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Well, my first instinct is to chastise you for your recklessness, but if I'm being honest this is not much different than how I feel about Europe, so fair enough, especially if you have ties to the place.
No total regime collapse? No neighboring countries swooping in to setup a puppet state? No civil war? No refugee wave?
Iran was able to build many impressive things in-house, so I don't doubt there are many educated people there, but I distinctly remember people telling me the same thing about Syria, to the point where "doctors and engineers" became a meme.
That sounds like the good ending, but I have my doubts. "Khamenei is a religious fanatic who hates us for irrational religious reasons, and so cannot be reasoned with" is a common argument, but I can't help but notice that Putin is secular, Hussein was secular, Gaddafi was secular, Assad was secular, and none of them had better luck being seen as rational people to be reasoned with. So unless it's possible to impose a puppet regime of the US and/or Israel, I don't think a secular military government will be accepted by them any more than the theocratic one is, and so, we'll see a descent into chaos. Hope I'm wrong.
For context, I mentioned that I support regime change/oppose the government because people misunderstood my criticism of the government as "defending". I don't especially advocate for Cruz/Trump driven-regime change though I'd pray for its success.
Indeed. The powers that be do not care nor wish for human flourishing (to the extent they had good policies). Replacing the Khmer Rouge with something less bad is a net win for humanity, even if international recognition doesn't improve.
I was describing the current situation, to explain apathy/lack of significant reformist movements. A civil war would naturally create a large refugee wave, but we don't know whether continued force will cause regime change nor what any of this looks like. As I stated before, I'm skeptical of the current admin's ability to engineer a positive outcome.
Syrians were at a "higher" cultural and educational level, than other Arab countries. The "issue"'s that they supported the regime and didn't emigrate, which motivated groups deftly left out.
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