis to the US and now hydra has taken over.
> Has there been a regime which has collapsed due to an external strike like this where it hasn't resulted in some decades long civil war nightmare?
The US operation to depose the dictator of Panama in 1989 is one example.
>I can't think of any time when bombing the shit out of a country and killing their leader has actually worked.
This happened just weeks ago in Venezuela, though in that case the removal was by abduction and foreign trial. (The U.S. struck Venezuela and abducted its President at the time, bringing him to trial in the United States. I've just now asked ChatGPT for a research report on his current status, you can read it here[1].)
This led to immediate and definitive regime change, the U.S. now has an excellent relationship with the new President of Venezuela.
[1] https://chatgpt.com/share/69a424b4-de38-800c-8699-cb95d25090...
It's likely the regime will be denied use of heavy weaponry by the US and Israel. This means any actual popular revolt in some sense could be supported by massive air power.
Naval blockade and the military capacity to simply siege you from afar. Tactically , why America didn’t do more of that is … well who knows. I mean, what if we literally parked our carrier group off of Iraq and sieged them until
A) Put in a government we like
B) Population behave or quality of life will be bad, you see, the simple life is difficult with cruise missiles coming at you
If that’s as effective as sending 250k ground troops (which … actually wasn’t effective), one could make the observation that Trump is a military genius.
Someone please talk sense to me because I cannot believe what I am saying.
Trump seems to have thought it through a bit. Recent post:
>...This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country. We are hearing that many of their IRGC, Military, and other Security and Police Forces, no longer want to fight, and are looking for Immunity from us. As I said last night, “Now they can have Immunity, later they only get Death!” Hopefully, the IRGC and Police will peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots, and work together as a unit to bring back the Country to the Greatness it deserves...
The merge peacefully or die thing may motivate them.
Uh huh, and if you are an Iranian Policeman are you more concerned that the funny orange man yelling on the tv/phone is going to get you, or the mob forming outside your window? They might see it in their personal self interest to stay lock step with the former regime as a better form of self preservation than just surrendering to the population they've been abusing. It's not like the U.S. can offer them any actual immunity lmao.
I'd probably think about which side is going to end up in power and try to get along with whoever that is. The US's demonstrated willingness to kill the leader will probably have an influence there.
“Which side”? What other side is there in Iran? You think there’s some shadow government that can realistically topple the mullahs from within? The only way the Shah comes back is with US boots on the ground, which would be a disaster for other reasons. Until that happens this is just reckless action that makes the regime even more radical than it already is.
I'm not sure - I'm not that up on all that but there's the
>coalition of liberal and nationalist political parties selected Reza Pahlavi to lead a transitional government until the realisation of democratic elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_opposition#:~:text=On%...
thing. Maybe if enough Iranian people back that?
There are a lot of well educated people in iran who were unhappy. Iran killed more than 30,000 protesters last month, and there are who knows how many more left.
only time will tell. I give iran much better than average odds this is for the better. Though the average is really bad: bad results would not surprise me.
If you were part of regime - now is your chance to defect.
Certainly people within the Trump administration have thought a lot about this.
The evidence shows that generally, nobody in the Trump administration gives a lot of serious thought to anything...
And/or neighboring countries see their chance to start another front in the war.
Few of Iran's neighbours are in a position to do this.
Afghanistan? No. Lacks means, motive, or organisation.
Iraq? Probably not, despite past history of conflict, too much internal strife.
Turkmenistan? Very unlikely.
Pakistan? Has the capability perhaps, but little motive AFAIU.
Azerbaijan, Aremenia, Turkey? Again, unlikely.
The most likely beligerents would be Israel (already involved, but not seeking occupation in all likelihood), and Saudi Arabia. But both those also seem unlikely. Both benefit by a weakened and submissive Iran, but occupation would be an extraordinary undertaking and highly problematic.
Non-bordering countries might be considerations (India likely tops that list) but again the upsides seem slight given costs.
The most likely situation is continuity. They just pick a new supreme leader. The second most likely situation is a civil war.
There is also a possibility of a Venezuela-style cooperation.
Adding Iranian oil back to the market will lower prices everywhere, including Russia. I'm not so sure the extra-heavy Venezuelan oil will be affected as much.
Anyone know?
India used to use Venezuelan crude before the 2019 sanctions [0][1]
India only shifted to using Russian oil in 2022 [2] after Venezuelan [3] and Iranian [4] oil sanctions were enacted, which was when both began increasing engagement with China.
It's a similar story for South Korea [5] and Japan [6].
This helps reduce prices for ONG, as India is shifting back to Venezuelan crude which gives slack which South Korea and Japan can take advantage of, as India, Japan, and South Korea represent 3 of the 5 largest oil consumers globally.
[0] - https://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/ongc-awaits-instr...
[1] - https://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/reliance-venezuel...
[2] - https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65553920
[3] - https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/india-and-venezuela-gro...
[4] - https://www.brookings.edu/articles/trump-tightens-sanctions-...
[5] - https://eastasiaforum.org/2019/09/13/south-korean-oil-refine...
[6] - https://mei.edu/ar/publication/japan-and-middle-east-navigat...
Reminder: extra heavy oil means that there is more processing required to get useful materials out of it, which in turn becomes higher operational cost. So, if Iranian oil entered the market, prices would go down making Venezuelan oil non competitive (I believe the break even price for Venezuelan oil was close to 80$). At this moment the numbers don't add up to make companies go back into Venezuela given the price, uncertainty and past expiriences.
It is too early to know what "Venezuela-style cooperation" looks like. It hasn't even been 6 months since the US kidnapped Maduro; the base case is that Venezuela's leadership does more or less what they were going to do anyway under US diplomatic pressure.
The US actually did something fairly similar in Iran; Trump had Soleimani blown up back in 2020. As we can see from the present situation, it failed to influence Iran in ways that the US thought were acceptable. It is rare for assassinations to have positive geopolitical ramifications.
Unlikely, large proportion of population is brainwashed for 40 years. They will elect a "moderate" supreme leader, then business as usual.
In Romania it took some 10 years to reach some degree of functional democracy after the fall of communism and the execution on Ceaușescu, who coincidentally, just returned from the crowning of Khamenei, while learning, dictator-to-dictator, how to suppress a revolution: 1006 killed, though most of them not by the initial "Revolutionary Guards" reprisal but in the semi-civil war that followed.
And that in a country/region without Islamic radicals trying to take over. So far, apart from Israel, no Middle East country has managed to function as a democracy. Turkey, the only Muslim majority who has the faintest chance of joining the European Union, only keeps stuff under control due to the army enforcing a secular state, which the liberal patsies in the West can't take, because authoritarianism is bad and diversity in accepting radical Islam creeping into our homeland is our strength.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania and Kosovo won’t get into the EU?
Forgot they aren't already in EU.
Also I'm getting downvoted and don't really understand unless I fall back to experience from 30 years ago, after the Romanian revolution and fall of =~ 50 years of dictatorial regime (not that before that was much better, with small interruptions).
At that time (1990), when everything seemed possible and a quick path to democracy and all that it brings (in the imaginary of the poor, oppressed people that we were) along with it, this guy came along: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Ra%C8%9Biu
He ran for president in the first free elections and made some 0.5% or something. I remember him for his words which go along the "it will take 20 years at least, for democracy to settle in Romania". He was right on. Now, 30 years after, we have a strong, frile democracy. Everyone can run for president but not everyone can win, even if they could: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4x2epppego
All things considered, I live a much, much better life now than 30 years ago during the communist dictatorship. Perfect? Far from it and perfection is a moving target. But we're definitely a solid democracy, and also definitely, it's a miracle the first 5-10 years didn't erupt in a full scale civil war. And the despised "revolutionary guards" had some involvement in making sure it didn't happen, so as much as you hate them, you need them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_clashes_of_T%C3%A2rgu_M...
Without doxxing yourself, why were you unable to visit? I have known Persian expats a few times in my life, and they were always able to visit without issue.
If they have said anything against the regime on social media, they would be wise not to visit. I personally know many Persian expats who meet family in Turkey and have been anxious about going back.
Not OP but most common reason I've heard is military age males with unresolved mandatory military service status.
Oh good point! I knew some young Turkish men a while back that could not visit Turkey for similar reasons.
Honestly I’m not sure I should say, sorry. Recent years have been worse than normal though, with lots of human rights violations, protests, protestors being tortured/killed, foreign nationals being held in prison/killed, etc.
I would defer the celebration until you can.
A friend of mine, EU member, hasn't been able to visit USA because he was cricizing us gov (under BIdden), still not allowed. Ban and censorship isn't specific to Iran, many western nations love it too.
There’s a difference between the ban where they don’t give you visa vs. censorship where they disappear you if you publicize your dissent. One must not conflate.
I hope that it works out for you and your family.
As another Iranian living the West, I wish he would have been captured alive and stood trial.
He should have answered for every single drop of blood on his hands.
My 21 year old cousin was captured during the Mahsa uprising, she was sent to Evin prison, tortured for months. After she was released, we brought her to Canada and she was hospitalized for over a year. She will never be able to live a normal life again.
Death was too merciful for Khamenei.
Well he’s been slain like the dog that he was, alongside some family members - same as the families of those who were slain and tortured on his theocratic watch. Perhaps this is good evidence that Allah is just, even if Allah’s justice has to be delivered by the hands of the Israelis.
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This comment likely confuses Khomeini and Khamenei, and is inaccurate either way.
My condolences. Your cousin sounds very brave.
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If Israel & the US prevail, Israel will treat Iran as the do their other neighbors, bombing them whenever they feel like it and murdering your relatives there. Take a look at Syria where they installed the head of Al-Qaeda/HTS. The IDF has carried out 600 attacks there since 2024 till present. They have attacked the following areas since 2023: Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Syria & Yemen.
Nope, every action protects Israeli citizens from the Iran terrorist regime. Thanks to Trump Iran will soon be Israel's ally again. Jews & Persians have centuries of mutual respect, the islamists were just a temporary curse
It's less a revolution and more a matter of catching the tide of shifting world powers — and seizing a rare shot at building something other than the last failed experiment. New Iran, new experiment. You bet Iranians are euphoric right now. Some of the country's brightest intellectuals and political minds are sitting in Evin prison, and if all goes well, they're about to walk out and help shape what comes next. My dad is worried about the power vacuum, and he's right to be. His biggest concern is the border states and the narrative that ISIS is being funneled into the country to destroy any chance of organized transition. I desperately hope he's wrong. And I don't think he'll ever fully heal — few who lived through the first revolution will.
> It's less a revolution and more a matter of catching the tide of shifting world powers — and seizing a rare shot at building something other than the last failed experiment
The Arab spring wasn't that long ago, was it? We all saw how that turned out, but I suppose hope springs eternal.
> You bet Iranians are euphoric right now
I'm guessing the 50+ dead elementary school kids may put a damper on celebrations a bit.
The last thing they should do is to import the Shah's exiled family member and make him their figurehead again. Both him and the mullahs are bad news.
I think you are speaking about the last Shah's first son: Reza Pahlavi. You can read about his planned policy for Iran here: https://rezapahlavi.org/en
To quote:
One idea is to transition to a secular democracy with a figurehead Shah like a northern European (or Japanese) monarchy. Also, my personal opinion: I think it is fine if they want to incorporate aspects of Islamic religious culture into their government. After all, it is their country. Example: The national parliament and political parties might be required to secular (at least in name), but they may wish to continue to support religious institutions using tax payer money, including masjids (places of prayer) and Islamic monasteries.An interesting point of comparison: (1) Malaysia isn't really secular (but they may claim it); (2) Singapore is fully secular; (3) Indonesia is secular (or "pan-religious"), but is still largely guided by Islamic relgious culture in their democractic systems.
What he says he's planning and what he will do are not necessarily the same thing. The former Shah's regime was really bad and paved the way for everything that happened afterwards. Between the SAVAK (which tortured and executed quite a few of those in opposition to the Shah regime) and excesses like Persepolis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,500-year_celebration_of_the_... ) there was created an atmosphere in which the mullahs seemed like a viable alternative.
To return to a scion of the man who put that all in place would - in my opinion, of course - be a massive mistake.
Keep in mind that the Shah was a client of the United States and the United Kingdom and that his son isn't doing this out of the goodness of his heart but because he wants what he thinks is his birthright back (he's been pretty vocal about that since his late teens), and that he has been living off wealth stolen from the Iranian people and squirreled out of the country by his father.
Of course he would present this as a transition but just wait until his ass hits that pluche and see if it isn't going to take another revolution to dislodge him.
This comment is weird. The Shah's son != the Shah. Reza Pahlavi left Iran when he was 17. The Shah fell the following year. All of the issues that you raise are perpetrated by his father. His son was not responsible.
Not much being said here. This is true for anybody anywhere anytime. You might as well write: true == true.Yeah I'm not sure why people think that the Iranian government never considered any sort of continuity for what happens when their 86 year old ruler dies. It's not like they're ants that are all helpless without their sole supreme leader.
It's reported that Ayatollah Khamenei nominated multiple successors for his role and a number of other military roles, to guard against this policy.
- https://www.timesofisrael.com/khamenei-said-to-pick-three-po...- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/28/strategic-opti...
That makes sense because the US/Israel goal is currently likely to murder every person nominated as a successor immediately, too, and it's a completely predictable strategy.
The fact a leader can be assassinated at any moment by the US probably changes the succession plan slightly... I imagine any potential successor is thinking hard about whether it's a job they actually want.
The problem is that you are not dealing with rational people here, you are dealing with extreme religous fanatics. They are either not afraid of dying and becoming martyrs, or they are afraid but dare not show it.
That's certainly how their own propaganda portrays them, however if you see the amount of corruption in that effective kleptostate, you'd understand they care much about life
This is "Our blessed homeland" type of mischaracterisation [1]. Their wanting to continue their state against and oversized enemy is irrational and religious fanaticism, our wanting to continue our state against an oversized for is noble and martyrsome.
I'm not saying either view is right, but reducing the Iranian government to irrational religious fanatics is intellectually uncurious and unempathetic.
[1] - https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/355/607/670
You are possibly misunderstanding me. Firstly, I am not saying anything against the Iranian people in general. As far as I understand things, the majority of Iranians are moderate and tolerant, and have a strong desire to have a more liberal approach to the world. The current Iranian government, however, is under the rule of insane fundamentalists (with the emphasis on mental) who think nothing of machine gunning down protesters in the street. Even the majority of Iranian people don't want to be ruled by them. This is fact, not "blessed homeland" mischaracterisation.
I'm British, and whilst I don't think my government is perfect (their stance on digital privacy is insane) they are not murdering people, and we can vote them out at the next election if we want to.
You talking about the Iranians or the Americans here?
it's quite common that autocratic states have periods of instability due to wars of succession. That's why many devolve into Monarchy like the Kim or Assad dynasties. That's why one of the possible successors was Khamenai's son
It's not a given - e.g. AFAIK most turks in Germany support Erdogan
In both countries, the educated population likes the religious leader less than the uneducated population. In Germany, most Turkish immigrants are from rather basic backgrounds and most Iranian immigrants are from intellectual backgrounds. It makes a huge difference. In both countries of origin, the population is split much more evenly than what you see abroad. AFAIK, about 50% support the religious strongman in both countries.
I don't live in Germany (nor am I a German national), but I have special cultural interest in the history of Turks immigrating to Germany. I agree: On the whole, overwhelming Turks that immigrate/d to Germany are not highly educated. They come to work in manual labor jobs, not as engineers or medical doctors.
> AFAIK, about 50% support the religious strongman in both countries.
Do you have any credible source for this?
For Turkey, election results. For Iran, no hard numbers, just fuzzy memory about articles I've read. What is clear is that the regime has supporters and not just those who benefit directly / materially.
Of course. It has actually staunched supporters. One cannot kill innocents in the streets by just the promise of money. So there’s religious ideology involved. However the percentage matters a lot here and even 10% of 90 million is a large number.
*typo edit
update: Here’s some relatively independent polling from inside Iran which does not corroborate the 50/50 divide. And remember this was taken before the 2026 massacre: https://gamaan.org/2025/08/20/analytical-report-on-iranians-...
A lot of the Persian diaspora is actually descendents of people who left in the 80s. There are certainly people who left 20 years ago or less but they're mostly secular as well.
If somebody tells you that they are Persian (I have met a few), you know their opinion right away: they prefer to associate with millennia of Persian history, not the modern (religious) state of Iran.
Note that the quote referred to people who left more recently and thus lived most if not all of their lives after the Islamic revolution. Quite often they'll drink beer or have their pizzas with ham just fine, women would not wear a hijab, and so on.
They're not brain-damaged. They know that!
It depends on how well the regime brainwashed its people over the last 50 years. The majority of Iranians haven't any experience of anything else - I think around 55% are under 40 years old.
There's a US born professor Marandi who said in an interview a few weeks ago that the regime had put in place succession plans, including for himself.
I'm hopeful but skeptical that they will change for the better.
Well, in any case, it is a guarantee that Iran will be less of a danger for other nations if the regime falls, and that people inside of the country will suffer - because either pro-Western or any other government is bound to be a lot weaker, and there will be a lot more violence and economic disruption, eventually economic degradation. It should avenge the emigrants, and provide sufficient punishment for those in Iran for enabling this regime in the first place.
Let's not have illusions about it. There is no way to build a sustainable democracy in a country that never had such leanings and is not culturally/religiously predisposed to it, and can't be physically coerced into it with boots on the ground. Achievable goals are punishment, and neutering.
It’s a good start
That why they are going beyond that and going after the IRGC
Another Ayatollah is being ushered in. This is no news. Khameni is old and without the missile, he would be dead soon. This sttike is just bonus to galvanize support for Ayatollah. So in a way Trump prolong the regime. And consequence from this: every other middle east countries now starting their nuke program. Good luck.
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There would likely be millions of Americans celebrating the murder of their current president, should that happen. It doesn't mean it's reasonable, right, just, or civilized, nor would it indicate that it was a unanimously supported action.
But in the case of an actual dictator who murdered thousands of protestors it is reasonable, right, just, and civilized.
Shed no tears for the deaths of tyrants. They would happily see you and any other threat to their illegitimate power put six feet under.
I can feel OK about Khamenei dying and still worry about what it means that the US can just murder anyone in the world just because.
"Just because they're a brutal dictator who murdered thousands of people."
Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of other reasons to be skeptical of American military adventurism, but killing this one guy in particular really isn't one of them.
Of the several reasons Trump has given for doing this so far, which one do you believe?
Yes our president has only needlessly murdered two innocent US citizens so far. As he has told us countless times, he would like to be a dictator.
>Yes our president has only needlessly murdered two innocent US citizens so far
Over a million people in the US died of COVID. It's impossible to know exactly how many of them would've lived if the pandemic started under a president with a saner response than recommending injecting disinfectant, but I'm willing to bet it's more than two.
Look at the number of covid deaths in countries other than the US and consider updating your news diet.
You do realize that the US had _one of the highest_ per capita Covid deaths amongst developed nations?
The correlation between mortality and body mass index is striking.
Maybe the President should have taken that into account when lying publicly about the impacts that he admitted in private conversation, or mocking and undermining expert advice?
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Fauci injected money into the economy? Who was the President at the time?
Excess death from Covid is a non-trivial topic. Sweden had a very different approach to covid response, and yet had a very average number of excess death. The post-covid investigation provider some clear insight of what was primary causes to excess deaths, and yet very little of those conclusions has became common knowledge.
The primary group that had excess death caused from covid was to people living in homes for elderly care, and the primary cause was a lack of initial process and gear by people who worked at those locations. They were not given enough time to keep up a higher standard of sanitation (often given less than 15 minutes between patients), and protective gear was lacking. They also heavily depended on mass transportation which was a primary location for the virus to spread. A better early response in that sector, including shutdown/restriction of mass transportation would had saved many elderly people from early death.
To note, this had nothing to do with masks, vaccines, or shutdown of schools, which is the main points usually brought up in popular discourse. Sweden would have had one of the lowest number of deaths, with the exact same use of masks/vaccines/shutdowns as it did, as long as the response in elderly care had been done better.
US has one of the unhealthiest populations amongst developed countries too, so maybe it’s not that surprising.
Parent is referring to the same president as the grandparent...
Trump has murdered 2 innocent U.S. citizens so far, and was president when COVID started. Trump's response to COVID was part of why he lost the 2020 election.
> Trump has murdered 2 innocent U.S. citizens so far
Are you referring to documented murders from the Epstein files, or to Melissa and Mark Hoffman?
Alex Pretti and Renee Good, both murdered on Trump's orders to shoot ICE protestors.
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By your logic, Khamenei probably hasn't murdered anyone either, right? What a pitiful "argument".
While other Presidents would go as far as putting signs saying "the buck stops here" on the Resolute Desk, the current President's sign would say "the buck stops anywhere but here".
Let's also see what happens with New Mexico's investigation of the Zorro Ranch...
Self defense, my ass. Neither situation posed ANY credible threat to those agents, despite what ICE Barbie got up and said in front of a podium twenty minutes after the event.
to be fair, the prior respondent did seem to agree with the word 'murder' so perhaps we're all ultimately in agreement about what happened :|
if it's self-defence then more or less by definition it isn't murder.
Who said it was self defense? ICE, within minutes? Trump, within minutes?
Despite blatantly contradictory video?
I'm just pointing out that you are probably not in agreement with simianparrot. I don't think it does count as self-defense.
He also pushed the first vaccine, and fast-tracked it : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed
The amount of ahistorical histrionics on here is deeply worrying for such an educated population. Your political news needs to change. Shouldn't have to say this but to people like you it's a necessity: not a Trump voter or supporter, just correcting misinformation.
solid and well written response except no one who is even slightly to the right would ever admit that we actually lived under Trump's rule during the COVID. entire right is now anti-vaccines, anti-all but it was the right that locked up our children and kept them out of schools and forced the vaccines on the population (could not go to the fucking gym without the proof of vaccination). so politically we have short-term memory in this country, especially the right politically. this is why the right is celebrating now America bombing the shit out of everyone while in October of 2023 were pitching that we need to vote right "to stop the endless wars."
and murdered a bunch of Venezuelans, a bunch of non-citizens in the USA, collected from American companies and residents billions in tariffs... How about those Epstein files?
The death toll for the Venezuela raid is between 80 and 100, out of them only 10 were civilians. I feel bad for those 10 civilians but, for the rest, I feel no sympathy, as they were oppressors.
They killed nearly 100 Venezuelans at sea, accusing them of transporting drugs. To date, this regime has provided no evidence to corroborate those claims, in addition to the fact those were extra-judicial executions. We already knew that parts of their justificantions were false, especially the accusations against Venezuela of producing fentanyl. We also know that the US military committed war crimes at least once, when they blew up survivors of an initial bombing. Despite all these, Trump and his goon squad were seemingly quite pleased and joking about it. It's splendidly evident that they assign zero value to lives outside of their goon circle. That extends to every non-whites, political opponents and even women/girls who suffered sexual crimes.
There are zero reasons to assume this regime's victims, except for known tyrants like Maduro and Khameini, to be guilty at all. The regime has zero credibility when it comes to human rights. So those fishermen were most likely innocent victims and not drug smugglers.
In addition to all this, don't assume that this US attacks on Iran were because of his love and benevolence for the Iranian civilians. If it were so, he wouldn't have provoked the Iranian regime to crackdown on the protestors and kill around 30K of them. That farce was unnecessary for the liberation of Iran. Instead, he used them to create an excuse to carry out an attack that they had already planned.
So, as much as I understand the Iranians' joy in seeing the end of Khameini, I strongly suspect that this is just the beginning of another authoritarian regime over there, controlled remotely by the US regime this time, just as we see in Venezuela. Expect everything from human rights violations to mass scale plunder of their natural resources. All that we see now are just ploys to establish a worldwide neocolonial order under a very racist and xenophobic regime operating from the US. Let me remind you of the meme that this orange dictator posted that shows Canada, Venezuela and Greenland as part of the US territory. I don't see this end well for any civilians on this planet, including US citizens.
Doesn't change the fact that it was a war crime. But hey, "rules based order," right?
There's quite a difference between saying you would like to be a dictator and actually being one.
Most dictators are elected democratically, once. What makes them a dictator is them not relinquishing power. It's too late to protest after a dictator is officially a dictator. They know what will come and are usually prepared with an armed force loyal only to them.
When the sitting president of the United states repeatedly states he would like to have an illegal third term, that elections are fraudulent and must be under his control, continually takes actions testing the limits of what he can get away with in terms of authoritarian behaviour, and only backs down temporarily when he faces massive backlash, you can forgive people for being alarmed.
When you're in a position of power and doing dictator like things, not very much.
Add to this list the two children and an adult unnecessary killed by measles in Texas and New Mexico in 2025 after the disinformation campaign aiming to save the government a few dollars.
Trump would very much like to be, no denying that, but he isn't there yet.
Regardless, dictators deserve to be put into the ground no matter where they are.
He sure does act like a dictator, ruling by executive order. He sent the US military to operate on US soil, by executive order... so yes, he is very much a dictator right now.
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As an outside observer, I'd say it's by far not as bad as in Russia yet but they're heading towards a similar model. Due process has already been eroded, prosecution is more selective than ever, there are attempts to criminalize harmless minorities, a large government-controlled police force arrests anyone they want to (including journalists), government-critical press is bought, sued, and intimidated, Congress is held in contempt, court orders are ignored, and the FBI works directly on behalf of the president. That being said, they've still got a long way to go.
So they are not even comparable.
> there are attempts to criminalize harmless minorities
like what?
> So they are not even comparable.
What a bizarre comment when I just compared them.
>> there are attempts to criminalize harmless minorities
> like what?
Among other minorities, they're going very strongly against transgender people and support groups and try to criminalize them. They're obsessed with transgender people for some reason. For example, Executive Order 14168, Executive Order 14183, Executive Order 14187, Executive Order 14190, Executive Order 14201, and by offering cash bounties to the FBI for "...information leading to the identification and arrest of transgender activists promoting 'radical gender ideology'."[Wikipedia] Pam Bondi described such activists as "domestic terrorist groups."[ibid] There is also a large initiative by the Heritage Foundation to make the FBI classify transgender people in general as domestic terrorists and introduce a new classification they call "Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violence and Extremism" (TIVE).
Why they are so particularly violent against transgender people and so obsessed with that topic is a complex matter. I suppose their hatred for this tiny group is based on a mix of religious fanaticism, Elon Musk's direct influence on the US government, extremely insecure masculinity, the need of Fascism for inventing inner enemies (because it doesn't have any stringent ideology), and the fact that this group is so small and insignificant that they cannot possibly defend themselves - unlike the US gay community, who have a large lobby by now and include people like Peter Thiel.
> identification and arrest of transgender _activists_
This isn't chasing trans, it's looking for people who promote 'radical gender ideology'. It's not activists who support trans either. Emphasis on _radical_ and _ideology_.
"Turn over your state's voter information to the Federal Government for ... reasons, or we'll keep up the ICE raids in your cities that have already led to death and injuries" would be one simple example. Oppression... or extortion... or both.
Huh?
"We want to suppress voters under some false boogeyman of 'illegal voters'. You are refusing to give us data which we need to do this, so instead, we'll keep ICE in your cities who have been shown to have no issues with escalating violence, until you do."
I struggle to believe you cannot connect those dots.
In addition, why would ICE enforcement in a city go away because voter rolls are turned over? Is illegal immigration in Minnesota a problem worthy of active enforcement or not?
In other words, oppression of citizenry to advance the efforts of a government to suppress voting that it dislikes.
Is this about requiring ID to vote? Like in literally every country. In a country where reliance on cars is like 99.9%?
You can't be serious.
The current administration's "we need your voter rolls" has fuck-all to do with "requiring ID to vote".
> Like in literally every country
As a citizen of Great Britain, Australia and now the US, I'm well aware of this.
And it doesn't change the "you can vote without ID in blue states!" from being the absolute bullshit that it is, and again, has nothing to do with why DHS is demanding voter rolls from blue states.
Ask any minority. Lest you think it will be limited to minorities though, ask Alex Pretti, or even ask the NRA what they think about Trump saying that if he didn’t want to get shot, he shouldn’t have been carrying a gun.
Look around
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In cases where it's feasible to do life in prison, I'm fine with that too. But for dictators, that's typically not realistic (Maduro notwithstanding). Better to kill them rather than let them continue killing others.
I actually oppose the death penalty as a punishment for crimes, but for practical rather than principled reasons: I don't want innocent people (and there's always a chance of innocence) to be killed, and it's more expensive than life in prison anyway.
Part of the reason I, like you, make an exception for world leaders is that it can be cathartic for the people who suffered under them. Of course, it depends on the circumstances. I'm not talking about giving Jimmy Carter the chair for failing to bring down inflation.
My personal view is that most dictators deserve to be stuffed into a suitcase, loaded into a canon, and fired into the side of a climbing wall. I guess that makes me immoral.
That said, for anything aside from a despotic world leader, I'm also against the death penalty.
I'm opposed to the death penalty as well, but this has nothing to do with why I'd prefer despots be left to live in obscurity rather than die a relatively quick, painless, and public death.
Sentence them to live alone and anonymously in an uncomfortable cell in an unremarkable prison without visitation, communication, or news of the outside world.
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Yes, and if he actually becomes a dictator, I'd shed no tears for him being removed by force.
Doesn't have to go that far he can be removed by force now for all the illegal shit he's done
"if" he actually becomes a dictator?
When is that? When he declares himself the supreme dictator of the US? Or when he nukes another nation because of his racism?
Look around and compare with the Nazis. There is already the demonization and dehumanization of a large demographic group. There are concentration camps and extralegal police forces around already. Just like in Nazi extermination camps, the people who disappear into these ICE facilities are near impossible to trace again. There are already fatalities in there from inhumane living conditions, very bad food, lack of medical care and occasional premeditated murders. Even among the civilians, they see differently abled people as a burden, just as the Nazis did. Just as in Nazi Germany, there is an expansion of military power at the expense of the civilians and flouting of international laws. And just as in Nazi Germany, smart people who can see the writing on the wall are already on a mass exodus.
If you still believe that you're in a democracy, you forgot what happened on Jan 6, 2021. Their ego is too fragile to accept anything except their victory. There is zero chance that the despots will risk getting impeached, trialed and punished by the Congress and face the severe consequences of absolutely horrendous stuff they've committed so far. Even if the public opinion is overwhelmingly hostile towards them, they'll just claim election fraud. They have started efforts for that on multiple fronts with truly bizzare incidents being reported.
And let's talk about the BIG massive elephant in the oval office (besides the obvious one). Trump is NOT the main character, even though I'm sure that he doesn't know that. Look at what their mouthpieces are saying, their dubious billionaire friends are doing and their unelected psycho-minions are pulling off. This isn't just a dictatorship. This is a multi-generational authoritarian regime with clear succession plans. You're all distracted by just the beginning of a long chain of misery. And the beginning isn't even the worst. This is one thing where this regime is unlike the Nazis or the Fascists. Those regimes were controlled by the figure head who formed it - making them vulnerable to decapitation. This one is acting more like a secret society that puts someone in the front to act as their symbolic figure head. Removing the figure head isn't going to end the regime.
You're waiting for an imaginary signal when every alarm around you is screaming at you. The time for 'if' is long gone. That ship sailed a while ago.
When he stays in power after losing an election or similar.
He did sorta try to do this...but didn't go all the way through.
That's too low a bar. It hasn't happened yet, but he has already done enormous damage on multiple fronts, some irreversible like the disruption of global economy, trauma of ICE terror victims and the enormous loss of human lives everywhere. You're saying that all those aren't serious enough for you. But for the rest of the world including the entire Americas (NA and SA besides the US), the Caribbean, the middle east, Africa and even the EU, consider the US as a serious threat now.
You did the "our blessed homeland" meme: https://xcancel.com/tomgauld/status/571994690289061888 / https://archive.vn/gAkNA
If Trump became an actual tyrant instead of a wannabe one, I'd shed no tears for him being "removed" either.
Well, there are other things you can look at. For one, Khamenei was dictator of a regime that abducts women and recently murdered 10s of thousands of protesters in the streets. I'd reckon most, including Iranians, would not judge the killing of such an individual immoral, unjust or uncivilized.
I don't know whether I'm "kidding" or not, but I might as well post what immediately came to mind as I read this:
Sandra Bland et al.
ICE detainments
The excess 20k (as far as absolute numbers go) road fatalities in the US versus Iran.
And the excess I-have-no-idea-how-many-k who died under Trump's bungled COVID response (and who are going to die from Biden's bungled rail strike response)(and who died under Obama's failed healthcare half-measure)(and who died under Bush's bungled Katrina response and because of his pre-9/11 mismanagement).
Yes, yes, per-capita and all that. I'm not really making a rational argument here, just appealing to the truthiness of noticing that America has its own way of killing its citizens.
There was a cottage industry in elaborating the theory that Bush and his administration were unnecessarily caught flat-footed or even knew the attacks were imminent.
Richard Clarke is a good place to start:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_A._Clarke
He seemed more interested in publicity and exaggerating his own bureaucratic importance than being objective—tendencies the political opposition and media were in no mood to criticize.
But YMMV.
Rail strike response casualties? Can you flesh that out a bit?
Everything that has and will happen due to poor working conditions after he broke the rail strike in 2022. The cause celebre was the East Palestine derailment, but conditions are still unconscionable, and it's hard to conceive of a situation where rail laborers are overworked and under-supported doesn't result in more, and worse, incidents like that one. And then, of course, there are the knock-on environmental and economic effects.
It's not the only objectionable thing Biden's administration is solely responsible for, just the one that came to mind.
They threw the justice and civility when they murdered people on the street. That ship has sailed and the party who's responsible for this escalation is the government.
It’s sad that I can’t be sure which government you are talking about right now, Iran or the USA.
I’m aware the scale of “murdered people on the street” is stark and so you are almost certainly talking about Iran but what ICE is doing (and the clear extrapolation) fits your comment IMHO.
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Not just Americans.
The entire continent of europe would be celebrating.
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You do know muslims arrived in Spain when they occupied it in the 8th century, right? It's not like they just arrived here recently. Most people in Spain today have muslim ancestry.
Overrun by muslims? Complete BS. I checked what he said, I don't see anything absurd, what are you talking about?
Wow, this comment is so bigoted and xenophobic, I don't even know where to begin. First of all, we're far from being "overrun by muslims".
And equating following Islamic faith with being supportive of Khomenei's regime is like saying all Christians support Trump's dictatorship.
Be better than this.
Perhaps, but there would be tens/hundreds of millions of people like me who didn't vote for Trump and don't like him, but would be absolutely enraged beyond perhaps anything in this country's history if another country blew up the White House and he was killed.
Well, I imagine there are a lot of people like that in Iran right now.
There are. There are also a lot who are celebrating in iran. In the us people who voted against trump accept he won and still believe his term will end as scheduled.
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Most Americans would. No fan of Trump but he is the duly elected president of the United States and has not done anything particularly egregious.
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Your worldview is not an appropriate substitute for objective reality :)
renee goode, alex pretti
Wait, Trump didn't kill any US citizen? Have we been watching the same news?
Exactly. This is just western media trying to project some morality to what was an internationally illegal act ... (and perhaps some in the media hoping against hope this publicity would please the dear, glorious leaders of Israel and the US to end the war).
International Law doesn't really exist.
Honestly, I am disappointed that your comment was downvoted. You raise a good, if uncomfortable, point. I too tire of the well-worn phrase: "XYZ is illegal under international law". To me, interntional law is only useful for medium-sized (population-wise) states and smaller. Once you are a nation with a large population, then you can afford a large military and do whatever you want. Sure, people won't always like what you do, but there is very little they can do to stop it. Look at all the crazy shit that US, China, and Russia has been up to in the last 10 years -- plenty of violations, but few teeth to stop it. Even Israel, which is a very small state, but backed by a global superpower, has done many terrible things in Gaza.
International law being thrown around a lot. Seems like everyone is an int’l law expert, even though it’s quite an exotic speciality.
So please go ahead and tell me, where does International Law prohibit a state that’s at war with another to assassinate its head of state?
Preventive war (attacking to neutralize a future, non-imminent threat) is considered illegal under modern international law. The UN Charter restricts the use of force to UN Security Council authorization or self-defense against an actual, imminent armed attack, making preventive actions, which target potential future dangers, unlawful.
It also allows any one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, including the US, to unilateraly veto any binding resolution that imposes sanctions for violating said law, with no established rules or even informal expectations that they recuse themselves when conflicts of interest arise.
Israel and Iran are involved in active hostilities for a long time now, direct or by proxies. Furthermore, US and Israel are making the case for a preemptive war with the advent of the Iranian nuclear program (whether you believe it or not, that’s beside the point), and those are legal.
US is not at war with Iran. Only the Congress has the right to declare war.
Ok, call it a "special military operation" if you want. A war by any other name would smell just as bad.
And what is Congress - or any other part of the US government - going to do about the pedophile not following rules? Stop him? How? Every potential check and balance has either been defanged or is controlled by his supporters.
Probably nothing. Also it’s not like the Democrats have much moral high ground to stand on here either (considering that Obama did more or less the same thing several times).
But congress can of course stop Trump from doing this and a whole bunch of other stuff. The problem is that it just chose not to and to give up much of its powers to the executive over the years (in practice if not legally) due to partisan reasons..
Why can't you be at war without officially declaring it? We have had lots of wars not declared by congress. Korean War, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, Iraq. This seems like a weird way to think.
Explicit authorization is still required even if there there is no explicit declaration of war.
The caveat being that the president only needs to get the approval of congress after 60 days.
And of course Obama established a precedent with his intervention in Libya which weakened this even more…
Being required legally doesn't change the actual fact of war. Sure it is breaking the law. I don't see how Libya is the one in the long list to set this precedent of illegally non-declared war.
International law == who has biggest guns
People celebrating inside Iran too https://x.com/visegrad24/status/2027840034150178952
That's very moving! I can't say many international developments have filled me with optimism the past couple years. I want so badly for this to pan out for Iranians.
> want so badly for this to pan out for Iranians
Badly? You seem a little obsessed. The few anti-regime Iranians (who live in Iran) I know do not want to get bombed into freedom & democracy. The Western hubris despite Iraq and Afghanistan is back in full force, I see.
I appreciate the time you took to reply to my comment, but life is too short to engage in this style of argument.
If you personally know Iranians (Persian, Azeri, Armenian, Kurds, Assyrian, Arab, Baloch, Tajik, Afghan etc) living in Iran or if you have connection with the land, that's fine. Otherwise, I find this kind of "obsession" a bit disturbing to the point of justifying actions of unhinged leaders in a very avoidable, unpopular, & potentially devastating war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_savior
> life is too short
Imagine surviving in war zones.
No harm in wishing people well really.
Hell of a way to wish them well by jeopardising their financial, political, social, and religious well-being.
Neither of us were cheerleading the bombing. Just saying we hope things work out.
tim333, I do believe you when you say you weren't. May be I am projecting and was out of sorts. Apologies.
All I see is cameras panning around buildings, no humans in sight, and audio of cheering people. Not saying it's fake, but in the age of AI faking such a video is child's play.
Too low signal-to-noise ratio for me to acknowledge any of this. We'll see how it will pan out for the Iranian people in due time.
If I were in their shoes, I would be celebrating, too. But this is complicated. If they and their loved ones are already outside the country, they are not directly imperiled by the power vacuum. So the upside is maybe their homeland becomes hospitable again, but the downside is basically that it remains inhospitable.
I'm not saying that the diaspora doesn't care about the risks or have empathy for those that remain in Iran. I'm sure there are also many people who are deeply concerned. Just that being an emigre changes things.
Aside from a few members of the IRGC, everybody who has been paying attention for the past 40 years is celebrating.
Taking out both Maduro and Khomeini over the course of a few months without a single American or Israeli casualty is peak.
There were allegedly 7 US personnel injured during the Maduro raid.
Decapitation airstrikes have been possible for decades. I suppose now we find out whether that was a good idea or not. Slightly surprised the Iran strike worked, if you remember the hunts for Saddam and Bin Laden.
> if you remember the hunts for Saddam and Bin Laden.
We didn't have Project Maven 25 years ago, and our leadership in the early 2000s were committed to boots-on-the-ground nation-building due to the afterglow of the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia.
Three very different operations.
Murdering heads of state and their families is cool as Judge, Jury, and Executioner if no soldiers are hurt in the process, is that where we are now?
That’s the privilege you get when you’re the hyperpower. And I say that as somebody who neither lives in the US nor voted for Trump.
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The dispora means little though, the people in the country count as they live 365 days there without the convenient ability to comment from a distance and they are ones who would have to die for a turnover.
You mean the ones who cannot comment because their authoritarian theocratic regime blocked protest and the internet? I hope that changes for them
I think this is a good point, there is evidence (even with strict censorship controls in place) that people inside the country are celebrating https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/28/world/middleeast/iran-kha...
There are similar scenes in all Iranian cities. Literally the first morning video we could see Saturday morning before the internet shutdown, were ladies on their balcony jumping of joy that they had struck Khamenei's neighbourhood.
Do enjoy the moment while it lasts. Because the next ruler will be an American stooge. This isn't going anywhere, like the other "revolutions" in the middle east.
> Because the next ruler will be an American stooge.
And if that's the case, do you think that American stooge shall do worse than Khamenei who ordered his islamist guards to slaughter 30 000+ unarmed iranian protesters in a matter of days?
What can be worse than religious extremist sending their fanatics into hospitals to finish the wounded?
I'm in the EU and I see cars with iranian flags honking. Someone posted a video or iranians celebrating: not bearded men and veiled women (which is a sign of religious extremism: there are many muslims that do not have the islamist beard and many muslim women who aren't veiled) but regular people, celebrating.
I don't doubt that many bearded men and veiled women are very sad today.
But I side with the free iranians in exile who are celebrating what may be the end of four decades of sharia law ruling their country.
> And if that's the case, do you think that American stooge shall do worse than Khamenei who ordered his islamist guards to slaughter 30 000+ unarmed iranian protesters in a matter of days?
American seemed to have been fine with 30k people disappearing in Argentina:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War
While a smaller number, US seemed to have been fine with their then-friend Saddam Hussein gassing a whole bunch of Kurds:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_massacre
The US stooges and friends have done all sorts of bad (maybe even worse) things in the past.
> The US stooges and friends have done all sorts of bad (maybe even worse) things in the past.
What kind of all sorts of bad did they do in the past while they ruled a country? Have they ever usurped throne for 36 years?
> What kind of all sorts of bad did they do in the past while they ruled a country? Have they ever usurped throne for 36 years?
To take the second quest first, and focus on Iran since it's the topic du jour: you mean like how the shah usurped power from the legislature with US/UK help and ruled for 38 years?
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27état
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi
And circling back to the first:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_Imperial_S...
Why do you think the 1979 Revolution happened in the first place? The people were tired of being repressed by an imperialist puppet:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution
(Hello irony.)
What about close to one million deaths in Iraq not to mention other countries?
Henry Kissinger is looking up and smiling.
> Henry Kissinger is looking up and smiling.
He's dea... oooh.
So what, you'd take living under an American stooge's rule over a religious fanatic's any day.
This has nothing comparable with "other revolutions" in the middle east, it's quite the opposite in fact: a non-islamist population held under the tyranny of islamist leaders.
What's wrong about it? This is the goal - like in Syria: neuter the country by bringing in a pro-American government that will ensure country will stay weak and irrelevant, in exchange for letting it terrorise locals as they please.
Syria was an interesting one for me... Not in the typical american modus-operandi of destroying countries that are not american banana republics, but in actually supporting Al-Qaeda there...
US is full of people who've lost family members, friends, their own limbs, have PTSD and worse from when they fought Al-Qaeda... and now their own politicians are shaking hands and taking photos with them.
Then another shooting spree will happen and the media will be asking "what radicalized him?"..
At least a sane stooge.
Was Saddam a sane stooge?
The US (and before them the UK) meddling in middle eastern politics has always seemed like kicking a wasp nest.
Yes, like the last one was, right?
Like Saddam Hussein?
Not only outside the country, but also inside the country! Many many videos on social media showing how they celebrate.
It's interesting that they're all flying the flag of the Shah.
The son of a Shah that was deposed by mass protests by well-educated students and intellectuals during the Islamic Revolution, who are now in their 60s.
Time is a circle.
sometimes you just have to try Islamism before you decide you don't like it
It's moot anyways since the fundamentalist side of the coalition purged the leftwing intellectuals shortly after the latter had served the purpose of toppling the Shah.
Oh you should see the videos coming out of Iran from people celebrating.
I also just saw state tv threatening people once more. They're so scared.
I can hear them from my window. They're really happy. Lots of honking, revving engines and shouting near Zoo.
Hopefully from this the conditions will materialize where they could, if so inclined, help build Iran up in the future..
Expatriates behaviors are often misleading and don't represent the general feeling inside the country.
I'm not saying that Iranian loved Khamenei, but maybe they are not that happy that he is dead because of other reasons. Instability for instance.
Not really, expats help shape the narrative and bring external help to make their views the reality.
What moment would that be? Begging for the Americans to bomb their former country?
Yes.
10 million Iranians live outside Iran. They want a normal country again.
Later today, I'm sure footage from LA, Toronto, London, Stockholm will be up.
It’s great, they can go back home now and get on with building a new state.
They're not going to have a normal country. The United States under Trump isn't interested in a democratic Iran. They want a dictator they can control.
I think you’re right that it would be a puppet state under trump. But in three years it will be a puppet state under somebody else! And maybe that somebody would relinquish the strings.
Haha.
Not disagreeing with you, but US-controlled dictators have better track record of not killing thousands of protesters or just random people in own populations.
Not perfect option, but still is an improvement even from your positiom.
US supported Pinochet or the US supported military dictatorship in brasil would like to disagree
Agree. See also military dictatorships in South Korea and Taiwan. Many terrible years and brutal killings by the gov't. Both gov'ts were strongly supported by the US.
Two great examples of countries where US pressure had effectively transformed from dictatorships to democracies
Wow, I did not expect this type of reply. I reject it. In South Korea, there was incredible civil violence between protesters and police. I'm talking about stolen automatic weapons by protesters, then used against the police after decades of unchecked violence by the police against protesters. In hindsight, it looks like a low grade civil war. It was brutally hard and violent for South Korean to gain their democracy. (When you listen to South Korean boomers talk about how much their treasure and defend their new-found democracy, it will bring tears to your eyes. They really lived the violence and found democracy.) Taiwan needed the last dictator to die. Once his son took over, he quickly devised a plan to transition to an authentic democracy. (They had rigged election for years.) Still, they had 40 years of the "White Terror" where secret police kidnapped and murdered thousands of protesters.
Related: Indonesia also had a very violent transition into democracy, but the old dictators didn't kill as many innocent people as Taiwan or South Korea.
As I understand, the US had very little influence during the democracy transition of these three nations. Regarding Taiwan, the US provided security gurantees against mainland China, but did not interfere with the gov't. South Korea, similar security guarantee against the "Kimdom". Again, did not interfere with the gov't. Indonesia: Provided no security guarantee and did not interfere with the gov't.
I can only see the US insistence on many bad foreign decisions in the name of democracy done in the Middle East by multiple administrations, that without much knowledge of the situation in East Asia, I venture to guess it is not a coincidence that US allies turned into democracies
I also am not sure about Indonesia as an example of a US ally, I don't think it is similar to the other two
Effectively both SK and Taiwan were completely dependent on US for defense, I doubt this had no bearing
At some point you have to decide: if my country is held back by a brutal dictatorial regime where civilians can't hope to topple it, is there anything else to do other than get external help?
This was never about Iranian people. This is all about war mongers, puppets and idiots who believe them.
Defend your thesis.
Venezuela.
Defend your thesis
Hmm I wonder what superpower got most of the oil from venezuela and iran. I think it starts with a C
Trump literally said it was about the oil on television?
Wild, right? He said it out loud. It reminds me of Chappelle's Show - Black Bush.
Those may be the motivations, but the outcome (so far) is still something Iranians are optimistic about
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Maybe speak to some Libyans. Or Iraqis. Or Syrians?
Libya is not a real country in a historical sense. It’s a bunch of tribes, Kadaffi was from one of the tribes that subjugated others. In Iraq it was a Sunni minority that rules over Shiite majority, and other minorities like the Kurds. In Syria one minority (alawiites) rules over others by force.
Also, these countries were not formed by themselves, but rather through deals with France and/or Britain.
Iran, while also diverse, has a thousands of years long history. Persians still see themselves as continuation of Persian peoples from the empire times, etc.
So, it is not very correct to compare it one to one.
Iraqis also see themselves as a continuation of Mesopotamian people, that was quite literally what Iraqi Baathist thought was centered around and used as the successful unification strategy. That's quite literally the justification the Baathists used to try 'reclaim' both Khuzestan and Kuwait. You quite literally couldn't be more wrong in how you categorize Baathist Iraq.
Iran has a much worse relationship with its minorities, where if you are of the wrong faith then you literally face state-sanctioned laws preventing you studying or working. In fact, things in Iraq became much worse for minorities after the overthrowal due to the adoption of Iranian cultural practices like Abrahamic elitism.
The cherry on top of all of this is that you probably don't realize that Persians in Iran only make up 60% of the country. You have Iranians who wholly reject Persian ancestry (Azeris, Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds...) but you don't even account for them, despite Iran having, what, three? entirely separate ethnic-based separatist insurgencies active across the country LOL
> That's quite literally the justification the Baathists used to try 'reclaim' both Khuzestan and Kuwait. You quite literally couldn't be more wrong in how you categorize Baathist Iraq.
Baathism is literally pan-arabism! Arabism as in Arab. Do you really think that making pan-arabism movement under the sauce of Babylonian legacy is going to work on Kurds and others? Of course not. Same applies to Syria that had their own flavor of pan-arabist party that kept Asad in power. Only recently, after the summer 2025 war with Israel Islamic Republic tried to connect itself to its Persian past, but of course it is too late for that.
> Iran has a much worse relationship with its minorities, where if you are of the wrong faith then you literally face state-sanctioned laws preventing you studying or working.
I am not sure how the practices of the Islamic Republic related to the current mood of the Iranians that oppose it.
> In fact, things in Iraq became much worse for minorities after the overthrowal due to the adoption of Iranian cultural practices like Abrahamic elitism.
You mean that Islamic Republic exported its own flawed ideology on the neighboring states through funding of various non-state actors? Wow.
> The cherry on top of all of this is that you probably don't realize that Persians in Iran only make up 60% of the country. You have Iranians who wholly reject Persian ancestry (Azeris, Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds...) but you don't even account for them, despite Iran having, what, three? entirely separate ethnic-based separatist insurgencies active across the country LOL
I think you conflate anti-regime insurgency vs. anti-persian one.
Is this a way to avoid thinking about the conundrum?
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"
Short term pain for long term gain.
Short term pain for long term more pain.
At no point in life I would wish for my fellow citizens to get killed by a foreign power. I’m already in my mid-40s, I’ve spent a day or two out in the streets, protesting (granted, not against governments that the West labels as dictatorial), but at no point has that option crossed my mind. More on point, I would regard the people thinking like that as traitors, because that’s what they are by definition, wishing for your fellow citizens to get killed by a foreign Power so that your political views can prevail is the very definition of treason to one’s people and nation.
> your fellow citizens to get killed by a foreign Power so that your political views can prevail
What does the assassination of DICTATORS have to do with all of this? Dictatorship is less about citizenship and more about a form of slavery. Resisting the killing of a dictator in any way, regardless of who is trying to kill him or why, is treason to a nation.
People don't agree on what a dictator looks like.
Which Arab countries are better after US intervention? The last place that had a dictator is now ruled by ISIS.
Iran is not an Arab country? Answering a more general question - all countries of former Yugoslavia are better after US intervention. Some Serbs would not agree, but it's on them
The absolute state of American public education...
No, Iran is not an Arab country! Arabic is a minority language in Iran, and Arabs are an ethnic minority there. Linguistically, culturally and even genetically, they aren't Arabs! Would you call Quebec an Anglo province?
In Iran the outcome is yet to be seen, but we have nearby Arab countries where we don't have to guess what happens. Great deflection.
It's not a deflection, it's an example of an intervention having a positive effect. I see no reason for Iran following Arabic rather than Balkan scenario - it's a totally different culture - much more modernised and much more secular
You want your story to be true so badly you ignore counter examples?
You should consider conformation bias.
What story? Iraq is ruled by ISIS and Syria is ruled by a dude who's goal was to institute Sharia or ISIS v2. Those were both countries in the region where US intervention toppled a dictator and now is how it is.
What Arab countries?
How can you compare Arab countries to Iran?
Any country can be compared to any country and Arab countries are the geographically nearest ones to compare. It's miles more strange to compare it to the Balkans.
Trump isn't there to help. He wants the oil and he wants a puppet dictator. He doesn't care about the people.
Oh, please. If you think the majority of all Iranians are in favor of US-Israeli bombings of their home country, you're seriously smoking some potent propaganda.
Every Iranian friend of mine is celebrating this. They desperately wanted him gone.
Are you suggesting Iranians should have protested harder, maybe tried more to "bring change from within"?
I have ten times as many Iranian friends as you have. They are all against the bombings.
Most Iranians outside Iran fled from the current regimes terror, they are happy with this. My country took in a lot of Iranians when the current regime took over in the 70s and those are very happy about this. They are out on the street celebrating the attacks on Iranian leaders, not protesting against them.
How do you know how many friends they have, to confidently state you have 10x?
I'm satirizing the dumb "all my friends think X"-argument. Honest intellectual debate requires that your claims are verifiable.
Did I say anything like that?
That's the implication of "At some point you have to decide: if my country ..." since "you" can't refer to anyone other than the Iranians. They have not "decided" to get bombed by Zionists.
That is not the implication. Learn some english and good manners
Well then, explain yourself. Who the fuck are the ones making the decision to get their home country bombed?
As an American, I’m really starting to feel that way.
Really... In a thread about Iran... This is not comparable at all and so insulting for what they have endured since 1979.
Except midterm elections are literally this year. But other than that small detail, sure.
They're all paid actors! CIA agents! Orange revolution!
Easy to celebrate from a few thousand miles away.
I'm not saying the Ayatollah wasn't a vile criminal, but it's always innocents on the ground who face the brunt of war.
I hope the citizens of Iran can have a peaceful transition and chart a better path for their country, but every single one of America's previous forced regime changes in the region (and across the world) has shown otherwise.
Also please see: https://old.reddit.com/r/newiran
Remember Kian.
In March 2020 l was glad about the oil price dropping to below $20, but very concerned about the state of the world.
Are they cheering killing of dozens of school children as well?
No, obviously.
Actually, they will probably assume the IRGC killed them to blame the West. I don't believe that, but the Iranians can't stand the regime.
When numbers hit tens of thousands maybe they will.
They have already, were you asleep?
Nobody is happy about killing civilians. But Khamenei did more than that every day he was alive. Personally I feel there is some amount of immediate civilian casualty that is worth putting a stop to continuous suffering.
It's easy to excuse the collateral damage of people you will never meet, just remember that this reasoning has unleashed hell on Earth for countless innocent people, many kids, and it makes you sound like a ghoul.
Hope to hell that you or anyone you care about isn't on the receiving end of such sentiments.
It's not "easy" but it remains true. We can play the moral-decision game and I'll ask you whether killing one child is justified to save 5,000,000. If you answer "yes" then from that point it's just about agreeing on numbers.
How many schools need to be blown up with children inside for you to say "Hey, maybe this didn't have to happen this way"
What is the alternative you propose? Just to give a hypothetical-but-realistic example, let’s presume that khamenei’s continued existence results in 100 civilian deaths per day. Under that assumption, what one-time cost would you accept to end his life?
Whether or not one would accept deaths of civilians to get rid of Khamenei, I don't think anyone should accept a school full of children being blown up for no obvious reason. If there was somehow a reason why Khameni could not have killed without attacking that school, then those reasons should be plainly spelled out and evidence presented. As things stand with the limited information we have now, it just looks like a war crime with no strategic upside.
I remember that the alternative has also unleashed hell on Earth for countless innocent people.
At some point, you have to take the path that offers at least some hope for the future. To turn into something that has lost all hope - there is no fixing that.
How does blowing up schools offer hope for the future?
Theres pictures online confirming that it was an Iranian misfire that killed the school.
Will you now redirect your outrage over innocent children to the incumbent Iranian government?
Will you continue entering threads to signal your outrage to the world?
Will you keep quiet, double down or practice the morals you claim to have?
While this is a minor point; whether or not it was an Iranian misfire doesn't move the moral responsibility away from the invaders. Unless the IRGC took advantage of the chaos to purposefully hit the school (seems unlikely) then the entire situation was teed up by the external aggression and can still pretty reasonably be blamed on them.
Of course it does.
If you try to shield your armed forces using children, and then accidentally kill them because you used them as a shield, you can't blame someone else.
... I'm just going of Wikipedia here but it seems to have been a standard small city [0]. Attempting to educate Iranians in Iranian cities isn't really trying to shield armed forces. Is the expectation here that Iran should send their students out into the wilderness to make it more politically convenient for US/Israeli to launch unannounced strikes on them?
Apart from the fact that Iran is a bad place to be right now it actually looks like a pleasant city to visit. Sounds like they have lots of fruit, warm weather and have some interesting history vis a vis the Mongols. Very middle eastern.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minab
Instead of looking at the entire city, just look at the google maps data for proximity of their armed forces to their school.
Look, maybe it was a school specifically for the children of army personnel, but that's a long shot. From the geolocation data, the school was right at their missile launch site.
They had choices.
Locate the school or the launch site elsewhere, for one.
Evacuate the school before they tried to launch munitions, for another.
This is on them.
Why does that seem unlikely? It makes people argue that the price is not worth it. After killing thousands of protesters you think they would shy away from killing some dozens of kids?
Weird that you're so delighted to shift the blame for the tragedy of children being blown up in school, even more so that you're relying on unsubstantiated claims to do it.
Since you know more than the rest of the world about this, please update Wikipedia with a reliable source for your claim as has already been requested by admins here[1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:2026_Minab_school_airstri...
> Weird that you're so delighted to shift the blame for the tragedy of children being blown up in school, even more so that you're relying on unsubstantiated claims to do it.
Where in my message does it seem that I am delighted?
No doubt the truth will eventually come out, what I have seen is that the school was sited unusually close to an Iran launch site.
You can judge me all you want for "being delighted", whatever the hell that means, but I'm not advocating that schools be used as shields for rocket launchers, am I?
I'm advocating the exact opposite.
Damn you really got up on your high horse because you read some spicy tweets lol
You said
> you're so delighted
Then you said
> lol
Okay, I get it - for you this is a laughing matter; your goal is something other than discussion.
But I gotta know - you are talking about a regime that had no problem gunning down thousands of innocent citizens in the streets just a month ago, why are you so sure that they won't use other innocents as shields for their soldiers?
Where is this confidence coming from?
I've been hearing the school strike was an Iranian misfire, actually.
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I'm not sure that Iranians in Berlin holding signs written in English are necessarily widely representative, nor entirely organic. Here's a comparable scene of what's going on in Iran for mourners of Ali Khamenei: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QQMGijEMJfc
I'm not saying this to be argumentative. I do not know what the "real" internal state of is in Iran in terms of support/opposition for their leadership, and I don't think there is anyway to find out this information. Our media will lie, and so will theirs. And people themselves will also lie, and not even necessarily intentionally. Imagine polling Americans (let alone expats long since removed from America) on what percent of Americans they think support Trump without knowledge of polls/votes to inform them.
As a result I think most of all media along these lines is much more likely to mislead rather than inform.
berlin is spooktown. everything you see is staged
People should never treat the diaspora as representative of any population other than the diaspora.
This issue comes up with Cuba a lot. A lot of Cuban-Americans hate Castro. Why? Because they were the upper-middle class to wealthy under Batista.
This history becomes almost comically distorted. Senator Ted Cruz said that he hates communists because his father was tortured by... Batista [1].
So let me give you an example of the Iranian/Persian diaspora. In 2024 in particular we had a lot of protests against Israel's genocide in Gaza and American support for it. Many were on college campuses. One was on UCLA.
In April 2024, masked counterprotesters attacked the protesters and the police stood idly by and let it happen. The police later then used this violence as a reason to crack down on the protesters. So who were these counter-protesters? Persian diaspora [2].
Anyone celebrating this knows nothing about history and honestly nothing about Iran.
First, Khamenei isn't a singular autocrat like Basheer al-Asaad or Saddam Hussein. No decapitation strike is going to result in regime change. Did you notice the Iranian response change after Khamenei's death? No. Because there isn't one. The religious governmental institutions still exist. A temporary successor was appointed. The IRGC continues as is. Iran is a functioning state that will continue without its Supreme Leader.
Second, let's just say that the Iranian government does fall apart. That's going to be incredibly bad for Iranians as you'll either get a fail-state like Libya, Syria or Somalia (which is what Israel wants) or you'll simply get an American puppet.
Do you know who the American puppet in Syria is? Ahmed al-Sharaa, formerly an al-Qaeda leader. Do you think that's going to end well? Saddam Hussein was an American puppet. Until he wasn't. The former Shah. Augusto Pinochet. That's who you get when the US installs a puppet regime.
Maybe you think Iran will get a functioning democracy. They had one until the US overthrew it in 1953.
Do you really think the US cares about Iranians? Like at all? What exactly is being celebrated here?
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/I2AdbLDVb0Q
[2]: https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/16/us/ucla-student-protests-coun...
"That's going to be incredibly bad for Iranians as you'll either get a fail-state like Libya, Syria or Somalia (which is what Israel wants) or you'll simply get an American puppet."
Iran is one of the oldest continuing political units in the world, clocking over 2500 years as an organized state.
I think you seriously underestimate the capabilities and know-how of the Iranians by expecting them to behave the same way as pre-state tribal polities like Somalia.
Did you miss the part where I said that Iran is not going to fall apart like some seem to think?
Why do you make comparisons to Libya or Somalia then, if you don't believe that this is going to happen. The defining characteristic of failed states is that central control crumbles and various local warlords step into the void.
Actually I do this a lot, I cite specific examples a, b to indicate a much more general category C that I have in mind. It's the 21st century and plausible that new types of failure-states unlike those seen historically will happen. So it's not necessarily a contradiction the other commenter had.
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Would create a market for aged accounts (or give a shot in the arm to the existing market). I think the problem is reach - if a site has reach, it's going to attract gamification. The more trustworthy the site is considered (for example, by having a many-hoops sign-up process), the bigger a target for gamification it will be.
(And this is why we can't have nice thighs.)
Agreed, it's a propaganda bot. But with Khamenei dead and Iran terrorist gov down we might have less of those paid actors here and everywhere on internet because their source of income will be gone
"Iran terrorist gov" so unserious. Yesterday's terrorist is today's US appointed leader. See: Syria. From US bounty to US approved. You can just as easily see Israel as the terrorist government attacking Iran unprovoked. They have been claiming Iran has been 2 weeks away from a nuke for decades.
I'm not picking a side, just saying people often create throw-away accounts for political discussions. But yeah an account can be anything. One never knows the underlying agenda people truly have.
My evil agenda is to encourage people to watch every season of Futurama.
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You're welcome. I found the link on Youtube. It looked legitimate to me.
Wikipedia:
No, I'm not a part of 'Unit 8200', though I'm flattered to be mistaken for one.I wonder how old the rest of the commentators are. I watched the Shock and Awe campaign. I watched Saddam fall. I remember thinking this is great.
Years later, I understand it was a complete folly. Removing Saddam in itself was good but what it did the wider region was not good.
I am old enough. Iraq is not perfect today but so much better than it was. Go talk to Iraqis and see for yourself.
It costs us some time, money and lives to get to this point. But Saddam (a tyrant who killed his own kind in masses with gas and started wars with neighbors) staying in power would have been way worse for the wider region.
I think the point being made is that there's wider fallout than just what's directly affected. If you go to Syria and ask Syrians how they feel about the affects on the wider region they might not so readily agree. Or even ask Iraqis in the border region who lived through ISIS rule.
I got the point.
I’m challenging the causal chain. I don’t think anyone would agree that the crusades in the Middle Ages caused the current state of the Middle East.
There is no way you can prove one or the other side. We can’t do controlled experiments with other worlds.
So it’s all guesswork. That’s why I’m challenging. I think that things are much less causally connected as people want to believe.
> I don’t think anyone would agree that the crusades in the Middle Ages caused the current state of the Middle East.
I think the Crusades have not yet ended…
And it is not clear that fewer people died following the US interventions than would have had Iraq been left to its own.
Hegseth certainly doesn't given his book title
Why go back 100s of years for explanations when 2003 is just over 20 years ago?
You see that’s exactly my point.
If you can go back 20 years, you can do that 5 times and end up at 100.
Iraqi path to democracy isn't really that different from everyone else's.
People tend to forget that various extant democracies, including European ones, mostly didn't precipitate out of thin air by everyone deciding to just be nice to one another. Many now-democratic countries had to fight a war of independence or a civil war, often with involvement of third parties, to get there.
France took about 80 years of violent upheavals from 1789 to 1871 to actually become a democratic republic for good. Germany was even worse. Unification of Italy was a long bloody mess. Poland barely survived the 20th century. Even Swiss direct democracy is an aftermath of a civil war, though in their case, it was a small one.
Democracy isn't an application that people just install and it starts working. It usually takes decades for it to take roots, as people have to slowly abandon the idea that it is just easier to massacre their opponents.
Even the US came to be after a war of independence with a major external factor on their side (the French) and only ended slavery through a nasty civil war.
Iraq isn't really an outlier in that context and Iran wouldn't probably be either.
Exactly this.
But then people look at it after 5 years and say: but it didn’t work!!!
Not acknowledging that all things ever achieved in life by humans were achieved over time by constant trial and error and not giving up.
> a tyrant who killed his own kind in masses with gas and started wars with neighbors
The US sent Saddam the Bell helicopters to gas the Kurds. US military aid increased after that happened.
The war with a neighbor was with Iran - the country the US just attacked, and which the US encouraged Iraq to fight. That's why Rumsfwld was over there shaking Saddam's hand.
So what about libya, syria, yemen, afghanistan, even venezuela
plus you can't know how Iraq would be today without the invasions
Iraq was ruled by a sociopath that used chemical weapons against his own citizens. I didn’t agree with the invasion, but there is no doubt Iraq is better off today than it would have been without U.S. involvement.
That's an absurd statement. No doubt? Saddam would be pushing 90 now, odds are he would be dead anyway and who knows how that chain of events would have gone.
And you frequently fly over to Iraq and explain that to the people there right? They nod in agreement with you. “We had to bomb and occupy your country and kill your citizens just like Saddam did remember? Now you’re better off after our failed occupation left your country. We’ll bomb you anytime; sure it costs us money is and the reason neither of our countries have healthcare but who needs healthcare when you have bombs and propaganda. You’re welcome.”
I went there and asked people about it. It was pretty clear they felt theyd gone through hell.
They were also complaining bitterly about things that got worse thanks to there being a war like corruption and a lack of jobs.
I have no idea who OP talked to nor why they thought the war was so great but it matched nothing of what I saw.
Isn’t it a bit wild you had to confirm with Iraqis that war was bad for their country?
shrug i developed a hobby of visiting countries that are in the news a lot and meeting the locals and talking about their day to day lives. Iraq, Israel/Palestine, North Korea, Venezuela, Saudi, Russia, etc.
I didnt exactly ask Iraqis that question directly and war certainly wasnt the only bad thing in their lives. e.g. a lot of guys would moan that they want to get married but "cant afford it".
but anyways OP's comment set my bullshit-o-meter spinning so fast i got vertigo.
I agree. The military component was a resounding success. The "de-Baathification" was a disaster and gets lumped into the decapitation of Sadaam's regime.
We'll never know the counterfactual, but it seems likely that the banning from public life everyone with ties to the current government was a large contributor to the collapse of the country and rise of the terrorist groups.
Always convenient to drop bombs and say “it would have been worse”. With absolutely no proof of that. It’s the stupidest American talking point and I despise other Americans who use that propaganda.
It's not guaranteed to be the same outcome in Iran, we're just rolling the dice again and hoping it is.
Iraq is a fantastic lesson to heed today.
In the first gulf war, Bush Sr. refused to occupy the country. He viewed it as too difficult and too expensive. In the second gulf war, Bush Jr. declared victory from the deck of an aircraft carrier, occupied the country, hunted and executed its leader, and then opened the U.S. treasury to deal with the aftermath. Thousands of Americans died. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's died. The occupation was long and difficult, but its end was still premature and left a power vacuum that ISIS raged into, causing even more destruction. Perhaps Iraqi's can say they're better off today than under Hussein, but a terrible cost was paid. Most of the blood was Iraqi, but most of the treasure was American.
The financial drain on the U.S. was extreme enough to expose the world's preeminent superpower as being unable to bring the occupation of a somewhat backwards and minor dictatorship to a successful conclusion. Iraq is not a big country, in either population or area, but it was still too much for the U.S. to control, even with willing allies. This failure made the world realize there were severe limits to what the U.S. can do. Sure, it might defeat the military of a middle or even major power, but occupy and control it? Fat chance!
In the days ahead, the U.S. military is going to bomb anything that moves and looks like it might shoot back, as well as a lot of infrastructure and probably a decent number of civilian targets by mistake (or design). Trump has framed this invasion as being directed towards eliminating Iran's nuclear program, so expect a lot of facilities in close proximity to civilians (and many of those civilians) to be vaporized.
If Trump is listening to his generals even slightly, he will not try to occupy the country. He'll declare victory and move on to whatever outrage is next to maintain his "Flood the zone" strategy and keep the Epstein heat from finally catching up with him. If that's all he does, this will be another war like Bush Sr.'s. Expensive, but not ruinously so. U.S. deaths will be in the hundreds and not the thousands. Iran will most likely fall into the hands of another mullah or descend into chaos, becoming a long-term security quagmire that will probably continue to bleed the U.S. for decades to come. Even if democracy does take root in Iran, it likely won't be a democracy that's friendly to the U.S..
If Trump isn't listening to his generals (who reportedly advised against the invasion to begin with), he might try to occupy Iran. Iran has double the population and four times the land area as Iraq. Unlike Bush Jr., Trump has not even tried to stitch together a coalition to share the costs. It's unlikely that many countries would be dumb enough to sign on now. There's no NATO article 5 pretext to drag in other NATO countries. There isn't even a falsified pretext like WMD's to quiet the howling in the UN. Israel isn't the kind of help the U.S. needs because the U.S. pays most of Israel's military bills to begin with. In short, if Iraq strained the U.S.'s finances close to the breaking point, Iran will ruin them completely. There's absolutely no way the U.S. can afford to occupy Iran.
Even if Trump cuts and runs, this war will ensure American's can't afford socialized medicine for another generation.
>There isn't even a falsified pretext like WMD's to quiet the howling in the UN.
30,000 dead protestors.
The source for both was "the state department bribed a guy in the Iraqi/Iranian government and you'll NEVER guess what he told us...."
W didn’t remember Vietnam because he didn’t go and probably never studied history
> There isn't even a falsified pretext like WMD's
I don’t think anyone believes it, but I’ve heard media reports that ‘unnamed officials’ thought the regime was weeks away from a nuclear weapon.
I think an Article 5 invocation would be a cynical way to destroy NATO with some deniability
So only US selected few countries can have nukes, what about France, UK, India etc?
Not a long time ago, the previous time when USA had bombed Iran, Trump claimed to have destroyed completely anything that Iran could use to make nuclear weapons.
It would be weird (or not?) to contradict himself now by claiming that they were able to make nuclear weapons.
I avoid listening to the current POTUS as it’s hard to make sense of his illogic, but his video said, “ they attempted to rebuild their nuclear program and to continue developing long-range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas and could soon reach the American homeland.”
But this is supposedly false per reports.
Every new generation in America learns this same lesson the hard way.
You and your children will be paying the bill for this war for the rest of your life.
Oil and defense companies will get richer.
Nothing will change in the middle east.
That's oversimplifying.
Iranian regime-allied forces were a big part of why Iraq was such a quagmire.
The balance of power in the Middle East is shifting from the Sunni~Shia schism that it once was.
Most of the remaining powers are willing to actually engage in diplomacy with Israel & prefer secular groups to Islamist groups.
There's still personality conflicts, such as the one growing between the heads of Saudi Arabia & the UAE, but the general trend seems to be very promising.
Iraq was a quagmire because the US attacked them for no reason at all other than to further Israel's interests. We have no business in the Middle East. Period.
We went into Iraq because we had to station troops in Saudi Arabia in order to defend them against Iraq, and having US troops in 'the holy land' led to Osama Bin Laden leading to 9-11. People say the two aren't connected but if you learn the context at the time they were, just not in the basic way people want to understand situations.
That would help make my argument that we don't belong in the Middle East. I think people should learn more about Paul Wolfowitz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wolfowitz
A part, but not the only part. Factions like AQI and later ISIL/ISIS/IS were ideological enemies to both the US and Iran and its Shia militas. The invasion, regime change, and occupation in Iraq would have caused a mess even with a US-aligned regime in Iran.
Nah, if anything the Islamist groups are biding their time, waiting for the internationally-supported governments to lose the will to carry on before striking.
No, I mean that even the Saudi's & the UAE are funding secular groups that are fighting Islamist groups because Saudi & UAE both believe that Islamist groups are too dangerous: https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-growing-rift-betw...
The governments, yes, but not the general population necessarily. And the governments can't survive without oil revenue and/or external support, so they'll be losing in the long run.
> Removing Saddam in itself was good but what it did the wider region was not good.
I believe this is the legacy of leaders like Saddam. They build a very messy future for their countries. Whenever such a leader is gone, somebody has to take over power. Dictators tend to concentrate as much power in their hands as possible. Forced removal of such a leader might accelerate and / or destabilize power transition. Which might end up in a very messy scenario.
Absolute power transition worked well with monarchy in the past, cause everybody knew who would be the next guy, there were rules and procedures. With dictatorship often times there are no rules. So power transition might turn into a complete chaos even with a natural death of a dictator.
One thing I notice on here is very few people understand counter intuitive stuff.
As you said.. plenty of evidence where on the surface it seems good. But in reality it turns out to make the people in the region worse off.
That, combined with extreme short-termism and unbridled optimism. All three probably having a similar root cause.
And we see this across the board. A canonical one that remains prevalent: "If only people would've come out and voted for Kamala in 2024, we wouldn't be in this mess". But then if you follow the pattern, with the candidate she was and what she would've done, this would've secured an ultra-MAGA victory in 2028 (and likely already by 2026 midterms). One more extreme, more devious, more intelligent from the get-go than the current one. People like to cling to "but you don't know that for sure", which is true, but we do know that with about 90% certainty. Betting on 10% is an awful idea and is indeed what has gotten you to where you're at.
It's the single biggest reason for the huge power shift from the US to China. Almost anything that China does is based on long-term consequences. Pain today for gain over time. Of course there are counterexamples, but by and large this holds.
In this case, sure, many Iranians will be happy for a day - especially overseas. So that's what people focus on. People have entirely lost the ability to think realistically in years. Of course part of this is biological, we're monkeys. But there are many reasons to believe that this ability has greatly declined over the last 50 years, particularly in the West and especially in the US.
> Almost anything that China does is based on long-term consequences.
I'm not sure that's the case with Xi. Well, I wouldn't be surprised if he tries, but as far as I can tell from a distance, his value system produces unwise decisions long-term. 10+ years of Xi have slowed economic growth, produced antagonism diplomatically, I'm not sure that the Belt and Road is currently seen favorably. He hasn't figured out a way for local governments to be solvent without selling property, nor has he resolved the shadow debt. I think his policy of shutting down Shanghai and other zero-Covid polices destroyed the people's confidence in the CCP as steward of economic growth, as it became obvious that the government can just arbitrarily kill your business and imprison you in your own home or Covid center. I think that removing your top military leaders--who are the only ones with any actual combat experience--is helpful for a successful occupation of Taiwan. Certainly what Xi did with Hong Kong made peaceful re-unification with Taiwan very unlikely.
One would think on HN there would be sophisticated grasp of complex systems than Reddit or what have you, so either there are just as many politically dogmatic/biased people in tech, or political threads are dominated by non-tech users, or what?
You seriously don’t think Iraq is in a better place today than it has ever been? You miss Saddam?
Iraq right now is in roughly the same position as it was when Saddam Hussein was there but in the meantime a few million people died and the country went through a pretty traumatic period.
Plenty of people died under Saddam, too. Do you think the average Iraqi would choose to go back and live under Saddam?
Estimates put the number of people killed due to the American invasion between half a million and a million. Saddam's brutality paled in comparison to the carnage the US invasion caused.
This also includes indirect deaths?
But if you add up the Iraq-Iran war and all his domestic atrocities it’s not that far (and these are only direct casualties).
During the years which followed after the invasion, lots did, yes. This is first hand account btw. Now? I'm not sure as the country has mostly stablised.
lol lmao
is the civilian population being gassed in Iraq now? how about a brutal repressive regime backed by a secret police that tortured and disappeared thousands? is Iraq really the same as it was under Saddam?!!?!?!?!?!??!?!
Unfortunately the current Iraqi government has a record of torturing people too. You just don't hear about it ever because they're a US client state.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/iraq-people-h...
https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/08/19/iraq-chilling-accounts-t...
There was a This American Life story about it which unfortunately I can't find.
You seem to forget that Irak instability was a big part of the reason why we got to deal with ISIS in the first place.
I say that ISIS was worst than Saddam.
ISIS also broke out of countries like Syria, which nobody messed with until after their civil war and the ISIS takeover. Which is to say that the problem isn’t the Iraq war - but Islam. It’s literally called ISIS - and you blame the US for it?
It would be good to read the wiki and understand what ISIS really was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State
Everything is linked, Syrian civil War didn't happen out of nowhere.
There was an environment of instability in middle east, some is inherent to these countries, but a big part is because another cointry came in 2003 and decided to make of Irak a failed country by bombing all their infrastructures.
Iraq is not the victim here, my friend. Iraq has willingly implicated itself in multiple wars. Unfortunately for Iraq, it was one war too many. Iraq didn't back down, despite having alternatives. Iraq could've negotiated its way out of a war throughout the entire time, but chose violence instead.
I'm tired of people dunking on the west.
Iraq today is likely a better place to live in than Iraq under Saddam. That's thanks to a painful and costly intervention. Muslims continue messing it up for everybody everywhere, the way they always did, regardless of geography or circumstances, under any pretence and excuse under the sun. West gets blamed for it no matter what. Rinse and repeat. It's getting old.
Well, Iran is majority muslim. If somehow you've concluded that muslims are simply fundamentally violent and incapable of stable governance and that is the reason why the occupation of iraq failed then...
But I personally think that the reasons why you see violent insurgency after a regime change and foreign occupation is a little more universal to humans than specific to islam.
When Saddam Hussein was removed, the result was that basically all Iraqi Christians who hadn't fled were murdered. There are probably as many Iraqi Christians in the EU as there are in Iraq now.
No one misses Saddam.
Parts of Iraq are much better off, like Kurdistan. Other parts were utterly devastated by our operations, insurgency, sectarian violence, ISIS, and so on. Some people had religious freedom and now live in areas under theocratic control.
We created Saddam Hussein. He was our foil against Iran. We propped up a war that killed over a million Iraqis and Iranians in the 1980s for no net strategic result.
And why did we want to punish Iran? Because the fundamentalist regime overthrew our puppet (the Shah).
And how did the Shah come to be a dictator, essentially? Because we overthrew the liberal democracy Iran had in 1953 at the behest of the british because Iran had wanted to control their own oil and BP wasn't happy.
Even the fundamentalist regime in Iran is kind of America's fault. Saddam Hussein expelled Khomenei from Iraq in 1978 (IIRC) because when it became clear that Iran was lost, we wanted the fundamentalists to take over instead of the communists because we didn't want Iran to fall into the Soviet sphere of influence.
It's also a pretty similar story with Osama bin Laden.
As payback for Soviet support for North Vietnam, we supplied arms to the rebels in Afghanistan after the USSR invaded. Supplying Stinger SAMs to the mujahadeen was particularly devastating and these included Osama bin Laden.
Isn't it weird that all this foreign interference always go badly and all these former puppets somehow end up becoming huge problems for us later? When will we learn, exactly?
It's also worth noting that there was a strong desire in American policy circles to overthrow Saddam well before 9/11. 9/11 and the fake WMD story just became the excuse. For example, in 1998 a bunch of people sent a letter to then President Bill Clinton urging him to invade Iraq and topple Saddam [1]. Just look at the signatories on that letter and what part they played in the War on Terror.
[1]: https://zfacts.com/zfacts.com/metaPage/lib/98-Rumsfeld-Iraq....
It's because we do these things not for American interests, but for the interests of a small country that has captured our political establishment through campaign finance and blackmail.
In this case I bet they rotate Khamenis until they find someone who will capitulate like in Venezuela.
Thats the hope at least. Seems like a completely different situation though. It could just as easily end up an unstable mess like Libya
This will be the start of something that never ends
Taking out Saddam allowed the Taliban to get right back to the raping of the Opium farmers wives and children. Not saying I approved of Saddam but I did enjoy the way he had originally curtailed the risk to his Opium revenue.
Yes, whether these strikes are a good idea in general depends on whether they make life better for the regular people of Iran imo.
That said, fuck Khamenei.
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I turned 18 about 6 months after 9-11.
Going to take a night off from worrying about forever wars and celebrate the end of the Ayatollah and Ali Khamenei.
I work with and know a lot of Shia (non-Iranian) Muslims and listening to them talk about this assassination I'm convinced that the likelihood of attempted terror attacks against the US has increased significantly.
The non-Iranian part is key. Millions of muslims around the world viewed the Iranian theocracy as the only power in the world fighting for Islam. They are devastated.
The most interesting thing to me is that he was apparently assassinated while working at his office. It's not like the US/Israeli actions were a secret, yet he seemingly made no effort to secure himself. It's hard not to see this as an intentional martyrdom. So it will be interesting to see whether his calculations were correct, or whether the US' were.
The one thing I think must be true is that I can't imagine an 86 year old cleric was an especially effective leader. So assassinating him is quite the gamble. I'd love to know what the military's chatbots thought about this idea.
Prophets are more dangerous when they're dead. At 86 he would either die from old age or fighting "imperialistic, evil" Israel/US.
This Prophet believed/taught that school girls should be raped before they are executed for not wearing hats so that they can't get into heaven (believing God would judge a child for being raped).
Should a believer/teacher of such things even be called a prophet? Old boy was straight trash with a horrific morality.
> Should a believer/teacher of such things even be called a prophet? Old boy was straight trash with a horrific morality.
Sadly, that has been a fairly common attribute for a fairly large majority of people anointed as 'prophets' and 'saints'.
He's not a prophet and he didn't teach that.
You don't need to lie about someone you don't like.
I have no horse in this race but I did find some daunting google results about that.
I'd love to see a link to them. My cursory googles aren't finding it.
Look, not trying to defend the guy, but I don't like this sort of hyperbole. People have the wrong view on what Iran is like. It's ran by religious fundamentalists, which is bad, but it's also probably one of the more progressive muslim theocracies in the region. People tend to mix up shit that Saudi Arabia does with Iran.
In particular, Iran has a very progressive view on education. They have one of the best educated populations in the middle east (men and women).
I really don't want this on my comment history but here you go:
~redacted google serarch~
And I understand your point. There's a ton of bias. We must be careful with the "facts" on the internet.
Admitedly, these link results don't inspire me much confidence.
The only one attributing a similar quote to khamenei is an x user. The rest appear to document that an exiranian official saying that counter revolutionary women sentenced to death are raped.
I hope you can see how these are pretty different things.
First link:
"Based on our findings, some of the various forms of sexual torture, such as the rape of virgin girls prior to their execution, were conducted in a systematic way and were based on the interpretation of an order by Ayatollah Khomeini (1979-1989), the Islamic Republic Supreme Leader at the time."
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmin...
> women who were captured in battle with the kuffar (infidels) were akin to property and slaves of the army of Islam (a practice of the Middle Ages which had subsequently been accepted, at least theologically, as a part of Islamic war practices)
Look, bad and disagreeable, but not the claimed quote. This is a much better attack that doesn't use hyperbole.
I don't have it bookmarked but he did teach that and had his friend Lajevardi whom he supported and praised carry it out. And his Islamic enforcement police regularly engaged in it. And he has defended his Islamic enforcement police the Basij, whose job is to enforce his teachings, when they have conducted systemic rapes.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmin...
Here he is defending the practice https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/aug/27/iran-ayatollah...
Amnesty talking about his Basij Islamic enforcement police conducting the practice: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/12/iran-security...
Challenges to his systemic use of rape and if it disqualifies his legitimacy back in 2009 https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/15/world/middleeast/15iran.h...
2011 Frontline coverage of the practice https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2011/0...
More coverage of the practice https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1890900/iran-rape-tortu...
In addition to the routine/sactioned religious police rapes how many executions have there been under this moderate? How many women arrested for religious reasons? Under his leadership the death decree against Salman Rushdie was never lifted. How many died of torture in detention after he called for people to be punished? If this is moderation then what does fundamentalism look like?
Hmmm, this may have been a 'mis-interpretation' but it seems odd that it wouldn't, you know, be corrected with a public 'correct' interpretation in all these years and with so much rape being done by religious police serving directly under him. Instead of easily issuing a public statement he defended the rapists indicating that in fact, it was a correct interpretation. https://wncri.org/2015/11/13/female-prisoners-virgins-raped/
> I don't have it bookmarked but he did teach that and had his friend Lajevardi whom he supported and praised carry it out.
Look, I'm simply not going to believe this claim without evidence.
You are presenting terrible practices in Iran that I disagree with, but that wasn't your original claim.
From the links you've given, rape was because political prisoners were believed to be slaves. That's a despicable and gross practice. It is not, however "school girls should be raped before they are executed for not wearing hats so that they can't get into heaven". The reason for the rape of prisoners was because the prisoners were viewed as slaves, not to keep them from heaven (from what I've read).
> If this is moderation then what does fundamentalism look like?
Relative to the region. Iran has been brutal to it's dissidents and enemies of the state.
However, if you compare the rights of women under Iran vs Saudi Arabia, you'll end up finding that women in Iran have more rights and freedoms. That's what relative means.
I'm not here to defend Khamenei. The reason I pushed back was because, as I said, you don't need to lie about someone you don't like. These are the facts you should present and represent. Talk about how Iran rapes political enemies. That is a horrible practice. But the extreme "He said to rape girls without hijabs and then kill them to keep them from heaven" is just a lie. Hell, you can pretty accurately say "He taught that political prisoners are slaves, which his government used to justify raping female prisoners". That's a true statement that makes him look horrible.
It looks like it was the previous Ayatollah who was Khamenei's religious teacher, but this one could easily have corrected things but instead chose to defend the practice/practitioners and never on the occasion of abuse over decades chose to correct the interpretation.
"such as the rape of virgin girls prior to their execution, were conducted in a systematic way and were based on the interpretation of an order by Ayatollah Khomeini (1979-1989)"
So his spiritual teacher ordered it with the vague cop-out by someone else that 'maybe it was misinterpreted' yet even though his Islamic police were raping for decades he never corrected what his teacher/spiritual leader said/meant.
Undisputed facts: it happened and the people doing it thought that it was sanctioned by the Ayatollah. Even though it happened for decades, this Ayatollah never corrected people that they had misunderstood. Did defend his Islamic police and did on occasions when they inflicted the violence after him basically saying “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?”.
Decades and decades of rape, and of government officials thinking this is the official Islamic position, and he NEVER chose to say otherwise even though his Islamic police were acting on it.
I'm throttled after this but I believe it was his official policy, and nothing indicates otherwise. There was systemic rape and he defended/protected those doing it and never corrected the believed edict from his predecessor. Also it is extremely rare to get these edicts externally. We only have what I pointed out because an insider (Ayatollah Montazeri) was trying to defend his reputation after word got out of the justification for rape by Khomeini.
I know someone who was in prison with Lajevardi in the 70s and the latter was an asshole even then according to him so I believe this
AFAICT nearly everyone who is called a "prophet" by anyone is horrible, no?
Doesn't stop people from killing or dying in their name though.
I can't think of anybody, who has significant power, who isn't seen as horrible by somebody else, and often by quite a lot of somebody elses. With power people always end up trying to make the world a better place. The problem is one man's better place is another's dystopia.
Supposedly he had a very deep bunker under his house but he came up for meetings.
So the real problem for Iran is that mossad seem to know exactly when he was vulnerable i.e. there are spies within the inner circles of the IRGC
Edit: Or some very effective high tech surveillance, but that's also not good news to put it mildly
>I'd love to know what the military's chatbots thought about this idea.
What a mad world we're hurtling ourselves into.
"You're thinking about this just like a professional warfighter would"
I'd say the main contemporary dynamic of the times is hallucination. Not necessary by LLMs per se, but rather by the humans wielding them to mainline their own bullshit.
In a way Grump himself is just society's own embodied hallucination from decades of Republican marketing hopium. Some scraps of dignity are surely about to trickle down any day now, once those mean libuhruls are out of the way.
(the "warfighter" terminology-coddling obviously coming from the user prompt)
He was assasinated during a meeting with many other high ranking members of the regime. I doubt they decided on collective suicide.
> intentional martyrdom
He didn’t play 4D chess. I’d bet on pure hubris.
Why would you assume that someone with decades of experience could not be an effective leader?
People lose cognition as they age.
And gain experience
In every field where competence can be objectively measured, experience does not endlessly correlate with competence. There's always a growth phase but then there's a bell curve of age vs competence, that reaches a peak and then there's a constant decline from there. So for instance chess is primarily a mental game, yet the decline comes as early as one's mid thirties for world class players.
I'm fully willing to accept that for a field where scenarios are fuzzier and intuition more important, it may well be that peak on the bell curve comes somewhat later. But I think it's essentially inconceivable that one is near, or even remotely near, their peak, in their 80s, in anything.
>There's always a growth phase but then there's a bell curve of age vs competence
A bell curve tracks the distribution of a single random variable. You're mixing statistical metaphors.
That’s true, but it’s not always good—Americans have stark examples of the risks of octogenarian leaders whose experience leads them astray by discounting how much the world has changed since they were young.
I think of mental faculties and experience as two separate overlapping curves where there’s a sweet spot in the middle where both are high but either one being low can become a big problem.
They also just don’t have the same energy they used to so even if they have a good idea they’ll be less effective at motivating people to embrace it, and the younger people behind them are going to be acting with more thought to succession politics.
Biden's surely a poster child for the value of experience and connections in the Presidency. Whatever you think of him (and I would certainly agree that he should never have considered a second term), he was quite successful in furthering his agenda while in office.
Yes, I agree that he used his experience well for many things (and had competent staff he could trust to get things done) but I will say he made a huge mistake continuing to back Israel's actions in Gaza to an extent which I don't think someone too young to remember the Six Days War would have done. I think you could also make a solid argument that earlier in his career he probably would have had more energy to put into getting a few of the close votes in Congress over the line.
But dude was 86, how many people in nursing homes would you trust to run a country?
Probably one in a thousand.
But as one whom the Ayatollah has sworn to eliminate, I can still state that man was sharp and brilliant and extremely well spoken. His worldview was internally consistent. He had vision and experience and knew how to motivate people. He was a one in ten million leader.
I give him that praise and more, even recognising that his stated mission was to exterminate myself and my children.
> But as one whom the Ayatollah has sworn to eliminate
What does this mean — did you stick him with the bill at all restaurant or something?
Even If you don't recognize the last name you can just click on the user info and make 2 + 2.
He's doing what's called "Hasbara". Regular people call it "lying".
I love this basically pointing out that racists call it "Hasbara" and regular people call it "lying".
Don't agree it applies in this situation, but it's nice to see someone break down regular people don't give a special jewish name to something that already has a common name/definition, and that the common name better communicates the intended concept so the purpose of using the word is to convey something different than basic understanding.
Please quote which part of my comment you feel is a lie.
It's.. an amusing exchange, especially as a response to the actual aknowledgement of the other party - the thing which people there nor have nor want.
And as we can see with Biden and Trump, 86 is past the the optimal compromise between experience and cognition.
Tell that to the US regime, too?
Many do!
Because he would be senile.
Being of an advanced age does not necessitate becoming senile. Do you have evidence that the Ayatollah was senile or trending in that direction?
I'd say, too, that judging by the current President's speeches, there's probably good evidence towards him being or becoming senile/demented.
I think the responses are very diverse throughout the region. Got example, in Karachi protestors gathered outside a consulate https://apnews.com/article/pakistan-protesters-attacked-us-c...
But inside Tehran (and in my neighborhood of D.C.) there have been celebrations https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/28/world/middleeast/iran-kha...
I have a friend that left Iran just before the Shah was overthrown. Over the years he has gone back multiple times to visit family and friends etc.
He told me years ago that the majority in Iran were not aligned with the new regime, it was a minority of the population that were.
>But inside Tehran...
where both celebrations and sorrow
of course. How do you think they systematically massacred so many people in so many cities during the protests. All those personnel are now devastated.
Any celebrations are an indicator but are far from the entire picture.
Wouldn't there be celebrations in the US if Trump died? What conclusions would you draw from that?
Exactly. Oddly enough most countries have politics split down the middle. A left and right. Up and down. Rarely even a 2/3 majority.
If you wanted to find people celebrating, you'd find people celebrating.
But my opinion is more often than not, you have two bad guys fighting each other for the top spot. They don't support Option B because they're dumb, they support B because Option A would sell his mom for power, while Option C would just become a puppet to A.
It's a lot easier to agree Current Guy Bad than it is to agree on who Next Guy should be
Judging by George W. Bush’s approval rating right after 9/11, it probably wouldn’t be very many.
9/11 was the first major attack on the continental US in living memory. It was literally a world-altering event for most of the population, and it radically changed the geopolitical calculus of the average citizen.
Lots of american citizens demanded retaliation. Our counterattacks weren't sanctioned by congress, but they were by the people.
Meanwhile, the current president just started a war based on a temper tantrum and an attempt to distract the population.
These aren't really the same thing.
I agree with you that the Iran strike is an effort to distract the public from Trump’s failure to bring down grocery prices like he promised: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_Dog
I was addressing the hypothetical of how Americans would react if Trump was killed by a foreign country in airstrikes similar to how the Ayatollah was killed. I think Americans would react like they did after 9/11, instead of celebrating like many are in Iran.
I agree. Half the country would be happy if an entity composed of Americans killed Trump, but most of those would be unhappy with a non-American entity doing it. Or at least I hope they would.
You may be right, but a lot has changed in the last quarter century. The 9/11 attacks came at a time when the Cold War had just ended and the dotcom boom had just given us a strong economy. There was a lot of resentment over the 2000 election but it didn't seem like the end of the world.
Since then public discourse has almost completely broken down. The President spends his days thinking of insults, and has deployed masked armed forces against civilians. As bitter as 2000 was, it's nothing compared to January 6 2021.
I imagine the details would depend on the circumstances. Say, a targeted assassination versus killing thousands of civilians. But I'm not so sure that things would look anything like 9/11.
if starting a war in the middle east gets you high approval ratings after campaigning as “presdent of peace” and crying like a little bitch trying to get nobel “peace” prize, the downfall of America is coming a lot sooner than most are ballparking (we are well on the way)
Bush’s approval rating benefited from the US being attacked, and then responding. Trump has the order wrong; preemptively attacking countries (even bad ones) doesn’t poll very well with Americans.
(This is ahead of Trump’s base being isolationist; it’s not even clear who wants this besides conventional hawks.)
I think it’s just wagging the dog: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_Dog.
Combined with the fact that the media will be confused about how to respond. You’ll have Iranian diaspora celebrating, like Venezuelans did after the capture of Maduro, making it impossible for the media to frame this simply in terms of “Trump is racist.” As a result, the whole thing will get memory holed, just like the Venezuela attack.
That’s a very different argument than it being similar to 9/11!
I didn’t say the attack on Iran was like 9/11. I was responding to OP’s hypothetical about what would happen if the situation was reversed and Trump was killed.
Now imagine if Bush & his family were assassinated by AQ on 9/11, and you’ll understand why the majority of Iranians inside Iran will not be celebrating.
i don't think any american would celebrate if trump was killed by a foreign army bombing the country.
Whereas french did celebrate US planes bombing nazis on their soil.
Some would; you see some in this thread. But only a fringe, thankfully.
speak for yourself.
I mean Pakistan is a nation founded on the idea that Muslims cannot live with non Muslims. /R/Pakistan is currently talking about this. What do you expect?
> But inside Tehran
This is done by diaspora lead by US, they started destroying public resources first and created public unrest on top of falling Rial due to sanctions, this lead the govt take matters in to their hands. Cunning US indeed, always playing cheap tricks.
> The non-Iranian part is key. Millions of muslims around the world viewed the Iranian theocracy as the only power in the world fighting for Islam
Yup. My Bangladeshi relatives who have no stake in Iran are upset. I suspect the lady who cuts my daughter’s hair—who was an accountant back in Iran and celebrated when Jimmy Carter died—is over the moon.
We cannot continue like this where one religion gets to get mad whenever they do not achieve utter dominance.
I have seen major celebrations here in a major Dutch city. If anything, my bet is that overall balance of Muslim opinion on the West has probably shifted to be more favorable.
Both can be true at the same time.
Are you suggesting that the US should appease Muslim ideology, under threat of terror?
No, I am telling you about people's sentiments. You are not required to do anything with the information.
This is not about Muslim idealogy at all, it is US want to play god on who to have nukes or not. Similar to Libiya WMD.
Men have been trying to decide who's allowed to own big sticks forever, there's no "playing god" involved
> Muslim idealogy
If you can't differentiate muslims from islamists you can probably keep your comments for yourself...
If you can not recognise that Muslims overwhelmingly support Islamist extremists, then maybe you should not tell others who have quite the experience in the matter, to keep their comments to themselves.
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Terror attacks? I think you mean self-defense, as the US/Israel just bombed Iran with no justification at all. That is a terror attack.
I’m quite sympathetic to the general assertion that the U.S. launches unprovoked attacks on random countries that didn’t attack the U.S. Iraq being the most egregious example.
But Iran is perhaps the least sympathetic actor on that front. Iran has been attacking the U.S. and its proxies for no reason for decades: https://www.britannica.com/event/1983-Beirut-barracks-bombin....
Tehran is a thousand miles away from Tel Aviv. Iran has no rational self-interest in whatever is going on between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Iran got itself involved in that conflict because it inexplicably chose to involve itself in that conflict.
> Iran has been attacking the U.S. and its proxies for no reason for decades
Iran did not attack the US and Lebanese Shia did not attack the US. Israel invaded Lebanon and the US went in in August 1982. This allowed for the Istaeli allies to perform the Sabra and Shatila massacre. About six months later the US embassy was bombed. Then the barracks was bombed.
The US eas not attacked, the US sent troops into Lebanon, which helped allow for the massacres which took place, and Lebanese attacked the US barracks that came into their country a year earlier.
> About six months later the US embassy was bombed. Then the barracks was bombed.
By whom? Passive voice doing a lot of work.
Aren't Iran's interests in Israel pretty analogous to the US's?
Regional security and holy book brainmush?
That’s my point. The U.S. certainly can’t complain it’s catching strays either. It chooses to involve itself in that conflict.
Iran has not attacked the US. Israel has though, just look at the Epstein files.
Well, no they were trying to get Epstein out of his bunker... I mean free the oil from the people, err no, the people from the regime.
Someone start playing fortunate son.
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Israel murdered the indigenous population of Palestine, Iran possibly (zero proof has been produced) killed some Zionist spies. These are not the same, Israel is our enemy, not Iran.
> killed some Zionist spies. These are not the same.
Be careful, you still need some moral credibility left, to defend the Palestinians with.
Well that's an awfully Islamophobic take. Never has a condition been so aptly named.
This morning's terror attack in Austin was perpetuated by one wearing a "property of Allah" shirt.
The world need not continue to live with and accept Islamic barbarism, and the people of the US will not bend to the sword of the Mullahs or your Shia coworkers.
People are what they are.
You can take the information I have provided into consideration when you build your internal worldview or you can ignore it.
There is no call to action here. It's just data.
The "good" part is that Sunni Muslims probably won't have the same feeling, or do they?
But I agree with the assessment. I'd definitely avoid large public events. Darn the world is becoming more and more chaotic and we are just waiting for China to put up the last piece to make it into 19th Europe.
Sunni Muslims generally oppose Shias in Muslim-internal matters, and vice versa. But they both generally support the other in matters against non-Muslims.
Arab Bedouin proverb "I against my brother; I and my brother against my cousin; I and my brother and my cousin against the world”
> China to put up the last piece to make it into 19th Europe.
Could you elaborate for us non-historians?
Taking over Taiwan.
Sunni Muslims will be upset too, because Israel was involved.
> Sunni Muslims will be upset too, because Israel was involved.
Some will be.
I saw on X a video of some Taliban commander saying nobody should cry for Khamenei, because "Israel and Iran are two sides of the same unbeliever coin"
Many hardline Sunnis view Shi'a as non-Muslims.
Upset enough to get into terrorism?
Probably not.
Why do you bring up China here? Trump has done more harm to the west in 10 years than China in the last century
No I'm trying to say, when China decides to copy the behavior of US, especially when her economy turns downwards again, will be the last piece of the puzzle (that shows up the end of the old world).
> the likelihood of attempted terror attacks against the US has increased significantly.
And one wonders if a terror attack on US soil would be the justification POTUS uses to cancel elections
Sunni Muslims hate the Iranian regime and consider Shia to be heretics
I am Sunni and I condemn the attack.
Having said that, I also condemn Iranian regime killing (reportedly) 30000 protesters. So he probably had it coming.
I'm more concerned about what happens to US now, because I think the attack indicates a complete failure and collapse of the legislative branch of the US government.
> I'm more concerned about what happens to US now, because I think the attack indicates a complete failure and collapse of the legislative branch of the US government.
Why now? Why not when they took out Soleimani in 2020? Or when they invaded and took out Gaddafi in 2011? Can keep going all the back to Truman invading Vietnam.
I don't know. Have Congress and Senate always been this ineffective? I don't remember Obama, Biden or even Trump 45 act with this much impunity. I obviously can't go further back because I have been here since Obama's second term.
The Iran-Contra scandal from the Reagan administration comes to mind. Congress explicitly de-authorized the executive from funding the Contras in Nicaragua. The executive kept doing it anyway. Nobody faced any consequences, though Congress at least made a lot of noise about it.
That's kind of ineffective, but not to this level where Congress is just fine with blatant illegality.
Oh, there is no effective US Government beyond Trump's demands. he's decimated anyone that could challenge, and the general public was manufactured without the critical analysis to understand. The USA is over and gone, the US is a headless zombie nation operated by 7th graders, pedos, and drug addicts. All they need is a social following and loyalty, and they are part of the government.
Cannot believe so called great country, elected a convicted felon.
The collapse happened when we elected a power drunk fool with a Project 2025 playbook to completely strip the separation of powers in favor of the Executive branch.
Now the war fool is trying to start as many conflicts as possible inside and outside the US to distract from his disturbingly heavy Epstein involvement to give him an excuse to take over polling sites in the US. No more wars my rear.
We have a chance to recover in the November elections by voting out his puppets and tools in congress. The question is whether or not we will take it.
This is not completely true. The Iranian regime gained some credibility in the Sunni world by strongly supporting the Palestinian cause.
You can bet that every anti-war demonstration in the West now will have as many Palestinian flags as flags of the Iranian Islamic Republic.
Stranger coalitions have been put together by politics...
Oh boy flying the flag of the Islamic Republic in the US would get so much blowback. Everyone knows how incredibly evil it is. It recently killed at least 20,000 protestors to stay in power.
I hope the people doing the blowback also blowback against flying US flags, a country that is famously responsible for so, so many deaths.
You think flying the US flag INSIDE the US will have blowback?
There were Hamas flags in the streets of NYC on Oct 8th 2023. Some people will gladly support anything.
Only people who live on social media believe these extreme views to be true. Most muslims hardly even know the difference or care.
While the comment you replied to was "extreme", it is impossible for any muslim to not know the difference when the difference defines everything about how they practice their religion.
Are you muslim? In the real world most muslims are not that religious and hardly follow what is taught to perfect precision. They would not be able to answer the difference except in vague terms at best.
No, I am not muslim.
Every single muslim, whether devout, practicing, lapsed or whatever, knows whether they are/were Sunni or Shia. They are literally born into it. It determines who is seen as the authority in matters of their faith, the way they pray, the sites they consider holy, the religious days they observe. Even Ramadan starts and ends on different days depending on which you are.
It's such a fundamental thing that I question whether you have any idea about what you're saying here.
I don't know much about Islam, but what's being described isn't uncommon for lapsed Christians. I know plenty of people in my orbit (including me) who went to mass on Christmas Eve and Easter as children, but literally wouldn't be able to answer if the curch they went to was Catholic or Protestant.
The difference between Islam and Christianity on this is so stark that I am trying so hard to not respond in a rude manner and tell people to read a book or something.
It's like if you didn't know a single thing about Mandarin but insisted on making claims about its grammatical rules because you know English grammar.
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I can assure you all Shia and Sunni are very much aware of their religious differences.
Well if you take religious interpretations to do the extreme they hate all 'non believers'. I am assuming that even the Sunni Muslim countries' average population might not be that happy with the bullying (their perception)
Every single one of them?
There are many Sunnis who view their leadership as "traitors to the cause" and respected Iranian defiance especially against Israel.
It's far from black and white.
Promising to destroy Israel is a lot more than just "defiance". Israel's existence has no significant effect on Iran but Iran is strangely obsessed with destroying it to Iran's own detriment.
Sounds like you should report them to the fbi then
You seem to have misread my comment.
None of the people I know and have spoken to are capable of or even thinking of violent retaliation.
I am extrapolating from their sentiments that someone out there will be moved to violence.
First, the Islamic Republic was not “the only power fighting for Islam.” It was fighting to expand Iranian state power under a religious banner. There’s a difference. The regime’s foreign policy has consistently followed geopolitical logic: expanding influence through proxies in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Gaza (Hamas and PIJ), Iraq (Shi’a militias), Syria (Assad), and Yemen (Houthis). That’s empire-building through asymmetric warfare, not some abstract defense of the global ummah.
Second, Islam itself is not a single centralized political bloc. The idea that “millions of Muslims” saw Tehran as their champion ignores deep sectarian and national divides. Sunni-majority states like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, and Turkey have spent decades actively countering Iranian influence. Many Arabs view Persian expansionism with suspicion for historical reasons that predate modern geopolitics by centuries. Even within Shi’a communities outside Iran, loyalty to Tehran is far from universal.
Third, the Islamic Republic’s model is explicitly totalitarian: clerical rule, suppression of dissent, morality police, imprisonment of reformers, execution of protesters. Calling that “fighting for Islam” collapses a complex global religion into one revolutionary state ideology. Many Muslims—Sunni and Shi’a—despise the regime precisely because it fuses religion with authoritarian control.
As for retaliation risk: yes, whenever a regime that funds proxy groups is hit, the risk of attempted attacks rises. That’s true by definition. But that risk has existed for decades already because of the regime’s own strategy of exporting violence. The question isn’t whether risk increases from zero. It’s whether removing a state sponsor that systematically arms, trains, and finances militant networks reduces long-term capacity for global destabilization.
Iran was not some neutral spiritual defender of the faith. It was a regional power using religion as a mobilizing ideology while building a cross-border militia network.
That distinction matters.
This is likely what the USA fascists want - some Islamic terrorist attacks (possibly false flag operations) will provide a justification for removing non-whites from the USA.
The fact that millions of muslims worshipped a terrorist is not sufficient justification to submit to terrorism.
I was just saying this to someone this morning. Iran’s theocracy was the only one that has withstood the Middle East political wars in Jordan, Syria, Afghanistan, etc.
To rephrase it… if The Middle East was the UK, Iran would be British. If the Middle East was the US. Iran would be California.
> The Middle East was the UK, Iran would be British.
Did you mean England perhaps, not "British"?
Why? Is Scotland innocent?
Scotland is almost certainly innocent, though the Scottish people may not be.
Anyhow, the worst crimes of colonialism/genocide were mainly conducted by the English (including invading/killing plenty of Scottish, Welsh and Irish people).
Jordan political system is much older than Iran, as well as the Saudis and others. Iran theocracy is a new phenomena in the Middle East, ushering the implementation era of political Islam, later continued by ISIS, Hamas and the milder Qatar and current Turkey
Not debating who came first. I’m also not debating that Saudi’s are equivalent to the French to the Iranians (if they were England in my UK analogy, or Texas for the US one).
I also don’t think that, in general, there’s any animosity there just talking size and influence over the region. Iran and Saudi are/were it. It’s a really interesting dynamic of faith, tradition, authoritarianism, and manipulation.
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> Muslims who move to Christian-majority lands do not assimilate
this is a ridiculous and false generalization, disproved by my own experience living in the United States and being friends with Muslim immigrants.
That's what the French and the a Swedes thought when they had a Muslim population under 10 or 20 percent. Look at any area - any, your choice - where Muslims represent 50 or more or the population and tell me how tolerant they are.
Don't let your values and your tolerance blind you to believe that your values and tolerance are universal or axiomic.
> Modern Western Christians are centuries removed from experiencing religion-as-politics.
That's news for those of us that are living through the decades-long effort by christian dominionists to take over the US.
> Western atheists, who share Christian values
It's the other way around: Christians share basic morality with people operating on morality from first principles. Plenty of western christian values are orthogonal to morality.
> Muslims who move to Christian-majority lands do not assimilate or convert.
This is false and flat-out defamatory. It's also the type of statement that gets used before bad people do a bunch of bad things.
The Catholic Church exerted strong influence in Quebec until the 1950s. Of course since then Quebec has become the most secular region in North America.
Another good analogy would be, said theocracy is (was?) like a very bad piece of legacy code, impossible to refactor, until the entire feature gets thrown in the trash.
That’s a greater analogy
I was with you until you said California. You think that Californians are understand Southern or Midwestern culture?
Not about culture. Size and GDP.
Well except for all those Shia in Iraq who more closely followed Ali al-Sistani. I still imagine they're not very happy all the same though.
and millions of Orthodox Jews view Israel as defending Judaism. So what? Maybe all the people who are willing to shoot and kill for their holy book should be put into an area and bomb each other to death
Would make a good reality tv show and an excellent warning on the danger of religious fundamentalism.
Oh, so they ARE in fact death cultists! Thanks for confirming that, I guess there's a lot more work for bombs.
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>> Millions of muslims around the world viewed the Iranian theocracy as the only power in the world fighting for Islam. They are devastated.
> They are devastated but they are were totally quiet on the unarmed thirty thousands+ protesters the islamist iranian regime killed in a matter of days a few weeks ago.
One person's protestor is another's insurrectionist.
See also the folks on January 6: (now-pardoned) patriots trying to 'stop the steal', or crazies trying to overthrow the government?
The US didn’t mass kill Jan 6ers.
> The US didn’t mass kill Jan 6ers.
Were the Jan6ers good guys or bad guys? Did they deserve to get punished? (Trump didn't/doesn't think so, which is why he pardoned them; Pence may have a different opinion.)
The fact that different countries have different punishments for the same crime is a cultural artefact. The fact that you find it unacceptable is personal opinion. In Singapore drug use (not even distribution) is punishable by up to 10 years in prison:
* https://www.cnb.gov.sg/singapore-drug-situation/misuse-of-dr...
Too much? Too little?
One can say that a person did bad things, but the punishment was inappropriate in a particular case, but some kind of punishment was needed.
Were the Iranian protestors/insurrectionists guilty of crimes? Did they deserve some kind of punishment?
Moral relativism can be real and I can be against another cultures moral ideology. They’re allowed to have their beliefs and I’m allowed to think they are wrong and they deserve to be killed for having them. Protestors do not deserve to be killed for protesting. People who kill protestors for protesting do deserve to be killed. Is that all personal opinion? Yes of course, so what?
I didn't know there were still fans around for this version of moral relativisim.
The IRGC mass killing of protesters was evil. Objectively so. Anyone thinking otherwise is part of the problem.
You should read up on “false equivalence”…
> You should read up on “false equivalence”…
You should read up on "Terrorists or Freedom Fighters":
* https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/terroris...
* https://harvardlawreview.org/forum/no-volume/on-terrorists-a...
I believe the OP's point was precisely that there's no objective true and false equivalence - there's just forces trying to impose a narrative which one is which.
> If people keep their mouth shut when a regime murders 30 000+
This is done by diaspora lead by US, they started destroying public resources first and created public unrest on top of falling Rial due to sanctions, this lead the govt take matters in to their hands. Cunning US indeed, always playing cheap tricks.
US is a regime too, world largest one, with minions everywhere. They murdered around 1 million just in Iraq. This war is not only about nukes but also oil and trade routes. Iran did not try to spread Islamic in the west, they do not want to either.
My point is US should not try to interfere with other countries internal matters. International threats should be dealt with treaties.
Yeah but a good majority don't want Islam in Iran, Iran used to have a culture
> Yeah but a good majority don't want Islam in Iran, Iran used to have a culture
Yeah but a better majority doesn't want Evangelicalism in USA, USA used to have a culture /s
The theocratic regime that rapes then kills school girls for not wearing hats was forced to gun down 30,000 of their own citizens, including many more school children.
The Supreme Leader before Khamenei preached that virgins need to be raped before execution so that they can't go to heaven. Sick people following a sick religion where their made up version of god would judge children based on if they were raped.
What about children and mothers in Gaza, I think that is okay with you!
Let's see what happen when they start bombing Greenland.
I hate violence, but US have too much power, they are in this war for their benefit. Looting others resources as usual.
Yes they were silent about the Iranian regime's tyranny. Yes they are hypocrites.
So what?
It doesn't matter whether it suits you nor I. You calling them out has zero effect other than making you feel righteous. They don't hear you and even if they did they do not care a whit what you think.
They believe, with utter conviction, that martyrdom in service of Islam will be rewarded in the "hereafter". Their holy book tells them this explicitly. And there are millions of them.
Hence my comment.
They also believe that before they kill a schoolgirl because she won't wear hats, they should rape her so that she doesn't go to heaven. They believe that because Khamenei and his predecessor taught it to them (Google it if you don't believe me, they were literally taught the religious guidelines for how to murder girls and it included rape). In their made up religion they made up a God would judge children for being raped. What pieces of total shit.
>If people keep their mouth shut when a regime murders 30 000+ unarmed people
That 30k number came from the same source the WMDs did - paid informants who knew exactly what they were being paid to deliver.
Same sales pitch, different war.
The standards of evidence some people will accept when America is hell bent on starting a war is so low it blows my mind.
Ive noticed that these people who try to guilt trip meek liberals over the alleged deaths of 30,000 people in Iran used to sell a war of aggression will almost always downplay or try to sow doubt about the genocide in gaza which america supported.
It's very remarkably similar to the way some of the most extreme racists on the planet used to try and guilt trip liberals by accusing them of being anti semitic.
> That 30k number came from the same source the WMDs did - paid informants who knew exactly what they were being paid to deliver.
The Iran official number was still 3,117.
It’s not that crazy to think the number is closer to 30k than to this.
Many of whom were cops.
Trump and Israel are not backing nonviolent protestors in Iran. Theyre hell bent on provoking a civil war and are quite open about it.
Plenty of video of evidence of protestor violence if you care to look.
Meanwhile team genocide are trying to run a guilt trip on the rest of us
Because we care less about a crackdown on protestors by another government than we do a fully fledged genocide aided and abetted by our own.
Why would you feel guilty for the actions of Iran’s government? That doesn’t seem like the appropriate reaction, even if you’re directionally “pro” Iran because they’re directionally opposed to Israel.
(Ultranationalist/reactionary states like Iran and Israel love this kind of absolute framing, because it allows the state to ratchet, rather than de-escalate, cycles of violence.)
The guilt trip is aimed by people who support the genocide at meek liberals who might be worried that they're not demonstrating "equal" concern about Iran.
It was the same shit back when they used to accuse meek liberals of being antisemitic for criticizing some of the most extreme racists on planet earth.
It doesnt matter how Iran frames things. This isnt a "both sides" issue. Youll only get iran's opinion if you read presstv, they dont flood english speaking forums.
I don't know what equal concern means, per se. It seems normal for people to express more or less concern about individual tragedies based on their background, etc. This is distinct from being unable to acknowledge that any given action is bad, which would be the territory of an ideologue.
(I get Iran's opinion because I have Iranian friends.)
I can't recommend Heretic by Ayaan Hirsi Ali enough.
I don't think doctrinal reformation is possible with Islam.
The Qur'an is totally prescriptive. It contains direct legal commands, judicial rules and explicit government principles which are all binding and considered as direct divine speech.
I think Westernisation and an increase in the number of "casual" muslims is and will continue to be the moderating effect.
Think of what is happening in Europe (as the clearest example) with the influx of Muslim immigrants who raise increasingly more assimilated children as the blueprint.
The cultural gulf between left and right in the US is expanding rather than being assimilated or adapting. There is nothing stopping the same thing from happening between immigrants and natives in the EU. Both cases involve fundamentaly irecconcilable values, and it just depends on which values prove more viral.
I'm not sure the left/right cultural gulf will last beyond Trump. I'm not even sure it's still alive now, with Trump's approval ratings in the toilet. The US political system takes time to cycle and isn't on the same schedule as the political pendulum.
For those of us who haven't read it, could you explain why it's salient on this topic?
It's an English language book aimed for Westerner readers. It purports to argue that the core strategy for spreading Islam - terror - is not compatible with Western values. It also states that other features of Islam are incompatible with Western values, such as repression of women. The book argues that since these ideologies are incompatible with Western values, they must be abandoned.
However, the abandonment argument is only valid if one already accepts Western values as an axiom - which being an English-language book most of the readers would agree with. These readers will perceive the book to promote the reform of Islam into a religion that resembles a modern Christian denomination, just with different idols and prayers and holidays.
However those who do not come from the perspective of modern Christian values and as axiomic, will reject the argument outright. This is the Muslim population who might read it.
To be totally frank, Islam is the odd one out.
You can call it 'Western' values or 'Christian' values or whatever in order to make it seem chauvinistic all you want, but the simple truth is that these values are often shared by many other religions and places. As an example, look at the success of the Indian Hindus and the Chinese / East Asian Buddhists in the United States and across the globe. For a reverse example, contrary to popular belief, Christians, Sikhs, and Jains in Hindu-majority India are actually richer and more educated on average.
Time and time again, if you go look at the data, you'll find that Islam is almost always the odd one out.
The Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Taoists, etc can all be made to get along with Christians or 'the West'. There is really only one pretty much universally problematic religion, and that's Islam. You can argue this point all you want, but the entirety of Islamic history shows it to be true. You can again (correctly, in some cases) point out various bad actions from Christians (or Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, etc), but the simple truth is this: it's pretty easy today, in 2025, to imagine how to get along with these people. In places with diverse populations and migrants from these places, there is barely any violent religious conflict. At most you get some fundies in a tizzy over someone else doing their thing.
The only one that consistently performs violence is Islam. And that's something Muslims need to figure out. They don't need to abandon their religion. And they certainly do not need to be harmed for their beliefs. But, they do need to figure out how to integrate with the rest of the world in 2025 in a pluralistic global society.
You seem to be mixing up "Western values" and "Christian values" whereas Christian values are very much against the accumulation of wealth, whereas "Western values" seem to be all about worshipping wealth to the exclusion of all other considerations and even worshipping those who deliberately exploit others to amass an ungodly amount of wealth.
If you think that small difference means that Western values are not Christian values, then you have no idea how large the gulf between your values and Islamic values are.
Do you value separation of state and religious authority? Women's rights? Minority rights? Human dignity? Equality before the law? Sanctity of life? Individual moral responsibility? Monogamous marriage? The objective study of history? Fair trial? Witnesses at trial? Tolerance of alternative viewpoints?
Most of these arguments on the effect of different religions tend to be a bit silly. Islam is much more related to Christianity and Judaism than either of those two are to each other.
Language, cultural history, and geography tend to play a bigger role on society than the monotheistic religions do.
As neither a Muslim nor a Christian, but have lived among both, the dismissive argument "A is more similar to B than C" should not mean "I don't need to be concerned about A or B or C".
Nowhere in the passage is it saying that. Merely that A, B, and C are the same and their difference play less of role in society than we think.
Radical Christians are no different from radical Muslims who are no different than radical Jews.
Pretty sure Palestinians would take issue with your opinion on that. And that’s not even considering historical records and precedent of any of those religions.
Bashing one monotheistic religion while trying to contort logic around supporting the others is a fruitless endeavor.
Those values seem to be exactly the ones being discarded by the Christo-fascists of the USA.
My point is that the so-called Christian values are nothing to do with the reported teachings of Jesus and instead are used to justify the exact opposite.
The ACTUAL teachings by Supreme Leader Khamenei (remember, the HIGHEST Shia authority according to some) include that school girls who are to be killed for not wearing hats should be raped, because the Muslim God judges children based on if they have been raped. With teachings like this, I'm OK with muslims not following the teachings.
I did not realize that the point of discussion had changed to specifically Christo-fascists of the USA. My point still stands in regard to the vast majority of Christians you will meet.
One thing that I can not stand about some modern fanatics is the representation of 1% of a population as if they represent the whole. Don't bring up Christo-fascists of the USA as representative of Christian values. That's highjacking the subject to your pet cause.
This is an awesome discussion.
It's showing that we need to make some finer distinctions to meaningfully engage with each other on the topic.
It beats the heck out of each side assuming bad-faith.
> Do you value separation of state and religious authority? Women's rights? Minority rights? Human dignity? Equality before the law? Sanctity of life? Individual moral responsibility? Monogamous marriage? The objective study of history? Fair trial? Witnesses at trial? Tolerance of alternative viewpoints?
Sorry, I thought you were pointing out the many issues with the current US administration and you were showing the difference between Christo-fascists and Christians who value the teachings of Jesus.
Anyone live in a metro in a major western country should feel legitimately feared, the chance of lone wolf just 100x-ed.
America and Israel are lawless countries. Can you imagine other countries assassinating a foreign head of state and not getting immediate blowback?
I prefer assassinations of leaders in wars over deaths of soldiers and especially civilians.
Considering how Israel had to raze entire cities to beat 'Hamas' or the US dropping nukes in WW2 instead of bombing the Japanese Emperor. This is decent as far as wars go.
> Considering how Israel had to raze entire cities to beat 'Hamas'
1) Israel didn't "have" to raze anything, they chose to.
2) "Beat Hamas" is an excuse for Israel to do what it wants, which is to raze entire cities.
My guess: All of those leaders are responsible for more innocent civilian deaths in each conflict than Khamenei's entire reign.
To me, I am very conflicted about the assassination of Khamenei. Yeah, he did a bunch of bad stuff and was very destabilising in the region, but I need to draw the line at assassination. It was unnecessary. It is a slippery slope.
It was a criticism of the three wars you mentioned. I think a quick victory would have limited civilian deaths in all those situations.
Except the first one, because the goal of that war was killing the civilians. They could have assassinated Hamas leaders just as easily, but then there would be no reason to bomb all those hospitals and children.
To the extent that they're actually effective, I agree.
Trouble is, higher-ups are easily replaceable, and the rank-and-file True Believers may be even more willing to follow orders in the name of a dead tyrant than a living one.
Or not. Sic semper tyrannis. Best wishes to the people of Iran.
> Considering how Israel had to raze entire cities to beat 'Hamas'
They didn't, they just had to stop funding them, as Hamas has been funded by Israel.
No, Hamas was never funded by Israel. In this instance, Hamas was funded by Qatar, and the Israelis were complicit by allowing it. But it's also important to remember that Hamas is the elected sovereign in Gaza, and this money was used in part to run Gaza's infrastructure. In the same way Taliban runs Afghanistan, Hamas runs Gaza.
The assumption in Israel was that it was beneficial to have Hamas retain something to lose, and not starve them dry outright. Of course that didn't pan out well, given what Hamas did in October 7th.
But saying Hamas was funded by Israel is an outright lie, and the irony it comes from the same people who blame Israel for not letting supplies into Gaza during war. So no matter if Israel does or does not, it's always to blame simply by being.
> the irony it comes from the same people who blame Israel for not letting supplies into Gaza during war.
Israel did in fact do that. In fact there were several months of Israel not allowing any food or supplies whatsoever into Gaza. That was about a year ago. (It's possible Israel may have been supplying rival groups unfriendly to Hamas with food/supplies/weapons in secret, but all regular humanitarian aid was shut off.)
Israel stopped finding hamas decades ago
Lies.
> In an interview with Politico in 2023, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that "In the last 15 years, Israel did everything to downgrade the Palestinian Authority and to boost Hamas." He continued saying "Gaza was on the brink of collapse because they had no resources, they had no money, and the PA refused to give Hamas any money. Bibi saved them. Bibi made a deal with Qatar and they started to move millions and millions of dollars to Gaza."
That looks like Israel made every effort to promote the welfare of Gazan citizens. From your own link "Gaza was on the brink of collapse" and Israel saved them.
Nonsense. They wanted to stabilize Hamas rule so that the Palestinian Authority would not be able to govern there. A unified Palestinian government in the West Bank and Gaza is what they were opposed to. They feared diplomatic success on the part of the Palestinian Authority more so than any violence from Hamas. A major oops, but ideologically consistent with the Zionist goal of keeping a foot on the neck of Palestinians. There's not much else to Israel aside from that.
That's like saying the EU fundeh Hamas because they gave aid money to Gaza. If you squint at it the right way then maybe, but fundamentally it's disingenuous to call something like that funding.
But "the Jews .. uhm, I mean Israel .. had it coming and they did it to themselves" is always a favorite, isn't it?
If that was true, it would be like that. But it isn't, so it's not. EU is wide, and does not always speak with one voice, but it has a clear history of doing their best to avoid funding the proto-democratic forces in the region. Any support of religious extremists is considered a failure and acted upon.
Are you kidding me? Hamas controlled the aid distribution until the US and Israel recently implemented their own distribution channels.
BTW, here's 120 Million funneled through te UN, which has dependent organizations (UNRWA) with ties to Hamas https://civil-protection-humanitarian-aid.ec.europa.eu/news-...
https://unwatch.org/new-un-watch-report-exposes-hamas-takeov...
But hey, that's okay, because Israel is the problem, right?
> America and Israel are lawless countries.
The truth of the world, as much as we may hate it, is that at least at the state level might makes right.
Well not right, but effective in the short term. In the longer term I assume this kind of policy is destabilizing and bad for everyone
Said another way, if you don’t kill your enemy before he kills you, you die. Human nature hasn’t changed. I think it just gets forgotten.
Try again
> America and Israel are lawless countries.
America is as much a victim of israel as iran is. You act like we have a choice in this matter. We are forced to cut funding for food programs, education, healthcare, etc because of soaring debt. Yet, we'll take on any amount of debt for israel's wars. It's amazing how we've become a slave of such a small nation.
> Can you imagine other countries assassinating a foreign head of state and not getting immediate blowback?
It's simply a matter of power. Who is powerful enough to do the enforcing of laws or punishing of bad actors? Might makes right.
There's no such thing as a legitimate dictator, and every one of them belongs six feet under.
International law is below its ability to bé enforced
The EU should do more to move away from being dependent on america . America is a hostile nation and should be treated like Russia and China.
EU needs the US so much and every time I see this comment, I remember why. Too many idealists running the EU
America is run by ideologues and the EU idealists. either way we are heading in separate directions. I don’t think the US can be described as a western country anymore tbh.
We need China more.
My thinking is that, it's good when it works in your favor, but one day it night not, and if it doesn't well what recourse is available then?
Russia tried many times in Ukraine. No blowback.
What are you talking about? Russia has effectively been blocked from the west while when the United States invaded Iraq nothing happened. Europe trades with the US like nothing ever happened while Russia will never return to what it was before without at minimum Putin being gone.
Europe even still trades with Israel when what they have done is Gaza has been declared a genocide by everyone. At the same time Russia can't even take part in the Olympics or the Eurovision song contest.
The west has no moral ground to stand on and hopefully people in the west will start to see that.
You raise a lot of good points here. Another unconfortable truth: Russia is withstanding the sanctions way better than anyone expected. I don't think that they can sustain it forever, but I do think they can make it (at least) another 2-3 years.
You can't see the french or Russians doing the same thing in Africa? Because I sure can. There's be some hand wringing and posturing but that's about it.
Not that it's ok for the US, or anyone else to do it.
Fine, you got me. We will expedite another billion in aid to Israel to make up for it.
Either this will end in a fractured state with different factions OR another Ayatollah will be in charge. Just my guess from seeing similar stories play out in other countries though....
Iran is not like other countries in the region. Despite its shortcomings, it's a cohesive society. I'm certain that there will be no fracturing and a central authority will emerge.
> I would also describe Jordan, Oman, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia as cohesive societies.
I don’t know much about the region; is it incorrect to say that the nations you listed (excepting Jordan) are collections of fiefdoms with a relatively weak central power? To OP’s point, that is not how I view Iran
That would only be nominally correct regarding UAE, which consists of seven emirates.
From my reading I get the feeling it has more in common with Spain and Portugal before the fall of the dictatorships.
Indeed, I'vve already read about an opposition government being organized.
Even as we speak, Ayatollah Razmara and his cadre of fanatics are consolidating their power!
It’s Ayatollah Rubio.
Even as we speak Israeli missiles are target at him.
Maybe .. the revolutionary guard is fed up though with ineffective empire rule? Like to be rubbed in the dirt face first repeatetly as inheritor of the mighty persian empire sucks bad enough, to reconsider the way things are run? Sorry, but whatever israel & the us are doing, seems to work way better than - whatever has happened the last decades in iran?
For those who don't get the joke:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpEF6QPSVJE
As I understand it, the IGRC doesn't particularly rub happily with the clerical council, and it's not entirely clear to me who will win that the power struggle.
But the ultimate loser of the power struggle is clear: the Iranian populace at large, as all of the viable factions are quite committed to consolidating their power by repressing the population. The most likely situation, I think, looks a lot like Libya.
Islamic societies seem to be unable to form stable institutions. The recipe seems to be unable to synthesize this, no matter how many ressources are available and how benign the conditions. As a result the biggest formable state-institution remains the family clan and the family clan just does not cut it in preventing civil war. At best you get a clan-coalition masquerading as a military government with some democratic pets - at worst you get libya.But i guess after 52 countries, the results are in and the fact that other - non western powers are colonizing islamic countries now (china, russia) and everyone is scrambling for nukes post trump - the displayed weaknesses could end the region.
The Ottoman Empire lasted 600 years with only one major civil war, a feat not matched by any major Christian European country. England faced 3½ civil wars (counting the Hundred Years War as a ½ civil war here, because while it is essentially a dynastic dispute, it's not a dynastic dispute over England itself but rather English holdings in France) in the same timeframe. And this despite the Ottoman successor law being essentially "battle royale among eligible candidates" whereas standard European succession by this time is the seemingly clear "eldest son" yet somehow creating endless succession disputes.
Those "battle royales" were the reason for the stability. The process selected for sultans (or, occasionally, mothers of sultans) who were most effective at building a backing coalition, and generally ended in the killing or at least exile of all pretenders to the throne. The disruption the process represented also helped quell the willingness of factions within the government to try and repeat it too often.
The well-established succession processes practiced in the West guaranteed that at any given time, not only was there almost always at least one person who would benefit directly from the ruler's demise, there were often individuals for whom the ruler's premature demise was required for them to be inline for the throne. If you're the King's brother, for example, under male-preference primogeniture you need to make sure your brother doesn't have any kids.
“ the biggest formable state-institution remains the family clan”
This is not at all how Irani society is structured.
The rest of your comments generalizations are weak and ill-supported as well, at best they only apply to a subset of Arab countries in the Middle East.
How about Indonesia?
Where did you hear that? The IRGC is the creation of the revolutionary clerical movement. It exists specifically to prevent outcomes like Egypt, where a powerful national armed service operates as a check on political Islam.
Replying authoritatively to a Simpsons quote betrays you.
I think maybe the reformists are able to hold on now that the IRGC is being hammered. There might be more internal bloodshed but chances are that Iran might be a bit more open and more modern. Of course I have zero knowledge about how Iran politics works, so that was just a guess, not even an intelligent one.
BTW I don't actually think even the reformists will "accept Western ideas".
"Mission Accomplished"
We have such short memories don't we
What country in the Middle East has actually gotten better after removal of a bad status quo, in the last 26 years? I really can’t think of any. Is even Iraq considered a success?
> I really can’t think of any. Is even Iraq considered a success?
It was for Netanyahu, and that's the important thing here.
> Is even Iraq considered a success?
For Israel, absolutely. Improving the victim countries is not the aim.
Each one has worked out pretty well for Israel.
I have no sympathy for Khamenei, but, if that is allowed we should not be surprised if Denmark prime minister is next?
It's an easier decision to make if Denmark's PM decides to spray bullets at 20,000 student protestors.
Weirdly Europe and even Canada seem to be completely onboard with all this..
That's not how I am reading this. Here, the reaction seems mostly that Europe doesn't want to touch this mess. Which is weird, as Iran was clearly on our list of bad countries and Israel can do nothing wrong.
Local news publishes articles of Iranians in our countries being happy, political commenters indicating it can go both ways, and not much comments from politicians.
I can totally see why Europe doesn't want to touch this! I'm assuming that Europe doesn't mind the results, but also finds the means legitimately concerning. But they aren't in a position to do anything about the latter, so issue statements of concern about unilateral action, and quietly be relieved that somebody else gets stuck with the stigma.
Not even Russia really wants Iran to have nuclear weapons and a rocket technology that can hit targets 3000 km+ distant, though they obviously wouldn't attack Iran over that problem. The Middle East is notoriously hard to predict and governments change, while the nuclear capability endures.
Of all the countries that currently make any steps towards nuclear armament, Iran has by far the widest coalition of opponents.
Having a brutal dictatorial regime that finances international terrorists on your doorstep does that to you.
Yes, all those radical Iranian-backed terrorists on Canada and France's doorsteps have radicalized them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_International_Airlines...
Citing Canada here is bad faith and you know it. For France that is unironically true.
You know who created ISIS? US
Please read: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/02/opinion/how-america-helpe...
Surely they will be sanctioning Israel like they sanctioned russia for attacking ukraine? After all aren't Canada and europe self proclaimed beacons of light?
Norway, Finland and Spain protested the attack on the basis of international law.
The swedish government was more like 'eh, they had it coming', which does not bode well for us in the long run.
Also weirdly they only came out in support once they saw that the operation was largely successful. It's almost like they prefer to ride on the coattails the same as they always have.
They don't want to risk their politics.
> Also weirdly they only came out in support once they saw that the operation was largely successful
This is revisionist.
First, when has a bombing run been ‘unsuccessful’ in the modern era? The assassination wasn’t confirmed until after these statements had come out.
Second, these statements were released essentially as soon as these folks woke up.
The rest of the world should be forgiven for taking POTUS at his word when he said he was going to continue negotiations.
Yeah, because killing murderous dictators is helpful, and it doesn't matter that much who does it. In Europe, states aren't sacred – it is the freedom of people, and when people are freed, Europeans are happy even if it includes breaking the sovereignty of some terror state. I'm not saying I like Trump, but when he kills evil dictators, I can't complain. (There was 10k+ protesters killed in Iran recently)
There is huge potential hidden in Iran; it has always had a huge influence over the region and possibly the whole world.
Agreed. Canada fired the attorney general rather than prosecute those who financed momar ghaddfi. If Trump takes carney to stand trial I support it.
It’s also self admittedly a genocidal state which has failed to bring anyone to justice for the genocide it committed.
The Canadian people need US help in bringing those responsible for genocide and terrorist financing to stand trial for their crimes.
Iran is not a sovereign state, the legitimate powers of government derive from the consent of the governed, without consent it’s not a sovereign state.
The power of sovereignty rests with the people who have given their consent in free and fair elections to have their leaders removed.
Of all options, why would Denmarks prime minister be next?
Refusal to hand over Greenland.
(I'm not saying it's plausible, just want to explain the rationale.)
It does feel like we're on a slippery slope though. Normalizing and supporting the violation of international norms because 'they were bad guys and deserved it' is like turning a blind eye to corruption when its people you agree with. It doesn't lead anywhere good in the end.
> Refusal to hand over
Technically correct but slightly loaded phrasing. It implies the USA is in the right. Denmark is /defending/ itself and its territories.
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I don't think killing democratic representatives has as big of an effect as killing authoritarians. You can't have cult of the leader without the leader, but in parliamentary systems you'd have to off quite a few people.
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Typically jihadist denotes a militant sunni-salafist tendency, who are even more hateful against shia than non-believers.
This is reflected in e.g. Aaron Y. Zelin separating his surveilling of islamic militancy respectively into a jihadology and a muqawamology web site.
It is common for people in the occident to project the ideas they have about sunni-salafists onto the islamic republic, even though it is absurd. Same goes for the view that Khamenei supposedly were the one trying to achieve nuclear weapons, while his office has been the main blocker for this and secular nuclear researchers and political analysts in Iran has been the main proponents.
A year ago Ali Larijani said that if Iran was attacked they'd have no choice but to build deterrence through nuclear weapons, a proposal the US and Israel apparently thought was jolly good and since have crashed diplomatic alternatives to by the crime of aggression, not once but twice. The second time they also removed Khamenei, to really rub it in that they'd prefer for their allies in the region to have yet another nuclear armed neighbour.
You realize what a bad guy he was, right?
Read the list of human rights violations in Iran here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_Islamic_Re... and tell us something the prime minister of Denmark has done to deserve assassination.
I swear half the people on the internet are crazy. You all would be defending Hitler if he was killed today.
"Just because he was bad doesn't give us the right to kill him". You people should hear yourselves.
Do you think that he was killed because of human right violations? I do not think so. The current US administration does not seem very concerned with those.
You realize that international law exists, right? Or are we now OK with devolving into a world where assassinating heads of state and cabinet members is applauded?
I don't think anyone should shed a tear for Khamenei's death, but I'm not convinced the current trend of regime decapitation is setting the world in a desirable direction.
I'm convinced that with current technology (namely, drones) any half competent state actor can easily assassinate any world leader, and I wonder if the recent US actions aren't going to make the practice commonplace, with dramatic destabilization risks. (For instance think about Air Force One being shot down during landing by an FPV drone controlled over LTE from somewhere in South America by a Cuban intelligence officer).
It's pretty obvious that these dictators etc. are legally civilians and that this kind of thing is against the laws of war.
Traditionally even people like the US president, who is technically commander in chief, kings etc. with formal military ranks but who are not real battlefield decision makers etc., have been regarded as civilians.
To any Iranians of HN: how do you feel about the current situation, and what's the sentiment of Iranians abroad?
Iranian here! Lived most of my life inside Iran. I don't view US's actions as a favor to common Iranians. That's naive. No one wants war and bombing of civilians. Our misery is caused by a mix of religious extremism, theocracy and foreign intervention (in the past, Mossadegh, etc.) among other things. First and foremost I hold the regime responsible. For most of my life, I witnessed firsthand how they pushed us step by step closer to confrontation with the US, yet there's no single bomb shelter in Tehran or any major city for people to run to after 47 years of this shit. How would you feel in this situation?
Their opposition to Israel is not from a humanitarian and moral standpoint, it's purely religious. They have no shame admitting this. You just have to listen to one of the 5 state TV channels in Farsi. I even think Palestinians would fare better if not for these extremists on either side!
All that said, the supreme leader is the one who commands the murder of innocents in the streets, so he had it coming. Good riddance and he died like the rat that he was. But as to what happens next? No one knows. Also I personally don't think US is doing this because they want Iran's oil. I believe they want to put pressure on China to not get Iran's cheap (under sanctions) oil. That seems more plausible to me.
*typo edit
The US is doing this because Netanyahu visited Trump in the White House 7 times last year. It’s not about oil, protestors, or nuclear weapons: it’s about Israeli hegemony in the region.
Kinda sorta... The reality of the situation is much more complicated. The narrative and actions of the Islamic regime don’t quite corroborate "Israeli hegemony in the region" as the sole purpose of this conflict. Their narrative has not been one of defense in the past; it's always been offense. When they talk about Israel, they talk about Quds (Arabic name for Jerusalem), Quds' freedom, and annihilation of Israel. Even the foreign arm of the IRGC forces are named Quds! They operate in Syria and Lebanon, right next to Israel's border. That's why I said that their enmity with Israel is not from a moral standpoint or, evidently, even defending Iran. It takes two to tango!
Obviously, all this is not to say that Israel doesn't have a hegemonic stance. Probably even Arab nations have those dreams too!
You're seeing this vast field of geopolitical shit show through a tiny crack of news and social media from the last year.
I've asked this question to an Iranian colleague and his response was that it was extremely welcome and even though they know there will be collateral damage, it's better than suffering under a regime which have killed and will continue to kill many more people than what these strikes will do.
Any time we drop bombs we set ourselves up for more pearl harbors or 9/11s. Just stupidly foolish decision most people involved won’t have to see the consequences. Especially since we’ve destroyed our soft power. What is the next step? More stupidity. We are Americans we all cheer for spectacle regardless of reason. My fellow citizens are stupid and I don’t support the troops anymore or any military that has let all this happen.
Parent asked for comments from Iranians.
And? Does it matter? They’re not press that will only post opinions from Iranians. A counter perspective is useful, yes?
If the hard-liners IRGC generals went with him then it might be a good thing for its economy. I have heard some rumors that China was frustrated that IRGC pushed against the deals and were not willing to accept foreign investments in key oil/infra projects because they sit on them -- and that was why China never put down any real investments after signing the deals.
Why would a regime that came to be, ultimately, precisely because of foreign meddling in resource extraction ever entertain more foreign meddling in resource extraction, especially when it's levered with "or else we'll kill you."?
IRGC or whatever succeed next should wise themselves and stop hedging about whatever next deal with US/EU.
I think the biggest problem of IRGC is that they grabbed a large share of economy but spent a lot of that in geopolitical expansion for the last 1-2 decades. This in turn contributed to a more fragile Iranian economy and high inflation, which makes them extremely unpopular among the people.
No matter who steps up, Trump's actions make clear they have only two options:
1. Permanent subjugation to western countries, to be unilaterally abused whenever they felt like it, or
2. Race to the nuke as fast and as secretly as possible
These comments are insane to me. Have any of you ever spoken with Iranians? Lived with them? Trust me, they were wishing for Khamenei to be removed for decades.
In a FIFA World Peace Cup year as well. Is nothing sacred?
This claim and the offer of immunity may be intended more to reduce Iranian resistance than to represent reality.
(I would not rely on immunity from a nation that left collaborators on the tarmac in afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam?)
Immunity from the USA maybe. I would hope the new Iranian government would prosecute people for crimes appropriately.
Approximately 370,000 Hmong Americans live in the U.S. largely due to their alliance with the CIA during the Vietnam war.
> Approximately 370,000 Hmong Americans live in the U.S. largely due to their alliance with the CIA during the Vietnam war.
Correct, but how does this invalidate OP’s assertion? Are you saying that there are no collaborators who were left behind in Vietnam after supporting the US?
If I recall correctly, even getting the Hmong here was a political lift that some opposed
It contradicts his assertion that the US abandons allies.
It was about time. I hope the opposition in Iran takes charge and gets into power before they find another religious leader.
yess, the experience so far makes it obvious. They will be democratic and their gdp will go up by 6900% now. There won't be devastation, people starving to death, meaningless hindsight or anything like that.
One of the foundational principles of a stable government (though not the only one) is a monopoly on the use of force.
Unless the military and other armed groups back the civilians, whoever they end up backing will rule.
"There are reports of US/Israeli strikes on or near the homes of former Iranian pres, Ahmadinejad, former reformist presidential candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, and various leftist activists. If the US/Israel really wanted the 'people' to take back the country, they wouldn’t assassinate these folks"
https://bsky.app/profile/msjamshidi.bsky.social/post/3mfwmdx...
Only one side has the guns currently
there is no opposition in Iran, they're mostly in DC and Tel Aviv...
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Google isn't reliable. They'll present you whatever the current thing dictates, without any nuance whatsoever. Sure you can hunt down some exceptions here and there but post 2020, most publications are inviolacy captured by various interests that aren't yours or mine.
But of course there are regime critics but apart from those already captured by US/Israeli intelligence are either people without any perspective or those smart enough to know that a US regime change will worsen their situation even more, so they rather not participate in riots. At least that's what I've been hearing. It's just an anecdote, make of it what you want.
We’re talking about opposition here. Don’t straw man the “regime change”. So much mental gymnastics because you can’t accept the reality that the people of Iran may not fit the imaginary picture you had in your head based on what someone (very credible anecdote) told you.
Yeah Iranians who don’t want to be oppressed have no agency or human dignity, or deserve to decide their own faith. They must be either captured by US, lack perspective or not smart enough. That’s some 19th century imperialistic attitude right there. You might want to reflect on that.
there is no such opposition in Iran, they're mostly in DC and Tel Aviv...
In 1953, Iran was a secular and democratic country. They had elected a prime minister who decided to nationalize the oil industry. The US didn't like this and overthrew him. They imposed a brutal monarchical dictatorship. Popular discontent led to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The ayatollahs, to a large extent, existed because of US interference.
The same is true for all the instability in the Middle East, entirely manufactured by the West.
Action-reaction, cause-effect: You never know how a story will end. And after the 1979 revolution, the CIA and British MI6 provided the ayatollahs with lists of communists to exterminate, which they did. Imperialism always prefers to deal with theocracies rather than communists. https://www.declassifieduk.org/how-britain-helped-irans-isla...
> The US didn't like this and overthrew him.
sure, US invested resources, and new government decided to take it for free by force. Why wouldn't you wrap this as original action?
> In 1953, Iran was a secular and democratic
That glosses over a huge amount of details. Calling it democratic is a huge stretch.
> They had elected a prime minister
The election of 1952 were rigged (seemingly by both sides) and not free at all. The vote was even stopped early and almost half the seats left empty.
Mosaddegh was also already in power (being appointed by the Shah) before these “democratic” elections and his reforms were already underway.
This is skimming over the important details, "democratic" is really stretching it.
I also liked the idea that oh look Iran was this liberal country and whatnot but unfortunately it's just not true.
> Imperialism always prefers to deal with theocracies rather than communists.
Communist regimes are also a form of theocracy (proof can be found in the writings of any communist leader). It's just that, unlike other theocratic regimes, other countries have to deal with millions of starving refugees (because the communist faith requires banning food production or something like that, I don't know much about their religion).
Iran confirms: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/latest-israel-launches-a...
Smart strategy by the administration - go after people who are universally hated (Maduro, Khamenei) so you can normalize breaking the law and no one will speak out against you or they're a supporter of said hated people.
I’m struggling to understand how this will be different from Libya.
When the Arch Duke was Franz Ferdinand was assassinated would the comments have just been about policy position in the Balkans?
There are now 3 active hot conflicts in Eurasia involving different Nuclear armed powers. This is a scary and unstable time.
Good way to boost the midterm vote.
Next Greenland and then Canada.
And for anybody that didn't see this coming somehow, a planned four day operation has now turned into a 4 weeks long one. [1] Want to guess what happens in 4 weeks?
[1] - https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/trump-military-...
This may or may not lead to a weaker Iran. From FP: “Iran is frequently portrayed as a political order bound tightly to individuals. Yet the architecture that emerged after 1979 was formed by a different logic, one founded in the revolutionary experience itself. Khomeini captured this hierarchy in a remark (https://abdimedia.net/en/ruhollah-khomeini/system-ahead-life...) often cited within Iran’s political elite: “Preserving the Islamic Republic is more important than preserving any individual, even if that individual were the Imam of the Age”—a reference to Shiism’s 12th Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi. It is still unclear whether the system will always follow this principle. But one should expect a change in leadership in Tehran to be treated less as an ending and more as a chance for the country’s institutions to show they can survive.”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/02/28/iran-khamenei-ayatollah...
Looks like Russia's Shahad drone supply chain just got disrupted.
Russia has a license to make their own in Russian factories, but this will decrease Russia's overall supply.
Russia does not import Shaheds for years now. Modern versions where developed in Russia and are produced on Russian soil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yelabuga_drone_factory
"As of late spring 2025 Russia has been producing around 170 Geran-2 drones per day, with indication that a total of around 26,000 Gerans were produced by Yelabuga drone factory"
In isolation the death of this brutal dictator is great news, but we have seen how previous decapitation strikes have not had the intended effect. And I can only hope the Iranian people somehow end up better for this entirely illegal war that the Trump administration has initiated, instead of facing up to a fractured leadership and a potential civil war.
Two aircraft carriers just to kill an 86 years old man in a democratic way 10000 km home away as proof of the empire sunset
That's one way to put it.
Another view can be: ending a 36 years long autoritarian, human rights infriging, regime with very few casualities.
It was never about human rights. Bibi gets to do genocide and we supply the weapons to make it happen.
khamenei being a piece of shit is pure coincidence. If he was a nice guy he'd be equally dead right now.
This feels very much like a "mission accomplished" moment. Nobody knows what the future holds. Highly likely it gets worse.
Not worth killing more people. Very sad stupid day. Just because a “bad guy” died doesn’t mean we did a good thing.
The fall of the Iranian regime would be a strategic turning point not just for the Middle East, but globally.
For more than four decades, the Islamic Republic has been one of the primary state sponsors of terror. Hezbollah is not an organic Lebanese movement — it is an Iranian creation. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are sustained by Iranian money and weapons. The Houthis’ missile and drone capabilities exist because Tehran supplied and trained them. Shi’a militias in Iraq killed hundreds of Americans with Iranian-provided EFPs. Today, Iranian Shahed drones are striking Ukrainian apartment buildings.
This is not passive instability. It is deliberate, systematic export of violence as state policy.
At the same time, the regime has consistently pursued a nuclear capability while publicly calling for the destruction of Israel and “death to America.” Even if one assumes deterrence logic would hold, a nuclear umbrella for Iran would dramatically increase its freedom to escalate proxy warfare across the region.
The downstream geopolitical effects are not hypothetical. Without Iranian drone and missile transfers, Russia’s ability to sustain certain strike campaigns in Ukraine would be materially degraded. Without heavily discounted Iranian oil shipments, China’s energy calculus shifts, particularly under sanctions pressure. Without Tehran’s funding pipelines, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis become far more constrained actors rather than semi-state militaries.
There is also precedent for preventive action against nuclear programs. Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq’s Osirak reactor (Operation Opera) was widely condemned at the time; decades later, most analysts agree it delayed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions. Likewise, Israel’s 2007 strike on Syria’s Al-Kibar reactor (Operation Orchard) prevented the Assad regime from developing a covert nuclear capability. Both operations were controversial in the moment and regarded as stabilizing in retrospect.
Preventing a hostile regime from acquiring nuclear capability has historically proven wiser than managing it after the fact.
Yes, regime change carries risk. So does allowing the world’s most aggressive revolutionary theocracy to entrench itself indefinitely while arming proxies from Beirut to Sana’a to Moscow. The status quo is not stable. It is violent by design.
If a regime that funds terrorism on three continents, arms Russia during a European war, and openly seeks nuclear weapons is dismantled, history is unlikely to judge that harshly.
It will likely judge it as overdue.
Israel's enemies aren't "terror", they're legitimate resistance to an actual terrorist entity. Israel and the US are the terrorists, not the people defending against them. This latest round of unprovoked attacks only opens the world's eyes even more to this reality.
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> Israel was surrounded by enemies at the time of its creation itself
Uhhhh... euphemism of the century lmao
Can you describe how exactly Israel just came into existence surrounded by enemies?
Israel is surrounded by "enemies" because it's a European colony that was artificially constructed through ethnic cleansing and terror. I'm in the US, and it's crystal clear that Israel is the #1 threat to my way of life. There's a massive population that is done being gaslit about this.
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> If the standard is historical continuity, Jews are indigenous to that land. Their sovereignty was interrupted by conquest. It was not invented in the 20th century.
Cool, I guess I need to find wherever my ancestors lived 3000 years ago. Turns out. I have a claim to it still!
I would encourage everyone to read about The Balfour Declaration and Nakba. Like I said, we're tired of being gaslit.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_declaration
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba
I would also encourage everyone to find all of the TikTok videos posted by the IDF themselves, detailing, in depth, the war crimes they committed.
If you want to accurately predict the future, look no further than following prominent Israeli Americans and whatever it is they are after.
Why didn't he flee? This was a long time coming
His daughter, son-in-law, and the defense minister were also killed, as they were all in his residence at the time.
If he decided to stay for ideological reasons, they would not have been there.
My guess is that they might have misinterpreted the US's demands as starting positions while the US considered them to be final. Who would expect a country that can produce ballistic missiles to willingly give it up? It was a non-starter from the beginning.
It's definitely odd if he was just sitting in his compound. That's a very, well, known place for him. Surely Iran has plenty of secure underground bunkers for leadership to retreat to?
Apparently they hit the compound with 30+ bunker busters. So perhaps he was in a bunker but the bombs still got him
Even if he has an underground bunker there, it's still a super well known place. You'd think they'd at least try to hide somewhere.
Is there a source for this? I haven’t read any of the specifics on the strike.
That's how Nasrallah was eliminated as well.
Fleeing is seen as dishonorable in many parts of the Arab world. Remember the Israeli lies about how Yahya Sinwar dressed in women's clothes and were trying to cross the border to Egypt? In reality he was out in the field with his men killing Israeli soldiers. He died a brave death and Khamenei will now have died one too.
Iran isn’t an arab country.
Great, but that is nit-picking---I'm describing a cultural trait present in Iran which makes certain decisions seem irrational to Westerners.
I’m suggesting by referring to Iran as an Arab country, you have demonstrated you know very little about the Middle East.
Perhaps you may want to address my argument instead of nit-picking on that I used "Arab world" instead of "Middle East"?
No. The other poster already did a fine job about pointing out that Islamic terror groups typically use guerilla warfare which frequently involves fleeing, not wearing a uniform, hiding among civilians, etc.
I would like to hear more about the cultural traits that seem irrational to Westerners.
For what it's worth, I agree with you about Sinwar dying while fighting.
Lol what are you talking about, Arabs are great at guerilla warfare, and that involves a ton of fleeing.
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> Fleeing is seen as dishonorable
Tell that to the soldiers in the famously almost universally ineffective militaries of almost all the countries in the Arab world.
If the United States truly supported regime change there should be a clear next leader favored to succeed the Ayatollah, otherwise this feels more like a favor to oil companies, raising prices temporarily, and a sound bite for political gain, without a care of what happens to the country later. Simply toppling a government seems quite risky without further planning. Just expecting "good" people to fill the leadership vacuum is a gamble that could easily backfire and lead to greater crackdowns on freedoms and death to those Trump told to go get the power.
I'm not discounting that Trump is thinking he could back another Pahlavi and restore the Peacock Throne.
Obviously has nothing to do with oil companies or oil, this is a war on behalf of Israel. Netanyahu visited Trump 6 times in the past year. Prominent Zionists and Israelis inside the US have been agitating for the US to do this for years, especially since Trump took office last year.
Wars are almost always about commerce, history has shown that. Ideology is used to back the motive publicly, but the reason for involvement is almost always trade or commerce. This case could be different, but it is not obvious to me that this case is any different. A simple example is WW1 where the US was forced to back the UK because of their large debt to US banks, despite them still being a colonist power at the time.
You are implying that Trump is rational and/or the interests of his administration align with those of the country?
I am making no implications of Trump, very on purpose to keep this in point (it's hard), but explicitly stating that the policies of the United States are based on capitalism and always have been, while the narrative given and received is that of humanitarianism, which in my opinion is a side effect only. In this case hopefully a positive one, hence my concern for the reckless nature of the war (let's just call it what it is, not just an attack or military action).
There is no evidence this strike has anything to do with oil, our leadership is not even saying that we will be involved with the changes on the ground. Oil prices are extremely low and have been so for a while now, domestic production is huge and we just claimed Venezuela's for ourselves as well. We have plenty of oil and again, there is just no evidence that this is motivated in any way by oil.
It is purely because Iran is a rival and check on Israel. Most of the US oligarchy has strong ties to Israel and they have made huge donations to Trump so that he would do this for them. Take a look at Miriam Adelson, Sheldon Adelson, Larry Elison, Ronald Lauder. These are mega donors who have been agitating for regime change in Iran from the very beginning. Go watch the speeches that Trump has given IN Israel, this has been their aim the entire time.
This conflict is extremely religious in nature, a huge contingent of Christians in the US believe that Israel ruling the middle east out of Jerusalem means that the end times will arrive sooner. Similarly a large contingent of Jews believe that their Messiah will return when they control the middle east.
Watch the Tucker interviews with Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee, many of these people are true believers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Israel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Zionism
>A 2017 LifeWay poll conducted in United States found that 80% of evangelical Christians believed that the creation of Israel in 1948 was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy that would bring about Christ's return and more than 50% of Evangelical Christians believed that they support Israel because it is important for fulfilling the prophecy.
Yes, and the price of oil has gone up 10% last I saw. United states domestic oil sells at the same price. Maybe not planned, but a reality. On the flip side the possibility this affect the global economy, which includes the US, more negatively is probably true also.
Again though, you are presenting 0 evidence that these strikes have anything to do with oil. Meanwhile there's a mountain of evidence that this has everything to do with Israel and its ambition to dominate the region.
I believe Netanyahu has visited 7 times now at this point. In a single year.
I'd rather wait until it is confirmed.
Why are the American democrats protesting?
Cause people are sick of their tax money going to endless wars
Aren’t they the ones who wanted to go to war with Russia?
missing keyword is "starting"
Because it's not them who did it.
Trump didn't get congressional approval
It’s so funny reading most comments here, knowing that they’d be celebrating and saying this is good if it was Netanyahu. But when it’s a maniacal islamist declaring his goal to be the destruction of US and Israel, it’s suddenly very nuanced.
No one liked the ayatollah, but if you think the president can go to war without congressional approval then you are unamerican. On top of that, the younger generation of the IRGC is more extreme than the current one, and there has never been a successful regime change by only using an air campaign. Dummies might point to Kosovo or Libya, but the opposition in those cases were armed. In Iran, the opposition is about to get slaughtered and oppressed further, unless we get boots on the ground.
> if you think the president can go to war without congressional approval then you are unamerican
The last time congress declared war was 1942. That ship long ago my friend.
And, probably not coincidentally, 1942 was the last time the US got involved in a conflict that we can be proud of.
I saw some news that the US and Israel have been killing existing leftist opposition india’s Iran because they want to install the Shah’s son.
I'm all for upholding international law and holding tyrants to justice.
I am also in favor of the US Constitution's separation of powers.
I would be equally pissed if Netanyahu died at the expense of rule of law.
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It's not nuanced at all. Both deserve death row.
An almost bigger irony is that most of those complaining would almost certainly have lamented in the past about leaders sending their nations poor to fight instead of going after each other directly. But now "that's illegal" (not just the war, but specifically the decapitation strikes)
>maniacal islamist declaring his goal
vs
>maniacal 'whatever you call him' actually committed to methodically wipe out his neighbor
The first one is crippled by US sanctions, second one propped up by US taxpayers.
The duality of imperialism
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If you do care the number of people will die bc of the sudden death of their leadership, then the reaction makes sense. Israel society will still function if its far right leadership was taken out suddenly, Iran society will collapse and become unpredictable and miserable if rev guard were suddenly removed without quick replacement or resolution.
Don't worry, if you say maniac and islamist enough times everyone will understand your view point and change their minds about what it means to blow up middle eastern countries.
They’re still bombing Tehran right now.[0] It’s not over. What is there to celebrate? I hope Netanyahu and Trump both die today but I’d prefer they were prosecuted not blown up with missiles. Do you think I should celebrate their deaths when the day comes? They’re both maniacal men who have beliefs and have gotten people killed for no reason.
[0] “U.S.-Israeli strikes in Iran continue into 2nd day, as the region faces turmoil” https://www.npr.org/2026/03/01/nx-s1-5731365/us-israeli-stri...
Obviously, given that Netanyahu is the face of the entity at the root cause of all of these problems.
Oh, please enlighten us what is the entity, don’t be a coward!
Israel of course, I'm sorry I thought that was clear. I do not shy away from stating the obvious.
So Israel is at fault of the Iranian government slaughtering 30,000 of its citizens just last month?
Oh, so the Iranian government didn't shoot its own citizens en masse? It's just Zionist propaganda? Interesting
Israel is at fault for spreading those false rumors, yes. Just like Iraq having "weapons of mass destruction". Same people lying to drag the US into unjust wars.
This reminds me of a quote I heard earlier this week - “if they’re brown, it’s culture. If they’re white, it’s genocide”
Netanyahu committed genocide. The worst crime humanity can commit.
It's not actually very funny how many people go very far out of their way to try and downplay that.
They don't downplay it anymore, they're justifying it.
> Netanyahu committed genocide
No he didn’t, you made that up.
The charges are not made-up, he just hasn't been tried on them yet: https://www.icc-cpi.int/defendant/netanyahu
It's funny how being partisan makes one "know" all these unknowable, evidence-free hypotheticals about the other side.
Must be nice, to replace the difficult art of getting things done in politics with merely spectating at a soccer match. Team Green or Team Blue? Get your bumper stickers and profile emojis.
Best of luck to the people of Iran. Be safe! I'm praying for the best!
They can not sadly. As the monsters of america and israel have free license to kill anyone, they will kill anyone they want to make their god happy. In the case of iran, they already killed 100+ girls in a school even though they have perfect intelligence and precision attack tech.
The killings of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were so amazingly successful in stabilizing those countries that Americans keep repeating the pattern.
Not a killing, but capturing Noriega did in fact work out well. Panama of today is generally stable and rich (by Latam standards anyway).
Panama's main asset can't be removed from Panama.
Also Panama's population and land area are an order of magnitude smaller than these Middle East states, and they were already an American client state in the past.
This is prime cherry-picked propaganda bullshit. What about Augusto Pinochet, to name drop a counterexample? How did that work out for the Chilean people?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet#U.S._backing_...
Okay, then how about Japan and West Germany?
It's almost like whether "regime change" works or not depends on the specifics. It's not something that can be universally generalized.
It's almost like they are either stupid or the point was never about stability
What is happening to this world. There is so many intense events happening in a such short time. I feel like we are truly living in weird times. Trumpet is out here deciding the fate of countries future for his own good. Now, it so happens to be something that benefited the Iranians. But I do not think he did it for the people directly, rather a side effect.
I feel like I've lost the touch of which direction our future is going now, the worlds geopolitics is fluctuation too much. Maybe I should remind myself that feelings also gets amplified by constant stream of news and social media. I am certain 1990s, 2000s and early 2010s was worse times.
Exactly just because the dictator was horrible doesn’t give the US the right to attack other countries. I see no difference between Russia, Israel, America. They’re all hostile countries which should be sanctioned for human rights violations and violating international law.
This.
I've begun to think of Trump as a forest fire. The consequences may be horrible, at least for the status quo, but it does provide an opportunity for new beginnings.
At least, that is the only way I maintain hope.
A 'new beginning' eould be vance in charge?
"American heroes may be lost", Trump said. He argued this would be a necessary price to pay to inflict damage.
lol. "Some of you will lose your lives. But that's a price I'm willing to pay"
Huh... It turns out you can just kill your enemies. You don't have to spend a decade trying to negotiate and placate them.
Good, Trump can now claim victory and shout some words in his third-world-dictator style, and american sailors move out of the region. Stock market is opening tomorrow and it doesnt want to see ugly things
To celebrate deaths this way is satanic.
Netanyahu is leading Trump around by the nose apparently. And here we all thought Putin owned Trump. How the wheel turns.
Nobody owns trump, you can't buy him.
Trump is for rent. Shutting down a competitor is 25M, "full service" is apparently ~100M. I'm not privy to what invading an oil nation costs, but I reckon it's akin to a hand job, so a nice golden wristwatch should probably do it?
The Board of Peace admission price is $1B apparently.
Good to know! That's a relatively hefty sum, I wonder what's included? Do you get a free invasion with that, or is it just access to membership discounts? I guess time will tell!
Those are not mutually exclusive. He is still Putin's bitch as well as Netanyahu's.
Trump appears to be for lease.
Today is a good day.
All the angry people here coming out of the woodwork in this thread. Where were you just a month ago, when the Iranian regime murdered 30k of its own civilians within just a couple of days, during the recent wave of protests? This site is infested with woke moralists and islamists.
Trump hasn't provided any evidence of his death and is quoted as saying something very non-Trumpian here: https://www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/live-blog/israel-iran-liv...
> Earlier, Trump addressed reports that Khamenei was killed in airstrikes today, saying, “We feel that that is a correct story.”
This doesn't sound like Trump's typical bluster, and it's even weirder that Trump didn't immediately go on TV to brag. I'm not saying this is fake news, but I'll wait for confirmation.
Maybe you should contact Iranian state tv because their promoting what you claim is an incorrect story: https://x.com/marionawfal/status/2027940530982625471?s=46
Hi Iran, enjoy your civil war
Israel, Trump claims Khamenei killed, Iran denies - https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/2/28/live-israe...
If true, and given how easy it seemed decapitate the regime I can't see another Ayatollah taking over, hopefully the people take over and institute a real secular democracy based on capitalism.
Without proper support and a huge nation building effort, the same fate as Lebanon, Syria, Lybia Iraq, Afghanistan is the more likely outcome after this evil dictator is gone.
Assassination doesn’t remove the system or rewrite the balance of power, nor does it reconstitute civil society.
Why not? If there's one thing that's been proven over the last 20 years it's you can just outlast America.
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There might be something to read between the lines for Putin.
Putin has nuclear weapons. What does he have to fear?
An assassination.
Good riddance
You shouldn't celebrate the killings of heads of state, that would set a bad precedent.
How is it bad? Imagine a world where instead of sending hundreds of thousands young men to die, countries would just launch targeted attacks on the head of enemy's state.
The powerful people that set the rules have made it unacceptable to kill powerful people.
Powerless people? Into the meat grinder!
Would you say the same if iran killed trump?
This isn't the gotcha you think it is. Most people in my social circles have a bottle waiting for a date.
I cannot confirm or deny that I would say the same thing
They're civilians, for one.
Are they? In most countries the head of the state is also army's commander-in-chief.
Yes, but these are traditionally not treated as actual soldiers, but civilians commanders-in-chief-in-name-only.
Only because of professional courtesy between powerful assholes. I have far more sympathy for an infantry grunt from literally any country in the world than any head of state.
If more dictators fear for their lives: good.
If he didn't want to be assassinated maybe he shouldn't have killed all those people.
Quite the opposite - if they know they are risking their lives they would be more reasonable.
It's the stated reason why the United States has an impeachment process. So that they have a process for removing undesirable heads of state without resorting to assassination.
True but other countries don't have an equivalent process.
Most have, but the decition is made by the local politicians instead of foreing nuclear powers. It's actually very similar to the impeachment.
Sorry I phrased that poorly. I meant countries have no means to impeach a foreign head of state so impeachment only serves as a power check if the citizenry disapproves.
Not that I think heads of state fearing for their lives from airstrikes is necessarily good, being able to act with impunity is certainly bad.
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The US has a constitution as well? It seems pretty worthless these days since nobody is willing to enforce it..
We already have a bad president.
Good
Thank god we're kicking 5 million people off of their health insurance in 2027, otherwise we would not be able to afford all of these bombs.
There was a clip of one of Iran's missiles dodging 3 Patriot interceptors to hit the US base in Bahrain. I realized I just watched $12m wasted for nothing in less than 5 seconds.
That's your money that's being Squandered yet you have no say in the decision to wage this war, nor your representative.
There was an election in 2024.
Between those currently in power, and those whose current leader (as senator minority leader).. is a known cheerleader of wars with Iran.
Wait are you saying Schumer was going to make Harris invade Iran?
This is the kind of brainrot that lets people like Trump get into power in the first place. Removing all agency from the American people by pretending that "both sides are the same". It's just pathetic.
You have built yourself a safe little cocoon, protected from the messy imperfect reality of the world, where sometimes you have to make compromises and you don't always get what you want.
So ? People didn't vote to spend billions on Israel wars.
Trump said he was against wars, that 2003 Irak war was a mistake, yet he's once again trying to make another country change government by dropping bombs on them.
Polls show that a majority of Americans are against that war.
What more do you want to understand that Americans didnt vote for it and are against it.
That's no excuse.
And if a choice between 2 people that have been thoroughly vetted by elites is your definition of democracy, you have a sad sad view of what's possible.
Sorry, how are free and fair elections not democracy?
These people are here to either sow dissent between American citizens and the American government, or have been influenced by those whose goal is to sow dissent between American citizens and the American government. Qatar can not take on the US with military power, so they use soft power and "influencers".
Say one thing, get elected, do the opposite.
Don't worry, Chuck Schumer has asked Trump for an explanation for why he's conducting new wars.
> There was a clip of one of Iran's missiles dodging 3 Patriot interceptors to hit the US base in Bahrain.
Link?
https://www.google.com/search?q=Al+Udeid+3+patriots+miss+ira...
It looks like the interceptors hit it, but missile was only damaged and not destroyed.
No one's a perfect shot: the misses aren't waste, because some misses should be expected.
They're wasted because none of this had to happen.
They are not supposed to intercept ballistic missiles anyway,it's THAAD's job
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So are 80 schoolchidren at a primary school
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/28/children-dead-...
The count is now over 165
The murderers are the people committing murders. That the victim was himself a ruthless tyrant doesn't change the fact that this is intolerable. The US can't be the only one allowed to bend the rules.
Don't come crying around when the next 9/11 inevitably happens.
Obama literally signed a deal with Iran to constrain their nuclear program, and Trump ripped it up in his first term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Ac...
Was the bottleneck in these situations really the US' willingness to kill or capture world leaders?
Obama thought it was a good idea to send pallets of cash to Iran’s government. That wasn’t a good deal.
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In hindsight, from the perspective of the Middle East and Arab world in general: Obama’s tenure was a geopolitical nightmare, while under Trump’s first presidency the Middle East made a big step forward with the Abraham Accords.
> In hindsight, from the perspective of the Middle East and Arab world in general
Do you live there?
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Israel is a horrible human rights abusing country. Why would you support that?
Israel is a wonderful country that protects human rights. I see no reason not to support Israel.
You support organization that's on a UN international blacklist of organizations that intentionally harm children. Have some shame.
I will never forget the thousands of little children that IDF burned to death, cut off their legs and arms, separate they heads or just degutted. Bleh.
IDF taught me that you can cut off both legs of a toddler at the hips and it will still live and scream, and will not die instantly from shock and hypovolemia.
Fuck scum that support this organization for whatever reason.
>a UN international blacklist
Fuck UN. UN's UNRWA is a friend of HAMAS and sponsor of terrorism.
>you can cut off both legs of a toddler
As far as I know, it was HAMAS, not the IDF, who burned the children.
It's unreasonable approach to blame UN and by that largely the whole world for Israel's own failings, like the whole failed approach to build a state based on brutal violence against other inhabitants of the land they stole. All they managed is to build a failed distopia that just brutalizes all its neighbors and non-citizen subjects.
You google for images of "israeli" or whatever and all you get is endless images of armed nutjobs. What other normal nation has that? Like no culture but blue/white flag and gun worship can be discerned from a simple generic search like that.
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do you mean ordinary iranians, women without covered hair and teenagers from high schools?
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The student becomes the master
Why the downvotes. Please elaborate when downvoting.
I didn't downvote you.
Israel can’t do anything without US. They don’t have the resources.
That's called counterfactual thinking.
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Long live the Yankee Empire. The world will learn to lick its boots.
This but unironically
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Yes, let us do Trump next.
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I realized how different the Iranian definition of "democracy" is compared to Western democracies when I was discussing Iranian elections with a regime supporter.
Me: "What about the Guardian Council having veto power over presidential candidates?"
Him: "Well, you can't let a goat herder be president!"
Say what you want about American democracy, but we do let any idiot run for president.
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Nope the US has interests and stakes in this going back decades.
Saudi Arabia was also heavily lobbying the US to attack Iran as well (1).
1: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-israel-attack-iran-iran-i...
The US, Canada, and Mexico are just as illegal as Israel as there were already people living on the land.
Illegal according to whose laws?
I think some people get so absorbed in the news that they forget that their life is no better than it was yesterday.
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The last thing Iran needs is another Pahlavi dynasty. They don't need the mullahs either.
RIP
It's remarkable to me how many seem to forget there is "morality" apart from "legality". Even if this does violate some treaty somewhere, we need not wring hands over the death of an objective dictator.
> Even if this does violate some treaty somewhere, we need not wring hands over the death of an objective dictator.
We absolutely should. It's a key principle of international law that brutal regimes should not be disturbed, until an opportunity for a regime change brokered by international lawyers presents itself in a century or two. Moral legitimacy comes from international law, and international law only.
> President Trump announced the Iranian leader's death on social media, saying Khamenei could not avoid U.S. intelligence and surveillance. A source briefed on the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran told NPR earlier Saturday that an Israeli airstrike killed Khamenei.
This does not seem to me like very strong evidence? Trump just says whatever, and "a source briefed on [the attacks]" just means at least one person in USG thinks Khamenei was in whatever house they blew up. Am I missing some other confirmation?
If he is not dead - Iran will have to show him - and he will be double tapped.
He is dead, Iran state media confirmed a couple of hours ago.
I'm tired of Israelis killing innocent people
This was has killed a lot of innocent people. Khamenei was not one of the innocent.
Ah yes, the poor innocent dictator minding his own business while killing thousands of protestors.
If what matters is the number of people killed, the next two should be Putin and Netanyahu. Yet I have a feeling that will not happen.
Pretty much by definition, dictators do not allow themselves to be removed by the people through peaceful means, which is why it's easy to draw a line there. If someone's a dictator, it's morally okay to kill them. Always.
Why isn't Trump bombarding the Kremlin? Isn't Putin a much larger threat to world peace than any leader of Iran?
Also, it's never "morally okay" to kill anyone, ever; the fact that the US still has the death penalty shows how little they understand about morals and logic.
Because it's easier for him to bully Iran, it just so happens that Iran's government is worthy of bullying.
> Why isn't Trump bombarding the Kremlin? Isn't Putin a much larger threat to world peace than any leader of Iran?
Russia is not a threat to the US per MAD doctrine. If Iran had nukes, you might believe that they could actually be mad enough to use them and because Russia has nukes, no one would try this with Putin.
> Also, it's never "morally okay" to kill anyone, ever; the fact that the US still has the death penalty shows how little they understand about morals and logic.
Never, ever? Even self-defence? Or what would you do if you were living in a hunter-gatherer society that did not have the capability to imprison someone for life and you had a murdering psycho in your tribe? Expel him so he can come back and kill more people? Logic?
Because Russia has Nuclear Weapons dummy
Aaaah thanks, I didn't know that and my question wasn't rhetorical.
It's cool we have all those new users on HN who are helping us understand the world.
Falling for the same lies as "Saddam's WMDs" in 2026 is crazy. Keep that energy with Kim Jong Un, or Netanyahu. Oh wait, Israel is America's boss.
There's plenty of footage out there if you want to see the bodies.
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Ding dong the witch is dead. Let's hope other witches follow his steps.
In my opinion the real problem for Iran lies in the north, on the border with Azerbaijan.
The Israeli-supplied Azeri military has already demonstrated its effectiveness when it curb stomped the unprepared and internally betrayed Armenian military and militias. Baku will eventually decide to intervene in the northern territories. If I had to guess, a "special military operation" into northern Iran is the most likely follow-up scenario goaded into and supplied of course by Israel/US. The goal will be to foment a civil war and begin the dismemberment process of Iran.
A little personal conspiracy theory I have is that after the last Israel/US intervention (when they mysteriously liquidated the only high-ranking and influential internal opposition of the Khamenei clan left) is that some sort of deal was worked out behind the scenes with the clan to get rid of the wizard-in-chief kinda like how Maduro was sold out. It is much easier to go to war with a country when it responds with only symbolic attacks and secretly promises to fight with one hand behind its back - provided cash and security flows for those at the top of course.
Honeeeeeeeeey get in here, the board of peace officially declared its first war!
Bring the popcorn with you. No need for salt cause everyone got that in spades on both sides.
it makes perfect sense when you realize they just misspelled 'bored'