[southerntofu]

That's not a fair assessment. Context: I hate Trump as much as Khomeini. A "both sides" treatment would be:

US & Israel illegally assassinate Iranian leader in bombing campaign, calling agression "necessity".

Now, if you'd like to lean to one side or the other, you can either:

- remove information about legality and the fact that they are the authors of the agression, add something about Iran being a threat to its neighbors

- or insist that any excuses provided by USA or Israel about nuclear weapons is 100% bogus as they have been claiming this for over 20 years

"We have no choice to do this horrible thing, but it may have slightly bad consequences for us" does not take the second side into consideration at all. It's very biased, and it's a very strong opinion in itself.

[edgyquant]

You are so clearly biased your “both sides” is seething hatred of one side.

[southerntofu]

Of course i'm biased (though probably not like you mean), but that "both sides" depiction was fair and rather neutral. I'm personally very happy Khomenei is dead, and so are my iranian friends. But we are all very concerned that he is dead for the wrong reason, under a wrong pretext, and with very grim perspectives (see also what the US did in all the countries it bombed in the past 20 years).

I think Khomenei and Trump are two sides of the same coin: bloody authoritarianism and religious zealotry. They're both pretty bad, but one side in this conflict was clearly the aggressor, and denying that is in itself picking sides. One can both sympathize with a victim of unjust aggression, and at the same time thinking they're a profound piece of shit.

One could even point out that just a few years ago, Trump was very insistent about "no more wars", and that he regularly mockingly predicted that Obama would attack Iran to avoid talking about domestic policy. Turns out the hypocrisy level is high and he really is beyond a doubt the bad guy in this story, even if that does not make the iranian ayatollahs good guys by any measure.