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Notes -
The death toll seems to have come to a grand total of zero.
This isn't war, this is kayfabe. An event for the sake of having an event. Is the Iranian military truly this incompetent? They could do better than this if they really wanted to cause damage. It feels like the purpose was domestic propaganda. All regimes need some level of popular legitimacy. "We are the only state willing to open fire on the Zionist dogs," is good for Iranian prestige in the region.
Yes. They look like clowns. Keep in mind this is a country which fought Iraq to a standstill for ten years, the same Iraq which the U.S. defeated in a week with a 1000-1 casualty ratio during the Gulf War.
It is going to be very tempting for Israel to attack their nuclear sites now after this demonstration of "strength" by the Iranians.
If the Israelis were smart, they might have let some of the missiles get through, lol. This is just too comical.
Calling them "the same country" is really oversimplifying, since both countries changed a lot over time.
Notably: Iran purged most of their military leadership after the 1979 revolution, and was struggling to rebuild when Iraq invaded in 1980. They managed to fight back pretty well, considering how lacking they were in equipment for most of that war, and came close to winning. But the US, USSR, and other countries were selling a lot of weapons to Iraq, which kept them going.
When the war finally stopped, Iraq was totally exhausted and indebted, with no one left to sell them weapons. Their soldiers and population were horribly demoralized from the years of bloody warfare. You can't generalize from that and say "oh I guess invading Iran would be a cakewalk." They've had several decades to re-arm and re-train their military. Not to mention that this is a country roughly the size of the eastern United States with a population of 90 million. Israel is 10 million and roughly the size of New Jersey, by way of comparison.
You only need to summary execute couple of Ayatollah and decimate the revolutionary guard - the people of Iran will do the rest.
Iran is the perfect country in which decapitating strike will work well.
Where "the rest" is anoint a few more Ayatollahs and reconstitute the guard, and hate America even more with even better reason?
Few people in Iran supports the current regime. And if they do reconstitute - you kill them again. Until they are tired of dying
Why should I believe that?
I'm not sure why I, or the United States, should care so much. If they did anything significant enough to the US I can see killing them until whoever replaces them includes "don't fuck with the Great Satan" among their policies, but other than that, such a policy seems pointless.
Absolutely massive protests that erupt every couple of years. And the participants there are actually people with something to lose. Unlike the LARP-ers in the west.
They try to obtain nuke. That is actually good enough reason for regime change or preventive nuclear strike.
Iran has almost 90 million people. A small minority would be massive. Even assuming the protests weren't stirred by Western intelligence agencies or even by the regime itself to draw out its enemies.
No, it isn't, not unless you want the US to actually be the evil hegemon it is often claimed to be.
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