I think it just represents people/entities who conduct business internationally, since camels used to be a major transportation method on the Silk Road.
Indeed, the cause of the war ISRAELi lies. Just like with Iraq. And they control the US administration with the Epstein files.
It is actually 2nd Epstein War.
Unrelated. I found this China propaganda video depicting its interpretation of the Iran war entertaining. It talks about the “flowing valley of gold” the Hormuz Strait, the “white eagle alliance” the USA, and “white eagle gold tickets” the petrodollar.
I watched some of the videos. I think that the New Yorker does its readers a disservice by not pointing out that they also contain blatant lies, just like the propaganda they're supposedly countering. For example the "Victory Chronicles" video really misrepresents how much damage Iranian drones were able to do in Dubai and Saudi Arabia.
Its a regime that killed 10s of thousands of its own people for protesting. Ofc its all blatant lies, cute legos or not. There's literally no good sides to this war (anymore)
That country was safe, had a decent standard of living and high life expectancy and that despite the sanctions.
Without sanctions & active support I guess it might have surpassed UAE.
It seems to me, the US government that makes the citiziens of other countries as miserable as possible and despite these attempts Iran managed just fine.
The regime's own published number is 3,000. If you look to how the regime provably undercounts the executions it commits with them normally reporting only 10%, going by historical precedent you would come out to 30,000 dead.
I keep getting downvoted and flagged, but there is noway anyone in good faith would support this war crime. A president who threaten to send a country to stone age, saying in front of everyones face that he wants to take the oil..
I don't understand how any human in good faith could look at Iran's government and say they are the evil regime, when we have on other hand, someone who is vocally saying that he is willing to destroy the country's infrastructure and steal their oil.
Well, sure I don't mind getting flagged or downvoted. But at least I speak my mind and what I believe is true.
This isn’t a contest for most just or most evil. Iran has committed horrible atrocities. The US’s approach to this war has been completely wrong and they are threatening war crimes.
Yeah but western powers have been threatening, bullying, murdering and undermining Iran and it's people since they nationalized their own damn oil three quarters of a century ago.
How do you expect an abused dog to turn out? It's probably not going to turn out very nice isn't it? The Iranian regime would chill out just fine on their own if only the west would stop being so cruel to them.
That's exactly it, and what's more they are kicking the abused dog even harder expecting submission. At this stage, it seems it would rather die or push the abuser away.
Iran has been "threatening, bullying, murdering and undermining" Israel since it was taken over by an irrational Shia theocracy. This war wouldn't be happening if Iran had behaved in a sane and rational manner over the last 35 years.
So one side is evil while the other side is just wrong ?
Like after 300k deaths in Irak when the administration said "sorry we have been misled by wrong information about the WMD"? They made a mistake, yet Iraqis were evil.
US armed rebels, that is their history, Israel wants to the current government down at all cost.
They did that with Iraq, ISIS, they trying with Kurdistan..
I'm not defending a theocracy, but this is not how countries are freed. And he is clearly claiming to take the oil, destroy their infrastructure and take the country to the dark ages. If Iranian government was saying that, hell would go lose.
Actually arming rebels is how countries are freed. Its not the only way but it is one of the most common. Also Iran arms rebels so whats your point in highlighting the US support for rebel groups?
Your perspective on who is being liberated and who is doing the liberating relies on a simplistic narrative. Ironically, the central figure of that narrative, Donald Trump, has openly stated that he does not mind seizing oil or returning the nation to the Dark Ages. Furthermore, they have backed armed protests and expressed a willingness to arm Kurdish factions.
I am uncertain about the logic or framework you are utilizing. If you believe such actions constitute "freeing" a country, then we clearly do not share the same moral and ethical standards.
I think you're assuming way to much from my comment. I was pushing back on the idea that arming rebel group isnt how countries are freed not supporting what Trump is doing.
A violent takeover may not immediately lead to a "free" country but it does open the doors to change and from that change can come freedom. Or in a different perspective its not freedom its just to be free from that certain regime.
because the person funding isnt doing it out of the good of their heart. They have interests in removing the current government. The rebels also have interests in removing the current government. That is all its just two people working together on a common goal its not that deep.
Iran has been saying this about Israel and the USA since 1979 and has been arming/propping up Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, who have has similar language on their flags/in their charters.
Keep in mind that we now know that US supplied the protestors weapons to wage violence during the crackdown that resulted in many police officers being killed. We also know that the US has run a campaign to turn protests into riots in past events. And we know that the US sponsors campaigns to create unrest in the country.
If Iran sucks, it is only because the US wants it to suck
The USA didn’t turn Iran into a terrorist Jihadist state attempting to get nukes. Not everything is the USA’s doing, give extremely violent Islam its fault as well.
Iran has funded/stood up Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthi rebels whose flags and charters include maximalist jihadist rhetoric. Iran my entire life has pushed 'death to America'. When Iran's leadership was killed they talked about welcoming it and Islamic martyrdom. My entire life that is my exposure to what an Islamic state looks like. Sure seems jihadist to me.
The only thing those groups have in common is their hate for israel. And israel has intentionally made them the enemy. As it has done with Iran. And blackmailed trump to go after Iran.
At this point you simply just back away from all indications of “iran bad”
Wait, cites on the "US supplied Iranian protestors with weapons" bit? Other than Trump? It sounds ridiculous to question whether he's telling the truth, but here we are...
Are you suggesting I provide a citation for the President's claims? Beyond his reputation as a loose cannon, it is difficult to fathom why he would boast about such a thing.
From the beginning, the primary objective of this conflict has been for Israel to eliminate regional resistance, leaving Iran as the final holdout. By arming internal rebels to oppose the administration, external forces are essentially inciting a civil war to topple the government.
While the nation and its current leadership require reform, it is important to remember that these radical regimes do not emerge in a vacuum. Their perceived need to resist stems from external efforts to dismantle them. Such radicalization is often the direct consequence of aggressive policies, including economic sanctions, historical support for Saddam Hussein, and the installation of corrupt monarchies.
Every radical movement triggers a counter-movement, making it difficult to distinguish cause from effect. Much like the chills and fever associated with the flu, these movements represent an extreme but instinctive immune response to an outside threat.
> I don't understand how any human in good faith could look at Iran's government and say they are the evil regime,
Well mainly by having Iranian friends who tell us their government is an evil regime, and when we try to insist our government is evil too, lecture us about our privilege to show they really mean it.
youre only getting downvoted because they pay people good money to make sure their ridiculous narrative gets front page every single day. us murders a countries leader and a bunch of school kids and suddenly iran is accused of murdering 100k protesters and committing war crimes... like wtf lol
> I don't understand how any human in good faith could look at Iran's government and say they are the evil regime
Iran mass murdered tens of thousands of protesters in one day. I was outraged when Trump’s goons murdered two Minnesotan protesters—if we can agree this is evil, it should follow that a regime that murders tens of thousands of protesters is also evil. This isn’t complicated, which is why you’re being downvoted (I did not downvote you).
Neither the precise scale of the killings or the degree of militancy of the protesters has been well documented. It's reported that a lot of policemen and revolutionary guard soldiers were killed too.
Remember, Mossad publicly boasted that they were on the ground with the protesters, which was a pretty insane thing to do and basically gave Iran carte blanche to say these aren't protests, it's a foreign sponsored coup attempt. There's very little we can say to that when Mossad basically publicly said it was.
Maybe they were so sure the protests would succeed they figured it would earn them/justify goodwill with the new government?
FWIW, my information comes from Iranians who speak regularly with their families who still live in the cities where these killings happened. They talk about protestors pushed into a market place by IRGC with just one exit—the market was set on fire and anyone who fled out the exit was shot by IRGC.
Also, if you know anything at all about the history of the Iranian regime, it’s entirely unsurprising that this happened. They respond murderously to every large scale protest, and have been mass murderers since they turned on the leftists and other allies who helped install them in ‘79.
> it's a foreign sponsored coup attempt
This is what the regime says every time large protests erupt internally. I’m not defending Israel, but these were innocent unarmed people protesting even if Israel played a role in organizing the protests. I detest the Israeli regime as well, but justifying either side’s mass murder is insane.
Man, if you've followed Iran, you'll know that some exile Iranians are a bit like exile Cubans. Like the latter, they have plenty of legitimate things to be angry about, but that doesn't mean they aren't, a good deal of them, batshit crazy. Lots of them support the son of the CIA-supported dictator who was so bad he landed Iran with their theocrats in the first place. Some of them are supporters of MEK, a goddamn case study in political cults.
> This is what the regime says every time large protests erupt internally
Yes, but that doesn't mean they're not right. US and particularly Israel outright took credit for it, to a degree you'd be hard pressed to find any time in history. It wasn't just a spontaneous uprising, it was also very openly a foreign sponsored regime change operation.
Which doesn't mean they're aren't a lot of innocent people who have wanted to get rid of the theocrats all along getting murdered. I'm sure there are.
There are just enough in the opposition who have decided to ally with Israel (which would rather see Iran a Somalia-style failed state before a free and democratic Iran) and the dictator's sonthat any kind of moral legitimacy the movement could have had is out the window.
There's a lot of incorrect information here, but I prefer not to veer farther from our core disagreement by litigating details that seem tertiary (though I'm happy to discuss them in another thread or after we've resolved our core disagreement--it's an interesting topic).
You were originally arguing that the Islamic Republic isn't evil because the protestors deserved to be killed because Israel and the US claimed to have coordinated the protests. I don't see how you're getting from "Israel and the US claimed to have coordinated the protests" to "therefore Iran's mass murder was legitimate". Even if the tens of thousands figure is exaggerated by an order of magnitude, it would still make the Islamic Republic an evil regime. Even if Iranians who criticize the regime are "batshit crazy", even if the US and Israel organized the protests, even if the Shah was really worse than the Islamic Republic, none of that justifies murdering unarmed protestors by the thousands. My position is that mass murder is wrong even if the protestors held opinions I disagreed with.
if the number of tens of thousands dead is true (and i'm highly skeptical, but let's go with that) then it correlates with the number of starlink terminals smuggled into sanctioned iran way before the protests. both us and israeli officials publicly boasted of mossad agents being on the ground (presumably coordinating these people exerting brutal violence; incidentally, these terminals were the reason for shutting down internet) and even bessant boasted about manipulating the currency into collapse to spark the unrests in the first place. that's all quite evil.
now, i'm against death penalty, but if a government under siege by foreign powers faces such an existential threat then that's one outcome to be expected ... those agitators had it coming. many innocent people died that day, but surely the majority weren't that innocent.
one can disagree with or dislike the irg, but i don't think they're evil, and if they are by the same criteria the us and israel are fucking monsters.
I would be entirely unsurprised if the US and Israel didn’t play a role in agitating, but the Iranian people genuinely don’t like their government. You can talk to pretty much any Iranian expat in any country. The protests may have been coordinated by Israel, but the people who died were ordinary citizens who want to live in a free country. The protestors absolutely were innocent by any reasonable definition. Protesting an oppressive government isn’t a moral offense.
> one can disagree with or dislike the irg, but i don't think they're evil, and if they are by the same criteria the us and israel are fucking monsters.
Yes, multiple governments can be bad, which is what this thread has been debating. Israel coordinating protests does not absolve IRGC butchering unarmed protestors. Iran sponsoring Hamas terrorism does not absolve Israel’s brutality against civilians. This isn’t complicated.
But as Trump has assured us, that’s the old regime which is completely different from the current regime, which as Trump again has assured us, is not anywhere near as crazy as the old regime.
/s
The Iranian regime is incredibly evil. That makes the American actions even more evil given that they’re providing that evil regime so much cover and allowed it to transition from their 86 year old leader with almost no opportunity for opposition.
So the country waging wars from the sky, threatening to take their oil, annexing Greenland, suffocating Cuba, the only country who used nuclear bombs twice...is what?
And anyone who knows a bit of history in the region they will understand that this is the case. They armed Saddam to fight Iran for 8 years. The main issue with Iran is that it is against Israel.
It feels like a lot of people on this thread believe that Iran can’t be bad because other countries have done bad things. This seems obviously absurd, but so many of the comments here take the form, “Iran isn’t bad, look at what the US has done”. Come on.
Gemini said
The point isn't that one side is "good." The point is that your binary notion of bad and good is far too simplistic for this reality. We are talking about nuclear powers threatening to send a country of 90 million people to the dark ages just to seize their oil and resources. Radicalism is not born in a vacuum; it is an extreme yet necessary immune reaction to an invader. When you are facing a genocide level threat, the moral calculus is not actually that hard. If you can't see the difference between internal policy flaws and a superpower threatening total destruction, then you aren't being objective. You are just taking a side with the party holding the bigger hammer.
You're making an obvious straw man argument. Acknowledging that the Islamic Republic is evil does not imply a moral comparison between them and the United States or Israel. There's no contradiction between opposing the US and Israel for starting this war and acknowledging that the Islamic Republic is an evil regime. That's the point of this entire thread: more than one group can be evil, and the Islamic Republic does not cease to be evil regardless of one's opinion about the US and Israel. These are not dependent variables. You are endorsing an obviously false dichotomy.
Why do you think no one cares? My feeds are outraged. Maybe some normies can’t keep up with all the specific heinous stuff coming out of this administration, but I don’t think they’re happy about it.
Saying things is not a war crime. So if Iranian soldiers surrendered to US soldiers and they were shot that would be a war crime. I don't think that happened? Hegseth statements could be used to support the claim of war crime under such circumstances if they were to arise. [EDIT: As a commenter suggests it is possible that simply saying this is a war crime, or at least there are some legal opinions suggesting it]
Attacking civilian targets with cluster bombs has happened and Iran is doing that as we speak. That is a war crime.
Attacking infrastructure is not a war crime if that infrastructure serves a military purpose. Attacking purely civilian use infrastructure is a war crime.
Threatening to attack civilian use infrastructure is not a war crime. Threatening to attack infrastructure used for military purposes is also not a war crime.
Mowing down protestors with machines guns is not a war crime but maybe we should consider it a crime against humanity.
EDIT: FWIW I do care about what Hegseth said. It's wrong and he shouldn't have said that. But people say stuff- what matters are the actions.
There are some actual acts that count as war crimes as well, that Hegsdeth has overseen - killing civilians off the coast of venesuela by attacking and sinking fishing boats, but also then killing the civilians after theyve jumped ship.
then in the iran conflict, leaving the sailors to drown after sinking iran's show boat with a sub
The US should do better. But we got here when the parent said:
> I don't understand how any human in good faith could look at Iran's government and say they are the evil regime,
Iran's government mows down protestors by the 10's of thousands. They beat woman to death for violating the dress code. They conduct public hangings in stadiums. They routinely use torture and arbitrary arrests. They and their proxies bombard civilians routinely. They recruit child soldiers. The list is just endless. How is that even comparable to the US government?
I know this double tap terminology is frequently used in social media these days (IMO it's propaganda). I don't know there is solid evidence of targeting first responders intentionally. I haven't seen it.
I did see some mention that the school was hit twice but I don't think that's supported by the satellite imagery or videos we've seen. In theory US service personnel can and should refuse to execute an order that is targeting first responders and my base assumption would be that the US does not practice this. There are huge number of people involved in planning strikes and executing them so you'd think some of those people would refuse such an order and/or speak about it publicly. I.e. I don't believe the US initial salvo of Tomahawk cruise missiles and bombings were designed to intentionally hit first responders. Beyond it being a war crime it also makes no sense to "waste" bombs and cruise missiles on first responders when presumably there are a lot of other more valuable targets; beyond it being morally wrong and a war crime it's also stupid. The only time I've seen this sort of strategy being executed intentionally is during the suicide bombing campaign in Israel. e.g.:
In the context of terrorizing a population it makes perfect sense. In the context of the US attack on Iran it makes zero sense since it doesn't serve the US interest to terrorize the population of Iran and the regime couldn't care less.
What do you want me to say about the US? I would like to see zero war crimes from the US. I would like to see a US president that doesn't sound like a mad person on social media and a SecDef that isn't a religious zealot. I still think that big picture there is no comparing the US to Iran in terms of the actions each is taking and has taken. Iran fundamentally wants to make the world a worse place and the US wants to make it a better place (and sure, make a lot of money while doing that...). Would a solution that doesn't involve dropping bombs be better? Sure. Find me one.
The confusion comes from the fact that the regime which is very clearly better for its own people is also the one which actions are clearly awful for the rest of the world (if only because it has vastly larger means).
It's not confirmed but I agree it was very likely a US strike. An accidental one.
Assuming the US did not intend to kill school girls that is also not a war crime. You can certainly argue that this happened due to the US decision to go to war and claim the actions to not be moral (or illegal as some have stated). Others might argue that more harm would occur if no action was taken and that the action minimizes the overall harm (e.g. to the Iranian people or others).
You could also argue that attack was intentional. I don't think there's any evidence of that and I'm not sure what purpose it served if it was one.
It is difficult to extract the real purpose of most things about this war, if you're in the US, since almost every single part of it seems against the US' interests and public face.
You're probably technically correct and that the US didn't intentionally look in Google Maps for an elementary school and decided to destroy it. But did we really need to Double Tap it?
That tweet by Timothy Snyder is quite ridiculous. There's just no way that's the motivation behind all this.
Unfortunately it's also the only motivation anyone has presented that there is any real hope of actually achieving. And it's the kind of excuse trump could use to become glorious dictator. Or at least I wouldn't be surprised to learn he thinks it is.
No, I really don't think that's why this war was started. I don't think trump actually wants terrorist attacks in America. But it just might be what he will get, whether he likes it or not.
> I don't think trump actually wants terrorist attacks in America.
He might not but he's surrounded by christian evangelist lunatics who think bringing about the end times is their moral responsibility and, more importantly, they are in charge because Trump is an addled idiot who has fewer thoughts in his head than an orange cat.
US president, holding nukes and saying things like "whole civilization will die tonight" is just state terrorism of the worst kind, ... so far, yes. It may become a war crime of genocide. Not sure why should I or anyone wait and see, before issuing sweeping comments about all of america, which made this possible, by working hard to building up the military capable of doing it and giving power to nutjob issuing the threats.
Be sure that this US threat is not just against Iran, it's a US threat aginst the entire world, and it will be taken as such by many, you war crime justifying tool.
Also pretty telling, that you're using intl. law to justify US attacks, instead of using it for what their purpose was,... which is to limit the ways in which states execute war. The same thing Israel was doing to justify murdering 20 000 children in Gaza, just constantly finding "loopholes" and using it retroactively to justify every single thing they did that someone contensted.
> Its a regime that killed 10s of thousands of its own people for protesting.
Nearly a thousand insurrectionists armed by the U.S., as Trump admitted, and crowds seeded with Mossad agents - as Mossad boasted about on both X and TV, were instructed to create as much death & havoc as possible to set the stage for regime change. Though several thousand died, the number was below 3k, and the Epstein coalition didn't get their regime change. All those bloated 10k-60k numbers are imaginary.
Hell, Trump was angry as there were supposed to be even more deaths, but he says the Kurds looted the weapons meant for the "protestors".
If this was done in the U.S,, it would be a 9/11 moment and your nation would go to world-war. But alas, the U.S. directly & indirectly owns the majority of the world media and the truth trickles down only days & weeks later. Thankfully, Trump is so stupid that he can never keep his mouth shut. And Mossad is so arrogant and protected that they boast about their wetwork missions on their official social media & Israeli TV channels.
Trump is noise, not signal. He has "admitted" plenty of things which are untrue, and sometimes self-contradictory. Even trying to model him as a rational liar is a nonstarter.
Oh, so you're ideologically captured by an admin that's proven to be full of liars. There was never a good side. There's no good side to war in nearly any case (limited exceptions and this is not (was never) one of those).
The most powerful country in history attacked a smaller country that wasn't a threat to the stronger country. Had the USA (and Israel) not attacked, it's unlikely that Iran would have struck first.
And Iran firing missiles on Israel in response to genocide in Gaza isn't really a credible threat. Israel could stop massacring civilians at any time to make Iran stop firing upon them.
That's not what you say it is. It is an estimate from UNHRC, which has a wide range. The estimate also seems to be for all dead, including counter protesters and government officers. Verification of any kind is in short supply.
It also does nothing to address the Iranian government's claim - strongly supported by US and Israel's public statements(!) that it's a foreign coup attempt rather than peaceful protests.
"Foreign coup attempt" is an extraordinary claim that is not backed by publicly available evidence. Indeed, it's not even backed by the statements by Iranian government officials, who are on record upholding the killings [1]. Furthermore, Iranian Ministry of Health officials have upheld these estimates of the death count. Eyewitness accounts uphold the fact that the Iranian government has perpetrated mass killings of protestors [2].
It is understandable that a person who distrusts the United States government would be led to believe the statements of a government in opposition to it. Indeed, the United States is engaged in an illegal war in which it is the aggressor. However, the statements of the Iranian government attributing protestor deaths to foreign-backed paramilitaries is not backed by any credible set of facts.
> "Foreign coup attempt" is an extraordinary claim that is not backed by publicly available evidence
It is not an extraordinary claim, and it's backed by absurdly strong evidence. As I said, it was pretty ridiculous that Mossad openly said not just that they wanted regime change (as the US also did), but that they were actively assisting in it. And in addition to the thousands of protesters who have been reported dead, hundreds of policemen or revolutionary guards have also been reported dead.
An ordinary, popular protest, even a damn angry one - even one armed with handguns! - does not kill hundreds of policemen. If you think that's possible, you don't understand the power difference between civilians and people with a full time job and training to use violence on civilians. Even if you would ignore the public statements (which I won't let you!) you simply do not succeed at killing so much of the state's violence apparatus without serious material and organizational support.
And anyone who's been following Iran for a while knows that yes, Mossad actually has shockingly many native agents in Iran (e.g. the murder of scientists wouldn't have been possible without it) and in addition there are political cults like MEK, and supporters of the dictator son Pahlavi, who are certainly organized and certainly not pacifist in their fight against the government.
It's your loyal party line messaging which is detached from reality.
(fails to produce any sources for unfounded claims, followed by a lot of rhetoric)
Note the failure to rebut the provided sources in my comment.
I accept that it's unlikely that you'll examine your own priors. My response is for the benefit of people who haven't had the chance to read extensively and travel, who might take your claims at face value.
You're good at trying to seem authoritative with your footnotes and links, but in this age of chatbots it's important to be able to see through that because it's trivial to bluff. Any idiot can be good at it. That's rhetoric. But you'd better get with the times: I think you'll find it's better to write like a regular human these days, rather than like a corporate news anchor or a chatbot, if you want to convince the commoners --- excuse me, I mean the "people who haven't had the chance to read extensively and travel".
The evidence I "provided" was evidence I think you already admitted. You do not deny that the US and Israel openly (and to repeat myself, insanely - it's so bad you'd almost think it was a deliberate attempt to sabotage any legitimacy) took credit for the attempt to replace the government of Iran to an unprecedented degree - why don't you find an example of an attempted revolution where a foreign country claimed to "be with you on the ground"?
I could have linked to the insane tweets with [1] and [2] myself, but why bother. I trust people to find them themselves if they're in doubt.
Never engaging with the credible evidence presented, claiming that heads of state said something they didn't. Other readers can be trusted to see through your lies.
I'm just really puzzled by people frankly, one would expect Hacker News to be of higher caliber. Read the history, watch real geo-political analysis. But even without that, a presidents in who screams profanity on social media, threaten to take oil and resources of other countries and bomb to the dark ages..even without any political background, this a real low for any position let alone the president of the US.
I think Social Media truly brought the worse in people. People are not trying to be decent anymore.
To be honest, this forum is where I come to take th temperature of the US "centrists" who brought us to this point. I've quit other social media, so this is one of the few places where I can hear what folks (who are often quite clever in quite a few dimensions) spout rather vicious thoughts.
The other spot I get exposure to this part of the US political spectrum is the comment section of a youtube guy who is pretty far to the right but who has a seemingly (at least to me) well-informed understanding of the facts- he's interesting because it's kind of wild to hear the more lumpen version of this site and what their concerns are: they are really mad that this war is happening instead of further domestic crackdowns on immigration.
In both cases, it's helpful to understand where folks who have some pretty misinformed understandings of history and politics are sitting with their opinions.
It doesn't seem surprising to me that a bunch of aspiring venture capitalists, who have probably have been or are on the cusp of having a small taste of the massive wealth that their work in building out the surveillance state has brought to their masters, have totally shitty politics.
I think you are right, I've also stopped social media myself recently and left with nothing but YouTube and the occasional visit on HN for tech.
With that said, and I'm aware that HN audience are mostly in tech but I always thought we in tech are better trained to think critically and look at things from various perspectives. But to see the exact same response patterns one would see in FB makes one surely question how many people are truly capable of independent critical thinking. I'm also starting to think that given the complexity of modern life and the amount of information we are flooded with people are simply choosing the most repeated narrative within their circle without much reflection or any critical thinking. At the end of the day most folks here are busy with other things and it is easier to believe they are evil and we are liberating then dive deep into one of the most complicated areas when it comes to history and geopolitics.
Well, a lot of the folks here also share the view that because they understand how pointers work in C or can orchestrate stuff in docker (or whatever the kids do these days) they must be smarter than all us dumb losers who can't figure out how to make our brains okay with this world.
It's an appealing view, and I get it. Probably not a bad idea to question at length.
Well, it's hard to tell with military advances. Before the attack you cannot say anyone is terrible, after -- it's too late. Like Russia recently denied they are amassing troops at the borders, and claimed that was just military exercises.
If we're talking about nuclear weapons -- there will be no point of discussing if the attack is made.
Similar to infamous question "is the farmer good with his beloved turkey that he raises until Thanksgiving?"
> You know, like CNN exaggerates how terrible iran is.
Do you not know it's a theocracy where women have to hide their faces, the punishment for BEING raped is death, and any dissent is illegal (gets you executed under the charge of "waging war against Allah").
I don't watch leftist news, but I'm pretty sure not even CNN gives Iran a free pass. You usually have to turn to new media like Hassan Abi for that.
The US is on its way to becoming a theocratically influenced state. That is how the war started. I dont see you abandoning the US. Nor do I see you observing Iran in a rational way. Iran is more than just a theocracy. It is a long running civilization.
bruh they gunned down thousands of protesters with live ammunition a couple months ago. Then shut down the internet so no one would see it. Ask any Iranian expat. They have no love for this regime. You can think of the war whatever you want. But there is no need to defend this regime.
Sophisticated propaganda is designed to radicalize people into having an emotional reaction to something before they have a chance to think rationally.
Many US citizens experienced an outpouring of emotion over Tank Man 37 years ago, and now all you have to do is wave around a picture of Tank Man and reflexively blue flames start shooting out of American asses and they go into conniptions and start howling like rabid Meerkats. They've been radicalized.
So long as Tank Man still works, US state media will keep using it. It doesn't have to be a lie. The important thing is that it's hard to reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
Chinese and Iranian propaganda is not nearly as effective as in the US can, where the advertising industry alone spends a half-trillion dollars annually in an effort to fool people into doing things they wouldn't normally do. It is an art and a science.
Bringing up Meta's complicity in the Rohingya Genocide on HN is like bringing up the Nanking Massacre in Japan, it's not a responsibility anyone is going to face, I get it. I brought it up in a thread about the careless things Meta has done so it was on point.
One thing to keep in mind is that neither Japan, China or Iran have been engaged in any imperial misadventures lately. If you haven't noticed, one theme that has been dominating world affairs as of late is the absolute shitshow that is the American political situation.
Iran is a literate nation and the US is blowing up universities and schools. Call me a troll but that's all some super depraved stuff going on right now so forgive me if I'm not particularly sensitive to the feelings of the people who are cheering for it.
Iran is well-known for extensive interference in its neighbors' political systems. It has funded and armed opposition groups with billions of dollars of assistance (Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis). Educational institutions in literate countries have been bombed by Iranian proxies.
The Chinese government invaded Indian territory within the last year. It directs its naval auxiliaries to harass civilian vessels from Vietnam and Philippines. According to your world view it doesn't qualify —authoritarian nations may harm their own denizens as long as it's not expeditionary— but residents of Xinjiang are routinely rounded up and imprisoned.
I would be interested to know how these are made on a technical level. Is it a combination of several tools and are they local or some service (I would think LEGO minifigs would trigger some copyright issue)? I also assume you need to do certain things to keep the consistency and somehow sync the music with the video?
people were worried about deepfakes with AI but instead the propaganda is doing pretty well, and arguably better, when it's not a deepfake but instead silly, catchy, youthful, and is playing up existing beliefs. The invasion is deeply unpopular in the US, and these videos only serve to amp that up.
Deepfakes were never necessary, people have been making incredible propaganda forever though the same few tactics. For instance, presenting footage out of context.
That Hegseth one is an extraordinary piece of media. It's dense with Hegseth and Epstein lore, the song is catchy, the visuals are a significant cut above the normal AI slop aesthetic.
If this is Iranian state backed propaganda (which seems very likely) it's light years ahead of those White House videos with footage of bombs mixed in with clips from action movies.
The Iranian propaganda videos are catchy but also emphasize all the cracks in U.S. society and the weak points of the U.S. leadership. Simultaneously it paints the Iranian regime as the defender not just of Iran, but victims of American aggression broadly. It doesn’t hurt that the White House keeps playing into this with their comments.
The White House comments trivialize mass murder and killing. And it appeals to absolutely nobody but the man boys currently inhabiting the White House.
Risk to Netanyahu's career or wellbeing can do the trick because as we have seen lately Israel is willing to risk Israel's future and the Jewish communities safety across the world. It's not even as a part of grand strategy or anything, they are pushing to make criticizing Netanyahu a taboo.
I used to admire Israel as the only sane country in the middle east with great culture for entrepreneurship even if they had elements of atrocities(these could be fixed through civil progress in sane countries). I'm genuinely sad to see it has turned into a genocidal theocratic lunacy like the rest of the middle east and theocratic lunatics can do anything.
If the calculus skewed by arrogance and religious delusions is on the positive for the ruling class, they will use a nuke.
Today I saw an analyst from Pakistan and he also had some of these "trump-lego-snippets" in the video, was wondering why someone would put so much effort in a video against trump, but it seems he copied it somewhere (from this group e.g.)
Is it even propaganda if you just read aloud your enemy’s wikipedia? I think Bubba refers to someone else than Clinton and Iran’s regime is despotic assholes, but apart from that pretty accurate depiction.
information or ideas that are spread by an organized group or government to influence people’s opinions, esp. by not giving all the facts or by secretly emphasizing only one way of looking at the facts
or another definition:
information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a particular cause, doctrine, or point of view.
Sure, that’s one definition, I was only asking rhetorically. But if you look deeper into the social scientific and historical literature on the term, it’s a bit contested. I personally would see propaganda as something far more insidious than simply “all mass media”, like your definitions from apparently some online dictionaries seem to suggest. I think there’s a difference between Triumph of the Will, a toothpaste commercial and ironic AI-generated music video about the leaders of the country attacking you. I’m not sure what that difference is - this would actually be a legit subject for proper academic research - but I would maybe rather try to analyse the desired goals of the makers and spreaders of the said media than just use some far too broad definition that turns the whole world virtually meaningless. I think there’s some nuance here.
If its aim is to influence opinion then yes. It doesn't matter if it's true or not true. It's the goal that matters. One can influence opinions with a subset of truths.
Lego has the resources to take on the AI labs infringing their copyright, but they're instead choosing to ignore it. From where I'm standing, it doesn't seem like they care very much.
Right, Iran used to have a parliament with Mossadegh as prime minister, what happened there? Oh yaa, Mossadegh wanted Iranian oil for Iranians, so the US and UK overthrew Mossadegh, with the help of conservative mullahs, and installed a dictatorship. Then SAVAK with CIA help spent decades slaughtering the secular opposition.
> that’s murdered 100s of their own people
There are armed Balochi and Kurdish separatists shooting at the Iranian army right now, no doubt with clandestine Israeli and US support. Incidentally the Kurds had their own state at the end of WWII, until the US and UK made them dissolve into Iran.
Also aside from the bombings, the Basij have been fired on from the ground and have fired back. Who is arming the people shooting at the Basij is unknown, but some signs point to Israel.
I write this less than three months after armed federal personnel decided to march into Minneapolis and among other things kill a nurse and also a woman.
> and aided terrorist organizations
The Arabs in southern Lebanon and the Gaza strip have lived there a long time. Over the past century Zionist Jews from around the world have been invading their land, shooting, bombing, starving them. If they fight back the epithet terrorist is applied to them, and if these brave men fighting for their people are assigned the word, it gives it a great esteem.
And today the occupation IRGC regime (that recently by IRGC released numbers massacred 3000 Iranians on the streets in 2 days) is importing foreign militias to prop up their unpopular regime (along with recruiting child soldiers for the Basij you mentioned).
"The roaming of the Islamic Republic's proxies in Iran; entry of "Zainabiyoun" of Pakistan after "Hashd al-Shaabi" of Iraq and "Fatemiyoun" of Afghanistan
Reports of the presence of forces affiliated with the Zainabiyoun Division of Pakistan have been published in various areas of Sistan and Baluchestan province."
Of course Mossadegh was "not ideal", but the current regime are genocidal islamists that over time have taken more and more to massacring their own population for ever more reasons.
A pinprick and metastasizing cancer are both bad in absolute terms, but not remotely comparable.
That doesn't even include the massacre they did on their own population 2 months back. When it comes to genocides, Iran's islamists have a LONG list of mass-killings to answer for.
No. Iran's islamists have organized plenty "hills", including an attack on Brussels airport and metro. Me and my wife were within 2 km of the shooting.
In the airport, they found a woman pushing a carriage. They shot the baby first and waited, laughing, for the woman to collapse onto the floor, dead, still bleeding baby in her hands, to shoot her. She survived. THAT is who you're dealing with here.
We found out Iran's embassy was involved in organizing these attacks. There is nothing you can possibly to do convince anything done to these islamists, each and every one of them, is immoral in the slightest.
I watched "One Battle After Another" and it shows how deranged people are. I don't think its a new thing, I just think in any stable society, people who don't thrive eventually find a way to destroy the society in the hope whatever comes next will serve them better. In a society where hard work and intelligent gives you an advantage, it stands to reason that lazy, stupid people will need to play differently in order to win.
This is a pretty obvious misinterpretation. Protagonist bad ≠ antagonist good. This isn't even the law of the excluded middle because there was only ever a statistical relationship between the morality of narrative opponents.
> I just think in any stable society, people who don't thrive eventually find a way to destroy the society in the hope whatever comes next will serve them better.
It seems our society is being destroyed by people who are thriving the most.
> In a society where hard work and intelligent gives you an advantage
Which society is this, Sweden? Xi Jinping is pretty smart and hard working, is China being demolished by lazy dumb twats? Because it seems to me its US that is overrun bu stupidity and sheer lazyness right now, but it seems to be because it rewards people like Musk, Trump etc.
It's ironic how they've been so instrumental in bombing Ukraine's civilian targets (for years) and now they're likely to get their civilian infrastructure bombed, by a third party. Strange times.
Having an electoral mandate is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. If you don't follow your own laws and your own constitution, for instance, you're not a in a democracy, even if you have been elected. Precisely because you are elected under the assumption that you will follow the laws and constitution, not have unlimited power to do whatever you like until the next elections.
> On the first morning of Operation Epic Fury, 28 February 2026, American forces struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab, in southern Iran, hitting the building at least two times during the morning session. American forces killed between 175 and 180 people, most of them girls between the ages of seven and 12
Check out the history behind this and how the US has treated Iran because of their Oil for almost a hundred years now. This is 100% on the west in my opinion. We've been abusing these people for the longest time.
When I first heard about the protests in Iran, I assigned automatically the blame on the dictatorial regime.
Nevertheless, after the following events and after extra information provided by the US government itself, this is no longer so clear cut.
The truth is that we do not really know what happened in Iran, how many have been killed and whether that was really an internal protest against the regime or a coup attempt organized by USA.
The timing of the protests is too suspicious. The most plausible hypothesis is that US/Israeli agents have initiated the protests by influencing a great number of well-intended internal opponents of the regime, who probably have suffered then most from this action.
If some of the opposition had received US weapons, that can explain the paranoia of the dictatorial regime, even if there is little doubt that the retaliations against the opposition must have affected many who had no ties with USA or Israel.
Until credible information will surface about what really happened in Iran at the beginning of the year, we can affirm only that it is likely that the dictatorial regime has killed or tortured many non-violent opponents, but there is nothing certain about this.
On the other hand, the unprovoked crimes committed by USA since the beginning of the year against countries like Iran or Cuba are certain facts, about which there exists no doubt whatsoever, because the top US officials are bragging about them.
For all we know, USA might have already killed more Iranian civilians than the Iran government, so any claims that the attacks done by USA are somehow intended for supporting the Iranian people, are completely ridiculous.
I will side with any country that's being illegally attacked, and whose population is being illegally targeted, thank you very much. Sovereignty is fundamental, it's been broken. The state of Iran is the result of US and Israeli meddling. There was time for criticizing Iran before it was attacked.
Remember Snowden? Remmeber Assange? Remember Aaron Swartz? Remember the terrorizing of Occupy Wallstreet organizers? Remember the funding of terrorists all over Africa? Remember Libya? Remember who funded Isis?
While Iran is bad - US is engaged in war crimes (they even brag about it). It’s like when Russians defend their war crimes by saying that Ukraine is corrupt.
I agree with you on principle, but you're oversimplifying things if you think that opposition to the United States or Israel is all about a single person.
I think it's possible to have a grown-up discussion about the production value, cultural relevance, and effectiveness of propaganda without "siding" with the videos' sponsors. This appears to be an uncomfortable case of bad people speaking at least some truth--to the point where it's resonating.
You mean like siding with the dictatorial regime that provided material support to the 9/11 hijackers, 15/19 of whom were nationals of that country? And then we wanted to question 3 menders of the royal family who were implicated they all mysteriously fell out of windows, died in a car accident or otherwise died?
Another national was a renowned arms dealer linked to both Robert Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein. And then that arms dealer’s nephew was chopped up in a foreign embassy and taken away in pieces?
They murdered thousands of our citizens let alone theirs.
There was an interview with a historian and he said an interesting thing about the ancient Sparta: "Everything we know about Sparta we know from its enemies".
> Siding with a dictatorial regime that’s murdered 100s of their own people and aided terrorist organizations
I'm getting really tired of this. United States and Israel have bombed and killed more innocent people than I can count on. The biggest terrorist regime is United States right now, bombing schools.
Your own president tweets out war crimes, your secretary of defense proudly proclaims "no quarters" and "send them back to the stone age".
Do me a favor, and please lay off the morality lecture.
How about you talk about the Gaza genocide for once? Or the IRAQ war that killed millions of people? Or using nuclear weapons on Japan? or the killing and raping of Vietnamese ?
Or the fact that you backed Saddam to use chemical weapons on Iranians during the 8 year war?
A regime driven by a weird religious cult and murdering their own citizens is battling a regime which is driven by a weird religious cult and is murdering their own citizens.
I think in this situation it is okay to cheer on both sides.
what numbers can you trust? i mean, you can trust whatever suits you, but *i* don't trust, really, any of the things i hear about the global bad guys, particularly iran when america is making war on them or building a case for war.
We were shuffling capital to China after Tiananmen Square. People were talking about how we should have left Saddam alone because of how "orderly" Iraq was under his boot. Europeans were happy to ink the plans for Nordstream 2 after Russia sent tanks into Georgia, and Russia received no less than a FIFA World Cup and Olympic games after seizing Crimea.
There is incredibly little will to stick to the whole "humans have rights and we should have a rules-based international order" when the rubber meets the road.
rules-based international order is mostly a propaganda term that the Us empire invented. It also was mostly "rules for thee but not for me"
Its a nice thing in theory but in practice power always overruled morals and I think the current US admin not only freely admits this but also kind of rubs your nose in it. In a way its less hypocritical than previously but also incredibly sobering for someone who grew up in a seemingly more "stable" world
> rules-based international order is mostly a propaganda term that the Us empire invented. It also was mostly "rules for thee but not for me"
I think there was an effort to try to stick to it, at least early on after WWII when people had seen what the old system resulted in.
Then the Berlin blockade, Korea, and Hungarian intervention happened and the implication was made that the rules were what were to be aspired to, not actually followed, and it's been all downhill from there.
Incidentally, most of those aren't on the "Us empire".
No one cares about who made these videos in the US. The bigger issue is why are we engaging in a ground war in Iran when it doesn’t really serve US interests? Everyone on both political spectrums in the US can see why it benefits Saudi Arabia and Israel, but not the US.
We’re using precious resources like missiles that we will need in the Pacific theater in next 1-2 years
Because it wasn’t planned that far. The administration probably thought it would go like Venezuela. A Middle East historian would have told you Iran has building for all our war for decades because it trusts none of its neighbors.
A second problem is that the US knew for a while that we were weak at asymmetric warfare but we didn’t fix it. There was a war game in 2002 (the Millennium Challenge, which was actually set in the Strait of Hormuz) that, though the red team did very much cheat, it did hint at a major weakness that wasn’t resolved.
There are US defense companies today that actually specialize in that but they weren’t given the same attention (but boy are they now).
My Army buddy once said "If you're not cheating you're not trying."
What did they expect? That's the whole point of a red team.
Reminds me of Admiral Ching Lee. He used to run red team exercises against US facilities. He once walked into a maximum security facility with a badge bearing the name and photograph of Adolf Hitler.
Anduril is the biggest one. They are based in Costa Mesa, CA and are building a bigger R&D facility in "Space Beach" (Long Beach, CA) and a manufacturing facility near Columbus, Ohio.
Afterwards, you have smaller companies like Shield AI (San Diego, CA), Saronic Technologies (Austin, TX) and some other smaller ones.
It’s crazy to believe that US would fight China in the pacific in 1-2 years. At this rate I don’t believe China will do anything as it sees US trashing at every point, making it’s allies and trade partners to rethink their strategy towards betting on US as it’s going full postal.
Because this war is driven by Israel, not the US. The destruction of Iran, no matter what the costs for the world, is seen as an existential matter for the current Israeli government.
But, destroying Iran without using nukes is not a Job Israel can do by themselves, they need the US. And while the Democrat establishment (although not the base) don't see an issue with supporting Israel activities in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, a war with Iran was not something the Democrats would agree with.
So, they had this window of opportunity with Trump, before the midterms, and they acted.
We may not agree, but under the point of view of the Likud, it makes perfect sense.
The Pacific war is not happening unless Trump chooses to start it. China is also having political issues; a massive purge of top brass is the worst preparation for a war. See Stalin.
I'm much more impressed by Chinese state-made eagles vs. cats video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dGY0_pgkv8
That's crazy. Who is the camel at the end supposed to represent? The springbok is presumably south africa i.e. BRICS so someone else in that alliance
Here's another one featuring some camels, the Japanese prime minister and "Meowatollah":
https://old.reddit.com/r/Destiny/comments/1s5m1vj/chinese_pr...
I thought that's supposed to be an Oryx (Qatar) while the camels are Saudi/UAE, but who knows.
Hmm. That makes contextual sense though the animation is definitely more springbok than oryx
I think it just represents people/entities who conduct business internationally, since camels used to be a major transportation method on the Silk Road.
Who is Europe here?
who?
That one is so good.
It's well-made and entertaining. However, it gets the cause of the war wrong; it is not over oil. China's Communist framework misleads it here
Indeed, the cause of the war ISRAELi lies. Just like with Iraq. And they control the US administration with the Epstein files. It is actually 2nd Epstein War.
Unrelated. I found this China propaganda video depicting its interpretation of the Iran war entertaining. It talks about the “flowing valley of gold” the Hormuz Strait, the “white eagle alliance” the USA, and “white eagle gold tickets” the petrodollar.
https://youtu.be/As0rplNJTZI
Who is "the chamber of commerce" in this?
I believe it is everyone China is marketing the Belt and Road initiative to.
I presume U.S. Western allies
I watched some of the videos. I think that the New Yorker does its readers a disservice by not pointing out that they also contain blatant lies, just like the propaganda they're supposedly countering. For example the "Victory Chronicles" video really misrepresents how much damage Iranian drones were able to do in Dubai and Saudi Arabia.
Iranian drones just hit the 30 billion dollar Aramco facility in Jubail. They are definitely a threat.
Arab countries have US military bases inside their countries. Cry me a fucking river.
You sided on with a mad men- who didn't even bother to consult you on the shit storm he was going to unleash. And now you reap the whirlwind.
It all makes fire lord Xi look good. As sad as that is.
The 2nd paragraph of the story states numerous techniques of propaganda the videos contain and several examples.
Contains more truth than US media and current admin.
Its a regime that killed 10s of thousands of its own people for protesting. Ofc its all blatant lies, cute legos or not. There's literally no good sides to this war (anymore)
Again, are you sure of it?
I'm sure that the Shia Theocracy that runs Iran is a very bad government and is willing to and has killed many Iranians to stay in power.
So u have been there?
That country was safe, had a decent standard of living and high life expectancy and that despite the sanctions.
Without sanctions & active support I guess it might have surpassed UAE.
It seems to me, the US government that makes the citiziens of other countries as miserable as possible and despite these attempts Iran managed just fine.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards are extremely bloodthirsty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981%E2%80%931982_Iran_massacr...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahshahr_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_murders_of_Iran
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_executions_of_Iranian_pol...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_massacres
[flagged]
I'm gonna blow your mind here: Both the US AND the Shia Theocracy controlling Iran can BOTH suck!
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards are extremely bloodthirsty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981%E2%80%931982_Iran_massacr...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahshahr_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_murders_of_Iran
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_executions_of_Iranian_pol...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_massacres
"Its a regime that killed 10s of thousands of its own people for protesting. " This information is simply not true.
The regime's own published number is 3,000. If you look to how the regime provably undercounts the executions it commits with them normally reporting only 10%, going by historical precedent you would come out to 30,000 dead.
You completely made up that 10 percent number.
Actually is true
Show two independent source.
any source I show you'll say is propaganda right?
friend of a friend was there during but that's "anecdotal" right?
I keep getting downvoted and flagged, but there is noway anyone in good faith would support this war crime. A president who threaten to send a country to stone age, saying in front of everyones face that he wants to take the oil..
I don't understand how any human in good faith could look at Iran's government and say they are the evil regime, when we have on other hand, someone who is vocally saying that he is willing to destroy the country's infrastructure and steal their oil.
Well, sure I don't mind getting flagged or downvoted. But at least I speak my mind and what I believe is true.
This isn’t a contest for most just or most evil. Iran has committed horrible atrocities. The US’s approach to this war has been completely wrong and they are threatening war crimes.
Everyone sucks here.
Yeah but western powers have been threatening, bullying, murdering and undermining Iran and it's people since they nationalized their own damn oil three quarters of a century ago.
How do you expect an abused dog to turn out? It's probably not going to turn out very nice isn't it? The Iranian regime would chill out just fine on their own if only the west would stop being so cruel to them.
That's exactly it, and what's more they are kicking the abused dog even harder expecting submission. At this stage, it seems it would rather die or push the abuser away.
Iran has been "threatening, bullying, murdering and undermining" Israel since it was taken over by an irrational Shia theocracy. This war wouldn't be happening if Iran had behaved in a sane and rational manner over the last 35 years.
So one side is evil while the other side is just wrong ?
Like after 300k deaths in Irak when the administration said "sorry we have been misled by wrong information about the WMD"? They made a mistake, yet Iraqis were evil.
US armed rebels, that is their history, Israel wants to the current government down at all cost.
They did that with Iraq, ISIS, they trying with Kurdistan..
I'm not defending a theocracy, but this is not how countries are freed. And he is clearly claiming to take the oil, destroy their infrastructure and take the country to the dark ages. If Iranian government was saying that, hell would go lose.
Actually arming rebels is how countries are freed. Its not the only way but it is one of the most common. Also Iran arms rebels so whats your point in highlighting the US support for rebel groups?
So, does that mean that Kremlin is freeing a country..?
Your perspective on who is being liberated and who is doing the liberating relies on a simplistic narrative. Ironically, the central figure of that narrative, Donald Trump, has openly stated that he does not mind seizing oil or returning the nation to the Dark Ages. Furthermore, they have backed armed protests and expressed a willingness to arm Kurdish factions.
I am uncertain about the logic or framework you are utilizing. If you believe such actions constitute "freeing" a country, then we clearly do not share the same moral and ethical standards.
I think you're assuming way to much from my comment. I was pushing back on the idea that arming rebel group isnt how countries are freed not supporting what Trump is doing.
A violent takeover may not immediately lead to a "free" country but it does open the doors to change and from that change can come freedom. Or in a different perspective its not freedom its just to be free from that certain regime.
We should punctuate the difference between self-actualization and liberal colonization.
I'm not Iranian, Iran has no effect on my life, and I'm a pacifist.
Why would I compel someone to liberate themselves with a mistaken paternalism? It's irresponsible.
because the person funding isnt doing it out of the good of their heart. They have interests in removing the current government. The rebels also have interests in removing the current government. That is all its just two people working together on a common goal its not that deep.
Since Iran is clearly seeking to remove the U.S. government, is arming democratic factions a morally justifiable response?
The origin of the United States hinged on its rebellion being armed by the French monarchy.
which directly led in no small way to the overthrow of the French monarchy.
Perhaps US involvemet in arming rebels elsewhere might led to the downfall of the current US ruling class also?
Iran has been saying this about Israel and the USA since 1979 and has been arming/propping up Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, who have has similar language on their flags/in their charters.
Keep in mind that we now know that US supplied the protestors weapons to wage violence during the crackdown that resulted in many police officers being killed. We also know that the US has run a campaign to turn protests into riots in past events. And we know that the US sponsors campaigns to create unrest in the country.
If Iran sucks, it is only because the US wants it to suck
That's exactly it. They admitted supplying anti-government rebels with weapons.
Imagine a country comes and arm a group in the US to rebel against the government..
The USA didn’t turn Iran into a terrorist Jihadist state attempting to get nukes. Not everything is the USA’s doing, give extremely violent Islam its fault as well.
Iran is not a jihadist nor a nuke state. The US attempted to isolate Iran from the world, and tried to make everyone its enemy.
Iran has funded/stood up Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthi rebels whose flags and charters include maximalist jihadist rhetoric. Iran my entire life has pushed 'death to America'. When Iran's leadership was killed they talked about welcoming it and Islamic martyrdom. My entire life that is my exposure to what an Islamic state looks like. Sure seems jihadist to me.
The only thing those groups have in common is their hate for israel. And israel has intentionally made them the enemy. As it has done with Iran. And blackmailed trump to go after Iran.
At this point you simply just back away from all indications of “iran bad”
[dead]
They certainly gave them a very hard push in that direction due to their coup in 1953. Do you also think 9/11 happened because of US freedom?
Wait, cites on the "US supplied Iranian protestors with weapons" bit? Other than Trump? It sounds ridiculous to question whether he's telling the truth, but here we are...
Are you suggesting I provide a citation for the President's claims? Beyond his reputation as a loose cannon, it is difficult to fathom why he would boast about such a thing.
From the beginning, the primary objective of this conflict has been for Israel to eliminate regional resistance, leaving Iran as the final holdout. By arming internal rebels to oppose the administration, external forces are essentially inciting a civil war to topple the government.
While the nation and its current leadership require reform, it is important to remember that these radical regimes do not emerge in a vacuum. Their perceived need to resist stems from external efforts to dismantle them. Such radicalization is often the direct consequence of aggressive policies, including economic sanctions, historical support for Saddam Hussein, and the installation of corrupt monarchies.
Every radical movement triggers a counter-movement, making it difficult to distinguish cause from effect. Much like the chills and fever associated with the flu, these movements represent an extreme but instinctive immune response to an outside threat.
[dead]
Are they committing war crimes?
> I don't understand how any human in good faith could look at Iran's government and say they are the evil regime
You seem to be trying to force reality into a “good vs evil” storyline. There does not have to be a good side.
> I don't understand how any human in good faith could look at Iran's government and say they are the evil regime,
Well mainly by having Iranian friends who tell us their government is an evil regime, and when we try to insist our government is evil too, lecture us about our privilege to show they really mean it.
youre only getting downvoted because they pay people good money to make sure their ridiculous narrative gets front page every single day. us murders a countries leader and a bunch of school kids and suddenly iran is accused of murdering 100k protesters and committing war crimes... like wtf lol
> I don't understand how any human in good faith could look at Iran's government and say they are the evil regime
Iran mass murdered tens of thousands of protesters in one day. I was outraged when Trump’s goons murdered two Minnesotan protesters—if we can agree this is evil, it should follow that a regime that murders tens of thousands of protesters is also evil. This isn’t complicated, which is why you’re being downvoted (I did not downvote you).
Neither the precise scale of the killings or the degree of militancy of the protesters has been well documented. It's reported that a lot of policemen and revolutionary guard soldiers were killed too.
Remember, Mossad publicly boasted that they were on the ground with the protesters, which was a pretty insane thing to do and basically gave Iran carte blanche to say these aren't protests, it's a foreign sponsored coup attempt. There's very little we can say to that when Mossad basically publicly said it was.
Maybe they were so sure the protests would succeed they figured it would earn them/justify goodwill with the new government?
FWIW, my information comes from Iranians who speak regularly with their families who still live in the cities where these killings happened. They talk about protestors pushed into a market place by IRGC with just one exit—the market was set on fire and anyone who fled out the exit was shot by IRGC.
Also, if you know anything at all about the history of the Iranian regime, it’s entirely unsurprising that this happened. They respond murderously to every large scale protest, and have been mass murderers since they turned on the leftists and other allies who helped install them in ‘79.
> it's a foreign sponsored coup attempt
This is what the regime says every time large protests erupt internally. I’m not defending Israel, but these were innocent unarmed people protesting even if Israel played a role in organizing the protests. I detest the Israeli regime as well, but justifying either side’s mass murder is insane.
Man, if you've followed Iran, you'll know that some exile Iranians are a bit like exile Cubans. Like the latter, they have plenty of legitimate things to be angry about, but that doesn't mean they aren't, a good deal of them, batshit crazy. Lots of them support the son of the CIA-supported dictator who was so bad he landed Iran with their theocrats in the first place. Some of them are supporters of MEK, a goddamn case study in political cults.
> This is what the regime says every time large protests erupt internally
Yes, but that doesn't mean they're not right. US and particularly Israel outright took credit for it, to a degree you'd be hard pressed to find any time in history. It wasn't just a spontaneous uprising, it was also very openly a foreign sponsored regime change operation.
Which doesn't mean they're aren't a lot of innocent people who have wanted to get rid of the theocrats all along getting murdered. I'm sure there are.
There are just enough in the opposition who have decided to ally with Israel (which would rather see Iran a Somalia-style failed state before a free and democratic Iran) and the dictator's sonthat any kind of moral legitimacy the movement could have had is out the window.
There's a lot of incorrect information here, but I prefer not to veer farther from our core disagreement by litigating details that seem tertiary (though I'm happy to discuss them in another thread or after we've resolved our core disagreement--it's an interesting topic).
You were originally arguing that the Islamic Republic isn't evil because the protestors deserved to be killed because Israel and the US claimed to have coordinated the protests. I don't see how you're getting from "Israel and the US claimed to have coordinated the protests" to "therefore Iran's mass murder was legitimate". Even if the tens of thousands figure is exaggerated by an order of magnitude, it would still make the Islamic Republic an evil regime. Even if Iranians who criticize the regime are "batshit crazy", even if the US and Israel organized the protests, even if the Shah was really worse than the Islamic Republic, none of that justifies murdering unarmed protestors by the thousands. My position is that mass murder is wrong even if the protestors held opinions I disagreed with.
if the number of tens of thousands dead is true (and i'm highly skeptical, but let's go with that) then it correlates with the number of starlink terminals smuggled into sanctioned iran way before the protests. both us and israeli officials publicly boasted of mossad agents being on the ground (presumably coordinating these people exerting brutal violence; incidentally, these terminals were the reason for shutting down internet) and even bessant boasted about manipulating the currency into collapse to spark the unrests in the first place. that's all quite evil.
now, i'm against death penalty, but if a government under siege by foreign powers faces such an existential threat then that's one outcome to be expected ... those agitators had it coming. many innocent people died that day, but surely the majority weren't that innocent.
one can disagree with or dislike the irg, but i don't think they're evil, and if they are by the same criteria the us and israel are fucking monsters.
I would be entirely unsurprised if the US and Israel didn’t play a role in agitating, but the Iranian people genuinely don’t like their government. You can talk to pretty much any Iranian expat in any country. The protests may have been coordinated by Israel, but the people who died were ordinary citizens who want to live in a free country. The protestors absolutely were innocent by any reasonable definition. Protesting an oppressive government isn’t a moral offense.
> one can disagree with or dislike the irg, but i don't think they're evil, and if they are by the same criteria the us and israel are fucking monsters.
Yes, multiple governments can be bad, which is what this thread has been debating. Israel coordinating protests does not absolve IRGC butchering unarmed protestors. Iran sponsoring Hamas terrorism does not absolve Israel’s brutality against civilians. This isn’t complicated.
But as Trump has assured us, that’s the old regime which is completely different from the current regime, which as Trump again has assured us, is not anywhere near as crazy as the old regime.
/s
The Iranian regime is incredibly evil. That makes the American actions even more evil given that they’re providing that evil regime so much cover and allowed it to transition from their 86 year old leader with almost no opportunity for opposition.
So the country waging wars from the sky, threatening to take their oil, annexing Greenland, suffocating Cuba, the only country who used nuclear bombs twice...is what?
I am vehemently opposed to Trump and this war as well. My position in this thread is that both sides are bad.
[dead]
Those are not neutral protests, those are armed fraction to take down the government, any existing government would fight back.
He said it clearly:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/6/has-trump-confirmed-...
And anyone who knows a bit of history in the region they will understand that this is the case. They armed Saddam to fight Iran for 8 years. The main issue with Iran is that it is against Israel.
It feels like a lot of people on this thread believe that Iran can’t be bad because other countries have done bad things. This seems obviously absurd, but so many of the comments here take the form, “Iran isn’t bad, look at what the US has done”. Come on.
Gemini said The point isn't that one side is "good." The point is that your binary notion of bad and good is far too simplistic for this reality. We are talking about nuclear powers threatening to send a country of 90 million people to the dark ages just to seize their oil and resources. Radicalism is not born in a vacuum; it is an extreme yet necessary immune reaction to an invader. When you are facing a genocide level threat, the moral calculus is not actually that hard. If you can't see the difference between internal policy flaws and a superpower threatening total destruction, then you aren't being objective. You are just taking a side with the party holding the bigger hammer.
You're making an obvious straw man argument. Acknowledging that the Islamic Republic is evil does not imply a moral comparison between them and the United States or Israel. There's no contradiction between opposing the US and Israel for starting this war and acknowledging that the Islamic Republic is an evil regime. That's the point of this entire thread: more than one group can be evil, and the Islamic Republic does not cease to be evil regardless of one's opinion about the US and Israel. These are not dependent variables. You are endorsing an obviously false dichotomy.
Hegseth saying no quarter is a war crime but no one seems to care. Why is that?
Why do you think no one cares? My feeds are outraged. Maybe some normies can’t keep up with all the specific heinous stuff coming out of this administration, but I don’t think they’re happy about it.
Saying things is not a war crime. So if Iranian soldiers surrendered to US soldiers and they were shot that would be a war crime. I don't think that happened? Hegseth statements could be used to support the claim of war crime under such circumstances if they were to arise. [EDIT: As a commenter suggests it is possible that simply saying this is a war crime, or at least there are some legal opinions suggesting it]
Attacking civilian targets with cluster bombs has happened and Iran is doing that as we speak. That is a war crime.
Attacking infrastructure is not a war crime if that infrastructure serves a military purpose. Attacking purely civilian use infrastructure is a war crime.
Threatening to attack civilian use infrastructure is not a war crime. Threatening to attack infrastructure used for military purposes is also not a war crime.
Mowing down protestors with machines guns is not a war crime but maybe we should consider it a crime against humanity.
EDIT: FWIW I do care about what Hegseth said. It's wrong and he shouldn't have said that. But people say stuff- what matters are the actions.
There are some actual acts that count as war crimes as well, that Hegsdeth has overseen - killing civilians off the coast of venesuela by attacking and sinking fishing boats, but also then killing the civilians after theyve jumped ship.
then in the iran conflict, leaving the sailors to drown after sinking iran's show boat with a sub
The US should do better. But we got here when the parent said: > I don't understand how any human in good faith could look at Iran's government and say they are the evil regime,
Iran's government mows down protestors by the 10's of thousands. They beat woman to death for violating the dress code. They conduct public hangings in stadiums. They routinely use torture and arbitrary arrests. They and their proxies bombard civilians routinely. They recruit child soldiers. The list is just endless. How is that even comparable to the US government?
https://iranhumanrights.org/2024/03/crimes-against-humanity-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drowning_of_Afghan_refugees_in...
https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-af...
https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/03/1134782
I read this as "talk about Iran!" All you're willing to say about the US seems to be that they "should do better".
How about the double tap strikes? Targeting first responders is a war crime, remember. And US use of double tap strikes is well documented.
If you just want to talk about how bad the victim of war crimes is, that sounds like making excuses for war crimes to me.
I know this double tap terminology is frequently used in social media these days (IMO it's propaganda). I don't know there is solid evidence of targeting first responders intentionally. I haven't seen it.
I did see some mention that the school was hit twice but I don't think that's supported by the satellite imagery or videos we've seen. In theory US service personnel can and should refuse to execute an order that is targeting first responders and my base assumption would be that the US does not practice this. There are huge number of people involved in planning strikes and executing them so you'd think some of those people would refuse such an order and/or speak about it publicly. I.e. I don't believe the US initial salvo of Tomahawk cruise missiles and bombings were designed to intentionally hit first responders. Beyond it being a war crime it also makes no sense to "waste" bombs and cruise missiles on first responders when presumably there are a lot of other more valuable targets; beyond it being morally wrong and a war crime it's also stupid. The only time I've seen this sort of strategy being executed intentionally is during the suicide bombing campaign in Israel. e.g.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beit_Lid_suicide_bombing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Yehuda_Street_bombings#200...
In the context of terrorizing a population it makes perfect sense. In the context of the US attack on Iran it makes zero sense since it doesn't serve the US interest to terrorize the population of Iran and the regime couldn't care less.
What do you want me to say about the US? I would like to see zero war crimes from the US. I would like to see a US president that doesn't sound like a mad person on social media and a SecDef that isn't a religious zealot. I still think that big picture there is no comparing the US to Iran in terms of the actions each is taking and has taken. Iran fundamentally wants to make the world a worse place and the US wants to make it a better place (and sure, make a lot of money while doing that...). Would a solution that doesn't involve dropping bombs be better? Sure. Find me one.
The confusion comes from the fact that the regime which is very clearly better for its own people is also the one which actions are clearly awful for the rest of the world (if only because it has vastly larger means).
I think the US destroyed a strategically important elementary school on the first day of the war.
It's not confirmed but I agree it was very likely a US strike. An accidental one.
Assuming the US did not intend to kill school girls that is also not a war crime. You can certainly argue that this happened due to the US decision to go to war and claim the actions to not be moral (or illegal as some have stated). Others might argue that more harm would occur if no action was taken and that the action minimizes the overall harm (e.g. to the Iranian people or others).
You could also argue that attack was intentional. I don't think there's any evidence of that and I'm not sure what purpose it served if it was one.
It is difficult to extract the real purpose of most things about this war, if you're in the US, since almost every single part of it seems against the US' interests and public face.
You're probably technically correct and that the US didn't intentionally look in Google Maps for an elementary school and decided to destroy it. But did we really need to Double Tap it?
Timothy Snyder has an opinion about this: https://x.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/2040883546093436941?s=20
I'm not quite there yet.
That tweet by Timothy Snyder is quite ridiculous. There's just no way that's the motivation behind all this.
Unfortunately it's also the only motivation anyone has presented that there is any real hope of actually achieving. And it's the kind of excuse trump could use to become glorious dictator. Or at least I wouldn't be surprised to learn he thinks it is.
No, I really don't think that's why this war was started. I don't think trump actually wants terrorist attacks in America. But it just might be what he will get, whether he likes it or not.
> I don't think trump actually wants terrorist attacks in America.
He might not but he's surrounded by christian evangelist lunatics who think bringing about the end times is their moral responsibility and, more importantly, they are in charge because Trump is an addled idiot who has fewer thoughts in his head than an orange cat.
Religion ought to be forbidden
Possibly wouldn't go that far but the US could definitely do with understanding that whole "separation of church and state" edict they were given.
[dead]
> Saying things is not a war crime.
On the contrary, there appear to be good legal arguments that Hegseth merely saying "no quarter" is, on its own, a war crime:
https://www.justsecurity.org/133970/legal-advice-hegseth-no-...
You might be right. You're definitely right there are legal arguments to support that.
0 evidence of the "mowing down protestors with machine guns" claim. Plz don't spread rumors.
US president, holding nukes and saying things like "whole civilization will die tonight" is just state terrorism of the worst kind, ... so far, yes. It may become a war crime of genocide. Not sure why should I or anyone wait and see, before issuing sweeping comments about all of america, which made this possible, by working hard to building up the military capable of doing it and giving power to nutjob issuing the threats.
Be sure that this US threat is not just against Iran, it's a US threat aginst the entire world, and it will be taken as such by many, you war crime justifying tool.
Also pretty telling, that you're using intl. law to justify US attacks, instead of using it for what their purpose was,... which is to limit the ways in which states execute war. The same thing Israel was doing to justify murdering 20 000 children in Gaza, just constantly finding "loopholes" and using it retroactively to justify every single thing they did that someone contensted.
people care, theyre just being censored and overwritten with rubbish.
> Its a regime that killed 10s of thousands of its own people for protesting.
Nearly a thousand insurrectionists armed by the U.S., as Trump admitted, and crowds seeded with Mossad agents - as Mossad boasted about on both X and TV, were instructed to create as much death & havoc as possible to set the stage for regime change. Though several thousand died, the number was below 3k, and the Epstein coalition didn't get their regime change. All those bloated 10k-60k numbers are imaginary.
Hell, Trump was angry as there were supposed to be even more deaths, but he says the Kurds looted the weapons meant for the "protestors".
If this was done in the U.S,, it would be a 9/11 moment and your nation would go to world-war. But alas, the U.S. directly & indirectly owns the majority of the world media and the truth trickles down only days & weeks later. Thankfully, Trump is so stupid that he can never keep his mouth shut. And Mossad is so arrogant and protected that they boast about their wetwork missions on their official social media & Israeli TV channels.
> as Trump admitted
Trump is noise, not signal. He has "admitted" plenty of things which are untrue, and sometimes self-contradictory. Even trying to model him as a rational liar is a nonstarter.
> 10s of thousands
I sorta doubt those numbers.
> (anymore)
Oh, so you're ideologically captured by an admin that's proven to be full of liars. There was never a good side. There's no good side to war in nearly any case (limited exceptions and this is not (was never) one of those).
The most powerful country in history attacked a smaller country that wasn't a threat to the stronger country. Had the USA (and Israel) not attacked, it's unlikely that Iran would have struck first.
And Iran firing missiles on Israel in response to genocide in Gaza isn't really a credible threat. Israel could stop massacring civilians at any time to make Iran stop firing upon them.
The numbers are independently verified by UNHRC [1].
The United States is the aggressor in this conflict. Its action is a violation of the UN Charter and international law.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Human_Rights_Co...
That's not what you say it is. It is an estimate from UNHRC, which has a wide range. The estimate also seems to be for all dead, including counter protesters and government officers. Verification of any kind is in short supply.
It also does nothing to address the Iranian government's claim - strongly supported by US and Israel's public statements(!) that it's a foreign coup attempt rather than peaceful protests.
"Foreign coup attempt" is an extraordinary claim that is not backed by publicly available evidence. Indeed, it's not even backed by the statements by Iranian government officials, who are on record upholding the killings [1]. Furthermore, Iranian Ministry of Health officials have upheld these estimates of the death count. Eyewitness accounts uphold the fact that the Iranian government has perpetrated mass killings of protestors [2].
It is understandable that a person who distrusts the United States government would be led to believe the statements of a government in opposition to it. Indeed, the United States is engaged in an illegal war in which it is the aggressor. However, the statements of the Iranian government attributing protestor deaths to foreign-backed paramilitaries is not backed by any credible set of facts.
1. https://reliefweb.int/report/iran-islamic-republic/iran-deat...
2. https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/01/16/iran-growing-evidence-of...
> "Foreign coup attempt" is an extraordinary claim that is not backed by publicly available evidence
It is not an extraordinary claim, and it's backed by absurdly strong evidence. As I said, it was pretty ridiculous that Mossad openly said not just that they wanted regime change (as the US also did), but that they were actively assisting in it. And in addition to the thousands of protesters who have been reported dead, hundreds of policemen or revolutionary guards have also been reported dead.
An ordinary, popular protest, even a damn angry one - even one armed with handguns! - does not kill hundreds of policemen. If you think that's possible, you don't understand the power difference between civilians and people with a full time job and training to use violence on civilians. Even if you would ignore the public statements (which I won't let you!) you simply do not succeed at killing so much of the state's violence apparatus without serious material and organizational support.
And anyone who's been following Iran for a while knows that yes, Mossad actually has shockingly many native agents in Iran (e.g. the murder of scientists wouldn't have been possible without it) and in addition there are political cults like MEK, and supporters of the dictator son Pahlavi, who are certainly organized and certainly not pacifist in their fight against the government.
It's your loyal party line messaging which is detached from reality.
"It's backed by absurdly strong evidence"
(fails to produce any sources for unfounded claims, followed by a lot of rhetoric)
Note the failure to rebut the provided sources in my comment.
I accept that it's unlikely that you'll examine your own priors. My response is for the benefit of people who haven't had the chance to read extensively and travel, who might take your claims at face value.
You're good at trying to seem authoritative with your footnotes and links, but in this age of chatbots it's important to be able to see through that because it's trivial to bluff. Any idiot can be good at it. That's rhetoric. But you'd better get with the times: I think you'll find it's better to write like a regular human these days, rather than like a corporate news anchor or a chatbot, if you want to convince the commoners --- excuse me, I mean the "people who haven't had the chance to read extensively and travel".
The evidence I "provided" was evidence I think you already admitted. You do not deny that the US and Israel openly (and to repeat myself, insanely - it's so bad you'd almost think it was a deliberate attempt to sabotage any legitimacy) took credit for the attempt to replace the government of Iran to an unprecedented degree - why don't you find an example of an attempted revolution where a foreign country claimed to "be with you on the ground"?
I could have linked to the insane tweets with [1] and [2] myself, but why bother. I trust people to find them themselves if they're in doubt.
Never engaging with the credible evidence presented, claiming that heads of state said something they didn't. Other readers can be trusted to see through your lies.
Oh can they? You seem to have a pretty low opinion of them.
I guess no head of state just threatened to nuke Iran either, and that is a preposterous lie.
You have not presented evidence. You have just linked authorities. The direct statements - those are evidence.
It is crazy that comments like this are getting downvoted when it is clearly the truth.
This comment provides no insight nor facts. Why bother to make it?
Is it really crazy though? Sad, but given the state of everything I don’t find this crazy.
I'm just really puzzled by people frankly, one would expect Hacker News to be of higher caliber. Read the history, watch real geo-political analysis. But even without that, a presidents in who screams profanity on social media, threaten to take oil and resources of other countries and bomb to the dark ages..even without any political background, this a real low for any position let alone the president of the US.
I think Social Media truly brought the worse in people. People are not trying to be decent anymore.
To be honest, this forum is where I come to take th temperature of the US "centrists" who brought us to this point. I've quit other social media, so this is one of the few places where I can hear what folks (who are often quite clever in quite a few dimensions) spout rather vicious thoughts.
The other spot I get exposure to this part of the US political spectrum is the comment section of a youtube guy who is pretty far to the right but who has a seemingly (at least to me) well-informed understanding of the facts- he's interesting because it's kind of wild to hear the more lumpen version of this site and what their concerns are: they are really mad that this war is happening instead of further domestic crackdowns on immigration.
In both cases, it's helpful to understand where folks who have some pretty misinformed understandings of history and politics are sitting with their opinions.
It doesn't seem surprising to me that a bunch of aspiring venture capitalists, who have probably have been or are on the cusp of having a small taste of the massive wealth that their work in building out the surveillance state has brought to their masters, have totally shitty politics.
I think you are right, I've also stopped social media myself recently and left with nothing but YouTube and the occasional visit on HN for tech.
With that said, and I'm aware that HN audience are mostly in tech but I always thought we in tech are better trained to think critically and look at things from various perspectives. But to see the exact same response patterns one would see in FB makes one surely question how many people are truly capable of independent critical thinking. I'm also starting to think that given the complexity of modern life and the amount of information we are flooded with people are simply choosing the most repeated narrative within their circle without much reflection or any critical thinking. At the end of the day most folks here are busy with other things and it is easier to believe they are evil and we are liberating then dive deep into one of the most complicated areas when it comes to history and geopolitics.
Well, a lot of the folks here also share the view that because they understand how pointers work in C or can orchestrate stuff in docker (or whatever the kids do these days) they must be smarter than all us dumb losers who can't figure out how to make our brains okay with this world.
It's an appealing view, and I get it. Probably not a bad idea to question at length.
[dead]
Trump literally admitting that he was the one arming the protestors. It'S US regime change playbook.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
It's not exculpatory for the independently-verified claims[1] of tens of thousands of those murdered by the Iranian regime.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Human_Rights_Co...
Okay, let's make a deal. Iranian regime faces trials and consequences, and so does the American executive.
Once they are locked up in the same cage, we all get to move on. Sounds good?
I'd be satisfied with that!
[flagged]
Killed 10s of thousands of civilians, you mean Iran or Israel?
Is it really necessary to mention something so obvious?
The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Are you sure of it?
Propaganda contains lies? Is water wet?
Does the average reader of this publication need to be told this?
Bad propaganda contains falsehoods. Good propaganda lies by omission. Great propaganda tells the truth, compellingly.
Edit: on the other hand, great propaganda is probably wasted on time periods like ours. Great propaganda isn't always effective propaganda.
Propaganda videos are not meant to tell the truth. They are meant to exaggerate the facts. You know, like CNN exaggerates how terrible iran is.
Well, it's hard to tell with military advances. Before the attack you cannot say anyone is terrible, after -- it's too late. Like Russia recently denied they are amassing troops at the borders, and claimed that was just military exercises.
If we're talking about nuclear weapons -- there will be no point of discussing if the attack is made.
Similar to infamous question "is the farmer good with his beloved turkey that he raises until Thanksgiving?"
> You know, like CNN exaggerates how terrible iran is.
Do you not know it's a theocracy where women have to hide their faces, the punishment for BEING raped is death, and any dissent is illegal (gets you executed under the charge of "waging war against Allah").
I don't watch leftist news, but I'm pretty sure not even CNN gives Iran a free pass. You usually have to turn to new media like Hassan Abi for that.
Isn't that Saudi Arabia you're talking about?
The US is on its way to becoming a theocratically influenced state. That is how the war started. I dont see you abandoning the US. Nor do I see you observing Iran in a rational way. Iran is more than just a theocracy. It is a long running civilization.
You mean unlike America where women are forced to carry dead babies to term. Where they hold prayer circles in the White House.
Like this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adriana_Smith_pregnancy_case
bruh they gunned down thousands of protesters with live ammunition a couple months ago. Then shut down the internet so no one would see it. Ask any Iranian expat. They have no love for this regime. You can think of the war whatever you want. But there is no need to defend this regime.
Sophisticated propaganda is designed to radicalize people into having an emotional reaction to something before they have a chance to think rationally.
Many US citizens experienced an outpouring of emotion over Tank Man 37 years ago, and now all you have to do is wave around a picture of Tank Man and reflexively blue flames start shooting out of American asses and they go into conniptions and start howling like rabid Meerkats. They've been radicalized.
So long as Tank Man still works, US state media will keep using it. It doesn't have to be a lie. The important thing is that it's hard to reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
Chinese and Iranian propaganda is not nearly as effective as in the US can, where the advertising industry alone spends a half-trillion dollars annually in an effort to fool people into doing things they wouldn't normally do. It is an art and a science.
This post: "If you have an emotional reaction to the symbol of a mass murder in the Beijing city square, you've been radicalized"
Same account 2 days ago: "Mark Zuckerberg and Meta are complicit in the Rohingya genocide"[1]
I knew I would find a contradictory post within the first page, because this account has the hallmarks of a troll.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47640251
Bringing up Meta's complicity in the Rohingya Genocide on HN is like bringing up the Nanking Massacre in Japan, it's not a responsibility anyone is going to face, I get it. I brought it up in a thread about the careless things Meta has done so it was on point.
One thing to keep in mind is that neither Japan, China or Iran have been engaged in any imperial misadventures lately. If you haven't noticed, one theme that has been dominating world affairs as of late is the absolute shitshow that is the American political situation.
Iran is a literate nation and the US is blowing up universities and schools. Call me a troll but that's all some super depraved stuff going on right now so forgive me if I'm not particularly sensitive to the feelings of the people who are cheering for it.
Iran is well-known for extensive interference in its neighbors' political systems. It has funded and armed opposition groups with billions of dollars of assistance (Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis). Educational institutions in literate countries have been bombed by Iranian proxies.
The Chinese government invaded Indian territory within the last year. It directs its naval auxiliaries to harass civilian vessels from Vietnam and Philippines. According to your world view it doesn't qualify —authoritarian nations may harm their own denizens as long as it's not expeditionary— but residents of Xinjiang are routinely rounded up and imprisoned.
Oh poor Dubai and Saudi Arabia. Im sure my pet animal is shedding a tear or two for them
Given the headline, they found out nothing about "the team".
I would be interested to know how these are made on a technical level. Is it a combination of several tools and are they local or some service (I would think LEGO minifigs would trigger some copyright issue)? I also assume you need to do certain things to keep the consistency and somehow sync the music with the video?
It was quite obvious, but this is a noteworthy example of just how much more effective propaganda will become with AI.
These videos are blowing up on Twitter.
I personally found the one about Pete Hegseth quite well made and the song actually catchy.
Edit: Video link courtesy mirashii in this thread - https://mastodon.social/@blogdiva/116348872322024778
people were worried about deepfakes with AI but instead the propaganda is doing pretty well, and arguably better, when it's not a deepfake but instead silly, catchy, youthful, and is playing up existing beliefs. The invasion is deeply unpopular in the US, and these videos only serve to amp that up.
Deepfakes were never necessary, people have been making incredible propaganda forever though the same few tactics. For instance, presenting footage out of context.
The deepfakes haven't gotten really good yet. Give it a year.
deepfakes have been pre-subverted by having leaders that can't put coherent sentences together, or be trusted when they say literally anything.
A trump deepfake will be just as reliable about trump policy as actually listening to him speak. maybe even more reliable than from the horse's mouth
You're right and it's not even hyperbole. Big sigh.
I saw a video of some French politician's speech on Reddit; most commenters were praising the guy's English. It was AI dubbed...
Invasion?
Ground troops are going to be deployed
That would be a precondition, yes.
Care to share the link?
https://mastodon.social/@blogdiva/116348872322024778
This is not a popular war. I would not use it as a milestone.
That Hegseth one is an extraordinary piece of media. It's dense with Hegseth and Epstein lore, the song is catchy, the visuals are a significant cut above the normal AI slop aesthetic.
If this is Iranian state backed propaganda (which seems very likely) it's light years ahead of those White House videos with footage of bombs mixed in with clips from action movies.
The Iranian propaganda videos are catchy but also emphasize all the cracks in U.S. society and the weak points of the U.S. leadership. Simultaneously it paints the Iranian regime as the defender not just of Iran, but victims of American aggression broadly. It doesn’t hurt that the White House keeps playing into this with their comments.
The White House comments trivialize mass murder and killing. And it appeals to absolutely nobody but the man boys currently inhabiting the White House.
The White House seems to have made the mistake of hiring HOI4 modders for their propaganda team.
A better article, I think: "Iran Is Winning the AI Slop Propaganda War" [0]
404 Media is journalist-owned if you want to contribute to consistently good journalism. I am not affiliated.
0. https://www.404media.co/iran-is-winning-the-ai-slop-propagan...
There's also an Anime style one, more martial and militant in style.
https://www.instagram.com/kutub.production/
Hate to admit it... but the video goes hard
The production values were great. I can't deny it.
I hope we never get there but what do you think could push Israel into using Nukes?
A serious existential threat to the country from a targetable state actor.
Risk to Netanyahu's career or wellbeing can do the trick because as we have seen lately Israel is willing to risk Israel's future and the Jewish communities safety across the world. It's not even as a part of grand strategy or anything, they are pushing to make criticizing Netanyahu a taboo.
I used to admire Israel as the only sane country in the middle east with great culture for entrepreneurship even if they had elements of atrocities(these could be fixed through civil progress in sane countries). I'm genuinely sad to see it has turned into a genocidal theocratic lunacy like the rest of the middle east and theocratic lunatics can do anything.
If the calculus skewed by arrogance and religious delusions is on the positive for the ruling class, they will use a nuke.
Israeli here. I would not be surprised if Bibi uses an N-bomb just to keep his chair.
Any serious attempt to stop the extermination in Gaza.
Is this one group?
Today I saw an analyst from Pakistan and he also had some of these "trump-lego-snippets" in the video, was wondering why someone would put so much effort in a video against trump, but it seems he copied it somewhere (from this group e.g.)
Is it even propaganda if you just read aloud your enemy’s wikipedia? I think Bubba refers to someone else than Clinton and Iran’s regime is despotic assholes, but apart from that pretty accurate depiction.
propaganda (noun)
information or ideas that are spread by an organized group or government to influence people’s opinions, esp. by not giving all the facts or by secretly emphasizing only one way of looking at the facts
or another definition:
information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a particular cause, doctrine, or point of view.
Sure, that’s one definition, I was only asking rhetorically. But if you look deeper into the social scientific and historical literature on the term, it’s a bit contested. I personally would see propaganda as something far more insidious than simply “all mass media”, like your definitions from apparently some online dictionaries seem to suggest. I think there’s a difference between Triumph of the Will, a toothpaste commercial and ironic AI-generated music video about the leaders of the country attacking you. I’m not sure what that difference is - this would actually be a legit subject for proper academic research - but I would maybe rather try to analyse the desired goals of the makers and spreaders of the said media than just use some far too broad definition that turns the whole world virtually meaningless. I think there’s some nuance here.
So, in short, almost anything of substance that is disseminated over mass and social media?
If its aim is to influence opinion then yes. It doesn't matter if it's true or not true. It's the goal that matters. One can influence opinions with a subset of truths.
[dead]
If Iran was the axis of evil they'd use Megabloks
> A spokesperson for the group says, “Let’s face it—if truth isn’t flashy, it’s kinda lonely.”
Was the spokeperson human or just chatgpt?
Puppet regime has competition. Now do Putin.
Lego must be so mad hahaha
Lego has the resources to take on the AI labs infringing their copyright, but they're instead choosing to ignore it. From where I'm standing, it doesn't seem like they care very much.
Danish company making kids constructors is used by trolls and state aligned to push their unhinged propaganda. I would be mad too.
There’s something real evil in using Lego for this, like using cute animals.
Am I the only one to believe that they used Lego, a company strongly associated with Denmark, to prime Europeans into associating Iran with Greenland?
[flagged]
[dead]
[flagged]
No doubt, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News and please especially don't start flamewars.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Siding with a dictatorial regime
Right, Iran used to have a parliament with Mossadegh as prime minister, what happened there? Oh yaa, Mossadegh wanted Iranian oil for Iranians, so the US and UK overthrew Mossadegh, with the help of conservative mullahs, and installed a dictatorship. Then SAVAK with CIA help spent decades slaughtering the secular opposition.
> that’s murdered 100s of their own people
There are armed Balochi and Kurdish separatists shooting at the Iranian army right now, no doubt with clandestine Israeli and US support. Incidentally the Kurds had their own state at the end of WWII, until the US and UK made them dissolve into Iran.
Also aside from the bombings, the Basij have been fired on from the ground and have fired back. Who is arming the people shooting at the Basij is unknown, but some signs point to Israel.
I write this less than three months after armed federal personnel decided to march into Minneapolis and among other things kill a nurse and also a woman.
> and aided terrorist organizations
The Arabs in southern Lebanon and the Gaza strip have lived there a long time. Over the past century Zionist Jews from around the world have been invading their land, shooting, bombing, starving them. If they fight back the epithet terrorist is applied to them, and if these brave men fighting for their people are assigned the word, it gives it a great esteem.
And today the occupation IRGC regime (that recently by IRGC released numbers massacred 3000 Iranians on the streets in 2 days) is importing foreign militias to prop up their unpopular regime (along with recruiting child soldiers for the Basij you mentioned).
"The roaming of the Islamic Republic's proxies in Iran; entry of "Zainabiyoun" of Pakistan after "Hashd al-Shaabi" of Iraq and "Fatemiyoun" of Afghanistan
Reports of the presence of forces affiliated with the Zainabiyoun Division of Pakistan have been published in various areas of Sistan and Baluchestan province."
multiple things can be bad at the same time.
Of course Mossadegh was "not ideal", but the current regime are genocidal islamists that over time have taken more and more to massacring their own population for ever more reasons.
A pinprick and metastasizing cancer are both bad in absolute terms, but not remotely comparable.
What genocide did they commit?
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countrie...
That doesn't even include the massacre they did on their own population 2 months back. When it comes to genocides, Iran's islamists have a LONG list of mass-killings to answer for.
The foreign-armed coup attempt? Is that the hill you wanna die on?
No. Iran's islamists have organized plenty "hills", including an attack on Brussels airport and metro. Me and my wife were within 2 km of the shooting.
In the airport, they found a woman pushing a carriage. They shot the baby first and waited, laughing, for the woman to collapse onto the floor, dead, still bleeding baby in her hands, to shoot her. She survived. THAT is who you're dealing with here.
We found out Iran's embassy was involved in organizing these attacks. There is nothing you can possibly to do convince anything done to these islamists, each and every one of them, is immoral in the slightest.
That is pretty bad, but where's the genocide you mentioned?
I watched "One Battle After Another" and it shows how deranged people are. I don't think its a new thing, I just think in any stable society, people who don't thrive eventually find a way to destroy the society in the hope whatever comes next will serve them better. In a society where hard work and intelligent gives you an advantage, it stands to reason that lazy, stupid people will need to play differently in order to win.
I can't wait to read wikipedia in 30 years.
I'm sorry, your takeaway from that film was that Sean Penn was the good guy?
This is a pretty obvious misinterpretation. Protagonist bad ≠ antagonist good. This isn't even the law of the excluded middle because there was only ever a statistical relationship between the morality of narrative opponents.
Isn't the film fiction? I haven't seen it but I would refrain from using a fiction film as something to measure "how deranged people are" by.
> I just think in any stable society, people who don't thrive eventually find a way to destroy the society in the hope whatever comes next will serve them better.
It seems our society is being destroyed by people who are thriving the most.
> In a society where hard work and intelligent gives you an advantage
Which society is this, Sweden? Xi Jinping is pretty smart and hard working, is China being demolished by lazy dumb twats? Because it seems to me its US that is overrun bu stupidity and sheer lazyness right now, but it seems to be because it rewards people like Musk, Trump etc.
[flagged]
Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN. The GP comment was bad*, but responding in kind is the opposite of what we're trying for here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
(* for reasons—I hasten to add—unrelated to which side of the conflict they or anyone else is identifying with)
It's almost funny how both of these descriptions can apply to either country.
[flagged]
I agree that HN often turns a blind eye to all of the awful things that the US and Israel do, but Iran is hitting civilian targets as well.
[flagged]
Iran hit a teaching hospital so I guess they technically managed to hit a school and a hospital at the same time.
Iran has helped Russia bomb many schools and hospitals.
It's ironic how they've been so instrumental in bombing Ukraine's civilian targets (for years) and now they're likely to get their civilian infrastructure bombed, by a third party. Strange times.
You probably have to wait 2 more years to see if they're really a dictatorship, for the time being at least they still have an electoral mandate.
Having an electoral mandate is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. If you don't follow your own laws and your own constitution, for instance, you're not a in a democracy, even if you have been elected. Precisely because you are elected under the assumption that you will follow the laws and constitution, not have unlimited power to do whatever you like until the next elections.
The Trump regime is still borderline, but I think it's fair to call Netanyahu a dictator at this point.
Not to mention atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; 170,000+ deaths.
the japanese killed around 50 times that number of people in ww2 (R.J. Rummel, Statistics of Democide, 1997)
Who exactly are you talking about?
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/mar/26/ai-got-the-blam...
> On the first morning of Operation Epic Fury, 28 February 2026, American forces struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab, in southern Iran, hitting the building at least two times during the morning session. American forces killed between 175 and 180 people, most of them girls between the ages of seven and 12
This doesn’t make the us or Israel a dictatorship
[flagged]
Check out the history behind this and how the US has treated Iran because of their Oil for almost a hundred years now. This is 100% on the west in my opinion. We've been abusing these people for the longest time.
Before the US it was the British with BP.
Before the British with BP it was the British East India Company.
Before the British EIC there were various periods of Arab, Turk and Mongol control.
Persia has been a political football since Alexander the Great. Cursed geography.
When I first heard about the protests in Iran, I assigned automatically the blame on the dictatorial regime.
Nevertheless, after the following events and after extra information provided by the US government itself, this is no longer so clear cut.
The truth is that we do not really know what happened in Iran, how many have been killed and whether that was really an internal protest against the regime or a coup attempt organized by USA.
The timing of the protests is too suspicious. The most plausible hypothesis is that US/Israeli agents have initiated the protests by influencing a great number of well-intended internal opponents of the regime, who probably have suffered then most from this action.
If some of the opposition had received US weapons, that can explain the paranoia of the dictatorial regime, even if there is little doubt that the retaliations against the opposition must have affected many who had no ties with USA or Israel.
Until credible information will surface about what really happened in Iran at the beginning of the year, we can affirm only that it is likely that the dictatorial regime has killed or tortured many non-violent opponents, but there is nothing certain about this.
On the other hand, the unprovoked crimes committed by USA since the beginning of the year against countries like Iran or Cuba are certain facts, about which there exists no doubt whatsoever, because the top US officials are bragging about them.
For all we know, USA might have already killed more Iranian civilians than the Iran government, so any claims that the attacks done by USA are somehow intended for supporting the Iranian people, are completely ridiculous.
Trump said on Sunday that the US at least tried to arm the protestors.
> The U.S. sent guns to anti-regime protesters in Iran amid the wider war against Tehran, President Donald Trump confirmed to Fox News on Sunday.
> Trump made the comment during an interview with Fox News' Try Yingst, saying the U.S. delivered the weapons through the Kurds.
> "We sent them a lot of guns. We sent them through the Kurds. And I think the Kurds kept them," Trump said.
https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/us-iran-trump-israel-war-l...
The story seems plausible but the source is as poor as they get.
Trump facts change so quickly.
I will side with any country that's being illegally attacked, and whose population is being illegally targeted, thank you very much. Sovereignty is fundamental, it's been broken. The state of Iran is the result of US and Israeli meddling. There was time for criticizing Iran before it was attacked.
Do you mean the US of I?
Remember Snowden? Remmeber Assange? Remember Aaron Swartz? Remember the terrorizing of Occupy Wallstreet organizers? Remember the funding of terrorists all over Africa? Remember Libya? Remember who funded Isis?
Is that regime you are talking about?
While Iran is bad - US is engaged in war crimes (they even brag about it). It’s like when Russians defend their war crimes by saying that Ukraine is corrupt.
I agree with you on principle, but you're oversimplifying things if you think that opposition to the United States or Israel is all about a single person.
[flagged]
I think it's possible to have a grown-up discussion about the production value, cultural relevance, and effectiveness of propaganda without "siding" with the videos' sponsors. This appears to be an uncomfortable case of bad people speaking at least some truth--to the point where it's resonating.
Churchill and Eisenhower beg to disagree. When everyone is bad, you focus on restraining the most powerful actor first.
You mean like siding with the dictatorial regime that provided material support to the 9/11 hijackers, 15/19 of whom were nationals of that country? And then we wanted to question 3 menders of the royal family who were implicated they all mysteriously fell out of windows, died in a car accident or otherwise died?
Another national was a renowned arms dealer linked to both Robert Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein. And then that arms dealer’s nephew was chopped up in a foreign embassy and taken away in pieces?
They murdered thousands of our citizens let alone theirs.
What leg do we have to stand on here exactly?
There was an interview with a historian and he said an interesting thing about the ancient Sparta: "Everything we know about Sparta we know from its enemies".
So instead we must side with another regime that slaughtered 72'000 innocent civilians of another country, most of whom were women and children?
That 72k is a bare minimum. Those are just the recovered and identified bodies.
The number is well in the thousands/tens of thousands, and we have no way of knowing precisely because, well, it's a dictatorial regime.
also because, well, our dictatorial regime.
[flagged]
You are absolutely correct. However, I fear you're running up against the basic human instinct of "my enemy's enemy is my friend.".
I also wonder how many actually support them, and how much is just a result of opinions boosted by bots?
I appreciate that this statement accurately describes all three regimes primarily involved without naming one.
> Siding with a dictatorial regime that’s murdered 100s of their own people and aided terrorist organizations
I'm getting really tired of this. United States and Israel have bombed and killed more innocent people than I can count on. The biggest terrorist regime is United States right now, bombing schools.
Your own president tweets out war crimes, your secretary of defense proudly proclaims "no quarters" and "send them back to the stone age".
Do me a favor, and please lay off the morality lecture.
How about you talk about the Gaza genocide for once? Or the IRAQ war that killed millions of people? Or using nuclear weapons on Japan? or the killing and raping of Vietnamese ?
Or the fact that you backed Saddam to use chemical weapons on Iranians during the 8 year war?
Who is siding with Iran?
Most commenters in this thread.
i really can't tell which side you're talking about
A regime driven by a weird religious cult and murdering their own citizens is battling a regime which is driven by a weird religious cult and is murdering their own citizens.
I think in this situation it is okay to cheer on both sides.
Cue dozens of comments doing exactly that...
[flagged]
Which one? If you mean Iran, "100s of" seems like a weird understatement.
what numbers can you trust? i mean, you can trust whatever suits you, but *i* don't trust, really, any of the things i hear about the global bad guys, particularly iran when america is making war on them or building a case for war.
How about start with the number that the regime itself admits to; namely, thousands of protestors killed.
Today’s world is messed up. Look at EU leaders rubbing shoulders with Syrian president/ex-terrorist.
Today's?
We were shuffling capital to China after Tiananmen Square. People were talking about how we should have left Saddam alone because of how "orderly" Iraq was under his boot. Europeans were happy to ink the plans for Nordstream 2 after Russia sent tanks into Georgia, and Russia received no less than a FIFA World Cup and Olympic games after seizing Crimea.
There is incredibly little will to stick to the whole "humans have rights and we should have a rules-based international order" when the rubber meets the road.
rules-based international order is mostly a propaganda term that the Us empire invented. It also was mostly "rules for thee but not for me"
Its a nice thing in theory but in practice power always overruled morals and I think the current US admin not only freely admits this but also kind of rubs your nose in it. In a way its less hypocritical than previously but also incredibly sobering for someone who grew up in a seemingly more "stable" world
> rules-based international order is mostly a propaganda term that the Us empire invented. It also was mostly "rules for thee but not for me"
I think there was an effort to try to stick to it, at least early on after WWII when people had seen what the old system resulted in.
Then the Berlin blockade, Korea, and Hungarian intervention happened and the implication was made that the rules were what were to be aspired to, not actually followed, and it's been all downhill from there.
Incidentally, most of those aren't on the "Us empire".
Don't worry, the multipolar world you dream of will be here soon, and it will be as brutal and violent as you're hoping.
> Don't worry, the multipolar world you dream of will be here soon, and it will be as brutal and violent as you're hoping.
... I don't hope for that?
Indeed, we even had deals with Germany and Belgium who bombed hospitals in Yugoslavia in 1999!
That's in part because many EU countries would like to ship the Syrian refugees back to Syria.
Don't forget Trump rubbing shoulders with al-Sharaa either.
And Putin, and Orban etc.
There's an implicit tolerance of authoritarian regimes so long as the price is right. This is nothing new.
No one cares about who made these videos in the US. The bigger issue is why are we engaging in a ground war in Iran when it doesn’t really serve US interests? Everyone on both political spectrums in the US can see why it benefits Saudi Arabia and Israel, but not the US.
We’re using precious resources like missiles that we will need in the Pacific theater in next 1-2 years
Because it wasn’t planned that far. The administration probably thought it would go like Venezuela. A Middle East historian would have told you Iran has building for all our war for decades because it trusts none of its neighbors.
A second problem is that the US knew for a while that we were weak at asymmetric warfare but we didn’t fix it. There was a war game in 2002 (the Millennium Challenge, which was actually set in the Strait of Hormuz) that, though the red team did very much cheat, it did hint at a major weakness that wasn’t resolved.
There are US defense companies today that actually specialize in that but they weren’t given the same attention (but boy are they now).
When one side complains no fair the other side is cheating, you've probably already lost.
Relevant The Far Side cartoon: https://static0.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/...
> though the red team did very much cheat,
My Army buddy once said "If you're not cheating you're not trying."
What did they expect? That's the whole point of a red team.
Reminds me of Admiral Ching Lee. He used to run red team exercises against US facilities. He once walked into a maximum security facility with a badge bearing the name and photograph of Adolf Hitler.
Which defense companies?
Anduril is the biggest one. They are based in Costa Mesa, CA and are building a bigger R&D facility in "Space Beach" (Long Beach, CA) and a manufacturing facility near Columbus, Ohio.
Afterwards, you have smaller companies like Shield AI (San Diego, CA), Saronic Technologies (Austin, TX) and some other smaller ones.
We will need the weapons to counter when Israel goes off the rails and starts waging war everywhere.
Here we are getting snaked into a war that we dont want, by a country that probably wants us to become weaker in the future.
It’s crazy to believe that US would fight China in the pacific in 1-2 years. At this rate I don’t believe China will do anything as it sees US trashing at every point, making it’s allies and trade partners to rethink their strategy towards betting on US as it’s going full postal.
I disagree
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/confron...
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/paint-it-black-an-asymmet...
https://news.usni.org/2026/03/19/china-not-committed-to-2027...
France just onshored their gold assets well. US allies are losing confidence.
Because this war is driven by Israel, not the US. The destruction of Iran, no matter what the costs for the world, is seen as an existential matter for the current Israeli government.
But, destroying Iran without using nukes is not a Job Israel can do by themselves, they need the US. And while the Democrat establishment (although not the base) don't see an issue with supporting Israel activities in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, a war with Iran was not something the Democrats would agree with.
So, they had this window of opportunity with Trump, before the midterms, and they acted.
We may not agree, but under the point of view of the Likud, it makes perfect sense.
The Pacific war is not happening unless Trump chooses to start it. China is also having political issues; a massive purge of top brass is the worst preparation for a war. See Stalin.
To be honest both sides are purging top brass. Chinas top brass was too old anyway.