4 ms·

> everyone knew was a bad idea It was a good idea if it was also timed during the popular uprisings. But the 20,000+ die-hard citizens that would have effecte

by petcat 5mo ago

> everyone knew was a bad idea It was a good idea if it was also timed during the popular uprisings. But the 20,000+ die-hard citizens that would have effected regime change were slaughtered months ago. So now it's just a scared populace hunkering in place while USA warships and jets dominate their country. And the Iranians fire off the occasional drone swarm on UAE.

basilgohar 5mo ago
It was not and never was a good idea. The US and Europe need to stay out of the Middle East, including Israel and Palestine, and let the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other indigenous peoples of the area live there peacefully like that had for over a thousand years until each and every single time Europeans and Americans entered militarily causing chaos and havoc. Was it 100% peaceful prior to the Crusades? Of course not. But not anymore so than anywhere else in the world. Did it become a mess once they arrived? Yes, and they slaughtered everyone, including Christians, when they came, let alone Jews and Muslims and everyone else that wasn't them. So, we need to stop pretending like the US and European colonizing entities do any kind of good wherever they go. It's just about enriching the elites through military contracts while subverting any peoples' attempts to have autonomy for themselves.
- logicchains 5mo ago
  >let the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other indigenous peoples of the area live there peacefully like that had for over a thousand years That's an extremely historically ignorant take. Turkey alone genocided 2-3 million Christians in the 20th century (Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks), well before Israel existed.
- YZF 5mo ago
  You must be joking re: peaceful before US and Europe. The first crusade was in 1099 for those who don't know the details. We had the Byzantine-Arab wars, Fatimid civil wars, Turkish invasions... Ofcourse we had the whole spread of Islam "by sword". Don't forget it was the Roman invasion of the region in 63 BCE that resulted in the mass murder and expulsion of Jewish people from Israel after the Bar Kokhba Revolt... Are you talking about the Ottoman Empire? Pretty violent. Anyways, I can't cover the history of the region in an HN comment...
  - oa335 5mo ago
    compare list of conflicts in europe to those in middle east over past from 1000 AD - 1900AD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe in particular state formation in late medieval and early modern europe saw immense bloodshed and turmoil. middle east was comparatively peaceful in contrast, especially post mongol conquest. e.g. compare 1700s and 1800s europe to middle east
    - YZF 5mo ago
      So you're arguing the crusaders brought peace to the middle east? This history is so vast I can't even begin to think about how to compare. But one thing that feels odd to me is how people think of the middle east as somehow separate/far from Europe when in fact it's basically the same neighborhood. The Greek and the Romans were there. Under the Ottoman Empire, Muslims from present day Bosnia moved to present day Israel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushnak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushnak Don't forget that Christianity came from the middle east and ofcourse Islam. The Ottoman Empire ruled vast swaths of present day Europe. Spain was under Muslim rule until 1492. It's all one big mesh. Just yesterday I learnt that many present day Yemeni trace their roots to the Levant. Very different than farther regions like Afria, China, India and ofcourse the Americas, Australia etc.
- junofan 5mo ago
  Why would we go halfway around the world to create conflict when we could just make money somewhere where there is already conflict? Seems like a lot of extra work, no?
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
  > let the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other indigenous peoples of the area live there peacefully like that had for over a thousand years What. Like actually, what? Bronze Age geopolitics weren't peaceful. The Romans and Parthians made going after each other, including through proxy wars, a sport. We even get a Jewish client state to the Romans in Judea [1]. The Levant is a fertile stretch with maritime access directly to the west of where human civilisation was born; one could argue it's one of the first pieces of land that's been constantly fought over over the entirety of human history. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodian_kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodian_kingdom
Cyph0n 5mo ago
I would love to see an agreement on the supposed number of (unarmed) civilians killed. Over the course of the past few months, I have heard claims of thousands up to 50k. You would think the traffic and surveillance cams hacked by the Israelis would’ve shown the extent of this bloodbath. https://apnews.com/article/iran-war-security-cameras-surveillance-5f9a1fe5845d94894f3edd50af560d3a https://apnews.com/article/iran-war-security-cameras-surveil...
- ceejayoz 5mo ago
  No one’s putting a public traffic cam in the regime’s secret detention sites.
  - Cyph0n 5mo ago
    Ah, so now none of the protesters were gunned down in the streets? How convenient. > As many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on Jan. 8 and 9 alone, two senior officials of the country’s Ministry of Health told TIME—indicating a dramatic surge in the death toll. https://time.com/7357635/more-than-30000-killed-in-iran-say-senior-officials/ https://time.com/7357635/more-than-30000-killed-in-iran-say-... Imagine infiltrating the Iranian surveillance camera network and being unable to produce footage of 30k people massacred across two days. I do not like Iran because of its actions in Syria and Yemen, but even with my bias, I could hear the bullshit Western elitist consent manufacturing engine starting up from miles away.
    - orwin 5mo ago
      Yeah, the 30k number is hogwash, but HR NGOs and OSINT volunteers worked up 7k dead in protest over 50 days, including 200 police/military forces, and a maximum of 18k death if you count the fights against separatist/freedom fighter/terrorists (depending on who you are aligned with, choose the description you like more)
      - jameshilliard 5mo ago
        > the 30k number is hogwash 30k is one estimate of actual deaths, it's expected to be higher than any verified number of deaths. Most estimates fall into the range of 20k to 40k from my understanding so 30k is certainly plausible.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
tyre 5mo ago
It was also a bad idea then. They could never have effected regime change. That’s a fantasy that Israel included in its pressure on the US, but which US intelligence deemed highly implausible. There was never a world where this was a good idea. We had a diplomatic agreement that worked, nuked it for no gain, and now there isn’t a viable way to influence Iran. Diplomacy can’t function again because they don’t trust the US (fair, correct.) The IRGC cannot be replaced without a ground invasion, which the US won’t do (fair, correct.) The US can’t unilaterally remove one ton of buried nuclear material from the middle of a hostile state. This was always stupid.
- petcat 5mo ago
  [flagged]
- logicchains 5mo ago
  >It was also a bad idea then. They could never have effected regime change They could have if they'd done what Israel wanted and destroyed all the oil infrastructure. The IRGC is heavily dependent on oil revenue for funding its oppressive apparatus; without it hundreds of thousands of militia would go without pay and eventually desert. For whatever reason Trump didn't want to do this; likely not for humanitarian reasons given his nature, but for some reason he seemed to really care what Turkey and Pakistan think, both of whom don't want to be flooded with refugees.
  - thisislife2 5mo ago
    > if they'd done what Israel wanted and destroyed all the oil infrastructure. That would have worked. But it is still a stupid idea if you don't cripple and destroy Iran's military capability first as Iran would have also retaliated and destroyed all its Arab neighbour's oil infrastructure too, plunging the world into an economic depression because of the energy crisis it would cause - The Iran War Is Destroying Something More Valuable Than Oil - https://houseofsaud.com/iran-war-refinery-crisis-saudi-aramco/ https://houseofsaud.com/iran-war-refinery-crisis-saudi-aramc...
    - 5mo ago
throw310822 5mo ago
> the popular uprisings isn't it obvious that the "popular uprisings" were part of a scheme to overthrow the government to install some US-friendly puppet (or better: Israel-friendly, since that's the only thing that counts), and that the supposedly slaughtered protesters are exactly the reason that is normally put forward to justify an attack on an enemy country?
- ZeroGravitas 5mo ago
  Israeli newspaper quoting NYT article with sources within Israel intelligence confirms this: > The Times reported that Barnea’s predecessor, Yossi Cohen, viewed regime change in Iran as unlikely and deemphasized the Mossad’s work on that project, instead working on ways to weaken the regime through sanctions and targeted assassinations of nuclear scientists. > But Barnea has adopted the opposite approach, directing the agency’s energies toward regime change over the past year https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-said-frustrated-that-mossad-promises-of-iran-uprising-have-fallen-short/amp/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-said-frustrated-that...

by petcat 5mo ago

basilgohar 5mo ago

It was not and never was a good idea. The US and Europe need to stay out of the Middle East, including Israel and Palestine, and let the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other indigenous peoples of the area live there peacefully like that had for over a thousand years until each and every single time Europeans and Americans entered militarily causing chaos and havoc. Was it 100% peaceful prior to the Crusades? Of course not. But not anymore so than anywhere else in the world. Did it become a mess once they arrived? Yes, and they slaughtered everyone, including Christians, when they came, let alone Jews and Muslims and everyone else that wasn't them. So, we need to stop pretending like the US and European colonizing entities do any kind of good wherever they go. It's just about enriching the elites through military contracts while subverting any peoples' attempts to have autonomy for themselves.

logicchains 5mo ago
>let the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other indigenous peoples of the area live there peacefully like that had for over a thousand years That's an extremely historically ignorant take. Turkey alone genocided 2-3 million Christians in the 20th century (Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks), well before Israel existed.
YZF 5mo ago
You must be joking re: peaceful before US and Europe. The first crusade was in 1099 for those who don't know the details. We had the Byzantine-Arab wars, Fatimid civil wars, Turkish invasions... Ofcourse we had the whole spread of Islam "by sword". Don't forget it was the Roman invasion of the region in 63 BCE that resulted in the mass murder and expulsion of Jewish people from Israel after the Bar Kokhba Revolt... Are you talking about the Ottoman Empire? Pretty violent. Anyways, I can't cover the history of the region in an HN comment...
- oa335 5mo ago
  compare list of conflicts in europe to those in middle east over past from 1000 AD - 1900AD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe in particular state formation in late medieval and early modern europe saw immense bloodshed and turmoil. middle east was comparatively peaceful in contrast, especially post mongol conquest. e.g. compare 1700s and 1800s europe to middle east
  - YZF 5mo ago
    So you're arguing the crusaders brought peace to the middle east? This history is so vast I can't even begin to think about how to compare. But one thing that feels odd to me is how people think of the middle east as somehow separate/far from Europe when in fact it's basically the same neighborhood. The Greek and the Romans were there. Under the Ottoman Empire, Muslims from present day Bosnia moved to present day Israel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushnak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushnak Don't forget that Christianity came from the middle east and ofcourse Islam. The Ottoman Empire ruled vast swaths of present day Europe. Spain was under Muslim rule until 1492. It's all one big mesh. Just yesterday I learnt that many present day Yemeni trace their roots to the Levant. Very different than farther regions like Afria, China, India and ofcourse the Americas, Australia etc.
junofan 5mo ago
Why would we go halfway around the world to create conflict when we could just make money somewhere where there is already conflict? Seems like a lot of extra work, no?
JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
> let the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other indigenous peoples of the area live there peacefully like that had for over a thousand years What. Like actually, what? Bronze Age geopolitics weren't peaceful. The Romans and Parthians made going after each other, including through proxy wars, a sport. We even get a Jewish client state to the Romans in Judea [1]. The Levant is a fertile stretch with maritime access directly to the west of where human civilisation was born; one could argue it's one of the first pieces of land that's been constantly fought over over the entirety of human history. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodian_kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodian_kingdom

Cyph0n 5mo ago

I would love to see an agreement on the supposed number of (unarmed) civilians killed. Over the course of the past few months, I have heard claims of thousands up to 50k. You would think the traffic and surveillance cams hacked by the Israelis would’ve shown the extent of this bloodbath. https://apnews.com/article/iran-war-security-cameras-surveillance-5f9a1fe5845d94894f3edd50af560d3a https://apnews.com/article/iran-war-security-cameras-surveil...

ceejayoz 5mo ago
No one’s putting a public traffic cam in the regime’s secret detention sites.
- Cyph0n 5mo ago
  Ah, so now none of the protesters were gunned down in the streets? How convenient. > As many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on Jan. 8 and 9 alone, two senior officials of the country’s Ministry of Health told TIME—indicating a dramatic surge in the death toll. https://time.com/7357635/more-than-30000-killed-in-iran-say-senior-officials/ https://time.com/7357635/more-than-30000-killed-in-iran-say-... Imagine infiltrating the Iranian surveillance camera network and being unable to produce footage of 30k people massacred across two days. I do not like Iran because of its actions in Syria and Yemen, but even with my bias, I could hear the bullshit Western elitist consent manufacturing engine starting up from miles away.
  - orwin 5mo ago
    Yeah, the 30k number is hogwash, but HR NGOs and OSINT volunteers worked up 7k dead in protest over 50 days, including 200 police/military forces, and a maximum of 18k death if you count the fights against separatist/freedom fighter/terrorists (depending on who you are aligned with, choose the description you like more)
    - jameshilliard 5mo ago
      > the 30k number is hogwash 30k is one estimate of actual deaths, it's expected to be higher than any verified number of deaths. Most estimates fall into the range of 20k to 40k from my understanding so 30k is certainly plausible.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

tyre 5mo ago

It was also a bad idea then. They could never have effected regime change. That’s a fantasy that Israel included in its pressure on the US, but which US intelligence deemed highly implausible. There was never a world where this was a good idea. We had a diplomatic agreement that worked, nuked it for no gain, and now there isn’t a viable way to influence Iran. Diplomacy can’t function again because they don’t trust the US (fair, correct.) The IRGC cannot be replaced without a ground invasion, which the US won’t do (fair, correct.) The US can’t unilaterally remove one ton of buried nuclear material from the middle of a hostile state. This was always stupid.

petcat 5mo ago
[flagged]
logicchains 5mo ago
>It was also a bad idea then. They could never have effected regime change They could have if they'd done what Israel wanted and destroyed all the oil infrastructure. The IRGC is heavily dependent on oil revenue for funding its oppressive apparatus; without it hundreds of thousands of militia would go without pay and eventually desert. For whatever reason Trump didn't want to do this; likely not for humanitarian reasons given his nature, but for some reason he seemed to really care what Turkey and Pakistan think, both of whom don't want to be flooded with refugees.
- thisislife2 5mo ago
  > if they'd done what Israel wanted and destroyed all the oil infrastructure. That would have worked. But it is still a stupid idea if you don't cripple and destroy Iran's military capability first as Iran would have also retaliated and destroyed all its Arab neighbour's oil infrastructure too, plunging the world into an economic depression because of the energy crisis it would cause - The Iran War Is Destroying Something More Valuable Than Oil - https://houseofsaud.com/iran-war-refinery-crisis-saudi-aramco/ https://houseofsaud.com/iran-war-refinery-crisis-saudi-aramc...
  - 5mo ago

throw310822 5mo ago

> the popular uprisings isn't it obvious that the "popular uprisings" were part of a scheme to overthrow the government to install some US-friendly puppet (or better: Israel-friendly, since that's the only thing that counts), and that the supposedly slaughtered protesters are exactly the reason that is normally put forward to justify an attack on an enemy country?

ZeroGravitas 5mo ago
Israeli newspaper quoting NYT article with sources within Israel intelligence confirms this: > The Times reported that Barnea’s predecessor, Yossi Cohen, viewed regime change in Iran as unlikely and deemphasized the Mossad’s work on that project, instead working on ways to weaken the regime through sanctions and targeted assassinations of nuclear scientists. > But Barnea has adopted the opposite approach, directing the agency’s energies toward regime change over the past year https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-said-frustrated-that-mossad-promises-of-iran-uprising-have-fallen-short/amp/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-said-frustrated-that...