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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 deci

• SpicyLemonZest 8mo ago
  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.
• winterbloom 8mo ago
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  • StephiePirelli 8mo ago
    Islamophobia is unacceptable and should not be allowed in any community.
    • RiverStone 8mo ago
      [flagged]
      • Revanche1367 8mo ago
        Yes. Just because you like the saying doesn’t mean it isn’t.
        • RiverStone 8mo ago
          Then the word doesn’t mean anything. If something causes harm, I’m allowed to dislike it. “Phobia” is an irrational fear. For the Iranian people, it’s perfectly rational.
• deleted 8mo ago
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• renewiltord 8mo ago
  Well, they're probably killing thousands of their people there. This country was once aligned with us. We may yet have an ally there.
  • ivraatiems 8mo ago
    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.
    • renewiltord 8mo ago
      Hey, we can’t save them all. But maybe we can save some of them.
      • gen2brain 8mo ago
        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.
      • Cipater 8mo ago
        The US government doesn't give a single damn about the Iranian people.
    • RobotToaster 8mo ago
      Including the US.
    • DecoySalamander 8mo ago
      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.
      • deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
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• breppp 8mo ago
  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
  • ivraatiems 8mo ago
    > 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?
    • breppp 8mo ago
      > 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
• kdheiwns 8mo ago
  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
  • robertjpayne 8mo ago
    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.
    • kdheiwns 8mo ago
      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.
• flyinglizard 8mo ago
  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.
  • moxifly7 8mo ago
    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 https://www.btselem.org/topic/apartheid [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Palestinians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Palestinians
    • idop 8mo ago
      [flagged]
      • moxifly7 8mo ago
        Cultural Arabs and Ethnic Arabs are not the same thing. Ethnic Arabs are from the Arabian peninsula. Islam's expansion started a slow process of Arabization whereby indigenous people in lands that ended up under the control of the Muslim caliphate/empire started speaking Arabic (mixed with their local dialects) and adopting aspects of Arabic culture, not dissimilar to the previous process of Romanization and Hellenization from the Greeks and Romans. TL;DR People who today call themselves Palestinians are biological descendants of ancient Jews and other peoples local to the region of Palestine who eventually converted to Christianity and/or Islam, some remained Jewish, started speaking Arabic, and never left the land. That's what genetic studies and history converge on, and what the early zionist leaders including Ben-Gurion also happened to believe in (Ben-Gurion wrote a thesis on this subject), until it became inconvenient for Zionism to continue to do so.
• ParentiSoundSys 8mo ago
  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.
  • lucketone 8mo ago
    Oil to Russia? Please review that
    • pjc50 8mo ago
      Coals to Newcastle.
      • ParentiSoundSys 8mo ago
        What if I told you the entire country of Russia is not actually oil fields, and Iran does export oil to them?
        • lucketone 8mo ago
          I would first assume it’s marginal amount of oil. But I am willing to change my mind about it if I would see a source on that. My low effort search suggests no significant oil export to russia https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-country/irn/partner/rus https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-country/irn/partner/r... (2022 data, maybe something changed)
• baxtr 8mo ago
  > No more Iranian nuclear program? There barely was one before. How do you know?
  • ivraatiems 8mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_strikes_on_Iranian_nuclear_sites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_strikes_on_Irani...
    • lucketone 8mo ago
      Good 1 hour presentation on youtube https://youtu.be/SxqipJgtTdk?si=YfWRzjcflhWHR276 https://youtu.be/SxqipJgtTdk?si=YfWRzjcflhWHR276 (Note: Iran did move some stuff away before the attack)
  • RobotToaster 8mo ago
    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/-1/0/2026-NATIONAL-DEFENSE-STRATEGY.PDF https://media.defense.gov/2026/Jan/23/2003864773/-1/-1/0/202...
• pfannkuchen 8mo ago
  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.
  • StephiePirelli 8mo ago
    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.
    • RiverStone 8mo ago
      It’s been a lifelong dream of millions of Iranian expats
      • ozgrakkurt 8mo ago
        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?
        • RiverStone 8mo ago
          I didn’t really know much about Iran as a typical American until I married an Iranian woman. And then I met her family and her friends and I came to love Persian people. They’re some of the kindest people I’ve ever met. What hasn’t come up enough in this thread is the currency crisis that triggered the protests. The economy is in shambles and they’re still simmering anger about the Mahsa Amini killing. There Iranian people are tired of being under the thumb of the mullahs. They don’t want to live under an Islamic theocracy. Millions of Iranians all over the world and inside Iran are cheering us on. They’re done. Yes, they’re scared and they don’t know what will come next, but they know what they have now is intolerable. it’s possible this could all go badly, but what the Iranian people have now is worse. We have to try. Every Iranian person I’ve met is hopeful something better will come.
• tempodox 8mo ago
  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.
• deaux 8mo ago
  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.
  • Sam6late 8mo ago
    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."
• slim 8mo ago
  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.
• bawolff 8mo ago
  > 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.
• pjc50 8mo ago
  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?
• RobertoG 8mo ago
  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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWxKn-1S8ts
• somewhereoutth 8mo ago
  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.
• vimy 8mo ago
  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.
  • alluro2 8mo ago
    I'm not sure how much that will pay off - it also gives China legitimacy in starting to much more overtly pursue their own interests through force. I definitely wouldn't be surprised if we saw something happening very quickly.
• tim333 8mo ago
  Yeah, regime change and no nukes.
• intalentive 8mo ago
  Iran is the main source of resistance in the region. Libya, Iraq, and Syria have been pacified. Egypt has been bought off. All the groups still fighting Israel (Hezbollah, Houthis, probably Hamas) have received significant Iranian support. I believe the calculation is this is Israel’s last best window of opportunity to leverage the declining American empire with a compromised asset in the White House. The time to strike is now, since in 10 years US military power and US political will in support of Israel will likely be diminished.
• Vicinity9635 8mo ago
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