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Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be. By scores do you mean dozens? We have certainly killed fewer than the Iranians own government did a couple months back. Most Iranians are not displaced. Most homes are in tact. The Iranians I see who can still get the occasional internet access say that they aren't afraid of the bombs, they're afraid of the bombs stopping because that means the war is over and the IRCG is still in charge.
Targeting mixed-use infrastructure is not actually a war crime and there are ways to target infrastructure without permanently destroying it. Trump might actually be legitimately senile and I hope he gets replaced soon, but the military is still run by competent good people. Don't pay any attention to anything on Truth Social ever and you'll probably have a clearer view of world events.
I'm not otherwise following this discussion, but bargaining down from n x 20 to n x 12 seems like nitpicking to me.
Oftentimes when people say scores they mean thousands instead of the actual number of 20.
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After moralism, rules lawyering? I don't think this rule is being enforced with any sort of consistency, and after Europe's response is, "America, control Iran better! and other such claims I don't think you get to ask for it to be enforced. But to be clear, by "you" I mean "Israel + the US", since you clearly are operating as a coalition.
Nation states are defined by having a monopoly on violence within their jurisdiction. Your opinion that the Iranian regime is not legitimate (whereas your own regime is sacred and must not be violated by foreigners), and that it is acceptable to demand submission to a foreign-backed attempt at violent revolution, is just that, an opinion; it doesn't give you the right to kill any extra civilians. Moreover you're not even doing it at the right time, should have joined in while protests were actually happening, when Iranians were killing cops and getting killed in turn.
I see estimates at > 1000 civilians dead, no idea how valid that is, except for the now-indisputable Tomahawk strike on girls' school (which Trump rather pathetically denied). I have seen footage of massive destruction that includes clearly residential housing, and the way these things go, that should have cumulatively taken some hundreds. The high estimates of 30-40-60 thousand killed in protests appear to be simply made up as well.
Might be the most bizarre war ever, the way Americans all suddenly have contacts in Tehran and are grasping at straws, straining to hear the voices of unbroken opposition, to convince themselves that they're liberators, even as their Secretary of War is plainly relishing the opportunity to break a nation.
Though this reminds me, people liked to see "all the pretty Iranian woman trying to learn Trump's YMCA dance a few weeks ago". Since then, the most viral of these pretty women had her cousin "killed in a war". She objects: not a war, a rescue operation! "The reason I lost my cousin is only and only the Islamic regime and no one else!". So yes, there is something to your point.
Nobody asks now how many of these dissidents or incredibly Zionist diaspora monarchists (very funny movement, imagine wanting this guy to be your king) are children of SAVAK, or astroturfed by Israel, or not even real. What they say soothes your conscience, so they get to speak for the will of the Iranian people as a whole. The poor Iranian people now apparently need their entire civilian infrastructure wiped out to Truly rise up against the brutal regime. We'll see how it goes.
I don't actually read Truth Social, and I'd prefer if the President of the United States of America didn't use it as his platform of choice, but reality is often disappointing.
The military is ran by a visibly incompetent Fox News host with a drinking problem, who's such s good person his mother condemns him for abuse of women.
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I would also just add that I think the idea that the US just now started acting with "realpolitik" is...very ahistorical. Europe accepted us after WW2 because the Russians were ~infinitely worse, not because the US didn't indulge in realpolitik.
For all the griping about Iraq (which...I get it! I also gripe about Iraq!) and American Empire, the specific failures of Iraq were bad in (large) part because it wasn't tempered by realpolitik, not because it was an imperial/hegemonic action. I think a realpolitik view (and also most American presidents throughout all of history) would have just bombed the heck out of various unlucky places known or suspected to be involved in terrorism and bribed, beg, borrowed, stolen and murdered until we got UBL and then called it a day. That might have been bad in different ways but it probably would not have been a 20-year ground occupation.
Would you prefer it if I said that the difference is just that Europe is finally doing realpolitik on its own? They're sometimes too slow, for sure, as Macron puts it.
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