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The fact that it was unsuccessful does not make it any less worrying. Iran was a regional problem before the war, but this new escalation shows they’re a threa

The fact that it was unsuccessful does not make it any less worrying. Iran was a regional problem before the war, but this new escalation shows they’re a threat to the entire world. They might have previously had a chance at a Vietnam or perhaps a Korea-style stalemate

cardanome 7mo ago
Iran is fighting for survival, Israel and the US are fighting by choice. They attacked Iran not the other way round. US bases, even if also used by UK which aides US it their war, are legitimate targets. US imperialism is the greatest threat to the world.
- anvuong 7mo ago
  The IRGC is fighting for survival, most Iranian want them gone, and Iran will be better as a whole if the IRGC is all dead. Don't try to conflate the government with the country, they don't always align.
  - spaghetdefects 7mo ago
    Most Iranians do not want the IRGC gone, that's US/Israeli propaganda. Thousands of people have been marching in support of the IRGC. Common sense would also tell you that Iranians aren't going to support the people bombing their schools.
    - gambutin 7mo ago
      [flagged]
    - tuna74 7mo ago
      It is impossible to know how may Iranians want the IRGC gone. But bombing schools (and bombings in general) will definitely increase the support for it.
  - cardanome 7mo ago
    Many people that protested against the government in January are now marching in support of the Islamic Republic and demand that the imperialists are punished. Most of them have protested for economic reasons, they don't want to see their country destroyed and their children murdered by bombs. Iran is more united than ever because of the imperialist war. That is what you get when you turn state leaders into martyrs.
    - watwut 7mo ago
      That sounds made up. Marches largely stopped after bombings, no one marches for IRGC - not even supporters. And there is no way for anyone to know what Iranians actually think now. No one does the polls there now.
      - cardanome 7mo ago
        There is massive video evidence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TOcnVe86Vo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TOcnVe86Vo There are massive protests in favor of the Republic every day. You can not deny the evidence.
      - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
        > no one marches for IRGC - not even supporters IRGC has a lot of support. We tend to think of educated Iranians from abroad. But they have their share of religious nutters.
        kelipso 7mo ago
        More like normal people who don’t want their country razed by outside forces.
        JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
        > normal people who don’t want their country razed by outside forces They’re being razed by domestic forces. Think of every Redditor who wants to see revolution.
  - sofixa 7mo ago
    > Iran will be better as a whole if the IRGC is all dead Which is an impossibility. We're talking about a military force of more than a million religiously fervent men that have martyrdom as a core tenet of their religion. They are not going anywhere, and assasinating their leaders and bombing their bases will not make them easier to enforce anything on.
    - jacquesm 7mo ago
      The opposite: Trump and Netanyahu have just proven to the bulk of the Iranians that the mullahs were right all along. They have helped IRGC more than they've hurt them by taking out their leadership. The mistake here is to think that the IRGC is structured along the lines of NATO or something like that. It really isn't. It's more like a 'instant guerilla mix' where all you have to do is add some water and stir it up. They learned a lot of lessons from looking at Iraq and the fact that their command structure is still in place should tell you something.
  - swat535 7mo ago
    This is simply not true. I'm Iranian and I wish it were but IRGC has more support than you think. There is at least 30-40% of the population who support it and within those, more than half will gladly die for the regime. My home country has more than 90M people and 40% of that equates for millions of supporters. From the outside, you are only hearing the diaspora talking points, which don't realistically represent Iran. Many of them have grievances with the regime, or have been exiled after the Shah. Iran is a complex country and it's hard for outsiders to grasp it, mainly because the censorship happening on both sides. I personally think this war was a major mistake, no Iranian is going to cheer for US or Israel after watching their children being killed by them. The west was doing a good job exporting liberal ideas to Iran slowly over the past 3 decades. Some of those were starting to drip into the country, but this war undid all that effort.
    - srean 7mo ago
      If anything, the attack on Iran has increased their support. US and Israel don't give two fucks for the people of Iran. If they did they wouldn't have been under such crippling sanctions. Irani people want to control their own destiny, not as a vassal of US-Israel backed power. Iran's best bet I think is to negotiate with the IRGC to earn reforms. I suspect that if IRGC doesn't feel so threatened they might even get them. There's a lot of commentary here along the lines that Iran is now a threat to Europe. Yes the capability might exist but it is not in Iran's interest and have never shown such interest or ambition. India certainly has missiles that can reach parts of Europe, capability does not signal intent. US and UK have screwed the relation up by organising coup, scuttling democratic processes, downing domestic passenger jet without apology, setting Saddam Hussein and his chemical weapons at them and the economically ravaging them with sanctions. As for nukes, with Israel and undeclared nuclear power right next door, it's a very reasonable ask for any country that wants to control its own destiny. In fact had it had one, the current conflict would not have happened.
    - CamperBob2 7mo ago
      There is at least 30-40% of the population who support it and within those, more than half will gladly die for the regime. Sobering, and (speaking as an American) all too familiar here at home. Cults suck.
  - Devasta 7mo ago
    You are absolutely deluded if you think the removal of the IRGC will result in any improvement in the situation of the Iranian people. The US and Israel want to bomb he place into a lawless wasteland, even if a secular democracy was to arise it would make no difference.
    - chasd00 7mo ago
      It’s trivial for either the US or Israel to do that with one phone call (completely destroy infrastructure on kharg island and the gas fields, this yields an Iranian failed state). The fact it hasn’t happened proves you wrong.
      - jacquesm 7mo ago
        The only reason that has not happened is because the West needs that oil to flow.
    - rasz 7mo ago
      Hey, I heard that exact argument many times before used when talking about pre 2024 Syria.
  - jacquesm 7mo ago
    The IRGC has more support in Iran than the Republicans do in the United States, just to give you one datapoint to contemplate.
- gizajob 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - cardanome 7mo ago
    Or maybe you could ask yourself why people chant this. Maybe people don't fancy your mass murder of their Palestinian brothers and sisters. Maybe Iran didn't appreciate the US supporting Saddam Hussein to fight a war against Iran where he used chemical weapons against the population. The might be a reason the whole region hates Israel and the US. Just saying.
    - AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
      Or maybe you could ask yourself why most of the rest of the region allows the US to have military bases on their soil, and why they are so concerned about protecting themselves against Iran. The "whole region" fears Iran more than they hate the US, judged by their behavior.
      - cardanome 7mo ago
        [flagged]
      - Hikikomori 7mo ago
        9/11 happened because US imperialism. The current regime is in power because of US imperialism, as them and the Brits doing the coup in the 50s.
    - chasd00 7mo ago
      Being empathetic to someone who wants to kill you does not make you safer. How ridiculous.
  - GordonS 7mo ago
    Maybe we should look at why Iranians chant this? And those "proxies" are not "against" America or Israel - they exist solely as resistance groups that counter Israeli aggression, ethic cleansing, land theft etc. You know, like Israel is doing right now in their stated aim of annexing South Lebanon, after displacing over a million people from their homes. Without Israeli aggression and land theft, these resistance groups wouldn't exist.
- gambutin 7mo ago
  Iranian kids have been chanting death to Israel and death to USA for 47 years now. They’ve been waiting for this.
  - srean 7mo ago
    Well, if US takes down their democracy and downs their domestic passenger jets, fight a proxy war with chemical weapons through Saddam Hussein that alone kills 20~30 thousand, no country is going to respond to that with flowers in their hair. In Iran's defence, in spite of being attacked repeatedly with chemical weapons, not once have they retaliated with chemical weapons. This is in line with their beliefs which was formalized into a fatwa by the late Khamenei against nuclear weapons. I would call that taking a pretty principled stand at a time when it would have been very tempting to redefine them.
    - gambutin 7mo ago
      Have you ever been in Iran? Do you know any Iranians and have you talked to them recently? Do you know what Khomeini did to his fellow leftist who toppled the Shah?
      - srean 7mo ago
        No. But many that I know have. They all had a lovely lovely time and to this day reminisce fondly about the hospitality they received from the people, from the officials. As complete strangers they were invited into their homes to share dinner with family, with much post dinner merriment and singing and dancing. Note, my people were complete strangers to them, foreigners too. Some of my people were young men, they giggle and blush telling stories they were approached openly by women, no burqa in sight. These people still try to stay in occasional touch to this day. Yes (many). Yes. Also what US planted Shah's SAVAK did to his political opponents. So what was your point again that you were presumably making, if any at all. Ah I see. You took a random shot hoping it would stick and silence. Tsk tsk. Maybe you are new here, those things don't work so well around here. All Iranians reading this on HN, thank you for your generosity and hospitality. No one can top yours, seriously. Americans are generally friendly people, but Iranians really hit hospitality and show of heart out of the park.
- xdennis 7mo ago
  > They attacked Iran not the other way round. This whole war is a continuation of the Oct 7 attack on Israel by Iran's proxies. It's been revealed recently that Israel took the decision to assassinate the leader of Iran soon after Oct 7 in retaliation. It just took a few years to find the opportunity to do so.
  - cardanome 7mo ago
    Iran is financially supporting both Hamas and Hezbollah so it has a degree of influence on these groups but it does not mean that they them. Oct 7th was planned by Hamas, specifically Hamas in Gaza. It is obvious that neither Iran nor Hezbollah knew about the date or they would have coordinated their attacks. In fact Iran did not seem very happy about October 7th because they didn't want the escalation.
brabel 7mo ago
How convenient for Trump that now all Europe now has a pretext to send the help they were asked for.
- fidotron 7mo ago
  The whole point of that noise is to put NATO + Japanese military in the Straits of Hormuz so that Israel and the US can continue to attack Iran with impunity. Any effort by Iran to shut the Straits in response to further attacks will hit some "innocent" party and drag them into the conflict. It's basically bait for WW3, and luckily so far the EU particularly are not biting.
  - chasd00 7mo ago
    When was the last time the NATO navy do anything anyway? They’d just be sitting ducks and probably not even know which directions to point what pointless weapons they have.
    - fidotron 7mo ago
      Being sitting ducks is the point. The underlying reason is too many people will readily believe that if someone died for something it means it's worth fighting for, and this has been abused by strategists for a very long time.
spaghetdefects 7mo ago
Iran was attacked. Israel and the US are the threat, Iran is just practicing very common sense self-defense.
- upcoming-sesame 7mo ago
  It's easy to assume the war started when Iran was attacked by the US and Israel, but in fact Iran has been fighting a proxy war for decades already and not just with Israel (Hezbollah) but also with Saudi Arabia (Houtis) and more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Israel_proxy_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Israel_proxy_conf...
  - spaghetdefects 7mo ago
    Israel has been fighting a proxy war with much of the world since Zionism was conceived. I value Iran's assistance in this matter. They were however attacked first by the US and Israel. That's not debatable.
surgical_fire 7mo ago
Are you implying other countries have to join in? Iran is only a threat because the US and Israel decided it was time to murder some Iranians. The US and Israel are more of a threat to the entire world.
- upcoming-sesame 7mo ago
  let's not pretend this attack happened in a vacuum. Iran has been funding murderous militias like Hezbollah , Houtis and fighting a proxy war for years.
  - jacquesm 7mo ago
    Fortunately the West would never stoop so low.
  - surgical_fire 7mo ago
    Let's not pretend that too happened in a vacuum. The US started all this with the 1953 coup in Iran, and Israel was from its inception an extremely aggressive and expansionist country.

cardanome 7mo ago

Iran is fighting for survival, Israel and the US are fighting by choice. They attacked Iran not the other way round. US bases, even if also used by UK which aides US it their war, are legitimate targets. US imperialism is the greatest threat to the world.

anvuong 7mo ago
The IRGC is fighting for survival, most Iranian want them gone, and Iran will be better as a whole if the IRGC is all dead. Don't try to conflate the government with the country, they don't always align.
- spaghetdefects 7mo ago
  Most Iranians do not want the IRGC gone, that's US/Israeli propaganda. Thousands of people have been marching in support of the IRGC. Common sense would also tell you that Iranians aren't going to support the people bombing their schools.
  - gambutin 7mo ago
    [flagged]
  - tuna74 7mo ago
    It is impossible to know how may Iranians want the IRGC gone. But bombing schools (and bombings in general) will definitely increase the support for it.
- cardanome 7mo ago
  Many people that protested against the government in January are now marching in support of the Islamic Republic and demand that the imperialists are punished. Most of them have protested for economic reasons, they don't want to see their country destroyed and their children murdered by bombs. Iran is more united than ever because of the imperialist war. That is what you get when you turn state leaders into martyrs.
  - watwut 7mo ago
    That sounds made up. Marches largely stopped after bombings, no one marches for IRGC - not even supporters. And there is no way for anyone to know what Iranians actually think now. No one does the polls there now.
    - cardanome 7mo ago
      There is massive video evidence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TOcnVe86Vo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TOcnVe86Vo There are massive protests in favor of the Republic every day. You can not deny the evidence.
    - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
      > no one marches for IRGC - not even supporters IRGC has a lot of support. We tend to think of educated Iranians from abroad. But they have their share of religious nutters.
      - kelipso 7mo ago
        More like normal people who don’t want their country razed by outside forces.
        JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
        > normal people who don’t want their country razed by outside forces They’re being razed by domestic forces. Think of every Redditor who wants to see revolution.
- sofixa 7mo ago
  > Iran will be better as a whole if the IRGC is all dead Which is an impossibility. We're talking about a military force of more than a million religiously fervent men that have martyrdom as a core tenet of their religion. They are not going anywhere, and assasinating their leaders and bombing their bases will not make them easier to enforce anything on.
  - jacquesm 7mo ago
    The opposite: Trump and Netanyahu have just proven to the bulk of the Iranians that the mullahs were right all along. They have helped IRGC more than they've hurt them by taking out their leadership. The mistake here is to think that the IRGC is structured along the lines of NATO or something like that. It really isn't. It's more like a 'instant guerilla mix' where all you have to do is add some water and stir it up. They learned a lot of lessons from looking at Iraq and the fact that their command structure is still in place should tell you something.
- swat535 7mo ago
  This is simply not true. I'm Iranian and I wish it were but IRGC has more support than you think. There is at least 30-40% of the population who support it and within those, more than half will gladly die for the regime. My home country has more than 90M people and 40% of that equates for millions of supporters. From the outside, you are only hearing the diaspora talking points, which don't realistically represent Iran. Many of them have grievances with the regime, or have been exiled after the Shah. Iran is a complex country and it's hard for outsiders to grasp it, mainly because the censorship happening on both sides. I personally think this war was a major mistake, no Iranian is going to cheer for US or Israel after watching their children being killed by them. The west was doing a good job exporting liberal ideas to Iran slowly over the past 3 decades. Some of those were starting to drip into the country, but this war undid all that effort.
  - srean 7mo ago
    If anything, the attack on Iran has increased their support. US and Israel don't give two fucks for the people of Iran. If they did they wouldn't have been under such crippling sanctions. Irani people want to control their own destiny, not as a vassal of US-Israel backed power. Iran's best bet I think is to negotiate with the IRGC to earn reforms. I suspect that if IRGC doesn't feel so threatened they might even get them. There's a lot of commentary here along the lines that Iran is now a threat to Europe. Yes the capability might exist but it is not in Iran's interest and have never shown such interest or ambition. India certainly has missiles that can reach parts of Europe, capability does not signal intent. US and UK have screwed the relation up by organising coup, scuttling democratic processes, downing domestic passenger jet without apology, setting Saddam Hussein and his chemical weapons at them and the economically ravaging them with sanctions. As for nukes, with Israel and undeclared nuclear power right next door, it's a very reasonable ask for any country that wants to control its own destiny. In fact had it had one, the current conflict would not have happened.
  - CamperBob2 7mo ago
    There is at least 30-40% of the population who support it and within those, more than half will gladly die for the regime. Sobering, and (speaking as an American) all too familiar here at home. Cults suck.
- Devasta 7mo ago
  You are absolutely deluded if you think the removal of the IRGC will result in any improvement in the situation of the Iranian people. The US and Israel want to bomb he place into a lawless wasteland, even if a secular democracy was to arise it would make no difference.
  - chasd00 7mo ago
    It’s trivial for either the US or Israel to do that with one phone call (completely destroy infrastructure on kharg island and the gas fields, this yields an Iranian failed state). The fact it hasn’t happened proves you wrong.
    - jacquesm 7mo ago
      The only reason that has not happened is because the West needs that oil to flow.
  - rasz 7mo ago
    Hey, I heard that exact argument many times before used when talking about pre 2024 Syria.
- jacquesm 7mo ago
  The IRGC has more support in Iran than the Republicans do in the United States, just to give you one datapoint to contemplate.
gizajob 7mo ago
[flagged]
- cardanome 7mo ago
  Or maybe you could ask yourself why people chant this. Maybe people don't fancy your mass murder of their Palestinian brothers and sisters. Maybe Iran didn't appreciate the US supporting Saddam Hussein to fight a war against Iran where he used chemical weapons against the population. The might be a reason the whole region hates Israel and the US. Just saying.
  - AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
    Or maybe you could ask yourself why most of the rest of the region allows the US to have military bases on their soil, and why they are so concerned about protecting themselves against Iran. The "whole region" fears Iran more than they hate the US, judged by their behavior.
    - cardanome 7mo ago
      [flagged]
    - Hikikomori 7mo ago
      9/11 happened because US imperialism. The current regime is in power because of US imperialism, as them and the Brits doing the coup in the 50s.
  - chasd00 7mo ago
    Being empathetic to someone who wants to kill you does not make you safer. How ridiculous.
- GordonS 7mo ago
  Maybe we should look at why Iranians chant this? And those "proxies" are not "against" America or Israel - they exist solely as resistance groups that counter Israeli aggression, ethic cleansing, land theft etc. You know, like Israel is doing right now in their stated aim of annexing South Lebanon, after displacing over a million people from their homes. Without Israeli aggression and land theft, these resistance groups wouldn't exist.
gambutin 7mo ago
Iranian kids have been chanting death to Israel and death to USA for 47 years now. They’ve been waiting for this.
- srean 7mo ago
  Well, if US takes down their democracy and downs their domestic passenger jets, fight a proxy war with chemical weapons through Saddam Hussein that alone kills 20~30 thousand, no country is going to respond to that with flowers in their hair. In Iran's defence, in spite of being attacked repeatedly with chemical weapons, not once have they retaliated with chemical weapons. This is in line with their beliefs which was formalized into a fatwa by the late Khamenei against nuclear weapons. I would call that taking a pretty principled stand at a time when it would have been very tempting to redefine them.
  - gambutin 7mo ago
    Have you ever been in Iran? Do you know any Iranians and have you talked to them recently? Do you know what Khomeini did to his fellow leftist who toppled the Shah?
    - srean 7mo ago
      No. But many that I know have. They all had a lovely lovely time and to this day reminisce fondly about the hospitality they received from the people, from the officials. As complete strangers they were invited into their homes to share dinner with family, with much post dinner merriment and singing and dancing. Note, my people were complete strangers to them, foreigners too. Some of my people were young men, they giggle and blush telling stories they were approached openly by women, no burqa in sight. These people still try to stay in occasional touch to this day. Yes (many). Yes. Also what US planted Shah's SAVAK did to his political opponents. So what was your point again that you were presumably making, if any at all. Ah I see. You took a random shot hoping it would stick and silence. Tsk tsk. Maybe you are new here, those things don't work so well around here. All Iranians reading this on HN, thank you for your generosity and hospitality. No one can top yours, seriously. Americans are generally friendly people, but Iranians really hit hospitality and show of heart out of the park.
xdennis 7mo ago
> They attacked Iran not the other way round. This whole war is a continuation of the Oct 7 attack on Israel by Iran's proxies. It's been revealed recently that Israel took the decision to assassinate the leader of Iran soon after Oct 7 in retaliation. It just took a few years to find the opportunity to do so.
- cardanome 7mo ago
  Iran is financially supporting both Hamas and Hezbollah so it has a degree of influence on these groups but it does not mean that they them. Oct 7th was planned by Hamas, specifically Hamas in Gaza. It is obvious that neither Iran nor Hezbollah knew about the date or they would have coordinated their attacks. In fact Iran did not seem very happy about October 7th because they didn't want the escalation.

brabel 7mo ago

How convenient for Trump that now all Europe now has a pretext to send the help they were asked for.

fidotron 7mo ago
The whole point of that noise is to put NATO + Japanese military in the Straits of Hormuz so that Israel and the US can continue to attack Iran with impunity. Any effort by Iran to shut the Straits in response to further attacks will hit some "innocent" party and drag them into the conflict. It's basically bait for WW3, and luckily so far the EU particularly are not biting.
- chasd00 7mo ago
  When was the last time the NATO navy do anything anyway? They’d just be sitting ducks and probably not even know which directions to point what pointless weapons they have.
  - fidotron 7mo ago
    Being sitting ducks is the point. The underlying reason is too many people will readily believe that if someone died for something it means it's worth fighting for, and this has been abused by strategists for a very long time.

spaghetdefects 7mo ago

Iran was attacked. Israel and the US are the threat, Iran is just practicing very common sense self-defense.

upcoming-sesame 7mo ago
It's easy to assume the war started when Iran was attacked by the US and Israel, but in fact Iran has been fighting a proxy war for decades already and not just with Israel (Hezbollah) but also with Saudi Arabia (Houtis) and more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Israel_proxy_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Israel_proxy_conf...
- spaghetdefects 7mo ago
  Israel has been fighting a proxy war with much of the world since Zionism was conceived. I value Iran's assistance in this matter. They were however attacked first by the US and Israel. That's not debatable.

surgical_fire 7mo ago

Are you implying other countries have to join in? Iran is only a threat because the US and Israel decided it was time to murder some Iranians. The US and Israel are more of a threat to the entire world.

upcoming-sesame 7mo ago
let's not pretend this attack happened in a vacuum. Iran has been funding murderous militias like Hezbollah , Houtis and fighting a proxy war for years.
- jacquesm 7mo ago
  Fortunately the West would never stoop so low.
- surgical_fire 7mo ago
  Let's not pretend that too happened in a vacuum. The US started all this with the 1953 coup in Iran, and Israel was from its inception an extremely aggressive and expansionist country.