[rwyinuse]

What about tens of thousands of peaceful civilians who have been killed by the Iranian regime during past decades? The alternative to this war is allowing the Iranian government to keep doing that, business as usual.

In my opinion bombing people responsible for these atrocities increases the well-being of the world. Most Iranians seem to agree.

[enaaem]

I don't see how this is going to work without troops on the ground?

The US had air supremacy, troops on the ground and a friendly regime in Afghanistan and Vietnam, and it did not work. (I am not sure if Iraq was a success, but I am sure that people were super tired of it, and did not want something like that again)

What is just bombing going to do? They just rebuilt their weapons and you have to bomb them again in 1-2 years?

The administration has already suggested sending troops as an option. It does not help that they are just making things up as they go.

[TemperaryT]

You’re right that airpower alone will not change anything. But as you pointed out, putting troops on the ground does not automatically change the outcome either. If there is a lesson from the last few decades it is that the military is good at two things. Killing people and breaking their equipment. What it can do is create opportunities that political or covert efforts have to capitalize on.

Any military campaign needs a clear objective and an achievable end state with contingencies planned. Even then something unexpected will still happen. Afghanistan, Vietnam, and Iraq were all very different conflicts and the current situation is different again.

As for rebuilding their capabilities, that is not trivial. Iran is still operating aircraft that we retired decades ago, which says something about their supply constraints.

The outcome also does not have to be installing a perfect government of our choosing. A more realistic result would be a government the United States can work with and one that the Iranian people actually support. That could still include parts of the current system if major and unpopular things changed.

I am sure someone in the current leadership would like to be the person who reduced the influence of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, loosened the grip of the religious leadership, and ended the country’s pariah status while getting sanctions lifted and money flowing back into the economy.

That would probably be a better outcome than trying to export our model of government to yet another Middle Eastern country.

[enaaem]

The issue is that no one is going to defect without protection. That is the reason you put troops there. Democracy building is nice, but that is not the real reason you sent troops.

[Jensson]

Defection happens without protection if the regime gets weakened enough, and in addition to that USA is supplying weapons to Iranians so they can take up arms against the regime.

Iran has mandatory military training so if the people gets weapons they can fight for themselves.

[enaaem]

Defection within the regime is never going to happen. If there is one thing that will unite a bunch of egos and put their personal grievances aside is a war. Anyone who smells like a traitor is shot. They become more fanatical, not less.

Only option is outside rebellion. But weapons and rebels are not created out of thin air. You need to sent weapons, trainers and troops. Syria 2.0 but worst.

[Jensson]

> Syria 2.0 but worst.

A big difference here is that the Iranian leaders are being blown to bits every day currently, so its a bit different from Syria where the rebels barely had any support.

[Jensson]

> I don't see how this is going to work without troops on the ground?

Their goal is to kill the leaders until a sensible leader appears. They haven't tested that before, so we will see how it works out.

Installing a puppet regime doesn't work well, but killing them until they put forward a reasonable regime might work.

[enaaem]

They killed Taliban leaders all the time. Did not work. And that is with troops on the ground and a friendly regime.

[Jensson]

But at that point the Talibans had Iran supporting them. Now they have no regime supporting them since the Iranian regime is constantly killed and no neighbor supports them. With 90% of the people not supporting such acts and no external country supporting them with weapons such acts quickly fizzle out into something the police can manage, it never completely disappears though.

[mothballed]

Trump is at his best point to save face right now. It's now or never, IMO. He killed an entire leadership lineup of Iran. If he pulls out now it is a clear victory for him. If he continues the campaign 2 or 3 more weeks it's tough for me to find another out for him that doesn't involve a lot more risk to the USA.

Given he did take this clear victory and cash in, in Venezuela, there is some hope he'll do the same in Iran.

[lejalv]

Now turn your argument towards Saudi Arabia, or any of the human-rights violating countries that the US supports or has supported recently.

Your opinion is respectable, but not compatible with any idea of “justice”.

[khazhoux]

The point being that eliminating a murderous tyrant is bad, because there are other murderous tyrants?

[lejalv]

Your president is a murderous tyrant, so how about eliminating him?

[vkou]

Killing a murderous tyrant, while maybe cathartic for a few minutes, when done in isolation, rarely results in better outcomes.

[postflopclarity]

sometimes there are more than two options between

"do nothing"

and the clusterfuck the current administration has embarked on.

[bawolff]

Sometimes yes, but is there in this specific case?

Because from my vantage point it looks like the choice is, status quo or bomb them. Its not like america can double sanction iran, they are already fully economically sanctioned. What is the middle ground here?

[cgio]

You could relax sanctions in exchange for other priorities. A persistent pain is less effective than an acute one anyway. There’s carrots too in negotiations. But no, we cannot do what a previous president did.

[bawolff]

How much of the current situation is a result of that previous deal?

The deal basically stopped iran's nuclear program but allowed the regime to better send money and guns to its proxy network.

The current war is effectively the downstream consequences of Iran's proxy network going off the leash.

Ultimately, negotiations work best with both a carrot and a stick. If its just a carrot, and no deal would be unacceptable to one of the parties, then the logical thing for the other party would be to always hold out.

----

In any case, in this specific situation (regardless of how we got here), its hard to imagine that Iran could have made a deal and survived. The regime is very weak at home and its questionable if they could have survived the loss of face to agree to what usa wanted.

[bjourne]

This justification for bombing Iran is dumb as fuck. In a few days the number of civilians killed by US-Israeli bombings will surpass the number of civilians killed by the regime in decades.

[irishcoffee]

Possibly.

What is that threshold? I've heard anywhere from 3k to 300k. You can definitively answer this question?

[orwin]

300k? You mean 30k right?

Iranian official numbers are 3.5k. the OSINT community say at least 15k in the 3 biggest cities (including peo-regime guardias of the revolution), and 'local' journalists (a lot with CIA ties though), not friend of the system say 30k.

I wouldn't trust Iran with a butter knife, so I imagine between 15 and 30k, including 1 to 2k 'guardians'

[Jensson]

> 300k? You mean 30k right?

30k was just the last protests, they talked about the entire regimes crimes which is much much more.

[orwin]

Let's count. Power consolidation (post-revolution): 10-20k. 100k during the first gulf war, but I think you should put that on the US (and maybe Irak, but it's the US that pushed Irak to attack Iran), then a bit more than 50 execution per year on average for 30 year. 100-300 in 2019/2020, and 15k-35k for the 2025/2026 protests. So even if you take the higher bound, that's 66k max, and if you count the gulf war (which was defensive, against US-led Iraki), 166k. But a reasonable estimate would not count the gulf war, and would be 35k over 40 year.

Weirdly, that's less than the number of saudi Arabia slaves who died in the last 20 years. But most of them are African, so they don't count, if I understand why Saudi Arabia are our allies.

[bjourne]

The 15-35k for protestors killed is a complete fabrication. No verifiable sources corroborate that figure. Media has a tendency to report figures based on nothing. Then those figures get established as the truth, which shifts the burden of proof. Thus, unless one can prove that 15-35k protestors wasn't killed the myth lives on.

[bjourne]

Killing more people won't bring dead people back to life! I can't believe I have to spell this out.

[irishcoffee]

> This justification for bombing Iran is dumb as fuck. In a few days the number of civilians killed by US-Israeli bombings will surpass the number of civilians killed by the regime in decades.

I was just curious if you had information that I don't have. I suppose not.

[mierz00]

I’m sure the welfare of the Iranian people is a top priority for Trump.

[hollerith]

But what you describe was not the motivation behind the decision by Washington to bomb Iran. The motivations were Tehran's nuclear program and Tehran's support for groups like Hezbollah and generally Tehran's promotion of violence and instability outside Iran in the Middle East.

[we_have_options]

wonder what your view is of ICE actions against peaceful protesters in MN?