Accusing Iran of "lashing out" and being "reckless" by attacking US bases while the US and Israel literally murder school children, bomb hospitals and assassinate state leaders is rich.
It didn't have to be this way but they decided this to turn into a fight of survival for Iran and destroy any option for a peaceful resolution. Now they are going to pay the price.
I can’t be an apologist for what’s going on but the Iranians seemed capable of killing tens of thousands of their own citizens in order to quash an uprising against the regime only weeks before the current events.
The way this war is shown to us (West) is very loopsided - Iran was never going to be able to stop the bombing and they knew it. But they still retain most of their ability to blow up anything they want around their country, which is most of oil and gas fields in the Middle East, and this time they actually proved it.
We like to think we're winning, but are we ? Iran leadership is supposedly decimated, missile capabilities destroyed etc. And yet, when Israel attacked their gas field, they immediately wiped out 17% of Qatari gas productions capacities which will take 5 years to rebuild and they could have wiped out everything. Seems their leadership structure is doing just fine.
As for all the killed - what did we actually achieve ? Replace Khamenei with his son - a guy who had all of his family blown up to pieces by US / Israeli ? That should do wonders to Iran's future relationship with those countries.
Listing a kill count doesn't amount to evidence that the war has been well thought out, it only tells us the US and Israel are good at assassinations.
It is clear the initial aim was to decapitate the leadership and expect capitulation of some form or another to follow. This obviously hasn't happened, and so the fallout grows by the day.
>36,500 killed in 400 cities... Our Editorial Board has now obtained more detailed information provided by the IRGC Intelligence Organization to the Supreme National Security Council.
There are zero verified sources of any mass killings by the Iranian government. In fact all evidence points to Mossad agents committing the mass killings of Iranian government officials as caught on video, including the wrestler that was just executed for killing a police officer with a machete, on video.
> you can, because you can say some of the killed people could be citizens of India, China and/or US, this way you already cover 2.5B people
No, there aren't 2.5 billion people Tehran has the ability to kill. The fact that you're having to be this ridiculous to make your argument should give pause to its validity.
There are limits to knowability. But that doesn't mean everything is always unknowable. (Or, vice versa, that all scepticism is unwarranted.) Choosing to believe that is politically useful to anyone with power, which is why there is constantly propaganda to its effect. But it's not intellectually onest.
> The Iranian government is bad, and yes, it should be toppled, eventually, by its own people.
You would prefer to tell people in Iran who oppose the regime to take up arms (which they don't have) and fight IRGC soldiers with better training and more resources?
Best case, if they did, Iran would end up in a situation like Syria. Would that be an improvement?
What I can tell you is that no matter how much I hate the government of my country, I would hate a lot more the foreign country that is destroying civilian infrastructure and murdering my people.
Let's not pretend that the US and Israel regimes have the best interest of the Iranian people in mind. They want murder.
I really can't say how this is being received in or out of Iran, but I remember after the initial strikes there was widespread footage of Iranian exiles celebrating, even on anti-Trump media.
Edit: and even people celebrating in Iran itself, which seems incredibly brave.
"videos posted on social media showed joy and defiance elsewhere, with people cheering as a statue was toppled in the city of Dehloran in Ilam province, dancing in the streets of Karaj city, near Tehran in Alborz province, and celebrating in the streets of Izeh in Khuzestan province.
In the town of Galleh Dar in southern Iran, people knocked down a monument commemorating Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic in 1979, a video on social media showed."
Even The Guardian, as anti-Trump as a source can be, reported that "videos shared widely on social media also showed people celebrating, dancing, honking car horns and setting off fireworks as news of the leader’s death broke."
Yeah, but then again the United States has also killed protestors with federal invasions of its cities. As well as slaughtered children with a targeted missle strike on a school.
Thousands, not tens of thousands. Which is bad enough so it seems silly to lie about this but whoever can make up the biggest number seems to favored by the Western narrative.
And let us not act like the decades of sanction were not designed to do exactly this. Sanctions mean you create as much hardships as possible for the people in hope they topple their government. They nearly never work but here we are.
> Contrary to popular belief, economic sanctions are ineffective in fulfilling their objectives. Historical observations from Russia to Cuba and Iran reveal that the more sanctions are designed to pressure the ruling class, the harder ordinary citizens are hit. Leaders often perceive sanctions as a means to enhance nationalism, portraying the United States and its allies as hostile. In many instances, such actions have only strengthened their hold on power while stifling dissent internally.
As for the protests, the truth is also that these were not peaceful protests. Mossads agents had been arming people and instructing them to riot. Hundreds of police offers have been murdered and mosques have been burned down. Mossad agents have been instructed to fire at protestors to increase the death toll.
Yes, there has been valid criticism and unhappiness with the government. But most of these people had been protesting for economic reasons. They didn't want to see their country invaded.
Today many of the people that had protested in January are joining the mass demonstrations in favor of the Islamic Republic. The war has united the Iranians.
> Hundreds of people died when security forces sought to crush the demonstrations, along with dozens of members of the police and Basij militia. Iranian intelligence operatives internally concluded that some of the violence was being encouraged and facilitated by Israeli operatives, according to the sources. “Foreign actors linked to Israeli intelligence services had, over time, established contact—through various social media platforms and under diverse cover identities—with a significant number of Iranian citizens, particularly young people,” the Iranian intelligence official alleged. These Israeli handlers, he said, “encouraged and incentivized the performance of specific tasks through a combination of financial and non-financial rewards, as well as the provision of material support, including small arms and other equipment.”
> “Foreign actors are arming the protesters in Iran with live firearms, which is the reason for the hundreds of regime personnel killed,” wrote Tamir Morag, the diplomatic correspondent for Israel’s Channel 14, during the uprising. “Everyone is free to guess who is behind it.” Morag and his network are well known for their close ties to Netanyahu.
You also find the some information in a Israeli Newspaper:
> On December 29, what is dubbed the Mossad X/Twitter account in Farsi encouraged Iranians to protest against the Iranian regime, telling them that it is literally physically with them at the demonstrations.
> “Go out together into the streets. The time has come,” the Mossad wrote. “We are with you,” it added. “Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field.”
[...]
> Foreign actors had armed Iranians to help them fight against the regime’s forces being used to crack down on and oppress protesters, Channel 14’s Tamir Morag reported Tuesday. Iran’s foreign minister retweeted the report for his own agenda.
In a war where Israel and US are literally bombing the hell out of Iran, fewer people have been killed than those two days of massacre.
All according to the numbers confirmed by Iranian government.
God, the moral depravity of defending the IRGC and islamic regime is mind boggling. You can still be against Mossad and what they do in Iran while holding the islamic regime accountable for its own atrocities.
Here's (1) a reference from a relatively credible source with a lot of context. There's a section dedicated to the number you're looking for.
Worth adding that the regime claims around 3000 were killed while not allowing any independent investigation and also completely blocking the internet for days and arresting reporters. Mighty suspicious indeed.
But that is besides my point. Even if we go with the regime's number and compare it with the casualties of the war (2), you can get a picture of the scale of the massacre compared to an actual war against US freakin army!
> On December 29, what is dubbed the Mossad X/Twitter account in Farsi encouraged Iranians to protest against the Iranian regime, telling them that it is literally physically with them at the demonstrations.
> “Go out together into the streets. The time has come,” the Mossad wrote. “We are with you,” it added. “Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field.” [...]
> Foreign actors had armed Iranians to help them fight against the regime’s forces being used to crack down on and oppress protesters, Channel 14’s Tamir Morag reported Tuesday. Iran’s foreign minister retweeted the report for his own agenda.
I really is ridiculous, and somehow the number only gets bigger as the stories are told! Last I saw was "40,000 protestors murdered in just 24 hours!", or something very close to it.
The US and Israel have been carpet bombing Iran for weeks now, blowing up hospitals, schools, power plants and residential buildings, yet the Iranian death toll is "only" around 1,500 so far. Yet we are to believe that Iran killed 40k of its own people in a day - you would literally be able to see piles of corpses from space!
Israel has also claimed that they've hacked every traffic camera in Tehran, yet are mysteriously unable to provide any actual evidence of the supposed massacre - meanwhile, Iran released several videos showing foreign agitators distributing weapons, people attacking civilians etc.
No they haven't. The US started phasing out carpet bombing[0] half a century ago. You discredit yourself by making such trivially falsifiable assertions.
The US and Israel use precision strikes. It is why the ratio of targets per sortie is by far the highest ever recorded in a major conflict.
While I somewhat agree, you should also look at the results of those precision strikes. Usually, when they kill a senior Iranian officer sleeping in his appartment, they level the building or at lest blow up several adjacent units, probably killing at last 10 innocent people.
That's an inherent limitation of precision strikes. The objective is minimizing the collateral damage required to achieve the objective, not avoiding it entirely. Even the various explosive-free precision-guided munitions the US uses have a non-zero damage radius.
One can argue whether or not it is a good idea for the bombs to be flying around in the first place, but there is no version of physics that allows anyone to avoid collateral damage as a practical matter.
I know. I'm just saying that the way we talk about 'precision strikes' in the west, make one feel like only the target is eliminated, while in reality we usually blow half of the building the target was in, along with all the people. I would actually be interested by a poll on what people in the US think about how many innocent people are killed in a precision or elimination strike on average - I bet it would be something like less than 1.
I agree that targeted strikes which miss or take out adjacent areas is not carpet bombing.
However, the above commenter suggested the U.S. has phased out carpet bombing, and while I'm suspect of that, we know with certainty that Israel will happily "carpet bomb" an area if it can string together a few words justifying it.
Even if it's true that what they've done isn't technically carpet bombing in the sense that they may not just dropping bombs out of planes indiscriminately, the same effect can be achieved with nominally "targeted" strikes now, especially with many of these being conducted by automated "targeting" systems.
Seriously, it's unlikely in this age of advanced weaponry that we'd see carpet bombing like we did in Vietnam, when the U.S. and Israel are capable of creating the same effect, but with thousands of supposedly tactical strikes over the entirety of some densely populated area.
Look at the videos coming out of Iran - civilian infrastructure and residences are clearly being targeted. Some unexploded bombs have been found that lack a JDAM guidance package.
And regardless of the USA, Israel is most certainly not above carpet bombing civilians.
Again, that's not "carpet bombing". Carpet bombing requires a type of aircraft that Israel doesn't have (though the US does).
Why would you expect a precision bomb to have a JDAM package? That is not the only type of guidance package. In fact, most of the footage I've seen (largely Israeli) has clearly been laser-guided bombs. They aren't the same thing, and the latter is more precise than JDAM in any case.
Use of precision-guided bombs in a city is not "carpet bombing".
Even if their actions might not precisely meet some dictionary definition of "carpet bombing", you know well what I meant - civilians and civilian infrastructure are being deliberately targeted with complete disregard for loss of life and environmental consequences.
You’re parroting IRGC propaganda, which is why people are arguing with you.
“We are innocent civilians and the Israelis are carpet bombing us”… said by the people that funded October 7th and killed more of their own people than the Israeli bombs did.
Iran’s government has been violently belligerent for decades, and continues to this day to bomb its Arab neighbours including hitting their civilians! They don’t get to whine about the morality of civilian versus military deaths.
Iran has absolutely not been violent for decades. And they don't "continue" to bomb their Arab neighbours - they are only bombing them now because they allowed their land to be used to attack Iran.
What exactly are Iran supposed to do here? Just give up, allow their country to be infested with ISIS and Al Qaeda, allow their country balkanised, their citizens massacred indiscriminatly?
You meant to lie, and you did lie, and you continue to lie. Standard TikTok rage where words no longer have meaning, reality must be rejected, and any headline is true even if the article directly negates it or there's no source, so long as it makes Israel look bad.
I swear, it's almost as if the anti-Israel mob _wants_ it to be true.
I looked into that one, because it was so outlandish but repeated by multiple sources and reported by reputable journalists.
The original reporting was carefully phrased to make it sound like IDF soldiers were "sniping" little children, taking careful aim and deliberately shooting them in the head, which is... monstrous.
Where this narrative starts to breaks down is that snipers don't aim for the head, because it's too small a target. Additionally, most of the reports mentioned that the children were shot "in the street" in scuffles with ordinary army grunts, so where were these mysterious "child-murdering snipers"? How were they so reliably hitting small moving targets in the head?
It turns out that this phenomenon was a product of Gaza's demographics combined with survivorship bias.
Half of Gaza's population is under 18! Teenagers are technically "children", but they're out in the streets throwing rocks or whatever at IDF troops, and get shot at in return. The ones that get hit by half a dozen rounds to the chest die on the spot and aren't taken to hospital because obviously, hospitals are for people that can be saved, not the dead. All of the reports of "children getting shot in the head" were coming from surgeons in hospitals, but they were seeing a biased sample: victims that only got hit once had a chance to survive. Similarly, a minor head-wound isn't instantly lethal, whereas a single round centre-mass typically is. So they were seeing victims with single shots to the head instead of multiple to the chest. They then cooked up a narrative that would explain what they were seeing, not realising that the cause wasn't "evil child murdering snipers", but simply a statistically biased view of a war that is not especially more unethical than any other armed conflict.
Here's a video of IDF in the West Bank head-shotting an unarmed elderly man who posed no threat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_David_Ben_Avraham In this one, the man had converted to Judaism after feeling an affinity to the religion due to his grandfather saving the lives of more than 10 Jews during the 1929 Hebron massacre. His Aliyah request was denied, and he was executed while attempting to visit a settlement (by invitation) for Torah study
These are just ones that come to mind as some of the most brutal ones, but there are many, many more videos of the IDF executing unarmed Palestinians who are posing no threat by head-shot. And for every one we see there are likely 4 or 5 more which we don't see because they weren't independently recorded.
War makes people angry, and angry people are trivially swayed by propaganda.
For example, there's thousands of people still screeching online that the US deliberately bombed little girls in Iran. No, they hit a girls school by accident, it used to be an IRGC military base building and is surrounded by IRGC buildings!
I don't condone Israel's actions in Gaza, nor do I condone the US/Israeli attacks on Iran.
Having said that, it's important in a war -- irrespective of what side one is supporting or opposing -- not to believe exaggerations or outright lies.
War is bad enough, we don't have to sprinkle imaginary horrors on top of the real ones!
In the worst case, if too many people spout transparently obvious propaganda, then that discounts the believability of the true horrors. This is most obvious today with the "that's just a fake AI video" retorts, but before it was "fake news", or whatever.
“ The bombing, combined with other simultaneous Israeli military actions in Gaza, killed at least 68,000 Palestinians (mostly civilians), which is between 3% and 4% of the total population of the territory, and damaged or destroyed Palestinian schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, and other civilian infrastructure including refugee camps.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_bombing_of_the_Gaza_St...
In October 7th 2023, about 11% of the residents of Kibbutz Be'eri - 130 out of 1200 - were murdered, raped, tortures and/or kidnapped into Gaza: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be%27eri_massacre
translation: Uh oh, he has irrefutable evidence everything I just argued for 5 replies was a lie. Quick! Change the subject to “two wrongs make a right” I know, I’ll equate 120 people with tens of thousands of murdered children.
I argue that anyone saying this is watching too many TikTok videos and not really familiar with what's going on.
Without going into too much detail, my position and line of work means that I have to keep very informed on the middle east and so far I've seen a lot of hatred, and very little factual basis. In fact every single person I personally talked to was very uninformed on these matters which is fine, as long as you accept it and don't form extreme opinions on entire countries.
I consume no TikTok, no Facebook, no cable news, none of any of that.
If Israel doesn't want people to form "extreme opinions" about them then maybe they should stop oppressing and murdering poeple with a compete disregard for human life.
I'd appreciate if you didn't spam the same link all over my comments, once is enough. And as for "forensic architecture", please visit their website and go over who these people are - especially the Palestinians from Ramallah and self proclaimed "activists". This is by no means an unbiased organization.
Then don't go asking for a report in all of your comments on this page where you have, once is enough.
Forensic Architecture is one of the most reputed organizations for this line of work.
Their reports are read with great deal of respect here on HN and they cover more than this conflict. If they don't count as credible and competent, nothing will satisfy you -- the moral equivalent of covering one's eyes and ears.
So I will appreciate if you stop this sham of yours of asking for a citation.
While you are at it, do better than ad hominem. I am still waiting to hear an argument about the content of the extensive and methodical report.
For HN audience, the report was discussed on HN here
"Can't say too much, but I'm one of the world's biggest experts on the Middle East, and basically everyone accusing Israel of genocide (so all the NGOs, the journalists, all these other people with their lying eyes) is wrong. And Forensic Architecture are basically shills (one of their team members comes from Muslamistan, need I say more)."
Do you guys hear yourselves? Your posts being flagged all over should give you an indication of how it sounds.
> Then don't go asking for a report in all of your comments
Your link that you posted everywhere was to a single comment before you edited it (on all comments!) to point to something else. So not only did I not ask for a report, but you can't even be consistent with your own spam.
7 thousand confirmed death, 9 thousand unconfirmed death. Among that 1200 confirmed death from the regime forces, and 400 to be confirmed bystanders. The nurse burned to death by protesters is among those 400.
There are only two countries capable of killing civilians by the ten thousands and the world knows them. In fact they're currently bombing Iran and the region, one of them is currently perpetrating a genocide with approval of the day called civilized world. No cameras or international press covering the massacre of Gaza.
This is just completely false. There are multiple countries capable of killing their own by those numbers. All of them are equally disgusting, and should all be held accountable.
They obliterated a kindergarten in Israel just this morning, and several others since the start of the war. Last week a missile landed right behind my house, just between a kindergarten and an elementary school, damaging both.
Literally all Israeli casualties were civilian.
Your comment made me realize international media doesn't care to even publish this, leading to this incredibly skewed view.
Thanks for correction. I looked up the news and could find reporting that some fragments of a missile did hit kindergarten. Thankfully no kids were there.
The ban is on reporting the exact locations (i.e. coordinates) of where missiles land, because it's information that is useful in helping the enemy to calibrate where missiles will land. Reporting on other details is perfectly acceptable.
The internal conflict over corruption, water issues and handling of the protesters had a decent chance to cause meaningful changes in government. Starting a war and attacking their civilians put those chances to bed.
Exactly. And this also want' just a protest. They were protest in the big cities and uprising from suppressed minoritiesm which explain the death toll among people from the regime.
Iran might have at best have a self-regime change, at worst split in 3. Now that the war is on, the regime consolidated.
Strategically, it makes no sense to corner and threaten people. Murdering their own citizens shows the degree to which they'll go to preserve their power. If anything, that's a reason to slowly bleed them instead of cornering and escalating.
The evil of your enemy does not excuse your own strategic stupidity or cruelty.
Arguably the country that has done the most to cement the Iranian regime is the United States with its sanctions. If Iran had been left to develop into a normal Middle Eastern oil-rich country then things might have turned out differently. The more money people have the harder it is to control them.
How does that compare with putting hundreds of thousands of people into cages for arbitrary reasons, I wonder. Or depositing them in random countries to be killed because they are e.g. homosexual.
Breaking a country's immigration laws does come with consequences, yes, at least if the government is willing to enforce to said laws, as it should be. Previously we had governments that weren't.
If you have a problem with those laws and think our borders should be wide open, that's of course a different matter, and one you should take up with Congress, which makes the laws.
I think those laws should be changed by the way, to be much friendlier towards Hispanic immigrants. They share our cultural values and are easy for the US to assimilate in my opinion, so long as they're properly vetted for obvious criminal behavior, ability and motivation to work, etc.
Considering theyre now doing airstrikes, there was 100% pre-invasion action that included agitating these protests. Like they're literally bombing them now but we think we werent already doing CIA activity there 6 months ago? Im not saying civilians love the government they probably hate it but... its complicated, what if the person rallying and pushing 1000 people was actually a deep cover agent
Before I get downvoted to hell Im not conding anything or taking any side, just pointing out an obvious deduction
You're being disingenuous - the "protestor" was caught on camera literally hacking a policeman to pieces. He murdered a policeman, and will now be executed.
Can you back this with linking the said videos and maybe some info on legal proceedings of the fair trial in which this person was convicted? I’m curious.
No, not just according to those factions. From the same CBS News article:
> The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency has recorded more than 7,000 killings, with the vast majority being protesters, while warning the toll could be far higher.
Neither CBS News nor this agency are friends of the factions you mention. Facts are stubborn things.
Are you seriously suggesting that Ellison-owned CBS News and US-based "human rights" orgs are not geopolitically aligned with the US government? They are 100% in cahoots.
Critics of the Iranian government, primarily in the West, claim that thousands of people have died in the protests. In particular, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) put the death toll at 2,615 on Wednesday.
Well some civilians have been injured when Iran attacked the hotels where US agents were stationed. Mostly due to them being foreign workers and well we all know how Dubai and the Saudis treat foreign workers. They were not allowed evacuate in time.
Of course it will be hard to completely avoid civilian casualties in the long run, I fear but yeah Iran has been pretty measured. Iran's fight is with the US imperialists and Israel and not the people that live in the region.
The mullahs and IRGC are not famous for their compassion or kind-heartedness.
They are infamous for fulminating against liberals, plotting to kill enemies, torturing and hanging dissidents from cranes, persecuting minorities and women, funding terror cells, and fleecing their citizens to enrich themselves.
Many of the comments here suffer from a misguided refusal to be impressed by the regime's reputation, as though anyone the American establishment criticises must automatically be righteous.
I would see this war as the end of a string of wars initiated by Iran through Hamas in October 7.
This left Israel similar to the USA post 9/11 or Peal Harbor. On a streak to make it never happen again in a very decisive/brutal way. Hegemony wasn't the moving factor for Israel, at least until very late in the war, and due to the same reasons
The attack plan of October 7 is generally so similar to the attack plan prepared for Hezbollah by the IRGC, that it is not surprising it is one and the same.
That's why Israel in this current conflict early on made moves on Iran and why the end game is this war.
> More broadly, this is the Levant versus Persia, a power contest as old as civilization.
Wasn't it more, Egypt and Greece vs Persia while the Levant was rapidly conquered?
That's not particularly enlightening, to be frank.
People always ask here why the community flags every post on these issues. Comments like this are why. Hardly anyone on this site knows even basic information on the nations involved.
If I were in charge of HN, I'd geoblock anyone from commenting on the Middle East who isn't at an IP from the Middle East. I wouldn't be able to comment either, but at least there might be enlightening information in the comments.
That said, the first page of any reputable history on Iran/Israel relations would go over 1979, when Israel went from friend of Iran to foe, based on Khomeini's interpretation of Islam.
They attacked a hospital during the 12 day war. They attacked a school today but it was evacuated due to the early warning system. They attack civilian targets indiscriminately using cluster warheads, in violation of international law.
Already has in Azerbaijan [0] and attempted in Israel [1].
Most reporting is hyper-regional and somewhat kept under wraps (eg. Qatar and UAE are actively prosecuting leakers who are using Reddit, and have even taken control of Qatar's subreddit [2]) or reported on in regional languages.
I've found the information control in this conflict to be much more strategic/professional in comparison to what was is seen in Ukraine and Russia.
This is obviously made easier when your opposition doesn’t stockpile their weapons in, nor conduct their military operations from, schools and hopsitals.
This is a truly profound insight, the benevolance of Iran's regime is suspiciously proportional to the interception prowess of the nations targeted by Iran. /s
So every time allied militaries protect their schools and hospitals by intercepting missiles, drones etc from Iran, you give credit to Iran?
> Accusing Iran of "lashing out" and being "reckless"
I think it’s more that these attacks are counterproductive to Iran’s state goals, which reveals that we’re seeing a hardline faction in Iran use the war as cover for consolidating power.
Unfortunately it's we who will pay the price, with "we" being the entire world, considering the destruction of a lot of oil production infrastructure will cause a price hike for everything.
Well China is still getting Iranian oil no problem.
We in the West, well we are aiding the US in this war by allowing it to operate from military bases in our countries. We deserve it for looking the other way while Israel has been mass murdering Palestinians for more than two years now.
At least Spain showed some guts.
Of course it will also potentially cause suffering in the global south but that is on those that started the war.
The attacks against Kharg Island were relatively limited as even the US wanted to avoid that level of escalation. The war has been painful but Iran could rebuild, if you destroyed Kharg island it would take decades to rebuild the Iranian economy, that would be a complete scorched earth point of no return.
Maybe there have been further attacks today that I missed but if true that would be an huge escalation.
My last information was that China has no problem getting oil but that was like two days ago.
> We deserve it for looking the other way while Israel has been mass murdering Palestinians for more than two years now.
The sad part is how the genocide in Gaza could have been prevented:
Imagine an alternate history, in which successive precedencies didn't turn a blind eye to Iran, imagine a decade ago (regardless of democrat or republican administration) that they decided to do what they are doing today in Iran. Iran wouldn't have had the funds and resources to sponsor Hamas and Hezbollah. The populations in Gaza and Lebanon wouldn't have been sandwiched between the projected powers of Israel and Iran. Their power structures could have been legitimate democracies etc. In that world there wouldn't have been a reason for Israel to attack and invade, and even if they did in this alternate history, the rest of the world would have strongly condemned it to the point of military intervention on behalf of Gaza / Lebanon.
Always take not how a faction has risen to power initially. In the case of Iran's regime it was hostage taking. A faction will very often resort to the same tactics and methods it used during its initial ascent to power, a form of survivorship bias.
If the West hadn't let the situation of Iran rot indefinitely for decades (they even systematically rewarded the regime's behavior by systematically giving in to the hostage politics it conducted, in my opinion they should have just drawn a line and said: return these hostages unconditionally or we treat this as hiding behind a human shield).
The genocide against the Palestinians has not started after October 7th though but long before the Islamic Republic of Iran even existed. In the Nakba of 1948 as much al 750k Palestinians lost their homes.
Hezbollah came to be as a resistance group against the invasion of Lebanon by Israel.
The reason both Hamas and Hezbollah exists is because Israel.
There can not be peace in the region as long as Israel exists. They are a settler colonial state build and sustaining itself by the dead bodies and suffering of the Palestinians.
> the rest of the world would have strongly condemned it to the point of military intervention on behalf of Gaza / Lebanon.
That is completely delusional.
I Iran had fallen ten years ago, there would be no Palestinians anymore. No one would have stopped Israel from killing them. Israel would have annexed South Lebanon, part of Syria, Egypt and so on and created Greater Israel.
You could've written that comment in a more constructive way.
As you probably already know, my point was that it's a bit callous to focus on "this war is expensive and inconvenient" while innocent people are, you know, dying.
And be substituted by what? The outcome can be worse for the Iranian people. Military foreign intervention rarely (never) manages to improve the situation, as it happened in Irak, Afghanistan, Lybia...
By the fact that Trump hasn't killed thousands of people to stay in power. Pretty simple really. Protesting the US government is still legal. Protesting the Iranian government in Iran will get you killed.
> By the fact that Trump hasn't killed thousands of people to stay in power.
Oh? How many do you think he has killed?
How many people have died so far because of Trump's aid to Israel?
How many people have died because of the cuts to USAID?
How many Iranians has Trump killed? How many Iranian children? ... Compare to, how many Americans did the Iranian government kill?
How certain are you that the conditions in the Iran protests weren't provoked by US and Israeli provocateurs? ... Why?
What's your explanation for Trump directing Lockheed Martin to ramp up production of interceptor missiles months before assassinating Iran's leader during negotiations? Months before the protests used as a fig leaf of justification?
> Pretty simple really.
Idk man. Is it? Maybe thinking Trump is a better person than the leader he helped assassinate is too simple.
> Protesting the US government is still legal. Protesting the Iranian government in Iran will get you killed.
Protesting the Israeli government in the US can get you thrown in a concentration camp and deported. That's pretty weird, no?
Even during the last admin, protesting the Israeli government could get you fired, or attacked by riot police.
Does the moral high ground of not murdering protesters give you the right to arm and enable genocide? To murder leaders while pretending to negotiate with them? To bomb schools?
Thanks for this comment, really. I always found it weird that people care so much about internal repression of some random countries (not Saudi Arabia, close ally of the US and one of the instigators of this war), but not military actions in third countries of its own (nor again repression by countries which solely exist because the US keeps their leaders in power like, again, Saudi Arabia).
It's very weird indeed - and yet, it always seems to match with whatever 'random' country the latest shows and news reports have been demonizing.
It reminds me of that old joke:
> A KGB spy and a CIA agent meet up in a bar for a friendly drink. "I have to admit, I'm always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up," the CIA agent says. "Thank you," the KGB says. "We do our best but truly, it's nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them." The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. "Thank you friend, but you must be confused... There's no propaganda in America."
And that's only gotten more true every decade since. I don't see the US ever reaching the level of discourse where we question our 'allies' atrocities the same as [latest boogeyman]'s. And taking any accountability for our own war crimes? Not a chance. We'll invade anyone who tries (see the Hague Invasion Act).
At least when it comes to politics, the vast majority of the US lives on the Dunning-Kruger "Peak of Mount Stupid"; failing to clear the lowest possible bar while pointing fingers and laughing at everyone else.
All the money, all the access to information, and still that's where we're at. Weird af.
It didn't have to be this way but they decided this to turn into a fight of survival for Iran and destroy any option for a peaceful resolution. Now they are going to pay the price.