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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30519 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026

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Trump has given a "red line" to Iran about killing protestors, but we still aren't seeing US involvement as deaths move into the thousands, reportedly. If the regime follows through with its claims, it will be executing many if not most of the thousands it has arrested.

I have an essay on my view that the US/West/Israel should clearly intervene in the Transnational Thursday thread, but the Culture War dynamics strike me as interesting in that it's not really Culture War Classic material. Traditionally, the Left has been soft on Iran and the Right has been hawkish. Iran has tried to kill Trump and Trump officials, as revenge for the Soleimani assassination.

There's a strong anti-interventionist Right and Left. During the 12-Day War, Trump went from tweeting about regime change, to abruptly demanding cessation of hostilities, which Israel and Iran complied with. (I think had the war continued the regime would already have fallen, given how easily Israel was bombing them.) This is something that's already kicked off, unlike the Maduro rendition. My understanding is that action got more popular in the polls having succeeded, though it's an open question what Venezuela's fate will be.

The Right strongly criticized Obama for declaring a red line in Syria, and then backing off. In hindsight, I think it would have been correct to have intervened against Assad. Here, I think there's a clear cost-benefit analysis case, whether you care about the plight of the Iranian people or the amoral realist power dynamics for America First Global Superpower Edition.

Why do protests in poorer countries like Iran result in so many deaths? The police seem to enact much cruder and less effective methods at controllling the protests. In West, we seem to be much more capable of keeping large protests under control without too much violence and death.

Is it just that the regime doesn't care as much about the deaths of protesters and thinks a brutal response is more effective at deterring further protesting? Or are they just at crowd control? Sniping people from rooftops seems very ineffective relative to groups of riot police clearing out streets block by block.

Killing people seems to like a poor choice because it undermines the legitimacy of the government. If the protesters are clearly causing more harm than the government, it gives the government the moral high ground. Being overly brutal seems like a recipe for greater backlash and foreign intervention.

The Islamic regime has crowd control down to a science. They get lots of practice.

There are a lot of levels before they start killing people. These protests took quite sometime before things started getting violent and they turned telecommunications off.

You have to consider that in the West the typical protestor does not want to violently overthrow the whole system of government.

Even during the height of the Civil Rights movement or BLM, the typical protestor knows that unless they pick a fight directly with law enforcement there won't be violence. Hell, Kent State is a major piece of lore, and it was a tiny instance of violence.

So it's not necessarily about "rich" or "poor." It's more about the population, sentiment towards the government, and willingness for either side to use violence.

In West, we seem to be much more capable of keeping large protests under control without too much violence and death.

There's a difference in how existential for the regime protests are in regions like that vs in countries that have been stable for over a century are.

In the West, even a riot is mostly just the population trying to convince the government it's totes mad enough to take to the streets. Look at Jan 6th, even if they take one of the seats of government they just don't know what to do with it, they end up taking a tour of the place, it's cute. For many/most governments in the middle east, latin america, africa, even eastern europe, rioting is within living memory how your or your neighboring country's government got the job, so it's taken a bit more seriously. If a middle eastern riot takes its capitol, you can expect a lot worse than stealing a pedestal.

CBS now is also reporting a death toll of at least 12,000 people in Iran, potentially as high as 20,000.

This line appears on Al-Jazera, Turkish broadcasters etc. The numbers seem ludicrous (and I hope they're wrong) but I'm surprised what sort of outlets are carrying it. The report

The BBC and other western media frequently quoted Hamas run agencies death figures from Palestine as if they were completely accurate. Why are you surprised at media agencies using figures that support their ends?

After all, isn't "You furnish the pictures, I'll provide the war!" the basis of most sensationalist journalism?

If you're surprised by CBS news making claims like this are you unaware of their recent(well, a few months ago) purchase and change in leadership? Bari Weiss explicitly attacked the journalistic standards unit at the broadcaster, presumably because the reporting she wants them to focus on and perform would not meet those standards - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/bari-weiss-cbs-news-standards-and-practices-b2862631.html

I mean, prior to the new ownership CBS faced several high profile scandals wherein the fabricated sources, deceptively edited videos, etc. Probably anyone in the news division thats been there since before Weiss is lucky to have a job, based purely on performance.

Interesting article from the Associated Press: Here’s how AP reports on the death toll from Iran’s protests

The difficulty of tracking the death toll from Iran’s nationwide protests has been compounded by the government’s decision to cut off the internet and international calling to the country, but some information has still been getting out.

The Associated Press has been relying on figures provided by the Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has reported hundreds of deaths. The U.S.-based agency has been accurate throughout multiple years of demonstrations, relying on a network of activists inside Iran that confirms all reported fatalities.

With communications blocked in Iran, the AP has been unable to independently confirm the group’s toll. The theocratic government of Iran has not provided casualty figures for the demonstrations.

Iranian state media has provided little information about the demonstrations, making it difficult to assess the scale of the protests. Videos that have surfaced online offer brief, shaky glimpses of people in the streets or the sound of gunfire.

The AP reporting has relied on some of these videos, which likely have made it out of the country via Starlink satellite dishes. The AP authenticates such footage by checking it against known locations and events, as well as talking to regional experts. The AP also ensures the substance of the video is consistent with its own reporting.

In a different article, AP relays that organization's number but conspicuously refrains from endorsing it: Death toll from nationwide protests in Iran spikes to at least 2,000, activists say

The death toll from nationwide protests in Iran spiked Tuesday to at least 2,000 people killed, activists said, even as Iranians made phone calls abroad for the first time in days after authorities severed communications during a crackdown.

The number of dead, as reported by the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, dwarfs that in any other round of protest or unrest in Iran in decades and recalls the chaos surrounding the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The activist group said 1,847 of the dead over more than two weeks of protests were protesters and 135 were government-affiliated. Another nine children were killed, and nine civilians it said were not taking part in protests also were killed. It said over 16,700 people had been detained.

But I'm surprised what sort of outlets are carrying it.

The Gulf Arab states and Turkey don’t like Iran much either, nor do liberal Americans.

The reason that there has been no military intervention yet is that there is, at this time, no carrier group within striking distance and spinning up a offensive operation takes time. Trump is posturing for a strike. Talks have been called up. It's inevitable now: it's not a question of if, but when.

Won't matter if the in-country opposition is all dead by the time it happens.

Trump really needs to intervene militarily here now. Destroy the Revolutionary Guards headquarters and take out their top brass. This minimizes deaths of Iranian people. Falsely telling the Iranian people that he'd help so they risk their lives and die only for Trump to later back out and allow the regime to continue would be an abject moral failure.

If Trump can properly fix Venezuela, Iran and Cuba by replacing their regimes with sane governments he'll genuinely deserve the Nobel peace prize.

would be an abject moral failure.

Don't tempt him further! :D

replacing their regimes with sane governments

The Iranian government is approximately sane. They need their religious fervor in order to (1) sustain their already low TFR, (2) incentivize high births among the intelligent [who otherwise would leave or not have so many kids], and (3) encourage bravery among the men who will certainly be dying against Israel this century. It doesn’t hurt that (4) it also promotes alliances with other Muslims in the region. Without Islam, Arabs would be a lot less resistant to the idea of America and Israel completely destroying them. If you were dictator of Iran and had the best interest of Iranians at heart, IMO you would be forced to retain the religious component of their governance, even without considering the huge gains in life satisfaction that come with religiosity. (And even the veil — women having to wear a modest veil likely increases their happiness given the longterm problems that come with the culture of appearance-obsession that plagues Western women).

The idea that “secularism” is sane for Iran is silly. The idea that democracy is remotely viable should be disproven per the long history of America interfering with democracies.

How effective is it though? Iranians are the least religious people of any Muslim country I have ever met by far. The heavy-handedness of the government in enforcing the religious laws seems to be backfiring. Islam is on the decline, with many people converting to Zoroastrianism.

Abrahamic religions are more pronatal than Zoroastrianism. The Iranian-ancestry Parsi Zoroastrians of India have had one of the lowest TFRs even back in the 1940s. Islam probably has the best chance of any religion to leading to high TFR families given its emphasis on female subordination. Unless we want a Mennonite Iran, which would be pretty cool.

If only a small segment of Iran’s society is high TFR, then that segment can double in total population percentage every 20 years. So in 80 years, the 2% of Iranian households that are super Islamic will become 16%. This is obviously beneficial to a state and it’s the same reason Israel nurtures and babies their Haredi population.

Abrahamic religions are more pronatal than Zoroastrianism.

OK, but what good is that if they're apostasizing en masse? It's backfiring. Iran's TFR is 1.7. It's basically a Western country.

If only a small segment of Iran’s society is high TFR, then that segment can double in total population percentage every 20 years. So in 80 years, the 2% of Iranian households that are super Islamic will become 16%. This is obviously beneficial to a state and it’s the same reason Israel nurtures and babies their Haredi population.

Do they actually have 2% of the population with an extremely high fertility rate? If they wanted such a thing, they'd be better off encouraging religious diversity. I don't see how enforcing Islam helps with that.

As another commenter pointed out, I'm not sure you really want a large portion of your population to be Haredim or Mennonites, given that they typically have extremely low productivity.

The question is if Iran wants them to be apostasizing. Probably not. I don’t think any religious country wants their citizens to be non-religious. Their inability to fix apostasy does not mean that they should throw out their whole social technology infrastructure. But the extent of apostasy is probably exaggerated in Western news, to drum up support for a perceived irreligious youth rebelling against those wicked & oppressive tyrannical mullahs.

Iran's TFR is 1.7. It's basically a Western country

A higher TFR than White Americans while only making 1/4th of their adjusted average wage is incredible. (Not that wages are so important for TFR, but really low wages and really high wages have an effect).

Do they actually have 2% of the population with an extremely high fertility rate? If they wanted such a thing, they'd be better off encouraging religious diversity. I don't see how enforcing Islam helps with that.

Without Islam their TFR would go even lower. An Iran that is legally “Islamic” can direct resources to those subpopulations which are high TFR, and has a generally better chance of one day fixing TFR concerns. An atheistic country is totally fucked wrt TFR and has pretty much zero chance of recuperating fertility except through a quasi-religious fascism.

A higher TFR than White Americans while only making 1/4th of their adjusted average wage is incredible.

It's not incredible. It's extremely normal and expected. Fertility rates are negatively correlated with income.

As another commenter pointed out, I'm not sure you really want a large portion of your population to be Haredim or Mennonites, given that they typically have extremely low productivity.

And, more importantly, they do not care about the state and regime, and are loyal only to their own community. Having such large and growing population is in no way a "win".

From what I heard of Haredis they produce little labor and just study the Torah professionally. This (the growth of total Haredi percentage) is good for a state only if they care about the total population as a number as opposed to what they do.

You want your high-TFR ultra-religious fraction to either leak moderates into the larger society, or for their religion to not get in the way of qualified labor.

The Haredi are mostly high-IQ Ashkenazim, if I understand correctly. They may not be useful now, but they do constitute a growing reservoir of human capital if the state can ever manage to get enough of them to take part productively in society.

I can’t speak for what Israel intends to do (obviously) but it’s reasonable to think that they are allowing this proliferation to go unimpeded until it dwarfs the Muslim and Christian TFRs to an amount deemed sufficiently safe for Jewish hegemony in the state. That is what I would do had I this concern. It has only been since 2021 (!!!) that the Jewish Average TFR started to beat the Muslim Average TFR in Israel, and ~2001 for the Christians / Druze. If I’m Israel, I wouldn’t even want to touch this social movement until things start to look better for my demographic, because of how fragile social movements can be. Another thing Israel does (man I wish I was at the Mossad discussion table because it’s hilarious) is promote skinny jeans among the Palestinians.

The Iranian Government has massively screwed up the economy and water resources due to trying to be self-sufficient. They are running out of water, because so much of it is being used to grow rice and sugar cane. They are running out of electricity because they have encouraged crypto mining without growing power supply.

It's this economic malaise, with high inflation which is driving the protests. Most people don't like the religious strictness, but they tolerate it for safety and a stable economy. When those things are being swept away, of course they are protesting and demanding change.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=OQj-56i76Sc

https://youtube.com/watch?v=-qL0IWvliqc&pp=ygUaaGlzdG9yeSBvZiBldmVyeXRoaW5nIGlyYW4%3D

Iran’s desire for self-sufficiency reasonable. What happened just today with rice imports illustrates this neatly:

https://archive.is/K0mlp

Jan 13 (Reuters) - India's basmati rice exports to Iran have slowed to a near standstill amid the protests gripping the Gulf ‌country, with suppliers wary of new deals due to the risk of non-payment and potential additional U.S. tariffs, trade officials said. U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that any country trading with Iran would face a 25% tariff on its commerce with the U.S., a move exporters say has made Indian suppliers even more reluctant to ‌sign new contracts with Iranian buyers.

"The proposed 25% levy under the Trump framework adds an additional challenge to the Indian basmati rice sector," said Akshay Gupta, head of bulk exports at KRBL Ltd (KRBL.NS), opens new tab, a leading rice exporter. India is Iran's largest rice supplier, with the staple accounting for nearly ‍two-thirds of all Iranian imports from the country.

IMHO the average American is blind to the utter bloodlust that many Zionist donors have against Iran, and how thoroughly Trump is committed to these Zionist billionaire donors. They would be fine starving the Iranian people just like they were fine starving children in Gaza. This is what makes the pretext of caring about the Iranian people so perplexing to me. Who can believe this? It requires terminal-level gullibility to believe it when we can look back at a quarter century of bloodshed, 400,000 civilians killed directly through American intervention, in Syria alone a mass migration crisis involving five million people… we even funded Islamist groups to accomplish this!

IMHO the average American is blind to the utter bloodlust that many Zionist donors have against Iran,

Ah poor Iran, hated by the Jews for no justifiable reason.

They would be fine starving the Iranian people just like they were fine starving children in Gaza.

Are we still going with that myth?

Which internationally-recognized aid organizations have concluded that starvation in Gaza was a myth? Israelis believe Americans are this gullible, that they can just call something a myth and that makes it so, and they can call something true and that makes it so. There’s a reason America’s approval of Israel has been plummeting. Let me guess, the Norwegian Refugee Council is Hamas?

Here’s a helpful list to get you started: 1) American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), (2) A.M. Qattan Foundation, (3) A New Policy, (4) ACT Alliance, (5) Action Against Hunger (ACF), (6) Action for Humanity, (7) ActionAid International, (8) American Baptist Churches Palestine Justice Network, (9) Amnesty International, (10) Asamblea de Cooperación por la Paz, (11) Associazione Cooperazione e Solidarietà (ACS), (12) Bystanders No More, (13) Campain, (14) CARE, (15) Caritas Germany, (16) Caritas Internationalis, (17) Caritas Jerusalem, (18) Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD), (19) Center for Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM), (20) CESVI Fondazione, (21) Children Not Numbers, (22) Christian Aid, (23) Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP), (24) CIDSE- International Family of Catholic Social Justice Organisations, (25) Cooperazione Internazionale Sud Sud (CISS), (26) Council for Arab‐British Understanding (CAABU), (27) DanChurchAid (DCA), (28) Danish Refugee Council (DRC), (29) Development and Peace – Caritas Canada, (30) Doctors against Genocide, (31) Episcopal Peace Fellowship, (32) EuroMed Rights, (33) Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), (34) Forum Ziviler Friedensdienst e.V., (35) Gender Action for Peace and Security, (36) Glia, (37) Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), (38) Global Witness, (39) Health Workers 4 Palestine, (40) HelpAge International, (41) Human Concern International, (42) Humanity & Inclusion (HI), (43) Humanity First UK, (44) Indiana Center for Middle East Peace, (45) Insecurity Insight, (46) International Media Support, (47) International NGO Safety Organisation, (48) Islamic Relief, (49) Jahalin Solidarity, (50) Japan International Volunteer Center (JVC), (51) Justice for All, (52) Kenya Association of Muslim Medical Professionals (KAMMP), (53) Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation, (54) MedGlobal, (55) Medico International, (56) Medico International Switzerland (medico international schweiz), (57) Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), (58) Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), (59) Medicine for the People - Belgium (MPLP/GVHV), (60) Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), (61) Médecins du Monde France, (62) Médecins du Monde Spain, (63) Médecins du Monde Switzerland, (64) Mercy Corps, (65) Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), (66) Movement for Peace (MPDL), (67) Muslim Aid, (68) National Justice and Peace Network in England and Wales, (69) Nonviolence International, (70) Norwegian Aid Committee (NORWAC), (71) Norwegian Church Aid (NCA), (72) Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA), (73) Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), (74) Oxfam International, (75) Pax Christi England and Wales, (76) Pax Christi International, (77) Pax Christi Merseyside, (78) Pax Christi USA, (79) Pal Law Commission, (80) Palestinian American Medical Association, (81) Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF), (82) Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS), (83) Peace Direct, (84) Peace Winds, (85) Pediatricians for Palestine, (86) People in Need, (87) Plan International, (88) Première Urgence Internationale (PUI), (89) Progettomondo, (90) Project HOPE, (91) Quaker Palestine Israel Network, (92) Rebuilding Alliance, (93) Refugees International, (94) Saferworld, (95) Sabeel‐Kairos UK, (96) Save the Children (SCI), (97) Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund, (98) Solidarités International, (99) Støtteforeningen Det Danske Hus i Palæstina, (100) Swiss Church Aid (HEKS/EPER), (101) Terre des Hommes Italia, (102) Terre des Hommes Lausanne, (103) Terre des Hommes Nederland, (104) The Borgen Project, (105) The Center for Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM), (106) The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (GCR2P), (107) The International Development and Relief Foundation, (108) The Institute for the Understanding of Anti‐Palestinian Racism, (109) Un Ponte Per (UPP), (110) United Against Inhumanity (UAI), (111) War Child Alliance, (112) War Child UK, (113) War on Want, (114) Weltfriedensdienst e.V., (115) Welthungerhilfe (WHH).

Are they all anti-Semitic, or what?

Which internationally-recognized aid organizations have concluded that starvation in Gaza was a myth? Israelis believe Americans are this gullible, that they can just call something a myth and that makes it so, and they can call something true and that makes it so. There’s a reason America’s approval of Israel has been plummeting. Let me guess, the Norwegian Refugee Council is Hamas?

I'm sure there is starvation in Gaza. Israel's claim is that Hamas seizes aid shipments which prevents them from reaching normal Gazans. Whether or not this claim is true, I can't say, and I can't really find any sources that haven't already picked one side or the other to prove or debunk it.

The US / UN did not find evidence of that. There we also easy ways to circumvent that were it happening, like thousands of aerial aid box drop locations or excluding certain men from receiving aid based on the facial recognition software already in use in Gaza. Hamas stealing aid isn’t even something that could be feasibly done in secret as 2% of the population stealing all the aid from starving people would be obviously discernible from drones.

You're seriously arguing that the Iranians are happier with Shia fundamentalism imposed upon them? Bold I must say. Why all the mass protests over the years I wonder? (Including some specifically over veiling.)

Are you aware that Iran already has a famously high rate of plastic surgery?

Are you aware Iran has a famously high rate of brain drain?

Are you aware the Islamic government actually instituted policies to decrease the TFR and increase female education? (Whoops.)

Are you aware that Persians are not Arabs?

Are you aware that the extremist version of Shia Islam the Iranian Islamic regime adheres to increases conflict with basically all of its Sunni neighbors?

"Approximately" is doing a hell of a lot of work in the "approximately sane" evaluation.

Why all the mass protests in America or France? This signals that people have opinions, it isn’t a valid indicator of predicted happiness of social policies. I mean, toddlers and teenagers protest everything from authority, but they seldom are able to predict the longterm outcome of their desired proposals. This is the sin of democracy, that people mistake mass opinion for predictive ability.

Are you aware that Iran already has a famously high rate of plastic surgery?

Are you aware that Iran has half our suicide rate, one eighth of our drug overdose rate, a heavily subsidized and expansive healthcare system, and one third our intentional homicide rate? Probably not. Perhaps you’ll accuse them of cooking the books.

Are you aware Iran has a famously high rate of brain drain

Yes, hence why I mentioned it: this doesn’t apply to the religious cohort, which is why they have an interest in maintaining their religious “extremism”. Otherwise they will all leave.

Are you aware that the extremist version of Shia Islam the Iranian Islamic regime adheres to increases conflict with basically all of its Sunni neighbors?

Of course but when it comes to the risk that Israel poses in the region, you can’t ignore that Iran being Islamic is helpful for speaking with other Islamic nations.

one third our intentional homicide rate?

How does it compare to the US's homicide rate when broken down by race?

Why all the mass protests in America or France?

You just obviously have no idea what you're talking about when you try to directly compare protests in the US or even France to those in Iran, before now or these ones. The dynamics are totally different when it's an actual police state.

Are you aware that Iran has half our suicide rate, one eighth of our drug overdose rate, a heavily subsidized and expansive healthcare system, and one third our intentional homicide rate? Probably not. Perhaps you’ll accuse them of cooking the books.

Ah, this is the "Maduro is the true conservative" perspective. Do you know what "cherry picking" is?

They have hyperinflation ffs, among many other critical economic failures. Trying to find a few metrics where Iran might have a good stat doesn't overturn the obvious reality that it's a shithole country because it's been held back by economically illiterate leadership for nearly 50 years.

you can’t ignore that Iran being Islamic is helpful for speaking with other Islamic nations.

Ahahahahahaha. Iran has been and continues to be hated and feared by nearly all of its Sunni neighbors. You're trying to cherry pick an instance of slightly improved relations with the Saudis to defend the insane proposition that Iran's version of Shia Islam makes it easier to deal with its Sunni neighbors. Gulf Arab states have collaborated with the US and Israel against Iran.

Did you know that Iran and the Taliban have nearly gone to war a time or two?

What's next? ISIS has an easy time dealing with other Islamic states thanks to Islam?

Protestant and Catholic countries have always had better relations due to Christianity as a commonality?

Do you know what "cherry picking" is?

These are pretty significant indicators. Especially if we want to “free” an “oppressed” population and deliver them American-Grade™️ Values. If our values lead to worse results for the average person than the average person in Iran, we should rethink our ability to improve other nations and instead consider why we’re doing so poorly. Their life expectancy is also tied with ours (and at a better trajectory) and they have half the obesity. The question of course is what they would look like without sanctions, with an extra 1 trillion.

cherry pick an instance of slightly improved relations with the Saudis to defend the insane proposition that Iran's version of Shia Islam makes it easier to deal with its Sunni neighbors

The proposition is that, while an Islamic Iran has something important in common with its Muslim neighbors, a non-Islamic Iran would lose that card altogether and could never leave pariah status. This may not be a factor today but it may be a factor in the future. Consider from the Atlantic Council —

To some extent, the Gaza war has brought about a degree of Iranian-Saudi alignment while pushing the two countries toward deeper diplomatic engagement. Four days into the war, Iranian President Raisi and Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman had their first phone conversation since their countries restored diplomatic ties. In the call, they agreed on the “need to end war crimes against Palestine” and promote stronger Islamic unity. Then, on November 11, 2023, Raisi came to Riyadh to address the joint Arab League-Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) emergency summit on Gaza, making him the first Iranian president to visit Saudi Arabia since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attended the 2012 OIC summit in Mecca.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/iran-saudi-arabia-china-deal-one-year/

and deliver them American-Grade™️

Good thing I didn't advocate for that I suppose.

It's really fucking funny to point out they have less obesity than Americans during a period where food is exorbitantly expensive for them. In America, those we subsidize food for have an enhanced risk of obesity. In Iran, even the subsidized are skinny.

Iran doesn't have to be a theocracy to still be Islamic, is the thing. The Shah was a Muslim ffs. So was Saddam.

You're seriously arguing that the Iranians are happier with Shia fundamentalism imposed upon them?

It's not imposed upon them, it's home-grown. They chose it in 1979.

Are you aware of the basic facts of the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution?

Familiar with buyer's remorse?

Capable of understanding its' been nearly 50 years and the theocratic regime does not have democratic legitimacy, since it's an illiberal, sham democracy?

Are you aware of the basic facts of the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution?

Sure, lots of Death-To-America rallies, lots of Westernized Iranians who hadn't fled (among others) getting killed. Basically consolidation of power. Worked, too.

Capable of understanding its' been nearly 50 years and the theocratic regime does not have democratic legitimacy, since it's an illiberal, sham democracy?

They don't need democratic legitimacy. With most of the people they have religious legitimacy, and for the malcontents they have the sword.

Basically consolidation of power. Worked, too.

They executed a lot of commies and other insufficiently Islamic co-revolutionaries. Lots of the country immediately regretted taking out the Shah. That was decades ago and things only got worse.

They don't need democratic legitimacy.

Ok, so you agree then that the present regime is imposing Shia theocracy on its populace?

With most of the people they have religious legitimacy

This hasn't been true for a long time.

Ok, so you agree then that the present regime is imposing Shia theocracy on its populace?

They're a Shia theocratic regime ruling over Shiites. No imposing necessary.

More comments

Being dead-set on making it certain that Iranian men will be dying against Israel within the century does not sound like a sane choice. Then again, gotta get rid of the excess men in a polygynist society somehow... unless...

The sane choice is to prepare for the inevitability of conflict with a regional power that is committed to warring against you, and in fact just assassinated a number of your scientists.

Signaling that you're developing nukes && that you want to wipe a particular neighboring power off the map is a great way to have your scientists assassinated. Could try not doing at least one of those.

"And then one day, for no reason at all, Israel started preparing for war against Iran..."

Israel has been trying to trick us into believing that Iran is years away from nuclear weapons for 30 years now. Iran opened itself to outside observers during the nuclear deal era. Meanwhile Israel has killed an almost inconceivable amount of women and children in Gaza while illegally stealing land in the West Bank. “And then one day, for no reason at all, Iran started preparing for war against Israel…”

Ah, yes, another one of those elaborate Jewish deceptions. If true, I would expect a sane government to not antagonize such a crafty people. Especially if you and your Muslim friends have a very poor century-long track record of destroying them.

For every ounce of commitment to warring against Muslims that Israel displays, there is tenfold commitment Muslims display to warring against Israel. The relationship between certainty of war with Israel and Muslim theocracy is exactly backwards from how you're attempting to portray it.

"Ah yes, another one of those elaborate Jewish deceptions..."

The reply said Israel, not Jews. And I've heard that Iran is on the verge of nukes for decades as well.

Ah, yes, another one of those elaborate Jewish deceptions.

No? There's absolutely nothing elaborate about these "Jewish deceptions" (not the phrasing I'd use personally) at all. I could have whipped together the diagrams and "evidence" provided to the UN on this topic in MS paint with a five minute deadline, and even the Obama whitehouse made a version of it to make fun of Netanyahu. They've just been lying consistently on this topic because it is obviously in their national interest to have the US go in and take out one of their regional enemies without them having to do it themselves.

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But at least half of this is circular. Iran would not need to worry about being crushed by Israel and the US if they credibly overhauled themselves into an enlightenment-values democracy: Iran is viewed as a threat by the US and Israel because they're antisemitic religious fundamentalists. That only leaves 1) and 2), and even then 2) is somewhat defanged in that if Iran were not a fanatical dictatorship, fewer intelligent people would leave.

Sure, none of this means that Iran would suddenly be welcomed by the West with open arms overnight if it stopped being a Muslim dictatorship now. It may be that they've backed themselves into a sharia-shaped corner. But sanity alone cannot have gotten them in the position they are now, even if there are rational reasons to remain tyrannical fanatics once they've started behaving like tyrannical fanatics.

But at least half of this is circular. Iran would not need to worry about being crushed by Israel and the US if they credibly overhauled themselves into an enlightenment-values democracy

And the US wouldn't have had to worry about being attacked by Osama bin Ladin if we'd credibly overhauled ourselves into an Islamic theocracy. These are not reasonable things to ask.

Well, no. But that still makes coffee_enjoyer's argument that the Iranian government is "approximately sane" circular. They only get in their current situation by starting out sincerely mad (i.e. religious fanatics). Religious fanaticism is not a policy they adopted out of rational self-interest in the face of military threats that existed of their own accord; their preexisting religious fanaticism, rather, is the reason they became the target of such threats at all. Whether their fanaticism has "perks" which help it deal with the threats that the fanaticism has brought down upon them is neither here nor there.

None of this necessitates that there was ever a possible world where they spontaneously purge themselves of that mindset and negate the threats. (I do of course think there are relatively plausible timelines where Iran got increasingly secular and liberal in the 20th century instead of the pendulum swinging back - certainly they are more plausible than a timeline where 90s America spontaneously develops a love of sharia law - but that is not the point.)

America has interfered in democracies before, even in Iran before (1953). In Ukraine, we funded pro-EU news in the lead up to the coup of Yanukovych, which was an illegal coup where a mob forced the democratically-elected Yanukovych to flee and the procedure for legal impeachment was never followed. We supported this anti-democratic mob activity in Ukraine diplomatically. Chavez was elected and popular in Venezuela, and we tried to coup him in 2002. At the same time, we have committed ties to absolute monarchies, the polar opposite of “enlightenment-based democracies”, and indeed those countries are fine and thriving.

Iran is viewed as a threat by the US and Israel because they're antisemitic religious fundamentalists

And Israel is not anti-Arab or anti-Palestinian? From a purely consequential standpoint it is the Israelis who have more blood on their hands. It is also Israel who attacked Iran first. Israel is also becoming more religious extremism, while Iran seems to be becoming less so.

if Iran were not a fanatical dictatorship, fewer intelligent people would leave.

The intelligent seculars will leave no matter what, as intelligent seculars around the world always try to leave for better countries. But the high TFR intelligent netionalist / religious families will stay.

From a purely consequential standpoint

I wasn't talking about a consequential standpoint at all, or indeed a moral plain. I meant that in plain, pragmatic terms, what happened was "Iran became ruled by fanatics who believe it is their holy duties to crush the Jews -> Israel viewed Iran as a threat -> the imams have a credible case that it's now necessary to keep the religious fervor up so that they have enough soldiers in case it comes to open existential war" - as distinct from "Israel becomes a threat to Iran for no articulate reason -> its government ponders a logical solution to this -> it decides to become a fanatical theocracy in order to motivate its soldiers in the event that it comes to open existential war".

In other words, I'm not saying that the US - or Israel - have some sort of inviolable taboo against antagonizing enlightenment-values democracies - I'm saying that their motives for antagonizing Iran in particular are downstream of the nature of the current regime and prevailing and ideology making it come across as a threat to the US and Israel. Therefore, in that particular case, removing those factors would have negated the basis for the tensions that Iran lives in fear of today.

Iran and Israel have adverse geopolitical interests. That isn’t going to change just because Iran isn’t being ruled by fanatics anymore. Iran having a government with popular support that actually has its shit together could very well turn out to be worse for Israel, especially in the long run. Israel probably knows this, and you would probably see an effort to break it into different countries by ethnic group the second the Islamic Republic is gone.

Iran and Israel have adverse geopolitical interests.

How so?

This is so obviously not true.

Israel and Iran do not have natural reasons to be rivals, let alone enemies. The Islamic regime chose for ideological reasons the foreign policy it did that frames Israel and the US as its major adversaries.

There’s three countries that have a shot at being the regional power that controls the Middle East: Israel, Iran and Turkey. That’s why they all hate each other! You notice that they weren’t constantly at each other’s throats back when Iraq was still a major military power.

Why did Iraq and Iran go to war in the 80s? What changed?

Does Turkey have a history of being a rival of Israel? What changed?

Why on earth did you leave out Saudi Arabia? Were they traditionally at odds with Iran? What changed?

Iran would not need to worry about being crushed by Israel and the US if they credibly overhauled themselves into an enlightenment-values democracy

As far as Israel goes, it wouldn't even take that. All Iran needs to do is stop threatening and attacking Israel and they can easily end up in basically the same position as Egypt, Jordan, and even Saudi Arabia.

Israel haters (and we all know why they hate Israel so much) have this fantasy that Israel is actually expansionistic, but there's no reasonable basis for such a conclusion.

As far as the US goes, I doubt it would take that either. The US has dealings with non-democracies on a regular basis.

Iran could have been an oil-rich Turkey in a slightly different universe.

Iran went down on its current path because its democratically elected secular government expropriated BP, whereupon the UK and the US organised a revolution (quoth Wikipedia):

In 2013, the United States government formally acknowledged its role in the coup as being a part of its foreign policy initiatives, including paying protesters and bribing officials.[15]

Do Iranians have any reason to believe that if they let a revolution/civil war happen, the first condition the US will impose on its chosen winner will not amount to giving back control of their oil plus 46 years of interest? If there is one thing revealed preference shows, it's that the one class of grudge the US never forgives or forgets are slights against allied petroleum corporations. It was a pretty open secret that the US hate-boner for Venezuela was rooted in how it likewise expropriated US petrocompanies, and Trump (who has a talent for blurting out things that were supposed to remain plausibly deniable in polite company) just abducted its president with his apparently only real demand being that he be given their oil.

Frankly, as with the Venezuelans, if you had Trump go to the Iranian protestors and go, "Hey, what's in this for me?" "Can I get back that oil value with interest?"

I think they'd sign on the dotted line without a second thought. After all, many of them are willing to pay with their lives.

Trump would be pro-Iraq War if we had just gotten more oil out of it. He's refreshingly pragmatic on the issue of foreign intervention. I'm more interested in the great power dynamics of taking out allies of Russia and China myself, plus unleashing the magic of capitalism for the locals.

Keep in mind that Mossadegh concerned the West for a number of reasons during the Cold War. And that, constitutionally, he was appointed by the Shah and could be dismissed by the Shah. Instead, he seized emergency powers and rigged an election. He was not very popular towards the end of his tenure. Operation Ajax was something of a counter-coup if you judge it fairly.

You say this like it's shameful. Protecting citizens from banditry is among the most noble duties of a nation. It's not an 'open secret,' or at least it shouldn't be -- it's a far more honorable casus belli then ideology or great power politics or rumored possession of WMDs, to be sure.

Countries that invoke might-makes-right to rob foreigners have no room to complain when those foreigners' nations invoke might-makes-right to seize restitution and inflict punishment. In fact, the world would be far more prosperous if those norms were consistently and strictly enforced. Not like it's ever a good idea, just some combination of stupidity (ideologically motivated or otherwise), short-sightedness, and corruption, as Venezuela's poverty demonstrates: they own their oil now... but they can't refine it and no one who can is dumb enough to invest in the nation.

No, the whole problem is that the US didn't do enough to punish the theft. Individual criminals tend to be dumb, high time preference, and low executive function, and that seems like an apt analogy to me. Studies show such people respond best to rapid, consistent and highly visible punishment. Letting things drag out for decades and using such indirect methods as funding protestors sends the wrong message and only multiplies the misery of the population.

We seem to be watching enlightenment-values democracy slowly falling over, though. (Picking either one by itself is probably OK though).

If the next century is basically America receding from 'global interventionist superpower' to 'very rich but very disorganised country on a different continent', Europe mostly becoming a set of Muslim-minority secular-in-name-only states and Isreal having serious problems solving the disconnect between the Harethi and everyone else, then Iran's current strategy might look pretty smart.

That's a big 'if' of course but I'd give it maybe 40% odds?

If.

I don’t think he can do any of those things. At best, he can create power vacuums. Trying to actually replace a regime is the kind of blank-check commitment that he knows to avoid. No exit strategy.

This minimizes deaths of Iranian people.

Rather big assumption that protecting lives and well being of Iranian (or any other) people is what it is all about.

Falsely telling the Iranian people that he'd help so they risk their lives and die only for Trump to later back out and allow the regime to continue would be an abject moral failure.

Well, this was US empire SOP at least since 1956 Hungarian revolt.

Real abject failure is when any literate person with basic awareness of 20/21st century history trusts US promises (and then faces another rugpull and backstab with sad Pikachu face).

Because all the PREVIOUS US interventions in the Middle East in general and Iran in particular have gone SO well.

You can argue we didn't intervene enough.

How much better off would the world be if Jimmy Carter hadn't been a leftist simp and he'd gone all in on keeping the Shah in power in 1979, instead of the Islamists and commies?

We should have done Operation Ajax 2.0 if anything.

I don't think rented mobs and planted newspaper articles would have prevented the Islamic Revolution. People seem to forget that the Shah still controlled the police and military in 1953, and the issue was that he didn't feel like he had the popular support to use them to take out Mossadeh. In 1979 he was deposed despite having that power tenfold and not being afraid to use it. Propaganda making the Ayatollah look bad wasn't going to stop that tidal wave.

He was actually afraid to use it.

The West told him to treat the opposition with kid gloves and facilitated Khomeini's return.

A mistake the current regime will not make.

Which is why we should bomb 'em I say.

Make it more of a fair fight.

Kuwait was a great success, in that the US achieved all its stated goals and Kuwait is today a rich, stable, pro-American state that acts as a crucial hub for US military operations in the Middle East. But Kuwait is also much easier to invade than Iran is.

You mean when we restored the House of al-Sabah, just deposed by Iraq? Sure, that worked out OK, but it was a much different sort of intervention, and part of a larger one which didn't go so well.

Look, I understand that Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria were glorious boondoggles. But Iran is not just a American enemy (or heck, an Israeli one.) It's an incompetent regime. One that has run out of money and electricity and water. You can't shoot your way out of a drought. One way or another, Iran is going to explode. The calculus has shifted - not because of the CIA or Mossad, but because of nature. Regime change will happen regardless of what Americans do or do not do, so getting ahead of the curve and allying ourselves with the Iranians who have already endured and sacrificed so much is smart.

The Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and Assad were not so short-sighted and stupid enough to run out of water. The mullahs of Iran and the IRGC are so incompetent they grow rice in the desert from water captured from dams they themselves built because they are stupid. They ignored the advice of their own scientists because of greed and that is why they are falling now - systematic incompetence on every level. Intervening now will save the world an Iranian refugee crisis down the line, far larger than the Syrian one.

Look, I understand that Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria were glorious boondoggles.

Iraq actually went rather well by these standards. And it's still shit.

It's an incompetent regime.

The Soviets were incompetent for 70 years. I mean, to the point of holding all of Ukraine and STILL not being able to feed themselves. Still took a leader not willing to massacre his way out to allow it to fall. The Iranian regime is still willing to massacre its way out.

Unless the Shia clerics can drink blood and summon rain, you can't kill your way out of having no water. The Islamic Republic has foolishly pushed themselves into a position where no amount of force will overcome its problems. It reminds me of Xerxes whipping the ocean for its insolence. One hundred million people living in a mountainous desert can't be denied water. Even the Soviets - hell, even the North Koreans and the Khmer Rouge - did not run out of water.

I can't overstate enough how incompetent you have to be to overlook this very obvious problem, of their own making. If the Iranian opposition starts getting denied water, they have literally nothing to lose but their lives - which their evil government is determined to do by dehydration and starvation. Just to make sure... you do know that humans require water to live, right?

The humanitarian catastrophe is already priced in: intervention is the difference between a impoverished but recovering democracy and an atrocity on par with the Great Leap Forward.

Even the Soviets did not run out of water.

The Aral Sea begs to differ.

Unless the Shia clerics can drink blood and summon rain, you can't kill your way out of having no water.

They don't have literally zero water. And killing indeed reduces demand, though it's unlikely they'll kill enough to make a dent.

If the Iranian opposition starts getting denied water, they have literally nothing to lose but their lives - which their evil government is determined to do by dehydration and starvation.

So the government simply reserves what water it has for its security forces, and the dehydrated and starving people are easier to kill.

The humanitarian catastrophe is already priced in: intervention is the difference between a impoverished but recovering democracy and an atrocity on par with the Great Leap Forward.

Note that the regime which did the Great Leap Forward is still in power.

Unless the Shia clerics can drink blood and summon rain, you can't kill your way out of having no water.

North Korea has survived famines without a regime change, and they can't drink blood and summon rain.

A famine isn't a drought. People can go without food for a month, very uncomfortably. People without water for a month are dead.

Iraq actually went rather well by these standards. And it's still shit.

Iraq is doing about as well as a non-GCC Arab country can do for now. Judged against its peers, it’s got good growth, a functioning economy with real median income having increased a lot in the last decade, and as a basket case of ethnic tensions between Sunni Arabs, Shias and Kurds it’s being vaguely held together with comparatively minimal violence.

In general though I agree with your point.

so getting ahead of the curve and allying ourselves with the Iranians who have already endured and sacrificed so much is smart.

I am very seriously concerned that overtly intervening will cause the protest movement to lose face and legitimacy. Merely offering verbal support to a revolutionary movement and or even arming it generates less risk of creating an appearance that it is merely an American puppet regime than airstrikes or a ground intervention. Now admittedly this is a position I hold from ignorance, but we have reliable evidence such as outside polling showing that e.g. a majority of Iranians support US airstrikes against the regime, then I have not heard of it.

The fact that they are calling for a return of the Shah with a straight face is a pretty big sign that they already have no legitimacy.

How many Iranians are old enough to actually remember life under the Shah? It's all Boomer fairytales to those young enough to fight, like the 50's suburbs are to American NEETs.

The Iranian regime is built to survive. As a result of the unique story of its emergence and the very unlikely survival of the movement in the face of both the Iraq-Iran war and the (initially) much larger socialist/student/Tudeh movement that it and its predecessor(s) utterly crushed, the IRGC is one of the most competent military bodies in the world if you consider its primary purpose the pacification of the Iranian people.

Khomeini understood that the bourgeois class would never fully support an Islamist revolution. Unlike various historical socialist revolutionaries, though, he realized that at least some of them were necessary for the economic survival of the state. He therefore set in motion a series of events that would lead to them being policed, essentially, by the sons of the devout lower middle-class, often semi-rural (but occasionally urban or rural) who would form the nexus of the IRGC and be utterly loyal to the clerical class (without whom they would go back to being nobodies). The IRGC would enrich itself, but never quite to the extent of e.g. the Egyptian or Pakistani military states, where military control of the economy is so absolute that the private sector is entirely subordinate to it in most industries.

In general, if you look at the big 3 US ‘axis of evil’ states still around, they each have a different relationship to popular protest. North Korea has almost none, not only because of the absoluteness of ideological surveillance and the ubiquitous East German style custom of informing on neighbors but because the people are completely ideologically indoctrinated into dynastic worship of the Kim family. Cuba has middling protests every 25 years where one or two people get killed and someone prominent resigns or apologizes but the regime is never under serious threat; Cubans are too lazy for revolution and those smart and ambitious enough to try it either rise within the Party or flee to America.

Only Iran actually has regular violent protests; unlike the Cubans or North Koreans, they have real, serious interest in regime change. But the IRGC is a well oiled machine with no loyalty to the protestors, and it just keeps gunning them down, hundreds a day, until order is restored. Life in Iran is bad but not hell, and to the domestic middle and upper middle classes, with their email jobs and social media, this is not worth dying over. That is why the regime stands a good chance of surviving in some form.

This is generally true. I think you're underestimating how much the IRGC dominates the economy, but very accurate overall.

You're missing a few key variables:

  • Everyone knows the regime is defenseless against US/Israel aircraft, and that Israel believes it has unfinished business
  • Everyone knows Trump has made noises about the regime killing protestors
  • The rial is approaching ~0 value, as part of a general economic deterioration
  • Estimates are now that 10k plus people have been killed
  • The regime has said its giving the death penalty to most/all protestors it arrests

Absent external support or a preference cascade among security forces to stand down/switch sides, the regime might just simply kill its way out of this.

But if it does, it will still be weaker than it ever was before.

Estimates are now that 10k plus people have been killed

very likely bullshit to drown out eventual losses from the US/Israeli intervention. It's really hard to kill 10K people in days without heavy military operation with airstrikes and such.

The Rwandan genocide managed a comparable body count with mostly machetes. It seems more a matter of whether the regime's forces (who I'm sure have enough small arms) are choosing to use lethal force, either as a top-down policy or more local spontaneous decisionmaking.

Actually, no.

It's very, very fucking easy to kill 10k massed, unarmed people in mere hours with machine guns.

Reportedly, a regime official told Reuters it's 2k.

They could kill 12k people if they wanted to, you're right it isn't hard. But I don't think they want to, and 12k deaths seems to me to be inconsistent with videos/images and reports coming out of Iran. There'd just be more evidence if true.

If you're gunning down crowds, I guess. If it's riot suppression, normally you wouldn't get anywhere close to that number, people don't behave like an army and just disperse.

If you're gunning down crowds, I guess. If it's riot suppression, normally you wouldn't get anywhere close to that number, people don't behave like an army and just disperse.

If you're trying to kill them, you block their escape before machine-gunning them. As a bonus, you'll probably get even more killed from the trampling.

It’s certainly possible, but I would have expected the protests to disappear if the regime was willing to mow-down crowds of civilians like this.

That is what the regime hopes, yeah.

The protestors are, at a minimum, holding out for promised US support. That does seem to be what Trump has done at this point.

Horrifying to think that all these “stand with Iran” posts could be getting thousands of people killed.

You do realize that the populace of Iran has been largely incapable of reading those posts because their tyrannical government has shutoff the internet, right?

The "stand with Iran" posts are for the foreigners. The Iranians already know what's going on and what the stakes are.

The protestors are, at a minimum, holding out for promised US support.

Evidently they are unfamiliar with the US record in this regard.

Can you think of reasons why this is not very much like the Bay of Pigs at all?

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Cubans are too lazy for revolution and those smart and ambitious enough to try it either rise within the Party or flee to America.

Now I am wondering if the decision of the US to liberally grant asylum to any Cuban refugees resulted in stabilizing the Castro regime.

That isn’t wondering. It’s fairly much a fact. The Cuban regime hasn’t killed a lot of people. When tensions have risen they just put the people on ships and sent them to America. Which for a Cuban was a solid deal they would take.

When you think about it, taking all the people who really hate you and sending them off to be part of your highly-armed and very rich neighbour is a strategy with some long term risks...

Yeah, the Bay of Pigs.

And Marco Rubio, Trump's Supreme Global Overlord of All Things

Rubio’s family left before communism, although it’s an open question whether that matters given he’s so strongly identified himself with the exiles from communism.

I did know that, and it is a funny fact.

Though it's still radicalizing to see one's ancestral homeland devastated by communism and presumably have family and friends directly affected.

Undoubtedly but asylum alone isn’t the answer, huge numbers of Iranians emigrated and it’s easy for Iranians to claim asylum in Europe (or it was for a very long time anyway), but it didn’t stop a long history of protest.

easy for Iranians to claim asylum in Europe

The dynamics are weird. I've known Iranian refugees who settled in e.g. Hungary (which doesn't want any and makes it quite hard) while Germany often denies cases of conversion to Christianity, some official going after the family etc. but accepts gay people. (Tangentially, sex changes are a mandatory solution to homosexuality in Iran - by 1987 Molkara convinced the Ayatollah.) There is a huge brain drain of them going to grad school in Europe or Turkey, so many girls doing MAs or PhDs in STEM to escape. The wealthy have also largely fled - in some nicer malls in Turkey every woman has that fake nose...

is bad but not hell, and to the domestic middle and upper middle classes, with their email jobs and social media, this is not worth dying over.

This is true of many countries that are not Iran too.

Sure, and most of them aren’t prone to revolutionary violence.

most of them aren’t prone to revolutionary violence

How many have foreign intelligence services actively attempting to ferment foment totally organic 'revolutionary violence'?

Also as the current structure was the result of the Iranian Revolution / Islamic Revolution shouldn't the current thing be 'anti-revolutionary counter-revolutionary violence'?

The word you're looking for is 'foment'.

Also as the current structure was the result of the Iranian Revolution / Islamic Revolution shouldn't the current thing be 'anti-revolutionary violence'?

Almsot 50 years of essentially uncontested rule later and you're no longer the Revolution, you're the Establishment. Whatever you call yourself.

Then you have revolutionaries fighting against the IRGC, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

It's revolutionary on revolutionary violence.

Counter-revolutionary was what I couldn't think of earlier.

Cubans are too lazy for revolution

Unfortunately for the US this did not seem to have been the case in 1959.

Even if Trump does nothing and the Ayatollah crushes the riots, then what? Irans currency is still getting annihilated, their water situation is not unfucked, their "allies" are both faraway and incapable, their neighbourhood actively hostile. The Regimes only friend that can offer a real lifeline is MAYBE India, and thats a huge gamble to count on India. The alternative is to surrender wholly to China, which if China does will simply add another failed overseas shithole to Chinas collection of worthless foreign investments.

Even if Trump does nothing and the Ayatollah crushes the riots, then what? Irans currency is still getting annihilated, their water situation is not unfucked, their "allies" are both faraway and incapable, their neighbourhood actively hostile.

None of these indicate that they are neutralized. I can think of historical examples of countries where citizens where got used to fleeing to bomb shelters and food was rationed, and still the country was both quite resilient against changes from within and also an imminent threat to world peace.

For example, you can not just look at the North Korean GDP and declare that they are surely a military irrelevant shithole, because e.g. fielding a quarter of their population does not actually require a great GDP.

Just from its size, Iran is a big regional player. But it gets worse. Their drone designs get widely used by the Russian military, inheritors to what was once a top notch superpower. Now you can argue that this reflects more on Russia's decline than on Iran's rise, or that Iran is simply able to sell the cheapest minimum viable drone, but even then they are beating whatever the military version of temu is at its own game, which seems impressive in its own right.

Just from its size, Iran is a big regional player. But it gets worse. Their drone designs get widely used by the Russian military, inheritors to what was once a top notch superpower. Now you can argue that this reflects more on Russia's decline than on Iran's rise, or that Iran is simply able to sell the cheapest minimum viable drone, but even then they are beating whatever the military version of temu is at its own game, which seems impressive in its own right.

Russia could afford much more MIC grift than Iran, which had to actually get some decent RoI.

Not just Russia. We are about to start fielding some shaheed clones ourselves.

Yeah, it's just a good design (at least for certain tasks), I think.

Supposedly it's based on the Israeli Harpy which in turn (it is theorized) was based on a German-American anti-radiation missile, but that might just be carcinization.

The alternative is to surrender wholly to China, which if China does will simply add another failed overseas shithole to Chinas collection of worthless foreign investments.

The problem is that they never surrendered even in part. All of these shitholes are a) very Sovereign and b) would rather submit to the US/Israel than to China, partially for racial reasons I think. Foreign Policy argues this may change, though:

Contrary to much Western analysis, Iran never fully embraced China—even after Trump’s 2018 exit from the nuclear deal. As the conservative Farhikhtegan newspaper recently noted, Tehran long treated Beijing as a fallback, abandoning major proposals whenever fleeting openings with the West arose. The paper asserts that Xi Jinping offered a $40 billion investment package in 2016, but it went nowhere, while the much-touted 25-year cooperation road map remained largely symbolic for lack of Iranian initiative.

Indeed, in the brief window of sanctions relief after the 2015 nuclear agreement, Tehran handed lucrative contracts to Western firms such as Total, Airbus, and Boeing—sidestepping Chinese companies. As Hossein Qaheri, the head of the Iranian-Chinese Strategic Studies Think Tank, admitted: “Time and again, for short-term gains, we have abandoned China—and the Chinese have repeatedly said they do not have strategic trust in Iran.”

The war’s aftermath and the “snapback” of U.N. sanctions have forced Tehran to rethink its approach: If it wants China to invest in infrastructure and defense, it must start acting like a genuine long-term partner, not just turning to Beijing in times of crisis. Even many reformists now echo this view. For instance, Jalaeipour, while pressing for broader democratic reforms at home, has likewise argued that Iran must demonstrate consistency and reliability if it expects China to invest at scale.

That message framed the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tianjin, China, which offered the strongest indication yet of a decisive pivot toward Beijing. For Tehran, the timing was critical. Still reeling from the 12-day war and facing the activation of snapback sanctions, it gained rare diplomatic cover as SCO leaders condemned the U.S.-Israeli strikes. At the same time, Araghchi joined his Russian and Chinese counterparts in a joint letter to the United Nations dismissing the snapback of sanctions as legally baseless and politically destructive.

Pezeshkian also used the summit to align openly with Beijing’s agenda, endorsing calls for global governance reform, de-dollarization, and new crisis response mechanisms while casting Chabahar, Iran’s Indian Ocean port, as a linchpin for China’s connectivity to Central Asia and beyond. In Beijing, Xi pledged respect for Iran’s nuclear rights, sovereignty, and dignity, and the two sides agreed on “maximum implementation” of their long-stalled 25-year pact. Most telling was Beijing’s symbolic gesture: inviting Iran—but not the United States, most of Europe, Israel, or some Gulf states—to its World War II “Victory Day” military parade, signaling Tehran’s place in China’s envisioned multipolar order. As Araghchi put it, “The president’s trip to China will go down as one of the most important in our history.”

But this is probably just Western fearmongering. There is no such thing as a Chinese puppet state, that actually advances their geopolitical goals, hosts their bases, receives their military training. It would be interesting to see.

These shitholes surrender to USA/Israel because USA actually makes demands, and China never did any Ask. China is in reality a shitty exim bank who absorbs capital shredding in exchange for EPC absorption, not geopolitical leverage. China "lends" money as a headline numbers but the drawdown is never loans to prop a regime, just project finance for builds or bridge finance for commodity offsets. That Iran snapped to Chinese supplication is itself a misread because China does not display any action that gives enough of a shit about the regime. Chinese failure to prop up their pets is a categorical misread because China does not view its debtor regimes as pets, but as fungible relationships: Gonzales or Maduro, Khan or Munir, Khamanei or Palevi, China does not care for the regime. Just keep the phone line open for discussions if anything changes.

There's a lot of ruin in a nation. They can muddle along.

"Here's how Imam Mahdi can still reappear."

“Somehow, Khomeini returned.”

What is this? Star Wars with the undead emperor?

I think so. I never bothered to watch the movie after learning that was the premise.

How would attacking Iran benefit America?

Throwing missiles around isn't going to do anything significant. How many missiles has Russia dumped on Ukraine, how many thousands of drones and missiles have they fired off? They've largely broken the Ukrainian electrical grid yet Ukraine remains in the struggle after years and years of bombing and a large-scale ground invasion.

The Saudis bombed Yemen. The US bombed Yemen. The bombing did very little.

How many bombs did the Allies drop on Germany, they flattened whole cities with firestorms comparable to nuclear strikes! This did not break the will of Nazi Germany, they fought on till ground troops conquered the country. The US flattened North Korea, they literally razed the entire country such that people were living in holes in the ground because the buildings had been destroyed. The war ended in a draw and from then on North Korea devoted massive resources into armaments and bunkerization and has taken a very hostile stance to America, as one might expect. Bombing Vietnam caused considerable casualties for Vietnam but it did not achieve the political goal, Saigon was lost. The Russians bombed the hell out of Chechnya but needed a ground invasion to secure it.

Bombing has military relevance but the political effect is very weak, often counterproductive. If you want a political effect, you need to have ground troops for an invasion and this invasion needs to be in progress or very likely to succeed to pressure leaders into surrendering. Alternately, you can aim for a military effect in that bombing can swing the tide of a relatively evenly fought civil war as in Syria or Libya. Only the bombing of Serbia worked out per the 'air campaign only' concept. Iran is a lot bigger than Serbia and a lot further away from NATO airbases. Air campaigns only work in special cases, not generally.

The prior Israeli and American bombing of Iran did nothing, there was no significant military or political effect. The bombing of Fordow had no effect since Iran does not want nuclear weapons. The Israelis have been saying the Iranians are 6-18 months away from nuclear weapons for the last 30 years. The Israelis are lying. If the Iranians wanted nuclear weapons, they'd simply acquire them like other countries that want them. Pakistan didn't stay months away from nukes for decades, they just acquired them. Same with North Korea. Iran probably wants to be a latent nuclear state like South Korea or Japan, they'll only change this stance if threatened with imminent disaster.

Bombing Iran more aggressively is the surest path to them nuclearizing.

There are also a myriad of other costs of bombing Iran. Oil prices will rise and economic uncertainty will increase. The cost in munitions will reduce US strength in more important theaters like Asia. It will further worsen US diplomatic standing. Russia and China will support Iran to inflict costs on the US, they won't be alone like Serbia was. The Iranians will fight on since a ground invasion is totally impractical and a ground invasion is the only thing that can actually deliver the goal of regime change, unless there is a civil war.

If you think the regime might be collapsing and is totally unsustainable then why bomb, why should the US not just do nothing and save a lot of effort, risk and blood? If you're right then doing nothing is the most logical choice, if you're wrong (and the semi-annual major Iran riots are another nothingburger) and the US bombs, then it probably won't work?

Trump shouldn't make these rash proclamations, he should take some notes from Xi about doing nothing, developing internally and biding his time. This recent Venezuela campaign seems to be incoherent. Maduro is gone, some people are dead but the whole socialist structure is still there. Maduro is a clown, not some evil wizard holding the whole country under his thrall. Trump could've just unsanctioned Venezuelan oil if he wanted to buy it, would have probably been much cheaper than moving all these troops around. He thinks he owns Venezuela, people are making memes about conquistadors but conquistadors fought ground campaigns and actually conquered territory, putting it under their complete political control. That comes first, then comes resource extraction. Montezuma's vice-emperor didn't take over the Aztecs!

I agree that U.S. intervention is inviting disaster for no real upside, but I think your military comparisons are wrongheaded.

This wouldn’t be a civilian terror bombing campaign as seen in WWII; the civilians are already in revolt. It wouldn’t be comparable to Vietnam or Korea (or Ukraine?) since Iran has no superpower stiffening its resistance. They cannot expect a flood of Chinese conscripts or spare HIMARS.

The goal would be tactical air power. After a certain point, any time the Nazis got too many tanks in one spot, a flight of P-47s would come ruin their day. This had real effects on their ability to organize a defense.

But, as you pointed out, that only works with troops to press the advantage. I have seen little evidence that such organized opposition exists in Iran. Without a strong horse to back, air intervention goes nowhere.

Trump shouldn’t make these rash proclamations

Well, I’m not going to argue with you there. His vibes-based policy is not suited for an actual lose-lose situation. Unless an actual rebel army forms, his best bet is to stay out.

If we’ve learned anything from the last five years of Happening, it’s that American and Israeli air power is really good. A modern extended bombing campaign against Iran would look nothing like the strategic bombing campaigns of the 20th century. It would look like what Israel did to Hezb. The ISAF and IAF would degrade Iranian air defense into irrelevance, then start dropping precision munitions on anyone regime associated who popped their head up. If you think that the American Air Force with target selection done by Israeli spies would get the same results that air campaigns with massed unguided bombs did 50-80 years ago you just haven’t been paying attention. It is true that you can’t just outright win a war, but you can cripple the command structure of an organization. In a country like Iran where there is lots of internal turmoil already, that could be enough to give the opposition an opportunity.

That doesn’t mean it would be a good idea. Iranians are mostly patriots even if they hate the mullahs, so there would be a rally around the flag effect. Regime officials would be able to hide in bunkers and move around. It is possible that enough of them would survive that they could continue coordinating resistance and ruling, and I think you are right that they would go balls to the wall for a nuke if they retained the capacity to do so. All your points about how this would deplete our munitions and damage us diplomatically are good points. We should not risk blowback just for a chance to destroy the Iranian regime.

Basically it seems like you think it definitely won’t work and we shouldn’t do it. I think it might work and we shouldn’t do it.

Besides the obvious previously mentioned example of Hamas, the USAF bombed Yemen relentlessly for over a year (over a decade counting the civil war) to basically no effect whatsoever, including under Trump. They failed to disable Houthi air defenses and nearly lost multiple jets including an F-35 as a result.

We have much worse intelligence against the houthies than the Mossad does against Iran, so I don’t think it is apples to apples.

As far as I know basically all the air assets we lost were reapers. If we are flying slow drones over the country at all, that means the air defenses are highly degraded. That’s like saying the VNAF won the air war because a lot of American airplanes went down. The reason the Vietnamese had so many targets to shoot down was because of our constant presence and dominance in the air.

Was it really so relentless? There sure were a lot of videos of random explosions floating around, but the Yemeni cities that appeared in them never seemed to be anywhere near the total rubble state that the Gaza strip, or Ukrainian frontline cities, were reduced to. I would guess that there was some consideration for the Saudis there, who probably don't want one of those "joining a terrorist militia is the best/only career path available to young men" territories on their border.

I agree that the capabilities of air power have changed.

I also agree that this does not mean that air power can suddenly deliver on the promise of strategic objectives. The US may well invest a few billions to force Iran to abandon its barracks and police stations. But nothing would stop the regime from evenly distributing their goons evenly over the apartments of Tehran. Even if the US can bust any bunker the regime might dig out, I am not convinced that the bunker busters are actually cheaper than digging out bunkers.

As others have pointed out, Hamas is a cautionary tale on what you can not do even with total air superiority.

I agree completely with the rally-around the flag effect, I expect there's probably enriched uranium or plutonium dispersed or hidden somewhere too.

But also I think air power is a bit of a mirage.

If US/Israeli air power was so great, why haven't they been able to destroy Hamas? That was their goal right? Hamas didn't have any air defences whatsoever. Israel's bombing has been extremely intensive, they've wrecked most of Gaza and gotten lots of lefties upset with how intense the bombing has been, people have been throwing out terms like 'absolute destruction', just look at all the footage. In addition Israel controls entry and exit into Gaza so they've been able to quasi-besiege it and block off food imports. But it still wasn't enough to destroy Hamas!

Nobody in the West really likes Hamas that much, they're considered a terror group. Gaza is a pretty small mini-state right next to Israel. Hamas is a tiny fraction of the Iranian military in strength. There have also been Israeli ground attacks. Even if Hamas was destroyed and Israel achieved a full victory it would not necessarily show that airpower would work in Iran, since just about every factor is much worse for an Iran campaign. And yet Hamas is still around, they're shooting collaborators.

If air power was so great, Hamas should be gone, right? You can blow up a commander, they just replace him again and again and again. I suppose that Hamas and Gazans are highly motivated to be anti-Israel and this compensates for being bombed? But it also seems that the strength of airpower is overrated if in even a highly favourable environment it fails.

The Iranian opposition don't seem to be armed, unless they're armed I don't think they're too relevant, the government can crush them if they want Tiananmen style, it's just that they don't particularly want to.

If US/Israeli air power was so great, why haven't they been able to destroy Hamas? That was their goal right?

I’m increasingly starting to suspect that the Gaza war was intentionally fought with the aim of going on forever while still leaving Hamas intact. It’s not great for Israel’s security, or the IDF soldiers deployed there, or for the civilian population of Gaza, but it is pretty good for having a permanent excuse to skip your court dates.

Sorry, court dates?

Who do you think is calling the shots in this scenario?

https://www.timesofisrael.com/court-agrees-to-cancel-pms-testimony-this-week-after-briefing-by-security-chiefs/

Oh. I guess that makes more sense.

I would still disagree with the suspicion, if only because I don’t see an obvious way to actually fix the problem.

I would not consider Gaza a place where air power is well suited. Air power works on opponents who are at least moderately sophisticated and organized. A tiny band of terrorists who belt toddlers to themselves instead of bullet proof vests every morning is exactly the opposite of the type of target that air power works well on.

I think the way it works well is in combination with good intelligence to wage assassination campaigns against enemy leadership and important weapons systems. You can’t destroy an enemy organization, but you can degrade them and scare whoever the next guy is. I think the right way to think of it might be like a correction for a dog. If you just assassinate their top 10 guys every time they cross some line, they’ll keep filling those spots but the next 10 guys might start to think twice about being as oppositional. It’s definitely not a silver bullet, but I don’t think that means it is useless.

they’ll keep filling those spots but the next 10 guys might start to think twice about being as oppositional. It’s definitely not a silver bullet, but I don’t think that means it is useless.

Or eventually you find one of those top 10 guys that you have a special relationship with and/or identify as a relative moderate, at which point you can then ensure the space above him is kept conveniently open and facilitate a regime change in which somebody you can actually negotiate with gets put into the top job.

Air power works on opponents who are at least moderately sophisticated and organized...

I think the way it works well is in combination with good intelligence to wage assassination campaigns against enemy leadership and important weapons systems. You can’t destroy an enemy organization, but you can degrade them and scare whoever the next guy is. I think the right way to think of it might be like a correction for a dog. If you just assassinate their top 10 guys every time they cross some line, they’ll keep filling those spots but the next 10 guys might start to think twice about being as oppositional.

I know everyone seems to have forgotten but the US tried this against the Houthis. First Biden and then Trump bombed Yemen for over a year to stop them from attacking ships or launching missiles at Israel, they blew up a bunch of Houthi leaders including the "top missile guy" yet in the end the targets were replaced and the missiles continued even as Trump basically signed a separate peace that didn't even oblige the Houthis to stop firing missiles.

My suspicion is that an extended campaign against Iran would resemble the Yemen campaign, with the exception that Iran, unlike the Houthis, have the firepower to actually kill a significant number of Americans if they're backed into a corner.

The Iranian opposition don't seem to be armed, unless they're armed I don't think they're too relevant, the government can crush them if they want Tiananmen style, it's just that they don't particularly want to.

Obviously in this day and age you can't trust anything (and I can't even dig the video in question back up), but Russian telegrams were circulating something that purported to be a CCTV video of protesters acting like a not completely incompetent fire team with some sort of machine guns. I'm sure the Americans and Israelis would have no trouble getting some of them trained and equipped if they wanted to.

Hamas are deep inside thousands of tunnels and tightly embedded among civilians, counting on Israel (who are being held to first world standards) to value Palestinian childrens' lives higher than Hamas does. They have solid intel on Israel and their capabilities and prepared for just such a war for decades. Why are you ignoring that?

I'm ignoring that because it's not true. The Israeli military has been eager to bomb and wreck Gaza and they've worked hard to limit and constrain food and medical supplies coming in, despite pressure from the US and EU. The ethos is not 'first world standards' but 'the bare minimum that can be dubiously defended as first world standards'.

Since when did first world countries routinely shoot children trying to collect food? Or claim just about every UN/human rights NGO is biased against them? Even Israeli sources have been going 'what is the point of this, what are we trying to achieve by setting these arbitrary lines and shooting people who try to cross them':

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-27/ty-article-magazine/.premium/idf-soldiers-ordered-to-shoot-deliberately-at-unarmed-gazans-waiting-for-humanitarian-aid/00000197-ad8e-de01-a39f-ffbe33780000

It's definitely true that they prepared for decades against the war that Israel would wage, with thousands of tunnels and human shields. An air war would not succeed, because Hamas made sure of that.

Could you quantify these "first world standards"? Because from where I'm sitting, the Israelis killed more Gazans in the average day prior to the "ceasefire" than the Iranians killed protesters even using the highest death projections despite the Iranian population sitting between 50x and 100x that of Gaza.

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The latter 99% of his post was about how attacking Iran wouldn't overthrow the regime?

My bad. I got lost. I read his comment and then came back to it a few hours later and thought it was a different one.

The steelman for bombing working is that if you take out the C&C or communication nodes of the enemy and perhaps hit a few troop concentrations they will scatter, loose coordination, and then fall to pieces before the troops that are already on the ground (the protestors). Coordination is extremely important and if you deny that to the enemy they might collapse quickly.

FWIW I tend to think the US should stay out.

I appreciate that you can model the way this could work, even if you don't support it.

It's just "shock and awe" revolutionary edition. The security forces need to be scared to operate, and ideally think they'd be better off switching sides. That's true with or without air support, but air support would sure make it easier.

Why do you think in any way it's a good idea to directly compare mass protests and regime change in Iran to Russia's invasion of Ukraine?

Those are not analogous scenarios. You've essentially provided a Gish Gallop of incredibly wrong military analysis.

It's actually something of a prevalent myth that strategic bombing in WWII didn't have a major impact on the outcome of the war, but that's also not an analogous situation.

I love that you leave out "China" when discussing the Korean War.

The prior Israeli and American bombing of Iran did nothing, there was no significant military or political effect.

I don't know what evidence I could possibly provide here to change your mind, given all the available evidence you've presumably had the chance to encounter.

Bombing Iran more aggressively is the surest path to them nuclearizing.

Seriously? I thought they didn't want weapons? What are they waiting for?

Russia and China will support Iran to inflict costs on the US

Where were they last June?

If you think the regime might be collapsing and is totally unsustainable then why bomb, why should the US not just do nothing and save a lot of effort, risk and blood?

Ensuring victory of the opposition and reducing the chance of protracted conflict and bloodshed.

This recent Venezuela campaign seems to be totally incoherent.

Imagine if you will how you would feel if Venezuela had been undergoing mass, violent protests?

At least when people bring up Libya they're conceding that air power in support of on-the-ground opposition can be quite effective at regime change.

You haven't provided military analysis at all, all you say in your little substack post is 'bomb and good things will happen'. At no point do you investigate the value proposition, the historic success rate of these air campaigns, consider relevant factors such as 'what are the risks of starting a major war in a key energy exporting area'? Go read a RAND report, there are far smarter ways to be hawkish.

mass protests and regime change in Iran to Russia's invasion of Ukraine?

Ukraine was in the middle of a civil war when Russia invaded, the rebels there had gotten FAR further than in Iran. They actually controlled territory, were well organized into their own mini-states in Donetsk and Luhansk. And even with the Russian bombing... Even with the Russian invasion... It's still turned into a mess for Russia because Ukraine (considerably smaller than Iran) is not easily toppled. Ukraine has outside support, so would Iran.

I love that you leave out "China" when discussing the Korean War.

Yeah, the Chinese provided the ground troops that retook North Korea. They fought the bulk of the ground campaigns. Ground campaigns matter, I have stressed this. But the US destroying 75-90% of the standing structures in North Korea still didn't bring them to the negotiating table, do you think a few measly missiles are going to knock out Iran? Israel has bombed the shit out of Gaza and marched in troops several times, it took a long long long time to achieve a draw. And that's all they've achieved! Hamas is still in charge on the ground.

It's insanely dumb to go 'yes, the Israelis have managed, after years and years of shelling and bombing and ground invasion against a tiny poor state they outnumber and totally encircle, to get back their captives, while Hamas is still in charge - so the US and Israel can bomb a mountainous country 50x bigger than Gaza in population, 80x the size of Israel in size, a country with much greater military resources and somehow this will overthrow the regime, without even a ground invasion since even in my fantasy world that's still too far'

There's no reason why this would work!

Where were they last June?

Sending military aid takes time and depends on the situation, whether it's a tit for tat squabble or a major campaign. We've been through over 20 years of interventionists proposing 'easy' campaigns in the Middle East that almost always turn out to be long, expensive, failures and yet no lessons seem to be learnt. Iran is not even an 'easy' campaign, it is an extremely difficult campaign in a mountainous, highly populated, huge territory. It is the hardest campaign.

Bombing Iran more aggressively is the surest path to them nuclearizing.

Seriously? I thought they didn't want weapons? What are they waiting for?

You understand the concept of theory of a hypothetical scenario, right? If it's warm, I don't need a coat. But if it's cold, I'll wear a coat. I might bring a coat in my bag if I think it'll suddenly get cold enough for me to need it! I'm a latent coat-wearer.

Ensuring victory of the opposition and reducing the chance of protracted conflict and bloodshed.

What opposition? Led by who? Can you even name them? What are their goals and ideologies? Have you justified that an air campaign would result in the success of this amorphous political grouping, as opposed to tarring them with comprador status (presumed to be in alliance with foreigners trying to bomb the country)?

Imagine if you will how you would feel if Venezuela had been undergoing mass, violent protests?

'Feelings' are not supposed to come into it. Strategy via 'feelings' is stupid and usually immoral too in its final outcomes, inferior in all respects compared to sober analysis.

Ukraine was in the middle of a civil war when Russia invaded

You continue to demonstrate you have no ability to understand reality.

You're still peddling "if we attack Iran they will really go for the bomb" AFTER the US and Israel attacked them six months ago.

You're still peddling "if we attack Iran they will get support from China/Russia" AFTER we've seen them do nothing to help Iran when it was getting pummeled six months ago.

You talk a big game about "sober analysis," but you are incapable of recognizing the use of the word "feel" in a context where I'm simply proposing you consider an alternate scenario. Instead of thinking about the posed alternate scenario--which would be inconvenient for you--you jump to a lecture on "feelings" not being a great way to analyze things.

At least the people who bring up Libya concede that air power in support of protests on the ground can be effective at toppling regimes.

Come back when you've worked out the difference between 'skirmishing' and 'attempted regime change'. You have no idea what you're proposing, an incredibly simplistic or outright ignorant view of the relevant dynamics.

Russia and China do not care much about skirmishes, they care more about regime change. The response would be different.

Hypothetical Venezuelan protests have little to do with the situation, unless they're well-armed enough to be credible threats to the state. I already addressed this but you don't seem to understand it.

I have a pretty good idea of what I'm proposing since I've spent some time in the Middle East, uh, working on US foreign policy.

Russia and China will not stick their necks out for Iran. Any support would be a mere token.

You have demonstrated you'll just throw analytic spaghetti at the wall even when it makes zero sense.

I don't think you grok my point about the Venezuela operation, were it to have been done in a context of a mass popular uprising.

It all makes sense now. Reflexive support of a totally unknown opposition. Great confidence in intervention, despite a poor track record. Complete assurance that this time, they really are developing WMDs... Very little interest in detail (what carrier groups are there to use for this attack, there aren't any deployed in CENTCOM right now) or any consequences of the attack. No attempt to weigh up pros and cons.

Yes, I can completely believe you worked on US foreign policy in the Middle East.

If the Venezuelan operation were done in the context of a mass uprising, who knows what would happen? A civil war, a new government or just more chaos? How does that help achieve US goals, how does that secure the oil Trump wants? These are totally different situations with different goals.

I'm not arguing this time they really are developing WMDs. Iran has long had an active nuclear research program with an at-least-latent weaponization angle. How close they are to break out capacity is hotly contested of course, after the Fordow bombing.

You were arguing that they would pursue the bomb if we intervene ... more than we already have of late. I don't think that's actually a real risk in that it's already baked in before this.

The opposition is not totally unknown in terms of its characteristics. They aren't Al Qaeda affiliates, for example. They aren't commies.

The US and Israel have a large number of potential options without a carrier group, FYI. I don't need to publish an OPORD to advocate for the basic idea of something we and Israel have a proven capacity to do.

We already have a good idea of potential blowback from Iran, since we just bombed them six months ago. They're worse off considerably than they were before.

We can also estimate the plausibility of various outcomes from toppling the regime and evaluate the costs and benefits.

You seem unwilling to do that in any reality-based way, since you lack a command of very basic facts about Iran in particular and military strategy in general. I think any objective observer who isn't suffering from Iraq Syndrome or a committed isolationist can see this is a good case for it.

Funnily enough, Iran also has a good deal of oil and gas. My point is just that in Venezuela Trump had Delta swoop in and rendition the leader, leaving everything else intact. Which is a strange situation! Will they get democracy? Who knows! In Iran, the mass protests for regime change are ongoing. If we were to assist with that regime change, the boulder is already rolling down the hill.

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Russia doesn't have the capacity to support Iran now and China just doesn't care (nor does it have the capacity to defend them). They're on their own.

As far as I know, Kim Il Sung was absolutely willing to negotiate as early as 1951 because it was clear that his original war goals were out of reach. Continuing the war was not only pointless but also rather detrimental for North Korea. It was Stalin who insisted on continuing the war and supplying the Chinese to do so with Mao's acceptance because both of them decided to make the return of POWs a central issue in order to block any agreement (because there was no way the enemy was going to forcibly repatriate all North Korean and Chinese POWs) and thus prolong the war as long as possible as they apparently thought this'd harm American interests or something (or a case of commie 4D chess, maybe). It's no surprise that a ceasefire was only reached after Stalin's death. In fact, it's reasonable to assume that Kim was willing to negotiate a truce as soon as the winter of 1950 had MacArthur not insisted on continuing the UN offensive beyond all of its original aims.

By all accounts the protests are smaller than in past years (way back in 2009 the opposition could draw out half a million people at a single march!) but much more violent. No real prospect of overthrowing the regime and I can't really think of an explanation for the way the protesters are acting except to conclude that they're being intentionally lured by Mossad to be slaughtered in order to bait Trump into doing their dirty work.

This seems to be Israel's preferred strategy under Trump: pick a fight you can't win alone, get people killed and then hope that Trump will stumble onto the escalation ladder and win the fight for you. Unlike some of their other decisions this one is at least rational since their domination of the American political system is unlikely to last much longer and they could well be faced with an indifferent if not hostile administration by 2029.

No real prospect of overthrowing the regime

Weird that the regime has taken the nationwide comms blackout to a new level and been gunning people down then.

I can't really think of an explanation for the way the protesters are acting except to conclude that they're being intentionally lured by Mossad

Ah yes, your inability to reason clearly about a fairly straightforward incentive structure is better explained by the Iranians being fooled by the crafty Jews.

The Iranians know the score. The regime has been in power for nearly 50 years. Nobody doesn't know the risks.

Ah yes, your inability to reason clearly about a fairly straightforward incentive structure is better explained by the Iranians being fooled by the crafty Jews.

You're being fairly uncharitable here. Mike Pompeo and the Jerusalem post have both made claims that the Mossad is involved in the protests, with Mike specifically wishing the Mossad agents marching alongside the protesters a happy new year and the Mossad explicitly sending a message in Farsi talking about how they were with the protesters and supporting them.

I'm really not though.

There's a huge difference between saying "Mossad supports Iranian dissidents" and "Mossad is the reason these protests are taking off and people are willing to die."

I agree with that phrasing in general, but "supports" is providing a lot of ambiguity here. From the reports I've seen, the Mossad are both supplying weapons and actively participating in the protests ("walking alongside"). While I'm not going to claim that the protests simply wouldn't happen at all in the absence of Mossad involvement, I think supplying weaponry, communication equipment and warm bodies is a significant contribution to the protests. "Supports" could easily be interpreted as an entirely non-material contribution, when that really isn't the case.

You're right about material support.

But that's not the precipitating factor. Things like hyperinflation are.

Weird that the regime has taken the nationwide comms blackout to a new level and been gunning people down then.

Not that weird, if they were actually on the verge of overthrowing the regime then they would be the ones seizing control of communications and gunning down the IRGC instead of the reverse.

You're conflating "on the verge of victory" with "on the verge of starting a serious revolution."

If they were already so close to the success, then we'd just let them succeed. It's the beginning of the beginning of a revolution, not the beginning of the end.

How is this any more a "serious revolution" than the last dozen Iranian protest waves that were crushed, some of which had even higher turnout than this one?

Well, you could go read about those protests and the context in which they happened, and then make the comparison to the present one.

One notable factor is that hyperinflation wasn't crashing the economy before now.

Another notable factor is the level of violence, and the size of the protests despite that violence.

One notable factor is that hyperinflation wasn't crashing the economy before now.

Plenty of regimes have survived hyperinflation combined with large protests. Venezuela's regime is basically inferior in every aspect to that of Iran yet they had no problem squashing proportionally far larger protests more than once while enduring far worse economic conditions without much issue.

Another notable factor is the level of violence, and the size of the protests despite that violence.

It seems like the violence led to the size of the protests rapidly collapsing, considering how they seem to have tapered off before stopping entirely

I'm not an expert on Iran or military matters but from what I see on Twitter it doesn't look like the US is carrying out the expected movements of troops/hardware you'd expect to see before a military intervention. My weak prediction is that Trump does nothing, the protests are harshly suppressed and Trump claims "credit" along the lines of "If it weren't for my warnings there would have been a lot more bloodshed, let me tell you".

That being said, I'm not sure how long the Iranian regime can carry on in its current form. The grand masterplan of:

1/Economically immiserate yourself for 40+ years for the sake of picking a fight with Israel and the USA

2/Get militarily humiliated during the first direct conflict with these two nations

3/Seethe

4/Profit

Seems to have hit a very visible snag around the last step and I don't know how long the regime is even going to be able to recruit enough people to fill its security apparatus to the extent necessary to continue keeping a lid on public frustration while it's abundantly obvious that essentially none of their citizens benefit from the country being run like this.

Obviously the plan is to get a nuke and obviate the "get militarily humiliated" part.

it's not really Culture War Classic material.

What are you saying has changed? I’m having a hard time finding the Deomcratic Party line—I mostly get results from last summer—but Trump blustering is par for the course.

Look at George W. Plenty of tough talk, minimal actual intervention. There was no reward in the risk. It’s entirely possible that we’re in a similar scenario.

Both parties have interventionists and noninterventionists, hawks and doves. Both parties will sometimes flip based on negative polarization of the other party being in charge.

Plus, foreign policy is by default less likely to be a Culture War topic.

The major change is Trump as a person and MAGA in general have a strange, not always coherent, set of foreign policy instincts. Iran hawks wanted to pull out of JCPOA, kill Soleimani, bomb Iran's nuclear program, and foster regime change. Trump, bit by bit, seems to be going along with that agenda. I'm seeing indications we're taking a harder line on Russia, and we just did the Venezuela op. (Little Marco is getting stuff done.) But Trump also likes to shit on NATO more than seems ideal, and then there's the whole Greenland issue. Oh, and Trump has been soft on China it seems? I don't understand it.

If either Vance or Rubio becomes president, I think there will be a much more consistent foreign policy than Trump's vibe-based approach.

Tangentially related: something I recall hearing a lot from the anti-interventionist left/Ron Paul libertarian/paleocon spheres ca. 2008-2012 was the idea that sanctions and embargoes (on Iran and Cuba, at that time) are actually counterproductive to the stated goal of spreading democracy, because they provide an easy foreign scapegoat for dictators to pin their economic woes on, and the resulting “rally ‘round the flag” effect ironically gives the sanctioned regimes more domestic popular support than they would otherwise enjoy.

On the one hand, this seems like a pretty galaxy-brained take; surely, from the perspective of the man in the streets of Tehran or Havana, the more obvious conclusion is, “If our regime fell and we played ball with the Americans, they’d lift the sanctions and we wouldn’t be poor!”

But on the other, national pride is a hell of a drug, and I can definitely imagine the ordinary people of a sovereign nation—particularly one like Iran, with such a long history of being the premier regional power and a bulwark of refinement and culture—chafing at the prospect of bending the knee to foreign interlopers. Anecdatally, during the US/Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last summer, I remember seeing assimilated, secular Persian-Americans on social media furiously condemning the US and Israel, even to the point of supporting the Ayatollah, whose very name they seldom utter without a curse before and after (cf. the old saw about not realizing “damn Yankee” was two separate words). In many cases, they were the very same people who took to the streets tweets during the anti-regime protests of 2009 and 2022!

Does anyone have any hard data on how true this hypothesis is?

On the one hand, this seems like a pretty galaxy-brained take; surely, from the perspective of the man in the streets of Tehran or Havana, the more obvious conclusion is, “If our regime fell and we played ball with the Americans, they’d lift the sanctions and we wouldn’t be poor!”

Absolutely nobody is going to think this. They are going to look at what happened when the regimes in Libya, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan fell and they played ball with the Americans. Compared to what Libya turned into, the regime is going to look pretty great by comparison.

Except for Libya, none of your examples involve a regime being overthrown from within by forces wanting an end to the sanctions, or voluntarily submitting to American demands in order to end the sanctions. Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan are all cases where the powers that be (well, were) pointedly refused to play ball, boldly stood up to American threats, and were invaded/couped in short order. If anything, they should serve as cautionary tales of what happens when you don’t play nice with America.

First of all, even if we just take Libya as the example it serves to make my point by itself. When you compare what Libya was before the fall of Gaddafi to the open-air slave markets that replaced him, I can't imagine that any reasonable person would want that for their country (or even any countries near them).

But the point I was trying to make was that the regimes in those countries did fall and get knocked out by American intervention (or assistance in the case of Syria), which is what is being proposed for Iran. In no case did the American intervention result in a positive change for the countries involved - and everyone else in the region can see exactly what happened.

In Iran, we don't have a bunch of Islamists waiting to take over.

The Islamists are already in charge.

It's just a completely different country than Libya.

National pride doesn't provide working electricity or keep you warm in the winter. The current protests in Iran seem to mostly be caused by the dire economic situation, which has only come about due to sanctions.

I also think a mistake you might be making is assuming that the primary aim of sanctions is to spread democracy in the first place, rather than as a means of weakening an enemy state so it's less able to harm you. A state that's poorer is one that's less able to buy weapons, pay soldiers, fund an air force etc.

No, sanctions are not responsible for decades of Islamic socialism driving the economy into the ground and hyperinflation via mismanagement. Don't take it from me, take it from Iran's president.

The dire economic situation is the underlying reality that triggers mass discontent, but there have been plenty of mass protests before for democratic reforms (not regime change).

I don't doubt that incompetence has a large role to play, but I think sanctions have to be somewhat responsible. I don't think you can claim for instance that their economy would be just as bad if they were as free to take part in global trade as Germany.

Sure, it's not nothing. They could sell oil to China at market prices instead of at a discount, for example.

But, as with Cuba, sanctions a supporting factor.

Also, lol, consider how shitty Germany's economy is without any US sanctions.

Germany is mismanaging its economy in its own unique way, but it's still doing a lot better than Iran.

Just about everyone is doing "a lot better" than Iran, since they have hyperinflation and water shortages.

The debated point was, "How much is that a result of US sanctions vs. mismanagement?"

I was pointing out Germany was a funny example to bring up since they have managed to royally fuck up their economy the last while with unforced errors.

IMO the allegation that Iran tried to kill Trump is frankly too absurd to take seriously. The Iranian agent conducted an interview with the FBI while in Iran? Like he is employed by Iran for a super secret mission, and voluntarily decides to confess guilt in an interview with the FBI, while still in Iran? And it’s a phone interview, so it could be literally anyone on the other side of the phone? Disregarding the absurdity of Iran ever trying to do this, never in a million years would they task a 50-year-old who spent a decade in prison with such a mission; that is like a television drama’s idea of how intelligence work plays out in real life. I think whoever is responsible for this bizarre event gave the game away with this:

he allegedly told the FBI of the IRGC's desire to kill an Iranian American activist and target Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka with a mass shooting event. Shakeri also told investigators that the IRGC tasked him with surveilling two Jewish American citizens living in New York

Would Iran, with its half-million strong diaspora in America, able to call upon thousands of Shiite Muslim Americans to do their bidding, task a criminal for four of their highly sensitive operations, none of which have anything to do with each other? And we know all this from a phone call interview? Press X to doubt.

Would Iran, with its half-million strong diaspora in America, able to call upon thousands of Shiite Muslim Americans to do their bidding

Come on man. Think about it. They came to America. They are not regime fans.

I have some "lived experience" with Iran assassination plots and I can tell you it's real.

You're assuming he knew he was talking to the FBI when he gave up that information. You'd be surprised what people will say if they think you're in the know.

Iran has a documented history of using criminals, foreign and domestic, to conduct assassination operations because they have leverage and plausible deniability. (See how easy it was to get you to believe there's no way it could be Iran?)

Come on man. Think about it. They came to America. They are not regime fans.

For the most part I agree, but I think it's more about the circumstances of their departure, i.e. they are elites who fled Iran in the 70s in connection with the revolution. One can contrast them with Israeli-Americans who tend to be very pro-Israel.

Some % of Iranian Americans are likely Shiite extremist or Iranian extremists simply as a matter of statistics; it is not unheard of for extremists to be the children of those who left their country because of extremism. According to the official documents they were “voluntary telephonic interviews” and

SHAKERI's stated reason for participating in the interviews was to attempt to obtain a sentence reduction for another individual ("Individual-1"), who is serving a sentence in U.S. prison, by providing assistance to law enforcement on this individual's behalf.

But this really stretches the imagination, as Iran would brutally torture him to death for conducting such an interview, were he a real person.

Iran has a documented history of using criminals, foreign and domestic, to conduct assassination operations because they have leverage and plausible deniability

Plausible deniability would be paying someone who is not Iranian. Really this all sounds similar to the string of antisemitic arson attacks in Australia, where some mysterious overseas organization hired criminals to commit random acts of criminality against Jewish organizations, most of which never constituted a real threat, coincidentally as the Australian Jewish community pushed for tyrannical antisemitic hate speech laws:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8057j0mz5mo.amp

Australia's federal police have said they are investigating whether "overseas actors or individuals" are paying local criminals to carry out antisemitic crimes in the country.

There has been a spate of such incidents in recent months, the latest of which saw a childcare centre in Sydney set alight and sprayed with anti-Jewish graffiti. No-one was injured.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called a snap cabinet meeting in response, where officials agreed to set up a national database to track antisemitic incidents. Thus far, the federal police taskforce, set up in December to investigate such incidents, received more than 166 reports of antisemitic crimes. Albanese said it appeared some of the crimes were "being perpetrated by people who don't have a particular issue, aren't motivated by an ideology, but are paid actors".

These “attacks” were designed specifically to cause no damage: https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2025/3/10/mob-faked-attack-on-australian-synagogue-police

The caravan had been easily located, the AFP said, adding that the explosives were clearly visible and no detonator was present, suggesting there was never any intent to attack Jewish targets. “The caravan was never going to cause a mass casualty event but instead was concocted by criminals who wanted to cause fear for personal benefit,” Krissy Barrett, AFP’s deputy commissioner for nation

This has also been blamed on Iran, because of course.

You're right that it "could be" the case that Iranian-Americans were willing to conduct terrorism on the Islamic regime's behalf. That rate is infinitesimal, empirically.

Presumably Shakeri thought the FBI wasn't going to publish the fact of the interview. I don't know the logic of why the FBI did what it did.

There's a well-documented history of Iran conducting operations against Jews worldwide over decades.

People love to mistake Iranian incompetence for "ah they didn't actually want to hurt anyone." "They couldn't be that irrational." Like the time they wanted to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US in Washington DC. Or like the time they fired ballistic missiles at US forces in Iraq and didn't do much, so the explanation among nonsensical people was "clearly it was all for show." For their part, the Iranians believed the MSM lied about the casualties they had actually caused, because they knew their missiles hit the geocoords. (We did have troops in bunkers get TBIs from the impacts.)

I've personally got to witness Iranian efforts to kill Americans and Jews, so I know not to confuse their incompetence with malicious intent.

Here’s what you are missing that explains the reluctance to wade into the Iran thing, both by Trump and the security apparatus as a whole:

ISRAEL DID NOT ACTUALLY DO THAT WELL IN THE LAST SKIRMISH WITH IRAN

While it was happening you were soaked in a bunch of propagandized news articles about how Israel completely dismantled Fordow and blew up every single Iranian missile and bombed Iran back into the Stone Age and caused every single member of Hezbollah to drop dead simultaneously.

Meanwhile any successful Iranian strikes against Israel were not covered by the mainstream media at all and if they were the damage was downplayed. And there were quite a few: a major military airfield got destroyed, the Israeli equivalent of the pentagon suffered major damage from a direct hit, a large power plant was destroyed, Tel Aviv’s largest hospital was damaged from a direct hit, a major financial building was severely damaged, there were several hits on apartment blocks that probably caused mass casualties that were covered up. And all that was in the four days before the war ended, as the interceptors were running dry. THAT’s why Trump leaned on them to stop. It was becoming unsustainable without major US military action in support, or Israel chucking nukes.

Then over the next six months the truth started leaking out: The damage against Iran’s missile sites was less severe than anticipated, Hezbollah has maintained organizational cohesion and just replaced all the officers killed in the pager attack, the attack on Fordow was so successful that we actually need to do it again.

If the US starts major strikes against Iran, the leadership will start throwing everything they have at Israel in retaliation. Combine that with the fact that every single Iranian protest action of the last 20 years has turned out to be a giant nothing burger, and it’s just not necessarily worth it risking a giant fiasco in the Middle East over a shot at toppling the Iranian regime. That’s said I think there’s a good chance they end up going for it anyway.

Within hours of the strikes mainstream western press was quoting experts saying, basically “this would have delayed them by a few months at the most; the most valuable facilities are dispersed and too deep underground”, so I don’t think this is accurate.

You’re right, but everyone kind of ignored that.

Do you have any solid sources for all these claims? What makes them more reliable than everything in the MSM? How did you verify them?

His assesment of Iran's damage roughly matches what I was seeing on Twitter and Telegram groups as it was happening.

Counter anecdote: It's the exact opposite of what I was seeing on Twitter as it was happening.

about how Israel completely dismantled Fordow

Israel?

THAT’s why Trump leaned on them to stop. It was becoming unsustainable without major US military action in support of Israel chucking nukes.

What a wonderful alternative theory of events. We had to hold Israel back for their own good.

risking a giant fiasco in the Middle East over a shot at toppling the Iranian regime.

Some would argue the giant fiasco in the Middle East is not toppling the Islamic regime. Do you know how much easier Iraq would have been without Iranian interference? Syria? Yemen? Palestine? Lebanon?

the leadership will start throwing everything they have at Israel in retaliation

Israel knows and they seem fine with it. Solve the problem once and for all, you know? They've been advocating for more strikes before these protests kicked off.

If Israel did well last time around (which on balance it seems to me they did) wouldn't the smartest thing for the US to do be "nothing" and let the Israelis sort it? They almost certainly have better intel and assets, their strike apparatus seems adequate, and they likely have better understanding of Iranian culture and society, and they have much more skin in the game.

The main argument I can see cutting against this is that US action might be more palatable to Iranians than Israeli action.

Team work makes the dream work imo.

We have complimentary capabilities in intelligence and air power. My understanding is the rate of Israeli strikes was only possible due to direct logistics support by the US.

Seems like the US could provide e.g. airborne tanker support without really doing anything that would be considered "going to war with Iran" (although ofc material support is technically an act of war [ETA: or at least a cause for war] and all that)

What a wonderful alternative theory of events. We had to hold Israel back for their own good.

Ok what’s your explanation? Trump strong-armed Netanyahu into stopping because he just loves Iran so much?

Israel knows and they seem fine with it. Solve the problem once and for all, you know?

Gambling is always fun when your losses will be covered by someone else’s money.

Trump strong-armed Netanyahu into stopping because he just loves Iran so much?

Why would Trump have to strong arm Netanyahu into stopping if Israel was getting its shit shoved in?

Netanyahu was banking on pushing things to such a critical state that large scale US intervention and regime change would be required. Failing that, it would justify using nuclear weapons.

Doesn't that mean it failed and they should have used nukes?

As I see it, the crux of the matter is the Revolutionary Guard. Unless you can somehow displace them as the primary powerbrokers/guards/corrupt overseers of Iran and its economy, it's hard to imagine meaningful improvement that is worth the number of bodies that will pile up. The system only changes if the guys with guns want it to change.

I do think it changes in the next 10 years. The leaders of the revolution seems to be dying out and my gut says the next generation isn’t the same. I have no idea if the current protest can work but I don’t think the replacements will have the same zeal.

You are correct. The protestors know this. They know the IRGC will, almost certainly, have to be forcibly removed.

The IRGC was designed to be an ideologically aligned military arm of the Islamic regime, as the name makes clear. They are very much the system that protestors seek to overthrow.

If Trump sends in Delta force and they manage to successfully yoink the Ayatollah with minimal casualties, I will buy $15,000 worth of Raytheon and Northrop Grumman stock.

Toppling the regime may or may not play out in the U.S.'s favor, but supporting the protestors in some material way also seems like an obvious win. I'm not sure what other leverage Trump can gain over Iran that doesn't involve another 'kinetic' action.

And I'm also unsure what 'Carrot' can be offered to the current regime to somehow play nice after like 50 years of entrenching as America's biggest hater.

I do know that of the few friends I have who feel strongly about the situation (because they or their family is from Iran/Persia) they are pretty vehement that it'd be worth significant amounts of death to remove the existing regime.

Toppling the regime may or may not play out in the U.S.'s favor,

Can you please point out any regime-toppling exercises that played out in the U.S.'s favor from the past 70 years? I legitimately can't think of any.

It's hard to tell what played out in the favor of the US compared to a counterfactual baseline that doesn't exist, but Grenada, Panama, Haiti and Brazil don't really seem to have backfired.

Haiti was / is a success?

If Haiti is a success then Guatemala, Congo, Indonesia, Chile and Libya should be on your list too.

The intervention (where we prepared an invasion, showed the ruler of the country a videotape of paratroopers en route, and then he decided to step down) seems to have played out in the US' favor in the sense of accomplishing our objectives at low cost.

I suppose it's fair to question whether or not the benefits from that were worth the cost, but OP didn't ask if regime-toppling exercises had solved all of the problems of the countries we toppled, just whether they had played out in the US' favor.

Probably some of those other ones should be on my list...

OP ( @FirmWeird) in his comment up thread seems to suggest a more comprehensive metric or expansive definition of US favor than the narrow 'decided to step down' = success metric.

Arguably it may yet be too soon to say in Venezuela.

I think it's too soon to say in Venezuela.

"Played out in the US' favor" isn't the same as "played out in the other country's favor" but did our intervention in Haiti actually make the country worse?

Which intervention? I don't see that the first one in 1915 made things better, mostly just different or worse.

I don't know that an alternative history where we leave them be produces better outcomes.

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they are pretty vehement that it'd be worth significant amounts of death to remove the existing regime

But notably not their death. If they actually thought this way---from a revealed preferences angle---they'd be out guerilla-ing.

I'm not so certain that's true.

At least in a couple cases it would also be irresponsible for them to break up their extant lives in the U.S. to go over and maybe die for a regime change.

In one case, though, the guy is single and otherwise not attached to much and owns a decent number of guns.

At least in a couple cases it would also be irresponsible for them to break up their extant lives in the U.S. to go over and maybe die for a regime change.

Just like it's irresponsible for the parents in the US military to disrupt their child's development to go on deployment.

Maybe they’re being more efficient by getting high-earning jobs in America, then sending that money to fund guerillas?

Effective insurrectionists.

slow clap

If they did that, would it actually help the protestors? Ayatollah Khamenei is 86 years old, so presumably not as sharp or energetic as he once was. He stays in power by inertia, and probably also because there's a certain amount of hardline islamists in Iran who like having a theocracy. It's very possible that taking him out would just end up replacing him with a younger, sharper ayatollah. Possibly his son.

Definitely a worrisome failure mode there.

I just like the idea of demonstrating the impotence of an authoritarian in such an embarrassing manner.

What I also find amusing is that if you yoink the current leader without killing him, suddenly their 'replacement' has a dilemma. They can either try to seize power for themselves and supplant their predecessor... at which point the U.S. can force a legitimacy crisis by returning the previous one, or the new leader can insist he's just a placeholder until the return of the captive leader... while admitting his own inability to effect that return.

I feel like this sort of thing happened semi-commonly in Medieval Europe when King got captured and held for ransom.

Seems completely unprecedented in the modern era though.

You are correct that it's not about taking out one person.

Iran is generally ruled by committees of senior officials and advisors, with the Supreme Leader ultimately signing off. It gives him the ability to blame whoever advocated for a course of action if things go poorly. The Supreme Leader has ultimate authority, but is shielded from any direct accountability. Classic "good Tsar, bad Boyars" government design.

Basically the entire reason for the Iranian president is to be the fall guy for economic policies failing. You can vote him out.

What would matter is taking on the security agencies, such that they stop performing effectively at killing protestors and begin switching sides. Just the very act of intervention would probably have a large impact on people's views on the ultimate outcome. Gotta get a preference cascade started.

Not that I'd advocate for it, but Delta probably wants another try at a major Iran op, just out of unit pride.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Eagle_Claw

Incidentally that would be why I DON'T expect Trump to pull something audacious and highly risky, since he's presumably sensitive to how a failure would crack his popularity and image. He has been VERY blessed in the success of his deployment of U.S. forces into dangerous situations. Hasn't had to reckon with a version of the Benghazi or Black Hawk Down situations, let alone the Iran Hostage Crisis. Biden even did him the favor of a hasty Afghanistan withdrawal in the interim.

I'm still in awe of the Venezuela gambit, he must have been assured there was such a disparity in capability (or they had SO MANY insiders to help out) that it would be virtually impossible to truly fail.

I'm not exactly sure what sort of material support for the protestors is most likely to help them succeed, but I do like that this tangibly reduces the likelihood of a real boots-on-ground invasion, from my perspective.

I'm still in awe of the Venezuela gambit, he must have been assured there was such a disparity in capability

They literally didn't turn on their air defences. It's not impressive from a military angle at all.

Long-range air defenses are not very effective against low-flying aircraft* (unless essentially colocated with the target, in which case they don't perform better and may perform worse than other cheaper systems) – you can see this in Ukraine, where Russian and Ukrainian aircraft have been able to operate despite the presence of air defenses much superior to those of Venezuela. Being able to get in, yoink a leader defended by small arms and MANPADS (as Maduro was) and fly off without (allegedly) loss of life or destruction of equipment is impressive. Frankly, just coordinating a joint-services time-on-target operation is difficult enough without any sort of resistance at all.

*you might be wondering "what's the point of long range missiles then?" and the answer is that is if all you are doing is forcing the enemy to do risky nap-of-the-earth operations where they will be susceptible to small-arms fire and have worse performance then your long-ranged missiles have paid for themselves already.

Did all of Maduro's security forget to take their guns off 'safe' as well?

Maybe he lost popular military support? They intentionally let the US take him?

I'm getting too cynical, it just doesn't feel real to me, but it's going to be years before we can parse it. It's an odd strategic move, akin to terrorism on its face, to kidnap a head of state as a naked threat to hang over his successor. So I have to imagine that there was some under the radar deal with the venezuelan deep state to accept this turn of events in exchange for letting them stay in power.

Of course, deals with the USA aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

Sorry what? I don't follow. If it wasn't clear, I was implying that the "disparity" was assured because the other side did not engage in a defense.

the likelihood of a real boots-on-ground invasion

Now do Greenland, lol [cries].

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15452323/Donald-Trump-orders-army-chiefs-plan-invade-Greenland-President.html

If Americans actually cared about Iranians they would stop trying to turn Iran into Syria. Relieve the sanctions, stop trying to steal the oil and work for peace. Another fiasco regime change war that will flood Europe with migrants and that will wreck Iran is the worst possible outcome.

In hindsight, I think it would have been correct to have intervened against Assad.

In hindsight the policy of arming jihadists while trying to sanction every aspect of the Syrian economy ended in a genocide of Syria's christian population and Europe getting flooded by migrants. If anything the west should prop up stable regimes in the middle east. Wasting another trillion trying to occupy a country in the middle east so they can get DEI would be a disastrous policy.

The recent fiasco in Yemen failed because bombing doesn't win wars. The newly installed jihadist in Syria barely controls the country. The Iraq war was a complete fiasco as well as Afghanistan. How many failures does it take before the neocons stop?

If anything the west should prop up stable regimes in the middle east.

No bueno, America's greatest ally would rather weaken and turn its neighbors into open-air slave markets. A strong functioning government even a democratic one, around the region undermines their desire for greater Israel.

Do you routinely hear people complain about the Iranian diaspora?

Something to that, I reckon.

Who's saying anything about an occupation?

I swear to god so many people have brainworms that any potential foreign intervention must be directly compared to the interventions in Iraq or Afghanistan. There are other ways to do things than occupying and nation building. (Also, Iraq is doing ok these days.)

Do you routinely hear people complain about the Iranian diaspora?

That's probably largely because that various kinds of sanctions make Iranians that reach western countries highly-selected.

Elite human capital, if you will.

In case of Iran wreckage, next migraants wouldn't be.

I swear to god so many people have brainworms that any potential foreign intervention must be directly compared to the interventions in Iraq or Afghanistan. There are other ways to do things than occupying and nation building.

It's not just Iraq and Afghanistan, it's also Syria and Libya (that I remember off the top of my head). Also I'd be more ok with your idea if anyone was punished for these blunders, and gave the current batch of pro-intervention people something to think about.

Those are better comparisons for sure.

Syria is a case of a LACK of Western intervention, however. Assad got a ton of support from Russia and Iran, which is why he really started losing when both of those countries had to focus on more immediate problems.

Libya is pretty different from Iran in a host of ways. For one, Gaddafi wasn't a major thorn in our side at the time. The Islamic regime is an ongoing threat that could be removed.

In my essay, I talk about the risk of separatism. You can't have a perfect future guaranteed. The most successful military intervention the US ever did, according to most anyway, was WWII. Which ended up leading to the Cold War with the USSR as our primary enemy, and then the rise of China. Whoops.

In my view, this case seems fairly straightforward once you consider the possible outcomes relative to baseline. The Islamic regime is really bad for Iran and the world.

Syria is a case of a LACK of Western intervention, however. Assad got a ton of support from Russia and Iran, which is why he really started losing when both of those countries had to focus on more immediate problems.

The leading alternatives to Assad were Al Qaeda and ISIS. It seems patently obvious that the Western-backed forces were objectively worse in nearly every way compared to Assad unless you're a Salafist, an Erdogan fan or an Israel-prioritizer (as in, elevating the narrow interests of Israel above all other considerations).

Assad is a major ally of Iran and Russia, traditional enemies of the US.

So far the Al Qaeda guy seems better than Assad.

Iran and Russia are only enemies of the American regime, Al Qaeda is an enemy of the American people.

The Al Qaeda guy is currently having ethnic and religious minorities thrown off of buildings, is that better than Assad?

Oh, I think Iran and Russia are just as much enemies of the American people as Al Qaeda is.

Regardless, can we do the math on how many people was Assad killing? I think it was more.

There's no great option here.

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Do you routinely hear people complain about the Iranian diaspora?

There were two Iranian families in my hometown growing up (smallish town of about 30k people) thet had fled after the Shah was overthrown. One of the families had even converted to Mormonism and was a member of my congregation. The one in my my congregation was a wonderful family and I never heard any complaints about them (they had a son with some mental health issues but even that didn't really cause any problems). I had fewer interactions with the other, but the father of the other family was a school psychiatrist/counsellor at my high school and seemed like a decent guy.

But if someone pretty rabidly anti mass migration like me doesn't have any particular beef with Persians I think that's a pretty good sign of the character of the ones we have here in the US, at least the ones who came here in the 70's.

IMO he shouldn't intervene. Unlike Venezuela, Iran is a middle east shithole and intervening in the middle east has never worked well because there is no history of democracy and widespread support of theocracy. I'm sympathetic to the protestors but I wouldn't help them.

Iran is a middle east shithole

It really wasn't until the mullahs derailed South Korea-level economic growth.

Turkey is not a shithole, and that's the closest approximation to Iran on a number of levels (though they are not oil rich).

There is in fact a history of democracy and constitutional monarchy. The lack of widespread support for theocracy after nearly 50 years is why we're having this conversation.

I have rather cursory knowledge of the pre-1979 Iranian monarchy but based on this I can say that whatever level of economic growth it was showing was not sustainable. It was rather uneven and had a distorting effect on multiple sectors. Also the Shah was mortally ill and had zero inclination to rule as a monarch and to raise his son to be his heir, and at the same time the monarchy was losing legitimacy overall. The population was being subjected to rapid cultural and economic change that it was unable to adapt to. (One American scholar likened it to trying to make people drink water from a fire hose.) Iran was not and was never going to be South Korea or any Asian Tiger.

Just imagine if it had ended up an oil-rich Turkey.

Also the Shah was mortally ill and had zero inclination to rule as a monarch and to raise his son to be his heir

Not sure where you're getting that. The West basically forced him to give up even before knowing about the cancer.

The population was being subjected to rapid cultural and economic change that it was unable to adapt to.

Some would say that's the issue facing the Islamic regime, but it is what is unable to adapt.

The oil boom was obviously not sustainable but the Shah's incompetence was unique. Every other oil state managed to not piss off their entire population.

Is Saudi Arabia not very rich because of oil? Is Turkey (the closest comparison to Iran) not pretty well off without oil?

Iran could have been the combination, and may yet turn out to be.

Economically, the Shah was far, far less incompetent than many of his contemporaries and definitely his successor.

His main flaw in terms of holding power was probably that he was insufficiently ruthless. For example, they let Khomeini go of to France to plot when they could have simply jailed or executed him.

You could argue "he should have been more like the Saudis" and perhaps he should have.

The point is, you should be ruling on easy mode when you have a money printer in the ground, but he still managed to get overthrown, without significant foreign interference.

The Shah is commonly regarded as a weak leader, even by his defenders, particularly compared to his father, Reza Shah. And, ironically, his sister (here we see the problems with hereditary monarchy). He was neither sufficiently brutal, nor sufficiently compromising; not enough love or fear. And he had cancer.

There is a great irony that left-leaning and anti-interventionist types love to harp on Operation Ajax overthrowing democracy and all that, but Mossadegh was simply a stronger strong man and descended from the Qajars--the dynasty Reza Shah overthrew a few decades earlier. Operation Ajax was actually a counter-coup, as Mossadegh was plainly in violation of the constitution to seize the powers he had and refuse to be dismissed. (The mullahs didn't like him either, so in a slightly different universe perhaps there still was an Islamic Revolution.)

The Shah was dealing with leftist and leftist-sympathies in the West, and denialism of Islamism as a risk, and he mismanaged the domestic politics situation at home. His military he lavished upon basically gave up on him.

Rapid economic growth and societal change is actually a risk factor for revolution. All those rural Iranians moving to the cities were more than a bit turned off by the vulgarity of it all. The college kids were listening to commies.

It's a tragedy that could have been avoided with either a more competent Shah, or a less insane West that was soft on leftism and Islamism.

history of democracy

How well did that work out for them?

Operation Ajax

Eh, Mossadegh was not actually that great at democracy since he violated the law to seize power and dismiss parliament.

One could also argue the US/West owe Iran a debt since we helped get them into this mess. (Which we did by basically facilitating Khomeini's return and believing his lies about running a democracy.)

Great or not it was the result of their democratic process. What came after was less so.

I would argue the best way to repay the debt would be to stay out of it now.

So you just support, by default, the dynamic where the undemocratic guys with the guns can mow down the protestors?

Can you see why it's hard to take seriously that the issue is "democracy"?

I mean if you're a committed isolationist/noninterventionist, then great. I can't argue with your consistency.

committed isolationist/noninterventionist

Yes.

Which un-democratic guys are you referring to?

I don't know that Mossadegh's government executed anyone.

Mossadegh was not in power very long.

He was arresting political opposition and emergency powers, but I'll grant you he was not bloodthirsty. He basically was a monarchist himself, it's just he had family ties to the preceding monarchy to the Pahlavis.

Of course, under the Shah, Mossadegh was sentenced to three years in solitary confinement and then house arrest for the rest of his life.

A lot of the people the Shah arrested and executed were communists or Islamists. So I have a hard time getting worked up about that, and also it explains why the Left hates him so much.

So I have to be an apologist for the Shah against the leftist-dominated polite discourse on him being a tyrant, even though he was actually not that bad compared to either rightwing or leftwing comparisons of the day, let alone the mullahs who took over.

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Traditionally, the Left has been soft on Iran and the Right has been hawkish.

I don't think the pro-establishment left has been particularly soft on Iran - although I agree at the margin the pro-establishment right has been more hawkish recently (see for example the Obama era nuclear deal).

There's a strong anti-interventionist Right and Left

I agree here - I think "pro-establishment = hawkish, anti-establishment = dovish" is a better model than "left = dovish, right = hawkish". Trump personally is an exception because he is close to both Israel and Saudi Arabia in a way which the anti-establishment right would disapprove of in anyone else.

There is also a model where the US factional politics of Iran is just the US factional politics of Israel. The pro-establishment left and right are pro-Israel and thus anti-Iran, the anti-establishment left is anti-Israel and thus pro-Iran, and the anti-establishment right is divided on Iran in ways which primarily reflect their attitudes to Israel and Jews.

Eh, I think very few members of the Establishment Left have been anything other than pretty soft of Iran.

For example, I think many of the hawkish criticisms of Obama and the JCPOA ("they wanted to give Iran nukes") are unfair (I supported it), but then there's Ben Rhodes...

The national security-focused Dems are usually pretty sane overall imo. The types who will say it's great Maduro is out of power, for example.

We have to balance how much we hate Iran with the risk that China or Russia push back against us going after their preferred Middle Eastern country. And it is better for the Iranians if they have their own Revolution, not just an American putting a new Dictator in place for them.

With that in mind, I fully believe the Iranians can have a revolution if they don't starve first. The only thing the Americans should do is try to get the protestors food and water on a humanitarian mission. Given how hostile Iran is, doing even this without attacking Iran would be a feat in itself. But it seems like the moral option if we want to help out.

We've already proven just six months ago that Russia and China ain't doin shit here.

They are having their own revolution. Problem is, the regime has all the guns. Nowhere do I advocate we put anyone on the throne. I'm saying we tip the scales against the regime.

People really love to jump to the aftermath complications, as if what's being advocated is an occupation and nation building.

Bombing and regime change aren't the same thing. They could have bombed Iran into a parking lot but it would have done nothing to change who was in power unless they were able to actually occupy Tehran and take control of government. That's a tall order considering the size and remoteness of the country and Tehran's location within it. Not that it couldn't be done, or even be done easily, it just wouldn't be same quick in and out operation and would almost certainly involve taking significant casualties.

There's an ongoing mass uprising.

You can do regime change without boots on the ground if you're providing air support for a mass uprising.

There are protests, not a mass uprising in the sense that there is a rival faction ready to take power. The situation in 2011 was markedly better than the current situation in Iran, as large parts of the country were already under rebel control, and foreign countries, the US included, had already recognized a different government. That's the only instance I can think of where we did "regime change by bombing only", and I haven't heard too many people describe that campaign as something we should try to replicate.

You can't really have "a rival faction" when the police state kills those off immediately in the normal course of business.

But also a mass uprising is a mass uprising, and you're just making up something about a "rival faction." These are the first protests where regime change, not reform, is the explicit goal. Millions of Iranians are risking their lives to take out the regime. They might succeed on their own. They'll almost certainly succeed with some shock and awe backing them up.

How many protestors do you thin there are? I can't find good estimates on numbers, other than "millions" on the high end. So let's assume for the sake of argument that somewhere between 5 and 6 million people have been involved in the protests in some fashion. That's about the equivalent of the number of protestors who turned out for the George Floyd protests, proportionally speaking. The Floyd protests were different in that they weren't calling for the government to be deposed, but other than that they were similarly based on generalized grievances and weren't organized and coordinated on a nation-wide level. If the Floyd protestors had called for a new government, do you think that airstrikes by a capable nation would have made that happen without invasion? If protestors are getting shot at in Washington DC I don't know that bombing the Navy Yard is going to do much to help them. And that's one of the few places where there's a major military base in a large city; here in Pittsburgh the closest you'd get is the 911th Air Refueling Wing, the bombing of which would be beyond useless. And it's not like you can take out military positions, either, because those enforcing the current regime's laws are out amoung the populace, not concentrated on battle lines. My point is that bombing is a good way to take out strategic military targets, but you're suggesting that it can be used to essentially take out law enforcement, which I've never seen happen.

I think you're comparing apples to horses with the George Floyd protests. The situation in Iran is not remotely comparable to the situation in the United States.

These protestors want a revolution, not reform. The economy is in shambles. The regime is not considered legitimate by a huge portion of the population. Large-scale violence is already happening. They do not have a Second Amendment.

The Iranian security agencies have facilities, equipment, and leaders. They could be targeted from the air with precision. Doesn't even require coordination with the opposition.

If protestors seize control of certain facilities/areas, then they can receive protection from the air such that massed military formations can't attack them with impunity. Similarly, no-fly zones disallow the regime to use aircraft to attack the opposition.

We can also air drop weaponry and supplies.

All of this is very feasible.

You can't really have "a rival faction" when the police state kills those off immediately in the normal course of business.

Yes, that's what the police state is for.

Eventually the regime is just going to machine gun the protestors and get on with life. There are plenty of Iranians who support the regime, after all.

Do you understand that it's not a valid critique to ask for something that couldn't be possible beforehand as a necessary variable?

There are numerous factions against the regime located outside Iran, Mr. Pahlavi being the most famous, and some separatist factions in Iran.

If the revolution takes off then things will get organized as they go.

Do you understand that it's not a valid critique to ask for something that couldn't be possible beforehand as a necessary variable?

Sure it is. It's tantamount to saying that the Iranian regime has successfully arranged for themselves to be not removable by air attack, but there's no reason that can't be true.

The regime will not be removed by air attack.

They will be removed by a mass uprising. And a mass uprising with air support is that much more effective.

Some in this thread seem to be operating from the perspective that the mass uprising is not already in place and that this is a question of "could the US simply destroy the regime from the air in short order?"

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A pet theory of mine is actually that the last 50-70 (?) or so of history is qualitatively different than previous eras because leaders are too easy to kill or remove. It used to be that movements would generate Washingtons and Jeffersons and Lafayettes and such who built up their reputation and fame and could lead after winning, or at least strike a deal. But in the modern era, assassinations and executions are relatively more common, and emigrating relatively easier, such that countries suffer "leadership drain" during civil conflict and make civil wars worse than in previous eras. Also, compromise is more difficult because leaders have less political capital at their command. At least, so the thinking goes.

We did that in Libya. The result was an unmitigated disaster.

Anyone have a good postmortem on how this one ended up so fucked?

Reuters:

  • 2011—Revolt and civil war: An uprising against Muammar Gaddafi's four-decade rule rapidly spreads, becoming an armed revolt aided by NATO airstrikes. Gaddafi is ousted in August and killed in October by rebels.

  • 2012—Missed opportunities: A rebel council holds elections for an interim General National Congress which creates a transitional government. True power lies with local armed groups. Islamist militants gain ground and attack the US consulate in Benghazi, killing the ambassador.

  • 2013—Growing divisions: Armed groups are ever more powerful, besieging government buildings. The Congress is increasingly divided and trust ebbs as it seeks to extend its term and delay elections.

  • 2014—East–West schism: The Congress rejects the results of an election to a new parliament—the House of Representatives (HoR)—and sets up a government backed by armed groups in the west. The newly elected parliament moves from Tripoli to the east in support of a rival government backed by Khalifa Haftar, a former general who has brought together several armed factions as the Libyan National Army. Libya is now split between warring administrations in east and west.

  • 2015—Islamists on the march: Islamist groups take advantage of the chaos and Islamic State seizes Sirte, Gaddafi's home city in central Libya, in February. In December, the rival parliamentary bodies sign the Libyan Political Agreement to set up a new transition. The agreement confirms the HoR as Libya's parliament but gives members of the General National Congress a new role as an advisory second chamber—the High State Council (HSC).

  • 2016—Islamic State driven back: The HoR rejects the new government as it takes office in Tripoli, entrenching Libya's east–west divide. Western armed factions eventually take Sirte from Islamic State as Haftar fights militants in Derna and Benghazi and seizes the oil crescent region of central Libya.

  • 2019—Haftar attacks Tripoli: After two more years of on-off fighting across Libya, Haftar drives his LNA through the south, bringing most remaining oil fields under his control. In April, Haftar launches a surprise offensive against Tripoli, taking Sirte en route. He is backed by the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Russia. Western Libyan armed groups come together to support the Tripoli government with help from Turkey, their alliance bolstered by a deal on maritime borders that angers Egypt and Greece.

  • 2020—Ceasefire: Turkey openly offers military support to Tripoli and Haftar's offensive collapses. As his forces pull back, evidence of atrocities is found in the town of Tarhuna. The sides agree a ceasefire and the UN launches a new peacemaking effort aimed at holding national elections the following year.

  • 2021—A failed election: Eastern and western factions accept a new Government of National Unity (GNU) and Presidency Council, meant to oversee elections in December. But the HoR in the east and the HSC in the west cannot agree on a new constitution or rules for the vote and the election falls apart at the last minute.

  • 2022—Standoff: Both parliamentary bodies now say the unity government has lost its legitimacy but the prime minister, Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah, refuses to quit. The HoR in eastern Libya again appoints a rival administration, but it fails to enter Tripoli. The Nawasi, a major Tripoli militia, is driven from the capital.

United Nations:

More than 14 years after the 2011 revolution and the fall of the former regime, Libya remains mired in an unstable transition marked by recurring violence, fragmented and divided institutions and the entrenchment of powerful armed groups. Its current governing and legislative institutions have continued to operate well past their mandated terms. The lack of an agreed upon constitution and the failure to hold national elections in December 2021, competing interpretations of political agreements, transitional road maps and provisional legal instruments are being used to entrench positions within the prevailing stalemate.

In the aftermath of the failure to hold national elections in December 2021, the political landscape of Libya has been defined by a prolonged stalemate and two distinct centres of power: the Government of National Unity in the west and the Libyan National Army in the east and south. In the west, in the absence of strong institutions, hybrid armed groups often act as de facto providers of security. Competition among these groups over territory, resources, control of illicit activities and institutional influence has fuelled recurring violence that often affects the civilian population. In May 2025, the killing of a major armed group leader triggered some of the deadliest clashes in Tripoli since 2011. With no unity of vision among Libyan political and institutional leaders on a national security architecture and disarmament, demobilization and reintegration, the various armed groups have limited incentives to pursue alternate paths.

In the east, over time, administrative structures that parallel those in the west have consolidated, including a military structure, executive bodies and economic institutions, presenting a challenge to efforts to unify national institutions. In the south, the situation remains characterized by divisions along tribal lines and complex security dynamics, including the presence of foreign fighters and mercenaries and the cross-border movements and activities of criminal networks, including illicit trafficking. Southern Libya, while rich in natural resources, remains politically and economically marginalized. The Amazigh, Tebu and Tuareg communities, which are the country’s three recognized non-Arab Indigenous groups, are not adequately represented in State institutions.

What if there are no guarantees and Iran is not like Libya for a multitude of reasons?

If you want America to commit to yet another military intervention in the middle east, I think you should provide something pretty close to a guarantee. The last several interventions were all disasters, and further, demonstrated that the elites in charge of managing the interventions could not actually be held accountable in any meaningful way for their disastrous management and decision-making. This has been a serious problem, and until I see some evidence that it has actually been corrected, my vote is no, hell no, are you insane?

If you want America to commit to yet another military intervention in the middle east, I think you should provide something pretty close to a guarantee.

Why? Surely it can be justified on the grounds that almost any replacement is going to be better for the US + allies than the current one.

This is famously what they thought about Syria, which is now controlled by Al Qaeda. I've yet to hear how any serious explanation for how Al Qaeda running Syria is better for America or Americans than Assad

Well, we can be very positive Al Qaeda won't be running things in Iran.

They presently have a Shia theocracy running things. That's a major reason they're a problem.

The opposition, in contrast, wants secular democracy.

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Why? Surely it can be justified on the grounds that almost any replacement is going to be better for the US + allies than the current one.

The problem with claiming that things can't get worse is all the previous claims that things couldn't get worse, combined with the numerous, extremely horrifying examples of how they did, in fact, get worse.

We've already done a recent intervention in the Middle East that went pretty well.

Namely, we bombed Iran's nuclear program (and supported Israel bombing other targets). There were decades of handwringing about Iran's weapons program and the downsides of intervention and it turned out most of that was needless concern.

Here's another one: Heard much about ISIS lately? Probably not, because we blew the fuck out of them.

That's the great thing here: Bombing is low risk, and things are already so bad for the Iranian people it would be hard for them to get worse.

Even a humanitarian disaster would be something chosen by the Iranians, and we take an enemy of Western Civilization out.

Knowing what we know now, we could have done the invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan and then simply left. We don't have to do "you break it you buy it" if our concern is removing enemies, and not nation building. (Noting that taking out Saddam wasn't a great idea for the general geopolitical reason that he didn't have a nuclear weapons program, and Iran did, and he was their primary enemy.)

Iran is in a far better position to succeed as a country if the regime is removed than any recent example I can think of.

Here's another one: Heard much about ISIS lately? Probably not, because we blew the fuck out of them.

ISIS shot and killed numerous people in the city I live in while I was out having dinner with my partner - I actually got to see the police cars leaving to go deal with the active shooters, so I have in fact heard a lot about them recently.

Do you live in the Middle East?

Because that was the geographic context of the response. They don't control territory anymore, but they still do attacks worldwide.

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