It’s no guarantee, but it is a good opportunity. I’m half-Persian, and certainly not as closely connected as others, but it’s hard to see this as a bad thing. There’s a possibility I can go visit my family in Iran as a result of this. I haven’t had a good chance for that in like 4 years
Removal of the head of state is often a turning point. Either a regime becomes more extreme or the government collapses due to in-fighting as individuals attempt to gain control.
I would hold back on any hopes until we see how the current government handles things. Intervention from other countries does not always lead to positive outcomes.
Trump seems to have thought it through a bit. Recent post:
>...This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country. We are hearing that many of their IRGC, Military, and other Security and Police Forces, no longer want to fight, and are looking for Immunity from us. As I said last night, “Now they can have Immunity, later they only get Death!” Hopefully, the IRGC and Police will peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots, and work together as a unit to bring back the Country to the Greatness it deserves...
The merge peacefully or die thing may motivate them.
Adding Iranian oil back to the market will lower prices everywhere, including Russia. I'm not so sure the extra-heavy Venezuelan oil will be affected as much.
India used to use Venezuelan crude before the 2019 sanctions [0][1]
India only shifted to using Russian oil in 2022 [2] after Venezuelan [3] and Iranian [4] oil sanctions were enacted, which was when both began increasing engagement with China.
It's a similar story for South Korea [5] and Japan [6].
This helps reduce prices for ONG, as India is shifting back to Venezuelan crude which gives slack which South Korea and Japan can take advantage of, as India, Japan, and South Korea represent 3 of the 5 largest oil consumers globally.
It's less a revolution and more a matter of catching the tide of shifting world powers — and seizing a rare shot at building something other than the last failed experiment.
New Iran, new experiment. You bet Iranians are euphoric right now. Some of the country's brightest intellectuals and political minds are sitting in Evin prison, and if all goes well, they're about to walk out and help shape what comes next.
My dad is worried about the power vacuum, and he's right to be. His biggest concern is the border states and the narrative that ISIS is being funneled into the country to destroy any chance of organized transition. I desperately hope he's wrong. And I don't think he'll ever fully heal — few who lived through the first revolution will.
There would likely be millions of Americans celebrating the murder of their current president, should that happen. It doesn't mean it's reasonable, right, just, or civilized, nor would it indicate that it was a unanimously supported action.
and murdered a bunch of Venezuelans, a bunch of non-citizens in the USA, collected from American companies and residents billions in tariffs...
How about those Epstein files?
In cases where it's feasible to do life in prison, I'm fine with that too. But for dictators, that's typically not realistic (Maduro notwithstanding). Better to kill them rather than let them continue killing others.
I actually oppose the death penalty as a punishment for crimes, but for practical rather than principled reasons: I don't want innocent people (and there's always a chance of innocence) to be killed, and it's more expensive than life in prison anyway.
Part of the reason I, like you, make an exception for world leaders is that it can be cathartic for the people who suffered under them. Of course, it depends on the circumstances. I'm not talking about giving Jimmy Carter the chair for failing to bring down inflation.
My personal view is that most dictators deserve to be stuffed into a suitcase, loaded into a canon, and fired into the side of a climbing wall. I guess that makes me immoral.
That said, for anything aside from a despotic world leader, I'm also against the death penalty.
He sure does act like a dictator, ruling by executive order. He sent the US military to operate on US soil, by executive order... so yes, he is very much a dictator right now.
Well, there are other things you can look at. For one, Khamenei was dictator of a regime that abducts women and recently murdered 10s of thousands of protesters in the streets. I'd reckon most, including Iranians, would not judge the killing of such an individual immoral, unjust or uncivilized.
They threw the justice and civility when they murdered people on the street. That ship has sailed and the party who's responsible for this escalation is the government.
There aren't millions. Maybe thousands which are completely insane considering Trump didn't kill any US citizen, unlike Haminayi killing 50k of his own people.
Perhaps, but there would be tens/hundreds of millions of people like me who didn't vote for Trump and don't like him, but would be absolutely enraged beyond perhaps anything in this country's history if another country blew up the White House and he was killed.
Exactly. This is just western media trying to project some morality to what was an internationally illegal act ... (and perhaps some in the media hoping against hope this publicity would please the dear, glorious leaders of Israel and the US to end the war).
Preventive war (attacking to neutralize a future, non-imminent threat) is considered illegal under modern international law. The UN Charter restricts the use of force to UN Security Council authorization or self-defense against an actual, imminent armed attack, making preventive actions, which target potential future dangers, unlawful.
Israel and Iran are involved in active hostilities for a long time now, direct or by proxies. Furthermore, US and Israel are making the case for a preemptive war with the advent of the Iranian nuclear program (whether you believe it or not, that’s beside the point), and those are legal.
There were allegedly 7 US personnel injured during the Maduro raid.
Decapitation airstrikes have been possible for decades. I suppose now we find out whether that was a good idea or not. Slightly surprised the Iran strike worked, if you remember the hunts for Saddam and Bin Laden.
25 years ago we didn't have Project Maven, and our leadership in the early 2000s were committed to boots-on-the-ground nation-building due to the afterglow of the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia.
If I were in their shoes, I would be celebrating, too. But this is complicated. If they and their loved ones are already outside the country, they are not directly imperiled by the power vacuum. So the upside is maybe their homeland becomes hospitable again, but the downside is basically that it remains inhospitable.
I'm not saying that the diaspora doesn't care about the risks or have empathy for those that remain in Iran. I'm sure there are also many people who are deeply concerned. Just that being an emigre changes things.
That's very moving! I can't say many international developments have filled me with optimism the past couple years. I want so badly for this to pan out for Iranians.
I'm not saying the Ayatollah wasn't a vile criminal, but it's always innocents on the ground who face the brunt of war.
I hope the citizens of Iran can have a peaceful transition and chart a better path for their country, but every single one of America's previous forced regime changes in the region (and across the world) has shown otherwise.
They're not going to have a normal country. The United States under Trump isn't interested in a democratic Iran. They want a dictator they can control.
Not disagreeing with you, but US-controlled dictators have better track record of not killing thousands of protesters or just random people in own populations.
Not perfect option, but still is an improvement even from your positiom.
I think you’re right that it would be a puppet state under trump. But in three years it will be a puppet state under somebody else! And maybe that somebody would relinquish the strings.
At some point you have to decide: if my country is held back by a brutal dictatorial regime where civilians can't hope to topple it, is there anything else to do other than get external help?
Libya is not a real country in a historical sense. It’s a bunch of tribes, Kadaffi was from one of the tribes that subjugated others. In Iraq it was a Sunni minority that rules over Shiite majority, and other minorities like the Kurds. In Syria one minority (alawiites) rules over others by force.
Also, these countries were not formed by themselves, but rather through deals with France and/or Britain.
Iran, while also diverse, has a thousands of years long history. Persians still see themselves as continuation of Persian peoples from the empire times, etc.
So, it is not very correct to compare it one to one.
Iraqis also see themselves as a continuation of Mesopotamian people, that was quite literally what Iraqi Baathist thought was centered around and used as the successful unification strategy. That's quite literally the justification the Baathists used to try 'reclaim' both Khuzestan and Kuwait. You quite literally couldn't be more wrong in how you categorize Baathist Iraq.
Iran has a much worse relationship with its minorities, where if you are of the wrong faith then you literally face state-sanctioned laws preventing you studying or working. In fact, things in Iraq became much worse for minorities after the overthrowal due to the adoption of Iranian cultural practices like Abrahamic elitism.
The cherry on top of all of this is that you probably don't realize that Persians in Iran only make up 60% of the country. You have Iranians who wholly reject Persian ancestry (Azeris, Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds...) but you don't even account for them.
Oh, please. If you think the majority of all Iranians are in favor of US-Israeli bombings of their home country, you're seriously smoking some potent propaganda.
Iran is not an Arab country? Answering a more general question - all countries of former Yugoslavia are better after US intervention. Some Serbs would not agree, but it's on them
It's not a deflection, it's an example of an intervention having a positive effect. I see no reason for Iran following Arabic rather than Balkan scenario - it's a totally different culture - much more modernised and much more secular
Nobody is happy about killing civilians. But Khamenei did more than that every day he was alive. Personally I feel there is some amount of immediate civilian casualty that is worth putting a stop to continuous suffering.
It's easy to excuse the collateral damage of people you will never meet, just remember that this reasoning has unleashed hell on Earth for countless innocent people, many kids, and it makes you sound like a ghoul.
Hope to hell that you or anyone you care about isn't on the receiving end of such sentiments.
I remember that the alternative has also unleashed hell on Earth for countless innocent people.
At some point, you have to take the path that offers at least some hope for the future. To turn into something that has lost all hope - there is no fixing that.
It's not "easy" but it remains true. We can play the moral-decision game and I'll ask you whether killing one child is justified to save 5,000,000. If you answer "yes" then from that point it's just about agreeing on numbers.
What is the alternative you propose? Just to give a hypothetical-but-realistic example, let’s presume that khamenei’s continued existence results in 100 civilian deaths per day. Under that assumption, what one-time cost would you accept to end his life?
Sometimes when you're making a media distraction campaign you gotta burn a few dozen children alive. I'm sure they would understand once they understand that this will buy two entire weeks of eyeballs!
Surely there could never be any unintended consequences from this! If history of conflict in the middle east has taught us anything it's that the power vacuum this bought will be filled with something much better and more enlightened.
We have probably entered an era of the Internet where new account signups need some sort of validation. An invite from a user with >500 karma? $10? Strong KYC? Or perhaps one of multiple such methods to be more inclusive?
We all know there's propaganda accounts on this site (and all over the internet). Is this one of them? I have no idea! But the fact that I have no idea makes it harder to enjoy HN and be confident in the things I am reading.
The time for changing user signup flows is probably nearby.
Would create a market for aged accounts (or give a shot in the arm to the existing market). I think the problem is reach - if a site has reach, it's going to attract gamification. The more trustworthy the site is considered (for example, by having a many-hoops sign-up process), the bigger a target for gamification it will be.
Agreed, it's a propaganda bot. But with Khamenei dead and Iran terrorist gov down we might have less of those paid actors here and everywhere on internet because their source of income will be gone
"Iran terrorist gov" so unserious. Yesterday's terrorist is today's US appointed leader. See: Syria. From US bounty to US approved. You can just as easily see Israel as the terrorist government attacking Iran unprovoked. They have been claiming Iran has been 2 weeks away from a nuke for decades.
I'm not picking a side, just saying people often create throw-away accounts for political discussions. But yeah an account can be anything. One never knows the underlying agenda people truly have.
My evil agenda is to encourage people to watch every season of Futurama.
> Removing Saddam in itself was good but what it did the wider region was not good.
I believe this is the legacy of leaders like Saddam. They build a very messy future for their countries. Whenever such a leader is gone, somebody has to take over power. Dictators tend to concentrate as much power in their hands as possible. Forced removal of such a leader might accelerate and / or destabilize power transition. Which might end up in a very messy scenario.
Absolute power transition worked well with monarchy in the past, cause everybody knew who would be the next guy, there were rules and procedures. With dictatorship often times there are no rules. So power transition might turn into a complete chaos even with a natural death of a dictator.
Taking out Saddam allowed the Taliban to get right back to the raping of the Opium farmers wives and children. Not saying I approved of Saddam but I did enjoy the way he had originally curtailed the risk to his Opium revenue.
Iraq right now is in roughly the same position as it was when Saddam Hussein was there but in the meantime a few million people died and the country went through a pretty traumatic period.
ISIS also broke out of countries like Syria, which nobody messed with until after their civil war and the ISIS takeover. Which is to say that the problem isn’t the Iraq war - but Islam. It’s literally called ISIS - and you blame the US for it?
Parts of Iraq are much better off, like Kurdistan. Other parts were utterly devastated by our operations, insurgency, sectarian violence, ISIS, and so on. Some people had religious freedom and now live in areas under theocratic control.
There was a clip of one of Iran's missiles dodging 3 Patriot interceptors to hit the US base in Bahrain. I realized I just watched $12m wasted for nothing in less than 5 seconds.
You can't see the french or Russians doing the same thing in Africa? Because I sure can. There's be some hand wringing and posturing but that's about it.
Not that it's ok for the US, or anyone else to do it.
Either this will end in a fractured state with different factions OR another Ayatollah will be in charge. Just my guess from seeing similar stories play out in other countries though....
I think maybe the reformists are able to hold on now that the IRGC is being hammered. There might be more internal bloodshed but chances are that Iran might be a bit more open and more modern. Of course I have zero knowledge about how Iran politics works, so that was just a guess, not even an intelligent one.
BTW I don't actually think even the reformists will "accept Western ideas".
Maybe .. the revolutionary guard is fed up though with ineffective empire rule? Like to be rubbed in the dirt face first repeatetly as inheritor of the mighty persian empire sucks bad enough, to reconsider the way things are run?
Sorry, but whatever israel & the us are doing, seems to work way better than - whatever has happened the last decades in iran?
As I understand it, the IGRC doesn't particularly rub happily with the clerical council, and it's not entirely clear to me who will win that the power struggle.
But the ultimate loser of the power struggle is clear: the Iranian populace at large, as all of the viable factions are quite committed to consolidating their power by repressing the population. The most likely situation, I think, looks a lot like Libya.
Iran is not like other countries in the region. Despite its shortcomings, it's a cohesive society. I'm certain that there will be no fracturing and a central authority will emerge.
yess, the experience so far makes it obvious. They will be democratic and their gdp will go up by 6900% now. There won't be devastation, people starving to death, meaningless hindsight or anything like that.
No you're right people usually love to be murdered by their regimes.
Sure there is! Some got killed and executed but many alive in jail! We even have a Nobel laureate in jail. For God's sake it's just one google search away!
If the hard-liners IRGC generals went with him then it might be a good thing for its economy. I have heard some rumors that China was frustrated that IRGC pushed against the deals and were not willing to accept foreign investments in key oil/infra projects because they sit on them -- and that was why China never put down any real investments after signing the deals.
I think the biggest problem of IRGC is that they grabbed a large share of economy but spent a lot of that in geopolitical expansion for the last 1-2 decades. This in turn contributed to a more fragile Iranian economy and high inflation, which makes them extremely unpopular among the people.
How is it bad? Imagine a world where instead of sending hundreds of thousands young men to die, countries would just launch targeted attacks on the head of enemy's state.
It's the stated reason why the United States has an impeachment process. So that they have a process for removing undesirable heads of state without resorting to assassination.
Iranian here! Lived most of my life inside Iran. I don't view US's actions as a favor to common Iranians. That's naive. No one wants war and bombing of civilians. Our misery is caused by a mix of religious extremism, theocracy and foreign intervention (in the past, Mossadegh, etc.) among other things. First and foremost I hold the regime responsible. For most of my life, I witnessed firsthand how they pushed us step by step closer to confrontation with the US, yet there's no single bomb shelter in Tehran or any major city for people to run to after 47 years of this shit. How would you feel in this situation?
Their opposition to Israel is not from a humanitarian and moral standpoint, it's purely religious. They have no shame admitting this. You just have to listen to one of the 5 state TV channels in Farsi. I even think Palestinians would fare better if not for these extremists on either side!
All that said, the supreme leader is the one who commands the murder of innocents in the streets, so he had it coming. Good riddance and he died like the rat that he was. But as to what happens next? No one knows. Also I personally don't think US is doing this because they want Iran's oil. I believe they want to put pressure on China to not get Iran's cheap (under sanctions) oil. That seems more plausible to me.
In my opinion the real problem for Iran lies in the north, on the border with Azerbaijan.
The Israeli-supplied Azeri military has already demonstrated its effectiveness when it curb stomped the unprepared and internally betrayed Armenian military and militias. Baku will eventually decide to intervene in the northern territories. If I had to guess, a "special military operation" into northern Iran is the most likely follow-up scenario goaded into and supplied of course by Israel/US. The goal will be to foment a civil war and begin the dismemberment process of Iran.
A little personal conspiracy theory I have is that after the last Israel/US intervention (when they mysteriously liquidated the only high-ranking and influential internal opposition of the Khamenei clan left) is that some sort of deal was worked out behind the scenes with the clan to get rid of the wizard-in-chief kinda like how Maduro was sold out. It is much easier to go to war with a country when it responds with only symbolic attacks and secretly promises to fight with one hand behind its back - provided cash and security flows for those at the top of course.
If true, and given how easy it seemed decapitate the regime I can't see another Ayatollah taking over, hopefully the people take over and institute a real secular democracy based on capitalism.
Without proper support and a huge nation building effort, the same fate as Lebanon, Syria, Lybia Iraq, Afghanistan is the more likely outcome after this evil dictator is gone.
Assassination doesn’t remove the system or rewrite the balance of power, nor does it reconstitute civil society.
The era of the Isreali empire in the Middle-east might have began. From being on the brink of extinction at the hands of the Germans 80 years go to building an empire is as outstanding achievement.
This may or may not lead to a weaker Iran. From FP:
“Iran is frequently portrayed as a political order bound tightly to individuals. Yet the architecture that emerged after 1979 was formed by a different logic, one founded in the revolutionary experience itself. Khomeini captured this hierarchy in a remark (https://abdimedia.net/en/ruhollah-khomeini/system-ahead-life...) often cited within Iran’s political elite: “Preserving the Islamic Republic is more important than preserving any individual, even if that individual were the Imam of the Age”—a reference to Shiism’s 12th Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi.
It is still unclear whether the system will always follow this principle. But one should expect a change in leadership in Tehran to be treated less as an ending and more as a chance for the country’s institutions to show they can survive.”
> Earlier, Trump addressed reports that Khamenei was killed in airstrikes today, saying, “We feel that that is a correct story.”
This doesn't sound like Trump's typical bluster, and it's even weirder that Trump didn't immediately go on TV to brag. I'm not saying this is fake news, but I'll wait for confirmation.
If the United States truly supported regime change there should be a clear next leader favored to succeed the Ayatollah, otherwise this feels more like a favor to oil companies, raising prices temporarily, and a sound bite for political gain, without a care of what happens to the country later. Simply toppling a government seems quite risky without further planning. Just expecting "good" people to fill the leadership vacuum is a gamble that could easily backfire and lead to greater crackdowns on freedoms and death to those Trump told to go get the power.
Obviously has nothing to do with oil companies or oil, this is a war on behalf of Israel. Netanyahu visited Trump 6 times in the past year. Prominent Zionists and Israelis inside the US have been agitating for the US to do this for years, especially since Trump took office last year.
> President Trump announced the Iranian leader's death on social media, saying Khamenei could not avoid U.S. intelligence and surveillance. A source briefed on the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran told NPR earlier Saturday that an Israeli airstrike killed Khamenei.
This does not seem to me like very strong evidence? Trump just says whatever, and "a source briefed on [the attacks]" just means at least one person in USG thinks Khamenei was in whatever house they blew up. Am I missing some other confirmation?
In isolation the death of this brutal dictator is great news, but we have seen how previous decapitation strikes have not had the intended effect. And I can only hope the Iranian people somehow end up better for this entirely illegal war that the Trump administration has initiated, instead of facing up to a fractured leadership and a potential civil war.
It's definitely odd if he was just sitting in his compound. That's a very, well, known place for him. Surely Iran has plenty of secure underground bunkers for leadership to retreat to?
Fleeing is seen as dishonorable in many parts of the Arab world. Remember the Israeli lies about how Yahya Sinwar dressed in women's clothes and were trying to cross the border to Egypt? In reality he was out in the field with his men killing Israeli soldiers. He died a brave death and Khamenei will now have died one too.
The killings of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were so amazingly successful in stabilizing those countries that Americans keep repeating the pattern.
It's remarkable to me how many seem to forget there is "morality" apart from "legality". Even if this does violate some treaty somewhere, we need not wring hands over the death of an objective dictator.
Trump is for rent. Shutting down a competitor is 25M, "full service" is apparently ~100M. I'm not privy to what invading an oil nation costs, but I reckon it's akin to a hand job, so a nice golden wristwatch should probably do it?
Time for the Iranians to overthrow the Islamic Regime and bring in Prince Reza Pahlavi as transitional leader, as so many Iranians died to make their wish of him being the leader clear, is fast approaching.
I didn't vote for him but you’ve got to give it to Trump. Where past US presidents’ foreign policy (wars: Afghanistan, Iraq; diplomacy: Iran under Obama, and so on) didn't go anywhere, Trump gets results.
Now, these results may lead to unintended consequences in the future. But today, a murderer is dead.
The murderers are the people committing murders. That the victim was himself a ruthless tyrant doesn't change the fact that this is intolerable. The US can't be the only one allowed to bend the rules.
Don't come crying around when the next 9/11 inevitably happens.
In hindsight, from the perspective of the Middle East and Arab world in general: Obama’s tenure was a geopolitical nightmare, while under Trump’s first presidency the Middle East made a big step forward with the Abraham Accords.
Pretty much by definition, dictators do not allow themselves to be removed by the people through peaceful means, which is why it's easy to draw a line there. If someone's a dictator, it's morally okay to kill them. Always.
https://youtu.be/NSbx_0mtk80?si=MJ_Bfvx8gVd1P1mm
They've waited a very long time for this moment!
But this assassination is no guarantee of change for the better. Far from it.
I would hold back on any hopes until we see how the current government handles things. Intervention from other countries does not always lead to positive outcomes.
>...This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country. We are hearing that many of their IRGC, Military, and other Security and Police Forces, no longer want to fight, and are looking for Immunity from us. As I said last night, “Now they can have Immunity, later they only get Death!” Hopefully, the IRGC and Police will peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots, and work together as a unit to bring back the Country to the Greatness it deserves...
The merge peacefully or die thing may motivate them.
Anyone know?
India only shifted to using Russian oil in 2022 [2] after Venezuelan [3] and Iranian [4] oil sanctions were enacted, which was when both began increasing engagement with China.
It's a similar story for South Korea [5] and Japan [6].
This helps reduce prices for ONG, as India is shifting back to Venezuelan crude which gives slack which South Korea and Japan can take advantage of, as India, Japan, and South Korea represent 3 of the 5 largest oil consumers globally.
[0] - https://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/ongc-awaits-instr...
[1] - https://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/reliance-venezuel...
[2] - https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65553920
[3] - https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/india-and-venezuela-gro...
[4] - https://www.brookings.edu/articles/trump-tightens-sanctions-...
[5] - https://eastasiaforum.org/2019/09/13/south-korean-oil-refine...
[6] - https://mei.edu/ar/publication/japan-and-middle-east-navigat...
Shed no tears for the deaths of tyrants. They would happily see you and any other threat to their illegitimate power put six feet under.
Regardless, dictators deserve to be put into the ground no matter where they are.
I actually oppose the death penalty as a punishment for crimes, but for practical rather than principled reasons: I don't want innocent people (and there's always a chance of innocence) to be killed, and it's more expensive than life in prison anyway.
That said, for anything aside from a despotic world leader, I'm also against the death penalty.
So please go ahead and tell me, where does International Law prohibit a state that’s at war with another to assassinate its head of state?
Taking out both Maduro and Khomeini over the course of a few months without a single American or Israeli casualty is peak.
Decapitation airstrikes have been possible for decades. I suppose now we find out whether that was a good idea or not. Slightly surprised the Iran strike worked, if you remember the hunts for Saddam and Bin Laden.
And a portion of HN.
I'm not saying that the diaspora doesn't care about the risks or have empathy for those that remain in Iran. I'm sure there are also many people who are deeply concerned. Just that being an emigre changes things.
I also just saw state tv threatening people once more. They're so scared.
I'm not saying that Iranian loved Khamenei, but maybe they are not that happy that he is dead because of other reasons. Instability for instance.
I'm not saying the Ayatollah wasn't a vile criminal, but it's always innocents on the ground who face the brunt of war.
I hope the citizens of Iran can have a peaceful transition and chart a better path for their country, but every single one of America's previous forced regime changes in the region (and across the world) has shown otherwise.
10 million Iranians live outside Iran. They want a normal country again.
Later today, I'm sure footage from LA, Toronto, London, Stockholm will be up.
Not perfect option, but still is an improvement even from your positiom.
Also, these countries were not formed by themselves, but rather through deals with France and/or Britain.
Iran, while also diverse, has a thousands of years long history. Persians still see themselves as continuation of Persian peoples from the empire times, etc.
So, it is not very correct to compare it one to one.
Iran has a much worse relationship with its minorities, where if you are of the wrong faith then you literally face state-sanctioned laws preventing you studying or working. In fact, things in Iraq became much worse for minorities after the overthrowal due to the adoption of Iranian cultural practices like Abrahamic elitism.
The cherry on top of all of this is that you probably don't realize that Persians in Iran only make up 60% of the country. You have Iranians who wholly reject Persian ancestry (Azeris, Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds...) but you don't even account for them.
Are you suggesting Iranians should have protested harder, maybe tried more to "bring change from within"?
You should consider conformation bias.
How can you compare Arab countries to Iran?
Actually, they will probably assume the IRGC killed them to blame the West. I don't believe that, but the Iranians can't stand the regime.
Hope to hell that you or anyone you care about isn't on the receiving end of such sentiments.
At some point, you have to take the path that offers at least some hope for the future. To turn into something that has lost all hope - there is no fixing that.
Surely there could never be any unintended consequences from this! If history of conflict in the middle east has taught us anything it's that the power vacuum this bought will be filled with something much better and more enlightened.
We have probably entered an era of the Internet where new account signups need some sort of validation. An invite from a user with >500 karma? $10? Strong KYC? Or perhaps one of multiple such methods to be more inclusive?
We all know there's propaganda accounts on this site (and all over the internet). Is this one of them? I have no idea! But the fact that I have no idea makes it harder to enjoy HN and be confident in the things I am reading.
The time for changing user signup flows is probably nearby.
(And this is why we can't have nice thighs.)
My evil agenda is to encourage people to watch every season of Futurama.
Years later, I understand it was a complete folly. Removing Saddam in itself was good but what it did the wider region was not good.
You and your children will be paying the bill for this war for the rest of your life.
Oil and defense companies will get richer.
Nothing will change in the middle east.
I believe this is the legacy of leaders like Saddam. They build a very messy future for their countries. Whenever such a leader is gone, somebody has to take over power. Dictators tend to concentrate as much power in their hands as possible. Forced removal of such a leader might accelerate and / or destabilize power transition. Which might end up in a very messy scenario.
Absolute power transition worked well with monarchy in the past, cause everybody knew who would be the next guy, there were rules and procedures. With dictatorship often times there are no rules. So power transition might turn into a complete chaos even with a natural death of a dictator.
As you said.. plenty of evidence where on the surface it seems good. But in reality it turns out to make the people in the region worse off.
I say that ISIS was worst than Saddam.
Parts of Iraq are much better off, like Kurdistan. Other parts were utterly devastated by our operations, insurgency, sectarian violence, ISIS, and so on. Some people had religious freedom and now live in areas under theocratic control.
That said, fuck Khamenei.
The truth of the world, as much as we may hate it, is that at least at the state level might makes right.
Not that it's ok for the US, or anyone else to do it.
BTW I don't actually think even the reformists will "accept Western ideas".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpEF6QPSVJE
But the ultimate loser of the power struggle is clear: the Iranian populace at large, as all of the viable factions are quite committed to consolidating their power by repressing the population. The most likely situation, I think, looks a lot like Libya.
No you're right people usually love to be murdered by their regimes.
Sure there is! Some got killed and executed but many alive in jail! We even have a Nobel laureate in jail. For God's sake it's just one google search away!
Their opposition to Israel is not from a humanitarian and moral standpoint, it's purely religious. They have no shame admitting this. You just have to listen to one of the 5 state TV channels in Farsi. I even think Palestinians would fare better if not for these extremists on either side!
All that said, the supreme leader is the one who commands the murder of innocents in the streets, so he had it coming. Good riddance and he died like the rat that he was. But as to what happens next? No one knows. Also I personally don't think US is doing this because they want Iran's oil. I believe they want to put pressure on China to not get Iran's cheap (under sanctions) oil. That seems more plausible to me.
*typo edit
(I would not rely on immunity from a nation that left collaborators on the tarmac in afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam?)
The Israeli-supplied Azeri military has already demonstrated its effectiveness when it curb stomped the unprepared and internally betrayed Armenian military and militias. Baku will eventually decide to intervene in the northern territories. If I had to guess, a "special military operation" into northern Iran is the most likely follow-up scenario goaded into and supplied of course by Israel/US. The goal will be to foment a civil war and begin the dismemberment process of Iran.
A little personal conspiracy theory I have is that after the last Israel/US intervention (when they mysteriously liquidated the only high-ranking and influential internal opposition of the Khamenei clan left) is that some sort of deal was worked out behind the scenes with the clan to get rid of the wizard-in-chief kinda like how Maduro was sold out. It is much easier to go to war with a country when it responds with only symbolic attacks and secretly promises to fight with one hand behind its back - provided cash and security flows for those at the top of course.
Assassination doesn’t remove the system or rewrite the balance of power, nor does it reconstitute civil society.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/02/28/iran-khamenei-ayatollah...
> Earlier, Trump addressed reports that Khamenei was killed in airstrikes today, saying, “We feel that that is a correct story.”
This doesn't sound like Trump's typical bluster, and it's even weirder that Trump didn't immediately go on TV to brag. I'm not saying this is fake news, but I'll wait for confirmation.
This does not seem to me like very strong evidence? Trump just says whatever, and "a source briefed on [the attacks]" just means at least one person in USG thinks Khamenei was in whatever house they blew up. Am I missing some other confirmation?
Trump is for rent. Shutting down a competitor is 25M, "full service" is apparently ~100M. I'm not privy to what invading an oil nation costs, but I reckon it's akin to a hand job, so a nice golden wristwatch should probably do it?
Bring the popcorn with you. No need for salt cause everyone got that in spades on both sides.
Now, these results may lead to unintended consequences in the future. But today, a murderer is dead.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/28/children-dead-...
Don't come crying around when the next 9/11 inevitably happens.
Was the bottleneck in these situations really the US' willingness to kill or capture world leaders?