The internal conflict over corruption, water issues and handling of the protesters had a decent chance to cause meaningful changes in government. Starting a war and attacking their civilians put those chances to bed.
Exactly. And this also want' just a protest. They were protest in the big cities and uprising from suppressed minoritiesm which explain the death toll among people from the regime.
Iran might have at best have a self-regime change, at worst split in 3. Now that the war is on, the regime consolidated.
Strategically, it makes no sense to corner and threaten people. Murdering their own citizens shows the degree to which they'll go to preserve their power. If anything, that's a reason to slowly bleed them instead of cornering and escalating.
The evil of your enemy does not excuse your own strategic stupidity or cruelty.
Arguably the country that has done the most to cement the Iranian regime is the United States with its sanctions. If Iran had been left to develop into a normal Middle Eastern oil-rich country then things might have turned out differently. The more money people have the harder it is to control them.
How does that compare with putting hundreds of thousands of people into cages for arbitrary reasons, I wonder. Or depositing them in random countries to be killed because they are e.g. homosexual.
Breaking a country's immigration laws does come with consequences, yes, at least if the government is willing to enforce to said laws, as it should be. Previously we had governments that weren't.
If you have a problem with those laws and think our borders should be wide open, that's of course a different matter, and one you should take up with Congress, which makes the laws.
I think those laws should be changed by the way, to be much friendlier towards Hispanic immigrants. They share our cultural values and are easy for the US to assimilate in my opinion, so long as they're properly vetted for obvious criminal behavior, ability and motivation to work, etc.
Considering theyre now doing airstrikes, there was 100% pre-invasion action that included agitating these protests. Like they're literally bombing them now but we think we werent already doing CIA activity there 6 months ago? Im not saying civilians love the government they probably hate it but... its complicated, what if the person rallying and pushing 1000 people was actually a deep cover agent
Before I get downvoted to hell Im not conding anything or taking any side, just pointing out an obvious deduction
You're being disingenuous - the "protestor" was caught on camera literally hacking a policeman to pieces. He murdered a policeman, and will now be executed.
Can you back this with linking the said videos and maybe some info on legal proceedings of the fair trial in which this person was convicted? I’m curious.
No, not just according to those factions. From the same CBS News article:
> The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency has recorded more than 7,000 killings, with the vast majority being protesters, while warning the toll could be far higher.
Neither CBS News nor this agency are friends of the factions you mention. Facts are stubborn things.
Are you seriously suggesting that Ellison-owned CBS News and US-based "human rights" orgs are not geopolitically aligned with the US government? They are 100% in cahoots.
Critics of the Iranian government, primarily in the West, claim that thousands of people have died in the protests. In particular, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) put the death toll at 2,615 on Wednesday.