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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   1134 thread views

Transnational Thursday for March 19, 2026

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Hehe.

I suspect blowing up power plants is a war crime.

How is this going to win the hearts and minds of the Iranian people? The US is going to seem like a bigger enemy than the clerics now.

The USA has shown a marked unconcern for legal niceties throughout, that is not going to change any opinions or make the top 5 list at the end of the war.

Power plants are 50/50 anyway, it should be proportional and Iran will provide proportionality afterwards if it hasn't by now.

The USA has shown a marked unconcern for legal niceties throughout,

How would you characterize the concern for legal niceties exhibited by everyone else in modern history then? Iran, for instance is attacking other nations seemingly at random and targeting infrastructure and hotels and other civilian targets.

The U.S. has shown the most concern for legal niceties out of any major combatant since those legal niceties existed.

That's not to say that the U.S. is particularly great on this front, just to say that nobody else really seems to even bother.

attacking other nations seemingly at random

This is the Motte - please leave takes sourced from John Stewart and other talk show hosts where they belong. What they are actually doing is attacking nations which are hosting US forces and military bases, and the hotels they have been attacking were used to host American troops. They've been positively saintlike when compared to the US' blowing up of primary schools and oil depots in Tehran.

targeting infrastructure

Iran attacked a gas field after one of their gas fields was attacked and they explicitly said that was a proportional response. Even Trump chickened out from destroying their powerplants after the Iranians explained what they would blow up if he did.

This is not factually accurate.

I am unaware of any U.S. military bases or U.S. troops in several of the attacked countries, of which there are over ten.

To list, at least: Israel, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Cyprus. By implication also the U.S., U.K., and France, and depending on how you want to count it Diego Garcia. Several of these were explicitly not getting involved.

I am also unaware of any evidence of U.S. military assets being present in a majority of the attacked civilian infrastructure. Some of the targets can be painted as part of an escalation ladder. Random civilian buildings can not.

unaware of any US military bases or U.S. troops

Israel

Come the fuck on. Are you even trying to participate in a good faith discussion? Are you going to seriously sit here and claim that Israel was not party to the attacks on Iran? Do you believe there's no military co-operation between Israel and the US?

Diego Garcia.

Are you for real? Did you forget a sentence or something here? If you aren't aware of any US military bases on Diego Garcia I think you need to go and do some more research before continuing to post on this topic.

I'm sorry - based off of your response I think you may have misread my comment, or at least you are not responding to what I actually said.

Given the specifics of the way you jumped in here it could be as part of some didactic exercise, please clarify if so.

Thank you!

Could you please clarify what your list actually meant then? When you said "I am unaware of any U.S. military bases or U.S. troops in several of the attacked countries" you then followed up with "To list, at least: Israel,". What, exactly, were you listing? I interpreted your post as listing countries that were attacked which lacked US military bases or US Troops, because simply listing all countries that had been attacked and implying that some of them lacked US Military bases or Troops would be ambiguous and useless in a good faith discussion. I'm not aware of any nations that Iran has attacked which didn't contribute to the attacks on them, with the exception of Lebanon (which is a difficult situation anyway, because to the best of my knowledge Iran has been attacking Israeli forces inside Lebanese territory).

because simply listing all countries that had been attacked and implying that some of them lacked US Military bases or Troops would be ambiguous and useless in a good faith discussion.

I think this implies you understood what I meant and decided not to interpret it correctly?

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