451–460 of 1001 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You shouldn't celebrate the killings of heads of state, that would set a bad precedent.
How is it bad? Imagine a world where instead of sending hundreds of thousands young men to die, countries would just launch targeted attacks on the head of enemy's state.
Powerless people? Into the meat grinder!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no doubt that they didn't like that the regime, which is why they left. But this assassination is no guarantee of change for the better. Far from it.
It’s no guarantee, but it is a good opportunity. I’m half-Persian, and certainly not as closely connected as others, but it’s hard to see this as a bad thing. There’s a possibility I can go visit my family in Iran as a result of this. I haven’t had a good chance for that in like 4 years
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a given - e.g. AFAIK most turks in Germany support Erdogan
A lot of the Persian diaspora is actually descendents of people who left in the 80s. There are certainly people who left 20 years ago or less but they're mostly secular as well.
The non-Iranian part is key. Millions of muslims around the world viewed the Iranian theocracy as the only power in the world fighting for Islam. They are devastated.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd probably think about which side is going to end up in power and try to get along with whoever that is. The US's demonstrated willingness to kill the leader will probably have an influence there.
“Which side”? What other side is there in Iran? You think there’s some shadow government that can realistically topple the mullahs from within? The only way the Shah comes back is with US boots on the ground, which would be a disaster for other reasons. Until that happens this is just reckless action that makes the regime even more radical than it already is.
only time will tell. I give iran much better than average odds this is for the better. Though the average is really bad: bad results would not surprise me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Removal of the head of state is often a turning point. Either a regime becomes more extreme or the government collapses due to in-fighting as individuals attempt to gain control. I would hold back on any hopes until we see how the current government handles things. Intervention from other countries does not always lead to positive outcomes.
Has there been a regime which has collapsed due to an external strike like this where it hasn't resulted in some decades long civil war nightmare? I can't think of any time when bombing the shit out of a country and killing their leader has actually worked. All I can think of is examples of blowback.
People have already mentioned the post WW2 occupation of Germany and Japan.
There’s also the Roman occupation of Greece (and other Hellenistic territories), and even perhaps the Norman occupation of England. Not that either of these didn’t cause some strife and rebellion in both cases, but still there was a concerted effort to build up both territories.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course it does. If you try to shield your armed forces using children, and then accidentally kill them because you used them as a shield, you can't blame someone else.
... I'm just going of Wikipedia here but it seems to have been a standard small city [0]. Attempting to educate Iranians in Iranian cities isn't really trying to shield armed forces. Is the expectation here that Iran should send their students out into the wilderness to make it more politically convenient for US/Israeli to launch unannounced strikes on them? Apart from the fact that Iran is a bad place to be right no…
Look, maybe it was a school specifically for the children of army personnel, but that's a long shot. From the geolocation data, the school was right at their missile launch site.
They had choices.
Locate the school or the launch site elsewhere, for one.
Evacuate the school before they tried to launch munitions, for another.
This is on them.
I work with and know a lot of Shia (non-Iranian) Muslims and listening to them talk about this assassination I'm convinced that the likelihood of attempted terror attacks against the US has increased significantly. The non-Iranian part is key. Millions of muslims around the world viewed the Iranian theocracy as the only power in the world fighting for Islam. They are devastated.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's definitely odd if he was just sitting in his compound. That's a very, well, known place for him. Surely Iran has plenty of secure underground bunkers for leadership to retreat to?
Fleeing is seen as dishonorable in many parts of the Arab world. Remember the Israeli lies about how Yahya Sinwar dressed in women's clothes and were trying to cross the border to Egypt? In reality he was out in the field with his men killing Israeli soldiers. He died a brave death and Khamenei will now have died one too.
If true, and given how easy it seemed decapitate the regime I can't see another Ayatollah taking over, hopefully the people take over and institute a real secular democracy based on capitalism.