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Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

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Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#361
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Saddam Hussain was a genocidal, fascist lunatic. Yes. > The world is certainly a better place with him gone. Even if America didn't handle the subsequent occupation too well, i would argue (and you are free to disagree) that Iraq was still better off. That is mad talk. Things have been much worse, so much worse for almost everyone in and around Iraq since that war. ISIS for one thing, was a direct result of the per…

It's like saying that russia is worse off after the collapse of communism and attributing that to capitalism.

the way I see it is that a country is better (or richer) if US allows them to trade with rich countries, not directly built on political systems, but political systems can affect being inclusive or exclusive of the global market.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#362
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm willing to bet that the majority of Americans can't connect the dots between the Iraq War and the creation of ISIS.

I bet. The middle east is more complicated than quantum mechanics. There are like gazillions of factions, local and foreign. You would think you can roughly group them into Israel+US, Russia, Shia, Sunni. They surely all hate each other. But there are still constantly shifting alliances. At some point Iran (Shia?) was funding ISIS (Sunni?) only to later team up with the US and Israel to fight them. Sometimes all thes…

> Iran funding ISIS

I’ll never understand the mentality of people who confidently yap about things that they don’t even have a basic understanding of. Iran didn’t fund ISIS, they are the ones who defeated it. ISIS was trying to destroy Assads government (Iranian ally), why would Iran fund them.

Seriously impressive level of ignorance and hubris on display here.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#363
post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you see an out for Khamenei et al? They can’t credibly dismantle their nuclear deterrent and expect to keep their heads. Israel and America cannot accept it, particularly now that its conventional defences have been shown ineffective Honestly, I don’t think the American people have the stomach for another Middle Eastern war, and Israel has shown in the past that if you recognize their right to exist in some form…

> the American people have the stomach for another Middle Eastern war, Sure they do. It's another faraway TV war. Trump is just pretending like he s hesitating to ease his fundamentalist MAGA base into it.

But the Democrats/liberals also don't want a war, especially one that vaguely supports Israel. Very few people in America are anything less than strongly opposed, just a few Iran hawks.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If ayatollah gets nuke regime becomes forever like in North Korea. And Israel may suffer first because nuke strike is the only chance for Iran right now. Hope they don't have it and ayatollah goes to Moscow.

The thing about nukes is that they're completely useless at defending against an internal revolution

Not completely. You're more likely to get external help to prop up your regime iff you have nukes and the external forces think it's better for your regime to stay in power than have a revolutionary force control the nukes. (Of course, if the external forces would rather the revolutionary force, then it's not so helpful)

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#365
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a coworker from Iran and he said every single computer just runs the same cracked Windows XP version translated into Farsi. Easy to exploit

No wonder they got into Natanz with stuxnet. I recommend the documentary Zero Days from 2016 to anyone remotely interested on this.

This massively trivialises how sophisticated stuxnet was, there were multiple 0-days affecting all versions of actively maintained versions of Windows being weaponised by the program.

It wasn’t a bunch of known vulnerabilities affecting unpatched machines. Quite the opposite.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because 1) America won’t allow nations near Israel to be successful, it’s too much of a threat to our greatest ally and 2) war is incredibly profitable.

> nations near Israel to be successful, I'm guessing that doesn't include Turkey or the rich oil arab states.

Actually they're already "joking" on Israeli TV that Turkey is next, and AEI is on the case making it clear we may need to go to war to take out Turkey next.

https://x.com/clashreport/status/1935078004230865094

https://www.aei.org/op-eds/israel-iran-war-dry-run-for-a-fut...

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US Director of National Intelligence The US Director of National Intelligence (Tulsi Gabbard) has a very public history of backing Assad and Iran during the Syrian Civil War, and any mention of the DNI without mentioning it's currently Tulsi Gabbard is clearly a bad faith discussion.

So basically the DNI says things that you disagree with, and therefore is illegitimate.

No. It's because she has been frozen out by the Trump admin for weeks now - as was seen with the fact that she was not invited to the Camp David but the other Intel heads were to discuss the Iran crisis when Netanyahu informed the admin about the then imminent strikes [0] - and the role of DNI is itself on the chopping block to be merged as part of Project 2025 (one of the few things I agree with them about - the DNI is a redundant role that was only developed during 9/11, and has been made redundant by the NSC and fusion centers).

[0] - https://www.axios.com/2025/06/10/trump-camp-david-iran-gaza-...

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#368
This makes sense. Israel seems to have used WhatsApp metadata to target Palestinians in Gaza: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

> The solution to this problem, he says, is artificial intelligence. The book offers a short guide to building a “target machine,” similar in description to Lavender, based on AI and machine-learning algorithms. Included in this guide are several examples of the “hundreds and thousands” of features that can increase an individual’s rating, such as being in a Whatsapp group with a known militant, changing cell phone every few months, and changing addresses frequently.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#369
post #7

I find the wordsmithery on Meta's statement the most interesting: “We do not track your *PRECISE* location, we don’t keep logs of who everyone is messaging and we do not track the *PERSONAL* messages people are sending one another," it added. “We do not provide *BULK* information to any government.”

It’s a lie. Russia Ukraine war demonstrated clearly that everything you write in whatsapp, your location, any photo etc are easily accessible and monitored in real time by USA government and their three letter agencies.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#370

I kind of suspect this is more a desperate regime on the brink of (at least military) collapse grasping at straws. Potentially they might be worried about anti-regime activists organizing on whatsapp and want to push people to more easily monitoriable alternatives. If iran knew meta was doing this for a long time, then it raises the question of why they are just asking people to delete it now. One would presume that…

This is the real reason. The leadership has been decapitated, and those still alive are fleeing or hiding in bunkers.

This is the perfect time for an uprising.

The Kurds are already starting whatever they’ve been planning.

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