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So the US and Israel attack Iran, Iran attacks many neutrals for "leverage", and it's right for the neutrals to act by putting pressure on the US and Israel to stop attacking Iran, thus giving them the leverage they were looking for?
Their territory and airspace is willingly being used to attack Iran. They are not neutral and that claim is totally preposterous.
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I don't really subscribe to the word "right" in this case.
Realpolitik and all that, "right" isn't really a factor here.
I don't condone Iran's actions. But I think they're pretty logical given the cards they have, and the constraint that "just roll over and take it" is off the table. Hard to blame them for that at least.
Same with the neutrals, yes, ideally they should go pressure Iran to stop shitting up the place. But they can't, they have 0 leverage/sway/pull with Iran. They do have a tiny, tiny amount of sway with the USA, so that's where they turn.
Personally, I think the USA should have anticipated this, and either ensured it had a mitigation strategy or hold off until it could come up with one. While they're not shitting up the Hormuz, they did start this localized round of fighting, and are kind of looking like they didn't think any of the consequences through, which is annoying and a bad look. They unfortunately take some responsibility because "you break it you bought it"
I actually think that when the protests were happening the American military should have scrambled whatever it had or could to get cooking immediately to help the protests with a decapitation strike. Especially because Isreal showed last year it can basically solo Iran, so there were sufficient allied military assets in-theater when the protests were cooking.
That was by far the best shot for a genuine regime change.
When you lose "right", you also lose "should" and also "responsibility".
The US did; the Department of Defense is not, in fact, entirely made up of idiots. There is mitigation, in fact, happening, which is why there's not $200+ oil and lights out everywhere from London to Calcutta.
It's pretty clear that wouldn't have worked. If the Iranian dissidents can't do anything with several layers of the leadership knocked off, they couldn't have done anything with whatever could be scrambled up at the time. The Iranian dissidents are utterly defanged and can be kept down by the Basij and their small arms alone.
The hope would be that the decapitation of Iranian leadership would happen during/before the ~7,000 protestors got killed, so they could keep inspiring protests and go break stuff under the cover of US airstrikes and ideally with lots of CIA help ("a mysterious box of drones has washed up shore at these coordinates, they have pre-programmed targets if you release them at this intersection ")
But once the protestors got whacked yeah, the energy of the Iranians really died. And if they were that easy to suppress they may never have had a chance. But the current reality was clearly not helpful at all for them lol.
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