The economic sanctions are a symptom not the cause.
It's nominal GDP per capita was above Taiwan, Turkiye, South Korea, and all of Eastern Europe.
If the stuff that happened to Iran in our timeline didn't happened in the 1980s-2000s, it probably could have seen an economic boom comparable to what SK and Taiwan saw in the 1990s - especially becuase the leadership in 1980s South Korea and Taiwan were equally as authoritarian as that in Iran back then.
Other similar losers from that era were the DRC, Syria (before the civil war it was roughly on par with Turkiye), the Ivory Coast (it was France's premier financial hub in Franafrique before the civil war), and Pakistan (it's GDP per capita was significantly above China's until the 1990s, and Pakistani advisors helped industrialize significant portions of the Gulf).
They could just stop being at war with Israel any time, it is a pointless choice.
Also, the US entered WWII because of Pearl Harbor, and engaged in a normal war against the Axis. Iran engages in terrorism by financing and arming terrorist groups that perform terrorist attacks on civilians. The US action in WWII defeated the nazis. The actions of the Iranian dictatorship caused deaths and terrors targeted at civilians in other countries and destroyed the lives of its own people in Iran.
The Gaza population has been increasing and almost doubled since Israel ceded the territory in 2005. Israel seeks to minimize civilian casualties when hitting valid military targets. Israel announces beforehand where targets will be hit, even though this obviously gives advantages to the enemy. Israel even just cancels their attacks if the civilian casualties would be too high. The ratio of civilians-by-combatants casualties in the Gaza war has been much lower than other wars in the urban environment.
No amount low effort lawyering is going to erase cabinet ministers calling for ethnic cleansing, the use of food as a weapon, the rape of detainees, the celebration of the rapists, the double tap shooting of children by their hundreds, the killing fields of the fake GHF aid sites, the mass executions of medics and aid workers, the systematic destruction of water, health and education infrastructure....and on and on and on.
> Do you think Israel engaged in this kind of campaign to kill as many people as possible of any ethnicity?
Yes. There are political constraints on the amount they can kill per day without drawing too much pressure from their backers USA and Europe. They spent a lot of time finding the horrible sweet spot that allows western politicians to largely ignore constant, neverending, Palestinian deaths, allowing the killing to never stop.
This weird so-called ceasefire (Israel has continued to kill and assassinate Palestinians despite it, about 150 have been killed) that is going on right now seems more like something that Trump insisted on and Israel was forced into accepting, but is doing their best to end.
Oh and, I replied to your naive talking points for the benefit of a bystander who might be reading and still be swayed by that after 2 years of a live-streamed genocide. I do not intend to reply any further, as the discussion on all these things has been largely settled, as evidenced by Israel's shattered reputation among basically everyone under the age of 40 in even USA.
> Yes.
You just said Israel engaged in campaigns of trying to kill as many Gazans as possible just like the Nazis did with Jewish people. Do you have any evidence at all of this? We live in the most information-rich era in history. Do you have an evidence AT ALL for this? Again, not a military campaign with military objectives that accepts more civilian casualties than what you'd like, but a systematic campaign with the OBJECTIVE of killing as many Gazans as possible?
In the meantime i hope it rains.
It is a crying shame and the Iranians deserve better. At the moment 16 million people may find themselves without water in the near future. I'm lost for words.
If one positive thing could be found in this situation it might finally be the thing that brings down the regime. I think it's fair to say this year has been an annus horribilis for them.
(Sounds familiar? Warning bells for other locals, maybe? ..)
Most educated Iranians you know, btw, are (drum roll) in diaspora, for good reasons.
It's sad to such a great people subjugated by their government.
1: https://www.cfr.org/article/irans-regional-armed-network 2: https://www.unitedagainstnucleariran.com/proxy-wars/map
It's an Islamic theocracy with nuclear as well as regional hegemonic ambitions; what about the corresponding impoverishment of its citizens is "baffling" to you?
Imagine if the US targeted germany or japan or saudi arabia for destruction. They'd be in far worse situation than iran.
Maybe Tehran just needs to tax the locals an additional 2% so they can finally start delivering…
They are delivering on the free water promise by setting Qty=0.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latyan_Dam https://maps.app.goo.gl/UzQrPMR4iHRdbsuP7
Edit: TIL there can be different translations/spellings of Persian to English
Nearby Israel has desalination plants that seem to be working out well.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Water_Project
Then, desalination requires energy, and Iran already faces blackouts here and there, there just isn't much spare capacity.
That is enough for drinking and probably enough for cooking which should be the priority in a situation like this.
Or the undground Great Man-Made River Project of Libya moving 6.5 million cubic meters over 2,820 km.
Main issue ther though is the first is from already present freshwater sources and the latter from underground aquifers. With both having been done over multilpe decades to reach that capacity. Finding the water to move would be the main challenge, een though the Caspian is less saline than ocean water - there are probably water usage agreemets with the neighbourign countries preventing a massive undertaking of such size.
This situation was avoidable but it required investment years ago. Kind of too late now.
to put this in perspective, 13M people fled during the Syrian Civil War. 5.7M people fled Ukraine. The evacuation of New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina was 1.2M people.
Even without that factor, Attention does matter. Governments can do multiple things, but in more dictatorial regimes, doing things well often require prioritization at the top, and there is a limited number of things the top can prioritize. Its one of the main failings of dictatorships in general: the top is afraid to appoint too competent middle management lest they rise up, so everything becomes very top down managed.
Additionally some of the issues causing this seem to be related to corruption in their military, like diverting water in unsustainable ways to support farming projects that have ties to people well connected to irgc. (To be fair, i dont know how true that is, i dont have a good source for that)
Iran's not war not peace policy is an expensive one, both directly and indirectly (e.g. turning them into a parriah state). In the end it seems like its also been largely ineffective. Instead of keeping them out of war, proxies like Hamas ended up drawing them into one, and it ended up being a pretty one sided war not in their favour. Although i suppose prior to that point it was yielding geopolitical gains.
Analysis that looks at countries like Iran simply as tools of Superpowers is reductive Cold War area analysis that has gigantic blind spots.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oil-production-by-country...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_government_re...
Anyways my point was not really about hurricane.