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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."

> 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.

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.

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.

> 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...

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

old men's*

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.

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.

“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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I have a very hard time understanding how the US is attacking Iran because of Christianity. I cannot even anticipate the hypothesis.

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."

> 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.

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.

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.

> Buddhism

No one lives up to their ideals on a day-to-day basis:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide

Fallacy.

(Wrong) Knife fight: a fight between people about knives

(Right) Knife fight: a fight between people using knives

Religion poisons everything.

It had nothing to do with religion, that element is used to distract.

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).

> 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...

>leads to regime change for all those involved

Including for the U.S. and Israel?

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.

Iraq? Afghanistan? Vietnam?

I don't think any of these were short.

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

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

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.

u sweet summer child.

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.

> 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

I think this is probably happening, but also there are just a ton of actual Zionists and Israelis in the tech industry. Unfortunately they visit this site regularly and police it against honest reporting about their crimes.

100%. Especially on topics involving countries with vast online propaganda operations.

HN doesnt have any defense against it, and the userbase is small enough that it would be highly effective.

I've seen lots of suspiciously new accounts hoping into these conversations. Saying questionable things.

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.

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.

You should point out the exact posts.

Mods are explicitly rolling back the no-political advocacy guideline - Dan G has said he’s explicitly unflagging political content which is why HN is filled with left wing activism.

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.

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.

Bored of Peace.

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

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.

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

yes, yes. Poor Iran.

> 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.

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.

Iranian regime was the entire middle east’s foe, including Irans. Speak to your local Persian.

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.

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).

Iran regime launched a missile during their last ditch attack on every country in the middle east and it fell on a school.

> Iranian media

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?

You really believe that news that comes from Iran media at this point?

And the tens of thousands of Iranians murdered for protesting? Did you care about them?

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.

Some Iranian kids in Iran celebrating, I think https://x.com/shadygrooove/status/2027667467456442730

War is the ultimate distraction.

Clinton bombed Serbia for 1/100th the severity of the Epstein files.

> 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.

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?

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.

You sure? Seems like a war for no reason is hardly going to get popular support.

Nothing like a war to push Epstein out of the headlines.

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.

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...

You really think the elections will happen

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

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, ...

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.

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

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

This is unlikelly because Iranian regime is going to execute false flag operations against their people to steer public opinion in their favour.

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?

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.

> 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.

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

There is virtually zero recent historical precedent supporting your wish, and plenty of precedent suggesting the opposite will happen.

the drones just have to fly slower for the kids and schools…”Easy, you just don't lead 'em so much”

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

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.

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

s/politics/optics/

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.

> 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.

> is there a plan...

probably not, outside of making more revenue for raytheon

>No approval from Congress.

To be fair that's been the case for decades. Trump's hardly new in this.

Campaign to move the headlines from Epstein to something else, perhaps?

...In a couple of weeks.

> No approval from Congress.

I don't support it but there's blanket approval from Congress from the AUMF.

And not to negotiate with the US in good faith.

North Korea looks a lot less unhinged now.

Israel has nuclear weapons. Did it keep them safe?

"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

Those who paid any attention to Ukraine already figured it out

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-...

Considering the rationale for this war that kind of seems false

This has nothing to do with nuclear weapons. The only problem here is that iran has petrol. Thats it.

100% -- unfortunate, sad, and entirely predictable

Israel has a lot of nukes (while they pretend they don't) and that does not prevent them from being attacked.

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.

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...

> though they've gone mostly electric

Who on earth told you this?

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...

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

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

since 1992!

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).

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.

Ill doers are illdeemers.

> 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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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)

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.

> 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

> Israel did not mass bomb civilians

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

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

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.

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...

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

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.

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.

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?

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

Yeah, regime change and no nukes.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

How do you know?

Can't have Gaza have relief for a second!

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

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?

> Death to....

Is the translation "Down with....".

I believe that’s related to Israel’s genocide of Palestinian children and America’s unending unconditional support of the same.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

I think that's because nobody believes for one second that these strikes are a retaliation for that.

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.

Maybe because nobody believes in the "exporting democracy" excuse anymore

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

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.

Yeah, the:

>Trump urges Iranians to keep protesting, saying 'help is on its way'

stuff if pretty relevant.

If you think Trump did that because he cares about Democracy I have some news for you regarding the Jan 6 rioters...

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.

Rookie numbers. Wait until they got liberated

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

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

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...

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.

They stopped doing that, really.

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

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

Weapons of mass destruction, as usual.

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).

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

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.

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

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.

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…

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

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.

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

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

I think its only just getting started

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Isn't Iran also famous for destroying landmarks that don't glorify the official state religion?

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.

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

I suspect a fourth column.

You know the answer ;-)

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.

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

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

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

Always have been.

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

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

Nope. In Jerusalem.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

>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.

> The president of peace btw.

Europe is to blame, according to him.

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.

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.

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

Pax Romana peace.

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...

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.

Do you support the Iranian regime?

> 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.

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"

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.

Surely this was approved by the Board of Peace. /s

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...

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.

>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

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

Russians invading Ukraine is NOT the same at all. You lefties are running Reddit and now HN. I am done. So done.

"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.

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.

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

> 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.

Probably not the dead ones

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.

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

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

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

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?

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.

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

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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!

What makes you think that?

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

>USA can't stop engaging in wars no?

Eisenhower explained why in his farewell address.

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.

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.

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...

Nothing more important than dow 50,000

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

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.

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

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

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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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

>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.

> 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?

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.

let's try to keep to credible sources here eh

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.

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

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

/sought/ to interfere.

See Stephen Fry on attempted chemistry.

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

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

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.

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

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

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...

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

>“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.

> 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."

> 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.

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”.

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

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

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.

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

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-...

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.

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.

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.

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

> What would (Xi) Jinping do?

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

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

Do you have any proof for this?

Love the Burzum reference, but it's low quality on a discussion forum. Downvoted.

>> 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...

Most people's definition of freedom isn't being bombed by the US and Israel.

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.

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)

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?

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.

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

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

WW3 started with the invasion of Ukraine.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

Yes.

Greetings from the European Union.

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.

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.