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Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

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Re: Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

#951

Post by righthand »

pydry wrote: post #699
righthand wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you frequently fly over to Iraq and explain that to the people there right? They nod in agreement with you. “We had to bomb and occupy your country and kill your citizens just like Saddam did remember? Now you’re better off after our failed occupation left your country. We’ll bomb you anytime; sure it costs us money is and the reason neither of our countries have healthcare but who needs healthcare when you have…

I went there and asked people about it. It was pretty clear they felt theyd gone through hell. They were also complaining bitterly about things that got worse thanks to there being a war like corruption and a lack of jobs. I have no idea who OP talked to nor why they thought the war was so great but it matched nothing of what I saw.

Isn’t it a bit wild you had to confirm with Iraqis that war was bad for their country?

Re: Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

#952

Post by FeloniousHam »

baxtr wrote: post #311
1a527dd5 wrote: post #86

I wonder how old the rest of the commentators are. I watched the Shock and Awe campaign. I watched Saddam fall. I remember thinking this is great. Years later, I understand it was a complete folly. Removing Saddam in itself was good but what it did the wider region was not good.

I am old enough. Iraq is not perfect today but so much better than it was. Go talk to Iraqis and see for yourself. It costs us some time, money and lives to get to this point. But Saddam (a tyrant who killed his own kind in masses with gas and started wars with neighbors) staying in power would have been way worse for the wider region.

I agree. The military component was a resounding success. The "de-Baathification" was a disaster and gets lumped into the decapitation of Sadaam's regime.

We'll never know the counterfactual, but it seems likely that the banning from public life everyone with ties to the current government was a large contributor to the collapse of the country and rise of the terrorist groups.

Re: Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

#953

Post by avazhi »

alchemism wrote: post #681
avazhi wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from a few members of the IRGC, everybody who has been paying attention for the past 40 years is celebrating. Taking out both Maduro and Khomeini over the course of a few months without a single American or Israeli casualty is peak.

Murdering heads of state and their families is cool as Judge, Jury, and Executioner if no soldiers are hurt in the process, is that where we are now?

That’s the privilege you get when you’re the hyperpower. And I say that as somebody who neither lives in the US nor voted for Trump.

Re: Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

#954

Post by hackandthink »

Someone wrote: post #945
hackandthink wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fourty (1945 - 1949 it was split in 4 occupation zones)

If you ignore Berlin (which, I think, kept its four occupation zones) it were first four, three from January 1, 1947, and two from from August 1, 1948 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bizone )

thanks

Re: Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

#955

Post by tptacek »

jcranmer wrote: post #30
indubioprorubik wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe .. the revolutionary guard is fed up though with ineffective empire rule? Like to be rubbed in the dirt face first repeatetly as inheritor of the mighty persian empire sucks bad enough, to reconsider the way things are run? Sorry, but whatever israel & the us are doing, seems to work way better than - whatever has happened the last decades in iran?

As I understand it, the IGRC doesn't particularly rub happily with the clerical council, and it's not entirely clear to me who will win that the power struggle. But the ultimate loser of the power struggle is clear: the Iranian populace at large, as all of the viable factions are quite committed to consolidating their power by repressing the population. The most likely situation, I think, looks a lot like Libya.

Where did you hear that? The IRGC is the creation of the revolutionary clerical movement. It exists specifically to prevent outcomes like Egypt, where a powerful national armed service operates as a check on political Islam.

Re: Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

#956

Post by anon291 »

dotancohen wrote: post #633
CoastalCoder wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those of us who haven't read it, could you explain why it's salient on this topic?

It's an English language book aimed for Westerner readers. It purports to argue that the core strategy for spreading Islam - terror - is not compatible with Western values. It also states that other features of Islam are incompatible with Western values, such as repression of women. The book argues that since these ideologies are incompatible with Western values, they must be abandoned. However, the abandonment argum…

To be totally frank, Islam is the odd one out.

You can call it 'Western' values or 'Christian' values or whatever in order to make it seem chauvinistic all you want, but the simple truth is that these values are often shared by many other religions and places. As an example, look at the success of the Indian Hindus and the Chinese / East Asian Buddhists in the United States and across the globe. For a reverse example, contrary to popular belief, Christians, Sikhs, and Jains in Hindu-majority India are actually richer and more educated on average.

Time and time again, if you go look at the data, you'll find that Islam is almost always the odd one out.

The Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Taoists, etc can all be made to get along with Christians or 'the West'. There is really only one pretty much universally problematic religion, and that's Islam. You can argue this point all you want, but the entirety of Islamic history shows it to be true. You can again (correctly, in some cases) point out various bad actions from Christians (or Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, etc), but the simple truth is this: it's pretty easy today, in 2025, to imagine how to get along with these people. In places with diverse populations and migrants from these places, there is barely any violent religious conflict. At most you get some fundies in a tizzy over someone else doing their thing.

The only one that consistently performs violence is Islam. And that's something Muslims need to figure out. They don't need to abandon their religion. And they certainly do not need to be harmed for their beliefs. But, they do need to figure out how to integrate with the rest of the world in 2025 in a pluralistic global society.

Re: Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

#957

Post by UltraSane »

mfru wrote: post #948
UltraSane wrote: post #829

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh boy flying the flag of the Islamic Republic in the US would get so much blowback. Everyone knows how incredibly evil it is. It recently killed at least 20,000 protestors to stay in power.

I hope the people doing the blowback also blowback against flying US flags, a country that is famously responsible for so, so many deaths.

You think flying the US flag INSIDE the US will have blowback?

Re: Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

#958

Post by esalman »

koolba wrote: post #622
esalman wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am Sunni and I condemn the attack. Having said that, I also condemn Iranian regime killing (reportedly) 30000 protesters. So he probably had it coming. I'm more concerned about what happens to US now, because I think the attack indicates a complete failure and collapse of the legislative branch of the US government.

> I'm more concerned about what happens to US now, because I think the attack indicates a complete failure and collapse of the legislative branch of the US government. Why now? Why not when they took out Soleimani in 2020? Or when they invaded and took out Gaddafi in 2011? Can keep going all the back to Truman invading Vietnam.

I don't know. Have Congress and Senate always been this ineffective? I don't remember Obama, Biden or even Trump 45 act with this much impunity. I obviously can't go further back because I have been here since Obama's second term.

Re: Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

#959

Post by andriy_koval »

icar wrote: post #315

In 1953, Iran was a secular and democratic country. They had elected a prime minister who decided to nationalize the oil industry. The US didn't like this and overthrew him. They imposed a brutal monarchical dictatorship. Popular discontent led to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The ayatollahs, to a large extent, existed because of US interference. The same is true for all the instability in the Middle East, entirely ma…

> The US didn't like this and overthrew him.

sure, US invested resources, and new government decided to take it for free by force. Why wouldn't you wrap this as original action?

Re: Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

#960

Post by amalcon »

esalman wrote: post #958
koolba wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm more concerned about what happens to US now, because I think the attack indicates a complete failure and collapse of the legislative branch of the US government. Why now? Why not when they took out Soleimani in 2020? Or when they invaded and took out Gaddafi in 2011? Can keep going all the back to Truman invading Vietnam.

I don't know. Have Congress and Senate always been this ineffective? I don't remember Obama, Biden or even Trump 45 act with this much impunity. I obviously can't go further back because I have been here since Obama's second term.

The Iran-Contra scandal from the Reagan administration comes to mind. Congress explicitly de-authorized the executive from funding the Contras in Nicaragua. The executive kept doing it anyway. Nobody faced any consequences, though Congress at least made a lot of noise about it.

That's kind of ineffective, but not to this level where Congress is just fine with blatant illegality.

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