Why not? It's a physical building with lots of equipment that produces products shipped to its customers.
Its products are sequences of electrons, instead of atoms. But so are power plants. And in the context of what happens when they're hit by missiles, a factory, data center, and power plant all behave the same.
Stop it. You're not helping. This kind of thing is really counterproductive. Welcome your comrade with open arm. Give him time to warm up. Don't be an absolutist.
Its not about abolitionism, its about realizing that Trump is not the cause, its a symptom.
The same sentiment that cause Nazi party to rise in power has never been eliminated, its just resurfaced itself years later. USA is not the only one with conservative problem, multiple countries in Europe have signs that right wing populism is on the rise.
And in order to be eliminated, we have to be able to get to extreme levels of social policing. And the only way to get there is through a social reset where people forgo all the comforts in life and are forced to confront the things that are actually important.
Lets be clear, you and most people aren't "fighting". Typing comments on the internet, voting, and maybe donating money to PACs is literally the minimum amount of effort anyone can do to show support.
Even for those that are doing political outreach, while the effort being put in is more than the average person, the direction is misplaced - in 2024 it was pretty clear that no matter how much information you give people, they are going to vote a certain way because of extreme polarization.
If people were willing to actually FIGHT for what they believe in through offensive means, physical or cyber, with direct results, I would have a different opinion.
But at this point, its pretty clear where society is headed. I don't want to live in that world either, but shit is going to boil over at one point or another, and delaying the inevitable just means we all get fucked when we are senior citizens instead of within the next decade.
Obviously. They would have kidnapped or assassinated leadership many decades ago otherwise. They have tried and failed many times. They're talking about trying to break the state though, which isn't something the US tried in Vz. This'll be much harder.
Many folks said that if the supreme leader got killed then it's all over. I honestly skeptical since IRGC folks would take over and I think they are much more militant than the Supreme Leader.
You are right to be skeptical. Khomeini died and now Khamenei is supreme leader. He too will have a successor if he dies (or is dead as Isreal clamed a moment ago). Iran has spent the last few weeks picking out successors four deep for each office. It's been the main news besides the "negotiations".
Yes. The US supports the monarchy, the Kurds and MeK. The CIA was revealed to have armed MeK (despite designation) and my guess is that they do with the Kurds too. The CIA also talks to the Balochi groups as well although I don't know how organized or armed they are.
Needless to say, "regime change" would in reality mean civil war like Syria or collapse like Libya.
The US has spent a lot of time and money on MEK but I don't think they are very effective. Or will be very effective. My understanding is the leader of MEK has n't been seen in years(is probably dead), and MEK members are only allowed to marry other MEK members, so the number of MEK members is way down from their 80s highpoint, and it's not getting better.
Well, Iraq is not that simple because Iran has also invested a lot in Iraq with various Shia forces. Right now Iraq is trying not to get involved. That's been their news all day. Maybe that is a sign that the Iranian investment is paying off, or just that the Iraqis are tired as fuck especially after the first Iran-Iraq invasion and then them being fucked by the US.
Romanizations are fashion trends rather than any kind of science or real standardized system. Other than those places with Roman-era Latin spellings like Syria, others have dozens of variants.
Iran was likely going to do that themselves by the massive inflation they caused through reckless financial policies such as Venezuelan style price controls. Russia is managed to weather sanctions decently, Iran's economic leadership is far more incompetent despite being a petrol state. Even in Tehran they can't get enough water because of the failure of infrastructure and planning (despite plenty of money being available for certain failed regional military projects).
There was a study showing almost every revolution happened not because of ideology but over the price of bread.
> There was a study showing almost every revolution happened not because of ideology but over the price of bread.
His name was Marx. ;)
Yeah. We'll see. Under what conditions will you consider yourself right or wrong? My prediction is after killing a few more heads of state, disabling some more striking capability that they'll back off under pressure from the Arab states. Trump will declare it as a victory regardless of what happens and everyone will forget about it. Iran will eventually rebuild itself as it just did, but this time it will take longer (Trump even said that himself, contradicting himself earlier).
Even if Trump doesn't care, Israel is very motivated to make regime change happen. They want to be permanently rid of Iran's nuclear threat, its funding of terrorist groups, all of it. Honestly I think Trump or at least his administration is on a similar page, and if not the Israelis can clearly be pretty persuasive.
No, my worry is whether it will be a regime change that benefits the Iranian people or some kind of sick puppet state. But of course:
> Trump will declare it as a victory regardless of what happens
...This goes without saying.
Edit: worth noting the Arab states tend to hate Iran as well, and Iran has already sprinkled some ballistic missiles on them just in this war. They're not going to speak up for Iran unless they think the escalation is getting too dangerous for themselves.
> Even if Trump doesn't care, Israel is very motivated to make regime change happen.
It doesn't matter. There are zero cases in history of successful regime change by air only. Iran, of all countries, has an extremely robust succession plan and at a last resort the IRGC itself will take over.
> Iran has already sprinkled some ballistic missiles on them just in this war
I can see you're not following this too seriously.
You didn't give objective criteria for how to judge whether you're right or wrong yet.
You should follow more seriously which usernames you're talking to. But as far as objective criteria, if a regime change happens I don't expect it to be subtle or debatable. Seeing the IRGC disbanded would be a pretty solid signal, though.
Obviously it's not going to be done 100% from the air. The Iranian people will have to play a big role. I just hope they manage to seize initiative from Trump and Netanyahu as far as how their government is run.
I do note that we've strayed a bit from the thesis of "Iran is so powerful Israel and the US have to gang up on it". :D
Sure. Anyway, did you have a factual critique of my statement about Iran throwing ballistic missiles around the Middle East, or did you just find my tone insufficiently serious?
I don't understand Iran, Hezbollah's and the Houthis' patience with the US actually. It's absolutely shocking. After the US betrayed ALL of it's own fucking allies, in what world does it make sense to negotiate with them?
The Houthis are still "threatening" to do things today after already being decimated and Hezbollah's strength more than halved.
I don't support any of these creeps but if any of them were minimally rational, they would have all gone to total war with Israel and the US the minute they realized what Hamas was doing on October 7th. They look even more naive than Europeans at this point.
The Iranians are pragmatic. Look beyond their relationship with the US. There are other state actors that Iran wants to remain in good relations with.
They understand that a defensive war is not the same as an offensive war. Besides, going on the offensive isn’t something they - as a regional power - have the firepower or diplomatic “street cred” for.
They are already painted as a so-called irrational actor. Doing something reckless will only prove their detractors right.
The other part to this is keeping the negotiation door open. The idea is to demonstrate to other state actors that they are cool headed & rational - even in wartime conditions.
> The Iranians are pragmatic. Look beyond their relationship with the US. There are other state actors that Iran wants to remain in good relations with.
Which is why they're sending missiles and drone strikes on the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar.
Rational negotiations have to be based on the relative power of the parties.
It made sense for iran to try to negotiate with the US because the alternative was a war they had no chance to win. Arguably it also made sense for them to not come to an agreement because USA wanted concessesions the Iranian regime probably couldn't do while still staying in power given how weak they are domestically.
> I don't support any of these creeps but if any of them were minimally rational, they would have all gone to total war with Israel and the US the minute they realized what Hamas was doing on October 7th.
Israel's ability to divide and conqour its enemies here has been pretty impressive.
> It made sense for iran to try to negotiate with the US because the alternative was a war they had no chance to win.
They have no chance of winning no matter what. At least inflict some damage on your enemy while you die like Hamas chose (although I disagree with the fact that they chose that for a lot of innocent people too.)
The US isn't ever going to leave anyone, let alone Iran, alone. The options are a) fight and cease to exist and b) don't fight and cease to exist.
> The US isn't ever going to leave anyone, let alone Iran, alone. The options are a) fight and cease to exist and b) don't fight and cease to exist.
Oh boy, I see we learned nothing from Afghanistan. The US will eventually leave you alone, There will be a power vacuum, and the local warlord will rise to that opportunity.
The "military operations" don't end in decisive vistory. They end with death and destruction for the young men sent into battle, and more enemies in the surrounding areas.
The US hasn't left Afghanistan alone. They were driven out of the country by force. They are still attacking it in multiple different ways and will continue to do so until they are defeated. Time did not end when the US was kicked out. They aren't just going to give up their goals.
I do not understand what argument you are trying to make. Nowhere do I say that time stands still or that the US doesn't still have a policy for Afghanistan. I'm saying that the US (and her allies, my country among them), with their war machine the likes of which has never been seen, could not bring peace and democracy to Afghanistan. Once we left, and we will always have to leave eventually, the existing structures of opression once again asserted themselves.
My country and my Government, sent people from my generation down there to die. My countrymen died in that war, and the only thing we got out of it was more enemies in the region. The Afghan is still getting persecuted for styling their beard wrong, and the Afghan woman is still getting opressed. We have nothing to show for that sacrifice.
I see no reason to believe the same thing isn't going to happen in Iran.
> Once we left, and we will always have to leave eventually, the existing structures of opression once again asserted themselves.
The US keeps coming back is what I'm saying. The US was kicked out of Iran in 1953. That's what all this is about. They will do the same to Afghanistan eventually. That's what I meant by time didn't stop. The Taliban isn't safe by any means. It's just a temporary reprieve.
> with their war machine the likes of which has never been seen, could not bring peace and democracy to Afghanistan.
As far as i understand, the US propped up an unpopular governmet that many of the locals did not like (there were rumours about turning a blind eye to moral impropriety because it was politically expediant).
The thing about democracy is its not really democracy when forced from the outside.
> As far as i understand, the US propped up an unpopular governmet that many of the locals did not like
From what I've read it's not that simple. The American system was more well liked in the cities than the alternatives. Outside the big cities, which is most of Afghanistan, the government really didn't matter much. They were still dominated by local malitias, "elders", and gangs.
To add insult to injury, the US led effort to build up an internal defense force in the country found that the only people willing to fight for the country were the very same people who had fought for the Taliban only years before.
The question left unsaid of course is if all of these problems could have been solved by a more competent actor. I would argue they couldn't have, that you can't bring peace through war, but reasonable minds can disagree.
> The US isn't ever going to leave anyone, let alone Iran, alone. The options are a) fight and cease to exist and b) don't fight and cease to exist.
Well i think this is true in the present moment, i think its also important to recognize that we got to this point by a series of decisions that Iran made. They boxed themselves into this corner via long term strategic blunders.
E.g. if they threatened US & israeli interests less (i.e. did not support proxy groups), US and Israel probably wouldnt find it worth it to go this far. Alternatively if they paid more attention to the home front and kept their people happy, there would be less pressure for them to not lose face during negotiations which might allow them to make concessions they cant currently.
> At least inflict some damage on your enemy while you die like Hamas chose (although I disagree with the fact that they chose that for a lot of innocent people too.)
Ultimately? If the people who are going to kill you were elected into power by those "innocent people", why would you not lash out at them too? Some twisted sense of morality or taking the high road?
I don't know what you're talking about. It sounds like you might be saying Israelis who elected Likud (and the supporting parties) are not innocent. If that's what you mean, then I agree, but that wasn't what I was referring to.
I was speaking of the Gazans who originally elected Hamas to protect them but where Hamas eventually decided to sacrifice masses of them to achieve some of their goals. They knew what would happen and did it anyway, without the people's consent.
Could very well be that, on a diplomatic level, they're far more reasonable and forgiving than we've been lead to believe. Maybe in order to justify an aggressively adversarial posture against them and their interests.
But that's hard to grok without corroborating evidence. Like maybe an analogous social dynamic where the American mainstream maintains a hostile posture towards a particular ethnic group, stereotyping them as violent and irrational and criminals and parasites, and doing things to them that have triggered sustained, armed uprisings in other times and places, but who, in fact, have historically and in-aggregate been steadfast in a commitment to non-violent resistance, integration, and endurance of oppression.
Safe to say that this is the first time America's ever encountered that kind of thing, though, so I guess that we can be somewhat forgiven for not recognizing it.
> Could very well be that, on a diplomatic level, they're far more reasonable and forgiving than we've been lead to believe.
If you have been following Iran over the past two years (and even before), you would know that this is empirically true and not just a hypothetical. American propag- sorry, media does its job well.
No such thing as total war with the USA. Without the means to nuke the USA out of existence, actually engaging them is suicide. Even if by some miracle you start winning, they can just nuke you back to the stone age, thereby ending the conflict.
Better to play the long game, corrupt them from within and wait for them to destroy themselves.
> The world in which America is a military superpower.
No, you missed my point. Iran dies no matter what happens. Better go down after eliminating Israel, taking out a huge % of the world's oil supply and banging up some Americans. Instead they were extremely restrained, squandering their capacities.
> They have been. They've been getting levelled. If the U.S. can staunch the flow of arms to the Houthis, they'll become irrelevant, too.
> Better go down after eliminating Israel, taking out a huge % of the world's oil supply and banging up some Americans
One, they tried. They don’t have the capability. Two, that means more Iranians die. Cultures that choose pointless vengeance over pragmatic survival tend to get weeded out.
> One, they tried. They don’t have the capability.
No, they didn't, not at the peak of their power. They waited until many of their tools were hit and THEN responded. Everything they've done is unfortunately in self-defense after their capabilities have been extremely degraded. They sat around and waited for Israel to strike first every time.
> Two, that means more Iranians die. Cultures that choose pointless vengeance over pragmatic survival tend to get weeded out.
Again, you're missing the point. They are going to be weeded out no matter what.
> They waited until many of their tools were hit and THEN responded
In part. Khamenei also pointlessly spent down Hezbollah supporting Hamas instead of writing the latter off and saving his firepower. If Hezbollah had maintained its massive-launch capability, instead of drip feeding rockets into interceptors as a messaging exercise, maybe this would have gone differently.
More broadly, if Iran ran itself without a C-list vengeance plot at its core and focused on its massive resources, it could have developed economically and geopolitically.
Houthi and Huzb do not have the organized armies to wage long-term war where they conquer territories. Their game plan is long term annoyance (at high casualty costs) and co-existence within a “neutral” state that provides cover and logistics for them.
> Houthi and Huzb do not have the organized armies to wage long-term war where they conquer territories.
Hezbollah did. They did it before and they were predicted by all analysts to be able to do it again, which is why Israel took the route they did with the espionage, assassinations and terrorism instead of confronting them on the battlefields.
What does it matter? There won't be any consequences for it. He can just do this now and then later the supreme court or congress will say something that also won't matter. The trade war wasn't legal, was struck down, yet is still happening.
> You seem to have forgotten that the US attacked Iran first, which made this regime even possible in the first place.
Bombing of US marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 was funded, and organized by Iran. Just take half day off, and read a bit on the role of Islamic Republic in Middle East in the past 40 years. I guarantee your stance of "US attacked first" will change to the "unclear" at the least.
Yeah and the 1953 coup to overthrow the Iranian prime minister and install a US puppet (the Shah) was organized by the CIA. We could also add that in the 1980's the US was actively supporting Iraq in its war against Iran.
This kind of thinking won't get you very far and won't ensure peace in the region.
The Lebanese Muslims at the time were furious that the Sixth Fleet was constantly shelling Shouf. At the time the Phalangists, with Israeli help, had recently murdered 3500 women and children at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.
There were and are plenty of grievances to go around in Lebanon.
40 years is an interesting cutoff of where to start history. Did Iran show any aggression to the USA before the Coup d'etat organized by the CIA and MI6?
You do know that the people and groups that started the revolution in 1979 were basically all imprisoned and murdered by the islamists that rule Iran now?
I did not say that Iran started its war in the shadows with US in 1983, I just showed that the scope of the conflict is not limited to the past two years.
You're moving the goalpost now. This started with US imperialism in 1953. Iran wouldn't do what the US wanted, so they installed a puppet, like they always do all over the world.
This sounds exactly like one of those birds-eye technocratic moves which inevitably destroys the system it tries to fix because of a failure to properly understand it, which nobody really can since it grew organically for actual reasons. Classic nerd overconfidence.
