The chance of Iran having regime replaced dropped to, like, zero.
Besides, Israel wont allow democratic or other functional regime change. Their goal is failed state with forever civil war in it. Something they can regularly bomb whenever it will seem functional. This can still happen, so everyone around should be ready for refugees waves.
Trumps idea of regime change is replacing head for someone who pays him personally - while keeping regime in place. This wont happen now.
Iranian monarchists want own dictatorship, but wont be getting it either.
Iranians who protested were just fucked and that is all about it.
At this point, Hanlon's razor should be considered a fallacy.
In fact, quite a lot of what looked like incompetence was malice. Intentional and proud malice. It does not mean there is no incompetence, but Hanlon's razor is no longer valid.
Second, army working group meant to ensure these mistakes wont happen was dismantled by Hegseth. All the while he framed such efforts as woke nonsense and praised lethality only. He was sending clear message about what matters to troops
The system was changed to allow and facilite errors like that.
I wonder if there is some kind of new law that we should be looking at drafting, in which we hold accountable folks who attribute bad actions to incompetence instead of malice despite the actors being explicitly malicious?
I think that covers a lot of western media in all the wars the US has waged in my lifetime:
it's always "a regrettable (but worthwhile) mistake" until it's a "horrific but unique war crime"... it's never "who the fuck said these vicious idiots could kill whoever they want and never face just and material consequences for their crimes".
This shit certainly seems intentional. Maybe the folks who are attributing things to "incompetence" are just projecting their own incompetencies in interpreting the world, but at this point I suspect that they to are complicit in this malice.
The US is not in a position to process much of the sweet crude it has. Instead, imports sour crude, which is what much of the US's refineries are actually built to handle. This is why Venezuela was such a thorn in the side of the US, as they were one of the major producers and also largely produced sour crude.
As adwn says, it's a globally priced commodity, and the US is not in a position to disentangle itself from that market because in spite of being one of the world's largest producers, US refineries are not in a position to process that product, so it needs to go abroad. The US needs to import significant amounts of sour crude to be refined for their own use.
The US is just as screwed as the rest of us.
Also, the primary worry for Europe isn't oil, it's natural gas.
Oil is a globally priced commodity. This means that downstream consumers of oil in the US will be just as affected by rising prices as European consumers. US producers of oil will benefit, though.
Have you heard Hegseth speeches lately? Or Trumps?
Like, yes, evil military planners did sat down and said "rules of engagement are woke, the working groups handling civilian safety are waste of money, be maximum lethal".
Also, they had no stable military objectives except "make my insecure masculinity feel manly".
Third, non career violent people. Domestic violence or other interpersonal viole ce should prevent you from having a gun. Regardless of whether you are career criminal
That isn't a third category, those are people who have been convicted of a crime and want to commit another one. It's the same general category of not being able to solve people committing crimes by making already-illegal things even more illegal. And on top of that you get to add two new problems.
The first is the deterrent to reporting, both before and after a conviction. In the original case the victim now can't even report a domestic misdemeanor in the subculture where gun ownership is sacrosanct because either they themselves consider "permanently can't own a gun" too severe a penalty for the crime they were trying to report, or they know the perpetrator will and they're afraid of being booted out into the street or worse if they do it. And for someone who already has a conviction but still has a gun, now the other people in the household can't be calling the police for any reason because if the police find the gun the person keeping a roof over their head is going to prison for years. In general you want the penalties for things to be proportionate and making them disproportionate makes things worse instead of better.
The second is that the victim, or any future victims, are living in the same household as the perpetrator, and then how do you answer this question: Is the victim now prohibited from having a firearm? You're screwed either way, because if you say no you're denying the innocent victim's right to self-defense but if you say yes the perpetrator now has an excuse to have them in the house.
Then these things combine poorly because the overconfident drunk who wants a gun is willing to bet they can convince anyone it belongs to their sweetheart but the sweetheart is nowhere near as confident they can control what happens if they call the police.
> those are people who have been convicted of a crime and want to commit another one
FWIW, this is why i said "anti-social" and not criminals in my original post. I think with many habitual abusers, the warning signs are there for a long time (often from childhood) before they break the law and before they are convicted.
> "permanently can't own a gun"
This points to other issues with the current system of punishments. OOH you have people claiming prison is meant for rehabilitation and released prisoners are to be considered fully rehabilitated, having paid their debt (which they argue is to society and not the victim) and not longer a threat to society. OTOH you have the reality that many people are repeat offenders and that also some people can genuinely change (or at least maintain the facade of internal change for the rest of their life).
Maybe what we need is a post-prison evaluation to determine which case we're dealing with and whether restrictions (if any) should be temporary or permanent.
---
FWIW regarding domestic violence, I think any target of it would be crazy to stay with the aggressor in the same household. People who commit it are often deeply and inherently anti-social without a way to treat them. Instead, as a society, we should be looking for ways to ease the process of their targets separating from them permanently. Case studies of what this kind of abuse looks like should be part of primary education, the abuser should be required to pay for housing for a reasonable period of time so the target can move away, etc.
It already does. Here is the list of prohibited persons:
convicted in any court of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year;
who is a fugitive from justice;
who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance (as defined in section 102 of the Controlled Substances Act, codified at 21 U.S.C. § 802);
who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution;
who is an illegal alien;
who has been discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions;
who has renounced his or her United States citizenship;
who is subject to a court order restraining the person from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner or child of the intimate partner;
or
who has been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.
> interpersonal viole ce should prevent you from having a gun
Nitpick but violence is not wrong on its own. Self defense is also violence and should not prevent your from having a gun for next time. Defense of others or reasonable defense of property likewise.
Forcibly removing a person from power who has gained or maintained that power without consent of those he has power over is also violence and even most current states allow us to celebrate it (usually as long as we don't argue it should be repeated against the current government).
There are plenty of educated Iranians within Iran. What's with the structural under-estimation of countries that are not quite like the West? Seriously, Iran has - especially given the sanctions they've been under - consistently outperformed everybody's expectations in terms of capabilities. Assuming they will get their coveted atomic weapon (and there are several paths to that, which I hope they will not be able to complete) we're in for a world of trouble because the only thing that kept Iran contained so far was the thought that maybe if they played ball they would be left to keep on meddling without there being an outright war.
Now that is no longer an option, so their resolve to get that weapon will be ten fold what it was three weeks ago.
You underestimate your foes at your peril, do not underestimate Iran or the Iranian people, they had an advanced culture when the West did not even exist. The fact that they're stuck in religion is the main item that is holding them back from really taking over the region. But there are plenty of countries in the West that have a bit of a religious problem so even on that front you can't point fingers.
You’re misreading my statement. Educated Iranians are plentiful. They’re the ones international people are familiar with. They almost universally hate the IRGC because they see it destroying their country. For every educated Iranian, however, they have tens of their equivalent of Koran thumpers. And those people will support the IRGC’s economic consolidation among their billionaire elite.
> their resolve to get that weapon will be ten fold what it was three weeks ago
They’ll probably get it. I’m almost convinced we’ll see the Middle East or Europe get nuked in our lifetime. Tehran hits Tel Aviv; the latter hits every major city or something.
You won't meet many IRGC supporters outside of Iran, that's the whole reason they are not in Iran in the first place. Just the same with Cubans outside of Cuba. Most Iranians (or people that still identify as Iranians in exile) have fled the regime and/or were connected to the regime of the Shah (and often through their parents, not they themselves).
> I’m almost convinced we’ll see the Middle East or Europe get nuked in our lifetime.
There is a good chance of that, and the last 3 weeks have made it much more likely that that will happen.
> Tehran hits Tel Aviv; the latter hits every major city or something.
That is possible. There are multiple possible nuclear flashpoints, Russia vs one of their neighbors, Pakistan vs India or the other way around, Israel vs Iran or the other way around, the USA because Trump has a bad hairday against pick-your-target.
Of all the parties that have nukes I figure China, France and the UK are the most stable.
But that has nothing to do with this war. Like, nothing at all. Israel doing genocode in gaza and what seems like ethnical cleansing of lebanon does not have anyyhing with that either. USA threatening Greenland is also not a factor in this war.
Donald Trump does not care about protesters in Iran. His idea of regime change is "keep the regime and change head for someone who will pay me personally".
And Hegseth does not care either. He is proving his manhood.
And Israel have completely different goals, so.
It is not like Saudi were democrats. They have cut that journalist into pieces. They are violent dictatorship on their own right.
Besides, Israel wont allow democratic or other functional regime change. Their goal is failed state with forever civil war in it. Something they can regularly bomb whenever it will seem functional. This can still happen, so everyone around should be ready for refugees waves.
Trumps idea of regime change is replacing head for someone who pays him personally - while keeping regime in place. This wont happen now.
Iranian monarchists want own dictatorship, but wont be getting it either.
Iranians who protested were just fucked and that is all about it.
reply