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HAPPENING NOW: ISRAEL LAUNCHES MASSIVE ATTACK AGAINST IRANESE NUCLEAR FACILITIES—AIR RAID SIRENS HEARD ALL ACROSS ISRAEL—MASSIVE AIR ACTIVITY OVER IRAQ-SYRIA BORDER—MULTIPLE EXPLOSIONS CONFIRMED IN TEHRAN INCLUDING COLLAPSED BUILDING—IRANIAN FIGHTER JETS SEEN TAKING OFF FROM AIRSTRIPS NEAR TEHRAN—BALLISTIC MISSILE LAUNCHES REPORTED IN IRAN—REPORTS OF EXPLOSIONS AT US BASES IN IRAQ—MULTIPLE EXPLOSIONS HEARD NEAR IRAN’S NATANZ NUCLEAR FACILITY—VIDEO FOOTAGE SHOWING NATANZ NUCLEAR FACILITY BURNING—UNCONFIRMED REPORTS THAT THE CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE IRANIAN MILITARY HAS BEEN KILLED IN A TARGETED STRIKE
—Inb4 source
—Inb4 “low effort post ban” Additional facts and my thoughts will be added as the situation develops
Our greatest ally is now putting American lives in danger by publishing that America was complicit in the attack
Trump's truth social posts suggest otherwise.
Wouldn't be surprised if it's the other way around. Trump encourages Netanyahu to go for the attack. The hawks in Israel have been aching to go at it for the last decade. Not only would the US have to complicit, it would need to have given an explicit go ahead.
I'm surprised that the Islamic Republic of Iran has stood for as long as it has. The urban areas don't want the conservatism. Khamenei is at death's door. Succession is unclear. Economy has been doing worse YOY and elite human capital leaves the country on first opportunity.
I know the Persians are a civilized people, so they may not resort to brute force violence. But, 30 years of stability under a continuously deteriorating economy is unheard of.
This is the same question I have: how many sustained humiliations can a government endure and still maintain a sufficient level of popular support? Like you can only blame the perfidy of the Great Satan for so long before the buck eventually stops with you. I’m seeing that Fox News apparently reported that the Israelis managed to dupe the entire leadership of Iran’s air force into a fake meeting before taking them all out. If this sort of thing happened to the American military, I have no idea how the government could continue to stand.
Is the fear of what regime collapse would mean for the country so pervasive that the Persian people will continue to tolerate the status quo? Perhaps I’m just a naïve American, wildly overestimating how much power the people of Iran have to effect a regime change even if they wanted to. Are the traumatic memories of life under the Shah, fifty years ago, really still so fresh that the Iranian people will continue to roll the dice on the Ayatollahs?
And is this actually true, or is it made up or heavily exaggerated? Fox News is not known for its even-handedness and scrupulous journalistic integrity regarding Israel and Iran.
The start of a major conflict is a breeding ground for misinformation.
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The minimum viable level of public support for an autocratic regime willing to take the gloves all the way off is above 0%, but it's probably below 20%, and Iran has enough bribes to go around/genuine believers to keep that minimum percentage for long enough that the current leadership class will die of old age before it rots. Remember ~nobody relevant believed in Communism in the USSR in the eighties either, but a few leaders had to drink themselves to death(and these are fanatical Islamic clerics, so they'll live longer than severe alcoholics) before someone was willing to back down on the project.
Interestingly, I've read recently that this common perception was actually the opposite of the truth -- the rabble and many of the mid and low level bureaucrats (i.e. people who were not fully insulated from the real world) no longer believed, but the relevant people in the upper echelons of power still mostly believed, and some quite fervently. Gorby himself did not plan to abandon Communism, he just wanted to release enough pressure to right the ship.
I’d long heard that Kruschev was the last true believer; there might obviously be true believers in important positions after that, but not necessarily in the top spots.
I had also heard that and believed it, but recently I heard a different story. I wish I could remember the source. I want to say it was Substack essay from about 1-2 years ago. I'll see if I can find it.
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What makes you think the alternative people reach for is going to be surrender?
What country has responded to urban aerial bombings with surrender? Maybe Japan but that was, you know, and also their armies had been thoroughly trounced at that point. In nearly every case I'm aware of it has stiffened the resolve of the populace and strengthened hardliners.
As long as Israel and their western support bloc shows absolutely no love or friendship for the Persian people, they're not going to throw the Ayatollah out and replace him with western moderates, they'll replace him with a hopefully more competent Ayatollah.
The Serbs during the Yugoslav wars come to mind.
Possibly, yes, although it’s far from clear to me that a more competent Ayatollah is on offer. Furthermore, I don’t interpret the U.S.’s or Israel’s enmity toward Iran as an expression of enmity toward “the Persian people”; it’s pretty obviously the Islamist revolutionary government that is the issue here. Neither Israel nor the United States have resorted to significant bombing of civilian urban infrastructure within Iran, so far as I am aware. All of the Israeli strikes I’m familiar with have been extremely targeted at Iranian regime leadership, which is in marked contrast to the more indiscriminate bombing campaigns against the Gazans by Israel, or of Iraq and Afghanistan by the United States.
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They follow Islam. They're not going to throw the Ayatollah out unless he's too liberal for them, which isn't going to happen. Islamic people like Islamic government, the stricter the better.
It’s routine for the somewhat secular elites in those countries fight low-level civil wars against islamists, or at least for the batshit islamists to terrorize the "moderate" islamists. The house of islam has always been the house of war.
It's the batshit Islamists who have the populace behind them, even if the elites are more moderate.
In Iran? The elites over there are genuinely much more religious than the populace.
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How do you square this with the existence of moderate, Western-aligned or neutral Muslim states like Jordan, the U.A.E., Bosnia, and Indonesia?
Jordan and the UAE are monarchies (like the Saudis), so they don't necessarily align to the preferences of the people. I expect Bosnia and Indonesia just haven't reached bottom yet.
Bosnia is just a bunch of Croats and Serbs who converted to avoid taxes. Demographics matter too. Iranians are quite distinct from Arabs as well. Highest IQ people in ME bar the Askenazi ofc.
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The current Israeli government continues to stand despite having apparently missed the invasion force massed on its borders.
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Reminds me of claims American Public would never stand for American soldiers being filmed as drones drop grenades on them. I don't believe that for a second, I think you people have about as much capacity as anyone else to forget previous standards. Organically, and when being whipped.
We have managed to lose three wars in living memory and none of the politicians involved suffered electoral consequences.
Do you remember the 2006 and 2008 elections? Republicans lost 14 senate seats and 52 house seats, plus the presidency. While there were certainly other issues bogging down the Republicans, their steadfastness in a losing war was the big issue.
Yes, and when Obama was elected he kept Dubya's SecDef along with most of his top generals, and after Obama we had two straight Dem nominees who voted for the Iraq war in the Senate. We did not see politicians who supported the war suffer consequences en masse.
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No, but Islam is that powerful.
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LOL. You know, the storming of the US embassy and the ensuing hostage crisis is in fact within living memory.
I mean, is that an example of “brute force violence”? If those American hostages had been captured by, say, ISIS, we would have seen high-definition videos of them being decapitated, set on fire, etc. Instead, the Iranians released all of the hostages unharmed. The only casualties from the entire incident were caused by the American military’s own incompetence in Operation Eagle Claw. (Obviously if Kenneth Kraus had been killed instead of injured and subsequently released, the story would be different, if only slightly.)
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