I don't want to insult you but your president is a populist and a TV personality. He is not a policy maker, he is more like an actor. So your country went into war mode by changing the name of the Department of Defence to Department of War. This was not a cosmetic change. This means peace times are over and you are in war. Your government acts accordingly.
Since you are still a democracy find those people who make your policy decisions. It's not that yellow man.
Ukraine’s TV personality leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy seems to be doing alright. Also went into war, but not of their own doing, and he has been measured, insightful, aware, throughout this whole war.
There’s more to it than Trump being a TV show personality. Far too complex and insidious than a simple quip.
I'm not disagreeing with you but "Dept of War" is ENTIRELY a cosmetic change. It's literally just a name. There are people, mostly with desk jobs, who really want to feel like badasses and they really want the Dept of War. The real human consequences of this are unimportant to them and sadly unimportant to the rest of us also.
And now of course you're going to label me an AIPAC nutter, but in this particular case I think the evidence is fairly plain given the collaboration between the two countries on this. If Israel had done this by their lonesome or if the US had not involved Israel then you could make the case that they reached this point independently, right now it looks to me as if collusion is a 100% certainty and that the US is executing a foreign policy that will not benefit it but that will benefit Israel. It also makes me wonder whether this will end up as a Venzuela re-run where the top names change but everything else remains the same, just with US companies the beneficiaries of the oil, which is, besides policy the main driver behind these things anyway.
ah here come the jews run the USA conspiracy. HN does not dissapoint. Well, no I am dissapointed. But not surprised.
Reddit and HN have been taken over by leftie tankie zoomers and thridies who want to see the West fall while then dream of a life in Europe or worse, live here.
You've been uncritically supportive of Israel in plenty of other threads on HN already so I'm not sure if your exaggeration of my comment should even be taken serious.
Israel has a massive lobbying effort in the United States and that's not exactly news, on top of that there have been many documented pieces of interaction between Trump and Nethanyahu that seem to be evidence that Trump is doing a lot of things to please Israel.
Well, we're certainly not collaborating with West Africa to bomb France. Not even the Philippines to bomb China.
I mean, it could just be the evangelicals hoping to start a holy war that heralds the End of Days. And now that I type that out, I have to agree with your implicit position that it's definitely the more rational catalyst.
I was hoping someone serious (versus the everything is AIPAC nutters) had put thought into it.
Rubio and Walz have been Iran hawks. But I’m not yet convinced they were unilateral. Instead, it looks like a Rice-Powell alignment of vague interests with enough groupthink that dissenters weren't in the room.
But in this case it literally is the AIPAC. Just because conspiracy theorists blame AIPAC for anything and everything they don’t like doesn’t mean the AIPAC doesn’t have massive influence in American politics. Especially in this case where we are going to war at Israel’s behest to distract from the Epstein Israeli intelligence operations.
AIPAC isn't a person. Who is the person who convinced the President to order these strikes? It could be someone at AIPAC. There is no evidence for that, I suspect, because it's highly unlikely.
The current Israeli government obviously has a great deal of influence in the US government. That much is not conspiracy theory. The evangelicals involved in project 2025 have a very real interest in middle eastern conflict from an ideological standpoint. If you want a cynical follow the money villain look no farther than Al Saud and friends. Also, this weakens Russia and further restricts oil reaching China from anywhere. Every oil feed reaching China over water is at this point being curtailed. Looking for a single reason is very hollywood, enough interests aligned.
The US president hasn't required a new war resolution since Afghanistan. They each keep stretching it farther and farther. It cannot be rescinded without a veto-proof majority. If there was a veto proof majority willing to stand up to the executive, a conviction and removal would have already occurred.
The assertion that the US is a democracy is nisguided. It will be downgraded by vdem this month to an electoral autocracy. It is also worth noting that it only takes senators receiving the votes of <7% of the total population to filibuster all legislation, prevent overriding any vetos, and halt all impeachment trials. The fact it has looked like a democracy for so long is astounding.
> Looking for a single reason is very hollywood, enough interests aligned
Correct. But interests need to be animated to have power. Who was arguing that this should be a priority, and a priority now, who is familiar in the White House?
> The assertion that the US is a democracy is nisguided. It will be downgraded by vdem this month to an electoral autocracy
This is nonsense.
> halt all impeachment trials
False. Senate Rule 193 sets time limits on debate for impeachment trials [1].
You seem to have a singular villain ready to point at. I do not see it. The president reportedly thinks whatever the last person to speak said. So are you proposing a mastermind or simply a catalyst?
As far as vdem goes, Lindberg has recently as much as confirmed they will down grade the us below democracy status.
> Lindberg has recently as much as confirmed they will down grade the us below democracy status
I mean, that's interesting from a political theoretical perspective. And if you want to put sacred meaning into it, sure. I'm not sure most people would take a decade-old Swedish institute as a harbinger of whether or not America is a demoracy too seriously (versus other sources, to be clear).
You are right that unless the eiu or others follow suit it would be less meaningful. On the senate conviction, my point is that only 33 senators need to oppose a conviction to stop it. Or to let a veto stand. The smallest states get the same number of senators. If those votes were evenly split, and it was the typical 50-60% turnout. It would actually only be 2-3% of the populace needed.
The rumor I heard was that high-level Pentagon generals had subtly suggested that Trump target Iran. The reason was to distract his attention from Greenland. Logic goes that if you have a reality TV star who built his brand on being a tough guy in the White House, it's far better that he attack a theocratic dictatorship that funds a host of terrorist organizations and whose country is already on the verge of collapse than a NATO ally and fellow democracy that didn't do anything to us.
This is bipartisan. The long term goals were to start with Libya, Iraq, Syria and then Iran. The latter two required Russia to be tied up in another conflict.
They don't explicitly put Iran in their portfolio because for Reality TV it is better to be a peace lover.
Now, undoubtedly the Democrats will pretend to complain, but Schumer and Pelosi want this, too.
[I am expanding on your comment, not trying to contradict anything.]
I don't think the American people can change their country's policy oriented toward a constant state of war, aggression, and invasions of other countries under the current system. This is a constant state policy, regardless of the party or the president. So it can be said that the United States is not a democracy. Money and capital rule, not the people.This can only be changed by a fundamental shift that empowers people over capital.
Of course, I agree that Trump is worse because, by removing the mask of civility and attacking others without first bothering to create propaganda and a narrative about how it is for the greater good and justice, he made the plundering and crimes faster and more efficient.
> don't think the American people can change their country's policy oriented toward a constant state of war, aggression, and invasions of other countries under the current system
Of course we can. People disagreeing with you doesn't mean they don't exist.
These are the Senate seats in play this cycle [1]. How many of those do you think would be flipped based on any foreign policy item?
If you're on this thread you pay attention to foreign policy. The notion that someone doesn't–not isn't informed, but literally doesn't to any degree–is almost more foreign than the strangest countries we read about. But the truth is most Americans have never ranked any foreign policy item as being in their top three issues since the Vietnam War.
We could change it if we wanted to. We don't because it's not personally pertinent or worse, it's boring.
That's assuming the people don't vote for this because they want this.
Many Americans have a hero complex. Their national mythology post World War II includes them being the "good guys" against the "bad guys." That mythology needs a bad guy.
Trump ran on "no wars" because he was going to spend all his focus on America instead of burning taxpayer money dropping bombs overseas. I'm sure some people voted for him at least in part for that reason. You can argue that they should have known he was liar, but there is support for it. Also, with the new concentration camps, the soldiers in our streets, and the nazi salutes I'm not sure the whole "good guys" against the "bad guys" narrative is something trump voters care about at all. They seem pretty comfortable playing the "bad guys" part anyway.
The moment they made that name change and stated their expansionist agenda it finally became clear to me that this wasn't just MAGA anymore, this was actual fascism.
Whether you think the current targets are legitimate or not, the fact that the U.S. is going to war without seeking any democratic approval anymore is deeply troubling.
> The moment they made that name change and stated their expansionist agenda it finally became clear to me that this wasn't just MAGA anymore, this was actual fascism.
I'm pretty sure MAGA was always fascism. I mean, all the signs were there and people were sounding alarm bells almost immediately.
This is clearly not fascism, and not very different from what the US is accustomed to. Let's not waste the meaning of words by throwing them at any occasion.
What do you think fascism is? What we have is a populist, nationalist, racist, regime headed by a man that can't be held accountable for his actions and who acts like a dictator (as further evidenced in this case by going to war without congress) who uses to the power of the government to attack/threaten/suppress his "enemies" here in the US. If this isn't textbook fascism you must admit that it at least checks a lot of the same boxes
Are you claiming Harris or Biden would have bombed Iran like this? That does not sound credible, but if the other party wouldn’t have attached Iran then this is not business as usual, it’s the GOP as usual.
An honest discussion about this cannot be had on this site, it's kinda funny how pointless all the comments are here. Yours is the closest anyone is allowed to get and I wonder if yours will stay up.
Ukraine is a democracy with a legitimate leadership that was not planning to acquire nukes and has no history of planning to remove Russia from the map. To suggest that this attack on Iran is the same as the Russian invasion of Ukraine is very misguided.
Ukraine got rid of nukes and it was massive collosal mistake. In alternative universe where they win and get territory back and get economy on track, they would be 100% warranted to get the nukes.
My point is, Ukraine war and the way it evolved shows that not having nukes is a bad position.
> My point is, Ukraine war and the way it evolved shows that not having nukes is a bad position.
Israel (allegedly? idk) has nukes. Did it stop October 7th? Did it stop Iran from firing ballistic missiles?
The war of today is not an open war (the war in Ukraine did not start on February 24 2022, but in 2014) where nuclear deterrence matters. Nuke will never help if the war is waged through proxies.
To be fair, nuking a piece of land that you claim you own and is also just a few miles away and downwind of your own citizens is a fairly difficult thing to do. Nukes are a great deterrent when it's a place at least 100 miles from your borders, and better if even farther. They're useless in your own backyard.
By now the nukes would have been useless. You need to have a continuous ballistic and nuclear program to manufacture new nukes and missiles as the old ones become stale.
I think Ukraine would have no problem maintaining it's own nuclear program from purely technical perspective, considering they have a number of nuclear plants and expertise. Plutonium is a byproduct of a nuclear plant, they wouldn't even have to bother with uranium enrichment.
About half of the killed in Gaza are militants. And while it sounds insensitive, if your objective is zero civilians dead, the opposing army will simply use civilians as shields knowing that you will never attack.
if you slaughter civilians and label all males as combatants you conveniently get a near 50% militant death rate
don't play dumb, there's a reason israel is not letting foreign media into gaza and slaughtering local journalists at a rate never seen in history of war
> if you slaughter civilians and label all males as combatants you conveniently get a near 50% militant death rate
Say the ratio is 1:4, then what?
> don't play dumb, there's a reason israel is not letting foreign media into gaza and slaughtering local journalists at a rate never seen in history of war
And, at the same time, they keep all the internet links alive so that Palestinians can show the whole world the "genocide"? Like, do you really think that Israelis are that dumb? Islamic Republic shut down the internet to hide the scope of butchery, but Israelis did not figure it out?
They're engaged in willful destruction of hospitals, they kill journalists on purpose, they have systematically blocked aid. Their friend minister recently declared an intent to eliminate all Palestinian territory.
> They're engaged in willful destruction of hospitals
If a civilian facility is used for military purposes it is a legitimate target. Ukranians also bomb schools and hospitals. Are Ukranians commit genocide?
If a hospital is never be attacked, what prevents militaries simply use hospitals as military bases? It's like the ultimate "get out of jail" free card.
> they kill journalists on purpose
US also did in Iraq. And? Does it make US's invasion of Iraq a genocide? Ukranians killed Russian journalists too. Does it make the war in Ukraine a genocide?
> they have systematically blocked aid
Egypt did so as well. Moreover, despite its international obligations, Egypt refused to accept Palestinian refugees as if it wanted a lot of civilians to die.
> Their friend minister recently declared an intent to eliminate all Palestinian territory.
Please provide sources. Genocide is not a matter of cherry-picking or of opinion. People who take this debate seriously look into context and evidence with a level of detail that goes beyond what can be covered here. Anyone interested in arguments and counterarguments will inevitable have to refer to authorities in the matter who have the background, time and resources.
Iran has been "a week away" from acquiring nukes since Netanyahu first claimed it in the 90s.
Not six months ago, Trump launched a strike that "completely obliterated" Iran's ability to obtain nukes. And then, either because he has the memory of a goldfish, or thinks that we do (both are somewhat true), he pulled out "a week away", again, at the SOTU. "We must attack Iran to destroy what I told you we destroyed last year."
Iran may be planning to do so. But this is just a boogeyman being used (again) by Israel and the US.
> And at the double standards applied to Russians and Israelis in their wars of aggression.
I would argue that funding Axis of Resistance from Hezbollah to Houthis is aggression too. Let’s not pretend that IR minded their own business, and suddenly was under attack.
Meanwhile "from the river to the sea" was actual Likud's election slogan before Hamas co-opted it. There are absolutely elements in Israel - and to be clear, in its government, with the ability to and motivation to make it happen, not just extremists posting on their forums - what are quite happy with the idea of razing both Gaza and the West Bank to the ground for settling. And their idea of what to do with the people displaced by this ranges from collateral damage to a shrug of the shoulders and making them someone else's problem.
> And at the double standards applied to Russians and Israelis in their wars of aggression
To be fair, this is the new standard. Russia has promulgated it through its actions in Georgia and Ukraine. China with Tibet and Taiwan. America with Iraq, Venezuela and Iran. The old rules-based international order is dead, and with it Pax Americana.
The wishes of a small group of people aren't the default for the majority. This is why the small group of people say that strong leaders for life, with no checks, are normal and natural.
> wishes of a small group of people aren't the default for the majority
In a geopolitical context, the words and actions of the powerful are what count. And those words and actions currently point–uniformly–towards sovereign borders not being a red line.
I'm certain that Persians will remain in Iran, Arabs in Palestine, and Jews in Germany for any reasonable number of lifetimes we could count. The wishes of a few fascists don't outlast their death.
> that was a couple of decades, it's not like that's an ancient status quo
Sure. The century-long peace following the Napoleonic Wars was also some decades.
Our default state, unfortunately, is war. But we sought to change that after the horrors of WWII (and the nuclear bomb), and it's worth nothing where those noble goals succeeded. It's sad that project is over. But something being sad doesn't mean it isn't true.
no need to accuse russia or china... America has always done that, now along with genocidal minions like israel. it’s insane that the West commits war crimes and people still comment: “It’s china’s fault”. that’s such a weird mentality, avoiding taking accountability.
No one here is saying this is China fault, they’re saying the current situation is on par for how the USA, China and Russia treat the world.
In this thread the only reason people have brought up Chinese issues are because the strong defensiveness of others like China is some saint. They’re not.
Also I think two more examples were missed, how Ukraine wouldn’t have been invaded without china’s tolerance of their ally doing it, and Hong Kong repression. Also how Iran and Ukraine make it much more likely they finally go for Taiwan like they’ve been posturing to do.
To deny China isn’t like Russia and the US in this regards is like thinking Trump was going to be the peace president as he claimed
India, Russia, Philippines, Vietnam (south China sea island taking), Russia (their last border skirmish was in the 90s), itself (PLA soldiers were used and killed people in TS 1989).
The idea that China hasn't 'attacked anyone' in 40 years is factually incorrect. In 1988, they engaged in a deadly naval skirmish with Vietnam over the Johnson South Reef. More recently, the PLA engaged in fatal border clashes with India in the Galwan Valley (2020). On top of direct skirmishes, they have engaged in constant gray-zone aggression: violently ramming Philippine and Vietnamese vessels in the South China Sea, firing water cannons at supply ships, and surrounding Taiwan with live-fire military blockades. That doesn't even touch on the internal human rights abuses against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Multiple international bodies and governments have recognized what they are doing to Uyghurs since 2014 as genocide. Finally, it's hard to ignore their devastating handling of COVID-19. The active suppression of information, punishment of early whistleblowers, and refusal to cooperate with international investigations resulted in unprecedented worldwide damage, amounting to an act of gross global endangerment.
I said "attacked/invaded", not "had some fistfights at the border". Could we set the standard at "at least one piece of military equipment fired on people"?
Bear in mind that we're comparing this to the USA and Israel's military record over the last 40 years.
> I said "attacked/invaded", not "had some fistfights at the border"
Disputed border region. Used military force to intervene. That's an attack.
> Could we set the standard at "at least one piece of military equipment fired on people"?
Why not tens of soldiers killed? (And on what planet do "the 4th (Highland) Motorised Infantry and 6th (Highland) Mechanised Infantry Divisions" of the PLA not contain military equipment?)
> we're comparing this to the USA and Israel's military record over the last 40 years
No, you are. The list I stated was China, Russia and America. You're trying to argue that China upholds the rules-based international order around respecting sovereign borders. That would be news in Taipei.
> I'm arguing that China has, generously, a 3-4 figure body count in the last 40 years
If we ignore proxy wars, sure.
And you're still arguing a straw man. Nobody in this thread ever said that China was as warlike as Russia and America (and Israel and Iran). Just that it has embraced the same geopolitical philosphy and standard.
The examples I gave were Tibet and Taiwan. I was asked to give "one country China has attacked/invaded in the last 40 years," a timeline chosen to exlude the Sino-Vietnamese war [1] and encompass the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse. I did, prioritizing directness, recency and death toll.
I'm not saying China is as militarily forward as Russia or America (or Israel or Iran). I'm saying that the double standard isn't a double standard, it's one Xi explicilty embraces with his rhetoric around Taiwan.
You may be thinking of Hong Kong, which the British invaded and annexed from the Qing dynasty [2] and then handed back to China in 1997 [3] under conditions that Beijing defaulted on in 2019 [4].
No. Threatening to invade a sovereign country, and then staging materiel to do it, is not "nothing." At the every least, it's something the U.S. (and China and Russia) once criticised others for doing. And it's something we've each done.
I know I left that Nobel Peace Prize somewhere … but I can't find it because there's so much America First lying around. I know, I'll ask the aliens and the US men's hockey team if they've seen it.
Being attacked should rule out 'war of aggression', but I guess the phrase seems to have lost any meaning in modern discourse. Apparently you can spend all the time calling 'death to X' and then get shocked when others take you seriously.
> You seem to have forgotten that the US attacked Iran first, which made this regime even possible in the first place.
Bombing of US marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 was funded, and organized by Iran. Just take half day off, and read a bit on the role of Islamic Republic in Middle East in the past 40 years. I guarantee your stance of "US attacked first" will change to the "unclear" at the least.
Doesn't matter who the president is - bush, obama, trump, biden. They all do what israel tells them to do. Just like the iraq war. Iraq, libya, syria, etc. You live long enough and you'll see.
> I'm baffled at the lack of calls to boycott the Fifa world cup in US.
That's cause much of europe is controlled by israel as well.
The war started in 1948 by Europeans attempting to attack and invade Palestine to grab their land to build their mediterranean resort homes. The war never stopped. There was no surrender documents signed. The foreign invaders have always been in the state of war. It's why their colonial outposts are required to have bomb shelters.
Not sure why you would consider October 7 an "insane horror" when the foreign invaders literally burned children alive in 1948 by throwing them into ovens, as happened in the Deir Yassin massacre. Or the rape camps of Tantura. There were 15,000 innocent civilians killed by the invaders when they started this war.
I still can't believe we have to fight Israel's war for them. First the Iraq war and now the Iran war.
It's the Middle East. The birthplace of civilisation. Everyone can legitimately claim everyone else started every conflict in the region because war in Mesopotamia and the Levant literally predates history.
At the end of the day I believe in the primacy of the living. Crimes committed by and against those alive today are infinitely more imporant than those committed by and against their ancestors. I've seen folks take this shit back to King Herod and the Parthians, and it's not a bad historical argument. (The Romans intervened.) It's practically counterproductive, however, inasmuch as focussing on blame versus harm reduction and prevention is counterproductive in any conflict resolution.
One of the separations between the rich and peaceful and the poor and permanently warring is in capacities to forgive. Japan wouldn't be a better place if they committed terrorist attacks against their American occupiers, or decided that they needed blood for Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And Americans wouldn't be happier if we decided to lob a nuke at the British in WWII for burning down our White House in the War of 1812. (France didn't ultimately profit from the Treaty of Versailles.)
> Not sure why you would consider October 7 an "insane horror" when
No. Don't do this to yourself. I get the temptation. But it is the path to becoming a monster. October 7 was an insane horror. So were other things. Atrocities aren't signed; they don't cancel out, just accumulate.
> It's the Middle East. The birthplace of civilisation.
(lots of word salad normalizing genocide)
> No. Don't do this to yourself. I get the temptation to do this. But this is the path to becoming a monster. October 7 was an insane horror. So were other things.
It's OK to hate an entity that decided to kill every Palestinian baby in a neonatal intensive care unit by forcing the staff to abandon them and leaving those precious infants to die slowly and alone of starvation.
Yes, you too can hate that entity, too.
October 7 was not an insane horror. It was a perfectly fine response to such a monstrous foreign entity. Please don't normalize those monsters.
If you're reading what I wrote as endorsing Israel's war you're exhibiting the problem with blind hate. You stop seeing the world as it is.
> It's OK to hate an entity
Sure. Hating an entity doesn't require you to endorse atrocities against its people.
> October 7 was not an insane horror. It was a perfectly fine response to such a monstrous foreign entity
One, you could literally change "October 7" to "the war in Gaza" and have the Israeli far right in a nutshell.
Two, I guess I respect you for being honest about what you believe. It's a clear position. Even if it's morally abhorrent. (You're saying killing children is okay if it's politically expedient.) But I guess there are enough people in that region who believe what you've said across various conflicts; herego this.
> "The point is that as soon as fear, hatred, jealousy and power worship are involved, the sense of reality becomes unhinged. And, as I have pointed out already, the sense of right and wrong becomes unhinged also. There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when ‘our’ side commits it. Even if one does not deny that the crime has happened, even if one knows that it is exactly the same crime as one has condemned in some other case, even if one admits in an intellectual sense that it is unjustified – still one cannot feel that it is wrong. Loyalty is involved, and so pity ceases to function."
> Do you know how many of those killed were soldiers and security personnel?
Do I need to?
If October 7 had solely engaged military targets, the moral contours of the entire campaign would have been different. It didn't. I'd argue couldn't. The political forces that sustained Hamas and Sinwar did not allow for targeted, strategic strikes. Just acts of vengeance played out for an audience.
Like, let's reverse it. Do you know how many of those killed by the IDF are bona fide militants? I don't. But I also don't think that's germane to e.g. "opening fire on crowds of Palestinians as they tried to make their way to the fenced enclosure to get food" [1].
> The war started in 1948 by Europeans attempting to attack and invade Palestine to grab their land to build their mediterranean resort homes.
Jewish people lived there for the past two thousands years. Hebron massacre by Arabs happened in 1929.
> It's why their colonial outposts are required to have bomb shelters.
I think they have bomb shelters to save their civilians from bombs.
> Not sure why you would consider October 7 an "insane horror" when the foreign invaders literally burned children alive in 1948 by throwing them into ovens, as happened in the Deir Yassin massacre. Or the rape camps of Tantura. There were 15,000 innocent civilians killed by the invaders when they started this war.
Interesting how you are totally fine with murder of civilians as long as they are the "right" kind of civilians.
FIFA might be the one organization that can go toe to toe with Trump I’m corruption. And I mean that in the worst way possible. Qatar was using literal slave labor to get stadiums built and the organization just shrugged when informed like it was just another Tuesday.
He could drop a nuke on Greenland tomorrow and they’d probably say they don’t want the sport to be tangled in political disagreements and if anything the World Cup can help everyone heal.
Look up what the Iranian regime has done to his people and to others, including US and European countries, since 1979 and you'll understand that the only reason US allies are cautious and not fully behind this campaign is that toppling the regime means high uncertainty as to what would replace it...
I know some people weren't alive then, but the invasion of Iraq started off pretty good for the US... Sort of how Russia imagined it's march on Kiev would go (!3) 4 years ago.
What replaced Sadaam was the US, and that went horribly for everyone.
You say that like US and Israel hit Iceland or Portugal. Like, Iran wasn't source of terror on Middle East, funding terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbolla and Houthi. Like, Iran didn't make "death to Israel, death to America" their national idea.
Remind us of Ukrainian rocket attacks on Russian cities, that provoked Ruso-Ukrainian war.
You can't not know all of this, so you're either a hamas/russian shill or a useful idiot.
What does it matter? There won't be any consequences for it. He can just do this now and then later the supreme court or congress will say something that also won't matter. The trade war wasn't legal, was struck down, yet is still happening.
> Do Americans even read or care about Constitution anymore?
Supreme court does not, so why should random Americans?
It is not like the high but malleable ideals in it mattered. Its only use is to be able to claim in abstract "we have these freedoms and protection" while the court system renders them void in practice.
The hope would be if more Americans were reading it, and understanding, then they would hold leaders more accountable and we wouldn't even get in this situation. The founding fathers kind of assumed an educated population, even if debating and disagreeing, would come to better conclusions. This current method of "lets cut education so the population doesn't know what is going on" is really a long term plan for the religious right to take over. But they are thinking in decades and generations.
What I would like people to understand is that this isn't a partisan issue. As bad as Trump is, American foreign policy is uniparty. Just look at the rhetoric from the Democratic Party leadership on an Iran strike. You have the likes of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries quibbling over the procedure not the policy, saying Congress needs to approve action, not that that action is belligerent or unwarranted.
October 7 happened under a Democratic president and continued essentially unchanged under Trump. Biden consistently lied about "red lines" and seeing a ceasefire [1].
The problem here isn't one party or one persident, it's America's commitment to imperialism, of which Iran is just one aspect. Since WW2 especially there has been so much regime change done or aided by the US as well as military action, it has it's own Wikipedia page [2].
And what did Kamala Harris promise to change about Biden's Middle East policy? Absolutely nothing [3]. It's a big part of why she lost and the DNC don't want to admit that so they're trying to cover up the 2024 autopsy [4].
Don't fool yourself into thinking anything would be different under a Kamala Harris administration.
I’m not sure what would have happened under a Dem administration. I’m not sure I’m against action in Iran.
But one the whole like precedents of the Trump Administration, was that we were going to ignore foreign entanglements, even if they could be perceived as being in our interests.
It’s wild to me how much Trump seems like Bush 2.0 when I think Trump was something of a reaction to Bush 1.0.
So much of both parties is actually alike, underneath a window dressing of differences (eg woke/anti woke), and a complicit media which does its best to amplify and brainwash people into believing. When it comes to policies that actually affect the elites, the deep state military industrial complex/intelligence services or financial interests, it is a uniparty. Look at how Obama continued the war on terror for example, after running on “hope and change”.
> I guess Israel can play the "October 7th" card at least which was an insane horror.
The islamic republic of Iran has been slaughtering tens of thousands of peaceful protesters who don't want to live under sharia laws anymore. Hunting wounded in hospitals and executing them.
It's obvious there's a movement in Iran that tries to topple the islamist regime. In my city, in the EU, I see cars with iranian flags and I've seen iranian in exile call for the international community to do targetted strikes.
I'm not defending the strikes but let's not make it sound like the US is launching nukes on peaceful monks in Tibet either: we're talking about evil islamist regime that slaughtered tens of thousands of unarmed people a few weeks ago.
I was going to say it's false equivalence to compare the Russian attack on Ukraine which was peaceful with a newly installed democratic leader and Iran which has an iffy dictatorship slaughtering thousands of unarmed protestors and exporting terrorism all over with aspirations to make that nuclear.
That's the policy being followed here. If you remember back a few weeks, Iran killed likely 30,000 of its own citizens. On top of that, they will not negotiate about medium and short-range missiles or stopping of nuclear production.
A power like that that happily goes after it's neighbors, directly or indirectly is a threat to everyone.
Applying those particular criticisms to Iran and not Israel is a special kind of irony given the past ~75 years (but especially the last 2-3), and when the latter is presently attacking the former unprovoked.
Islamic Republic sees itself as a vehicle to spread Islamic revolution around the world.
Just listen to their internal rhetoric, watch who they find and why, and it is clear. However, since it’s Trump who is bombing IR, people will defend the IR regardless of what the IR stands for.
Yes. The US supports the monarchy, the Kurds and MeK. The CIA was revealed to have armed MeK (despite designation) and my guess is that they do with the Kurds too. The CIA also talks to the Balochi groups as well although I don't know how organized or armed they are.
Needless to say, "regime change" would in reality mean civil war like Syria or collapse like Libya.
I don't understand Iran, Hezbollah's and the Houthis' patience with the US actually. It's absolutely shocking. After the US betrayed ALL of it's own fucking allies, in what world does it make sense to negotiate with them?
The Houthis are still "threatening" to do things today after already being decimated and Hezbollah's strength more than halved.
I don't support any of these creeps but if any of them were minimally rational, they would have all gone to total war with Israel and the US the minute they realized what Hamas was doing on October 7th. They look even more naive than Europeans at this point.
The Iranians are pragmatic. Look beyond their relationship with the US. There are other state actors that Iran wants to remain in good relations with.
They understand that a defensive war is not the same as an offensive war. Besides, going on the offensive isn’t something they - as a regional power - have the firepower or diplomatic “street cred” for.
They are already painted as a so-called irrational actor. Doing something reckless will only prove its detractors right.
The other part to this is keeping the negotiation door open. The idea is to demonstrate to other state actors that they are cool headed & rational - even in wartime conditions.
Rational negotiations have to be based on the relative power of the parties.
It made sense for iran to try to negotiate with the US because the alternative was a war they had no chance to win. Arguably it also made sense for them to not come to an agreement because USA wanted concessesions the Iranian regime probably couldn't do while still staying in power given how weak they are domestically.
> I don't support any of these creeps but if any of them were minimally rational, they would have all gone to total war with Israel and the US the minute they realized what Hamas was doing on October 7th.
Israel's ability to divide and conqour its enemies here has been pretty impressive.
> It made sense for iran to try to negotiate with the US because the alternative was a war they had no chance to win.
They have no chance of winning no matter what. At least inflict some damage on your enemy while you die like Hamas chose (although I disagree with the fact that they chose that for a lot of innocent people too.)
The US isn't ever going to leave anyone, let alone Iran, alone. The options are a) fight and cease to exist and b) don't fight and cease to exist.
> The US isn't ever going to leave anyone, let alone Iran, alone. The options are a) fight and cease to exist and b) don't fight and cease to exist.
Oh boy, I see we learned nothing from Afghanistan. The US will eventually leave you alone, There will be a power vacuum, and the local warlord will rise to that opportunity.
The "military operations" don't end in decisive vistory. They end with death and destruction for the young men sent into battle, and more enemies in the surrounding areas.
The US hasn't left Afghanistan alone. They were driven out of the country by force. They are still attacking it in multiple different ways and will continue to do so until they are defeated. Time did not end when the US was kicked out. They aren't just going to give up their goals.
> At least inflict some damage on your enemy while you die like Hamas chose (although I disagree with the fact that they chose that for a lot of innocent people too.)
Ultimately? If the people who are going to kill you were elected into power by those "innocent people", why would you not lash out at them too? Some twisted sense of morality or taking the high road?
I don't know what you're talking about. It sounds like you might be saying Israelis who elected Likud (and the supporting parties) are not innocent. If that's what you mean, then I agree, but that wasn't what I was referring to.
I was speaking of the Gazans who originally elected Hamas to protect them but where Hamas eventually decided to sacrifice masses of them to achieve some of their goals. They knew what would happen and did it anyway, without the people's consent.
It is still unhinged, but not because of nuclear weapons. Ukraine, and now Iran, showed the whole world what happens when you don’t have a nuclear deterrence.
I think the unhinged rhetoric is, in part, a necessary partner of the nukes. Because you need to not only have nukes but have your adversaries believe that you won't hesitate to use them. If North Korea had nukes, but the US didn't believe they would use them, then they'd be getting the Iran, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, etc, etc, etc treatment.
The claim has always been made that attacking NK was off the table anyway, because they have obscene numbers of conventional artillery pointed directly at SK's capital and largest population centre, right across the DMZ; even the fastest decapitation strike wouldn't have prevented Seoul from getting flattened. Nukes definitely don't hurt but I'm not actually sure NK needed the bomb as an additional deterrent.
I mean, nothing unhinged here, nukes are only ever useful if other countries believe you will use them when attacked. Same thing for North Korea as the US, France, etc. (Well, nuclear war is unhinged, but...).
It’s good for them. That’s the point they’re making. All this shows that for many countries nuclear proliferation is the way to guarantee their safety.
The people arent being pppressed by the bomb, but by their leaders. The odea that the US would liberate all peoples from tyranical rulers is naive. The US routinely installs and supports tyrants who allign with their geopolitical goals. Pol pot, pahlavi, pinochet, marcos, suharto, seko, the banana republics. Nukes didnt enable those guys, the US did
Maybe after the civil war, certainly not during it. If I had to pick where to live, I'd pick North Korea over Ukraine right now because it's a lot easier to live in a dictatorship than an active war zone. (This isn't me saying I want to live in NK, I don't).
But I'd also point out that a lot of what makes it really suck to live in the worst places in the world isn't often the government but rather the international relationships. Turkey has a particularly brutal government, but it's Nato and EU ally status means that the civilians enjoy modern trade and travel.
The worst times to be in NK was the 90s when there was an ongoing famine and the US refused to lift sanctions thinking it'd spark a civil war that overthrew the regime. It didn't.
>I'd pick North Korea over Ukraine right now because it's a lot easier to live in a dictatorship than an active war zone
You can live a perfectly normal life in Kiev. It’s not exactly an active war zone, you see luxury cars worth hundreds of thousands of dollars on every corner. You can buy bottles of Petrus in 24 hour supermarkets and eat decent food at countless fancy restaurants.
Goodwine in Kiev will also put US luxury grocers to shame. Ukraine might be at war, but the quality of life is hardly bad.
> I'd pick North Korea over Ukraine right now because it's a lot easier to live in a dictatorship than an active war zone
To each their own. I wouldn't. In part because once you're in North Korea, you're not getting out. That isn't the case for Ukraine, Syria or any of the other war-torn countries.
It'd depend on my status. There are a lot of people who can't just get out of Ukraine or Syria. The average citizen in Syria had no means to just flee. I'd assume in my above scenario that I'm one of the masses that can't escape.
NK does actually allow people to leave, mostly to china and mostly after they attain a high social class. A decent number of tourists, including US citizens, go on tours of NK.
> If you had to live in gaza or north korea right now, which would you choose?
Me as me? Gaza. Because I'd get out. That's a bullshit answer, though, so I'll answer as a local. And there, it's honestly a coin toss because Gaza is possibly the shittiest war zone outside Africa right now. But if you said North Korea or Syria during its civil war? North Korea or Myanmar? I'm going with not Pyongyang.
The only one where I'd honestly choose North Korea hands down is Sudan, because that's the one nobody really gives a shit about which means it's going to go on forever.
> How would you get out? It’s impossible. Every exit is shut.
Of course it isn't, it's entirely porous to the IDF. I'm an American citizen. If I were teleported to Gaza I'd probably be fine. At material risk of being fucked up. But I'd take my chances there over being an American teleported to North Korea.
Sure. And yes, it's risky. But there are two million people in Gaza and half a dozen to a dozen, on average, being killed each day. If I, literally I, were teleported into Gaza, my primary operational concern would be avoiding Hamas. (My primary operational goal, getting to an internet-connected device.)
Any attempt to walk towards a controlled point or border will get you shot inside 2-3km. Your passport will be removed from your body before it is destroyed. You were never there.
You're making the mistake of correlating these proxy wars with any later improvements in these countries' living conditions. War is always detrimental to quality of life.
> You're making the mistake of correlating these proxy wars with any later improvements in these countries' living conditions
...nobody argued the proxy wars were good for those countries. Just that if you're turned into a random local in one of those theatres, chances are you're better off a decade or two later than if you're turned into a random North Korean.
War isn't glamorous. It's mechanized death and torture destroying communities, families, and loved ones. And when it's powered by foreign governments, it's worse. Because the two colliding sides are armed to the gills with the best weapons in murder along with mercenaries and no oversight.
Living in a dictatorship is hard but doable, There are literally generations of people that have survived and thrived in that sort of an environment. It's not preferable, for sure, but you still have your family, friends, and neighbors. None of them are trying to actively kill you. So long as you follow the rules, life in a dictatorship is generally predicable and the odds of the state making you specifically an example are low.
The only people who thrive in a dictatorship are its enforcers. And by the way a dictatorship needs quite a lot of them. That's how, decades after its fall, you get voices saying it wasn't all that bad, there were some nice things actually, or we should do it again.
And also your neighbors absolutely will sell you out.
I agree. A foreign powered civil war is worse than that.
Thriving in a dictatorship, even not as an enforcer, is possible. It's a worse life in general but still a life you can live.
Generally speaking, the only life that truly sucks in a dictatorship is if you become an enemy of the state. That doesn't generally apply to all citizens because, if it did, a dicatorship would quickly end in revolt. That is the theory behind strong sanctions. It's believed that if you starve a nation eventually the citizens revolt. The problem is it takes little resources to keep people happy, ultimately.
So if a dictatorship decides to invade a neighboring democratic country, the people there should not fight and let them take over, because war is worse than dictatorship, right?
A authoritarian regime starting wars isn't one I want to live in either. That's why I don't want to live in Israel.
Iran has had civil unrest over the last year, they weren't in the position politically to be doing much of anything to the "democracy" of Israel.
The entire reason for the US Israel attack on Iran is because of that civil unrest, not because Iran was a threat, but because both nations see an opportunity to install a puppet government that does their bidding.
What remains to be seen is if Russia sees a similar opportunity and we end up with another Syria.
Sorry if my answer seemed evasive. I was reading into your question something not stated
> the people there should not fight and let them take over, because war is worse than dictatorship, right?
No, I think the people should fight back, obviously. A country being actively invaded has a right to fight back. The war isn't their choosing and laying down arms is a mistake because captured civilians are rarely treated well after a war.
I'm specifically talking about an established dictatorship vs war. Specifically, as I said, a civil war which is a proxy war for foreign agents. Starting a war to end a dictatorship is bad. A dictatorship starting a war is bad. However, a dictatorship not starting wars is ultimately a better place to live vs anywhere under and active civil war.
The fact that NK possess nuclear weapons strongly discourages external players from attacking it. It does not in any way change the tools NK has at its disposal domestically.
If you're trying to say that had NK not had nukes we would bomb it for 'humanitarian purposes' or 'on behalf of its people' then I have a couple of bridges for sale.
> If you're trying to say that had NK not had nukes we would bomb it for 'humanitarian purposes' or 'on behalf of its people' then I have a couple of bridges for sale.
You think the US would just leave them alone as a communist, sovereign country without nukes, bordering china???
Theyve had the bomb for a while and south korea still exists and is thriving. I have seen alot of batshit insane talk from them, but no real negative consequences for any other country. So it hasnt really been a negative for anyone. I dont think theyll use it first either because they know theyll be glassed if they do
Now if they didnt have the bomb, i dont think they would have lasted this long. I think the US would have gone and "democratized" them to smithereens a while ago.
Usually an invasion entails an intent to capture territory and occupy. A suicide terror attack is qualitatively different even if it’s large-scale. The boots on the ground could just as well have been rockets, whereas an invasion needs a longer term presence.
> Considering the rationale for this war that kind of seems false
The spring to a nuke is riskier than ever. That doesn't change that nuclear sovereignty is a tier above the regular kind, this is something every one of the global powers (China, Russia and America) and most regional powers (Israel) have explicilty endorsed.
"In the world of strategic studies, there has been a return to ‘theories of [nuclear] victory’. Their proponents draw on the work of past scholars such as Henry Kissinger, who wondered in his 1957 book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy if extending the American deterrent to all of Europe at a time when the threat of total destruction hung over the US itself would actually work: ‘A reliance on all-out war as the chief deterrent saps our system of alliances in two ways: either our allies feel that any military effort on their part is unnecessary or they may be led to the conviction that peace is preferable to war even on terms almost akin to surrender ... As the implication of all-out war with modern weapons become better understood ... it is not reasonable to assume that the United Kingdom, and even more the United States, would be prepared to commit suicide in order to defend a particular area ... whatever its importance, to an enemy’.
One of the recommended solutions was to bring tactical nuclear weapons back into the dialectic of deterrence extended to allied territories, so as to give US decision makers a range of options between Armageddon and defeat without a war. Global deterrence was ‘restored’ by creating additional rungs on the ladder of escalation, which were supposed to enable a sub-apocalyptic deterrence dialogue — before one major adversary or the other felt its key interests were threatened and resorted to extreme measures. Many theorists in the 1970s took this logic further, in particular Colin Gray in a 1979 article, now back in fashion, titled ‘Nuclear Strategy: the case for a theory of victory’.
...
In 2018 Admiral Pierre Vandier, now chief of staff of the French navy, offered a precise definition of this shift to the new strategic era, which has begun with Russia’s invasion: ‘A number of indicators suggest that we are entering a new era, a Third Nuclear Age, following the first, defined by mutual deterrence between the two superpowers, and the second, which raised hopes of a total and definitive elimination of nuclear weapons after the cold war’" [1].
I think the chances we see a tactial nuclear exchange in our lifetimes has gone from distant to almost certain.
This is an incredibly facile take on the situation. Iran has been a destabilizing regional power with imperial aims for 47 odd years. They even murdered the PM of Lebanon via their proxy army. They’ve been poking the bear for decades, and there are serval occasions where it may have happened sooner in an alternative universe. Had McCain become president in ‘08 we may well have seen a land invasion from US positions in Iraq, as the Iranian Quds force was already fighting US soldiers in Iraq. The whole DoD is now full of Iraq veterans who hate the Iranian government to their bones. It’s shocking this didn’t happen sooner, and probably only didn’t because of luck.
More than taking control of Iranian petrol, this is probably more an attempt at cutting off China access to it (and also generally eliminating one of their allies), same as for the Venezuelan invasion.
I used to believe that, I think there are also some very ambitious people nearby who want to use US armed forces for their benefit - as any rational player who has influence over such power would attempt.
1. According to the US and Israel, Iran has been a week away from having nuclear weapons for at least 34 years [1];
2. It's quite clear Iran could've developed nuclear weapons but chose not to. I actually think was a mistake. The real lesson from the so-called War on Terror was that only nuclear weapons will preserve your regime (ie Norht Korea);
3. Israel is a nuclear power. It's widely believed that Israel first obtained weapons grade Uranium by stealing it from the US in the 1960s [2];
4. In a just world, people would hang for what we did to Iran in 1953, 1978-79, the Iran-Iraq War and sanctions (which are a sanitized way of saying "we're starving you"); and
5. The current round of demands include Iran dismantling its ballistic missile program. This is because the 12 day war was a strategic and military disaster for the US and Israel.
Israel has a multi-layered missile defence shield. People usually talk about Iron Dome but that's just for shooting down small rockets. Separate layers exist for long-range and ballistic missiles (eg David's Sling, Arrow-2, Arrow-3). In recent times the US has complemented these with the ship-borne THAAD system.
Even with all this protection, Iran responded to the unprovoked attacks of the 12-day war by sending just enough ballistic missiles to overwhelm the defences, basically saying "if we have to, we can hit Israel".
Many suspect that the real reason the US negotiated an end to the 12 day war was because both Israel and the US were running cirtically low on the munitions for THAAD and Israel's missile defence shield. You can't just quickly make more either. Reportedly that will take over a year to get replacements.
Thing is, pretty much all of this missile defence technology is about to become obsolete once hypersonic missiles become more widespread, which is going to happen pretty soon. I suspect that's a big part of why the US and Israel are now trying so desperately to topple the regime and turn Iran into a fail-state like Somalia or Yemen.
I'm not normally one to encourage nuclear proliferation but when it's the only thing the US will listen to, what choice do countries have?
> Thing is, pretty much all of this missile defence technology is about to become obsolete once hypersonic missiles become more widespread, which is going to happen pretty soon.
I think you'll have to be more specific.
Or I guess to compare with your other observation: """Even with all this protection, Iran [sent] enough ballistic missiles to overwhelm the defences""" -- It's not a binary of "have missile defense or not => every missile will be shot down". An amount of missile defense will make it harder for missiles to successfully hit a target.
Similarly with hypersonic missiles, it's not the binary of "I have a missile that's difficult to defend against, I win".
Having a sword which can defeat a shield isn't in itself sufficient to obsolete the shield. (Infantry can be killed with bullets, yet infantry remain an important part of fighting despite that).
Yes, because "what choice did Iran have" other than:
1. Routinely calling for death to Israel and America, turning it into part of the national curriculum and sowing hate
2. Funding, training, supplying and directing multiple violent proxy organizations around the region which attacked Israel and undermined their own countries (Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in West Bank and Gaza, other organizations in Iraq)
3. Enriching Uranium to clearly non-civilian grade in multiple militarily hardened facilities;
4. Directly attacking multiple Jewish targets around the world (like the AMIA and then embassy bombings in Argentina)
5. Attacking neighboring countries with ballistic and cruise missiles, like the attacks on Saudi Aramco in 2019
6. Holding international shipping and energy markets hostage by threatening to attack ships and tankers in the Persian Gulf
7. Abusing their own citizens, including public executions, persecutions and extreme violence
8. Providing support to Russia in their efforts in Ukraine, and especially drones used for indiscriminate dumb attack waves against civilians and infrastructure
Now we have people arguing that if they had just gotten nukes then they could have continued doing all of that.
Probably in all of it. Iran wouldn't have a MAD arsenal, they'd have a small handful that they could pop on a ballistic. We know we can shoot down Iran's missiles. And we know they can't reach America. I'm entirely unconvinced that we wouldn't have launched an attack on Iran even if they had nuclear weapons, because we think we can intercept them, and if we can't, they aren't hitting the homeland.
And on the off chance this defense doesn’t work? No system is perfect. Put another way, would the risk calculation for an attack on Iran be as easy as it is right now?
The point of having nuclear capabilities is to make the risk calculation more difficult. It doesn’t mean you need to have state of the art capabilities.
There is a hardline element in the IRGC that personally profits from autarky. If the Iranian markets opened to the world, it would decimate their incomes.
This is part of why we help defend Israel, to constrain wars to conventional means.
In the first Gulf War, we placed the Patriot batteries around Israel, as they said that if an Iraqi biological or chemical SCUD attack hit Tel Aviv, they would vitrify Baghdad.
Having nukes doesn't prevent _anyone_ from attacking you, but it does constrain those attacks to conventional means. And what if you pulled off a decapitation attack against Tel Aviv? Well their fleet of nuclear capable subs would make you pay.
Thanks for pointing this out. I hear people say this over and over, if Iran only had nukes it would be safe to continue propagating terrorism as it has been doing. It’s obviously wrong, as you point out. Russia has nukes. India has nukes. Having nuclear weapons doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want, if anything it brings a higher level of scrutiny. A nuclear Iran would be a serious problem for many and that’s why it’s so critical to make sure that doesn’t happen, not just for Israel but the entire planet.
There's only one country that has repeatedly attacked its neighbors and has decided to occupy and seize land from two of them while actively calling for and carrying out strikes in many others all in the last two years.
My totally unsubstantiated conspiracy theory is that several of those are sitting in shipping containers in the US and Europe, and that is part of the reason that their interests drive all western foreign policy, despite their open hostility to their 'allies'.
How does that factor in here right now? We haven't used or threatened to use nukes, and at least the public case made is in part that Iran is trying to get nukes and shouldn't.
I say "public case" specifically here, I don't buy that justification but it is still the one being used.
It likely wouldn't be kinetic, but nukes didn't stop us from chipping away at the Soviet Union.
I could be wrong, but I don't buy the public story that this is about regime change. You don't topple a government with air superiority alone, and you don't do it in a matter of days. I also don't expect the US would be okay letting the Iranian people pick who comes next. We have a history of installing puppets and that similarly doesn't happen only via bombing runs.
> If Iran had deployable nukes, would they get invaded?
Honestly, maybe? Like if we had high confidence we knew where they were, and Israel consented to the attack, I could absolutely see the U.S. trying to take it out in storage.
If Iran had a nuke that could hit the U.S., I'd say no. But that's a stretch from "deployable nukes."
> Name a country that got bombed to credibly destroy the government, and had nukes
Makes you wonder if recent antagonistic approach towards Europe was just part of this?
The Iran invasion was on the todo list of the current administration for ever. In those situation, they'd probably call NATO to step up in the same fashion as Yugoslavia.
And in that effort at least some level of collaboration from Europe is required, by geological proximity to middle east. So, prop them up with rethoric, make them lenient or even pro-iran invasion. "If we focus on Iran we will drop all the rethoric around Europe and Greenland" would probably even make the anti US sentiment be passive or silent about the military collaboration.
I recall someone (name escapes me at the moment) defining WW3 as ignition in 5 flashpoints between belligerent groupings:
- Eastern Africa esp. Sudan, which we all nearly universally ignore
- Israel Iran
- Russia and a neighbor which we know today is Ukraine
- Pakistan Afghanistan India
- China Taiwan Plus Plus
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.
> Attributes that distinguish WW3 from previous world wars were IIRC
You're missing the commonalities, what defined world wars: the full might of industrial economies being dedicated to military campaigns.
World War II's theatres' were incoherent–the Axis interests in e.g. China and the Pacific had basically zero stragegic overlap with Europe and North Africa. (The only parties having to consider a unified theatre being the USSR and USA.) But the entire economic surplus of Europe, Asia and North America was basically dedicated to (or extracted towards) making things that were reasonably expected to be destroyed within the year.
The USSR had to carefully keep enough land forces in the Pacific region to deter a Japanese land invasion. (Remember that Japan controlled Manchukuo.) So, yes, the USSR had little involvement, and they had to be very careful to keep it from becoming an active front.
Check your thinking. Korea currently has a DMZ dividing it from a war that never really ended and was fought to a stalemate. Their nuclear program didn’t result in military action because they currently have a gun to the head of every South Korean citizen and the backing of a large nuclear neighbour. Those are circumstances you can’t easily recreate elsewhere.
Adding to your point, Seoul is visible from North Korea, and vice-versa, and likely has enough conventional artillery aimed at it that even without nukes an invasion would be Very Bad for the Korean people.
> And essentially none of us will know the truth, even the reasons.
Maybe not in the details, but the general geopolitical "axes" (USA/the "West" vs China/Russia/BRICS/"Global South"/etc) have become increasingly obvious in the last years. And so far, most of the recent conflicts fit pretty neatly into that pattern.
Of course there are more things running in parallel, like the general shift to the right, Trump in the US, the specific situation with Israel/Palestine, the emergence of AI, etc.
But I don't see why any of this needs any other "grand secret cause" to explain the current conflicts.
BRICS is Russia wishing that China (much less Brazil, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates) were aligned to its interests.
A more accurate description of the way the world is trending:
US / UK / Europe / Japan / South Korea (still tied by defense, if push really comes to shove) vs Russia vs China vs Non-Aligned Nations (India, Indonesia, Egypt, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, etc.)
And historically (1960s), in a multi-polar world, middle powers are best served by being ambiguously aligned to force advantageous courting by major powers.
Then have a look who is supporting whom with weapons, which militaries are running maneuvers together, who is cooperating - or not cooperating - economically, who is visiting each others' summits, etc.
It's true that many countries are trying to have relationship with both sides or are trying to keep all options open - which is the most reasonable strategy, I think - but there are still two power centers emerging between which those countries are aligning themselves.
Well, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea seem to have a (fairly loose) "alliance of convenience" at the moment. "The enemy of my enemy", more or less.
I'm surprised such a superstitious reply is so highly-upvoted. There's no "WW3" any more than there is time travel or blue smirfs. It's a hypothetical, but you're talking about it like it's an inevitability. That's just not logically-sound thinking.
We are not heading into WW 3. Those old rich men you worry about have to pay a much higher price in cash for their illusions of control. And that reduces what harm and how long wars can run. Keep an eye on what the markets tell everyone on Monday.
First, I don't think this leads to WW3 although I would agree with you that there is a general global tendency towards escalation. Still, I think we can not call this WW3 and I am not 100% certain this is a build-up to WW3 either.
As for North Korea: I think the situation is not solely about North Korea itself but China. China is kind of acting as protective proxy here. I don't see North Korea as primary problem to the USA, but to South Korea and Japan. Both really should get nukes. Taiwan too, though mainland China would probably invade when it thinks Taiwan is about to have nukes; then again China already committed to invasion - this is the whole point of having a dictator like Xi in charge now.
The situation Russia is in is interesting, because even though they are stronger than Ukraine, Ukraine managed to stop or delay Russia, which is a huge feat, even with support. As Putin does not want to stop, and Trump is supporting him (agent Krasnov theory applies), I think this has escalation potential. Putin is killing civilians in Ukraine daily - I think he does that because he already committed to further escalation against all Europeans. So Europeans need a nuclear arsenal, but european politicians are totally lame - see Merz "we will never have nukes". Basically he wants to be abused by Putin here.
> So Europeans need a nuclear arsenal, but european politicians are totally lame
Are France's 240 submarines-launched thermonuclear ballistic missiles not adequate? Despite the need for security, nuclear proliferation is extremely bad. It seems ideal for France continue to maintain their nuclear weapons while the rest of Europe keeps their hands clean.
hmmm - but is it really "world war" 3 if it's a bunch of localized conflicts?
I'm a little disappointed that the internet and social media had little impact on universal disclosure about geopolitical matters. My sense is that governments updated their playbooks to both defend against them (e.g. minimize leaking) and leverage them (e.g. bury inconvenient information with propaganda). By comparison, I'm more hopeful about cellphones and bodycams generally reducing excessive police violence and discrimination (emphasis on "reduce").
prediction: the nuclear threat will look quaint compared with disposable million-drone swarms on land and in the air, targeting anything remotely interesting via onboard AI.
The revolution will be notably public, but not live-streamed. It will come as a swift and decisive reaction to a shock-and-awe deployment that will de-stabilize the state apparatus of a big nation outside of the “west”. The movement will be initially localized but it will spread until a perimeter of containment is setup around developed nations. Much more will come after.
Ok. So we have just taken out all of Israel's foes with force. They are safe now right? We can stop supporting them militarily in every way now right? They no longer need any weapons, intelligence support, defense support, etc, right? If this is the right path to their long term safety then this must be true.
> The US mostly isn't interested in butchering it's own citizens, slavery is the approach we went with À la the U.S. prison system.
I hate to break it to you, but US prisons, while maybe worse than Scandinavian ones, are on par with France, and way better than like 70% of the world.
This is not a competition who has it worse. You can acknowledge terrible things that IR does without trying to portray yourself as a victim.
Protesters that took to the streets, according to what I read, because the US president said he would back them. Sounds like he led them to a slaughter to generate justification.
I'm delegitimizing the US president saying things he can't back up, causing death, and getting the US into another war that the American people didn't ask for.
No. You are saying that these people died because of Trump's tweet, and not because the IR goons gunned people on the streets. Seems to me that you place the fault on Trump, rather than on those who pulled the trigger.
Well hopefully this is short, minimally lethal, and leads to regime change for all those involved.
That would be ideal but unfortunately not likely. Nobody will like this comment but US ships are sitting ducks. They have minimal ammo per the pentagon and no oilers. No oilers and low ammo means no prolonged conflict. Only two of the ships are nuclear powered not counting submarines. Most of Iran's military and weapons are deep underground in a massive series of underground cities and tunnels. The US would require boots on the ground if they manage to breach the tunnel openings under the mountains. Should that fail the only viable targets are civilians and that won't win favor with anyone or accomplish anything.
Iranian military could just wait it out if they wanted and then smoke Israel with supersonic missiles when the US leaves. Then we find out if Israel does have the nukes for the Samson option and that would result in the destruction of Israel. Iran's military could survive a nuclear strike but would have to clean up the fallout and I am not sure they could. Anyone not underground would likely get Acute Radiation Sickness and Cancer.
On a positive note if the US can manage to get into the tunnels and send in enough munitions to start detonating the missile stockpile a chain reaction could crack all the concrete and collapse the tunnels. Satellite could detect which tunnel they try to evac from. They have less than 5 days to accomplish the chain reaction assuming this is the plan. From the videos I have seen the missiles are literally lined up like a double-strand fuse.
The US military has seldom had problems with the blowing up the enemy bit. It's providing peace and stability after that happens where they tend to run into problems.
The US military has seldom had problems with the blowing up the enemy bit.
True however AFAIK they have never once been in this situation. Iran has spent 40+ years digging in and hunkering down. There were plenty of bunkers in WWII but this is a whole new setup, deeper under mountains, higher quality concrete assuming they knew what they were doing and dug in much deeper. To get this done in 5 days will be quite a feet. If they manage to do it I will be very impressed.
It's providing peace and stability after that happens where they tend to run into problems.
I think you are correct, what happens afterwards is usually a crap-fest. That would require a lot of boots on the ground to maintain stability for a very long time. It's not a great example but Korea is one such example. The payoff may be worth it if many of the Iranian funded terror groups are drained of resources as a result. Keeping boots on the ground for years will require funding from congress. Short of that it will just be another power vacuum filled by yet another zealot. The "if's" are doing a lot of heavy lifting in my comment.
There is nothing ideal about that outcome. The "regime change" people talk about is intended to look like what happened in Libya: A failed state that falls in anarchy.
However, to be fair, Desert Storm hasn't resulted in regime change. The Coalition bombed the shit out of the Iraqi army, but never committed to the ground operation deep inside Iraq. And Saddam's regime survived until the next war.
That alone hints that it is very hard to bring a dictatorship down with just aerial attacks - the ground component is also essential. Something tells me it is going to be the same here.
Only a land operation or a total collapse of the government, with the armed police and military joining the opposition, can topple the Iranian regime.
Won't there be boots on the ground? We already bombed their facilities and at the time they said best that bombs can do is fuck up the entrance to these tunnels.
2 countries with the best war technologies on earth must work together to have a war with embargod-country-for-decades.
And those 2 counties are founder of Board of Peace.
My greater concern is the people of Iran. Especially since Iran has conscription so the people who end up dieing in a war didn't even consent to being made soldiers.
> Iranian media now report 40 killed and 48 students injured following the strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab, as rescue and recovery efforts continue.
Easy, it was Israel that probably did it and it's been shown time and time again that they can do this without political fallout under the guise that the target was a hiding spot for the military assets of Iran (or Hamas in the case of Palestine bombing).
No need to worry. They have extensively stress-tested the American public over the past few years and the conclusion is clear: Americans are never going to revolt no matter what you do to them.
I am just befuddled by how much of this violence is directly motivated by religious concerns, both on the side of Iran and on the side of Israel and USA.
I have been reading on the topic of shunyata or emptiness in Mahayana Buddhism, and have been uncomfortably observing just how much of the artifacts we take to be real and substantial in the world are just "made up". They don't have an inherent reality of their own except what we attribute to them. And yet, made up stories can have very real consequences in terms human suffering.
It ought to be possible to cut through the layers of reifications and simply defuse much of the strife in the world. And yet, we continue to inflict misery on each other unnecessarily.
You’re mistaking the packaging for the product. Religion is the language leaders use. Power, territory, oil corridors, regional dominance, and domestic political survival are what they’re actually fighting over.
Tehran isn’t calculating missile ranges based on sutras. Washington doesn’t position carrier groups because of metaphysics. Israel’s security doctrine isn’t a meditation retreat.
Spiritual narratives make clean moral theater for the public. They mobilize bodies. They sanctify retaliation. But the machinery underneath runs on leverage and deterrence, not theology.
Wake up to the real world.
Calling it primarily religious violence feels tidy and tragic in a philosophical way. It’s harder, and more uncomfortable, to admit that it’s strategic violence dressed in symbols people recognize.
Shunyata is a beautiful lens for seeing through ego. It doesn’t dissolve geopolitics.
It makes a lot more sense if you picture a bunch of organized, strong and merciless chimps attacking some other chimps to plunder what they have.
Chimps generally agree war is bad and horrific. But some smart, opportunistic and hard-working chimps can create situations that make war possible. Even though the war will only bring losses to most chimps on both sides.
> I am just befuddled by how much of this violence is directly motivated by religious concerns, both on the side of Iran and on the side of Israel and USA.
Can you provide an example of this in 2026?
It seems a little tenable with the ayatollah and Iran. But even here you don’t hear much talk of this being a war in the name of religion anymore. Nowhere near a few years ago and certainly nothing like 9/11 and the Taliban.
And I hear nobody in Israel or America talking that way. Just a war defending people against attackers at the gates.
The land promised to the Israelites generally extends from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Iraq/Syria, encompassing modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, and parts of Syria and Saudi Arabia.
If you're a religious Jew, then you believe you have a mandate from God (so an irrefutable right, or even obligation, needing no justification) to settle and rule not only the West Bank but the entire region. So there will always be that motivation, as long as religious Judaism exists in Israel.
That is not the ruling Likud ideology in Israel nor the allied national religious ideology; both refer to Israel+Palestine+Golan as "the Whole Land of Israel".
And in any case, the "most religious" (ie those whose politics are most totally driven by Judaism) bloc in Israel are at best ambivalent about the Israeli state and the settlement enterprise, and actively hostile to military service.
Israeli hostility to Iran is driven by a "defensive" paranoia, not a religious mission.
Of course it needs to be approached pragmatically. If Israel stated that its number one goal is to rule the entire region, they wouldn't have been as successful as they are.
Also God didn't say when. But he did promise, according to the Book.
There is also point of view that remembers that always right behind US military there is a team building next oil pipeline.
US tried to used China as cheap labor, lost a lot of intelligence and now - look at how much oil Iran has and who is it exporting to and what is the percentage at the destination.
The numbers add up and only the funny (?) thing is - China is (going to) be most eco country, because they already use nuclear power a lot and were forced to work on that.
What a time to be alive, again!
And please, downvote me, comment that US is fighting for some country’s civilians freedom. It’s fun too.
It's not said in polite company, but Israeli concerns are racial, not religious. If you meet a Jewish zionist, then you've also met an athiest. An explanation of Christian Zionism deserves much longer discussion than can be made here, but how and why such an obvious contradiction to Jesus' ministry gained popularity is something worth studying.
Once you realize the gospels and the epistles disagree, it becomes a lot easier to understand. Christianity is the practice of cognitive dissonance. The bible, due to the nature, has a lot of mixed messaging.
Imagine, for example, you wanted to write the religion of Liberalism, so you collect the works of all the major thinkers on the subject of liberalism into one book. Now imagine someone gets the bad idea that all these authors must actually have a unified view on what liberalism is, means, and implies. You'll end up seeing that person teach a form of liberalism that's easily countered with other passages from their book and they'll mostly just wave it away because they have their passages and the others are simply you misinterpreting an "obvious" metaphor.
That is christianity in a nutshell, just replace liberalism with god. That's why there are so many sects. Because it's just too easy to yell "Context context context!" when a difficult passage comes up you don't agree with and use "spiritual" as the excuse for why you don't actually have to follow that passage.
Religious concerns are, IMHO, always a facade for the underlying economic/territorial/geopolitical reasons. These religious facades help sell the war effort: get young men to enlist and fight to the death for "preserving their identity". And "muh freedom" is just as much a religious motivation to me (unsubstantiated, indoctrinated, unthreatened).
> I am just befuddled by how much of this violence is directly motivated by religious concerns, both on the side of Iran and on the side of Israel and USA.
This just isn't true. Religion is never the reason for these conflicts. It's the excuse. It's how that conflict is sold to the rest of the world. It's how civilians are manipulated into dying in a conflict.
The source of these conflicts is always material. Always.
Reagan's Secretary of State, General Alexander Haig once said [1]:
> Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier, and is located in a critical region for American national security.
In 1986, then Senator and future president Joe Biden said [2]:
> [Israel] is the best $3 billion ivnestment we make. Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to an invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region.
Much of US Middle East polciy was aimed to sabotaging and undermining Pan-Arab Nationalism (particularly under then Egyptian President Nasser) [3].
Nothing about any of this has anything to do with faith. In this case it's about oil.
Whatever crimes you think Iran might've done, I'll stack up the US crimes against Iran and it won't even be close, including:
1. Iran was a liberal democracy that the US deposed in 1953 at the behest of the British because BP didn't want to have to pay higher royalties, ultimately leading Mossadegh wanting to "nationalize" their own oil;
2. In 1978, then US-puppet Saddam Hussein expelled Khomenei from Iraq. This was about the time the US realized that Iran was likely lost. it is believed that the reason for this was that a fundamentalist regime was preferred to a Communist one (which was otherwise the likely outcome) as the US didn't want Iran to fall into the Soviet sphere of influence. So all this pearl-clutching about the current regime rings hollow when you realize the US helped created it;
3. As punishment for the Revolution, the US supplied weapons to Iraq and fueled the Iran-Iraq war for almost a decade that killed over a million people; and
4. Crippling economic sanctions, which is a fancy way of saying "starving people and denying them medical care", for daring not to be a US puppet.
If you point me to any conflict you think is based on faith, I'll show you the material interests behind it.
There is a theory (a bit "school of schizo" and totally unsubstantiated but kind of interesting) that the sense of urgency from Israel at the moment is because they really believe in the curse of the eighth decade.
In other words it is actually totally irrational and driven by belief in (and attempt to refute) a kind of prophecy.
No idea if that's true or not, but at this point, it wouldn't even surprise me
Hey there I'm Israeli and I'm quite politically informed and moderately religiously educated and I have never heard of this "curse of the eighth decade" thing you've heard of.
You probably know a lot more than me but my understanding is there have been two previous Jewish states in the Levant, the ancient Kingdom of Israel ruled by King David and then the Hasmonean dynasty during the Second Temple period.
Both of those states lasted for around 80 years before collapsing. My (probably worthless) 2c is there's nothing magical or surprising about that, a lot of people have pointed out that political entities often last around the length of a human life before change occurs.
The most prominent current theory is the Strauss–Howe "fourth turning" one but the idea goes back further than that
What are the chances that HN is getting astroturfed these days?
Happens all day every day. There are many AI agents starting discussions and replying to comments. This is how The Crappening started on 4chan. Some of them are just future grifters. Some are training AI (I have replied to a few for fun). Some are propaganda bots. Those running the bots will reply with something equiv to Errrm Proof?? when called out. Without root I can not empirically prove it and the botters know that.
I predict about 2 years before the site will have more AI noise than real people. I have no idea what can be done about it aside from tracking the bots and reporting them via email to Daniel and I don't know what he could or would do. HN has always been very hands off which is mostly good but not for this scenario. If nothing is done it will just be bots grifting and AstroTurfing one another to the benefit of Google SEO and most of the humans would eventually go elsewhere with exception of some die-hards that refuse to recognize the situation.
My nickname on here would at least suggest so. I think Grok is the closest option since they were working on making a snarky insulting version of their bot. Tame that down a bit and one could get the personality of Bender. [1]
I hope this war will be short.
And that the result will be Iran becoming a democracy that fully joins the global community. The Iranian people (Persians, Azerbaijanis, Kurds, and others), deserve better.
It would benefit the entire world to see Iran integrated and engaged internationally.
There is zero likelihood of that. The IRGC and Iranian forces are a million strong and have a loyal base of support among the population. Without boots on the ground, relying on air power and 'moderate rebels' you are looking at at least a decade of war (using Syria and Libya as best-case-scenarios examples; Assad regime was nothing like the Iranian). The Israelis are dividing the opposition by pushing the out-of-touch monarchists as their would-be puppets and the Trump regime are backing them too. Which means they are not even seriously pushing any viable or credible alternative. They are likely arming the Kurdish and other ethnic factions in the region and stoking ethnic conflict. It is in Israel's interests to prolong the conflict , to degrade Iran's military and economy (like they did in Syria) and even break it up into smaller manageable parts. The monarchists are a moon-shot; Reza Pehlavi is not his father (who also was a US puppet) - Israelis like him because he will be weak and pliable and completely dependent on foreign patronage.
Interesting point on Israel pushing for the monarchy to come back.
Democracy in the middle-east does not result in Israel or US aligned governments, but the monarchies have proven more interested in preserving their autocratic dynasties and quite easy and eager to work with Israel and the US to preserve themselves.
My observation was that more democracy in the Middle East is not what Israel or the US is interested in, given that the people's choice there would be overwhelmingly against Israeli and US interests.
They replaced the last democratic choice in Egypt with another military dictator, they keep the widely unpopular autocrat in Jordan on his throne with military and intelligence subsidies, have established and propped up a network of autocratic Gulf states that toe the line...
So yeah, I would not be surprised that Israel and the US would be more than happy to but a scion of the previous Iranian autocratic dynasty back on the throne there.
Oh the car accident was years ago, I was fine. I cannot walk because I'm seatbelted into a car driving down the road at the moment. Why would you have ever thought there was a connection?
True but they will have a hard time ignoring the 22nd amendment of the US constitution and it would be an easy move to remove him from the election process which a majority of the states themselves could do without opposition.
They might try the good old Putin trick, have a puppet elected on behalf of Trump and let Trump have another high-ranking position (e.g. Vice President) and hold the real power. Trump can still do most of campaigning, and there is also ample opportunity for election fraud.
> Nothing like a war to boost your popularity just before the elections
If he pulls off a regime change, even a Delcy-style swaparoo, he'll get it, and arguably not undeservedly. It will ultimately come down to Iran's capacity to inflict casualties on American forces.
I’m not so sure. This is no where near a priority issue for most Americans, “I can’t afford eggs and the immigrant I buy pizza from got shipped to a warehouse but thank god the regime changed in Iran.”
Schumer was brought into a briefing on Iran and clearly 'got his mind right' in there. I don't know who makes decisions in government, but it's not the people on camera. US elections are irrelevant to consequential matters, and we waste too much time thinking about them.
> We didn’t change the regime in Venezuela though right?
Practically speaking, we changed it. The foreign and energy policies we care about changed. The notion that you need to wholesale clean shop to qualify as regime change is misguided and counterproductive [1].
(On the other end of the spectrum, the fact that we kept the Japanese Emperor on his throne doesn't mean we didn't change the Japanese regime.)
I don't know if the same theory works in Iran though right, Iran is amidst economic collapse. It seems like the situation in Venezula with Maduro was tenable so when we decapitated the leader and got what we wanted it was ok that maybe most things didn't change. Is there a similar theory for Iran that's not soaked in hubris?
> Is there a similar theory for Iran that's not soaked in hubris?
Lots of factions in Iran, including within the IRGC. Khamenei's bunker gets hit, oh no, new dude knives the competition and then makes a call to the White House.
They leveraged special operations forces in Venezuela. Iran has two US carrier groups on their front door; this operation is not going to be as precise as the one against Maduro.
Military action in Iran is deeply unpopular, being supported by just 27% of US adult citizens [1]. As an aside, Congress literally doesn't care what voters think [2]. The pearl-clutching about this from Congressional Democrats isn't about policy but process, with the likes of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries saying Congress should authorize this action, not that it shouldn't happen.
I'm interested in what makes empires tick, what their basis of power is.
Spain in the colonial era was propped up by looting silver from Central and South America, for example.
The British Empire is what many (including me) like to call the "drug dealer empire". First tobacco then later opium. Any claims that we didn't know about the health risks of tobacco are complete BS (eg [3]).
Circling back to your point, the US is what I like to call the "arms dealer empire". WW1 and WW2 massively enriched the United States. NATO is essentially a protection racket for Europe and the price is, you guessed it, buying arms from the United States.
And the next Budget has proposed increasing "defense" spending from an already eye-popping $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion [4]. Where does that money go? Arms, weapons programs, defense contractors, the ultra-wealthy.
War is good for business even though it's unpopular.
Not surprising - people don't count deaths in the Middle East if they're caused by fellow Middle Easterns, except Israel. Living in Europe I've never heard about a protest against Saddam (250,000 - 1,000,000 dead), Khamenei (30,000 in a week?), Assad (> 300,000 civilians) etc. This is business as usual. It's only news if someone else does it.
That’s the Bish doctrine! A belief that you can invade a country, remove the power center, and democracy will spring forth. You don’t even need to speak the local language, read any books about the country you’re attacking, or talk to any locals! Just go for it and democracy will magically spring into existence.
Not directly but OP seemed to intuit some sort of moral justification for this war of aggression ("humanitarian reasons"), and few people believe that to be a key motivating factor for the White House.
> Not directly but OP seemed to intuit some sort of moral justification for this war of aggression
There is an absolute moral justification for this war. Saying that US is the aggressor here is an absolute revisionism of history. Let us not pretend that Islamic Republic minded its own business since its inception, and suddenly the US and Israel decided to wage war on it.
One example of IR's aggression is Beirut bombing in 1983 sponsored and planned by IR.
Both from an international rights and from a moral point of view you're objectively wrong. This is not even worth a discussion. The fact that you need cite a terrorist attack from 1983 to justify an illegal war of aggression in 2026 instigated by a US president without Congressional oversight speaks volumes.
> Islamic Republic minded its own business since its inception
That's a straw man argument since nobody claimed that.
Just to anticipate another weak argument that is a non-starter, a war of aggression is also illegal if it is started under the pretense of caring about a human rights situation. This kind of justification is quite common anyway. For the same reason, preventive wars are also prohibited and immoral. Not even you want to live in a world where such wars are common, you're more likely merely arguing from the perspective of someone whose country you believe to be in a position of strength.
> Both from an international rights and from a moral point of view you're objectively wrong.
Can you clarify the "moral point of view", please?
> This is not even worth a discussion.
How do you know without a discussion that you are right?
> The fact that you need cite a terrorist attack from 1983 to justify an illegal war of aggression in 2026 instigated by a US president without Congressional oversight speaks volumes.
This is a straw man you just made. The 1983 event is to show that Iran was in forever war with the US through either 3rd parties or directly on the territories of other states.
> That's a straw man argument since nobody claimed that.
Now it seems we are in a strange situation. If it is a war of aggression by the US, the implication is that Iran was not aggressive towards US. But we know it is not true. So, which is it?
Also, how would congress authorization make US non-aggressor here?
> Can you clarify the "moral point of view", please?
The moral point of view is that a war of aggression violates the sovereignty of the people in the attacked country. Another country's officials are not elected by that country, nor do they in any other way represent the people of that country. They have no right to decide the fate of the people in another country.
> How do you know without a discussion that you are right?
I know that because I've studied philosophy and worked in ethics, though not specifically on any issues concerning international rights. I'm also overall a well-educated person with an intact sense of justice.
> This is a straw man you just made. The 1983 event is to show that Iran was in forever war with the US through either 3rd parties or directly on the territories of other states.
No it's not a straw man. You came up with the 1983 event, not me. It would have been a straw man argument if I suddenly had come up with that. My reply to your position is that there are no "forever wars" - this category does not exist in international right and obviously makes no sense. Once you start justifying your attacks with a "forever war" you're in the realm of historical justifications, and these are principally wrong. Why? Because you can find some historical justification for just about any war you want to start. The whole world would be constantly at war if historical justifications were used and deemed acceptable. They are not acceptable.
> Now it seems we are in a strange situation. If it is a war of aggression by the US, the implication is that Iran was not aggressive towards US. But we know it is not true. So, which is it?
I believe you're trolling. In any case, that is not the implication. Not every act of aggression is an act of war. However, the US military has just started a widespread bombing campaign, and that is an act of war. The US is the aggressor not just from an international rights point of view, they're the aggressor as evidenced by the speech of the US President.
> Also, how would congress authorization make US non-aggressor here?
Compare how much Israel was in the news for targeting militants these past two years in Gaza.
How biased is the press? Iran slaughters 36k people in a week and...
crickets. Israel refuses to let its hostages die while Hamas hides out in hospitals and schools and the world is against Israel not Iran.
Because HNers are not so gullible to swallow and regurgitate this pretext. The Trump administration doesn't care about the people of Iran, any more than Bush cared about the Iraqi Kurds or Afghan women. Just a pretext for geopolitics.
Are you saying those protested actually got funded by Israel and because Iran killed them, now Israel is retaliating?
Now I really wonder if those protests were indeed fueled and funded by Israel, because we have seen videos of mosques being burned down by protestors, which is strange for Shia Muslim country, even if they don't like their government
"A 2020 Online Survey by Gamaan found that 8.8% Iranians identifying as Atheist and a large fraction (22.2%) identifying as not following an organized religion and only 40% self identified as Muslims."
As I recall Iran said quite openly, in response to the US troop buildup, that they would see an attack by Israel as an attack by the US, suggesting that they could target e.g. carriers instead of Israel if Israel attacked them.
> I'm not sure what's the logic behind that PR-wise
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.
While I think this (and Venezuela) are arguably the biggest missteps this administration is making, it's hardly a partisan point. The political establishment loves war more than perhaps anything else. In 2016 alone Obama bombed half a dozen different countries with more than 26,000 munitions for an average rate of three bombs dropped every hour, every day, for a year. [1] Nobel Peace Prize embodied.
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.
Not defending that peace price but:
Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for his efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation.
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?
Large scale deployments shifted under Obama to widescale bombing campaigns. The site mentions its various sources such as this [1] which mentions that Obama also increased the number of drone strikes by an order of magnitude relative to his predecessor. To be clear I'm not picking on Obama, but saying solely that this isn't a partisan issue. "They" all love war.
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.
> 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
Drone strikes picked up, obviously as that technology became more and more mature. They're cheaper to operate and don't put a pilot in harms way. So that's kinda expected?
Not only that but it should be noted what the stated aim is of these strikes and earlier Trump strikes on Iran: take out the nuclear threat.
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.
I'd rather we held Trump accountable for his many crimes.
I find it astounding that the U.S. population aren't storming Washington and demanding his removal. Other countries are removing people from positions who were involved with Epstein due to the massive corruption and yet the USA seems fine with allowing Trump to continue destroying everything he touches.
Regarding intervention in Venezuela, is that seen as a mistep in the US? In the rest of America it is considered as a win, except of course by Cuba (Cubans are the most, almost the only, affected)
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.
The operation in Venezuela could be characterised as an enormous success in the sense that it didn't seem to do anything and therefore was a big improvement on most times the US activates its military. But it was still a misstep in the sense that it keeps US aggression top of mind without achieving very much.
A war? Of course not. It’s a major combat operation. Only congress can declare wars. We haven’t had any in decades. They should call it the Dept. of Major Combat Operations.
It's not just the US, very few wars have been formally declared after WW2, because we all learned war is bad™, so we added more and more rules (both international and national) to make it harder to do it.
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].
That article says that nowadays countries no longer declare war, because now there are a lot of international treaties that restrict what may be done during wars.
Not declaring war provides a workaround, allowing the states to do whatever they desire, without constraints, while avoiding being accused that they do not observe their obligations assumed internationally.
As soon a country agrees to enter a conflict on a side, which the original axes declare to be a war, it's at war. You can tell the media whatever you want of course.
The US didn’t declare war since WW2 because such a declaration would give the president disruptive powers (such as the power to seize factories).
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.
The occurrence of a war is a fact whether or not it is declared, and whether or not the actor waging war does so consistent with the legal requirements their nation's laws put on doing so.
Americans voted for no new wars, and especially no new wars in the sandbox, and they got a new war in the sandbox.
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.
I’m honestly perplexed. I had anticipated a scenario like “the US feared Iran was unstable and attacked to protect nuclear material”. It seems this would give them reasonable cover. I don’t see how Israel going along helps
There is a huge flame war in the comments as people who had money on 27th Feb are claiming the attack started on that date
I think they don’t have an argument because technically the missile can be de-activated up until the last seconds before it reaches its intended target
Still it feels surreal to argue about these things , bomb dropping on humans and other humans attacking each other for the privilege to have their bet honored on when said bombs dropped on the other side of the world
I guess people in intelligence communities had these sort of bets going on ever since WW2 and Vietnam , but still it’s uncanny to see it widespread to potentially the whole population of the internet
Due to distance planes need to take off many hours before the bombs drop.
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, ...
I tried to access that URL but it's banned in my country (Romania) for being an "exploitative gambling website". It's the first time I've felt that my country has a sensible internet policy.
Even HN is astroturfed to heck and filled with bots. The ratio of good faith informed dialog to Reddit like slop in these threads is wild. The old HN would never have such “obvious” black and white answers.
I'm guessing way fewer people will die now than the 36k in Iranian protests a couple weeks ago. But this will get way more press and obviously press matters to you more than actual human lives.
This is also a good deal for the Iranian government since they can transfer hatred people had for them to the America and Israel. No one will see Trump as salvation and the “rally behind the flag” phenomena in times of invasion applies just as much to Iran as it does to the USA.
Apropos of nothing in particular, back in the previous millennium, UNIX (and Linux) had the `fortune` command. It would spew out a "cookie" - a pithy one-/two-liner, usually funny, often thought-provoking, and sometimes offensive (when invoked with `fortune -o`)
I had added it to my `motd`; it would give me a chuckle every time I logged in.
One of the cookies I recall:
A nuclear war can ruin your whole day. [1]
And that's what I think of when I see this absurd new war.
While I have no love for the Iranian regime I fear this will end up like the 'liberation' of Iraq: A massive power vacuum in an unstable Islamic regime.
What even is the plan here if the air assault fails? Boots on the ground? In Iran?
What even is the plan here if the air assault fails? Boots on the ground? In Iran?
Other than nukes that would be the only option if they can blast the doors to the underground military cities. They will have to do it fast as the ships will not sustain combat for more than 5 days with their current ammo per the pentagon.
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.
Regime just means ruling system. Western media prefers to use it as a shorthand for autocratic governments so it gotten a bad conotation, but any ruling system can be described as a regime, regardless of if you like it or not. The organization you work at has a "regime"
> I generally use 'regime' for autocratic governments
Which is fine.
"In theory, the term need not imply anything about the particular government to which it relates, and most social scientists use it in a normative and neutral manner. The term, though, can be used in a political context. It is used colloquially by some, such as government officials, media journalists, and policy makers, when referring to governments that they believe are repressive, undemocratic, or illegitimate or simply do not square with the person’s own view of the world. Used in this context, the concept of regime communicates a sense of ideological or moral disapproval or political opposition" [1].
There is no precise definition. English has many synonyms where the formal meaning is the same, but one is used pejoratively because it's acquired a bad association. Regime is like that, formally it just means the rule of a particular party or system. It can still be used neutrally if not denoting a government.
I don’t think it’s possible to change regime without boots on the ground which is not currently considered. So there will be no power vacuum, at most Iran military will be weaken. It’s not a big win for the US but would allow Trump to safe face after his demands were essentially rejected.
Iraq was attacking its neighbors every couple of years, Iran is not.
Iran has shown that it is remarkably sane actually, given the aggression 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?
Oh yes, and the fact that Israel is just sitting there occupying millions of Palestinians, attacking Syria, Lebanon etc. despite a 'ceasefire' has nothing to do with why these groups continue to exist, I am sure.
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.
> Iran's funding for these groups is a part of its 'defense in depth' strategy
That's the rationalisation. Not a justification. Defence in depth was Hitler's rationale for invading Russia, is Israel's strategy for pacifying neighbors, and is Russia's excuse for invading Ukraine.
Creating weak neighbors is checklist-item one for any classical aspiring land empire. It's also tremendously destabilising to its neighbourhood. (It's not a coincidence that China and Russia are bordered by (a) shitshows or (b) countries militarily posturing against them.)
Ah yes, give any discussion enough time and Hitler inevitably gets to be whoever your opponent is.
Unlike Hitler, unlike Israel and unlike the US, Iran has not proactively attacked.
Hitler had no reason to fear attack from Russia, Czechoslovakia or France. Iran has every reason to fear an attack from the US and Israel, look at what is happening right now ffs.
Western governments provide funding and shelter for extremist Iranian groups like People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran and various separatists movements inside the country, so please spare me this Hitler nonsense.
> give any discussion enough time and Hitler inevitably gets to be whoever your opponent is
Because it fits. Nazi Germany was an aspiring land power. You can see the same effect in Imperial Rome and the Persian empires. (And, while America was conquering its own continent, on the peripheries of Manifest-Destiny America.)
> Unlike Hitler, unlike Israel and unlike the US, Iran has not proactively attacked
Of course they have. Its proxies are constantly proactively attacking everyone in their neighbourhood.
> Hitler had no reason to fear attack from Russia, Czechoslovakia or France. Iran has every reason to fear an attack from the US and Israel, look at what is happening right now ffs
Everyone has reason to fear attack from everyone. Defence in depth is a regionally-destabilising response to that security imperative. And by the way, Russia and Germany did wind up going to war with each other. Same as Iran and Israel, that same one whose anihiliation the former has been chanting for since its revolution.
Arguing Iran has been some peaceful country minding its own business is totally inaccurate.
At every step, for years, they've tried to de-escalate while Israel and the US launched direct attacks against them. Embassies bombed, that general in Iraq in 2020, last summer and now this. All of these attacks completely unprovoked except for the fact that they are friendly with Hamas and Hezbollah.
They are practically Gandhi in this story.
Looking forward, the problem with being irrationally hateful is that its irrational. What's the plan here? Persia will still exist, and its unlikely any future rulers will like Israel, given what's going on. So what's the win condition?
> Because it fits. Nazi Germany was an aspiring land power.
Look at the mass murder by Israel in Gaza. Or how the US just overthrew Venezuela and seized their resources, threatened to take Greenland, taunts Canada and suggests more countries are in their sights.
And now the two of them teamed up to bomb Iran, unprovoked, saying it's going to "annihilate their Navy" as their citizens run for cover.
And your conclusion is Iran is the one that resembles Nazi Germany?
> your conclusion is Iran is the one that resembles Nazi Germany?
In this strategic aspect, yes. So does Israel. So do Russia and China. They're all acting like land empires. And they're all pursuing a strategy that seeks weak, unstable neighbours.
It's a shitty strategy that does't earn one friends. The fact that it's theoretically coherent doesn't make it less shitty.
> by the way, Russia and Germany did wind up going to war with each other. Same as Iran and Israel,
Are you seriously arguing that Hitler was rational for preemptively attacking Russia because AFTER Hitler attacked Russia, Russia did not simply sit back and let itself be attacked but in fact started defending itself?
And are you arguing that Israel doing the same is rational because AFTER Israel attacked Iran, Iran launched some missiles towards Israel IN RESPONSE TO THE ISRAELI ATTACK, therefore proving Israel right that Iran is going to attack them?
> that same one whose anihiliation the former has been chanting for since its revolution.
Oh and Israel has been nothing but wishing them happy Ramadan?
The reason Israel does not want the current Iranian system to survive is because it sees it as the only possible threat to its eternal domination of the Palestinians and its ability to dictate its borders in the Middle East.
> Are you seriously arguing that Hitler was rational for preemptively attacking Russia because AFTER Hitler attacked Russia, Russia did not simply sit back and let itself be attacked but in fact started defending itself?
No. I'm saying Hitler's theory of attacking Russia was the same as Iran's simultaneous proxy wars with its entire neighbourhood. It's not theoretically wrong. Just antiquated, destructive and–in the trade-based modern world–increasingly counterproductive. (You're trashing and alienating your natural trading partners.)
And I'm drawing analogy between (a) "Iran has every reason to fear an attack from the US and Israel, look at what is happening right now" and (b) the nonsense argument "that Hitler was rational for preemptively attacking Russia because AFTER Hitler attacked Russia, Russia did not simply sit back and let itself be attacked." In both cases, retaliation is being used to justify the preceding (note: not initial) aggression.
> Oh and Israel has been nothing but wishing them happy Ramadan?
If your neighbour is developing ballistic missiles and explicitly calling for your anihilation, you're not going to "simply sit back and let [your]self be attacked."
> reason Israel does not want the current Iranian system to survive is because it sees it as the only possible threat to its eternal domination of the Palestinians and its ability to dictate its borders in the Middle East
Iran isn't a material threat to Israel's power projection into Gaza and the West Bank. Its ballistic missiles and nuclear programme, on the other hand, are an existential threat to Tel Aviv/Jerusalem. And yes, it's a regional competitor to Israeli (and Saudi and Emirati) hegemony.
> Iran's simultaneous proxy wars with its entire neighborhood
Except that's not happening and is complete BS. It also assumes these proxies have no agency and would not have acted on their own.
> It's not theoretically wrong. Just antiquated, destructive and–in the trade-based modern world–increasingly counterproductive. (You're trashing and alienating your natural trading partners.)
Guess what would allow Iran to peacefully trade with Israel. The end of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
The reason Iran cannot simply ignore that occupation is because it would loose the moral high ground in the Shia/Muslim world. And having that moral high ground (i.e. its support for the Palestinian cause) is also part of its power projection strategy.
> If your neighbour is developing ballistic missiles and explicitly calling for your anihilation, you're not going to "simply sit back and let [your]self be attacked.
Given that Israel does indeed have ballistic missiles and is explicitly calling for for the annihilation of Palestinians, or even 'Arabs' in general, does that in your mind justify October 7th?
> Iran isn't a material threat to Israel's power projection into Gaza and the West Bank.
Not Iran itself, but Israel insists that Iran support for 'proxies' is. Maybe not to Israeli power projection, but to its security at least.
Iranian government massacres its own civilians whenever they dare to demand change. Iranians are also largely secular compared to citizens of most Arab states, and hate their government. They're also mostly Shia, which makes it hard for likes of ISIS and Al Qaeda to gain ground there, as Shias are enemies to Sunni extremists.
I believe there's a much better change of democracy / sane regime in Iran, than there ever was in Iraq and other Arab states.
Mossad was literally bragging that it is handing out weapons in Iran recently, but yes, Iran always 'attacks' for no reason and should not do anything no matter what happens right?
Same as the Gaza and Lebanon ceasefires where one side stops attacking and the other (Israel) keeps bombing?
That all being said, we are talking about different cultures. Iranians are on average more educated than Iraqis were/are, and the country is ethnically more homogeneous.
So I have hope that they'll find a way to organize when the current regime falls.
I know that, but what I don't get is with a society like that, how can a theocratic government last for so long? Maybe I'm being naive, but authoritarian governments tend to fall when an educated population is against them. Iran looks like a weird case to me in this respect in that the population seems to be against (and honestly, seems to be quite brave) and still the theocracy goes on and on.
Anyway, best of luck in this. Your people deserve better.
Yeah this is what lots of Western people don't get. The cultural / ideological gap between rulers and those being ruled appears much larger in Iran than in most other Muslim countries.
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.
Yet another very recent account on HN claiming to be Persian and speaking about things on the ground in Iran. Can’t you guys at least try a little harder to be convincing?
I don't understand this. What you call bold claims are easily verifiable facts. Demographic and education level statistics are widely available online, choose your source of choice.
I'm pretty sure there are also a lot of people on this site that anecdotally know this from their contact with Iranian diaspora.
>What exactly do you imagine will replace the Iranian government that is worse?
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? Iran is a sophisticated country with a parliament and elections, with a powerful civil society. It has 90 million inhabitants. They graduated more women in STEM disciplines than the USA. Yes, it's a theocracy, but it's more free than Saudi Arabia for instance.
Are the Americans going to bomb the Saudis next? or only if Israel ask for it?
Its very much Muslim minority, but having even a few in senior government positions (e.g. Tariq Aziz, who was foreign minister) is an indication that its not a theocracy.
IT was a dictatorship, of course, but not a theocratic one.
Your description of what happened in Iraq was exactly the point of why we invaded. Iraq and Iran were the two biggest threats to Israel, we got rid of Iraq and now we are removing the only other rival to Israel remaining in the Middle East.
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.
The plan is a show of power. Trump will leave in 2 years, leaving much of the world in disarray because he had no plan whatsoever, and his staff is literally out of the movie Idiocracy. Nothing of lasting value will come out of the horrors that happened in the past 3 years, and in 10 years we (the world) will look back into the present with disbelief.
> in 10 years we will look back into the present with disbelief.
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?
> in 10 years we (the world) will look back into the present with disbelief.
This is a very optimistic outlook, to the point of naivete, though I really hope you are right. In reality, neither Trump nor his cronies are acting like people who imagine they will be out of power anytime soon. In 10 years the world will likely still be dealing with the fallout of this administration, if not still dealing with the administration itself.
Hot take: Trump's denialism of 2020 and the use of '3rd term' is so that they can make a case that he can have a '4th term' -- that the will of the people to elect him overrides the constitutional limits of Presidency.
This shows a real ignorance about the true culture of Iran. It is not a Muslim culture. They want to install the son of the shah, and get back to pre-revolution culture.
But liberals will be quick to tell them they don't know best, better to just keep the oppressive ayatollah in power.
Maybe this is correct? I want this to be correct. But American entanglements in the Middle East have often overestimated the size of the “they” you’re referring to. There are many “they’s” in Iran, some of whom have been trained over time to hate the US.
So like, I think this is the right choice, but Trump was elected by MAGA to avoid these kind of entanglements even when it was the right thing to do. In fact, I think “liberals” (not progressive) support this action more than many on the right.
Traditional left/right is not useful to understanding people’s support of our foreign policy in 2026 America. Tucker Carlson will hate this way more than Chuck Schumer.
So replacing a fascist with western antagonism and constant threat on American allies, with a somewhat democratic, weak, and western aligned government?
The place has 90 million people, how do you even deal with this without throwing the whole place into chaos?
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.
> Besides, after this the collective west has no moral high-ground anymore
They never had any morals, all for their business gains look at Middle East, Africa and Asian countries where they were involved. Europe always looked other way when US does something and vise versa.
There is no such thing as the "global south" other than in the minds of westerners and westernised elites (and elites are getting less westernised). From a western viewpoint you can lump the rest of the world together, but it makes no sense from any other view point.
As for moral high ground. Compared to whom? China? Russia? Myanmar?
At this point, no country in the world will ever again 'make a deal' with the US, because while pretending to negotiate with you they try to ram a knife into your back.
The world already know this. Having an agreement with the USA is a lot like having an agreement with Darth Vader. The terms of the deal can be altered unexpectedly at any time.
That doesn't mean that such agreements are worthless. They can still be of value to the counties making them. It is just that those countries have to take into account the unreliability of the entity they are making the deal with. Deals with the USA involve a lot of forecasting.
It was pretty obvious that if the negotiations failed that the US would respond by attacking Iran. Iran didn't seem willing to give up their nuclear weapons program regardless of the quite predictable consequences.
I doubt the negotiations were in good faith, probably just a political 'see, we tried' gesture full of deal-breaker bad faith proposals. I think the plan all along has been to attack, probably for more than a year.
You don't go and rename a whole federal department to 'Department of War' when you don't intend to get into wars.
> I doubt the negotiations were in good faith, probably just a political 'see, we tried' gesture full of deal-breaker bad faith proposals.
Iranian officials made public statements refusing to give up their nuclear weapons program so they weren't negotiating in good faith either. Terrorists like the Iranian regime can never be allowed to have access to nuclear weapons for obvious reasons.
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.
> 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.
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.
> You stated Iran doesn't want to give up its nuclear programme, not true. Iran in fact already did agree to it
JCPOA didn't fully eliminate the nuclear program, it mostly just kept it from getting too far along.
> 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.
Nuclear isn't the only issue either, but Iranian officials made it clear they would not give up their nuclear program.
> Negotiations failed over dismantling Iranian power, mostly its ballistic weapons. i.e. give up weapons and make yourself defenseless to maintain peace.
Iran isn't interested in maintaining peace, they want to continue destabilizing the entire region.
> 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.
Last I checked Hamas has refused to give up their weapons.
> 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.
Iran has repeatedly threatened the destruction of Israel, it's not surprising that Israel and the US are taking those threats seriously.
What's predictable is, if you don't have nuclear weapons, you get attacked. Ask Ukraine. If I were a small country (any country for that matter) the first order of business would be to build myself nuclear weapons now.
Ask Libya. They gave up their nuclear weapons program as a sign of good will.
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.
"In the middle of negotiations" is arguably more and more used as a carte blanche to do whatever you want in the meantime. Prominent recent example being Putin pretending to be ready to negotiate for peace while bombing Ukraine.
The question is really whether negotiations were going on in good faith with the actual goal of realistic compromise.
It was Trump who cancelled to JCPOA. Also, sending Witkoff and Kushner as negotiators is already an obvious sign the US is dishonest about preventing conflicts through diplomacy, otherwise they would send experienced diplomats. It is really the US Epstein Class Deep State government to blame here.
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.
You all just keep lying endlessly, I think most people get it at this point. Iran was prepared to go further than the JCPOA, it was never enough because it was never about nuclear weapons.
I speak Persian (Farsi) and in state TV, every day, they said we won’t back down and won’t give up anything. Watch the supreme leader’s translated speech. Straight from the horse mouth! Who’s lying here?
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.
'productive talks and reasonable progress' is what diplomats almost always say in negotiations in order to maintain a reasonable atmosphere for possible further negotiations, this is not rocket science.
They also said the US demands are completely unreasonable, which you conveniently left out.
TL;DR Iran wants essentially symbolic enrichment so they could save face domestically, the US wants it to limit the range of its missiles so they could not reach Israel when Israel attacks.
I want to avoid linking particular sources because I know it's easy to call this or that biased etc. but it's easy to look up even in Israeli sources.
Iran shortening the range of its missiles to the point where they can no longer reach Israel is what Iran giving up all its offensive capabilities means given that the missile threat is the only meaningful response Iran can have to a preemptive Israeli attack.
> For a Persian you have very US republican boomer speaking patterns.
Most Persians I know will support just about anyone who will go against the regime, there were huge protests all over the world recently by the Iranian diaspora calling for the regime to be destroyed after tens of thousands of protesters were murdered by the regime all over Iran.
I presume its just an Iranian living in the west? Just look at the Miami Cubans cheering on the total energy blockade killing Cuba right now, its not entirely unusual for immigrants to sound like US republican boomers sadly.
What do you even think the words diplomacy and negotiation even mean? Of course it included independent oversight to any extend the US wanted. There is nothing that Iran can do to satisfy the requirements for peace because the goal of the US is war, Iran has no interest in war that leads to their destruction. For fuck sake it didn't even include any sanction relief! Wake the fuck up!
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.
Evidently I care more about the hundreds of thousands of Iranian people that will die in this war than you. All you do is repeat the talking points of the Trump administration. I've seen this all before, the Iraq war broke peoples brains in exactly the same way, nobody learned anything at all.
Oh these poor Iranians need saviors, they don’t know what’s good for them. We know better. They don’t learn.
Don’t you see any similarity between what you say and any colonial. And my brain is broken?
Let me put it in a way that’s easy to comprehend for you. War is bad and Iranian government is as much responsible for this war as the US. I don’t understand how this is so triggering for some.
edit.
> Evidently I care more about the hundreds of thousands of Iranian people that will die in this war than you.
Did you care equally when thousands of Iranians were massacred in the streets by the government or the “care” activates only when convenient?
> Oh these poor Iranians need saviors, they don’t know what’s good for them. We know better. They don’t learn.
I'm anti-interventionism, you can't seriously reframe that into western chauvinism.
> War is bad and Iranian government is as much responsible for this war as the US. I don’t understand how this is so triggering for some.
Because its just not true, there would be no war without the US and Israel starting it, PERIOD. It's triggering because you could've said exactly the same thing about the Iraq war, its always the same disaster and people never listen or learn anything, that's why its frustrating.
> there would be no war without the US and Israel starting it, PERIOD.
“there would be no war without Hamas starting it, PERIOD.”
See how dishonest and ignorant that sounds?
For everyone else reading this thread as Iran being bombed: In 47 years of constant confrontation, islamic regime has not built one fucking bomb shelter for its people for these days. Let that sink in. Don’t believe these people who suddenly start to care about Iranian lives by taking the regime’s side and also don’t believe US officials when they say they do all these for our freedom.
That's not the point. The point is that the attacks on Iran are not about the nuclear weapons. Iran entered the JCPOA and complied with it, it had completely suspended any nuclear weapons program. But that didn't matter for Israel and their sycophants in US foreign policy, because for them the nuclear weapons program is at best only one part of the problem. Their real problem is that Iran is an independent state in the region that refuses to accept Israel's occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and parts of Lebanon, and that refuses to comply with US policies more broadly.
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.
> The wall extends across the so-called Blue Line and has made “more than 4,000 square metres [43,055sq feet] of Lebanese territory inaccessible to the Lebanese people”
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.)
How much land area, exactly, is another nation allowed to seize by force before it becomes unacceptable to you? It obviously is not that much given the tone of your message.
That's not the question I'm interested in. The question I'm interested in is whether it's correct to claim that Israel occupies "parts of Lebanon", particularly in the context in which the claim was made, next to the claim that it occupies Gaza and the West Bank.
The south. It's not a real occupation like the west bank, it's more of a 'raid and pillage' thing. No rape reported yet, so it isn't at all like the West Bank.
So they have medical grade uranium facility under a mountain? If that’s all they need, wouldn’t it be easier to just purchase it from a third party instead of investing billions of dollars hiding from Israel?
They have a military base under a mountain, not a uranium enrichment facility.
Building military defenses against crazed, genocidal, racial supremacists who routinely fire missiles at your country seems more like sensible forward planning to me rather than evidence of a guilty conscience.
there are many reasons to do nuclear research beyond medicine, for batteries like the ones powering the voyager space craft, nuclear reactors come in a wide variety of configurations, and many of them actualy produce more radioactive elements that then need to be managed.
60% is nothing,80% is nothing, it needs to be 93%++, and LOTS of it to build a bomb, and given the number of bombs already arrayed around Iran, they would need 100's
and all the infrastructure to become a credible threat , for which they plainly dont have the money to afford.
The wildly unpopular leaders going after Iran need a scapegoat, or rather a continious supply of scapegoats, but have failed to recognise that the world is moving past them.
I hope you’re right but not too confident that will be the case. I wish EU leadership wouldn’t be as spineless as it is. I’m afraid they will accept any opportunity to make things feel as if they are back to the old normal if they are given the opportunity. And that would of course backfire, but long term thinking hasn’t been our strength over the past 3 decades or so…
Somehow world will close eyes again ... Somehow we need to bring back moral standards that we all have deep in ourselves and screw this money world me all made together... I dont have answers or ideas how but this is just nonsense
US has been always playing god, cunning manipulations all over the world. Most of the Europe was silent until recently when Greenland under threat. US benefits from every war either oil, rare metals, trade, weapons, there is always an agenda even though they are not directly involved.
You are lying, they have been trying to avoid this war in any possible way. But Israel wanted this war before they lost the support of the USA population (that it's happening fast) or they have a less accommodating USA president.
I agree about Israel fast losing support among the general public here but the idea of a less accommodating executive or legislative branch in the US for Israel is unthinkable. Not unless the system is changed from the ground up in dramatic fashion. The two most relevant branches of government in this country are completely beholden to Israel and anybody denying it is a zionist shill.
Iran also has a gang of murderous theocratic nutters running it, massacring their citizens for taking to the streets and singing songs, undermining foreign societies, and lending their knowhow and drones to other, bigger psychopaths for their invasions. It'll gladden my heart if the leadership is destroyed, even if some old pretty masonry gets chipped along the way.
I was discussing this with a friend today. It just feels like there's no point to these actions.
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!
The point is preventing another North Korea style nuclear blackmail state.
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
Does Iran not have the same rights of self-defense and sovereignty as the US and Israel?
> 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
190 countries signed the non proliferation treaty for a very good reason, so no they don’t have the right to it in any sense of the word on the international stage.
Especially not when they’re mass murdering protestors and funding islamic extremism left and right
Okay so neither then does Israel yet here we are a country with illicit nuclear weapons that murdered scores of thousands of civilians has what standing to do what now?
They actually do. And I say it as a European and I think the Iranian regime is as bad as it gets, and won't shed a tear if they all get executed.
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.
Why exactly do you suppose the US gets away with carrying out military attack or threatening to carry out military attack against a new country every couple of months?
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.
That was before the revolution. The revolutionary government still honored the deal, but that's been obviously a losing move for a while. The whole Middle East recognizes that, just look at how many countries Pakistan has sharing agreements with recently.
No such right exists, except in moral terms, but if you are going to invoke morals, the Iranian regime does not hold up well. So no, they do not.
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.
> The rational move for Iran to prevent itself from being bullied is to have nukes like North Korea
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?"
This comment is so wrong. Trump's strikes won't "prevent" anything, it's domestic posturing to look tough. You cannot bomb your way into regime change.
> 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.
>Iran has negotiated like no one will ever attack it, and that was a correct assumption for decades
Iran had a signed agreement, trump cancelled it. Israel literally killed Irans negotiators just a few months ago. What is this nuclear level ignorance.
> In this situation it is a fair request by the US to sign a nuclear deal that heavily restricts Iran's ability to enrich, and as Iran due to ideological reasons refused, and IMO miscalculated this will be a win-win, as losing will quell the protests, the only thing really left is the metaphorical stick
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?
The contradiction is that they’re weak at this minute - militarily and economically and politically. But they won’t be this weak in the future.
- 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.
> Didn't we have one of those a few years ago? I wonder what happened to it /s
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
I dont see how it is fair from USA to demand others dont have nukes. Ukraine made mistake of trusting ISA and giving them away and now USA basically support Russia in their invasion.
Iran is a bad guy state ... but the "fair" atgunent hwre dont apply.
> Has Israel even officially confirmed they have nukes?
No. There's a number of reasons for this. #1 is Israel's policy of "strategic ambiguity" and #2 is that it might be illegal to even mention it in Israel. Israel prosecuted a whistleblower nuclear scientist for leaking state secrets, for example.
> And who have they blackmailed with the nukes?
The US, for one:
"Similarly, in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, IDF was again outnumbered by the invading Arab armies. Then Israeli PM Golda Meir authorized a nuclear alert and ordered that nuclear warheads be readied for launch from missiles and aircraft. The Israeli ambassador to the US, Simcha Dinitz, met with Henry Kissinger to inform President Nixon of “Very serious conclusions” if the US did not airlift arms supplies to the IDF. Nixon complied with this demand due to the threat of the use of nuclear forces. This was the first successful use of the Samson option as a threat and tantamount to nuclear blackmail."
The Samson Option enables Israel to blackmail the entire Middle East, and do so silently. Turkey or Egypt can't afford for Hezbollah to overrun Israel, because Ankara and Cairo might get nuked, even if they had nothing to do with contributing to Israel's existential crisis. It basically forces the whole neighborhood to keep each other in check out of sheer self-preservation. Credit given where credit due, it's a smart approach on Israel's part.
On Israel, is it possible that they feel their influence on US foreign policy is waning and they want to push over Iran before they can’t do it anymore, even if the propaganda in America hasn’t been sufficiently set up yet to provide cover? Where pushing Iran over is useful because having weak neighbors is good for their expansion?
Possibly wishful thinking, but that’s the only way I can make it make sense in my head.
does anyone seriously believe there can be a good outcome of this for iranian people?
I can't make up a story that will be good for iranian people in the end. Is there even an example in last 100 years that started out like this thing is starting out and ended well for the people?
You don’t unseat the Fraudster in Chief while at war. So starting a war is a slightly less conspicuous trick than outright preventing relevant elections from taking place.
Yes, when you ask the basic Clauzewitz question about "continuation of politics by other means": what are the war aims, and how is this action connected to them?
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!
> What are they trying for? Regime change in Iran?
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.
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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.
Probably a continuation of the 'mowing the lawn' strategy (as used against the Palestinians). Every now and again use massive military force to set back Iran's capabilities, time and effort they spend rebuilding is time and effort not spent causing problems elsewhere.
It accomplishes the goal of diverting attention away from the recent revelations of a pedophile ring among the elites having operated from a private island for decades, with current US president and serial rapist Trump being best friends with the ring leader.
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.
Yes, but there is also the other elephant in the room. Don’t underestimate Trump, he may not have read about Michael Parenti’s explanation of The Assassination of Julius Caesar: where he argues that Caesar was killed not as a tyrant threatening republican liberty, but as a popular reformer who challenged the Roman oligarchy's wealth and power and thirst for wars.
Maybe Parenti doesn't explicitly equate JFK's killing to Caesar’s, the similarity lies in both being elite-driven assassinations to preserve power: Caesar by Roman senators against reforms, akin to theories of JFK's killing over anti-war shifts and perceived threats to entrenched interests. Critics note Parenti's JFK work critiques official narratives as state cover-ups, mirroring his Caesar "people's history" inversion of "gentlemen historians."
Anyone raising their weapon against Israel in the last 20 years was armed, supplied, funded, trained and directed by Iran. There’s a special division called Quds in the IRGC responsible just for that. The list includes Hizbollah, Assad’s former regime in Syria, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Houthis, Hizbollah in Iraq and others.
Israel being an ethnic supremacist state for more than the last 20 years [0], on a determined mission to ethnically cleanse the indigenous population from their ancestral land [1], this comment unintentionally makes Iran sound like the good guys in this story. (I do not support any form of theocracy).
It would be highly impractical to go to war with all of them at once, but USA can still fix one country at time. Venezuella, Iran, hopefully Cuba next.
They were only aligned with us after we overthrew their democratic secular government in 1953, and installed an unpopular authoritarian monarchy as sole leader. The reason we overthrew their government is because they felt we were ripping them off in oil deals and wanted the right to audit and cancel those deals (and renationalize their oil fields) if we weren't playing fair. Then in 1979 that puppet government was overthrown in a "real" revolution, which gave birth to the Islamic Republic of Iran which, for some reason, always had a chip on its shoulder against the West.
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
While true for the Iraq war I don't think that holds as true anymore. Even a lot of MAGA recognise that getting into wars in the Middle East does nothing but cost the taxpayer billions/trillions of dollars for nothing to show.
That's because there's a glimpse of reason that still pokes through with influencers sometimes saying "you know, I think (thing) might not be good so I hope Trump doesn't do it." Then when trump does (thing), they always backpedal and say it's great. Pre-election inflation was a problem. Now prices are great. Epstein was a problem. Now they say nobody cares. War with Iran was bad. In 2 days influencers will all have a prepared message supporting it and in 3 days half the country will absolutely support it.
Their endgame is genocide. They will be happy to only enslave the Iranian people too. Seriously, USA and its colony in Palestine are colonialist supremacists and they just want to extract all the resources and don't mind killing all the people of that land.
It's regime change this time. Trump published a message calling for all Iranian military forces to surrender and the Iranian people to take over the government.
It's a nakedly imperial gambit, the Western ruling classes are attempting to deny Middle Eastern oil to Russia and China. Iran is their only capable opposition in the region, every other Gulf country is a bought-and-paid-for satrapy which just cosigned a genocide on its doorstep.
The US department of war said last month that it was "obliterated"
>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.
I really do not even want to understand the mental gymnastics which one has to undertake to justify the actions of the US and Israel in recent years.
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.
To add to this: anyone who still does not see that Israel is by and far the most dangerous rogue state in the region is (at best) blinded by propaganda.
Iran has repeatedly demonstrated restraint and pragmatism throughout these aggressions on their sovereignty, starting with Israel’s strike on their consulate in Damascus.
There is a curious cognitive dissonance in which people think is somehow more morally correct to do human rights abuses abroad than at home. The US is doing both currently, though.
Very level headed and empathetic to go and claim that 50 countries just lost their right to criticize China because US and Israel are fighting Iran. Trolls having their priorities straight!
Anyway, sticking to the "Death to America" strategy and choosing to run a global proxy war and killing their own people, instead of choosing peace, have led to this moment.
Lets pray for the people of Iran we get rid of the regime this time, and eventually reach peace in the middle east.
Trump also said that when he says things he means them, unlike Obama's red lines in Syria (his words). When he said that, it was pretty clear he couldn't back off of attacking Iran.
I assume it took so long because he's going for regime change, not just a few bombings. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, it took the US 5 months to launch a counter-invasion (mostly because of coalition building).
Iranians are celebrating, btw. This is what they have been dreaming of. This is their chance to finally take their country back, and I think they'll do it.
I can't think of a better use of US military power in the world than to take out this terrible regime and let the Iranians do the rest. This isn't Iraq or Venezuela. People saying that we can't bomb our way into regime change apparently didn't follow the protests and massacres very closely a couple months ago. Iranians were begging for help so that they could topple the regime.
> People saying that we can't bomb our way into regime change apparently didn't follow the protests and massacres very closely a couple months ago. Iranians were begging for help so that they could topple the regime.
Of course people didn’t follow. Did you see any major news outlet doing live coverage of the events like they did for October 7th? No.
The news of bombs falling on schools must be really exhilarating to people. Especially for the ones that have children! Finally they have a chance to throw away their government and replace it with a military junta
Successful regime change requires a far more significant investment in soft power than America & Israel's current right-wing leadership would even conceive of.
"This war like the next war, is the war to end all wars"
- David LLoyd George, c.1916
The first wars were fought between tribes and then later between kingddoms for power/minor differences and trying to increase influence and alliances. Religion and race and many other discriminating factors are used for both sides to get support of the people, the people who are actually gonna carry the rifle and risk their lives and lose it, this drives the next war to redeem the losses of the first one, to take revenge.
This then creates a community which dislikes the other community and now we are here.
We do not like to be robbed of an enemy; we want someone to have when we suffer. … If so-and-so’s wickedness is the sole cause of our misery, let us punish so-and-so and we shall be happy. The supreme example of this kind of political thought was the Treaty of Versailles. Yet most people are only seeking some new scapegoat to replace the Germans.
- Bertrand Russel in Skeptical Essays.
Humanity has had a history written with bloodshed but the problem right now seems to me that we don't know how to write future, we lack a vision for other prospects, it seems to me that we jump into the newest Hype on the block and its all so wishy-washy. Contrary to people saying its a western issue, I think its an whole world issue, its just that the west is particularly impacted by it.
Has there been a desensitization in things in recent years?
I know of atleast one leader (King Kaniska) who fought for land (Modern day Orrisa) and won and then saw the bloodshed and screams on the ground and decided to not repeat it and I think he spent later of his life trying to promote peace.
I am sure that there must be other leaders in the history of past as well but perhaps its the problem of history as well which can sometimes glorify wars.
I think the biggest problem right now is being noise. We have created machines so large that humans have lost dignity and are treated unfairly at scale in terms of Renting places at scale owned by shell companies who'd rather have it empty than give you affordable housing. Prices seem to be increasing and I don't think modern social media helps in giving people dignity quite the opposite at times and it's very likely someone is reading this who may have contributed to making the machine.
With this being a political thread, I see comments from both sides[0], I don't think I have too much to add politically to the discussion but perhaps I just wanted to treat out that its best we treat each other with dignity in this thread and in general because I do believe that's the only thing we can do which can bring change. It's gonna be extremely hard for people to treat others with dignity while taking sides which talk about wars killing people, but I don't know what else to say. Iranian censorship for its people but I am not sure if the current idea of America brings me thinking of liberation. One can wish for pure democracies in such regions but its gonna be extremely hard and even grass-roots movements of these can be shut down by intrusive forces whether foreign or govt itself and given that the region is extremely shaky relying on oil which can be extracted from ground leading to a less dependence on people themselves for Iranian govt.s being the reason why they can be so censoring. They have shown enough power to fight massive protests but as I said earlier, the current picture of America don't exactly give me the idea of bringing pure democracy in the region either.
My prayers to the Iranian people who are stuck between a rock and tough spot.
(there are no sides, its a circle, a circle of people who start wars and the people who fight wars)
Even if you don't support US & IL standing in the frontlines against the terror regime, at least pray for the freedom of the people of Iran, 90m people held hostages by the regime. If you are pro-peace, do not be hypocrite, some wars are needed to defeat evil.
US needs to start thinking that you are not givinig someone freedom bt bombing them. You have soo much of your problems but your money printing machine is working and that is only reason that you can say that. Its not about 90m people its about your pockets...
Sure seems that way. I don't really see how this military action is justified from a US perspective. Or even from an Israeli one. The most likely justification is that the leadership of the US and Israel are a little bit unhinged and want a war to distract from domestic issues.
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.
Well, it's plausibly justified because the US considers a strong regional ally like Israel a valuable asset to have in the Middle East and if Israel is a regional hegemon [1] then all the better.
There have been many arguments that the US' support of Israel goes against US interests [2], but that really makes no sense. It's not just Trump who has to be convinced to start a war for Israel, it's the entire defense establishment in the US.
And also in Israel. If fighting half a dozen wars all at once was really that bad for Israel, surely, someone would have put a stop in it.
Surely.
_____________
[1] Got that term from J. Mearsheimer, if you were wondering.
[2] Particularly the Tucker Carlson - Judge Napolitano - Col. Daniel Davies continuum of mostly conservative podcast hosts. Or those are the ones I follow closely anyway. They're all convinced it's all "because of the lobby".
Netanjahu is old and wants to secure his 'legacy' by being credited for dismantling Iran, knowing Trump will back him both because he's been fed BS and because the Israelis have enough kompromat to sink him. There's no 'rational' justification for this attack, only madness and huge egos.
What kompromat would even affect Trump at this point? He's been proven to be deep in bed with a literal pedophilic cabal of elites, what on Earth else could they have on this guy that would affect anything?
I've long suspected DJT is on a rampage of radical, ragebait news worthy actions to take the news away from the Epstein files. I hate that it's working and many people have to suffer because of it.
Classic playbook. This war will last the next three years. Trump admin will leak information and let Iranian cells in US cause terrorism, giving them the excuse to install domestic mass surveillance locally. They'll use that as a means to stay in power.
we sure dodged a bullet in 2024 elections and elected the right people to stop all these senseless wars that were one of the cornerstones of the election campaign
Because polls before and after the election were crystal clear on this point.
Over 30% of Biden 2020 voters said arming genocide was going to affect their vote.
That's BIDEN VOTERS.
80% of Democrats wanted an arms embargo.
Arming Israel meant giving up millions of votes in swing states, in an election that was lost by extremely slim margins in those states.
And before you ask, it was also clear from polling that ending support to Israel would have cost nearly zero votes from her base.
And the reason the Harris campaign didn't know this is because they didn't want to know. Campaign staffers were instructed to mark anyone who raised Gaza as "no response". Attendees of the DNC conventions were literally plugging their ears and shielding their eyes from protests, or even laughing about them.
Trump won by less than 50% of the vote and there are many polls that show the Biden administration's genocide was massively demotivating to democratic voters.
Voters don't lose elections, campaigns do. Harris failed, and this kind of "turning around of the blame" thing that Dems try to do is one of the reasons why they don't win elections: they never learn.
I find the nuclear motivation an excuse. I mean, enrichment plants or not, if Iran wants a few nukes I am pretty sure that Russia would part with some enriched material and smuggle it pretty easily to Iran.
My theory is that Israel has dirt (Epstein files maybe) on Trump and holds him by the balls. The second idea is that this is an obfuscation campaign to have the public opinion forget about Epstein, the state of the real economy, the falling approval rates, or all of the above.
What makes you think Trump is not interested in this himself they just offered him hotels and land. Him getting blackmailed is I feel a lot of people that have voted for him are using as a coping mechanism.
The attack on Iran proves the point just like Russia attacking Ukraine if you want to protect your territories you need nuclear weapons. Canada, Greenland and countries in South America should also look to acquire nuclear weapons as once they are done with Iran you will be the next.
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.
opportunity cost-wise, iran could have poured all the money they did in nuclear enrichment instead into missiles, air defense, etc, and they would not be having as much problems as they do now.
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.
That's an idiosyncratic take on the facts that basically everyone else agrees to interpret otherwise.
Ukraine and weapons of mass destruction
Ukraine, formerly a republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1922 to 1991, once hosted Soviet nuclear weapons and delivery systems on its territory.[1] The former Soviet Union had its nuclear program expanded to only four of its republics: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine. After its dissolution in 1991, Ukraine inherited about 130 UR-100N intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) with six warheads each, 46 RT-23 Molodets ICBMs with ten warheads apiece, as well as 33 heavy bombers, totaling approximately 1,700 nuclear warheads that remained on Ukrainian territory.[2] Thus Ukraine became the third largest nuclear power in the world (possessing 300 more nuclear warheads than Kazakhstan, 6.5 times less than the United States, and ten times less than Russia)[3] and held about one third of the former Soviet nuclear weapons, delivery system, and significant knowledge of its design and production.[4] While all these weapons were located on Ukrainian territory, they were not under Ukraine's control.[5]
In 1994, Ukraine agreed to transfer these weapons to Russia for dismantlement and became a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, in exchange for economic compensation and assurances from Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom to respect Ukrainian independence and sovereignty within its existing borders.[6][7] Almost twenty years later, Russia, one of the parties to the agreement, invaded Ukraine in 2014 and subsequently also from 2022 onwards.
Btw, reference [5], used to justify the absurd claim that those weapons were in Ukraine's territory but not under its control, goes like this:
{{cite Hansard |url=https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199293/cmhansrd/1993... |title=Nuclear Weapons |speaker=[[Jeremy Hanley]] |position=Minister of State for the Armed Forces |house=[[House of Commons (United Kingdom)|House of Commons]] |volume=227 |date=June 22, 1993 |column=154 |access-date=September 9, 2018 |quote=Some weapons are also possessed by Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, but these are controlled by the Commonwealth of Independent States.}}
So it's basically the words of a UK MP assuring his audience that, nooo, don't worry, Ukraine doesn't control its WMD.
> My advice for rulers … hire a few hundred Chinese scientists and engineers and get nuked up ASAP.
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.
If nukes are so good why Israel isn't safe? Or in other words you overestimate how useful nukes are. On contrary for Iran them having nukes mean Israel have to guess if coming missiles contain nukes or not and whatever to strike back with their own nukes where as now they can freely sand missiles without escalation concerns.
Israel isn't safe? They are probably the most well defended country on the earth. A very capable domestic military and the full power of the US as an attack dog willing to do their bidding.
Nukes do not help against guerilla warfare: their destructive power is so big that they are really unreasonable attack weapon, and only a deterring factor instead.
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).
Anti-nuclear proliferation should now be treated as crime against humanity. Nuclear proliferation is only way to ensure world peace. Every single country should get nukes and capability to use them against each others. And be fully ready to do it.
I hope you and I never get the opportunity to learn how this would end. We’ve had nukes on Earth for less than 100 years, do you expect the next few thousand to go that well? Do you think in that time, nobody will ever roll a nat 1 on a wisdom check?
Another mid east war entirely on Israel’s behalf, another war Americans will pay tax for, die for- just so Israel can keep grabbing few parcels of lands from Palestine.
Iran is a lesson to all: as soon as Israel or the US take a disliking to you you have to rush for nuclear weapons.
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.
Don't know why you are being down voted. I mean Iran had a democracy that was toppled by the CIA when they tried to nationalise their resources in favour of a puppet dictator. If the US cared so much about human rights why not go invade Saudi Arabia.
I know someone whose clan was involved (still were when I last talked to him, before the US left Afghanistan). Of course the CIA/MI6 used local support, but they did have an impact on when, who and how. And on the power structure from 53 onwards.
Iran makes the drones that russia uses to attack Ukraine every day. Iran makes the rockets Houthis use to attack ships. Iran provides rockets andgunding to Hezbollah and Hamas. Iran is a terrorist state.
I can't help but think that all this shit is because Netanyahu really wants to put off more court hearings on his lame ass corruption charges. I really can't wait for him and his cronies (in Israel, and the West) to be brought to justice.
Without having to wait for the history books to do their thing.
His court appearance are continuing as scheduled, twice a week, for the last year. except for some specific incidents where he had to leave of cancel due to running a state.
No matter what you think, there is no way for him to avoid these hearings
Great, for those minor charges of accepting what, something like 150k Eur in gifts. As opposed to life in prison for genocide, which he clearly and absolutely deserves.
While Netanyahu definitely deserves that, don't expect anything to change for the better in Israeli foreign policy if he gets deposed and tried. Israeli politicians have become radicalized to a level that is hard to imagine from a European or US perspective.
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.
There wasn't a war between the Siam and Khmer, just some clashes plus their conflict is irrelevant to the rest of the world. I am not aware of crypto going down during that time? If I remember correctly it was close to ATH.
They have chosen the weekend not to disturb the stock markets. They may pull that off when they get inside support as the corruption of the regime has made it unpopular with business class and the middle class. Trump may achieve another 'Venezuela' short war.
I'm very skeptical that external attacks bring about a resurgence of domestic Iranian protest resulting in a tidy regime change. I think the downward lurch of BTC tells you how it's going to go, because Trump's mouth is writing checks others are going to have to cash and there's a lot of contradictions involved.
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?
I don’t know why anyone even bothers with this anymore. Literally every single word that comes out of his mouth is a lie. It’s actually staggering to think about. It’s like he is incapable of doing anything that right, correct, or true.
Ever since the ICE stuff I've been desperate to find a way to not pay my taxes - even if it means donating 2, 3x, hell 4x my tax bill to somewhere else. Obviously it's basically impossible to do this (especially if your income is all self employment income) outside of just spending every penny you earn on something that could be viably considered a business expense. So I'm wondering if I should just straight up stop working until I can relinquish my USA citizenship.
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.
If you're willing to go through all this trouble, why not just become politically active? Don't underestimate what a motivated individual can do. All these public figures (or institutions) swaying the country back and forth are only people too.
I was politically active in the USA, in the only way I believe can make any meaningful change: direct action, mutual aid.
The American political system is captured by two neoliberal (one now post liberal, fascist) parties, and you have to sell your soul to "accomplish" anything, only to watch it yet ratcheted away by your own party, or obliterated by the fascists.
This is a laudable position, and I don't say this to discourage you or others from taking this action, but taxation does not effectively constrain US military spending, as long as the USD remains globally desirable and the US retains the ability to print more of them.
You're a good person and I feel similarly. We live under the Fourth Reich.
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.
Ben Franklin was asked what kind of govt would the newly formed United States have. He was sadly right when he replied 'A republic, if you can keep it'
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.
Remember when we bombed Iran at Fordow? It happened less than a year ago. Iran sent some perfunctory retaliation, and everyone forgot the whole affair. Same with this. Nothing ever happens.
This was doesn't benefit the US whatsoever. I am getting tired of our taxes going to another useless war, like the Iraq one, that only benefits a foreign entity, aka Israel.
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.
It won't go to a full blown war. They will bomb some stuff and declare victory. Once they sailed two carrier battle groups over there an attack of some sort was a foregone conclusion.
>We don't know the details of the strikes, but I hope it doesn't go into a full blown war
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.
I don’t believe China has any intention to support anyone by military means. Best case they will keep on trading and that’s it. Iran is alone. Maybe Turkey makes a crazy move to support seeing it sees itself as next in line if Iran falls. This is the biggest present to European powers, which I think will be hoping that it will keep US busy for rest of Trump’s presidency. They have the Ukraine excuse to distance themselves and let everyone get weaker while they arm themselves up. Internal political tensions in US will also give them leeway to more actively influence American politics and these will be even worse with a long war pitched against a scandal background. Then again, Trump may be a genius, get this done in a couple of months and leave everyone grasping for a new strategy.
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.
I might be convinced that the Administration was concerned about people being forced to live under Islamic rule if it was as eager for war with Saudi Arabia as it is with Iran.
(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".)
No. There are dozens of countries with despotic regimes, including Israel. And I also have no interest in zionist or any religious ideals exported either. If this were justification we would also be bombing Israel, which has committed far worse crimes than Iran.
US president can be democrat or republican, republicans can control the Senate or the House, or the democrats can control the Senate or the House - regardless of who is in power, Israel's interests by US are always met. US can wreck havoc on close relations and ties with Europe, Canada, etc. - but relation to Israel never changes. You can oblivious to all this, but the truth is: Israel de facto controls the US.
The most likely and capable retaliation will be cyber/info wars.
Iran has sophisticated influence operations and will likely flood social media with disinformation designed to deepen political divisions and erode trust in institutions.
This advice serves even if you don’t believe the above. Be deeply skeptical of all viral content in the coming days and weeks, especially anything designed to change your opinions, or provoke outrage/fear. Verify before sharing. Expect deepfakes. Stick to primary sources when possible.
It kind of reveals Trump as a big liar. Not that this is a surprise, but even in his own self-image he can no longer try to shift the blame to others. Now he committed to war until regime change occurs.
What an utter betrayal of no war by DJT. This is the final straw. Era of Trump is dead, we are back to neoconservative era. I guess Adelsons are too hard to say no to.
Citizens United is an existential threat for USA. You cannot have Israeli-American dual citizens pouring $200 million dollars in elections. and that’s just her alone. This is simply not sustainable.
Ideally we would completely restructure the government to have multimember districts and change the Senate.
Within the current structure, we need to implement ranked/scored voting to break the two party system and the implied complete control it has over our government. It's so much easier for big money to control the narrative, control the candidates, and play off extreme polar politics when the voting system makes people choose the "lesser of two evils".
Were I king for a day in the US, and could only do one thing to help America, changing our voting system to some kind of rank/scored system would be it. Ending gerrymandering and Citizens United are also important but honestly less so than this.
Exactly what part of my statement was dog whistling? Can you stop throwing around this serious accusation of antisemitism without any attempt to substantiate your claim?
Making a big deal out of Israelis—especially wealthy ones—having dual citizenship is a classic antisemitic tactic, used to sow the idea that they aren't "real Americans" or their primary loyalty is to another country.
Also: yes, Citizens United is a big problem. But phrasing your comment as if the primary problem with it is "Israeli-American dual citizens" pouring millions of dollars into politics is perpetuating the antisemitic ideas that a) all or most Jews are wealthy, and b) Jews are controlling our country/the world.
Whether or not you meant it as antisemitic, it played directly and very clearly into multiple antisemitic tropes that are frequently used to try to smear and harm Jewish people.
It’s still pretty unclear how in the US is planning to go. For example, manifold still rates the chance that Iran’s regime falls this year at 46%, which should be a given if the US put boots on the ground. https://manifold.markets/SaviorofPlant/will-irans-regime-fal...
Are there any accurate sources on how many Iranian citizens the Iran regime has killed in the past couple of months? (some sources suggest tens of thousands, but I wonder if it could be a 'WMDs' situation [lie to get support for a 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]
I don't get that argument at all. Americans felt that they were missing out on all the fun, so they decided to kill even more Iranians? Does anyone really believe that bombing cities saves lives?
This is exactly what was claimed in Iraq, and while I'm sure you can find some few idiots or optimists, it is completely false at the relevant level. There is no such thing, and has never been such a thing, as a country welcoming an invasion by another country, at least not in the last few hundred years since nation states developed, and since explosives became the major means of war.
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.
The diaspora and the clans are cheering for sure, as well as a lot of people who lost their operations when the Taliban took Afghanistan back.
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.
Why are we even talking about this? As if this is being done for the 'protestors'? Netanyahu didn't visit the White House 6 times in the last year to advocate for the welfare of the Iranian people. The "negotiations" over the last several weeks weren't over protestors - it was over the Nuclear program, ballistic program and proxy forces. It wasn't even about US interests. Iran offered mining, oil and other valuable rights. Trump wasn't buying. This is about Israel's national security interests and hegemonic ambitions. Protestors are just pawns in service of that.
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.
Apparently you don't even have to give Americans the neocon foreign policy spin anymore, we generate it ourselves.
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.
Its probably not the reason they are attacking (except in as much that it makes the iranian regime vulnerable). However i would say that yes, humanitarian intervention is one of the only non self-defense justifications for war that anyone has ever accepted in the post-ww2 era. (Edit: to clarify, im saying its the type of thing people build justifications for war around. Whether its a valid justification on this specific case is probably highly debatable. I think a reasonable argument could be made)
> However i would say that yes, humanitarian intervention is one of the only non self-defense justifications for war that anyone has ever accepted in the post-ww2 era
So when is the US intervening in Ukraine then? Russia is literally doing human safari with drones hunting down civilians in Kherson.
But this will undoubtedly increase the general level of adversarial feelings and justifications of violence worldwide for many decades to come. The seeds of the next ISIS were planted today
Can the US or Israel morally claim “humanitarian” intervention given what’s happening in parallel in Gaza? If Iran bombed Tel Aviv would you call it a humanitarian intervention? Is this a creative use of the term? When you make a “humanitarian” intervention to save some humans, while decimating others it sounds like you think the “others” are not/sub-humans.
Regarding the protests in the preceding week, while the iranian people probably had valid problems with their government, its so pbvious the actual scenes we saw in the news were orchestrated to manufacture consent. Its barely hidden anymore.
If you see a sudden uptick in protests in a country the US/isreal see as an enemy, you can bet its probably just the step in the playbook preceding military action
Protests have been happening in Iran for years and their frequency and depth increasing. Last one was “Woman life freedom” movement because the government killed a girl for bad hijab.
It’s not new, you just started paying attention now.
I know its not new, the iranian governemnt has always been cruel to dissidents. I guess my point is a sudden uptic in participants and media coverage of them is the indicator of manufactured consent
Ok I get your point. You mean the uptick in US/Western media coverage? I do agree and don’t think whatever we’re witnessing right now is for the good of the people of Iran!
Also the scale in which people were killed in Iran in such a short time (even if you believe the Iranian state media) was unprecedented. So there’s that too.
The protests were there before. Maybe you didn't know about them, but many people have been protesting. These are 40 day protests - iran funerals are 40 days afer the death, and 40 days ago iran killed tens of thousands of protesters who now are having funerals. (Iran deach culture is more complex than that, but for discussion the above works)
I still cannot understand what "Claud helping to conduct attacks" could possibly mean. Like, they asked an LLM to use tool calls to look up strategic info, maps, and military asset inventory and then write a plan for where to point the missiles? How is a text generator helpful here, whose job could it make meaningfully easier in the chain of command?
"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."
I would not expect that prompt to work unless there's a fairly trivial query that can be crafted to give the right answer when run against the relevant datastore. If there is a query like that I would hope you have a guy on staff well-versed enough to know that and just run it himself.
Getting publicly kicked to the curb by the Trump admin mere hours before it starts another war is probably the best thing that could have happened to Anthropic. Not sure how well OpenAI's parachuting in is gonna look with hindsight. I have a feeling we won't have to wait that long to find out.
agreed. Although "starts another war" dismisses 50 years of history. Iran never stopped being at war with US and Israel and they clearly were never going to agree to a deal that left them without the nuclear capability to wipe both US and Israel off the map.
There are always unanticipated consequences in war. Argentina never thought in a million years that an attack on the practically undefended Falklands would result in the loss of the General Belgrano.
Regardless of how it ends, and it can go both ways, we're witnessing history here. This feels like a much bigger development than Russia-Ukraine. Iran is a major partner for Russia and China, mostly for military technology and oil. Hope it's not a start of WW3.
But russia-ukraine is also a much more contained war between 2 parties that will likely end in a stalemate.
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.
Ukraine will never de jure give up those territories and majority of nations will never recognize those as part of Russia. And it’s 20%, not 30%. Pre full scale war it was 7%, now it is 19%, so during the five years they’ve captured 12% of Ukraine's territory.
Russian goals were:
- Quick decapitation - fail
- Change of government - fail
- Prove that majority of Ukrainians are phone Russians and the moment greater Russia comes everyone will see that Ukraine is not a real state - fail
- Make second Belarus out of Ukraine - fail
- Stop NATO enlargement, Finland and Sweden joined NATO essentially doubling border with NATO - fail
- Dissuade Ukraine from joining EU and make it pro Russian first - fail
- Prove that Russia is a great military power on par with US that can topple regimes at will - fail
- Make Russia strategically independent- fail, Russia is now completely dependent on China
- Destabilize EU - fail, Europe is united like never under US/Russia/China threat
This war will enter history as one of the worst blunders.
I hope you're joking. This is such "Ukrainians are just Russians by a different name" logic. China, Belarus, and North Korea are deep in this conflict, so are all the European countries. There's no stalemate end to this war, only a temporary cease fire or the collapse of Russia.
Depends how you count “big”. Russia-Ukraine has had about 1 million deaths, and has completely changed how Europe thinks about security- it’s hardly a sideshow. Then again, not much territory has changed hands and there has been no regime change yet.
Not true, prior to 2022 February Russia controlled small parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, now they control them almost entirely, as well as good chunks of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts.
All were captured during their thrift store blitzkrieg. Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Mariupol were captured because pro Russian rats sabotaged mine defenses in Kherson oblast.
The casualty-to-death ratio in Ukraine is surprising for modern times, especially on the Russian side. Counting civilians, Ukrainians, Russians, I can see the death count being close to 1M. Partisan sources already put Russian combat losses at around 1.2M personnel. Ukrainian losses might be more than half what Russian losses are. The 1M deaths estimate doesn't seem outlandish.
No it's not. This is an air strike campaign, no boots on the ground. It'll end in two weeks. There is no chance China or Russia get involved, like last time, so "WW3" is completely non-credible.
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.
> 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.
Okay, and where's the army? I'm not sure what you're expecting without boots to put on the ground. Are the pilots gonna be ejecting to go hunt Khamenei? This argument is meaningless. Again, none of this can lead to WW3 and none of this can turn into a protracted war as in Ukraine-Russia.
You can stop when you have no idea what you're talking about, you know.
You seem like a Trump voter who voted for no more wars doing damage control
Boots on the ground can happen at any time if Iran manages to either hit one of the thousands of US assets in the region or worse they resort to terrorism with a theatrical attack like 9/11 which ended up costing so many lives , money and freedoms ranging from TSA literally up your ass to the destruction of privacy online and offline…..and of course as we all know boots on the ground
The big difference with previous campaign is that now, the Iranian regime is facing existential threat. While the previous war was more a of a show for respective domestic publics, this one feels like there is no coming back.
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.
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.
Being Serbian, the bombing campaign of 1999. was successful. It lead to the (temporary, 12-years long) regime change, and to the de-facto independence of Kosovo. It ended the war.
There might be boots on the ground eventually given Trump's speech.
>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
Iran is hitting back at US bases so it could be related to those risks, rather than a full invasion.
(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)
It's a sinister statement, but despite everything the U.S. has moved to the region, they didn't move the stuff they would need to move for ground operations.
> 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.
China buys Iranian oil, if they’ll start to but oil from non-sanctioned countries it will push prices up. But the biggest reason for prices to go up is the risk that Iran will attack tankers in the strait of Hormuz or oil infrastructure on Arabian peninsula.
I don't think it's bigger than Russia-Ukraine - it's part of it. This is all about destabilising Iran's incumbent government, which is probably a good thing at the moment. It'll damage supply lines to Russia's Ukraine offensive, give the chance for Iranian citizens to rise up against Khamenei and the IRGC and break the command chain for their foreign proxy operations. Part of Dugan's work on geopolitics, which they seem to be following to the word (c'mon guys seriously?) suggests that Moscow and Tehran should be allied which they are behind the scenes.
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.
> 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.
More like this is a small piece of the puzzle in Russian-Ukraine war. Iran plays quite a big role in supplying Russians. If Iran is taken out, power balance in that war may change too.
As big as this is, the Russia-Ukraine war pretty much marked the end of the post-WW2 era and redefined global relations between the powers. In that sense, this is yet another major shift within this new era. But also, the series of events that led to this point does connect to the Russia-Ukraine war, and maybe doesn't happen without it.
I don’t dispute that fact, but the Jews that have immigrated from there have grew up in the Soviet Union and in the Soviet education system, and therefore speak Russian
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
I have to wonder how many are in governmental roles and realized they can steer the US into conflicts and ruining itself without any of those involved identifying as Russian. It's the cleanest backdoor for espionage that there ever was.
Will not one of you try to steelman this decision? Or do you truly, fully believe the entire US government and intelligence complex, supported by roughly 50% of your compatriots, are warmongering baboons?
Israël is threatened by Iran. Iran has been working on nukes. There have been negotiations but they haven't been definitive yet, and Iran has never been a trustworthy negotiating partner anyway. That is why this President ditched the last round of agreements.
That's the steelman. Reality is that half my compatriots are warmongering baboons.
I am saddened by your gullibility. Your first instinct is to trust this administration? Who has repeatedly showed utter contempt for the very idea of truth, the constitution, the rule of law, and science, merely because half of American voters are brainwashed?
This administration's arguments do not deserve to be steelmanned.
I think it's possible it's a good decision (As with most wars in the middle east, I think hubris is playing a heavy role and we're underestimating the risks involved) but I think I'm in the minority and this is _not_ supported by 50% of my compatriots.
I don't know if by 50% you're talking about left vs right, but I'm center left, and a decent number of center-left thought leaders support this action. I think the people who support this are a relatively narrow 25-30% of remaining neo(lib|con)s in the center, and the more left and the America First right crowd hate this. My guess would be loosely speaking Trump's base hates this more than the typical HN poster. Tucker Carlson for instance will be way more against this than anyone here.
The president of peace btw.
I'm baffled at the lack of calls to boycott the Fifa world cup in US.
And at the double standards applied to Russians and Israelis in their wars of aggression.
I guess Israel can play the "October 7th" card at least which was an insane horror.
I don't want to insult you but your president is a populist and a TV personality. He is not a policy maker, he is more like an actor. So your country went into war mode by changing the name of the Department of Defence to Department of War. This was not a cosmetic change. This means peace times are over and you are in war. Your government acts accordingly.
Since you are still a democracy find those people who make your policy decisions. It's not that yellow man.
Ukraine’s TV personality leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy seems to be doing alright. Also went into war, but not of their own doing, and he has been measured, insightful, aware, throughout this whole war.
There’s more to it than Trump being a TV show personality. Far too complex and insidious than a simple quip.
I'm not disagreeing with you but "Dept of War" is ENTIRELY a cosmetic change. It's literally just a name. There are people, mostly with desk jobs, who really want to feel like badasses and they really want the Dept of War. The real human consequences of this are unimportant to them and sadly unimportant to the rest of us also.
>I don't want to insult you but your president is a populist and a TV personality. He is not a policy maker, he is more like an actor.
All of them are, even those that haven't had a show on TV.
> find those people who make your policy decisions
Genuine question: who put Iran in their policy portfolio?
AIPAC is a thing...
And now of course you're going to label me an AIPAC nutter, but in this particular case I think the evidence is fairly plain given the collaboration between the two countries on this. If Israel had done this by their lonesome or if the US had not involved Israel then you could make the case that they reached this point independently, right now it looks to me as if collusion is a 100% certainty and that the US is executing a foreign policy that will not benefit it but that will benefit Israel. It also makes me wonder whether this will end up as a Venzuela re-run where the top names change but everything else remains the same, just with US companies the beneficiaries of the oil, which is, besides policy the main driver behind these things anyway.
ah here come the jews run the USA conspiracy. HN does not dissapoint. Well, no I am dissapointed. But not surprised.
Reddit and HN have been taken over by leftie tankie zoomers and thridies who want to see the West fall while then dream of a life in Europe or worse, live here.
You've been uncritically supportive of Israel in plenty of other threads on HN already so I'm not sure if your exaggeration of my comment should even be taken serious.
Israel has a massive lobbying effort in the United States and that's not exactly news, on top of that there have been many documented pieces of interaction between Trump and Nethanyahu that seem to be evidence that Trump is doing a lot of things to please Israel.
Well, we're certainly not collaborating with West Africa to bomb France. Not even the Philippines to bomb China.
I mean, it could just be the evangelicals hoping to start a holy war that heralds the End of Days. And now that I type that out, I have to agree with your implicit position that it's definitely the more rational catalyst.
Make a genuine guess…
I was hoping someone serious (versus the everything is AIPAC nutters) had put thought into it.
Rubio and Walz have been Iran hawks. But I’m not yet convinced they were unilateral. Instead, it looks like a Rice-Powell alignment of vague interests with enough groupthink that dissenters weren't in the room.
But in this case it literally is the AIPAC. Just because conspiracy theorists blame AIPAC for anything and everything they don’t like doesn’t mean the AIPAC doesn’t have massive influence in American politics. Especially in this case where we are going to war at Israel’s behest to distract from the Epstein Israeli intelligence operations.
> it literally is the AIPAC
AIPAC isn't a person. Who is the person who convinced the President to order these strikes? It could be someone at AIPAC. There is no evidence for that, I suspect, because it's highly unlikely.
The current Israeli government obviously has a great deal of influence in the US government. That much is not conspiracy theory. The evangelicals involved in project 2025 have a very real interest in middle eastern conflict from an ideological standpoint. If you want a cynical follow the money villain look no farther than Al Saud and friends. Also, this weakens Russia and further restricts oil reaching China from anywhere. Every oil feed reaching China over water is at this point being curtailed. Looking for a single reason is very hollywood, enough interests aligned.
The US president hasn't required a new war resolution since Afghanistan. They each keep stretching it farther and farther. It cannot be rescinded without a veto-proof majority. If there was a veto proof majority willing to stand up to the executive, a conviction and removal would have already occurred.
The assertion that the US is a democracy is nisguided. It will be downgraded by vdem this month to an electoral autocracy. It is also worth noting that it only takes senators receiving the votes of <7% of the total population to filibuster all legislation, prevent overriding any vetos, and halt all impeachment trials. The fact it has looked like a democracy for so long is astounding.
> Also, this weakens Russia and further restricts oil reaching China from anywhere
This is good for the West and EU.
I support this strike, simple as.
> Looking for a single reason is very hollywood, enough interests aligned
Correct. But interests need to be animated to have power. Who was arguing that this should be a priority, and a priority now, who is familiar in the White House?
> The assertion that the US is a democracy is nisguided. It will be downgraded by vdem this month to an electoral autocracy
This is nonsense.
> halt all impeachment trials
False. Senate Rule 193 sets time limits on debate for impeachment trials [1].
[1] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDOC-117sdoc1/pdf/CDOC-1...
You seem to have a singular villain ready to point at. I do not see it. The president reportedly thinks whatever the last person to speak said. So are you proposing a mastermind or simply a catalyst?
As far as vdem goes, Lindberg has recently as much as confirmed they will down grade the us below democracy status.
> Lindberg has recently as much as confirmed they will down grade the us below democracy status
I mean, that's interesting from a political theoretical perspective. And if you want to put sacred meaning into it, sure. I'm not sure most people would take a decade-old Swedish institute as a harbinger of whether or not America is a demoracy too seriously (versus other sources, to be clear).
You are right that unless the eiu or others follow suit it would be less meaningful. On the senate conviction, my point is that only 33 senators need to oppose a conviction to stop it. Or to let a veto stand. The smallest states get the same number of senators. If those votes were evenly split, and it was the typical 50-60% turnout. It would actually only be 2-3% of the populace needed.
I do want to know who the bad guy is though.
I see this as Trump going after governments that were close to Russia and China. Which is why he is going after Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.
Also there are many countries in the middle east that we are friends with which would be happy if Iran falls.
The rumor I heard was that high-level Pentagon generals had subtly suggested that Trump target Iran. The reason was to distract his attention from Greenland. Logic goes that if you have a reality TV star who built his brand on being a tough guy in the White House, it's far better that he attack a theocratic dictatorship that funds a host of terrorist organizations and whose country is already on the verge of collapse than a NATO ally and fellow democracy that didn't do anything to us.
He's been talking about Iran since 2011
Indeed, the permanent bureaucracies and think tanks have advised all administrations:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7864/j.ctt6wpgvg
This is bipartisan. The long term goals were to start with Libya, Iraq, Syria and then Iran. The latter two required Russia to be tied up in another conflict.
They don't explicitly put Iran in their portfolio because for Reality TV it is better to be a peace lover.
Now, undoubtedly the Democrats will pretend to complain, but Schumer and Pelosi want this, too.
[I am expanding on your comment, not trying to contradict anything.]
The Trump admin would sooner drop nukes on LA then cede a fair election.
I don't think the American people can change their country's policy oriented toward a constant state of war, aggression, and invasions of other countries under the current system. This is a constant state policy, regardless of the party or the president. So it can be said that the United States is not a democracy. Money and capital rule, not the people.This can only be changed by a fundamental shift that empowers people over capital.
Of course, I agree that Trump is worse because, by removing the mask of civility and attacking others without first bothering to create propaganda and a narrative about how it is for the greater good and justice, he made the plundering and crimes faster and more efficient.
> don't think the American people can change their country's policy oriented toward a constant state of war, aggression, and invasions of other countries under the current system
Of course we can. People disagreeing with you doesn't mean they don't exist.
These are the Senate seats in play this cycle [1]. How many of those do you think would be flipped based on any foreign policy item?
If you're on this thread you pay attention to foreign policy. The notion that someone doesn't–not isn't informed, but literally doesn't to any degree–is almost more foreign than the strangest countries we read about. But the truth is most Americans have never ranked any foreign policy item as being in their top three issues since the Vietnam War.
We could change it if we wanted to. We don't because it's not personally pertinent or worse, it's boring.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_United_States_Senate_elec...
That's assuming the people don't vote for this because they want this.
Many Americans have a hero complex. Their national mythology post World War II includes them being the "good guys" against the "bad guys." That mythology needs a bad guy.
Trump ran on "no wars" because he was going to spend all his focus on America instead of burning taxpayer money dropping bombs overseas. I'm sure some people voted for him at least in part for that reason. You can argue that they should have known he was liar, but there is support for it. Also, with the new concentration camps, the soldiers in our streets, and the nazi salutes I'm not sure the whole "good guys" against the "bad guys" narrative is something trump voters care about at all. They seem pretty comfortable playing the "bad guys" part anyway.
The moment they made that name change and stated their expansionist agenda it finally became clear to me that this wasn't just MAGA anymore, this was actual fascism.
Whether you think the current targets are legitimate or not, the fact that the U.S. is going to war without seeking any democratic approval anymore is deeply troubling.
> The moment they made that name change and stated their expansionist agenda it finally became clear to me that this wasn't just MAGA anymore, this was actual fascism.
I'm pretty sure MAGA was always fascism. I mean, all the signs were there and people were sounding alarm bells almost immediately.
This is clearly not fascism, and not very different from what the US is accustomed to. Let's not waste the meaning of words by throwing them at any occasion.
What do you think fascism is? What we have is a populist, nationalist, racist, regime headed by a man that can't be held accountable for his actions and who acts like a dictator (as further evidenced in this case by going to war without congress) who uses to the power of the government to attack/threaten/suppress his "enemies" here in the US. If this isn't textbook fascism you must admit that it at least checks a lot of the same boxes
Are you claiming Harris or Biden would have bombed Iran like this? That does not sound credible, but if the other party wouldn’t have attached Iran then this is not business as usual, it’s the GOP as usual.
But the Iranian regime isn’t at all fascist, right?
An honest discussion about this cannot be had on this site, it's kinda funny how pointless all the comments are here. Yours is the closest anyone is allowed to get and I wonder if yours will stay up.
The guy’s in the World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame. He’s been seeking or serving in office for over ten years. We all know. It’s old ground.
Ukraine is a democracy with a legitimate leadership that was not planning to acquire nukes and has no history of planning to remove Russia from the map. To suggest that this attack on Iran is the same as the Russian invasion of Ukraine is very misguided.
Ukraine got rid of nukes and it was massive collosal mistake. In alternative universe where they win and get territory back and get economy on track, they would be 100% warranted to get the nukes.
My point is, Ukraine war and the way it evolved shows that not having nukes is a bad position.
> My point is, Ukraine war and the way it evolved shows that not having nukes is a bad position.
Israel (allegedly? idk) has nukes. Did it stop October 7th? Did it stop Iran from firing ballistic missiles?
The war of today is not an open war (the war in Ukraine did not start on February 24 2022, but in 2014) where nuclear deterrence matters. Nuke will never help if the war is waged through proxies.
To be fair, nuking a piece of land that you claim you own and is also just a few miles away and downwind of your own citizens is a fairly difficult thing to do. Nukes are a great deterrent when it's a place at least 100 miles from your borders, and better if even farther. They're useless in your own backyard.
Ukraine never had operational control of the missiles in its territory
By now the nukes would have been useless. You need to have a continuous ballistic and nuclear program to manufacture new nukes and missiles as the old ones become stale.
I think Ukraine would have no problem maintaining it's own nuclear program from purely technical perspective, considering they have a number of nuclear plants and expertise. Plutonium is a byproduct of a nuclear plant, they wouldn't even have to bother with uranium enrichment.
Presumably if you kept your nukes you’d built that capacity
That takes money. Ukraine was very poor in 1993. It's even poorer now.
You forgot the genocide they have going and the current attempt to starve Cuba into submission with their little "blockade"
> You forgot the genocide they have going
There is no genocide.
About half of the killed in Gaza are militants. And while it sounds insensitive, if your objective is zero civilians dead, the opposing army will simply use civilians as shields knowing that you will never attack.
Laws of warfare are pretty clear and reasonable.
50% as in the barely armed males that were killed like fish in a barrel
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-1...
> Women, children (ie, younger than 18 years), and older people (ie, older than 64 years) comprised 56·2% (95% CI 50·4–61·9) of violent deaths
How many of those people under 18 are boys over 15?
Militias rarely have age restrictions.
I am not sure what is the point you are trying to make with these stats.
It is clear that if half of the killed were militants, the other half is not by definition.
50% of casualties being civilians does not mean it is a genocide.
if you slaughter civilians and label all males as combatants you conveniently get a near 50% militant death rate
don't play dumb, there's a reason israel is not letting foreign media into gaza and slaughtering local journalists at a rate never seen in history of war
> if you slaughter civilians and label all males as combatants you conveniently get a near 50% militant death rate
Say the ratio is 1:4, then what?
> don't play dumb, there's a reason israel is not letting foreign media into gaza and slaughtering local journalists at a rate never seen in history of war
And, at the same time, they keep all the internet links alive so that Palestinians can show the whole world the "genocide"? Like, do you really think that Israelis are that dumb? Islamic Republic shut down the internet to hide the scope of butchery, but Israelis did not figure it out?
They're engaged in willful destruction of hospitals, they kill journalists on purpose, they have systematically blocked aid. Their friend minister recently declared an intent to eliminate all Palestinian territory.
You're just lying.
> They're engaged in willful destruction of hospitals
If a civilian facility is used for military purposes it is a legitimate target. Ukranians also bomb schools and hospitals. Are Ukranians commit genocide?
If a hospital is never be attacked, what prevents militaries simply use hospitals as military bases? It's like the ultimate "get out of jail" free card.
> they kill journalists on purpose
US also did in Iraq. And? Does it make US's invasion of Iraq a genocide? Ukranians killed Russian journalists too. Does it make the war in Ukraine a genocide?
> they have systematically blocked aid
Egypt did so as well. Moreover, despite its international obligations, Egypt refused to accept Palestinian refugees as if it wanted a lot of civilians to die.
> Their friend minister recently declared an intent to eliminate all Palestinian territory.
You mean politicians pandering to their base?
> You're just lying.
Sure.
Please provide sources. Genocide is not a matter of cherry-picking or of opinion. People who take this debate seriously look into context and evidence with a level of detail that goes beyond what can be covered here. Anyone interested in arguments and counterarguments will inevitable have to refer to authorities in the matter who have the background, time and resources.
Iran has been "a week away" from acquiring nukes since Netanyahu first claimed it in the 90s.
Not six months ago, Trump launched a strike that "completely obliterated" Iran's ability to obtain nukes. And then, either because he has the memory of a goldfish, or thinks that we do (both are somewhat true), he pulled out "a week away", again, at the SOTU. "We must attack Iran to destroy what I told you we destroyed last year."
Iran may be planning to do so. But this is just a boogeyman being used (again) by Israel and the US.
> And at the double standards applied to Russians and Israelis in their wars of aggression.
I would argue that funding Axis of Resistance from Hezbollah to Houthis is aggression too. Let’s not pretend that IR minded their own business, and suddenly was under attack.
It's called R2P.
Not to mention all the numerous threats to wipe Israel off the map by Iran, Hez etc.
Let's not pretend Iran is innocent please. Or Hamas either.
Meanwhile "from the river to the sea" was actual Likud's election slogan before Hamas co-opted it. There are absolutely elements in Israel - and to be clear, in its government, with the ability to and motivation to make it happen, not just extremists posting on their forums - what are quite happy with the idea of razing both Gaza and the West Bank to the ground for settling. And their idea of what to do with the people displaced by this ranges from collateral damage to a shrug of the shoulders and making them someone else's problem.
> And at the double standards applied to Russians and Israelis in their wars of aggression
To be fair, this is the new standard. Russia has promulgated it through its actions in Georgia and Ukraine. China with Tibet and Taiwan. America with Iraq, Venezuela and Iran. The old rules-based international order is dead, and with it Pax Americana.
The wishes of a small group of people aren't the default for the majority. This is why the small group of people say that strong leaders for life, with no checks, are normal and natural.
> wishes of a small group of people aren't the default for the majority
In a geopolitical context, the words and actions of the powerful are what count. And those words and actions currently point–uniformly–towards sovereign borders not being a red line.
I'm certain that Persians will remain in Iran, Arabs in Palestine, and Jews in Germany for any reasonable number of lifetimes we could count. The wishes of a few fascists don't outlast their death.
> the old rules-based international order
At most that was a couple of decades, it's not like that's an ancient status quo.
> that was a couple of decades, it's not like that's an ancient status quo
Sure. The century-long peace following the Napoleonic Wars was also some decades.
Our default state, unfortunately, is war. But we sought to change that after the horrors of WWII (and the nuclear bomb), and it's worth nothing where those noble goals succeeded. It's sad that project is over. But something being sad doesn't mean it isn't true.
"worth nothing" -> "worth noting"
!!
no need to accuse russia or china... America has always done that, now along with genocidal minions like israel. it’s insane that the West commits war crimes and people still comment: “It’s china’s fault”. that’s such a weird mentality, avoiding taking accountability.
No one here is saying this is China fault, they’re saying the current situation is on par for how the USA, China and Russia treat the world.
In this thread the only reason people have brought up Chinese issues are because the strong defensiveness of others like China is some saint. They’re not.
Also I think two more examples were missed, how Ukraine wouldn’t have been invaded without china’s tolerance of their ally doing it, and Hong Kong repression. Also how Iran and Ukraine make it much more likely they finally go for Taiwan like they’ve been posturing to do.
To deny China isn’t like Russia and the US in this regards is like thinking Trump was going to be the peace president as he claimed
> insane that the West commits war crimes and people still comment: “It’s china’s fault”
Insane that people see a list of common actions by Russia, China and America and still conclude Chinese victimhood.
Name one country China has attacked/invaded in the last 40 years.
India, Russia, Philippines, Vietnam (south China sea island taking), Russia (their last border skirmish was in the 90s), itself (PLA soldiers were used and killed people in TS 1989).
(EDIT in lieu of multiple replies - a random border fuckup is not an invasion in my book)
And the body count from all of those tiny border skirmishes together? Its less than these 24 hours in Iran, right?
You asked for names of countries. That was provided. What you're doing here is called moving the goalposts.
If you include TS 1989 then the body count is much higher than that last 24 hours in Iran.
Where are you gonna move the goalposts to next?
A fuckup at the border is not an "attack/invasion". If China/Russia/India attacked each other for real, it would not look like a fuckup.
I'm being consistent with my goalposts.
The idea that China hasn't 'attacked anyone' in 40 years is factually incorrect. In 1988, they engaged in a deadly naval skirmish with Vietnam over the Johnson South Reef. More recently, the PLA engaged in fatal border clashes with India in the Galwan Valley (2020). On top of direct skirmishes, they have engaged in constant gray-zone aggression: violently ramming Philippine and Vietnamese vessels in the South China Sea, firing water cannons at supply ships, and surrounding Taiwan with live-fire military blockades. That doesn't even touch on the internal human rights abuses against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Multiple international bodies and governments have recognized what they are doing to Uyghurs since 2014 as genocide. Finally, it's hard to ignore their devastating handling of COVID-19. The active suppression of information, punishment of early whistleblowers, and refusal to cooperate with international investigations resulted in unprecedented worldwide damage, amounting to an act of gross global endangerment.
> Name one country China has attacked/invaded in the last 40 years
India [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_China%E2%80%...
I said "attacked/invaded", not "had some fistfights at the border". Could we set the standard at "at least one piece of military equipment fired on people"?
Bear in mind that we're comparing this to the USA and Israel's military record over the last 40 years.
> I said "attacked/invaded", not "had some fistfights at the border"
Disputed border region. Used military force to intervene. That's an attack.
> Could we set the standard at "at least one piece of military equipment fired on people"?
Why not tens of soldiers killed? (And on what planet do "the 4th (Highland) Motorised Infantry and 6th (Highland) Mechanised Infantry Divisions" of the PLA not contain military equipment?)
> we're comparing this to the USA and Israel's military record over the last 40 years
No, you are. The list I stated was China, Russia and America. You're trying to argue that China upholds the rules-based international order around respecting sovereign borders. That would be news in Taipei.
I'm arguing that China has, generously, inflicted maybe 1k military casualties in the last 40 years if we round everything all the way up.
You're arguing that China is the real bad guy while USA/Israel are doing 10x that in the current 24 hours.
> I'm arguing that China has, generously, a 3-4 figure body count in the last 40 years
If we ignore proxy wars, sure.
And you're still arguing a straw man. Nobody in this thread ever said that China was as warlike as Russia and America (and Israel and Iran). Just that it has embraced the same geopolitical philosphy and standard.
> Small scale melee combat at the border.
> Casualties: 35 combatants killed
Uh-huh.
So, half of the number of people we killed in our Venezuela attack. Of which half were innocent civilians.
Hey, could you really quick remind me how many civilians the US killed in Afghanistan? Something like 500,000 right?
Not here to say China is a good guy by any means, but your example was so bad I laughed out loud.
> your example
The examples I gave were Tibet and Taiwan. I was asked to give "one country China has attacked/invaded in the last 40 years," a timeline chosen to exlude the Sino-Vietnamese war [1] and encompass the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse. I did, prioritizing directness, recency and death toll.
I'm not saying China is as militarily forward as Russia or America (or Israel or Iran). I'm saying that the double standard isn't a double standard, it's one Xi explicilty embraces with his rhetoric around Taiwan.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War
> China with Tibet and Taiwan
What do you mean? China has bought Tibet from the British. And what have they done with Taiwan?
> China has bought Tibet from the British
China invaded and annexed Tibet in 1951 [1].
You may be thinking of Hong Kong, which the British invaded and annexed from the Qing dynasty [2] and then handed back to China in 1997 [3] under conditions that Beijing defaulted on in 2019 [4].
> what have they done with Taiwan?
Same as America has been doing with Greenland.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Tibet_by_the_Peo...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Hong_Kong
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handover_of_Hong_Kong
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Hong_Kong_pr...
>Same as America has been doing with Greenland.
So, nothing?
> So, nothing?
No. Threatening to invade a sovereign country, and then staging materiel to do it, is not "nothing." At the every least, it's something the U.S. (and China and Russia) once criticised others for doing. And it's something we've each done.
I know I left that Nobel Peace Prize somewhere … but I can't find it because there's so much America First lying around. I know, I'll ask the aliens and the US men's hockey team if they've seen it.
surely you mean the coveted FIFA Peace Prize!
Laser pointers are to cats as sparkly objects are to Trump.
covfefe
Being attacked should rule out 'war of aggression', but I guess the phrase seems to have lost any meaning in modern discourse. Apparently you can spend all the time calling 'death to X' and then get shocked when others take you seriously.
> Being attacked should rule out 'war of aggression'
It usually does. The argument here is about the proportion of the response.
You seem to have forgotten that the US attacked Iran first, which made this regime even possible in the first place.
> You seem to have forgotten that the US attacked Iran first, which made this regime even possible in the first place.
Bombing of US marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 was funded, and organized by Iran. Just take half day off, and read a bit on the role of Islamic Republic in Middle East in the past 40 years. I guarantee your stance of "US attacked first" will change to the "unclear" at the least.
> The president of peace btw.
Doesn't matter who the president is - bush, obama, trump, biden. They all do what israel tells them to do. Just like the iraq war. Iraq, libya, syria, etc. You live long enough and you'll see.
> I'm baffled at the lack of calls to boycott the Fifa world cup in US.
That's cause much of europe is controlled by israel as well.
The war started in 1948 by Europeans attempting to attack and invade Palestine to grab their land to build their mediterranean resort homes. The war never stopped. There was no surrender documents signed. The foreign invaders have always been in the state of war. It's why their colonial outposts are required to have bomb shelters.
Not sure why you would consider October 7 an "insane horror" when the foreign invaders literally burned children alive in 1948 by throwing them into ovens, as happened in the Deir Yassin massacre. Or the rape camps of Tantura. There were 15,000 innocent civilians killed by the invaders when they started this war.
I still can't believe we have to fight Israel's war for them. First the Iraq war and now the Iran war.
> war started in 1948
It's the Middle East. The birthplace of civilisation. Everyone can legitimately claim everyone else started every conflict in the region because war in Mesopotamia and the Levant literally predates history.
At the end of the day I believe in the primacy of the living. Crimes committed by and against those alive today are infinitely more imporant than those committed by and against their ancestors. I've seen folks take this shit back to King Herod and the Parthians, and it's not a bad historical argument. (The Romans intervened.) It's practically counterproductive, however, inasmuch as focussing on blame versus harm reduction and prevention is counterproductive in any conflict resolution.
One of the separations between the rich and peaceful and the poor and permanently warring is in capacities to forgive. Japan wouldn't be a better place if they committed terrorist attacks against their American occupiers, or decided that they needed blood for Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And Americans wouldn't be happier if we decided to lob a nuke at the British in WWII for burning down our White House in the War of 1812. (France didn't ultimately profit from the Treaty of Versailles.)
> Not sure why you would consider October 7 an "insane horror" when
No. Don't do this to yourself. I get the temptation. But it is the path to becoming a monster. October 7 was an insane horror. So were other things. Atrocities aren't signed; they don't cancel out, just accumulate.
> It's the Middle East. The birthplace of civilisation.
(lots of word salad normalizing genocide)
> No. Don't do this to yourself. I get the temptation to do this. But this is the path to becoming a monster. October 7 was an insane horror. So were other things.
It's OK to hate an entity that decided to kill every Palestinian baby in a neonatal intensive care unit by forcing the staff to abandon them and leaving those precious infants to die slowly and alone of starvation.
Yes, you too can hate that entity, too.
October 7 was not an insane horror. It was a perfectly fine response to such a monstrous foreign entity. Please don't normalize those monsters.
> (lots of word salad normalizing genocide)
If you're reading what I wrote as endorsing Israel's war you're exhibiting the problem with blind hate. You stop seeing the world as it is.
> It's OK to hate an entity
Sure. Hating an entity doesn't require you to endorse atrocities against its people.
> October 7 was not an insane horror. It was a perfectly fine response to such a monstrous foreign entity
One, you could literally change "October 7" to "the war in Gaza" and have the Israeli far right in a nutshell.
Two, I guess I respect you for being honest about what you believe. It's a clear position. Even if it's morally abhorrent. (You're saying killing children is okay if it's politically expedient.) But I guess there are enough people in that region who believe what you've said across various conflicts; herego this.
Yeah, that attitude is not new.
> "The point is that as soon as fear, hatred, jealousy and power worship are involved, the sense of reality becomes unhinged. And, as I have pointed out already, the sense of right and wrong becomes unhinged also. There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when ‘our’ side commits it. Even if one does not deny that the crime has happened, even if one knows that it is exactly the same crime as one has condemned in some other case, even if one admits in an intellectual sense that it is unjustified – still one cannot feel that it is wrong. Loyalty is involved, and so pity ceases to function."
It's not. It's the first time I'm seeing it so clearly–and, again, credit where it's due, honestly–on HN.
Since you are so concerned by October 7. Do you know how many of those killed were soldiers? Do you know how many were killed by the IDF?
> Do you know how many of those killed were soldiers and security personnel?
Do I need to?
If October 7 had solely engaged military targets, the moral contours of the entire campaign would have been different. It didn't. I'd argue couldn't. The political forces that sustained Hamas and Sinwar did not allow for targeted, strategic strikes. Just acts of vengeance played out for an audience.
Like, let's reverse it. Do you know how many of those killed by the IDF are bona fide militants? I don't. But I also don't think that's germane to e.g. "opening fire on crowds of Palestinians as they tried to make their way to the fenced enclosure to get food" [1].
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/04/middleeast/israel-military-ga...
> The war started in 1948 by Europeans attempting to attack and invade Palestine to grab their land to build their mediterranean resort homes.
Jewish people lived there for the past two thousands years. Hebron massacre by Arabs happened in 1929.
> It's why their colonial outposts are required to have bomb shelters.
I think they have bomb shelters to save their civilians from bombs.
> Not sure why you would consider October 7 an "insane horror" when the foreign invaders literally burned children alive in 1948 by throwing them into ovens, as happened in the Deir Yassin massacre. Or the rape camps of Tantura. There were 15,000 innocent civilians killed by the invaders when they started this war.
Interesting how you are totally fine with murder of civilians as long as they are the "right" kind of civilians.
>And at the double standards applied to Russians and Israelis in their wars of aggression.
Russians invading Ukraine is NOT the same at all. You lefties are running Reddit and now HN. I am done. So done.
>I guess Israel can play the "October 7th" card at least which was an insane horror.
More than twice as many people died in Puerto Rico during Hurricane Maria than on October 7th.
My regard is thus: lobs half an intercontinental ballistic roll of paper towels at Tel Aviv
> The president of peace btw.
Europe is to blame, according to him.
FIFA might be the one organization that can go toe to toe with Trump I’m corruption. And I mean that in the worst way possible. Qatar was using literal slave labor to get stadiums built and the organization just shrugged when informed like it was just another Tuesday.
He could drop a nuke on Greenland tomorrow and they’d probably say they don’t want the sport to be tangled in political disagreements and if anything the World Cup can help everyone heal.
Do you support the Iranian regime?
Pax Romana peace.
I can't believe the winner of the FIFA Peace Prize would do such a thing.
I for one can no longer take the FIFA Peace Prize seriously.
Look up what the Iranian regime has done to his people and to others, including US and European countries, since 1979 and you'll understand that the only reason US allies are cautious and not fully behind this campaign is that toppling the regime means high uncertainty as to what would replace it...
I know some people weren't alive then, but the invasion of Iraq started off pretty good for the US... Sort of how Russia imagined it's march on Kiev would go (!3) 4 years ago.
What replaced Sadaam was the US, and that went horribly for everyone.
You say that like US and Israel hit Iceland or Portugal. Like, Iran wasn't source of terror on Middle East, funding terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbolla and Houthi. Like, Iran didn't make "death to Israel, death to America" their national idea.
Remind us of Ukrainian rocket attacks on Russian cities, that provoked Ruso-Ukrainian war.
You can't not know all of this, so you're either a hamas/russian shill or a useful idiot.
if he has no consequences for this, and he won't
it would be very bad to be Cuba right now
considering when the midterms are and about how long it would take afterwards to move all the ships
I mean why would he stop with Iran?
All of the US is now a "constitution-free zone"
> it would be very bad to be Cuba right now
Yesterday Trump proposed that the US take over Cuba. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-...
Trump is basically a glorified realtor with the intellect of a single celled organism.
Do Americans even read or care about Constitution anymore?
Congress declares War.
Even Bush sought out Congressional approval and had a resolution passed before invading Iraq.
These guys are speed running the fascist playbook. Disregarding laws is one step.
What does it matter? There won't be any consequences for it. He can just do this now and then later the supreme court or congress will say something that also won't matter. The trade war wasn't legal, was struck down, yet is still happening.
> Do Americans even read or care about Constitution anymore?
Supreme court does not, so why should random Americans?
It is not like the high but malleable ideals in it mattered. Its only use is to be able to claim in abstract "we have these freedoms and protection" while the court system renders them void in practice.
The hope would be if more Americans were reading it, and understanding, then they would hold leaders more accountable and we wouldn't even get in this situation. The founding fathers kind of assumed an educated population, even if debating and disagreeing, would come to better conclusions. This current method of "lets cut education so the population doesn't know what is going on" is really a long term plan for the religious right to take over. But they are thinking in decades and generations.
Almost a quarter of Americans are functional illiterate, and it's getting worse for new generations
50%+ have below sixth grade reading comprehension
This thing is not actually getting worst "for generations". By available data, it was improving a lot for generations with only minor drop.
Surely this was approved by the Board of Peace. /s
What I would like people to understand is that this isn't a partisan issue. As bad as Trump is, American foreign policy is uniparty. Just look at the rhetoric from the Democratic Party leadership on an Iran strike. You have the likes of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries quibbling over the procedure not the policy, saying Congress needs to approve action, not that that action is belligerent or unwarranted.
October 7 happened under a Democratic president and continued essentially unchanged under Trump. Biden consistently lied about "red lines" and seeing a ceasefire [1].
The problem here isn't one party or one persident, it's America's commitment to imperialism, of which Iran is just one aspect. Since WW2 especially there has been so much regime change done or aided by the US as well as military action, it has it's own Wikipedia page [2].
And what did Kamala Harris promise to change about Biden's Middle East policy? Absolutely nothing [3]. It's a big part of why she lost and the DNC don't want to admit that so they're trying to cover up the 2024 autopsy [4].
Don't fool yourself into thinking anything would be different under a Kamala Harris administration.
[1]: https://internationalpolicy.org/publications/the-biden-admin...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
[3]: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/8/8/biden-vs-harris-...
[4]: https://www.axios.com/2026/02/22/dnc-2024-autopsy-harris-gaz...
> The problem here isn't one party or one persident, it's America's commitment to imperialism, of which Iran is just one aspect.
Iran is as imperialistic if not more. Why you are against US "imperialism" but for Islamic Republic's one?
I’m not sure what would have happened under a Dem administration. I’m not sure I’m against action in Iran.
But one the whole like precedents of the Trump Administration, was that we were going to ignore foreign entanglements, even if they could be perceived as being in our interests.
It’s wild to me how much Trump seems like Bush 2.0 when I think Trump was something of a reaction to Bush 1.0.
"I’m not sure what would have happened under a Dem administration."
Hard to say. Under Obama we got the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
It is amazing that anyone took his campaign claims at face value. There's an extensive record of him just saying whatever gets cheers/votes/money.
So much of both parties is actually alike, underneath a window dressing of differences (eg woke/anti woke), and a complicit media which does its best to amplify and brainwash people into believing. When it comes to policies that actually affect the elites, the deep state military industrial complex/intelligence services or financial interests, it is a uniparty. Look at how Obama continued the war on terror for example, after running on “hope and change”.
I am curious what your plan would be for Obama to extricate us from the GWOT and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Trump has been publicly mulling over an attack on Iran for several weeks. It’s been headline news everywhere.
I did not not notice any opinions, one way or the other, from other American politicians. Correct me if I’m wrong ( with link, of course. )
I guess we can laud Rep. Jim McGovern [1].
[1] https://archive.is/LvDf2
> I guess Israel can play the "October 7th" card at least which was an insane horror.
The islamic republic of Iran has been slaughtering tens of thousands of peaceful protesters who don't want to live under sharia laws anymore. Hunting wounded in hospitals and executing them.
It's obvious there's a movement in Iran that tries to topple the islamist regime. In my city, in the EU, I see cars with iranian flags and I've seen iranian in exile call for the international community to do targetted strikes.
I'm not defending the strikes but let's not make it sound like the US is launching nukes on peaceful monks in Tibet either: we're talking about evil islamist regime that slaughtered tens of thousands of unarmed people a few weeks ago.
I was going to say it's false equivalence to compare the Russian attack on Ukraine which was peaceful with a newly installed democratic leader and Iran which has an iffy dictatorship slaughtering thousands of unarmed protestors and exporting terrorism all over with aspirations to make that nuclear.
"Peace through strength"
That's the policy being followed here. If you remember back a few weeks, Iran killed likely 30,000 of its own citizens. On top of that, they will not negotiate about medium and short-range missiles or stopping of nuclear production.
A power like that that happily goes after it's neighbors, directly or indirectly is a threat to everyone.
Applying those particular criticisms to Iran and not Israel is a special kind of irony given the past ~75 years (but especially the last 2-3), and when the latter is presently attacking the former unprovoked.
> and when the latter is presently attacking the former unprovoked.
Did you miss the whole “axis of resistance” funded and driven by Iran?
And what exactly does Iran feel the need to "resist" against?
Islamic Republic sees itself as a vehicle to spread Islamic revolution around the world.
Just listen to their internal rhetoric, watch who they find and why, and it is clear. However, since it’s Trump who is bombing IR, people will defend the IR regardless of what the IR stands for.
>A power like that that happily goes after it's neighbors, directly or indirectly is a threat to everyone.
Is the US a threat because of its actions towards Venezuela?
Yes
Again, little to no information for the US public. No approval from Congress.
Calling for the people to rise up. You can't bomb your way into regime change. Are we supplying arms to groups?
Is there a plan beyond pointless death and regional chaos the president would like to share?
> Are we supplying arms to groups?
Yes. The US supports the monarchy, the Kurds and MeK. The CIA was revealed to have armed MeK (despite designation) and my guess is that they do with the Kurds too. The CIA also talks to the Balochi groups as well although I don't know how organized or armed they are.
Needless to say, "regime change" would in reality mean civil war like Syria or collapse like Libya.
Or Irak.
The list of exemple is long enough, no need to add Iran.
We already had ISIS thanks to the mess in Irak and Libya.
> is there a plan...
probably not, outside of making more revenue for raytheon
> No approval from Congress.
I don't support it but there's blanket approval from Congress from the AUMF.
>No approval from Congress.
To be fair that's been the case for decades. Trump's hardly new in this.
Needs to notify Congress within 48 hours (and he did beforehand), and has 60 days before needing Congress to declare war.
Looking at the list of countries we have declared war on
https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/declarations-...
I don't think it matters.
...In a couple of weeks.
The take home message from this is that the only way for any country to be secure is to have nuclear weapons.
And not to negotiate with the US in good faith.
I don't understand Iran, Hezbollah's and the Houthis' patience with the US actually. It's absolutely shocking. After the US betrayed ALL of it's own fucking allies, in what world does it make sense to negotiate with them?
The Houthis are still "threatening" to do things today after already being decimated and Hezbollah's strength more than halved.
I don't support any of these creeps but if any of them were minimally rational, they would have all gone to total war with Israel and the US the minute they realized what Hamas was doing on October 7th. They look even more naive than Europeans at this point.
The Iranians are pragmatic. Look beyond their relationship with the US. There are other state actors that Iran wants to remain in good relations with.
They understand that a defensive war is not the same as an offensive war. Besides, going on the offensive isn’t something they - as a regional power - have the firepower or diplomatic “street cred” for.
They are already painted as a so-called irrational actor. Doing something reckless will only prove its detractors right.
The other part to this is keeping the negotiation door open. The idea is to demonstrate to other state actors that they are cool headed & rational - even in wartime conditions.
Rational negotiations have to be based on the relative power of the parties.
It made sense for iran to try to negotiate with the US because the alternative was a war they had no chance to win. Arguably it also made sense for them to not come to an agreement because USA wanted concessesions the Iranian regime probably couldn't do while still staying in power given how weak they are domestically.
> I don't support any of these creeps but if any of them were minimally rational, they would have all gone to total war with Israel and the US the minute they realized what Hamas was doing on October 7th.
Israel's ability to divide and conqour its enemies here has been pretty impressive.
> It made sense for iran to try to negotiate with the US because the alternative was a war they had no chance to win.
They have no chance of winning no matter what. At least inflict some damage on your enemy while you die like Hamas chose (although I disagree with the fact that they chose that for a lot of innocent people too.)
The US isn't ever going to leave anyone, let alone Iran, alone. The options are a) fight and cease to exist and b) don't fight and cease to exist.
> The US isn't ever going to leave anyone, let alone Iran, alone. The options are a) fight and cease to exist and b) don't fight and cease to exist.
Oh boy, I see we learned nothing from Afghanistan. The US will eventually leave you alone, There will be a power vacuum, and the local warlord will rise to that opportunity.
The "military operations" don't end in decisive vistory. They end with death and destruction for the young men sent into battle, and more enemies in the surrounding areas.
The US hasn't left Afghanistan alone. They were driven out of the country by force. They are still attacking it in multiple different ways and will continue to do so until they are defeated. Time did not end when the US was kicked out. They aren't just going to give up their goals.
> At least inflict some damage on your enemy while you die like Hamas chose (although I disagree with the fact that they chose that for a lot of innocent people too.)
Ultimately? If the people who are going to kill you were elected into power by those "innocent people", why would you not lash out at them too? Some twisted sense of morality or taking the high road?
I don't know what you're talking about. It sounds like you might be saying Israelis who elected Likud (and the supporting parties) are not innocent. If that's what you mean, then I agree, but that wasn't what I was referring to.
I was speaking of the Gazans who originally elected Hamas to protect them but where Hamas eventually decided to sacrifice masses of them to achieve some of their goals. They knew what would happen and did it anyway, without the people's consent.
> in what world does it make sense to negotiate with them?
The world in which America is a military superpower.
> if any of them were minimally rational, they would have all gone to total war with Israel and the US
They have been. They've been getting levelled. If the U.S. can staunch the flow of arms to the Houthis, they'll become irrelevant, too.
Not sure Iran was doing that, but for sure Maduro wasn’t.
Not sure it affects the outcome.
North Korea looks a lot less unhinged now.
It is still unhinged, but not because of nuclear weapons. Ukraine, and now Iran, showed the whole world what happens when you don’t have a nuclear deterrence.
I think the unhinged rhetoric is, in part, a necessary partner of the nukes. Because you need to not only have nukes but have your adversaries believe that you won't hesitate to use them. If North Korea had nukes, but the US didn't believe they would use them, then they'd be getting the Iran, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, etc, etc, etc treatment.
The claim has always been made that attacking NK was off the table anyway, because they have obscene numbers of conventional artillery pointed directly at SK's capital and largest population centre, right across the DMZ; even the fastest decapitation strike wouldn't have prevented Seoul from getting flattened. Nukes definitely don't hurt but I'm not actually sure NK needed the bomb as an additional deterrent.
Exactly, the threat of using nukes needs to be credible in order to work as a deterrence.
I mean, nothing unhinged here, nukes are only ever useful if other countries believe you will use them when attacked. Same thing for North Korea as the US, France, etc. (Well, nuclear war is unhinged, but...).
Do you believe it’s a good thing North Korea has the bomb?
It’s good for them. That’s the point they’re making. All this shows that for many countries nuclear proliferation is the way to guarantee their safety.
Who is "them"? Definitely not the people.
"safety" for whom? Definitely not the people. They starve.
The people arent being pppressed by the bomb, but by their leaders. The odea that the US would liberate all peoples from tyranical rulers is naive. The US routinely installs and supports tyrants who allign with their geopolitical goals. Pol pot, pahlavi, pinochet, marcos, suharto, seko, the banana republics. Nukes didnt enable those guys, the US did
> "safety" for whom? Definitely not the people. They starve.
Better to have privation than to get bombed and massacred in large numbers.
Was it better for jews to starve in concentration camps rather than to get bombed by the allies? If not, what's different this time?
My bad - I didn't know Iran was starving Jews to death in concentration camps. Can you point me to a source ?
This is a comment sub-thread about DPRK
They love to project the past crimes of the West onto the East as a justification for their current crimes.
Kinda? I can't help but notice that I'm not particularly worried about my friends or family being sent off to fight North Korea anytime soon.
I believe that it is a rational step they have taken as an act of deterrence.
I don't believe any country having nuclear weapons is good.
If you are the leaders of North Korea, yes
What about its people?
Yes. Dictatorships suck, but what sucks more is a civil war powered by foreign governments doing a proxy war.
Syria is the prime example of this. A major reason for the civilian slaughter was foreign intervention trying regime change.
> Dictatorships suck, but what sucks more is a civil war powered by foreign governments doing a proxy war
It's a macabre study. But one could honestly argue that several countries in the latter category's populations are better off than North Korea's.
Maybe after the civil war, certainly not during it. If I had to pick where to live, I'd pick North Korea over Ukraine right now because it's a lot easier to live in a dictatorship than an active war zone. (This isn't me saying I want to live in NK, I don't).
But I'd also point out that a lot of what makes it really suck to live in the worst places in the world isn't often the government but rather the international relationships. Turkey has a particularly brutal government, but it's Nato and EU ally status means that the civilians enjoy modern trade and travel.
The worst times to be in NK was the 90s when there was an ongoing famine and the US refused to lift sanctions thinking it'd spark a civil war that overthrew the regime. It didn't.
>I'd pick North Korea over Ukraine right now because it's a lot easier to live in a dictatorship than an active war zone
You can live a perfectly normal life in Kiev. It’s not exactly an active war zone, you see luxury cars worth hundreds of thousands of dollars on every corner. You can buy bottles of Petrus in 24 hour supermarkets and eat decent food at countless fancy restaurants.
Goodwine in Kiev will also put US luxury grocers to shame. Ukraine might be at war, but the quality of life is hardly bad.
> I'd pick North Korea over Ukraine right now because it's a lot easier to live in a dictatorship than an active war zone
To each their own. I wouldn't. In part because once you're in North Korea, you're not getting out. That isn't the case for Ukraine, Syria or any of the other war-torn countries.
If you are a male between the ages of 17 and 55, you are not getting out of Ukraine right now.
It'd depend on my status. There are a lot of people who can't just get out of Ukraine or Syria. The average citizen in Syria had no means to just flee. I'd assume in my above scenario that I'm one of the masses that can't escape.
NK does actually allow people to leave, mostly to china and mostly after they attain a high social class. A decent number of tourists, including US citizens, go on tours of NK.
> NK does actually allow people to leave, mostly to china and mostly after they attain a high social class
I didn't know this. Source? I thought Pyongyang controls its elites' movement even more strictly than its commoners'.
[1] Don't get me wrong, movement is highly restricted, but it's not impossible. AFAIK, it's mostly afforded to the elites in NK.
I guess I shouldn't have written leave, but to visit other countries. I don't think you can change your citizenship.
[1] https://www.youngpioneertours.com/can-north-koreans-travel/
If you had to live in gaza or north korea right now, which would you choose?
> If you had to live in gaza or north korea right now, which would you choose?
Me as me? Gaza. Because I'd get out. That's a bullshit answer, though, so I'll answer as a local. And there, it's honestly a coin toss because Gaza is possibly the shittiest war zone outside Africa right now. But if you said North Korea or Syria during its civil war? North Korea or Myanmar? I'm going with not Pyongyang.
The only one where I'd honestly choose North Korea hands down is Sudan, because that's the one nobody really gives a shit about which means it's going to go on forever.
How would you get out? It’s impossible. Every exit is shut.
> How would you get out? It’s impossible. Every exit is shut.
Of course it isn't, it's entirely porous to the IDF. I'm an American citizen. If I were teleported to Gaza I'd probably be fine. At material risk of being fucked up. But I'd take my chances there over being an American teleported to North Korea.
Rockets can’t tell what citizenship you are. The fact is no one is launching rockets onto North Korea.
> Rockets can’t tell what citizenship you are
Sure. And yes, it's risky. But there are two million people in Gaza and half a dozen to a dozen, on average, being killed each day. If I, literally I, were teleported into Gaza, my primary operational concern would be avoiding Hamas. (My primary operational goal, getting to an internet-connected device.)
> no one is launching rockets onto North Korea
Correct, their security forces are undisrupted.
Any attempt to walk towards a controlled point or border will get you shot inside 2-3km. Your passport will be removed from your body before it is destroyed. You were never there.
You're making the mistake of correlating these proxy wars with any later improvements in these countries' living conditions. War is always detrimental to quality of life.
> You're making the mistake of correlating these proxy wars with any later improvements in these countries' living conditions
...nobody argued the proxy wars were good for those countries. Just that if you're turned into a random local in one of those theatres, chances are you're better off a decade or two later than if you're turned into a random North Korean.
> Dictatorships suck, but what sucks more is a civil war powered by foreign governments doing a proxy war.
Are you sure about this part?
Absolutely. No question.
War isn't glamorous. It's mechanized death and torture destroying communities, families, and loved ones. And when it's powered by foreign governments, it's worse. Because the two colliding sides are armed to the gills with the best weapons in murder along with mercenaries and no oversight.
Living in a dictatorship is hard but doable, There are literally generations of people that have survived and thrived in that sort of an environment. It's not preferable, for sure, but you still have your family, friends, and neighbors. None of them are trying to actively kill you. So long as you follow the rules, life in a dictatorship is generally predicable and the odds of the state making you specifically an example are low.
The only people who thrive in a dictatorship are its enforcers. And by the way a dictatorship needs quite a lot of them. That's how, decades after its fall, you get voices saying it wasn't all that bad, there were some nice things actually, or we should do it again.
And also your neighbors absolutely will sell you out.
I agree. A foreign powered civil war is worse than that.
Thriving in a dictatorship, even not as an enforcer, is possible. It's a worse life in general but still a life you can live.
Generally speaking, the only life that truly sucks in a dictatorship is if you become an enemy of the state. That doesn't generally apply to all citizens because, if it did, a dicatorship would quickly end in revolt. That is the theory behind strong sanctions. It's believed that if you starve a nation eventually the citizens revolt. The problem is it takes little resources to keep people happy, ultimately.
So if a dictatorship decides to invade a neighboring democratic country, the people there should not fight and let them take over, because war is worse than dictatorship, right?
A authoritarian regime starting wars isn't one I want to live in either. That's why I don't want to live in Israel.
Iran has had civil unrest over the last year, they weren't in the position politically to be doing much of anything to the "democracy" of Israel.
The entire reason for the US Israel attack on Iran is because of that civil unrest, not because Iran was a threat, but because both nations see an opportunity to install a puppet government that does their bidding.
What remains to be seen is if Russia sees a similar opportunity and we end up with another Syria.
You evade answering a simple question.
It’s because your logic is flawed. It doesn’t hold up a very simple scrutiny test.
Sorry if my answer seemed evasive. I was reading into your question something not stated
> the people there should not fight and let them take over, because war is worse than dictatorship, right?
No, I think the people should fight back, obviously. A country being actively invaded has a right to fight back. The war isn't their choosing and laying down arms is a mistake because captured civilians are rarely treated well after a war.
I'm specifically talking about an established dictatorship vs war. Specifically, as I said, a civil war which is a proxy war for foreign agents. Starting a war to end a dictatorship is bad. A dictatorship starting a war is bad. However, a dictatorship not starting wars is ultimately a better place to live vs anywhere under and active civil war.
The leadership in North Korea’s clearly doesn’t prioritize them.
The fact that NK possess nuclear weapons strongly discourages external players from attacking it. It does not in any way change the tools NK has at its disposal domestically.
If you're trying to say that had NK not had nukes we would bomb it for 'humanitarian purposes' or 'on behalf of its people' then I have a couple of bridges for sale.
> If you're trying to say that had NK not had nukes we would bomb it for 'humanitarian purposes' or 'on behalf of its people' then I have a couple of bridges for sale.
You think the US would just leave them alone as a communist, sovereign country without nukes, bordering china???
I think any US intervention in NK would not be to help the people of NK, that's all.
Theyve had the bomb for a while and south korea still exists and is thriving. I have seen alot of batshit insane talk from them, but no real negative consequences for any other country. So it hasnt really been a negative for anyone. I dont think theyll use it first either because they know theyll be glassed if they do
Now if they didnt have the bomb, i dont think they would have lasted this long. I think the US would have gone and "democratized" them to smithereens a while ago.
South Korea has the capability to build nuclear weapons very quickly if needed, they're a nuclear threshold state.
Israel has nuclear weapons. Did it keep them safe?
From invasion or forced regime change? Yes (But I don't think the nukes actually helped in that regard).
It did not keep them safe from the invasion 2 years ago.
I think the meaning of 'invasion' in the context of nuclear deterrence refers to an attempt to occupy.
Those attacks were horrific, but certainly nothing that rises to the level of an "invasion".
They were invasion by definition: Palestinians crossed into Israel, invaded villages and towns. How come it's not an invasion?
Usually an invasion entails an intent to capture territory and occupy. A suicide terror attack is qualitatively different even if it’s large-scale. The boots on the ground could just as well have been rockets, whereas an invasion needs a longer term presence.
Pretty safe if you ask me, judging from their…location and historical context.
Historically, Israelis have been much safer than most of their neighbors Oct. 7th notwithstanding.
Safer from what?
Israeli neighbors that are at peace with Israel are safe as well, e.g., Egypt and Jordan.
Well, proximity is a factor...
Those who paid any attention to Ukraine already figured it out
Considering the rationale for this war that kind of seems false
> Considering the rationale for this war that kind of seems false
The spring to a nuke is riskier than ever. That doesn't change that nuclear sovereignty is a tier above the regular kind, this is something every one of the global powers (China, Russia and America) and most regional powers (Israel) have explicilty endorsed.
"In the world of strategic studies, there has been a return to ‘theories of [nuclear] victory’. Their proponents draw on the work of past scholars such as Henry Kissinger, who wondered in his 1957 book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy if extending the American deterrent to all of Europe at a time when the threat of total destruction hung over the US itself would actually work: ‘A reliance on all-out war as the chief deterrent saps our system of alliances in two ways: either our allies feel that any military effort on their part is unnecessary or they may be led to the conviction that peace is preferable to war even on terms almost akin to surrender ... As the implication of all-out war with modern weapons become better understood ... it is not reasonable to assume that the United Kingdom, and even more the United States, would be prepared to commit suicide in order to defend a particular area ... whatever its importance, to an enemy’.
One of the recommended solutions was to bring tactical nuclear weapons back into the dialectic of deterrence extended to allied territories, so as to give US decision makers a range of options between Armageddon and defeat without a war. Global deterrence was ‘restored’ by creating additional rungs on the ladder of escalation, which were supposed to enable a sub-apocalyptic deterrence dialogue — before one major adversary or the other felt its key interests were threatened and resorted to extreme measures. Many theorists in the 1970s took this logic further, in particular Colin Gray in a 1979 article, now back in fashion, titled ‘Nuclear Strategy: the case for a theory of victory’.
...
In 2018 Admiral Pierre Vandier, now chief of staff of the French navy, offered a precise definition of this shift to the new strategic era, which has begun with Russia’s invasion: ‘A number of indicators suggest that we are entering a new era, a Third Nuclear Age, following the first, defined by mutual deterrence between the two superpowers, and the second, which raised hopes of a total and definitive elimination of nuclear weapons after the cold war’" [1].
I think the chances we see a tactial nuclear exchange in our lifetimes has gone from distant to almost certain.
[1] https://mondediplo.com/2022/04/03nuclear
This has nothing to do with nuclear weapons. The only problem here is that iran has petrol. Thats it.
This is an incredibly facile take on the situation. Iran has been a destabilizing regional power with imperial aims for 47 odd years. They even murdered the PM of Lebanon via their proxy army. They’ve been poking the bear for decades, and there are serval occasions where it may have happened sooner in an alternative universe. Had McCain become president in ‘08 we may well have seen a land invasion from US positions in Iraq, as the Iranian Quds force was already fighting US soldiers in Iraq. The whole DoD is now full of Iraq veterans who hate the Iranian government to their bones. It’s shocking this didn’t happen sooner, and probably only didn’t because of luck.
> Iran has petrol
More than taking control of Iranian petrol, this is probably more an attempt at cutting off China access to it (and also generally eliminating one of their allies), same as for the Venezuelan invasion.
You've completely misunderstood the poster's point. Nations are being taught that without nuclear weapons you could be attacked in this new world.
I used to believe that, I think there are also some very ambitious people nearby who want to use US armed forces for their benefit - as any rational player who has influence over such power would attempt.
I just want to expand on this.
1. According to the US and Israel, Iran has been a week away from having nuclear weapons for at least 34 years [1];
2. It's quite clear Iran could've developed nuclear weapons but chose not to. I actually think was a mistake. The real lesson from the so-called War on Terror was that only nuclear weapons will preserve your regime (ie Norht Korea);
3. Israel is a nuclear power. It's widely believed that Israel first obtained weapons grade Uranium by stealing it from the US in the 1960s [2];
4. In a just world, people would hang for what we did to Iran in 1953, 1978-79, the Iran-Iraq War and sanctions (which are a sanitized way of saying "we're starving you"); and
5. The current round of demands include Iran dismantling its ballistic missile program. This is because the 12 day war was a strategic and military disaster for the US and Israel.
Israel has a multi-layered missile defence shield. People usually talk about Iron Dome but that's just for shooting down small rockets. Separate layers exist for long-range and ballistic missiles (eg David's Sling, Arrow-2, Arrow-3). In recent times the US has complemented these with the ship-borne THAAD system.
Even with all this protection, Iran responded to the unprovoked attacks of the 12-day war by sending just enough ballistic missiles to overwhelm the defences, basically saying "if we have to, we can hit Israel".
Many suspect that the real reason the US negotiated an end to the 12 day war was because both Israel and the US were running cirtically low on the munitions for THAAD and Israel's missile defence shield. You can't just quickly make more either. Reportedly that will take over a year to get replacements.
Thing is, pretty much all of this missile defence technology is about to become obsolete once hypersonic missiles become more widespread, which is going to happen pretty soon. I suspect that's a big part of why the US and Israel are now trying so desperately to topple the regime and turn Iran into a fail-state like Somalia or Yemen.
I'm not normally one to encourage nuclear proliferation but when it's the only thing the US will listen to, what choice do countries have?
[1]: https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2025/6/18/the-history-of-n...
[2]: https://thebulletin.org/2014/04/did-israel-steal-bomb-grade-...
> Thing is, pretty much all of this missile defence technology is about to become obsolete once hypersonic missiles become more widespread, which is going to happen pretty soon.
I think you'll have to be more specific.
Or I guess to compare with your other observation: """Even with all this protection, Iran [sent] enough ballistic missiles to overwhelm the defences""" -- It's not a binary of "have missile defense or not => every missile will be shot down". An amount of missile defense will make it harder for missiles to successfully hit a target.
Similarly with hypersonic missiles, it's not the binary of "I have a missile that's difficult to defend against, I win".
Having a sword which can defeat a shield isn't in itself sufficient to obsolete the shield. (Infantry can be killed with bullets, yet infantry remain an important part of fighting despite that).
Yes, because "what choice did Iran have" other than:
1. Routinely calling for death to Israel and America, turning it into part of the national curriculum and sowing hate
2. Funding, training, supplying and directing multiple violent proxy organizations around the region which attacked Israel and undermined their own countries (Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in West Bank and Gaza, other organizations in Iraq)
3. Enriching Uranium to clearly non-civilian grade in multiple militarily hardened facilities;
4. Directly attacking multiple Jewish targets around the world (like the AMIA and then embassy bombings in Argentina)
5. Attacking neighboring countries with ballistic and cruise missiles, like the attacks on Saudi Aramco in 2019
6. Holding international shipping and energy markets hostage by threatening to attack ships and tankers in the Persian Gulf
7. Abusing their own citizens, including public executions, persecutions and extreme violence
8. Providing support to Russia in their efforts in Ukraine, and especially drones used for indiscriminate dumb attack waves against civilians and infrastructure
Now we have people arguing that if they had just gotten nukes then they could have continued doing all of that.
> Now we have people arguing that if they had just gotten nukes then they could have continued doing all of that.
And where are they wrong?
> where are they wrong?
Probably in all of it. Iran wouldn't have a MAD arsenal, they'd have a small handful that they could pop on a ballistic. We know we can shoot down Iran's missiles. And we know they can't reach America. I'm entirely unconvinced that we wouldn't have launched an attack on Iran even if they had nuclear weapons, because we think we can intercept them, and if we can't, they aren't hitting the homeland.
And on the off chance this defense doesn’t work? No system is perfect. Put another way, would the risk calculation for an attack on Iran be as easy as it is right now?
The point of having nuclear capabilities is to make the risk calculation more difficult. It doesn’t mean you need to have state of the art capabilities.
> on the off chance this defense doesn’t work? No system is perfect
Someone in the Middle East gets hit.
> would the risk calculation for an attack on Iran be as easy as it is right now?
The risk calculation isn't easy. Nukes would make it harder. But I'm pushing back on the notion that it would make it a non-starter.
(MAD arsenals and long-range ICBMs, on the other hand, make it a non-starter.)
> 4. Directly attacking multiple Jewish targets around the world (like the AMIA and then embassy bombings in Argentina)
Why would Iran attack Argentina? There's plenty of Jewish Iranian citizens. Did they run out of people to attack?
> Why would Iran attack Argentina?
There is a hardline element in the IRGC that personally profits from autarky. If the Iranian markets opened to the world, it would decimate their incomes.
Israel has a lot of nukes (while they pretend they don't) and that does not prevent them from being attacked.
This is part of why we help defend Israel, to constrain wars to conventional means.
In the first Gulf War, we placed the Patriot batteries around Israel, as they said that if an Iraqi biological or chemical SCUD attack hit Tel Aviv, they would vitrify Baghdad.
Having nukes doesn't prevent _anyone_ from attacking you, but it does constrain those attacks to conventional means. And what if you pulled off a decapitation attack against Tel Aviv? Well their fleet of nuclear capable subs would make you pay.
So should the US defend North Korea in case of a conflict with South Korea?
It probably prevents armed warships from attacking them. It doesn't, as you correctly point out, prevent guerilla warfare.
Thanks for pointing this out. I hear people say this over and over, if Iran only had nukes it would be safe to continue propagating terrorism as it has been doing. It’s obviously wrong, as you point out. Russia has nukes. India has nukes. Having nuclear weapons doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want, if anything it brings a higher level of scrutiny. A nuclear Iran would be a serious problem for many and that’s why it’s so critical to make sure that doesn’t happen, not just for Israel but the entire planet.
There's only one country that has repeatedly attacked its neighbors and has decided to occupy and seize land from two of them while actively calling for and carrying out strikes in many others all in the last two years.
It ain't Iran.
Maybe it is scale.
Maybe Nukes do not prevent terrorism, or gorilla warfare.
Having Nukes would prevent a large strike from another state, like what US just did.
Nobody is doing this large scale of bombing on any of the nuclear powers.
My totally unsubstantiated conspiracy theory is that several of those are sitting in shipping containers in the US and Europe, and that is part of the reason that their interests drive all western foreign policy, despite their open hostility to their 'allies'.
How does that factor in here right now? We haven't used or threatened to use nukes, and at least the public case made is in part that Iran is trying to get nukes and shouldn't.
I say "public case" specifically here, I don't buy that justification but it is still the one being used.
How does it factor in? How doesn't it?
If Iran had deployable nukes, would they get invaded?
Name a country that got bombed to credibly destroy the government, and had nukes. I'll wait.
It likely wouldn't be kinetic, but nukes didn't stop us from chipping away at the Soviet Union.
I could be wrong, but I don't buy the public story that this is about regime change. You don't topple a government with air superiority alone, and you don't do it in a matter of days. I also don't expect the US would be okay letting the Iranian people pick who comes next. We have a history of installing puppets and that similarly doesn't happen only via bombing runs.
> If Iran had deployable nukes, would they get invaded?
Honestly, maybe? Like if we had high confidence we knew where they were, and Israel consented to the attack, I could absolutely see the U.S. trying to take it out in storage.
If Iran had a nuke that could hit the U.S., I'd say no. But that's a stretch from "deployable nukes."
> Name a country that got bombed to credibly destroy the government, and had nukes
Pedantically, Ukraine.
On another note, Canada is the only country that ever decided against having them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_weapons_of_mass_des...
Ukraine literally had them and gave them up
Makes you wonder if recent antagonistic approach towards Europe was just part of this?
The Iran invasion was on the todo list of the current administration for ever. In those situation, they'd probably call NATO to step up in the same fashion as Yugoslavia.
And in that effort at least some level of collaboration from Europe is required, by geological proximity to middle east. So, prop them up with rethoric, make them lenient or even pro-iran invasion. "If we focus on Iran we will drop all the rethoric around Europe and Greenland" would probably even make the anti US sentiment be passive or silent about the military collaboration.
I recall someone (name escapes me at the moment) defining WW3 as ignition in 5 flashpoints between belligerent groupings: - Eastern Africa esp. Sudan, which we all nearly universally ignore - Israel Iran - Russia and a neighbor which we know today is Ukraine - Pakistan Afghanistan India - China Taiwan Plus Plus
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.
> Attributes that distinguish WW3 from previous world wars were IIRC
You're missing the commonalities, what defined world wars: the full might of industrial economies being dedicated to military campaigns.
World War II's theatres' were incoherent–the Axis interests in e.g. China and the Pacific had basically zero stragegic overlap with Europe and North Africa. (The only parties having to consider a unified theatre being the USSR and USA.) But the entire economic surplus of Europe, Asia and North America was basically dedicated to (or extracted towards) making things that were reasonably expected to be destroyed within the year.
British Empire was heavily involved in Europe, North Africa and South-East Asia. Events in India had great consequences on Europe
The USSR on the other hand barely had any involvement in the Pacific theatre, entering in August 1945.
The USSR had to carefully keep enough land forces in the Pacific region to deter a Japanese land invasion. (Remember that Japan controlled Manchukuo.) So, yes, the USSR had little involvement, and they had to be very careful to keep it from becoming an active front.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Khalkhin_Gol (that was in 1939).
looks at Russia's economy
Check your thinking. Korea currently has a DMZ dividing it from a war that never really ended and was fought to a stalemate. Their nuclear program didn’t result in military action because they currently have a gun to the head of every South Korean citizen and the backing of a large nuclear neighbour. Those are circumstances you can’t easily recreate elsewhere.
Adding to your point, Seoul is visible from North Korea, and vice-versa, and likely has enough conventional artillery aimed at it that even without nukes an invasion would be Very Bad for the Korean people.
> And essentially none of us will know the truth, even the reasons.
Maybe not in the details, but the general geopolitical "axes" (USA/the "West" vs China/Russia/BRICS/"Global South"/etc) have become increasingly obvious in the last years. And so far, most of the recent conflicts fit pretty neatly into that pattern.
Of course there are more things running in parallel, like the general shift to the right, Trump in the US, the specific situation with Israel/Palestine, the emergence of AI, etc.
But I don't see why any of this needs any other "grand secret cause" to explain the current conflicts.
BRICS is Russia wishing that China (much less Brazil, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates) were aligned to its interests.
A more accurate description of the way the world is trending:
US / UK / Europe / Japan / South Korea (still tied by defense, if push really comes to shove) vs Russia vs China vs Non-Aligned Nations (India, Indonesia, Egypt, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, etc.)
And historically (1960s), in a multi-polar world, middle powers are best served by being ambiguously aligned to force advantageous courting by major powers.
Then have a look who is supporting whom with weapons, which militaries are running maneuvers together, who is cooperating - or not cooperating - economically, who is visiting each others' summits, etc.
It's true that many countries are trying to have relationship with both sides or are trying to keep all options open - which is the most reasonable strategy, I think - but there are still two power centers emerging between which those countries are aligning themselves.
Well, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea seem to have a (fairly loose) "alliance of convenience" at the moment. "The enemy of my enemy", more or less.
“The revolution will be livestreamed” is not used correctly and not what “will be televised” means. You are using it in the opposite manner actually.
Op made an evocative point but then immediately betrayed it.
It is interesting to think about the difference of livestreaming versus television.
I'm surprised such a superstitious reply is so highly-upvoted. There's no "WW3" any more than there is time travel or blue smirfs. It's a hypothetical, but you're talking about it like it's an inevitability. That's just not logically-sound thinking.
We are not heading into WW 3. Those old rich men you worry about have to pay a much higher price in cash for their illusions of control. And that reduces what harm and how long wars can run. Keep an eye on what the markets tell everyone on Monday.
First, I don't think this leads to WW3 although I would agree with you that there is a general global tendency towards escalation. Still, I think we can not call this WW3 and I am not 100% certain this is a build-up to WW3 either.
As for North Korea: I think the situation is not solely about North Korea itself but China. China is kind of acting as protective proxy here. I don't see North Korea as primary problem to the USA, but to South Korea and Japan. Both really should get nukes. Taiwan too, though mainland China would probably invade when it thinks Taiwan is about to have nukes; then again China already committed to invasion - this is the whole point of having a dictator like Xi in charge now.
The situation Russia is in is interesting, because even though they are stronger than Ukraine, Ukraine managed to stop or delay Russia, which is a huge feat, even with support. As Putin does not want to stop, and Trump is supporting him (agent Krasnov theory applies), I think this has escalation potential. Putin is killing civilians in Ukraine daily - I think he does that because he already committed to further escalation against all Europeans. So Europeans need a nuclear arsenal, but european politicians are totally lame - see Merz "we will never have nukes". Basically he wants to be abused by Putin here.
> So Europeans need a nuclear arsenal, but european politicians are totally lame
Are France's 240 submarines-launched thermonuclear ballistic missiles not adequate? Despite the need for security, nuclear proliferation is extremely bad. It seems ideal for France continue to maintain their nuclear weapons while the rest of Europe keeps their hands clean.
Say what you want about France, but their military has generally been extremely pragmatic and forward thinking*.
They've seen the writing on the wall about independent nukes for decades.
* WWII front collapse being more of a political failure than a military one: politicians dictating unachievable military strategies)
Taiwan needs nukes on low flying hypersonic cruise missles now. Seems that would halt Chinese aggression.
hmmm - but is it really "world war" 3 if it's a bunch of localized conflicts?
I'm a little disappointed that the internet and social media had little impact on universal disclosure about geopolitical matters. My sense is that governments updated their playbooks to both defend against them (e.g. minimize leaking) and leverage them (e.g. bury inconvenient information with propaganda). By comparison, I'm more hopeful about cellphones and bodycams generally reducing excessive police violence and discrimination (emphasis on "reduce").
prediction: the nuclear threat will look quaint compared with disposable million-drone swarms on land and in the air, targeting anything remotely interesting via onboard AI.
The revolution will be notably public, but not live-streamed. It will come as a swift and decisive reaction to a shock-and-awe deployment that will de-stabilize the state apparatus of a big nation outside of the “west”. The movement will be initially localized but it will spread until a perimeter of containment is setup around developed nations. Much more will come after.
Ok. So we have just taken out all of Israel's foes with force. They are safe now right? We can stop supporting them militarily in every way now right? They no longer need any weapons, intelligence support, defense support, etc, right? If this is the right path to their long term safety then this must be true.
Well hopefully this is short, minimally lethal, and leads to regime change for all those involved.
>leads to regime change for all those involved
Including for the U.S. and Israel?
Pretty sure he chose his words carefully.
We can only hope.
It’s possible
I did not see the US butchering 30k protesters in 2 days.
And no, stop your American exceptionalism, ICE is not the same.
Your threshold for desiring regime change is the murder of 30,000 people?
Nah you just bully your allies and illegally tariff the entire world, no biggy
The US mostly isn't interested in butchering it's own citizens, slavery is the approach we went with À la the U.S. prison system.
> The US mostly isn't interested in butchering it's own citizens, slavery is the approach we went with À la the U.S. prison system.
I hate to break it to you, but US prisons, while maybe worse than Scandinavian ones, are on par with France, and way better than like 70% of the world.
This is not a competition who has it worse. You can acknowledge terrible things that IR does without trying to portray yourself as a victim.
Protesters that took to the streets, according to what I read, because the US president said he would back them. Sounds like he led them to a slaughter to generate justification.
Protests started way before Trumps tweet.
Second, why are you legitimizing gunning down thousands of people?
I'm delegitimizing the US president saying things he can't back up, causing death, and getting the US into another war that the American people didn't ask for.
> I'm delegitimizing the US president
No. You are saying that these people died because of Trump's tweet, and not because the IR goons gunned people on the streets. Seems to me that you place the fault on Trump, rather than on those who pulled the trigger.
I mean we just killed a bunch of children. So give it a bit of time I’m sure we can get those numbers up.
Trump is the kind of person who would kill protestors to stay in power. We all know it
Have we forgotten the huge amount of covid deaths?
True but a lot of people would like to see Netanyahu and Trump replaced with other leaders.
Well hopefully this is short, minimally lethal, and leads to regime change for all those involved.
That would be ideal but unfortunately not likely. Nobody will like this comment but US ships are sitting ducks. They have minimal ammo per the pentagon and no oilers. No oilers and low ammo means no prolonged conflict. Only two of the ships are nuclear powered not counting submarines. Most of Iran's military and weapons are deep underground in a massive series of underground cities and tunnels. The US would require boots on the ground if they manage to breach the tunnel openings under the mountains. Should that fail the only viable targets are civilians and that won't win favor with anyone or accomplish anything.
Iranian military could just wait it out if they wanted and then smoke Israel with supersonic missiles when the US leaves. Then we find out if Israel does have the nukes for the Samson option and that would result in the destruction of Israel. Iran's military could survive a nuclear strike but would have to clean up the fallout and I am not sure they could. Anyone not underground would likely get Acute Radiation Sickness and Cancer.
On a positive note if the US can manage to get into the tunnels and send in enough munitions to start detonating the missile stockpile a chain reaction could crack all the concrete and collapse the tunnels. Satellite could detect which tunnel they try to evac from. They have less than 5 days to accomplish the chain reaction assuming this is the plan. From the videos I have seen the missiles are literally lined up like a double-strand fuse.
I can't imagine a world where the US military only has the logistics for a five day offensive.
The US military has seldom had problems with the blowing up the enemy bit. It's providing peace and stability after that happens where they tend to run into problems.
The US military has seldom had problems with the blowing up the enemy bit.
True however AFAIK they have never once been in this situation. Iran has spent 40+ years digging in and hunkering down. There were plenty of bunkers in WWII but this is a whole new setup, deeper under mountains, higher quality concrete assuming they knew what they were doing and dug in much deeper. To get this done in 5 days will be quite a feet. If they manage to do it I will be very impressed.
It's providing peace and stability after that happens where they tend to run into problems.
I think you are correct, what happens afterwards is usually a crap-fest. That would require a lot of boots on the ground to maintain stability for a very long time. It's not a great example but Korea is one such example. The payoff may be worth it if many of the Iranian funded terror groups are drained of resources as a result. Keeping boots on the ground for years will require funding from congress. Short of that it will just be another power vacuum filled by yet another zealot. The "if's" are doing a lot of heavy lifting in my comment.
What yt channel?
There is nothing ideal about that outcome. The "regime change" people talk about is intended to look like what happened in Libya: A failed state that falls in anarchy.
> look like what happened in Libya: A failed state that falls in anarchy.
This comment just shows that you have no idea what Iran is, and how it differs from Libya.
Libya is a loose conglomerate of tribes. Iran majorly Persian that see themselves as one nation. Completely different dynamics.
Iraq? Afghanistan? Vietnam?
I don't think any of these were short.
Desert Storm was short. The second Iraq War, the stupid one, was not.
However, to be fair, Desert Storm hasn't resulted in regime change. The Coalition bombed the shit out of the Iraqi army, but never committed to the ground operation deep inside Iraq. And Saddam's regime survived until the next war.
That alone hints that it is very hard to bring a dictatorship down with just aerial attacks - the ground component is also essential. Something tells me it is going to be the same here.
Only a land operation or a total collapse of the government, with the armed police and military joining the opposition, can topple the Iranian regime.
Counterexanple would be Venezuela
Are you sure? They removed one guy they didn't like but the regime remains.
What was the regime change there? The vice president is in charge.
That's because Desert Storm was launched by people who remembered the Second World War. Current wars are started by draft dodgers.
This does not look like a smart one. A bit smarter would be to strike a month ago to support street protests.
Desert storm didn’t attempt regime change. Iran is not currently invading anyone.
You can’t be short, minimal lethal AND regime change. Gotta be pretty bloody to make that happen.
Unless like Venezuela. Or like 1953 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
u sweet summer child.
Based on previous American wars in the middle east wouldn't you say that's unlikely?
Won't there be boots on the ground? We already bombed their facilities and at the time they said best that bombs can do is fuck up the entrance to these tunnels.
2 countries with the best war technologies on earth must work together to have a war with embargod-country-for-decades. And those 2 counties are founder of Board of Peace.
Well. Iran gets a lot of weapons from Russia which spends a whole lot of their GDP producing weaponry.
Bored of Peace.
To obliterate a nuclear program that they claimed was totally obliterated last year
> 2 countries with the best war technologies on earth must work together to have a war with embargod-country-for-decades
It gives us a regional coalition partner. That's never a bad thing, regardless of circumstances.
> It gives us a regional coalition partner. That's never a bad thing, regardless of circumstances.
You missed the point. The fact that it requires two of them to gang up on Iran says something about how capable Iran is in defending itself.
No it doesn't. No military power, however overpowered compared to its opponents, will ever say no to an even more unfair beatdown.
yes, yes. Poor Iran.
My greater concern is the people of Iran. Especially since Iran has conscription so the people who end up dieing in a war didn't even consent to being made soldiers.
Maybe the Iranian people would be thrilled to get some weapons.
Yes. Poor Iran.
Because America and Israel.
> Iranian media now report 40 killed and 48 students injured following the strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab, as rescue and recovery efforts continue.
Congrats America!
Easy, it was Israel that probably did it and it's been shown time and time again that they can do this without political fallout under the guise that the target was a hiding spot for the military assets of Iran (or Hamas in the case of Palestine bombing).
It's been shown time and time again that the world will eat up any propaganda against Israel without waiting to hear any facts at all.
Those videos of Israeli soldiers raping prisoners, beating prisoners, spitting on or beating people just walking in the streets.
Yeah, so much propaganda. We can see it with our own eyes.
It's been shown time and time again that some people will eat up Israeli propaganda and completely ignore facts and abject reality.
UPDATE: Reports now say that over 80 school children between the age of 7 and 12 were killed in Minab.
How is the Epstein Regime going to survive this politically? How is the Senate (Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, etc.) going to survive this politically?
No need to worry. They have extensively stress-tested the American public over the past few years and the conclusion is clear: Americans are never going to revolt no matter what you do to them.
I think you forgot /s to your last two points
And the tens of thousands of Iranians murdered for protesting? Did you care about them?
Can you explain how this relates to that?
Some people are getting killed so more people should be killed?
Did Israelis kill them? No. So, why would anyone care?
Did you see non-stop coverage about it from NYT, WaPo or others? No.
I am just befuddled by how much of this violence is directly motivated by religious concerns, both on the side of Iran and on the side of Israel and USA.
I have been reading on the topic of shunyata or emptiness in Mahayana Buddhism, and have been uncomfortably observing just how much of the artifacts we take to be real and substantial in the world are just "made up". They don't have an inherent reality of their own except what we attribute to them. And yet, made up stories can have very real consequences in terms human suffering.
It ought to be possible to cut through the layers of reifications and simply defuse much of the strife in the world. And yet, we continue to inflict misery on each other unnecessarily.
You’re mistaking the packaging for the product. Religion is the language leaders use. Power, territory, oil corridors, regional dominance, and domestic political survival are what they’re actually fighting over.
Tehran isn’t calculating missile ranges based on sutras. Washington doesn’t position carrier groups because of metaphysics. Israel’s security doctrine isn’t a meditation retreat.
Spiritual narratives make clean moral theater for the public. They mobilize bodies. They sanctify retaliation. But the machinery underneath runs on leverage and deterrence, not theology.
Wake up to the real world.
Calling it primarily religious violence feels tidy and tragic in a philosophical way. It’s harder, and more uncomfortable, to admit that it’s strategic violence dressed in symbols people recognize.
Shunyata is a beautiful lens for seeing through ego. It doesn’t dissolve geopolitics.
It makes a lot more sense if you picture a bunch of organized, strong and merciless chimps attacking some other chimps to plunder what they have.
Chimps generally agree war is bad and horrific. But some smart, opportunistic and hard-working chimps can create situations that make war possible. Even though the war will only bring losses to most chimps on both sides.
> I am just befuddled by how much of this violence is directly motivated by religious concerns, both on the side of Iran and on the side of Israel and USA.
Can you provide an example of this in 2026?
It seems a little tenable with the ayatollah and Iran. But even here you don’t hear much talk of this being a war in the name of religion anymore. Nowhere near a few years ago and certainly nothing like 9/11 and the Taliban.
And I hear nobody in Israel or America talking that way. Just a war defending people against attackers at the gates.
The land promised to the Israelites generally extends from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Iraq/Syria, encompassing modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, and parts of Syria and Saudi Arabia.
If you're a religious Jew, then you believe you have a mandate from God (so an irrefutable right, or even obligation, needing no justification) to settle and rule not only the West Bank but the entire region. So there will always be that motivation, as long as religious Judaism exists in Israel.
That is not the ruling Likud ideology in Israel nor the allied national religious ideology; both refer to Israel+Palestine+Golan as "the Whole Land of Israel".
And in any case, the "most religious" (ie those whose politics are most totally driven by Judaism) bloc in Israel are at best ambivalent about the Israeli state and the settlement enterprise, and actively hostile to military service.
Israeli hostility to Iran is driven by a "defensive" paranoia, not a religious mission.
Of course it needs to be approached pragmatically. If Israel stated that its number one goal is to rule the entire region, they wouldn't have been as successful as they are.
Also God didn't say when. But he did promise, according to the Book.
The evangelicals support isreal due to religious obligation.
Project 2025, a christian nationalist policy advisement widely followed by the current regime, prescribes supporting isreal
There is also point of view that remembers that always right behind US military there is a team building next oil pipeline. US tried to used China as cheap labor, lost a lot of intelligence and now - look at how much oil Iran has and who is it exporting to and what is the percentage at the destination. The numbers add up and only the funny (?) thing is - China is (going to) be most eco country, because they already use nuclear power a lot and were forced to work on that.
What a time to be alive, again! And please, downvote me, comment that US is fighting for some country’s civilians freedom. It’s fun too.
It's not said in polite company, but Israeli concerns are racial, not religious. If you meet a Jewish zionist, then you've also met an athiest. An explanation of Christian Zionism deserves much longer discussion than can be made here, but how and why such an obvious contradiction to Jesus' ministry gained popularity is something worth studying.
Once you realize the gospels and the epistles disagree, it becomes a lot easier to understand. Christianity is the practice of cognitive dissonance. The bible, due to the nature, has a lot of mixed messaging.
Imagine, for example, you wanted to write the religion of Liberalism, so you collect the works of all the major thinkers on the subject of liberalism into one book. Now imagine someone gets the bad idea that all these authors must actually have a unified view on what liberalism is, means, and implies. You'll end up seeing that person teach a form of liberalism that's easily countered with other passages from their book and they'll mostly just wave it away because they have their passages and the others are simply you misinterpreting an "obvious" metaphor.
That is christianity in a nutshell, just replace liberalism with god. That's why there are so many sects. Because it's just too easy to yell "Context context context!" when a difficult passage comes up you don't agree with and use "spiritual" as the excuse for why you don't actually have to follow that passage.
Fallacy.
(Wrong) Knife fight: a fight between people about knives
(Right) Knife fight: a fight between people using knives
Religion poisons everything.
It had nothing to do with religion, that element is used to distract.
They are following their books like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Religious concerns are, IMHO, always a facade for the underlying economic/territorial/geopolitical reasons. These religious facades help sell the war effort: get young men to enlist and fight to the death for "preserving their identity". And "muh freedom" is just as much a religious motivation to me (unsubstantiated, indoctrinated, unthreatened).
Religion isn't the facade, it is the medium through which other reasons are transmitted
> I am just befuddled by how much of this violence is directly motivated by religious concerns, both on the side of Iran and on the side of Israel and USA.
This just isn't true. Religion is never the reason for these conflicts. It's the excuse. It's how that conflict is sold to the rest of the world. It's how civilians are manipulated into dying in a conflict.
The source of these conflicts is always material. Always.
Reagan's Secretary of State, General Alexander Haig once said [1]:
> Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier, and is located in a critical region for American national security.
In 1986, then Senator and future president Joe Biden said [2]:
> [Israel] is the best $3 billion ivnestment we make. Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to an invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region.
Much of US Middle East polciy was aimed to sabotaging and undermining Pan-Arab Nationalism (particularly under then Egyptian President Nasser) [3].
Nothing about any of this has anything to do with faith. In this case it's about oil.
Whatever crimes you think Iran might've done, I'll stack up the US crimes against Iran and it won't even be close, including:
1. Iran was a liberal democracy that the US deposed in 1953 at the behest of the British because BP didn't want to have to pay higher royalties, ultimately leading Mossadegh wanting to "nationalize" their own oil;
2. In 1978, then US-puppet Saddam Hussein expelled Khomenei from Iraq. This was about the time the US realized that Iran was likely lost. it is believed that the reason for this was that a fundamentalist regime was preferred to a Communist one (which was otherwise the likely outcome) as the US didn't want Iran to fall into the Soviet sphere of influence. So all this pearl-clutching about the current regime rings hollow when you realize the US helped created it;
3. As punishment for the Revolution, the US supplied weapons to Iraq and fueled the Iran-Iraq war for almost a decade that killed over a million people; and
4. Crippling economic sanctions, which is a fancy way of saying "starving people and denying them medical care", for daring not to be a US puppet.
If you point me to any conflict you think is based on faith, I'll show you the material interests behind it.
[1]: https://archive.ph/tMTBd
[2]: https://www.c-span.org/clip/senate-highlight/user-clip-joe-b...
[3]: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v12...
> Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk,
Airstrip one is disappointed.
There is a theory (a bit "school of schizo" and totally unsubstantiated but kind of interesting) that the sense of urgency from Israel at the moment is because they really believe in the curse of the eighth decade.
In other words it is actually totally irrational and driven by belief in (and attempt to refute) a kind of prophecy.
No idea if that's true or not, but at this point, it wouldn't even surprise me
Hey there I'm Israeli and I'm quite politically informed and moderately religiously educated and I have never heard of this "curse of the eighth decade" thing you've heard of.
You probably know a lot more than me but my understanding is there have been two previous Jewish states in the Levant, the ancient Kingdom of Israel ruled by King David and then the Hasmonean dynasty during the Second Temple period.
Both of those states lasted for around 80 years before collapsing. My (probably worthless) 2c is there's nothing magical or surprising about that, a lot of people have pointed out that political entities often last around the length of a human life before change occurs.
The most prominent current theory is the Strauss–Howe "fourth turning" one but the idea goes back further than that
Isreal did have some polarization among liberal-conservative sides recently. Protests and all that. Could be
I'll know from how many downvotes I get whether I've touched a nerve or not
What are the chances that HN is getting astroturfed these days? Are mods strict about it?
I lots of relatively new accounts coming with what seems to me extreme, but altogether pop-culture acceptable opinions
100%. Especially on topics involving countries with vast online propaganda operations.
What are the chances that HN is getting astroturfed these days?
Happens all day every day. There are many AI agents starting discussions and replying to comments. This is how The Crappening started on 4chan. Some of them are just future grifters. Some are training AI (I have replied to a few for fun). Some are propaganda bots. Those running the bots will reply with something equiv to Errrm Proof?? when called out. Without root I can not empirically prove it and the botters know that.
I predict about 2 years before the site will have more AI noise than real people. I have no idea what can be done about it aside from tracking the bots and reporting them via email to Daniel and I don't know what he could or would do. HN has always been very hands off which is mostly good but not for this scenario. If nothing is done it will just be bots grifting and AstroTurfing one another to the benefit of Google SEO and most of the humans would eventually go elsewhere with exception of some die-hards that refuse to recognize the situation.
Maybe this comment is also AI.
Maybe this comment is also AI.
My nickname on here would at least suggest so. I think Grok is the closest option since they were working on making a snarky insulting version of their bot. Tame that down a bit and one could get the personality of Bender. [1]
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPNGFC7-t68 [video][16s]
You should point out the exact posts.
I hope this war will be short. And that the result will be Iran becoming a democracy that fully joins the global community. The Iranian people (Persians, Azerbaijanis, Kurds, and others), deserve better.
It would benefit the entire world to see Iran integrated and engaged internationally.
There is zero likelihood of that. The IRGC and Iranian forces are a million strong and have a loyal base of support among the population. Without boots on the ground, relying on air power and 'moderate rebels' you are looking at at least a decade of war (using Syria and Libya as best-case-scenarios examples; Assad regime was nothing like the Iranian). The Israelis are dividing the opposition by pushing the out-of-touch monarchists as their would-be puppets and the Trump regime are backing them too. Which means they are not even seriously pushing any viable or credible alternative. They are likely arming the Kurdish and other ethnic factions in the region and stoking ethnic conflict. It is in Israel's interests to prolong the conflict , to degrade Iran's military and economy (like they did in Syria) and even break it up into smaller manageable parts. The monarchists are a moon-shot; Reza Pehlavi is not his father (who also was a US puppet) - Israelis like him because he will be weak and pliable and completely dependent on foreign patronage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yinon_Plan
Interesting point on Israel pushing for the monarchy to come back.
Democracy in the middle-east does not result in Israel or US aligned governments, but the monarchies have proven more interested in preserving their autocratic dynasties and quite easy and eager to work with Israel and the US to preserve themselves.
Aside from Israel are there any democracies in the Middle East?
My observation was that more democracy in the Middle East is not what Israel or the US is interested in, given that the people's choice there would be overwhelmingly against Israeli and US interests.
They replaced the last democratic choice in Egypt with another military dictator, they keep the widely unpopular autocrat in Jordan on his throne with military and intelligence subsidies, have established and propped up a network of autocratic Gulf states that toe the line...
So yeah, I would not be surprised that Israel and the US would be more than happy to but a scion of the previous Iranian autocratic dynasty back on the throne there.
Lebanon is democracy. It is true that system is sectarian (power-sharing among religious groups) but still a democracy.
> Fully joins the global community
If by that you mean that Iran will become a toothless vassal state of the U.S.-Americans, then God forbid.
the drones just have to fly slower for the kids and schools…”Easy, you just don't lead 'em so much”
Previous conflicts between the involved parties were intense but also defined by constrain on both sides.
Israel did not mass bomb civilians, and Iranian agents did not commit sabotage against infrastructure on US soil.
I hope this pattern persists.
A hand full of determined Ukrainians managed to blow up North Stream, some people plunged part of Berlin into darkness for 2 weeks.
Power and data cables as well as pipelines are as vulnerable in the US, as they are here. Maybe even more so.
A regime that truly feared for its existence, might decide to escalate, since there is nothing to loose.
I think the latter, the US is explicitly attempting a regime change operation so Iran has no reason for restraint.
The US is aware of this, that's why they evacuated all their bases etc within range
> explicitly attempting a regime change operation
I missed that press release. Where is it?
> "When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations,"
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/us-and-israel-launch-a-ma...
...if we didn't kill you.
Thanks.
US is to out of touch with reality, they want to put a Zionist who is generally hated by Iranians in power. Will never happen.
> who is generally hated by Iranians in power.
So that’s why said Iranians chant Javid Shah?
Iranian here, the Shah has surprisingly many supporters, both inside and abroad.
Iran is a big complex country and is more diverse than people think.
Exactly, I have a hard time seeing how that will ever play out how they want.
The whole reason the 1979 revolution happened in the first place was because the Shah was a blatant US/Israeli puppet
You've missed the part where islamist butchered the leaders of the actual 1979 revolution. In reality it was:
unpopular shah -> 1979 revolution -> islamists take control, prison and kill the leftists of 1979 revolution.
It worked with Machado, so why wouldn't it work with... oh wait. We're governed by a shadowy criminal network of idiots.
Nothing went dark for weeks as a German you should know that.
Maybe not weeks, but there was extensive damage and parts of Berlin went dark https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/07/europe/berlin-power-outag...
That has 0 correlation with Northstream.
Op didn’t say they were connected. They were referring to two distinct but impactful events.
The phrasing implies a connection.
I was in a major car accident, I cannot walk.
Oh the car accident was years ago, I was fine. I cannot walk because I'm seatbelted into a car driving down the road at the moment. Why would you have ever thought there was a connection?
> Israel did not mass bomb civilians
Within an hour Israel blew up an elementary school, killing 80 civilians.
Nothing like a war to boost your popularity just before the elections
Only I’m not exactly sure what constituency will support this war.
He wasn’t even smart enough to leave America open to attack, manufacture a pretext, and rally people around the flag like 9/11
Heck, there was even a better case in Korea & Vietnam. Even Venezuela. What’s the case this is America’s problem?
The Jesus people love it when Americas army support Israel
The racists love it when Muslims get killed
Funny how Iran is America's problem so much but Ukraine is not, despite signed security assurance to the Ukrainian people.
This is about Religion. Hegseth is the 'Holy warrior for God' type. If there is a pretense to kill Muslims Trump and him will take it.
Israel is in charge of America and they did noy sign any assurances with Ukraine
If a democracy is meaningfully created in Iran I will consider that a huge win for Trump and it would certainly make me more sympathetic to his party.
To be clear, I don't think the chances of that happening are high.
Nothing like a war to boost your popularity just before the elections
Congress will not let him have a third term regardless of what he says or thinks.
> Congress will let him...
Lol, 'let'. Whose going to stop him?
Congress seems to be quite toothless lately.
True but they will have a hard time ignoring the 22nd amendment of the US constitution and it would be an easy move to remove him from the election process which a majority of the states themselves could do without opposition.
They might try the good old Putin trick, have a puppet elected on behalf of Trump and let Trump have another high-ranking position (e.g. Vice President) and hold the real power. Trump can still do most of campaigning, and there is also ample opportunity for election fraud.
In russia they had 2 terms limit as well. Putin found a quick work-around by basically running through Proxy.
I can see JD being a figurehead with very public Trump support.
> Nothing like a war to boost your popularity just before the elections
If he pulls off a regime change, even a Delcy-style swaparoo, he'll get it, and arguably not undeservedly. It will ultimately come down to Iran's capacity to inflict casualties on American forces.
I’m not so sure. This is no where near a priority issue for most Americans, “I can’t afford eggs and the immigrant I buy pizza from got shipped to a warehouse but thank god the regime changed in Iran.”
> This is no where near a priority issue for most Americans
I don't think this means the GOP keeps the House. But Trump got a bump from Venezuela, particularly within his party.
Schumer was brought into a briefing on Iran and clearly 'got his mind right' in there. I don't know who makes decisions in government, but it's not the people on camera. US elections are irrelevant to consequential matters, and we waste too much time thinking about them.
I never understand how someone can look at Trump and the last year and think elections don’t matter or have consequences.
> US elections are irrelevant to consequential matters
This is nonsense. If you actually believe this, spend some time around your elected representatives and in Washington.
somehow I dont think regime change is gonna happen before the midterms or even before 2028
> I dont think regime change is gonna happen before the midterms
I agree. But to be fair, I would have said the same thing about Venezuela a year ago. Maybe the term should be a regime slip.
We didn’t change the regime in Venezuela though right? Just decapitated it?
No one’s thinking America cant succeed at the killing partz. It’s what comes after that people are worried about.
> We didn’t change the regime in Venezuela though right?
Practically speaking, we changed it. The foreign and energy policies we care about changed. The notion that you need to wholesale clean shop to qualify as regime change is misguided and counterproductive [1].
(On the other end of the spectrum, the fact that we kept the Japanese Emperor on his throne doesn't mean we didn't change the Japanese regime.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Ba%27athification
I don't know if the same theory works in Iran though right, Iran is amidst economic collapse. It seems like the situation in Venezula with Maduro was tenable so when we decapitated the leader and got what we wanted it was ok that maybe most things didn't change. Is there a similar theory for Iran that's not soaked in hubris?
> Is there a similar theory for Iran that's not soaked in hubris?
Lots of factions in Iran, including within the IRGC. Khamenei's bunker gets hit, oh no, new dude knives the competition and then makes a call to the White House.
I think he meant another regime not the Iranians.
They leveraged special operations forces in Venezuela. Iran has two US carrier groups on their front door; this operation is not going to be as precise as the one against Maduro.
Nothing like a war to push Epstein out of the headlines.
You sure? Seems like a war for no reason is hardly going to get popular support.
From a man who campaigned on No New Wars.
Americans are bloodthirsty freaks. Killing people is always popular with Americans.
You really think the elections will happen
Military action in Iran is deeply unpopular, being supported by just 27% of US adult citizens [1]. As an aside, Congress literally doesn't care what voters think [2]. The pearl-clutching about this from Congressional Democrats isn't about policy but process, with the likes of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries saying Congress should authorize this action, not that it shouldn't happen.
I'm interested in what makes empires tick, what their basis of power is.
Spain in the colonial era was propped up by looting silver from Central and South America, for example.
The British Empire is what many (including me) like to call the "drug dealer empire". First tobacco then later opium. Any claims that we didn't know about the health risks of tobacco are complete BS (eg [3]).
Circling back to your point, the US is what I like to call the "arms dealer empire". WW1 and WW2 massively enriched the United States. NATO is essentially a protection racket for Europe and the price is, you guessed it, buying arms from the United States.
And the next Budget has proposed increasing "defense" spending from an already eye-popping $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion [4]. Where does that money go? Arms, weapons programs, defense contractors, the ultra-wealthy.
War is good for business even though it's unpopular.
[1]: https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/54158-few-americans-suppor...
[2]: https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/
[3]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15198996/
[4]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-proposes-massive...
I'm surprised this has not been mentioned, for context:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_massacres
I think that's because nobody believes for one second that these strikes are a retaliation for that.
Epstein files and plummeting poll numbers are more likely reasons
My guess is Hegseth is cumming in his pants at the idea of starting the 10th Crusade.
Not surprising - people don't count deaths in the Middle East if they're caused by fellow Middle Easterns, except Israel. Living in Europe I've never heard about a protest against Saddam (250,000 - 1,000,000 dead), Khamenei (30,000 in a week?), Assad (> 300,000 civilians) etc. This is business as usual. It's only news if someone else does it.
this is so true
Maybe because nobody believes in the "exporting democracy" excuse anymore
> nobody believes in the "exporting democracy" excuse
Has this been argued?
That’s the Bish doctrine! A belief that you can invade a country, remove the power center, and democracy will spring forth. You don’t even need to speak the local language, read any books about the country you’re attacking, or talk to any locals! Just go for it and democracy will magically spring into existence.
Not directly but OP seemed to intuit some sort of moral justification for this war of aggression ("humanitarian reasons"), and few people believe that to be a key motivating factor for the White House.
> Not directly but OP seemed to intuit some sort of moral justification for this war of aggression
There is an absolute moral justification for this war. Saying that US is the aggressor here is an absolute revisionism of history. Let us not pretend that Islamic Republic minded its own business since its inception, and suddenly the US and Israel decided to wage war on it.
One example of IR's aggression is Beirut bombing in 1983 sponsored and planned by IR.
Both from an international rights and from a moral point of view you're objectively wrong. This is not even worth a discussion. The fact that you need cite a terrorist attack from 1983 to justify an illegal war of aggression in 2026 instigated by a US president without Congressional oversight speaks volumes.
> Islamic Republic minded its own business since its inception
That's a straw man argument since nobody claimed that.
Just to anticipate another weak argument that is a non-starter, a war of aggression is also illegal if it is started under the pretense of caring about a human rights situation. This kind of justification is quite common anyway. For the same reason, preventive wars are also prohibited and immoral. Not even you want to live in a world where such wars are common, you're more likely merely arguing from the perspective of someone whose country you believe to be in a position of strength.
> Both from an international rights and from a moral point of view you're objectively wrong.
Can you clarify the "moral point of view", please?
> This is not even worth a discussion.
How do you know without a discussion that you are right?
> The fact that you need cite a terrorist attack from 1983 to justify an illegal war of aggression in 2026 instigated by a US president without Congressional oversight speaks volumes.
This is a straw man you just made. The 1983 event is to show that Iran was in forever war with the US through either 3rd parties or directly on the territories of other states.
> That's a straw man argument since nobody claimed that.
Now it seems we are in a strange situation. If it is a war of aggression by the US, the implication is that Iran was not aggressive towards US. But we know it is not true. So, which is it?
Also, how would congress authorization make US non-aggressor here?
> Can you clarify the "moral point of view", please?
The moral point of view is that a war of aggression violates the sovereignty of the people in the attacked country. Another country's officials are not elected by that country, nor do they in any other way represent the people of that country. They have no right to decide the fate of the people in another country.
> How do you know without a discussion that you are right?
I know that because I've studied philosophy and worked in ethics, though not specifically on any issues concerning international rights. I'm also overall a well-educated person with an intact sense of justice.
> This is a straw man you just made. The 1983 event is to show that Iran was in forever war with the US through either 3rd parties or directly on the territories of other states.
No it's not a straw man. You came up with the 1983 event, not me. It would have been a straw man argument if I suddenly had come up with that. My reply to your position is that there are no "forever wars" - this category does not exist in international right and obviously makes no sense. Once you start justifying your attacks with a "forever war" you're in the realm of historical justifications, and these are principally wrong. Why? Because you can find some historical justification for just about any war you want to start. The whole world would be constantly at war if historical justifications were used and deemed acceptable. They are not acceptable.
> Now it seems we are in a strange situation. If it is a war of aggression by the US, the implication is that Iran was not aggressive towards US. But we know it is not true. So, which is it?
I believe you're trolling. In any case, that is not the implication. Not every act of aggression is an act of war. However, the US military has just started a widespread bombing campaign, and that is an act of war. The US is the aggressor not just from an international rights point of view, they're the aggressor as evidenced by the speech of the US President.
> Also, how would congress authorization make US non-aggressor here?
Not at all, and I didn't say that.
Compare how much Israel was in the news for targeting militants these past two years in Gaza.
How biased is the press? Iran slaughters 36k people in a week and... crickets. Israel refuses to let its hostages die while Hamas hides out in hospitals and schools and the world is against Israel not Iran.
If you think Trump did that because he cares about Democracy I have some news for you regarding the Jan 6 rioters...
Because HNers are not so gullible to swallow and regurgitate this pretext. The Trump administration doesn't care about the people of Iran, any more than Bush cared about the Iraqi Kurds or Afghan women. Just a pretext for geopolitics.
Rookie numbers. Wait until they got liberated
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
Are you saying those protested actually got funded by Israel and because Iran killed them, now Israel is retaliating?
Now I really wonder if those protests were indeed fueled and funded by Israel, because we have seen videos of mosques being burned down by protestors, which is strange for Shia Muslim country, even if they don't like their government
"A 2020 Online Survey by Gamaan found that 8.8% Iranians identifying as Atheist and a large fraction (22.2%) identifying as not following an organized religion and only 40% self identified as Muslims."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularism_in_Iran
That regime in the US. It is truly baffling.
Feb 25:
>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...
Looks like the rumor was incorrect. Both jointly attacked (NYtimes - https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02/28/world/iran-strikes-t...)
But Israel announced it first, which they maybe hoped would amount to the same thing PR wise.
The rumor above specifically talks about letting Iran retaliate against Israel which would then lead US to attack.
I'm not sure what's the logic behind that PR-wise, but regardless, it didn't happen.
As I recall Iran said quite openly, in response to the US troop buildup, that they would see an attack by Israel as an attack by the US, suggesting that they could target e.g. carriers instead of Israel if Israel attacked them.
> I'm not sure what's the logic behind that PR-wise
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.
Just now:
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.
While I think this (and Venezuela) are arguably the biggest missteps this administration is making, it's hardly a partisan point. The political establishment loves war more than perhaps anything else. In 2016 alone Obama bombed half a dozen different countries with more than 26,000 munitions for an average rate of three bombs dropped every hour, every day, for a year. [1] Nobel Peace Prize embodied.
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...
Not defending that peace price but: Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for his efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation.
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?
Large scale deployments shifted under Obama to widescale bombing campaigns. The site mentions its various sources such as this [1] which mentions that Obama also increased the number of drone strikes by an order of magnitude relative to his predecessor. To be clear I'm not picking on Obama, but saying solely that this isn't a partisan issue. "They" all love war.
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...
> 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
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_Sycamore
Drone strikes picked up, obviously as that technology became more and more mature. They're cheaper to operate and don't put a pilot in harms way. So that's kinda expected?
Agreed with most of the rest you said though
> So that's kinda expected?
Sure, if the choice is between drone bombings and conventional bombings.
But no, not expected if the choice is between bombing and not bombing.
> Large scale deployments shifted under Obama to widescale bombing campaigns
This isn't true. Small-scale targeted raids, not B52s recreating Dresden.
Not only that but it should be noted what the stated aim is of these strikes and earlier Trump strikes on Iran: take out the nuclear threat.
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.
Is it just another distraction from the Trump/Epstein files?
It does seem that military action is correlated with increased coverage in the media of the Trump/Epstein files.
yes, that is what it is. Nothing more, nothing less IMHO
Should we hold the media accountable for coverage of the Trump/Epstein files because of this?
I'd rather we held Trump accountable for his many crimes.
I find it astounding that the U.S. population aren't storming Washington and demanding his removal. Other countries are removing people from positions who were involved with Epstein due to the massive corruption and yet the USA seems fine with allowing Trump to continue destroying everything he touches.
Regarding intervention in Venezuela, is that seen as a mistep in the US? In the rest of America it is considered as a win, except of course by Cuba (Cubans are the most, almost the only, affected)
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.
The operation in Venezuela could be characterised as an enormous success in the sense that it didn't seem to do anything and therefore was a big improvement on most times the US activates its military. But it was still a misstep in the sense that it keeps US aggression top of mind without achieving very much.
It did help the US government's goals of starving Cuba.
It successfully didn’t backfire on the US.
A war? Of course not. It’s a major combat operation. Only congress can declare wars. We haven’t had any in decades. They should call it the Dept. of Major Combat Operations.
Isn't the currently trendy term "special military operation"?
That's reserved for those lost 200,000* of personnel dead.
* Only verified number with real losses dead higher and even more crippled.
https://en.zona.media/article/2026/02/24/mapofwar
Aged quickly
The USA never even declared the Vietnam "conflict" as a war, or Korea, come to that, though that did at least have the backing of the UN.
It's not just the US, very few wars have been formally declared after WW2, because we all learned war is bad™, so we added more and more rules (both international and national) to make it harder to do it.
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...
That article says that nowadays countries no longer declare war, because now there are a lot of international treaties that restrict what may be done during wars.
Not declaring war provides a workaround, allowing the states to do whatever they desire, without constraints, while avoiding being accused that they do not observe their obligations assumed internationally.
Seems plausible.
As soon a country agrees to enter a conflict on a side, which the original axes declare to be a war, it's at war. You can tell the media whatever you want of course.
The US didn’t declare war since WW2 because such a declaration would give the president disruptive powers (such as the power to seize factories).
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.
The occurrence of a war is a fact whether or not it is declared, and whether or not the actor waging war does so consistent with the legal requirements their nation's laws put on doing so.
I like Special Military Operation better.
I thought he wasn't allowed to start a war without a vote in congress?
(a) It's not a war, it's just a military operation.
(2) It's only the constitution that requires an act of congress, and that document is not considered applicable by the current king.
Worse. He has to win a vote in Congress. How bothersome!
This may be the bloodiest "Wag the Dog" in modern history. They may create an Ig Nobel peace prize specifically for this.
Once again mass killing civilians and setting a country of 100 million inhabitants into chaos.
But yes, poor American soldiers.
"Some of you are going to die, but that is a sacrifice I'm willing to make"
> Trump: "The lives of American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties - that often happens in war."
Coming from President Bone Spurs ...
Americans voted for no new wars, and especially no new wars in the sandbox, and they got a new war in the sandbox.
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're implying those who voted for Trump believed his pitch.
I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt, that they are effectively merely retarded rather than actually evil.
Why not both?
You forgot the Obama wars for some reason?
Trump is calling them heroes now. But we know what he really thinks: "suckers and losers".
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/john-kelly-con...
"Some of you may die, but that is a risk I am willing to take."
I’m honestly perplexed. I had anticipated a scenario like “the US feared Iran was unstable and attacked to protect nuclear material”. It seems this would give them reasonable cover. I don’t see how Israel going along helps
Bibi needs Israel to keep fabricating wars. He will go to trial for previous charges if Israel runs out of wars.
How can you attack israeli pm on US site? This is not what we paid/threatened/extorted/killed for!
> Israel going along
Honinbo-sensei, you seem to have failed to recognize puppy-go for what it is and also to identify the player.
s/politics/optics/
NYT gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02/28/world/iran-strikes-t...
There seems to be an uptick around 1am on Polymarket.
https://polymarket.com/event/us-strikes-iran-by
There is a huge flame war in the comments as people who had money on 27th Feb are claiming the attack started on that date
I think they don’t have an argument because technically the missile can be de-activated up until the last seconds before it reaches its intended target
Still it feels surreal to argue about these things , bomb dropping on humans and other humans attacking each other for the privilege to have their bet honored on when said bombs dropped on the other side of the world
I guess people in intelligence communities had these sort of bets going on ever since WW2 and Vietnam , but still it’s uncanny to see it widespread to potentially the whole population of the internet
Due to distance planes need to take off many hours before the bombs drop.
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, ...
Sure, it could be that. My money is on something a bit simpler.
Yes many markets began to react at 1:14AM EST.
I tried to access that URL but it's banned in my country (Romania) for being an "exploitative gambling website". It's the first time I've felt that my country has a sensible internet policy.
The whole Anthropic DoW tiff was related to this, and folks were downvoting me even minutes before the first strike for making the connection:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189853#47191060
Even HN is astroturfed to heck and filled with bots. The ratio of good faith informed dialog to Reddit like slop in these threads is wild. The old HN would never have such “obvious” black and white answers.
Peace president ah? American terrorists never learn to mind their own business in their own country. Where are all the MAGA clowns?
How exactly attacking Iran make their country great? Murdered million children in Iraq and now they started their terrorism in Iran.
I'm guessing way fewer people will die now than the 36k in Iranian protests a couple weeks ago. But this will get way more press and obviously press matters to you more than actual human lives.
This is also a good deal for the Iranian government since they can transfer hatred people had for them to the America and Israel. No one will see Trump as salvation and the “rally behind the flag” phenomena in times of invasion applies just as much to Iran as it does to the USA.
Apropos of nothing in particular, back in the previous millennium, UNIX (and Linux) had the `fortune` command. It would spew out a "cookie" - a pithy one-/two-liner, usually funny, often thought-provoking, and sometimes offensive (when invoked with `fortune -o`)
I had added it to my `motd`; it would give me a chuckle every time I logged in.
One of the cookies I recall:
A nuclear war can ruin your whole day. [1]
And that's what I think of when I see this absurd new war.
[1] http://fortunes.pbworks.com/w/page/14107138/politics
Here is a 12 minute video showing OSINT of various attacks, and Iranian counter-attacks.
https://youtu.be/ZmtRhiI9uWU
While I have no love for the Iranian regime I fear this will end up like the 'liberation' of Iraq: A massive power vacuum in an unstable Islamic regime.
What even is the plan here if the air assault fails? Boots on the ground? In Iran?
What even is the plan here if the air assault fails? Boots on the ground? In Iran?
Other than nukes that would be the only option if they can blast the doors to the underground military cities. They will have to do it fast as the ships will not sustain combat for more than 5 days with their current ammo per the pentagon.
> While I have no love for the Iranian regime
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.
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/w6_2Ul3Ght8
> Who say US is not regime?
Who says it isn't? Regime literally means a system of government [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regime#Usage
I generally use 'regime' for autocratic governments.
Trump is democratically elected, for now.
I'm not actually sure if this is correct, English is not my native language.
Regime just means ruling system. Western media prefers to use it as a shorthand for autocratic governments so it gotten a bad conotation, but any ruling system can be described as a regime, regardless of if you like it or not. The organization you work at has a "regime"
> I generally use 'regime' for autocratic governments
Which is fine.
"In theory, the term need not imply anything about the particular government to which it relates, and most social scientists use it in a normative and neutral manner. The term, though, can be used in a political context. It is used colloquially by some, such as government officials, media journalists, and policy makers, when referring to governments that they believe are repressive, undemocratic, or illegitimate or simply do not square with the person’s own view of the world. Used in this context, the concept of regime communicates a sense of ideological or moral disapproval or political opposition" [1].
[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/regime
There is no precise definition. English has many synonyms where the formal meaning is the same, but one is used pejoratively because it's acquired a bad association. Regime is like that, formally it just means the rule of a particular party or system. It can still be used neutrally if not denoting a government.
Iran also had elections, were they manipulated? I do not know. Were US people were manipulated using social media for elections. I do not know either.
> Trump is democratically elected, for now.
He was convicted felon before the election, I cannot believe that he won.
The elected president of Iran is more like a Chief of Staff to the actual leader.
I don’t think it’s possible to change regime without boots on the ground which is not currently considered. So there will be no power vacuum, at most Iran military will be weaken. It’s not a big win for the US but would allow Trump to safe face after his demands were essentially rejected.
I imagine CIA political officers are on the ground right now.
Iraq was not an Islamic regime in the same sense. It was not a theocracy. There were non Muslims in senior political positions.
The Iraqi government was a lot more stable.
What exactly do you imagine will replace the Iranian government that is worse?
Iraq was attacking its neighbors every couple of years, Iran is not.
Iran has shown that it is remarkably sane actually, given the aggression 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 attacks its neighbors through proxies: Hizbollah, Houthis, Shiite militias, and Hamas. These groups are armed and funded by Iran.
Oh yes, and the fact that Israel is just sitting there occupying millions of Palestinians, attacking Syria, Lebanon etc. despite a 'ceasefire' has nothing to do with why these groups continue to exist, I am sure.
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.
> Iran's funding for these groups is a part of its 'defense in depth' strategy
That's the rationalisation. Not a justification. Defence in depth was Hitler's rationale for invading Russia, is Israel's strategy for pacifying neighbors, and is Russia's excuse for invading Ukraine.
Creating weak neighbors is checklist-item one for any classical aspiring land empire. It's also tremendously destabilising to its neighbourhood. (It's not a coincidence that China and Russia are bordered by (a) shitshows or (b) countries militarily posturing against them.)
> Hitler's rationale
Ah yes, give any discussion enough time and Hitler inevitably gets to be whoever your opponent is.
Unlike Hitler, unlike Israel and unlike the US, Iran has not proactively attacked.
Hitler had no reason to fear attack from Russia, Czechoslovakia or France. Iran has every reason to fear an attack from the US and Israel, look at what is happening right now ffs.
Western governments provide funding and shelter for extremist Iranian groups like People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran and various separatists movements inside the country, so please spare me this Hitler nonsense.
> give any discussion enough time and Hitler inevitably gets to be whoever your opponent is
Because it fits. Nazi Germany was an aspiring land power. You can see the same effect in Imperial Rome and the Persian empires. (And, while America was conquering its own continent, on the peripheries of Manifest-Destiny America.)
> Unlike Hitler, unlike Israel and unlike the US, Iran has not proactively attacked
Of course they have. Its proxies are constantly proactively attacking everyone in their neighbourhood.
> Hitler had no reason to fear attack from Russia, Czechoslovakia or France. Iran has every reason to fear an attack from the US and Israel, look at what is happening right now ffs
Everyone has reason to fear attack from everyone. Defence in depth is a regionally-destabilising response to that security imperative. And by the way, Russia and Germany did wind up going to war with each other. Same as Iran and Israel, that same one whose anihiliation the former has been chanting for since its revolution.
Arguing Iran has been some peaceful country minding its own business is totally inaccurate.
> Arguing Iran has been some peaceful country minding its own business is totally inaccurate.
Compared to Israel and the US, it would be a massive understatement to call Iran peaceful.
> Compared to Israel and the US, it would be a massive understatement to call Iran peaceful
Sure. Which makes Iran a decidedly not-peaceful country.
At every step, for years, they've tried to de-escalate while Israel and the US launched direct attacks against them. Embassies bombed, that general in Iraq in 2020, last summer and now this. All of these attacks completely unprovoked except for the fact that they are friendly with Hamas and Hezbollah.
They are practically Gandhi in this story.
Looking forward, the problem with being irrationally hateful is that its irrational. What's the plan here? Persia will still exist, and its unlikely any future rulers will like Israel, given what's going on. So what's the win condition?
> At every step, for years, they've tried to de-escalate
They've also, simultaneously, tried to escalate.
> All of these attacks completely unprovoked except for the fact that they are friendly with Hamas and Hezbollah
"Friendly with" in the way America was friendly with South Vietnam and South Korea. (Also, the IRGC has directly sponsored attacks, e.g. Bondi Beach.)
> They are practically Gandhi in this story
This is either stupid or dishonest.
> What's the plan here?
Don't confuse specific criticism with endorsement of the war.
> Because it fits. Nazi Germany was an aspiring land power.
Look at the mass murder by Israel in Gaza. Or how the US just overthrew Venezuela and seized their resources, threatened to take Greenland, taunts Canada and suggests more countries are in their sights.
And now the two of them teamed up to bomb Iran, unprovoked, saying it's going to "annihilate their Navy" as their citizens run for cover.
And your conclusion is Iran is the one that resembles Nazi Germany?
> your conclusion is Iran is the one that resembles Nazi Germany?
In this strategic aspect, yes. So does Israel. So do Russia and China. They're all acting like land empires. And they're all pursuing a strategy that seeks weak, unstable neighbours.
It's a shitty strategy that does't earn one friends. The fact that it's theoretically coherent doesn't make it less shitty.
> In this strategic aspect, yes. So does Israel. So do Russia and China. They're all acting like land empires.
The issue is that you seem to be ignoring the context and using this (weak imo) comparison to defend the US and Israel's decision to attack them.
> by the way, Russia and Germany did wind up going to war with each other. Same as Iran and Israel,
Are you seriously arguing that Hitler was rational for preemptively attacking Russia because AFTER Hitler attacked Russia, Russia did not simply sit back and let itself be attacked but in fact started defending itself? And are you arguing that Israel doing the same is rational because AFTER Israel attacked Iran, Iran launched some missiles towards Israel IN RESPONSE TO THE ISRAELI ATTACK, therefore proving Israel right that Iran is going to attack them?
> that same one whose anihiliation the former has been chanting for since its revolution.
Oh and Israel has been nothing but wishing them happy Ramadan?
The reason Israel does not want the current Iranian system to survive is because it sees it as the only possible threat to its eternal domination of the Palestinians and its ability to dictate its borders in the Middle East.
> Are you seriously arguing that Hitler was rational for preemptively attacking Russia because AFTER Hitler attacked Russia, Russia did not simply sit back and let itself be attacked but in fact started defending itself?
No. I'm saying Hitler's theory of attacking Russia was the same as Iran's simultaneous proxy wars with its entire neighbourhood. It's not theoretically wrong. Just antiquated, destructive and–in the trade-based modern world–increasingly counterproductive. (You're trashing and alienating your natural trading partners.)
And I'm drawing analogy between (a) "Iran has every reason to fear an attack from the US and Israel, look at what is happening right now" and (b) the nonsense argument "that Hitler was rational for preemptively attacking Russia because AFTER Hitler attacked Russia, Russia did not simply sit back and let itself be attacked." In both cases, retaliation is being used to justify the preceding (note: not initial) aggression.
> Oh and Israel has been nothing but wishing them happy Ramadan?
If your neighbour is developing ballistic missiles and explicitly calling for your anihilation, you're not going to "simply sit back and let [your]self be attacked."
> reason Israel does not want the current Iranian system to survive is because it sees it as the only possible threat to its eternal domination of the Palestinians and its ability to dictate its borders in the Middle East
Iran isn't a material threat to Israel's power projection into Gaza and the West Bank. Its ballistic missiles and nuclear programme, on the other hand, are an existential threat to Tel Aviv/Jerusalem. And yes, it's a regional competitor to Israeli (and Saudi and Emirati) hegemony.
> Iran's simultaneous proxy wars with its entire neighborhood
Except that's not happening and is complete BS. It also assumes these proxies have no agency and would not have acted on their own.
> It's not theoretically wrong. Just antiquated, destructive and–in the trade-based modern world–increasingly counterproductive. (You're trashing and alienating your natural trading partners.)
Guess what would allow Iran to peacefully trade with Israel. The end of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. The reason Iran cannot simply ignore that occupation is because it would loose the moral high ground in the Shia/Muslim world. And having that moral high ground (i.e. its support for the Palestinian cause) is also part of its power projection strategy.
> If your neighbour is developing ballistic missiles and explicitly calling for your anihilation, you're not going to "simply sit back and let [your]self be attacked.
Given that Israel does indeed have ballistic missiles and is explicitly calling for for the annihilation of Palestinians, or even 'Arabs' in general, does that in your mind justify October 7th?
> Iran isn't a material threat to Israel's power projection into Gaza and the West Bank.
Not Iran itself, but Israel insists that Iran support for 'proxies' is. Maybe not to Israeli power projection, but to its security at least.
Iranian government massacres its own civilians whenever they dare to demand change. Iranians are also largely secular compared to citizens of most Arab states, and hate their government. They're also mostly Shia, which makes it hard for likes of ISIS and Al Qaeda to gain ground there, as Shias are enemies to Sunni extremists.
I believe there's a much better change of democracy / sane regime in Iran, than there ever was in Iraq and other Arab states.
Iran attacks through its proxies.
Mossad was literally bragging that it is handing out weapons in Iran recently, but yes, Iran always 'attacks' for no reason and should not do anything no matter what happens right?
Same as the Gaza and Lebanon ceasefires where one side stops attacking and the other (Israel) keeps bombing?
I see how this works.
>Iraq was attacking its neighbors every couple of years, Iran is not.
Nonsense. Iran has been stirring up trouble in the region for a long time.
Indeed, Israel just wants to occupy the Palestinians in peace.
Perhaps you forgot that it was Iraq who attacked Iran and Kuwait while Iran attacked no country but hey.
That all being said, we are talking about different cultures. Iranians are on average more educated than Iraqis were/are, and the country is ethnically more homogeneous.
So I have hope that they'll find a way to organize when the current regime falls.
And we’re mostly not religious at all.
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
I know that, but what I don't get is with a society like that, how can a theocratic government last for so long? Maybe I'm being naive, but authoritarian governments tend to fall when an educated population is against them. Iran looks like a weird case to me in this respect in that the population seems to be against (and honestly, seems to be quite brave) and still the theocracy goes on and on.
Anyway, best of luck in this. Your people deserve better.
Thank you.
Yes, it’s complex. Firstly, the regime isn’t truly theocratic.
There are many online videos of regime family members enjoying parties and alcohol.
The second piece: I assume 10-20% of people were participating in the exploitation of our country. They kept the other 80% in control for a long time.
Yeah this is what lots of Western people don't get. The cultural / ideological gap between rulers and those being ruled appears much larger in Iran than in most other Muslim countries.
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.
Yet another very recent account on HN claiming to be Persian and speaking about things on the ground in Iran. Can’t you guys at least try a little harder to be convincing?
Please provide sources when claiming such bold claims.
I don't understand this. What you call bold claims are easily verifiable facts. Demographic and education level statistics are widely available online, choose your source of choice.
I'm pretty sure there are also a lot of people on this site that anecdotally know this from their contact with Iranian diaspora.
Not the GP nor claiming anything , but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Iran is what you are asking for.
>What exactly do you imagine will replace the Iranian government that is worse?
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...
Nothing at all could be worse!
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.
Was ISIS better or worse than Iran's government is now?
Iraq’s Ba’ath party were secularists.
what are you talking about? Iran is a sophisticated country with a parliament and elections, with a powerful civil society. It has 90 million inhabitants. They graduated more women in STEM disciplines than the USA. Yes, it's a theocracy, but it's more free than Saudi Arabia for instance.
Are the Americans going to bomb the Saudis next? or only if Israel ask for it?
What exactly did I say that you disagree with?
“ There were non Muslims in senior political positions.”
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Iraq
Its very much Muslim minority, but having even a few in senior government positions (e.g. Tariq Aziz, who was foreign minister) is an indication that its not a theocracy.
IT was a dictatorship, of course, but not a theocratic one.
No government and another perpetual war zone.
Your description of what happened in Iraq was exactly the point of why we invaded. Iraq and Iran were the two biggest threats to Israel, we got rid of Iraq and now we are removing the only other rival to Israel remaining in the Middle East.
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.
After this, Israel, being the most dangerous rogue state in the world and extremely divided internally, will likely devolve into civil war.
One hopes, anyway. That’s the best chance we have to remove the Nazis currently in power here.
After Iran falls - Turkey is next.
What does it mean "fail"?
What is the goal, to overthrow the regime, so success would mean a change of government?
(sorry, I haven't followed)
The plan is a show of power. Trump will leave in 2 years, leaving much of the world in disarray because he had no plan whatsoever, and his staff is literally out of the movie Idiocracy. Nothing of lasting value will come out of the horrors that happened in the past 3 years, and in 10 years we (the world) will look back into the present with disbelief.
> in 10 years we will look back into the present with disbelief.
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?
Maybe the feeling will be "I can't believe I didn't get out of there while I still could".
> in 10 years we (the world) will look back into the present with disbelief.
This is a very optimistic outlook, to the point of naivete, though I really hope you are right. In reality, neither Trump nor his cronies are acting like people who imagine they will be out of power anytime soon. In 10 years the world will likely still be dealing with the fallout of this administration, if not still dealing with the administration itself.
Hot take: Trump's denialism of 2020 and the use of '3rd term' is so that they can make a case that he can have a '4th term' -- that the will of the people to elect him overrides the constitutional limits of Presidency.
> Boots on the ground? In Iran?
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.
This shows a real ignorance about the true culture of Iran. It is not a Muslim culture. They want to install the son of the shah, and get back to pre-revolution culture.
But liberals will be quick to tell them they don't know best, better to just keep the oppressive ayatollah in power.
Maybe this is correct? I want this to be correct. But American entanglements in the Middle East have often overestimated the size of the “they” you’re referring to. There are many “they’s” in Iran, some of whom have been trained over time to hate the US.
So like, I think this is the right choice, but Trump was elected by MAGA to avoid these kind of entanglements even when it was the right thing to do. In fact, I think “liberals” (not progressive) support this action more than many on the right.
Traditional left/right is not useful to understanding people’s support of our foreign policy in 2026 America. Tucker Carlson will hate this way more than Chuck Schumer.
So replacing a fascist with western antagonism and constant threat on American allies, with a somewhat democratic, weak, and western aligned government?
Sounds like a good idea
It sounds like you believe that the people of Iran don't support the regime and are secretly loving america.
You can say the same thing for Iraq, but here we are.
The place has 90 million people, how do you even deal with this without throwing the whole place into chaos?
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.
> Besides, after this the collective west has no moral high-ground anymore
They never had any morals, all for their business gains look at Middle East, Africa and Asian countries where they were involved. Europe always looked other way when US does something and vise versa.
The moral peak of the west was siding with egypt against uk/france in the suez canal dispute. Its been downhill since then. Especially nam
There is no such thing as the "global south" other than in the minds of westerners and westernised elites (and elites are getting less westernised). From a western viewpoint you can lump the rest of the world together, but it makes no sense from any other view point.
As for moral high ground. Compared to whom? China? Russia? Myanmar?
China
If Americans would like to better understand what it is that they actually did last year: https://www.liberalcurrents.com/killing-for-content/
We all saw this coming decades ago, they weren't exactly subtle.
At this point, no country in the world will ever again 'make a deal' with the US, because while pretending to negotiate with you they try to ram a knife into your back.
You just need access to the videos then the pedo cabal does whatever you want
Canadian here...
The world already know this. Having an agreement with the USA is a lot like having an agreement with Darth Vader. The terms of the deal can be altered unexpectedly at any time.
That doesn't mean that such agreements are worthless. They can still be of value to the counties making them. It is just that those countries have to take into account the unreliability of the entity they are making the deal with. Deals with the USA involve a lot of forecasting.
I'm pretty sure US higher-ups have been publicly describing Iran regime change as a todo-list item for a while now...
It was pretty obvious that if the negotiations failed that the US would respond by attacking Iran. Iran didn't seem willing to give up their nuclear weapons program regardless of the quite predictable consequences.
I doubt the negotiations were in good faith, probably just a political 'see, we tried' gesture full of deal-breaker bad faith proposals. I think the plan all along has been to attack, probably for more than a year.
You don't go and rename a whole federal department to 'Department of War' when you don't intend to get into wars.
> I doubt the negotiations were in good faith, probably just a political 'see, we tried' gesture full of deal-breaker bad faith proposals.
Iranian officials made public statements refusing to give up their nuclear weapons program so they weren't negotiating in good faith either. Terrorists like the Iranian regime can never be allowed to have access to nuclear weapons for obvious reasons.
> 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.
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.
> doesn't make what I stated above any less true.
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.
> You stated Iran doesn't want to give up its nuclear programme, not true. Iran in fact already did agree to it
JCPOA didn't fully eliminate the nuclear program, it mostly just kept it from getting too far along.
> 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.
Nuclear isn't the only issue either, but Iranian officials made it clear they would not give up their nuclear program.
> Negotiations failed over dismantling Iranian power, mostly its ballistic weapons. i.e. give up weapons and make yourself defenseless to maintain peace.
Iran isn't interested in maintaining peace, they want to continue destabilizing the entire region.
> 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.
Last I checked Hamas has refused to give up their weapons.
> 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.
Iran has repeatedly threatened the destruction of Israel, it's not surprising that Israel and the US are taking those threats seriously.
What's predictable is, if you don't have nuclear weapons, you get attacked. Ask Ukraine. If I were a small country (any country for that matter) the first order of business would be to build myself nuclear weapons now.
Ask Libya. They gave up their nuclear weapons program as a sign of good will.
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.
there is news iran accepted to zero nuclear enrichment so what are you saying?
there were not such news
https://www.moneycontrol.com/world/oman-says-iran-agrees-to-...
why are you lying
Did Israel bomb the Iranian negotiators again?
They were literally in the middle of negotiations, but Trump started the war anyway...
> They were literally in the middle of negotiations, but Trump started the war anyway...
It was pretty clear the negotiations had stalled based on statements put out by Iranian officials.
"In the middle of negotiations" is arguably more and more used as a carte blanche to do whatever you want in the meantime. Prominent recent example being Putin pretending to be ready to negotiate for peace while bombing Ukraine.
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.
It was Trump who cancelled to JCPOA. Also, sending Witkoff and Kushner as negotiators is already an obvious sign the US is dishonest about preventing conflicts through diplomacy, otherwise they would send experienced diplomats. It is really the US Epstein Class Deep State government to blame here.
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.
You believe everything the US says? lol
You all just keep lying endlessly, I think most people get it at this point. Iran was prepared to go further than the JCPOA, it was never enough because it was never about nuclear weapons.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/28/peace-within-reach-...
I speak Persian (Farsi) and in state TV, every day, they said we won’t back down and won’t give up anything. Watch the supreme leader’s translated speech. Straight from the horse mouth! Who’s lying here?
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.
I can tell you that in Israel, the prime minister is daily on the news describing how much we are ready to give up and prepared to back down.
Obviously the leaders of both our countries want what’s best for all of us and always tell us the truth, right?
The US demands were for Iran to give up all its offensive capabilities so that Israel and the US can bomb it with impunity every time they please.
It would be foolish for the Iranians to agree to that. But useful idiots will be useful idiots.
Iran’s FM’s statements on the negotiations contradict these claims. They said that they had productive talks and reasonable progress! Did they lie?
'productive talks and reasonable progress' is what diplomats almost always say in negotiations in order to maintain a reasonable atmosphere for possible further negotiations, this is not rocket science.
They also said the US demands are completely unreasonable, which you conveniently left out.
> They also said the US demands are completely unreasonable, which you conveniently left out.
Can you give me some official sources that explain what exactly was negotiated and demanded on both sides?
TL;DR Iran wants essentially symbolic enrichment so they could save face domestically, the US wants it to limit the range of its missiles so they could not reach Israel when Israel attacks.
I want to avoid linking particular sources because I know it's easy to call this or that biased etc. but it's easy to look up even in Israeli sources.
But that’s not what you said:
> The US demands were for Iran to give up all its offensive capabilities
Iran shortening the range of its missiles to the point where they can no longer reach Israel is what Iran giving up all its offensive capabilities means given that the missile threat is the only meaningful response Iran can have to a preemptive Israeli attack.
What's your point?
For a Persian you have very US republican boomer speaking patterns. And of course a very recent account.
> For a Persian you have very US republican boomer speaking patterns.
Most Persians I know will support just about anyone who will go against the regime, there were huge protests all over the world recently by the Iranian diaspora calling for the regime to be destroyed after tens of thousands of protesters were murdered by the regime all over Iran.
I presume its just an Iranian living in the west? Just look at the Miami Cubans cheering on the total energy blockade killing Cuba right now, its not entirely unusual for immigrants to sound like US republican boomers sadly.
What do you even think the words diplomacy and negotiation even mean? Of course it included independent oversight to any extend the US wanted. There is nothing that Iran can do to satisfy the requirements for peace because the goal of the US is war, Iran has no interest in war that leads to their destruction. For fuck sake it didn't even include any sanction relief! Wake the fuck up!
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.
> Wake the fuck up!
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.
Evidently I care more about the hundreds of thousands of Iranian people that will die in this war than you. All you do is repeat the talking points of the Trump administration. I've seen this all before, the Iraq war broke peoples brains in exactly the same way, nobody learned anything at all.
Oh these poor Iranians need saviors, they don’t know what’s good for them. We know better. They don’t learn.
Don’t you see any similarity between what you say and any colonial. And my brain is broken?
Let me put it in a way that’s easy to comprehend for you. War is bad and Iranian government is as much responsible for this war as the US. I don’t understand how this is so triggering for some.
edit.
> Evidently I care more about the hundreds of thousands of Iranian people that will die in this war than you.
Did you care equally when thousands of Iranians were massacred in the streets by the government or the “care” activates only when convenient?
> Oh these poor Iranians need saviors, they don’t know what’s good for them. We know better. They don’t learn.
I'm anti-interventionism, you can't seriously reframe that into western chauvinism.
> War is bad and Iranian government is as much responsible for this war as the US. I don’t understand how this is so triggering for some.
Because its just not true, there would be no war without the US and Israel starting it, PERIOD. It's triggering because you could've said exactly the same thing about the Iraq war, its always the same disaster and people never listen or learn anything, that's why its frustrating.
> there would be no war without the US and Israel starting it, PERIOD.
“there would be no war without Hamas starting it, PERIOD.”
See how dishonest and ignorant that sounds?
For everyone else reading this thread as Iran being bombed: In 47 years of constant confrontation, islamic regime has not built one fucking bomb shelter for its people for these days. Let that sink in. Don’t believe these people who suddenly start to care about Iranian lives by taking the regime’s side and also don’t believe US officials when they say they do all these for our freedom.
anti-interventionism is immoral at some point
Do you think the Trump is doing this to help the Iranian people? Did Bush try to help the Iraqi people?
> it was never about nuclear weapons
The only reason to enrich uranium to 60% like Iran was doing is for nuclear weapons purposes.
That's not the point. The point is that the attacks on Iran are not about the nuclear weapons. Iran entered the JCPOA and complied with it, it had completely suspended any nuclear weapons program. But that didn't matter for Israel and their sycophants in US foreign policy, because for them the nuclear weapons program is at best only one part of the problem. Their real problem is that Iran is an independent state in the region that refuses to accept Israel's occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and parts of Lebanon, and that refuses to comply with US policies more broadly.
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.
> Israel's occupation of ... parts of Lebanon
Which parts of Lebanon does Israel occupy?
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/11/14/un-peacekeepers-sa...
> The wall extends across the so-called Blue Line and has made “more than 4,000 square metres [43,055sq feet] of Lebanese territory inaccessible to the Lebanese people”
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.)
How much land area, exactly, is another nation allowed to seize by force before it becomes unacceptable to you? It obviously is not that much given the tone of your message.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Lebanese_confl...
That's not the question I'm interested in. The question I'm interested in is whether it's correct to claim that Israel occupies "parts of Lebanon", particularly in the context in which the claim was made, next to the claim that it occupies Gaza and the West Bank.
I could have sworn that I saw a goalpost here. Why is it over there now?
The south. It's not a real occupation like the west bank, it's more of a 'raid and pillage' thing. No rape reported yet, so it isn't at all like the West Bank.
Israel only has outposts in Lebanese territory.
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.
This. Everything going on is one step closer to Israeli dominance of the region and “Greater Israel”.
No, the reason is to have a deterrence so that Iran could say, 'hey, if you attack us we'll develop nukes'.
By the way, I am a lot more worried about Israel and its actual nuclear stockpile that has zero oversight.
Its good u have no say in whatever important.
And burying your facilities under a mountain is not suspect at all
Not especially. Their other facilities were being bombed routinely by Israel (along with infrastructure).
So they have medical grade uranium facility under a mountain? If that’s all they need, wouldn’t it be easier to just purchase it from a third party instead of investing billions of dollars hiding from Israel?
They have a military base under a mountain, not a uranium enrichment facility.
Building military defenses against crazed, genocidal, racial supremacists who routinely fire missiles at your country seems more like sensible forward planning to me rather than evidence of a guilty conscience.
there are many reasons to do nuclear research beyond medicine, for batteries like the ones powering the voyager space craft, nuclear reactors come in a wide variety of configurations, and many of them actualy produce more radioactive elements that then need to be managed. 60% is nothing,80% is nothing, it needs to be 93%++, and LOTS of it to build a bomb, and given the number of bombs already arrayed around Iran, they would need 100's and all the infrastructure to become a credible threat , for which they plainly dont have the money to afford. The wildly unpopular leaders going after Iran need a scapegoat, or rather a continious supply of scapegoats, but have failed to recognise that the world is moving past them.
True. Medical needs require only a lower percentage. I don't know if Iran was planning any fission reactors.
I hope you’re right but not too confident that will be the case. I wish EU leadership wouldn’t be as spineless as it is. I’m afraid they will accept any opportunity to make things feel as if they are back to the old normal if they are given the opportunity. And that would of course backfire, but long term thinking hasn’t been our strength over the past 3 decades or so…
Somehow world will close eyes again ... Somehow we need to bring back moral standards that we all have deep in ourselves and screw this money world me all made together... I dont have answers or ideas how but this is just nonsense
US has been always playing god, cunning manipulations all over the world. Most of the Europe was silent until recently when Greenland under threat. US benefits from every war either oil, rare metals, trade, weapons, there is always an agenda even though they are not directly involved.
Needs a war to cancel the mid terms.
They’re calling it Operation Epstein Fury
Gotta derail any peace talks!
Can't have Gaza have relief for a second!
What does this have to do with Gaza? One would think that if the IDF is busy in Iran, it will probably be less busy in Gaza.
Everything. A new conflict distracts from the ongoing genocide and allows its perpetrators to stay in power.
LOL. The US is on it too. So what you have to say for yourself now?
What peace talks? The ones where for over a year Iran refused to deescalate their nuclear war program and the now Europe range ballistic missiles?
You are lying, they have been trying to avoid this war in any possible way. But Israel wanted this war before they lost the support of the USA population (that it's happening fast) or they have a less accommodating USA president.
I agree about Israel fast losing support among the general public here but the idea of a less accommodating executive or legislative branch in the US for Israel is unthinkable. Not unless the system is changed from the ground up in dramatic fashion. The two most relevant branches of government in this country are completely beholden to Israel and anybody denying it is a zionist shill.
Iran has marvelous cities, sim of the greatest humanity archeological treasures.
It hurts my heart to see Americans destroying them (and the thousands of lifes).
Iran also has a gang of murderous theocratic nutters running it, massacring their citizens for taking to the streets and singing songs, undermining foreign societies, and lending their knowhow and drones to other, bigger psychopaths for their invasions. It'll gladden my heart if the leadership is destroyed, even if some old pretty masonry gets chipped along the way.
> massacring their citizens for taking to the streets and singing songs
The US is also doing this albeit fewer people.
"fewer" doing a lot of work here
Isn't Iran also famous for destroying landmarks that don't glorify the official state religion?
I was discussing this with a friend today. It just feels like there's no point to these actions.
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!
The point is preventing another North Korea style nuclear blackmail state.
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
Does Iran not have the same rights of self-defense and sovereignty as the US and Israel?
> 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.
190 countries signed the non proliferation treaty for a very good reason, so no they don’t have the right to it in any sense of the word on the international stage.
Especially not when they’re mass murdering protestors and funding islamic extremism left and right
Okay so neither then does Israel yet here we are a country with illicit nuclear weapons that murdered scores of thousands of civilians has what standing to do what now?
Opposition to Iran’s regime does not imply support for Israel’s
Israel never signed the NPT, like India and Pakistan.
Oh wow cool even more unhinged than I realized
As opposed to America who are only non-mass murdering protestors.
They actually do. And I say it as a European and I think the Iranian regime is as bad as it gets, and won't shed a tear if they all get executed.
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.
The US is also murdering protesters and funding Christian extremists. So what now?
Dictatorships have no "rights". People have rights.
> The US and Israel are currently nuclear blackmail states.
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.
Why exactly do you suppose the US gets away with carrying out military attack or threatening to carry out military attack against a new country every couple of months?
Trump had done it several times.
Iran signed the NPT.
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.
That was before the revolution. The revolutionary government still honored the deal, but that's been obviously a losing move for a while. The whole Middle East recognizes that, just look at how many countries Pakistan has sharing agreements with recently.
Treaty obligations do not disappear with a revolution
No such right exists, except in moral terms, but if you are going to invoke morals, the Iranian regime does not hold up well. So no, they do not.
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.
> The rational move for Iran to prevent itself from being bullied is to have nukes like North Korea
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?"
> Does Iran not have the same rights of self-defense and sovereignty as the US and Israel?
Iran signed Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
And US signed Budapest Memorandum. Both are equally hollow.
The former government, a US puppet regime. Why should they honor a deal that doesn't benefit them when the US and Israel refuse to play by the rules?
>Does Iran not have the same rights of self-defense and sovereignty as the US and Israel?
No. If they wanted self-defense and sovereignty they should have become stronger not weaker after the revolution.
This comment is so wrong. Trump's strikes won't "prevent" anything, it's domestic posturing to look tough. You cannot bomb your way into regime change.
> 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.
>Iran has negotiated like no one will ever attack it, and that was a correct assumption for decades
Iran had a signed agreement, trump cancelled it. Israel literally killed Irans negotiators just a few months ago. What is this nuclear level ignorance.
> The point is preventing another North Korea style nuclear blackmail state.
North Korea aspires be to be a Israel-style nuclear blackmail state.
> In this situation it is a fair request by the US to sign a nuclear deal that heavily restricts Iran's ability to enrich, and as Iran due to ideological reasons refused, and IMO miscalculated this will be a win-win, as losing will quell the protests, the only thing really left is the metaphorical stick
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?
The contradiction is that they’re weak at this minute - militarily and economically and politically. But they won’t be this weak in the future.
- 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?
Very good analysis. I think most of the world doesn’t quite understand how bad the currency crisis is right now in Iran
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.
> Didn't we have one of those a few years ago? I wonder what happened to it /s
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
I dont see how it is fair from USA to demand others dont have nukes. Ukraine made mistake of trusting ISA and giving them away and now USA basically support Russia in their invasion.
Iran is a bad guy state ... but the "fair" atgunent hwre dont apply.
The biggest blackmail rogue state right now is the US.
Why do you call the concept a "North Korea style nuclear blackmail state" and not an "Israel style nuclear blackmail state"?
Has Israel even officially confirmed they have nukes? And who have they blackmailed with the nukes?
> Has Israel even officially confirmed they have nukes?
No. There's a number of reasons for this. #1 is Israel's policy of "strategic ambiguity" and #2 is that it might be illegal to even mention it in Israel. Israel prosecuted a whistleblower nuclear scientist for leaking state secrets, for example.
> And who have they blackmailed with the nukes?
The US, for one:
"Similarly, in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, IDF was again outnumbered by the invading Arab armies. Then Israeli PM Golda Meir authorized a nuclear alert and ordered that nuclear warheads be readied for launch from missiles and aircraft. The Israeli ambassador to the US, Simcha Dinitz, met with Henry Kissinger to inform President Nixon of “Very serious conclusions” if the US did not airlift arms supplies to the IDF. Nixon complied with this demand due to the threat of the use of nuclear forces. This was the first successful use of the Samson option as a threat and tantamount to nuclear blackmail."
from: https://thesvi.org/deconstructing-israels-samson-option/
I also recommend: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/wait-why-is-israel-allow...
The Samson Option enables Israel to blackmail the entire Middle East, and do so silently. Turkey or Egypt can't afford for Hezbollah to overrun Israel, because Ankara and Cairo might get nuked, even if they had nothing to do with contributing to Israel's existential crisis. It basically forces the whole neighborhood to keep each other in check out of sheer self-preservation. Credit given where credit due, it's a smart approach on Israel's part.
On Israel, is it possible that they feel their influence on US foreign policy is waning and they want to push over Iran before they can’t do it anymore, even if the propaganda in America hasn’t been sufficiently set up yet to provide cover? Where pushing Iran over is useful because having weak neighbors is good for their expansion?
Possibly wishful thinking, but that’s the only way I can make it make sense in my head.
Netanyahu has been pushing for the US to attack Iran since the 80s, it's been a lifelong dream of his. This has nothing to do with self defense.
It’s been a lifelong dream of millions of Iranian expats
does anyone seriously believe there can be a good outcome of this for iranian people?
I can't make up a story that will be good for iranian people in the end. Is there even an example in last 100 years that started out like this thing is starting out and ended well for the people?
You don’t unseat the Fraudster in Chief while at war. So starting a war is a slightly less conspicuous trick than outright preventing relevant elections from taking place.
The point is that Israel can't tolerate any competition in the area.
Wesley Clark: "We're going to take out 7 countries in 5 years":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWxKn-1S8ts
Yes, when you ask the basic Clauzewitz question about "continuation of politics by other means": what are the war aims, and how is this action connected to them?
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?
> What are they trying for? Regime change in Iran?
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.
They are boxing in China. Taking away China’s oil. First Venezuela. Now Iran.
Decoupling from China while taking out China’s allies is the overarching foreign policy.
Probably a continuation of the 'mowing the lawn' strategy (as used against the Palestinians). Every now and again use massive military force to set back Iran's capabilities, time and effort they spend rebuilding is time and effort not spent causing problems elsewhere.
It accomplishes the goal of diverting attention away from the recent revelations of a pedophile ring among the elites having operated from a private island for decades, with current US president and serial rapist Trump being best friends with the ring leader.
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.
Yes, but there is also the other elephant in the room. Don’t underestimate Trump, he may not have read about Michael Parenti’s explanation of The Assassination of Julius Caesar: where he argues that Caesar was killed not as a tyrant threatening republican liberty, but as a popular reformer who challenged the Roman oligarchy's wealth and power and thirst for wars. Maybe Parenti doesn't explicitly equate JFK's killing to Caesar’s, the similarity lies in both being elite-driven assassinations to preserve power: Caesar by Roman senators against reforms, akin to theories of JFK's killing over anti-war shifts and perceived threats to entrenched interests. Critics note Parenti's JFK work critiques official narratives as state cover-ups, mirroring his Caesar "people's history" inversion of "gentlemen historians."
Anyone raising their weapon against Israel in the last 20 years was armed, supplied, funded, trained and directed by Iran. There’s a special division called Quds in the IRGC responsible just for that. The list includes Hizbollah, Assad’s former regime in Syria, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Houthis, Hizbollah in Iraq and others.
Israel being an ethnic supremacist state for more than the last 20 years [0], on a determined mission to ethnically cleanse the indigenous population from their ancestral land [1], this comment unintentionally makes Iran sound like the good guys in this story. (I do not support any form of theocracy).
[0] https://www.btselem.org/topic/apartheid [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Palestinians
Well, they're probably killing thousands of their people there. This country was once aligned with us. We may yet have an ally there.
If we attacked every country in the world killing thousands of its own people we'd be at war with half the world right now.
Including the US.
Hey, we can’t save them all. But maybe we can save some of them.
Sure, throw several thousand bombs on them. That surely will help. They send kisses currently and are very happy they and their children are dying.
It would be highly impractical to go to war with all of them at once, but USA can still fix one country at time. Venezuella, Iran, hopefully Cuba next.
They were only aligned with us after we overthrew their democratic secular government in 1953, and installed an unpopular authoritarian monarchy as sole leader. The reason we overthrew their government is because they felt we were ripping them off in oil deals and wanted the right to audit and cancel those deals (and renationalize their oil fields) if we weren't playing fair. Then in 1979 that puppet government was overthrown in a "real" revolution, which gave birth to the Islamic Republic of Iran which, for some reason, always had a chip on its shoulder against the West.
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.
It gets his base fired up and excited.
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
While true for the Iraq war I don't think that holds as true anymore. Even a lot of MAGA recognise that getting into wars in the Middle East does nothing but cost the taxpayer billions/trillions of dollars for nothing to show.
That's because there's a glimpse of reason that still pokes through with influencers sometimes saying "you know, I think (thing) might not be good so I hope Trump doesn't do it." Then when trump does (thing), they always backpedal and say it's great. Pre-election inflation was a problem. Now prices are great. Epstein was a problem. Now they say nobody cares. War with Iran was bad. In 2 days influencers will all have a prepared message supporting it and in 3 days half the country will absolutely support it.
Their endgame is genocide. They will be happy to only enslave the Iranian people too. Seriously, USA and its colony in Palestine are colonialist supremacists and they just want to extract all the resources and don't mind killing all the people of that land.
It's regime change this time. Trump published a message calling for all Iranian military forces to surrender and the Iranian people to take over the government.
It's a nakedly imperial gambit, the Western ruling classes are attempting to deny Middle Eastern oil to Russia and China. Iran is their only capable opposition in the region, every other Gulf country is a bought-and-paid-for satrapy which just cosigned a genocide on its doorstep.
Oil to Russia? Please review that
Coals to Newcastle.
What if I told you the entire country of Russia is not actually oil fields, and Iran does export oil to them?
> No more Iranian nuclear program? There barely was one before.
How do you know?
The US department of war said last month that it was "obliterated"
>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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_strikes_on_Irani...
Good 1 hour presentation on youtube
https://youtu.be/SxqipJgtTdk?si=YfWRzjcflhWHR276
(Note: Iran did move some stuff away before the attack)
I really do not even want to understand the mental gymnastics which one has to undertake to justify the actions of the US and Israel in recent years.
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.
To add to this: anyone who still does not see that Israel is by and far the most dangerous rogue state in the region is (at best) blinded by propaganda.
Iran has repeatedly demonstrated restraint and pragmatism throughout these aggressions on their sovereignty, starting with Israel’s strike on their consulate in Damascus.
There is a curious cognitive dissonance in which people think is somehow more morally correct to do human rights abuses abroad than at home. The US is doing both currently, though.
Very level headed and empathetic to go and claim that 50 countries just lost their right to criticize China because US and Israel are fighting Iran. Trolls having their priorities straight!
He did not make that claim and even said criticism of China’s abuses is warranted. Zionist shill.
There is no need to gymnastics. Iran materially supports russian war against Ukraine.
I believe this is related for Iran's decades old calls for "Death to America"/"Death to Israel".
I believe that’s related to Israel’s genocide of Palestinian children and America’s unending unconditional support of the same.
Anyway, sticking to the "Death to America" strategy and choosing to run a global proxy war and killing their own people, instead of choosing peace, have led to this moment.
Lets pray for the people of Iran we get rid of the regime this time, and eventually reach peace in the middle east.
No, it's because of the country is run by fanatics.
Leta hope the good side wins.
> Death to....
Is the translation "Down with....".
No it's not.
My theory was they were waiting for the finale of Tehran on Apple TV
EDIT: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-february-28-2026/
People are posting these choice quotes:
"In order to get elected Barack Obama will start a war with Iran"
—Donald Trump, Nov 29, 2011
"Barack Obama will attack Iran to get re-elected."
—Trump, Jan 17, 2012
"Now that Obama's poll numbers are in tailspin watch for him to launch a strike on Libya or Iran. He is desperate."
—Trump, Oct 9, 2012
Ill doers are illdeemers.
USA can't stop engaging in wars no? Now food prices are gonna go up because gas prices will go up. Or all prices will go up.
>USA can't stop engaging in wars no?
Eisenhower explained why in his farewell address.
What are that pizza place google statistics?
Did anybody need those? The deployment of half the US army near israel was not enough evidence?
Those spiked like 50x in the past 4 months. Doesn't seem to mean anything.
The only time it didn't spike was for the Venezuela Maduro operation.
At this point, the pizza index is another vector of (dis)information managed by the Pentagon.
Once that side channel was found, it was kind of inevitable it would be plugged. Even under a normal administration, that's an opsec leak.
Seriously. They can put a Burger King anywhere on the planet in 24 hours, but can't do their own pizza at the Pentagon?
How did the US justify this?
The way they justify everything in the modern time.
“The strong do what they will. The weak suffer what they must.”
If you are in the US, pray that you are never weak.
They stopped doing that, really.
You might've missed it but the "department of defense" is now "department of war'.
Here is their attempt: https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-trump-address-f662a4f3378...
Weapons of mass destruction, as usual.
1. Iranians protested.
2. Islamists massacred them.
3. Trump said "help is on its way" ( https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/13/trump-promises... )
4. Now is the help.
---
Trump also said that when he says things he means them, unlike Obama's red lines in Syria (his words). When he said that, it was pretty clear he couldn't back off of attacking Iran.
I assume it took so long because he's going for regime change, not just a few bombings. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, it took the US 5 months to launch a counter-invasion (mostly because of coalition building).
Iranians are celebrating, btw. This is what they have been dreaming of. This is their chance to finally take their country back, and I think they'll do it.
I can't think of a better use of US military power in the world than to take out this terrible regime and let the Iranians do the rest. This isn't Iraq or Venezuela. People saying that we can't bomb our way into regime change apparently didn't follow the protests and massacres very closely a couple months ago. Iranians were begging for help so that they could topple the regime.
> People saying that we can't bomb our way into regime change apparently didn't follow the protests and massacres very closely a couple months ago. Iranians were begging for help so that they could topple the regime.
Of course people didn’t follow. Did you see any major news outlet doing live coverage of the events like they did for October 7th? No.
The news of bombs falling on schools must be really exhilarating to people. Especially for the ones that have children! Finally they have a chance to throw away their government and replace it with a military junta
Probably not the dead ones
They didn't celebrate the last time Israel & the U.S. attacked them & they aren't celebrating now.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2026/01/trump-kham...
Successful regime change requires a far more significant investment in soft power than America & Israel's current right-wing leadership would even conceive of.
"This war like the next war, is the war to end all wars"
- David LLoyd George, c.1916
The first wars were fought between tribes and then later between kingddoms for power/minor differences and trying to increase influence and alliances. Religion and race and many other discriminating factors are used for both sides to get support of the people, the people who are actually gonna carry the rifle and risk their lives and lose it, this drives the next war to redeem the losses of the first one, to take revenge.
This then creates a community which dislikes the other community and now we are here.
We do not like to be robbed of an enemy; we want someone to have when we suffer. … If so-and-so’s wickedness is the sole cause of our misery, let us punish so-and-so and we shall be happy. The supreme example of this kind of political thought was the Treaty of Versailles. Yet most people are only seeking some new scapegoat to replace the Germans.
- Bertrand Russel in Skeptical Essays.
Humanity has had a history written with bloodshed but the problem right now seems to me that we don't know how to write future, we lack a vision for other prospects, it seems to me that we jump into the newest Hype on the block and its all so wishy-washy. Contrary to people saying its a western issue, I think its an whole world issue, its just that the west is particularly impacted by it.
Has there been a desensitization in things in recent years?
I know of atleast one leader (King Kaniska) who fought for land (Modern day Orrisa) and won and then saw the bloodshed and screams on the ground and decided to not repeat it and I think he spent later of his life trying to promote peace.
I am sure that there must be other leaders in the history of past as well but perhaps its the problem of history as well which can sometimes glorify wars.
I think the biggest problem right now is being noise. We have created machines so large that humans have lost dignity and are treated unfairly at scale in terms of Renting places at scale owned by shell companies who'd rather have it empty than give you affordable housing. Prices seem to be increasing and I don't think modern social media helps in giving people dignity quite the opposite at times and it's very likely someone is reading this who may have contributed to making the machine.
With this being a political thread, I see comments from both sides[0], I don't think I have too much to add politically to the discussion but perhaps I just wanted to treat out that its best we treat each other with dignity in this thread and in general because I do believe that's the only thing we can do which can bring change. It's gonna be extremely hard for people to treat others with dignity while taking sides which talk about wars killing people, but I don't know what else to say. Iranian censorship for its people but I am not sure if the current idea of America brings me thinking of liberation. One can wish for pure democracies in such regions but its gonna be extremely hard and even grass-roots movements of these can be shut down by intrusive forces whether foreign or govt itself and given that the region is extremely shaky relying on oil which can be extracted from ground leading to a less dependence on people themselves for Iranian govt.s being the reason why they can be so censoring. They have shown enough power to fight massive protests but as I said earlier, the current picture of America don't exactly give me the idea of bringing pure democracy in the region either.
My prayers to the Iranian people who are stuck between a rock and tough spot.
(there are no sides, its a circle, a circle of people who start wars and the people who fight wars)
Even if you don't support US & IL standing in the frontlines against the terror regime, at least pray for the freedom of the people of Iran, 90m people held hostages by the regime. If you are pro-peace, do not be hypocrite, some wars are needed to defeat evil.
US needs to start thinking that you are not givinig someone freedom bt bombing them. You have soo much of your problems but your money printing machine is working and that is only reason that you can say that. Its not about 90m people its about your pockets...
Are all our foreign policy decisions now made in Tel Aviv to suit Israel?
Sure seems that way. I don't really see how this military action is justified from a US perspective. Or even from an Israeli one. The most likely justification is that the leadership of the US and Israel are a little bit unhinged and want a war to distract from domestic issues.
Not only is it unjustified, attacking during a negotiation seriously undermines future negotiations. This is a massive self face punching exercise.
Israel has even killed a Hamas negotiator in 2024 during deliberations, and attempted to kill another one in 2025.
I mean they literally shot a child and watched him bleed to death while creating a wall to prevent an ambulance getting to him soooo.
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.
Was there really a negotiation? It seems like US is giving them an ultimatum, stop nuclear enrichment and ballistic missile production or well hit you
"This is America, you can always cut a deal"
- Dutch
Don't fool yourself and others, attacking during negotiation is part of the negotiation.
Well, it's plausibly justified because the US considers a strong regional ally like Israel a valuable asset to have in the Middle East and if Israel is a regional hegemon [1] then all the better.
There have been many arguments that the US' support of Israel goes against US interests [2], but that really makes no sense. It's not just Trump who has to be convinced to start a war for Israel, it's the entire defense establishment in the US.
And also in Israel. If fighting half a dozen wars all at once was really that bad for Israel, surely, someone would have put a stop in it.
Surely.
_____________
[1] Got that term from J. Mearsheimer, if you were wondering.
[2] Particularly the Tucker Carlson - Judge Napolitano - Col. Daniel Davies continuum of mostly conservative podcast hosts. Or those are the ones I follow closely anyway. They're all convinced it's all "because of the lobby".
Why is Israel a valuable asset?
Netanjahu is old and wants to secure his 'legacy' by being credited for dismantling Iran, knowing Trump will back him both because he's been fed BS and because the Israelis have enough kompromat to sink him. There's no 'rational' justification for this attack, only madness and huge egos.
What kompromat would even affect Trump at this point? He's been proven to be deep in bed with a literal pedophilic cabal of elites, what on Earth else could they have on this guy that would affect anything?
A literal video of him doing what most of us think he likely did with this pedophilic cabal of elites could likely still do some damage.
Or perhaps there's still worse things we cannot imagine? With these people, one can never be too sure.
I am not convinced that Israel is such an important ally.
I suspect a fourth column.
careful, you might get flagged by the self appointed hackernews mods
You know the answer ;-)
No. They're made in Virginia and broadcast to proxies around the world.
Seriously, I'm constantly amazed by how oblivious some Americans are. You got it all backwards.
What makes you think it suits Israel? There is only one person here it serves
Israel is the tip of the USA spear. We've seen this already, this should come as no surprise.
Oh, it's not only Israel. It's also a powerful distraction from the Epstein files.
Wait, weren't the Epstein files a distraction from war operations?
I don't believe one is needed. USians seem ok with wars. The last one which caused problems also had a forced conscription.
its an Ouroboros of distractions.
Always have been.
This doesn't even benefit Israel, it benefits a bunch of power-hungry sociopaths in Israel.
Nope. In Jerusalem.
this global escalation will be the reason elections are cancelled.
Interesting times intensifies. It's only February.
I've long suspected DJT is on a rampage of radical, ragebait news worthy actions to take the news away from the Epstein files. I hate that it's working and many people have to suffer because of it.
Classic playbook. This war will last the next three years. Trump admin will leak information and let Iranian cells in US cause terrorism, giving them the excuse to install domestic mass surveillance locally. They'll use that as a means to stay in power.
special operation
we sure dodged a bullet in 2024 elections and elected the right people to stop all these senseless wars that were one of the cornerstones of the election campaign
It's baffling to me that the DNC decided it was more important to support Israel than win the election and do good things at home.
How can you look at the current support for Trump and conclude you would've won in the US by not supporting Israel?
Because polls before and after the election were crystal clear on this point.
Over 30% of Biden 2020 voters said arming genocide was going to affect their vote.
That's BIDEN VOTERS.
80% of Democrats wanted an arms embargo.
Arming Israel meant giving up millions of votes in swing states, in an election that was lost by extremely slim margins in those states.
And before you ask, it was also clear from polling that ending support to Israel would have cost nearly zero votes from her base.
And the reason the Harris campaign didn't know this is because they didn't want to know. Campaign staffers were instructed to mark anyone who raised Gaza as "no response". Attendees of the DNC conventions were literally plugging their ears and shielding their eyes from protests, or even laughing about them.
Trump won by less than 50% of the vote and there are many polls that show the Biden administration's genocide was massively demotivating to democratic voters.
Supporting Hamas over Israel would've hurt more, probably.
False dichotomy.
is it? Because 'that part' of the Democrats were fully in support of Hamas. Have you seen the University protests?
If the Dems caved to that they would've alienated 10 voters for every 1 student that might show up at the polls if it doesn't rain.
Being against genocide doesn't mean one supports Hamas.
> student that might show up at the polls if it doesn't rain
Please don't do that. Your view of other people is quite sad.
These are statistics, not views of people. you can look up that certain groups rarely vote and other vote almost always.
You can also support neither.
Harris had all sorts of good things planned at home. It’s baffling to me that some voters thought it was more important to lose the election.
Voters don't lose elections, campaigns do. Harris failed, and this kind of "turning around of the blame" thing that Dems try to do is one of the reasons why they don't win elections: they never learn.
you mean election, not elections, right? cause you know, 2018, 2020…
Peace and profit.
I find the nuclear motivation an excuse. I mean, enrichment plants or not, if Iran wants a few nukes I am pretty sure that Russia would part with some enriched material and smuggle it pretty easily to Iran.
My theory is that Israel has dirt (Epstein files maybe) on Trump and holds him by the balls. The second idea is that this is an obfuscation campaign to have the public opinion forget about Epstein, the state of the real economy, the falling approval rates, or all of the above.
What makes you think Trump is not interested in this himself they just offered him hotels and land. Him getting blackmailed is I feel a lot of people that have voted for him are using as a coping mechanism. The attack on Iran proves the point just like Russia attacking Ukraine if you want to protect your territories you need nuclear weapons. Canada, Greenland and countries in South America should also look to acquire nuclear weapons as once they are done with Iran you will be the next.
My previous comment:
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.
Or we can all shoot ourselves in the face. Faster, cheaper, and guaranteed to work every time. Ish.
opportunity cost-wise, iran could have poured all the money they did in nuclear enrichment instead into missiles, air defense, etc, and they would not be having as much problems as they do now.
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.
I thought Ukraine surrendered her nukes?
Ukraine never had nukes. It's like saying Alabama had to give up their nukes after gaining independence
That's an idiosyncratic take on the facts that basically everyone else agrees to interpret otherwise.
Ukraine and weapons of mass destruction
Ukraine, formerly a republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1922 to 1991, once hosted Soviet nuclear weapons and delivery systems on its territory.[1] The former Soviet Union had its nuclear program expanded to only four of its republics: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine. After its dissolution in 1991, Ukraine inherited about 130 UR-100N intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) with six warheads each, 46 RT-23 Molodets ICBMs with ten warheads apiece, as well as 33 heavy bombers, totaling approximately 1,700 nuclear warheads that remained on Ukrainian territory.[2] Thus Ukraine became the third largest nuclear power in the world (possessing 300 more nuclear warheads than Kazakhstan, 6.5 times less than the United States, and ten times less than Russia)[3] and held about one third of the former Soviet nuclear weapons, delivery system, and significant knowledge of its design and production.[4] While all these weapons were located on Ukrainian territory, they were not under Ukraine's control.[5]
In 1994, Ukraine agreed to transfer these weapons to Russia for dismantlement and became a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, in exchange for economic compensation and assurances from Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom to respect Ukrainian independence and sovereignty within its existing borders.[6][7] Almost twenty years later, Russia, one of the parties to the agreement, invaded Ukraine in 2014 and subsequently also from 2022 onwards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_and_weapons_of_mass_de...
Btw, reference [5], used to justify the absurd claim that those weapons were in Ukraine's territory but not under its control, goes like this:
{{cite Hansard |url=https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199293/cmhansrd/1993... |title=Nuclear Weapons |speaker=[[Jeremy Hanley]] |position=Minister of State for the Armed Forces |house=[[House of Commons (United Kingdom)|House of Commons]] |volume=227 |date=June 22, 1993 |column=154 |access-date=September 9, 2018 |quote=Some weapons are also possessed by Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, but these are controlled by the Commonwealth of Independent States.}}
So it's basically the words of a UK MP assuring his audience that, nooo, don't worry, Ukraine doesn't control its WMD.
> My advice for rulers … hire a few hundred Chinese scientists and engineers and get nuked up ASAP.
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.
If nukes are so good why Israel isn't safe? Or in other words you overestimate how useful nukes are. On contrary for Iran them having nukes mean Israel have to guess if coming missiles contain nukes or not and whatever to strike back with their own nukes where as now they can freely sand missiles without escalation concerns.
Israel isn't safe? They are probably the most well defended country on the earth. A very capable domestic military and the full power of the US as an attack dog willing to do their bidding.
They have good defence, but:
- it costs money and attention
- good is not the same as perfect (there are some casualties from time to time)
Nukes do not help against guerilla warfare: their destructive power is so big that they are really unreasonable attack weapon, and only a deterring factor instead.
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.
>If nukes are so good why Israel isn't safe?
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).
Anti-nuclear proliferation should now be treated as crime against humanity. Nuclear proliferation is only way to ensure world peace. Every single country should get nukes and capability to use them against each others. And be fully ready to do it.
I hope you and I never get the opportunity to learn how this would end. We’ve had nukes on Earth for less than 100 years, do you expect the next few thousand to go that well? Do you think in that time, nobody will ever roll a nat 1 on a wisdom check?
https://www.angryflower.com/422.html
Let's bring this idea to an ultimate level- each country to have a warhead able to wipe everything, sort of project Sundial...
After all if your country is too small, it may be worthless to have nukes that probably would be destroyed by neighbors on launch...
That would work. Reasonable power balance would be reached. And negotiations could happen from equal perspective.
One step further: every man, woman and child should have a launch button.
(My bet would be: max one day)
Can't tell if sarcasm
Another mid east war entirely on Israel’s behalf, another war Americans will pay tax for, die for- just so Israel can keep grabbing few parcels of lands from Palestine.
This is why we can't have nice things.
I take this as a confirmation that more "nuclear bomb material" i.e. unpublished Epstein files still exist.
There's at least 14TB of unpublished files left. A little under half of the 6 million documents.
And that's only the ones the FBI didn't "somehow" fail to collect.
There's at least 14TB of unpublished files left.
And that's only the ones the FBI didn't "somehow" fail to collect.
Iran is a lesson to all: as soon as Israel or the US take a disliking to you you have to rush for nuclear weapons.
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.
Don't know why you are being down voted. I mean Iran had a democracy that was toppled by the CIA when they tried to nationalise their resources in favour of a puppet dictator. If the US cared so much about human rights why not go invade Saudi Arabia.
Go look at photos of the Iranian Revolution. You’ll see pictures of millions of Iranians involved.
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.
I know someone whose clan was involved (still were when I last talked to him, before the US left Afghanistan). Of course the CIA/MI6 used local support, but they did have an impact on when, who and how. And on the power structure from 53 onwards.
My point is that any Americans claiming moral legitimacy for these actions due to human rights considerations should give us all a break.
And are you really claiming the CIA was not involved in instigating a coup to bring in the Shah?
Iran makes the drones that russia uses to attack Ukraine every day. Iran makes the rockets Houthis use to attack ships. Iran provides rockets andgunding to Hezbollah and Hamas. Iran is a terrorist state.
Usa makes the bombs that israel uses to attack gaza every day.
I guess it depends from which angle you see this. Things are not black & white.
A big chunk of the world sees the US as the biggest terrorist state in the world, followed up by Israel...
Iran and russia are pretty black. Without any white
True. Your enemies are ontologically evil
what's going on in the epstein files that he's bombing iran
[delayed]
I can't help but think that all this shit is because Netanyahu really wants to put off more court hearings on his lame ass corruption charges. I really can't wait for him and his cronies (in Israel, and the West) to be brought to justice.
Without having to wait for the history books to do their thing.
His court appearance are continuing as scheduled, twice a week, for the last year. except for some specific incidents where he had to leave of cancel due to running a state.
No matter what you think, there is no way for him to avoid these hearings
Great, for those minor charges of accepting what, something like 150k Eur in gifts. As opposed to life in prison for genocide, which he clearly and absolutely deserves.
While Netanyahu definitely deserves that, don't expect anything to change for the better in Israeli foreign policy if he gets deposed and tried. Israeli politicians have become radicalized to a level that is hard to imagine from a European or US perspective.
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.
Same, this is disgusting. Actions like these need oversight by the US people.
Crypto going down while Gold going up (on XAUt) suggests the market thinks this war is not going to go necessarily to the US/Israel advantage.
as iran is a major player in crypto money laundering then it could price its fall
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202602279443
why?
is not crypto going down on any "multinational"* war?
*war amid thai and kambodgia is not "multinational" kind of, just example of not any
There wasn't a war between the Siam and Khmer, just some clashes plus their conflict is irrelevant to the rest of the world. I am not aware of crypto going down during that time? If I remember correctly it was close to ATH.
To hell with america!
Bored of Peace
I think its only just getting started
They have chosen the weekend not to disturb the stock markets. They may pull that off when they get inside support as the corruption of the regime has made it unpopular with business class and the middle class. Trump may achieve another 'Venezuela' short war.
I'm very skeptical that external attacks bring about a resurgence of domestic Iranian protest resulting in a tidy regime change. I think the downward lurch of BTC tells you how it's going to go, because Trump's mouth is writing checks others are going to have to cash and there's a lot of contradictions involved.
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?
A mere 8 months ago, Trump and his cronies were saying that Iran’s nuclear program was “totally obliterated” every chance they got.
And perhaps more importantly, “Suggestions otherwise are fake news”
https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/06/irans-nuclear-fa...
New day, new talking points. Surely this isn’t a surprise to you?
16 months ago, he was campaigning on no new wars.
Presumably, what he meant was 'No, new wars!'
I don’t know why anyone even bothers with this anymore. Literally every single word that comes out of his mouth is a lie. It’s actually staggering to think about. It’s like he is incapable of doing anything that right, correct, or true.
This is the beginning of 3rd world war.
What makes you think that?
Would you be willing to back up that claim with money on a prediction market?
It's very subjective, not appropriate for a prediction market.
Yup, up to those that write the history books.
I hate that we apparently have to take sides when commenting ..
Comment freely. Ignore karma. Here are some uBlock rules that help:
You don’t have to take sides. I haven’t landed on a particular POV here. You’re free to take a breath and think about things.
So another war of aggression by Israel.
Hopefully they finish the job this time and rid us of this horrible islamist regime, to make Iran great again !
Un-redact the Epstein files.
This war shows Hamas was resistance group and Israel was actual oppressor and terrorist.
Israel attacked Iran
Israel attacked Lebanon
Israel oppressed and kidnapped Palestinians
World is getting destroyed by couple hundred Israeli and US maniacs, by the way, all of whom are connected via Epstein
Nothing to do with nuclear weapons. They are trying to surround and isolate Turkey as the only other military heavyweight of the middle east.
Israel and the US have already shown their cards in Syria. It is not peace they are after, it is regional domination.
Why does HN continue to delete all comments against this?
Enable "show dead" in your profile to see things that get flagged to oblivion and that action is by the user-base not moderators.
Do you have any proof for this?
Iran FTW
Ever since the ICE stuff I've been desperate to find a way to not pay my taxes - even if it means donating 2, 3x, hell 4x my tax bill to somewhere else. Obviously it's basically impossible to do this (especially if your income is all self employment income) outside of just spending every penny you earn on something that could be viably considered a business expense. So I'm wondering if I should just straight up stop working until I can relinquish my USA citizenship.
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.
If you're willing to go through all this trouble, why not just become politically active? Don't underestimate what a motivated individual can do. All these public figures (or institutions) swaying the country back and forth are only people too.
I would rather vote for a person from hackernews than any other politician right now tbh...
"both sides" still with this?
I was politically active in the USA, in the only way I believe can make any meaningful change: direct action, mutual aid.
The American political system is captured by two neoliberal (one now post liberal, fascist) parties, and you have to sell your soul to "accomplish" anything, only to watch it yet ratcheted away by your own party, or obliterated by the fascists.
That would be unsound? Travel to Europe _before_ giving your assets away so you can stick the landing and work on building useful stuff there instead.
This is a laudable position, and I don't say this to discourage you or others from taking this action, but taxation does not effectively constrain US military spending, as long as the USD remains globally desirable and the US retains the ability to print more of them.
I’ll be a willing receptacle for your donations. I am homeless living with schizoaffective disorder and could use the help!
You're a good person and I feel similarly. We live under the Fourth Reich.
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.
Ben Franklin was asked what kind of govt would the newly formed United States have. He was sadly right when he replied 'A republic, if you can keep it'
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.
/sought/ to interfere.
See Stephen Fry on attempted chemistry.
Remember when we bombed Iran at Fordow? It happened less than a year ago. Iran sent some perfunctory retaliation, and everyone forgot the whole affair. Same with this. Nothing ever happens.
idk about that, telling people to get ready for body bags does not sound like the hands-off fireworks show of previous episodes.
Given the amount of planes this isn’t going to be a single precision strike
> Iran, pledging to lay waste to the country’s military and obliterate its nuclear program.
Is that the same program that was totally obliterated in June 2025 according to Trump?
"Obliterated like nobody’s ever seen before"?
This was doesn't benefit the US whatsoever. I am getting tired of our taxes going to another useless war, like the Iraq one, that only benefits a foreign entity, aka Israel.
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.
indeed. One of the only positive things Obama did internationally.
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.
It won't go to a full blown war. They will bomb some stuff and declare victory. Once they sailed two carrier battle groups over there an attack of some sort was a foregone conclusion.
lol we all hope
If they don’t put boots on the ground, it won’t. They can bomb Iran back to the stoneage, as it has no viable air defenses.
I guess countless Iranians dying in the process doesn’t matter at all? As long as the Americans are killing them from far away, it’s all good?
>We don't know the details of the strikes, but I hope it doesn't go into a full blown war
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.
I don’t believe China has any intention to support anyone by military means. Best case they will keep on trading and that’s it. Iran is alone. Maybe Turkey makes a crazy move to support seeing it sees itself as next in line if Iran falls. This is the biggest present to European powers, which I think will be hoping that it will keep US busy for rest of Trump’s presidency. They have the Ukraine excuse to distance themselves and let everyone get weaker while they arm themselves up. Internal political tensions in US will also give them leeway to more actively influence American politics and these will be even worse with a long war pitched against a scandal background. Then again, Trump may be a genius, get this done in a couple of months and leave everyone grasping for a new strategy.
It would take weeks for China to shop stuff. (Unless they have done their homework in advance)
There's been rumors of Chinese kit arriving in Iran, but nothing concrete:
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.
> Iran could have been contained and Obama was right on his approach.
So you don't care about people forced to live under IRGC rule and their desire to export their Islamic ideals elsewhere?
Do you really believe this “altruistic” angle?
Yes, I don't want to live under Islamic rule.
I might be convinced that the Administration was concerned about people being forced to live under Islamic rule if it was as eager for war with Saudi Arabia as it is with Iran.
(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".)
Many people want to though, and no one is forcing you to.
Where do you live where Islamic rule is a worry?
No. There are dozens of countries with despotic regimes, including Israel. And I also have no interest in zionist or any religious ideals exported either. If this were justification we would also be bombing Israel, which has committed far worse crimes than Iran.
US president can be democrat or republican, republicans can control the Senate or the House, or the democrats can control the Senate or the House - regardless of who is in power, Israel's interests by US are always met. US can wreck havoc on close relations and ties with Europe, Canada, etc. - but relation to Israel never changes. You can oblivious to all this, but the truth is: Israel de facto controls the US.
The most likely and capable retaliation will be cyber/info wars.
Iran has sophisticated influence operations and will likely flood social media with disinformation designed to deepen political divisions and erode trust in institutions.
This advice serves even if you don’t believe the above. Be deeply skeptical of all viral content in the coming days and weeks, especially anything designed to change your opinions, or provoke outrage/fear. Verify before sharing. Expect deepfakes. Stick to primary sources when possible.
"Iran tried to interfere in 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump, and now faces renewed war with United States"[0]
So we're going to war with Iran based on election fraud conspiracies from MAGA?
0: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1161475725227...
It kind of reveals Trump as a big liar. Not that this is a surprise, but even in his own self-image he can no longer try to shift the blame to others. Now he committed to war until regime change occurs.
What an utter betrayal of no war by DJT. This is the final straw. Era of Trump is dead, we are back to neoconservative era. I guess Adelsons are too hard to say no to.
Citizens United is an existential threat for USA. You cannot have Israeli-American dual citizens pouring $200 million dollars in elections. and that’s just her alone. This is simply not sustainable.
Or one South African-Canadian-American triple citizen pouring $300 million dollars in elections. I am shocked that campaign donations are legal.
I mean, some of the stuff actually wasn't legal. But accountability for wealthy elites is limited to a strongly worded letter
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.
Ideally we would completely restructure the government to have multimember districts and change the Senate.
Within the current structure, we need to implement ranked/scored voting to break the two party system and the implied complete control it has over our government. It's so much easier for big money to control the narrative, control the candidates, and play off extreme polar politics when the voting system makes people choose the "lesser of two evils".
Were I king for a day in the US, and could only do one thing to help America, changing our voting system to some kind of rank/scored system would be it. Ending gerrymandering and Citizens United are also important but honestly less so than this.
Can we not with the blatant antisemitic dogwhistles...?
Exactly what part of my statement was dog whistling? Can you stop throwing around this serious accusation of antisemitism without any attempt to substantiate your claim?
"Israeli-American dual citizens"
Making a big deal out of Israelis—especially wealthy ones—having dual citizenship is a classic antisemitic tactic, used to sow the idea that they aren't "real Americans" or their primary loyalty is to another country.
Also: yes, Citizens United is a big problem. But phrasing your comment as if the primary problem with it is "Israeli-American dual citizens" pouring millions of dollars into politics is perpetuating the antisemitic ideas that a) all or most Jews are wealthy, and b) Jews are controlling our country/the world.
Whether or not you meant it as antisemitic, it played directly and very clearly into multiple antisemitic tropes that are frequently used to try to smear and harm Jewish people.
Coming as a shock to only the most gullible people on Earth.
Fell For It Again one-hundred-time world champions.
It’s still pretty unclear how in the US is planning to go. For example, manifold still rates the chance that Iran’s regime falls this year at 46%, which should be a given if the US put boots on the ground. https://manifold.markets/SaviorofPlant/will-irans-regime-fal...
The headlines in Europe are that Israel is carrying out preventive strikes, the USA is helping.
And that's certainly the deathbed of any hopes to a mullah regime change. They will come out stronger than before.
Paywall : https://archive.ph/M6Ywb
Latest update of the page archived here: https://archive.ph/VqSqj
3 days ago this was in the news:
> "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?
Do you people seriously think that planning such a large scale operation can take 3 days?
Go America, go Israel, fuck ayatollahs.
The headline says "US and Israel". Why are you all focusing on Israel?
Earlier headlines did just state Israel, US involvement became evident somewhat later.
https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/399731975432728576
let's try to keep to credible sources here eh
Joke? Or someone really dont know it's his account?
/i
Good. Let them have it!! Free Iran!
Most people's definition of freedom isn't being bombed by the US and Israel.
This is war... huh... wow!
Love the Burzum reference, but it's low quality on a discussion forum. Downvoted.
What's there to discuss about this absolute shit show?
Are there any accurate sources on how many Iranian citizens the Iran regime has killed in the past couple of months? (some sources suggest tens of thousands, but I wonder if it could be a 'WMDs' situation [lie to get support for a 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
I don't get that argument at all. Americans felt that they were missing out on all the fun, so they decided to kill even more Iranians? Does anyone really believe that bombing cities saves lives?
Whether it will in this case i don't know.
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.
> i do think sometimes war can be a net positive for civilians
Spoken from the comfort of your cozy apartment, with the AC on, light music in the background and a drink in your hand.
Can't make me an omelette without breaking your eggs.
They’re not nuking Tehran, they’re dropping targeted bombs on government/military sites.
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 exactly what was claimed in Iraq, and while I'm sure you can find some few idiots or optimists, it is completely false at the relevant level. There is no such thing, and has never been such a thing, as a country welcoming an invasion by another country, at least not in the last few hundred years since nation states developed, and since explosives became the major means of war.
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.
The diaspora and the clans are cheering for sure, as well as a lot of people who lost their operations when the Taliban took Afghanistan back.
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.
Us and Britain is largely the reason they're in power in the first place.
Why are we even talking about this? As if this is being done for the 'protestors'? Netanyahu didn't visit the White House 6 times in the last year to advocate for the welfare of the Iranian people. The "negotiations" over the last several weeks weren't over protestors - it was over the Nuclear program, ballistic program and proxy forces. It wasn't even about US interests. Iran offered mining, oil and other valuable rights. Trump wasn't buying. This is about Israel's national security interests and hegemonic ambitions. Protestors are just pawns in service of that.
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.
> This is about Israel's national security interests and hegemonic ambitions.
This sums it all up succinctly. Emphasis on the “hegemonic ambitions” part.
Apparently you don't even have to give Americans the neocon foreign policy spin anymore, we generate it ourselves.
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 think its incredibly difficult to get confirmed numbers in a situation like that.
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.
Why does it matter? Is it justification to attack them?
Its probably not the reason they are attacking (except in as much that it makes the iranian regime vulnerable). However i would say that yes, humanitarian intervention is one of the only non self-defense justifications for war that anyone has ever accepted in the post-ww2 era. (Edit: to clarify, im saying its the type of thing people build justifications for war around. Whether its a valid justification on this specific case is probably highly debatable. I think a reasonable argument could be made)
> However i would say that yes, humanitarian intervention is one of the only non self-defense justifications for war that anyone has ever accepted in the post-ww2 era
So when is the US intervening in Ukraine then? Russia is literally doing human safari with drones hunting down civilians in Kherson.
> So when is the US intervening in Ukraine then?
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.
> Did you miss the absolute massive amounts of aid US has given ukraine?
I missed US bombing Moscow, like they are bombing Tehran at this moment.
But this will undoubtedly increase the general level of adversarial feelings and justifications of violence worldwide for many decades to come. The seeds of the next ISIS were planted today
Can the US or Israel morally claim “humanitarian” intervention given what’s happening in parallel in Gaza? If Iran bombed Tel Aviv would you call it a humanitarian intervention? Is this a creative use of the term? When you make a “humanitarian” intervention to save some humans, while decimating others it sounds like you think the “others” are not/sub-humans.
Tu quoque
So I suppose you'll be attacking Saudi Arabia after this if you're so worried about humanitarian conditions?
You have to pick your battles and be pragmatic. Changing the Iranian regime would have a much broader impact than changing the Saudi Arabian one.
Bombs for peace.
The 'tens of thousands' figure is one primary justification. Iran (eventually) getting a nuke is another.
Regarding the protests in the preceding week, while the iranian people probably had valid problems with their government, its so pbvious the actual scenes we saw in the news were orchestrated to manufacture consent. Its barely hidden anymore.
If you see a sudden uptick in protests in a country the US/isreal see as an enemy, you can bet its probably just the step in the playbook preceding military action
Protests have been happening in Iran for years and their frequency and depth increasing. Last one was “Woman life freedom” movement because the government killed a girl for bad hijab.
It’s not new, you just started paying attention now.
I know its not new, the iranian governemnt has always been cruel to dissidents. I guess my point is a sudden uptic in participants and media coverage of them is the indicator of manufactured consent
Ok I get your point. You mean the uptick in US/Western media coverage? I do agree and don’t think whatever we’re witnessing right now is for the good of the people of Iran!
Also the scale in which people were killed in Iran in such a short time (even if you believe the Iranian state media) was unprecedented. So there’s that too.
The protests were there before. Maybe you didn't know about them, but many people have been protesting. These are 40 day protests - iran funerals are 40 days afer the death, and 40 days ago iran killed tens of thousands of protesters who now are having funerals. (Iran deach culture is more complex than that, but for discussion the above works)
I can't shake the thought that Claude is quite possibly helping to conduct these attacks.
Maybe it's a good thing that Anthropic will no longer be associated with the US government's attacks in another six months.
I still cannot understand what "Claud helping to conduct attacks" could possibly mean. Like, they asked an LLM to use tool calls to look up strategic info, maps, and military asset inventory and then write a plan for where to point the missiles? How is a text generator helpful here, whose job could it make meaningfully easier in the chain of command?
Target selection?
"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."
I would not expect that prompt to work unless there's a fairly trivial query that can be crafted to give the right answer when run against the relevant datastore. If there is a query like that I would hope you have a guy on staff well-versed enough to know that and just run it himself.
That's funny, I can't shake the thought that China's AI tech could be helping the ayatollahs' conduct their retaliation strikes.
Getting publicly kicked to the curb by the Trump admin mere hours before it starts another war is probably the best thing that could have happened to Anthropic. Not sure how well OpenAI's parachuting in is gonna look with hindsight. I have a feeling we won't have to wait that long to find out.
agreed. Although "starts another war" dismisses 50 years of history. Iran never stopped being at war with US and Israel and they clearly were never going to agree to a deal that left them without the nuclear capability to wipe both US and Israel off the map.
There are always unanticipated consequences in war. Argentina never thought in a million years that an attack on the practically undefended Falklands would result in the loss of the General Belgrano.
Regardless of how it ends, and it can go both ways, we're witnessing history here. This feels like a much bigger development than Russia-Ukraine. Iran is a major partner for Russia and China, mostly for military technology and oil. Hope it's not a start of WW3.
> This feels like a much bigger development than Russia-Ukraine.
Russia-Ukraine war is 1M+ combat casualties deep and is nowhere near finished. You are out of touch.
But russia-ukraine is also a much more contained war between 2 parties that will likely end in a stalemate.
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.
> But russia-ukraine is also a much more contained war between 2 parties that will likely end in a stalemate.
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.
Ukraine will never de jure give up those territories and majority of nations will never recognize those as part of Russia. And it’s 20%, not 30%. Pre full scale war it was 7%, now it is 19%, so during the five years they’ve captured 12% of Ukraine's territory.
Russian goals were:
- Quick decapitation - fail
- Change of government - fail
- Prove that majority of Ukrainians are phone Russians and the moment greater Russia comes everyone will see that Ukraine is not a real state - fail
- Make second Belarus out of Ukraine - fail
- Stop NATO enlargement, Finland and Sweden joined NATO essentially doubling border with NATO - fail
- Dissuade Ukraine from joining EU and make it pro Russian first - fail
- Prove that Russia is a great military power on par with US that can topple regimes at will - fail
- Make Russia strategically independent- fail, Russia is now completely dependent on China
- Destabilize EU - fail, Europe is united like never under US/Russia/China threat
This war will enter history as one of the worst blunders.
I hope you're joking. This is such "Ukrainians are just Russians by a different name" logic. China, Belarus, and North Korea are deep in this conflict, so are all the European countries. There's no stalemate end to this war, only a temporary cease fire or the collapse of Russia.
Depends how you count “big”. Russia-Ukraine has had about 1 million deaths, and has completely changed how Europe thinks about security- it’s hardly a sideshow. Then again, not much territory has changed hands and there has been no regime change yet.
> not much territory has changed hands
Russia occupies about 20% of Ukraine, an area three times larger than the country I live in (the Netherlands).
Majority of that is since 2014, gains since 2022 are way lower
Not true, prior to 2022 February Russia controlled small parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, now they control them almost entirely, as well as good chunks of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/24/mapping-russian-att...
https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian...
All were captured during their thrift store blitzkrieg. Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Mariupol were captured because pro Russian rats sabotaged mine defenses in Kherson oblast.
> Russia-Ukraine has had about 1 million deaths
I wish... But estimates say between 230,000 and 468,500 dead orcs.
One million casualties is injured, missing, and dead… not just the dead.
> 1 million deaths
Casulties, not deaths.
The casualty-to-death ratio in Ukraine is surprising for modern times, especially on the Russian side. Counting civilians, Ukrainians, Russians, I can see the death count being close to 1M. Partisan sources already put Russian combat losses at around 1.2M personnel. Ukrainian losses might be more than half what Russian losses are. The 1M deaths estimate doesn't seem outlandish.
Russia and Ukraine are now at war for the fifth year running, you're just used to the fact that there is ongoing war in Europe.
No it's not. This is an air strike campaign, no boots on the ground. It'll end in two weeks. There is no chance China or Russia get involved, like last time, so "WW3" is completely non-credible.
> ...no boots on the ground. It'll end in two weeks
Why do we never learn from history?
There are no ground ops and there is no possibility of any significant ground ops given current deployments.
And if Iran gets incredibly lucky and sinks an aircraft carrier or lands a sufficiently lucky hit on a military base?
Will there still be no possibility of ground deployments?
Yes ... why do we never learn from history? What's with the selective memory?
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.
> 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.
Okay, and where's the army? I'm not sure what you're expecting without boots to put on the ground. Are the pilots gonna be ejecting to go hunt Khamenei? This argument is meaningless. Again, none of this can lead to WW3 and none of this can turn into a protracted war as in Ukraine-Russia.
You can stop when you have no idea what you're talking about, you know.
You seem like a Trump voter who voted for no more wars doing damage control
Boots on the ground can happen at any time if Iran manages to either hit one of the thousands of US assets in the region or worse they resort to terrorism with a theatrical attack like 9/11 which ended up costing so many lives , money and freedoms ranging from TSA literally up your ass to the destruction of privacy online and offline…..and of course as we all know boots on the ground
What do the three points of the navy trident represent?
The big difference with previous campaign is that now, the Iranian regime is facing existential threat. While the previous war was more a of a show for respective domestic publics, this one feels like there is no coming back.
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.
They will provide intel and weapons like NATO in Ukraine.
Chinese state media is already reporting it's "unlikely to be contained" https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202602/28/WS69a2a669a310d686...
A regional war isn't a world war
Bombing never wins wars, with one exception.
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.
Being Serbian, the bombing campaign of 1999. was successful. It lead to the (temporary, 12-years long) regime change, and to the de-facto independence of Kosovo. It ended the war.
While it's possible, it's unlikely. Iranian regime is in a corner - they have no choice anymore but to escalate, and escalate quickly.
There might be boots on the ground eventually given Trump's speech.
>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.
Iran is hitting back at US bases so it could be related to those risks, rather than a full invasion.
(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)
It's a sinister statement, but despite everything the U.S. has moved to the region, they didn't move the stuff they would need to move for ground operations.
Venezuela didn’t take many boots. Maybe we can decapitate the Iranian regime in the same way.
I feel like maybe you have no idea how that Maduro takedown happened. That is not possible here.
Could be more of an intimidation tactic. The United States of Israel wouldnt go to a land war in Iran, that's unwinnable
This is about Iran, not Iraq.
There's no land campaign. It's an isolated series of strikes for PR reasons and wishful thinking about Iran collapse.
What happens when Iran responds by firing missiles on Israel or on a US ship and inflicts major casualties on either targets, though?
Even the US can't move an Iran sized invasion force overnight. It was a couple of years from 9/11 until the invasion of Iraq.
Exactly. See, sinking of the General Belgrano.
WW3 started with the invasion of Ukraine.
Otoh, what russia desperately needs in the short term is oil prices to go up, so there is probably a major silver lining for them.
> Otoh, what russia desperately needs in the short term is oil prices to go up, so there is probably a major silver lining for them.
And they will again appear weak and incapable, unable to help their allies
> 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.
Isn’t this a fact set in stone by now? Armenia, Syria, Iran in the previous months
Iran’s oil is sanctioned hence not on public market. Does it really have much influence?
China buys Iranian oil, if they’ll start to but oil from non-sanctioned countries it will push prices up. But the biggest reason for prices to go up is the risk that Iran will attack tankers in the strait of Hormuz or oil infrastructure on Arabian peninsula.
Yes, because if it stops flowing, demand on the public market will increase, and prices will rise.
I don't think it's bigger than Russia-Ukraine - it's part of it. This is all about destabilising Iran's incumbent government, which is probably a good thing at the moment. It'll damage supply lines to Russia's Ukraine offensive, give the chance for Iranian citizens to rise up against Khamenei and the IRGC and break the command chain for their foreign proxy operations. Part of Dugan's work on geopolitics, which they seem to be following to the word (c'mon guys seriously?) suggests that Moscow and Tehran should be allied which they are behind the scenes.
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.
> 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.
"for you and me," not "for you and I." Would you write, "for I"?????
I don't think that's the case. I think it's some of those people got elected.
They got elected because they communicated effectively with people in a way those people understood.
Trump speaks like a 4th grader and it is extremely effective.
I doubt either of them is keen to enter the fray here. Russia is making shaheeds at home now anyway
More like this is a small piece of the puzzle in Russian-Ukraine war. Iran plays quite a big role in supplying Russians. If Iran is taken out, power balance in that war may change too.
As big as this is, the Russia-Ukraine war pretty much marked the end of the post-WW2 era and redefined global relations between the powers. In that sense, this is yet another major shift within this new era. But also, the series of events that led to this point does connect to the Russia-Ukraine war, and maybe doesn't happen without it.
Putin said it himself, there are over 2 million russians in Israel - they will not participate
Russian Speakers* a lot of them are from previous Soviet republics like Georgia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Belarus and Ukraine
In Georgia, they speak Georgian. Azerbaijani is a Turkic language.
I don’t dispute that fact, but the Jews that have immigrated from there have grew up in the Soviet Union and in the Soviet education system, and therefore speak Russian
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
thats definitely not the reason they wont participate. Its just a public excuse
I have to wonder how many are in governmental roles and realized they can steer the US into conflicts and ruining itself without any of those involved identifying as Russian. It's the cleanest backdoor for espionage that there ever was.
"russia controlling the us" is such a 2015 narrative, you ought to update your positioning..
I am saddened by all of these comments.
Will not one of you try to steelman this decision? Or do you truly, fully believe the entire US government and intelligence complex, supported by roughly 50% of your compatriots, are warmongering baboons?
Ok, fine.
Israël is threatened by Iran. Iran has been working on nukes. There have been negotiations but they haven't been definitive yet, and Iran has never been a trustworthy negotiating partner anyway. That is why this President ditched the last round of agreements.
That's the steelman. Reality is that half my compatriots are warmongering baboons.
I am saddened by your gullibility. Your first instinct is to trust this administration? Who has repeatedly showed utter contempt for the very idea of truth, the constitution, the rule of law, and science, merely because half of American voters are brainwashed?
This administration's arguments do not deserve to be steelmanned.
Yes.
Greetings from the European Union.
I think it's possible it's a good decision (As with most wars in the middle east, I think hubris is playing a heavy role and we're underestimating the risks involved) but I think I'm in the minority and this is _not_ supported by 50% of my compatriots.
I don't know if by 50% you're talking about left vs right, but I'm center left, and a decent number of center-left thought leaders support this action. I think the people who support this are a relatively narrow 25-30% of remaining neo(lib|con)s in the center, and the more left and the America First right crowd hate this. My guess would be loosely speaking Trump's base hates this more than the typical HN poster. Tucker Carlson for instance will be way more against this than anyone here.