4 ms·

Right, a clearer way of saying this, as you do, is the West imposed crippling sanctions just prior to all of this, as Trump sends aircraft carriers to the Gulf.

JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
> a clearer way of saying this, as you do, is the West imposed crippling sanctions The world doesn't revolve around the West. Nobody in America caused the IRGC to engineer a water crisis. Nobody asked for them to murder students in an internet-connected age, like the single thing you do not do if you want to calm things down. Sanctions have made Iranians poorer. But so has their gerontocratic theocracy pursuing autarky and misguided nuclear ambitions at any cost. Khamenei can't hold open elections because he knows he'd lose.
- throwaway27448 7mo ago
  So why don't we apply the same reasoning to the other authoritarian theocracies in the region that are just as oppressive? This whole idea that Iran is somehow uniquely bad just stinks to high heaven, and we have caused the people of iran to suffer for decades for it. I don't think Iran is the uniquely evil state between the two of us. (Not that the US is the cause of all evil, of course, but we certainly have caused many orders of magnitude more harm to the iranian people...)
  - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
    > why don't we apply the same reasoning to the other authoritarian theocracies in the region that are just as oppressive? They're either our allies, aren't pursuing nuclear weapons and/or aren't actively destabilising everything in their vicinity. America calling for regime change in the Middle East is fraught, and I'm honestly not yet on board with direct action (though that's about as influential as what shade the moon is tonight). But Iran is "uniquely bad." It's also uniquely imperialistic in the region, up there with to Israel.
    - throwaway27448 7mo ago
      > It's also uniquely imperialistic in the region, up there with to Israel. Iran hasn't had a direct conflicr with anyone but Iraq and Israel in the last fifty years, last I checked, and the conflict with Israel was in response to unproved aggression. If you're talking proxy wars, how are Iran's proxies any worse than UAE's, or Turkey's, or the Saudi's? And Israel has certainly been orders of magnitude more destabilizing. I'm entirely unconvinced.
      - dlubarov 7mo ago
        Hiding behind proxies doesn't absolve the Iranian regime of culpability for their aggression. Hezbollah alone fired tens of thousands of Iranian rockets at Israel just in 2023-24. There's no mystery about who provided the weapons or for what purpose. Calling any Israeli action against Iran "unprov[ok]ed" is absurd.

JumpCrisscross 7mo ago

> a clearer way of saying this, as you do, is the West imposed crippling sanctions The world doesn't revolve around the West. Nobody in America caused the IRGC to engineer a water crisis. Nobody asked for them to murder students in an internet-connected age, like the single thing you do not do if you want to calm things down. Sanctions have made Iranians poorer. But so has their gerontocratic theocracy pursuing autarky and misguided nuclear ambitions at any cost. Khamenei can't hold open elections because he knows he'd lose.

throwaway27448 7mo ago
So why don't we apply the same reasoning to the other authoritarian theocracies in the region that are just as oppressive? This whole idea that Iran is somehow uniquely bad just stinks to high heaven, and we have caused the people of iran to suffer for decades for it. I don't think Iran is the uniquely evil state between the two of us. (Not that the US is the cause of all evil, of course, but we certainly have caused many orders of magnitude more harm to the iranian people...)
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
  > why don't we apply the same reasoning to the other authoritarian theocracies in the region that are just as oppressive? They're either our allies, aren't pursuing nuclear weapons and/or aren't actively destabilising everything in their vicinity. America calling for regime change in the Middle East is fraught, and I'm honestly not yet on board with direct action (though that's about as influential as what shade the moon is tonight). But Iran is "uniquely bad." It's also uniquely imperialistic in the region, up there with to Israel.
  - throwaway27448 7mo ago
    > It's also uniquely imperialistic in the region, up there with to Israel. Iran hasn't had a direct conflicr with anyone but Iraq and Israel in the last fifty years, last I checked, and the conflict with Israel was in response to unproved aggression. If you're talking proxy wars, how are Iran's proxies any worse than UAE's, or Turkey's, or the Saudi's? And Israel has certainly been orders of magnitude more destabilizing. I'm entirely unconvinced.
    - dlubarov 7mo ago
      Hiding behind proxies doesn't absolve the Iranian regime of culpability for their aggression. Hezbollah alone fired tens of thousands of Iranian rockets at Israel just in 2023-24. There's no mystery about who provided the weapons or for what purpose. Calling any Israeli action against Iran "unprov[ok]ed" is absurd.