Attributes that distinguish WW3 from previous world wars were IIRC: Contained conflagration, short targeted exchanges, probability of contamination low, material possibility of nuclear escalation. Case in point: North Korea developed nukes without being invaded, and now that they have nukes, other countries are watching and seeing that NK won't be invaded. What lesson do those other countries draw? And what of a world in which many potential belligerents hold nukes? Hiroshima weeps.
I'd like to add an important attribute here: The revolution will be live-streamed, more-or-less. And essentially none of us will know the truth, even the reasons. I predict this fact will not distress many people, such is the state of humanity.
So to the 7 or so decades of stability we and our ancestors enjoyed, here's looking at you, going down me. But Brettonwoods serves the present the least of any time since its creation. Case in point, w.r.t. eastern Africa, the geopolitical bounds of those ~4 countries seems likely meld to a degree. If we are indeed heading into WW3, I expect the world map to be redrawn afterwards, and the only lessons learned is how to win better in future.
And if we are, while disgruntled old geriatrics go at each others throats via their youthful proxies, I greatly prefer the nukes rust in peace.
Reminds me of Blaise Pascal's quote: 'All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room.' Aspiration, you gotta take care man, it just might kill ya.
>White House officials believe ‘the politics are a lot better’ if Israel strikes Iran first
>As the administration mulls military action in Iran, officials argue it’d be best if Israel makes the first move.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/25/white-house-politic...
I'm not sure what's the logic behind that PR-wise, but regardless, it didn't happen.
Part of it is the stated idea that Israel still has public support. That such an exchange, even if Israel launches the first strike, would get more support. This is probably misjudging the actual public support for Israel, which is much lower amongst the general public than amongst (esp. Republican) political circles.
The other part of it is that Trump has surrounded himself with card-carrying nazis, who have not at all been subtle about their desires to harm jews.
> but regardless, it didn't happen.
That Israel didn't launch the first strike and instead insisting on a joint strike (despite otherwise being constantly warmongering), suggests to me that it's the latter 'part' of the reason that had a lot of weight here.
My reading of the “politics” was that Iranian propaganda has for decades pushed the view of Israel and the US together being a singular archenemy, so regardless of how united the two actually are in their purpose at the moment, Iran may well attack US troops in response to an attack by Israeli troops. There have in fact been official Iranian declarations to that effect recently.
So the US admin’s plan would have been to have Israel attack, which would have seen Iran attack US bases in retaliation, and then a subsequent US attack on Iran could be sold as a response to that, what with the US public being notoriously touchy about the US military being attacked.
The two flaws here, of course, are that Iranian politicians aren’t quite as foolish as the propaganda they disseminate would suggest (as of now, the news reports are that Iran is pretty happily targeting residential areas in Israel but only hit a known-empty field within a single US base); and that Israeli politicians aren’t really keen on the country shouldering the blame for aggression, either (not without getting something in return at least).
Trump: "The lives of American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties - that often happens in war."
Another republican president starting a war in the middle east, once again sacrificing American lives.
I think the only way to get away from the warmongering is to go for a third party. But even they would likely be corrupted by the excessive influence of the military industrial complex. Eisenhower was not only right, but plainly prophetic.
[1] - https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/list-of-c...
Regarding politicians: Gustavo Petro was the most vocal protester; now that Trump told him in the White house to shut up, he is wagging his tail happily.
Trump this time around didn't inherit a major us deployment in a conflict area. No Iraq, no Afghanistan. Also, he's doing military strikes by himself, no Congress involved.
Syrian and Libia were both essentially civil wars with an oppressive regime with Syria using allegedly chemical weapons.
Your source is a very weird site. Countries Obama bombed 2026??? What does that even mean. Is it just a typo in the main heading and the title?
And places being in a state of internal conflict, conflict which is itself often backed and fomented by US intelligence agencies and backed proxy forces, is hardly some reason to go bomb them. Even moreso when you look at results. See what Libya turned into, and what Syria is now turning into. It turns out that Al Qaeda in a suit is still Al Qaeda, to literally nobody's surprise if you're even vaguely familiar with our history of backing extremists and putting them in power, something which we have done repeatedly.
This war, if it escalates, is not going to be good for Iran, the people of Iran, or likely even the US. The only country that might come out a winner is Israel, but even that might not end up being the case, as Iran's retaliation will likely focus on them. To say nothing of longer term consequences.
[1] - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-preside...
Agreed with most of the rest you said though
This isn't true. Small-scale targeted raids, not B52s recreating Dresden.
That nuclear threat was contained under a plan backed by US, EU, Russia, China and Iran, in which Iran would not pursue nuclear expansion and let a team of international experts in to verify this on a continuous basis, in exchange for some sanction relief. A solution Trump threw in the trash, reinstating the sanctions, pressuring Iran to pursue nuclear again as one of its few levers of power it can pull on.
In other words he created the necessity for violence by throwing away a unique solution that the entire world got behind including US allies & enemies, throwing away goodwill and trust in future deals (why would Iran negotiate now if it's clear how Trump views deals, as things to be broken even irrationally?)
Those who claim this is an anti-war president have no clue, even in the context of a 'just war' argument it simply falls flat.
It does seem that military action is correlated with increased coverage in the media of the Trump/Epstein files.
no, he got it for no visible reason whatsoever
the most plausible explanation is an advance payment by foreign entities in exchange for future favors
Between his inauguration (January 20, 2009) and the Nobel announcement (October 9, 2009), Obama had been president for less than nine months. The Nobel Committee emphasized his intentions, tone, and early diplomatic actions, rather than long-term achievements.
But the reasons wars existed didn't go away, so this just resulted in more and more people getting killed in "special military operations" or similar things. See e.g. "Why States No Longer Declare War"[0].
[0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228896825_Why_State...
In fact, after Vietnam war congress specifically created a law to restrict hostilities without congress approval to up to 60 days, which is what the current (and prior) administrations are acting on.
Remember that the Iraq war was also started for Israel. It's a meme to say that the Iraq war was for oil, but no oil company exec went before congress to promote the war. Netanyahu did.
Meanwhile, oil company execs were all like "WTF, we didn't ask for this". But the liberal establishment decided it would shoulder the blame on "cOrPoRaTiOns" instead of Israel for the Iraq war.
Iraq war was all because of Israel, led by religious right-wing Christian and Jewish zionists at Heritage Foundation.
America spent trillions for Israel fighting the Iraq war, we are now spending trillions for Israel fighting Iran.
Think of the economy we could have had if it wasn't for Israel.
But yes, poor American soldiers.
Americans really have to be among the most gullible people on the planet.
Not to mention that Trump is a paedophile, the open corruption, attempted coup etc... it's like that Hemingway quote. The decline of the USA has been gradual, and then very sudden.
You can get an edge here by moving your ass somewhere where you can see the planes take off, maybe a team with people at multiple locations - boats near the aircraft carrier, near military bases in Israel, ...
What even is the plan here if the air assault fails? Boots on the ground? In Iran?
The Iraqi government was a lot more stable.
What exactly do you imagine will replace the Iranian government that is worse?
Iran has shown that it is remarkably sane actually, given the aggression towards shown towards it by Israel and the US and has made a lot of efforts to reach a deal.
Remember, it was the US that exited the JCPOA and now it wants Iran to give up all its misses so that they would be defenseless.
I have no love for theocracies, but I do think the Iranian system is a lot better than the likes of Saudi Arabia, which we're buddy buddy with.
Oh and I guess the founder of Syrian branch of AQ and deputy head of ISIS running Syria is better that what was before too, in your book?
Iran's funding for these groups is a part of its 'defense in depth' strategy since it doesn't have the capability to project power otherwise. I am not saying that it is the right thing to do, but I am also not that surprised that backed into a corner, they're trying to build regional proxies. It's not like the US and Israel are not doing the same in and around Iran.
But I like how these statements, like yours, are always made with zero context and hope for an uninformed audience to upvote them.
Same as the Gaza and Lebanon ceasefires where one side stops attacking and the other (Israel) keeps bombing?
I see how this works.
Nonsense. Iran has been stirring up trouble in the region for a long time.
Perhaps you forgot that it was Iraq who attacked Iran and Kuwait while Iran attacked no country but hey.
I believe there's a much better change of democracy / sane regime in Iran, than there ever was in Iraq and other Arab states.
So I have hope that they'll find a way to organize when the current regime falls.
We have Ramadan here now. No one cares. Arab influencer come and make videos and are shocked
Everyone eats and drinks during the days we don’t care
Many countries have hardcore conservative rulers AND population, but in Iran the problem is mostly just the rulers. With better government, Iran would have so much potential.
A regime that only controls the capital, leaving the rest of the country in a power vacuum leading to internal conflicts and sectarian violence that will eventually spill over the borders into Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iraq etc...
One of the issues with Iraq was that Rumsfeld didn't want to acknowledge that it takes more personnel post-toppling (to rebuild infrastructure and institutions) than during invasion. It seems like the current government could be prone to make the same mistake.
I recommend anyone interested in this to read Cobra II. It's an excellent book.
What are you talking about?
Iraq is >95% Muslim, but there are a few different sub groups. With those numbers there were few in government then and now who are not Muslim.
Are the Americans going to bomb the Saudis next? or only if Israel ask for it?
Who say US is not regime? It is the world largest regime in the world, with bidders in every country to do their bidding, mass surveillance including their own country men. People blame only Russia, China, Iran etc when US have been doing the same for years.
Trump is democratically elected, for now.
I'm not actually sure if this is correct, English is not my native language.
Trump is a coward. He knows that boots on the ground will mean massive losses.
The only way he does that is if someone convinces him that they can go in and out very quickly.
Unlike Venezuela I doubt there are people in the right place to oust Khamenei.
You mean in 10 years, when the US is a stable and high-functioning democracy with independent media, a universally liked, charming, and polite president, supported by both the right and the left, who finally manage to overcome their minor differences? Is... is this the direction this is all heading?
What is the goal, to overthrow the regime, so success would mean a change of government?
(sorry, I haven't followed)
Sounds like a good idea
After this, Israel, being the only nuclear power in the region and having massive funding from the American taxpayer, will dominate the entire region. This has always been the goal.
Besides, after this the collective west has no moral high-ground anymore, the global south will resent us more than ever. If other countries go to aggressive wars, our condemnation is worthless.
Trump is completely compromised and it was probably the powers that be who told them that this is how it is going to be.
As for moral high ground. Compared to whom? China? Russia? Myanmar?
You don't go and rename a whole federal department to 'Department of War' when you don't intend to get into wars.
1. The U.S. and Iran had already negotiated and signed a nuclear agreement between our countries but Trump reneged on the already-negotiated agreement.
2. Trump claimed that his previous attacks on Iran within the last year “completely and totally obliterated” their nuclear program, “obliterated like nobody’s ever seen before” - both direct Trump quotes. Trump was quite clear that Iran’s nuclear program had already been destroyed like nothing had ever been destroyed before.Yeah, I agree that was probably a bad idea, doesn't make what I stated above any less true.
> 2. Trump claimed that his previous attacks on Iran within the last year “completely and totally obliterated” their nuclear program, “obliterated like nobody’s ever seen before” - both direct Trump quotes. Trump was quite clear that Iran’s nuclear program had already been destroyed like nothing had ever been destroyed before.
Yes...Trump lies all the time, that's nothing new.
Yes it does, it makes everything you said untrue. You stated Iran doesn't want to give up its nuclear programme, not true. Iran in fact already did agree to it, Trump then threw that in the trash.
Second, it shows the Nuclear threat wasn't the issue because he had a solution for it and threw it away. Then bombed Iran destroying it ostensibly, then continued bombing for regime change. So it's not obvious negotiations failed over nuclear which you stated, because it wasn't about nuclear.
Negotiations failed over dismantling Iranian power, mostly its ballistic weapons. i.e. give up weapons and make yourself defenseless to maintain peace. Like the Palestinians did with Israel, after which they're still being murdered daily, aid is still being blocked, and the west bank is increasingly being colonised. In other words an absurd ask from a sovereign country with multiple expansionist neighbours including one that bombed you and virtually all its neighbours last year.
The US then lied through their teeth to the security council about wanting to conduct a humanitarian operation and instead acted as the rebels' air force, helping them win and subsequently leaving the country in utter ruin.
The question is really whether negotiations were going on in good faith with the actual goal of realistic compromise.
None of us know that side, I would assume.
They could have named the DOD the "Department Of Peace", instead they called it the "Department Of War", showing their true face and trajectory.
At this point it is really the people of the US to rise up and implement a Regime Change from within to change things for the better.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/28/peace-within-reach-...
Just to be clear I’m not pro war! I take Iranian regime as the first and foremost responsible party in this mess and then US! My people stuck in this disaster of a power struggle.
It would be foolish for the Iranians to agree to that. But useful idiots will be useful idiots.
The magnitude of human suffering this will bring, civil war, sectarian violence, it all leads to hundreds of millions of people dying, millions of people displaced. Nobody likes the Iranian regime, just like nobody liked Saddam, its not the point. These wars are barbaric, not in the interests of anybody but Israel and a select few American arms dealers and pedophiles that propagandize their way to barely conscious sheep in the west clapping along to the barbarism AGAIN.
The obnoxious sanctimonious behavior of telling random Iranians to “wake the fuck up” as if we have a saying in what either Iranian government or the US side does. Go pound sand.
The only reason to enrich uranium to 60% like Iran was doing is for nuclear weapons purposes.
Overall the goal is not to stop Iran's nuclear program, though that is part of it. The goal would be to install a government in Iran that is friendly to Israel and the USA, or, failing that, to completely destroy their economy and defense such that they effectively can't act outside their own borders.
Which parts of Lebanon does Israel occupy?
So you're saying Israel's occupation of Lebanon amounts to 4,000 square metres? About the area of an athletics track, I guess? (Not counting the bit inside the athletics track.)
In Syria, Israel had a buffer zone since 1974. Last year they said the agreement had "collapsed" and went on to occupy even more territoru: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/26/israel-carries-out-...
Palestine is occupied.
By the way, I am a lot more worried about Israel and its actual nuclear stockpile that has zero oversight.
Tiresome.
Lybia was 100% a French war the US took over. Sarkozy's subordinates were extremely close to the Lybia regime that helped illegally finance his presidential election, at least according to French judges, so it was also also a very political war.
Pre-emptive violence; not even justified with a narrative of escalating threat.
Bleak for anybody who knows their history.
So I don't think Israel has anything to fear there.
Sounds like you might be making a very strong claim! Can you make it more precise? For example, "President Trump will not peaceably transfer power at the end of his current term". Is it something you'd be willing to put money on, for example on Polymarket?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/02/26/trump-ele...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
Neither the current administration nor Israel are particularly popular with the US public today, and those are correlated in that Israel has particularly lost support from Democrats and Independents in the US, suggesting that a change in power (legislative or executive, and especially both) in the US government could very easily spell much less favorable US policy toward Israel.
Normal people distinguish between Israel and Jews. It's Zionists who blur the distinction.
There are several countries throughout history where the citizens have been absolutely obsessed with their own race and considered the crusader state to be the sole representative of it. It never ended well.
I mean, it is a pretty convenient distraction from the epstein files tho, so win-win for Trump/Netanyahu
Btw. They ARE not that far away from the bomb, after they enriched uranium as a consequence of Trump (in his first term) cancelling the Obama treaty.
But they ARE a theocracy and Ajatollah Chamenei released an order (fatwa) forbidding Iran from obtaining and using an a-bomb. The new religious leader might change the religious law tho. I mean the one that comes after Chamenei becomes a martyr.
Funny how, knowing just a little bit more, it all really looks like nonsense created for illiterate, just to take their attention off of Epstein Pedophile Scandal.
If that was true, obviously they would have built one buy now. Being one year away from building would be non-urgency inducing.
The constant lying about timelines does not imply Iran does not enrich uranium, but, as you remember, after the last bombing the leaders of the USA and Israel said they had completely obliterated Iran's nuclear program. Except, apparently After six months they are one week away from a nuke again.
This seems to indicate the USA should be bombing Iran every few weeks, forever, just in case they get a bit faster next time.
Except, when we don't have any scandal or other crisis going on, then Iran does not seem to be getting a nuke quickly. I wonder why.
Without having to wait for the history books to do their thing.
No matter what you think, there is no way for him to avoid these hearings
Even the leader of the "left wing" opposition has recently explicitly stated that Israel was gifted the entire region from the Euphrates to the Nile by God, so they would have a right to own the entire region, but that this must be balanced by security concerns and tactical realities. This happened in response to the US ambassador's explicit public remarks in the Tucker Carlson interview that also asserted Israel's God-given right to the entire region. Note that this region, from the Euphrates to the Nile, includes about half of Irak, parts of Syria, most of Lebanon, parts of Saudi Arabia, and of Egypt.
Nor do I even know how to begin to grasp the enablement displayed by Europe as a whole. People constantly cite China’s “human rights abuses” (which seem to pale in comparison to all this) and rightly so, but continue to enable this blood thirsty and power hungry tag team to indulge in flagrant abuses of international law and general morality.
This is a sad day for level headed and empathetic humans across the globe. At which point do we accept that WW3 began quite a while ago? Because it sure as shit did.
Edit: fully expect this to be downvoted to oblivion but it’s my truth.
Iran has repeatedly demonstrated restraint and pragmatism throughout these aggressions on their sovereignty, starting with Israel’s strike on their consulate in Damascus.
But for some reason the Western world only sees the evil things Hamas does and handwaves IDF.
They're both evil.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpqwv9vvzx9o
Though I suppose you could say he's lying, it's staged etc. In the same way that the religious attribute every good thing to their god and every bad thing to their devil.
This feels a lot like the people building a home next to an airport and then complaining about the noise.
Besides, are you sure "your house" wasn't stolen from someone? That's hardly uncommon in Israel.
Why should anyone be opposed to you living in Russia?
Anyway your argument is bad in multiple layers, I don’t have any other passport and I live in a home that is younger than 80 years as most Israelis do
You don't need one, it is very easy to emigrate to many western countries as an Israeli passport holder. There's also a chance you qualify for one of the EU citizenship schemes for jewish descendants. You don't have to choose to live in an apartheid state.
At least if you only held a Russian passport you could plausibly claim that it's somewhat difficult to move anywhere nice.
> I live in a home that is younger than 80 years as most Israelis do
I guess that makes it better. Truly, a shining example of Israeli moral superiority.
I can easily find ownership records going back more than 500 years for the land I live on. Odds are it'd be trivial to go even further.
What about the land you live on? Who owned it 100 years ago and how'd it end up in your possession? How do you think those records would tend to look in Israel? What kind of stories do you think they would tell? Would it be a good look for Israeli people?
There's hardly anything comparable in Europe.
Probably other groups who are even less visible, so we don't know about the challenges they face. The 19th century push for nation states has marginalized and tried to erase many groups.
I won’t leave my friends and family and rather fight for the values of this country from here
The nazis justified the holocaust as a "defense of their values" as well.
I hope this particularly weak whataboutism helps you feel better about your indefensible moral position.
> fight for the values of this country from here
Apartheid being one of the core values worth fighting for, apparently.
I cut my salary to be involved politically, I believe in a future of peace. You can rest assured I engage in what’s right far more than you
What does that look like to you?
I'm sure Hamas would say the same, it's just about how that peace is reached and how it looks like in the end. The typical Israeli vision of peace isn't any better than the typical Palestinian vision of peace.
My moral compass says the following - 1. First of all securing our own democracy from all the internal authoritarian movements 2. Creating a situation were any Palestinian can live respectfully, feed their family and get education
From there state decision should be far more easier.
perfectly reasonable ask. 3 years ago, I would have been perfectly fine if they demonstrated interest in that. Instead we have people like Ben gvir openly spout ethnosupremacist vitriol that would make hitler blush. Now my instagram is full of that man touring prisons where he prags about executing people who clearly show signs of torture. between that and his approval ratings (60% of israelis want to relocate Palestinians somewhere else Its clear that the whole society is rotten from the top down.
frankly, I just want this madness to end.
I don't know. Why did the Cossacks oppose Jews living in Russia?
The only reason it still exists is because of a massive propaganda machine designed to misrepresent the whole situation to the American people who's tax dollars are bankrolling it.
You can just leave, you have a decent passport and can easily move to Europe where you don't have to worry about Iranian missiles.
Seriously, I'm constantly amazed by how oblivious some Americans are. You got it all backwards.
I suspect a fourth column.
Russia-Ukraine war is 1M+ combat casualties deep and is nowhere near finished. You are out of touch.
The middle east is a much more tangled web of alliances and hatreds, i think the iranian regime falling would have much more harder to predict second order geopolitical effects.
The whole of Europe is affected, it might seem contained only if you live very far away. Every European country is affected in one way or another.
It's not a stalemate if Ukraine ends up losing 30% of its territory. That's Russian victory.
Russia occupies about 20% of Ukraine, an area three times larger than the country I live in (the Netherlands).
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/24/mapping-russian-att...
https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian...
Casulties, not deaths.
Why do we never learn from history?
Will there still be no possibility of ground deployments?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Israel_war
The previous campaign lasted a whole 13 days and WW3 didn't start. I'm not sure why anybody thinks it'll be different now or why Russia or China would bother going to war for Iran. That makes zero sense.
We did not move 1/3 of operational USAF capacity and 33% of our deployable Navy for limited strikes.
You can stop when you have no idea what you're talking about, you know.
Of course Russia or China won't go to war for Iran - nobody is saying that. They can get involved though, just as Europe is involved in Ukraine war.
bombing of: -N.Vietnam -Germany -Serbia -Sudan -Tunisia -England
Exception:
-Japan
That is not to say bombing doesn't have its uses in war. The bombing of the oilfields of Ploesti in Romania severely damaged the German war machine. But it took Russian boots on the ground in Berlin to effect a German surrender.
>The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties. That often happens in war, but we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission
Very foreboding.
(Crazy idea, maybe the people shouldn’t be left in the dark about their government’s war plans by having a deliberate legislative body debate and vote on it)
And they will again appear weak and incapable, unable to help their allies
Iran and Russia have various partnership agreements, but are not allies. And Russia has already demonstrated that it doesn't support what are, on paper, close allies in the CSTO, so not defending a non-ally strategic partner really doesn't move the needle on their credibility.
As for the nuclear threat, literally Iran said it was going to destroy Israel to the point it had a massive countdown clock in Tehran until Israel blew it up, so meh. If I was on the receiving end of that threat I'd make it a policy to respond to it, escalation or not. I make no claims of the accuracy of the threats past IAEA being unable to verify they aren't enriching stuff.
Doubt it'll escalate into WW3. The only other powers involved are Russia, who are totally hands tied with Ukraine if they like it or not and China is only interested keeping what's left in its sphere of influence later through their outreach initiatives. I suspect most Middle Eastern countries will be quite happy about this conflict as they have persistent problems with Iran as well from the Houthis, Hezbollah and tens of other factions. They won't want to say anything though in case their own citizens turn on them.
The cringeworthy thing is how the US gov are communicating this and that does the operation a lot of damage. It's really quite terrible. Sounds like it was written by a bunch of 9 year olds after too many sugary drinks. Urgh.
Thats because its not written for you and I. Its written for people who struggle to communicate at an adult level, which is a shockingly large portion of the US.
https://www.lloydslist.com/LL1154545/Ukraine-strikes-cargosh...
(not just once)
Iran's involvement in the Ukrainian conflict is mostly business-like, it didn't even send troops (unlike North Korea, for example).
I don't see these two conflicts merging to a WW3, if that is what you were implying.
Unless Russia gives some nukes to Iran, which again I somehow don't see happening.
That's one thing that's scary about Iran. ayatollahs with nukes are unacceptable ... even in Putin's assessment.
Additional context: the comment above me stated 2m people have emigrated from Russia to Israel it’s more correct to say that they have emigrated from the Soviet Union
Spend down my savings and assets till I have almost nothing to exit tax, exit, and then start working again.
I don't want to fund the bombing of strangers I have no quarrel with.
I do not think ceasing work is the right move, but definitely get involved politically and don't equivocate when you condemn our elected "representatives".
It might also soothe your soul to be in the company of like-minded individuals. A Quaker prayer is a sure place to find many.
At this point, the pizza index is another vector of (dis)information managed by the Pentagon.
“The strong do what they will. The weak suffer what they must.”
If you are in the US, pray that you are never weak.
You might've missed it but the "department of defense" is now "department of war'.
Trump said in the State of the Union [0]:
> in just over the past couple of months with the protests they've killed at least 32000 protestors
And just moments ago Trump says 'tens of thousands' [1]
Is this confirmed or conjecture?
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l-iErpskb8&t=1h21m20s
[1] https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/2027651077865157033
But yes, i do think sometimes war can be a net positive for civilians over the alternative in the long term. Not often, but sometimes.
Spoken from the comfort of your cozy apartment, with the AC on, light music in the background and a drink in your hand.
Get in touch with your local Iranian community. You’d be surprised how much they’re cheering the bombing on.
You might be surprised that people inside Tehran are shouting “get the mullahs out” and cheering us on.
This is especially false in Iran in relation to USA intervention, since both the democrats and the fundamentalists still remember how the USA & UK deposed their last democratic leaders and (re) installed the brutal dictatorship of the Shah, who both parts of Iranian society hate and remeber being oppressed by today.
But the clans are way, way weaker than they were when they did their coup against Mosaddegh, so it will be extremely expensive for the US to keep control this time.
If this turns into a full-scale war or a civil war breaks out, we are looking at 1 million Iranian deaths conservatively speaking. Just look at happened at every single foreign intervention in the region - Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia. How does a million dead Iranians help them? How does it help the Americans, and the world if oil infrastructures or shipping lanes are targeted ? How does it help the region or Europe when millions of refugees flood out, and armouries are broken open and weapons and insurgents flood the region (like it did with Iraq and Libya)? It helps Israel greatly though, since they take out their arch nemesis, their conventional military and the nuclear program. And they think can shield themselves from the chaos they create around them.
To wit, after Maduro was kidnapped and the exact same regime kept in place (minus selling oil to Cuba), and Trump openly said it was to control the oil, most of the reactions were pretending we live in a universe where the US does these things to spread democracy.
I do think its on the higher end though as i dont think they would have bothered with a costly extended internet blackout if the number was small.
So when is the US intervening in Ukraine then? Russia is literally doing human safari with drones hunting down civilians in Kherson.
Did you miss the absolute massive amounts of aid US has given ukraine?
Regardless, there is a difference between how war is justified and why wars actually take place.
Not in the sense of "I don't ideologically agree with our decision to do this," but in the sense of, "I do not see how this accomplishes any ideological or practical goal."
What are they trying for? Regime change in Iran? No more Iranian nuclear program? There barely was one before. Keeping Israel safe? It's been an open secret for years that Iran is not a real threat to Israel, because any action it took against Israel would be existential for Iran and its leadership.
A US president who vocally and repeatedly promised he would not start new conflicts keeps starting them, and there's not even a reason. It's infuriating. I have my partisan opinions, but that should not be a partisan statement! It's just disturbing!
Iran has negotiated like no one will ever attack it, and that was a correct assumption for decades
However, due to Iran's overly aggressive use of questionably rational proxies, Hamas has dragged it into a regional conflict where it lost most of its proxies power.
After the last war, it also is no longer a threshold state, so the only leverage they had left was ballistic missiles, which were also handled quite reasonably by Israeli air defense.
In this situation it is a fair request by the US to sign a nuclear deal that heavily restricts Iran's ability to enrich as well as ICBM, trigger with existing uranium stockpiles removed.
As Iran due to ideological reasons refused, and IMO had miscalculated this will be a win-win, as losing will quell the protests, the only thing really left is the metaphorical stick
> The point is preventing another North Korea style nuclear blackmail state
The US and Israel are currently nuclear blackmail states. The rational move for Iran to prevent itself from being bullied is to have nukes like North Korea.
> In this situation it is a fair request by the US
Fair if you're the US, sure.
Not all countries have the same goals for human peace, and not all countries act rationally.
Do you think all people in your country should get the same rights?
And I’m not entirely sure what point are you trying to make, that terror countries like the houthis should have nuclear weapons, or that people in a country should not have equal rights.
Especially not when they’re mass murdering protestors and funding islamic extremism left and right
What recent months show us, is that it's a rough world - there are no friends. I'm rooting for European countries to accelerate their nuclear weapons programs. In an ideal world, of course I would be against. But the world is far from ideal. The current alternative is being dictated the rules by Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin. Thanks, but no.
Neither of these states have at any point said anything on the modern era that can be implied to be a threat to nuke anybody.
Part of that is because it would be a bad strategy for them, but nonetheless "nuclear blackmail state" and "nuclear state" is not the same thing.
The NPT did not exist at the time of the US developing nuclear weapons, and it explicitly allows US (and other pre-existing nuclear powers') weapons.
Israel, like India and Pakistan, simply never signed it, forgoing the international nuclear technology market as a consequence but also avoiding a treaty obligation not to develop them.
Perhaps you will argue that the US or Israel or Pakistan or North Korea have conducted themselves in a way where they do not have that moral right either, but that is a different debate, and either way it is moot because they do have them.
North Korea invaded South Korea, stole a US Navy ship (the Pueblo, which they still proudly exhibit), dug large infiltration tunnels under the DMZ, kidnapped hundreds, or even thousands people from SK (and Japan, to a lesser extent), and have assassinated, or attempted to assassinate, multiple SK heads of state, and perpetrated acts of terror like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_858
What did the US or SK do to them before their nuclear program that constituted "bullying?"
Iran signed Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
No. If they wanted self-defense and sovereignty they should have become stronger not weaker after the revolution.
Iran had a signed agreement, trump cancelled it. Israel literally killed Irans negotiators just a few months ago. What is this nuclear level ignorance.
> After the last war, it also is no longer a threshold state
That's also wrong. Trump claimed Iran's enrichment capabilities were totally destroyed, but they weren't.
> In this situation it is a fair request by the US to sign a nuclear deal
America already had a good deal. Trump got rid of it.
Didn't we have one of those a few years ago? I wonder what happened to it /s
Seriously, though: how can Iran both be so powerful we must avoid it becoming a blackmail state, and so weak and feckless it's not a threat to anyone?
And didn't we already attack them to stop them from getting nuclear capabilities?
- Military - their regional proxies destroyed, missile and drone stocks low, provably weak air defences.
- Economically - the currency is worthless, extreme inflation for seven years and hyper inflation for a few months, the economy is currently producing nothing due to unrest, they have a massive water shortage of their own making. They have no goods worth exporting. Their oil is sanctioned, meaning only China will buy from them and at a steep discount. And oil is extremely cheap at this minute.
- Politically - they have no friends willing to bail them out. Russia has no money to spare. China doesn’t care about anyone outside of China. North Korea is even poorer. All sections within Iranian society detest the mullahs running the government. They’re hanging on by killing tens of thousands of protestors.
Trump bets that Iran’s leaders are at their weakest since their war with Saddam ended in 1988. Meaning now is the best time to negotiate a deal where they hand over their fissile material and uranium enrichment equipment. In return they could get a heavy water reactor(s) that produces energy but no fissile material.
If he lets this opportunity slip Iran could fix all of their many problems in a year or three. Manufacture more missiles and drones. Build up their proxies once more. Maybe the price of oil recovers. Russia’s war ends and they aid Iran best they can. The economy recovers and the Iranian people stop trying to overthrow the government. Maybe a conflict starts elsewhere that draws America’s full attention.
Will Trump get that deal? Probably not. That fissile material is the only leverage the mullahs have. If they give it up they’ll be toppled like the other dictators who gave up their weapons programs - Gaddafi and Saddam.
But if you don’t ask you don’t get, right?
It was one of the primary triggers for the protests. People are very upset about the economy and willing to protest and die for it.
Yes, although it had merit it was far worse than what can be signed now, especially the sunset clause was problematic
> Seriously, though: how can Iran both be so powerful we must avoid it becoming a blackmail state, and so weak and feckless it's not a threat to anyone?
that's the nature of nuclear weapons, your conventional force can be abysmal (pretty much NK situation vs US) and yet you can create epic destruction
> And didn't we already attack them to stop them from getting nuclear capabilities?
Yes, the thing here is the long term goal of signing a deal, whose main goal is removing the existing highly enriched uranium from Iran and restricting their ability to redevelop nuclear capabilities. Essentially this is the part where "Diplomacy is the continuation of war by other means" (to highly paraphrase), because the alternative to a deal is maintenance attacks such as these every two years
Iran is a bad guy state ... but the "fair" atgunent hwre dont apply.
Possibly wishful thinking, but that’s the only way I can make it make sense in my head.
Wesley Clark: "We're going to take out 7 countries in 5 years":
What are the strikes even against?
Do they seriously think that after Iran shot all the street revolutionaries, another group will come forward and collapse the government?
Are they treating Iran as Big Serbia? It's a very different situation!
Or is this just for the Posting?
Seems like it. I can't imagine what else they might try for.
I suppose USA might think some shock and awe will result in iran making concessions at the bargaining table, but that seems unrealistic to me.
> No more Iranian nuclear program? There barely was one before.
That seems very debatable.
> Keeping Israel safe? It's been an open secret for years that Iran is not a real threat to Israel, because any action it took against Israel would be existential for Iran and its leadership.
Well they did take action against israel (you could say they were indirectly responsible for oct 7). Now they are facing said existential threat.
---
Ultimately though. Iran has been a major threat to both israeli and US interests, largely by funding proxy groups that take violent action against those interests. That's your motive for a war.
Iran is currently weak, facing multiple internal and eexternal crisises.
A war is happening because there is a limited window where iran is weak but the window potentially won't remain. That's the reason behind a lot of wars in history.
Is that Islamophobia?
It's bound to be incredibly successful at accomplishing that goal.
Similarly, wars against Iraq and Afghanistan were very successful in diverting attention away from 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers being from Saudi Arabia, and later on from the funding provided to one or more of the hijackers by Saudi officials. With a certain Ms. Maxwell being asked to join the investigatory committee on the event in question.
[0] https://www.btselem.org/topic/apartheid [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Palestinians
Israel is definitely not the ancestral homeland of the Arabs, and Wikipedia cannot change that.
> The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.
Which is why there are plenty of racist laws like this
Ethnic Arabs are from the Arabian peninsula. Islam's expansion started a slow process of Arabization whereby indigenous people in lands that ended up under the control of the Muslim caliphate/empire started speaking Arabic (mixed with their local dialects) and adopting aspects of Arabic culture, not dissimilar to the previous process of Romanization and Hellenization from the Greeks and Romans.
TL;DR People who today call themselves Palestinians are biological descendants of ancient Jews and other peoples local to the region of Palestine who eventually converted to Christianity and/or Islam, some remained Jewish, started speaking Arabic, and never left the land.
That's what genetic studies and history converge on, and what the early zionist leaders including Ben-Gurion also happened to believe in (Ben-Gurion wrote a thesis on this subject), until it became inconvenient for Zionism to continue to do so.
Syria: 90% Arab
Jordan: 95% Arab
Soudi-Arabia: 90% Arab
Egypt: 99.7% Egyptian
I love how you turned the elimination of hundreds of religions and ethnic groups into some beautiful cultural influence.
But go ahead, tell me how Israel is an ethnic supremacist state and how the Palestinians are the REAL Jews.
>Ben-Gurion, along with Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (the second President of Israel), argued in a 1918 booklet (written in Yiddish) that the Arab peasants of Palestine were not descendants of the Arab conquests, but rather the "remnant of the ancient Hebrew agriculturalists".
If you'd rather modern science, then there are genetic studies out of Israeli universities leading weight to this hypothesis (they tend to not get much attention among modern zionists as you can imagine). It's also the general consensus among historians of the region, inside and outside Israel. It's not really a contested position amongst academic historians.
>I love how you turned the elimination of hundreds of religions and ethnic groups into some beautiful cultural influence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabization
It was not always a clean process, varied a lot by century and location, but on the whole did not involve ethnic cleansing or massacres of ethnicities. The percentages of Arabs you quote above are, again, people who started calling themselves Arabs after cultural shifts, and not, as you seem to believe, a result of mass migration of ethnic Arabs from the Arabian peninsula to replace the local populations.
I don't think we have much else to exchange in good faith on this topic, so I'll leave you here.
Only for dc/marvel-shaped brains where there are evil guys who do bad things, and they're opposed by good guys who spread goodness.
> to ethnically cleanse the indigenous population from their ancestral land
Like after creation of Israel, Arabs motivated (often violently) Jews to leave their homelands and move to safe Israel, thus proving zionist ideas to be right. And then wonder what people support these zionist ideas now? Any ideas? :-)
So we agree that the first move in this conflict was a 20th century European nationalist group setting up a new state by force in the middle of an inhabited nation? With the blessing of the colonial power in charge.
Doesn't defend what happened to Jewish people in Egypt and Lebanon, but certainly puts some context around it.
As for the depopulation of Jews from Yemen and Iraq, that was Israeli policy and they managed it by themselves.
Which context? That zionism is right and it's great that Jews had a backup safe land to go?
> depopulation of Jews from Yemen and Iraq, that was Israeli policy and they managed it by themselves
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Iraq#Pe...
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_anti-Jewish_riots_in_Aden
Arabs started to bully Jews, and thus prove that the idea of a safe homeland for Jews is the right idea. For generations. What a smartasses.
The protests in Iran today are almost certainly being extensively backed by the CIA and other US organizations. Do not mistake a minority as necessarily representing much more than themselves. Of course they might (I certainly don't have any particular insight in the "real" Iran), but you could certainly see something similar happening in the US with extreme groups, left or right wing, becoming visibly active if they were able to find a strong backing/organizing power that made them believe that they could genuinely overthrow the government. The point being that the actions and claims of those groups would not necessarily represent the US at large.
Some people here might not be American or were too young to remember the lead up to the Iraq War, but it was transparently bullshit. Many people knew this. But if you dared say that, supporters would actively ruin your life. The Dixie Chicks were one of the most popular music acts in the US at the time, a country band that broke out of country and was getting huge appeal across the US. They dared to say they opposed the war. Their careers never returned.
Now with social media that isn't completely locked down, some voice of opposition can slip through and assure people that, yes, this is crazy. No, we don't need to blow the shit out of towns across the world. But these social media sites are all owned by government-aligned mega billionaires. They're rolling out AI that can comment and act very, very human and endorse everything the government does. They can auto-police opinions and spit out thousands of arguments and messages of harassment against them in seconds. Soon they'll be autoblocking any sense of disagreement.
It's at that point they can say that this is done to defend America. This is done to defend freedom. This desert country that's too screwed up to even manage its own internal affairs is somehow so dangerous that it's going to destroy the whole world with nukes it doesn't even have so we must destroy them all now. Dear leader always has your interests at heart. And you'll have no info to point to saying otherwise. Everyone who dares question it will be mocked, ridiculed, fired. Even if this administration fails, the tools are being built and laid out for the next, and I really don't know how humanity will overcome it. And I hate that I can't have optimism in this situation.
This discussion is one where it's worth looking at commenters' histories. Many have several pages where the bulk of their posts are defending Israel, saying war with Iran is necessary, and various related things. It's kind of spooky
How do you know?
>No other military in the world could have executed an operation of such scale, complexity, and consequence as Operation MIDNIGHT HAMMER. Yet the Joint Force did so flawlessly and obliterated Iran’s nuclear program.
https://media.defense.gov/2026/Jan/23/2003864773/-1/-1/0/202...
https://youtu.be/SxqipJgtTdk?si=YfWRzjcflhWHR276
(Note: Iran did move some stuff away before the attack)
Schumer, for example, is an avowed Zionist and would love to attack Iran. Case in point: His leadership worked to delay Massey and Khanna's war powers resolution until after this attack so they could say "Well, I guess we're too late. Darn."
On might think muslims would have learned something after the defeat of islam (as in the last coherent country/state structure) in 1919-1923 at the hands of muslims. Of course, islam as in the state, started a Naval war with the US, to defend the great institution of slavery ... and when they failed ... they started a second one.
And let's just not discuss whether some muslims (such as IS, but certainly not limited to them) are still trying to bring back slavery. Because we all know the answer.
It's a shame that it took all this for the Democrats to even begin the dialog about Israeli money in politics, and perhaps they may even realize that nobody wants to vote for pro-war neoliberals.
It's not a bold statements that many senior democrats are thrilled that Trump is attacking Iran. This time, he's doing something they would have liked to but couldn't get away with.
Yes, voting matters, but organizing matters more. Until there's people who don't (secretly or openly) cheer for policies driving the world towards a cliff, voting matters little.
And on no account should you listen to the paid political operatives suggesting that the Democratic party's previous last minute offer would have gone significantly better.
Two sides of the same coin: Republicans bomb 3rd world countries, and the Democrats gain slave labor from 3rd world countries refugees.
The government is compromised by Israeli blackmail. You vote against Israel you end up dead (JFK, Charlie Kirk) or blackmailed.
Iran has been the grown up in the room for well over a decade at this stage and it didn't matter one bit. You cannot appease Israel or the US because that don't want to be appeased, they want to bomb Iran into a lawless wasteland. They could have switched to a secular liberal democracy and it'd make no difference.
It’s infantilizing to act like Iranians weren’t capable of their own decisions, or their own mistakes in this case.
This talking point that “the CIA did it“ has never been accurate.
And are you really claiming the CIA was not involved in instigating a coup to bring in the Shah?
A big chunk of the world sees the US as the biggest terrorist state in the world, followed up by Israel...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c748l0zv4x8o
Just look at the fallout from the Epstein files where at best we can hope people will be embarrassed into resigning their current position.
The most salient lesson of the post-Cold War era: Get nukes or die trying.
A nation's relationship to other states, up to and especially including superpowers, is completely different once it's in the nuclear club. Pakistan can host bin Laden for years and still enjoy US military funding. North Korea can literally fire missiles over South Korea and Japan and get a strongly-worded letter of condemnation, along with a generous increase in foreign aid. We can know, for a fact, that the 2003 Iraq War coalition didn't actually believe their own WMD propaganda. If they thought that Saddam could vaporize the invasion force in a final act of defiance, he'd still be in power today. Putin knows perfectly well that NATO isn't going to invade Russia, so he can strip every last soldier from the Baltic borders and throw them into the Ukrainian meat grinder.
Aside from deterring attack, it also discourages powerful outside actors from fomenting revolutions. The worry becomes who gets the nukes if the central government falls.
Iran's assumption seems to have been that by permanently remaining n steps away from having nukes (n varying according to the current political and diplomatic climate), you get all the benefits of being a nuclear-armed state without the blowback of going straight for them. But no, you need to have the actual weapons in your arsenal, ready to use at a moment's notice.
My advice for rulers, especially ones on the outs with major geopolitical powers: Pour one out for Gaddafi, then hire a few hundred Chinese scientists and engineers and get nuked up ASAP.
nuclear enrichment is extraordinarily expensive and really not all that great of a deterrent when you have them. just look at fairly recent tussels between india, pakistan and china. Russia was invaded and didnt nuke ukraine.
Just need one flight from Pyongyang. Why suggest involving a major power given that you’ve just laid out the strategic need for nuclear weapons to deter interference from… major powers? Your post lacks coherency.
- it costs money and attention
- good is not the same as perfect (there are some casualties from time to time)
They protect against being "policed" by big world countries.
Eg. if Ukraine still had nuclear weapons, Russia would not have been invading them (or are they "protecting" them, as promised when they took their nuclear arsenal for destruction?). If Iran or Iraq had nuclear weapons, they would not have been bombed by US.
Israeli nukes are the main reason we haven't had regime change in Tel Aviv at the hands of a Turkish/Egyptian/Saudi/Iranian coalition. Israeli nukes are why Iran has had to settle into a pattern of slow, distant, annoyance via proxy forces (which lack a capability for existentially challenging the IDF).
After all if your country is too small, it may be worthless to have nukes that probably would be destroyed by neighbors on launch...
> "Epstein files: DOJ withheld documents about claim Trump sexually abused minor"
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/24/epstein-trump-doj-garcia.htm...
Will it even make a single newspaper or talk show this weekend?
is not crypto going down on any "multinational"* war?
*war amid thai and kambodgia is not "multinational" kind of, just example of not any
One of the (many) pretexts for the war, at least from Trump seems to be that Iran 'interfered' in US elections. From the Washington post
'President Donald Trump shared an article about Iran seeking to interfere in U.S. elections on his Truth Social account a couple of hours after U.S. strikes began in Iran early Saturday.
“Iran tried to interfere in 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump, and now faces renewed war with United States,” the post read, with a link to a piece from Just the News, a conservative website from which Trump frequently shares articles. Shortly after, the president posted another article from the site, albeit unrelated to Iran; it was about the Fulton County, Georgia, prosecutor Fani T. Willis.'
Does the US even have a functioning Congress left? Who will even believe such a preposterous lie? Even the most die hard MAGA supporter will find it hard to believe this fabrication.
It's like Trump doesn't feel the need to even maintain the fig leaf of a causus belli. He must truly feel that he is now the king of the United States to be so emboldened.
How is he guaranteeing immunity to members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard if they do nothing? Likewise, if he's telling the general Iranian public to simultaneously rise up and stay home, how does he plan to manage the hoped-for happy ending? In the event they succeed and topple the regime, are they just going to let bygones be bygones with the suddenly displaced IRGC while also giving Trump the keys to their treasury?
Iran could have been contained and Obama was right on his approach. We don't know the details of the strikes, but I hope it doesn't go into a full blown war, but this will be another Iraq like disaster, and american people are getting tired of doing the bidding of Isreal, a country that is already mirred into doing a genocide. This war is already unpopular in pools. Iran's regime is terrible to its people, but this has the potential to be another disaster where countless of people could die.
The regime may be horrific, but the only route out was through supporting and encoraging change and opening up and progressive forces.
It's a country with 90 million people, and many groups and external influences. Could end up like Iraq.
and it's Europe that will experince the political chaos as result of pressure from refugees, not the US.
Well, if the Chinese are smart, they will capitalize on this opportunity. They can prop up the Iranian regime with intelligence, weapons, and financial support the same way US & EU prop up Ukraine. The purpose would be to bleed US munitions stocks even faster than they already are, as well as increase attritional losses in platforms and personnel. China's stranglehold on rare earths and their export restrictions are making it more difficult for the US to restore its weapons stockpile. I'm sure China can crunch some numbers to identify the point of maximum weakness if the US is forced to sustain an anti-Iran air and naval campaign 30/60/90+ days. Then Xi can try to overlap that window of weakness with one of the two invasion windows against Taiwan (mostly due to weather in the Taiwan Strait). I don't think the PLA is dumb enough to try a full amphibious assault, but they could definitely initiate their blockade then.
https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2026/02/10/how-iran-gained-the-ab...
If China didn't anticipate the US attacking Iran after Maduro was deposed and the resulting impacts on their oil supplies, then they are asleep at the wheel.
So you don't care about people forced to live under IRGC rule and their desire to export their Islamic ideals elsewhere?
(I wouldn't support it any more in that case, but I would be more inclined to believe that its motivation might actually have anything to do with "Islamic rule".)
Can we follow the age old adage WWJD?
What would (Xi) Jinping do?
Make himself dictator for life and purge his party of dissenters?
Much nuance, wow.
please, can somebody in the US or Israel have an "are we the baddies" epiphany?
> defending the mullahs wasn't exactly on my bingo card, but here we are...
Propaganda is a hell of a drug.
This is WW3 in slow motion. The goal is to takeover Eurasia and contain the Russian-Chinese alliance by eating away at the edges and removing all unaligned or hostile energy sources.
Saddam had been selling dollars for euros and talking about shifting his oil to other currencies for years. 2003 put an end to that - it was literally the first thing that was done by the provisional Govt. was to make sure all Iraqi oil was sold in dollars.
The Petrodollar was not in jeopardy anymore, and for the post-1971 system, that was essential. Same thing is now happening with Iran and Venezuela. The real goal is - China must not be allowed to have substantial sources of energy that are not priced in dollars.
Almost as amazing for world peace as when the US overthrew Saddam Hussein's regime and gave birth to the Islamic State.
Not a meaningful supplier anymore, Russia just took the designs and onshored the manufacturing.
Propaganda is a hell of a drug.
Lots of genocides have been carried out with primitive weapons, even recently. Remember, the protesters in Iran were mostly unarmed...
All this is just a excuse, when this whole war is about Israel's national security interest and hegemonic ambitions. The "negotiations" were entirely over the Nuclear program, ballistic program and proxy forces - The protestors, human rights, democracy none of it were even mentioned. Netanyahu didn't visit the White House 6 times over the last year to advocate for the protestors.
Iranian people have been struggling under a dictatorship for decades.
Unironically, the US might become a beacon of freedom again.
Let’s see how this unfolds.
or ask another colleague whose family is still there. Would be different answer.
1. Not everybody lives in the direct nearing of the bombing/conflict hotspot
2. They weren’t doing that great before anyway (because, you know, the islamic totalitarian theocratic dictatorship)
3. They haven’t been doing great at all lately (because, you know, protests and turmoil and the violent repression from the aforementioned islamic totalitarian theocratic dictatorship)
It may be infeasible to do it, or bad idea because of geopolitical or similar reasons, but no - in Iran's regime case - we are not the baddies.
Think about it. If someone actually bombed or invaded the continental US you'd have woke libs cheering for Donald Trump.
The Iranian regime may fall, but it'll be like Iraq. We'll get something like ISIS out of it, or worse, and the place will be a complete basketcase of civil war for 25+ years. Or we'll be there for 25 years in another "forever war." Bravo.
As the recent wave of protests in Iran came after the 12 days where Iranian regime was dealt a massive blow, I think your analysis is wrong. Iranians consider this an opportunity. Also, the scale of violence unleashed on the Iranian public by the regime is staggering; it’s not about the regime being simply “unpopular”.
My point is that an outside force coming in will help the current regime and/or the ideas behind it. Even if the current regime falls, democratic or pro-Western ideas in Iran will be seen as aligned with the invading force and rejected by many people who might otherwise be open to them.
Is there anyone who likes being invaded by a foreign power, ever?
If president Trump doesn't declare martial law, start a civil war, military coup or change the constitution of the USA, he will stop ruling in 3 years. We can wait that long.
Do you think the people fighting ICE in the streets of Minneapolis would welcome a joint Chinese+North Korean decapitation strike on Washington and cruise missiles flying over Portland?
I think this is a scenario Steven miller fantasizes about while playing with action figures but that’s the closest it gets to being real.
Sure derogatory terms for liberals, as you term the left, would support the armed forces if China invaded hawaii but expecting them to also support Trump is fantasy. Like supporting America and supporting Donald Trump are entirely different matters and usually divergent.
Huh? If anything, he'd try to put blame on "Antifa" and "the radical left."
Judging by how they responded to the assassination attempt(s) on Trump and the assassination of Charlie Kirk, I don't really believe that.
Social media is brain poison.
And that's certainly the deathbed of any hopes to a mullah regime change. They will come out stronger than before.
Hacker News is unfortunately very out of touch with actual Iranian people who are largely cheering this on.
Next question.
> DEATH TO AMERICA
in the streets like blood-thirsty lunatics, something for which there was no equivalent in the US even after 9/11 (mobs chanting "Death to Muslims/Islam"), let alone doing so with governmental encouragement as happens in Iran?
Do they not realize how many Americans aren't pro-Israel and aren't invested enough in the Middle East and its politics, proxy wars, and human rights abuses to want the US to support Israel in military action against Iran, except for their nuclear ambitions, and regularly professed eternal hatred for our country?
Current stance on negotiations is a miscalculation IMHO, they likely wanted for negotiations to drag on for a long time.
>justtrustmebro
That they'll never, in some capacity, attempt use them against the country they weekly collectively chant death to?
EDIT: thanks, dang, for the
> posting too fast
cooldown, for all of my four posts.
> perhaps we could negotiate a peace deal in which israel and iran both agree to give up nuclear weapons and allow for IAEA inspections
I completely agree with you. Isreal has better relations with its neighbors than its ever had, has destroyed Iran's proxies, and given its obvious conventional military supremacy and lack of regional nuclear-armed foes and US-backing, its nuclear stockpile is just a destabilizing force in the region, and them voluntarily disbanding it would earn them a great deal of goodwill and a moral highground.
perhaps we could negotiate a peace deal in which israel and iran both agree to give up nuclear weapons and allow for IAEA inspections
https://www.thejournal.ie/iran-agrees-in-breakthrough-talks-...
Works out great for Netanyahu though as is customary. He can be PM for a while longer and stave off his own impending trial and imprisonment. If this goes well for Israel, he might even get that pardon that Trump campaigned for tirelessly.
You seem to have missed the little detail the US is now at war.
There was a deal with Iran, but Trump throw it away because was closed by Obama and Israel did not like it...
I was quite surprised to see it that low... and also to find it is inaccessible for trading if a US national. Just looking at the platform it seems predominantly US driven so I gather many people are willfully attempting to breach the ToS (and probably lie to the IRS) when using it...
Maybe it's a good thing that Anthropic will no longer be associated with the US government's attacks in another six months.
"Here is 10 petabytes of signals intelligences, you can run queries, give me the hierarchy of my enemy, the house address of anyone within 3 degrees of separation of their leadership or weapons industry, the next house address they're likely to be at if trying to flee my strikes, and the time they're all most likely to be there. Then schedule drone strikes on the houses."
Iranians are a beautiful people, with an ancient culture, delicious food, and a language full of poetry. They are some of the kindest people I have ever met.
And they are suffering under a regime that massacres them when they protest.
We have a moral obligation to help.
We want this mafia regime be gone as soon as possible so that we can be free.
As long as the bombs land primarily on regime targets, this is the right thing to do.
I am cautiously hopeful. If there aren't widespread civilian casualties, and if enough of the Iranian army and police join the protesters, Iran will finally be free.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_executions_in_Iran
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guidance_Patrol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state-sponsored_terro...
If so many Iranian civilians die that this new revolution fails, then not only will regular Iranians continue to suffer, but all the deaths in the protests and these bombings will have been completely pointless.
If few enough Iranians are affected that they persist, then it may well be worth it.