241–250 of 586 posts
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Stronger how? The central command is gone.
They seem to be heading towards control of the strait, and the tolls from that could be a pretty good pickup for whatever new government forms?
The mental gymnastics of the Israeli "splainers" will never fail to amaze me. Israelsplainers perhaps.
I want to say that it's just Netanyahu who needs to go away but it's actually much, much more than just him. The tide is shifting methinks and rightly so (and finally).
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more like weaker iran than ever, now that the central command are gone, no leader at the top and no high level generals, the power at the hand of mid level thugs of the IRGC.
> no leader at the top and no high level generals, the power at the hand of mid level thugs of the IRGC One could argue a junta makes for a stronger Iran than the previous gerontocratic autocracy. Of course, we don't know. And I think it's silly to say Iran is stronger today than it was at the start of the war. But relative to America? At least in the region, I'd say one could argue that sensibly.
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Maybe this is a bit glib, but it's because attacking Iran (which everyone knew was a bad idea but which presumably seemed useful as a distraction) turned out to be a bad idea. So the administration is taking it out on Israel, who wanted us to do it.
Along these lines, but with a bit more: Israel definitely wanted us to do this, but they've been trying to sell US presidents on this for decades without success. MBS and the Saudis also want this, but you rarely read about that in the news; likewise with the UAE and quite a few others who have even been running their own direct strikes on Iran. The thing is, and I realize this is a rough climate to say this into: Je…
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And here's another article from a supporter of the JCPOA: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/an-unsatisfying-outcome-o... "The finale of the PMD controversy has been a long time coming. In November 2011, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano issued a detailed report — based on “overall credible” information from a “wide variety of independent sources” and the Agency’s own investigations — which concluded that, at least…
The Final Verdict
So, was Iran in compliance? Under the strict text of the JCPOA (2016–2019): Yes. They met the mathematical limits on active enrichment, which is why the UN, the IAEA, and the US State Department repeatedly certified their compliance during that period.
Under the spirit of the deal and international law: No. The premise of the JCPOA was that Iran had to come clean so the IAEA had a baseline to measure against. By hiding the Atomic Archive and keeping secret contaminated sites on standby, Iran proved they negotiated the deal in bad faith and violated their foundational NPT Safeguards.
I can live with that. So if you want to be "technical" sure. Either the agreement was bad and was upheld or it was good and was violated. Either way, Iran has acted in bad faith is the bottom line.
I will add that we don't have evidence that Iran was enriching Uranium in those secret sites during this period (one could even say we have some evidence they weren't). But that still doesn't change that they acted in bad faith and/or the agreement was bad.
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Maybe this is a bit glib, but it's because attacking Iran (which everyone knew was a bad idea but which presumably seemed useful as a distraction) turned out to be a bad idea. So the administration is taking it out on Israel, who wanted us to do it.
Or, because different factions in the regime are at odds with eachother - there's MAGA, who are a sock puppet for whatever Netanyahu wants, and who spearheaded the idiotic war with Iran, and there's the entire military, which thinks that this war is by far the dumbest thing they've been asked to do... This year. Did this announcement come from the military side of things, or the MAGA side of things?
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Stronger how? The central command is gone.
I'm Iranian, now living in the west. Allow me to chime in.. So Iran doesn't have a central command, they've developed a mosaic system where the 30+ chains operate autonomously. It is also multi-layered (IRGC, Artesh, Basij, etc). The multi-layered design was developed after the revolution, when they realized that the regime should be protected in case of internal mutiny. IRGC specifically was put in place to protect…
Iran would be highly unlikely to be able to prevent a ground invasion from the US since Iran's convention military capabilities are not particularly strong(hence why Iran often fights through proxies or other non-convention means). They can obviously cause a lot of damage but they would obviously lose that war if the US decided they had to remove the regime by force.
> What the West doesn't understand is that you can't really dismantle an ideology by dropping bombs on civilians. It didn't work in Afghanistan, it didn't work in IRAQ and it's not working with IRAN.
The problem is more that those with the ideology have all the weapons in Iran, so even though the regime and their ideology may be extremely unpopular it's still quite difficult to change things when the fanatics are the ones in power.
> The Shia martyrdom culture is misunderstood. I was not being hyperbolic when I said they have been praying for this war.
Yeah, unfortunately this likely is going to end up resulting in a ground invasion being inevitable at some point as Iran seems to be unwilling to abandon their goal of destroying Israel and nuclear weapons program.
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I'm Iranian, now living in the west. Allow me to chime in.. So Iran doesn't have a central command, they've developed a mosaic system where the 30+ chains operate autonomously. It is also multi-layered (IRGC, Artesh, Basij, etc). The multi-layered design was developed after the revolution, when they realized that the regime should be protected in case of internal mutiny. IRGC specifically was put in place to protect…
> They've prepared for this war for 47 years, _literally_ praying for it Is there an apocalyptic religious movement in Iran? Similar to American Evangelists hoping for Armageddon?
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Ah, so now none of the protesters were gunned down in the streets? How convenient. > As many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on Jan. 8 and 9 alone, two senior officials of the country’s Ministry of Health told TIME—indicating a dramatic surge in the death toll. https://time.com/7357635/more-than-30000-killed-in-iran-say-... Imagine infiltrating the Iranian surveillance camera network an…
Yeah, the 30k number is hogwash, but HR NGOs and OSINT volunteers worked up 7k dead in protest over 50 days, including 200 police/military forces, and a maximum of 18k death if you count the fights against separatist/freedom fighter/terrorists (depending on who you are aligned with, choose the description you like more)
I personally trust OSINT sources more than NGOs these days. I would wager that the security forces numbers are higher. I would also wager that the majority of the deaths were CIA and Mossad backed insurgents operating in the context of a wider, legitimate, civilian-led protest movement.
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I'm Iranian, now living in the west. Allow me to chime in.. So Iran doesn't have a central command, they've developed a mosaic system where the 30+ chains operate autonomously. It is also multi-layered (IRGC, Artesh, Basij, etc). The multi-layered design was developed after the revolution, when they realized that the regime should be protected in case of internal mutiny. IRGC specifically was put in place to protect…
> They've prepared for this war for 47 years, _literally_ praying for it Is there an apocalyptic religious movement in Iran? Similar to American Evangelists hoping for Armageddon?
It's more of a Jihad/Martyrdom ideology that's driving them.
> Similar to American Evangelists hoping for Armageddon?
That's a rather different issue, and luckily one that at least causes a lot less problems in practice. Sam Harris has some decent material on why this is(a lot of it comes down to important differences in doctrine).