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On March 03 2026 05:57 Doublemint wrote:
never heard of this Mark Dice, skimming through his Wikipedia I did not miss all that much.
He is part of the Trump base that thinks October 7, 2023 was a false flag operation.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1202 Posts
On March 03 2026 00:39 Billyboy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2026 07:24 ChristianS wrote:On March 02 2026 06:12 Billyboy wrote:On March 02 2026 06:00 ChristianS wrote:On March 02 2026 04:30 Billyboy wrote:On March 02 2026 03:57 ChristianS wrote:On March 02 2026 02:45 Billyboy wrote:On March 01 2026 09:30 ChristianS wrote:On March 01 2026 09:02 Ze'ev wrote:
Just keep kill every damn political and military leader until the regime collapses for lack of authority and organizational capacity. Whack a mole. Theoretically this works, right? Your issue is with the government, not the people, so with smart enough targeting you should be able to force surrender without invading, right? Trouble is, if you think about everybody in a country and rank them in descending order of how much their death would contribute to regime change, and then rank them in descending order of how much ability/resources they have to avoid being hit by foreign bombs, you’re likely to find the two lists look pretty similar. Blowing up schools and hospitals is a lot easier than blowing up command and control points or secret bunkers. Occasionally you get lucky and take out a high-ranking general or politician but modern states are extraordinarily resilient to having a handful of leading officials evaporate here or there. And as long as your goal is regime change, no matter who you kill, whoever takes their place is not incentivized to give you what you want. We first started bragging about “smart bombs” in the 90s, said they were gonna revolutionize our ability to do targeted bombings. Then we spent the rest of the decade bombing Iraq periodically. That was pretty effective at, for instance, keeping large sections of the country without power indefinitely, but never threatened to approach regime change. Only invading did that. I hesitate to focus exclusively on the efficacy criticism here – we should always keep in mind the massive humanitarian costs of civilian bombings that make them immoral. That would be true even if they *were* somewhat effective at achieving military objectives. But I think it’s also worth emphasizing the pointlessness of it. I agree on much of your analysis on this topic. But one factor you tend to be drastically underestimating, or even missing is how much the supreme leader and IGRC are hated. It was only a few weeks ago that there was massive protests against them and 10000 ish civilians died at their hands. There is like 95% (maybe 99%) happy that all those high ups died. If a bunch of civilians start dying in the conflict that could change. But so far it looks like the Americans and Israelis are valueing Iranian life a lot more than the IGRC ever has. That’s fine, I have no expert knowledge of Iranian public opinion but I’m sure you’re right ( except your last sentence, that’s silly). But I don’t think it’s hard to understand why getting massacred by your own government doesn’t become any less shitty if you’re also getting bombed by Americans. Iranians have had a pretty rough time for the last century, generally either at the hand of their own government or (directly or indirectly) at the hand of Americans. In the most horrific moments in their recent history, no positive outcome was possible because the Americans wouldn’t allow it. I sincerely hope they find a more humane system in my lifetime but American bombs are an impediment to that outcome, not an assist. Sadly it is true, not because the US and Israel care so much, but because of how awful the Iranian gov is. You are vastly under estimating how many civilians the Iranian kills, tortures, locks away for any number of "crimes". There is a reason so many refugees were cheering about this. Your last sentence may be true, or may not be. I certainly do not know. But it is a ignorant take to think you with such little knowledge know so much more than Iranian refugees. At some point being a little more thoughtful than America and Israel are always the bad guys is useful. Especially when there are plenty of bad guys in the world. It is not hard to look up how awful this regime is, and how awful the regimes it has supported externally are. I'm sure you can find plenty of sources that you trust that can go into detail. I also think the 30000 people that died protesting would have loved these airstikes to have happened earlier, when promised. Every Iranian civilian death is a tragedy, every IGRC member, and political member dead is a victory. + Show Spoiler +On March 02 2026 03:33 Yurie wrote:
How does the city vs countryside split in Iran look like? Or the educated vs the uneducated? We know educated city people hate the regime. Does the same apply to the farmers etc? They are 75% urban. The popularity is hard to determine in the sense they don't do polling because if you said anything not extremely positive you be put in jail or killed. But the massive protests where they knew a bunch of people were going to get gunned down a disappeared suggests extreme unpopularity. If you trust those who have left, the only ones who support the government are those in it and directly benefiting which is a super small percentage. No, it’s silly because currently the Americans and Israelis value Iranian lives at 0. Under ordinary circumstances they would care a *little* about Iranian lives because death counts create international outcry, but the current Americans and Israelis have made very clear they don’t give a shit about that, maybe even consider it a badge of honor. Bombs are expensive, so they’re not going out of their way to kill every civilian they can, but they do not value their lives. Meanwhile the Iranian government, like any totalitarian government, views its people as a resource to be harnessed and controlled. That means they’re prepared to expend considerable resources to police, surveil, terrorize, imprison, or whatever else they think will keep people productive and compliant. To read that situation as “the Americans and Israelis value their lives more” is silly; the Iranian government views them as “our people” (emphasis on the possessive) while the bombers assign them no value or importance of any kind. Agreed that “the Americans and Israelis are always the bad guys” is a framing with limited utility. But try to take it one step further and recognize that “good guys and bad guys” in general is only slightly less limited. It leads to morally deficient sentiments like: Every Iranian civilian death is a tragedy, every IGRC member, and political member dead is a victory. I say this not because I doubt the Iranian government are “bad guys” but since you seem convinced I do, I’ll speak by analogy to a faction everybody should agree was evil (wouldn’t that be nice), the Nazis. I think defeat of the Nazi regime was a huge victory, and to the extent killing a Nazi soldier was helping achieve that goal I’ll call it a subvictory. If that soldier was personally complicit in atrocities I’d even call it a form of justice, albeit a shoddy one. But I would not say “every dead Nazi was a victory.” The Allies did plenty of Nazi-killing (shooting enemies trying to surrender, as one of the more polite examples) that did not further the war effort, and that is (IMO) a black mark on the otherwise heroic cause they undertook. Then Iran values them less than zero. America is not actively targeting and killing civilians, that makes them better. You even point it out, America is not using their bombs actively on civilians. Iran is using much of the IGRC bullets, bombs and other less deadly forms of repression on the people. That was probably broad strokes. But the whole IGRC is not the Iranian army, they are separate and only loyal to the supreme commander not the people. They are not the NAZI's they are the SS. I'm pretty sure there are cases where they were not awful, I doubt that rises to 1%. You’re missing the point, and I’m not totally sure what your motivation is. Imagine two cars are coming towards me on the road. The first driver has absolutely no care whether I live or die – he won’t even brake or swerve if I’m in his path – but has no desire to steer his car just to hurt me. The second driver is planning to pull over in front of me, get out, club me over the head, throw me in the trunk, chain me in a storage container, and force me to manufacture cheap crafts for him to sell on Etsy. Which one “values my life more”? The second one, I think pretty obviously. To him I’m a resource to be exploited, to the other I’m literally nothing. But that mostly shows “which values my life more” is not a useful framing for comparison. They’re each different types of threats to my well-being. But if the former starts setting off explosions in the storage park I’m chained up in, mostly so he can brag to his friends about it, that’s not *good news* for me. If he happens to kill the second guy in the process, I might cheer, even if his son will just take over there Etsy slave empire; fuck that guy, I’m glad he’s dead. But it certainly doesn’t make “second guy is the bad guy, first guy is the good guy“ a useful understanding of the situation. Your analogy is incredibly flawed compared to what is actually happening. You have 3 groups A B and C. B is in the middle and is a huge number, A and C are on the outsides with far fewer numbers but all the power. C has been using its power for a long time to kill, rape, torture and jail B. C takes there tank and runs over as many of B as possible. A on the other hand is only interested in destroying C. If people from B end up getting run over on the way, they are not slowing down. Well you are correct that on a 1-1 ratio there isn’t a big difference for those who die. But to the survivors there is a pretty big one as A is killing people they hate as well and C is only killing those they love. And then of course the ratio, at least now, is not 1-1 it’s closer to 1-1000. Then the next part you seem to be missing is that Iranians are willing to sacrifice themselves to over throw this ultra repressive theocracy. I know this because hundreds of thousands protested with rocks against guns and grenades. To the point that 30,000 or more died. So it is not hard to see why many of them would be happy to see some bombs get dropped on those who have inflicted so much pain on them. I’m not saying that the Iranian people all the sudden love the US. But in the short term there is an enemy of my enemy thing going on.
Your analogy doesn't take into account that B has all the guns in large part due to C's previous actions, when they toppled D, who was very popular with A (well the predecessors of A).
To complicate it, C is being egged on by E, who very obviously wants to destroy A and B's ability to function as an organised society (though admittedly whether A or C come out on top, the result IS likely to be hostile to E). So even if B was selectively taken out, C and E are going to go after any sort of attempt A has to govern the country.
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On March 03 2026 06:26 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2026 05:57 Doublemint wrote:
never heard of this Mark Dice, skimming through his Wikipedia I did not miss all that much.
He is part of the Trump base that thinks October 7, 2023 was a false flag operation.
it's a big tent alright... Qanon was at least partly funny for how fantastically stupid some of it is/was.
that's just heinous.
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The thing about tariffs is that we told you guys that this would be an issue the minute Trump implemented them. Like input costs have spiked for the entirety of Trump’s term.
(Yes I’m aware there was a spike mid 2024 but prices remained elevated throughout 2025 as though it became the new normal. Biden’s economy was awful and Trump has basically maintained the same weaknesses like a pathetic job market that is shrinking in every field but health care while introducing further inflationary pressures.)
The problem now is that if Trump decides to eliminate his tariffs, is there any expectation for input prices and the prices of packaged goods to actually come *down*? Like I dabble in the DIY loudspeaker market, is there any expectation for Madisound to half the price of the components if Trump decides to rewind tariffs? They’re not going to pass the full discount back to the consumer, especially when Seas out in Norway doesn’t do the same because, you know, profit margins. Tariffs provided cover for every major business to juice their profit margins or cover their costs, none of these guys are going to *lower* their profit margins if the market has accepted these prices.
Maybe in 8 months time we can also be on the same page on the jobs market being solely held up by gains in the healthcare industry.
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The scary part is.. that's how people saw the nazis. As a bunch of idiots that couldn't be more insincere or more incompetent or even more openly corrupted by greed and self loathing - compensated by visions of grandeur
And well things turned out pretty bad - especially because normal people start marching to the beat once absurdity becomes the new "normality".
>550 people dead from US and Israel strikes<
A temporary distraction from the Epstein files, and another state of war for Netanyahu, who eliminates a "bunch of brown people" to force retaliation strikes, which make israelis afraid and vote for the guy who kills "brown faced people", aka Bibi.
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On March 03 2026 06:54 KT_Elwood wrote:
A temporary distraction from the Epstein files, and another state of war for Netanyahu, who eliminates a "bunch of brown people" to force retaliation strikes, which make israelis afraid and vote for the guy who kills "brown faced people", aka Bibi.
If we want to be a tad conspiratorial, creating an unsafe environment for Jewish people by linking Jewish identity with support for Israel is exactly what guys like Netanyahu want. To avoid a Rhodesia situation where the country went abandoned precisely because it got too dangerous for people to accept, he’s making the entire world dangerous for the Jewish community while promising Israel as the only government that isn’t anti-Semitic.
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On March 03 2026 06:39 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2026 00:39 Billyboy wrote:On March 02 2026 07:24 ChristianS wrote:On March 02 2026 06:12 Billyboy wrote:On March 02 2026 06:00 ChristianS wrote:On March 02 2026 04:30 Billyboy wrote:On March 02 2026 03:57 ChristianS wrote:On March 02 2026 02:45 Billyboy wrote:On March 01 2026 09:30 ChristianS wrote:On March 01 2026 09:02 Ze'ev wrote:
Just keep kill every damn political and military leader until the regime collapses for lack of authority and organizational capacity. Whack a mole. Theoretically this works, right? Your issue is with the government, not the people, so with smart enough targeting you should be able to force surrender without invading, right? Trouble is, if you think about everybody in a country and rank them in descending order of how much their death would contribute to regime change, and then rank them in descending order of how much ability/resources they have to avoid being hit by foreign bombs, you’re likely to find the two lists look pretty similar. Blowing up schools and hospitals is a lot easier than blowing up command and control points or secret bunkers. Occasionally you get lucky and take out a high-ranking general or politician but modern states are extraordinarily resilient to having a handful of leading officials evaporate here or there. And as long as your goal is regime change, no matter who you kill, whoever takes their place is not incentivized to give you what you want. We first started bragging about “smart bombs” in the 90s, said they were gonna revolutionize our ability to do targeted bombings. Then we spent the rest of the decade bombing Iraq periodically. That was pretty effective at, for instance, keeping large sections of the country without power indefinitely, but never threatened to approach regime change. Only invading did that. I hesitate to focus exclusively on the efficacy criticism here – we should always keep in mind the massive humanitarian costs of civilian bombings that make them immoral. That would be true even if they *were* somewhat effective at achieving military objectives. But I think it’s also worth emphasizing the pointlessness of it. I agree on much of your analysis on this topic. But one factor you tend to be drastically underestimating, or even missing is how much the supreme leader and IGRC are hated. It was only a few weeks ago that there was massive protests against them and 10000 ish civilians died at their hands. There is like 95% (maybe 99%) happy that all those high ups died. If a bunch of civilians start dying in the conflict that could change. But so far it looks like the Americans and Israelis are valueing Iranian life a lot more than the IGRC ever has. That’s fine, I have no expert knowledge of Iranian public opinion but I’m sure you’re right ( except your last sentence, that’s silly). But I don’t think it’s hard to understand why getting massacred by your own government doesn’t become any less shitty if you’re also getting bombed by Americans. Iranians have had a pretty rough time for the last century, generally either at the hand of their own government or (directly or indirectly) at the hand of Americans. In the most horrific moments in their recent history, no positive outcome was possible because the Americans wouldn’t allow it. I sincerely hope they find a more humane system in my lifetime but American bombs are an impediment to that outcome, not an assist. Sadly it is true, not because the US and Israel care so much, but because of how awful the Iranian gov is. You are vastly under estimating how many civilians the Iranian kills, tortures, locks away for any number of "crimes". There is a reason so many refugees were cheering about this. Your last sentence may be true, or may not be. I certainly do not know. But it is a ignorant take to think you with such little knowledge know so much more than Iranian refugees. At some point being a little more thoughtful than America and Israel are always the bad guys is useful. Especially when there are plenty of bad guys in the world. It is not hard to look up how awful this regime is, and how awful the regimes it has supported externally are. I'm sure you can find plenty of sources that you trust that can go into detail. I also think the 30000 people that died protesting would have loved these airstikes to have happened earlier, when promised. Every Iranian civilian death is a tragedy, every IGRC member, and political member dead is a victory. + Show Spoiler +On March 02 2026 03:33 Yurie wrote:
How does the city vs countryside split in Iran look like? Or the educated vs the uneducated? We know educated city people hate the regime. Does the same apply to the farmers etc? They are 75% urban. The popularity is hard to determine in the sense they don't do polling because if you said anything not extremely positive you be put in jail or killed. But the massive protests where they knew a bunch of people were going to get gunned down a disappeared suggests extreme unpopularity. If you trust those who have left, the only ones who support the government are those in it and directly benefiting which is a super small percentage. No, it’s silly because currently the Americans and Israelis value Iranian lives at 0. Under ordinary circumstances they would care a *little* about Iranian lives because death counts create international outcry, but the current Americans and Israelis have made very clear they don’t give a shit about that, maybe even consider it a badge of honor. Bombs are expensive, so they’re not going out of their way to kill every civilian they can, but they do not value their lives. Meanwhile the Iranian government, like any totalitarian government, views its people as a resource to be harnessed and controlled. That means they’re prepared to expend considerable resources to police, surveil, terrorize, imprison, or whatever else they think will keep people productive and compliant. To read that situation as “the Americans and Israelis value their lives more” is silly; the Iranian government views them as “our people” (emphasis on the possessive) while the bombers assign them no value or importance of any kind. Agreed that “the Americans and Israelis are always the bad guys” is a framing with limited utility. But try to take it one step further and recognize that “good guys and bad guys” in general is only slightly less limited. It leads to morally deficient sentiments like: Every Iranian civilian death is a tragedy, every IGRC member, and political member dead is a victory. I say this not because I doubt the Iranian government are “bad guys” but since you seem convinced I do, I’ll speak by analogy to a faction everybody should agree was evil (wouldn’t that be nice), the Nazis. I think defeat of the Nazi regime was a huge victory, and to the extent killing a Nazi soldier was helping achieve that goal I’ll call it a subvictory. If that soldier was personally complicit in atrocities I’d even call it a form of justice, albeit a shoddy one. But I would not say “every dead Nazi was a victory.” The Allies did plenty of Nazi-killing (shooting enemies trying to surrender, as one of the more polite examples) that did not further the war effort, and that is (IMO) a black mark on the otherwise heroic cause they undertook. Then Iran values them less than zero. America is not actively targeting and killing civilians, that makes them better. You even point it out, America is not using their bombs actively on civilians. Iran is using much of the IGRC bullets, bombs and other less deadly forms of repression on the people. That was probably broad strokes. But the whole IGRC is not the Iranian army, they are separate and only loyal to the supreme commander not the people. They are not the NAZI's they are the SS. I'm pretty sure there are cases where they were not awful, I doubt that rises to 1%. You’re missing the point, and I’m not totally sure what your motivation is. Imagine two cars are coming towards me on the road. The first driver has absolutely no care whether I live or die – he won’t even brake or swerve if I’m in his path – but has no desire to steer his car just to hurt me. The second driver is planning to pull over in front of me, get out, club me over the head, throw me in the trunk, chain me in a storage container, and force me to manufacture cheap crafts for him to sell on Etsy. Which one “values my life more”? The second one, I think pretty obviously. To him I’m a resource to be exploited, to the other I’m literally nothing. But that mostly shows “which values my life more” is not a useful framing for comparison. They’re each different types of threats to my well-being. But if the former starts setting off explosions in the storage park I’m chained up in, mostly so he can brag to his friends about it, that’s not *good news* for me. If he happens to kill the second guy in the process, I might cheer, even if his son will just take over there Etsy slave empire; fuck that guy, I’m glad he’s dead. But it certainly doesn’t make “second guy is the bad guy, first guy is the good guy“ a useful understanding of the situation. Your analogy is incredibly flawed compared to what is actually happening. You have 3 groups A B and C. B is in the middle and is a huge number, A and C are on the outsides with far fewer numbers but all the power. C has been using its power for a long time to kill, rape, torture and jail B. C takes there tank and runs over as many of B as possible. A on the other hand is only interested in destroying C. If people from B end up getting run over on the way, they are not slowing down. Well you are correct that on a 1-1 ratio there isn’t a big difference for those who die. But to the survivors there is a pretty big one as A is killing people they hate as well and C is only killing those they love. And then of course the ratio, at least now, is not 1-1 it’s closer to 1-1000. Then the next part you seem to be missing is that Iranians are willing to sacrifice themselves to over throw this ultra repressive theocracy. I know this because hundreds of thousands protested with rocks against guns and grenades. To the point that 30,000 or more died. So it is not hard to see why many of them would be happy to see some bombs get dropped on those who have inflicted so much pain on them. I’m not saying that the Iranian people all the sudden love the US. But in the short term there is an enemy of my enemy thing going on. Your analogy doesn't take into account that B has all the guns in large part due to C's previous actions, when they toppled D, who was very popular with A (well the predecessors of A). To complicate it, C is being egged on by E, who very obviously wants to destroy A and B's ability to function as an organised society (though admittedly whether A or C come out on top, the result IS likely to be hostile to E). So even if B was selectively taken out, C and E are going to go after any sort of attempt A has to govern the country.
You got all the letters mixed up which makes it pretty confusing to parse through. But I believe you are saying that the US is a big reason it is how it is there. And you won’t find any disagreement from me. And that you don’t believe the US or the current Israeli government have any interest in helping to build a good functioning government in Iran, which is also something I agree with.
So not sure where you are going with this, or if you just missed the point of the conversation or simply didn’t read it.
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On March 03 2026 04:10 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2026 03:59 Manit0u wrote:On March 03 2026 02:00 KT_Elwood wrote:
Bush Junior got about 5-10 times more US Soldiers killed per opponent casualty than Bush senior - who was smart enough to not leave an occupational force.
I am not sure what the US is to gain from all of this. Will they install another Shah? Will Baron Trump just become Prince of Persia?
The only reasonable explanation is: Netanyahu has Epstein knowledge that Trump also fears... A war in the middle East might be the right way to not have midterm elections.
Did you really think Trump had any real plan for that? In the recent interview for NYT when they asked for his plans for a transition of power there he said he hoped that Iranian military forces would simply hand over their weapons to the people... Hesgeth placed the burden for the defeat of the Iranian state on the Iranian people. Show nested quote +We hope the Iranian people take advantage of this incredible opportunity. President Trump has been clear: Now is your time. If, in your own public propaganda, you're presenting the adversary as having all the power over how the war ends, that's not a sign of high confidence. That's laying the groundwork for declaring victory and withdrawing leaving behind an Iran that is still standing. That's laying the groundwork for agreeing to a retreat if they're willing to go back to not fucking up the area. Typically your theory of victory doesn't rely on the enemy simply giving up. Trump's does. The "its up to the Iranian people to take back their country" would have made a lot more sense if this action happened while the population was actually running mass protests.
not waiting until those protests had been brutally put down before acting.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1202 Posts
On March 03 2026 07:17 Billyboy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2026 06:39 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On March 03 2026 00:39 Billyboy wrote:On March 02 2026 07:24 ChristianS wrote:On March 02 2026 06:12 Billyboy wrote:On March 02 2026 06:00 ChristianS wrote:On March 02 2026 04:30 Billyboy wrote:On March 02 2026 03:57 ChristianS wrote:On March 02 2026 02:45 Billyboy wrote:On March 01 2026 09:30 ChristianS wrote:
[quote]
Theoretically this works, right? Your issue is with the government, not the people, so with smart enough targeting you should be able to force surrender without invading, right?
Trouble is, if you think about everybody in a country and rank them in descending order of how much their death would contribute to regime change, and then rank them in descending order of how much ability/resources they have to avoid being hit by foreign bombs, you’re likely to find the two lists look pretty similar. Blowing up schools and hospitals is a lot easier than blowing up command and control points or secret bunkers. Occasionally you get lucky and take out a high-ranking general or politician but modern states are extraordinarily resilient to having a handful of leading officials evaporate here or there. And as long as your goal is regime change, no matter who you kill, whoever takes their place is not incentivized to give you what you want.
We first started bragging about “smart bombs” in the 90s, said they were gonna revolutionize our ability to do targeted bombings. Then we spent the rest of the decade bombing Iraq periodically. That was pretty effective at, for instance, keeping large sections of the country without power indefinitely, but never threatened to approach regime change. Only invading did that.
I hesitate to focus exclusively on the efficacy criticism here – we should always keep in mind the massive humanitarian costs of civilian bombings that make them immoral. That would be true even if they *were* somewhat effective at achieving military objectives. But I think it’s also worth emphasizing the pointlessness of it. I agree on much of your analysis on this topic. But one factor you tend to be drastically underestimating, or even missing is how much the supreme leader and IGRC are hated. It was only a few weeks ago that there was massive protests against them and 10000 ish civilians died at their hands. There is like 95% (maybe 99%) happy that all those high ups died. If a bunch of civilians start dying in the conflict that could change. But so far it looks like the Americans and Israelis are valueing Iranian life a lot more than the IGRC ever has. That’s fine, I have no expert knowledge of Iranian public opinion but I’m sure you’re right ( except your last sentence, that’s silly). But I don’t think it’s hard to understand why getting massacred by your own government doesn’t become any less shitty if you’re also getting bombed by Americans. Iranians have had a pretty rough time for the last century, generally either at the hand of their own government or (directly or indirectly) at the hand of Americans. In the most horrific moments in their recent history, no positive outcome was possible because the Americans wouldn’t allow it. I sincerely hope they find a more humane system in my lifetime but American bombs are an impediment to that outcome, not an assist. Sadly it is true, not because the US and Israel care so much, but because of how awful the Iranian gov is. You are vastly under estimating how many civilians the Iranian kills, tortures, locks away for any number of "crimes". There is a reason so many refugees were cheering about this. Your last sentence may be true, or may not be. I certainly do not know. But it is a ignorant take to think you with such little knowledge know so much more than Iranian refugees. At some point being a little more thoughtful than America and Israel are always the bad guys is useful. Especially when there are plenty of bad guys in the world. It is not hard to look up how awful this regime is, and how awful the regimes it has supported externally are. I'm sure you can find plenty of sources that you trust that can go into detail. I also think the 30000 people that died protesting would have loved these airstikes to have happened earlier, when promised. Every Iranian civilian death is a tragedy, every IGRC member, and political member dead is a victory. + Show Spoiler +On March 02 2026 03:33 Yurie wrote:
How does the city vs countryside split in Iran look like? Or the educated vs the uneducated? We know educated city people hate the regime. Does the same apply to the farmers etc? They are 75% urban. The popularity is hard to determine in the sense they don't do polling because if you said anything not extremely positive you be put in jail or killed. But the massive protests where they knew a bunch of people were going to get gunned down a disappeared suggests extreme unpopularity. If you trust those who have left, the only ones who support the government are those in it and directly benefiting which is a super small percentage. No, it’s silly because currently the Americans and Israelis value Iranian lives at 0. Under ordinary circumstances they would care a *little* about Iranian lives because death counts create international outcry, but the current Americans and Israelis have made very clear they don’t give a shit about that, maybe even consider it a badge of honor. Bombs are expensive, so they’re not going out of their way to kill every civilian they can, but they do not value their lives. Meanwhile the Iranian government, like any totalitarian government, views its people as a resource to be harnessed and controlled. That means they’re prepared to expend considerable resources to police, surveil, terrorize, imprison, or whatever else they think will keep people productive and compliant. To read that situation as “the Americans and Israelis value their lives more” is silly; the Iranian government views them as “our people” (emphasis on the possessive) while the bombers assign them no value or importance of any kind. Agreed that “the Americans and Israelis are always the bad guys” is a framing with limited utility. But try to take it one step further and recognize that “good guys and bad guys” in general is only slightly less limited. It leads to morally deficient sentiments like: Every Iranian civilian death is a tragedy, every IGRC member, and political member dead is a victory. I say this not because I doubt the Iranian government are “bad guys” but since you seem convinced I do, I’ll speak by analogy to a faction everybody should agree was evil (wouldn’t that be nice), the Nazis. I think defeat of the Nazi regime was a huge victory, and to the extent killing a Nazi soldier was helping achieve that goal I’ll call it a subvictory. If that soldier was personally complicit in atrocities I’d even call it a form of justice, albeit a shoddy one. But I would not say “every dead Nazi was a victory.” The Allies did plenty of Nazi-killing (shooting enemies trying to surrender, as one of the more polite examples) that did not further the war effort, and that is (IMO) a black mark on the otherwise heroic cause they undertook. Then Iran values them less than zero. America is not actively targeting and killing civilians, that makes them better. You even point it out, America is not using their bombs actively on civilians. Iran is using much of the IGRC bullets, bombs and other less deadly forms of repression on the people. That was probably broad strokes. But the whole IGRC is not the Iranian army, they are separate and only loyal to the supreme commander not the people. They are not the NAZI's they are the SS. I'm pretty sure there are cases where they were not awful, I doubt that rises to 1%. You’re missing the point, and I’m not totally sure what your motivation is. Imagine two cars are coming towards me on the road. The first driver has absolutely no care whether I live or die – he won’t even brake or swerve if I’m in his path – but has no desire to steer his car just to hurt me. The second driver is planning to pull over in front of me, get out, club me over the head, throw me in the trunk, chain me in a storage container, and force me to manufacture cheap crafts for him to sell on Etsy. Which one “values my life more”? The second one, I think pretty obviously. To him I’m a resource to be exploited, to the other I’m literally nothing. But that mostly shows “which values my life more” is not a useful framing for comparison. They’re each different types of threats to my well-being. But if the former starts setting off explosions in the storage park I’m chained up in, mostly so he can brag to his friends about it, that’s not *good news* for me. If he happens to kill the second guy in the process, I might cheer, even if his son will just take over there Etsy slave empire; fuck that guy, I’m glad he’s dead. But it certainly doesn’t make “second guy is the bad guy, first guy is the good guy“ a useful understanding of the situation. Your analogy is incredibly flawed compared to what is actually happening. You have 3 groups A B and C. B is in the middle and is a huge number, A and C are on the outsides with far fewer numbers but all the power. C has been using its power for a long time to kill, rape, torture and jail B. C takes there tank and runs over as many of B as possible. A on the other hand is only interested in destroying C. If people from B end up getting run over on the way, they are not slowing down. Well you are correct that on a 1-1 ratio there isn’t a big difference for those who die. But to the survivors there is a pretty big one as A is killing people they hate as well and C is only killing those they love. And then of course the ratio, at least now, is not 1-1 it’s closer to 1-1000. Then the next part you seem to be missing is that Iranians are willing to sacrifice themselves to over throw this ultra repressive theocracy. I know this because hundreds of thousands protested with rocks against guns and grenades. To the point that 30,000 or more died. So it is not hard to see why many of them would be happy to see some bombs get dropped on those who have inflicted so much pain on them. I’m not saying that the Iranian people all the sudden love the US. But in the short term there is an enemy of my enemy thing going on. Your analogy doesn't take into account that B has all the guns in large part due to C's previous actions, when they toppled D, who was very popular with A (well the predecessors of A). To complicate it, C is being egged on by E, who very obviously wants to destroy A and B's ability to function as an organised society (though admittedly whether A or C come out on top, the result IS likely to be hostile to E). So even if B was selectively taken out, C and E are going to go after any sort of attempt A has to govern the country. You got all the letters mixed up which makes it pretty confusing to parse through. But I believe you are saying that the US is a big reason it is how it is there. And you won’t find any disagreement from me. And that you don’t believe the US or the current Israeli government have any interest in helping to build a good functioning government in Iran, which is also something I agree with. So not sure where you are going with this, or if you just missed the point of the conversation or simply didn’t read it.
Sorry, really hard to keep track of who's who with just the letters.
My point is, at best the US and Israel are seen by Iranians on the same terms as a natural disaster, that's happening while they are struggling against the regime. Natural disasters sometimes kill the people you are against too, you don't see natural disasters as the enemy of your enemy.
More realistically, they are not driven by personal hate for anyone in leadership of the regime, they just want to topple it, and the current strikes don't actually do anything to topple the regime. Iran have been very open that they have prepared redundancies in leadership in anticipation of losing key members of leadership. They knew the US was negotiating in bad faith, they said this was coming.
So this would be at best, an extra layer of chaos happening on top of their struggle. More likely, since the Iranians would be aware of their own history, it will be a nuisance, because IF the regime does get toppled, whoever comes out on top of the power struggle is going to have the stigma of illegitimacy attached to them due to US involvement, and this is merely hindering/delaying their attempt to have stable/legitimate governance, especially if Israel in particular doesn't want them to be a functioning self-governing state.
More than likely, if a dissident faction does take power, they know THEY are going to come under attack by the US/Israel. (though at least that would give them a sense of legitimacy)
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EPT
