> In a Truth Social post on March 30, Trump warned that the U.S. would obliterate "all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet 'touched.'"
Iran was having a water crisis before all this, to the extent of considering relocating the capital city away from Tehran's current location. Bombing Iranian water infrastructure will kill a lot of civilians, just as similar things happened in the Yemeni civil war (which Iran is a participant in). It's disheartening how much the prospect of mass murder is met with a shrug.
> AFAIK there is no exemption that says it is OK to commit war crimes if the other side does.
Of course not, but I still think the expectation that someone doesn't commit war crimes against you disappears relatively quickly when you're openly and proudly admitting you'll open to violating the rules of war and saying international humanitarian law doesn't matter.
> Wasn’t that in response to Trump posting that he’d hit theirs?
It's Iran. They haven't been following international law since 1979. That isn't an excuse to commit war crimes against them. But Iran really doesn't have any legs to stand on when it comes to complaining about targeting civilian infrastructure–they and their proxies have been doing this for decades.
>They haven't been following international law since 1979.
History doesn't start in 1979. Why not go back to 1953? Overthrowing another country's elected government is no more conscionable under international law.
This "both sides" game does not carry much weight when one side, the US and Britain, made the bad faith move on Iran first.
Stubbing one's toe and complaining "both sides" - the pebble and me.
Complaining I am being hit back because I hit first, does not elicit support. Especially, when one is less than forthcoming about who made the move on a sovereign country first. Made a move just because that country had resources you are interested in.
If you want the resource then buy it. Norway nationalised it's oil, Iran had equal sovereign right to do so.
You and I agree on many things. This one is not one of them.
> This "both sides" game does not carry much weight when one side, the US and Britain, made the bad faith move on Iran first
Trying to disentangle who did what first in the Middle East is a fool's errand. Practically any living human can trace descendence to someone who was harmed by any other group in that region because that's where the first civilisation was born and almost every one after it had cause for crossroads.
> Complaining I am being hit back because I hit first, does not elicit support
If one dude stabs another, they're at fault. If that dude stabs the first one back, I'm sympathetic to their cause of action but not how they prosecuted it.
> Norway nationalised it's oil, Iran had equal sovereign right to do so
If Iran nationalised its oil and then didn't go on a vendetta against Israel, together with various spawned proxy groups dotting the region, every one of their neighbors wouldn't be standing by today while they get pummeled.
Sort of? I don't think that's really how war crimes work. Unless we're objectively in eye-for-an-eye territory, in which case we're not really talking about international law anymore. (To be clear, I think everyone talking about international law in this conflict is posturing. We've been collectively setting new norms for years, and between Russia, China and America, the rules seem to have inched closer to total war.)
It doesn't matter. Killing 34 something children like Hamas did vs 20 000 something children like Israel did in the same conflict.
Or threatening some water facility in a country with functioning air defense vs threatening entire population of 92 million with complete anihilation ("A whole civilization will die tonight" like Trump just said on behalf of all americans - credible threat from a nuclear superpower with enough nukes to spare), in a country where they can't really defend against this other than spreading the costs on enemy-allied countries.
There's bad, and there's 100x worse. And yeah, people should focus on stopping the 100x worse first, is my belief.
> people should focus on stopping the 100x worse first
That's fair. When I see conflicts like this, I tend to sit back and observe. There are enough conflicts on the planet where both sides are not being bastards, and where the diffences in scale of bastardly doesn't clearly map to differences in capability (versus will).
My personal opinion is that, it's because with the previous political and cultural trends, West had (maybe still has) actually quite high chances of collapsing and falling in the long term due to its own indecisiveness, lots of words mixed a lack of actions against coordinated and targeted efforts of Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Belarus, Cuba, China, Syria and North Korea.
I remember national state TV in Russia talking about "we are ready to nuke United States if needed" in 2014 [1].
So, domestically, government made sure people believe that the West is the mortal enemy and we were are already at some kind of cold war since Crimea annexation, it's just West didn't notice, seems like.
Then, there were also artifical immigration crisis at EU borders created by Russia and Belarus.
And many other various hybrid and asymmetrical attacks.
So, USA recognized the danger and started dismantling the problem piece by piece, to ensure a long term peace and safety of its people. Could it be better organized and coordinated with allies? Probably, yes, but the meaning stays.
If the west collapses it will be because of its internal problems. Inefficiency, bad government, inequality.
I think you are right that the West is complacent about its enemies because it cannot really shake the belief in its superiority that came from winning the cold war and dominating the world in the decades after, I just do not think that is the biggest threat.
> Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Belarus, Cuba, China, Syria and North Korea.
Putting these all in the same list conflates very different situations.
- Big actual threat with body count: Russia.
- Russian proxies: Syria (very lethal, but mostly within Syria, not a "threat to the west", complicated by Daesh and AQ)
- Nasty autocracy but stable cold war: NK
- Autocracy, but largely minding their own business and with no real capability to threaten: Cuba, Venezuela
- Major trading partner: China
> USA recognized the danger and started dismantling the problem piece by piece
Trump era has systematically downplayed the threat from Russia. And let's not forget how many members of Trump campaign staff were jailed due to Russian influence.
Is Russia really a threat? It has a small economy. Its no threat at all to the US, and could be easily be beaten by the European NATO countries. It has struggled to take on just Ukraine with western backing.
China has a far bigger economy and far bigger armed forces. It has a history of aggression and has border disputes with multiple countries.
I strongly suspect that people who downplay the risk from China have not yet internalised the fact that no-white countries are powerful too now.
The airliner shootdown? The polonium poisonings? Miscellaneous sabotage attempts in Europe? In addition to, you know, the active war.
There's a lot of things that China "might" do but hasn't so far translated into significant violence, beyond the low-intensity border dispute in the mountains with India. Do they have power? Yes. Are they making threats? Other than a war of words with Japan, not really. What is this "history of aggression"?
Between China and the US, only one of those two has made threats to the territorial integrity of Europe.
> So, USA recognized the danger and started dismantling the problem piece by piece, to ensure a long term peace and safety of its people. Could it be better organized and coordinated with allies? Probably, yes, but the meaning stays.
By becoming part of the problem? Trump threatening to invade Greenland was a wake-up call for Europe. Actively supporting forces that want to tear down democracy in Europe isn’t particularly helpful either.
If we become like China and Russia then why is our civilization in any way better?
Iranian proxies are responsible for well over 1,000 American deaths since 1979, and there were dozens of foiled plots on American soil and hundreds of individual militia attacks in Iraq and Syria, directed by Iran.
For reference, how many times has the US interfered with Iran's government and how many people in Iran has the US killed since 1979? That's the only way to get a fair view of this discussion. Just wondering if all this happened in a vacuum or, god forbid, Iran maybe has some reason to dislike the US.
this was a reply to people saying "Iran is not attacking the US". It is of course convenient to bend this discussion into a different direction, but this was a reply to blind propaganda that sees only one side as responsible for bad things.
[To the downvoter, downvoting is not going to change the historical facts]
It was the US that upended Iranian parliamentary democracy with a military coup, sponsored chemical weapons attacks on Irani population (through its proxy Iraq). This killed some 30k to 50k by way of chemical attacks alone. Credible sources estimate 100K killed by these chemical weapons attacks alone.
US shot down their passenger jet. US has imposed crippling sanctions that have decimated the economic well being of the country compared to what it could have been.
Iran Air Flight 655 was an international scheduled passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai via Bandar Abbas that was shot down on 3 July 1988 by two surface-to-air missiles fired by USS Vincennes, a United States Navy warship. The missiles hit the Iran Air aircraft, an Airbus A300, while it was flying its usual route over Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf, shortly after the flight departed its stopover location, Bandar Abbas International Airport. All 290 people on board were killed. No apologies yet.
Talking about Iranian proxies alone is one-sided if you don't consider what US-Israel proxies have been doing to them. US Israel have inflicted 10 to 100X more Irani deaths than what Iran has done in retaliation.
You are either ignorant or deliberately underplaying that. Most likely the latter.
Only westerners can be bad actors or at all in historic events racism of the charts? It takes two to tango and iran is dancing its heart out.. and could have had the most peacefull life, if its religion would not involve destroying all "unbelievers" in the middle east - first and foremost aimed at israel.
Interesting to see this chemical attack talking point suddenly in the last week. But yet posters here will claim the bad actors are pushing 'zionist' talking points and ignore when an obviously coordinated Iranian talking point is suddenly injected into every thread within a week.
The us is the peace guarantor for maritime trade in the region. Its the protector of several oil powers. When the hoothi shoot on ships, they hit the us.
America never invaded Greenland. Nevertheless, we're facing blowback because we threatened it.
Iran has been chanting "death to America" for decades. That isn't casus belli. Not by a long shot. But pretending Iran hasn't been playing the part of belligerent for years is rewriting history.
30K to 50K Iranians killed by chemical weapons attacks by US proxy, Iraq. Credible sources estimate 100K killed and 30K-50K is a conservative lowball estimate.
This is an active unhealed wound in Iran. Families of the dead still grieve those killed in cemeteries and graves that are there in almost all their major cities.
Iran has every reason to not like the US which has been destabilising and killing and crippling them economically for several decades.
Iran Air Flight 655 was an international scheduled passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai via Bandar Abbas that was shot down on 3 July 1988 by two surface-to-air missiles fired by USS Vincennes, a United States Navy warship. The missiles hit the Iran Air aircraft, an Airbus A300, while it was flying its usual route over Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf, shortly after the flight departed its stopover location, Bandar Abbas International Airport. All 290 people on board were killed.
Iran's targeting strategy has been a capability restrained tit for tat, for the most part. This is true except for attacks on other gulf states right after US-Israel decapitation strike.
Blame is a weird word for geopolitics. I think Iran fucked up hitting those targets pre-emptively. Someone at home had to show their hard-liner boss that they were just as hard-line as he is. So they did something macho. The consequences be damned.
The mirroring of dysfunction on each side of this war is uncanny.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-hegseth-and...
> In a Truth Social post on March 30, Trump warned that the U.S. would obliterate "all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet 'touched.'"