That country was safe, had a decent standard of living and high life expectancy and that despite the sanctions.
Without sanctions & active support I guess it might have surpassed UAE.
It seems to me, the US government that makes the citiziens of other countries as miserable as possible and despite these attempts Iran managed just fine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981%E2%80%931982_Iran_massacr...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahshahr_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_murders_of_Iran
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_executions_of_Iranian_pol...
Fucking ungrateful bastards! I've read in Wikipedia and western media how caricaturally evil this shia government is on this shia population! 30.000 deaths! We have proof! a CIA report!!!
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards are extremely bloodthirsty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981%E2%80%931982_Iran_massacr...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahshahr_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_murders_of_Iran
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_executions_of_Iranian_pol...
I sorta doubt those numbers.
> (anymore)
Oh, so you're ideologically captured by an admin that's proven to be full of liars. There was never a good side. There's no good side to war in nearly any case (limited exceptions and this is not (was never) one of those).
The most powerful country in history attacked a smaller country that wasn't a threat to the stronger country. Had the USA (and Israel) not attacked, it's unlikely that Iran would have struck first.
And Iran firing missiles on Israel in response to genocide in Gaza isn't really a credible threat. Israel could stop massacring civilians at any time to make Iran stop firing upon them.
I think Social Media truly brought the worse in people. People are not trying to be decent anymore.
The other spot I get exposure to this part of the US political spectrum is the comment section of a youtube guy who is pretty far to the right but who has a seemingly (at least to me) well-informed understanding of the facts- he's interesting because it's kind of wild to hear the more lumpen version of this site and what their concerns are: they are really mad that this war is happening instead of further domestic crackdowns on immigration.
In both cases, it's helpful to understand where folks who have some pretty misinformed understandings of history and politics are sitting with their opinions.
It doesn't seem surprising to me that a bunch of aspiring venture capitalists, who have probably have been or are on the cusp of having a small taste of the massive wealth that their work in building out the surveillance state has brought to their masters, have totally shitty politics.
With that said, and I'm aware that HN audience are mostly in tech but I always thought we in tech are better trained to think critically and look at things from various perspectives. But to see the exact same response patterns one would see in FB makes one surely question how many people are truly capable of independent critical thinking. I'm also starting to think that given the complexity of modern life and the amount of information we are flooded with people are simply choosing the most repeated narrative within their circle without much reflection or any critical thinking. At the end of the day most folks here are busy with other things and it is easier to believe they are evil and we are liberating then dive deep into one of the most complicated areas when it comes to history and geopolitics.
It's an appealing view, and I get it. Probably not a bad idea to question at length.
The United States is the aggressor in this conflict. Its action is a violation of the UN Charter and international law.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Human_Rights_Co...
It also does nothing to address the Iranian government's claim - strongly supported by US and Israel's public statements(!) that it's a foreign coup attempt rather than peaceful protests.
It is understandable that a person who distrusts the United States government would be led to believe the statements of a government in opposition to it. Indeed, the United States is engaged in an illegal war in which it is the aggressor. However, the statements of the Iranian government attributing protestor deaths to foreign-backed paramilitaries is not backed by any credible set of facts.
1. https://reliefweb.int/report/iran-islamic-republic/iran-deat...
2. https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/01/16/iran-growing-evidence-of...
It is not an extraordinary claim, and it's backed by absurdly strong evidence. As I said, it was pretty ridiculous that Mossad openly said not just that they wanted regime change (as the US also did), but that they were actively assisting in it. And in addition to the thousands of protesters who have been reported dead, hundreds of policemen or revolutionary guards have also been reported dead.
An ordinary, popular protest, even a damn angry one - even one armed with handguns! - does not kill hundreds of policemen. If you think that's possible, you don't understand the power difference between civilians and people with a full time job and training to use violence on civilians. Even if you would ignore the public statements (which I won't let you!) you simply do not succeed at killing so much of the state's violence apparatus without serious material and organizational support.
And anyone who's been following Iran for a while knows that yes, Mossad actually has shockingly many native agents in Iran (e.g. the murder of scientists wouldn't have been possible without it) and in addition there are political cults like MEK, and supporters of the dictator son Pahlavi, who are certainly organized and certainly not pacifist in their fight against the government.
It's your loyal party line messaging which is detached from reality.
(fails to produce any sources for unfounded claims, followed by a lot of rhetoric)
Note the failure to rebut the provided sources in my comment.
I accept that it's unlikely that you'll examine your own priors. My response is for the benefit of people who haven't had the chance to read extensively and travel, who might take your claims at face value.
The evidence I "provided" was evidence I think you already admitted. You do not deny that the US and Israel openly (and to repeat myself, insanely - it's so bad you'd almost think it was a deliberate attempt to sabotage any legitimacy) took credit for the attempt to replace the government of Iran to an unprecedented degree - why don't you find an example of an attempted revolution where a foreign country claimed to "be with you on the ground"?
I could have linked to the insane tweets with [1] and [2] myself, but why bother. I trust people to find them themselves if they're in doubt.
I guess no head of state just threatened to nuke Iran either, and that is a preposterous lie.
You have not presented evidence. You have just linked authorities. The direct statements - those are evidence.
I don't understand how any human in good faith could look at Iran's government and say they are the evil regime, when we have on other hand, someone who is vocally saying that he is willing to destroy the country's infrastructure and steal their oil.
Well, sure I don't mind getting flagged or downvoted. But at least I speak my mind and what I believe is true.
Everyone sucks here.
They did that with Iraq, ISIS, they trying with Kurdistan..
I'm defending a theocracy, but this is not how countries are freed. And he is clearly claiming to take the oil, destroy their infrastructure and take the country to the dark ages. If Iranian government was saying that, hell would go lose.
A violent takeover may not immediately lead to a "free" country but it does open the doors to change and from that change can come freedom. Or in a different perspective its not freedom its just to be free from that certain regime.
I'm not Iranian, Iran has no effect on my life, and I'm a pacifist.
Why would I compel someone to liberate themselves with a mistaken paternalism? It's irresponsible.
Perhaps US involvemet in arming rebels elsewhere might led to the downfall of the current US ruling class also?
How do you expect an abused dog to turn out? It's probably not going to turn out very nice isn't it? The Iranian regime would chill out just fine on their own if only the west would stop being so cruel to them.
If Iran sucks, it is only because the US wants it to suck
Imagine a country comes and arm a group in the US to rebel against the government..
At this point you simply just back away from all indications of “iran bad”
Like after 300k deaths in Irak when the administration said "sorry we have been misled by wrong information about the WMD"? They made a mistake, yet Iraqis were evil.
Attacking civilian targets with cluster bombs has happened and Iran is doing that as we speak. That is a war crime.
Attacking infrastructure is not a war crime if that infrastructure serves a military purpose. Attacking purely civilian use infrastructure is a war crime.
Threatening to attack civilian use infrastructure is not a war crime. Threatening to attack infrastructure used for military purposes is also not a war crime.
Mowing down protestors with machines guns is not a war crime but maybe we should consider it a crime against humanity.
EDIT: FWIW I do care about what Hegseth said. It's wrong and he shouldn't have said that. But people say stuff- what matters are the actions.
then in the iran conflict, leaving the sailors to drown after sinking iran's show boat with a sub
Iran's government mows down protestors by the 10's of thousands. They beat woman to death for violating the dress code. They conduct public hangings in stadiums. They routinely use torture and arbitrary arrests. They and their proxies bombard civilians routinely. They recruit child soldiers. The list is just endless. How is that even comparable to the US government?
https://iranhumanrights.org/2024/03/crimes-against-humanity-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drowning_of_Afghan_refugees_in...
https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-af...
How about the double tap strikes? Targeting first responders is a war crime, remember. And US use of double tap strikes is well documented.
If you just want to talk about how bad the victim of war crimes is, that sounds like making excuses for war crimes to me.
I did see some mention that the school was hit twice but I don't think that's supported by the satellite imagery or videos we've seen. In theory US service personnel can and should refuse to execute an order that is targeting first responders and my base assumption would be that the US does not practice this. There are huge number of people involved in planning strikes and executing them so you'd think some of those people would refuse such an order and/or speak about it publicly. I.e. I don't believe the US initial salvo of Tomahawk cruise missiles and bombings were designed to intentionally hit first responders. Beyond it being a war crime it also makes no sense to "waste" bombs and cruise missiles on first responders when presumably there are a lot of other more valuable targets; beyond it being morally wrong and a war crime it's also stupid. The only time I've seen this sort of strategy being executed intentionally is during the suicide bombing campaign in Israel. e.g.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beit_Lid_suicide_bombing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Yehuda_Street_bombings#200...
In the context of terrorizing a population it makes perfect sense. In the context of the US attack on Iran it makes zero sense since it doesn't serve the US interest to terrorize the population of Iran and the regime couldn't care less.
What do you want me to say about the US? I would like to see zero war crimes from the US. I would like to see a US president that doesn't sound like a mad person on social media and a SecDef that isn't a religious zealot. I still think that big picture there is no comparing the US to Iran in terms of the actions each is taking and has taken. Iran fundamentally wants to make the world a worse place and the US wants to make it a better place (and sure, make a lot of money while doing that...). Would a solution that doesn't involve dropping bombs be better? Sure. Find me one.
Assuming the US did not intend to kill school girls that is also not a war crime. You can certainly argue that this happened due to the US decision to go to war and claim the actions to not be moral (or illegal as some have stated). Others might argue that more harm would occur if no action was taken and that the action minimizes the overall harm (e.g. to the Iranian people or others).
You could also argue that attack was intentional. I don't think there's any evidence of that and I'm not sure what purpose it served if it was one.
You're probably technically correct and that the US didn't intentionally look in Google Maps for an elementary school and decided to destroy it. But did we really need to Double Tap it?
Timothy Snyder has an opinion about this: https://x.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/2040883546093436941?s=20
I'm not quite there yet.
Unfortunately it's also the only motivation anyone has presented that there is any real hope of actually achieving. And it's the kind of excuse trump could use to become glorious dictator. Or at least I wouldn't be surprised to learn he thinks it is.
No, I really don't think that's why this war was started. I don't think trump actually wants terrorist attacks in America. But it just might be what he will get, whether he likes it or not.
He might not but he's surrounded by christian evangelist lunatics who think bringing about the end times is their moral responsibility and, more importantly, they are in charge because Trump is an addled idiot who has fewer thoughts in his head than an orange cat.
On the contrary, there appear to be good legal arguments that Hegseth merely saying "no quarter" is, on its own, a war crime:
https://www.justsecurity.org/133970/legal-advice-hegseth-no-...
Be sure that this US threat is not just against Iran, it's a US threat aginst the entire world, and it will be taken as such by many, you war crime justifying tool.
Also pretty telling, that you're using intl. law to justify US attacks, instead of using it for what their purpose was,... which is to limit the ways in which states execute war. The same thing Israel was doing to justify murdering 20 000 children in Gaza, just constantly finding "loopholes" and using it retroactively to justify every single thing they did that someone contensted.
Iran mass murdered tens of thousands of protesters in one day. I was outraged when Trump’s goons murdered two Minnesotan protesters—if we can agree this is evil, it should follow that a regime that murders tens of thousands of protesters is also evil. This isn’t complicated, which is why you’re being downvoted (I did not downvote you).
now, i'm against death penalty, but if a government under siege by foreign powers faces such an existential threat then that's one outcome to be expected ... those agitators had it coming. many innocent people died that day, but surely the majority weren't that innocent.
one can disagree with or dislike the irg, but i don't think they're evil, and if they are by the same criteria the us and israel are fucking monsters.
> one can disagree with or dislike the irg, but i don't think they're evil, and if they are by the same criteria the us and israel are fucking monsters.
Yes, multiple governments can be bad, which is what this thread has been debating. Israel coordinating protests does not absolve IRGC butchering unarmed protestors. Iran sponsoring Hamas terrorism does not absolve Israel’s brutality against civilians. This isn’t complicated.
He said it clearly:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/6/has-trump-confirmed-...
And anyone who knows a bit of history in the region they will understand that this is the case. They armed Saddam to fight Iran for 8 years. The main issue with Iran is that it is against Israel.
/s
The Iranian regime is incredibly evil. That makes the American actions even more evil given that they’re providing that evil regime so much cover and allowed it to transition from their 86 year old leader with almost no opportunity for opposition.
Remember, Mossad publicly boasted that they were on the ground with the protesters, which was a pretty insane thing to do and basically gave Iran carte blanche to say these aren't protests, it's a foreign sponsored coup attempt. There's very little we can say to that when Mossad basically publicly said it was.
Maybe they were so sure the protests would succeed they figured it would earn them/justify goodwill with the new government?
Also, if you know anything at all about the history of the Iranian regime, it’s entirely unsurprising that this happened. They respond murderously to every large scale protest, and have been mass murderers since they turned on the leftists and other allies who helped install them in ‘79.
> it's a foreign sponsored coup attempt
This is what the regime says every time large protests erupt internally. I’m not defending Israel, but these were innocent unarmed people protesting even if Israel played a role in organizing the protests. I detest the Israeli regime as well, but justifying either side’s mass murder is insane.
> This is what the regime says every time large protests erupt internally
Yes, but that doesn't mean they're not right. US and particularly Israel outright took credit for it, to a degree you'd be hard pressed to find any time in history. It wasn't just a spontaneous uprising, it was also very openly a foreign sponsored regime change operation.
Which doesn't mean they're aren't a lot of innocent people who have wanted to get rid of the theocrats all along getting murdered. I'm sure there are.
There are just enough in the opposition who have decided to ally with Israel (which would rather see Iran a Somalia-style failed state before a free and democratic Iran) and the dictator's sonthat any kind of moral legitimacy the movement could have had is out the window.
You were originally arguing that the Islamic Republic isn't evil because the protestors deserved to be killed because Israel and the US claimed to have coordinated the protests. I don't see how you're getting from "Israel and the US claimed to have coordinated the protests" to "therefore Iran's mass murder was legitimate". Even if the tens of thousands figure is exaggerated by an order of magnitude, it would still make the Islamic Republic an evil regime. Even if Iranians who criticize the regime are "batshit crazy", even if the US and Israel organized the protests, even if the Shah was really worse than the Islamic Republic, none of that justifies murdering unarmed protestors by the thousands. My position is that mass murder is wrong even if the protestors held opinions I disagreed with.
Well mainly by having Iranian friends who tell us their government is an evil regime, and when we try to insist our government is evil too, lecture us about our privilege to show they really mean it.
You seem to be trying to force reality into a “good vs evil” storyline. There does not have to be a good side.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Human_Rights_Co...
Once they are locked up in the same cage, we all get to move on. Sounds good?
friend of a friend was there during but that's "anecdotal" right?
Nearly a thousand insurrectionists armed by the U.S., as Trump admitted, and crowds seeded with Mossad agents - as Mossad boasted about on both X and TV, were instructed to create as much death & havoc as possible to set the stage for regime change. Though several thousand died, the number was below 3k, and the Epstein coalition didn't get their regime change. All those bloated 10k-60k numbers are imaginary.
Hell, Trump was angry as there were supposed to be even more deaths, but he says the Kurds looted the weapons meant for the "protestors".
If this was done in the U.S,, it would be a 9/11 moment and your nation would go to world-war. But alas, the U.S. directly & indirectly owns the majority of the world media and the truth trickles down only days & weeks later. Thankfully, Trump is so stupid that he can never keep his mouth shut. And Mossad is so arrogant and protected that they boast about their wetwork missions on their official social media & Israeli TV channels.
Trump is noise, not signal. He has "admitted" plenty of things which are untrue, and sometimes self-contradictory. Even trying to model him as a rational liar is a nonstarter.