The article kind of downplays the most interesting elements. Not an expert, but to my limited understanding:
* I think this is the longest-range use of a ballistic missile in anger, possibly ever?
* This seems to reveal previously-unknown range of Iranian ballistic missiles and, if true, could touch basically all of Europe?
ChuckMcM 13 hours ago [-]
I think the article downplays the element that the attack probably achieved its goal which was not to actually hit something at Diego Garcia, but to show that thing 2500 miles from Iran are potentially targetable by Iran. That starts conversations like the one here and in other fora about whether or not Iran would limit themselves to military targets (Russia doesn't as an example) and if not how could Europe and its East Asian allies protect literally everything with their finite supply of defensive units.
JumpCrisscross 13 hours ago [-]
> to show that thing 2500 miles from Iran are potentially targetable
Iran has had IRBMs for some time. Demonstration doesn’t hurt. But demonstrating failure doesn’t particularly help either.
chasd00 11 hours ago [-]
The thing is Iran has long promised their max range was 2k Km and so defensive only. This shows that was a lie.
roncesvalles 5 hours ago [-]
All countries publicly understate the max range that their missiles can go. This is generally understood in the defense community.
5 hours ago [-]
ofrzeta 3 hours ago [-]
What's the point? Naively one would think it is the opposite.
NomDePlum 2 hours ago [-]
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sashagim 59 minutes ago [-]
> whether or not Iran would limit themselves to military targets
This question has long been answered
big-and-small 13 hours ago [-]
Except it would be very weird goal to achieve because it's only give more reasons to bomb whole country into oblivion and justify deployment of ground troops.
Spooky23 12 hours ago [-]
They’re at war. The US and Israel are bombing everything anyway.
Strategically, Diego Garcia is a forward operating base for irreplaceable B-52 and B-2 bombers. Placing them at risk on the ground seems like a reckless call, more likely the US pulls those resources back to the US.
I’m not rooting for Iran, but since the US has who they have making the calls, Iran has obvious strategic cards to play - escalation benefits them.
DoctorOetker 10 hours ago [-]
one missile fails, the other is intercepted
your conclusion: US will pull those resources back?
Spooky23 5 hours ago [-]
As a defender, you only need to fail once. Blow up a few B-2s on the ramp and that becomes a event with unlimited bad potential.
urikaduri 54 minutes ago [-]
By the time it takes the missiles to reach there, the planes could be in the air.
JumpCrisscross 13 hours ago [-]
There is probably a hardline faction within Iran that still thinks it gains from further bombing and forced isolation.
jhanschoo 2 hours ago [-]
Why would Iran end up further isolated due to this war, and out of escalation? (your sentence is slightly ambiguous so I assume that you are referring to it.) If it successfully asserts control over the Strait as it seems to presently be doing, it should be able to negotiate a peace favorable to itself. Even with the status quo, I don't know how that figures into things, but the US has temporarily lifted sanctions on Iranian oil.
I don't follow the news very well, but from what I know the claim that you make isn't very obviously true but needs some evidence for it to stand.
PixyMisa 13 hours ago [-]
Yep. The IRGC runs the country at this point, and they do not have anyone else's best interests in mind.
yongjik 13 hours ago [-]
I don't know which country you're from, but in most countries, "our troops may get bombed if we join this war" is a very strong public argument against joining the war.
Just look at Trump's latest attempt to enlist his "allies" into sending warships to the Strait of Hormuz, and what a resounding success it was.
DoctorOetker 10 hours ago [-]
Well I live in one of those countries in Europe, it's quite embarrassing: our government basically said:
"sure we would like to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, but only under peaceful conditions"
So, suppose the peaceful conditions are obtained, they will sail back the moment a single shot is fired? They want to partake only for show? I totally agree the Hegseth fulminating speeches are over the top and tasteless show... but what were European countries saying just days ago (they are turning around these days): that they want to pose and posture and pretend to be part of the power projection group, but not actually run any risks? They are willing to waste their taxpayer money on sending a mission, but only if they are required to pose for a show?
I'm glad they are starting to think a bit deeper than the initial b-hurt about not having received prior notice... consider the huge potential for leaks if each and every nitwit politician in every nation had been informed beforehand! Sometimes when I hear local politicians speak its almost if they WANT Iran to succeed, to possess nuclear warheads and ICBM's capable of reaching Europe!
phs318u 2 hours ago [-]
Maintaining peace is not the same as restoring peace. Perhaps the American executive should have extrapolated the consequences of their actions using a model of the real world and not the fever dream they seem to be in. I am all for the Europeans standing their ground and not letting themselves get dragged into a conflagration not of their desiring nor of their making.
Trump and co are finding out that FAFO goes both ways. Much to the cost of all of us, Americans, Iranians, Europeans and the rest of us.
beedeebeedee 9 hours ago [-]
> I'm glad they are starting to think a bit deeper than the initial b-hurt about not having received prior notice
Reducing objections to an unnecessary, unprovoked and world-destabilizing war to being butthurt is one of the least serious and least thoughtful comments anyone has contributed here for a long time. You are all over the comment section with long diatribes. It would be nice if you used some critical thinking before contributing.
DoctorOetker 9 hours ago [-]
> It would be nice if you used some critical thinking before contributing.
It is certainly possible that my critical thinking skills are less refined as yours. But in order to quickly assess it, may I ask you a simple question?
1. Search and find the video of Mahsa Amini's death at the Fashion Police.
2. Explain how she died.
beedeebeedee 9 hours ago [-]
Wow, it is clear that you are trolling and acting as a propagandist. You do know that you can be against violence, hatred and bigotry in general, and not just that of your ‘enemies’, right?
DoctorOetker 8 hours ago [-]
> Wow, it is clear that you are trolling and acting as a propagandist.
Asking a question about how Mahsa Amini died is not trolling or propaganda, its not even a statement, but a question.
> You do know that you can be against violence, hatred and bigotry in general, and not just that of your ‘enemies’, right?
I know that, but can you please answer the question, it is you who brought up the matter of critical thinkink skills after all.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 52 minutes ago [-]
> Asking a question about how Mahsa Amini died is not trolling or propaganda, its not even a statement, but a question.
Indeed, it is trolling, even if you think it's not.
Do you? Your whataboutism and dismissing concerns about this war as being butthurt is the dumbest and most morally bankrupt response anyone can make. I absolutely condemn the Iranian regime for what they have done, but that in no way excuses what the Israeli and US regimes have done. This was an unnecessary, unprovoked, world-destabilizing and ultimately counterproductive war. Please stop
DoctorOetker 7 hours ago [-]
I assure you it is not whataboutism, and I will prove it the moment you answer the question you keep evading:
What do you believe actually happened to Mahsa Amini?
I am not asking you if you condemn what happened to her, I think everyone condemns the fact she died in the hands of the regime, but you told me I have no critical thinking skills, so I am curious if you can analyze and interpret what happened to her.
This is an opportunity for you to gain my deepest respect!
yongjik 10 hours ago [-]
So you are embarrassed that your leaders don't want their soldiers to die in a war started by another country without providing any semblance of justification?
...I'm just glad that European politicians take their soldiers' lives more seriously than the court of public opinions. Well, at least some of them. That's the mark of being an adult.
DoctorOetker 9 hours ago [-]
> ...I'm just glad that European politicians take their soldiers' lives more seriously than the court of public opinions. Well, at least some of them. That's the mark of being an adult.
A mark of being an adult, is if European politicians would value the lives of their civilians, present and future, higher than their soldiers, yes.
A world where Iran continues to develop and improve the reliability of their ICBM's, nuclear weapons designs and re-entry vehicles, would place those civilians, present and future, at risk.
Short-sighted, short-term thinking poll-vote-oriented decision taking is not adult at all. A lot of administration agnostic personnel prepared these playbooks a long time in advance, and you and I may not like the current sitting president of the United States, that doesn't mean this president isn't offered valuable options prior presidents may have been to scared to select. Perhaps the failed assassination attempt gave this president the courage the earlier ones lacked?
Imagine you were the president of the United States, would you feel safe the rest of your life, about yourself, your family and loved ones, if you gave a green light to disarm Iran? It's not like US presidents have never been assassinated. I don't think it's a coincidence that a president that has experienced a failed assassination attempt is the one with the courage to give that green light, although the lack of general intelligence may have been a contributing factor.
I think many in the Pentagon are relieved that they were finally able to convince a president of what needed to be done a long time before.
urikaduri 46 minutes ago [-]
Hah, I'm so used to thinking about these missiles as conventional that I forgot it actually means Iran was building the capability to nuke Europe. Or more accurately - to deter Europe with nukes while they export terrorism globally.
beedeebeedee 7 hours ago [-]
> I think many in the Pentagon are relieved that they were finally able to convince a president of what needed to be done a long time before
Like your other comments, this is abjectly false. Our generals and admirals specifically warned against going to war with Iran.
DoctorOetker 7 hours ago [-]
I am willing to hear you out on this, but the Pentagon employs a lot of personnel, can you demonstrate that the sentiment you describe was actually representative?
Clearly those who do believe in this intervention don't have the same incentive to speak up as those that disagree with it.
It is also rather vague to conflate warnings with disagreement:
They can believe in the validity of an approach but still have the legal obligation to not just inform the president of the values and benefits of such a mission, but also warn him of any potential negative outcomes.
Warning someone about a path of action, is not equivalent to disagreeing with that path of action, it can be their job description to provide such warnings.
That said, I would like to read more about what you are referring to, to make sure we are talking about the same things.
> Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine has been advising President Trump and top officials that a military campaign against Iran could carry significant risks, in particular the possibility of becoming entangled in a prolonged conflict, according to two sources with knowledge of those internal discussions.
"that a military campaign against Iran could carry significant risks, "
specifically
"could carry"
Sounds like people doing their job, and informing a president of potential outcomes, precisely what I predicted above. The media always makes things seem more adversarial than what it turns out to be.
beedeebeedee 6 hours ago [-]
Your comments make it clear that you are a propagandist and maybe even a bot. I assume that you can comprehend English, but are choosing to be obtuse. If that is not the case, and you still cannot understand the warnings, ask Claude or some other AI to help you.
urikaduri 43 minutes ago [-]
If he is the propagandist, why is it you that only reply in cliches instead of presenting arguments?
DoctorOetker 6 hours ago [-]
I am neither a propagandist, nor a bot.
I am open to widening my perspectives by interpreting the viewpoints of others (if they actually respond meaningfully -not evasively- to questions)
I would appreciate if you actually respond to the question you continue to evade:
maybe they aren't as worried about that as they should be. maybe america isn't as worried about that as it should be.
but, what are you saying? it would be weird for iran to act in a way that might provoke escalation? you mean in the totally unprovoked war israel/america launched against them?
hshdhdhj4444 13 hours ago [-]
Not really. Because no one in Europe wants to bomb Iran into oblivion, if for no other reason but the fact that the Europeans (and Turkey) would face another massive refugee crisis.
The only people wanting to continue this war are the U.S. and Israel (and maybe Saudi Arabia?) and even Trump is clearly looking for an off ramp.
This is most likely a way for Iran to tell Europe to do what they can to end this otherwise they will drag Europe into this mess as well.
bigfatkitten 12 hours ago [-]
> and maybe Saudi Arabia?
The war is extremely bad for business for Saudi Arabia and has already cost them enormous amounts of money. It is causing damage to their oil refineries that will take years to repair.
The only person who gains anything out of this is Netanyahu and his friends. Everyone else loses, including the Israeli people.
srean 12 hours ago [-]
That is so because of Iran's choice of targets. SA might have misjudged that their business assets would be attacked.
There is some chatter that crown prince supported and approved the assassination of Khamenei and possibly supplies supportive intelligence.
They haven't been exactly friendly with Iran.
The odd ball is Qatar. Qatar had been working hard to have friendly relations with Iran. So I was surprised by Iran's attack on Qatari interests.
jacquesm 7 hours ago [-]
There are unfortunately plenty of idiots in Europe who learned nothing from accompanying the USA on their previous illegal adventures abroad.
DoctorOetker 10 hours ago [-]
False: I live in Europe, and I most definitely want Iran's ICBM, nuclear, weapons, etc facilities to be bombed to smithereens. I welcome the news every morning when I read about the exponential decay in absolute numbers of Iran's rockets and drones fired. It will take time until the last caches are depleted, but this intervention seems surprisingly cheap until now. Seeing how this evolves, its not just puzzling that this didn't happen before, its also saddening: if it was this easy to bring Iran to it's knees, a Hamas-less Gaza or Hezbollah-less Lebanon would have been spared the genocide Gaza endures now, and the instability in Lebanon now...
big-and-small 13 hours ago [-]
Europe to do what to stop the war? EU cant even stop war on their own borders. And we seen what Trump buddies think about EU in their leaked Signal chat.
Also it's not like EU and UK actually have any military capacity to bomb Iran even if they wanted because again everything they do have is going to Ukraine already.
bawolff 14 hours ago [-]
> * This seems to reveal previously-unknown range of Iranian ballistic missiles and, if true, could touch basically all of Europe?
The Wikipedia article has said they had missiles that can range 4300km since 2019 (as in the article was updated in 2019) https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shahab-5&oldid=91... . If Wikipedia has known about it for 7 years, surely military planners were already aware.
jandrewrogers 14 hours ago [-]
US intelligence had assessed that this was possible a long time ago. It was one of the motivations behind the installation of long-range missile defense capabilities in Poland and Czechia in the late 2000s. Obama killed that program to appease Russia.
Of course, there is a significant gap between Iran possessing the capability, having the temperament to use it, and actually doing so.
alephnerd 11 hours ago [-]
> It was one of the motivations behind the installation of long-range missile defense capabilities in Poland and Czechia in the late 2000s. Obama killed that program to appease Russia
This was sidestepped by allowing the Poland-SK defense partnership to kick off in 2013 [0] which was further entrenched in 2022 [1], and itself acted as a message against North Korea for acting in a similar manner with Iran [2]
> This seems to reveal previously-unknown range of Iranian ballistic missiles and, if true, could touch basically all of Europe
True but they have also literally launched multiple orbital satellites from iran on iranian rockets. Eg. The Noor 2 spy satellite and before that the Noor 1 series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noor_2_(satellite)
These are in orbit to this day. They regularly post images it takes of US military bases. Essentially it’s similar to how sputnik was a demonstration of icbm capability. Iran can launch a first generation ICBM right now. Pointless if they use a conventional payload (too small payload to be cost effective militarily) and a non manoeuvrable warhead (would just be intercepted) and so these aren’t used militarily but essentially everyone acting shocked they can hit 4000km range was not paying attention.
I think one of the problems we are having right now is that we have leaders who actively believed the downplaying of Irans military capabilities. It’s one thing for the common civilian to think the enemies missiles are made of cardboard and tanks of paper but it’s another when the leader of a nation believes it. Now here we are with a war that’s stalemated and no way out.
JumpCrisscross 13 hours ago [-]
> we have leaders who actively believed the downplaying of Irans military capabilities
Iran has done precisely nothing unexpected in the entire course of this war. Closing Hormuz has been mooted since the 70s. And its IRBM stockpile has been known. This is more a case of something between political leaders and possibly the media being ignorant of even open-source intelligence.
hirako2000 12 hours ago [-]
I thought the US president said they didn't expect a number of things that happened.
It also expected a quick intervention, 2 weeks max.
JumpCrisscross 12 hours ago [-]
> the US president…
The President is a political leader.
chasd00 11 hours ago [-]
To be fair Trump admins most optimistic timeline was “4-6 weeks maybe longer”. We’re at the end of week 3.
rayiner 13 hours ago [-]
The downplaying of Iran’s capabilities is a weird kind of racism IMHO. In the modern view, Iranians have been categorized as “brown” so people lump them together with Somalians and Afghans. But Iran is a technologically and politically sophisticated country. In terms of the Civ tech tree, it’s higher than any middle eastern country except Israel.
oa335 12 hours ago [-]
> The downplaying of Iran’s capabilities is a weird kind of racism IMHO.
Agreed, but it’s not at all surprising to me. Propaganda means that people will project fictitious motives and capabilities on their opponents, even if they are internally inconsistent (e.g. Iran must be attacked because they will threaten the USA mainland vs Iran’s missiles are very inaccurate and barely hit anything).
13 hours ago [-]
logicchains 13 hours ago [-]
>Iranians have been categorized as “brown” so people lump them together with Somalians and Afghans.
Even from a racist perspective that's completely wrong; Iranians are white, the name "Iran" literally means "Land of the Aryans".
breppp 12 hours ago [-]
> Iranians are white, the name "Iran" literally means "Land of the Aryans".
The Indians were also Aryan according to race theories. I wouldn't put much sense into racism
srean 12 hours ago [-]
Leaving the 'aryan' and 'white' bit aside there are mountains of things that are common between Indians and Iranians -- the system of classical music, musical instruments, mythological characters, food, and of course language.
zabzonk 14 hours ago [-]
> a non manoeuvrable warhead (would just be intercepted)
Intercepted? In the UK, by what? London has no missile defence system that I am aware of.
kenhwang 14 hours ago [-]
Probably by the Sea Viper system from a destroyer parked in the Dover Strait. Now, the UK probably doesn't have enough interceptors or destroyers carrying them to be confident they'll be able to stop a proper all out attack, but that seems to be a common problem with every Western country right now with a peacetime military budget in an increasingly unpeaceful time.
dingaling 9 hours ago [-]
Sea Viper can defend against short / medium-range BMs impacting in its vicinity, not IRBMs passing overhead in mid-course to a distant target.
chatmasta 14 hours ago [-]
A missile would need to fly all the way over Europe before reaching London. It would be noticed, jets would be scrambled and it would be shot. Just like what happened here.
delichon 14 hours ago [-]
These were ballistic missiles. They are only vulnerable during the terminal phase, when they are moving at hypersonic speeds. Standard fighter jets aren't going to do it. It would take ground based THAAD, Patriot, or ship based Aegis systems. London might want to budget for that.
They can fly well above any commercial and military aircraft.
lostlogin 13 hours ago [-]
> I think one of the problems we are having right now is that we have leaders who actively believed the downplaying of Irans military capabilities.
Was that the problem?
The US handling of the situation seems the elephant in the room.
alephnerd 14 hours ago [-]
> is that we have leaders who actively believed the downplaying of Irans military capabilities
We've been hinting about these capabilities for decades [0]. A lot of what is being brought up now is stuff a number of us touched on during the Obama years.
None of this is really hidden either - it would be brought up in think tanks and even undergrad classes if you attended a target program.
Civilian leaders have always had a hands-off approach to Defense and NatSec policy - once you show them how close to a polycrisis everything is they quickly defer responsibility. It's actually pretty similar to working in a corporate environment - it's all about managing upwards.
That might not work with the current administration. Which probably a/the problem.
alephnerd 13 hours ago [-]
It still does/is. Most of what I'm seeing with Iran is similar to what was discussed back in the early 2010s.
There hasn't been significant churn in the NatSec space aside from political appointees, and core policymakers like Doshi, Maestro, Allison, Colby, and even Hill have worked with administrations irrespective of party affiliation.
jopsen 12 hours ago [-]
The outcomes is very different from 2010, how so?
alephnerd 11 hours ago [-]
> The outcomes is very different from 2010
Not really. What we're seeing today is similar to what was being discussed in 2010 [0]. Heck, this failed missile attempt confirms capabilities that were being discussed in 2010 [1].
> It’s one thing for the common civilian to think the enemies missiles are made of cardboard and tanks of paper but it’s another when the leader of a nation believes it.
It's just another case of history - endlessly - repeating.
breppp 14 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
throw310822 14 hours ago [-]
> Iran's missiles are used as a terror weapon against civilian population
Classic. An advanced tech US missile hits a school and kills 200 schoolgirls? "A tragic mistake, it happens in war". A much less advanced Iranian rocket hits a building? "Terrorists! They point their weapons at civilians!"
Since Iran was attacked and it has a right to defend itself, we should give it more precise weapons so it can hit directly the military headquarters in central Tel Aviv.
dastuer 13 hours ago [-]
Did you protest when they killed 40,000 unarmed civilians in early January?
ta8903 12 hours ago [-]
No need to downplay the IRGC's brutal murder of 60000 civilians.
jacquesm 7 hours ago [-]
Temptation... but no, let's keep HN clean.
kortilla 14 hours ago [-]
Intent is literally the difference in terrorism though. The US hitting 500 targets in Iran and one of them being a school is the exact opposite of a strategy of terrorism. With terrorism you explicitly target civilians to drive fear.
Trying to hit the Burj Khalifa without targeting any military or high political office is terrorism.
When Iran launched at military bases or tried to shoot at planes, it was not called terrorism.
JasonADrury 13 hours ago [-]
>Trying to hit the Burj Khalifa without targeting any military or high political office is terrorism.
It's really not credible to claim that Iran has made any serious efforts to hit the Burj Khalifa, they would have succeeded if they wanted to do this.
golemiprague 14 hours ago [-]
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isr 13 hours ago [-]
Its a mystery how "the terrorists" have launched 1000's of missiles & drones, in 70+ (and counting) waves, across 3 weeks, spanning across the region, and yet they have ABJECTLY FAILED to:
* hit any hospital
* blow up any school
* nor murder any journalists.
Yet, despite this stunning lack of accuracy from ... "the terrorists", they have somehow managed to hit EVERYTHING ELSE they were aiming at.
On the other hand, the "West", who are absolutely NOT terrorists, have managed to blow up schools, slaughter hundreds and hundreds of school children, smash multiple hospitals, take out as many health workers & first responders as possible with double tap strikes ...
and let's not even mention the number of journalists deliberately targeted & killed, nor the families of journalists, deliberately targeted & killed
And to answer the "but they killed 25 million of their own civilians just weeks ago", it would be almost churlish to point out that the MASSIVE pro-Iran public sentiments expressed by ALL sectors of Iranian society would, to a logically thinking person, lead one to conclude that perhaps, just perhaps, the media campaign behind those riots was just pushing a complete LIE. Because those reports don't fit in a reality where, under direct bombardment and personal risk, those same civilians are supporting their state, their government & their leadership.
As always, the simplest explanations which fit observable facts are usually closest to the actual truth. And the simplest explanation is that the "definitely NOT terroristic" West has been lying about Iran, consistantly, for decades.
Either that, or the Mango Mussolini is the new Oracle of Delphi.
Go pick the hill you want to stand on ...
breppp 13 hours ago [-]
Actually Iran has hit the Soroka hospital in Israel in the previous war and the Weizmann Institute, a research university
s5300 12 hours ago [-]
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magic_hamster 13 hours ago [-]
Iran literally hit a preschool in Israel today, with an MRV which is solely designed to terrorize the population (and is a war crime btw). Plus a 12 year old is in critical condition alongside 40 civilians from a single Iranian missile hitting a residential building later today. And in June Iran hit a hospital in Israel with a ballistic missile.
> Its a mystery...
Not a mystery, though, is it? Israel has excellent air defense which is why the damage isn't x10 worse. But Iran is definitely making a huge effort to hit the civilian population for maximum damage.
Unlike Iran which is literally aiming statistical weapons at population centers, the US has high accuracy weapons - the school was hit because intelligence wasn't up to date (it used be an IRGC building).
Your comment is absolutely misinformed, or worse, spreading disinformation on purpose.
isr 8 hours ago [-]
No, everything I said was true. The entire world knows who deliberately targets and murders children, by the tens of thousands. "Disinformation" is one of the Zionist colony's biggest exports, but its effect (like all drugs) has waned over time.
People who have unyoked from Zionist mental-control have dozens, if not 100s of independent journalistic outlets, mostly online, where they can (and ARE) following to get some sense of what's really happening. Hence your frustration.
Its not for nothing that "every accusation is a confession" is now a phrase which has spread across the globe, in relation to the Zionist entity and its hasbara. So, your "spreading disinformation on purpose" accusation is really your confession.
sofixa 14 hours ago [-]
> Iran's missiles are used as a terror weapon against civilian population
They've also sucessfuly been used against energy and military infrastructure.
breppp 14 hours ago [-]
Those were mostly UAVs, you can see the abysmal aiming ability in Israel, where they have largely stopped aiming at facilities and moved to cluster warheads to maximize civilian hit ratio in large metropolis
subscribed 11 hours ago [-]
I wonder if they consider it a payback for Israel targeting civilians.
breppp 1 hours ago [-]
their targeting of Jews worldwide or Israeli citizens wildly predates this war and into the 90s.
Examples being the AMIA bombing or their mercenaries in Hezbollah firing rockets at Kiryat Shmona well through the 90s
bdangubic 14 hours ago [-]
that would be stupid and their regime is not stupid
breppp 14 hours ago [-]
Hardly, after attacking all their friends in the region, which would leave them even more isolated after the war, I would not attribute careful strategic planning either
cjbgkagh 14 hours ago [-]
“Better to be feared than loved” - Niccolo Machiavelli
watwut 14 hours ago [-]
They were not mutual friends. They were mutually hostile.
And the friends are hosting american soldiers and bases.
breppp 14 hours ago [-]
Qatar and Oman were mutually hostile? that's a very unique interpretation of Middle Eastern politics
jopsen 14 hours ago [-]
Do you think launching a dumb ICBM at New York would make the US put boots on the ground.
I kind of doubt it's enough. This wouldn't be another 9/11, it would be merely be retaliation.
JumpCrisscross 13 hours ago [-]
> This wouldn't be another 9/11, it would be merely be retaliation
The Japanese and Al Qaeda framed their attacks defensively. An attack on the homeland is an attack on the homeland. I wouldn’t put it past Iran. But you’d rapidly see political consensus to ensure the regime is destroyed at all costs, including and up to leaving a power vacuum and humanitarian crisis.
kortilla 14 hours ago [-]
It already looks like the US is sending marines over. Any excuse to make it more politically palatable would be latched onto.
bdangubic 14 hours ago [-]
the war is wildly unpopular in the US (rightfully so) - attacking US would rally the country (rightfully so) and regime would fall within a week (with significant casulties on our side)
AnimalMuppet 13 hours ago [-]
Probably all true, except for the "within a week" part. We don't have nearly enough there yet to do that, and buildups take time.
Hikikomori 11 hours ago [-]
9/11 was retaliation for US imperialism.
JumpCrisscross 13 hours ago [-]
> their regime is not stupid
It’s pretty fucking stupid. Convening the top brass above ground, failing to scatter the navy, bombing Azerbaijan and Qatar and Oman. I’m not saying the individual actors are dumb. But the result of the competing centers of power between the IRGC, military proper, clerical establishment and god knows who else produces a stupid strategy.
bdangubic 12 hours ago [-]
what would be a non-stupid strategy?
JumpCrisscross 12 hours ago [-]
Broadly, taking American and Israeli threats seriously. And not overestimating how easily their neighbors would capitulate if bombed.
Tactically, this would mean not concentrating senior leadership above ground. Scattering their navies out of port. Targeting U.S. military bases and not the civilian infrastructure around them.
PixyMisa 12 hours ago [-]
Their regime is made up of hardline Shia Twelvers that believe that if they kill enough people the Twelfth Imam will appear and lead them to global victory.
Only problem is the Twelfth Imam has been dead for a thousand years.
They may not be stupid, but they consistently act based on counterfactual beliefs.
9991 14 hours ago [-]
They're Muslims. You can debate whether that means 'stupid', but they've come to totally erroneous opinions on the structure of reality.
BLKNSLVR 13 hours ago [-]
Equal to any other religion?
9991 10 hours ago [-]
No, not equal. They're all varying amounts of stupid.
wolvoleo 12 hours ago [-]
I disagree heavily with them too but that doesn't mean we should eradicate them. We can't expect the whole world population to be aligned.
But once we start shooting they will obviously shoot back and we're many steps further away from the desired "agree to disagree and live together anyway" outcome that is the only way to peace.
I mean the US tried this too with Afghanistan. Many lives lost, trillions of dollars wasted and everything was back to 'normal' in two weeks.
Change has to come from within and the thing is this was actually happening in Iran. Now with military law and the regime uniting people against a common enemy this is much further away.
bdangubic 14 hours ago [-]
first, what does it matter whether they are Muslims or not? second, what is the structure of reality?! you may have some notion you know what “reality” is given what your media allows you to think - the actual reality is vastly different than you think it is - that is a certainty
pfannkuchen 13 hours ago [-]
Why does it matter if they have some capabilities to hit whatever targets in Europe or America? They’re not crazy, it would still be suicide for them to do it. It would just give them leverage, which I can’t think of a fair reason to prevent them from having.
dragonelite 14 hours ago [-]
It's a message toward the west don't think you're safe further away. Iran is pushing the west out of west Asia. Time will tell what USIS and EU will do to combat this.
ignoramous 14 hours ago [-]
> Time will tell what USIS and EU will do to combat this.
Anyone thinking they can talk their way into controlling Iran, a fundamentalist fanatic country with a very loud and visible doctrine literally calling to destroy the west, is delusional. The western "avoid conflict at all cost" approach is extremely detrimental.
> Anyone thinking they can talk their way into controlling Iran, a fundamentalist fanatic country with a very loud and visible doctrine literally calling to destroy the west, is delusional
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.
Loved your link, but I doubt it is going to change anyone who thinks Israel and US are doing the god's work here.
seanmcdirmid 13 hours ago [-]
Once you simply kill all the leaders, there is no one left to negotiate with.
Iran is also oddly moderate from the region (beyond the whole death to America thing).
wolvoleo 13 hours ago [-]
I don't think they had any reason to destroy us until trump decided to kick the hornet's nest. In fact they were quite reasonable and agreed to inspections of their nuclear programme which is also something Trump broke before, and now with his petty war.
I mean they hate Israel way more than us and they never attacked them either (until this war obviously). And regime change was already happening there slowly. They would have become more moderate, the public opinion inside Iran was more and more against them especially since what they did to the protesters.
This war was unnecessary and only cemented the regime's hold on their people by giving them an external enemy.
magic_hamster 12 hours ago [-]
You are just uninformed.
Iran has sponsored, built and trained organizations all over the middle east so they could destroy Israel: Hamas, the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and groups in Iraq are all proxies propped up by Iran.
Iran was the first to attack Israel, this happened in 2024 when Israel killed Nasrallah (Hezbollah) and Iran fired hundreds of ballistic missiles directly at Israel.
Iran hates the US way more than Israel, but Israel is closer so obviously they are directing their efforts according to what's plausible. Iran calls the US and Israel "the big satan" and "little satan" in almost all internal communication. Just a couple of weeks ago the entire Iranian parliament chanted "death to America" and "death to Israel" (you can see the videos online). Iran had US flags laid out on the floor of their facilities so that anyone going by will walk over the US flag.
Despite being very uncomfortable, the war is probably necessary because as seen by Iran's attack on Diego Garcia, they have way longer range than previously thought, they have a deposit or military grade uranium enough for 10-12 bombs, they were completely dishonest about their nuclear programs, and waiting until Iran had nukes meant you couldn't ever stop them. You'd have another North Korea but ten times worse, as the Iranian regime is truly a fundamentalist insane leadership. Trump may be unhinged but he's right about Iran using nukes if they had them.
Yes, war is bad. Unless you're from the Complex. No big insight here, Mr. Rayiner.
madaxe_again 15 hours ago [-]
Iran have boats.
derektank 15 hours ago [-]
Obviously they have boats. The question is, do they still have boats which are capable of serving as a launch platform for ballistic missiles? And could those boats meaningfully close the distance between Iran and its adversaries.
This launch demonstrates that if the answer to both of those questions is still no, they can still place them at threat.
zer00eyz 15 hours ago [-]
The question is do they have a launcher that fits in a shipping container...
myth_drannon 15 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
fnordpiglet 15 hours ago [-]
They’ve been preparing for this day for 5 decades, and I wouldn’t believe this administrations propaganda if they claimed the sky was blue.
1over137 14 hours ago [-]
>They’ve been preparing for this day for 5 decades...
So have the USA & Israel I suspect.
nozzlegear 14 hours ago [-]
Five decades doesn't seem to mean much when most of their leadership, military and air defenses can be laid prostrate by the US and Israel in a couple of days. I don't ever take Trump for his word, but neither do I think there's wisdom in believing that a technologically superior force couldn't easily wipe out Iran's ballistic-capable navy just because they've been preparing for a long time.
Edit: am I wrong? Can copium in fact save inferior boats from a vastly superior military force?
fnordpiglet 10 hours ago [-]
You’re wrong in a few ways -
- Iran has structured the functioning of its government and military to be highly resilient to decapitation. Every function has redundancy and every military unit can exercise autonomy. Their goal is to build a theocratic revolution around an ideology and not a personality, and intentionally built a system to survive a hostile environment.
- You have to find what you want to destroy and quantity can out last highly sophisticated and expensive systems. They have been aware of satellite imaging for some time and almost certainly have planned for closing the straight against the US navy for decades. What they have going for them is asymmetric warfare that relies on mass and surprise. For instance, the $20,000 drone that requires multiple $4mm interceptors to stop. They can just keep dropping those randomly indefinitely on their time table and burn a steady supply of interceptors that are increasingly spread out then roll out the hypersonic missiles they have but haven’t even used yet knowing the defenses have been spread thin across an ever increasingly wide region as they demonstrate the radius of attack they have. Ground warfare would be against an enemy who has fortified and prepared for decades with full awareness of our capabilities as we demonstrated them globally.
- the idiocy of a talk show host leading a military commanded by a real estate developer turned reality tv show host with delusions of megalomaniacal grandeur can self defeat any military against any foe
nozzlegear 9 hours ago [-]
Thanks, I appreciate the reply. My contention was only about Iran's navy and their ability to field ships that can launch ballistic missiles. I believe the GP or GGP was implying that Iran still has "boats" with which they could extend the range of their ballistic missiles even further. That's what I think is a far cry from reality – the US and Israel surely know where those ships would be and would be more than capable of destroying them.
Regarding the substance of your comment: I'm not sure I agree about being resilient to decapitation, as the US and Israel have apparently become very skilled at locating the people they want to kill. But I agree with all the rest, especially regarding that bloviating ass, Hegseth.
fnordpiglet 8 hours ago [-]
The thing is, as I understand it, is every function has four designated replacements and a process for the replacements replacement in the scenario all four people are lost. Every military unit has autonomous instructions they carry out without central command.
Israel has been assassinating people for decades. They’re aware that the strategy would be this one. They’ve designed an organizational structure that’s not dependent on individuals. That’s why you see a lot of the senior leaders have had very varied roles over the years - like wildly so. No one in their organization is indispensable, and the supreme ayatollah is a title not a person. They elected his son in coma as a message that the person isn’t relevant, it’s a symbolic role with invested power in the role not the person.
There’s no reason to believe assassinating individuals will achieve very much. It has not seemed to slow them down an iota so far, and I think at this point we have done enough personal damage to their leadership that there is no way to end the war. Even if we stop, it will go one through terrorism and proxy wars at a greater clip than ever before. Only an invasion will work, and I suspect that would be next to impossible to succeed at.
I do not think the US will win this. If we had had a plan, had enlisted allies, had prepared perhaps. But Trump just thought this was like Venezuela and YOLO’ed not realizing it’s not a dictatorship there.
jacquesm 7 hours ago [-]
Think Hydra, not lion.
verdverm 15 hours ago [-]
Large surface and mini subs, yes. They still have many small boats for laying mines. These are indistinguishable from a typical motor boat.
Look at how Ukraine has denied Russia access to most of the Black Sea. It's going to be real hard to stop Iran from creating enough uncertainty to ease the worries of the shipping world. Iran will have to say they are done threatening the straight.
nozzlegear 15 hours ago [-]
We're losing the plot here. What use are small motor boats for launching ballistic missiles?
verdverm 14 hours ago [-]
Comments and threads typically digress into related topics, so I don't see the plot lost, rather the context expanded in a subthread.
Many experts think Iran has already won. They don't have to lay mines to seed doubt, they don't need boats to close the straights, shaheds are sufficient. One does need to define what it means to "win"
For Iran, it seems the regime will stay in power, you can't remove them from the air. The geography and population size of Iran will prove more challenging than Iraq or Afghanistan. There is very little support for Trump's War. They never sought to persuade the people, it appears they have no plan b (which they wish to be illegal /s)
Hubris is an apt way to describe Trump's approach to Iran. One evidence to this is that they thought Venezuela was the model for Iran. A SA dictator is nothing like a religious movement that has taken root for ~50 years.
What does winning look like for the US & Israel? Trump has already claimed they won, but have more winning to do. What they have said changes daily and between who's talking. I imagine this will continue after hostilities end, they will backfill their goals to claim they "won", like so many other things they do this with.
The real winners from this? Probably Russia and China more than others.
irishcoffee 14 hours ago [-]
I was just talking about winning the “plant-bombs” vs “detect and-blow-up-bombs” chess game. I have no comment on the rest of what you said, nor do I care who “wins” here, I have no say in the matter and have chosen zero emotional investment.
verdverm 13 hours ago [-]
Similarly, there are new laser guided hydra pods starting to roll out.
Don’t believe Hegseths obvious buffoonery. They still have boats.
alephnerd 15 hours ago [-]
Yep. Hence why I posted it.
> previously-unknown
It was implied by Iran's space program.
There's a reason most regional powers also invested in a space program as well as a civilian uncles program. The name of the game is dual-use technologies.
The Biden admin also warned about Iran-NK collaboration on building these kinds of capabilities [0]
Iran repeatedly stated that they will not attack any country's assets if they do not assist the US/Israel. Most European countries have refused to take part, the UK decided to help so this seems like a very easy situation to have avoided.
JumpCrisscross 13 hours ago [-]
> Iran repeatedly stated that they will not attack any country's assets if they do not assist the US/Israel
They’ve been doing this across the region. Some of this looks like individual commanders taking strategic decisions into their own hands. But it’s absolutely false that neutrality has protected anyone in the region.
kelipso 8 hours ago [-]
They only attacked countries that host US bases, correct?
JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago [-]
> only attacked countries that host US bases, correct?
No. Azerbaijan hosts no U.S. bases. Also, the Gulf hosts U.S. bases in part to protect against Iran. Blowing up hotels while missing American warships underlines why Iran is a shit neighbor.
throwaw12 12 hours ago [-]
Iran hasn't attacked Turkmenistan yet, so neutrality has protected them
JumpCrisscross 12 hours ago [-]
> Iran hasn't attacked Turkmenistan yet
The fact that we have to pick out a single neighbour they haven’t attacked sort of lands the point.
throwaw12 12 hours ago [-]
Okay, Afghanistan as well. Afghanistan is obviously not neutral, but they haven't participated in supporting US-Israeli attack on Iran
How about now?
JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago [-]
> Afghanistan as well
Sure, if you’re Turkmenistan or Afghanistan, the latter which is being bombed by Pakistan, you’re fine. Also if you’re Azerbaijan, fuck you.
What’s the argument? Like, Oman was trusted by parts of Tehran on diplomatic matters. They still got bombed. Trying to rationalize this is untenable—it was a stupid strategy of throwing toys out of the pram.
throwaw12 4 hours ago [-]
Doesn't look like you understood your own words about neutrality
Azerbaijan does intelligence cooperation with Israel, against Iran, so it's not a neutral party.
Oman, also shares their facilities to the US military.
nozzlegear 14 hours ago [-]
From TFA:
> It is understood the attempted air strike occurred before the UK agreed to let the US use British military bases to hit Iranian sites targeting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
I don't think the article you linked disagrees with what I've quoted from the BBC, does it? Aircraft being present at the airbase isn't the same as aircraft launching for an attack from the airbase.
wongarsu 12 hours ago [-]
True on technicalities. If it isn't useful to the operation of the bombers in the region, why did it happen? And if it is useful that sounds like a UK base participating in the war
nozzlegear 9 hours ago [-]
I'm no war strategist but I'd guess they did it to have them ready to strike Iran if needed. Diego Garcia has been used by UK/US joint operations in the Middle East since the Iraq War, it's not unusual to have American bombers stationed there when the US is on "high alert" or whatever.
To be clear, I'm not saying I support any of this Iran nonsense from Trump. I am very much against him meddling in the ME.
GordonS 13 hours ago [-]
Except that Starmer was lying - there have been photos of bombs being loaded onto US bombers going around for at least several days now.
nozzlegear 13 hours ago [-]
What photos? And what reason would Starmer have to lie about it?
chronic20001 14 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
embedding-shape 14 hours ago [-]
Yeah, US/Israel won this war as quickly as Russia won their war with Ukraine. Incredible how much winning you can do once you get over-confident.
sofixa 14 hours ago [-]
> destroying
The same Iran that just launched missiles at Diego Garcia, a critical American base? The same one that severely damaged Qatari LNG infrastructure two days ago? The same one that continues sending missile and drone attacks at various targets? Has effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz and forced a +50% spike in oil prices? Ruled by the regime that has no intention of going anywhere?
We must have different definitions of destroyed.
spaghetdefects 14 hours ago [-]
No, the US/Israel are losing the war. Iran is successfully controlling the economic situation and continuously removing western forces from the Middle East. They are also successfully targeting Israel every day. There's very little support for this war in the US and Trump is on the ropes.
JumpCrisscross 13 hours ago [-]
> US/Israel are losing the war
This is incorrect. It’s grinding to a stalemate.
thrance 4 hours ago [-]
The US just allowed Iran to sell their oil [1]. If that's not a sign that Iran has the upper hand, I don't know what is.
> Iran repeatedly stated that they will not attack any country's assets if they do not assist the US/Israel.
They attacked the UK in Cyprus at the start of the war back when the UK refused to allow any of it's bases to be used by the US. Stop spreading propaganda.
mmmm2 13 hours ago [-]
To me this is like the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo during WWII. The tactical result isn't important, the range of the strike is, and that it happened at all. Japan thought it was immune from air attack on the home islands in 1942, and the raid shocked them.
Iran is showing the world (especially Europe), that it's more vulnerable than it thinks. Europe has more skin in the game than just the price of oil and nitrogen. Also think about what would happen if Iran is able to recreate something like the Cuban missile crisis now that we've moved a bunch of our military assets to the middle east.
ttul 13 hours ago [-]
Strategically, it seems like a dumb move. Right now, Congress is unlikely to approve Trump’s request for $200B to fund the war effort. But if Americans can be convinced that Iran could somehow hit American cities, they would call their members of Congress in a heartbeat and that money would presumably flow without interruption.
Why time the medium range missiles now? It seems like yet another own-goal for this desperate and poorly coordinated regime.
mmmm2 12 hours ago [-]
I can't speak for Iran, but it may be a warning against attempting to land troops on Kharg Island. They're showing that they've been "nice" so far, but they have escalation paths America may not have considered. I think most people thought they were limited to short range missile strikes.
tuna74 12 hours ago [-]
Or the US could just stop bombing Iran? Then there would be no reason for Iran to attack American cities.
mmmm2 12 hours ago [-]
Yeah, that would be nice. I'm worried this will continue to escalate.
jacquesm 7 hours ago [-]
You and 97% of the globe.
vasac 13 hours ago [-]
Americans can be convinced of anything without too much effort so that isn’t really a factor here.
georgeburdell 15 hours ago [-]
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 15 hours 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 15 hours 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.
swat535 14 hours 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 14 hours 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 13 hours 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.
thunky 12 hours ago [-]
Unless you're talking about the US military you're wrong here. MAGA is not willing to sacrifice anything. It's a bully mindset and bullies take, they don't give.
CamperBob2 11 hours ago [-]
MAGA is not willing to sacrifice anything.
They're willing to sacrifice the rest of us, just like the mullahs. As long as other people are hurting more, MAGA is happy to sacrifice whatever is asked of them.
It's a literal cult. To understand that, all you have to do is imagine a Biden, an Obama, or a Harris saying and doing the things Trump has said and done in the last 30 days alone. "Some of you may die, and gas prices may go up for a while, but that's a chance I'm willing to take. Oh, also, Imma need 'bout $200 billion, kthx."
thunky 10 hours ago [-]
> They're willing to sacrifice the rest of us
It's a transaction: they'll pay more for gas for a month to feel strong and powerful. That's a good exchange. They feel like they're winning. But there's no way they're putting their life on the line for anything.
So no, it's not a sacrifice. If they were to lose their position of strength they'd roll over in a second. Not just the followers but the leaders too. I mean imagine if Hegseth or Trump was captured by Iran. They would shit their pants give them anything they want. Anything to get back to their comfortable bed. Because they have zero principles. You don't need priciples if you're not being tested. That's why bullies bully, because they think there are no consequences.
spaghetdefects 15 hours 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.
tuna74 12 hours 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.
gambutin 14 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
jacquesm 6 hours ago [-]
The IRGC has more support in Iran than the Republicans do in the United States, just to give you one datapoint to contemplate.
sofixa 14 hours 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 6 hours 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.
Devasta 11 hours 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 11 hours 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 6 hours ago [-]
The only reason that has not happened is because the West needs that oil to flow.
rasz 6 hours ago [-]
Hey, I heard that exact argument many times before used when talking about pre 2024 Syria.
cardanome 14 hours 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 13 hours 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.
There are massive protests in favor of the Republic every day. You can not deny the evidence.
11 hours ago [-]
JumpCrisscross 12 hours 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.
jacquesm 6 hours ago [-]
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.
JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago [-]
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.
jacquesm 6 hours ago [-]
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.
kelipso 8 hours ago [-]
More like normal people who don’t want their country razed by outside forces.
JumpCrisscross 6 hours 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.
gambutin 14 hours ago [-]
Iranian kids have been chanting death to Israel and death to USA for 47 years now. They’ve been waiting for this.
srean 14 hours 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 11 hours 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 11 hours 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.
bigfatkitten 12 hours ago [-]
Funnily enough, they are still a bit salty about the US and UK overthrowing their government in 1953, because that government started asking questions about how much oil the UK was stealing.
thrance 3 hours ago [-]
You'll be surprised to hear about what they have been chanting in the streets of Tel Aviv for decades. This cycle of violence can't be resolved by more violence. By starting this war for no reason, Israel and the US will only succeed in further radicalizing the Iranian people against them.
xdennis 11 hours 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 7 hours 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.
gizajob 14 hours ago [-]
There’s only so many decades you can say “death to America, death to Israel” and fund proxies against them until they say enough is enough and deal with the baiting once and for all.
jacquesm 6 hours ago [-]
> and deal with the baiting once and for all.
That sounds very bad when you translate it into German.
cardanome 14 hours 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 13 hours 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.
Hikikomori 11 hours 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.
cardanome 12 hours ago [-]
The people in the region cheer when they see Iranian missiles hit US bases.
It is the Saudis and the other monarchists and oligarchs that have decided to sell out their countries to the US and Israel. They fear their own people more than anything else.
Iran is the only country in the region who has supported the Palestinians. Everyone else has looked the other way. Iran has not invaded any other country. It is Israel that keep the region in a constant state of war.
chasd00 11 hours ago [-]
Being empathetic to someone who wants to kill you does not make you safer. How ridiculous.
GordonS 13 hours 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.
JumpCrisscross 13 hours ago [-]
> those "proxies" are not "against" America or Israel - they exist solely as resistance groups that counter Israeli aggression, ethic cleansing, land theft etc.
They explicitly call for the destruction of Israel.
thunky 12 hours ago [-]
A lot of people think the world would be better off without the violent Israeli regime and their influence.
GordonS 12 hours ago [-]
Why would that be?
upcoming-sesame 10 hours ago [-]
Religion extremism
kelipso 8 hours ago [-]
It’s resistance against genocide.
JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago [-]
This is a Western-centric framing. Iran have an oligarchy of IRGC billionaires consolidating power. Gazans and Lebanese and Yemeni are only slightly more disposable than their own populations.
It’s tempting to turn adversary into heroism. But the truth is Iran has supported the laughter of Gazans and Yemenis to keep war away from its shores for a few more years. These proxies need to rule ruthlessly, like their parent, because they’re violent, ruthless and cruel regimes. Powerful. But no paragon, and certainly not one who give two shits about Western notions of who is committing genocide or war crimes against whom.
idop 12 hours ago [-]
Yeah we should meet them half way
spaghetdefects 15 hours ago [-]
Iran was attacked. Israel and the US are the threat, Iran is just practicing very common sense self-defense.
upcoming-sesame 10 hours 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.
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 11 hours 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 10 hours 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 6 hours ago [-]
Fortunately the West would never stoop so low.
surgical_fire 6 hours 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.
brabel 15 hours ago [-]
How convenient for Trump that now all Europe now has a pretext to send the help they were asked for.
fidotron 14 hours 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 11 hours 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 10 hours 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.
cardanome 15 hours ago [-]
Accusing Iran of "lashing out" and being "reckless" by attacking US bases while the US and Israel literally murder school children, bomb hospitals and assassinate state leaders is rich.
It didn't have to be this way but they decided this to turn into a fight of survival for Iran and destroy any option for a peaceful resolution. Now they are going to pay the price.
gizajob 14 hours ago [-]
I can’t be an apologist for what’s going on but the Iranians seemed capable of killing tens of thousands of their own citizens in order to quash an uprising against the regime only weeks before the current events.
verzali 11 hours ago [-]
We should have little sympathy for them, but ill thought out war will do nothing to improve things for those citizens. Far more likely the opposite.
leereeves 11 hours ago [-]
This seems to be a fairly well thought out war that's already killed many Iranian leaders, including:
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – Supreme Leader
Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi – Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces
Major General Mohammad Pakpour – Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC
Brigadier General Aziz Nasirzadeh – Minister of Defense
Mohammad Shirazi – Head of Supreme Leader’s military office
Saleh Asadi – Head of military intelligence at Khatam‑al Anbiya
Has there been any other war in which one side so quickly killed the leadership of the other side?
TheAlchemist 9 hours ago [-]
The way this war is shown to us (West) is very loopsided - Iran was never going to be able to stop the bombing and they knew it. But they still retain most of their ability to blow up anything they want around their country, which is most of oil and gas fields in the Middle East, and this time they actually proved it.
We like to think we're winning, but are we ? Iran leadership is supposedly decimated, missile capabilities destroyed etc. And yet, when Israel attacked their gas field, they immediately wiped out 17% of Qatari gas productions capacities which will take 5 years to rebuild and they could have wiped out everything. Seems their leadership structure is doing just fine.
As for all the killed - what did we actually achieve ? Replace Khamenei with his son - a guy who had all of his family blown up to pieces by US / Israeli ? That should do wonders to Iran's future relationship with those countries.
rasz 6 hours ago [-]
>ability to blow up anything they want around their country
Only places that falsely believed to be immune due to being of same blood, like Qatar.
>Replace Khamenei with his son - a guy who had all of his family blown up to pieces by US / Israeli
Rumor has it son was also blown up, just not completely (supposedly disfigured with leg missing) and is most likely hiding in Moscow.
greggoB 10 hours ago [-]
Listing a kill count doesn't amount to evidence that the war has been well thought out, it only tells us the US and Israel are good at assassinations.
It is clear the initial aim was to decapitate the leadership and expect capitulation of some form or another to follow. This obviously hasn't happened, and so the fallout grows by the day.
cardanome 10 hours ago [-]
Many of these leaders decided to not hide underground but to become martyrs.
It is really not an accomplishment to murder someone in their own house when they have not been hiding.
Khamenei was already very old.
His security begged him to evacuate but he asked them if they can evacuate all Iranians. If they can't why should he get special treatment?
He knew he could serve his country best by becoming a martyr.
Meanwhile Israeli leader Netanyahu is so afraid to come out of his hole that people are wondering if he is still alive.
8 hours ago [-]
throwaw12 12 hours ago [-]
> tens of thousands of their own citizens
Any credible source for this?
1. Western media is not credible because West treats Iran as enemy
2. Iranian media is not credible because they obviously want to hide facts when they're negative
Now my question is, why are you spreading unverifiable information as something credible and building your facts on top of it?
tim333 10 hours ago [-]
Not sure how credible but iranintl.com has
>36,500 killed in 400 cities... Our Editorial Board has now obtained more detailed information provided by the IRGC Intelligence Organization to the Supreme National Security Council.
There are zero verified sources of any mass killings by the Iranian government. In fact all evidence points to Mossad agents committing the mass killings of Iranian government officials as caught on video, including the wrestler that was just executed for killing a police officer with a machete, on video.
tim333 6 hours ago [-]
Any links to the on video bit? Most stuff on the internet seems to say he didn't do anything except protest.
JumpCrisscross 12 hours ago [-]
> Any credible source for this?
For tens of thousands? No. That’s the upper end of estimates. For the brutality? Yes. Wikipedia is a good start.
11 hours ago [-]
throwaw12 12 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
JumpCrisscross 10 hours ago [-]
> Then you can also fairly say they've killed billions of people
No, you can’t. One, it exceeds Iran’s population. Two, no known method of estimation produces a reasonable guess at those levels.
> there is no credible source in this scenario
There are. There aren’t if you assume ex ante they don’t exist, or if you’re committed to ignoring them.
> Iran has executed three men accused of killing police officers during anti-government protests in January,
As I said, West considers Iran as enemy, used words by BBC reflects this clearly.
1. "accused of" - we don't know, but lets say they're "accusing" them
2. if true, then they have killed the "police officers" (seems many?) so what do you expect from Iran?
BenGosub 7 hours ago [-]
There have been hundreds of thousands of Palestinians brutally murdered by Israel, yet the US has not intervened in Israel yet.
cardanome 14 hours ago [-]
Thousands, not tens of thousands. Which is bad enough so it seems silly to lie about this but whoever can make up the biggest number seems to favored by the Western narrative.
And let us not act like the decades of sanction were not designed to do exactly this. Sanctions mean you create as much hardships as possible for the people in hope they topple their government. They nearly never work but here we are.
> Contrary to popular belief, economic sanctions are ineffective in fulfilling their objectives. Historical observations from Russia to Cuba and Iran reveal that the more sanctions are designed to pressure the ruling class, the harder ordinary citizens are hit. Leaders often perceive sanctions as a means to enhance nationalism, portraying the United States and its allies as hostile. In many instances, such actions have only strengthened their hold on power while stifling dissent internally.
As for the protests, the truth is also that these were not peaceful protests. Mossads agents had been arming people and instructing them to riot. Hundreds of police offers have been murdered and mosques have been burned down. Mossad agents have been instructed to fire at protestors to increase the death toll.
Yes, there has been valid criticism and unhappiness with the government. But most of these people had been protesting for economic reasons. They didn't want to see their country invaded.
Today many of the people that had protested in January are joining the mass demonstrations in favor of the Islamic Republic. The war has united the Iranians.
rcMgD2BwE72F 14 hours ago [-]
>Mossad agents have been instructed to fire at protestors to increase the death toll.
Source?
cardanome 13 hours ago [-]
> Hundreds of people died when security forces sought to crush the demonstrations, along with dozens of members of the police and Basij militia. Iranian intelligence operatives internally concluded that some of the violence was being encouraged and facilitated by Israeli operatives, according to the sources. “Foreign actors linked to Israeli intelligence services had, over time, established contact—through various social media platforms and under diverse cover identities—with a significant number of Iranian citizens, particularly young people,” the Iranian intelligence official alleged. These Israeli handlers, he said, “encouraged and incentivized the performance of specific tasks through a combination of financial and non-financial rewards, as well as the provision of material support, including small arms and other equipment.”
> “Foreign actors are arming the protesters in Iran with live firearms, which is the reason for the hundreds of regime personnel killed,” wrote Tamir Morag, the diplomatic correspondent for Israel’s Channel 14, during the uprising. “Everyone is free to guess who is behind it.” Morag and his network are well known for their close ties to Netanyahu.
You also find the some information in a Israeli Newspaper:
> On December 29, what is dubbed the Mossad X/Twitter account in Farsi encouraged Iranians to protest against the Iranian regime, telling them that it is literally physically with them at the demonstrations.
> “Go out together into the streets. The time has come,” the Mossad wrote. “We are with you,” it added. “Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field.”
[...]
> Foreign actors had armed Iranians to help them fight against the regime’s forces being used to crack down on and oppress protesters, Channel 14’s Tamir Morag reported Tuesday. Iran’s foreign minister retweeted the report for his own agenda.
He claims the a nurse was burned alive in a clinic by rioters.
throwawayheui57 13 hours ago [-]
In a war where Israel and US are literally bombing the hell out of Iran, fewer people have been killed than those two days of massacre.
All according to the numbers confirmed by Iranian government.
God, the moral depravity of defending the IRGC and islamic regime is mind boggling. You can still be against Mossad and what they do in Iran while holding the islamic regime accountable for its own atrocities.
srean 11 hours ago [-]
> fewer people have been killed than those two days of massacre.
So, how many have been killed in those two days of massacre exactly?
A credible source please, and "killed", not "accused of killing", "allegedly killed" etc.
I was following this news in real-time at that time. One thing I noticed was that media outlets started killing/withdrawing many of their stories.
That made me mighty suspicious.
johnxbar 9 hours ago [-]
[dead]
yorwba 12 hours ago [-]
Those are not sources for the statement you were asked to back up with a source.
geraneum 13 hours ago [-]
The state TV. It’s impossible they lie.
UltraSane 12 hours ago [-]
"Mossads agents had been arming people and instructing them to riot. "
This feels far too much like Iranian government propaganda to be plausible.
cardanome 10 hours ago [-]
Mossad has literally admitted to that.
Let me even quote an Israeli newspaper:
> On December 29, what is dubbed the Mossad X/Twitter account in Farsi encouraged Iranians to protest against the Iranian regime, telling them that it is literally physically with them at the demonstrations.
> “Go out together into the streets. The time has come,” the Mossad wrote. “We are with you,” it added. “Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field.” [...]
> Foreign actors had armed Iranians to help them fight against the regime’s forces being used to crack down on and oppress protesters, Channel 14’s Tamir Morag reported Tuesday. Iran’s foreign minister retweeted the report for his own agenda.
Iranians don't NEED any external motivation to riot. The current Shia Theocracy that runs Iran is completely insane and incompetent and cruel.
kelipso 9 hours ago [-]
These are just propaganda words. Could say the same thing about Israel, US, many countries.
UltraSane 8 hours ago [-]
So you consider the Shia Theocracy to be sane and sensible?
srean 11 hours ago [-]
That would be right from the text book of any psyops and insurgency operation. This is as standard operating procedure as it gets.
It would be very surprising if they didn't. Heck FBI was doing it to citizens at one point, during war against terror.
flyinglizard 12 hours ago [-]
There is a name for that, "Israel Derangement Syndrome". No matter what bad thing happens, it is Israel's fault or doing (even if it happens to Israel itself).
UltraSane 8 hours ago [-]
Believing anything the insane Shia Theocracy running Iran says is also deranged. They are even bigger liars than Trump.
surgical_fire 11 hours ago [-]
The Iranian government is bad, and yes, it should be toppled, eventually, by its own people.
This doesn't change the fact that Iran is the aggressed party in an invasion of an incredibly aggressive US-Israel axis that seem to revel in death.
You can hate the Iranian murderous regime, and also understand that it is fighting against another evil, murderous regime.
leereeves 11 hours ago [-]
> The Iranian government is bad, and yes, it should be toppled, eventually, by its own people.
You would prefer to tell people in Iran who oppose the regime to take up arms (which they don't have) and fight IRGC soldiers with better training and more resources?
Best case, if they did, Iran would end up in a situation like Syria. Would that be an improvement?
More likely, it would simply be a massacre.
surgical_fire 11 hours ago [-]
What I can tell you is that no matter how much I hate the government of my country, I would hate a lot more the foreign country that is destroying civilian infrastructure and murdering my people.
Let's not pretend that the US and Israel regimes have the best interest of the Iranian people in mind. They want murder.
leereeves 11 hours ago [-]
I really can't say how this is being received in or out of Iran, but I remember after the initial strikes there was widespread footage of Iranian exiles celebrating, even on anti-Trump media.
Edit: and even people celebrating in Iran itself, which seems incredibly brave.
"videos posted on social media showed joy and defiance elsewhere, with people cheering as a statue was toppled in the city of Dehloran in Ilam province, dancing in the streets of Karaj city, near Tehran in Alborz province, and celebrating in the streets of Izeh in Khuzestan province.
In the town of Galleh Dar in southern Iran, people knocked down a monument commemorating Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic in 1979, a video on social media showed."
Even The Guardian, as anti-Trump as a source can be, reported that "videos shared widely on social media also showed people celebrating, dancing, honking car horns and setting off fireworks as news of the leader’s death broke."
I bet that in Russia they also have media showing that people in Uraike are celebrating their liberation, etc.
I am very skeptical of war propaganda. You would do well to be skeptical of it too.
kelipso 8 hours ago [-]
Seriously. WWII propaganda from multiple countries being compared side by side need to be part of everyone’s high school curriculum.
iAMkenough 11 hours ago [-]
Yeah, but then again the United States has also killed protestors with federal invasions of its cities. As well as slaughtered children with a targeted missle strike on a school.
11 hours ago [-]
readitalready 9 hours ago [-]
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typon 14 hours ago [-]
There is zero proof that Iranian government has killed thousands of their own citizens. Please stop spouting Zionist propaganda
GordonS 13 hours ago [-]
I really is ridiculous, and somehow the number only gets bigger as the stories are told! Last I saw was "40,000 protestors murdered in just 24 hours!", or something very close to it.
The US and Israel have been carpet bombing Iran for weeks now, blowing up hospitals, schools, power plants and residential buildings, yet the Iranian death toll is "only" around 1,500 so far. Yet we are to believe that Iran killed 40k of its own people in a day - you would literally be able to see piles of corpses from space!
Israel has also claimed that they've hacked every traffic camera in Tehran, yet are mysteriously unable to provide any actual evidence of the supposed massacre - meanwhile, Iran released several videos showing foreign agitators distributing weapons, people attacking civilians etc.
catgary 12 hours ago [-]
I think there are 5-7 thousand confirmed deaths by the UN, and medical reports in Iran estimated there could be 20,000+ casualties.
orwin 11 hours ago [-]
7 thousand confirmed death, 9 thousand unconfirmed death. Among that 1200 confirmed death from the regime forces, and 400 to be confirmed bystanders. The nurse burned to death by protesters is among those 400.
srean 12 hours ago [-]
I don't know enough to dispute, but could you link such a report
jandrewrogers 13 hours ago [-]
> The US and Israel have been carpet bombing Iran
No they haven't. The US started phasing out carpet bombing[0] half a century ago. You discredit yourself by making such trivially falsifiable assertions.
The US and Israel use precision strikes. It is why the ratio of targets per sortie is by far the highest ever recorded in a major conflict.
While I somewhat agree, you should also look at the results of those precision strikes. Usually, when they kill a senior Iranian officer sleeping in his appartment, they level the building or at lest blow up several adjacent units, probably killing at last 10 innocent people.
jandrewrogers 12 hours ago [-]
That's an inherent limitation of precision strikes. The objective is minimizing the collateral damage required to achieve the objective, not avoiding it entirely. Even the various explosive-free precision-guided munitions the US uses have a non-zero damage radius.
One can argue whether or not it is a good idea for the bombs to be flying around in the first place, but there is no version of physics that allows anyone to avoid collateral damage as a practical matter.
I know. I'm just saying that the way we talk about 'precision strikes' in the west, make one feel like only the target is eliminated, while in reality we usually blow half of the building the target was in, along with all the people. I would actually be interested by a poll on what people in the US think about how many innocent people are killed in a precision or elimination strike on average - I bet it would be something like less than 1.
jiggawatts 12 hours ago [-]
Which is not “carpet bombing”.
Use words and phrases correctly, or expect an argument.
pcthrowaway 4 hours ago [-]
I agree that targeted strikes which miss or take out adjacent areas is not carpet bombing.
However, the above commenter suggested the U.S. has phased out carpet bombing, and while I'm suspect of that, we know with certainty that Israel will happily "carpet bomb" an area if it can string together a few words justifying it.
Even if it's true that what they've done isn't technically carpet bombing in the sense that they may not just dropping bombs out of planes indiscriminately, the same effect can be achieved with nominally "targeted" strikes now, especially with many of these being conducted by automated "targeting" systems.
Seriously, it's unlikely in this age of advanced weaponry that we'd see carpet bombing like we did in Vietnam, when the U.S. and Israel are capable of creating the same effect, but with thousands of supposedly tactical strikes over the entirety of some densely populated area.
GordonS 13 hours ago [-]
Look at the videos coming out of Iran - civilian infrastructure and residences are clearly being targeted. Some unexploded bombs have been found that lack a JDAM guidance package.
And regardless of the USA, Israel is most certainly not above carpet bombing civilians.
jandrewrogers 12 hours ago [-]
Again, that's not "carpet bombing". Carpet bombing requires a type of aircraft that Israel doesn't have (though the US does).
Why would you expect a precision bomb to have a JDAM package? That is not the only type of guidance package. In fact, most of the footage I've seen (largely Israeli) has clearly been laser-guided bombs. They aren't the same thing, and the latter is more precise than JDAM in any case.
Use of precision-guided bombs in a city is not "carpet bombing".
GordonS 12 hours ago [-]
Even if their actions might not precisely meet some dictionary definition of "carpet bombing", you know well what I meant - civilians and civilian infrastructure are being deliberately targeted with complete disregard for loss of life and environmental consequences.
jiggawatts 12 hours ago [-]
That’s called war.
You’re parroting IRGC propaganda, which is why people are arguing with you.
“We are innocent civilians and the Israelis are carpet bombing us”… said by the people that funded October 7th and killed more of their own people than the Israeli bombs did.
Iran’s government has been violently belligerent for decades, and continues to this day to bomb its Arab neighbours including hitting their civilians! They don’t get to whine about the morality of civilian versus military deaths.
idop 12 hours ago [-]
You meant to lie, and you did lie, and you continue to lie. Standard TikTok rage where words no longer have meaning, reality must be rejected, and any headline is true even if the article directly negates it or there's no source, so long as it makes Israel look bad.
I swear, it's almost as if the anti-Israel mob _wants_ it to be true.
magic_hamster 13 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
GordonS 12 hours ago [-]
Be serious, look at what has been done to Gaza. Israel absolutely sets out to murder civilians, en-masse.
magic_hamster 12 hours ago [-]
Can you show me a verified case where IDF intentionally targeted civilians fully knowing they were going to "murder" them for no reason?
All the children shot in the head as reported by western doctors working there?
jiggawatts 8 hours ago [-]
I looked into that one, because it was so outlandish but repeated by multiple sources and reported by reputable journalists.
The original reporting was carefully phrased to make it sound like IDF soldiers were "sniping" little children, taking careful aim and deliberately shooting them in the head, which is... monstrous.
Where this narrative starts to breaks down is that snipers don't aim for the head, because it's too small a target. Additionally, most of the reports mentioned that the children were shot "in the street" in scuffles with ordinary army grunts, so where were these mysterious "child-murdering snipers"? How were they so reliably hitting small moving targets in the head?
It turns out that this phenomenon was a product of Gaza's demographics combined with survivorship bias.
Half of Gaza's population is under 18! Teenagers are technically "children", but they're out in the streets throwing rocks or whatever at IDF troops, and get shot at in return. The ones that get hit by half a dozen rounds to the chest die on the spot and aren't taken to hospital because obviously, hospitals are for people that can be saved, not the dead. All of the reports of "children getting shot in the head" were coming from surgeons in hospitals, but they were seeing a biased sample: victims that only got hit once had a chance to survive. Similarly, a minor head-wound isn't instantly lethal, whereas a single round centre-mass typically is. So they were seeing victims with single shots to the head instead of multiple to the chest. They then cooked up a narrative that would explain what they were seeing, not realising that the cause wasn't "evil child murdering snipers", but simply a statistically biased view of a war that is not especially more unethical than any other armed conflict.
pcthrowaway 4 hours ago [-]
There are videos of Palestinians being shot in the head, yes (NSFL links below)
Here's a video of IDF in the West Bank head-shotting an unarmed elderly man who posed no threat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_David_Ben_Avraham In this one, the man had converted to Judaism after feeling an affinity to the religion due to his grandfather saving the lives of more than 10 Jews during the 1929 Hebron massacre. His Aliyah request was denied, and he was executed while attempting to visit a settlement (by invitation) for Torah study
These are just ones that come to mind as some of the most brutal ones, but there are many, many more videos of the IDF executing unarmed Palestinians who are posing no threat by head-shot. And for every one we see there are likely 4 or 5 more which we don't see because they weren't independently recorded.
jacquesm 7 hours ago [-]
Oh, that's ok then. /s
ffs
jiggawatts 5 hours ago [-]
War makes people angry, and angry people are trivially swayed by propaganda.
For example, there's thousands of people still screeching online that the US deliberately bombed little girls in Iran. No, they hit a girls school by accident, it used to be an IRGC military base building and is surrounded by IRGC buildings!
I don't condone Israel's actions in Gaza, nor do I condone the US/Israeli attacks on Iran.
Having said that, it's important in a war -- irrespective of what side one is supporting or opposing -- not to believe exaggerations or outright lies.
War is bad enough, we don't have to sprinkle imaginary horrors on top of the real ones!
In the worst case, if too many people spout transparently obvious propaganda, then that discounts the believability of the true horrors. This is most obvious today with the "that's just a fake AI video" retorts, but before it was "fake news", or whatever.
Diluting the truth harms it.
flyinglizard 12 hours ago [-]
Gaza was not carpet bombed at all. Gaza was bombed with precision weapons, then bulldozers came in and leveled empty buildings after calling their residents to evacuate. You may not like it, but Israel never used a strategy of carpet bombings, it's neither effective nor efficient.
Holy shit what rock are you living under? Israel is villifying itself just fine.
magic_hamster 12 hours ago [-]
I argue that anyone saying this is watching too many TikTok videos and not really familiar with what's going on.
Without going into too much detail, my position and line of work means that I have to keep very informed on the middle east and so far I've seen a lot of hatred, and very little factual basis. In fact every single person I personally talked to was very uninformed on these matters which is fine, as long as you accept it and don't form extreme opinions on entire countries.
thunky 10 hours ago [-]
I consume no TikTok, no Facebook, no cable news, none of any of that.
If Israel doesn't want people to form "extreme opinions" about them then maybe they should stop oppressing and murdering poeple with a compete disregard for human life.
I'd appreciate if you didn't spam the same link all over my comments, once is enough. And as for "forensic architecture", please visit their website and go over who these people are - especially the Palestinians from Ramallah and self proclaimed "activists". This is by no means an unbiased organization.
srean 11 hours ago [-]
Then don't go asking for a report in all of your comments on this page where you have, once is enough.
Forensic Architecture is one of the most reputed organizations for this line of work.
Their reports are read with great deal of respect here on HN and they cover more than this conflict. If they don't count as credible and competent, nothing will satisfy you -- the moral equivalent of covering one's eyes and ears.
So I will appreciate if you stop this sham of yours of asking for a citation.
While you are at it, do better than ad hominem. I am still waiting to hear an argument about the content of the extensive and methodical report.
For HN audience, the report was discussed on HN here
>For HN audience, the report was discussed on HN here
He's in there as well, truly unapologetic Zionist.
magic_hamster 10 hours ago [-]
I am in there too, just citing details straight out of the report and shining a light on some issues, to which nobody had an answer, because yes it is absolutely not an objective group of people - which they proudly declare.
I don't go on HN for political topics, but as it turns out I am fairly well versed in this specific topic, and I don't like it when people paint the wrong picture on behalf of some truly bad actors.
constantius 8 hours ago [-]
"Can't say too much, but I'm one of the world's biggest experts on the Middle East, and basically everyone accusing Israel of genocide (so all the NGOs, the journalists, all these other people with their lying eyes) is wrong. And Forensic Architecture are basically shills (one of their team members comes from Muslamistan, need I say more)."
Do you guys hear yourselves? Your posts being flagged all over should give you an indication of how it sounds.
srean 10 hours ago [-]
Ah! Now I feel like an idiot wasting my time. Thanks for the heads up though.
Sadly, my country does this too, pay shills to promote their party line on Whatsapp.
Hikikomori 10 hours ago [-]
Same. While politicians here are not as bad as Germany they provide political cover and interference. I applaud Ireland and Spain.
srean 10 hours ago [-]
Super impressed by Spain and Ireland. Like as if some European countries have a spine.
I really wish Europe got it's shit together soon.
magic_hamster 9 hours ago [-]
> Then don't go asking for a report in all of your comments
Your link that you posted everywhere was to a single comment before you edited it (on all comments!) to point to something else. So not only did I not ask for a report, but you can't even be consistent with your own spam.
Low effort.
Go waste someone's time on Twitter.
srean 9 hours ago [-]
And now you are just lying.
The links that I posted as a reply to you, are all there, unedited, repeated as you noted and as a response to you asking HN members for reports of IDF targeting civilians.
For someone claiming low effort, you still haven't done any better than ad hominem about the report.
I have wasted more time on you than you deserve. So that's it from me to you.
idop 12 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
abdelhousni 11 hours ago [-]
There are only two countries capable of killing civilians by the ten thousands and the world knows them. In fact they're currently bombing Iran and the region, one of them is currently perpetrating a genocide with approval of the day called civilized world. No cameras or international press covering the massacre of Gaza.
cmilton 11 hours ago [-]
This is just completely false. There are multiple countries capable of killing their own by those numbers. All of them are equally disgusting, and should all be held accountable.
einszwei 14 hours ago [-]
Your comment made me realise that while Iran has attacked a dozen countries, they have yet to attack a school or a hospital.
Not condoning anyone but shows the priority of both sides.
arbuge 14 hours ago [-]
They did however murder thousands of protesters in their own streets in January, and who knows how much more dissidents over the years.
The internal conflict over corruption, water issues and handling of the protesters had a decent chance to cause meaningful changes in government. Starting a war and attacking their civilians put those chances to bed.
orwin 11 hours ago [-]
Exactly. And this also want' just a protest. They were protest in the big cities and uprising from suppressed minoritiesm which explain the death toll among people from the regime.
Iran might have at best have a self-regime change, at worst split in 3. Now that the war is on, the regime consolidated.
w10-1 13 hours ago [-]
Strategically, it makes no sense to corner and threaten people. Murdering their own citizens shows the degree to which they'll go to preserve their power. If anything, that's a reason to slowly bleed them instead of cornering and escalating.
The evil of your enemy does not excuse your own strategic stupidity or cruelty.
zarzavat 12 hours ago [-]
Arguably the country that has done the most to cement the Iranian regime is the United States with its sanctions. If Iran had been left to develop into a normal Middle Eastern oil-rich country then things might have turned out differently. The more money people have the harder it is to control them.
marcosdumay 11 hours ago [-]
And that gives US people the right to go there and murder a few thousand extra people?
arbuge 10 hours ago [-]
What it gave the US was an added incentive to take down what is unarguably one of the world's most evil and dangerous regimes.
Would you attack the US because they "murdered" thousands of Germans to take down Hitler in WW2?
jacquesm 7 hours ago [-]
I you want to point at evil and dangerous regimes I have a list and Iran wouldn't even be in the top 3...
arbuge 5 hours ago [-]
Obviously your list is different from mine.
alchemism 12 hours ago [-]
How does that compare with putting hundreds of thousands of people into cages for arbitrary reasons, I wonder. Or depositing them in random countries to be killed because they are e.g. homosexual.
arbuge 10 hours ago [-]
Breaking a country's immigration laws does come with consequences, yes, at least if the government is willing to enforce to said laws, as it should be. Previously we had governments that weren't.
If you have a problem with those laws and think our borders should be wide open, that's of course a different matter, and one you should take up with Congress, which makes the laws.
I think those laws should be changed by the way, to be much friendlier towards Hispanic immigrants. They share our cultural values and are easy for the US to assimilate in my opinion, so long as they're properly vetted for obvious criminal behavior, ability and motivation to work, etc.
bad_haircut72 12 hours ago [-]
Considering theyre now doing airstrikes, there was 100% pre-invasion action that included agitating these protests. Like they're literally bombing them now but we think we werent already doing CIA activity there 6 months ago? Im not saying civilians love the government they probably hate it but... its complicated, what if the person rallying and pushing 1000 people was actually a deep cover agent
Before I get downvoted to hell Im not conding anything or taking any side, just pointing out an obvious deduction
GordonS 13 hours ago [-]
You're being disingenuous - the "protestor" was caught on camera literally hacking a policeman to pieces. He murdered a policeman, and will now be executed.
geraneum 13 hours ago [-]
Can you back this with linking the said videos and maybe some info on legal proceedings of the fair trial in which this person was convicted? I’m curious.
arbuge 12 hours ago [-]
From that article, on CBS News which isn't exactly known for being a fan of this administration:
"Rights groups said the trio were executed without a fair trial and had given confessions under torture."
pphysch 13 hours ago [-]
Allegedly, according to the same political factions that aggressively bombed Iran just weeks later.
arbuge 10 hours ago [-]
No, not just according to those factions. From the same CBS News article:
> The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency has recorded more than 7,000 killings, with the vast majority being protesters, while warning the toll could be far higher.
Neither CBS News nor this agency are friends of the factions you mention. Facts are stubborn things.
frm88 3 hours ago [-]
Critics of the Iranian government, primarily in the West, claim that thousands of people have died in the protests. In particular, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) put the death toll at 2,615 on Wednesday.
They obliterated a kindergarten in Israel just this morning, and several others since the start of the war. Last week a missile landed right behind my house, just between a kindergarten and an elementary school, damaging both.
Literally all Israeli casualties were civilian.
Your comment made me realize international media doesn't care to even publish this, leading to this incredibly skewed view.
einszwei 12 hours ago [-]
Thanks for correction. I looked up the news and could find reporting that some fragments of a missile did hit kindergarten. Thankfully no kids were there.
I'd edit my previous comment but I can't.
drcongo 12 hours ago [-]
Doesn't Isreal have a ban on reporting of strikes inside their borders?
solatic 12 hours ago [-]
The ban is on reporting the exact locations (i.e. coordinates) of where missiles land, because it's information that is useful in helping the enemy to calibrate where missiles will land. Reporting on other details is perfectly acceptable.
idop 12 hours ago [-]
No, only specifics like exact locations are not publicized.
cardanome 14 hours ago [-]
Well some civilians have been injured when Iran attacked the hotels where US agents were stationed. Mostly due to them being foreign workers and well we all know how Dubai and the Saudis treat foreign workers. They were not allowed evacuate in time.
Of course it will be hard to completely avoid civilian casualties in the long run, I fear but yeah Iran has been pretty measured. Iran's fight is with the US imperialists and Israel and not the people that live in the region.
GordonS 13 hours ago [-]
> some civilians have been injured when Iran attacked the hotels where US agents were stationed
Surely the US are using civilians as human shields?
cardanome 13 hours ago [-]
Yes, they are absolutely using civilians as human shields. Just like Israel has been doing for ages.
That is why they constantly lie about Hamas using human shields. Every accusation is a confession with these people.
DoctorOetker 11 hours ago [-]
Like Iran placing a girls school on the grounds of a military base?
They had years and years to correct the open source maps and inform the world at large about the presence and location of the girls school, but didn't?
Imagine being a parent of such a child, being informed enough to understand what the regime aspires to (ballistic nuclear missiles), and what a large number of nuclear powers think about this. If you are that parent, would you be happy with your child being sent to a school on the grounds of a military base? They risk being the first casualties in war. Obviously, in this fun society of Iran, these parents had no choice, for if they did, they would insist their children go to a different school. The victims you complain about, are indeed victims, but first and foremost victims of Iran's regime, its against the statutes of Rome to use human shields.
A hotel is not a military target, a military complex is.
I do think international law is up for some modernization with regards to human shields etc. An improved law (that recognizes the existence of open source maps) could mandate every nation to mark the locations of schools etc.
If however you place the school as a human shield (war crime), and mark that shield on an open map, such international law should legitimize war unless a deadline to move the school is met.
If a military complex is not marked as having a childrens school, while in fact there is, then its a war crime too.
Then there will be no silly forum discussions on who's fault these casualties are, the goal of regulation is to prevent misery, not to point fingers afterwards.
thomassmith65 13 hours ago [-]
The mullahs and IRGC are not famous for their compassion or kind-heartedness.
They are infamous for fulminating against liberals, plotting to kill enemies, torturing and hanging dissidents from cranes, persecuting minorities and women, funding terror cells, and fleecing their citizens to enrich themselves.
Many of the comments here suffer from a misguided refusal to be impressed by the regime's reputation, as though anyone the American establishment criticises must automatically be righteous.
anramon 13 hours ago [-]
>from a misguided refusal to be impressed by the regime's reputation
You have to thank the actions of the genocidal State of Israel that anything below it is somewhat acceptable. Reaping what they sow themselves.
JumpCrisscross 12 hours ago [-]
> Reaping what they sow
Israel and Iran somewhat independently came to the conclusion that they’re the regional hegemon, and that protecting that position is worth any cost.
breppp 12 hours ago [-]
I would see this war as the end of a string of wars initiated by Iran through Hamas in October 7.
This left Israel similar to the USA post 9/11 or Peal Harbor. On a streak to make it never happen again in a very decisive/brutal way. Hegemony wasn't the moving factor for Israel, at least until very late in the war, and due to the same reasons
JumpCrisscross 10 hours ago [-]
> the end of a string of wars initiated by Iran through Hamas in October 7
Locally, yes. Iran not condemning those attacks was a fuckup.
More broadly, this is the Levant versus Persia, a power contest as old as civilization.
breppp 9 hours ago [-]
I am talking about direct IRGC planning and training for the attack
The attack plan of October 7 is generally so similar to the attack plan prepared for Hezbollah by the IRGC, that it is not surprising it is one and the same.
That's why Israel in this current conflict early on made moves on Iran and why the end game is this war.
> More broadly, this is the Levant versus Persia, a power contest as old as civilization.
Wasn't it more, Egypt and Greece vs Persia while the Levant was rapidly conquered?
thomassmith65 11 hours ago [-]
That's not particularly enlightening, to be frank.
People always ask here why the community flags every post on these issues. Comments like this are why. Hardly anyone on this site knows even basic information on the nations involved.
If I were in charge of HN, I'd geoblock anyone from commenting on the Middle East who isn't at an IP from the Middle East. I wouldn't be able to comment either, but at least there might be enlightening information in the comments.
That said, the first page of any reputable history on Iran/Israel relations would go over 1979, when Israel went from friend of Iran to foe, based on Khomeini's interpretation of Islam.
energy123 13 hours ago [-]
They attacked a hospital during the 12 day war. They attacked a school today but it was evacuated due to the early warning system. They attack civilian targets indiscriminately using cluster warheads, in violation of international law.
yonixw 12 hours ago [-]
HN need community notes BAD.
throwaway132448 12 hours ago [-]
This is obviously made easier when your opposition doesn’t stockpile their weapons in, nor conduct their military operations from, schools and hopsitals.
JumpCrisscross 13 hours ago [-]
> they have yet to attack a school or a hospital
Most of their ordinance has been intercepted. And a good fraction was unguided enough that it would have hit a school or hospital.
alephnerd 12 hours ago [-]
> hit a school
Already has in Azerbaijan [0] and attempted in Israel [1].
Most reporting is hyper-regional and somewhat kept under wraps (eg. Qatar and UAE are actively prosecuting leakers who are using Reddit, and have even taken control of Qatar's subreddit [2]) or reported on in regional languages.
I've found the information control in this conflict to be much more strategic/professional in comparison to what was is seen in Ukraine and Russia.
The fact Israel has a very effective defensive system (active and passive) does not mean Iranians avoid civilian targets.
12 hours ago [-]
DoctorOetker 11 hours ago [-]
This is a truly profound insight, the benevolance of Iran's regime is suspiciously proportional to the interception prowess of the nations targeted by Iran. /s
So every time allied militaries protect their schools and hospitals by intercepting missiles, drones etc from Iran, you give credit to Iran?
JumpCrisscross 13 hours ago [-]
> Accusing Iran of "lashing out" and being "reckless"
I think it’s more that these attacks are counterproductive to Iran’s state goals, which reveals that we’re seeing a hardline faction in Iran use the war as cover for consolidating power.
netsharc 14 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately it's we who will pay the price, with "we" being the entire world, considering the destruction of a lot of oil production infrastructure will cause a price hike for everything.
cardanome 14 hours ago [-]
Well China is still getting Iranian oil no problem.
We in the West, well we are aiding the US in this war by allowing it to operate from military bases in our countries. We deserve it for looking the other way while Israel has been mass murdering Palestinians for more than two years now.
At least Spain showed some guts.
Of course it will also potentially cause suffering in the global south but that is on those that started the war.
kortilla 14 hours ago [-]
How is China getting that oil without problem? Something like 90% of it when through Kharg island which is now rubble.
cardanome 13 hours ago [-]
The attacks against Kharg Island were relatively limited as even the US wanted to avoid that level of escalation. The war has been painful but Iran could rebuild, if you destroyed Kharg island it would take decades to rebuild the Iranian economy, that would be a complete scorched earth point of no return.
Maybe there have been further attacks today that I missed but if true that would be an huge escalation.
My last information was that China has no problem getting oil but that was like two days ago.
DoctorOetker 10 hours ago [-]
> We deserve it for looking the other way while Israel has been mass murdering Palestinians for more than two years now.
The sad part is how the genocide in Gaza could have been prevented:
Imagine an alternate history, in which successive precedencies didn't turn a blind eye to Iran, imagine a decade ago (regardless of democrat or republican administration) that they decided to do what they are doing today in Iran. Iran wouldn't have had the funds and resources to sponsor Hamas and Hezbollah. The populations in Gaza and Lebanon wouldn't have been sandwiched between the projected powers of Israel and Iran. Their power structures could have been legitimate democracies etc. In that world there wouldn't have been a reason for Israel to attack and invade, and even if they did in this alternate history, the rest of the world would have strongly condemned it to the point of military intervention on behalf of Gaza / Lebanon.
Always take not how a faction has risen to power initially. In the case of Iran's regime it was hostage taking. A faction will very often resort to the same tactics and methods it used during its initial ascent to power, a form of survivorship bias.
If the West hadn't let the situation of Iran rot indefinitely for decades (they even systematically rewarded the regime's behavior by systematically giving in to the hostage politics it conducted, in my opinion they should have just drawn a line and said: return these hostages unconditionally or we treat this as hiding behind a human shield).
cardanome 10 hours ago [-]
The genocide against the Palestinians has not started after October 7th though but long before the Islamic Republic of Iran even existed. In the Nakba of 1948 as much al 750k Palestinians lost their homes.
Hezbollah came to be as a resistance group against the invasion of Lebanon by Israel.
The reason both Hamas and Hezbollah exists is because Israel.
There can not be peace in the region as long as Israel exists. They are a settler colonial state build and sustaining itself by the dead bodies and suffering of the Palestinians.
> the rest of the world would have strongly condemned it to the point of military intervention on behalf of Gaza / Lebanon.
That is completely delusional.
I Iran had fallen ten years ago, there would be no Palestinians anymore. No one would have stopped Israel from killing them. Israel would have annexed South Lebanon, part of Syria, Egypt and so on and created Greater Israel.
throw379635 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
shepherdjerred 13 hours ago [-]
TBH I am a little more concerned about people dying from the conflict than paying a bit more for gas
undersuit 12 hours ago [-]
What about the people who will die because they cannot afford the higher prices that will come from a disruption in gas supply?
shepherdjerred 9 hours ago [-]
You could've written that comment in a more constructive way.
As you probably already know, my point was that it's a bit callous to focus on "this war is expensive and inconvenient" while innocent people are, you know, dying.
lm28469 11 hours ago [-]
They're also doing exactly what they said they'd be doing if attacked in such manner.
People who say Iran is "crazy" or "lashing out" are falling for the most brain dead propaganda
UltraSane 12 hours ago [-]
Iran is actively murdering protesters including a 19 year old.
It really should make you want the Totalitarian Shia Theocracy running Iran to collapse.
gzread 6 hours ago [-]
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right? Same logic - if correct - would give Iran the moral right to first strike the US.
UltraSane 5 hours ago [-]
I hate Trump also but he is a saint compared to the Iranian Shia Theocracy
dyauspitr 12 hours ago [-]
You have to be pretty shit to get people to defacto support Iran. As usually Trump has led the US into the gutter.
mikeyouse 15 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately this is more interesting than a failed Diego Garcia attack — the late Ayatollah had a self-imposed range limit on the strikes or tests they would carry out. By using IRBMs in this fashion, it’s clear the new regime no longer feels bound by that restriction..
Which is notable since it’s about the same distance from Southern Iran to Diego Garcia (3,800km) as it is from Northern Iran to London.
maratc 15 hours ago [-]
They had a religious ruling on the range, and they also had a religious ruling on "not creating an atomic bomb."
The question of whether the world can assume its security on some religious rulings of some Ayatollas is still standing, as these rulings can apparently be changed or bypassed.
tptacek 14 hours ago [-]
This "religious ruling" stuff is less interesting than it sounds. To begin with, while the Islamic Republic of Iran is a totalitarian state, the Twelver Shia hierarchy isn't unified. The supposed ban on nuclear weapons was Khamenei's, and binding only on his followers. But there are several other marja (marjas? marji?), with significant followings even in the security state & IRGC (al-Sistani being a good example).
More importantly, it's pretty clear that the geopolitical rulings are, well, geopolitical in nature. Iran is a nuclear threshold state; its strategy is to come as close to the breakout line as it can and extract concessions for not crossing it. The supposed nuclear fatwa is just public relations strategy. At the point Iran decided the cost/benefit/risk/reward of crossing the threshold made sense, it would be updated.
ttul 13 hours ago [-]
I agree with you, mostly. My read is that Twelver Shi’ism is not a unified hierarchy, and a marja’s fatwa normally binds that marja’s own followers rather than all Shi’a, so your institutional point is broadly right.[1][2] It is too strong, though, to say the anti-nuclear position was simply “invented for PR”: Khamenei did publicly describe it as a real fatwa.[3] At the same time, Iran’s enrichment posture _does_ fit the description of a threshold state, with large stocks of uranium enriched to 60%, so it is fair to say the ruling also had strategic and diplomatic value.[4]
The parts I would soften are the specific claim about Sistani having a significant following inside the IRGC, which MIGHT be true but is much harder to substantiate publicly (although, maybe you have some behind-the-scenes knowledge?), and the certainty of motive. Still, your last sentence is basically right: these rulings are not _immutable_. After Ali Khamenei’s death, Iran’s foreign minister said (quoting the Reuters article), “fatwas depend on the Islamic jurist issuing them,” and added he was “not yet in a position to judge the jurisprudential or political views of Mojtaba Khamenei…” This reinforces the point that doctrine can shift if the leadership chooses.[5]
[1] Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Twelver Shi’ah.”
[2] Al-Islam.org, “Question 49: Difference between hukm and fatwa.”
[3] Leader.ir, “Ayatollah Khamenei in the Eid al-Fitr congregational prayers” and “Leader’s remarks on anti-Iran sanctions and Yemen aggressions by Saudi Arabia.”
[4] Arms Control Association, “The Status of Iran’s Nuclear Program,” and ACA analysis citing the IAEA’s 440.9 kg figure.
[5] Reuters, “Iran says nuclear doctrine unlikely to change, Hormuz Strait needs new protocol” (March 18, 2026).
rayiner 14 hours ago [-]
Your in-depth knowledge of completely random things never ceases to amaze me.
tptacek 14 hours ago [-]
I'm Catholic and Twelver Shiism is the closest thing Islam has to Catholicism. It's a really neat system.
chimineycricket 14 hours ago [-]
Maraaji' is the pluralized version in Arabic, but nothing wrong with saying marjas. Marji would be most wrong though.
thaumasiotes 14 hours ago [-]
> But there are several other marja (marjas? marji?)
Wikipedia has romanized: [singular] marji'; plural marāji'.
cardanome 14 hours ago [-]
Maybe don't murder the religious leader that made the rulings.
Can anyone blame them for considering developing nuclear weapons for real now? I can't.
tonyedgecombe 14 hours ago [-]
I don't know but I can certainly blame them for oppressing and murdering their own citizens.
lm28469 11 hours ago [-]
Everyone does, the problem is that every time the US came to deliver democracy to the Middle East they left the place in a much worse shape than it was... Also I don't believe for a second Trump or Israel give a single fuck about Iranian citizens
mikeyouse 9 hours ago [-]
That’s the thing that annoys me the most about that post-hoc rationale - we’re supposed to pretend that Donald Trump cares at all about Muslim protesters on the other side of the world?
FpUser 14 hours ago [-]
There are lots of countries doing just the same but the West does not give a flying fuck about it. Most of the human rights violations they care about somehow related to countries that happened to have oil.
And if you tell me that US /Israel are bombing Iran to protect rights of oppressed then I have that wonderful bridge.
13 hours ago [-]
watwut 14 hours ago [-]
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.
breppp 14 hours ago [-]
After being caught developing nuclear weapons for real numerous times, now it is really for real?
pepperoni_pizza 14 hours ago [-]
Were they caught by the same people who found WMDs in Iraq by any chance?
breppp 14 hours ago [-]
the IAEA, presumably you trust UN agencies?
in any case, these are the mythical WMDs found in Iraq:
> "These weapons were not part of an active arsenal. They were remnants from Iraq’s arms program in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war."
These are not the "WMD" that led to or had any involvement with 2003, it's dishonest to suggest so
breppp 14 hours ago [-]
These were chemical weapons found in Iraq, the reason the new york times was interested in the story was the fact that ISIS has somehow developed chemical weapons using Iraq's existing infrastructure.
This means there were active facilities, materials and know how even after the war
14 hours ago [-]
14 hours ago [-]
lm28469 11 hours ago [-]
We have Joe Kent on mic saying Iran was not building nukes and posed no threat to the US.
The only people saying Iran was just about to get nukes are the Israelis, who've been saying that every 5 years for the last 40 years, and the only people who fell for it are magatards
I don't understand how people fall for this shit after the Iraq war scam, which was essentially the exact same propaganda
maratc 10 hours ago [-]
Well, maybe you have a plausible explanation for why Iran needed 60%-grade enriched uranium -- now that we've firmly established that it clearly was not for building nukes.
xdennis 11 hours ago [-]
> Maybe don't murder the religious leader that made the rulings.
Are you saying that politicians should be immune if they also serve a religious role?
cardanome 10 hours ago [-]
I am saying it is bad to murder people. Period.
Don't start wars. Don't assassinate neither political nor religious leaders.
throwaway27448 14 hours ago [-]
> The question of whether the world can assume its security on some religious rulings of some Ayatollas
I don't think much of the world has processed that Iran's ostensible lack of nuclear weapons is purely a matter of will and not capability.
14 hours ago [-]
greesil 15 hours ago [-]
Excellent point. Maybe it's the goal of this attack to demonstrate this capability.
rayiner 14 hours ago [-]
> the late Ayatollah had a self-imposed range limit on the strikes or tests they would carry out.
Can you elaborate on what kind of strikes the Ayatollah was carrying out within the old range limit?
mikeyouse 7 hours ago [-]
The IRGC directly was mostly targeting US troops in Iraq (eg the 2020 Al Asad ballistic missile attack) and frequently responded to ‘Imperial Aggression’ with missile attacks on Israel - which peaked at 2,000km... They’d also been surprisingly consistent with limiting their proxies to SRBMs so that you wouldn’t get a random Hamas or Hezbolah missile into Central Europe.
Im really hoping they enforced those limits by not sending them IRBMs rather than sending them and ‘not letting’ them use the full range because I’m getting the sense their proxies would rather land some flashy strikes on soft targets instead of having everything swatted down over Israel.
lm28469 11 hours ago [-]
> it’s clear the new regime no longer feels bound by that restriction..
Wait a minute... Are you implying the dude who just got his dad, wife, brother, son and many other relatives killed by their arch enemies is not bending the knee?
Who could have predicted that?
chasd00 11 hours ago [-]
That guy is dead or dying. He’s not in control of anything. There’s been no audio or video of him since the opening strike.
lm28469 10 hours ago [-]
Whoever is in charge doesn't matter, I can guarantee you they're not in a more favorable mood than 4 weeks ago. They also killed one of only rational diplomatic Iranian officials, during active negociations, if you want to make it clear negociating with the US is useless that's exactly what you'd do
jmyeet 14 hours ago [-]
I'd add that it's also a free opportunity to test IRBM targeting at much longer ranges.
The war of choice is really the US's Teutoburg Forest moment.
14 hours ago [-]
mytailorisrich 15 hours ago [-]
Iran has always said a lot of things (mostly BS). This is worthless without evidence and I don't think anyone had evidence that their missiles were restricted to 2,000km. Certainly, I don't think anyone took their word for it. In fact this attack proves that there was no such limitation (although it is unclear to me if the missiles fired could actually jave reached Diego Garcia).
Now this may be a demonstration and veiled threat, on the other hand if Iran was to fire a missile at continental Europe I would hope that the consequence for them would be to be flattened, so...
applfanboysbgon 15 hours ago [-]
You didn't have to take their word for it. It was self-evident from the fact they never did anything like this before, and now they are.
Notably, the previous guy issued a religious decree against the development of nuclear weapons. Despite American's favorite propaganda tool for manufacturing consent, "but the WMDs", we have no reason to believe that was ever actually being violated. But you'd better believe it will be now if they think they can pull it off.
mytailorisrich 14 hours ago [-]
There is a difference between not doing something and being unable to do something. Clearly there were able but only showed it now and their previous claim was BS (again, assuming those missiles did fly "far").
No-one believes that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons, either... or that they wouldn't if they had developed the capability.
gambutin 14 hours ago [-]
Ayatollah Khomeini admitted that he had lied about plans to make Iran democratic.
This practice is known as taqqiya. It’s ok to lie if you’re deceiving the enemy.
subscribed 11 hours ago [-]
Did he also released a religious decree stating as much?
Because otherwise you're comparing apples to mushrooms. Not even themselves kingdom.
rayiner 14 hours ago [-]
Do the missiles Iran has been raining down on other countries for decades not count as WMDs?
oa335 14 hours ago [-]
No.
“ A weapon of mass destruction is a nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological, or other device that is intended to harm a large number of people”
Oh, that would be quite a spin. We can probably see it in the Faux News soon.
mda 14 hours ago [-]
Like they flattened Afghanistan? It is funny people thinks land war in an huge mountainous country with 90 million people is easy.
PepperdineG 13 hours ago [-]
Never get involved in a land war in Asia but only slightly less well-known is never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
me_smith 13 hours ago [-]
Inconceivable!
mytailorisrich 14 hours ago [-]
I wrote "flatten", not "invade".
mda 14 hours ago [-]
flatten with what?
drnick1 13 hours ago [-]
Like what is happening now, completely decimating their army, navy, and air force. If that isn't enough, destroy their only source of revenue (oil fields), or go even further and destroy their electrical grid and send the country back to the stone age.
Finally, if the regime does not surrender after all this, a nuke could still be used.
lostlogin 13 hours ago [-]
> destroy their only source of revenue (oil fields)
That’s the worlds source or revenue.
amunozo 8 hours ago [-]
Think about what you're saying. That causes hundreds of thousands of deaths of innocent civilians. Suffering of millions. Weren't you supposed to help the Iranian people? This is the opposite.
lm28469 11 hours ago [-]
Lmao, from "we're here to bring democracy" to "let's destroy their civilian infrastructure" to "let's nuke them" real quick
If that's the US way, why are Russians the bad guy again?
subscribed 11 hours ago [-]
You don't use nuke on the regime, you use it on the civilians, FFS.
Genocidal freaks. As if Hiroshima didn't teach you anything.
chasd00 11 hours ago [-]
Idk, I don’t think Europe has the capacity to do anything except launch their nukes. If missiles started falling on London they’d run to the UN and start writing letters. It would take months for NATO to start having planning meetings to figure out how to plan the response. I feel like the only military capability is maybe the SAS and nukes. There’s nothing in between.
amunozo 8 hours ago [-]
That's ridiculous, but Europe has no reason to intervene in this craze. If attacked, things would change. Europe has participated in previous wars like Irak or Afghanistan, why wouldn't we be able to act now?
breppp 14 hours ago [-]
> On the other hand if Iran was to fire a missile at continental Europe I would hope that the consequence for them would be to be flattened
Iran have been attacking uninvolved NATO member Turkey for a while now and nothing happens. The USA is already fully engaged into this war while Europe can hardly deal together with Russia, it is doubtful they'd do anything even if it rained down on their territory
GordonS 13 hours ago [-]
It should be noted that Iran has publicly stated that the attacks on Turkey were false-flag attacks launched by Israel.
breppp 2 hours ago [-]
It should be noted that Iran has claimed to have sunk the USS Lincoln and to have captured several US soldiers, among other creative interpretations of reality
To take the claims at face value, local governments that has an interest to shift blame on Israel, do not believe Iran, due to their own radar data
mda 14 hours ago [-]
Attacking as in a couple of rockets heading US bases which were intercepted. Of course nothing would happen, why would Turkey (or other European countries) join this pointless war?
breppp 14 hours ago [-]
This is an attack on Turkish territory regardless if there's a US base, and Iranian missiles usually miss the bases anyway.
Turkey is led by a strongman leader and these are very sensitive to acts of public humiliation. So that's unwise when thinking about any negligible strategic advantage they may gain from these attacks
mda 8 hours ago [-]
Iran is Turkey's neighbor and had relatively good relations for very long time, even with the strongman it doesn't make a shred of sense to change this. Especially for USA which has a tendency to back stab Turkey in any occasion (They could not get away from the time when Turkey did not allow them to invade Iraq from north, the previous BS war)
breppp 2 hours ago [-]
Hence my point that Iran's "strategy" is very questionable
14 hours ago [-]
throwaway27448 14 hours ago [-]
What incentive would Iran have to lie? Their entire security model revolves around believable deterrence—apparently far more believable than either Israel or the US understood.
kevbin 15 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
gravisultra 15 hours ago [-]
Actually it would be better to kill Netanyahu and the IDF.
kevbin 14 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
gambutin 14 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
gravisultra 14 hours ago [-]
Successfully remove Israel's influence from western politics and media and let the Palestinians have their land back.
gambutin 14 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
nslsm 14 hours ago [-]
They could move to a place where their behaviour is tolerated. Maybe in Mars.
gravisultra 14 hours ago [-]
That's up to the Palestinians to decide, it's their land.
I don't see the relevance of history and mythology to the point I was making. I am suggesting that even within the Shia framework, if we were to take it at face value, the religious ruling that the GP mentioned is non-binding because they are allowed to lie out of expediency to life or existential threats to the Islamic establishment (Taqiyya); it won't count as a sin or hypocricy within their own framework, objectively.
k33n 13 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
rayiner 14 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
spaghetdefects 14 hours ago [-]
Saying that your enemy "plans" to do something, is never justification for mass murdering civilians. It's interesting that this is basically the same playbook Zionists are currently using. Hurl some accusations, then start killing civilians.
rayiner 13 hours ago [-]
Haman’s plans weren’t theoretical. He had taken steps to put them into action, just like Iran has taken steps for decades in attacking Israel. Likewise, the people that were killed weren’t civilians. They were supporters of Haman. Undoubtedly, some innocent people were killed. That’s just how war works.
spaghetdefects 12 hours ago [-]
> modern scholarship generally regards it as a historical novel with legendary elements, not a reliable account of Purim’s origins.
It's fiction.
nomdep 13 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
NooneAtAll3 15 hours ago [-]
considering that there were already provocations about "unsuccessful attacks on Turkey", I have doubts that this attack was also Iran's
the "notable distance/unexpectedly high range" quoted everywhere seems like a nice war justification: "see, they do have rockets that can threaten us!"
pcrh 12 hours ago [-]
I'm suspicious as well...
Supposedly this missile was hit during the boost phase over Iran, the evidence is that it was actually targeted at Diego Garcia relies on US reports.
lokar 14 hours ago [-]
Question: could this lead to much more expensive war risk insurance for all ships transiting the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean?
That’s a lot of traffic
DrProtic 10 hours ago [-]
US affected war risk insurance by sinking Iranian ship, this will to although probably not much.
penguin_booze 12 hours ago [-]
> see a swift end to the conflict
I'll tell you a swifter method: rest of the world attack the US efforts and send them home. Then lock up the presidumb [sic] somewhere.
They stirred the hornets' nest. Now the rest of the world are getting stung, slowly dragging into an all-out war.
The rest of us could really use a regime change now--and it's not in Iran.
shishcat 14 hours ago [-]
The .io tld is going through rough times :pensive:
10xDev 14 hours ago [-]
Can we just leave countries alone, like we do with North Korea?
thrance 3 hours ago [-]
Not until they get nukes. Which is inevitable now, as we've shown Iran that until then, they are liable to being carpet bombed once a year by the imperialist powers that be. And then we'll have one more rogue nation in the world, hurrah!
AndrewKemendo 14 hours ago [-]
The reason people leave North Korea alone is because they have nuclear weapon(s)
10xDev 14 hours ago [-]
So we can only reach stalemate once a country has nukes and otherwise have to start blowing up their schools?
lm28469 11 hours ago [-]
Why do you think Iran wanted to have nukes?
It's the only way to not get raped by the US whenever their supreme leader decides it's war time
AndrewKemendo 14 hours ago [-]
According to postwar foreign policy clearly that’s true:
Look at Libya and Ukraine for your most direct examples - give away your nukes, get invaded. South Africa is an odd example that proves the rule: they simply bend the knee to the west.
Nuclear deterrents and mutual assured destruction has been the key driver in preventing large scale conflict in the “postwar period.”
Everyone knows Israel has nukes it’s just a matter of when they can get enough public support to use them
cameronh90 13 hours ago [-]
Mutually assured destruction does seem to deter conflict, but even assuming it works, it always seemed like a poor tradeoff to me.
Significantly reduce the frequency of small to medium-scale conflicts, in exchange for an inevitable, possibly apocalyptic nuclear conflict at some point. Maybe not this year, maybe not for centuries, but one day, someone will press the button.
extraduder_ire 14 hours ago [-]
Prior to that, they had thousands of artillery pieces pointed at Seoul the presumed backing of China if the Korean war resumed.
energy123 13 hours ago [-]
The reason people left North Korea alone while they were building nuclear weapons is because they weren't arming 5 terrorist proxies and they didn't have a doomsday countdown clock in their capital city.
10xDev 13 hours ago [-]
True, Kim Jong Un is actually pretty chill, just likes testing some nukes towards Japan as a hobby. Are people genuinely retarded? Or is it the severe Israel bias?
surgical_fire 11 hours ago [-]
Both
bigfatkitten 11 hours ago [-]
And because China won’t allow it.
PepperdineG 13 hours ago [-]
They also have the GDP equivalent of JetBlue Airways
IAmGraydon 13 hours ago [-]
As NATO has thus far neglected to get involved, this seems like an incredibly dumb move by Iran. Making Europe feel threatened will not turn things in their favor.
DrProtic 10 hours ago [-]
On what basis should NATO get involved?
US and Israel sneak attacked Iran during negotiations that presumably were going very well.
Iran is attacking only the countries that were involved in the attacks.
13 hours ago [-]
MagicMoonlight 11 hours ago [-]
It’s fascinating seeing all the Iranian shilling in these comments. You would think the resources would be better spent elsewhere.
alephnerd 10 hours ago [-]
I hope this the HN moderator team is actively looking at this.
Based on the live HN dataset on HuggingFace [0], it confirms that much of HN's recent traffic doesn't align with American hours.
I've also been noticing some unused and underused accounts suddenly becoming active, showing hallmarks of an LOTL attack. Given HN's unique characteristics it is actually significantly at risk for such tactics.
I've also been messing around with the types of responses I write over the past few months as a smoke test - it feels DRAGONBRIDGE-esque.
HN won't even moderate when people's comments are flagged to death simply because they have the wrong opinion on Iran/Israel threads, showing the threads are just being used to push a one sided narrative not serve as a place for discussion.
alephnerd 8 hours ago [-]
That is actually one of my indicators - I found significantly higher flagging and mutual acrimony about West Asian affairs during non-US hours versus US hours irrespective of bias.
What will be interesting is what happens on HN tomorrow - Sunday is the equivalent of Monday in MENA.
Additionally, tne fact it took hours for this to get flagged is worrisome for me. I have also noticed increased usage of HackerSmacker.
HN needs a hard ban on politics and much stricter off-topic controls to reduce the risk of misuse of HN. It will make HN significantly harder to use and for diamonds in the rough to arise, but will help ensure good faith discourse amongst users
Also, this isn't meant to be a slight at the HN moderating team - they are doing commendable work, but there is a deluge that is very difficult to manage (so I can only imagine how much hard work they are putting into moderating already).
3 hours ago [-]
isr 6 hours ago [-]
Hmm, interesting. HN has long been a site dominated by Zionists, and that was reflected in the type of commentary here. Your post, and the 3 others wh8ch responded to you, are clearly bemoaning the fact that even on this bastion of your world view, you're getting strong pushback.
I guess that's what years of widely publicized genocide, plus illegal wars of aggression (lost count by now - Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Lebanon again, etc, etc), gets you.
People are waking up, and some are not afraid to push back publicly. Even on your perceived "stomping grounds".
No wonder this doesn't compute for you, and you have to appeal to a higher authority.
Its a big world. And it's waking up. You can't censor everybody, everywhere, all of the time.
AndrewKemendo 15 hours ago [-]
Diego Garcia is strategically very important to global security according to the US
Had something actually struck within the ADIZ there would have been massive implications. My guess is they intentionally failed as a warning shot.
This isn’t a random act and its quite the signal if you know what it means, Iran knows what it did here.
noir_lord 14 hours ago [-]
Would the Americans and Isreali’s start bombing mainland Iran and takin out their weapons and oil/gas infrastructure as retaliation?.
spaghetdefects 14 hours ago [-]
Americans and Israelis literally started this war by bombing an Iranian girl's school. They've been bombing Iran every day since then.
iamtheworstdev 14 hours ago [-]
i believe the parent comment was being sarcastic
chronic20001 14 hours ago [-]
> Would the Americans and Isreali’s start bombing mainland Iran and takin out their weapons and oil/gas infrastructure as retaliation?.
No that’s too easy.
Give hope to Iran / Islamic world for a few months, then take it away.
visuhire 15 hours ago [-]
I was reading that one of the two failed en route, and the other was intercepted. I don't think this was an intentional failure to hit.
AndrewKemendo 15 hours ago [-]
Sometimes getting shot down is the goal or at least a test to see what kind of response you’ll get
roughly 15 hours ago [-]
Iran did the same before the conflict in response to prior Israeli attacks - the two drone waves they sent that were intercepted were both demonstrations of capability, not actual attacks.
Unfortunately I’m not sure their current audience is gonna pick up the implied threat.
srean 14 hours ago [-]
Iran even has a history of calling in their attacks to ensure no one gets hurt.
I don't think they did it this time, but they have in the past.
picture 14 hours ago [-]
How do you know their intentions?
It's also a bit unreasonable to launch live munitions that have some 90% probability of being intercepted by a given system on a good day, while intending for "just a warning"
roughly 12 hours ago [-]
> How do you know their intentions?
Because they declared them loudly.
When they launched the drone strikes on Israel, they gave Israel and the US warning time so they could be intercepted. The second time, they gave them much less warning time.
The Iranians have a long history of negotiating loudly via their actions, which anyone who's spent any reasonable amount of time studying Iran knows and has seen in action. They're really not a mystery, they're very transparent, we just don't like what they're saying.
AndrewKemendo 14 hours ago [-]
It’s more like if David and Goliath are in a standoff
David takes a small rock and whips it at a sensitive spot on Goliath’s ankles that most people don’t know about (Diego Garcia)
David knows Goliath will probably dodge it, and most likely kick it away given it’s importance, but there’s a point being made by shooting: if it hits then that’s a win, but if gets knocked down it’s a warning that they know where they need to hit for it to hurt
14 hours ago [-]
Rebelgecko 14 hours ago [-]
If you're already at war, why waste resources on warning shots?
14 hours ago [-]
AndrewKemendo 14 hours ago [-]
Sometimes it’s worth it to test in production
CamperBob2 13 hours ago [-]
See also the Doolittle Raid.
alephnerd 15 hours ago [-]
> This isn’t a random act and its quite the signal if you know what it means, Iran knows what it did here.
It also publicizes Iran-NK military cooperation on ballistics development, which the Biden admin warned about [0], as well as Iran-Russia military cooperation (which was obviously much less under-the-radar).
It also shows the merger of the Ukraine conflict with the West Asia conflict, and was a major reason why Fiona Hill argued we entered an unavoidable polycrisis in 2022 [1].
Agreed, there’s so much intelligence in this act it’s really astonishing
alephnerd 12 hours ago [-]
Yep. This action wasn't intended for the average HNer or Redditor to pontificate about.
Those who they wanted to send a message to got the message, and it's a significant message up the escalation chain.
Additionally, the fact that this is being very publicly disclosed and discussed in British media in a manner that RAF Akhrioti wasn't is also a massive signal.
drnick1 13 hours ago [-]
What kind of game is Iran playing here? It's as if the regime wanted to get nuked.
Rendered at 07:53:56 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
* I think this is the longest-range use of a ballistic missile in anger, possibly ever?
* This seems to reveal previously-unknown range of Iranian ballistic missiles and, if true, could touch basically all of Europe?
Iran has had IRBMs for some time. Demonstration doesn’t hurt. But demonstrating failure doesn’t particularly help either.
This question has long been answered
Strategically, Diego Garcia is a forward operating base for irreplaceable B-52 and B-2 bombers. Placing them at risk on the ground seems like a reckless call, more likely the US pulls those resources back to the US.
I’m not rooting for Iran, but since the US has who they have making the calls, Iran has obvious strategic cards to play - escalation benefits them.
your conclusion: US will pull those resources back?
I don't follow the news very well, but from what I know the claim that you make isn't very obviously true but needs some evidence for it to stand.
Just look at Trump's latest attempt to enlist his "allies" into sending warships to the Strait of Hormuz, and what a resounding success it was.
"sure we would like to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, but only under peaceful conditions"
So, suppose the peaceful conditions are obtained, they will sail back the moment a single shot is fired? They want to partake only for show? I totally agree the Hegseth fulminating speeches are over the top and tasteless show... but what were European countries saying just days ago (they are turning around these days): that they want to pose and posture and pretend to be part of the power projection group, but not actually run any risks? They are willing to waste their taxpayer money on sending a mission, but only if they are required to pose for a show?
I'm glad they are starting to think a bit deeper than the initial b-hurt about not having received prior notice... consider the huge potential for leaks if each and every nitwit politician in every nation had been informed beforehand! Sometimes when I hear local politicians speak its almost if they WANT Iran to succeed, to possess nuclear warheads and ICBM's capable of reaching Europe!
Trump and co are finding out that FAFO goes both ways. Much to the cost of all of us, Americans, Iranians, Europeans and the rest of us.
Reducing objections to an unnecessary, unprovoked and world-destabilizing war to being butthurt is one of the least serious and least thoughtful comments anyone has contributed here for a long time. You are all over the comment section with long diatribes. It would be nice if you used some critical thinking before contributing.
It is certainly possible that my critical thinking skills are less refined as yours. But in order to quickly assess it, may I ask you a simple question?
1. Search and find the video of Mahsa Amini's death at the Fashion Police.
2. Explain how she died.
Asking a question about how Mahsa Amini died is not trolling or propaganda, its not even a statement, but a question.
> You do know that you can be against violence, hatred and bigotry in general, and not just that of your ‘enemies’, right?
I know that, but can you please answer the question, it is you who brought up the matter of critical thinkink skills after all.
Indeed, it is trolling, even if you think it's not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
Do you? Your whataboutism and dismissing concerns about this war as being butthurt is the dumbest and most morally bankrupt response anyone can make. I absolutely condemn the Iranian regime for what they have done, but that in no way excuses what the Israeli and US regimes have done. This was an unnecessary, unprovoked, world-destabilizing and ultimately counterproductive war. Please stop
What do you believe actually happened to Mahsa Amini?
I am not asking you if you condemn what happened to her, I think everyone condemns the fact she died in the hands of the regime, but you told me I have no critical thinking skills, so I am curious if you can analyze and interpret what happened to her.
This is an opportunity for you to gain my deepest respect!
...I'm just glad that European politicians take their soldiers' lives more seriously than the court of public opinions. Well, at least some of them. That's the mark of being an adult.
A mark of being an adult, is if European politicians would value the lives of their civilians, present and future, higher than their soldiers, yes.
A world where Iran continues to develop and improve the reliability of their ICBM's, nuclear weapons designs and re-entry vehicles, would place those civilians, present and future, at risk.
Short-sighted, short-term thinking poll-vote-oriented decision taking is not adult at all. A lot of administration agnostic personnel prepared these playbooks a long time in advance, and you and I may not like the current sitting president of the United States, that doesn't mean this president isn't offered valuable options prior presidents may have been to scared to select. Perhaps the failed assassination attempt gave this president the courage the earlier ones lacked?
Imagine you were the president of the United States, would you feel safe the rest of your life, about yourself, your family and loved ones, if you gave a green light to disarm Iran? It's not like US presidents have never been assassinated. I don't think it's a coincidence that a president that has experienced a failed assassination attempt is the one with the courage to give that green light, although the lack of general intelligence may have been a contributing factor.
I think many in the Pentagon are relieved that they were finally able to convince a president of what needed to be done a long time before.
Like your other comments, this is abjectly false. Our generals and admirals specifically warned against going to war with Iran.
Clearly those who do believe in this intervention don't have the same incentive to speak up as those that disagree with it.
It is also rather vague to conflate warnings with disagreement:
They can believe in the validity of an approach but still have the legal obligation to not just inform the president of the values and benefits of such a mission, but also warn him of any potential negative outcomes.
Warning someone about a path of action, is not equivalent to disagreeing with that path of action, it can be their job description to provide such warnings.
That said, I would like to read more about what you are referring to, to make sure we are talking about the same things.
To get you started: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington...
https://www.axios.com/2026/02/23/iran-strike-trump-gen-dan-c...
> Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine has been advising President Trump and top officials that a military campaign against Iran could carry significant risks, in particular the possibility of becoming entangled in a prolonged conflict, according to two sources with knowledge of those internal discussions.
"that a military campaign against Iran could carry significant risks, "
specifically
"could carry"
Sounds like people doing their job, and informing a president of potential outcomes, precisely what I predicted above. The media always makes things seem more adversarial than what it turns out to be.
I am open to widening my perspectives by interpreting the viewpoints of others (if they actually respond meaningfully -not evasively- to questions)
I would appreciate if you actually respond to the question you continue to evade:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47473137
but, what are you saying? it would be weird for iran to act in a way that might provoke escalation? you mean in the totally unprovoked war israel/america launched against them?
The only people wanting to continue this war are the U.S. and Israel (and maybe Saudi Arabia?) and even Trump is clearly looking for an off ramp.
This is most likely a way for Iran to tell Europe to do what they can to end this otherwise they will drag Europe into this mess as well.
The war is extremely bad for business for Saudi Arabia and has already cost them enormous amounts of money. It is causing damage to their oil refineries that will take years to repair.
The only person who gains anything out of this is Netanyahu and his friends. Everyone else loses, including the Israeli people.
There is some chatter that crown prince supported and approved the assassination of Khamenei and possibly supplies supportive intelligence.
They haven't been exactly friendly with Iran.
The odd ball is Qatar. Qatar had been working hard to have friendly relations with Iran. So I was surprised by Iran's attack on Qatari interests.
Also it's not like EU and UK actually have any military capacity to bomb Iran even if they wanted because again everything they do have is going to Ukraine already.
The Wikipedia article has said they had missiles that can range 4300km since 2019 (as in the article was updated in 2019) https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shahab-5&oldid=91... . If Wikipedia has known about it for 7 years, surely military planners were already aware.
Of course, there is a significant gap between Iran possessing the capability, having the temperament to use it, and actually doing so.
This was sidestepped by allowing the Poland-SK defense partnership to kick off in 2013 [0] which was further entrenched in 2022 [1], and itself acted as a message against North Korea for acting in a similar manner with Iran [2]
[0] - https://www.president.pl/archives/bronislaw-komorowski/news/...
[1] - https://www.irsem.fr/storage/file_manager_files/2025/03/nr-i...
[2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/middleeast/29missil...
True but they have also literally launched multiple orbital satellites from iran on iranian rockets. Eg. The Noor 2 spy satellite and before that the Noor 1 series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noor_2_(satellite)
These are in orbit to this day. They regularly post images it takes of US military bases. Essentially it’s similar to how sputnik was a demonstration of icbm capability. Iran can launch a first generation ICBM right now. Pointless if they use a conventional payload (too small payload to be cost effective militarily) and a non manoeuvrable warhead (would just be intercepted) and so these aren’t used militarily but essentially everyone acting shocked they can hit 4000km range was not paying attention.
I think one of the problems we are having right now is that we have leaders who actively believed the downplaying of Irans military capabilities. It’s one thing for the common civilian to think the enemies missiles are made of cardboard and tanks of paper but it’s another when the leader of a nation believes it. Now here we are with a war that’s stalemated and no way out.
Iran has done precisely nothing unexpected in the entire course of this war. Closing Hormuz has been mooted since the 70s. And its IRBM stockpile has been known. This is more a case of something between political leaders and possibly the media being ignorant of even open-source intelligence.
It also expected a quick intervention, 2 weeks max.
The President is a political leader.
Agreed, but it’s not at all surprising to me. Propaganda means that people will project fictitious motives and capabilities on their opponents, even if they are internally inconsistent (e.g. Iran must be attacked because they will threaten the USA mainland vs Iran’s missiles are very inaccurate and barely hit anything).
Even from a racist perspective that's completely wrong; Iranians are white, the name "Iran" literally means "Land of the Aryans".
The Indians were also Aryan according to race theories. I wouldn't put much sense into racism
Intercepted? In the UK, by what? London has no missile defence system that I am aware of.
Was that the problem?
The US handling of the situation seems the elephant in the room.
We've been hinting about these capabilities for decades [0]. A lot of what is being brought up now is stuff a number of us touched on during the Obama years.
None of this is really hidden either - it would be brought up in think tanks and even undergrad classes if you attended a target program.
Civilian leaders have always had a hands-off approach to Defense and NatSec policy - once you show them how close to a polycrisis everything is they quickly defer responsibility. It's actually pretty similar to working in a corporate environment - it's all about managing upwards.
[0] - https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/middleeast/29missil...
That might not work with the current administration. Which probably a/the problem.
There hasn't been significant churn in the NatSec space aside from political appointees, and core policymakers like Doshi, Maestro, Allison, Colby, and even Hill have worked with administrations irrespective of party affiliation.
Not really. What we're seeing today is similar to what was being discussed in 2010 [0]. Heck, this failed missile attempt confirms capabilities that were being discussed in 2010 [1].
[0] - https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2010/4/22/us-iran-strike-stil...
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/middleeast/29missil...
It's just another case of history - endlessly - repeating.
Classic. An advanced tech US missile hits a school and kills 200 schoolgirls? "A tragic mistake, it happens in war". A much less advanced Iranian rocket hits a building? "Terrorists! They point their weapons at civilians!"
Since Iran was attacked and it has a right to defend itself, we should give it more precise weapons so it can hit directly the military headquarters in central Tel Aviv.
Trying to hit the Burj Khalifa without targeting any military or high political office is terrorism.
When Iran launched at military bases or tried to shoot at planes, it was not called terrorism.
It's really not credible to claim that Iran has made any serious efforts to hit the Burj Khalifa, they would have succeeded if they wanted to do this.
* hit any hospital
* blow up any school
* nor murder any journalists.
Yet, despite this stunning lack of accuracy from ... "the terrorists", they have somehow managed to hit EVERYTHING ELSE they were aiming at.
On the other hand, the "West", who are absolutely NOT terrorists, have managed to blow up schools, slaughter hundreds and hundreds of school children, smash multiple hospitals, take out as many health workers & first responders as possible with double tap strikes ...
and let's not even mention the number of journalists deliberately targeted & killed, nor the families of journalists, deliberately targeted & killed
And to answer the "but they killed 25 million of their own civilians just weeks ago", it would be almost churlish to point out that the MASSIVE pro-Iran public sentiments expressed by ALL sectors of Iranian society would, to a logically thinking person, lead one to conclude that perhaps, just perhaps, the media campaign behind those riots was just pushing a complete LIE. Because those reports don't fit in a reality where, under direct bombardment and personal risk, those same civilians are supporting their state, their government & their leadership.
As always, the simplest explanations which fit observable facts are usually closest to the actual truth. And the simplest explanation is that the "definitely NOT terroristic" West has been lying about Iran, consistantly, for decades.
Either that, or the Mango Mussolini is the new Oracle of Delphi.
Go pick the hill you want to stand on ...
> Its a mystery...
Not a mystery, though, is it? Israel has excellent air defense which is why the damage isn't x10 worse. But Iran is definitely making a huge effort to hit the civilian population for maximum damage.
Unlike Iran which is literally aiming statistical weapons at population centers, the US has high accuracy weapons - the school was hit because intelligence wasn't up to date (it used be an IRGC building).
Your comment is absolutely misinformed, or worse, spreading disinformation on purpose.
People who have unyoked from Zionist mental-control have dozens, if not 100s of independent journalistic outlets, mostly online, where they can (and ARE) following to get some sense of what's really happening. Hence your frustration.
Its not for nothing that "every accusation is a confession" is now a phrase which has spread across the globe, in relation to the Zionist entity and its hasbara. So, your "spreading disinformation on purpose" accusation is really your confession.
They've also sucessfuly been used against energy and military infrastructure.
Examples being the AMIA bombing or their mercenaries in Hezbollah firing rockets at Kiryat Shmona well through the 90s
And the friends are hosting american soldiers and bases.
I kind of doubt it's enough. This wouldn't be another 9/11, it would be merely be retaliation.
The Japanese and Al Qaeda framed their attacks defensively. An attack on the homeland is an attack on the homeland. I wouldn’t put it past Iran. But you’d rapidly see political consensus to ensure the regime is destroyed at all costs, including and up to leaving a power vacuum and humanitarian crisis.
It’s pretty fucking stupid. Convening the top brass above ground, failing to scatter the navy, bombing Azerbaijan and Qatar and Oman. I’m not saying the individual actors are dumb. But the result of the competing centers of power between the IRGC, military proper, clerical establishment and god knows who else produces a stupid strategy.
Tactically, this would mean not concentrating senior leadership above ground. Scattering their navies out of port. Targeting U.S. military bases and not the civilian infrastructure around them.
Only problem is the Twelfth Imam has been dead for a thousand years.
They may not be stupid, but they consistently act based on counterfactual beliefs.
But once we start shooting they will obviously shoot back and we're many steps further away from the desired "agree to disagree and live together anyway" outcome that is the only way to peace.
I mean the US tried this too with Afghanistan. Many lives lost, trillions of dollars wasted and everything was back to 'normal' in two weeks.
Change has to come from within and the thing is this was actually happening in Iran. Now with military law and the regime uniting people against a common enemy this is much further away.
Diplomacy was working fine, per high-ranking diplomats: https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2026/03/18/americas-...
United States, a fundamentalist fanatic country: https://bsky.app/profile/gregsargent.bsky.social/post/3mhgag...
Yeah, what's it about peoples of the third world that they're always fanatical, that they're always out to destroy the first world... https://theconversation.com/orientalism-edward-saids-groundb... / https://archive.vn/HoEk5
Loved your link, but I doubt it is going to change anyone who thinks Israel and US are doing the god's work here.
Iran is also oddly moderate from the region (beyond the whole death to America thing).
I mean they hate Israel way more than us and they never attacked them either (until this war obviously). And regime change was already happening there slowly. They would have become more moderate, the public opinion inside Iran was more and more against them especially since what they did to the protesters.
This war was unnecessary and only cemented the regime's hold on their people by giving them an external enemy.
Iran has sponsored, built and trained organizations all over the middle east so they could destroy Israel: Hamas, the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and groups in Iraq are all proxies propped up by Iran.
Iran was the first to attack Israel, this happened in 2024 when Israel killed Nasrallah (Hezbollah) and Iran fired hundreds of ballistic missiles directly at Israel.
Iran hates the US way more than Israel, but Israel is closer so obviously they are directing their efforts according to what's plausible. Iran calls the US and Israel "the big satan" and "little satan" in almost all internal communication. Just a couple of weeks ago the entire Iranian parliament chanted "death to America" and "death to Israel" (you can see the videos online). Iran had US flags laid out on the floor of their facilities so that anyone going by will walk over the US flag.
Despite being very uncomfortable, the war is probably necessary because as seen by Iran's attack on Diego Garcia, they have way longer range than previously thought, they have a deposit or military grade uranium enough for 10-12 bombs, they were completely dishonest about their nuclear programs, and waiting until Iran had nukes meant you couldn't ever stop them. You'd have another North Korea but ten times worse, as the Iranian regime is truly a fundamentalist insane leadership. Trump may be unhinged but he's right about Iran using nukes if they had them.
This launch demonstrates that if the answer to both of those questions is still no, they can still place them at threat.
So have the USA & Israel I suspect.
Edit: am I wrong? Can copium in fact save inferior boats from a vastly superior military force?
- Iran has structured the functioning of its government and military to be highly resilient to decapitation. Every function has redundancy and every military unit can exercise autonomy. Their goal is to build a theocratic revolution around an ideology and not a personality, and intentionally built a system to survive a hostile environment.
- You have to find what you want to destroy and quantity can out last highly sophisticated and expensive systems. They have been aware of satellite imaging for some time and almost certainly have planned for closing the straight against the US navy for decades. What they have going for them is asymmetric warfare that relies on mass and surprise. For instance, the $20,000 drone that requires multiple $4mm interceptors to stop. They can just keep dropping those randomly indefinitely on their time table and burn a steady supply of interceptors that are increasingly spread out then roll out the hypersonic missiles they have but haven’t even used yet knowing the defenses have been spread thin across an ever increasingly wide region as they demonstrate the radius of attack they have. Ground warfare would be against an enemy who has fortified and prepared for decades with full awareness of our capabilities as we demonstrated them globally.
- the idiocy of a talk show host leading a military commanded by a real estate developer turned reality tv show host with delusions of megalomaniacal grandeur can self defeat any military against any foe
Regarding the substance of your comment: I'm not sure I agree about being resilient to decapitation, as the US and Israel have apparently become very skilled at locating the people they want to kill. But I agree with all the rest, especially regarding that bloviating ass, Hegseth.
Israel has been assassinating people for decades. They’re aware that the strategy would be this one. They’ve designed an organizational structure that’s not dependent on individuals. That’s why you see a lot of the senior leaders have had very varied roles over the years - like wildly so. No one in their organization is indispensable, and the supreme ayatollah is a title not a person. They elected his son in coma as a message that the person isn’t relevant, it’s a symbolic role with invested power in the role not the person.
There’s no reason to believe assassinating individuals will achieve very much. It has not seemed to slow them down an iota so far, and I think at this point we have done enough personal damage to their leadership that there is no way to end the war. Even if we stop, it will go one through terrorism and proxy wars at a greater clip than ever before. Only an invasion will work, and I suspect that would be next to impossible to succeed at.
I do not think the US will win this. If we had had a plan, had enlisted allies, had prepared perhaps. But Trump just thought this was like Venezuela and YOLO’ed not realizing it’s not a dictatorship there.
Look at how Ukraine has denied Russia access to most of the Black Sea. It's going to be real hard to stop Iran from creating enough uncertainty to ease the worries of the shipping world. Iran will have to say they are done threatening the straight.
For Iran, it seems the regime will stay in power, you can't remove them from the air. The geography and population size of Iran will prove more challenging than Iraq or Afghanistan. There is very little support for Trump's War. They never sought to persuade the people, it appears they have no plan b (which they wish to be illegal /s)
Hubris is an apt way to describe Trump's approach to Iran. One evidence to this is that they thought Venezuela was the model for Iran. A SA dictator is nothing like a religious movement that has taken root for ~50 years.
What does winning look like for the US & Israel? Trump has already claimed they won, but have more winning to do. What they have said changes daily and between who's talking. I imagine this will continue after hostilities end, they will backfill their goals to claim they "won", like so many other things they do this with.
The real winners from this? Probably Russia and China more than others.
https://en.defence-ua.com/news/ukraine_could_equip_its_f_16s...
> previously-unknown
It was implied by Iran's space program.
There's a reason most regional powers also invested in a space program as well as a civilian uncles program. The name of the game is dual-use technologies.
The Biden admin also warned about Iran-NK collaboration on building these kinds of capabilities [0]
[0] - https://www.janes.com/osint-insights/defence-news/us-officia...
I know its just a typo but lol'ed so hard
They’ve been doing this across the region. Some of this looks like individual commanders taking strategic decisions into their own hands. But it’s absolutely false that neutrality has protected anyone in the region.
No. Azerbaijan hosts no U.S. bases. Also, the Gulf hosts U.S. bases in part to protect against Iran. Blowing up hotels while missing American warships underlines why Iran is a shit neighbor.
The fact that we have to pick out a single neighbour they haven’t attacked sort of lands the point.
How about now?
Sure, if you’re Turkmenistan or Afghanistan, the latter which is being bombed by Pakistan, you’re fine. Also if you’re Azerbaijan, fuck you.
What’s the argument? Like, Oman was trusted by parts of Tehran on diplomatic matters. They still got bombed. Trying to rationalize this is untenable—it was a stupid strategy of throwing toys out of the pram.
Azerbaijan does intelligence cooperation with Israel, against Iran, so it's not a neutral party.
Oman, also shares their facilities to the US military.
> It is understood the attempted air strike occurred before the UK agreed to let the US use British military bases to hit Iranian sites targeting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/02/middleeast/us-b2-bombers-dieg...
To be clear, I'm not saying I support any of this Iran nonsense from Trump. I am very much against him meddling in the ME.
The same Iran that just launched missiles at Diego Garcia, a critical American base? The same one that severely damaged Qatari LNG infrastructure two days ago? The same one that continues sending missile and drone attacks at various targets? Has effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz and forced a +50% spike in oil prices? Ruled by the regime that has no intention of going anywhere?
We must have different definitions of destroyed.
This is incorrect. It’s grinding to a stalemate.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-authorizes-tempor...
They attacked the UK in Cyprus at the start of the war back when the UK refused to allow any of it's bases to be used by the US. Stop spreading propaganda.
Iran is showing the world (especially Europe), that it's more vulnerable than it thinks. Europe has more skin in the game than just the price of oil and nitrogen. Also think about what would happen if Iran is able to recreate something like the Cuban missile crisis now that we've moved a bunch of our military assets to the middle east.
Why time the medium range missiles now? It seems like yet another own-goal for this desperate and poorly coordinated regime.
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.
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.
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.
Sobering, and (speaking as an American) all too familiar here at home.
Cults suck.
They're willing to sacrifice the rest of us, just like the mullahs. As long as other people are hurting more, MAGA is happy to sacrifice whatever is asked of them.
It's a literal cult. To understand that, all you have to do is imagine a Biden, an Obama, or a Harris saying and doing the things Trump has said and done in the last 30 days alone. "Some of you may die, and gas prices may go up for a while, but that's a chance I'm willing to take. Oh, also, Imma need 'bout $200 billion, kthx."
It's a transaction: they'll pay more for gas for a month to feel strong and powerful. That's a good exchange. They feel like they're winning. But there's no way they're putting their life on the line for anything.
So no, it's not a sacrifice. If they were to lose their position of strength they'd roll over in a second. Not just the followers but the leaders too. I mean imagine if Hegseth or Trump was captured by Iran. They would shit their pants give them anything they want. Anything to get back to their comfortable bed. Because they have zero principles. You don't need priciples if you're not being tested. That's why bullies bully, because they think there are no consequences.
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.
Iran is more united than ever because of the imperialist war. That is what you get when you turn state leaders into martyrs.
And there is no way for anyone to know what Iranians actually think now. No one does the polls there now.
There are massive protests in favor of the Republic every day. You can not deny the evidence.
IRGC has a lot of support. We tend to think of educated Iranians from abroad. But they have their share of religious nutters.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
They’re being razed by domestic forces. Think of every Redditor who wants to see revolution.
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.
Do you know what Khomeini did to his fellow leftist who toppled the Shah?
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.
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.
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.
That sounds very bad when you translate it into German.
The might be a reason the whole region hates Israel and the US. Just saying.
The "whole region" fears Iran more than they hate the US, judged by their behavior.
It is the Saudis and the other monarchists and oligarchs that have decided to sell out their countries to the US and Israel. They fear their own people more than anything else.
Iran is the only country in the region who has supported the Palestinians. Everyone else has looked the other way. Iran has not invaded any other country. It is Israel that keep the region in a constant state of war.
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.
They explicitly call for the destruction of Israel.
It’s tempting to turn adversary into heroism. But the truth is Iran has supported the laughter of Gazans and Yemenis to keep war away from its shores for a few more years. These proxies need to rule ruthlessly, like their parent, because they’re violent, ruthless and cruel regimes. Powerful. But no paragon, and certainly not one who give two shits about Western notions of who is committing genocide or war crimes against whom.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Israel_proxy_conf...
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.
Iran has been funding murderous militias like Hezbollah , Houtis and fighting a proxy war for years.
The US started all this with the 1953 coup in Iran, and Israel was from its inception an extremely aggressive and expansionist country.
It's basically bait for WW3, and luckily so far the EU particularly are not biting.
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.
It didn't have to be this way but they decided this to turn into a fight of survival for Iran and destroy any option for a peaceful resolution. Now they are going to pay the price.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – Supreme Leader
Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi – Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces
Major General Mohammad Pakpour – Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC
Brigadier General Aziz Nasirzadeh – Minister of Defense
Mohammad Shirazi – Head of Supreme Leader’s military office
Ali Larijani – Senior national security chief
Esmaeil Khatib – Minister of Intelligence
Gholamreza Rezaian – Iranian police intelligence commander
Gholamreza Soleimani – Basij paramilitary commander
Saleh Asadi – Head of military intelligence at Khatam‑al Anbiya
Has there been any other war in which one side so quickly killed the leadership of the other side?
We like to think we're winning, but are we ? Iran leadership is supposedly decimated, missile capabilities destroyed etc. And yet, when Israel attacked their gas field, they immediately wiped out 17% of Qatari gas productions capacities which will take 5 years to rebuild and they could have wiped out everything. Seems their leadership structure is doing just fine.
As for all the killed - what did we actually achieve ? Replace Khamenei with his son - a guy who had all of his family blown up to pieces by US / Israeli ? That should do wonders to Iran's future relationship with those countries.
Only places that falsely believed to be immune due to being of same blood, like Qatar.
>Replace Khamenei with his son - a guy who had all of his family blown up to pieces by US / Israeli
Rumor has it son was also blown up, just not completely (supposedly disfigured with leg missing) and is most likely hiding in Moscow.
It is clear the initial aim was to decapitate the leadership and expect capitulation of some form or another to follow. This obviously hasn't happened, and so the fallout grows by the day.
It is really not an accomplishment to murder someone in their own house when they have not been hiding.
Khamenei was already very old.
His security begged him to evacuate but he asked them if they can evacuate all Iranians. If they can't why should he get special treatment?
He knew he could serve his country best by becoming a martyr.
Meanwhile Israeli leader Netanyahu is so afraid to come out of his hole that people are wondering if he is still alive.
Any credible source for this?
1. Western media is not credible because West treats Iran as enemy
2. Iranian media is not credible because they obviously want to hide facts when they're negative
Now my question is, why are you spreading unverifiable information as something credible and building your facts on top of it?
>36,500 killed in 400 cities... Our Editorial Board has now obtained more detailed information provided by the IRGC Intelligence Organization to the Supreme National Security Council.
they are an Iranian opposition outfit funded but the Saudis. (https://www.iranintl.com/en/202601255198)
There are zero verified sources of any mass killings by the Iranian government. In fact all evidence points to Mossad agents committing the mass killings of Iranian government officials as caught on video, including the wrestler that was just executed for killing a police officer with a machete, on video.
For tens of thousands? No. That’s the upper end of estimates. For the brutality? Yes. Wikipedia is a good start.
No, you can’t. One, it exceeds Iran’s population. Two, no known method of estimation produces a reasonable guess at those levels.
> there is no credible source in this scenario
There are. There aren’t if you assume ex ante they don’t exist, or if you’re committed to ignoring them.
As I said, West considers Iran as enemy, used words by BBC reflects this clearly.
1. "accused of" - we don't know, but lets say they're "accusing" them
2. if true, then they have killed the "police officers" (seems many?) so what do you expect from Iran?
And let us not act like the decades of sanction were not designed to do exactly this. Sanctions mean you create as much hardships as possible for the people in hope they topple their government. They nearly never work but here we are.
> Contrary to popular belief, economic sanctions are ineffective in fulfilling their objectives. Historical observations from Russia to Cuba and Iran reveal that the more sanctions are designed to pressure the ruling class, the harder ordinary citizens are hit. Leaders often perceive sanctions as a means to enhance nationalism, portraying the United States and its allies as hostile. In many instances, such actions have only strengthened their hold on power while stifling dissent internally.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yljdgwppzo
As for the protests, the truth is also that these were not peaceful protests. Mossads agents had been arming people and instructing them to riot. Hundreds of police offers have been murdered and mosques have been burned down. Mossad agents have been instructed to fire at protestors to increase the death toll.
Yes, there has been valid criticism and unhappiness with the government. But most of these people had been protesting for economic reasons. They didn't want to see their country invaded.
Today many of the people that had protested in January are joining the mass demonstrations in favor of the Islamic Republic. The war has united the Iranians.
Source?
> “Foreign actors are arming the protesters in Iran with live firearms, which is the reason for the hundreds of regime personnel killed,” wrote Tamir Morag, the diplomatic correspondent for Israel’s Channel 14, during the uprising. “Everyone is free to guess who is behind it.” Morag and his network are well known for their close ties to Netanyahu.
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/iran-ministry-of-intelligence...
You also find the some information in a Israeli Newspaper:
> On December 29, what is dubbed the Mossad X/Twitter account in Farsi encouraged Iranians to protest against the Iranian regime, telling them that it is literally physically with them at the demonstrations.
> “Go out together into the streets. The time has come,” the Mossad wrote. “We are with you,” it added. “Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field.” [...]
> Foreign actors had armed Iranians to help them fight against the regime’s forces being used to crack down on and oppress protesters, Channel 14’s Tamir Morag reported Tuesday. Iran’s foreign minister retweeted the report for his own agenda.
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-883524
See also interview with Prof. Marandi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-tcwcon30M
He claims the a nurse was burned alive in a clinic by rioters.
All according to the numbers confirmed by Iranian government.
God, the moral depravity of defending the IRGC and islamic regime is mind boggling. You can still be against Mossad and what they do in Iran while holding the islamic regime accountable for its own atrocities.
So, how many have been killed in those two days of massacre exactly?
A credible source please, and "killed", not "accused of killing", "allegedly killed" etc.
I was following this news in real-time at that time. One thing I noticed was that media outlets started killing/withdrawing many of their stories.
That made me mighty suspicious.
This feels far too much like Iranian government propaganda to be plausible.
Let me even quote an Israeli newspaper:
> On December 29, what is dubbed the Mossad X/Twitter account in Farsi encouraged Iranians to protest against the Iranian regime, telling them that it is literally physically with them at the demonstrations.
> “Go out together into the streets. The time has come,” the Mossad wrote. “We are with you,” it added. “Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field.” [...]
> Foreign actors had armed Iranians to help them fight against the regime’s forces being used to crack down on and oppress protesters, Channel 14’s Tamir Morag reported Tuesday. Iran’s foreign minister retweeted the report for his own agenda.
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-883524
It would be very surprising if they didn't. Heck FBI was doing it to citizens at one point, during war against terror.
This doesn't change the fact that Iran is the aggressed party in an invasion of an incredibly aggressive US-Israel axis that seem to revel in death.
You can hate the Iranian murderous regime, and also understand that it is fighting against another evil, murderous regime.
You would prefer to tell people in Iran who oppose the regime to take up arms (which they don't have) and fight IRGC soldiers with better training and more resources?
Best case, if they did, Iran would end up in a situation like Syria. Would that be an improvement?
More likely, it would simply be a massacre.
Let's not pretend that the US and Israel regimes have the best interest of the Iranian people in mind. They want murder.
Edit: and even people celebrating in Iran itself, which seems incredibly brave.
"videos posted on social media showed joy and defiance elsewhere, with people cheering as a statue was toppled in the city of Dehloran in Ilam province, dancing in the streets of Karaj city, near Tehran in Alborz province, and celebrating in the streets of Izeh in Khuzestan province. In the town of Galleh Dar in southern Iran, people knocked down a monument commemorating Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic in 1979, a video on social media showed."
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/polarised-ira...
Even The Guardian, as anti-Trump as a source can be, reported that "videos shared widely on social media also showed people celebrating, dancing, honking car horns and setting off fireworks as news of the leader’s death broke."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/01/celebration-or...
I am very skeptical of war propaganda. You would do well to be skeptical of it too.
The US and Israel have been carpet bombing Iran for weeks now, blowing up hospitals, schools, power plants and residential buildings, yet the Iranian death toll is "only" around 1,500 so far. Yet we are to believe that Iran killed 40k of its own people in a day - you would literally be able to see piles of corpses from space!
Israel has also claimed that they've hacked every traffic camera in Tehran, yet are mysteriously unable to provide any actual evidence of the supposed massacre - meanwhile, Iran released several videos showing foreign agitators distributing weapons, people attacking civilians etc.
No they haven't. The US started phasing out carpet bombing[0] half a century ago. You discredit yourself by making such trivially falsifiable assertions.
The US and Israel use precision strikes. It is why the ratio of targets per sortie is by far the highest ever recorded in a major conflict.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpet_bombing
One can argue whether or not it is a good idea for the bombs to be flying around in the first place, but there is no version of physics that allows anyone to avoid collateral damage as a practical matter.
Use words and phrases correctly, or expect an argument.
However, the above commenter suggested the U.S. has phased out carpet bombing, and while I'm suspect of that, we know with certainty that Israel will happily "carpet bomb" an area if it can string together a few words justifying it.
Even if it's true that what they've done isn't technically carpet bombing in the sense that they may not just dropping bombs out of planes indiscriminately, the same effect can be achieved with nominally "targeted" strikes now, especially with many of these being conducted by automated "targeting" systems.
Seriously, it's unlikely in this age of advanced weaponry that we'd see carpet bombing like we did in Vietnam, when the U.S. and Israel are capable of creating the same effect, but with thousands of supposedly tactical strikes over the entirety of some densely populated area.
And regardless of the USA, Israel is most certainly not above carpet bombing civilians.
Why would you expect a precision bomb to have a JDAM package? That is not the only type of guidance package. In fact, most of the footage I've seen (largely Israeli) has clearly been laser-guided bombs. They aren't the same thing, and the latter is more precise than JDAM in any case.
Use of precision-guided bombs in a city is not "carpet bombing".
You’re parroting IRGC propaganda, which is why people are arguing with you.
“We are innocent civilians and the Israelis are carpet bombing us”… said by the people that funded October 7th and killed more of their own people than the Israeli bombs did.
Iran’s government has been violently belligerent for decades, and continues to this day to bomb its Arab neighbours including hitting their civilians! They don’t get to whine about the morality of civilian versus military deaths.
I swear, it's almost as if the anti-Israel mob _wants_ it to be true.
The original reporting was carefully phrased to make it sound like IDF soldiers were "sniping" little children, taking careful aim and deliberately shooting them in the head, which is... monstrous.
Where this narrative starts to breaks down is that snipers don't aim for the head, because it's too small a target. Additionally, most of the reports mentioned that the children were shot "in the street" in scuffles with ordinary army grunts, so where were these mysterious "child-murdering snipers"? How were they so reliably hitting small moving targets in the head?
It turns out that this phenomenon was a product of Gaza's demographics combined with survivorship bias.
Half of Gaza's population is under 18! Teenagers are technically "children", but they're out in the streets throwing rocks or whatever at IDF troops, and get shot at in return. The ones that get hit by half a dozen rounds to the chest die on the spot and aren't taken to hospital because obviously, hospitals are for people that can be saved, not the dead. All of the reports of "children getting shot in the head" were coming from surgeons in hospitals, but they were seeing a biased sample: victims that only got hit once had a chance to survive. Similarly, a minor head-wound isn't instantly lethal, whereas a single round centre-mass typically is. So they were seeing victims with single shots to the head instead of multiple to the chest. They then cooked up a narrative that would explain what they were seeing, not realising that the cause wasn't "evil child murdering snipers", but simply a statistically biased view of a war that is not especially more unethical than any other armed conflict.
Here's a video from last year of an elderly man carrying a white flag being shot in the head: https://www.wgbh.org/tv-shows/newshour/clip/war-in-the-holy-... (this news site removed the moment of impact but I'm sure you can still find it)
Here's a video of IDF in the West Bank head-shotting an unarmed elderly man who posed no threat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_David_Ben_Avraham In this one, the man had converted to Judaism after feeling an affinity to the religion due to his grandfather saving the lives of more than 10 Jews during the 1929 Hebron massacre. His Aliyah request was denied, and he was executed while attempting to visit a settlement (by invitation) for Torah study
This one from 2018 was widely circulated (this victim was shot in the leg, although based on the IDF recording here many had assumed this was also a headshot): https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/10/video-appears-...
Here's a very detailed report on 15 aid workers in Gaza being executed at point blank range and dumped into a mass grave last year: https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/israeli-soldiers-tel-sultan-g...
These are just ones that come to mind as some of the most brutal ones, but there are many, many more videos of the IDF executing unarmed Palestinians who are posing no threat by head-shot. And for every one we see there are likely 4 or 5 more which we don't see because they weren't independently recorded.
ffs
For example, there's thousands of people still screeching online that the US deliberately bombed little girls in Iran. No, they hit a girls school by accident, it used to be an IRGC military base building and is surrounded by IRGC buildings!
I don't condone Israel's actions in Gaza, nor do I condone the US/Israeli attacks on Iran.
Having said that, it's important in a war -- irrespective of what side one is supporting or opposing -- not to believe exaggerations or outright lies.
War is bad enough, we don't have to sprinkle imaginary horrors on top of the real ones!
In the worst case, if too many people spout transparently obvious propaganda, then that discounts the believability of the true horrors. This is most obvious today with the "that's just a fake AI video" retorts, but before it was "fake news", or whatever.
Diluting the truth harms it.
Without going into too much detail, my position and line of work means that I have to keep very informed on the middle east and so far I've seen a lot of hatred, and very little factual basis. In fact every single person I personally talked to was very uninformed on these matters which is fine, as long as you accept it and don't form extreme opinions on entire countries.
If Israel doesn't want people to form "extreme opinions" about them then maybe they should stop oppressing and murdering poeple with a compete disregard for human life.
Forensic Architecture is one of the most reputed organizations for this line of work.
Their reports are read with great deal of respect here on HN and they cover more than this conflict. If they don't count as credible and competent, nothing will satisfy you -- the moral equivalent of covering one's eyes and ears.
So I will appreciate if you stop this sham of yours of asking for a citation.
While you are at it, do better than ad hominem. I am still waiting to hear an argument about the content of the extensive and methodical report.
For HN audience, the report was discussed on HN here
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47136179
He's in there as well, truly unapologetic Zionist.
I don't go on HN for political topics, but as it turns out I am fairly well versed in this specific topic, and I don't like it when people paint the wrong picture on behalf of some truly bad actors.
Do you guys hear yourselves? Your posts being flagged all over should give you an indication of how it sounds.
Sadly, my country does this too, pay shills to promote their party line on Whatsapp.
I really wish Europe got it's shit together soon.
Your link that you posted everywhere was to a single comment before you edited it (on all comments!) to point to something else. So not only did I not ask for a report, but you can't even be consistent with your own spam.
Low effort.
Go waste someone's time on Twitter.
The links that I posted as a reply to you, are all there, unedited, repeated as you noted and as a response to you asking HN members for reports of IDF targeting civilians.
For someone claiming low effort, you still haven't done any better than ad hominem about the report.
I have wasted more time on you than you deserve. So that's it from me to you.
Not condoning anyone but shows the priority of both sides.
This one was just this week: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-execution-teen-wrestler-ja...
So there's that.
Iran might have at best have a self-regime change, at worst split in 3. Now that the war is on, the regime consolidated.
The evil of your enemy does not excuse your own strategic stupidity or cruelty.
Would you attack the US because they "murdered" thousands of Germans to take down Hitler in WW2?
If you have a problem with those laws and think our borders should be wide open, that's of course a different matter, and one you should take up with Congress, which makes the laws.
I think those laws should be changed by the way, to be much friendlier towards Hispanic immigrants. They share our cultural values and are easy for the US to assimilate in my opinion, so long as they're properly vetted for obvious criminal behavior, ability and motivation to work, etc.
Before I get downvoted to hell Im not conding anything or taking any side, just pointing out an obvious deduction
"Rights groups said the trio were executed without a fair trial and had given confessions under torture."
> The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency has recorded more than 7,000 killings, with the vast majority being protesters, while warning the toll could be far higher.
Neither CBS News nor this agency are friends of the factions you mention. Facts are stubborn things.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/15/what-is-hrana-the-u...
Literally all Israeli casualties were civilian.
Your comment made me realize international media doesn't care to even publish this, leading to this incredibly skewed view.
I'd edit my previous comment but I can't.
Of course it will be hard to completely avoid civilian casualties in the long run, I fear but yeah Iran has been pretty measured. Iran's fight is with the US imperialists and Israel and not the people that live in the region.
Surely the US are using civilians as human shields?
That is why they constantly lie about Hamas using human shields. Every accusation is a confession with these people.
They had years and years to correct the open source maps and inform the world at large about the presence and location of the girls school, but didn't?
Imagine being a parent of such a child, being informed enough to understand what the regime aspires to (ballistic nuclear missiles), and what a large number of nuclear powers think about this. If you are that parent, would you be happy with your child being sent to a school on the grounds of a military base? They risk being the first casualties in war. Obviously, in this fun society of Iran, these parents had no choice, for if they did, they would insist their children go to a different school. The victims you complain about, are indeed victims, but first and foremost victims of Iran's regime, its against the statutes of Rome to use human shields.
A hotel is not a military target, a military complex is.
I do think international law is up for some modernization with regards to human shields etc. An improved law (that recognizes the existence of open source maps) could mandate every nation to mark the locations of schools etc.
If however you place the school as a human shield (war crime), and mark that shield on an open map, such international law should legitimize war unless a deadline to move the school is met.
If a military complex is not marked as having a childrens school, while in fact there is, then its a war crime too.
Then there will be no silly forum discussions on who's fault these casualties are, the goal of regulation is to prevent misery, not to point fingers afterwards.
They are infamous for fulminating against liberals, plotting to kill enemies, torturing and hanging dissidents from cranes, persecuting minorities and women, funding terror cells, and fleecing their citizens to enrich themselves.
Many of the comments here suffer from a misguided refusal to be impressed by the regime's reputation, as though anyone the American establishment criticises must automatically be righteous.
You have to thank the actions of the genocidal State of Israel that anything below it is somewhat acceptable. Reaping what they sow themselves.
Israel and Iran somewhat independently came to the conclusion that they’re the regional hegemon, and that protecting that position is worth any cost.
This left Israel similar to the USA post 9/11 or Peal Harbor. On a streak to make it never happen again in a very decisive/brutal way. Hegemony wasn't the moving factor for Israel, at least until very late in the war, and due to the same reasons
Locally, yes. Iran not condemning those attacks was a fuckup.
More broadly, this is the Levant versus Persia, a power contest as old as civilization.
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-israel-hamas-stri... https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-fighters-trained...
The attack plan of October 7 is generally so similar to the attack plan prepared for Hezbollah by the IRGC, that it is not surprising it is one and the same.
That's why Israel in this current conflict early on made moves on Iran and why the end game is this war.
> More broadly, this is the Levant versus Persia, a power contest as old as civilization.
Wasn't it more, Egypt and Greece vs Persia while the Levant was rapidly conquered?
People always ask here why the community flags every post on these issues. Comments like this are why. Hardly anyone on this site knows even basic information on the nations involved.
If I were in charge of HN, I'd geoblock anyone from commenting on the Middle East who isn't at an IP from the Middle East. I wouldn't be able to comment either, but at least there might be enlightening information in the comments.
That said, the first page of any reputable history on Iran/Israel relations would go over 1979, when Israel went from friend of Iran to foe, based on Khomeini's interpretation of Islam.
Most of their ordinance has been intercepted. And a good fraction was unguided enough that it would have hit a school or hospital.
Already has in Azerbaijan [0] and attempted in Israel [1].
Most reporting is hyper-regional and somewhat kept under wraps (eg. Qatar and UAE are actively prosecuting leakers who are using Reddit, and have even taken control of Qatar's subreddit [2]) or reported on in regional languages.
I've found the information control in this conflict to be much more strategic/professional in comparison to what was is seen in Ukraine and Russia.
[0] - https://www.euronews.com/2026/03/06/aliyev-vows-attacks-on-a...
[1] - https://www.jns.org/news/israel-news/iranian-cluster-bomb-hi...
[2] - https://www.reddit.com/r/qatar/comments/1rt2fth/timeout/
The fact Israel has a very effective defensive system (active and passive) does not mean Iranians avoid civilian targets.
So every time allied militaries protect their schools and hospitals by intercepting missiles, drones etc from Iran, you give credit to Iran?
I think it’s more that these attacks are counterproductive to Iran’s state goals, which reveals that we’re seeing a hardline faction in Iran use the war as cover for consolidating power.
We in the West, well we are aiding the US in this war by allowing it to operate from military bases in our countries. We deserve it for looking the other way while Israel has been mass murdering Palestinians for more than two years now.
At least Spain showed some guts.
Of course it will also potentially cause suffering in the global south but that is on those that started the war.
Maybe there have been further attacks today that I missed but if true that would be an huge escalation.
My last information was that China has no problem getting oil but that was like two days ago.
The sad part is how the genocide in Gaza could have been prevented:
Imagine an alternate history, in which successive precedencies didn't turn a blind eye to Iran, imagine a decade ago (regardless of democrat or republican administration) that they decided to do what they are doing today in Iran. Iran wouldn't have had the funds and resources to sponsor Hamas and Hezbollah. The populations in Gaza and Lebanon wouldn't have been sandwiched between the projected powers of Israel and Iran. Their power structures could have been legitimate democracies etc. In that world there wouldn't have been a reason for Israel to attack and invade, and even if they did in this alternate history, the rest of the world would have strongly condemned it to the point of military intervention on behalf of Gaza / Lebanon.
Always take not how a faction has risen to power initially. In the case of Iran's regime it was hostage taking. A faction will very often resort to the same tactics and methods it used during its initial ascent to power, a form of survivorship bias.
If the West hadn't let the situation of Iran rot indefinitely for decades (they even systematically rewarded the regime's behavior by systematically giving in to the hostage politics it conducted, in my opinion they should have just drawn a line and said: return these hostages unconditionally or we treat this as hiding behind a human shield).
Hezbollah came to be as a resistance group against the invasion of Lebanon by Israel.
The reason both Hamas and Hezbollah exists is because Israel.
There can not be peace in the region as long as Israel exists. They are a settler colonial state build and sustaining itself by the dead bodies and suffering of the Palestinians.
> the rest of the world would have strongly condemned it to the point of military intervention on behalf of Gaza / Lebanon.
That is completely delusional.
I Iran had fallen ten years ago, there would be no Palestinians anymore. No one would have stopped Israel from killing them. Israel would have annexed South Lebanon, part of Syria, Egypt and so on and created Greater Israel.
As you probably already know, my point was that it's a bit callous to focus on "this war is expensive and inconvenient" while innocent people are, you know, dying.
People who say Iran is "crazy" or "lashing out" are falling for the most brain dead propaganda
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce9mzn7k722o
Which is notable since it’s about the same distance from Southern Iran to Diego Garcia (3,800km) as it is from Northern Iran to London.
The question of whether the world can assume its security on some religious rulings of some Ayatollas is still standing, as these rulings can apparently be changed or bypassed.
More importantly, it's pretty clear that the geopolitical rulings are, well, geopolitical in nature. Iran is a nuclear threshold state; its strategy is to come as close to the breakout line as it can and extract concessions for not crossing it. The supposed nuclear fatwa is just public relations strategy. At the point Iran decided the cost/benefit/risk/reward of crossing the threshold made sense, it would be updated.
The parts I would soften are the specific claim about Sistani having a significant following inside the IRGC, which MIGHT be true but is much harder to substantiate publicly (although, maybe you have some behind-the-scenes knowledge?), and the certainty of motive. Still, your last sentence is basically right: these rulings are not _immutable_. After Ali Khamenei’s death, Iran’s foreign minister said (quoting the Reuters article), “fatwas depend on the Islamic jurist issuing them,” and added he was “not yet in a position to judge the jurisprudential or political views of Mojtaba Khamenei…” This reinforces the point that doctrine can shift if the leadership chooses.[5]
[1] Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Twelver Shi’ah.”
[2] Al-Islam.org, “Question 49: Difference between hukm and fatwa.” [3] Leader.ir, “Ayatollah Khamenei in the Eid al-Fitr congregational prayers” and “Leader’s remarks on anti-Iran sanctions and Yemen aggressions by Saudi Arabia.”
[4] Arms Control Association, “The Status of Iran’s Nuclear Program,” and ACA analysis citing the IAEA’s 440.9 kg figure.
[5] Reuters, “Iran says nuclear doctrine unlikely to change, Hormuz Strait needs new protocol” (March 18, 2026).
Wikipedia has romanized: [singular] marji'; plural marāji'.
Can anyone blame them for considering developing nuclear weapons for real now? I can't.
And if you tell me that US /Israel are bombing Iran to protect rights of oppressed then I have that wonderful bridge.
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.
in any case, these are the mythical WMDs found in Iraq:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/03/world/middlee...
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/world/cia-is-said-to-have...
> "These weapons were not part of an active arsenal. They were remnants from Iraq’s arms program in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war."
These are not the "WMD" that led to or had any involvement with 2003, it's dishonest to suggest so
This means there were active facilities, materials and know how even after the war
The only people saying Iran was just about to get nukes are the Israelis, who've been saying that every 5 years for the last 40 years, and the only people who fell for it are magatards
I don't understand how people fall for this shit after the Iraq war scam, which was essentially the exact same propaganda
Are you saying that politicians should be immune if they also serve a religious role?
Don't start wars. Don't assassinate neither political nor religious leaders.
I don't think much of the world has processed that Iran's ostensible lack of nuclear weapons is purely a matter of will and not capability.
Can you elaborate on what kind of strikes the Ayatollah was carrying out within the old range limit?
Im really hoping they enforced those limits by not sending them IRBMs rather than sending them and ‘not letting’ them use the full range because I’m getting the sense their proxies would rather land some flashy strikes on soft targets instead of having everything swatted down over Israel.
Wait a minute... Are you implying the dude who just got his dad, wife, brother, son and many other relatives killed by their arch enemies is not bending the knee?
Who could have predicted that?
The war of choice is really the US's Teutoburg Forest moment.
Now this may be a demonstration and veiled threat, on the other hand if Iran was to fire a missile at continental Europe I would hope that the consequence for them would be to be flattened, so...
Notably, the previous guy issued a religious decree against the development of nuclear weapons. Despite American's favorite propaganda tool for manufacturing consent, "but the WMDs", we have no reason to believe that was ever actually being violated. But you'd better believe it will be now if they think they can pull it off.
No-one believes that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons, either... or that they wouldn't if they had developed the capability.
This practice is known as taqqiya. It’s ok to lie if you’re deceiving the enemy.
Because otherwise you're comparing apples to mushrooms. Not even themselves kingdom.
“ A weapon of mass destruction is a nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological, or other device that is intended to harm a large number of people”
https://www.dhs.gov/topics/weapons-mass-destruction.
https://unterm.un.org/unterm2/en/view/UNHQ/9626F6CEB2A92C9B8...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_of_mass_destruction#Def...
Finally, if the regime does not surrender after all this, a nuke could still be used.
That’s the worlds source or revenue.
If that's the US way, why are Russians the bad guy again?
Genocidal freaks. As if Hiroshima didn't teach you anything.
Iran have been attacking uninvolved NATO member Turkey for a while now and nothing happens. The USA is already fully engaged into this war while Europe can hardly deal together with Russia, it is doubtful they'd do anything even if it rained down on their territory
To take the claims at face value, local governments that has an interest to shift blame on Israel, do not believe Iran, due to their own radar data
Turkey is led by a strongman leader and these are very sensitive to acts of public humiliation. So that's unwise when thinking about any negligible strategic advantage they may gain from these attacks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_declaration
Return West-Poland to Germany? Return Spain to the Arabs?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purim
It's fiction.
the "notable distance/unexpectedly high range" quoted everywhere seems like a nice war justification: "see, they do have rockets that can threaten us!"
Supposedly this missile was hit during the boost phase over Iran, the evidence is that it was actually targeted at Diego Garcia relies on US reports.
That’s a lot of traffic
I'll tell you a swifter method: rest of the world attack the US efforts and send them home. Then lock up the presidumb [sic] somewhere.
They stirred the hornets' nest. Now the rest of the world are getting stung, slowly dragging into an all-out war.
The rest of us could really use a regime change now--and it's not in Iran.
It's the only way to not get raped by the US whenever their supreme leader decides it's war time
Look at Libya and Ukraine for your most direct examples - give away your nukes, get invaded. South Africa is an odd example that proves the rule: they simply bend the knee to the west.
Nuclear deterrents and mutual assured destruction has been the key driver in preventing large scale conflict in the “postwar period.”
Everyone knows Israel has nukes it’s just a matter of when they can get enough public support to use them
Significantly reduce the frequency of small to medium-scale conflicts, in exchange for an inevitable, possibly apocalyptic nuclear conflict at some point. Maybe not this year, maybe not for centuries, but one day, someone will press the button.
US and Israel sneak attacked Iran during negotiations that presumably were going very well.
Iran is attacking only the countries that were involved in the attacks.
Based on the live HN dataset on HuggingFace [0], it confirms that much of HN's recent traffic doesn't align with American hours.
I've also been noticing some unused and underused accounts suddenly becoming active, showing hallmarks of an LOTL attack. Given HN's unique characteristics it is actually significantly at risk for such tactics.
I've also been messing around with the types of responses I write over the past few months as a smoke test - it feels DRAGONBRIDGE-esque.
[0] - https://huggingface.co/datasets/open-index/hacker-news
What will be interesting is what happens on HN tomorrow - Sunday is the equivalent of Monday in MENA.
Additionally, tne fact it took hours for this to get flagged is worrisome for me. I have also noticed increased usage of HackerSmacker.
HN needs a hard ban on politics and much stricter off-topic controls to reduce the risk of misuse of HN. It will make HN significantly harder to use and for diamonds in the rough to arise, but will help ensure good faith discourse amongst users
Also, this isn't meant to be a slight at the HN moderating team - they are doing commendable work, but there is a deluge that is very difficult to manage (so I can only imagine how much hard work they are putting into moderating already).
I guess that's what years of widely publicized genocide, plus illegal wars of aggression (lost count by now - Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Lebanon again, etc, etc), gets you.
People are waking up, and some are not afraid to push back publicly. Even on your perceived "stomping grounds".
No wonder this doesn't compute for you, and you have to appeal to a higher authority.
Its a big world. And it's waking up. You can't censor everybody, everywhere, all of the time.
Had something actually struck within the ADIZ there would have been massive implications. My guess is they intentionally failed as a warning shot.
This isn’t a random act and its quite the signal if you know what it means, Iran knows what it did here.
No that’s too easy.
Give hope to Iran / Islamic world for a few months, then take it away.
Unfortunately I’m not sure their current audience is gonna pick up the implied threat.
I don't think they did it this time, but they have in the past.
It's also a bit unreasonable to launch live munitions that have some 90% probability of being intercepted by a given system on a good day, while intending for "just a warning"
Because they declared them loudly.
When they launched the drone strikes on Israel, they gave Israel and the US warning time so they could be intercepted. The second time, they gave them much less warning time.
The Iranians have a long history of negotiating loudly via their actions, which anyone who's spent any reasonable amount of time studying Iran knows and has seen in action. They're really not a mystery, they're very transparent, we just don't like what they're saying.
David takes a small rock and whips it at a sensitive spot on Goliath’s ankles that most people don’t know about (Diego Garcia)
David knows Goliath will probably dodge it, and most likely kick it away given it’s importance, but there’s a point being made by shooting: if it hits then that’s a win, but if gets knocked down it’s a warning that they know where they need to hit for it to hurt
It also publicizes Iran-NK military cooperation on ballistics development, which the Biden admin warned about [0], as well as Iran-Russia military cooperation (which was obviously much less under-the-radar).
It also shows the merger of the Ukraine conflict with the West Asia conflict, and was a major reason why Fiona Hill argued we entered an unavoidable polycrisis in 2022 [1].
[0] - https://www.janes.com/osint-insights/defence-news/us-officia...
[1] - https://xcancel.com/FrankRGardner/status/2027098560647348410...
Those who they wanted to send a message to got the message, and it's a significant message up the escalation chain.
Additionally, the fact that this is being very publicly disclosed and discussed in British media in a manner that RAF Akhrioti wasn't is also a massive signal.