> I never mentioned a Western-backed dictatorship, the Shah...
You stated:
> Iran's leadership changed post-1979...
The pre-1979 leadership was the Shah, who was effectively a Western-backed dictator. You conveniently ignore this fact. Why don't you want to acknowledge it?
Your statement, "Iran's leadership changed post-1979...", also conveniently glosses over the fact that there was a revolution that overthrew this Western-backed dictatorship. The leadership just didn't passively change.
> My argument is simple: 60%+ of Iranians want regime change. 69% want the government to stop funding foreign proxy wars. The regime has a 12% approval rating. Iranians want something else. I cited polling data showing what Iranians want themselves. You can read the links I provided. The policies of the current regime are deeply unpopular.
I would point out that polling reliably in Iran is, for obvious reasons, very difficult but even if we accept for argument's sake the notion that the majority of Iranians want something other than the current regime, which seems entirely logical, that doesn't actually tell us what they want to replace it with.
Your own source (GAMAAN) has stated:
"The demand for a democratic government is widespread among Iranians, though at the same time, a notable portion of society shows an inclination toward individual authoritarianism. No political or civil figure currently enjoys majority support in society. Each political cluster represents only a portion (between 5% to 35%) of the population, and no single opposition force is capable of representing the full diversity present within the country."
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202508212335
The implication of this is that Iranians don't hold a singular view of what a replacement to the Islamic Republic should look like. There is no guarantee that whatever comes next would be significantly "better" and many reasons to believe that if the Islamic Republic falls under certain circumstances, it could lead to a very precarious situation for Iranians, the region and the world.
> I did not advocate for a Western-backed dictatorship. The false choice you're presenting (Islamic republic vs Western puppet state) isn't the one Iranians are making. Iranians are not asking for a Western-backed dictatorship. Iranians are saying "stop spending our money blowing up the Middle East and end this pointless forever war with Israel". Iranians want a different foreign policy.
The problem is that you haven't articulated a specific, realistic vision for what would come next. I might be wrong but the just of your comments seems to suggest that you believe the US and Israeli war against Iran will led to something good when there's scant evidence of that.
Ironically, on the other side of the equation, a majority of Americans have been asking their government for more than two decades to stop spending their money blowing up the Middle East.
The US (and Israel) launched this war against Iran and it's deeply unpopular with the majority of Americans.
If you think it's "utterly insane" for Iran to spend 2-3% of its GDP (tens of billions of dollars a year) on its military spending, surely you must think it's "utterly insane" that the US spends a similar percentage of its much, much larger GDP (amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars a year) on its military every year. Us military spending is more than double China's, and China is the country with the next highest level of military spending in the world. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are homeless, and millions more struggle to afford basic necessities like healthcare and housing.
> You also accused me of not caring about Iranians, while also defending a regime that 88% of Iranians disapprove of. That's a strange way to show you care about Iranians.
It's completely disingenuous to suggest that anything in my comment defended the Iranian regime. I don't know if you care about Iranians or not, but if you do, you surely would be very concerned that the person claiming he wants to liberate them has threatened to destroy "every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran" (a war crime) and end their "whole civilization" (genocide).
You want the Iranian government to build infrastructure, invest in its people and build the economy. That sounds good. But I fail to see how the US and Israel destroying Iran's infrastructure, killing innocent civilians and suffocating the Iranian economy is going to lead to that.