The United States and Israel have launched a major attack on Iran

https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/28/middleeast/israel-attack-iran-intl-hnk

by lavp • 5 months ago

1207 2151 5 months ago

cnn.com

https://archive.ph/VqSqj

YZF11• 5 months ago

EDIT: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-february-28-2026/

csomar7• 5 months ago

Crypto going down while Gold going up (on XAUt) suggests the market thinks this war is not going to go necessarily to the US/Israel advantage.

dlahoda• 5 months ago

why?

is not crypto going down on any "multinational"* war?

*war amid thai and kambodgia is not "multinational" kind of, just example of not any

csomar7• 5 months ago

There wasn't a war between the Siam and Khmer, just some clashes plus their conflict is irrelevant to the rest of the world. I am not aware of crypto going down during that time? If I remember correctly it was close to ATH.

breppp5• 5 months ago

as iran is a major player in crypto money laundering then it could price its fall

https://www.iranintl.com/en/202602279443

Aliabid94• 5 months ago

Gotta derail any peace talks!

abdusco• 5 months ago

Can't have Gaza have relief for a second!

yoavm5• 5 months ago

What does this have to do with Gaza? One would think that if the IDF is busy in Iran, it will probably be less busy in Gaza.

yonisto3• 5 months ago

LOL. The US is on it too. So what you have to say for yourself now?

piping_pony• 5 months ago

What peace talks? The ones where for over a year Iran refused to deescalate their nuclear war program and the now Europe range ballistic missiles?

RobertoG3• 5 months ago

You are lying, they have been trying to avoid this war in any possible way. But Israel wanted this war before they lost the support of the USA population (that it's happening fast) or they have a less accommodating USA president.

seydor8• 5 months ago

Thankfully the stock market is closed

rvz• 5 months ago

That always happens before an expected event or attack on another country.

throwawa15• 5 months ago

Casino.

throwawa15• 5 months ago

Nothing more important than dow 50,000

throwawa15• 5 months ago

* "dollars"

pear01• 5 months ago

Speaking of markets... Polymarket was trading yes on this happening at quite interesting odds, "yes" was trading at around 30¢ or better over the next few days just a few hours ago...

I was quite surprised to see it that low... and also to find it is inaccessible for trading if a US national. Just looking at the platform it seems predominantly US driven so I gather many people are willfully attempting to breach the ToS (and probably lie to the IRS) when using it...

johnbarron2• 5 months ago

At this moment, dont know what looks more terrifying. This war the US just got itself into, or the contents of the unreleased Epstein files...

popalchemist• 5 months ago

They must be commensurate, because one is meant to drown out the other.

ourguile• 5 months ago

NYT gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02/28/world/iran-strikes-t...

ReptileMan3• 5 months ago

Seems that they are behaving intelligently - pummeling the IRGC. If the IRGC fails the public will probably have a bit of small talk with the regime officials and functionaries while the regular army and police will probably look vague amused from the sides.

johnbarron2• 5 months ago

> Seems that they are behaving intelligently

You seem to have missed the little detail the US is now at war.

There was a deal with Iran, but Trump throw it away because was closed by Obama and Israel did not like it...

riffraff5• 5 months ago

well, they were one week away from a nuke, as usual.

throwawa15• 5 months ago

since 1992!

wafflemaker2• 5 months ago

There's an Israeli newspaper from 1984 saying it's a month away. Definitely more than a month passed between '84 and '92.

Btw. They ARE not that far away from the bomb, after they enriched uranium as a consequence of Trump (in his first term) cancelling the Obama treaty.

But they ARE a theocracy and Ajatollah Chamenei released an order (fatwa) forbidding Iran from obtaining and using an a-bomb. The new religious leader might change the religious law tho. I mean the one that comes after Chamenei becomes a martyr.

Funny how, knowing just a little bit more, it all really looks like nonsense created for illiterate, just to take their attention off of Epstein Pedophile Scandal.

flyinglizard7• 5 months ago

The concept of nuclear brinkmanship is part of accepted WMD doctrine. A country can maintain a fixed short interval away from weaponization for decades. It is widely accepted that Iran does have a military nuclear program; the amount of material enriched, the enrichment level achieved and the hardening of the involved facilities are an open testament to that (there are many other intelligence signals that we are not privy to).

riffraff5• 5 months ago

I think you're missing the point: a constant justification for bombing Iran is that they are one month, one week, or a couple months from building a nuclear bomb.

If that was true, obviously they would have built one buy now. Being one year away from building would be non-urgency inducing.

The constant lying about timelines does not imply Iran does not enrich uranium, but, as you remember, after the last bombing the leaders of the USA and Israel said they had completely obliterated Iran's nuclear program. Except, apparently After six months they are one week away from a nuke again.

This seems to indicate the USA should be bombing Iran every few weeks, forever, just in case they get a bit faster next time.

Except, when we don't have any scandal or other crisis going on, then Iran does not seem to be getting a nuke quickly. I wonder why.

nkrisc4• 5 months ago

We need to get the Iranians working on nuclear fusion instead.

ozgrakkurt5• 5 months ago

They were going to get AGI before US but don’t worry, the last openai funding and this war will save US

kvuj2• 5 months ago

While that's a funny thought, recently I stumbled across a sobering website [1].

This website lets you zoom in on the Ukraine-Russia battlefront and place Polymarket bets on land being taken by Russia. We may be closer to big private company betting on wars than we'd like to think.

[1] pizzint.watch

HNisCIS2• 5 months ago

Currently an absolute shit load of C17s landing in Germany after leaving the PG region. I guess we know which country finally caved and let the US use them for whatever fresh conquest this is.

fjfaase• 5 months ago

Germany is one of the most pro-Israel countries and known for using excessive police voilance against pro-Palestina protestors and strongly denies that there is a genocide going on in Gaza.

etyhhgfff• 5 months ago

And its not allowed to film the police crimes. They can lawfully demand to turn your camera off, because of privacy laws. Welcome to Germany.

api3• 5 months ago

What a gift to the deeply unpopular Iranian regime. Nothing galvanizes support for whatever-you-have more than an external threat.

Think about it. If someone actually bombed or invaded the continental US you'd have woke libs cheering for Donald Trump.

The Iranian regime may fall, but it'll be like Iraq. We'll get something like ISIS out of it, or worse, and the place will be a complete basketcase of civil war for 25+ years. Or we'll be there for 25 years in another "forever war." Bravo.

Acrobatic_Road• 5 months ago

Do you have any better ideas or is it your position that evil dictators get to rule forever?

wafflemaker2• 5 months ago

Do you have any better ideas or is it your position that evil dictators get to rule forever?

If president Trump doesn't declare martial law, start a civil war, military coup or change the constitution of the USA, he will stop ruling in 3 years. We can wait that long.

HNisCIS2• 5 months ago

Things were starting to come undone naturally then we decided to 3rd party the whole thing

Do you think the people fighting ICE in the streets of Minneapolis would welcome a joint Chinese+North Korean decapitation strike on Washington and cruise missiles flying over Portland?

beeflet4• 5 months ago

how about a negotiating a peace deal between the Israel and Iran wherein they both agree to give up nuclear weapons and allow for IAEA inspections

api3• 5 months ago

The Iranian people overthrow their government and establish what they want?

My point is that an outside force coming in will help the current regime and/or the ideas behind it. Even if the current regime falls, democratic or pro-Western ideas in Iran will be seen as aligned with the invading force and rejected by many people who might otherwise be open to them.

Is there anyone who likes being invaded by a foreign power, ever?

fyredge• 5 months ago

Provide aid to the local population and provide support to grassroots resistance. Things do not need to be flashy to be effective

_zagj6• 5 months ago

Think about it. If someone actually bombed or invaded the continental US you'd have woke libs cheering for Donald Trump.

Judging by how they responded to the assassination attempt(s) on Trump and the assassination of Charlie Kirk, I don't really believe that.

beeflet4• 5 months ago

most liberals do not support the assassination of politicians. after the guy got killed, there was a massive search on social media where right wingers were looking for anyone who mocked him, and they got like a handful of people.

api3• 5 months ago

You're mistaking attention bait on social media for majority opinion. Almost nobody IRL sympathized with Kirk's shooter or wants to see people shot.

Social media is brain poison.

flyinglizard7• 5 months ago

One of the main reasons Iraq is like Iraq is the Iranian meddling and their proxy organizations which operate in Iraq with impunity. The Iraqi government is entirely subservient to the Iranians.

As the recent wave of protests in Iran came after the 12 days where Iranian regime was dealt a massive blow, I think your analysis is wrong. Iranians consider this an opportunity. Also, the scale of violence unleashed on the Iranian public by the regime is staggering; it’s not about the regime being simply “unpopular”.

seattle_spring• 5 months ago

Think about it. If someone actually bombed or invaded the continental US you'd have woke libs cheering for Donald Trump.

Huh? If anything, he'd try to put blame on "Antifa" and "the radical left."

mint52• 5 months ago

“Think about it. If someone actually bombed or invaded the continental US you'd have woke libs cheering for Donald Trump”

I think this is a scenario Steven miller fantasizes about while playing with action figures but that’s the closest it gets to being real.

Sure derogatory terms for liberals, as you term the left, would support the armed forces if China invaded hawaii but expecting them to also support Trump is fantasy. Like supporting America and supporting Donald Trump are entirely different matters and usually divergent.

kome• 5 months ago

shameful for the west, and a tragedy. leave iran alone. defending the mullahs wasn't exactly on my bingo card, but here we are...

please, can somebody in the US or Israel have an "are we the baddies" epiphany?

dismalaf4• 5 months ago

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jan/27/i...

defending the mullahs wasn't exactly on my bingo card, but here we are...

Propaganda is a hell of a drug.

m90• 5 months ago

So how do the recurring airstrikes help the protesters?

epsters7• 5 months ago

30,000 in 2 days - half the 2-year death toll of Gaza ; With no artillery , air-strikes or heavy weapons, without million-man armies facing off in pitched battles, without health system collapsing with 100s of thousands of injuries in 48 hours, photos or satellite imagery of mass graves and bodies littering the streets

Propaganda is a hell of a drug.

kranke1552• 5 months ago

And you think the US, now currently sliding into authoritarianism itself, will install an enlightened democracy upon the Iranians?

This is WW3 in slow motion. The goal is to takeover Eurasia and contain the Russian-Chinese alliance by eating away at the edges and removing all unaligned or hostile energy sources.

ReptileMan3• 5 months ago

Killing people that blind women for refusing to wear headscarf is always a good deed.

It may be infeasible to do it, or bad idea because of geopolitical or similar reasons, but no - in Iran's regime case - we are not the baddies.

tgv2• 5 months ago

There's no way you can defend the Iranian leadership. Toppling them is not shameful, just like ousting Saddam Hussein was IMO reasonable. The problem is what happens afterwards.

epsters7• 5 months ago

Trump launching bunker-busters on his midterm chances. Which depending on how bad it goes, potentially means impeachment and prison. Whatever it is the Israelis have on him, it must be good.

Works out great for Netanyahu though as is customary. He can be PM for a while longer and stave off his own impending trial and imprisonment. If this goes well for Israel, he might even get that pardon that Trump campaigned for tirelessly.

weatherlite6• 5 months ago

I don't see Trump in prison, that's just not in his DNA.

deaux2• 5 months ago

He'd definitely off himself in a bunker, in line with his great idol.

drivebyhooting2• 5 months ago

Please, can the administration do something useful for America instead of… whatever this is?

Can we follow the age old adage WWJD?

What would (Xi) Jinping do?

_zagj6• 5 months ago

What would (Xi) Jinping do?

Make himself dictator for life and purge his party of dissenters?

drivebyhooting2• 5 months ago

Yes and then what? Bankrupt his empire by getting into global wars? Yeah sure.

karmakurtisaani• 5 months ago

But also expand through trade and renewables, rather than war and oil.

Much nuance, wow.

Freedom2• 5 months ago

Luckily that can never happen in America.

ivraatiems4• 5 months ago

I was discussing this with a friend today. It just feels like there's no point to these actions.

Not in the sense of "I don't ideologically agree with our decision to do this," but in the sense of, "I do not see how this accomplishes any ideological or practical goal."

What are they trying for? Regime change in Iran? No more Iranian nuclear program? There barely was one before. Keeping Israel safe? It's been an open secret for years that Iran is not a real threat to Israel, because any action it took against Israel would be existential for Iran and its leadership.

A US president who vocally and repeatedly promised he would not start new conflicts keeps starting them, and there's not even a reason. It's infuriating. I have my partisan opinions, but that should not be a partisan statement! It's just disturbing!

renewiltord2• 5 months ago

Well, they're probably killing thousands of their people there. This country was once aligned with us. We may yet have an ally there.

ivraatiems4• 5 months ago

If we attacked every country in the world killing thousands of its own people we'd be at war with half the world right now.

somenameforme7• 5 months ago

They were only aligned with us after we overthrew their democratic secular government in 1953, and installed an unpopular authoritarian monarchy as sole leader. The reason we overthrew their government is because they felt we were ripping them off in oil deals and wanted the right to audit and cancel those deals (and renationalize their oil fields) if we weren't playing fair. Then in 1979 that puppet government was overthrown in a "real" revolution, which gave birth to the Islamic Republic of Iran which, for some reason, always had a chip on its shoulder against the West.

The protests in Iran today are almost certainly being extensively backed by the CIA and other US organizations. Do not mistake a minority as necessarily representing much more than themselves. Of course they might (I certainly don't have any particular insight in the "real" Iran), but you could certainly see something similar happening in the US with extreme groups, left or right wing, becoming visibly active if they were able to find a strong backing/organizing power that made them believe that they could genuinely overthrow the government. The point being that the actions and claims of those groups would not necessarily represent the US at large.

breppp5• 5 months ago

The point is preventing another North Korea style nuclear blackmail state.

Iran has negotiated like no one will ever attack it, and that was a correct assumption for decades

However, due to Iran's overly aggressive use of questionably rational proxies, Hamas has dragged it into a regional conflict where it lost most of its proxies power.

After the last war, it also is no longer a threshold state, so the only leverage they had left was ballistic missiles, which were also handled quite reasonably by Israeli air defense.

In this situation it is a fair request by the US to sign a nuclear deal that heavily restricts Iran's ability to enrich as well as ICBM, trigger with existing uranium stockpiles removed.

As Iran due to ideological reasons refused, and IMO had miscalculated this will be a win-win, as losing will quell the protests, the only thing really left is the metaphorical stick

ivraatiems4• 5 months ago

In this situation it is a fair request by the US to sign a nuclear deal that heavily restricts Iran's ability to enrich, and as Iran due to ideological reasons refused, and IMO miscalculated this will be a win-win, as losing will quell the protests, the only thing really left is the metaphorical stick

Didn't we have one of those a few years ago? I wonder what happened to it /s

Seriously, though: how can Iran both be so powerful we must avoid it becoming a blackmail state, and so weak and feckless it's not a threat to anyone?

And didn't we already attack them to stop them from getting nuclear capabilities?

nielsbot2• 5 months ago

Does Iran not have the same rights of self-defense and sovereignty as the US and Israel?

The point is preventing another North Korea style nuclear blackmail state

The US and Israel are currently nuclear blackmail states. The rational move for Iran to prevent itself from being bullied is to have nukes like North Korea.

In this situation it is a fair request by the US

Fair if you're the US, sure.

CapricornNoble5• 5 months ago

Why do you call the concept a "North Korea style nuclear blackmail state" and not an "Israel style nuclear blackmail state"?

watwut11• 5 months ago

I dont see how it is fair from USA to demand others dont have nukes. Ukraine made mistake of trusting ISA and giving them away and now USA basically support Russia in their invasion.

Iran is a bad guy state ... but the "fair" atgunent hwre dont apply.

locallost2• 5 months ago

The biggest blackmail rogue state right now is the US.

concinds6• 5 months ago

This comment is so wrong. Trump's strikes won't "prevent" anything, it's domestic posturing to look tough. You cannot bomb your way into regime change.

After the last war, it also is no longer a threshold state

That's also wrong. Trump claimed Iran's enrichment capabilities were totally destroyed, but they weren't.

In this situation it is a fair request by the US to sign a nuclear deal

America already had a good deal. Trump got rid of it.

Hikikomori10• 5 months ago

Iran has negotiated like no one will ever attack it, and that was a correct assumption for decades

Iran had a signed agreement, trump cancelled it. Israel literally killed Irans negotiators just a few months ago. What is this nuclear level ignorance.

epsters7• 5 months ago

The point is preventing another North Korea style nuclear blackmail state.

North Korea aspires be to be a Israel-style nuclear blackmail state.

mmustapic• 5 months ago

Iran's nuclear program cannot produce usable nuclear weapons just with enriched uranium, so there's no risk at all for them to blackmail anybody.

jopsen7• 5 months ago

The point is preventing another North Korea style nuclear blackmail state.

You can bomb the leadership all day long.

Without boots on the ground the regime will probably continue.

I don't see how this stops Iran from building nukes. Sure they may have a temporary set back.

But do you think this will change their minds?

Can they even negotiate a resolution with the US. Given that the current administration won't honor its own agreements.

Did Trump issue an ultimatum here? And demand something?

kdheiwns5• 5 months ago

It gets his base fired up and excited.

Some people here might not be American or were too young to remember the lead up to the Iraq War, but it was transparently bullshit. Many people knew this. But if you dared say that, supporters would actively ruin your life. The Dixie Chicks were one of the most popular music acts in the US at the time, a country band that broke out of country and was getting huge appeal across the US. They dared to say they opposed the war. Their careers never returned.

Now with social media that isn't completely locked down, some voice of opposition can slip through and assure people that, yes, this is crazy. No, we don't need to blow the shit out of towns across the world. But these social media sites are all owned by government-aligned mega billionaires. They're rolling out AI that can comment and act very, very human and endorse everything the government does. They can auto-police opinions and spit out thousands of arguments and messages of harassment against them in seconds. Soon they'll be autoblocking any sense of disagreement.

It's at that point they can say that this is done to defend America. This is done to defend freedom. This desert country that's too screwed up to even manage its own internal affairs is somehow so dangerous that it's going to destroy the whole world with nukes it doesn't even have so we must destroy them all now. Dear leader always has your interests at heart. And you'll have no info to point to saying otherwise. Everyone who dares question it will be mocked, ridiculed, fired. Even if this administration fails, the tools are being built and laid out for the next, and I really don't know how humanity will overcome it. And I hate that I can't have optimism in this situation.

This discussion is one where it's worth looking at commenters' histories. Many have several pages where the bulk of their posts are defending Israel, saying war with Iran is necessary, and various related things. It's kind of spooky

robertjpayne• 5 months ago

While true for the Iraq war I don't think that holds as true anymore. Even a lot of MAGA recognise that getting into wars in the Middle East does nothing but cost the taxpayer billions/trillions of dollars for nothing to show.

flyinglizard7• 5 months ago

Anyone raising their weapon against Israel in the last 20 years was armed, supplied, funded, trained and directed by Iran. There’s a special division called Quds in the IRGC responsible just for that. The list includes Hizbollah, Assad’s former regime in Syria, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Houthis, Hizbollah in Iraq and others.

moxifly75• 5 months ago

Israel being an ethnic supremacist state for more than the last 20 years [0], on a determined mission to ethnically cleanse the indigenous population from their ancestral land [1], this comment unintentionally makes Iran sound like the good guys in this story. (I do not support any form of theocracy).

[0] https://www.btselem.org/topic/apartheid [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Palestinians

ParentiSoundSys2• 5 months ago

It's a nakedly imperial gambit, the Western ruling classes are attempting to deny Middle Eastern oil to Russia and China. Iran is their only capable opposition in the region, every other Gulf country is a bought-and-paid-for satrapy which just cosigned a genocide on its doorstep.

lucketone7• 5 months ago

Oil to Russia? Please review that

SpicyLemonZest• 5 months ago

It's regime change this time. Trump published a message calling for all Iranian military forces to surrender and the Iranian people to take over the government.

baxtr8• 5 months ago

No more Iranian nuclear program? There barely was one before.

How do you know?

ivraatiems4• 5 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_strikes_on_Irani...

RobotToaster3• 5 months ago

The US department of war said last month that it was "obliterated"

No other military in the world could have executed an operation of such scale, complexity, and consequence as Operation MIDNIGHT HAMMER. Yet the Joint Force did so flawlessly and obliterated Iran’s nuclear program.

https://media.defense.gov/2026/Jan/23/2003864773/-1/-1/0/202...

pfannkuchen2• 5 months ago

On Israel, is it possible that they feel their influence on US foreign policy is waning and they want to push over Iran before they can’t do it anymore, even if the propaganda in America hasn’t been sufficiently set up yet to provide cover? Where pushing Iran over is useful because having weak neighbors is good for their expansion?

Possibly wishful thinking, but that’s the only way I can make it make sense in my head.

StephiePirelli• 5 months ago

Netanyahu has been pushing for the US to attack Iran since the 80s, it's been a lifelong dream of his. This has nothing to do with self defense.

tempodox• 5 months ago

You don’t unseat the Fraudster in Chief while at war. So starting a war is a slightly less conspicuous trick than outright preventing relevant elections from taking place.

deaux2• 5 months ago

It accomplishes the goal of diverting attention away from the recent revelations of a pedophile ring among the elites having operated from a private island for decades, with current US president and serial rapist Trump being best friends with the ring leader.

It's bound to be incredibly successful at accomplishing that goal.

Similarly, wars against Iraq and Afghanistan were very successful in diverting attention away from 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers being from Saudi Arabia, and later on from the funding provided to one or more of the hijackers by Saudi officials. With a certain Ms. Maxwell being asked to join the investigatory committee on the event in question.

Sam6late2• 5 months ago

Yes, but there is also the other elephant in the room. Don’t underestimate Trump, he may not have read about Michael Parenti’s explanation of The Assassination of Julius Caesar: where he argues that Caesar was killed not as a tyrant threatening republican liberty, but as a popular reformer who challenged the Roman oligarchy's wealth and power and thirst for wars. Maybe Parenti doesn't explicitly equate JFK's killing to Caesar’s, the similarity lies in both being elite-driven assassinations to preserve power: Caesar by Roman senators against reforms, akin to theories of JFK's killing over anti-war shifts and perceived threats to entrenched interests. Critics note Parenti's JFK work critiques official narratives as state cover-ups, mirroring his Caesar "people's history" inversion of "gentlemen historians."

slim• 5 months ago

Their endgame is genocide. They will be happy to only enslave the Iranian people too. Seriously, USA and its colony in Palestine are colonialist supremacists and they just want to extract all the resources and don't mind killing all the people of that land.

bawolff16• 5 months ago

What are they trying for? Regime change in Iran?

Seems like it. I can't imagine what else they might try for.

I suppose USA might think some shock and awe will result in iran making concessions at the bargaining table, but that seems unrealistic to me.

No more Iranian nuclear program? There barely was one before.

That seems very debatable.

Keeping Israel safe? It's been an open secret for years that Iran is not a real threat to Israel, because any action it took against Israel would be existential for Iran and its leadership.

Well they did take action against israel (you could say they were indirectly responsible for oct 7). Now they are facing said existential threat.

---

Ultimately though. Iran has been a major threat to both israeli and US interests, largely by funding proxy groups that take violent action against those interests. That's your motive for a war.

Iran is currently weak, facing multiple internal and eexternal crisises.

A war is happening because there is a limited window where iran is weak but the window potentially won't remain. That's the reason behind a lot of wars in history.

pjc504• 5 months ago

Yes, when you ask the basic Clauzewitz question about "continuation of politics by other means": what are the war aims, and how is this action connected to them?

What are the strikes even against?

Do they seriously think that after Iran shot all the street revolutionaries, another group will come forward and collapse the government?

Are they treating Iran as Big Serbia? It's a very different situation!

Or is this just for the Posting?

RobertoG3• 5 months ago

The point is that Israel can't tolerate any competition in the area.

Wesley Clark: "We're going to take out 7 countries in 5 years":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWxKn-1S8ts

somewhereoutth• 5 months ago

Probably a continuation of the 'mowing the lawn' strategy (as used against the Palestinians). Every now and again use massive military force to set back Iran's capabilities, time and effort they spend rebuilding is time and effort not spent causing problems elsewhere.

vimy• 5 months ago

They are boxing in China. Taking away China’s oil. First Venezuela. Now Iran.

Decoupling from China while taking out China’s allies is the overarching foreign policy.

alluro22• 5 months ago

I'm not sure how much that will pay off - it also gives China legitimacy in starting to much more overtly pursue their own interests through force. I definitely wouldn't be surprised if we saw something happening very quickly.

tim33312• 5 months ago

Yeah, regime change and no nukes.

intalentive2• 5 months ago

Iran is the main source of resistance in the region. Libya, Iraq, and Syria have been pacified. Egypt has been bought off. All the groups still fighting Israel (Hezbollah, Houthis, probably Hamas) have received significant Iranian support.

I believe the calculation is this is Israel’s last best window of opportunity to leverage the declining American empire with a compromised asset in the White House. The time to strike is now, since in 10 years US military power and US political will in support of Israel will likely be diminished.

optimalsolver• 5 months ago

My previous comment:

The most salient lesson of the post-Cold War era: Get nukes or die trying.

A nation's relationship to other states, up to and especially including superpowers, is completely different once it's in the nuclear club. Pakistan can host bin Laden for years and still enjoy US military funding. North Korea can literally fire missiles over South Korea and Japan and get a strongly-worded letter of condemnation, along with a generous increase in foreign aid. We can know, for a fact, that the 2003 Iraq War coalition didn't actually believe their own WMD propaganda. If they thought that Saddam could vaporize the invasion force in a final act of defiance, he'd still be in power today. Putin knows perfectly well that NATO isn't going to invade Russia, so he can strip every last soldier from the Baltic borders and throw them into the Ukrainian meat grinder.

Aside from deterring attack, it also discourages powerful outside actors from fomenting revolutions. The worry becomes who gets the nukes if the central government falls.

Iran's assumption seems to have been that by permanently remaining n steps away from having nukes (n varying according to the current political and diplomatic climate), you get all the benefits of being a nuclear-armed state without the blowback of going straight for them. But no, you need to have the actual weapons in your arsenal, ready to use at a moment's notice.

My advice for rulers, especially ones on the outs with major geopolitical powers: Pour one out for Gaddafi, then hire a few hundred Chinese scientists and engineers and get nuked up ASAP.

Ekaros2• 5 months ago

Anti-nuclear proliferation should now be treated as crime against humanity. Nuclear proliferation is only way to ensure world peace. Every single country should get nukes and capability to use them against each others. And be fully ready to do it.

Moldoteck• 5 months ago

Let's bring this idea to an ultimate level- each country to have a warhead able to wipe everything, sort of project Sundial...

After all if your country is too small, it may be worthless to have nukes that probably would be destroyed by neighbors on launch...

phoronixrly• 5 months ago

Can't tell if sarcasm

bombcar• 5 months ago

https://www.angryflower.com/422.html

wolfd• 5 months ago

I hope you and I never get the opportunity to learn how this would end. We’ve had nukes on Earth for less than 100 years, do you expect the next few thousand to go that well? Do you think in that time, nobody will ever roll a nat 1 on a wisdom check?

HappyPanacea4• 5 months ago

If nukes are so good why Israel isn't safe? Or in other words you overestimate how useful nukes are. On contrary for Iran them having nukes mean Israel have to guess if coming missiles contain nukes or not and whatever to strike back with their own nukes where as now they can freely sand missiles without escalation concerns.

padjo6• 5 months ago

Israel isn't safe? They are probably the most well defended country on the earth. A very capable domestic military and the full power of the US as an attack dog willing to do their bidding.

CapricornNoble5• 5 months ago

If nukes are so good why Israel isn't safe?

Israeli nukes are the main reason we haven't had regime change in Tel Aviv at the hands of a Turkish/Egyptian/Saudi/Iranian coalition. Israeli nukes are why Iran has had to settle into a pattern of slow, distant, annoyance via proxy forces (which lack a capability for existentially challenging the IDF).

necovek• 5 months ago

Nukes do not help against guerilla warfare: their destructive power is so big that they are really unreasonable attack weapon, and only a deterring factor instead.

They protect against being "policed" by big world countries.

Eg. if Ukraine still had nuclear weapons, Russia would not have been invading them (or are they "protecting" them, as promised when they took their nuclear arsenal for destruction?). If Iran or Iraq had nuclear weapons, they would not have been bombed by US.

peyton2• 5 months ago

My advice for rulers … hire a few hundred Chinese scientists and engineers and get nuked up ASAP.

Just need one flight from Pyongyang. Why suggest involving a major power given that you’ve just laid out the strategic need for nuclear weapons to deter interference from… major powers? Your post lacks coherency.

8note• 5 months ago

opportunity cost-wise, iran could have poured all the money they did in nuclear enrichment instead into missiles, air defense, etc, and they would not be having as much problems as they do now.

nuclear enrichment is extraordinarily expensive and really not all that great of a deterrent when you have them. just look at fairly recent tussels between india, pakistan and china. Russia was invaded and didnt nuke ukraine.

nielsbot2• 5 months ago

I thought Ukraine surrendered her nukes?

YeGoblynQueenne7• 5 months ago

Or we can all shoot ourselves in the face. Faster, cheaper, and guaranteed to work every time. Ish.

athrowaway3z• 5 months ago

I have to wonder how much of this is driven by Israel accounting for the risk of less favorable US relationship in the future.

Pre-emptive violence; not even justified with a narrative of escalating threat.

Bleak for anybody who knows their history.

e40• 5 months ago

And it happened on a Friday night. Best time of the week for the least news impact.

baq3• 5 months ago

In the great age of grift wars ideally last no more than the time between Friday market close and Sunday futures open.

weatherlite6• 5 months ago

It was Trump or his immediate environmetn who asked Israeli to attack Iran first (better optics); Israel would have never done this without American approval. Did Israel want this to happen though ? Yes. But so did the Americans. I guess the negotiations went badly.

viking1233• 5 months ago

"Negotiations"

seydor8• 5 months ago

The US has moved half of its navy in the region, and there are doubts about its support?

replooda3• 5 months ago

"Let's do it now, when they'd still move half their navy there for us, rather than in the future, when they might not."

dragonwriter7• 5 months ago

“In the future” is not “now”.

Neither the current administration nor Israel are particularly popular with the US public today, and those are correlated in that Israel has particularly lost support from Democrats and Independents in the US, suggesting that a change in power (legislative or executive, and especially both) in the US government could very easily spell much less favorable US policy toward Israel.

palisade• 5 months ago

That is only 6% of our Navy. Not half.

epsters7• 5 months ago

More specifically, seems to be driven by Netanyahu's political accounting. Starting a potential major war going into mid-terms is pretty inconvenient for Trump who could be looking at impeachment over Epstein. But Netanyahu is facing trial and October-7 investigation commissions more imminently and can't wait that long. Netanyahu trumps Trump, evidently.

riffraff5• 5 months ago

is pretty inconvenient for Trump who could be looking at impeachment over Epstein

I mean, it is a pretty convenient distraction from the epstein files tho, so win-win for Trump/Netanyahu

Simon_ORourke2• 5 months ago

I think just forego the hypocrisy and have the Israeli's move the White House over there and put one of their own in it instead of pulling the strings.

bojan5• 5 months ago

Those who know their history also know that the current American administration is of a kind that usually ascends following the rules, but then never voluntarily leaves power.

So I don't think Israel has anything to fear there.

Revanche13678• 5 months ago

Not only the current administration, no US administration in the recent past or foreseeable future will not be okay with fighting wars for Israel at the cost of American lives and wealth. Some might hesitate or push back more than others, but the end result is the same.

Schmerika7• 5 months ago

Literally this week, for the first time ever, a majority of Americans polled favored Palestine over Israel.

To be clear, I'm not trying to suggest that's why we're bombing Iran today. Just pointing out a data point supporting your hypothesis.

stevenjgarner• 5 months ago

Paywall : https://archive.ph/M6Ywb

tomhow4• 5 months ago

Latest update of the page archived here: https://archive.ph/VqSqj

bdangubic4• 5 months ago

we sure dodged a bullet in 2024 elections and elected the right people to stop all these senseless wars that were one of the cornerstones of the election campaign

matsemann3• 5 months ago

It's baffling to me that the DNC decided it was more important to support Israel than win the election and do good things at home.

robertoandred• 5 months ago

Harris had all sorts of good things planned at home. It’s baffling to me that some voters thought it was more important to lose the election.

apexalpha8• 5 months ago

How can you look at the current support for Trump and conclude you would've won in the US by not supporting Israel?

2001zhaozhao• 5 months ago

I can't shake the thought that Claude is quite possibly helping to conduct these attacks.

Maybe it's a good thing that Anthropic will no longer be associated with the US government's attacks in another six months.

idle_zealot2• 5 months ago

I still cannot understand what "Claud helping to conduct attacks" could possibly mean. Like, they asked an LLM to use tool calls to look up strategic info, maps, and military asset inventory and then write a plan for where to point the missiles? How is a text generator helpful here, whose job could it make meaningfully easier in the chain of command?

moxifly75• 5 months ago

Target selection?

"Here is 10 petabytes of signals intelligences, you can run queries, give me the hierarchy of my enemy, the house address of anyone within 3 degrees of separation of their leadership or weapons industry, the next house address they're likely to be at if trying to flee my strikes, and the time they're all most likely to be there. Then schedule drone strikes on the houses."

anigbrowl3• 5 months ago

Getting publicly kicked to the curb by the Trump admin mere hours before it starts another war is probably the best thing that could have happened to Anthropic. Not sure how well OpenAI's parachuting in is gonna look with hindsight. I have a feeling we won't have to wait that long to find out.

k3vinw2• 5 months ago

agreed. Although "starts another war" dismisses 50 years of history. Iran never stopped being at war with US and Israel and they clearly were never going to agree to a deal that left them without the nuclear capability to wipe both US and Israel off the map.

k3vinw2• 5 months ago

That's funny, I can't shake the thought that China's AI tech could be helping the ayatollahs' conduct their retaliation strikes.

throwawa15• 5 months ago

https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/399731975432728576

thomasingalls• 5 months ago

let's try to keep to credible sources here eh

big-and-small• 5 months ago

Joke? Or someone really dont know it's his account?

Sam6late2• 5 months ago

They have chosen the weekend not to disturb the stock markets. They may pull that off when they get inside support as the corruption of the regime has made it unpopular with business class and the middle class. Trump may achieve another 'Venezuela' short war.

anigbrowl3• 5 months ago

I'm very skeptical that external attacks bring about a resurgence of domestic Iranian protest resulting in a tidy regime change. I think the downward lurch of BTC tells you how it's going to go, because Trump's mouth is writing checks others are going to have to cash and there's a lot of contradictions involved.

How is he guaranteeing immunity to members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard if they do nothing? Likewise, if he's telling the general Iranian public to simultaneously rise up and stay home, how does he plan to manage the hoped-for happy ending? In the event they succeed and topple the regime, are they just going to let bygones be bygones with the suddenly displaced IRGC while also giving Trump the keys to their treasury?

fortran772• 5 months ago

The headline says "US and Israel". Why are you all focusing on Israel?

bpye• 5 months ago

Earlier headlines did just state Israel, US involvement became evident somewhat later.

ardit33• 5 months ago

This was doesn't benefit the US whatsoever. I am getting tired of our taxes going to another useless war, like the Iraq one, that only benefits a foreign entity, aka Israel.

Iran could have been contained and Obama was right on his approach. We don't know the details of the strikes, but I hope it doesn't go into a full blown war, but this will be another Iraq like disaster, and american people are getting tired of doing the bidding of Isreal, a country that is already mirred into doing a genocide. This war is already unpopular in pools. Iran's regime is terrible to its people, but this has the potential to be another disaster where countless of people could die.

padjo6• 5 months ago

It won't go to a full blown war. They will bomb some stuff and declare victory. Once they sailed two carrier battle groups over there an attack of some sort was a foregone conclusion.

jryan49• 5 months ago

lol we all hope

CapricornNoble5• 5 months ago

We don't know the details of the strikes, but I hope it doesn't go into a full blown war

Well, if the Chinese are smart, they will capitalize on this opportunity. They can prop up the Iranian regime with intelligence, weapons, and financial support the same way US & EU prop up Ukraine. The purpose would be to bleed US munitions stocks even faster than they already are, as well as increase attritional losses in platforms and personnel. China's stranglehold on rare earths and their export restrictions are making it more difficult for the US to restore its weapons stockpile. I'm sure China can crunch some numbers to identify the point of maximum weakness if the US is forced to sustain an anti-Iran air and naval campaign 30/60/90+ days. Then Xi can try to overlap that window of weakness with one of the two invasion windows against Taiwan (mostly due to weather in the Taiwan Strait). I don't think the PLA is dumb enough to try a full amphibious assault, but they could definitely initiate their blockade then.

lucketone7• 5 months ago

It would take weeks for China to shop stuff. (Unless they have done their homework in advance)

cgio• 5 months ago

I don’t believe China has any intention to support anyone by military means. Best case they will keep on trading and that’s it. Iran is alone. Maybe Turkey makes a crazy move to support seeing it sees itself as next in line if Iran falls. This is the biggest present to European powers, which I think will be hoping that it will keep US busy for rest of Trump’s presidency. They have the Ukraine excuse to distance themselves and let everyone get weaker while they arm themselves up. Internal political tensions in US will also give them leeway to more actively influence American politics and these will be even worse with a long war pitched against a scandal background. Then again, Trump may be a genius, get this done in a couple of months and leave everyone grasping for a new strategy.

HappyPanacea4• 5 months ago

Iran could have been contained and Obama was right on his approach.

So you don't care about people forced to live under IRGC rule and their desire to export their Islamic ideals elsewhere?

hackpelican• 5 months ago

Do you really believe this “altruistic” angle?

colordrops3• 5 months ago

No. There are dozens of countries with despotic regimes, including Israel. And I also have no interest in zionist or any religious ideals exported either. If this were justification we would also be bombing Israel, which has committed far worse crimes than Iran.

gghhzzgghhzz2• 5 months ago

indeed. One of the only positive things Obama did internationally.

The regime may be horrific, but the only route out was through supporting and encoraging change and opening up and progressive forces.

It's a country with 90 million people, and many groups and external influences. Could end up like Iraq.

and it's Europe that will experince the political chaos as result of pressure from refugees, not the US.

ExoticPearTree2• 5 months ago

If they don’t put boots on the ground, it won’t. They can bomb Iran back to the stoneage, as it has no viable air defenses.

Revanche13678• 5 months ago

I guess countless Iranians dying in the process doesn’t matter at all? As long as the Americans are killing them from far away, it’s all good?

r721• 5 months ago

Feb 25:

White House officials believe ‘the politics are a lot better’ if Israel strikes Iran first
As the administration mulls military action in Iran, officials argue it’d be best if Israel makes the first move.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/25/white-house-politic...

gpt56• 5 months ago

Looks like the rumor was incorrect. Both jointly attacked (NYtimes - https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02/28/world/iran-strikes-t...)

vintermann2• 5 months ago

But Israel announced it first, which they maybe hoped would amount to the same thing PR wise.

sekai5• 5 months ago

Just now:

Trump: "The lives of American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties - that often happens in war."

Another republican president starting a war in the middle east, once again sacrificing American lives.

ambentzen• 5 months ago

"Some of you are going to die, but that is a sacrifice I'm willing to make"

alex_young• 5 months ago

A war? Of course not. It’s a major combat operation. Only congress can declare wars. We haven’t had any in decades. They should call it the Dept. of Major Combat Operations.

somenameforme7• 5 months ago

While I think this (and Venezuela) are arguably the biggest missteps this administration is making, it's hardly a partisan point. The political establishment loves war more than perhaps anything else. In 2016 alone Obama bombed half a dozen different countries with more than 26,000 munitions for an average rate of three bombs dropped every hour, every day, for a year. [1] Nobel Peace Prize embodied.

I think the only way to get away from the warmongering is to go for a third party. But even they would likely be corrupted by the excessive influence of the military industrial complex. Eisenhower was not only right, but plainly prophetic.

[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/list-of-c...

jjtwixman3• 5 months ago

Americans voted for no new wars, and especially no new wars in the sandbox, and they got a new war in the sandbox.

Americans really have to be among the most gullible people on the planet.

Not to mention that Trump is a paedophile, the open corruption, attempted coup etc... it's like that Hemingway quote. The decline of the USA has been gradual, and then very sudden.

hermitcrab• 5 months ago

I thought he wasn't allowed to start a war without a vote in congress?

TheOtherHobbes• 5 months ago

"Some of you may die, but that is a risk I am willing to take."

amunozo2• 5 months ago

Once again mass killing civilians and setting a country of 100 million inhabitants into chaos.

But yes, poor American soldiers.

beloch• 5 months ago

This may be the bloodiest "Wag the Dog" in modern history. They may create an Ig Nobel peace prize specifically for this.

lonelyasacloud• 5 months ago

Trump: "The lives of American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties - that often happens in war."

Coming from President Bone Spurs ...

ekianjo4• 5 months ago

You forgot the Obama wars for some reason?

heresie-dabord• 5 months ago

Trump is calling them heroes now. But we know what he really thinks: "suckers and losers".

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/john-kelly-con...

shusaku3• 5 months ago

I’m honestly perplexed. I had anticipated a scenario like “the US feared Iran was unstable and attacked to protect nuclear material”. It seems this would give them reasonable cover. I don’t see how Israel going along helps

catlikesshrimp6• 5 months ago

Bibi needs Israel to keep fabricating wars. He will go to trial for previous charges if Israel runs out of wars.

replooda3• 5 months ago

Israel going along

Honinbo-sensei, you seem to have failed to recognize puppy-go for what it is and also to identify the player.

chrisjj8• 5 months ago

s/politics/optics/

_zagj6• 5 months ago

Can any Iran simps explain why the regime couldn't just agree to zero enrichment and cease its weekly ritual of organized mobs chanting:

DEATH TO AMERICA

in the streets like blood-thirsty lunatics, something for which there was no equivalent in the US even after 9/11 (mobs chanting "Death to Muslims/Islam"), let alone doing so with governmental encouragement as happens in Iran?

Do they not realize how many Americans aren't pro-Israel and aren't invested enough in the Middle East and its politics, proxy wars, and human rights abuses to want the US to support Israel in military action against Iran, except for their nuclear ambitions, and regularly professed eternal hatred for our country?

beeflet4• 5 months ago

I think iran wants nuclear weapons to ensure its survival against israel

_zagj6• 5 months ago

So we're supposed to

justtrustmebro

That they'll never, in some capacity, attempt use them against the country they weekly collectively chant death to?

EDIT: thanks, dang, for the

posting too fast

cooldown, for all of my four posts.

perhaps we could negotiate a peace deal in which israel and iran both agree to give up nuclear weapons and allow for IAEA inspections

I completely agree with you. Isreal has better relations with its neighbors than its ever had, has destroyed Iran's proxies, and given its obvious conventional military supremacy and lack of regional nuclear-armed foes and US-backing, its nuclear stockpile is just a destabilizing force in the region, and them voluntarily disbanding it would earn them a great deal of goodwill and a moral highground.

citrin_ru4• 5 months ago

The current Iranian regime has destruction of Israel as one of their main goals. Not the other way around. I’m sure if Iran will have less threatening leadership Isreal will not bother them.

bigyabai10• 5 months ago

We don't have many details regarding the negotiations, but early reports suggest that Iran agreed to the "no high-enrichment" line. It was the proxy support and MRBM standoff weaponry that caused the talks to collapse (allegedly).

https://www.thejournal.ie/iran-agrees-in-breakthrough-talks-...

citrin_ru4• 5 months ago

No one dares to attack North Korea because they have nukes. Ayatollahs surely want the same but didn’t have enough time/resources.

Current stance on negotiations is a miscalculation IMHO, they likely wanted for negotiations to drag on for a long time.

_zagj6• 5 months ago

Last I checked, no one dared to attack them before they had nukes because of China's promise (made good in 1950) to use their military to defend the regime in Pyongyang, and the massive array of conventional artillery pointing at Seoul just across the DMZ, where 25% of South Korea's population resides. Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47192139

nomilk2• 5 months ago

Are there any accurate sources on how many Iranian citizens the Iran regime has killed in the past couple of months? (some sources suggest tens of thousands, but I wonder if it could be a 'WMDs' situation [lie to get support for a war]).

Trump said in the State of the Union [0]:

in just over the past couple of months with the protests they've killed at least 32000 protestors

And just moments ago Trump says 'tens of thousands' [1]

Is this confirmed or conjecture?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l-iErpskb8&t=1h21m20s

[1] https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/2027651077865157033

bawolff16• 5 months ago

I think its incredibly difficult to get confirmed numbers in a situation like that.

I do think its on the higher end though as i dont think they would have bothered with a costly extended internet blackout if the number was small.

colordrops3• 5 months ago

Why does it matter? Is it justification to attack them?

nomilk2• 5 months ago

The 'tens of thousands' figure is one primary justification. Iran (eventually) getting a nuke is another.

bawolff16• 5 months ago

Its probably not the reason they are attacking (except in as much that it makes the iranian regime vulnerable). However i would say that yes, humanitarian intervention is one of the only non self-defense justifications for war that anyone has ever accepted in the post-ww2 era. (Edit: to clarify, im saying its the type of thing people build justifications for war around. Whether its a valid justification on this specific case is probably highly debatable. I think a reasonable argument could be made)

usrnm• 5 months ago

I don't get that argument at all. Americans felt that they were missing out on all the fun, so they decided to kill even more Iranians? Does anyone really believe that bombing cities saves lives?

bawolff16• 5 months ago

Whether it will in this case i don't know.

But yes, i do think sometimes war can be a net positive for civilians over the alternative in the long term. Not often, but sometimes.

RiverStone7• 5 months ago

They’re not nuking Tehran, they’re dropping targeted bombs on government/military sites.

Get in touch with your local Iranian community. You’d be surprised how much they’re cheering the bombing on.

You might be surprised that people inside Tehran are shouting “get the mullahs out” and cheering us on.

epsters7• 5 months ago

Why are we even talking about this? As if this is being done for the 'protestors'? Netanyahu didn't visit the White House 6 times in the last year to advocate for the welfare of the Iranian people. The "negotiations" over the last several weeks weren't over protestors - it was over the Nuclear program, ballistic program and proxy forces. It wasn't even about US interests. Iran offered mining, oil and other valuable rights. Trump wasn't buying. This is about Israel's national security interests and hegemonic ambitions. Protestors are just pawns in service of that.

If this turns into a full-scale war or a civil war breaks out, we are looking at 1 million Iranian deaths conservatively speaking. Just look at happened at every single foreign intervention in the region - Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia. How does a million dead Iranians help them? How does it help the Americans, and the world if oil infrastructures or shipping lanes are targeted ? How does it help the region or Europe when millions of refugees flood out, and armouries are broken open and weapons and insurgents flood the region (like it did with Iraq and Libya)? It helps Israel greatly though, since they take out their arch nemesis, their conventional military and the nuclear program. And they think can shield themselves from the chaos they create around them.

tdeck5• 5 months ago

Apparently you don't even have to give Americans the neocon foreign policy spin anymore, we generate it ourselves.

To wit, after Maduro was kidnapped and the exact same regime kept in place (minus selling oil to Cuba), and Trump openly said it was to control the oil, most of the reactions were pretending we live in a universe where the US does these things to spread democracy.

swingboy6• 5 months ago

This is about Israel's national security interests and hegemonic ambitions.

This sums it all up succinctly. Emphasis on the “hegemonic ambitions” part.

Rapzid5• 5 months ago

Why are we even talking about this?

There were lots of reasons to do this. The massacre of 40k citizens opened the door.

Kinda like how Al Capone got busted on tax evasion? Capisci? Maybe no.

TheAlchemist4• 5 months ago

Regardless of how it ends, and it can go both ways, we're witnessing history here. This feels like a much bigger development than Russia-Ukraine. Iran is a major partner for Russia and China, mostly for military technology and oil. Hope it's not a start of WW3.

waihtis2• 5 months ago

Putin said it himself, there are over 2 million russians in Israel - they will not participate

quotz• 5 months ago

thats definitely not the reason they wont participate. Its just a public excuse

null_deref3• 5 months ago

Russian Speakers* a lot of them are from previous Soviet republics like Georgia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Belarus and Ukraine

kdheiwns5• 5 months ago

I have to wonder how many are in governmental roles and realized they can steer the US into conflicts and ruining itself without any of those involved identifying as Russian. It's the cleanest backdoor for espionage that there ever was.

bawolff16• 5 months ago

Otoh, what russia desperately needs in the short term is oil prices to go up, so there is probably a major silver lining for them.

sekai5• 5 months ago

Otoh, what russia desperately needs in the short term is oil prices to go up, so there is probably a major silver lining for them.

And they will again appear weak and incapable, unable to help their allies

dzhiurgis2• 5 months ago

Iran’s oil is sanctioned hence not on public market. Does it really have much influence?

seydor8• 5 months ago

Could be more of an intimidation tactic. The United States of Israel wouldnt go to a land war in Iran, that's unwinnable

AlecSchueler4• 5 months ago

This is about Iran, not Iraq.

dash2• 5 months ago

Depends how you count “big”. Russia-Ukraine has had about 1 million deaths, and has completely changed how Europe thinks about security- it’s hardly a sideshow. Then again, not much territory has changed hands and there has been no regime change yet.

tromp• 5 months ago

not much territory has changed hands

Russia occupies about 20% of Ukraine, an area three times larger than the country I live in (the Netherlands).

jiggawatts• 5 months ago

One million casualties is injured, missing, and dead… not just the dead.

eps• 5 months ago

1 million deaths

Casulties, not deaths.

xdennis4• 5 months ago

Russia-Ukraine has had about 1 million deaths

I wish... But estimates say between 230,000 and 468,500 dead orcs.

pjc504• 5 months ago

There's no land campaign. It's an isolated series of strikes for PR reasons and wishful thinking about Iran collapse.

bambax3• 5 months ago

What happens when Iran responds by firing missiles on Israel or on a US ship and inflicts major casualties on either targets, though?

Etheryte• 5 months ago

Russia and Ukraine are now at war for the fifth year running, you're just used to the fact that there is ongoing war in Europe.

dgxyz2• 5 months ago

I don't think it's bigger than Russia-Ukraine - it's part of it. This is all about destabilising Iran's incumbent government, which is probably a good thing at the moment. It'll damage supply lines to Russia's Ukraine offensive, give the chance for Iranian citizens to rise up against Khamenei and the IRGC and break the command chain for their foreign proxy operations. Part of Dugan's work on geopolitics, which they seem to be following to the word (c'mon guys seriously?) suggests that Moscow and Tehran should be allied which they are behind the scenes.

As for the nuclear threat, literally Iran said it was going to destroy Israel to the point it had a massive countdown clock in Tehran until Israel blew it up, so meh. If I was on the receiving end of that threat I'd make it a policy to respond to it, escalation or not. I make no claims of the accuracy of the threats past IAEA being unable to verify they aren't enriching stuff.

Doubt it'll escalate into WW3. The only other powers involved are Russia, who are totally hands tied with Ukraine if they like it or not and China is only interested keeping what's left in its sphere of influence later through their outreach initiatives. I suspect most Middle Eastern countries will be quite happy about this conflict as they have persistent problems with Iran as well from the Houthis, Hezbollah and tens of other factions. They won't want to say anything though in case their own citizens turn on them.

The cringeworthy thing is how the US gov are communicating this and that does the operation a lot of damage. It's really quite terrible. Sounds like it was written by a bunch of 9 year olds after too many sugary drinks. Urgh.

voidfunc3• 5 months ago

The cringeworthy thing is how the US gov are communicating this and that does the operation a lot of damage. It's really quite terrible. Sounds like it was written by a bunch of 9 year olds after too many sugary drinks. Urgh.

Thats because its not written for you and I. Its written for people who struggle to communicate at an adult level, which is a shockingly large portion of the US.

concinds6• 5 months ago

No it's not. This is an air strike campaign, no boots on the ground. It'll end in two weeks. There is no chance China or Russia get involved, like last time, so "WW3" is completely non-credible.

AlecSchueler4• 5 months ago

...no boots on the ground. It'll end in two weeks

Why do we never learn from history?

TheAlchemist4• 5 months ago

While it's possible, it's unlikely. Iranian regime is in a corner - they have no choice anymore but to escalate, and escalate quickly.

suddenlybananas• 5 months ago

There might be boots on the ground eventually given Trump's speech.

The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties. That often happens in war, but we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission

Very foreboding.

RobotToaster3• 5 months ago

Chinese state media is already reporting it's "unlikely to be contained" https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202602/28/WS69a2a669a310d686...

pseingatl6• 5 months ago

Bombing never wins wars, with one exception.

bombing of: -N.Vietnam -Germany -Serbia -Sudan -Tunisia -England

Exception:

-Japan

That is not to say bombing doesn't have its uses in war. The bombing of the oilfields of Ploesti in Romania severely damaged the German war machine. But it took Russian boots on the ground in Berlin to effect a German surrender.

throwaway3060• 5 months ago

As big as this is, the Russia-Ukraine war pretty much marked the end of the post-WW2 era and redefined global relations between the powers. In that sense, this is yet another major shift within this new era. But also, the series of events that led to this point does connect to the Russia-Ukraine war, and maybe doesn't happen without it.

dmos624• 5 months ago

This feels like a much bigger development than Russia-Ukraine.

Russia-Ukraine war is 1M+ combat casualties deep and is nowhere near finished. You are out of touch.

bawolff16• 5 months ago

But russia-ukraine is also a much more contained war between 2 parties that will likely end in a stalemate.

The middle east is a much more tangled web of alliances and hatreds, i think the iranian regime falling would have much more harder to predict second order geopolitical effects.

Havoc3• 5 months ago

I doubt either of them is keen to enter the fray here. Russia is making shaheeds at home now anyway

mantas• 5 months ago

More like this is a small piece of the puzzle in Russian-Ukraine war. Iran plays quite a big role in supplying Russians. If Iran is taken out, power balance in that war may change too.

bambax3• 5 months ago

WW3 started with the invasion of Ukraine.

kibae• 5 months ago

There seems to be an uptick around 1am on Polymarket.

https://polymarket.com/event/us-strikes-iran-by

dist-epoch2• 5 months ago

Due to distance planes need to take off many hours before the bombs drop.

You can get an edge here by moving your ass somewhere where you can see the planes take off, maybe a team with people at multiple locations - boats near the aircraft carrier, near military bases in Israel, ...

mijoharas• 5 months ago

Sure, it could be that. My money is on something a bit simpler.

xdennis4• 5 months ago

I tried to access that URL but it's banned in my country (Romania) for being an "exploitative gambling website". It's the first time I've felt that my country has a sensible internet policy.

IAmGraydon2• 5 months ago

Yes many markets began to react at 1:14AM EST.

JumpinJack_Cash2• 5 months ago

There is a huge flame war in the comments as people who had money on 27th Feb are claiming the attack started on that date

I think they don’t have an argument because technically the missile can be de-activated up until the last seconds before it reaches its intended target

Still it feels surreal to argue about these things , bomb dropping on humans and other humans attacking each other for the privilege to have their bet honored on when said bombs dropped on the other side of the world

I guess people in intelligence communities had these sort of bets going on ever since WW2 and Vietnam , but still it’s uncanny to see it widespread to potentially the whole population of the internet

Devasta• 5 months ago

Iran is a lesson to all: as soon as Israel or the US take a disliking to you you have to rush for nuclear weapons.

Iran has been the grown up in the room for well over a decade at this stage and it didn't matter one bit. You cannot appease Israel or the US because that don't want to be appeased, they want to bomb Iran into a lawless wasteland. They could have switched to a secular liberal democracy and it'd make no difference.

TiredOfLife3• 5 months ago

Iran makes the drones that russia uses to attack Ukraine every day. Iran makes the rockets Houthis use to attack ships. Iran provides rockets andgunding to Hezbollah and Hamas. Iran is a terrorist state.

heyheyhouhou• 5 months ago

I guess it depends from which angle you see this. Things are not black & white.

A big chunk of the world sees the US as the biggest terrorist state in the world, followed up by Israel...

Hikikomori10• 5 months ago

Usa makes the bombs that israel uses to attack gaza every day.

rando12343• 5 months ago

Don't know why you are being down voted. I mean Iran had a democracy that was toppled by the CIA when they tried to nationalise their resources in favour of a puppet dictator. If the US cared so much about human rights why not go invade Saudi Arabia.

carlosbaraza• 5 months ago

What are that pizza place google statistics?

seydor8• 5 months ago

Did anybody need those? The deployment of half the US army near israel was not enough evidence?

carabiner2• 5 months ago

Those spiked like 50x in the past 4 months. Doesn't seem to mean anything.

dist-epoch2• 5 months ago

The only time it didn't spike was for the Venezuela Maduro operation.

At this point, the pizza index is another vector of (dis)information managed by the Pentagon.

carabiner2• 5 months ago

Remember when we bombed Iran at Fordow? It happened less than a year ago. Iran sent some perfunctory retaliation, and everyone forgot the whole affair. Same with this. Nothing ever happens.

anigbrowl3• 5 months ago

idk about that, telling people to get ready for body bags does not sound like the hands-off fireworks show of previous episodes.

Havoc3• 5 months ago

Given the amount of planes this isn’t going to be a single precision strike

shihab4• 5 months ago

Another mid east war entirely on Israel’s behalf, another war Americans will pay tax for, die for- just so Israel can keep grabbing few parcels of lands from Palestine.

bettercallsalad• 5 months ago

What an utter betrayal of no war by DJT. This is the final straw. Era of Trump is dead, we are back to neoconservative era. I guess Adelsons are too hard to say no to.

shihab4• 5 months ago

Citizens United is an existential threat for USA. You cannot have Israeli-American dual citizens pouring $200 million dollars in elections. and that’s just her alone. This is simply not sustainable.

idop2• 5 months ago

Or one South African-Canadian-American triple citizen pouring $300 million dollars in elections. I am shocked that campaign donations are legal.

danaris2• 5 months ago

Can we not with the blatant antisemitic dogwhistles...?

unethical_ban• 5 months ago

Ideally we would completely restructure the government to have multimember districts and change the Senate.

Within the current structure, we need to implement ranked/scored voting to break the two party system and the implied complete control it has over our government. It's so much easier for big money to control the narrative, control the candidates, and play off extreme polar politics when the voting system makes people choose the "lesser of two evils".

Were I king for a day in the US, and could only do one thing to help America, changing our voting system to some kind of rank/scored system would be it. Ending gerrymandering and Citizens United are also important but honestly less so than this.

subdude• 5 months ago

Coming as a shock to only the most gullible people on Earth.

shusaku3• 5 months ago

It’s still pretty unclear how in the US is planning to go. For example, manifold still rates the chance that Iran’s regime falls this year at 46%, which should be a given if the US put boots on the ground. https://manifold.markets/SaviorofPlant/will-irans-regime-fal...

jjtwixman3• 5 months ago

Fell For It Again one-hundred-time world champions.

coffinbirth4• 5 months ago

At this point, no country in the world will ever again 'make a deal' with the US, because while pretending to negotiate with you they try to ram a knife into your back.

jameshilliard11• 5 months ago

It was pretty obvious that if the negotiations failed that the US would respond by attacking Iran. Iran didn't seem willing to give up their nuclear weapons program regardless of the quite predictable consequences.

lyu072827• 5 months ago

You all just keep lying endlessly, I think most people get it at this point. Iran was prepared to go further than the JCPOA, it was never enough because it was never about nuclear weapons.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/28/peace-within-reach-...

po_ta_to• 5 months ago

You believe everything the US says? lol

coffinbirth4• 5 months ago

It was Trump who cancelled to JCPOA. Also, sending Witkoff and Kushner as negotiators is already an obvious sign the US is dishonest about preventing conflicts through diplomacy, otherwise they would send experienced diplomats. It is really the US Epstein Class Deep State government to blame here.

They could have named the DOD the "Department Of Peace", instead they called it the "Department Of War", showing their true face and trajectory.

At this point it is really the people of the US to rise up and implement a Regime Change from within to change things for the better.

no-name-here2• 5 months ago

  1. The U.S. and Iran had already negotiated and signed a nuclear agreement between our countries but Trump reneged on the already-negotiated agreement.
  2. Trump claimed that his previous attacks on Iran within the last year “completely and totally obliterated” their nuclear program, “obliterated like nobody’s ever seen before” - both direct Trump quotes. Trump was quite clear that Iran’s nuclear program had already been destroyed like nothing had ever been destroyed before.

bambax3• 5 months ago

What's predictable is, if you don't have nuclear weapons, you get attacked. Ask Ukraine. If I were a small country (any country for that matter) the first order of business would be to build myself nuclear weapons now.

Hikikomori10• 5 months ago

Did Israel bomb the Iranian negotiators again?

2Gkashmiri3• 5 months ago

there is news iran accepted to zero nuclear enrichment so what are you saying?

netsharc2• 5 months ago

They were literally in the middle of negotiations, but Trump started the war anyway...

mullingitover2• 5 months ago

I doubt the negotiations were in good faith, probably just a political 'see, we tried' gesture full of deal-breaker bad faith proposals. I think the plan all along has been to attack, probably for more than a year.

You don't go and rename a whole federal department to 'Department of War' when you don't intend to get into wars.

yibg• 5 months ago

Israel just (quite proudly) said they had been planning the targets for months.

Havoc3• 5 months ago

You just need access to the videos then the pedo cabal does whatever you want

FrankSaaSDev2• 5 months ago

Somehow world will close eyes again ... Somehow we need to bring back moral standards that we all have deep in ourselves and screw this money world me all made together... I dont have answers or ideas how but this is just nonsense

nerdyadventurer4• 5 months ago

US has been always playing god, cunning manipulations all over the world. Most of the Europe was silent until recently when Greenland under threat. US benefits from every war either oil, rare metals, trade, weapons, there is always an agenda even though they are not directly involved.

TurdF3rguson2• 5 months ago

I'm pretty sure US higher-ups have been publicly describing Iran regime change as a todo-list item for a while now...

upofadown• 5 months ago

Canadian here...

The world already know this. Having an agreement with the USA is a lot like having an agreement with Darth Vader. The terms of the deal can be altered unexpectedly at any time.

That doesn't mean that such agreements are worthless. They can still be of value to the counties making them. It is just that those countries have to take into account the unreliability of the entity they are making the deal with. Deals with the USA involve a lot of forecasting.

dgellow• 5 months ago

I hope you’re right but not too confident that will be the case. I wish EU leadership wouldn’t be as spineless as it is. I’m afraid they will accept any opportunity to make things feel as if they are back to the old normal if they are given the opportunity. And that would of course backfire, but long term thinking hasn’t been our strength over the past 3 decades or so…

qwrfg• 5 months ago

My friend, that's been SOP from the beginning [1]. The question you have to ask is whether the US actually respects the other parties to the agreement.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_United_States_trea...

komali24• 5 months ago

Ever since the ICE stuff I've been desperate to find a way to not pay my taxes - even if it means donating 2, 3x, hell 4x my tax bill to somewhere else. Obviously it's basically impossible to do this (especially if your income is all self employment income) outside of just spending every penny you earn on something that could be viably considered a business expense. So I'm wondering if I should just straight up stop working until I can relinquish my USA citizenship.

Spend down my savings and assets till I have almost nothing to exit tax, exit, and then start working again.

I don't want to fund the bombing of strangers I have no quarrel with.

dmos624• 5 months ago

If you're willing to go through all this trouble, why not just become politically active? Don't underestimate what a motivated individual can do. All these public figures (or institutions) swaying the country back and forth are only people too.

upmind3• 5 months ago

I would rather vote for a person from hackernews than any other politician right now tbh...

komali24• 5 months ago

I was politically active in the USA, in the only way I believe can make any meaningful change: direct action, mutual aid.

The American political system is captured by two neoliberal (one now post liberal, fascist) parties, and you have to sell your soul to "accomplish" anything, only to watch it yet ratcheted away by your own party, or obliterated by the fascists.

dmos624• 5 months ago

Btw, an example of a person making a difference: https://www.youtube.com/garyseconomics

propagandist3• 5 months ago

You're a good person and I feel similarly. We live under the Fourth Reich.

I do not think ceasing work is the right move, but definitely get involved politically and don't equivocate when you condemn our elected "representatives".

It might also soothe your soul to be in the company of like-minded individuals. A Quaker prayer is a sure place to find many.

Noaidi• 5 months ago

I’ll be a willing receptacle for your donations. I am homeless living with schizoaffective disorder and could use the help!

JonChesterfield• 5 months ago

That would be unsound? Travel to Europe _before_ giving your assets away so you can stick the landing and work on building useful stuff there instead.

greyface-• 5 months ago

This is a laudable position, and I don't say this to discourage you or others from taking this action, but taxation does not effectively constrain US military spending, as long as the USD remains globally desirable and the US retains the ability to print more of them.

krembo3• 5 months ago

Even if you don't support US & IL standing in the frontlines against the terror regime, at least pray for the freedom of the people of Iran, 90m people held hostages by the regime. If you are pro-peace, do not be hypocrite, some wars are needed to defeat evil.

FrankSaaSDev2• 5 months ago

US needs to start thinking that you are not givinig someone freedom bt bombing them. You have soo much of your problems but your money printing machine is working and that is only reason that you can say that. Its not about 90m people its about your pockets...

bigyabai10• 5 months ago

This is bad-faith rationalization. Looking at your comment history confirms that you only use HN to steer political narratives.

krembo3• 5 months ago

This might be a bad faith rationalization per your subjective humble opinion. But thank you for trying to educate me.

apexalpha8• 5 months ago

While I have no love for the Iranian regime I fear this will end up like the 'liberation' of Iraq: A massive power vacuum in an unstable Islamic regime.

What even is the plan here if the air assault fails? Boots on the ground? In Iran?

viking1233• 5 months ago

The place has 90 million people, how do you even deal with this without throwing the whole place into chaos?

Besides, after this the collective west has no moral high-ground anymore, the global south will resent us more than ever. If other countries go to aggressive wars, our condemnation is worthless.

Trump is completely compromised and it was probably the powers that be who told them that this is how it is going to be.

graemep4• 5 months ago

There is no such thing as the "global south" other than in the minds of westerners and westernised elites (and elites are getting less westernised). From a western viewpoint you can lump the rest of the world together, but it makes no sense from any other view point.

As for moral high ground. Compared to whom? China? Russia? Myanmar?

nerdyadventurer4• 5 months ago

Besides, after this the collective west has no moral high-ground anymore

They never had any morals, all for their business gains look at Middle East, Africa and Asian countries where they were involved. Europe always looked other way when US does something and vise versa.

intalentive2• 5 months ago

Chaos could be the point. That is the Libya model.

altern82• 5 months ago

What does it mean "fail"?

What is the goal, to overthrow the regime, so success would mean a change of government?

(sorry, I haven't followed)

halflife7• 5 months ago

So replacing a fascist with western antagonism and constant threat on American allies, with a somewhat democratic, weak, and western aligned government?

Sounds like a good idea

seydor8• 5 months ago

It sounds like you believe that the people of Iran don't support the regime and are secretly loving america.

citrin_ru4• 5 months ago

I don’t think it’s possible to change regime without boots on the ground which is not currently considered. So there will be no power vacuum, at most Iran military will be weaken. It’s not a big win for the US but would allow Trump to safe face after his demands were essentially rejected.

esseph2• 5 months ago

I imagine CIA political officers are on the ground right now.

graemep4• 5 months ago

Iraq was not an Islamic regime in the same sense. It was not a theocracy. There were non Muslims in senior political positions.

The Iraqi government was a lot more stable.

What exactly do you imagine will replace the Iranian government that is worse?

riffraff5• 5 months ago

Was ISIS better or worse than Iran's government is now?

bojan5• 5 months ago

That all being said, we are talking about different cultures. Iranians are on average more educated than Iraqis were/are, and the country is ethnically more homogeneous.

So I have hope that they'll find a way to organize when the current regime falls.

RobertoG3• 5 months ago

what are you talking about? Iran is a sophisticated country with a parliament and elections, with a powerful civil society. It has 90 million inhabitants. They graduated more women in STEM disciplines than the USA. Yes, it's a theocracy, but it's more free than Saudi Arabia for instance.

Are the Americans going to bomb the Saudis next? or only if Israel ask for it?

kqr• 5 months ago

Nothing at all could be worse!

One of the issues with Iraq was that Rumsfeld didn't want to acknowledge that it takes more personnel post-toppling (to rebuild infrastructure and institutions) than during invasion. It seems like the current government could be prone to make the same mistake.

I recommend anyone interested in this to read Cobra II. It's an excellent book.

apexalpha8• 5 months ago

What exactly do you imagine will replace the Iranian government that is worse?

A regime that only controls the capital, leaving the rest of the country in a power vacuum leading to internal conflicts and sectarian violence that will eventually spill over the borders into Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iraq etc...

blks2• 5 months ago

No government and another perpetual war zone.

Matl18• 5 months ago

Iraq was attacking its neighbors every couple of years, Iran is not.

Iran has shown that it is remarkably sane actually, given the aggression shown towards it by Israel and the US and has made a lot of efforts to reach a deal.

Remember, it was the US that exited the JCPOA and now it wants Iran to give up all its misses so that they would be defenseless.

I have no love for theocracies, but I do think the Iranian system is a lot better than the likes of Saudi Arabia, which we're buddy buddy with.

Oh and I guess the founder of Syrian branch of AQ and deputy head of ISIS running Syria is better that what was before too, in your book?

bhouston• 5 months ago

“ There were non Muslims in senior political positions.”

What are you talking about?

Iraq is >95% Muslim, but there are a few different sub groups. With those numbers there were few in government then and now who are not Muslim.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Iraq

justin66• 5 months ago

Iraq’s Ba’ath party were secularists.

Dig1t2• 5 months ago

Your description of what happened in Iraq was exactly the point of why we invaded. Iraq and Iran were the two biggest threats to Israel, we got rid of Iraq and now we are removing the only other rival to Israel remaining in the Middle East.

After this, Israel, being the only nuclear power in the region and having massive funding from the American taxpayer, will dominate the entire region. This has always been the goal.

throwaway6373722• 5 months ago

After Iran falls - Turkey is next.

hjkl04• 5 months ago

After this, Israel, being the most dangerous rogue state in the world and extremely divided internally, will likely devolve into civil war.

One hopes, anyway. That’s the best chance we have to remove the Nazis currently in power here.

seydor8• 5 months ago

The plan is a show of power. Trump will leave in 2 years, leaving much of the world in disarray because he had no plan whatsoever, and his staff is literally out of the movie Idiocracy. Nothing of lasting value will come out of the horrors that happened in the past 3 years, and in 10 years we (the world) will look back into the present with disbelief.

tasuki• 5 months ago

in 10 years we will look back into the present with disbelief.

You mean in 10 years, when the US is a stable and high-functioning democracy with independent media, a universally liked, charming, and polite president, supported by both the right and the left, who finally manage to overcome their minor differences? Is... is this the direction this is all heading?

baubino• 5 months ago

in 10 years we (the world) will look back into the present with disbelief.

This is a very optimistic outlook, to the point of naivete, though I really hope you are right. In reality, neither Trump nor his cronies are acting like people who imagine they will be out of power anytime soon. In 10 years the world will likely still be dealing with the fallout of this administration, if not still dealing with the administration itself.

nerdyadventurer4• 5 months ago

While I have no love for the Iranian regime

Who say US is not regime? It is the world largest regime in the world, with bidders in every country to do their bidding, mass surveillance including their own country men. People blame only Russia, China, Iran etc when US have been doing the same for years.

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/w6_2Ul3Ght8

apexalpha8• 5 months ago

I generally use 'regime' for autocratic governments.

Trump is democratically elected, for now.

I'm not actually sure if this is correct, English is not my native language.

JumpCrisscross55• 5 months ago

Who say US is not regime?

Who says it isn't? Regime literally means a system of government [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regime#Usage

kgwxd3• 5 months ago

Who say US is not regime?

Unless they edited, not GP. 2 things can be a regime at the same time.

KaiserPro2• 5 months ago

Boots on the ground? In Iran?

Trump is a coward. He knows that boots on the ground will mean massive losses.

The only way he does that is if someone convinces him that they can go in and out very quickly.

Unlike Venezuela I doubt there are people in the right place to oust Khamenei.

KaiserPro2• 5 months ago

Update

Turns out they bombed him

Bender26• 5 months ago

What even is the plan here if the air assault fails? Boots on the ground? In Iran?

Other than nukes that would be the only option if they can blast the doors to the underground military cities. They will have to do it fast as the ships will not sustain combat for more than 5 days with their current ammo per the pentagon.

bakies4• 5 months ago

Why would warships only have ammo for 5 days??

Rover2228• 5 months ago

This shows a real ignorance about the true culture of Iran. It is not a Muslim culture. They want to install the son of the shah, and get back to pre-revolution culture.

But liberals will be quick to tell them they don't know best, better to just keep the oppressive ayatollah in power.

techblueberry6• 5 months ago

Maybe this is correct? I want this to be correct. But American entanglements in the Middle East have often overestimated the size of the “they” you’re referring to. There are many “they’s” in Iran, some of whom have been trained over time to hate the US.

So like, I think this is the right choice, but Trump was elected by MAGA to avoid these kind of entanglements even when it was the right thing to do. In fact, I think “liberals” (not progressive) support this action more than many on the right.

Traditional left/right is not useful to understanding people’s support of our foreign policy in 2026 America. Tucker Carlson will hate this way more than Chuck Schumer.

maxglute• 5 months ago

Interesting times intensifies. It's only February.

pseingatl6• 5 months ago

There are always unanticipated consequences in war. Argentina never thought in a million years that an attack on the practically undefended Falklands would result in the loss of the General Belgrano.

rurban• 5 months ago

The headlines in Europe are that Israel is carrying out preventive strikes, the USA is helping.

And that's certainly the deathbed of any hopes to a mullah regime change. They will come out stronger than before.

karim792• 5 months ago

I can't help but think that all this shit is because Netanyahu really wants to put off more court hearings on his lame ass corruption charges. I really can't wait for him and his cronies (in Israel, and the West) to be brought to justice.

Without having to wait for the history books to do their thing.

upmind3• 5 months ago

Same, this is disgusting. Actions like these need oversight by the US people.

halflife7• 5 months ago

His court appearance are continuing as scheduled, twice a week, for the last year. except for some specific incidents where he had to leave of cancel due to running a state.

No matter what you think, there is no way for him to avoid these hearings

karim792• 5 months ago

Great, for those minor charges of accepting what, something like 150k Eur in gifts. As opposed to life in prison for genocide, which he clearly and absolutely deserves.

tsimionescu4• 5 months ago

While Netanyahu definitely deserves that, don't expect anything to change for the better in Israeli foreign policy if he gets deposed and tried. Israeli politicians have become radicalized to a level that is hard to imagine from a European or US perspective.

Even the leader of the "left wing" opposition has recently explicitly stated that Israel was gifted the entire region from the Euphrates to the Nile by God, so they would have a right to own the entire region, but that this must be balanced by security concerns and tactical realities. This happened in response to the US ambassador's explicit public remarks in the Tucker Carlson interview that also asserted Israel's God-given right to the entire region. Note that this region, from the Euphrates to the Nile, includes about half of Irak, parts of Syria, most of Lebanon, parts of Saudi Arabia, and of Egypt.

Simon_ORourke2• 5 months ago

Are all our foreign policy decisions now made in Tel Aviv to suit Israel?

altern82• 5 months ago

You know the answer ;-)

A_D_E_P_T• 5 months ago

Sure seems that way. I don't really see how this military action is justified from a US perspective. Or even from an Israeli one. The most likely justification is that the leadership of the US and Israel are a little bit unhinged and want a war to distract from domestic issues.

ccppurcell• 5 months ago

Not only is it unjustified, attacking during a negotiation seriously undermines future negotiations. This is a massive self face punching exercise.

Matl18• 5 months ago

Netanjahu is old and wants to secure his 'legacy' by being credited for dismantling Iran, knowing Trump will back him both because he's been fed BS and because the Israelis have enough kompromat to sink him. There's no 'rational' justification for this attack, only madness and huge egos.

YeGoblynQueenne7• 5 months ago

Well, it's plausibly justified because the US considers a strong regional ally like Israel a valuable asset to have in the Middle East and if Israel is a regional hegemon [1] then all the better.

There have been many arguments that the US' support of Israel goes against US interests [2], but that really makes no sense. It's not just Trump who has to be convinced to start a war for Israel, it's the entire defense establishment in the US.

And also in Israel. If fighting half a dozen wars all at once was really that bad for Israel, surely, someone would have put a stop in it.

Surely.

_____________

[1] Got that term from J. Mearsheimer, if you were wondering.

[2] Particularly the Tucker Carlson - Judge Napolitano - Col. Daniel Davies continuum of mostly conservative podcast hosts. Or those are the ones I follow closely anyway. They're all convinced it's all "because of the lobby".

cultofmetatron2• 5 months ago

careful, you might get flagged by the self appointed hackernews mods

yonisto3• 5 months ago

Nope. In Jerusalem.

TurdF3rguson2• 5 months ago

Israel is the tip of the USA spear. We've seen this already, this should come as no surprise.

praptak2• 5 months ago

Oh, it's not only Israel. It's also a powerful distraction from the Epstein files.

rixed• 5 months ago

Wait, weren't the Epstein files a distraction from war operations?

idop2• 5 months ago

No. They're made in Virginia and broadcast to proxies around the world.

Seriously, I'm constantly amazed by how oblivious some Americans are. You got it all backwards.

churchill• 5 months ago

I'm happy with how the Overton Window on the US being completely subservient to Israel is shifting. A few years ago, this would have gotten you denounced as antisemitic, but now it's a common position even normies hold that no matter the issue, the US will take the position that favors Israel the most, no matter how it hurts American interests and endangers or outright kills their citizens.

Even if Iran gets 500 years to build out a proper technological economy, there's no universe where they're a threat to the US. All the players the US has invaded the Middle East to fight don't constitute a threat to Joe in Alabama. It's all about weakening potential threats to leave Israel as the only extant regional power, no matter the costs to American credibility, military stockpiles, finances ($10t so far, according to Brown University Costs of War).

The overton Window has shifted and this question will not go away.

InsideOutSanta• 5 months ago

This doesn't even benefit Israel, it benefits a bunch of power-hungry sociopaths in Israel.

kakadu• 5 months ago

I am not convinced that Israel is such an important ally.

I suspect a fourth column.

thisislife212• 5 months ago

Israel is not an ally, it's the puppet. What is happening is what the Anglo-Americans want.

hjkl04• 5 months ago

What makes you think it suits Israel? There is only one person here it serves

joshrw2• 5 months ago

Always have been.

gethly• 5 months ago

Iran FTW

upmind3• 5 months ago

How did the US justify this?

apexalpha8• 5 months ago

They stopped doing that, really.

You might've missed it but the "department of defense" is now "department of war'.

lll-o-lll• 5 months ago

The way they justify everything in the modern time.

“The strong do what they will. The weak suffer what they must.”

If you are in the US, pray that you are never weak.

joshrw2• 5 months ago

Weapons of mass destruction, as usual.

chrisjj8• 5 months ago

Here is their attempt: https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-trump-address-f662a4f3378...

xdennis4• 5 months ago

1. Iranians protested.

2. Islamists massacred them.

3. Trump said "help is on its way" ( https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/13/trump-promises... )

4. Now is the help.

---

Trump also said that when he says things he means them, unlike Obama's red lines in Syria (his words). When he said that, it was pretty clear he couldn't back off of attacking Iran.

I assume it took so long because he's going for regime change, not just a few bombings. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, it took the US 5 months to launch a counter-invasion (mostly because of coalition building).

bigyabai10• 5 months ago

Trump also said that when he says things he means them

He says all sorts of things. Remember when Iran's nuclear facilities were "obliterated" and any "suggestions otherwise are fake news"? https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/06/irans-nuclear-fa...

manyaoman• 5 months ago

I take this as a confirmation that more "nuclear material" i.e. unpublished Epstein files still exist.

Schmerika7• 5 months ago

There's at least 14TB of unpublished files left.

And that's only the ones the FBI didn't "somehow" fail to collect.

Schmerika7• 5 months ago

There's at least 14TB of unpublished files left. A little under half of the 6 million documents.

And that's only the ones the FBI didn't "somehow" fail to collect.

m00dy• 5 months ago

This is the beginning of 3rd world war.

tome9• 5 months ago

Would you be willing to back up that claim with money on a prediction market?

rationalist• 5 months ago

It's very subjective, not appropriate for a prediction market.

phendrenad24• 5 months ago

What makes you think that?

dodgerdan• 5 months ago

3 days ago this was in the news:

"Epstein files: DOJ withheld documents about claim Trump sexually abused minor"

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/24/epstein-trump-doj-garcia.htm...

Will it even make a single newspaper or talk show this weekend?

halflife7• 5 months ago

Do you people seriously think that planning such a large scale operation can take 3 days?

notenlish2• 5 months ago

This is why we can't have nice things.

lawgimenez• 5 months ago

USA can't stop engaging in wars no? Now food prices are gonna go up because gas prices will go up. Or all prices will go up.

Zealotux2• 5 months ago

USA can't stop engaging in wars no?

Eisenhower explained why in his farewell address.

makingstuffs• 5 months ago

I really do not even want to understand the mental gymnastics which one has to undertake to justify the actions of the US and Israel in recent years.

Nor do I even know how to begin to grasp the enablement displayed by Europe as a whole. People constantly cite China’s “human rights abuses” (which seem to pale in comparison to all this) and rightly so, but continue to enable this blood thirsty and power hungry tag team to indulge in flagrant abuses of international law and general morality.

This is a sad day for level headed and empathetic humans across the globe. At which point do we accept that WW3 began quite a while ago? Because it sure as shit did.

Edit: fully expect this to be downvoted to oblivion but it’s my truth.

amunozo2• 5 months ago

There is a curious cognitive dissonance in which people think is somehow more morally correct to do human rights abuses abroad than at home. The US is doing both currently, though.

Cyph0n12• 5 months ago

To add to this: anyone who still does not see that Israel is by and far the most dangerous rogue state in the region is (at best) blinded by propaganda.

Iran has repeatedly demonstrated restraint and pragmatism throughout these aggressions on their sovereignty, starting with Israel’s strike on their consulate in Damascus.

TiredOfLife3• 5 months ago

There is no need to gymnastics. Iran materially supports russian war against Ukraine.

wewxjfq• 5 months ago

Very level headed and empathetic to go and claim that 50 countries just lost their right to criticize China because US and Israel are fighting Iran. Trolls having their priorities straight!

Revanche13678• 5 months ago

He did not make that claim and even said criticism of China’s abuses is warranted. Zionist shill.

raven12345• 5 months ago

Whenever certain countries start a war, China is used as a tool to divert attention. People don't discuss the right or wrong of the countries involved in the war, but they keep saying China, China...

throwaway6373722• 5 months ago

US president can be democrat or republican, republicans can control the Senate or the House, or the democrats can control the Senate or the House - regardless of who is in power, Israel's interests by US are always met. US can wreck havoc on close relations and ties with Europe, Canada, etc. - but relation to Israel never changes. You can oblivious to all this, but the truth is: Israel de facto controls the US.

arunabha3• 5 months ago

Ben Franklin was asked what kind of govt would the newly formed United States have. He was sadly right when he replied 'A republic, if you can keep it'

One of the (many) pretexts for the war, at least from Trump seems to be that Iran 'interfered' in US elections. From the Washington post

'President Donald Trump shared an article about Iran seeking to interfere in U.S. elections on his Truth Social account a couple of hours after U.S. strikes began in Iran early Saturday.

“Iran tried to interfere in 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump, and now faces renewed war with United States,” the post read, with a link to a piece from Just the News, a conservative website from which Trump frequently shares articles. Shortly after, the president posted another article from the site, albeit unrelated to Iran; it was about the Fulton County, Georgia, prosecutor Fani T. Willis.'

Does the US even have a functioning Congress left? Who will even believe such a preposterous lie? Even the most die hard MAGA supporter will find it hard to believe this fabrication.

It's like Trump doesn't feel the need to even maintain the fig leaf of a causus belli. He must truly feel that he is now the king of the United States to be so emboldened.

chrisjj8• 5 months ago

/sought/ to interfere.

See Stephen Fry on attempted chemistry.

mdni007• 5 months ago

Why does HN continue to delete all comments against this?

notenlish2• 5 months ago

Do you have any proof for this?

Bender26• 5 months ago

Enable "show dead" in your profile to see things that get flagged to oblivion and that action is by the user-base not moderators.

blks2• 5 months ago

So another war of aggression by Israel.

0x600613• 5 months ago

2 countries with the best war technologies on earth must work together to have a war with embargod-country-for-decades. And those 2 counties are founder of Board of Peace.

SirFatty• 5 months ago

yes, yes. Poor Iran.

Schmerika7• 5 months ago

Yes. Poor Iran.

Because America and Israel.

harimau777• 5 months ago

My greater concern is the people of Iran. Especially since Iran has conscription so the people who end up dieing in a war didn't even consent to being made soldiers.

JumpCrisscross55• 5 months ago

2 countries with the best war technologies on earth must work together to have a war with embargod-country-for-decades

It gives us a regional coalition partner. That's never a bad thing, regardless of circumstances.

propagandist3• 5 months ago

I'd say being an apartheid state and conducting a live-streamed genocide could possibly be a minor issue. Just a PR issue mind, Lord knows we've given up on our souls long ago.

guerrilla24• 5 months ago

It gives us a regional coalition partner. That's never a bad thing, regardless of circumstances.

You missed the point. The fact that it requires two of them to gang up on Iran says something about how capable Iran is in defending itself.

croes3• 5 months ago

To obliterate a nuclear program that they claimed was totally obliterated last year

NickC253• 5 months ago

while repeating the claim that Iran is a week from having a bomb....the same claim the nutty yahoo has made for nearly 3 decades now.

onlyrealcuzzo• 5 months ago

Bored of Peace.

IncreasePosts• 5 months ago

Well. Iran gets a lot of weapons from Russia which spends a whole lot of their GDP producing weaponry.

NewsaHackO• 5 months ago

Come on, you haven't lived if you were a high school senior and didn't stuff a bunch of middle schoolers in lockers with your bros for fun.

gpt56• 5 months ago

The reason it is hard is not due to a power balance. Both of those countries could have sent nukes with minimal efforts.

But their goal is targeted and precise attacks, that effectively destroy targets based on specific, and high quality intelligence.

The other part is that defense against missiles is significantly harder and more expensive than sending missiles. Iran, while relatively poor, has dedicated a significant part of its economy for missile development and production.

tootie3• 5 months ago

their goal is targeted and precise attacks

Day one and they've already bombed a school and killed dozens of children. The goals, strategy and tactics have not been clearly communicated. You can pray they are using high quality intelligence, but history tells us they are not at all concerned with collateral damage. They likely want to degrade Iran's military capabilities, but they also want them cowed and bleeding.

papaver-somnamb• 5 months ago

I recall someone (name escapes me at the moment) defining WW3 as ignition in 5 flashpoints between belligerent groupings: - Eastern Africa esp. Sudan, which we all nearly universally ignore - Israel Iran - Russia and a neighbor which we know today is Ukraine - Pakistan Afghanistan India - China Taiwan Plus Plus

Attributes that distinguish WW3 from previous world wars were IIRC: Contained conflagration, short targeted exchanges, probability of contamination low, material possibility of nuclear escalation. Case in point: North Korea developed nukes without being invaded, and now that they have nukes, other countries are watching and seeing that NK won't be invaded. What lesson do those other countries draw? And what of a world in which many potential belligerents hold nukes? Hiroshima weeps.

I'd like to add an important attribute here: The revolution will be live-streamed, more-or-less. And essentially none of us will know the truth, even the reasons. I predict this fact will not distress many people, such is the state of humanity.

So to the 7 or so decades of stability we and our ancestors enjoyed, here's looking at you, going down me. But Brettonwoods serves the present the least of any time since its creation. Case in point, w.r.t. eastern Africa, the geopolitical bounds of those ~4 countries seems likely meld to a degree. If we are indeed heading into WW3, I expect the world map to be redrawn afterwards, and the only lessons learned is how to win better in future.

And if we are, while disgruntled old geriatrics go at each others throats via their youthful proxies, I greatly prefer the nukes rust in peace.

Reminds me of Blaise Pascal's quote: 'All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room.' Aspiration, you gotta take care man, it just might kill ya.

shevy-java3• 5 months ago

First, I don't think this leads to WW3 although I would agree with you that there is a general global tendency towards escalation. Still, I think we can not call this WW3 and I am not 100% certain this is a build-up to WW3 either.

As for North Korea: I think the situation is not solely about North Korea itself but China. China is kind of acting as protective proxy here. I don't see North Korea as primary problem to the USA, but to South Korea and Japan. Both really should get nukes. Taiwan too, though mainland China would probably invade when it thinks Taiwan is about to have nukes; then again China already committed to invasion - this is the whole point of having a dictator like Xi in charge now.

The situation Russia is in is interesting, because even though they are stronger than Ukraine, Ukraine managed to stop or delay Russia, which is a huge feat, even with support. As Putin does not want to stop, and Trump is supporting him (agent Krasnov theory applies), I think this has escalation potential. Putin is killing civilians in Ukraine daily - I think he does that because he already committed to further escalation against all Europeans. So Europeans need a nuclear arsenal, but european politicians are totally lame - see Merz "we will never have nukes". Basically he wants to be abused by Putin here.

DivingForGold• 5 months ago

Taiwan needs nukes on low flying hypersonic cruise missles now. Seems that would halt Chinese aggression.

anonymous_user9• 5 months ago

So Europeans need a nuclear arsenal, but european politicians are totally lame

Are France's 240 submarines-launched thermonuclear ballistic missiles not adequate? Despite the need for security, nuclear proliferation is extremely bad. It seems ideal for France continue to maintain their nuclear weapons while the rest of Europe keeps their hands clean.

Rapzid5• 5 months ago

China won't invade Taiwan because it would destroy their economy and thus their country. Would wreck the entire world economy and turn every country against them.

It's nice nationalistic rhetoric, but there is literally no upside for them.

asah• 5 months ago

hmmm - but is it really "world war" 3 if it's a bunch of localized conflicts?

I'm a little disappointed that the internet and social media had little impact on universal disclosure about geopolitical matters. My sense is that governments updated their playbooks to both defend against them (e.g. minimize leaking) and leverage them (e.g. bury inconvenient information with propaganda). By comparison, I'm more hopeful about cellphones and bodycams generally reducing excessive police violence and discrimination (emphasis on "reduce").

prediction: the nuclear threat will look quaint compared with disposable million-drone swarms on land and in the air, targeting anything remotely interesting via onboard AI.

throwpoaster5• 5 months ago

“A bunch of localized conflicts” is what contemporaries thought WWII was before people realized the larger pattern.

AreShoesFeet000• 5 months ago

The revolution will be notably public, but not live-streamed. It will come as a swift and decisive reaction to a shock-and-awe deployment that will de-stabilize the state apparatus of a big nation outside of the “west”. The movement will be initially localized but it will spread until a perimeter of containment is setup around developed nations. Much more will come after.

xg154• 5 months ago

And essentially none of us will know the truth, even the reasons.

Maybe not in the details, but the general geopolitical "axes" (USA/the "West" vs China/Russia/BRICS/"Global South"/etc) have become increasingly obvious in the last years. And so far, most of the recent conflicts fit pretty neatly into that pattern.

Of course there are more things running in parallel, like the general shift to the right, Trump in the US, the specific situation with Israel/Palestine, the emergence of AI, etc.

But I don't see why any of this needs any other "grand secret cause" to explain the current conflicts.

ethbr13• 5 months ago

BRICS is Russia wishing that China (much less Brazil, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates) were aligned to its interests.

A more accurate description of the way the world is trending:

US / UK / Europe / Japan / South Korea (still tied by defense, if push really comes to shove) vs Russia vs China vs Non-Aligned Nations (India, Indonesia, Egypt, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, etc.)

And historically (1960s), in a multi-polar world, middle powers are best served by being ambiguously aligned to force advantageous courting by major powers.

JumpCrisscross55• 5 months ago

Attributes that distinguish WW3 from previous world wars were IIRC

You're missing the commonalities, what defined world wars: the full might of industrial economies being dedicated to military campaigns.

World War II's theatres' were incoherent–the Axis interests in e.g. China and the Pacific had basically zero stragegic overlap with Europe and North Africa. (The only parties having to consider a unified theatre being the USSR and USA.) But the entire economic surplus of Europe, Asia and North America was basically dedicated to (or extracted towards) making things that were reasonably expected to be destroyed within the year.

ethbr13• 5 months ago

looks at Russia's economy

iso16312• 5 months ago

British Empire was heavily involved in Europe, North Africa and South-East Asia. Events in India had great consequences on Europe

The USSR on the other hand barely had any involvement in the Pacific theatre, entering in August 1945.

jjfoooo43• 5 months ago

But the entire economic surplus of Europe, Asia and North America was basically dedicated to (or extracted towards) making things that were reasonably expected to be destroyed within the year.

This is no longer necessary to inflict the catastrophic destruction we're really referring to when talking about a hypothetical WWIII

bcxdxc65• 5 months ago

We are not heading into WW 3. Those old rich men you worry about have to pay a much higher price in cash for their illusions of control. And that reduces what harm and how long wars can run. Keep an eye on what the markets tell everyone on Monday.

throwthrowuknow• 5 months ago

Check your thinking. Korea currently has a DMZ dividing it from a war that never really ended and was fought to a stalemate. Their nuclear program didn’t result in military action because they currently have a gun to the head of every South Korean citizen and the backing of a large nuclear neighbour. Those are circumstances you can’t easily recreate elsewhere.

doubletwoyou• 5 months ago

Adding to your point, Seoul is visible from North Korea, and vice-versa, and likely has enough conventional artillery aimed at it that even without nukes an invasion would be Very Bad for the Korean people.

petre8• 5 months ago

The DPRK is a nuclear armed buffer state and shall remain so for the forseeable future.

righthand2• 5 months ago

“The revolution will be livestreamed” is not used correctly and not what “will be televised” means. You are using it in the opposite manner actually.

throwpoaster5• 5 months ago

Op made an evocative point but then immediately betrayed it.

It is interesting to think about the difference of livestreaming versus television.

phendrenad24• 5 months ago

I'm surprised such a superstitious reply is so highly-upvoted. There's no "WW3" any more than there is time travel or blue smirfs. It's a hypothetical, but you're talking about it like it's an inevitability. That's just not logically-sound thinking.

throwpoaster5• 5 months ago

WWII, contemporaneously, was thought of as several small regional wars: “wow, that Hitler guy has started a bunch of small limited conflicts.”

It was only when one stood back to regard the whole picture that it became clear that something larger was happening.

OP is making the same point.

foobarian• 5 months ago

Reminds me of Blaise Pascal's quote: 'All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room.'

Ah but this is where modern technology comes in! Social media, Tiktoks, video games, porn...

HPsquared• 5 months ago

The great pacifier.

mandeepj• 5 months ago

'All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room.'

old men's*

copx• 5 months ago

Alexander "the Great" (mass murderer) began his conquests at the age of 20 and had conquered the largest empire the world had ever seen at the age of 26.

Hannibal was in his 20s when he lead the Carthagian campaign against Rome.

Napoleon began at 26 and had conquered half of Europe at 35.

War being a business of old men sending young men to die is a modern thing.

chupy• 5 months ago

You say this because young men use TikTok as a distraction?

fuzzfactor5• 5 months ago

That's very backwards when you consider one of the things keeping WW3 from starting for so long was the continued existence of WWII veterans and the citizens of the countries they came from who sacrificed everything.

If we only still had a few hundred million of them still alive, it's the proven most effective thing anybody has ever had to prevent mindless war and/or nuclear war.

And they would all be between 100 and 150 years old by now.

Now that's elderly, and if the human race were to have been blessed with such a miracle it would be so good for them to continue teaching their lessons to those who never had the chance, and are just not mature enough to have any other clue yet.

rayiner4• 5 months ago

What's missing here is the complex network of alliances that led to WWI. The Iranian regime has alienated virtually everyone, including many of its Muslim neighbors. Nor is the regime part of some overarching international movement, like the communist countries were. Who is going to lift a finger to help Iran?

I'm not supportive of these strikes. Iranians created this government, and if they want to topple it they'll have to be the ones to do it, without foreign intervention.

jopsen7• 5 months ago

Agreed, nobody is going to help out Iran.

If anyone does it'll be China giving them missiles to hit a US boat.

That would make the US turn tail. Not start a war with China.

As for Iranian leadership, they just need to dig deep and wait this out. I can't imagine they don't have plenty of hardened bunkers.

petre8• 5 months ago

I'm not supportive of these strikes. Iranians created this government, and if they want to topple it they'll have to be the ones to do it, without foreign intervention.

Well, foreign intervention kind of worked in Syria, Libya and Iraq after a few backstops, didn't it? All three countries reduced to rubble and virtually eliminated as threats to the US and Israel. Iran is next on the list, now that they're close to obtaing nukes. Let's not kid ourselves, they're not doing it for the Iranians, the're doing it for themselves. Regime change on their own terms, or if that isn't possible, yet another civil war.

zugi• 5 months ago

Interestingly Iran had moderately good relations with Russia, to whom they sold drones, and China, to whom they sold oil. But indeed not enough for either to help defend Iran.

With Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran, the US is bottling up Russian and Chinese global influence into smaller regional influence.

refurb3• 5 months ago

Indeed. The Gulf states didn’t want to get involved in this war for fear of upsetting local groups, but after the attacks have now jumped on board.

Iran basically has no state allies in the Middle East. Russia and China don’t seem any more committed than just arms sales.

What potential problem is upsetting the ethnic Apple cart in the region. We know countries like Iraq are a mix of Sunni and Shia with Iran supporting the Shia side quite significantly.

If the main supporting of Shia in the region (Iran) gets wiped out, Shia in varies countries like Iraq may feel much more vulnerable and make political moves preemptively.

unsupp0rted2• 5 months ago

Another aspect of a WW3 is that people- pretty much ALL people everywhere- who have nothing to do with the war will find their lives threatened or completely changed by it.

I'm less concerned about nuclear escalation than about biological escalation.

It's quite hard to destroy the human world with nukes: you can only blow up big chunks of it, maybe take out enough power plants and supply chains to drop us into a multi-decade or multi-century dark age, or maybe cause a nuclear winter, although the actual risk of that is unclear.

Whereas a year into a major war a kid in his/her basement can release something that is functionally the end of the human species.

We currently have no real safeguards against this. If we ever have descendants, they'll think we were insane during this time period and they'll be right.

jjtheblunt4• 5 months ago

It's quite hard to destroy the human world with nukes

what about bio weapons? smallpox in the americas, for an example of many at the page below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_the_Indi...

NetMageSCW• 5 months ago

There’s no chance a kit in a basement can produce a biological weapon that will be successful.

LorenPechtel3• 5 months ago

Disagree: Most people live in areas dependent on the supply chain. And when the supply chain gets disrupted they aren't going to go peacefully. And there will be enough mobility that areas that could be self-sufficient get hordes descending on them.

lukan5• 5 months ago

"Whereas a year into a major war a kid in his/her basement can release something that is functionally the end of the human species."

How?

If a a virus is so deadly, everything it touches dies soon, it would not spread quickly but die out. If it is very contagious .. but very, very slow incubation time, so it infects the whole world, before becoming a deadly disease ... then I would say it is far beyond the possibility of a basement workshop to remotely design anything like this. I doubt the professional state labs can create something to wipe out humanity. Dramatically disturb? For sure. Covid was not really deadly in comparison, but already problematic.

XorNot2• 5 months ago

Whereas a year into a major war a kid in his/her basement can release something that is functionally the end of the human species.

Urgh. "No tests, no prototypes".

Imagine trying to write "Hello, World" but there's no programming language. The compilation cycle takes a week. And you can't actually control where the program runs. And also the storage device will be destroyed by light, air, and other programs on your computer if you don't handle it just right.

It is very very clear when people with no molecular biology experience start talking about biology, because it's clear you all have no idea what any part of the process looks like.

Even the vaunted DNA synthesis machines...only synthesize DNA. Which will be completely destroyed if you so much as breathe at it the wrong way (in fact don't breathe on it at all). And that's like step 2, because step 1 is "grow up a candidate organism in sterile conditions, isolate and characterize it".

That stupid longtermism movement is god damn obsessed with this concept, and it's stunning how clueless they are.

mlsu• 5 months ago

Covid, ahem, could have been designed in a lab to be an "ideal" bioweapon. As far as viruses go it approximated just about the best bioweapon we could have made with current technology.

- very deadly

- asymptomatic spreading for a couple days

- spreads easy

- no tests/vaccine (early on)

It did kill a lot of people, that's for sure, and caused a huge disruption. But was far less disruptive, imo, than e.g. a nuke in multiple big cities would have been, even if the death toll was similar.

Imustaskforhelp3• 5 months ago

(I don't know too much about nuclear level situations so I can be obviously wrong perhaps but here's my take on it)

supply chains to drop us into a multi-decade or multi-century dark age,or maybe cause a nuclear winter, although the actual risk of that is unclear.

It's defintiely gonna be a hard life if WW3 ever happens but I think with hydroponics and other advancement, a localized community can still have chances of making sense of things.

It definitely wouldn't be this life where we can eat almost anything but it won't be starvation either, hopefully.

For water, we might have to do reverse osmosis or boiling+condensing to remove radiation.

The biggest issue to me seems energy. Solar energy might be hard to get if nuclear storms are made over any region which I do think iirc can even stay till decades.

Temporarily Windmills and then primarily Hydroenergy is still possible tho but it might take some time to rebuild it if it got destroyed by Nuclear attack so energy to just produce food/water is possible but everything to me feels like it would be strictly rationed. You might have some spare energy for Radio.

I am not sure how food is gonna be distributed, perhaps a new system of work would be designed within community where community gives food and you give what the community might need to get work done.

I feel like though we are gonna slowly improve our Energy situations and as we do that, society can progress back to say a mathematician who can work on theorms which might require computers/energy and just computers in general back.

The quality of life would drop but I would consider tho that the people already in war-struck regions where they don't know if they are gonna be the next target of a messy war have their Quality of life significantly dropped as well.

Now the virus point is something that I don't exist similar to Lukan's comment tho.

paviva• 5 months ago

His French is so simple and yet, incredibly beautiful and elegant, in a way that I am not even able to express in words. Only Voltaire compares.

"tout le malheur des hommes vient d’une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre." -- "All the woe of man comes from one single thing only: not knowing how to remain at rest, in a room"

In the same text, he follows with:

"Le roi est environné de gens qui ne pensent qu’à divertir le roi, et à l’empêcher de penser à lui. Car il est malheureux, tout roi qu’il est, s’il y pense."

"The king is surrounded by people who think only of amusing the king and preventing him from thinking about himself. For he is unhappy, though he be king, if he thinks about it."

hedayet4• 5 months ago

Epstein files have more potent power in them than any nuclear arsenal.

No way this many rich powerful people would go down without destroying at least half of the world.

sriram_malhar3• 5 months ago

It seems the admin would rather you focus on DoW or DOW. Any mention of Epstein is getting downvoted.

neves3• 5 months ago

It makes sense. Now is the perfect time for China to invade Taiwan.

londons_explore• 5 months ago

North Korea developed nukes without being invaded

This one always interested me. I assume they were given a lot of the tech from China, and China probably told diplomats that if NK is invaded China might get involved.

simonh2• 5 months ago

The Soviet Union helped them build some research reactors, but they got the weapon tech from Pakistan.

sethev• 5 months ago

Contained conflagration, short targeted exchanges, probability of contamination low, material possibility of nuclear escalation.

That's describing something that's not a world war, though. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is already far worse than what you're describing as WW3. (setting aside nuclear escalation)

andrepd2• 5 months ago

Am I the only reading this comment as a incoherent vague rambling? In kinder words: what is your point/thesis exactly?

yowayb• 5 months ago

There has never been a moment in the known history of humanity without war going on somewhere in the world.

ergocoder6• 5 months ago

I'd bet on WW3 not happening in the next 20 years.

US's military power is too strong. Russia is in such a bad shape that it can't even win Ukraine. China never goes to any war; their equipments suck as we saw in the Venezuela occurrence.

Nobody is going to help Iran. China and Russia only see Iran as the enemy of my enemy. Other than that, Chineses and Russians are likely disgusted by Iran's culture e.g. how they treat women. It would be like wtf why are we helping people like this?

The world will continue being policed by US and Europe.

dwd2• 5 months ago

The US has shown very quickly that it is not a spent power. Compare what they have done recently in Venezuela and Iran to Russia's botching of taking Kiev and the mess ever since.

But to quote Fiona Hill in regards to China, Russia and iran.

--------------------

The Chinese have told the Europeans many times when they've been asked, 'Why are you continuing to support Russia? And why do you want Russia to win?' that, 'Well, if we wanted Russia to win, they would have won.'

Also, if they wanted Russia to lose, Russia would probably have lost.

China is, again, just gauging their support and playing all of this out, gaming it out, really, as to how it affects the United States one way or another.

The same is true of North Korea and Iran, she says: support for Russia has been built on antipathy towards the United States and their own beef with the United States.

kernal• 5 months ago

How can you have WW3 when your opponent has the military power equivalent of a butter knife? Instead of wishing for a WW3, I suggest you look at all of the people celebrating in the streets of Iran and even the US.

dns_snek4• 5 months ago

The revolution will be live-streamed

I disagree with you on this. The revolution will never be live-streamed because the ability to do so is gated by the same people whom the revolution seeks to overthrow.

What's being live-streamed is the evolution of the status-quo towards growing hostility, violence, wars, and indeed - fascism.

swingboy6• 5 months ago

A mere 8 months ago, Trump and his cronies were saying that Iran’s nuclear program was “totally obliterated” every chance they got.

vkou2• 5 months ago

16 months ago, he was campaigning on no new wars.

Presumably, what he meant was 'No, new wars!'

IAmGraydon2• 5 months ago

I don’t know why anyone even bothers with this anymore. Literally every single word that comes out of his mouth is a lie. It’s actually staggering to think about. It’s like he is incapable of doing anything that right, correct, or true.

criddell• 5 months ago

New day, new talking points. Surely this isn’t a surprise to you?

TheCondor• 5 months ago

And perhaps more importantly, “Suggestions otherwise are fake news”

https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/06/irans-nuclear-fa...

adverbly• 5 months ago

Well hopefully this is short, minimally lethal, and leads to regime change for all those involved.

shevy-java3• 5 months ago

Iraq? Afghanistan? Vietnam?

I don't think any of these were short.

thomassmith653• 5 months ago

Desert Storm was short. The second Iraq War, the stupid one, was not.

Zealotux2• 5 months ago

leads to regime change for all those involved

Including for the U.S. and Israel?

gambiting• 5 months ago

We can only hope.

methyl• 5 months ago

It’s possible

Revanche13678• 5 months ago

Pretty sure he chose his words carefully.

scoofy11• 5 months ago

It is difficult to instigate regime change for democratically elected governments.

Iran has an unelected supreme leader.

Israel has a large portion of its population completely disenfranchised.

The US has a generally democratically elected government.

If one of these governments is going to fall during military instabilities, it would most likely be Iran. The US will have significant regime change in November if polling holds.

michaelteter• 5 months ago

One can only dream.

nyc_data_geek12• 5 months ago

He said what he said.

FuckButtons• 5 months ago

Did he stutter?

hedayet4• 5 months ago

don't know about Israel, but for the USA, it means "midterm is coming"

Bender26• 5 months ago

Well hopefully this is short, minimally lethal, and leads to regime change for all those involved.

That would be ideal but unfortunately not likely. Nobody will like this comment but US ships are sitting ducks. They have minimal ammo per the pentagon and no oilers. No oilers and low ammo means no prolonged conflict. Only two of the ships are nuclear powered not counting submarines. Most of Iran's military and weapons are deep underground in a massive series of underground cities and tunnels. The US would require boots on the ground if they manage to breach the tunnel openings under the mountains. Should that fail the only viable targets are civilians and that won't win favor with anyone or accomplish anything.

Iranian military could just wait it out if they wanted and then smoke Israel with supersonic missiles when the US leaves. Then we find out if Israel does have the nukes for the Samson option and that would result in the destruction of Israel. Iran's military could survive a nuclear strike but would have to clean up the fallout and I am not sure they could. Anyone not underground would likely get Acute Radiation Sickness and Cancer.

On a positive note if the US can manage to get into the tunnels and send in enough munitions to start detonating the missile stockpile a chain reaction could crack all the concrete and collapse the tunnels. Satellite could detect which tunnel they try to evac from. They have less than 5 days to accomplish the chain reaction assuming this is the plan. From the videos I have seen the missiles are literally lined up like a double-strand fuse.

tim33312• 5 months ago

The US military has seldom had problems with the blowing up the enemy bit. It's providing peace and stability after that happens where they tend to run into problems.

scrollop• 5 months ago

What yt channel?

cosmicgadget8• 5 months ago

I can't imagine a world where the US military only has the logistics for a five day offensive.

weatherlite6• 5 months ago

I know you won't believe me here but dude you are absolutely full of shit

thisislife212• 5 months ago

Yeah, the possibility of a regime collapse / change due to this military action is unlikely. The military goal seems to be to destroy Iran's military-industrial complexes to hamper its missile production. Note however that while Iran has potent missile capability, Iran's underground complexes where it is stored presents its own problems - in the absence of adequate air defence and an Air Force, its enemies can just bomb the openings of these underground complexes, making it very, very difficult for the Iranians to use its missile arsenals from there. (This is what Israel did the last time). As for the scenario you outlined, I highly doubt the US would be willing to send boots to the ground to blow up their missiles manually - urban warfare takes a heavy toll and I doubt if the Trump administration can withstand the criticism if body bags start coming home. Even the MAGA crowd has been unexceptionally hostile to Trump's attack on Israel.

Bender26• 5 months ago

[Update]: It seems my dear leader is hitting all the cities... [1] I am not OK with this. Save the handful of leaders and scientists for ground recon instead of whacking all the citizens. Take out the missiles first. Most of the military and religious leaders are under ground. Take out those underground complexes and Iran is yours.

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/28/us-and-israel-attac...

franktankbank• 5 months ago

Won't there be boots on the ground? We already bombed their facilities and at the time they said best that bombs can do is fuck up the entrance to these tunnels.

Braxton19806• 5 months ago

Based on previous American wars in the middle east wouldn't you say that's unlikely?

jari_mustonen• 5 months ago

There is nothing ideal about that outcome. The "regime change" people talk about is intended to look like what happened in Libya: A failed state that falls in anarchy.

reliabilityguy37• 5 months ago

look like what happened in Libya: A failed state that falls in anarchy.

This comment just shows that you have no idea what Iran is, and how it differs from Libya.

Libya is a loose conglomerate of tribes. Iran majorly Persian that see themselves as one nation. Completely different dynamics.

markus_zhang3• 5 months ago

You can’t be short, minimal lethal AND regime change. Gotta be pretty bloody to make that happen.

tim33312• 5 months ago

Unless like Venezuela. Or like 1953 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

rambojohnson3• 5 months ago

u sweet summer child.

plaidfuji3• 5 months ago

Minimally lethal

“Israel strikes two schools in Iran, killing more than 80 people”

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2026/2/28/israel-strikes-...

Welp, better luck next time

shykes19• 5 months ago

This reminds me of the Al-Ahli hospital incident in Gaza, when a mysterious explosion at a hospital was immediately blamed on an Iraeli strike - first by Hamas, then by the international press. A precise death toll was immediately available: 500 killed. Israel urged caution as they investigated, but were ignored.

Eventually, it was established that 1) the casualty number had been a fabrication, 2) the explosion was in the parking lot, 3) it was NOT caused by an Israeli strike, but by a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket that had fell short.

Soon the press was forced to issue corrections - New York Times [1] , Le Monde [2], BBC [3]...

This incident looks VERY similar. Which is not surprising, since Hamas was trained in information warfare by the IRGC. Note that Al Jazeera (the media arm of Qatar, who funds Hamas and hosts their leaders in Doha) is enthusiastically amplifying this story with no apparent effort to cross-examine Iran's official source.

I predict that this story will turn out to be fabricated as well.

UPDATE: preliminary reports from the OSINT community seem to indicate that the story was indeed a fabrication... https://x.com/tarikh_eran/status/2027784301840846939

[1] https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2023/the-new-york-times-e...

[2] https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2023/10/24/a-no...

[3] https://deadline.com/2023/11/bbcs-international-editor-grill...

sschueller• 5 months ago

There is no such thing but I guess the US still has not learned this after so many conflicts.

steve-atx-76002• 5 months ago

Regime change is not the same thing as a "forever war". I don't think you read the post that you replied to.

Aeolun• 5 months ago

minimally lethal

The US and Israel are involved. The only way it’s going to turn out is maximally lethal to all those not involved at all.

See… basically any military operation participated in by those nations in recent history.

We got a couple strikes and already managed to hit an elementary school. Nothing I’ve seen in Gaza or Iraq leads me to believe this will be any different.

throw102225• 5 months ago

See Israel’s take down of Hezbollah.

cman1444• 5 months ago

Wouldn't you consider the Maduro capture a minimally lethal operation?

niemandhier2• 5 months ago

Previous conflicts between the involved parties were intense but also defined by constrain on both sides.

Israel did not mass bomb civilians, and Iranian agents did not commit sabotage against infrastructure on US soil.

I hope this pattern persists.

A hand full of determined Ukrainians managed to blow up North Stream, some people plunged part of Berlin into darkness for 2 weeks.

Power and data cables as well as pipelines are as vulnerable in the US, as they are here. Maybe even more so.

A regime that truly feared for its existence, might decide to escalate, since there is nothing to loose.

ifwinterco3• 5 months ago

I think the latter, the US is explicitly attempting a regime change operation so Iran has no reason for restraint.

The US is aware of this, that's why they evacuated all their bases etc within range

chrisjj8• 5 months ago

explicitly attempting a regime change operation

I missed that press release. Where is it?

BoredPositron3• 5 months ago

Nothing went dark for weeks as a German you should know that.

DecoySalamander2• 5 months ago

Maybe not weeks, but there was extensive damage and parts of Berlin went dark https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/07/europe/berlin-power-outag...

Tadpole91813• 5 months ago

Israel did not mass bomb civilians

Within an hour Israel blew up an elementary school, killing 80 civilians.

red75prime3• 5 months ago

A school located at 27.109828°N, 57.084744°E was hit and partially collapsed. That is the extent of the hard evidence.

nullocator5• 5 months ago

Israel has been mass bombing civilians right next door for years now.

ActorNightly12• 5 months ago

Then explain how the Population of Palestine keeps growing.

marcyb5st• 5 months ago

I find the nuclear motivation an excuse. I mean, enrichment plants or not, if Iran wants a few nukes I am pretty sure that Russia would part with some enriched material and smuggle it pretty easily to Iran.

My theory is that Israel has dirt (Epstein files maybe) on Trump and holds him by the balls. The second idea is that this is an obfuscation campaign to have the public opinion forget about Epstein, the state of the real economy, the falling approval rates, or all of the above.

xbmcuser• 5 months ago

What makes you think Trump is not interested in this himself they just offered him hotels and land. Him getting blackmailed is I feel a lot of people that have voted for him are using as a coping mechanism. The attack on Iran proves the point just like Russia attacking Ukraine if you want to protect your territories you need nuclear weapons. Canada, Greenland and countries in South America should also look to acquire nuclear weapons as once they are done with Iran you will be the next.

drcongo• 5 months ago

Bored of Peace

checker659• 5 months ago

I think its only just getting started

shevy-java3• 5 months ago

It kind of reveals Trump as a big liar. Not that this is a surprise, but even in his own self-image he can no longer try to shift the blame to others. Now he committed to war until regime change occurs.

epolanski8• 5 months ago

The president of peace btw.

I'm baffled at the lack of calls to boycott the Fifa world cup in US.

And at the double standards applied to Russians and Israelis in their wars of aggression.

I guess Israel can play the "October 7th" card at least which was an insane horror.

dfxm12• 5 months ago

I can't believe the winner of the FIFA Peace Prize would do such a thing.

tim33312• 5 months ago

I for one can no longer take the FIFA Peace Prize seriously.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm3• 5 months ago

People still believe October 7th attacks weren't intentionally allowed? There is a lot of legitimate debate on this topic as the security failures are unusual and are still officially being discussed in Israel.

xg154• 5 months ago

I see no "smoking gun" for this yet, but yeah, there are a lot of indicators, such as alarm calls by military observers being ignored beforehand, IDF units having been moved from the Gaza envelope to the West Bank before, etc.

Of course, Netanyahu could counter those rumors by establishing a state commission if inquiry, but instead he fights tooth and nail to prevent this from happening...

kakacik2• 5 months ago

Well either utter incompetence of every part of military of israel, or planned to allow it to happen. They even removed most of the guards spread across the region, those who were left were often only with pistols from what I've heard. They were closely monitoring hamas training for exactly this just before it happened.

Sure, some incompetent russian fsb officer who got his place thanks to nepotism may miss that, but mosad, on border with one's mortal enemy? Give me a break, there is 0 logic and knowledge of the involved parties in such thinking.

But its expected, say soviet union went to great lengths to make state terror official and legal, justified and all by th books. Not sure for whom since all knew what chaotic terror was happening all the time and there was often no logic in who was next, but the face of the regime needed to have everything straight and square.

Anyway, those who actually care about the topic understand it well, its not some superbly hidden scheming bur rather facts in plain sight. The rest of folks simply don't care

ekianjo4• 5 months ago

Careful people will call you an antisemite for even bringing this topic.

chokominto• 5 months ago

If that was an attitude of Israel towards its people they wouldn't go to such length to return the hostages home.

epolanski8• 5 months ago

It's a well documented fact that Netanyahu has always wanted and actively supported Hamas leadership in order to have no reasons to sit at the table of with the PLA.

When the other side is led by what you can easily sell to the world as terrorists, you're by default the good guys.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_support_for_Hamas

hjkl04• 5 months ago

People like you still spread stupid lies about it, but no one with any sense believes them. There is no legitimate debate on the subject, only propaganda, and it comes from Benjamin Netanyahu directly.

Obviously, it’s the same stupidity that “allowed” the 7th of October attacks to happen. These people are way too scared and hateful of Palestinians to conspire with them like this. They allowed it to happen through sheer incompetence. They just let their guard down, quite literally.

If they could actually cooperate well enough to work together on something like the 7th of October of attacks, which were under active planning for at least two years and involved thousands of highly trained men, don’t you think they’d be able to cooperate on something positive too?

yoavm5• 5 months ago

What a pile of non-sense. I despise literally everyone in the Israeli government, but suggesting this was allowed by anyone in the government/military/intelligence is the lowest low form of ridiculous conspiracy theory.

Nothing like this is "officially discussed in Israel", unless you mean "repeatedly officially denied".

JasonADrury16• 5 months ago

I guess Israel can play the "October 7th" card at least which was an insane horror.

If October 7th is an "insane horror", what words will suffice to describe the decades of far worse crimes committed by Israel?

Considering the scale of suffering caused by this conflict, October 7th was just a small blip.

epolanski8• 5 months ago

While I agree, and I find that Israel is on the wrong side of history, I'm not entirely into seeing this whole matter as black and white.

I have the opinion that modern world history is mostly shaped around each countries/population traumas that echo through society till today.

E.g. the biggest trauma of Ukrainians aren't even the events that are playing recently, but the Holodomor that happened 100 years ago. On the other hand the biggest trauma on Russian side is still the German invasion and war of annihilation happened during the second world war. As both sides see themselves as the victims and see the other side as the aggressor (or collaborator) and none has ever taken a step back to recognize their actions, they simply cannot communicate.

The biggest trauma of China is the century of humiliation where western powers and Japan went above and beyond any decency in their actions. Thus, Chinese society and leadership is all about never being dictated conditions and terms by foreign powers. They see themselves as victims of events that they don't want to see ever again.

The jewish Israeli population biggest trauma are centuries if not millenia of animosity, racism and violence coming from any side, last but definitely not least the Holocaust. Thus Israel is all about security at all costs, even if it means bending any sign of human decency. Again, they see themselves as victims and their actions will always go in that direction.

Sadly many parts of the world, many countries, many societies, are simply too scarred and unable to take a step back from the victim mentality and recognize their own actions.

Israelis are unable to recognize they are Goliath and not David from the longest time, they are unable and unwilling to say sorry, the last Israeli leader that tried, got assassinated by one of his own.

The arabic/muslim population in the area too see themselves as victims of the post world war 2 events, and they are as well unable to recognize how scarred and traumatized is Israeli society from centuries of events, including modern ones where they had to survive against hostile Arab coalitions aimed to annihilate them.

So, without a generation of leaders able to recognize and understand the role of history and those traumas and empathize with the other sides we're trapped in those loops of aggression.

dijit20• 5 months ago

"small blip" isn't a political take, it's just wrong.

October 7th was the deadliest per capita terrorist attack since the Global Terrorism Database started recording in 1970 [1]. Globally, it's third on the all-time list (behind only 9/11 and one IS attack [1]. The confirmed death toll from Israeli social security data (not government press releases) is 1,139, which still makes it 31 times deadlier than the next worst attack in Israeli history [2][3].

You invoked scale. Those are the numbers. They don't say what you wanted them to say.

And for the record: one atrocity not excusing another cuts both ways. Nobody here argued otherwise. What was actually said (by the person you're replying to) is that you cannot use scale as your framework whilst hand-waving away the single largest data point in the argument.

If you mean the Nakba, Sabra and Shatila, or the current death toll in Gaza — those are serious. But "decades of far worse crimes" doing the work of making October 7th a "small blip" doesn't follow. You can have a long ledger of serious grievances and still recognise that one morning where 1,139 people were massacred (including at a music festival, in kibbutz bedrooms, in bomb shelters) was not a blip. It was the deadliest single terrorist attack per capita since records began.

There is no moral argument for October 7th, and the reaction is disproportionate and unjustifiable - but inevitable. We should all be so unlucky to have neighbours like those, and nobody knows how we would all act if we did.

[1] https://www.csis.org/analysis/hamass-october-7-attack-visual...

[2] https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231215-israel-social...

[3] https://www.csis.org/analysis/hamass-october-7-attack-visual...

vehemenz3• 5 months ago

Can you provide some support for your moral position? You’ve also put “insane horror” in scare quotes, which honestly I find troubling.

Does your moral account provide some justificatory, non-antisemitic framework based on colonialism or oppression that allows us to sidestep the issues with Gazans’ support of Jihad, other extremist doctrines, and the extermination of Jews?

It’s kind of a rhetorical question, but it’s the least I would expect for someone to argue credibly about the morality of the conflict.

yyyk3• 5 months ago

Being attacked should rule out 'war of aggression', but I guess the phrase seems to have lost any meaning in modern discourse. Apparently you can spend all the time calling 'death to X' and then get shocked when others take you seriously.

randomlurking• 5 months ago

Being attacked should rule out 'war of aggression'

It usually does. The argument here is about the proportion of the response.

guerrilla24• 5 months ago

You seem to have forgotten that the US attacked Iran first, which made this regime even possible in the first place.

qwertox• 5 months ago

The president of peace btw.

Europe is to blame, according to him.

treetalker• 5 months ago

I know I left that Nobel Peace Prize somewhere … but I can't find it because there's so much America First lying around. I know, I'll ask the aliens and the US men's hockey team if they've seen it.

gpderetta3• 5 months ago

surely you mean the coveted FIFA Peace Prize!

jmyeet7• 5 months ago

What I would like people to understand is that this isn't a partisan issue. As bad as Trump is, American foreign policy is uniparty. Just look at the rhetoric from the Democratic Party leadership on an Iran strike. You have the likes of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries quibbling over the procedure not the policy, saying Congress needs to approve action, not that that action is belligerent or unwarranted.

October 7 happened under a Democratic president and continued essentially unchanged under Trump. Biden consistently lied about "red lines" and seeing a ceasefire [1].

The problem here isn't one party or one persident, it's America's commitment to imperialism, of which Iran is just one aspect. Since WW2 especially there has been so much regime change done or aided by the US as well as military action, it has it's own Wikipedia page [2].

And what did Kamala Harris promise to change about Biden's Middle East policy? Absolutely nothing [3]. It's a big part of why she lost and the DNC don't want to admit that so they're trying to cover up the 2024 autopsy [4].

Don't fool yourself into thinking anything would be different under a Kamala Harris administration.

[1] https://internationalpolicy.org/publications/the-biden-admin...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

[3] https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/8/8/biden-vs-harris-...

[4] https://www.axios.com/2026/02/22/dnc-2024-autopsy-harris-gaz...

patrickk2• 5 months ago

So much of both parties is actually alike, underneath a window dressing of differences (eg woke/anti woke), and a complicit media which does its best to amplify and brainwash people into believing. When it comes to policies that actually affect the elites, the deep state military industrial complex/intelligence services or financial interests, it is a uniparty. Look at how Obama continued the war on terror for example, after running on “hope and change”.

RickJWagner2• 5 months ago

Trump has been publicly mulling over an attack on Iran for several weeks. It’s been headline news everywhere.

I did not not notice any opinions, one way or the other, from other American politicians. Correct me if I’m wrong ( with link, of course. )

techblueberry6• 5 months ago

I’m not sure what would have happened under a Dem administration. I’m not sure I’m against action in Iran.

But one the whole like precedents of the Trump Administration, was that we were going to ignore foreign entanglements, even if they could be perceived as being in our interests.

It’s wild to me how much Trump seems like Bush 2.0 when I think Trump was something of a reaction to Bush 1.0.

reliabilityguy37• 5 months ago

The problem here isn't one party or one persident, it's America's commitment to imperialism, of which Iran is just one aspect.

Iran is as imperialistic if not more. Why you are against US "imperialism" but for Islamic Republic's one?

tw047• 5 months ago

FIFA might be the one organization that can go toe to toe with Trump I’m corruption. And I mean that in the worst way possible. Qatar was using literal slave labor to get stadiums built and the organization just shrugged when informed like it was just another Tuesday.

He could drop a nuke on Greenland tomorrow and they’d probably say they don’t want the sport to be tangled in political disagreements and if anything the World Cup can help everyone heal.

ck2• 5 months ago

if he has no consequences for this, and he won't

it would be very bad to be Cuba right now

considering when the midterms are and about how long it would take afterwards to move all the ships

I mean why would he stop with Iran?

All of the US is now a "constitution-free zone"

no-name-here2• 5 months ago

it would be very bad to be Cuba right now

Yesterday Trump proposed that the US take over Cuba. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-...

FrustratedMonky3• 5 months ago

Do Americans even read or care about Constitution anymore?

Congress declares War.

Even Bush sought out Congressional approval and had a resolution passed before invading Iraq.

These guys are speed running the fascist playbook. Disregarding laws is one step.

lm28469• 5 months ago

Almost a quarter of Americans are functional illiterate, and it's getting worse for new generations

50%+ have below sixth grade reading comprehension

guerrilla24• 5 months ago

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.

watwut11• 5 months ago

Do Americans even read or care about Constitution anymore?

Supreme court does not, so why should random Americans?

It is not like the high but malleable ideals in it mattered. Its only use is to be able to claim in abstract "we have these freedoms and protection" while the court system renders them void in practice.

JumpCrisscross55• 5 months ago

And at the double standards applied to Russians and Israelis in their wars of aggression

To be fair, this is the new standard. Russia has promulgated it through its actions in Georgia and Ukraine. China with Tibet and Taiwan. America with Iraq, Venezuela and Iran. The old rules-based international order is dead, and with it Pax Americana.

cobbaut2• 5 months ago

China with Tibet and Taiwan

What do you mean? China has bought Tibet from the British. And what have they done with Taiwan?

georgefrowny• 5 months ago

the old rules-based international order

At most that was a couple of decades, it's not like that's an ancient status quo.

axus3• 5 months ago

The wishes of a small group of people aren't the default for the majority. This is why the small group of people say that strong leaders for life, with no checks, are normal and natural.

kyrra• 5 months ago

"Peace through strength"

That's the policy being followed here. If you remember back a few weeks, Iran killed likely 30,000 of its own citizens. On top of that, they will not negotiate about medium and short-range missiles or stopping of nuclear production.

A power like that that happily goes after it's neighbors, directly or indirectly is a threat to everyone.

delecti3• 5 months ago

Applying those particular criticisms to Iran and not Israel is a special kind of irony given the past ~75 years (but especially the last 2-3), and when the latter is presently attacking the former unprovoked.

Braxton19806• 5 months ago

A power like that that happily goes after it's neighbors, directly or indirectly is a threat to everyone.

Is the US a threat because of its actions towards Venezuela?

TacticalCoder• 5 months ago

I guess Israel can play the "October 7th" card at least which was an insane horror.

The islamic republic of Iran has been slaughtering tens of thousands of peaceful protesters who don't want to live under sharia laws anymore. Hunting wounded in hospitals and executing them.

It's obvious there's a movement in Iran that tries to topple the islamist regime. In my city, in the EU, I see cars with iranian flags and I've seen iranian in exile call for the international community to do targetted strikes.

I'm not defending the strikes but let's not make it sound like the US is launching nukes on peaceful monks in Tibet either: we're talking about evil islamist regime that slaughtered tens of thousands of unarmed people a few weeks ago.

tim33312• 5 months ago

I was going to say it's false equivalence to compare the Russian attack on Ukraine which was peaceful with a newly installed democratic leader and Iran which has an iffy dictatorship slaughtering thousands of unarmed protestors and exporting terrorism all over with aspirations to make that nuclear.

mixmastamyk2• 5 months ago

That was obviously exaggerated, think about the planning and resources needed to execute a stadium worth of people across a country. Not possible in a few days without extreme preparation, or bodies rotting everywhere.

lgregg• 5 months ago

Pax Romana peace.

ozgung• 5 months ago

I don't want to insult you but your president is a populist and a TV personality. He is not a policy maker, he is more like an actor. So your country went into war mode by changing the name of the Department of Defence to Department of War. This was not a cosmetic change. This means peace times are over and you are in war. Your government acts accordingly.

Since you are still a democracy find those people who make your policy decisions. It's not that yellow man.

gslepak2• 5 months ago

An honest discussion about this cannot be had on this site, it's kinda funny how pointless all the comments are here. Yours is the closest anyone is allowed to get and I wonder if yours will stay up.

JumpCrisscross55• 5 months ago

find those people who make your policy decisions

Genuine question: who put Iran in their policy portfolio?

armada6512• 5 months ago

The moment they made that name change and stated their expansionist agenda it finally became clear to me that this wasn't just MAGA anymore, this was actual fascism.

Whether you think the current targets are legitimate or not, the fact that the U.S. is going to war without seeking any democratic approval anymore is deeply troubling.

thiagoharry• 5 months ago

I don't think the American people can change their country's policy oriented toward a constant state of war, aggression, and invasions of other countries under the current system. This is a constant state policy, regardless of the party or the president. So it can be said that the United States is not a democracy. Money and capital rule, not the people.This can only be changed by a fundamental shift that empowers people over capital.

Of course, I agree that Trump is worse because, by removing the mask of civility and attacking others without first bothering to create propaganda and a narrative about how it is for the greater good and justice, he made the plundering and crimes faster and more efficient.

yoyohello135• 5 months ago

The Trump admin would sooner drop nukes on LA then cede a fair election.

coldtea• 5 months ago

I don't want to insult you but your president is a populist and a TV personality. He is not a policy maker, he is more like an actor.

All of them are, even those that haven't had a show on TV.

nixon_why694• 5 months ago

I'm not disagreeing with you but "Dept of War" is ENTIRELY a cosmetic change. It's literally just a name. There are people, mostly with desk jobs, who really want to feel like badasses and they really want the Dept of War. The real human consequences of this are unimportant to them and sadly unimportant to the rest of us also.

trenning• 5 months ago

Ukraine’s TV personality leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy seems to be doing alright. Also went into war, but not of their own doing, and he has been measured, insightful, aware, throughout this whole war.

There’s more to it than Trump being a TV show personality. Far too complex and insidious than a simple quip.

epolanski8• 5 months ago

I'm not American.

reliabilityguy37• 5 months ago

And at the double standards applied to Russians and Israelis in their wars of aggression.

I would argue that funding Axis of Resistance from Hezbollah to Houthis is aggression too. Let’s not pretend that IR minded their own business, and suddenly was under attack.

jraby34• 5 months ago

Not to mention all the numerous threats to wipe Israel off the map by Iran, Hez etc.

Let's not pretend Iran is innocent please. Or Hamas either.

primroot• 5 months ago

It's called R2P.

nz• 5 months ago

Just FYI, Chomsky, answering "Is Iran a Threat?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdxxVxtHK2M

epolanski8• 5 months ago

There was literally a puppet regime in the 70s backed and promoted by the US.

And since then Iran has always been in US and Israeli crossfire.

You also need to try to understand their point of view.

There's no doubt Iran has promoted armed resistance and terrorism, don't get me wrong, but ask yourself how much of this is about their own safety and defence. It's not 0%, far from it.

stackedinserter3• 5 months ago

You say that like US and Israel hit Iceland or Portugal. Like, Iran wasn't source of terror on Middle East, funding terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbolla and Houthi. Like, Iran didn't make "death to Israel, death to America" their national idea.

Remind us of Ukrainian rocket attacks on Russian cities, that provoked Ruso-Ukrainian war.

You can't not know all of this, so you're either a hamas/russian shill or a useful idiot.

fortran772• 5 months ago

I really hope our Government seeks out all these terrorists and Iran boosters on Hacker News who work in high tech. It’s a supply chain risk and none of them should be working.

Hikikomori10• 5 months ago

Israel makes sure Hamas is funded, are they a valid target now?

mytailorisrich• 5 months ago

Look up what the Iranian regime has done to his people and to others, including US and European countries, since 1979 and you'll understand that the only reason US allies are cautious and not fully behind this campaign is that toppling the regime means high uncertainty as to what would replace it...

axus3• 5 months ago

I know some people weren't alive then, but the invasion of Iraq started off pretty good for the US... Sort of how Russia imagined it's march on Kiev would go (!3) 4 years ago.

What replaced Sadaam was the US, and that went horribly for everyone.

johanvts• 5 months ago

Ukraine is a democracy with a legitimate leadership that was not planning to acquire nukes and has no history of planning to remove Russia from the map. To suggest that this attack on Iran is the same as the Russian invasion of Ukraine is very misguided.

m_ke• 5 months ago

You forgot the genocide they have going and the current attempt to starve Cuba into submission with their little "blockade"

watwut11• 5 months ago

Ukraine got rid of nukes and it was massive collosal mistake. In alternative universe where they win and get territory back and get economy on track, they would be 100% warranted to get the nukes.

My point is, Ukraine war and the way it evolved shows that not having nukes is a bad position.

FireBeyond4• 5 months ago

Iran has been "a week away" from acquiring nukes since Netanyahu first claimed it in the 90s.

Not six months ago, Trump launched a strike that "completely obliterated" Iran's ability to obtain nukes. And then, either because he has the memory of a goldfish, or thinks that we do (both are somewhat true), he pulled out "a week away", again, at the SOTU. "We must attack Iran to destroy what I told you we destroyed last year."

Iran may be planning to do so. But this is just a boogeyman being used (again) by Israel and the US.

sosomoxie4• 5 months ago

It's not the same as all, whatever you think of the Ukraine, it used to be part of the Soviet Union. Russia and the Ukraine fighting is a "normal" war. The US has absolutely no business attacking Iran. It's entirely unprovoked and at the behest of the terrorist "nation" of Israel, which also should have nothing to do with the US.

readitalready• 5 months ago

The war started in 1948 by Europeans attempting to attack and invade Palestine to grab their land to build their mediterranean resort homes. The war never stopped. There was no surrender documents signed. The foreign invaders have always been in the state of war. It's why their colonial outposts are required to have bomb shelters.

Not sure why you would consider October 7 an "insane horror" when the foreign invaders literally burned children alive in 1948 by throwing them into ovens, as happened in the Deir Yassin massacre. Or the rape camps of Tantura. There were 15,000 innocent civilians killed by the invaders when they started this war.

I still can't believe we have to fight Israel's war for them. First the Iraq war and now the Iran war.

JumpCrisscross55• 5 months ago

war started in 1948

It's the Middle East. The birthplace of civilisation. Everyone can legitimately claim everyone else started every conflict in the region because war in Mesopotamia and the Levant literally predates history.

At the end of the day I believe in the primacy of the living. Crimes committed by and against those alive today are infinitely more imporant than those committed by and against their ancestors. I've seen folks take this shit back to King Herod and the Parthians, and it's not a bad historical argument. (The Romans intervened.) It's practically counterproductive, however, inasmuch as focussing on blame versus harm reduction and prevention is counterproductive in any conflict resolution.

One of the separations between the rich and peaceful and the poor and permanently warring is in capacities to forgive. Japan wouldn't be a better place if they committed terrorist attacks against their American occupiers, or decided that they needed blood for Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And Americans wouldn't be happier if we decided to lob a nuke at the British in WWII for burning down our White House in the War of 1812. (France didn't ultimately profit from the Treaty of Versailles.)

Not sure why you would consider October 7 an "insane horror" when

No. Don't do this to yourself. I get the temptation. But it is the path to becoming a monster. October 7 was an insane horror. So were other things. Atrocities aren't signed; they don't cancel out, just accumulate.

reliabilityguy37• 5 months ago

The war started in 1948 by Europeans attempting to attack and invade Palestine to grab their land to build their mediterranean resort homes.

Jewish people lived there for the past two thousands years. Hebron massacre by Arabs happened in 1929.

It's why their colonial outposts are required to have bomb shelters.

I think they have bomb shelters to save their civilians from bombs.

Not sure why you would consider October 7 an "insane horror" when the foreign invaders literally burned children alive in 1948 by throwing them into ovens, as happened in the Deir Yassin massacre. Or the rape camps of Tantura. There were 15,000 innocent civilians killed by the invaders when they started this war.

Interesting how you are totally fine with murder of civilians as long as they are the "right" kind of civilians.

barbazoo• 5 months ago

Surely this was approved by the Board of Peace. /s

throwpoaster5• 5 months ago

Do you support the Iranian regime?

underlipton3• 5 months ago

I guess Israel can play the "October 7th" card at least which was an insane horror.

More than twice as many people died in Puerto Rico during Hurricane Maria than on October 7th.

My regard is thus: lobs less than half an intercontinental ballistic roll of paper towels at Tel Aviv

Svoka6• 5 months ago

As Ukrainian, I don't remember launching missiles on russia, or, in fact, any aggression towards russia. In its turn russia did recognize borders with Ukraine in multiple treaties, and on top of that security guarantees promised in exchange of 3rd by the size world nuclear arsenal.

Just a quick reminder, that Iranian and Hamas policy towards Israel is extermination. Palestine was never recognized by Israel or USA. Israel is not recognized by Iran.

So tell me, what parallels do you see between these conflicts? Human misery and destruction is hardly a common ground, and even in that, scale is incomparable.

throwaw122• 5 months ago

This war shows Hamas was resistance group and Israel was actual oppressor and terrorist.

Israel attacked Iran

Israel attacked Lebanon

Israel oppressed and kidnapped Palestinians

World is getting destroyed by couple hundred Israeli and US maniacs, by the way, all of whom are connected via Epstein

sega_sai• 5 months ago

The take home message from this is that the only way for any country to be secure is to have nuclear weapons.

Matl18• 5 months ago

North Korea looks a lot less unhinged now.

wiseowise3• 5 months ago

It is still unhinged, but not because of nuclear weapons. Ukraine, and now Iran, showed the whole world what happens when you don’t have a nuclear deterrence.

baxtr8• 5 months ago

Do you believe it’s a good thing North Korea has the bomb?

_heimdall2• 5 months ago

How does that factor in here right now? We haven't used or threatened to use nukes, and at least the public case made is in part that Iran is trying to get nukes and shouldn't.

I say "public case" specifically here, I don't buy that justification but it is still the one being used.

knorker4• 5 months ago

How does it factor in? How doesn't it?

If Iran had deployable nukes, would they get invaded?

Name a country that got bombed to credibly destroy the government, and had nukes. I'll wait.

rich_sasha• 5 months ago

And not to negotiate with the US in good faith.

jaredklewis• 5 months ago

Not sure Iran was doing that, but for sure Maduro wasn’t.

Not sure it affects the outcome.

guerrilla24• 5 months ago

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.

lakrici88284• 5 months ago

The US demands were clear - no nuclear capability whatsoever, not really a hard demand to meet if you're coming "in good faith".

Iran decided to play stupid games and found out.

ekianjo4• 5 months ago

Israel has a lot of nukes (while they pretend they don't) and that does not prevent them from being attacked.

xrd• 5 months ago

It probably prevents armed warships from attacking them. It doesn't, as you correctly point out, prevent guerilla warfare.

learingsci• 5 months ago

Thanks for pointing this out. I hear people say this over and over, if Iran only had nukes it would be safe to continue propagating terrorism as it has been doing. It’s obviously wrong, as you point out. Russia has nukes. India has nukes. Having nuclear weapons doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want, if anything it brings a higher level of scrutiny. A nuclear Iran would be a serious problem for many and that’s why it’s so critical to make sure that doesn’t happen, not just for Israel but the entire planet.

violentapricot4• 5 months ago

My totally unsubstantiated conspiracy theory is that several of those are sitting in shipping containers in the US and Europe, and that is part of the reason that their interests drive all western foreign policy, despite their open hostility to their 'allies'.

twistedpair• 5 months ago

This is part of why we help defend Israel, to constrain wars to conventional means.

In the first Gulf War, we placed the Patriot batteries around Israel, as they said that if an Iraqi biological or chemical SCUD attack hit Tel Aviv, they would vitrify Baghdad.

Having nukes doesn't prevent _anyone_ from attacking you, but it does constrain those attacks to conventional means. And what if you pulled off a decapitation attack against Tel Aviv? Well their fleet of nuclear capable subs would make you pay.

JumpCrisscross55• 5 months ago

"In the world of strategic studies, there has been a return to ‘theories of [nuclear] victory’. Their proponents draw on the work of past scholars such as Henry Kissinger, who wondered in his 1957 book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy if extending the American deterrent to all of Europe at a time when the threat of total destruction hung over the US itself would actually work: ‘A reliance on all-out war as the chief deterrent saps our system of alliances in two ways: either our allies feel that any military effort on their part is unnecessary or they may be led to the conviction that peace is preferable to war even on terms almost akin to surrender ... As the implication of all-out war with modern weapons become better understood ... it is not reasonable to assume that the United Kingdom, and even more the United States, would be prepared to commit suicide in order to defend a particular area ... whatever its importance, to an enemy’.

One of the recommended solutions was to bring tactical nuclear weapons back into the dialectic of deterrence extended to allied territories, so as to give US decision makers a range of options between Armageddon and defeat without a war. Global deterrence was ‘restored’ by creating additional rungs on the ladder of escalation, which were supposed to enable a sub-apocalyptic deterrence dialogue — before one major adversary or the other felt its key interests were threatened and resorted to extreme measures. Many theorists in the 1970s took this logic further, in particular Colin Gray in a 1979 article, now back in fashion, titled ‘Nuclear Strategy: the case for a theory of victory’.

...

In 2018 Admiral Pierre Vandier, now chief of staff of the French navy, offered a precise definition of this shift to the new strategic era, which has begun with Russia’s invasion: ‘A number of indicators suggest that we are entering a new era, a Third Nuclear Age, following the first, defined by mutual deterrence between the two superpowers, and the second, which raised hopes of a total and definitive elimination of nuclear weapons after the cold war’" [1].

I think the chances we see a tactial nuclear exchange in our lifetimes has gone from distant to almost certain.

[1] https://mondediplo.com/2022/04/03nuclear

wat100005• 5 months ago

Now that the last generation with direct experience of the Nazis is leaving us, it seems like the populace is forgetting the horrors of that time. That also happens to be the last generation with direct experience of nuclear weapons used in war.

CamperBob2• 5 months ago

Who will be launching the tactical nuclear attacks? The US is no longer equipped with tactical nukes, as I understand it (corrections welcome).

jmyeet7• 5 months ago

I just want to expand on this.

1. According to the US and Israel, Iran has been a week away from having nuclear weapons for at least 34 years [1];

2. It's quite clear Iran could've developed nuclear weapons but chose not to. I actually think was a mistake. The real lesson from the so-called War on Terror was that only nuclear weapons will preserve your regime (ie Norht Korea);

3. Israel is a nuclear power. It's widely believed that Israel first obtained weapons grade Uranium by stealing it from the US in the 1960s [2];

4. In a just world, people would hang for what we did to Iran in 1953, 1978-79, the Iran-Iraq War and sanctions (which are a sanitized way of saying "we're starving you"); and

5. The current round of demands include Iran dismantling its ballistic missile program. This is because the 12 day war was a strategic and military disaster for the US and Israel.

Israel has a multi-layered missile defence shield. People usually talk about Iron Dome but that's just for shooting down small rockets. Separate layers exist for long-range and ballistic missiles (eg David's Sling, Arrow-2, Arrow-3). In recent times the US has complemented these with the ship-borne THAAD system.

Even with all this protection, Iran responded to the unprovoked attacks of the 12-day war by sending just enough ballistic missiles to overwhelm the defences, basically saying "if we have to, we can hit Israel".

Many suspect that the real reason the US negotiated an end to the 12 day war was because both Israel and the US were running cirtically low on the munitions for THAAD and Israel's missile defence shield. You can't just quickly make more either. Reportedly that will take over a year to get replacements.

Thing is, pretty much all of this missile defence technology is about to become obsolete once hypersonic missiles become more widespread, which is going to happen pretty soon. I suspect that's a big part of why the US and Israel are now trying so desperately to topple the regime and turn Iran into a fail-state like Somalia or Yemen.

I'm not normally one to encourage nuclear proliferation but when it's the only thing the US will listen to, what choice do countries have?

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2025/6/18/the-history-of-n...

[2] https://thebulletin.org/2014/04/did-israel-steal-bomb-grade-...

flyinglizard7• 5 months ago

Yes, because "what choice did Iran have" other than:

1. Routinely calling for death to Israel and America, turning it into part of the national curriculum and sowing hate

2. Funding, training, supplying and directing multiple violent proxy organizations around the region which attacked Israel and undermined their own countries (Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in West Bank and Gaza, other organizations in Iraq)

3. Enriching Uranium to clearly non-civilian grade in multiple militarily hardened facilities;

4. Directly attacking multiple Jewish targets around the world (like the AMIA and then embassy bombings in Argentina)

5. Attacking neighboring countries with ballistic and cruise missiles, like the attacks on Saudi Aramco in 2019

6. Holding international shipping and energy markets hostage by threatening to attack ships and tankers in the Persian Gulf

7. Abusing their own citizens, including public executions, persecutions and extreme violence

8. Providing support to Russia in their efforts in Ukraine, and especially drones used for indiscriminate dumb attack waves against civilians and infrastructure

Now we have people arguing that if they had just gotten nukes then they could have continued doing all of that.

rgoulter• 5 months ago

Thing is, pretty much all of this missile defence technology is about to become obsolete once hypersonic missiles become more widespread, which is going to happen pretty soon.

I think you'll have to be more specific.

Or I guess to compare with your other observation: """Even with all this protection, Iran [sent] enough ballistic missiles to overwhelm the defences""" -- It's not a binary of "have missile defense or not => every missile will be shot down". An amount of missile defense will make it harder for missiles to successfully hit a target.

Similarly with hypersonic missiles, it's not the binary of "I have a missile that's difficult to defend against, I win".

Having a sword which can defeat a shield isn't in itself sufficient to obsolete the shield. (Infantry can be killed with bullets, yet infantry remain an important part of fighting despite that).

ruben81ad• 5 months ago

This has nothing to do with nuclear weapons. The only problem here is that iran has petrol. Thats it.

baq3• 5 months ago

I used to believe that, I think there are also some very ambitious people nearby who want to use US armed forces for their benefit - as any rational player who has influence over such power would attempt.

gpderetta3• 5 months ago

Iran has petrol

More than taking control of Iranian petrol, this is probably more an attempt at cutting off China access to it (and also generally eliminating one of their allies), same as for the Venezuelan invasion.

squidbeak3• 5 months ago

You've completely misunderstood the poster's point. Nations are being taught that without nuclear weapons you could be attacked in this new world.

ch4s3• 5 months ago

This is an incredibly facile take on the situation. Iran has been a destabilizing regional power with imperial aims for 47 odd years. They even murdered the PM of Lebanon via their proxy army. They’ve been poking the bear for decades, and there are serval occasions where it may have happened sooner in an alternative universe. Had McCain become president in ‘08 we may well have seen a land invasion from US positions in Iraq, as the Iranian Quds force was already fighting US soldiers in Iraq. The whole DoD is now full of Iraq veterans who hate the Iranian government to their bones. It’s shocking this didn’t happen sooner, and probably only didn’t because of luck.

yonisto3• 5 months ago

Those who paid any attention to Ukraine already figured it out

edgyquant2• 5 months ago

Considering the rationale for this war that kind of seems false

JumpCrisscross55• 5 months ago

Considering the rationale for this war that kind of seems false

The spring to a nuke is riskier than ever. That doesn't change that nuclear sovereignty is a tier above the regular kind, this is something every one of the global powers (China, Russia and America) and most regional powers (Israel) have explicilty endorsed.

hmokiguess2• 5 months ago

On another note, Canada is the only country that ever decided against having them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_weapons_of_mass_des...

iso16312• 5 months ago

Ukraine literally had them and gave them up

throw-the-towel• 5 months ago

South Africa got rid of its nukes after the apartheid ended.

soraminazuki• 5 months ago

You missed like, *checks notes* 186 other non-nuclear-armed states parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

https://www.iaea.org/topics/non-proliferation-treaty

reliabilityguy37• 5 months ago

Israel has nuclear weapons. Did it keep them safe?

markus_zhang3• 5 months ago

Pretty safe if you ask me, judging from their…location and historical context.

alkonaut• 5 months ago

From invasion or forced regime change? Yes (But I don't think the nukes actually helped in that regard).

BoredPositron3• 5 months ago

Well, proximity is a factor...

Manuel_D3• 5 months ago

Historically, Israelis have been much safer than most of their neighbors Oct. 7th notwithstanding.

wat100005• 5 months ago

The last time Israel faced an existential threat from its neighbors was 1973. The timeline isn’t entirely clear, but that’s right around the time when they started to have operational nuclear weapons. Many factors contributed to their relative safety since then, but the timing certainly works out for nuclear weapons helping to make that true.

mickle00• 5 months ago

100% -- unfortunate, sad, and entirely predictable

windowliker2• 5 months ago

This is war... huh... wow!

xdennis4• 5 months ago

Love the Burzum reference, but it's low quality on a discussion forum. Downvoted.

windowliker2• 5 months ago

What's there to discuss about this absolute shit show?

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm3• 5 months ago

Nothing to do with nuclear weapons. They are trying to surround and isolate Turkey as the only other military heavyweight of the middle east.

Israel and the US have already shown their cards in Syria. It is not peace they are after, it is regional domination.

alex_low• 5 months ago

I'm surprised this has not been mentioned, for context:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_massacres

tgv2• 5 months ago

I think that's because nobody believes for one second that these strikes are a retaliation for that.

philk102• 5 months ago

Epstein files and plummeting poll numbers are more likely reasons

croes3• 5 months ago

Rookie numbers. Wait until they got liberated

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

throwaw122• 5 months ago

Are you saying those protested actually got funded by Israel and because Iran killed them, now Israel is retaliating?

Now I really wonder if those protests were indeed fueled and funded by Israel, because we have seen videos of mosques being burned down by protestors, which is strange for Shia Muslim country, even if they don't like their government

yoavm5• 5 months ago

"A 2020 Online Survey by Gamaan found that 8.8% Iranians identifying as Atheist and a large fraction (22.2%) identifying as not following an organized religion and only 40% self identified as Muslims."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularism_in_Iran

izietto• 5 months ago

Maybe because nobody believes in the "exporting democracy" excuse anymore

JumpCrisscross55• 5 months ago

nobody believes in the "exporting democracy" excuse

Has this been argued?

yoavm5• 5 months ago

Not surprising - people don't count deaths in the Middle East if they're caused by fellow Middle Easterns, except Israel. Living in Europe I've never heard about a protest against Saddam (250,000 - 1,000,000 dead), Khamenei (30,000 in a week?), Assad (> 300,000 civilians) etc. This is business as usual. It's only news if someone else does it.

Rover2228• 5 months ago

this is so true

eleventyseven3• 5 months ago

Because HNers are not so gullible to swallow and regurgitate this pretext. The Trump administration doesn't care about the people of Iran, any more than Bush cared about the Iraqi Kurds or Afghan women. Just a pretext for geopolitics.

kwar13• 5 months ago

If you think Trump did that because he cares about Democracy I have some news for you regarding the Jan 6 rioters...

jraby34• 5 months ago

Compare how much Israel was in the news for targeting militants these past two years in Gaza.

How biased is the press? Iran slaughters 36k people in a week and... crickets. Israel refuses to let its hostages die while Hamas hides out in hospitals and schools and the world is against Israel not Iran.

tim33312• 5 months ago

Yeah, the:

Trump urges Iranians to keep protesting, saying 'help is on its way'

stuff if pretty relevant.

yodsanklai2• 5 months ago

Nothing like a war to boost your popularity just before the elections

AbstractH245• 5 months ago

Only I’m not exactly sure what constituency will support this war.

He wasn’t even smart enough to leave America open to attack, manufacture a pretext, and rally people around the flag like 9/11

Heck, there was even a better case in Korea & Vietnam. Even Venezuela. What’s the case this is America’s problem?

ponector2• 5 months ago

Funny how Iran is America's problem so much but Ukraine is not, despite signed security assurance to the Ukrainian people.

happosai• 5 months ago

The Jesus people love it when Americas army support Israel

The racists love it when Muslims get killed

nsvd2• 5 months ago

If a democracy is meaningfully created in Iran I will consider that a huge win for Trump and it would certainly make me more sympathetic to his party.

To be clear, I don't think the chances of that happening are high.

butterbomb• 5 months ago

Only I’m not exactly sure what constituency will support this war.

The remaining neocons who have surprisingly managed to weasel their way back into influence.

JumpCrisscross55• 5 months ago

Nothing like a war to boost your popularity just before the elections

If he pulls off a regime change, even a Delcy-style swaparoo, he'll get it, and arguably not undeservedly. It will ultimately come down to Iran's capacity to inflict casualties on American forces.

philk102• 5 months ago

somehow I dont think regime change is gonna happen before the midterms or even before 2028

tyleo2• 5 months ago

I’m not so sure. This is no where near a priority issue for most Americans, “I can’t afford eggs and the immigrant I buy pizza from got shipped to a warehouse but thank god the regime changed in Iran.”

hypeatei2• 5 months ago

They leveraged special operations forces in Venezuela. Iran has two US carrier groups on their front door; this operation is not going to be as precise as the one against Maduro.

nullocator5• 5 months ago

Trump could liberate every repressed country in the world and it would not impact in the slightest the cold hard fact that neither I nor most the people I know will ever vote R again.

eunos3• 5 months ago

Delcy-style swaparoo,

I think IRGCs are much more robust and zealous than whatever Maduro had.

JeremyNT• 5 months ago

Is our memory so short? Regime change in Iraq destabilized that region for 2 decades.

ekianjo4• 5 months ago

You sure? Seems like a war for no reason is hardly going to get popular support.

nickthegreek2• 5 months ago

From a man who campaigned on No New Wars.

awnird• 5 months ago

Americans are bloodthirsty freaks. Killing people is always popular with Americans.

andrewflnr5• 5 months ago

You're acting like people are rational. It's just about power. Appearing strong appeals to the apes inside the humans. And no one is more in touch with his inner ape than Trump.

jmyeet7• 5 months ago

Military action in Iran is deeply unpopular, being supported by just 27% of US adult citizens [1]. As an aside, Congress literally doesn't care what voters think [2]. The pearl-clutching about this from Congressional Democrats isn't about policy but process, with the likes of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries saying Congress should authorize this action, not that it shouldn't happen.

I'm interested in what makes empires tick, what their basis of power is.

Spain in the colonial era was propped up by looting silver from Central and South America, for example.

The British Empire is what many (including me) like to call the "drug dealer empire". First tobacco then later opium. Any claims that we didn't know about the health risks of tobacco are complete BS (eg [3]).

Circling back to your point, the US is what I like to call the "arms dealer empire". WW1 and WW2 massively enriched the United States. NATO is essentially a protection racket for Europe and the price is, you guessed it, buying arms from the United States.

And the next Budget has proposed increasing "defense" spending from an already eye-popping $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion [4]. Where does that money go? Arms, weapons programs, defense contractors, the ultra-wealthy.

War is good for business even though it's unpopular.

[1] https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/54158-few-americans-suppor...

[2] https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15198996/

[4] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-proposes-massive...

sharadov4• 5 months ago

War is America's business and business is good.

Bender26• 5 months ago

Nothing like a war to boost your popularity just before the elections

Congress will not let him have a third term regardless of what he says or thinks.

sph2• 5 months ago

Congress seems to be quite toothless lately.

Svoka6• 5 months ago

In russia they had 2 terms limit as well. Putin found a quick work-around by basically running through Proxy.

I can see JD being a figurehead with very public Trump support.

yoyohello135• 5 months ago

Congress will let him...

Lol, 'let'. Whose going to stop him?

squidbeak3• 5 months ago

Nothing like a war to push Epstein out of the headlines.

DANmode2• 5 months ago

Almost every lever has been pulled.

malshe• 5 months ago

You really think the elections will happen

ActorNightly12• 5 months ago

The popularity aspect is irrelevant.

Trump can literally do all the things that the epstein files accuse him of doing, right on camera in front of everyone, and Americans will still vote for him all because he isn't a "woke" black woman.

DANmode2• 5 months ago

because it’s more comfortable than admitting the people who run the show are scumbags.

because it’s more comfortable than admitting they were wrong.

jeffhollon• 5 months ago

Peace and profit.

Arun2009• 5 months ago

I am just befuddled by how much of this violence is directly motivated by religious concerns, both on the side of Iran and on the side of Israel and USA.

I have been reading on the topic of shunyata or emptiness in Mahayana Buddhism, and have been uncomfortably observing just how much of the artifacts we take to be real and substantial in the world are just "made up". They don't have an inherent reality of their own except what we attribute to them. And yet, made up stories can have very real consequences in terms human suffering.

It ought to be possible to cut through the layers of reifications and simply defuse much of the strife in the world. And yet, we continue to inflict misery on each other unnecessarily.

vcryan3• 5 months ago

It had nothing to do with religion, that element is used to distract.

merelythere• 5 months ago

They are following their books like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

AbstractH245• 5 months ago

I am just befuddled by how much of this violence is directly motivated by religious concerns, both on the side of Iran and on the side of Israel and USA.

Can you provide an example of this in 2026?

It seems a little tenable with the ayatollah and Iran. But even here you don’t hear much talk of this being a war in the name of religion anymore. Nowhere near a few years ago and certainly nothing like 9/11 and the Taliban.

And I hear nobody in Israel or America talking that way. Just a war defending people against attackers at the gates.

samrus9• 5 months ago

The evangelicals support isreal due to religious obligation.

Project 2025, a christian nationalist policy advisement widely followed by the current regime, prescribes supporting isreal

kubb9• 5 months ago

The land promised to the Israelites generally extends from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Iraq/Syria, encompassing modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, and parts of Syria and Saudi Arabia.

If you're a religious Jew, then you believe you have a mandate from God (so an irrefutable right, or even obligation, needing no justification) to settle and rule not only the West Bank but the entire region. So there will always be that motivation, as long as religious Judaism exists in Israel.

thisislife212• 5 months ago

And I hear nobody in Israel or America talking that way.

The American ambassador to Israel recently publicly said that Israel has a "biblical right" to the whole of the middle-east! (Watch these two interviews to understand how cleverly, and strongly, Israeli politics is tied up with American evangelical Christianity to keep American polity tied to Israel's existence - https://tuckercarlson.com/tucker-show-fares-abraham-021826 and https://tuckercarlson.com/tucker-show-mike-huckabee-022026 . Both these interviews give you a very insightful picture of how religious fundamentalist Israelis in power are total nutcases, supported by the American Christian fundamentalist fruitcakes).

jmyeet7• 5 months ago

I am just befuddled by how much of this violence is directly motivated by religious concerns, both on the side of Iran and on the side of Israel and USA.

This just isn't true. Religion is never the reason for these conflicts. It's the excuse. It's how that conflict is sold to the rest of the world. It's how civilians are manipulated into dying in a conflict.

The source of these conflicts is always material. Always.

Reagan's Secretary of State, General Alexander Haig once said [1]:

Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier, and is located in a critical region for American national security.

In 1986, then Senator and future president Joe Biden said [2]:

[Israel] is the best $3 billion ivnestment we make. Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to an invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region.

Much of US Middle East polciy was aimed to sabotaging and undermining Pan-Arab Nationalism (particularly under then Egyptian President Nasser) [3].

Nothing about any of this has anything to do with faith. In this case it's about oil.

Whatever crimes you think Iran might've done, I'll stack up the US crimes against Iran and it won't even be close, including:

1. Iran was a liberal democracy that the US deposed in 1953 at the behest of the British because BP didn't want to have to pay higher royalties, ultimately leading Mossadegh wanting to "nationalize" their own oil;

2. In 1978, then US-puppet Saddam Hussein expelled Khomenei from Iraq. This was about the time the US realized that Iran was likely lost. it is believed that the reason for this was that a fundamentalist regime was preferred to a Communist one (which was otherwise the likely outcome) as the US didn't want Iran to fall into the Soviet sphere of influence. So all this pearl-clutching about the current regime rings hollow when you realize the US helped created it;

3. As punishment for the Revolution, the US supplied weapons to Iraq and fueled the Iran-Iraq war for almost a decade that killed over a million people; and

4. Crippling economic sanctions, which is a fancy way of saying "starving people and denying them medical care", for daring not to be a US puppet.

If you point me to any conflict you think is based on faith, I'll show you the material interests behind it.

[1] https://archive.ph/tMTBd

[2] https://www.c-span.org/clip/senate-highlight/user-clip-joe-b...

[3] https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v12...

gpderetta3• 5 months ago

Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk,

Airstrip one is disappointed.

marcosdumay4• 5 months ago

The source of these conflicts is always material. Always.

Since the beginning of the Green Revolution¹, no. The source of these conflicts are always ideological. Always. Ideology may come through religion or some other medium.

Countries don't go occupying land because they need crops or slaves anymore. Material is always cheaper to buy than to get from an occupation. The desire to annex some land is always for somebody's pet project, it doesn't make economic sense.

1 - In a very wide sense. Agriculture stopped being the bottleneck for human populations at some point in the 18th or early 19th centuries.

GorbachevyChase• 5 months ago

I think the praise of the strategic value to US military interests are rationalizations and poor ones at that. The Gulf monarchies are allies in a meaningful sense and provide useful material support to the United States. Our “ally“ on the other hand was recently caught running a child prostitution ring and money laundering operation to control business and political leaders in the United States. Kidnapping children and removing their teeth so they can’t bite their rapists for political leverage is going to be remembered by future generations with the same horror and disgust as medieval torture and 20th century concentration camps.

violentapricot4• 5 months ago

It's not said in polite company, but Israeli concerns are racial, not religious. If you meet a Jewish zionist, then you've also met an athiest. An explanation of Christian Zionism deserves much longer discussion than can be made here, but how and why such an obvious contradiction to Jesus' ministry gained popularity is something worth studying.

cogman1010• 5 months ago

Once you realize the gospels and the epistles disagree, it becomes a lot easier to understand. Christianity is the practice of cognitive dissonance. The bible, due to the nature, has a lot of mixed messaging.

Imagine, for example, you wanted to write the religion of Liberalism, so you collect the works of all the major thinkers on the subject of liberalism into one book. Now imagine someone gets the bad idea that all these authors must actually have a unified view on what liberalism is, means, and implies. You'll end up seeing that person teach a form of liberalism that's easily countered with other passages from their book and they'll mostly just wave it away because they have their passages and the others are simply you misinterpreting an "obvious" metaphor.

That is christianity in a nutshell, just replace liberalism with god. That's why there are so many sects. Because it's just too easy to yell "Context context context!" when a difficult passage comes up you don't agree with and use "spiritual" as the excuse for why you don't actually have to follow that passage.

azernik10• 5 months ago

Not entirely accurate:

1. Many Israeli Jewish Zionists are either "traditional" (religious but not that much) or Religious Zionist, and they are generally part of the right wing coalition. Actual atheists tend to be in the Israeli (still-Zionist) left.

2. The Zionist conception of Jewish identity is not "racial" in the American sense. The most obvious sense in which this is true is that it considers converts and their descendants full members of the nation. Probably the closest analogies are some Native American nations' identities or Armenian nationalism.

But you're directionally correct - Zionism is not a particularly religious ideology within the Jewish world, and outside of the Religious Zionist minority the political class is (openly!) on the less observant end even on the right.

cies• 5 months ago

Religious concerns are, IMHO, always a facade for the underlying economic/territorial/geopolitical reasons. These religious facades help sell the war effort: get young men to enlist and fight to the death for "preserving their identity". And "muh freedom" is just as much a religious motivation to me (unsubstantiated, indoctrinated, unthreatened).

eleventyseven3• 5 months ago

Religion isn't the facade, it is the medium through which other reasons are transmitted

mkoubaa• 5 months ago

Fallacy.

(Wrong) Knife fight: a fight between people about knives

(Right) Knife fight: a fight between people using knives

philistine2• 5 months ago

Religion poisons everything.

lukifer2• 5 months ago

Examples abound; but for good and ill, the language-using ape seems to be a religious animal, having co-evolved with mythological memeplexes.

There's the old salt from DFW, "one can't choose whether to worship, only what to worship". Less apologetics, perhaps, than a realmythos (akin to realpolitik).

Nature abhors a vacuum, and something inevitably fills the void: the "god-shaped hole" in individuals, and the game-theoretic basin of attraction, the actual realpolitik of loyalty-signaling, load-bearing fictions which bind an "imagined community". (The first might be manageable, but the second is a doozy: a faith which could not be more explicitly anarcho-pacifist mutated into justification for brutally violent hierarchies of domination and exploitation. So it goes.)

misiek08• 5 months ago

There is also point of view that remembers that always right behind US military there is a team building next oil pipeline. US tried to used China as cheap labor, lost a lot of intelligence and now - look at how much oil Iran has and who is it exporting to and what is the percentage at the destination. The numbers add up and only the funny (?) thing is - China is (going to) be most eco country, because they already use nuclear power a lot and were forced to work on that.

What a time to be alive, again! And please, downvote me, comment that US is fighting for some country’s civilians freedom. It’s fun too.

ozgrakkurt5• 5 months ago

It makes a lot more sense if you picture a bunch of organized, strong and merciless chimps attacking some other chimps to plunder what they have.

Chimps generally agree war is bad and horrific. But some smart, opportunistic and hard-working chimps can create situations that make war possible. Even though the war will only bring losses to most chimps on both sides.

lioeters• 5 months ago

The best political insight in this thread. This is the planet of the apes. If any future historians are reading, some of us primates were aware of the absurdity of the situation, horrified by the senseless violence that erupts again and again, led by sociopathic chimps that somehow managed to organize whole societies against each other and profit from the whole primitive enterprise. What a waste of human potential.

rambojohnson3• 5 months ago

You’re mistaking the packaging for the product. Religion is the language leaders use. Power, territory, oil corridors, regional dominance, and domestic political survival are what they’re actually fighting over.

Tehran isn’t calculating missile ranges based on sutras. Washington doesn’t position carrier groups because of metaphysics. Israel’s security doctrine isn’t a meditation retreat.

Spiritual narratives make clean moral theater for the public. They mobilize bodies. They sanctify retaliation. But the machinery underneath runs on leverage and deterrence, not theology.

Wake up to the real world.

Calling it primarily religious violence feels tidy and tragic in a philosophical way. It’s harder, and more uncomfortable, to admit that it’s strategic violence dressed in symbols people recognize.

Shunyata is a beautiful lens for seeing through ego. It doesn’t dissolve geopolitics.

pphysch4• 5 months ago

Israel’s security doctrine isn’t a meditation retreat.

"Security doctrine" is quite a euphemism for aggressive territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing, which is tightly wrapped in religious rhetoric.

Rapzid5• 5 months ago

IMHO you're still making it too complicated; knives out GOT, titans of industry..

Sure, but it's even simpler.. The Ayatollah Regime funds regional terrorism. It destabilizes the region, gets people killed, and holds back progress.

Also, they are always seemingly always almost done building a nuke.. Which frankly nobody wants(not even them because they know they'd be obliterated the instant the world thought they actually had one or were about to for-reals have one).

They are BAD FOR BUSINESS both private AND PUBLIC.

As long as the rest of the region was developing eventually their number would be up. The recent uprising and massacre was the signal their number is up. Time to go, honestly signed all their neighbors.

andrepd2• 5 months ago

On the contrary, you're mistaking the means with the ends. Yes the regimes and their leaders think about oil corridors and regional proxies. Yes probably a chunk of the apparatchiks don't believe in the spiel and just care about enriching themselves off of corruption and so forth.

But religion, and not pure materialism, is absolutely at the center of the motivation of these people, the leaders and the population alike. It's not just, as you say, a sham that the leaders use to control and mobilise the masses. Religious fanaticism is at the source of the actions and the very existence of the Islamic Republic. Just as religious fanaticism is at the heart of the worst excesses of Zionism and the at-worst-genocidal, at-best-apartheid policies of Israel. It's not just materialism! It's not just prosaic greed! These people are moved by a holy fervour.

Like, this is the central mistake of Marxism, for all its merits in analysing the "capitalist mode of production", it is absolutely false that material conditions and class struggle are the engine of history.

asdfe3r343• 5 months ago

Religion is the language leaders use.

Yeah. Because people believe in in and leaders take advantage. DUH. Its not so peaceful religion all the way.

frogperson• 5 months ago

That was very well said. Thank you.

nonethewiser5• 5 months ago

I have a very hard time understanding how the US is attacking Iran because of Christianity. I cannot even anticipate the hypothesis.

js2• 5 months ago

America's Evangelical Christian Right:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/29/us/iran-israel-evangelicals-p...

https://archive.ph/Pz81T

Huckabee one week ago:

"Citing the book of Genesis, Carlson asked whether the modern state of Israel had a right to the lands promised in the Bible by God to Abraham, stretching from the Euphrates River to the Nile, covering much of the Middle East. In response, Huckabee said: “It would be fine if they took it all. But I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about here today.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/21/mike-huckabee-claims-israel-...

throw0101c2• 5 months ago

Buddhism

No one lives up to their ideals on a day-to-day basis:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide

HerbManic• 5 months ago

When it comes to battles of religion, Alan watts said it best.

"Since opposed principles, or ideologies, are irreconcilable, wars fought over principle will be wars of mutual annihilation. But wars fought for simple greed will be far less destructive, because the aggressor will be careful not to destroy what he is fighting to capture. Reasonable–that is, human–men will always be capable of compromise, but men who have dehumanized themselves by becoming the blind worshipers of an idea or an ideal are fanatics whose devotion to abstractions makes them the enemies of life."

jackcosgrove• 5 months ago

Complexity can lead to "more is different" outcomes at higher strata. I would not say reified concepts are "made up" as they can have very real effects on both higher and lower strata.

The fallacy of reification is treating something emergent as a thing-unto-itself rather than a process or interaction born from constituents at a lower stratum. A reified thing can be recognized and changed for this reason. A mental concept needs only a change of mind to mutate, or to be destroyed.

Religion may well prove to be a reification that is destroyed once it is recognized as such. But I do believe that you cannot reduce that which is real and not real to only those things that have physical antecedents at lower strata, as we see emergent phenomena in the physical world as well.

gib444• 5 months ago

It makes you wonder about religion's true purpose. It's a really convenient framework for creating peoples/regions that hate each other, isn't it, as history has shown for millenia

monarchwadia• 5 months ago

It is rare to find a comment on shunyata on HN. I wanted to deepen the discussion on that, instead of move into geopolitics or the justification of status quo reality. I think youre very correct that war is unnecessary, if only we realize the illusory nature of many of the things we desire or hate.

Shunyata means everything is empty. Empty of what? Empty of inherent, independent existence. That means everything is connected -- not only connected, but mostly illusory, sitting on top of a reality that cannot be understood in terms of objects, processes, distinctions, or boundaries between objects. Sometimes, this connection takes on strange forms.

For example: The horrible reality of war was a direct cause for your compassionate unease. I.e. war acted as a cause for compassion. This is strange. How do we reconcile this disturbing relationship, where a compassionate response is directly the child of war? In other words, horrific war has given rise to compassion, and this is a causal relationship, in the same way that a child arises from a mother. So, violence and love can arise from each other? What? Are they not supposed to be opposites?

The next step is a bit more provocative. Shunyata seems to imply that, since everything lacks inherent and independence existence, then suffering is not a part of the human condition. Instead, it is a mental construct. It isn't that the suffering of humanity does not exist; it's that it is constructed by the mind.

Deleuze and Guattari offers an interesting viewpoint on this. There are various intensities that do arise naturally. Injury, for example, is an intensity. But, suffering itself is not "really-real" unless we reify the intensities as suffering. And eliminating suffering partially involves the non-reification of intensities into suffering.

Obviously, easier said than done.

Anyway I'll leave it there. It's probably quite easy to destroy my points here, so I would appreciate it if people steelmanned my comment instead of strawmanning it. Shunyata is a genuinely useful discussion from a mental health and human flourishing standpoint. And has some very interesting and rigorous logic behind it. (see Mulamadhyamakakarika by Nagarjuna)

heraldgeezer• 5 months ago

Good. Let them have it!! Free Iran!

vcryan3• 5 months ago

Most people's definition of freedom isn't being bombed by the US and Israel.

jackdoe• 5 months ago

special operation

aeon_ai• 5 months ago

The most likely and capable retaliation will be cyber/info wars.

Iran has sophisticated influence operations and will likely flood social media with disinformation designed to deepen political divisions and erode trust in institutions.

This advice serves even if you don’t believe the above. Be deeply skeptical of all viral content in the coming days and weeks, especially anything designed to change your opinions, or provoke outrage/fear. Verify before sharing. Expect deepfakes. Stick to primary sources when possible.

apples_oranges• 5 months ago

I hate that we apparently have to take sides when commenting ..

tyleo2• 5 months ago

You don’t have to take sides. I haven’t landed on a particular POV here. You’re free to take a breath and think about things.

Bender26• 5 months ago

Comment freely. Ignore karma. Here are some uBlock rules that help:

    #  HN Block Karma View
    news.ycombinator.com##.comhead .score:style(overflow: hidden; display: inline-block; line-height: 0.1em; width: 0; margin-left: -1.9em;)
    news.ycombinator.com###hnmain > tbody > tr:first-of-type table td:last-of-type .pagetop:style(font-size: 0!important; color: transparent!important;)
    news.ycombinator.com###hnmain > tbody > tr:first-of-type table td:last-of-type .pagetop > *:style(font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.45em;)
    news.ycombinator.com###logout::before:style(content: "|"; padding: 0.25em;)
    news.ycombinator.com##form.profileform tbody tr:nth-child(3)
    news.ycombinator.com###karma

croes3• 5 months ago

Iran, pledging to lay waste to the country’s military and obliterate its nuclear program.

Is that the same program that was totally obliterated in June 2025 according to Trump?

"Obliterated like nobody’s ever seen before"?

HumblyTossed• 5 months ago

Needs a war to cancel the mid terms.

samrus9• 5 months ago

Regarding the protests in the preceding week, while the iranian people probably had valid problems with their government, its so pbvious the actual scenes we saw in the news were orchestrated to manufacture consent. Its barely hidden anymore.

If you see a sudden uptick in protests in a country the US/isreal see as an enemy, you can bet its probably just the step in the playbook preceding military action

throwawayheui579• 5 months ago

Protests have been happening in Iran for years and their frequency and depth increasing. Last one was “Woman life freedom” movement because the government killed a girl for bad hijab.

It’s not new, you just started paying attention now.

samrus9• 5 months ago

I know its not new, the iranian governemnt has always been cruel to dissidents. I guess my point is a sudden uptic in participants and media coverage of them is the indicator of manufactured consent

bluGill• 5 months ago

The protests were there before. Maybe you didn't know about them, but many people have been protesting. These are 40 day protests - iran funerals are 40 days afer the death, and 40 days ago iran killed tens of thousands of protesters who now are having funerals. (Iran deach culture is more complex than that, but for discussion the above works)

udioron9• 5 months ago

I believe this is related for Iran's decades old calls for "Death to America"/"Death to Israel".

tw047• 5 months ago

I believe that’s related to Israel’s genocide of Palestinian children and America’s unending unconditional support of the same.

udioron9• 5 months ago

No, it's because of the country is run by fanatics.

udioron9• 5 months ago

Leta hope the good side wins.

udioron9• 5 months ago

Anyway, sticking to the "Death to America" strategy and choosing to run a global proxy war and killing their own people, instead of choosing peace, have led to this moment.

Lets pray for the people of Iran we get rid of the regime this time, and eventually reach peace in the middle east.

udioron9• 5 months ago

Hopefully Khamenei is dead. Sticking with "Death to Israel" was not a good plan for him. I hope the regime goes down ASAP.

Ylpertnodi3• 5 months ago

Death to....

Is the translation "Down with....".

udioron9• 5 months ago

No it's not.

coffinbirth4• 5 months ago

Iranian media now report 40 killed and 48 students injured following the strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab, as rescue and recovery efforts continue.

Congrats America!

coffinbirth4• 5 months ago

UPDATE: Reports now say that over 80 school children between the age of 7 and 12 were killed in Minab.

How is the Epstein Regime going to survive this politically? How is the Senate (Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, etc.) going to survive this politically?

derwiki• 5 months ago

I think you forgot /s to your last two points

Aerbil313• 5 months ago

No need to worry. They have extensively stress-tested the American public over the past few years and the conclusion is clear: Americans are never going to revolt no matter what you do to them.

vkou2• 5 months ago

He could drop a bomb on a school in Ohio, and still enjoy 40% support. There is no red line for these people.

shykes19• 5 months ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47199047

Rover2228• 5 months ago

And the tens of thousands of Iranians murdered for protesting? Did you care about them?

reliabilityguy37• 5 months ago

Did Israelis kill them? No. So, why would anyone care?

Did you see non-stop coverage about it from NYT, WaPo or others? No.

ozgrakkurt5• 5 months ago

Can you explain how this relates to that?

Some people are getting killed so more people should be killed?

lopatamd• 5 months ago

You really believe that news that comes from Iran media at this point?

HaloZero• 5 months ago

Easy, it was Israel that probably did it and it's been shown time and time again that they can do this without political fallout under the guise that the target was a hiding spot for the military assets of Iran (or Hamas in the case of Palestine bombing).

jraby34• 5 months ago

It's been shown time and time again that the world will eat up any propaganda against Israel without waiting to hear any facts at all.

lelanthran2• 5 months ago

Easy, it was Israel that probably did it and it's been shown time and time again that they can do this without political fallout under the guise that the target was a hiding spot for the military assets of Iran (or Hamas in the case of Palestine bombing).

Are you claiming that Iran (or Hamas) site their military bases away from schools (or hospitals)?

y-c-o-m-b2• 5 months ago

As an Iranian-American that's familiar with the regime, I would take that with a grain of salt. I saw this being reported from the Iranian regime themselves and they know how to manipulate optics and media really well. It's possible, but needs verification. I would also not put it past Iran to build their military infrastructure around schools intentionally (similar to Hamas with hospitals) in the hopes that it has this exact effect. Of course that does nothing to take away from the tragedy of innocent people dying and I'm not trying to negate that in any way, just something to point out.

shykes19• 5 months ago

100%. In another comment [1] I drew a parallel with the Al-Ahli hospital incident in Gaza. Once you understand basic information warfare tactics, they're easy to spot. Why newsrooms still fall for it so easily is the real mystery...

I bet this story is a fabrication as well.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47199047

sirfz2• 5 months ago

You being Iranian-american bares no weight on your opinion

nonethewiser5• 5 months ago

Iranian media

nailer4• 5 months ago

Iran regime launched a missile during their last ditch attack on every country in the middle east and it fell on a school.

consumer4513• 5 months ago

Why would you believe this statement any more than a statement from Putin, Likud, Trump... or anyone like that? The Iranian regime recently admitted to shooting thousands of their own people who were protesting.

Without some confirmation, everything is propaganda, isn't it? Jeez... there is no greater force that that to have one's bias confirmed, is there. That is going to destroy us.

Rover2228• 5 months ago

congrats on parroting the propaganda of the Iranian regime

frm88• 5 months ago

Update: AP news reports that deaths at girls school has now risen to 148.

https://apnews.com/live/us-israel-strikes-iran-khamenei-03-0...

exodust3• 5 months ago

"Iranian prosecutor says..." deserves minimal trust.

That said, if the US/Israel didn't do it, we'd have heard a denial by now. Perhaps the target was a nearby military site. Placing military sites next to schools sounds like a tactic from the Hamas Resistance handbook.

UltraSane5• 5 months ago

The Iranian Government lies as much as Trump does.

lucasRW• 5 months ago

Hopefully they finish the job this time and rid us of this horrible islamist regime, to make Iran great again !

Imustaskforhelp3• 5 months ago

"This war like the next war, is the war to end all wars"

- David LLoyd George, c.1916

The first wars were fought between tribes and then later between kingddoms for power/minor differences and trying to increase influence and alliances. Religion and race and many other discriminating factors are used for both sides to get support of the people, the people who are actually gonna carry the rifle and risk their lives and lose it, this drives the next war to redeem the losses of the first one, to take revenge.

This then creates a community which dislikes the other community and now we are here.

We do not like to be robbed of an enemy; we want someone to have when we suffer. … If so-and-so’s wickedness is the sole cause of our misery, let us punish so-and-so and we shall be happy. The supreme example of this kind of political thought was the Treaty of Versailles. Yet most people are only seeking some new scapegoat to replace the Germans.

- Bertrand Russel in Skeptical Essays.

Humanity has had a history written with bloodshed but the problem right now seems to me that we don't know how to write future, we lack a vision for other prospects, it seems to me that we jump into the newest Hype on the block and its all so wishy-washy. Contrary to people saying its a western issue, I think its an whole world issue, its just that the west is particularly impacted by it.

Has there been a desensitization in things in recent years?

I know of atleast one leader (King Kaniska) who fought for land (Modern day Orrisa) and won and then saw the bloodshed and screams on the ground and decided to not repeat it and I think he spent later of his life trying to promote peace.

I am sure that there must be other leaders in the history of past as well but perhaps its the problem of history as well which can sometimes glorify wars.

I think the biggest problem right now is being noise. We have created machines so large that humans have lost dignity and are treated unfairly at scale in terms of Renting places at scale owned by shell companies who'd rather have it empty than give you affordable housing. Prices seem to be increasing and I don't think modern social media helps in giving people dignity quite the opposite at times and it's very likely someone is reading this who may have contributed to making the machine.

With this being a political thread, I see comments from both sides[0], I don't think I have too much to add politically to the discussion but perhaps I just wanted to treat out that its best we treat each other with dignity in this thread and in general because I do believe that's the only thing we can do which can bring change. It's gonna be extremely hard for people to treat others with dignity while taking sides which talk about wars killing people, but I don't know what else to say. Iranian censorship for its people but I am not sure if the current idea of America brings me thinking of liberation. One can wish for pure democracies in such regions but its gonna be extremely hard and even grass-roots movements of these can be shut down by intrusive forces whether foreign or govt itself and given that the region is extremely shaky relying on oil which can be extracted from ground leading to a less dependence on people themselves for Iranian govt.s being the reason why they can be so censoring. They have shown enough power to fight massive protests but as I said earlier, the current picture of America don't exactly give me the idea of bringing pure democracy in the region either.

My prayers to the Iranian people who are stuck between a rock and tough spot.

(there are no sides, its a circle, a circle of people who start wars and the people who fight wars)

consumer4513• 5 months ago

Here is a 12 minute video showing OSINT of various attacks, and Iranian counter-attacks.

https://youtu.be/ZmtRhiI9uWU

neves3• 5 months ago

Iran has marvelous cities, sim of the greatest humanity archeological treasures.

It hurts my heart to see Americans destroying them (and the thousands of lifes).

squidbeak3• 5 months ago

Iran also has a gang of murderous theocratic nutters running it, massacring their citizens for taking to the streets and singing songs, undermining foreign societies, and lending their knowhow and drones to other, bigger psychopaths for their invasions. It'll gladden my heart if the leadership is destroyed, even if some old pretty masonry gets chipped along the way.

dyauspitr3• 5 months ago

massacring their citizens for taking to the streets and singing songs

The US is also doing this albeit fewer people.

phendrenad24• 5 months ago

Isn't Iran also famous for destroying landmarks that don't glorify the official state religion?

ubixar• 5 months ago

I've long suspected DJT is on a rampage of radical, ragebait news worthy actions to take the news away from the Epstein files. I hate that it's working and many people have to suffer because of it.

JKCalhoun4• 5 months ago

People are posting these choice quotes:

"In order to get elected Barack Obama will start a war with Iran"

—Donald Trump, Nov 29, 2011

"Barack Obama will attack Iran to get re-elected."

—Trump, Jan 17, 2012

"Now that Obama's poll numbers are in tailspin watch for him to launch a strike on Libya or Iran. He is desperate."

—Trump, Oct 9, 2012

niels8472• 5 months ago

Ill doers are illdeemers.

yoyohello135• 5 months ago

During the election MAGA was yelling that Kamala Harris was going to bring us into war with Iran. They are real quiet now, as usual. Republicans are always the same, cut benefits to the poor, cut taxes on the rich, war with the Middle East. Every, single, time.

JKCalhoun4• 5 months ago

"Former Vice President Kamala Harris: 'I unequivocally oppose this war'"

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2026/02/28/k...

tlogan4• 5 months ago

I hope this war will be short. And that the result will be Iran becoming a democracy that fully joins the global community. The Iranian people (Persians, Azerbaijanis, Kurds, and others), deserve better.

It would benefit the entire world to see Iran integrated and engaged internationally.

voganmother42• 5 months ago

the drones just have to fly slower for the kids and schools…”Easy, you just don't lead 'em so much”

rcbdev2• 5 months ago

Fully joins the global community

If by that you mean that Iran will become a toothless vassal state of the U.S.-Americans, then God forbid.

tlogan4• 5 months ago

What do you mean by “toothless”?

I was thinking more along the lines of Japan or South Korea. Militarily restrained, but prosperous and strong.

I understand that recent military actions have often made things worse, not better. I am just trying to stay optimistic. From what I know, many Iranians are not enthusiastic about religion controlling law and politics.

mtoner23• 5 months ago

Does the us have any toothless vassal states?

epsters7• 5 months ago

There is zero likelihood of that. The IRGC and Iranian forces are a million strong and have a loyal base of support among the population. Without boots on the ground, relying on air power and 'moderate rebels' you are looking at at least a decade of war (using Syria and Libya as best-case-scenarios examples; Assad regime was nothing like the Iranian). The Israelis are dividing the opposition by pushing the out-of-touch monarchists as their would-be puppets and the Trump regime are backing them too. Which means they are not even seriously pushing any viable or credible alternative. They are likely arming the Kurdish and other ethnic factions in the region and stoking ethnic conflict. It is in Israel's interests to prolong the conflict , to degrade Iran's military and economy (like they did in Syria) and even break it up into smaller manageable parts. The monarchists are a moon-shot; Reza Pehlavi is not his father (who also was a US puppet) - Israelis like him because he will be weak and pliable and completely dependent on foreign patronage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yinon_Plan

moxifly75• 5 months ago

Interesting point on Israel pushing for the monarchy to come back.

Democracy in the middle-east does not result in Israel or US aligned governments, but the monarchies have proven more interested in preserving their autocratic dynasties and quite easy and eager to work with Israel and the US to preserve themselves.

JanisErdmanis• 5 months ago

This is unlikelly because Iranian regime is going to execute false flag operations against their people to steer public opinion in their favour.

MagicMoonlight3• 5 months ago

Not if the US kills the whole regime. They certainly have the firepower. And Israel has the intelligence.

pphysch4• 5 months ago

There is virtually zero recent historical precedent supporting your wish, and plenty of precedent suggesting the opposite will happen.

tlogan4• 5 months ago

I wonder why that is.

We saw significant success with Germany, Japan, South Korea, and other countries in the past. But more recently, similar efforts seem to have ended in failure.

y-c-o-m-b2• 5 months ago

I know a lot of the responses are skeptical (for good reason), but the opportunity is certainly there. The pro-regime population is aging out, with the more secular youth taking hold. There has always been an appreciation for American culture (specifically) amongst the general population. This was true when I was there in the 80s and increasingly more true over the decades since. Concessions by the regime over the hijab laws is one example of the society drifting more towards Western norms. Alcohol and western style parties are way more present in the society than ever before. Basically, the foundation for it is certainly there.

Furthermore if Reza Pahlavi does manage to integrate into the society, he will most certainly use his business and political ties here in the US to westernize the society. He's said as much. Some of the more well known Iranian-American business leaders here in the US (CEO of Uber, CEO of intuit, founder of eBay for example) I'm sure would contribute to work towards this also.

There will be push-back from rural areas (just like anywhere else) and the regime will not go away overnight, but the possibility does exist for this outcome. I think the biggest roadblock would be America and Israel intentionally preventing this outcome for the reasons that suit them geopolitically.

EDIT: should have mentioned that after decades of widely known voter manipulation and more or less "mock" elections, Iranians would be happy to finally participate in actual democratic processes where their votes and voices matter

jjfoooo43• 5 months ago

This scenario always imagines that the people getting bombs rained down on them will somehow determine that their actual friends in the world are those dropping the bombs.

Even accepting this, how exactly are these peaceful, western friendly civilians going to withstand a war better than their country's army?

It's very depressing to see this playbook credulously trotted out yet again. When has this worked?

tootie3• 5 months ago

We literally just went through this with Venezuela. They replaced the dictator with the assistant dictator. The Iranian face of regime change making the rounds in Western media is the son of the last Shah.

sharadov4• 5 months ago

I can't believe that people are so naively optimistic - it's not too long that we fought endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to what end?

The Taliban ruling Afghanistan and an unstable coalition in Iraq.

You know how much we spent? $5.8 to $8 trillion.

robbies• 5 months ago

And that the result will be Iran becoming a democracy that fully joins the global community.

You can hope that (and I can hope that), but the powers that are driving this military action completely do not care about this outcome. Which makes it exceedingly difficult for me to think this will happen.

I know the US proxies keep blabbering about 'regime change', but there's zero intentionality behind the political work to do that. My guess is balkanization, which won't really go how the US/Israel wants it to go

cc-d• 5 months ago

We all saw this coming decades ago, they weren't exactly subtle.

globemaster992• 5 months ago

Peace president ah? American terrorists never learn to mind their own business in their own country. Where are all the MAGA clowns?

How exactly attacking Iran make their country great? Murdered million children in Iraq and now they started their terrorism in Iran.

tim33312• 5 months ago

Some Iranian kids in Iran celebrating, I think https://x.com/shadygrooove/status/2027667467456442730

I-M-S6• 5 months ago

I know of at least 80 Iranian kids today who aren't in position to celebrate.

toxik• 5 months ago

I don't think this is terrorism, that's not what the word means. It's a clear and open act of war, so in many ways much worse, but somehow terrorism is a scarier word.

nicce• 5 months ago

but somehow terrorism is a scarier word.

It is, because it might impact normal citizens. Nobody has ever invaded US so coensequences of real war are unknown to most.

globemaster992• 5 months ago

Murdering million children in Iraq, now attacking school in Iran, 2 million people dead in Ukraine, regime change operations across the world, military and economic interventions across the world.

English is not my first language. If you got a better word other than American terrorists and American terrorism, then suggest me one.

coreyh14444• 5 months ago

I had several conversations IRL about how they wouldn't vote for Kamala because she was the more "pro war" candidate. smdh

Bender26• 5 months ago

Peace president ah?

Yes, the USA and Israel are putting an end to a 47 year war of Iran vs. Everyone. There will be casualties on every side, that is war. Iran made the middle east into a giant PVP server. That is coming to an end.

steveBK123• 5 months ago

My theory was they were waiting for the finale of Tehran on Apple TV

ourmandave2• 5 months ago

Again, little to no information for the US public. No approval from Congress.

Calling for the people to rise up. You can't bomb your way into regime change. Are we supplying arms to groups?

Is there a plan beyond pointless death and regional chaos the president would like to share?

guerrilla24• 5 months ago

Are we supplying arms to groups?

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.

aucisson_masque2• 5 months ago

Or Irak.

The list of exemple is long enough, no need to add Iran.

We already had ISIS thanks to the mess in Irak and Libya.

etc-hosts8• 5 months ago

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.

Ylpertnodi3• 5 months ago

...In a couple of weeks.

gruez• 5 months ago

No approval from Congress.

To be fair that's been the case for decades. Trump's hardly new in this.

qup3• 5 months ago

Needs to notify Congress within 48 hours (and he did beforehand), and has 60 days before needing Congress to declare war.

wat100005• 5 months ago

For better or for worse, the War Powers Resolution acts as standing approval.

Natfan• 5 months ago

is there a plan...

probably not, outside of making more revenue for raytheon

parineum• 5 months ago

No approval from Congress.

I don't support it but there's blanket approval from Congress from the AUMF.

pphysch4• 5 months ago

And when was that approval passed?

richk449• 5 months ago

This authorizes an attack on Iran?

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This joint resolution may be cited as the ‘‘Authorization for Use of Military Force’’. SEC. 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES. (a) IN GENERAL.—That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

kenjackson3• 5 months ago

A plan? Actually there is. This is all part of the backdrop to end US elections. We can’t have elections in the middle of a major war. And if we do have them we must greatly constrain how they are held while we are at war.

idontwantthis• 5 months ago

That's an absurd stretch with no basis in fact or history.

muwtyhg• 5 months ago

We can’t have elections in the middle of a major war.

Yes we can? Is there any provision in the US Constitution that allows delay of election because of war? We have had elections during most of our recent wars (Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan).

Trump could definitely try. Or pull an emergency card out of his ass. But it doesn't mean there is any provision for cancelling elections because of this 'war' with Iran (which they aren't even calling a war, but a "special combat operation" to get around congress having the war powers)

jjk1663• 5 months ago

We had elections during WW2, the largest war of all time; we had elections during the civil war when confederate troops were 30 miles from DC. An air campaign in the Middle East is just another tuesday by comparison. This theory falls flat on its face - it is not a reasonable pretext for suspending elections, and this administration does not bother with creating pretexts for its power grabs.

actionfromafar• 5 months ago

So, I heard Epstein started a war in the middle east...

jimt12342• 5 months ago

I've been trying to avoid the news for a little over a year now. I needed a detox. ... Is this true? That is, are there legitimate proposals to cancel or constrain the November elections in any significant way? Or, is this all speculation?

petre8• 5 months ago

What, is the US Ukraine? Is it under attack?

thisisit• 5 months ago

Campaign to move the headlines from Epstein to something else, perhaps?

underdeserver• 5 months ago

I am saddened by all of these comments.

Will not one of you try to steelman this decision? Or do you truly, fully believe the entire US government and intelligence complex, supported by roughly 50% of your compatriots, are warmongering baboons?

jfengel• 5 months ago

Ok, fine.

Israël is threatened by Iran. Iran has been working on nukes. There have been negotiations but they haven't been definitive yet, and Iran has never been a trustworthy negotiating partner anyway. That is why this President ditched the last round of agreements.

That's the steelman. Reality is that half my compatriots are warmongering baboons.

techblueberry6• 5 months ago

I think it's possible it's a good decision (As with most wars in the middle east, I think hubris is playing a heavy role and we're underestimating the risks involved) but I think I'm in the minority and this is _not_ supported by 50% of my compatriots.

I don't know if by 50% you're talking about left vs right, but I'm center left, and a decent number of center-left thought leaders support this action. I think the people who support this are a relatively narrow 25-30% of remaining neo(lib|con)s in the center, and the more left and the America First right crowd hate this. My guess would be loosely speaking Trump's base hates this more than the typical HN poster. Tucker Carlson for instance will be way more against this than anyone here.

eleventyseven3• 5 months ago

I am saddened by your gullibility. Your first instinct is to trust this administration? Who has repeatedly showed utter contempt for the very idea of truth, the constitution, the rule of law, and science, merely because half of American voters are brainwashed?

This administration's arguments do not deserve to be steelmanned.

rcbdev2• 5 months ago

Yes.

Greetings from the European Union.

tryauuum2• 5 months ago

If assume the goal of the US administration is to really limit the weapons of mass destruction

then why the previous peacefull attempts were thrown out? I remember Iran agreed to limit the production or ivite the people to watch their actions, the US sanctions were even lifted in 2015. But then later reiplemented by the US for some reason.

unrelated to all of this, I don't understand what's the problem is with a country developing nuclear weapons. US can nuke Iran with ICBMs anyway if they try to use them?

whearyou5• 5 months ago

What are the chances that HN is getting astroturfed these days? Are mods strict about it?

I lots of relatively new accounts coming with what seems to me extreme, but altogether pop-culture acceptable opinions

fsflover• 5 months ago

You should point out the exact posts.

Bender26• 5 months ago

What are the chances that HN is getting astroturfed these days?

Happens all day every day. There are many AI agents starting discussions and replying to comments. This is how The Crappening started on 4chan. Some of them are just future grifters. Some are training AI (I have replied to a few for fun). Some are propaganda bots. Those running the bots will reply with something equiv to Errrm Proof?? when called out. Without root I can not empirically prove it and the botters know that.

I predict about 2 years before the site will have more AI noise than real people. I have no idea what can be done about it aside from tracking the bots and reporting them via email to Daniel and I don't know what he could or would do. HN has always been very hands off which is mostly good but not for this scenario. If nothing is done it will just be bots grifting and AstroTurfing one another to the benefit of Google SEO and most of the humans would eventually go elsewhere with exception of some die-hards that refuse to recognize the situation.

worldsavior• 5 months ago

Maybe this comment is also AI.

nananana9• 5 months ago

Anonymous internet forums will very likely die out if inference gets another order of magnitude cheaper.

The only solutions are (1) private forums, (2) strict verification or maybe (3) some sort of "web of trust" thing, if someone manages to make it user friendly and not suck.

danielparsons• 5 months ago

we need to start a paywalled private HN forum

hightrix2• 5 months ago

100%. Especially on topics involving countries with vast online propaganda operations.

agentifysh• 5 months ago

Not necessarily I see these green handles that just seem to pop up out of nowhere and they always have characteristically triggering/cynical tone to them, which usually triggers some type of reaction

Could be that these are being farmed but at a state level it might be easier to outright purchase aged accounts

kilroy123• 5 months ago

I've seen lots of suspiciously new accounts hoping into these conversations. Saying questionable things.

dyauspitr3• 5 months ago

With things like Openclaw it’s kind of trivial to game forums now. You just have to tell an agent to “post arguments for/against this perspective on this forum.” Give it a few talking points to include if you want to get specific and let it run. Specify the tone so it sounds realistic. It’s literally going to do everything else essentially forever or until you run out of tokens. Comments in a forum are dirt cheap so it’s also going to be very cheap.

nonethewiser5• 5 months ago

Youd have to do a lot of work to make sure it's only a few short sentences, non-specific, and ultra-quippy though.

I mean I'm sure it can be done but if you ask an LLM to produce comment reply without more instruction it's going to write something a lot more thoughtful, respectful, and substantive than a forum user would.

ActorNightly12• 5 months ago

I mean does it matter?

At this point, lines have been drawn. In conservative land, everything conservative is good, everything liberal is bad. So the only sane position to take is the complete opposite.

For example, if you see someone self proclaimed liberal being critical of liberals, that person is probably a conservative or its a conservative bot.

spaghetdefects4• 5 months ago

That's not totally true when it comes to Zionism though. Much of the left and the right are united against Zionism. It's the older center liberals and right that are united in being pro-Zionism.

fortzi10• 5 months ago

Seems like you’re describing political polarization. Just on one side though.. Why?

sosomoxie4• 5 months ago

[flagged]

shykes19• 5 months ago

Unfortunately they visit this site regularly and police it against honest reporting about their crimes.

I think that's called "disagreeing".

fortzi10• 5 months ago

Luckily you don’t get to regulate who can participate in public discourse

erxam• 5 months ago

Do keep in mind that basically every single Israeli goes through military training, which includes training in psychological counter-warfare (hasbara). Even the 'cool' Israelis you know in real life are spies at the beckon-and-call of Israel 24/7.

What I'm trying to say is that this is an intentional part of their strategy. They know what they're doing.

They probably have a small detachment assigned to every popular-ish website. For the long tail, they have bot farms.

UltraSane5• 5 months ago

What does Zionist actually mean when Israel as a Jewish State has existed for 77 years and seems likely to exist for at least as long. I'm genuinely asking here. People use the word all the time and I just don't understand what they are trying to say.

whearyou5• 5 months ago

Posted by a 48 day account that mostly talks about Israel.

This has felt like a super postmodern interaction

tomhow4• 5 months ago

This is in breach of the HN guidelines.

Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.

People on both sides of any topic are welcome to participate here and express their points of view, as long as they respect the guidelines. If you see users who "police it against honest reporting about their crimes", you should email us to point it out, as the guidelines ask.

Making sweeping claims like this without including any links so we can know what you're talking about serves only to poison HN.

nonethewiser5• 5 months ago

HN doesnt have any defense against it, and the userbase is small enough that it would be highly effective.

jjtheblunt4• 5 months ago

language question: what does astroturfed mean here? (i know that astroturf is artificial grass.)

locusofself• 5 months ago

It's when people (or bots) acting in bad faith make a lot of noise to make it seem like there is a strong support for some (usually bad) position. It' a play on the term "grassroots". Fake grassroots=astroturfing

kgwxd3• 5 months ago

Which ones are the pop-culture acceptable opinions?

yadaeno• 5 months ago

Take a look at the Iran subreddit.

jmward015• 5 months ago

Your account, while 10 years old, only has comments from the past year. It is becoming very hard to tell what accounts are real and which are fake. Social proof of account activity pre-llm (usable) could be a very important thing in the future.

rudhdb773b• 5 months ago

Social proof of account activity pre-llm (usable) could be a very important thing in the future.

It's already common practice to buy aged accounts with good reputations, so even that doesn't mean much.

whearyou5• 5 months ago

I think I have comments going back about 10 years no?

oefrha• 5 months ago

I used to report quite a number of political/ideological-only accounts to mods through email. They're explicitly against the single purpose account rule. They usually got banned or at least warned.

Over the past year or two I reported a number of accounts that are basically pro-Israel-only, they post a ton of comments to any Israel-related thread and either nothing else or very little of anything else. Mods refuse to ban or even warn them, apparently because emotions run high, there are too many of them and there's priority in punishing the most egregious content so relatively mild ones get a pass, and if mods are being accused of being-antisemitic and they ban a bunch of these they would reinforce the image, etc. These are from memory and not exact quotes.

I don't buy it, and I've stopped reporting things to mods. (To be abundantly clear, anti-Israel-only accounts should 100% be banned too, but at least I haven't noticed as many as them. Any other kind of politics-only account should be purged too if the rules are to be believed.)

whearyou5• 5 months ago

So interesting I've mostly noticed the fishy seeming anti-Israel accounts, I think mostly because what they say gets up so upvoted

tomhow4• 5 months ago

A large proportion of the software that runs HN exists to detect inorganic activity. It's quite obvious to us when significant numbers of comments are made in support of a particular agenda by new accounts or old accounts without regular, normal participation on HN.

Also, it's against the guidelines to allege or speculate about astroturfing (as is anything that is tangential to the primary topic), but we welcome emails (hn@ycombinator.com) from anyone who notices anything that seems suspect, and we're happy to investigate.

Rover2228• 5 months ago

Iranians are celebrating, btw. This is what they have been dreaming of. This is their chance to finally take their country back, and I think they'll do it.

I can't think of a better use of US military power in the world than to take out this terrible regime and let the Iranians do the rest. This isn't Iraq or Venezuela. People saying that we can't bomb our way into regime change apparently didn't follow the protests and massacres very closely a couple months ago. Iranians were begging for help so that they could topple the regime.

reliabilityguy37• 5 months ago

People saying that we can't bomb our way into regime change apparently didn't follow the protests and massacres very closely a couple months ago. Iranians were begging for help so that they could topple the regime.

Of course people didn’t follow. Did you see any major news outlet doing live coverage of the events like they did for October 7th? No.

dfedbeef• 5 months ago

Probably not the dead ones

ozgrakkurt5• 5 months ago

The news of bombs falling on schools must be really exhilarating to people. Especially for the ones that have children! Finally they have a chance to throw away their government and replace it with a military junta

Rover2228• 5 months ago

Good job parroting Iranian propaganda

judahmeek• 5 months ago

They didn't celebrate the last time Israel & the U.S. attacked them & they aren't celebrating now.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2026/01/trump-kham...

Successful regime change requires a far more significant investment in soft power than America & Israel's current right-wing leadership would even conceive of.

broadsidepicnic2• 5 months ago

Taking their country? Unlikely.

I sincerely hope I'm wrong, but if 89,95M of 90M people are just looking at from the sides for years, I'm still not seeing that this would motivate people to revolt. Same thing as with the young elephant growing up with the chains.

Rover2228• 5 months ago

Did you just totally miss the millions of people protesting the other month or what?

hypeatei2• 5 months ago

"Iran tried to interfere in 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump, and now faces renewed war with United States"[0]

So we're going to war with Iran based on election fraud conspiracies from MAGA?

0: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1161475725227...

stackedinserter3• 5 months ago

Go America, go Israel, fuck ayatollahs.

Ylpertnodi3• 5 months ago

Un-redact the Epstein files.

gnarlouse2• 5 months ago

Classic playbook. This war will last the next three years. Trump admin will leak information and let Iranian cells in US cause terrorism, giving them the excuse to install domestic mass surveillance locally. They'll use that as a means to stay in power.

gnarlouse2• 5 months ago

what's going on in the epstein files that he's bombing iran

globalnode• 5 months ago

this global escalation will be the reason elections are cancelled.

aanet• 5 months ago

Apropos of nothing in particular, back in the previous millennium, UNIX (and Linux) had the `fortune` command. It would spew out a "cookie" - a pithy one-/two-liner, usually funny, often thought-provoking, and sometimes offensive (when invoked with `fortune -o`)

I had added it to my `motd`; it would give me a chuckle every time I logged in.

One of the cookies I recall:

A nuclear war can ruin your whole day. [1]

And that's what I think of when I see this absurd new war.

[1] http://fortunes.pbworks.com/w/page/14107138/politics

chinathrow2• 5 months ago

That regime in the US. It is truly baffling.

LarsDu88• 5 months ago

The whole Anthropic DoW tiff was related to this, and folks were downvoting me even minutes before the first strike for making the connection:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189853#47191060

evan_• 5 months ago

They’re calling it Operation Epstein Fury

throwaway20222• 5 months ago

Even HN is astroturfed to heck and filled with bots. The ratio of good faith informed dialog to Reddit like slop in these threads is wild. The old HN would never have such “obvious” black and white answers.

martythemaniak• 5 months ago

If Americans would like to better understand what it is that they actually did last year: https://www.liberalcurrents.com/killing-for-content/

jmward015• 5 months ago

Ok. So we have just taken out all of Israel's foes with force. They are safe now right? We can stop supporting them militarily in every way now right? They no longer need any weapons, intelligence support, defense support, etc, right? If this is the right path to their long term safety then this must be true.

nailer4• 5 months ago

Iranian regime was the entire middle east’s foe, including Irans. Speak to your local Persian.

I-M-S6• 5 months ago

If by local you mean an émigré, they might be the worst person to ask.

markus_zhang3• 5 months ago

For sure a lot of people in Iran hate the regime. But given their 40 or so years of rule, I doubt they could achieve that without a strong basis.

And yeah Iranians out of Iran definitely hate it too.

catlikesshrimp6• 5 months ago

To take a break from breaking havoc in Gaza, there was an israeli incursion into Lebanon (which included a fantastic supply chain attack) Then they tried to pick a fight in Siria for some BS reason (intervening Siria for protecting some jew friendly faction inside Siria, a la Russia protecting russiansnin Ukraine), then went to Iran, then continued milling Gaza, and now we are back at Iran, again.

No, support will never falther.

graeme• 5 months ago

intervening Siria for protecting some jew friendly faction inside Siria, a la Russia protecting russiansnin Ukraine

It was the Druze and they were actually being killed.

"The friend of my enemy deserves to die" is not an attitude you have to adopt, even if you disagree with the Israeli response to the killings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_2025_massacres_of_Syrian...

frakkingcylons• 5 months ago

Have you never seen the word Syria spelled out?

muzani3• 5 months ago

Pretty sure killing all the enemies just turns the rest of the world into enemies.

PessimalDecimal• 5 months ago

This is the gist of Israel's problem. Successful tactically, but no long term strategy. They're increasingly isolated. As Baby Boomer voters lose power in US, Israel's isolation will become more obvious.

ergocoder6• 5 months ago

To be fair, nobody likes Iran

aizk• 5 months ago

America / Israel's partnership goes a lot deeper, it started in the cold war, and it's quite interesting. It heightened significantly after 9/11, where Israel spied (and still does) on all of America's enemies to prevent another 9/11, doing a lot of dirty work, giving intel as part of a partnership. I can't imagine both countries ever wanting to get rid of that partnership. This part of the equation is often left out in the conversation, presumably because it's hush hush ultimately.

elAhmo• 5 months ago

AIPAC says hi

keernan• 5 months ago

Rep Raskin said his search of the unredacted Epstein files found Trump listed more than one million times.[1]

And just days ago it was discovered that documents involving FBI investigations into allegations by one or more victims against Epstein and Trump were not released by the DOJ.[2]

I trust Trump still has time to testify to Congress about his connections to Epstein like others have been doing.

Meanwhile yesterday:

>>the U.S. designated Iran as a “state sponsor of wrongful detention” and demanded that the country release any Americans in its detention.[3]

You just can't make this shit up.

1: https://www.axios.com/2026/02/10/trump-epstein-files-jamie-r...

2. https://www.npr.org/2026/02/24/nx-s1-5723968/epstein-files-t...

3. https://au.news.yahoo.com/us-designates-iran-state-sponsor-0...

CrzyLngPwd• 5 months ago

USA, bombing for peace since bombs were invented.

amelius3• 5 months ago

With maps:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g0pnnj8xyo

nasaeclipse• 5 months ago

All I can do is sit here and sigh.

The thing is, as sudden as this seems to the general public, this is something that takes months of planning. Having served in the Navy for eight years, I know that this kind of thing doesn't necessarily happen overnight. That doesn't mean it _couldn't_. The US military certainly does have the ability to plan a strike very quickly.

But, most likely, this was planned behind closed doors. Based on the reports, I bet this was probably planned shortly after Trump took office. It just so happens that it's a good distraction from the Epstein files.

I hate the direction this country's government is taking. It sucks. I just want to leave at some point. I don't want my family to grow up here anymore.

lukan5• 5 months ago

Of course there was a military plan for this since months, but that does not mean that plan was surely to be executed. (A likely option I assume)

What I find worrying is the standard tactic seems to be to do negotiations, let the other side assume there is hope for a other solution - and then attack hard all of a sudden. Already the second time. It might be effective short term, but it erodes what is left of trust negotiating with the US.

tim33312• 5 months ago

This one isn't all bad. From Trump's recent speech:

Finally, to the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand

It may not work but it's not a bad objective. My mum in the UK is a Bahai and a lot of those are refugees from Iran because they say be nice and tolerant and the Iranian government imprisons or kills them for so doing. Blasphemy etc. The are not a good lot.

QuantumAtom• 5 months ago

I don't understand. I was under the impression that this a tech site. Why is there so much politics on here? What is all the rage bait. Are these bots or people who have inject politics and rage bait into every single place. Whatever you think of the Israel/Palestine conflict, maybe there can be places or website where some of us just want tech articles and interests.

blahgeek• 5 months ago

Same. And I don’t understand why you are being down ranked. The HN guideline specifically stated that political news are not welcome, yet, this is the post with most comments in the front page. I didn’t come to HN for this

sriram_malhar3• 5 months ago

Why is no one calling it the Epstein War?

avazhi• 5 months ago

Iran: We are going to get nukes at any cost and wipe Israel and the United States off the face of the earth. It is our destiny.

Israel and the US: You serious?

Iran: Yes.

...

Iran, after being bombed to a slightly earlier point of the Stone Age than they've spent the past ~50 years: We are working hard trying to find the guy responsible for this.

FAFO, as they say. Meanwhile, literally the entire Middle East and the rest of the world besides Russia will be happy to see these clowns gone. Bon voyage.

anjel3• 5 months ago

If some chinese samples of this unstoppable carrier killer made its way to Iran already.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/iran-nears-deal-buy-supe...

Also, the US News media silence on this is noteworthy.

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=reuters+cm-302+missile&ia=w...

chasd002• 5 months ago

If Iran sinks a carrier then the us congress will declare an actual war and that will seal Irans fate. Also, seal the fate of hundreds of thousands of lives.

randunel3• 5 months ago

So US citizens like you actually expect other countries to accept being attacked by you without as little as defending themselves?

tim33312• 5 months ago

According to the Times of Israel Khamenei has been killed. I think that already counts as actual war.

jopsen7• 5 months ago

I'm not so sure.

I think Trump would taco.

A carrier is fair game, especially when you shoot first.

There wouldn't be a coalition with half of Europe. Because of bridges burned.

reese_john• 5 months ago

This seems to be a short range (290km) anti-ship cruise missile. Definitely not an unstoppable carrier killer

What could threaten US carries are China’s DF-21D/26D – anti-ship ballistic missiles with reported ranges of > 2000km – and Iran is not getting them

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/chinas-carrier-killer...

wnevets• 5 months ago

Not a single person who claim Trump is a peace president will admit they are wrong.

Bender26• 5 months ago

Trump is indeed a peace president. He is shutting down the middle east PVP server. Iran has been attacking everyone for 47 years. That era is coming to an end. It's time to make Iran great again.

dennysora• 5 months ago

I think everyone should stop being so nervous. How many times have the U.S. and Israel hit Iran over the past two years? And people still aren’t used to it? On Monday, the market might not even drop. In fact, a lot of people may want to buy the dip. Everyone hypes up the fear, the big players wait to scoop up bargains, and then what happens? Not only does it not fall, it rebounds instead. How many times have we seen this script already?

And Iran? Every single time it’s just performance art. I’m already sick of watching it.

Besides, Iran has been heavily sanctioned and blocked by the U.S. and Israel for so many years that its impact on the global economy is basically zero. So what the hell is there to dump over?

Oil prices? Venezuela’s situation has already been dealt with. The U.S. can produce its own oil, Canada still has plenty of oil, and Russia is still selling at bargain-bin prices. Iran and the surrounding major oil-producing countries are barely even moving in sync, and there’s basically no real incentive for anything major to happen to oil. So why the hell would the market drop?

As for all this fearmongering, I’d say go harder. Seriously, make it as apocalyptic as possible, so my gold can moon, I can pick up cheap Taiwan stocks, and short crypto, so I can completely clean out all the people panicking in fear.

NoLinkToMe7• 5 months ago

Iran is the 5th biggest oil producer in the world. Not only that, it can cut-off the strait of Hormuz which 5 of the top 10 oil producers ship their oil through, including Saudi Arabia which is the nr 1 exporter.

In earlier strikes Iran signaled it did not want to escalate. It warned US bases prior to its attack, and sent small symbolic strikes to pacify their base, while trying to de-escalate through all diplomatic channels.

This time it looks different, Israel/US have targetted their president and political (religious) leader. There is hardly a more existential threat you can imagine for the current regime, so it will do everything in its power to strike back. If you put someone with his back on the wall and start a firing squad, don't expect a non-response.

Beyond that it's the middle east, last time US tried regime change we had two decades of violence with 1m Iraqi's dead and ISIS rampaging in the region. It's a human catastrophe that people are worried about, not just stock markets. To come here and talk about your stocks is insane.

comfysocks• 5 months ago

Not the first time Trump has wagged the dog.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_dog

helaoban2• 5 months ago

"Trump Rolls the Dice on Regime Change" (1)

What a headline. Anybody else have this on their election day bingo card?

Midterms should be a blood bath though, right? Right? (insert Anakin meme).

1. https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/trump-rolls-the-dice-o...

shykes19• 5 months ago

There are reports that Ali Khamenei has been killed:

https://www.iranintl.com/en/202602280738

sharadov4• 5 months ago

Meanwhile Pakistan launched airstrikes on Afghanistan

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/feb/27/pakistan-...

consumer4513• 5 months ago

Tough news day for anyone who has a difficult time holding contradictory ideas in their mind. Pretty sure that includes myself.

On the one hand, Trump is awful for the USA, and the world.

On the other hand, there is a possibility that the freedom-wanting citizens of Iran finally have a slight chance of achieving their goal.

The chance of something truly positive happening seems low. However, as someone who has, for years, watched what happens in Iran via the lens of https://old.reddit.com/r/newiran, I am allowing myself the slightest amount of hope. Iranian people deserve it.

Of course, there is a large chance of this blowing up into something really bad for everyone.

edit: This Ukrainian is currently live streaming with OSINT, and his takes align with many of my actual realist thoughts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUdeA0zukq4

cdrnsf2• 5 months ago

Destroying alliances that took decades to build and then initiating multiple ill-advised military incursions is quite the play.

cdrnsf2• 5 months ago

I can't name a single thing this administration has done well, or competently and this is no exception. Unless, of course, you count killing innocent people between military action, aid cuts and ICE.

moogly2• 5 months ago

    [T]he War Department will not be distracted by democracy building interventionism, undefined wars, regime change, climate change, woke moralizing and feckless nation building.
    
    - Pete Hegseth, December 6, 2025[1]

[1]: https://www.war.gov/News/Speeches/Speech/Article/4354431/rem...

dzonga• 5 months ago

one thing though - food and oil supplies at risk - if the airspace and shipping lanes remain shut down for 1 month or more.

people in the Middle East will literally starve

and china will run out of fuel - though they've gone mostly electric

simonsarris• 5 months ago

though they've gone mostly electric

Who on earth told you this?

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...

namuol• 5 months ago

It’s high time for regime change in the US.

nullorempty• 5 months ago

Does this contribute to global warming? Are the governments waging war paying their CO2 tax?

I'd think they emit slightly more than a cow's fart.

AtlasBarfed• 5 months ago

War is the ultimate distraction.

Clinton bombed Serbia for 1/100th the severity of the Epstein files.

throw_rust• 5 months ago

I thought the forever wars and quarrels with people we know nothing of were over?

abdelhousni• 5 months ago

Saving private Epstein has a nice ring to it

xannabxlle• 5 months ago

I'm tired of Israelis killing innocent people

fortzi10• 5 months ago

Then wake up

csense• 5 months ago

Israel and the US told Iran "Don't try to develop nukes or else." Iran tried to develop nukes and got bombed. Then Iran tried to develop nukes again.

PotUS told Iran "Don't shoot the protestors or else." Iran shot the protestors.

Iran chose to FAFO; "Or else" has now arrived.

I don't like Trump and based on past bad experiences I'm not sure it's wise for the US to start a war in the Middle East.

I feel sorry for the civilians caught in the middle, e.g. the ~50 Iranian schoolkids that ate a wayward bomb. People can legitimately criticize the US and Israel for that mistake, but if they do they need to also criticize Iran ~200 times harder for killing tens of thousands of protestors on purpose.

I don't agree with people who think this war is illegitimate or Iran isn't the bad guy here.

yodsanklai2• 5 months ago

Then Iran tried to develop nukes again.

Do we know that for a fact? or is it a lie just like Saddam's WMD.

PotUS told Iran "Don't shoot the protestors or else." Iran shot the protestors.

Do you think Trump genuinely care about the protestors in Iran?

I don't agree with people who think this war is illegitimate or Iran isn't the bad guy here.

Things can be more nuanced than the "good" versus the "bad" guys and bombing countries isn't always the best solution.

lucketone7• 5 months ago

Civilian applications require uranium at 3-20% enrichment.

Iran had 60% enriched uranium (hundreds of kilograms)

Weapons require 90%.

Not exactly there, but way past electricity generation.

broadsidepicnic2• 5 months ago

I think I should refrain from commenting political posts, but this one has a possibility of being something major.

However, looking at how the US president has abused power, silenced those who are against the draft dodging crybaby and his league of human trafficking millionaires, I feel this is yet another try to move focus from US domestic probs to something else. I see no honesty or greater reason for this attack or justification for it. While I'm no fan of Iran's autocratic regime, US is slipping towards into being one, as well.

US president has now active war operations in Venezuela, soon lightning the Cuba situation on fire as well, not to forget planning to take Greenland and Canada, too.

That's honestly not bad for the president of peace. Nobel committee should take a look at nominating this guy for a peace prize

steve-atx-76002• 5 months ago

It will easily be a victory for him. He's smarter that non-maga give him credit for. Bomb Iran with overwhelming force & it will be a media victory. That doesn't mean that it's right or wrong or that there won't be consequences. But, in the short term it will be a political win. Democrats are already taking the bait and saying that they are outraged that the supreme leader was whacked w/out congressional approval.

neves3• 5 months ago

https://bsky.app/profile/70sbachchan.bsky.social/post/3mfwas...

Does anybody can trust andnegotiate with USA?

Waterluvian• 5 months ago

I suspect the Venn diagram of those who: 1) are aggrieved that America covers the bulk of the cost of world policing and 2) believe that America has a natural right to unilaterally determine foreign regime change, overlap greatly.

I knew it was foolish, but I really was somewhat hopeful that the American regime’s stated doctrinal shift was true and they really were going to fuck right off from the world stage, even just a little. Naturally, we suffer the opposite.

nemo44x• 5 months ago

One leader was kidnapped and brought to America to face justice and another was killed in his own base and not a single American died.

Wow.

bigyabai10• 5 months ago

and not a single American died.

That's an interesting scope of collateral damage.

duxup• 5 months ago

https://x.com/realdonaldtrump/status/255784560904773633?s=46

yanhangyhy2• 5 months ago

Many people might wonder why China doesn't step in to help Iran. From our perspective, we realized a long time ago that the Iranian government is too weak and fundamentally untrustworthy. They would sell out China's interests to curry favor with the United States, so China's cooperation with Iran is kept as free from political entanglements as possible. War is wrong, but at most China will sell some weapons—it won't get too involved."

mna_• 5 months ago

Based on recent events, China seems to be an all-round an unreliable ally. China did nothing for Venezuela when Maduro was kidnapped by the US, did nothing for Pakistan when India conducted airstrikes on Pakistani military bases, and now is doing nothing for Iran. You guys seem more like ruthless businessmen who are in it to solely make money and nothing else, and in that regard you guys are very similar to the Americans.

yanhangyhy2• 5 months ago

kind of true.

rKarpinski• 5 months ago

but at most China will sell some weapons—it won't get too involved.

In the Middle-east theatre, no telling what will happen in East Asia.

tsoukase• 5 months ago

After 5000 years of human organised war history we are here:

* the weapons can annihilate the world and extinguish civilization in a few hours

* a massive asymmetry between the enemies in any metric is evident

* the strikes and battles are surprisingly of small scale, targeted and not decisive

Why on earth isn't the diplomacy used to solve the status after an imminent warning to make Iran an extension of Indian ocean with weapons of mass destruction?

yfw• 5 months ago

Theres no one more at war with the us people than billionaires

jusonchan81• 5 months ago

Using the game theory, shouldn’t the nice, forgiving and not being a pushover the winning strategy?

I’ve always felt the US won trust and respect with these characteristics. It looks like we are now shifting strategy and I wonder where this will lead to.

tim33312• 5 months ago

The US seems in practice to be doing more of a bomb the bad guys strategy. I guess that could work? It's a bit random - Trump's instinct seems to include attacking Canada and Denmark but he doesn't get buy in for those thankfully.

SegfaultSeagull• 5 months ago

The fall of the Iranian regime would be a strategic turning point not just for the Middle East, but globally.

For more than four decades, the Islamic Republic has been one of the primary state sponsors of terror. Hezbollah is not an organic Lebanese movement — it is an Iranian creation. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are sustained by Iranian money and weapons. The Houthis’ missile and drone capabilities exist because Tehran supplied and trained them. Shi’a militias in Iraq killed hundreds of Americans with Iranian-provided EFPs. Today, Iranian Shahed drones are striking Ukrainian apartment buildings.

This is not passive instability. It is deliberate, systematic export of violence as state policy.

At the same time, the regime has consistently pursued a nuclear capability while publicly calling for the destruction of Israel and “death to America.” Even if one assumes deterrence logic would hold, a nuclear umbrella for Iran would dramatically increase its freedom to escalate proxy warfare across the region.

The downstream geopolitical effects are not hypothetical. Without Iranian drone and missile transfers, Russia’s ability to sustain certain strike campaigns in Ukraine would be materially degraded. Without heavily discounted Iranian oil shipments, China’s energy calculus shifts, particularly under sanctions pressure. Without Tehran’s funding pipelines, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis become far more constrained actors rather than semi-state militaries.

There is also precedent for preventive action against nuclear programs. Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq’s Osirak reactor (Operation Opera) was widely condemned at the time; decades later, most analysts agree it delayed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions. Likewise, Israel’s 2007 strike on Syria’s Al-Kibar reactor (Operation Orchard) prevented the Assad regime from developing a covert nuclear capability. Both operations were controversial in the moment and regarded as stabilizing in retrospect.

Preventing a hostile regime from acquiring nuclear capability has historically proven wiser than managing it after the fact.

Yes, regime change carries risk. So does allowing the world’s most aggressive revolutionary theocracy to entrench itself indefinitely while arming proxies from Beirut to Sana’a to Moscow. The status quo is not stable. It is violent by design.

If a regime that funds terrorism on three continents, arms Russia during a European war, and openly seeks nuclear weapons is dismantled, history is unlikely to judge that harshly.

It will likely judge it as overdue.

squibonpig2• 5 months ago

Sorry if it isn't but there are multiple markers of AI writing.

braebo2• 5 months ago

Someone do the US next we need regime change before the election seasons martial law plunges us into civil war.

GypsyKing716• 5 months ago

Is there any need for developers in Iran for remote work to help the country's efforts to reconnect to the outside world?

The United States and Israel have launched a major attack on Iran

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