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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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