Probably not. Afaik only the Dutch have eaten their leader in a time of desperation and while I'm not saying that other nations should have taken notes, we are probably all thinking it...
That's it? Momentary gasoline price is all that matters now? Not geopolitical interests, alliances, _Doing The Right Thing_? If that's the only angle you care about, then US subduing the Iranian regime would go a long way to de-facto dissolving OPEC and bring much more flexibility to oil prices.
>Independent analysis of satellite imagery suggested that the school and the Sayyid al-Shuhada military complex had been struck near-simultaneously by air-delivered munitions.[39]
The objectionable part of double/triple tap strike is that you're killing rescuers or aid workers. Otherwise from a morality perspective there's no meaningful difference between 1 bomb and 2/3 bombs, especially if the actual incident was by all accounts caused by a targeting error.
I don't think it was an intentional decision to target a school. If targetting schools was a goal, there would likely have been many more targetted.
It certainly seems that there was an intentional decision to disband departments in the military last year that were intended to confirm targets are appropriate before a strike (although I can't find a reference now). There's also a lot of reporting that they used AI to do the targetting selection; if so that was an intentional decision to allow for poor selection; especially since it doesn't appear there was validation of targets. There's a lot of intentional decisions to make comments declaring 'no stupid rules of engagement' and such.
I think it's most likely that the intentional decisions led to the situation where the targetting of a school would not be noticed until after the school was hit and international outcry was made, but that doesn't mean it was not a targetting mistake. You can certainly hold people accountable for the decisions that lead to the targetting of a school, at least in the court of public opinion since there's an accountability vacuum in washington DC lately.
There are many examples of targetting mistakes that are excusable. I don't think this is one of them; but that it is inexcusable and was the result of intentional decisions doesn't make it necessarily an intentional act and not a mistake.
>It certainly seems that there was an intentional decision to disband departments in the military last year that were intended to confirm targets are appropriate before a strike (although I can't find a reference now).
On the Media recently interviewed somebody involved with that effort, and they discuss the bombing of the school.
The "proof" of the mistake is Hanlon's razor and the fact that the school was adjacent a military facility and the building itself used to be for military purposes.
>Footage from Russian state broadcaster RT has captured the moment a missile lands just a few feet from where its reporter was broadcasting in southern Lebanon.
What's this supposed to be proof of? That because a bombing happened near a journalist, that he must have been intentionally targeted? Does the US even have capabilities to track journalists in Iran, of all places? Given that journalists are specifically going into war zones, what even is the expected amount of journalists to get bombed, from pure chance alone?
Israel has a track record with the coincidentally anti-journalist ordinance. At some point you land a coin on heads twenty times and have to think maybe the coin is weighted.
At this point, Hanlon's razor should be considered a fallacy.
In fact, quite a lot of what looked like incompetence was malice. Intentional and proud malice. It does not mean there is no incompetence, but Hanlon's razor is no longer valid.
Second, army working group meant to ensure these mistakes wont happen was dismantled by Hegseth. All the while he framed such efforts as woke nonsense and praised lethality only. He was sending clear message about what matters to troops
The system was changed to allow and facilite errors like that.
I wonder if there is some kind of new law that we should be looking at drafting, in which we hold accountable folks who attribute bad actions to incompetence instead of malice despite the actors being explicitly malicious?
I think that covers a lot of western media in all the wars the US has waged in my lifetime:
it's always "a regrettable (but worthwhile) mistake" until it's a "horrific but unique war crime"... it's never "who the fuck said these vicious idiots could kill whoever they want and never face just and material consequences for their crimes".
This shit certainly seems intentional. Maybe the folks who are attributing things to "incompetence" are just projecting their own incompetencies in interpreting the world, but at this point I suspect that they to are complicit in this malice.
"Despite the war aims being nebulous, illegal, and ever changing, none of them would be advanced by bombing a girls school."
If the goal is to force the enemy into giving up? Many are willing to give their life to a cause, but way less are willing to give the lifes of their children.
This was not just some school, but a school where the children of the iranian leadership are going to.
And coincidently Trump himself said he would target the families of terrorists, if voted into power.
"The Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab is part of a broad network of schools structurally and administratively affiliated with the IRGC Navy.
These schools are classified as nonprofit institutions and are primarily intended to provide educational services to the sons and daughters of members of the IRGC Navy."
IRGC means leadership (I did not said highest leadership, they would be in Teheran)
I still think often about the article. it was published in the runup to full on invasion of Iraq by Bush Jr. While it certainly was spot on capturing the dynamic of the argument, it was also deeply prescient about the impacts of that war.
and now we find ourselves in nearly the same situation "they will welcome us as liberators", "it will just take two weeks", "the United States was in imminent danger of attack by weapons of mass destruction", "these are really bad totalitarian people and we are morally required to intervene". word for word.
and still, after doing this twice to countries directly to the east and west, and having poured money and blood into the sand to end up in a worse position than before, we're taking another run at it, with even less justification.
before bringing up the fate of the Iranian people, maybe we should look at the Iraquis - they certainly didn't benefit, or the Afghanis, or the Venezuelans to take a more recent example. It takes a special kind of idiot to ignore all that recent history and support this assault.
Okay, let's compare. How many iranians has the regime killed over the last few months. They've said they would continue indiscriminately killing as long as it took, the regime would literally destroy Iran rather than let go of their dreams of Muslim empire. They killed tens of thousands of people. Every persian person i know or have even heard about had been highly supportive of the war, with the singular goal of replacing the ayatollah. I hate Trump, i don't think he's necessarily doing it for the right reasons, and i think he's incredibly stupid for the way this didn't need to be a catastrophe for the economy (saying he would fill the strategic oil reserves, not doing that, starting a war that blocks hormuz). But it really bothers me to see everyone touting around the girls school. Do you really think they did that on purpose? The iranian regime would do that in a heartbeat if it meant harming America. How can you care so much about the 1 school and not have cared at all about the tens of thousands of brave protestors literally mowed down with machine guns. Or does it not matter because you didn't see it? They shut off the internet for a reason, and it appears to have worked.
Yes, was is bad, trump is a massive ego and idiot. But nothing we've done has come even close to what the regime has been doing to their own people since 1979.
In the end Iranians who want freedom need to form a different regime but when a group is under attack it rallies around the flag so it is a setback not an opportunity for dissidents.
But at some point incompetence crossing the line to being gross and shifts the moral balance as well. This wasn't a 'deep in the fog of war' situation, that girls school was part of an opening strike package...and because of that, we need to find out more, but that "deliberately" is an open question with the facts we have now.
The chance of Iran having regime replaced dropped to, like, zero.
Besides, Israel wont allow democratic or other functional regime change. Their goal is failed state with forever civil war in it. Something they can regularly bomb whenever it will seem functional. This can still happen, so everyone around should be ready for refugees waves.
Trumps idea of regime change is replacing head for someone who pays him personally - while keeping regime in place. This wont happen now.
Iranian monarchists want own dictatorship, but wont be getting it either.
Iranians who protested were just fucked and that is all about it.
Do you think some evil military planners sat in the Pentagon, saw that school, said "let's shoot at it for shits and giggles" and pressed the button? Or are you trying to pollute a grown up conversation with sensationalism and punchy hooks?
In reality someone made a mistake. It can happen. It should be investigated. It should not deter from achieving the military objectives.
I was not saying that there was a problem with the rockets themselves. Any attack is a long process with a lot of stages, and something (in this case, probably the targeting) needs to go wrong.
And because I dislike a regime that wants to kill me, I must automatically worship Trump?
I agree with you, but i want to also ask, have you heard what the ayatollah and the mullahs have said about killing Americans, dismembering protestors, raping children, nuking the United States. Have you heard the protestors mowed down by machine guns, have you heard they make you buy the body of your loved ones for the cost of the bullet, assigning that value to their life, have you heard that they literally living inside hospitals and schools, that they told the iranians they would rather every iranian die then let go of power, have you heard at all how insane the islamic regime is? How seriously they talk about destroying America and all of the west so they can spread their Islamic regime (forced conversions or death, forces prayer or death, women cannot go outside with men, men have all rights in marriage, age of consent is 9 years old _for girls_, older for boys, speaking against the governed is death, protesting is death. They literally walked the streets with speakers and plays on the national tv (propaganda, the only channel allowed now) that the people should go into the street and leave their houses, while america and israel are saying to shelter while we take out military installations. The mullahs are trying to get people killed to use that as a story to get us to stop the war. They've literally embedded military installations in every single block of most of the cities. They do that to use the citizens as human shields. The only reason they haven't already been toppled is that owning guns is illegal, and the regime and their insanity are willing to murder anyone and everyone it takes to hold on to power. They don't care about iran, they care about islam and nothing else, they're willing to destroy the world if it means no other religions are allowed. They killed tens of thousands of protestors, they raped the bodies of women then ripped out their wombs to prevent investigation. It's categorically insane. These are facts. If you don't believe them is cause you don't know anyone who came from Iran, i know many and all of them support toppling the ayatollah, sending in pahlavi as transitionary leader to get democracy running again. Trump is and has always been a crazy person too, but having learned some farsi and listened with my own ears, he's nothing like the mullahs.
>I think that if you start an unjustified war of agression against a country [...]
That's just moving the goalposts because the original comment said
>What part of "doing the right thing" is bombing an all girls school?
which is calling out that particular event specifically, other than the war itself. Otherwise you can just head over to the wikipedia page and point out the casualty figures.
You do not get to decide that. If we allow everyone to invade other countries and murder leaders because they deem those people worse than themselves, the world will be engaged in endless war. Or do you think perhaps deciding who to invade and kill is a special privilege reserved only for your country, which should be emperor of the world?
If a guy pays soldiers to sneak into another country, kidnap rape and murder children, and continues similar behavior for 4 decades I can decide he's worse than Trump. I do get to decide that. Some things are worse than others.
The preceding comment was about holding someone responsible. It appears you might have misunderstood that mine points out that this is exactly how the school was hit.
??? Do most of your everyday life decisions involve starting wars or killing people? That's concerning. Are you a high-ranking officer in the US military? As it happens, I'm not, and my decisions do not typically have life-or-death consequences.
I also don't even know what you're getting at. There was nothing "relativistic" or "morally grey" about my argument. My point is that in order for any kind of peace to exist, each country must be able to accept that there will be other people in the world who are morally repugnant to them. Because there will always be leaders who consider each other repugnant, so if you endorse starting wars over that, you're committing to a world where everyone is starting wars all the time as the international norm.
But if you're getting attacked for 4 decades by another country, do you do something about it or are you saying that's also wrong?
My understanding is that the regime in Iran has been terrorizing around the world for decades. It's not just disagreeable. People are seeking justice.
It's one thing to dislike another politician. No one needs justice for repugnancy. But if they are committing acts of terror, that's a totally different thing.
The regime in the US has been terrorizing around the world for decades. Among many other things, it overthrew the democratic Iranian government to establish a puppet autocracy in Iran, leading directly to the current one after a revolution. The entire reason Iran funds terrorists that target the US is because the US is an existential threat to it. So your argument basically boils down to "if I shoot someone, and they shoot me back, am I not entitled to self-defense?". The actual answer is to stop shooting them. Stop fucking up the entire Middle East and the people from there won't hate a country across the world so much that they feel a worthwhile use of their life is to strap a bomb to themselves in order to kill people from there.
Your other comment is locked apparently. Can't reply.
But there you suggested that the US should stop because they make Iran want to bomb and that's why there's war. And we can say the same about Iran.
So, your solution is hopeless as we already know from centuries of conflict history. Iran wants to kill us for historical events. We want to kill them for those too. Very insightful.
But we're bigger and the war is just on the TV in America. You have a much better shot of convincing them that we'll stop bombing them if they just take it for a while and then don't seek revenge.
I didn't know why you think America will be easier to convince of that.
No, Iran wants to kill you for current events. You're talking like American imperialism in the Middle East is past-tense. It is on-going, constantly. It is happening right now. This, itself, is an imperialist war. Trump is not going to war for whatever fucking reason you think he is, like stopping terrorism or changing the Iranian regime to help the Iranian people.
> You have a much better shot of convincing them that we'll stop bombing them if they just take it for a while and then don't seek revenge.
They LITERALLY DID THAT. The first invasion striking their nuclear facilities was itself an act of war that would have justified closing the Strait and all other measures they could take to fight back. Yet they accepted such a blatant crime against them and tried to de-escalate, were in the middle of negotiating a humiliatingly one-sided deal (after Trump tore up the one they had made with Obama, for no reason), and then the US attacked them in the middle of negotiations for the second time in a row. This time killing their leader, 150 children, and countless other crimes. Nobody could ever lay down and accept that. You have just created a country full of people that will justifiably hate you for another 80 years, minimum. They have been taught that the only thing trying to appease the US does is embolden the US to take even more from them.
I don't know how to communicate this to you, but your country IS THE AGGRESSOR. The US is worse than Iran. Fullstop. The Iranian regime is evil, and despite that, the American regime manages to be multiple times worse. Peace in the Middle East was possible. It is the US who is constantly, constantly, constantly stirring up conflicts there, and you have the gall to blame Iran for it.
Which events were they wanting to kill Israelis and Americans for on October 7th? Or is it totally acceptable for Iran to start wars by kidnapping and torturing civilians and filming it, but not for America to do it without celebrating the death, kidnap, torture and rape of children?
>The regime in the US has been terrorizing around the world
Yeah, that already happened. Now what? How do we stop more kids from getting kidnapped, raped, murdered, or bombed?
Your proposed solution is essentially a leader in every country that has suffered from Iran's terror who can convince his/her people that their kidnapped children are worth it.
Obviously that isn't feasible. But worse, how is that different than saying it's okay for Iran to kidnap children?
> My understanding is that the regime in Iran has been terrorizing around the world for decades
The list of Iranian terror attacks in America amounts to a whole lot of fuck all. Whatever Iran might be doing elsewhere shouldn't be America's problem.
I didn't think the point was that subtle. There is good and evil, right and wrong, survival and destruction. You seem to think that drawing a line around some land and calling yourself a country immunizes you from the moral scrutiny of your neighbors.
While this certainly accords with the promulgations of the morally bankrupt UN, it is not a recipe for existing in our world. This is why it is important to have a powerful military.
It is a matter of pragmatism. Even if I myself consider my perspective on good and evil to be objective, it is a given that each of my neighbors will have their own seemingly-objective sense of good and bad that differs from my own. We are then at an impasse. Do I attempt to kill all of my neighbors in order to rid the world of what I perceive to be evil? Or do I perhaps make peace with an imperfect world in which bad things happen in other countries that are not my jurisdiction to worry about? Apparently you subscribe to the "kill all your neighbors" camp, that your objective brand of morality must be enforced on the entire world by means of military might. World conquest, however, is an utterly irrational thing to attempt, and will only lead to death and destruction, not an idealistic world that conforms to your sense of morality.
I don't know what to tell you. You're restating the paradox of tolerance. You should probably come to some philosophical resolution regarding that before you keep digging.
What I have said has nothing to do with the paradox of tolerance. I am firmly on the side of not tolerating the intolerant, but stating that, "not tolerating" does not extend to "starting wars in an attempt at world conquest to rid the world of the intolerant".
It is actionable. That action is simply not "world conquest", jesus fucking christ. Is America itself a society in which the intolerant have no power? No, it is not. Maybe first it could think about clearing things up in its own borders before trying to use that excuse to invade the whole goddamn world. Indeed it is the intolerant who currently have power in the US. You seem to be projecting your own desire for invading Iran, which is completely incompatible with the people in power's actual reason for invading Iran. They are not invading Iran to make life better for Iranians. But you believe invading Iran to make life better for Iranians is justified, so you lend your support to the current administration, even though that is explicitly not what is going to happen as a result of your support. You are, in short, a useful idiot[1].
You'd be hard pressed to find someone more intolerant that the islamic regime of iran. So what are we going to do about it. What actions are we taking to not tolerate them? We tried the nuke deal and they lied and kept building. We tried sanctions and that crippled their economy and led people to attempt regime change, only to be murdered by the tens of thousands in the streets, brutally suppressed. All this while the regime is funding the majority of terrorism in the world today, fucking with literally every country in the middle east to attempt to assert their regime and rules farther and wider. At what point do we do something? How many have to die for us to decide to act. I'm aware that number is not 1, is it 35,000? 100,000? If not a number then what, what does it take to act?
> We tried the nuke deal and they lied and kept building
This is a lie. A complete fabrication. Trump says this, completely baselessly, without a shred of evidence, as known liars are wont to do. They allowed inspectors in and not one of them ever suggested they were violating the terms of the deal.
> How many have to die for us to decide to act.
This is a murky question, but if anybody was going to intervene in a country's domestic affairs, it would need to be by broad international consensus to have any legitimacy. It absolutely cannot be a unilateral invasion where one country decides who is worthy of invading and who is not. Moreover, that is not why they were invaded. Whatever qualms you have with the Iranian regime, this war is not a war to instate democracy in Iran. We already saw with Venezuela literally just two months ago that Trump invaded and deposed the leader, only to keep the current regime in place with an agreement to serve as his country's economic vassal. Stop projecting your own justifications for why you would invade Iran if you were President of the United States, to justify the actions of the current one who is not invading for those reasons. The only thing you are doing by justifying his invasion for unrelated reasons is giving your support to the death of more innocent Iranians that you ostensibly want to help.
Do you support Khameini's call and platform to fund the export of Islamic Revolution?
Do you believe that other countries should be allowed to defend themselves from the import of Khameini's Islamic Revolution?
Or did you not know that this was his openly stated purpose?
How many people have to die before you start blaming the international community for inaction or worse, you start to feel that the international community is complicit because they prevent one country from acting while another funds terror attacks with impunity?
I don't know why you decided to hop to multiple unrelated threads of conversation with other people while ignoring my reply to you on this subject specifically earlier, but to restate: wholesale violence does not solve terrorism. You already fucking tried this in Afghanistan, and failed, badly. The solution to terrorism is to stop giving people reasons to be terrorists, which means you must stop killing their people and trying to conquer their land/resources, as the US has been engaged in constantly for the entire post-world-war period. A commitment to peace won't make all of the terrorists disappear overnight, so you will have to deal with a long tail of violence against you for years to come, which is known as "consequences for your actions". You have a right to take measures to defend yourself against individual terrorists, but if you ever want actual peace, those measures can't include actions that will create new generations of terrorists, like invading a fucking country, assassinating its leader, bombing schools, sinking ships on diplomatic missions, and destroying infrastructure. Every single one of these actions will create new terrorists who hate your country so much they will lay down their lives to hurt it.
Actually, not only did you ignore my reply, you're ignoring the post you're replying to as well. THIS WAR IS NOT EVEN A REGIME CHANGE WAR. STOP PROJECTING YOUR OWN MOTIVATIONS ONTO THE US GOVERNMENT.
So by your reasoning America is the terrorist. Got it.
But then it's Iran that's giving America reasonable cause to be terrorists. Maybe the US is the biggest terrorist in history. Good for you, I'll buy your story for the sake of discussion.
But then why isn't the IR subject to the same scrutiny? Why are you criticizing one side, but not the other.
For me, I criticize IR far more than the US for banning free speech. For hanging and mutilating women. For kidnapping civilians. For celebrating Israeli deaths. For using residences and schools to house munitions and military targets. For openly advocating that their purpose is to "export Islamic Revolution." For subjugating and murdering protesters by the tens of thousands. And more...
For me this makes the US the lesser of two bad actors. I don't have much choice but where I do, I choose the less immoral, and hopefully I'm right. That doesn't mean I promote the violence on either side. Or that I like or agree with either side.
There's bad and worse. That's politics and even more so, that's war. But I'm definitely not voting for worse.
FFS they don't need reasons. Their stated goal and actions in support of it is the destruction of the apostatic free world. Your oppressed/oppressor narrative is vapid. Though terrorism is a tool they use, their goal is a caliphate with Sharia law.
You are literally brainwashed by American propaganda, JFC. Iranians do not hate you because you are free, they hate you because you are trying to control their country. Do you understand they are not movie villains? They are real people? Real people who would, in normal circumstances, prefer to live their lives peacefully? Imagine what it would take for you to decide the best way to spend your life is to strap a bomb to yourself and kill people from a country on the other side of the planet? Some reasons that may motivate you so heavily would perhaps include that country overthrowing your democracy and massacring your children. Reasons that are not likely are "jealousy of their FREEDOM".
I already know your next tired argument will be BUT THE RELIGION OF PEACE, so I will go ahead and pre-empt it. It is not genuinely religion that motivates people to die in acts of terrorism. If it were, that would still not be a reason to attack America, which is on the other side of the planet, as opposed to any of their closer neighbors who are just as full of heathens. Take, for example, Japan. It is a notable country on the world stage, once the #2 economy in the world. It has never, not even a single time, been attacked by an Islamic terrorist. Why do you think that is? Is it because Japan is not free? Is it because Japan lives in accordance with Islamic principles? Or is it because, maybe, just maybe, Japan hasn't given a single person from the Middle East any reason to want to sacrifice themselves to kill Japanese people?
Similarly, note that Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world, with 270 million people, 87% of which are Muslims. Not one of them has ever staged a terrorist attack against the US. Doesn't that seem strange to you? If Muslims are inherently evil people born for the religious purpose of attacking the US, surely Indonesians should be doing it too? Or maybe, just maybe, it's not actually religion that motivates such extreme acts of self-sacrifice, and the real reasons Indonesians don't attack the US is because the US has not given Indonesians reasons to hate it?
False dichotomy. There are other ways to deal with Iran that don't involve starting an ill conceived (and illegal) war that kills school children and possibly (probably?) plunges the world economy into recession. It is highly unlikely that the current military action will result in a pacified Iran.
Why do people think that since Iran is evil all actions against Iran are justified?
They're not old enough to remember the start of the war in Iraq, I imagine. For those who aren't: it was a barrage of justifications which were found to be untrue, especially the 45 minute claim which said Iraq could strike European targets within 45 minutes with chemical or biological weapons. The UN weapons inspector said this was nonsense, and so it proved to be - after the invasion.
Sovereignty. You only get to hold responsibility of your own citizens, like Jeffery Epstein AND his supporters. You do that right, and then maybe then people will like you as the world police.
Well, a couple of days ago Iran fired 2 missiles at a US base in the Indian Ocean with twice the range of anything they were supposed to be allowed to have.
Right. Under sanctions to prevent them from being a danger to everyone around them while they sponsor terror globally and go on TV talking about getting nuclear weapons to destroy Israel.
Most of Europe is within striking distance of their current capabilities that they were not supposed to have.
Treaties gave terms to limit the range of their missiles. Treaties were agreed to to prevent them from enriching uranium.
They violated both. Had they been allowed to continue on their path, we can all expect that we would be looking at a nuclear terror attack in the near future.
People are going to react for their left/right politics but the Iranian regime is a danger to the entire planet. There’s a reason that Iranian expats world wide have been celebrating in the streets.
Their biggest fear is that we are going to leave before the regime is fully removed.
The real dangers to peace in the Middle East are America, Israel and historically the British, because these three are the bastards that toppled Iran's democracy and lead them to such a defensive posture in the first place. With the utmost respect, kindly blow your judeo-american sanctions out your ass. America should have NOTHING to do with Iran whatsoever, we don't have any moral right to intervention here.
It’s impossible to take anyone seriously who dismisses the threat of developing a nuclear weapon with intent to use it.
Sponsoring and funding global terror networks is not a “defensive posture”. Giving speeches about nuking your enemy while secretly developing those capabilities isn’t either.
Please apply your thoughts to Israel then. Israel is the greatest destabilizing force in the middle east. From Gaza, to false flags in Iran, Saudi Arabia and who knows where else.
>secretly developing those capabilities isn’t either.
At least Iran's been pretty transparent about their intentions for a while now.
Israel maintains the "strategic ambiguity" about its nuclear "energy" development which is the stupidest fucking thing ever. Of course they've got nuclear weapons.
The treatie that trump left in 2017 at a time when all US intelligence agencies after that they were not working on a nuclear bomb and were then put under sanctions? Yeah ok buddy.
> Do you think some evil military planners sat in the Pentagon, saw that school, said "let's shoot at it for shits and giggles" and pressed the button?
Absolutely. Russia does it all the time, IDF does it all the time, why would the Pentagon be any different?
Seems in Libanon the IDF is currently targeting hospitals and first responders [0]. Sometimes people are just evil.
Regarding the USA-Iran war, the president of the USA has threatened to destroy essential infrastructure (e.g. electricity) if Iran doesn't surrender in 48 hours. Which, from my understanding, is a war crime. I think Trump is perfectly ok with bombing schools and hospitals.
> In reality someone made a mistake. It can happen. It should be investigated. It should not deter from achieving the military objectives.
There has been little planning and there are no sane military objectives beyond blow stuff up. How can there be when the objectives of the overall war change depend on what side of the bed Bone Spurs got out.
Destroying a school is not an "oopsie". It should literally not be possible for it to happen in any organization that values human life at all. This was a precision strike with three missiles hitting the same target, they should have been goddamn sure they knew where the millions of dollars in ordnance they were launching for the purpose of ending human life were headed. Of course, the US military places zero value on not murdering civilians, which it has shown time and time again throughout its history, so this is the obvious result: massacre by intentional negligence.
It's absolutely fucking insane to downplay it like these things just happen and are unavoidable. What is wrong with you? Maybe you don't understand these are not just numbers on a screen? How many children do you know in your life? Is it even close to 150? Can you imagine every single child you know being killed and shrugging that off, insulting people who bring it up as being "sensationalist" and "polluting the conversation"?
Let’s have a serious conversation about downplaying things because this is where all of these conversations go sideways.
Many people, myself included, watch very loud righteous indignation about this awful event…while hearing absolutely nothing from the same people about…
- The Iranian women’s soccer team who are returning home from asylum to likely torture and execution due to regime threats against their families.
- The thousands of Iranian protesters who were shot by the regime.
- The 19 year old wrestling champion who was executed for participating in a protest.
Nobody is saying the school wasn’t terrible, but it’s not some situation where if we just leave the regime in power it’s going to be all sunshine and roses over there.
Show equal parts outrage and people will take you more seriously. Show equal parts outrage and you will find far more outrage from leaving the regime in power.
The entire reason the current Iranian regime exists is because the US overthrew their democracy to replace it with a monarchy that was friendly to their oil interests, which was then overthrown by a popular revolution. Maybe the US should stay the fuck out of Iran because it's not the US's fucking business, and it is most certainly not acting benevolently out of desire to help the people of Iran.
> while hearing absolutely nothing from the same people about…
Also, really? You think anybody who opposes the US bombing a school is cheering on protestors being shot and all other crimes of the Iranian regime? Well, I guess I'll be the first: Iranian regime bad. Killing protestors bad. Executing dissenters bad. There you go. Your argument is defeated. You can no longer make that claim. But I reckon most people aren't couching their statements by bringing up the whudabbouts because first it's not the direct topic of the conversation, and second it's a fucking given. But it being a given that X is bad does not justify doing more bad things.
Totally agree with you. The US also created the Bin Laden problem.
That genie isn’t going back in the bottle though so now we have to deal with the very real threat to the world that we certainly had a hand in creating.
Glad to hear your opposition to all of the evil as well. The desire for vocal, social righteous indignation with most of this dialog does not follow your fervor though. People remain silent until it supports their local politics, for the most part.
i think the poster you're replying to does not regard iranians as capable of independent decisions. thus, the school deaths are a crime, but the dead protesters are more like a weather event: a tragedy.
I would reply point-by-point to show US hypocrisy, but that might be too much whataboutism. I think I'll just say this one: this is the only time Trump has pretended to care about the lives of brown-skinned protestors. He literally has asked whether he could intentionally shoot American protestors legally.
He doesn't care about the Iranian people either, so there's some other reason. I'm not going to carry water for a secretly-motivated war where the "good" effects are secondary, post-hoc rationalizations.
At least just say they're a grave threat we should destroy or whatever, don't play along with the game that the American government and people care so much for Muslims on the other side of the world.
You should see how many innocent people US's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq killed. And that's only the ones we know of before the era of smartphones and social media where people could more easily document war crimes. Did anyone go to jail for it? No. Will anyone go to jail for killing innocent people in Iran? Also no.
Trump is gonna fuck some more shit up in the area, declare "victory" when he's bored or the political pressure gets too high while leaving the middle east in a bigger mess than it was before.
Miraculously by US standards, a couple of soldiers (though only a couple, by no means all who committed them) actually did face prison time for war crimes in Iraq, and were then pardoned by Trump because he can't settle for not being the most evil man on the planet: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/27/eddie-gallag...
Because that was not the subject of the conversation. Iran's military killing civilians is bad, but that does not somehow justify also killing their civilians. WTF even is your logic?
The US made a mistake while attempting to ensure that insane theocrats who are close to building nuclear weapons are not able to. The fondest wish of the religious lunatics in charge of Iran (and we know this because they have told us) is to annihilate the US and Israel. They have demonstrated missiles that can reach Europe.
This is a lie. Not only is it not the stated purpose of the war, even Netanyahu himself went out of the way to say that Iran had no remaining capability to accomplish this and that was not why they were invaded.
> They currently have demonstrated missiles that can reach Europe.
The US demonstrated its missiles can reach schools in Iran. Why are we more concerned with scaremongering about what hypothetical evil acts Iran could commit while downplaying the evil acts that are actually being propagated by the US?
> Why are we more concerned with scaremongering about what hypothetical evil acts Iran could commit while downplaying the evil acts that are actually being propagated by the US?
Because normal people can understand the difference between a mistake and intentional acts. And between the scales of different actions.
One of which is explicitly not Iran's nuclear capacity, as confirmed by one of the heads of state invading.
> Because normal people can understand the difference between a mistake and intentional acts.
Normal people can also understand that some things are too serious to pass off as "oopsie". We have terms like "manslaughter" or "aggravated murder" for when your reckless negligence leads to loss of human life. You are still responsible for the murders you cause when you take actions with intent that you know will lead to people dying without intending any specific one of those deaths.
You may disagree with the idea that militaries are responsible for civilians they kill regardless of intent, but it is not poor argumentation. And the fact that it triggers you to support the war reveals more about you than you may intend.
You are absolutely not on the side that does that. The US has killed millions of civilians over the past century in all of the wars it's partaken in and pardons its own war criminals, on the very rare occasion it bothers to try them in the first place. Fuck me American propaganda is in another world.
> Do you see Americans cheering for the dead school children?
I'm watching Iran cheering for the dead children in countries around the world every day for 40 years.
I agree, people should be ashamed of supporting killing civilians and any society that supports that should be criticized.
I’m not familiar with any instances of Iranis celebrating civilian deaths though? Do you have any examples?
Yes. Evil military planners used AI to generate a list of thousands of kill sites and then engaged them without verification. They attacked a public park by accident because it has the name “police” in it. Recklessly slaughtering children is “grown up” now?
>> In reality someone made a mistake. It can happen. It should be investigated. It should not deter from achieving the military objectives.
You should really unpack these statements, especially if you're trying to have a "grown up conversation". You're saying that no price is too high for achieving military objectives, even those that are very unclear and unilaterally defined without justification by a easily distracted narcissist with obvious goals of distracting from his domestic problems.
He isn't saying that at all, though. He is saying that by the nature of war, innocent people will die. Everyone knows this, which is why international law is based on proportionality, not on whether or not a single civilian was harmed.
So you're saying that killing 150 school girls is a proportionate response to what, exactly? The children would have been safe if their parents would have preemptively sent them away to Epstein's Kid Rock?
Possibly so, yes, that may have happened. The strike may have been calculated to inflame the Iranian public and lock them into a prolonged conflict, great for military contractors and their shareholders.
I simply had a few beers before getting behind the wheel. Honestly, judge, can we admit: nobody wants to run over anyone with their car. Cmon, do you really think I was twirling my moustache, thinking about how I would love to run those people over? Of course not! No, I am a benevolent fun loving guy. And I was simply having a few beers! How else is a good guy like me supposed to get home?
Then somebody should be punished so severely that incidence would go down dramatically. I dont mean 2 weeks administrative leave (or medal and promotion), I mean lives ruined, names tarnished, and/or people executed/jailed for 20 lives for mass (in)voluntary manslaughter.
In reality, in same vein quite a few US laws are set. If you are not US passport holder you are subhuman. Less rights, less care, more disposable, just a garbage to step on. We saw it enough in past 80 years to see a clear pattern everywhere US went and (mostly) failed.
For those slow in back rows - this is how you get almost endless stream of new fanatical recruits to merry groups like isis or al-queda. Dumb, supremely dumb. Yeah, 'a mistake, it can happen'. Fuck that american self-entitled rotten racist mentality. Then you wonder why whole world hates you now and what you stand for and represent. What a success story for america in past year.
Sometimes a mistake is negligence. If you're going to use lethal force it's a good idea to check your facts first. It's been a school for years, how was that missed?
None of that happened because the US was unprepared for this war. It was Bibi's idea and Trump is weak and incompetent so he just went along with it, ironically because he thought it would avoid making him look weak and incompetent.
> ironically because he thought it would avoid making him look weak and incompetent
Trump is what a weak man imagines a strong man to be like. Just look at his official portrait [1], trying to look tough and dangerous. Compare that to Dwight D. Eisenhower's portrait [2], a man who commanded entire armies in the largest war in human history.
Have you heard Hegseth speeches lately? Or Trumps?
Like, yes, evil military planners did sat down and said "rules of engagement are woke, the working groups handling civilian safety are waste of money, be maximum lethal".
Also, they had no stable military objectives except "make my insecure masculinity feel manly".
I think the military planners sat in the Pentagon and thought "Hey if we hit this school and kill all these children, that will achieve us X. Shall we do it?" And then they decided to do it. Yes, that's what I think.
Good try. When you are complicit in genocide in Gaza, destroy multiple countries on pretext of democracy and human rights, start wars with blatant lies, the "let's shoot at it for shits and giggles" is actually being kind.
None of which is being handled by the current admin with a modicum of professionalism or competency, so I guess at times you just have to pick _one_ from the laundry list of complaints here.
Oh, now worries, I can take my bicycle or train whenever possible (like right now). And since I am european, I do not just worry about gasoline, but also that the US actually might attack us at some point, Trump did threaten again over greenland and the last time - it was not just words, danish troops took it serious and were ready to shoot.
Also, the gasoline prices are only "momentary" up, if the whole area does not burst into flames. Then it doesn't matter if the trait is closed, as no more oil is being produced.
The only bright side is, this is a great push for renewables.
The US is not in a position to process much of the sweet crude it has. Instead, imports sour crude, which is what much of the US's refineries are actually built to handle. This is why Venezuela was such a thorn in the side of the US, as they were one of the major producers and also largely produced sour crude.
As adwn says, it's a globally priced commodity, and the US is not in a position to disentangle itself from that market because in spite of being one of the world's largest producers, US refineries are not in a position to process that product, so it needs to go abroad. The US needs to import significant amounts of sour crude to be refined for their own use.
The US is just as screwed as the rest of us.
Also, the primary worry for Europe isn't oil, it's natural gas.
Oil is a globally priced commodity. This means that downstream consumers of oil in the US will be just as affected by rising prices as European consumers. US producers of oil will benefit, though.
Since WWII you're living under the umbrella of the US, as client states. There was no reason Europe could not amass a significant military power that would grant its sovereignty, but money went to increasing quality of life instead. Trump the 45th even implored EU to do so and bolster NATO.
That's rich, the guy threatening the existence of NATO more than any other factor is trying to bolster NATO. I struggle to imagine how you square this in your mind.
At the outset, he doesn't want to carry the burden of NATO alone. Maybe he has other strategic interests in mind where US deviates from the rest of the world (like Greenland) but he's entirely right that NATO really depends on the US.
Trump's attitude towards NATO member state spend it widely publicized [0] so I don't think there's much to debate here. Trump wanted member states to spend more, not less.
He was somewhat prescient during his 45th presidency, given what happened in Ukraine in 2022 and how it forced US to spend huge amounts of money and military hardware which the EU simply didn't have. Maybe with a stronger standing EU army, that invasion would not have happened in the first place.
Yes. By design. But if the US decouples, the rest of the countries can and will make their own alliance, with blackjack and hookers. Greenland thing is peak wierdness and the only explanation of it would be pride, stupidity or active undermining of NATO.
> Trump's attitude towards NATO member state spend it widely publicized [0] so I don't think there's much to debate here. Trump wanted member states to spend more, not less.
Yes. But, you have a very shallow reading of this and you're taking things at face value. He latched on the spending as a pretext, and as a way to increase US income for the defense industry. He doesn't give a rat's ass about the security of NATO countries. US has entered a very transactional, bully, phase and this is a bad way to maintain international standing.
Also, I took a look on the paper you linked. I have no idea what you want to prove with it, since it all but confirms the stance I already explained:
"There was also a second related initiative, the European Defense Fund, that will support continental defense research and development. The projects were widely seen as attempts to address a long-standing American concern – that Europe lacks usable military equipment, and is overly reliant on Washington for military deployments.
But instead of reacting with satisfaction that the continent was finally addressing a long-standing weakness, the United States expressed frustration, noting that the projects could decrease trans-Atlantic cooperation and could also cut out American defense companies from bidding on future European defense projects."
> At the outset, he doesn't want to carry the burden of NATO alone.
The US chose to be the premiere military power and as a result reaped the benefits that come with having bases all over the world. This absurd claim by Trump that the relationship is one-sided is completely without merit. It was mutually beneficial, arguably better for the US. Just like being the world’s reserve currency. The complicated system of soft power reinforced by the threat of hard power that the US created over the last 80 years was no small feat and frankly we will never get that back now. Maybe it’s for the best! But this nonsense about NATO being a one-sided deal where Europe overwhelmingly benefits from US dollars/military presence is absolutely ridiculous and just another piece of evidence that Trump has no clue how foreign policy works.
Additionally, any argument about not wanting to spend all that money lacks legitimacy given how the administration is spending.
You don’t think that the person you’re replying to is Donald Trump, do you? He’s not wrong even though I can see why amassing independent defense didn’t feel necessary all this time
> You don’t think that the person you’re replying to is Donald Trump, do you?
I'm confused how this interpretation could ever come about. No, I mean his point about "Trump trying to bolster NATO" is comic, as Trump is actively weakening NATO, no matter his stated goals wrt. improving funding and having member states "carry their load". _Especially_ his threats to Greenland and Canada, for no apparent reason. It's really mind-boggling. Perhaps my fault, since I expect mental consistency from post-truth populists and authoritarians.
Turns out consistency is overrated. We talk as if it's a bare minimum, but there isn't actually any penalty for violating it.
We've still got some kind of karmic notion that inconsistency is bad for you in the long run. Maybe it is, but that run keeps getting longer and longer.
Having contact with reality is quite important when critical moments arise. Fantasy can proper you quite high, but there is a breaking point where it can't carry the day. Trump & Co are both post-truth and detached for reality. I am a bit scared for your country when you get a post-truth populist that is NOT detached from reality. If you can't deal with a buffoon like Trump, how will you be able to deal with someone who is half competent? Truth be told, I don't know how to deal with these people.
Not that my country fared any better with this kind of rhetoric in last couple of years. But we don't have the democratic tradition as rich as you had (or at least I felt you had). I feel like despair will be the feeling for me this decade.
It's a good question. His supporters like the buffoonery. It allows them to see what they want to in his actions. It's remarkable that he has the full-throated support of the theocrats while being blatantly an atheist. And conversely he has surrounded himself with people who clearly hate Christianity, but gloss over his pandering to the religious right.
That wouldn't be possible if he were any smarter. Nor is he a Boris Johnson type character, playing the clown while being quite well educated in private.
The right wing coalition will survive and thrive even without him. But it's hard to predict just how, because it will have to adapt.
"Trump the 45th even implored EU to do so and bolster NATO."
All he wanted was EU to buy more US weapons (also to help with his wars). Guess what is happening now, we still do buy US weapons where there is no other choice, but apart from that, we build and buy our own things now. Try to get rid of US software depenencies - in general, get rid of any dependency we have towards you. If this was Trump's goal, great job I have to say.
>
Since WWII you're living under the umbrella of the US, as client states. There was no reason Europe could not amass a significant military power that would grant its sovereignty, but money went to increasing quality of life instead. Trump the 45th even implored EU to do so and bolster NATO.
Problem is that Trump wants to eat the cake and have it too. If we’re no longer being protected by the US then US companies should not expect preferential laws and access to the EU market.
Europe didn't slack off militarily during the Cold War. Germany, for example, poured massive amounts of money and resources into the Bundeswehr to be able to fend of the Soviets. The US relied as much on the European members of NATO as the Europeans did on the US.
After the Cold War, both the US and Europe scaled back their military spending and enjoyed the peace dividend. It was only after 2001 that the US increased its budget again – but to fight insurrectionist wars (which EU members aren't particularly interested in), not in a peer conflict. They're not prepared for a pro-longed war against a near-peer power.
So although I agree that Europe should be rearming heavily, and should have started in 2022 at the very latest, it's not like the US did really much better. They're really good at curb-stomping much weaker opponents, like Venezuela or Iran, but they haven't seriously prepared for a war against China.
> They're really good at curb-stomping much weaker opponents, like [..] Iran
That remains to be seen, though. Really winning that war requires either lots of boots on the ground and a long occupation (where the outcome might still be like in Afghanistan) or using nukes, which could escalate quite badly for us all. There is a reason no other POTUS has attacked Iran before.
Of course Trump can at every point in time just declare victory and leave the mess to all others for cleaning up. That is the most likely outcome, IMHO.
Plus if gas prices rise more people might switch to EVs, drive less often, and/or hopefully begin to understand the fragility of our car-only infrastructure and mandatory car ownership and demand better urban planning and transportation options.
Can't wait to get my new iPhone shipped here on an electric cargo ship, and it shouldn't be too much more expensive for my food transported by a fleet of electric semis and trains. Totally worth exploding billions of ordnance and killing a few thousand people!
East Asian economies are severely affected by high fuel prices. People need it to fuel their boats, to get to work, and to heat their homes. And it's the input to many critical industries, most importantly to make fertilizer. Not all countries's stockpiles are large enough to sit this out.
So much bullshit. The best way to dissolve the OPEC is to stop buying oil from them. Period. A country like the US should not be burning oil or any kind of fossil fuel for its electricity, we're rich in rivers, sunlight and have tech enough to build as many nuclear power plants as we want.
This is all being done to prop up oil prices, but China is going to be the silent killer here, helping the world move to renewables and OPEC won't be a thing anymore. Its to see a country committing suicide like this.
Trump is now threatening to destroy Iran's power plants if the straight isn't reopened. Is this "doing the right thing"? And doesn't this show he cares more about oil prices than regime change?
But the most important question is, what's next? If depriving tens of millions of people of energy doesn't work, what will he do next?
One hypothesis is he'll threaten Iran with a nuclear strike. In response, either China or Russia or both, will say that's a line that cannot be crossed.
And then, we will either all die, or be living in a world saved by authoritarian regimes from the irresponsibility of the US.
It will be interesting! But probably extremely unpleasant.
I would say gasoline is not all that matters. This has also made clear Israel is not a US ally. They are a disobedient client state.
Given how much money the US has given Israel compared to how tiny their GDP is it is also clear the US financially owns Israel. If I were US president I would annex Israel so that they no longer determine US foreign policy. Of course Israel would agree to be annexed because otherwise they can be easily isolated like the way they isolate Gaza.
They don't really care what happens afterwards. They openly admitted that a Libya-like situation would be preferable compared to leaving the current regime in power. Whether that's actually a strategically valid assessment is a completely different question.
We robbed S Korea of a radar system they paid for which they found highly insulting. We’re causing an energy crisis in Japan. We repealed the sanctions on Russia to try to level oil prices which is the last straw for Ukraine. Europe refused to participate. Fascinating you see this as doing the right thing and motivated by alliances plural.
good point. i'm more than happy to pay 10x for my diesel and electricity and even change my whole lifestyle for the foreseeable future in support of iran doing the right thing: kicking the murderous usrael regime out of western asia where it should never have been in the first place, if it weren't for their god damned blood soaked petrodollars.
You and both I agree that only violence will solve the conflict between Iran and Israel. They can't really coexist in the same sphere. May the best country win :)
Is that the goal, though? "Subduing the Iranian regime"? If so, shouldn't they explain that so that the war gets support and so better chances of achieving its goals? How is that goal to be achieved? Because so far it seems like the goal is some personal achievement for Trump, and that shapes the perspective.
> That's it? Momentary gasoline price is all that matters now?
Did you not see the lead up to the 2024 election and all the whining about how Biden, specifically, caused gasoline prices to go up? This is a very important issue to Americans because we use gas cars to go everywhere and all our food is transported using vehicles that consume gas. GP is obviously being rhetorical here because MAGAs wouldn't stop railing on Biden for global COVID inflation (mostly out of his control) but they're now making excuses for Trump starting a war that's spiking gas prices.
Say the goal is to get rid of the regime by giving the protesters an opening to rebel. Then Trump blew the metaphorical load too early by encouraging the protesters on truth social. Tens of thousands of them being killed destroyed the momentum. Smarter people would have tried to arm them first, or discouraged the protests until we could hit them at the same time.
Say the goal is to "do the right thing." Then we shoudn't be tag-teaming with a country doing a genocide, clearly. We'd probably be hesitant to help them destroy their enemy or realize their interests in general. We've had endless opportunity to reign them in and done nothing about it. "Oh, but we need them to project force in the middle east for us." Well then why the fuck are we starting a war? Let's force that ally to reform before starting the war. There was no fucking rush man.
Say the goal is to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Well, Iran isn't (wasn't) run by stupid people. They knew we could likely set back their nuclear program before it completed and they knew the best-case-scenario in building nukes would be to get some leverage. They therefore opted to take a deal, using the threat of becoming armed to have some leverage. For us this is a great deal because we don't need to pay the costs of fighting Iran and we don't need to give them a better deal at nuke-point, and for them it's pretty solid because it's less risky. There's no evidence the terms were violated before WE ripped up the deal.
"Well however we got into this situation, we're here now and they could have nukes within seconds, I mean minutes, I mean hours, I mean days, I mean months, I mean years..." Maybe before creating an international energy crisis, just bomb the damn nuclear program again. Worst case scenario they get a nuke and what? The whole point of a nuke is leverage, when you use it you lose the leverage. We would be forced to cut another deal with better terms for Iran. Whatever dude, maybe that's not worth fighting another middle eastern war idk maybe I'm crazy.
I'm not a big war guy who just loves killing for the fun of it or whatever but even a war of aggression can be competent. I can admit when competence is exhibited and when something I otherwise dislike at least works out well. This shit is the most monumental blunder in decades. It wasn't planned, it has no goal, it will either end in a pointless withdrawal or (most likely) a Vietnam-esque quagmire. Every single problem was foreseeable and foreseen, that's why we didn't do this before. But some fucking moron pedophile gets blackmailed hard enough by a genocidal war criminal to say "what's one more, for old times sake?" and I'm supposed to want to shout hurrah and put my goddamn body and soul on the line for absolutely literally jack shit? Utterly ridiculous.
It's still middle-click in my muscle memory from the Windows XP days!
God, I used to be _really_ into Minesweeper.
One of the earliest games I made back in college was a 3D Minesweeper cube. I remember being really proud of one little detail – the detection and automatic resolution of ambiguous clues that would require guessing, which always annoyed the heck out of me in every other version of Minesweeper.
Hormuz is not a minefield though. According to sources, ships are moving near the coast of Iran, according to other sources they are being charged $2M per passage. According to other sources only Yuan paid oil is allowed.
Iran has indicated they will only target ships tied to countries that are involved in the conflict.
That likely means US and Israel. Unclear if countries like the UK that are facilitating the US through use of their bases would be considered legitimate targets (likely yes).
That’s an interesting idea. I think the fiber optics for drones works because it is only used once over a short period of time. It seems like a cable connected to a mine could be easily disrupted by dragging an anchor with a small robot boat.
And as another commenter noted, mines get moved by currents, so the cable could get tangled and snap.
In the modern era, the difference between sea mine and drone or torpedo can be a lot fuzzier than you may expect. People think of spikey balls, but some sea mines today can do stuff like use passive sonar to match targets against an internal database before firing a homing torpedo. I doubt Iran has these, but they certainly have the proficiency to think creatively about the problem.
I mean you could have some slack in the cable easily, and have the mine become intert should its cable snap.
You have to be mindful of enemy tampering, but overal I would say the idea's worth investigating.
On an unrelated note, I was also thinking of using fiber optic drones to rapidly set up an unjammable communications network on the battlefield. Surely that would be useful for something?
That’s not fundamental to how mines work. You could arm/disarm them remotely, either manually or via transponder. But I assume most mines are not like this.
Easy: you mine the straight except the water immediately near your shores, where you can control the boat. We don't know about the mining part (the straight may or may not be mined yet) but the second part is what the Iranians are doing right now (the tankers which cross are doing to between Qeshm Island and mainland Iran, not in the straight proper)
Unfortunately Iran's leadership is in a bit of distress and communication disrupted, and "involved in the conflict" is a very broad term - so they do make some effort to get chinese oil out, but any ship not asking for explicit permission from Iran - will have some great risk of being targeted.
Remember, the strait is not Iranian property, but International waters. So no one would have to ask them for permission, but that is the way it is and most do not risk it (insurance won't cover).
A small number of ships are crossing with AIS off (and without the benefit of GPS, because it is jammed) by coordinating with Iran. For example: https://gcaptain.com/iranian-navy-guided-indian-tanker-throu.... These will not show up on Marine Traffic as they are transiting the strait.
Wonder why US doesn’t spam the strait with fake AIS signals. Do Iranians have capability to spot ships in dark at night? If they employ radar - why not geolocate radar stations? Is there other techniques Iranians have for spotting ships (EW, SAR, etc)?
If Shaheds use Starlink - how come SpaceX can’t geolocate the launch sites?
I've seen reports of ship turning off their AIS before attempting the strait, not sure if this is still valid but Marine Traffic only shows AIS signals that are turned on, which is as simple as flipping a switch.
Also something Chinese fishing ships do around the galapagos and other regions to fish illegally.
As others have mentioned, that's simply not going to tell you anything. AIS can and is often times turned off in such situations and it ships can spoof their location by sending false AIS... something that situations like could encourage, at least one could well imagine.
I find Sal Mercogliano's "What's Going on With Shipping?" to be a better source to understanding what's happening in the Strait. Here's a link to yesterday's episode "Strait of Hormuz 3-Week Recap | What is the Status of the Ships, Transits and Escort Mission?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q64cOs7GN_4
> Before the war, about 138 ships passed through the strait each day according to the Joint Maritime Information Centre, carrying one fifth of the global oil supply.
> The data provided by shipping analysts Kpler shows 99 vessels passing the narrow strait so far this month, an average of just 5-6 vessels a day.
I mean, it's bad, but it's factually not a minefield. The threat isn't coming from mines anyway.
It might not be. It might be. Uncertainty is the point of what Iran is doing.
There might be mines in the straight that are sophisticated enough to be armed, disarmed, or moved on command, or there might not. There might be artillery emplacements* hidden and not found, ready to pop up... or there might not. There are probably still plenty of drones and missiles all over the country that can be called down on Hormuz at will. Iran might choose to save them for something else... or they might not.
If a few oil tankers get through without Iran's permission, one might conclude everything Iran has in place has been found and that the straight is safe. Then again, it might not be. The Iranians might save a few choice surprises for the first aircraft carrier that gets too close. They might also choose to actually sink a large ship**, blocking the straight long-term. The Iranian regime has been planning specifically for a U.S. invasion since it's inception*** and they probably have some very well hidden and nasty surprises as well as plans to use them to maximum effect.
Merchant vessels can't get insurance to go through because of all this uncertainty. The U.S. Navy has completely refused to go in there because losing a multi-billion dollar military vessel along with hundreds or thousands of sailors for a war that's already unpopular would likely knock the U.S. out of it completely. This is why Trump is desperate for other nations to come in and clear the straight. He doesn't care if they lose ships, but he can't afford to lose even one American ship for a "Wag the Dog" war that's already exploded the budget.
-------------------
*The straight is narrow enough that artillery can actually cover it. Even the most sophisticated anti-missile defence systems aren't meant to deal with artillery shells fired from nearly point blank range.
**The straight has only a couple of channels deep enough for large vessels to transit. One or two well positioned wrecks could block the works.
*** They rebelled against a Shah installed by a CIA backed coup after all.
So Lloyds is willing to reimburse the first crash test dummy if things go wrong while testing the waters. But unless they've figured out how to bring people back to life I don't think I'd want to be on the crew.
So what's left of the Iranian regime is basically like the Houthis now, reduced to getting world attention by committing random acts of piracy and firing at random ships off their coast. To make whatever point they were trying to make. Seems like a win to me. Declare victory, say the straight is open, just like the Red Sea is open. If anything moves at shipping, destroy its source. They don't have a right to attack merchant vessels, and there's no reason to negotiate with them either.
> They don't have a right to attack merchant vessels
This is a sovereign nation that is being attacked by a waning superpower. It's war and they are retaliating in really the only way that they can force America to back off - which is make the war really expensive and even more unpopular domestically.
That's clearly the strategy the headless Iranian regime is pursuing. Their prior strategy of arming regional proxy regimes and paramilitary groups to deter and expand their reach failed spectacularly, in large part because it sufficiently irritated the Gulf states, and Israel, and the US. So if all that matters here is whether they pick a winning strategy, then it's questionable whether further aligning all their neighbors against them is going to work out in their favor.
However, even if it were a winning strategy, on the bet that the US will back off if the IRGC can inflict enough economic pain on US allies, it would still objectively amount to piracy and terrorism to attack merchant vessels not aligned at all to the US or involved in any way in the war. If you think the US or Israel has no right to attack and degrade Iran's military capacity to the degree they feel is necessary for their own security, you can't possibly say the IRGC somehow has a right to attack third parties to the conflict. If the disparity between who has the right to do what hinges upon who the aggressor is, consider that it was Iran which first fired a missile from its own territory at Israel, not the other way around. But in what case is a private vessel flagged in Malaysia and on its way to Japan or something a valid target? To say so would explicitly mean that every country in the world is fair game because Iran is at war with the whole world. If that's the case then what exactly is wrong with the world removing that regime?
You seem to be implying that whether or not it's successful, the Iranian regime's strategy is justified in some vague moral sense. That isn't an argument, it's a feeling. All it exposes is that you have a favorite side in this war, which is at least anyone who opposes America, if not the Iranian regime specifically.
> Declare victory, say the straight is open, just like the Red Sea is open. If anything moves at shipping, destroy its source.
Do you understand the concept of asymmetrical warfare? Hiding hundreds of launchers, firing them, and losing them is already accounted for by Iran, while a decent chance of losing any asset going through is prohibitively expensive. The strait is closed.
Doesn't seem to work on iPhone. I suggest having a button to toggle between mine marking mode and regular mode - I used that on my own little vibe-coded minesweeper clone here: https://tools.simonwillison.net/minesweeper
"Mines only spawn on water" is a bit confusing; there are no clickable tiles that are fully on land, but tiles that touch land can also have mines. So I'm not sure what that is telling me.
Last time I checked, only the US and Israel. Europeans don't want anything to do with this war, and the USA's East Asian allies also like it not even a little bit.
As a Brit, I'm disgusted that Starmer is allowing UK bases to be used by the US for launching attacks. I can see it being just a matter of time before Starmer drags us into another war of lies. (Last time it was Tony Blair, also a Labour leader and he still hasn't been tried for his war crimes).
Fallacious comparison, two entirely different situations. For a start, whatever the Iranian response, the aggressor at the root of this particular episode is the other side: the U.S.
It never ceases to amaze me that demonstrating such a weapon on civilian targets somehow made it past the entire chain of command. One of those things that I just can't wrap my head around no matter how many times I come back to it.
They weren't exclusively civilian targets, they were considered "mixed" targets. Hirohito's home wasn't considered strategically-important enough and therefore didn't make the cut.
The sites in question were also specifically selected because they hadn't previously faced conventional attack, enabling a more accurate damage assessment.
> they hadn't previously faced conventional attack
Which, by the way, illustrates a related point: Hiroshima and Nagasaki had stiff competition. WWII was devastating, to cities and civilians all over the map. More people died in the conventional bombing of Tokyo than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. I think the atomic bombs represented some 2 weeks worth of casualties in a war that lasted 300.
No sir that's not a school we're proposing to bomb, it's a complex containing both a school and a vehicle maintenance facility. So it's mixed, meaning there's valid logistical reasons to attack it. Yes, hundreds of children will perish in the attack, but the action will also provide us with legitimate benefits. Just try not to think about the former and focus on the latter. I'm sure no one in the future will judge us too harshly for the decision.
Is that what the Japanese were doing? (Bit of a pointless diversion though because this is a nuclear bomb we're talking about here. Not exactly a surgical strike.)
Yes and no. They were doing that, but AFAIK they did so because it was deemed more efficient, not to use people as human shields. Also, at the time, there was no such thing as a surgical strike.
I don’t quite agree with making fun of the situation that’s deadly serious to many innocent people. Yet I’m sure the intentions of the author were good.
Comedy and satire is a long-established method of political critique, and is often the only or last available way. It's not making fun of the situation, rather pointing out the pain & sufferring in the face of absurdity.
I don't really agree with rooting against the USA just because you don't like the president. An Islamist Iran with nukes is a scary proposition. I'm glad someone is finally doing something about it rather than sending palettes of cash on an jet to radical Muslims.
> Washington
CNN
—
The Obama administration secretly arranged a plane delivery of $400 million in cash on the same day Iran released four American prisoners and formally implemented the nuclear deal, US officials confirmed Wednesday.
Secretly-ish - it was announced publicly 7 months prior (Jan 2016) and it was the first instalment of a legal settlement, not just some random or ransom payment.
Obviously Republicans decried it with bad faith bullshit because reality and sanity don't matter to them.
While the optics of this may look bad, the same thing happens after armed conflict too; the US has spent boatloads of money in Afghanistan on top of all the military costs, and we're basically in the same situation as before.
And the bad faith keeps on rolling. We get it, you're a MAGA true believer, it's not like you're being subtle. But besides trying to troll the good people at HN, what is your point?
> is there any plan to do this differently to those expensive failures?
Why are you asking me? You can listen to the secretary of war (a veteran of those wars) and the president describe their strategy themselves. They are extremely transparent.
The smiley button does not seem to be doing anything.
Good to see minesweeper is still existing today.
As for "winning" - Trump will say everything, from A to the opposite Z. It is the flood-the-zone-with-shit strategy, as explained in the 1980s by Yuri:
So, rather than evaluate what Trump says, one has to evaluate what is happening.
What I see right now is the USA committing more and more to the invasion. Ground troops will come next; first as "limited range", lateron as Vietnam 2.0. Trump is kind of like Lyndon B. Johnson now, just that the country is Iran rather than Vietnam.
It's a piece about showing the detachment from war and you are arguing like idiots again. "Look how easy it is," you say. "Even a child could do it. Let me show you." And just two minutes later, there you are: huffing and puffing, bickering like you’re back on the schoolyard. The irony is almost as staggering as your ignorance.
This is symptom of the misunderstanding among people that somehow more people being knowledgeable about politics will bring about a change. "Pen is mightier than sword" was probably written by a person who only wielded pen. It's a collective psyops inflicted by people on themselves, belonging to an era where it made sense. In today's world, it doesn't matter. Bring missles to a sword / knife fight. Only true power is respected.
You completely misunderstood that. Take into account that you see the swords failing all around you whilst one nation effectively messed up the rest of the world through propaganda and maybe you'll begin to understand the true meaning of that sentence.
Information, used well or abused well, is more powerful than any other weapon of war.
Pen / writing represents bits. Sword represents atoms. We already know atoms > bits. Nation states by their monopoly on violence through judicial system have abused that power. You can do hairsplitting analysis all day long but real people suffer because powerful people want something else. Petrodollar is a perfect example of physical force enforcing rules that benefit the country who ensured that system comes into existence and has maintained that through intermediate violence.
"Information, used well or abused well, is more powerful than any other weapon of war."
Indeed, because people with the swords will decide on that information who to slain or who to defend. If you do it right, you don't need to fight the enemy soldiers, but they will fight for you.
First, conclusion is confounding respect and fear. No one is going to kill a person they respect while they slip or as soon as a window of doability occurs. Fear can bring surface level compliance to orders, but it doesn't provide much respect.
Playing by the book of fear uncertainty and doubt is going to foster hate, distrust and suspicion/paranoia.
This sort of ridiculous reductionism has never been true. Do you seriously think all the conflicts we experience have never been there before?
"Only true power is respected"—what’s this even supposed to mean? Right now, the American military is shooting with all its mighty glory on Iran, yet loosing the war, money, and yes, respect from the rest of the world. Well, except for Putin maybe, who is unilaterally benefiting from this disaster.
This little incel power fantasy of rule by force you guys are cooking up there is complete and utter bollocks.
Mearsheimer and Rand... between those two a lot of damage is being done to the psyche of impressionable people. They're all just looking for excuses to act out their inner toddler believing themselves to be in the possession of profound insights. Lesswrong probably also deserves a mention.
Totally. After reading your poorly worded screed on geopolitical ethics, which itself was a random and inane response to a comment mocking that exact type of behavior. Too rich.
I will now go listen to the words of a bloodthirsty fascist. Thank you for the advice.
Why do think I support Netanyahu? The fact that he choose that example says more about his ideals and psyche. I am merely pointing out the fallacy that a better informed populace doesn't immediately translate to good policies.
How about you make an app about "winning" that involves flying a cargo plane loaded with so much cash to Iranian Islamists that it struggles to stay aloft. Because that was the strategy before Trump and it led to terror tunnels, terror proxies, and weapons grade nuclear enrichment.
Edit: For the record this actually happened 10 years ago under Obama.
> Washington
CNN
—
The Obama administration secretly arranged a plane delivery of $400 million in cash on the same day Iran released four American prisoners and formally implemented the nuclear deal, US officials confirmed Wednesday.
Listen, you have posted a lot, are very passionate here about this Obama thing. You have multiple times said "how about make an app that...". Why don't you make the app? I for one would love to play a game where you are Obama the money smuggler or whatever, it sounds kind of awesome.
https://sweepthestrait.com/ This one was made the first week of the war.
This one looks a lot easier though, maybe I can play it during boring meetings without getting pissed off..
Thank you for Making Minesweeper Great Again!
Minesweeper Achieves Greatness Again!
We're gonna build a wall(ed garden) and have the Linux penguins pay for it.
The penguins who are running the servers for your walled garden? Good luck with that. Let me know how it works out for you.
MMGA
Ok, I did win. Do I get cheaper gasoline now?
Probably not. Afaik only the Dutch have eaten their leader in a time of desperation and while I'm not saying that other nations should have taken notes, we are probably all thinking it...
I don’t think it was in desperation but to disrespect him for his crimes
Who are you talking about so I can waste my weekend reading this ?
idk prions are a concern
> Ok, I did win. Do I get cheaper gasoline now?
Yes, in 10 years. Because even though gas prices go up hour by hour they take years to ever so slowly drift down.
In 10 years you should be driving an EV anyway.
That's it? Momentary gasoline price is all that matters now? Not geopolitical interests, alliances, _Doing The Right Thing_? If that's the only angle you care about, then US subduing the Iranian regime would go a long way to de-facto dissolving OPEC and bring much more flexibility to oil prices.
What part of "doing the right thing" is bombing an all girls school?
A double tap strike as well. Definitely no mistake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Minab_school_attack
Edit: *triple tap.
From the same article:
>Independent analysis of satellite imagery suggested that the school and the Sayyid al-Shuhada military complex had been struck near-simultaneously by air-delivered munitions.[39]
The objectionable part of double/triple tap strike is that you're killing rescuers or aid workers. Otherwise from a morality perspective there's no meaningful difference between 1 bomb and 2/3 bombs, especially if the actual incident was by all accounts caused by a targeting error.
Don’t you mean “error”?
Due diligence isn’t really an option.
Triple tap seems to indicate definitely a mistake in targeting.
Despite the war aims being nebulous, illegal, and ever changing, none of them would be advanced by bombing a girls school.
>none of them would be advanced by bombing a girls school.
no shit... this is not proof of a mistake.
I don't think it was an intentional decision to target a school. If targetting schools was a goal, there would likely have been many more targetted.
It certainly seems that there was an intentional decision to disband departments in the military last year that were intended to confirm targets are appropriate before a strike (although I can't find a reference now). There's also a lot of reporting that they used AI to do the targetting selection; if so that was an intentional decision to allow for poor selection; especially since it doesn't appear there was validation of targets. There's a lot of intentional decisions to make comments declaring 'no stupid rules of engagement' and such.
I think it's most likely that the intentional decisions led to the situation where the targetting of a school would not be noticed until after the school was hit and international outcry was made, but that doesn't mean it was not a targetting mistake. You can certainly hold people accountable for the decisions that lead to the targetting of a school, at least in the court of public opinion since there's an accountability vacuum in washington DC lately.
There are many examples of targetting mistakes that are excusable. I don't think this is one of them; but that it is inexcusable and was the result of intentional decisions doesn't make it necessarily an intentional act and not a mistake.
>It certainly seems that there was an intentional decision to disband departments in the military last year that were intended to confirm targets are appropriate before a strike (although I can't find a reference now).
On the Media recently interviewed somebody involved with that effort, and they discuss the bombing of the school.
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/articles/hegseths-p...
>this is not proof of a mistake.
The "proof" of the mistake is Hanlon's razor and the fact that the school was adjacent a military facility and the building itself used to be for military purposes.
Too consistent, too frequent, too precise to be explained away as "stupid": https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/ce9mz0gl8z7o
From the description:
>Footage from Russian state broadcaster RT has captured the moment a missile lands just a few feet from where its reporter was broadcasting in southern Lebanon.
What's this supposed to be proof of? That because a bombing happened near a journalist, that he must have been intentionally targeted? Does the US even have capabilities to track journalists in Iran, of all places? Given that journalists are specifically going into war zones, what even is the expected amount of journalists to get bombed, from pure chance alone?
That was a missile attack by Israeli forces, not US ones.
Israel has a track record with the coincidentally anti-journalist ordinance. At some point you land a coin on heads twenty times and have to think maybe the coin is weighted.
> Hanlon's razor
At this point, Hanlon's razor should be considered a fallacy.
In fact, quite a lot of what looked like incompetence was malice. Intentional and proud malice. It does not mean there is no incompetence, but Hanlon's razor is no longer valid.
Second, army working group meant to ensure these mistakes wont happen was dismantled by Hegseth. All the while he framed such efforts as woke nonsense and praised lethality only. He was sending clear message about what matters to troops
The system was changed to allow and facilite errors like that.
I wonder if there is some kind of new law that we should be looking at drafting, in which we hold accountable folks who attribute bad actions to incompetence instead of malice despite the actors being explicitly malicious?
I think that covers a lot of western media in all the wars the US has waged in my lifetime:
it's always "a regrettable (but worthwhile) mistake" until it's a "horrific but unique war crime"... it's never "who the fuck said these vicious idiots could kill whoever they want and never face just and material consequences for their crimes".
This shit certainly seems intentional. Maybe the folks who are attributing things to "incompetence" are just projecting their own incompetencies in interpreting the world, but at this point I suspect that they to are complicit in this malice.
"Despite the war aims being nebulous, illegal, and ever changing, none of them would be advanced by bombing a girls school."
If the goal is to force the enemy into giving up? Many are willing to give their life to a cause, but way less are willing to give the lifes of their children.
This was not just some school, but a school where the children of the iranian leadership are going to.
And coincidently Trump himself said he would target the families of terrorists, if voted into power.
https://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/02/politics/donald-trump-ter...
Prove the claim that multiple children of Iranian leadership attended the school.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/3/questions-over-minab...
"The Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab is part of a broad network of schools structurally and administratively affiliated with the IRGC Navy.
These schools are classified as nonprofit institutions and are primarily intended to provide educational services to the sons and daughters of members of the IRGC Navy."
IRGC means leadership (I did not said highest leadership, they would be in Teheran)
Wow, I didn't know that. Fucked to think they may have done it on purpose. Sheesh, thanks for finding that
I would like the Iranian regime to be destroyed more responsibly and carefully.
I'd like the Iranian regime to be destroyed, and I'd like for the Israeli regime under Bibi to be destroyed, too.
They both suck and both collectively fuck off for the betterment of humanity.
I would like the same for _______.
Triple, according to Wikipedia.
https://theonion.com/this-war-will-destabilize-the-entire-mi...
I still think often about the article. it was published in the runup to full on invasion of Iraq by Bush Jr. While it certainly was spot on capturing the dynamic of the argument, it was also deeply prescient about the impacts of that war.
and now we find ourselves in nearly the same situation "they will welcome us as liberators", "it will just take two weeks", "the United States was in imminent danger of attack by weapons of mass destruction", "these are really bad totalitarian people and we are morally required to intervene". word for word.
and still, after doing this twice to countries directly to the east and west, and having poured money and blood into the sand to end up in a worse position than before, we're taking another run at it, with even less justification.
before bringing up the fate of the Iranian people, maybe we should look at the Iraquis - they certainly didn't benefit, or the Afghanis, or the Venezuelans to take a more recent example. It takes a special kind of idiot to ignore all that recent history and support this assault.
And netanyahu was there to lie to congress about WMDs back then as well.
Okay, let's compare. How many iranians has the regime killed over the last few months. They've said they would continue indiscriminately killing as long as it took, the regime would literally destroy Iran rather than let go of their dreams of Muslim empire. They killed tens of thousands of people. Every persian person i know or have even heard about had been highly supportive of the war, with the singular goal of replacing the ayatollah. I hate Trump, i don't think he's necessarily doing it for the right reasons, and i think he's incredibly stupid for the way this didn't need to be a catastrophe for the economy (saying he would fill the strategic oil reserves, not doing that, starting a war that blocks hormuz). But it really bothers me to see everyone touting around the girls school. Do you really think they did that on purpose? The iranian regime would do that in a heartbeat if it meant harming America. How can you care so much about the 1 school and not have cared at all about the tens of thousands of brave protestors literally mowed down with machine guns. Or does it not matter because you didn't see it? They shut off the internet for a reason, and it appears to have worked.
Yes, was is bad, trump is a massive ego and idiot. But nothing we've done has come even close to what the regime has been doing to their own people since 1979.
In the end Iranians who want freedom need to form a different regime but when a group is under attack it rallies around the flag so it is a setback not an opportunity for dissidents.
I guess if someone else is killing innocent people it makes it fine for us to kill innocent people too.
Accidentally killing someone in service of destroying a military is not as bad as a regime just deliberately killing its citizens, no.
But at some point incompetence crossing the line to being gross and shifts the moral balance as well. This wasn't a 'deep in the fog of war' situation, that girls school was part of an opening strike package...and because of that, we need to find out more, but that "deliberately" is an open question with the facts we have now.
How does one "accidentally" target a school three times?
And America will as usual allow a dictator to take power, only difference will be to allow US corporations to profit from their oil.
The chance of Iran having regime replaced dropped to, like, zero.
Besides, Israel wont allow democratic or other functional regime change. Their goal is failed state with forever civil war in it. Something they can regularly bomb whenever it will seem functional. This can still happen, so everyone around should be ready for refugees waves.
Trumps idea of regime change is replacing head for someone who pays him personally - while keeping regime in place. This wont happen now.
Iranian monarchists want own dictatorship, but wont be getting it either.
Iranians who protested were just fucked and that is all about it.
Do you think some evil military planners sat in the Pentagon, saw that school, said "let's shoot at it for shits and giggles" and pressed the button? Or are you trying to pollute a grown up conversation with sensationalism and punchy hooks?
In reality someone made a mistake. It can happen. It should be investigated. It should not deter from achieving the military objectives.
I think that if you start an unjustified war of agression against a country and you kill 150 children, you should be held responsible
How would you like a country to respond to getting bombed?
Destroy the bombers, not children?
Also I am confused which contry you mean, mutual bombing has going on there since a while.
The school was next to a missile launcher.
Iran bombed Israel in January as a distraction tactic during the protests.
The school was hit 3 times by precision rockets.
The compound of the school physically separated from the military buildings since 10 years. Clearly visible on sat pictures.
Trump's reaction?
It could have been anyones Tomahawks missiles.
Is that where your information comes from, that there was a missile launcher next to it?
Oh and are you aware that Trump once said he will intentionally kill the families of terrorists, if voted into power?
https://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/02/politics/donald-trump-ter...
I was not saying that there was a problem with the rockets themselves. Any attack is a long process with a lot of stages, and something (in this case, probably the targeting) needs to go wrong.
And because I dislike a regime that wants to kill me, I must automatically worship Trump?
I agree with you, but i want to also ask, have you heard what the ayatollah and the mullahs have said about killing Americans, dismembering protestors, raping children, nuking the United States. Have you heard the protestors mowed down by machine guns, have you heard they make you buy the body of your loved ones for the cost of the bullet, assigning that value to their life, have you heard that they literally living inside hospitals and schools, that they told the iranians they would rather every iranian die then let go of power, have you heard at all how insane the islamic regime is? How seriously they talk about destroying America and all of the west so they can spread their Islamic regime (forced conversions or death, forces prayer or death, women cannot go outside with men, men have all rights in marriage, age of consent is 9 years old _for girls_, older for boys, speaking against the governed is death, protesting is death. They literally walked the streets with speakers and plays on the national tv (propaganda, the only channel allowed now) that the people should go into the street and leave their houses, while america and israel are saying to shelter while we take out military installations. The mullahs are trying to get people killed to use that as a story to get us to stop the war. They've literally embedded military installations in every single block of most of the cities. They do that to use the citizens as human shields. The only reason they haven't already been toppled is that owning guns is illegal, and the regime and their insanity are willing to murder anyone and everyone it takes to hold on to power. They don't care about iran, they care about islam and nothing else, they're willing to destroy the world if it means no other religions are allowed. They killed tens of thousands of protestors, they raped the bodies of women then ripped out their wombs to prevent investigation. It's categorically insane. These are facts. If you don't believe them is cause you don't know anyone who came from Iran, i know many and all of them support toppling the ayatollah, sending in pahlavi as transitionary leader to get democracy running again. Trump is and has always been a crazy person too, but having learned some farsi and listened with my own ears, he's nothing like the mullahs.
>I think that if you start an unjustified war of agression against a country [...]
That's just moving the goalposts because the original comment said
>What part of "doing the right thing" is bombing an all girls school?
which is calling out that particular event specifically, other than the war itself. Otherwise you can just head over to the wikipedia page and point out the casualty figures.
What if it happens as a result of trying to hold someone worse responsible?
> someone worse
You do not get to decide that. If we allow everyone to invade other countries and murder leaders because they deem those people worse than themselves, the world will be engaged in endless war. Or do you think perhaps deciding who to invade and kill is a special privilege reserved only for your country, which should be emperor of the world?
If a guy pays soldiers to sneak into another country, kidnap rape and murder children, and continues similar behavior for 4 decades I can decide he's worse than Trump. I do get to decide that. Some things are worse than others.
The preceding comment was about holding someone responsible. It appears you might have misunderstood that mine points out that this is exactly how the school was hit.
With this reasoning, how do you make any decisions in your everyday life? Does everything look like a morally relativistic gray to you?
??? Do most of your everyday life decisions involve starting wars or killing people? That's concerning. Are you a high-ranking officer in the US military? As it happens, I'm not, and my decisions do not typically have life-or-death consequences.
I also don't even know what you're getting at. There was nothing "relativistic" or "morally grey" about my argument. My point is that in order for any kind of peace to exist, each country must be able to accept that there will be other people in the world who are morally repugnant to them. Because there will always be leaders who consider each other repugnant, so if you endorse starting wars over that, you're committing to a world where everyone is starting wars all the time as the international norm.
But if you're getting attacked for 4 decades by another country, do you do something about it or are you saying that's also wrong?
My understanding is that the regime in Iran has been terrorizing around the world for decades. It's not just disagreeable. People are seeking justice.
It's one thing to dislike another politician. No one needs justice for repugnancy. But if they are committing acts of terror, that's a totally different thing.
The regime in the US has been terrorizing around the world for decades. Among many other things, it overthrew the democratic Iranian government to establish a puppet autocracy in Iran, leading directly to the current one after a revolution. The entire reason Iran funds terrorists that target the US is because the US is an existential threat to it. So your argument basically boils down to "if I shoot someone, and they shoot me back, am I not entitled to self-defense?". The actual answer is to stop shooting them. Stop fucking up the entire Middle East and the people from there won't hate a country across the world so much that they feel a worthwhile use of their life is to strap a bomb to themselves in order to kill people from there.
Your other comment is locked apparently. Can't reply.
But there you suggested that the US should stop because they make Iran want to bomb and that's why there's war. And we can say the same about Iran.
So, your solution is hopeless as we already know from centuries of conflict history. Iran wants to kill us for historical events. We want to kill them for those too. Very insightful.
But we're bigger and the war is just on the TV in America. You have a much better shot of convincing them that we'll stop bombing them if they just take it for a while and then don't seek revenge.
I didn't know why you think America will be easier to convince of that.
> Iran wants to kill us for historical events.
No, Iran wants to kill you for current events. You're talking like American imperialism in the Middle East is past-tense. It is on-going, constantly. It is happening right now. This, itself, is an imperialist war. Trump is not going to war for whatever fucking reason you think he is, like stopping terrorism or changing the Iranian regime to help the Iranian people.
> You have a much better shot of convincing them that we'll stop bombing them if they just take it for a while and then don't seek revenge.
They LITERALLY DID THAT. The first invasion striking their nuclear facilities was itself an act of war that would have justified closing the Strait and all other measures they could take to fight back. Yet they accepted such a blatant crime against them and tried to de-escalate, were in the middle of negotiating a humiliatingly one-sided deal (after Trump tore up the one they had made with Obama, for no reason), and then the US attacked them in the middle of negotiations for the second time in a row. This time killing their leader, 150 children, and countless other crimes. Nobody could ever lay down and accept that. You have just created a country full of people that will justifiably hate you for another 80 years, minimum. They have been taught that the only thing trying to appease the US does is embolden the US to take even more from them.
I don't know how to communicate this to you, but your country IS THE AGGRESSOR. The US is worse than Iran. Fullstop. The Iranian regime is evil, and despite that, the American regime manages to be multiple times worse. Peace in the Middle East was possible. It is the US who is constantly, constantly, constantly stirring up conflicts there, and you have the gall to blame Iran for it.
>'No, Iran wants to kill you for current events"
Which events were they wanting to kill Israelis and Americans for on October 7th? Or is it totally acceptable for Iran to start wars by kidnapping and torturing civilians and filming it, but not for America to do it without celebrating the death, kidnap, torture and rape of children?
Just to add, Israel killed Irans negotiators last year when they were approaching a deal. This situation is manufactured.
"Negotiators!?" They were torturing children and using the videos for ransom.
Did you just not know that or you would still call that negotiating?
>The regime in the US has been terrorizing around the world
Yeah, that already happened. Now what? How do we stop more kids from getting kidnapped, raped, murdered, or bombed?
Your proposed solution is essentially a leader in every country that has suffered from Iran's terror who can convince his/her people that their kidnapped children are worth it.
Obviously that isn't feasible. But worse, how is that different than saying it's okay for Iran to kidnap children?
> How do we stop more kids from getting kidnapped, raped, murdered, or bombed?
Not launching missiles at schools would be a great start to stopping kids from being bombed!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47479695
So just hit military targets?
Do you think America thought of that already? I think they did and civilians still died.
Do you have any realistic suggestions?
> My understanding is that the regime in Iran has been terrorizing around the world for decades
The list of Iranian terror attacks in America amounts to a whole lot of fuck all. Whatever Iran might be doing elsewhere shouldn't be America's problem.
I didn't think the point was that subtle. There is good and evil, right and wrong, survival and destruction. You seem to think that drawing a line around some land and calling yourself a country immunizes you from the moral scrutiny of your neighbors.
While this certainly accords with the promulgations of the morally bankrupt UN, it is not a recipe for existing in our world. This is why it is important to have a powerful military.
It is a matter of pragmatism. Even if I myself consider my perspective on good and evil to be objective, it is a given that each of my neighbors will have their own seemingly-objective sense of good and bad that differs from my own. We are then at an impasse. Do I attempt to kill all of my neighbors in order to rid the world of what I perceive to be evil? Or do I perhaps make peace with an imperfect world in which bad things happen in other countries that are not my jurisdiction to worry about? Apparently you subscribe to the "kill all your neighbors" camp, that your objective brand of morality must be enforced on the entire world by means of military might. World conquest, however, is an utterly irrational thing to attempt, and will only lead to death and destruction, not an idealistic world that conforms to your sense of morality.
I don't know what to tell you. You're restating the paradox of tolerance. You should probably come to some philosophical resolution regarding that before you keep digging.
What I have said has nothing to do with the paradox of tolerance. I am firmly on the side of not tolerating the intolerant, but stating that, "not tolerating" does not extend to "starting wars in an attempt at world conquest to rid the world of the intolerant".
If "not tolerating the intolerant" is not actionable, it is just mindless rhetoric.
It is actionable. That action is simply not "world conquest", jesus fucking christ. Is America itself a society in which the intolerant have no power? No, it is not. Maybe first it could think about clearing things up in its own borders before trying to use that excuse to invade the whole goddamn world. Indeed it is the intolerant who currently have power in the US. You seem to be projecting your own desire for invading Iran, which is completely incompatible with the people in power's actual reason for invading Iran. They are not invading Iran to make life better for Iranians. But you believe invading Iran to make life better for Iranians is justified, so you lend your support to the current administration, even though that is explicitly not what is going to happen as a result of your support. You are, in short, a useful idiot[1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
Regardless of why we're there, did you want to keep Khameini in power while he coordinates terror? What is your solution for that?
You'd be hard pressed to find someone more intolerant that the islamic regime of iran. So what are we going to do about it. What actions are we taking to not tolerate them? We tried the nuke deal and they lied and kept building. We tried sanctions and that crippled their economy and led people to attempt regime change, only to be murdered by the tens of thousands in the streets, brutally suppressed. All this while the regime is funding the majority of terrorism in the world today, fucking with literally every country in the middle east to attempt to assert their regime and rules farther and wider. At what point do we do something? How many have to die for us to decide to act. I'm aware that number is not 1, is it 35,000? 100,000? If not a number then what, what does it take to act?
> We tried the nuke deal and they lied and kept building
This is a lie. A complete fabrication. Trump says this, completely baselessly, without a shred of evidence, as known liars are wont to do. They allowed inspectors in and not one of them ever suggested they were violating the terms of the deal.
> How many have to die for us to decide to act.
This is a murky question, but if anybody was going to intervene in a country's domestic affairs, it would need to be by broad international consensus to have any legitimacy. It absolutely cannot be a unilateral invasion where one country decides who is worthy of invading and who is not. Moreover, that is not why they were invaded. Whatever qualms you have with the Iranian regime, this war is not a war to instate democracy in Iran. We already saw with Venezuela literally just two months ago that Trump invaded and deposed the leader, only to keep the current regime in place with an agreement to serve as his country's economic vassal. Stop projecting your own justifications for why you would invade Iran if you were President of the United States, to justify the actions of the current one who is not invading for those reasons. The only thing you are doing by justifying his invasion for unrelated reasons is giving your support to the death of more innocent Iranians that you ostensibly want to help.
Do you support Khameini's call and platform to fund the export of Islamic Revolution?
Do you believe that other countries should be allowed to defend themselves from the import of Khameini's Islamic Revolution?
Or did you not know that this was his openly stated purpose?
How many people have to die before you start blaming the international community for inaction or worse, you start to feel that the international community is complicit because they prevent one country from acting while another funds terror attacks with impunity?
I don't know why you decided to hop to multiple unrelated threads of conversation with other people while ignoring my reply to you on this subject specifically earlier, but to restate: wholesale violence does not solve terrorism. You already fucking tried this in Afghanistan, and failed, badly. The solution to terrorism is to stop giving people reasons to be terrorists, which means you must stop killing their people and trying to conquer their land/resources, as the US has been engaged in constantly for the entire post-world-war period. A commitment to peace won't make all of the terrorists disappear overnight, so you will have to deal with a long tail of violence against you for years to come, which is known as "consequences for your actions". You have a right to take measures to defend yourself against individual terrorists, but if you ever want actual peace, those measures can't include actions that will create new generations of terrorists, like invading a fucking country, assassinating its leader, bombing schools, sinking ships on diplomatic missions, and destroying infrastructure. Every single one of these actions will create new terrorists who hate your country so much they will lay down their lives to hurt it.
Actually, not only did you ignore my reply, you're ignoring the post you're replying to as well. THIS WAR IS NOT EVEN A REGIME CHANGE WAR. STOP PROJECTING YOUR OWN MOTIVATIONS ONTO THE US GOVERNMENT.
So by your reasoning America is the terrorist. Got it.
But then it's Iran that's giving America reasonable cause to be terrorists. Maybe the US is the biggest terrorist in history. Good for you, I'll buy your story for the sake of discussion.
But then why isn't the IR subject to the same scrutiny? Why are you criticizing one side, but not the other.
For me, I criticize IR far more than the US for banning free speech. For hanging and mutilating women. For kidnapping civilians. For celebrating Israeli deaths. For using residences and schools to house munitions and military targets. For openly advocating that their purpose is to "export Islamic Revolution." For subjugating and murdering protesters by the tens of thousands. And more...
For me this makes the US the lesser of two bad actors. I don't have much choice but where I do, I choose the less immoral, and hopefully I'm right. That doesn't mean I promote the violence on either side. Or that I like or agree with either side.
There's bad and worse. That's politics and even more so, that's war. But I'm definitely not voting for worse.
Change my mind. Seriously...
> stop giving people reasons to be terrorists
FFS they don't need reasons. Their stated goal and actions in support of it is the destruction of the apostatic free world. Your oppressed/oppressor narrative is vapid. Though terrorism is a tool they use, their goal is a caliphate with Sharia law.
You are literally brainwashed by American propaganda, JFC. Iranians do not hate you because you are free, they hate you because you are trying to control their country. Do you understand they are not movie villains? They are real people? Real people who would, in normal circumstances, prefer to live their lives peacefully? Imagine what it would take for you to decide the best way to spend your life is to strap a bomb to yourself and kill people from a country on the other side of the planet? Some reasons that may motivate you so heavily would perhaps include that country overthrowing your democracy and massacring your children. Reasons that are not likely are "jealousy of their FREEDOM".
I already know your next tired argument will be BUT THE RELIGION OF PEACE, so I will go ahead and pre-empt it. It is not genuinely religion that motivates people to die in acts of terrorism. If it were, that would still not be a reason to attack America, which is on the other side of the planet, as opposed to any of their closer neighbors who are just as full of heathens. Take, for example, Japan. It is a notable country on the world stage, once the #2 economy in the world. It has never, not even a single time, been attacked by an Islamic terrorist. Why do you think that is? Is it because Japan is not free? Is it because Japan lives in accordance with Islamic principles? Or is it because, maybe, just maybe, Japan hasn't given a single person from the Middle East any reason to want to sacrifice themselves to kill Japanese people?
Similarly, note that Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world, with 270 million people, 87% of which are Muslims. Not one of them has ever staged a terrorist attack against the US. Doesn't that seem strange to you? If Muslims are inherently evil people born for the religious purpose of attacking the US, surely Indonesians should be doing it too? Or maybe, just maybe, it's not actually religion that motivates such extreme acts of self-sacrifice, and the real reasons Indonesians don't attack the US is because the US has not given Indonesians reasons to hate it?
Why are you making this about Muslims generally?
You were already going there.
> their goal is a caliphate with Sharia law.
Nope. But now that you see how your distorted world view can lead you to the wrong conclusion, you should consider reassessing.
> do you think perhaps deciding who to invade and kill is a special privilege reserved only for your country, which should be emperor of the world?
yes. we got the bomb before they did, because our policies are better than theirs.
False dichotomy. There are other ways to deal with Iran that don't involve starting an ill conceived (and illegal) war that kills school children and possibly (probably?) plunges the world economy into recession. It is highly unlikely that the current military action will result in a pacified Iran.
Why do people think that since Iran is evil all actions against Iran are justified?
They're not old enough to remember the start of the war in Iraq, I imagine. For those who aren't: it was a barrage of justifications which were found to be untrue, especially the 45 minute claim which said Iraq could strike European targets within 45 minutes with chemical or biological weapons. The UN weapons inspector said this was nonsense, and so it proved to be - after the invasion.
Iran will go the same way, one way or another.
We can quantify "Who has killed the most children in the middle east recently" and Iran is in a distant third place.
Sovereignty. You only get to hold responsibility of your own citizens, like Jeffery Epstein AND his supporters. You do that right, and then maybe then people will like you as the world police.
Held responsible by whom? Certainly not you.
Well, a couple of days ago Iran fired 2 missiles at a US base in the Indian Ocean with twice the range of anything they were supposed to be allowed to have.
That was pretty validating for the war effort.
Iran shooting back after being attacked validates the decision to attack them in the first place?
"supposed to be allowed to have."
Ridiculous premise. They armed themselves thusly because American politicians have been singing "Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran!" for generations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_Iran
Right. Under sanctions to prevent them from being a danger to everyone around them while they sponsor terror globally and go on TV talking about getting nuclear weapons to destroy Israel.
Most of Europe is within striking distance of their current capabilities that they were not supposed to have.
Treaties gave terms to limit the range of their missiles. Treaties were agreed to to prevent them from enriching uranium.
They violated both. Had they been allowed to continue on their path, we can all expect that we would be looking at a nuclear terror attack in the near future.
People are going to react for their left/right politics but the Iranian regime is a danger to the entire planet. There’s a reason that Iranian expats world wide have been celebrating in the streets.
Their biggest fear is that we are going to leave before the regime is fully removed.
The real dangers to peace in the Middle East are America, Israel and historically the British, because these three are the bastards that toppled Iran's democracy and lead them to such a defensive posture in the first place. With the utmost respect, kindly blow your judeo-american sanctions out your ass. America should have NOTHING to do with Iran whatsoever, we don't have any moral right to intervention here.
It’s impossible to take anyone seriously who dismisses the threat of developing a nuclear weapon with intent to use it.
Sponsoring and funding global terror networks is not a “defensive posture”. Giving speeches about nuking your enemy while secretly developing those capabilities isn’t either.
"Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran"
Gee, I wonder why they want nukes. Pity they didn't get them in time, this whole war might have been averted.
Please apply your thoughts to Israel then. Israel is the greatest destabilizing force in the middle east. From Gaza, to false flags in Iran, Saudi Arabia and who knows where else.
>secretly developing those capabilities isn’t either.
At least Iran's been pretty transparent about their intentions for a while now.
Israel maintains the "strategic ambiguity" about its nuclear "energy" development which is the stupidest fucking thing ever. Of course they've got nuclear weapons.
The treatie that trump left in 2017 at a time when all US intelligence agencies after that they were not working on a nuclear bomb and were then put under sanctions? Yeah ok buddy.
That is not a validation of anything and it is not a US base.
US/UK base
> Do you think some evil military planners sat in the Pentagon, saw that school, said "let's shoot at it for shits and giggles" and pressed the button?
Absolutely. Russia does it all the time, IDF does it all the time, why would the Pentagon be any different?
Grow up conversations aren’t possible when the clowns are running the circus.
Seems in Libanon the IDF is currently targeting hospitals and first responders [0]. Sometimes people are just evil.
Regarding the USA-Iran war, the president of the USA has threatened to destroy essential infrastructure (e.g. electricity) if Iran doesn't surrender in 48 hours. Which, from my understanding, is a war crime. I think Trump is perfectly ok with bombing schools and hospitals.
---
[0]: https://x.com/haaretzcom/status/2035545687006298392?s=20
> In reality someone made a mistake. It can happen. It should be investigated. It should not deter from achieving the military objectives.
There has been little planning and there are no sane military objectives beyond blow stuff up. How can there be when the objectives of the overall war change depend on what side of the bed Bone Spurs got out.
Yes, mistakes can happen.
But when you use autonomous targeting systems (with "human oversight" in theory) and tell your soldiers:
"no stupid rules of engagement,” “no politically correct wars,” and “no nation-building quagmire.” (Hegseth)
And the top commander says that he would intentionally kill the families of terrorists if voted into power:
https://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/02/politics/donald-trump-ter...
Then at some point I do not believe the term "mistake" is appropriate here.
"Maximum lethality, not tepid legality"
What are the military objectives?
Prop up the friendly apartheid regime.
Destroying a school is not an "oopsie". It should literally not be possible for it to happen in any organization that values human life at all. This was a precision strike with three missiles hitting the same target, they should have been goddamn sure they knew where the millions of dollars in ordnance they were launching for the purpose of ending human life were headed. Of course, the US military places zero value on not murdering civilians, which it has shown time and time again throughout its history, so this is the obvious result: massacre by intentional negligence.
It's absolutely fucking insane to downplay it like these things just happen and are unavoidable. What is wrong with you? Maybe you don't understand these are not just numbers on a screen? How many children do you know in your life? Is it even close to 150? Can you imagine every single child you know being killed and shrugging that off, insulting people who bring it up as being "sensationalist" and "polluting the conversation"?
Let’s have a serious conversation about downplaying things because this is where all of these conversations go sideways.
Many people, myself included, watch very loud righteous indignation about this awful event…while hearing absolutely nothing from the same people about…
- The Iranian women’s soccer team who are returning home from asylum to likely torture and execution due to regime threats against their families.
- The thousands of Iranian protesters who were shot by the regime.
- The 19 year old wrestling champion who was executed for participating in a protest.
Nobody is saying the school wasn’t terrible, but it’s not some situation where if we just leave the regime in power it’s going to be all sunshine and roses over there.
Show equal parts outrage and people will take you more seriously. Show equal parts outrage and you will find far more outrage from leaving the regime in power.
The entire reason the current Iranian regime exists is because the US overthrew their democracy to replace it with a monarchy that was friendly to their oil interests, which was then overthrown by a popular revolution. Maybe the US should stay the fuck out of Iran because it's not the US's fucking business, and it is most certainly not acting benevolently out of desire to help the people of Iran.
> while hearing absolutely nothing from the same people about…
Also, really? You think anybody who opposes the US bombing a school is cheering on protestors being shot and all other crimes of the Iranian regime? Well, I guess I'll be the first: Iranian regime bad. Killing protestors bad. Executing dissenters bad. There you go. Your argument is defeated. You can no longer make that claim. But I reckon most people aren't couching their statements by bringing up the whudabbouts because first it's not the direct topic of the conversation, and second it's a fucking given. But it being a given that X is bad does not justify doing more bad things.
Totally agree with you. The US also created the Bin Laden problem.
That genie isn’t going back in the bottle though so now we have to deal with the very real threat to the world that we certainly had a hand in creating.
Glad to hear your opposition to all of the evil as well. The desire for vocal, social righteous indignation with most of this dialog does not follow your fervor though. People remain silent until it supports their local politics, for the most part.
The Genie was in the bottle until trump removed it in 2017.
i think the poster you're replying to does not regard iranians as capable of independent decisions. thus, the school deaths are a crime, but the dead protesters are more like a weather event: a tragedy.
I would reply point-by-point to show US hypocrisy, but that might be too much whataboutism. I think I'll just say this one: this is the only time Trump has pretended to care about the lives of brown-skinned protestors. He literally has asked whether he could intentionally shoot American protestors legally.
He doesn't care about the Iranian people either, so there's some other reason. I'm not going to carry water for a secretly-motivated war where the "good" effects are secondary, post-hoc rationalizations.
At least just say they're a grave threat we should destroy or whatever, don't play along with the game that the American government and people care so much for Muslims on the other side of the world.
Okay. We can consider this war to be about regime change when Israel and the US give up strategic planning to revolutionaries in Iran.
>Destroying a school is not an "oopsie".
You should see how many innocent people US's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq killed. And that's only the ones we know of before the era of smartphones and social media where people could more easily document war crimes. Did anyone go to jail for it? No. Will anyone go to jail for killing innocent people in Iran? Also no.
Trump is gonna fuck some more shit up in the area, declare "victory" when he's bored or the political pressure gets too high while leaving the middle east in a bigger mess than it was before.
Miraculously by US standards, a couple of soldiers (though only a couple, by no means all who committed them) actually did face prison time for war crimes in Iraq, and were then pardoned by Trump because he can't settle for not being the most evil man on the planet: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/27/eddie-gallag...
Pardoning criminals is Trump's definition of patriotism. He would know what a criminal is.
I notice you're not critical of Iran's military intentionally firing on civilians. Why?
Because that was not the subject of the conversation. Iran's military killing civilians is bad, but that does not somehow justify also killing their civilians. WTF even is your logic?
It certainly doesn't justify killing civilians.
The US made a mistake while attempting to ensure that insane theocrats who are close to building nuclear weapons are not able to. The fondest wish of the religious lunatics in charge of Iran (and we know this because they have told us) is to annihilate the US and Israel. They have demonstrated missiles that can reach Europe.
These dots don't seem hard to connect.
> who are close to building nuclear weapons
This is a lie. Not only is it not the stated purpose of the war, even Netanyahu himself went out of the way to say that Iran had no remaining capability to accomplish this and that was not why they were invaded.
> They currently have demonstrated missiles that can reach Europe.
The US demonstrated its missiles can reach schools in Iran. Why are we more concerned with scaremongering about what hypothetical evil acts Iran could commit while downplaying the evil acts that are actually being propagated by the US?
The war has multiple goals.
> Why are we more concerned with scaremongering about what hypothetical evil acts Iran could commit while downplaying the evil acts that are actually being propagated by the US?
Because normal people can understand the difference between a mistake and intentional acts. And between the scales of different actions.
> The war has multiple goals.
One of which is explicitly not Iran's nuclear capacity, as confirmed by one of the heads of state invading.
> Because normal people can understand the difference between a mistake and intentional acts.
Normal people can also understand that some things are too serious to pass off as "oopsie". We have terms like "manslaughter" or "aggravated murder" for when your reckless negligence leads to loss of human life. You are still responsible for the murders you cause when you take actions with intent that you know will lead to people dying without intending any specific one of those deaths.
either way, you may wish to know: your poor argumentation shores up support for the war.
You may disagree with the idea that militaries are responsible for civilians they kill regardless of intent, but it is not poor argumentation. And the fact that it triggers you to support the war reveals more about you than you may intend.
you've mistaken my comment! i do not support the war.
Military action always has civilian casualties. All you can do is hope and make effort to reduce them. And I'm glad we're on the side that does that.
You are absolutely not on the side that does that. The US has killed millions of civilians over the past century in all of the wars it's partaken in and pardons its own war criminals, on the very rare occasion it bothers to try them in the first place. Fuck me American propaganda is in another world.
Israeli propaganda. America is fighting this war but not leading it
Iran advertises and brags about how many civilians they've killed and literally states its purpose is to export revolution.
But America is the bad guy? No... Not even close. Do you see Americans cheering for the dead school children?
I'm watching Iran cheering for the dead children in countries around the world every day for 40 years.
You should be ashamed of yourself for even comparing.
> Do you see Americans cheering for the dead school children? I'm watching Iran cheering for the dead children in countries around the world every day for 40 years.
I agree, people should be ashamed of supporting killing civilians and any society that supports that should be criticized.
I’m not familiar with any instances of Iranis celebrating civilian deaths though? Do you have any examples?
Maybe something like this;
https://youtube.com/shorts/2jTZwSPdK8I
Or
https://www.timesofisrael.com/watch-far-right-israelis-celeb...
?
Iran (govt) is not Iranian. They are occupied. And yes. From your same source (Israeli news) for added effect.
https://www.thejewishstar.com/stories/palestinian-tradition-...
Thousands more similar articles. This is not a new tradition. Decades of this same behavior everywhere that Iran operates terror orgs.
I shared articles of Israelis celebrating deaths of Palestinian civilians, and you shared an article of Palestinians celebrating Israeli deaths.
I asked for proof of your claim that Iranis celebrated civilian deaths and you still have not shown that.
Additionally your statement:
“ Iran (govt) is not Iranian. They are occupied.” betrays a basic ignorance of Iran. Irans government is comprised entirely of Iranians.
Lastly, to paraphrase your earlier statement:
> I'm watching Israel cheering for the dead children Palestine for decades. You should be ashamed of yourself for even comparing.
I’m fine arguing with the ignorant or unprincipled, but it’s not worth my time interacting with someone who displays both.
I see you couldn't connect the dots, but you've resorted to insults so I can't continue.
Yes. Evil military planners used AI to generate a list of thousands of kill sites and then engaged them without verification. They attacked a public park by accident because it has the name “police” in it. Recklessly slaughtering children is “grown up” now?
Another school was attacked[1] because it had "Shahed" in the name, like the drones. This is the First Slop War: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/6/elementary-school-in...
>> In reality someone made a mistake. It can happen. It should be investigated. It should not deter from achieving the military objectives.
You should really unpack these statements, especially if you're trying to have a "grown up conversation". You're saying that no price is too high for achieving military objectives, even those that are very unclear and unilaterally defined without justification by a easily distracted narcissist with obvious goals of distracting from his domestic problems.
He isn't saying that at all, though. He is saying that by the nature of war, innocent people will die. Everyone knows this, which is why international law is based on proportionality, not on whether or not a single civilian was harmed.
So you're saying that killing 150 school girls is a proportionate response to what, exactly? The children would have been safe if their parents would have preemptively sent them away to Epstein's Kid Rock?
Possibly so, yes, that may have happened. The strike may have been calculated to inflame the Iranian public and lock them into a prolonged conflict, great for military contractors and their shareholders.
Is the fact that is a mistake a comfort to the kids' parents, siblings, or friends? Are they somehow less dead?
> In reality someone made a mistake.
It's never just one mistake. It's usually a chain of mistakes and bad decisions that make the final mistake possible.
I'd estimate that there were likely 77,168,458 mistakes/bad decisions made by individuals before this mistake could happen.
I simply had a few beers before getting behind the wheel. Honestly, judge, can we admit: nobody wants to run over anyone with their car. Cmon, do you really think I was twirling my moustache, thinking about how I would love to run those people over? Of course not! No, I am a benevolent fun loving guy. And I was simply having a few beers! How else is a good guy like me supposed to get home?
Then somebody should be punished so severely that incidence would go down dramatically. I dont mean 2 weeks administrative leave (or medal and promotion), I mean lives ruined, names tarnished, and/or people executed/jailed for 20 lives for mass (in)voluntary manslaughter.
In reality, in same vein quite a few US laws are set. If you are not US passport holder you are subhuman. Less rights, less care, more disposable, just a garbage to step on. We saw it enough in past 80 years to see a clear pattern everywhere US went and (mostly) failed.
For those slow in back rows - this is how you get almost endless stream of new fanatical recruits to merry groups like isis or al-queda. Dumb, supremely dumb. Yeah, 'a mistake, it can happen'. Fuck that american self-entitled rotten racist mentality. Then you wonder why whole world hates you now and what you stand for and represent. What a success story for america in past year.
Sometimes a mistake is negligence. If you're going to use lethal force it's a good idea to check your facts first. It's been a school for years, how was that missed?
None of that happened because the US was unprepared for this war. It was Bibi's idea and Trump is weak and incompetent so he just went along with it, ironically because he thought it would avoid making him look weak and incompetent.
> ironically because he thought it would avoid making him look weak and incompetent
Trump is what a weak man imagines a strong man to be like. Just look at his official portrait [1], trying to look tough and dangerous. Compare that to Dwight D. Eisenhower's portrait [2], a man who commanded entire armies in the largest war in human history.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump#/media/File:Offic...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower#/media/Fi...
Have you heard Hegseth speeches lately? Or Trumps?
Like, yes, evil military planners did sat down and said "rules of engagement are woke, the working groups handling civilian safety are waste of money, be maximum lethal".
Also, they had no stable military objectives except "make my insecure masculinity feel manly".
I think the military planners sat in the Pentagon and thought "Hey if we hit this school and kill all these children, that will achieve us X. Shall we do it?" And then they decided to do it. Yes, that's what I think.
Surely nothing to do with the missile launcher next to it, right?
Good try. When you are complicit in genocide in Gaza, destroy multiple countries on pretext of democracy and human rights, start wars with blatant lies, the "let's shoot at it for shits and giggles" is actually being kind.
Would you be so calm if someone made a mistake with your kid’s school?
I have heard more than one Trump-defender say “well they would have grown up to attack us.”
> Do you think some evil military planners sat in the Pentagon...
Why shouldn’t he believe it?
You people believe the same kind of crap when you're told that X (insert the current boogeyman de jour) hates Murica and wants to kill you all.
None of which is being handled by the current admin with a modicum of professionalism or competency, so I guess at times you just have to pick _one_ from the laundry list of complaints here.
Oh, now worries, I can take my bicycle or train whenever possible (like right now). And since I am european, I do not just worry about gasoline, but also that the US actually might attack us at some point, Trump did threaten again over greenland and the last time - it was not just words, danish troops took it serious and were ready to shoot.
"https://www.euractiv.com/news/denmark-considered-destroying-..."
Unpleasant if this escalates.
Also, the gasoline prices are only "momentary" up, if the whole area does not burst into flames. Then it doesn't matter if the trait is closed, as no more oil is being produced.
The only bright side is, this is a great push for renewables.
Europe will be affected more then USA by oil prices.
The US is not in a position to process much of the sweet crude it has. Instead, imports sour crude, which is what much of the US's refineries are actually built to handle. This is why Venezuela was such a thorn in the side of the US, as they were one of the major producers and also largely produced sour crude.
As adwn says, it's a globally priced commodity, and the US is not in a position to disentangle itself from that market because in spite of being one of the world's largest producers, US refineries are not in a position to process that product, so it needs to go abroad. The US needs to import significant amounts of sour crude to be refined for their own use.
The US is just as screwed as the rest of us.
Also, the primary worry for Europe isn't oil, it's natural gas.
Oil is a globally priced commodity. This means that downstream consumers of oil in the US will be just as affected by rising prices as European consumers. US producers of oil will benefit, though.
Since WWII you're living under the umbrella of the US, as client states. There was no reason Europe could not amass a significant military power that would grant its sovereignty, but money went to increasing quality of life instead. Trump the 45th even implored EU to do so and bolster NATO.
That's rich, the guy threatening the existence of NATO more than any other factor is trying to bolster NATO. I struggle to imagine how you square this in your mind.
At the outset, he doesn't want to carry the burden of NATO alone. Maybe he has other strategic interests in mind where US deviates from the rest of the world (like Greenland) but he's entirely right that NATO really depends on the US.
Trump's attitude towards NATO member state spend it widely publicized [0] so I don't think there's much to debate here. Trump wanted member states to spend more, not less.
He was somewhat prescient during his 45th presidency, given what happened in Ukraine in 2022 and how it forced US to spend huge amounts of money and military hardware which the EU simply didn't have. Maybe with a stronger standing EU army, that invasion would not have happened in the first place.
[0] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01495933.2021.19...
> NATO really depends on the US.
Yes. By design. But if the US decouples, the rest of the countries can and will make their own alliance, with blackjack and hookers. Greenland thing is peak wierdness and the only explanation of it would be pride, stupidity or active undermining of NATO.
> Trump's attitude towards NATO member state spend it widely publicized [0] so I don't think there's much to debate here. Trump wanted member states to spend more, not less.
Yes. But, you have a very shallow reading of this and you're taking things at face value. He latched on the spending as a pretext, and as a way to increase US income for the defense industry. He doesn't give a rat's ass about the security of NATO countries. US has entered a very transactional, bully, phase and this is a bad way to maintain international standing.
> it forced US to spend huge amounts of money and military hardware which the EU simply didn't have
- Europe's monetary aid for Ukraine far outweighs that of the US.
- The US military aid for Ukraine mostly consisted of old and obsolete hardware.
- Since about a year or so, all weapons and munitions delivered by the US are paid for by Europe.
> - Since about a year or so, all weapons and munitions delivered by the US are paid for by Europe.
Huh, I wonder what happened a year or so ago? What could have led to the US cutting off so much support? /s
Also, I took a look on the paper you linked. I have no idea what you want to prove with it, since it all but confirms the stance I already explained:
> At the outset, he doesn't want to carry the burden of NATO alone.
The US chose to be the premiere military power and as a result reaped the benefits that come with having bases all over the world. This absurd claim by Trump that the relationship is one-sided is completely without merit. It was mutually beneficial, arguably better for the US. Just like being the world’s reserve currency. The complicated system of soft power reinforced by the threat of hard power that the US created over the last 80 years was no small feat and frankly we will never get that back now. Maybe it’s for the best! But this nonsense about NATO being a one-sided deal where Europe overwhelmingly benefits from US dollars/military presence is absolutely ridiculous and just another piece of evidence that Trump has no clue how foreign policy works.
Additionally, any argument about not wanting to spend all that money lacks legitimacy given how the administration is spending.
You don’t think that the person you’re replying to is Donald Trump, do you? He’s not wrong even though I can see why amassing independent defense didn’t feel necessary all this time
> You don’t think that the person you’re replying to is Donald Trump, do you?
I'm confused how this interpretation could ever come about. No, I mean his point about "Trump trying to bolster NATO" is comic, as Trump is actively weakening NATO, no matter his stated goals wrt. improving funding and having member states "carry their load". _Especially_ his threats to Greenland and Canada, for no apparent reason. It's really mind-boggling. Perhaps my fault, since I expect mental consistency from post-truth populists and authoritarians.
Turns out consistency is overrated. We talk as if it's a bare minimum, but there isn't actually any penalty for violating it.
We've still got some kind of karmic notion that inconsistency is bad for you in the long run. Maybe it is, but that run keeps getting longer and longer.
Having contact with reality is quite important when critical moments arise. Fantasy can proper you quite high, but there is a breaking point where it can't carry the day. Trump & Co are both post-truth and detached for reality. I am a bit scared for your country when you get a post-truth populist that is NOT detached from reality. If you can't deal with a buffoon like Trump, how will you be able to deal with someone who is half competent? Truth be told, I don't know how to deal with these people.
Not that my country fared any better with this kind of rhetoric in last couple of years. But we don't have the democratic tradition as rich as you had (or at least I felt you had). I feel like despair will be the feeling for me this decade.
It's a good question. His supporters like the buffoonery. It allows them to see what they want to in his actions. It's remarkable that he has the full-throated support of the theocrats while being blatantly an atheist. And conversely he has surrounded himself with people who clearly hate Christianity, but gloss over his pandering to the religious right.
That wouldn't be possible if he were any smarter. Nor is he a Boris Johnson type character, playing the clown while being quite well educated in private.
The right wing coalition will survive and thrive even without him. But it's hard to predict just how, because it will have to adapt.
"Trump the 45th even implored EU to do so and bolster NATO."
All he wanted was EU to buy more US weapons (also to help with his wars). Guess what is happening now, we still do buy US weapons where there is no other choice, but apart from that, we build and buy our own things now. Try to get rid of US software depenencies - in general, get rid of any dependency we have towards you. If this was Trump's goal, great job I have to say.
> Since WWII you're living under the umbrella of the US, as client states. There was no reason Europe could not amass a significant military power that would grant its sovereignty, but money went to increasing quality of life instead. Trump the 45th even implored EU to do so and bolster NATO.
Problem is that Trump wants to eat the cake and have it too. If we’re no longer being protected by the US then US companies should not expect preferential laws and access to the EU market.
> Since WWII […]
Europe didn't slack off militarily during the Cold War. Germany, for example, poured massive amounts of money and resources into the Bundeswehr to be able to fend of the Soviets. The US relied as much on the European members of NATO as the Europeans did on the US.
After the Cold War, both the US and Europe scaled back their military spending and enjoyed the peace dividend. It was only after 2001 that the US increased its budget again – but to fight insurrectionist wars (which EU members aren't particularly interested in), not in a peer conflict. They're not prepared for a pro-longed war against a near-peer power.
So although I agree that Europe should be rearming heavily, and should have started in 2022 at the very latest, it's not like the US did really much better. They're really good at curb-stomping much weaker opponents, like Venezuela or Iran, but they haven't seriously prepared for a war against China.
> They're really good at curb-stomping much weaker opponents, like [..] Iran
That remains to be seen, though. Really winning that war requires either lots of boots on the ground and a long occupation (where the outcome might still be like in Afghanistan) or using nukes, which could escalate quite badly for us all. There is a reason no other POTUS has attacked Iran before.
Of course Trump can at every point in time just declare victory and leave the mess to all others for cleaning up. That is the most likely outcome, IMHO.
Europe can't yet heat all the homes in winter with renewables and the heat cast from a smug sense of self-satisfaction, so I wouldn't celebrate yet.
Statements with "the only bright side" usually do not indicate celebrating.
Plus if gas prices rise more people might switch to EVs, drive less often, and/or hopefully begin to understand the fragility of our car-only infrastructure and mandatory car ownership and demand better urban planning and transportation options.
We had a version of this called "carbon pricing" that didn't involve wanton murder.
Can't wait to get my new iPhone shipped here on an electric cargo ship, and it shouldn't be too much more expensive for my food transported by a fleet of electric semis and trains. Totally worth exploding billions of ordnance and killing a few thousand people!
East Asian economies are severely affected by high fuel prices. People need it to fuel their boats, to get to work, and to heat their homes. And it's the input to many critical industries, most importantly to make fertilizer. Not all countries's stockpiles are large enough to sit this out.
So much bullshit. The best way to dissolve the OPEC is to stop buying oil from them. Period. A country like the US should not be burning oil or any kind of fossil fuel for its electricity, we're rich in rivers, sunlight and have tech enough to build as many nuclear power plants as we want.
This is all being done to prop up oil prices, but China is going to be the silent killer here, helping the world move to renewables and OPEC won't be a thing anymore. Its to see a country committing suicide like this.
Trump is now threatening to destroy Iran's power plants if the straight isn't reopened. Is this "doing the right thing"? And doesn't this show he cares more about oil prices than regime change?
But the most important question is, what's next? If depriving tens of millions of people of energy doesn't work, what will he do next?
One hypothesis is he'll threaten Iran with a nuclear strike. In response, either China or Russia or both, will say that's a line that cannot be crossed.
And then, we will either all die, or be living in a world saved by authoritarian regimes from the irresponsibility of the US.
It will be interesting! But probably extremely unpleasant.
I would say gasoline is not all that matters. This has also made clear Israel is not a US ally. They are a disobedient client state.
Given how much money the US has given Israel compared to how tiny their GDP is it is also clear the US financially owns Israel. If I were US president I would annex Israel so that they no longer determine US foreign policy. Of course Israel would agree to be annexed because otherwise they can be easily isolated like the way they isolate Gaza.
> They are a disobedient client state
Who, the US? Quite obedient I'd say.
So .. the plan is Big Afghanistan, to install a puppet regime at massive expense which evaporates the moment the US ground troops leave?
They don't really care what happens afterwards. They openly admitted that a Libya-like situation would be preferable compared to leaving the current regime in power. Whether that's actually a strategically valid assessment is a completely different question.
-Sent from Tel Aviv.
We robbed S Korea of a radar system they paid for which they found highly insulting. We’re causing an energy crisis in Japan. We repealed the sanctions on Russia to try to level oil prices which is the last straw for Ukraine. Europe refused to participate. Fascinating you see this as doing the right thing and motivated by alliances plural.
The purpose of this war is to do the fighting for Israel. Is that what you mean by "doing the right thing"?
All of those matter, making this whole situation even more unjustified.
good point. i'm more than happy to pay 10x for my diesel and electricity and even change my whole lifestyle for the foreseeable future in support of iran doing the right thing: kicking the murderous usrael regime out of western asia where it should never have been in the first place, if it weren't for their god damned blood soaked petrodollars.
You and both I agree that only violence will solve the conflict between Iran and Israel. They can't really coexist in the same sphere. May the best country win :)
Is that the goal, though? "Subduing the Iranian regime"? If so, shouldn't they explain that so that the war gets support and so better chances of achieving its goals? How is that goal to be achieved? Because so far it seems like the goal is some personal achievement for Trump, and that shapes the perspective.
> That's it? Momentary gasoline price is all that matters now?
Did you not see the lead up to the 2024 election and all the whining about how Biden, specifically, caused gasoline prices to go up? This is a very important issue to Americans because we use gas cars to go everywhere and all our food is transported using vehicles that consume gas. GP is obviously being rhetorical here because MAGAs wouldn't stop railing on Biden for global COVID inflation (mostly out of his control) but they're now making excuses for Trump starting a war that's spiking gas prices.
> That's it?
Yes, that's it. The only reason for imperialism is "what's in it for me".
All the rest is bullshit.
Source: I am not American, therefore I know American Imperialism when I see it.
Oy, vey! You mean Epstein first policy instead of America first?
What's the point?
Say the goal is to get rid of the regime by giving the protesters an opening to rebel. Then Trump blew the metaphorical load too early by encouraging the protesters on truth social. Tens of thousands of them being killed destroyed the momentum. Smarter people would have tried to arm them first, or discouraged the protests until we could hit them at the same time.
Say the goal is to "do the right thing." Then we shoudn't be tag-teaming with a country doing a genocide, clearly. We'd probably be hesitant to help them destroy their enemy or realize their interests in general. We've had endless opportunity to reign them in and done nothing about it. "Oh, but we need them to project force in the middle east for us." Well then why the fuck are we starting a war? Let's force that ally to reform before starting the war. There was no fucking rush man.
Say the goal is to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Well, Iran isn't (wasn't) run by stupid people. They knew we could likely set back their nuclear program before it completed and they knew the best-case-scenario in building nukes would be to get some leverage. They therefore opted to take a deal, using the threat of becoming armed to have some leverage. For us this is a great deal because we don't need to pay the costs of fighting Iran and we don't need to give them a better deal at nuke-point, and for them it's pretty solid because it's less risky. There's no evidence the terms were violated before WE ripped up the deal.
"Well however we got into this situation, we're here now and they could have nukes within seconds, I mean minutes, I mean hours, I mean days, I mean months, I mean years..." Maybe before creating an international energy crisis, just bomb the damn nuclear program again. Worst case scenario they get a nuke and what? The whole point of a nuke is leverage, when you use it you lose the leverage. We would be forced to cut another deal with better terms for Iran. Whatever dude, maybe that's not worth fighting another middle eastern war idk maybe I'm crazy.
I'm not a big war guy who just loves killing for the fun of it or whatever but even a war of aggression can be competent. I can admit when competence is exhibited and when something I otherwise dislike at least works out well. This shit is the most monumental blunder in decades. It wasn't planned, it has no goal, it will either end in a pointless withdrawal or (most likely) a Vietnam-esque quagmire. Every single problem was foreseeable and foreseen, that's why we didn't do this before. But some fucking moron pedophile gets blackmailed hard enough by a genocidal war criminal to say "what's one more, for old times sake?" and I'm supposed to want to shout hurrah and put my goddamn body and soul on the line for absolutely literally jack shit? Utterly ridiculous.
here is my version with algo generated levels and you have to navigate a ship from left to right
https://strait-sweeper.franzai.com/
On Chrome, right-click brings up the context menu in addition to flagging a mine, which basically makes this unplayable.
Also the ship is not explained at all (the graphics, the controls, the systems). I'd recommend at least a one paragraph help section in the menu.
Long press instead of right click also marks mines.
fixed
Cool! But on level 10 the ship can't move further to the goal although the path is cleared. No movement forward is allowed
fixed. thx for the feeback
It's missing the double click on a number feature from minesweeper.
chording is available only during peace times
It's still middle-click in my muscle memory from the Windows XP days!
God, I used to be _really_ into Minesweeper.
One of the earliest games I made back in college was a 3D Minesweeper cube. I remember being really proud of one little detail – the detection and automatic resolution of ambiguous clues that would require guessing, which always annoyed the heck out of me in every other version of Minesweeper.
Oh, me too. Do you have your game still available somewhere?
Nah, this was 20 years ago or so! Would be fun to whip up a modern version though.
Added double click feature
Double clicking on a tile doesn't seem to do anything different than a single click (Firefox on macOS)
Clearing more than one sector at a time requires allied support.
Hormuz is not a minefield though. According to sources, ships are moving near the coast of Iran, according to other sources they are being charged $2M per passage. According to other sources only Yuan paid oil is allowed.
Iran has indicated they will only target ships tied to countries that are involved in the conflict.
That likely means US and Israel. Unclear if countries like the UK that are facilitating the US through use of their bases would be considered legitimate targets (likely yes).
That's not how mines work. They don't only explode on people you want them to explode on.
I'm not a military guy, but I would think you can make mines nowadays that do exactly that.
With what communication protocol? Does high-frequency radio have the range for that?
I was thinking you could run a fiber optic cable. Those have proven themselves to work over 10s of miles in Ukraine with drones.
That’s an interesting idea. I think the fiber optics for drones works because it is only used once over a short period of time. It seems like a cable connected to a mine could be easily disrupted by dragging an anchor with a small robot boat.
And as another commenter noted, mines get moved by currents, so the cable could get tangled and snap.
In the modern era, the difference between sea mine and drone or torpedo can be a lot fuzzier than you may expect. People think of spikey balls, but some sea mines today can do stuff like use passive sonar to match targets against an internal database before firing a homing torpedo. I doubt Iran has these, but they certainly have the proficiency to think creatively about the problem.
> I doubt Iran has these
According to guys in the know, they have quite the hardware:
https://www.hisutton.com/Iranian-Naval-Mines.html
I mean you could have some slack in the cable easily, and have the mine become intert should its cable snap.
You have to be mindful of enemy tampering, but overal I would say the idea's worth investigating.
On an unrelated note, I was also thinking of using fiber optic drones to rapidly set up an unjammable communications network on the battlefield. Surely that would be useful for something?
Sonar can work over 100km. Mines obvs need to maintain radio silence so passive mode only.
Yep. IIRC Norway and Sweden has actually have a network of smart mines deployed.
That’s not fundamental to how mines work. You could arm/disarm them remotely, either manually or via transponder. But I assume most mines are not like this.
The problem is that it's to my knowledge very difficult to know where maritime mines are, since they get swept around by currents.
CAPTOR is your solution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_60_CAPTOR
$130,000 a pop in 1980s money, probably even cheaper if you have trade inroads with China and a bunch of 533mm torpedos sitting around in storage.
Easy: you mine the straight except the water immediately near your shores, where you can control the boat. We don't know about the mining part (the straight may or may not be mined yet) but the second part is what the Iranians are doing right now (the tankers which cross are doing to between Qeshm Island and mainland Iran, not in the straight proper)
Unfortunately Iran's leadership is in a bit of distress and communication disrupted, and "involved in the conflict" is a very broad term - so they do make some effort to get chinese oil out, but any ship not asking for explicit permission from Iran - will have some great risk of being targeted.
Remember, the strait is not Iranian property, but International waters. So no one would have to ask them for permission, but that is the way it is and most do not risk it (insurance won't cover).
> the strait is not Iranian property, but International waters
That seems to depend on who you ask. Iran has expressed a differing opinion on the matter and appears to be capable of striking the area in practice.
Nah, the narrowest points are below 24 nautical miles, so all ships need to pass through Iran and/or Oman's territorial waters (12 nmi each).
You can see for yourself if anything is passing: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:57.7/cente...
A small number of ships are crossing with AIS off (and without the benefit of GPS, because it is jammed) by coordinating with Iran. For example: https://gcaptain.com/iranian-navy-guided-indian-tanker-throu.... These will not show up on Marine Traffic as they are transiting the strait.
Wonder why US doesn’t spam the strait with fake AIS signals. Do Iranians have capability to spot ships in dark at night? If they employ radar - why not geolocate radar stations? Is there other techniques Iranians have for spotting ships (EW, SAR, etc)?
If Shaheds use Starlink - how come SpaceX can’t geolocate the launch sites?
I've seen reports of ship turning off their AIS before attempting the strait, not sure if this is still valid but Marine Traffic only shows AIS signals that are turned on, which is as simple as flipping a switch.
Also something Chinese fishing ships do around the galapagos and other regions to fish illegally.
As others have mentioned, that's simply not going to tell you anything. AIS can and is often times turned off in such situations and it ships can spoof their location by sending false AIS... something that situations like could encourage, at least one could well imagine.
I find Sal Mercogliano's "What's Going on With Shipping?" to be a better source to understanding what's happening in the Strait. Here's a link to yesterday's episode "Strait of Hormuz 3-Week Recap | What is the Status of the Ships, Transits and Escort Mission?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q64cOs7GN_4
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4geg0eeyjeo
> Before the war, about 138 ships passed through the strait each day according to the Joint Maritime Information Centre, carrying one fifth of the global oil supply.
> The data provided by shipping analysts Kpler shows 99 vessels passing the narrow strait so far this month, an average of just 5-6 vessels a day.
I mean, it's bad, but it's factually not a minefield. The threat isn't coming from mines anyway.
> I mean, it's bad, but it's factually not a minefield.
That's not clear. Mines are generally concealed. It's the reason that mine-sweeping is slow and dangerous.
And there's no public information (AFAIK) that let's us rule out mines having been, or even currently being, laid.
The risk of being targeted by missiles or drones works just as well. There is a reason NATO has to patrol the Red Sea with warships.
https://www.hisutton.com/Iranian-Naval-Mines.html
It might not be. It might be. Uncertainty is the point of what Iran is doing.
There might be mines in the straight that are sophisticated enough to be armed, disarmed, or moved on command, or there might not. There might be artillery emplacements* hidden and not found, ready to pop up... or there might not. There are probably still plenty of drones and missiles all over the country that can be called down on Hormuz at will. Iran might choose to save them for something else... or they might not.
If a few oil tankers get through without Iran's permission, one might conclude everything Iran has in place has been found and that the straight is safe. Then again, it might not be. The Iranians might save a few choice surprises for the first aircraft carrier that gets too close. They might also choose to actually sink a large ship**, blocking the straight long-term. The Iranian regime has been planning specifically for a U.S. invasion since it's inception*** and they probably have some very well hidden and nasty surprises as well as plans to use them to maximum effect.
Merchant vessels can't get insurance to go through because of all this uncertainty. The U.S. Navy has completely refused to go in there because losing a multi-billion dollar military vessel along with hundreds or thousands of sailors for a war that's already unpopular would likely knock the U.S. out of it completely. This is why Trump is desperate for other nations to come in and clear the straight. He doesn't care if they lose ships, but he can't afford to lose even one American ship for a "Wag the Dog" war that's already exploded the budget.
-------------------
*The straight is narrow enough that artillery can actually cover it. Even the most sophisticated anti-missile defence systems aren't meant to deal with artillery shells fired from nearly point blank range.
**The straight has only a couple of channels deep enough for large vessels to transit. One or two well positioned wrecks could block the works.
*** They rebelled against a Shah installed by a CIA backed coup after all.
Lloyds who are one of the biggest players have indicated cover is available.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/mar/20/risk-london...
At what cost, I wonder?
And even then: "after you" ... "no, I insist, after you" ...
So Lloyds is willing to reimburse the first crash test dummy if things go wrong while testing the waters. But unless they've figured out how to bring people back to life I don't think I'd want to be on the crew.
So what's left of the Iranian regime is basically like the Houthis now, reduced to getting world attention by committing random acts of piracy and firing at random ships off their coast. To make whatever point they were trying to make. Seems like a win to me. Declare victory, say the straight is open, just like the Red Sea is open. If anything moves at shipping, destroy its source. They don't have a right to attack merchant vessels, and there's no reason to negotiate with them either.
> They don't have a right to attack merchant vessels
This is a sovereign nation that is being attacked by a waning superpower. It's war and they are retaliating in really the only way that they can force America to back off - which is make the war really expensive and even more unpopular domestically.
That's clearly the strategy the headless Iranian regime is pursuing. Their prior strategy of arming regional proxy regimes and paramilitary groups to deter and expand their reach failed spectacularly, in large part because it sufficiently irritated the Gulf states, and Israel, and the US. So if all that matters here is whether they pick a winning strategy, then it's questionable whether further aligning all their neighbors against them is going to work out in their favor.
However, even if it were a winning strategy, on the bet that the US will back off if the IRGC can inflict enough economic pain on US allies, it would still objectively amount to piracy and terrorism to attack merchant vessels not aligned at all to the US or involved in any way in the war. If you think the US or Israel has no right to attack and degrade Iran's military capacity to the degree they feel is necessary for their own security, you can't possibly say the IRGC somehow has a right to attack third parties to the conflict. If the disparity between who has the right to do what hinges upon who the aggressor is, consider that it was Iran which first fired a missile from its own territory at Israel, not the other way around. But in what case is a private vessel flagged in Malaysia and on its way to Japan or something a valid target? To say so would explicitly mean that every country in the world is fair game because Iran is at war with the whole world. If that's the case then what exactly is wrong with the world removing that regime?
You seem to be implying that whether or not it's successful, the Iranian regime's strategy is justified in some vague moral sense. That isn't an argument, it's a feeling. All it exposes is that you have a favorite side in this war, which is at least anyone who opposes America, if not the Iranian regime specifically.
> Declare victory, say the straight is open, just like the Red Sea is open. If anything moves at shipping, destroy its source.
Do you understand the concept of asymmetrical warfare? Hiding hundreds of launchers, firing them, and losing them is already accounted for by Iran, while a decent chance of losing any asset going through is prohibitively expensive. The strait is closed.
That sounds a lot like "do the thing you've been trying and failing for the past few weeks, but this time succeed instead of failing"
I’m not sure this is intended to be factually accurate
correct
Very very good satire. Well done
Looks good but can’t play on iPad due to lack of right click.
You win if there are no more fields without mines.
added support for ipad using long press for flags
Doesn't seem to work on iPhone. I suggest having a button to toggle between mine marking mode and regular mode - I used that on my own little vibe-coded minesweeper clone here: https://tools.simonwillison.net/minesweeper
good call, added it
iPhone user here, the toggle button works but it’s a pain to have to keep scrolling back to it to toggle when you are zoomed in
sounds like it's more realistic that way
Long press flags on touch screens
The tie-in with Apple is what doomed the littoral combat ship program. Things got better once they shifted to xbox controllers.
Could have used hex tiles
https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=155566
The missile feature is missing.
"Mines only spawn on water" is a bit confusing; there are no clickable tiles that are fully on land, but tiles that touch land can also have mines. So I'm not sure what that is telling me.
I have not finished a game, but I would be very disappointed if I didn’t get credit for stopping a war once I’ve won.
Next FIFA peace price for you!
Do not fix this perfect Freudian slip!
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/04/sport/soccer-world-cup-pe...
He's referring to the word "price".
Incredibly this actually happened and isn’t a slip
It's not
The Apple gold and glass plaque of kowtowing and subservience was first.
We have to settle for the smiley face changing slightly.
I was hoping that when i actually win i'd get a video of him doing that goofy dance he does.
Is there Ukraine-Russia DLC?
and missiles too, not just mines
Missing feature where you blanket nuke the whole area to destroy mines.
WHO is currently doing readiness for a nuclear attack in the region.
This is America, the country willing to do the unconscionable when they're not winning fast enough.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
WHO was also preparing for Covid turning people into zombies. It's their job to prepare for anything that has an above 0.5% chance of happening.
Other than that, of course, WWII was perfectly civilized
The unfortunate thing is how keen the US and its allies appear to recreate it.
Last time I checked, only the US and Israel. Europeans don't want anything to do with this war, and the USA's East Asian allies also like it not even a little bit.
As a Brit, I'm disgusted that Starmer is allowing UK bases to be used by the US for launching attacks. I can see it being just a matter of time before Starmer drags us into another war of lies. (Last time it was Tony Blair, also a Labour leader and he still hasn't been tried for his war crimes).
A UK base was attacked. Would you rather Starmer be the next Chamberlain?
Interestingly, this is denied by the Iranians.
Regardless, Trump and Bibi started this war unilaterally. It's not gone as planned and now they want our support.
The only appeasement I've seen the UK do (repeatedly) in my lifetime is in kowtowing to the US and Israel.
Fallacious comparison, two entirely different situations. For a start, whatever the Iranian response, the aggressor at the root of this particular episode is the other side: the U.S.
Moscow would be encircled right now if that was true.
I mean in relative terms ...
It never ceases to amaze me that demonstrating such a weapon on civilian targets somehow made it past the entire chain of command. One of those things that I just can't wrap my head around no matter how many times I come back to it.
They weren't exclusively civilian targets, they were considered "mixed" targets. Hirohito's home wasn't considered strategically-important enough and therefore didn't make the cut.
The sites in question were also specifically selected because they hadn't previously faced conventional attack, enabling a more accurate damage assessment.
> they hadn't previously faced conventional attack
Which, by the way, illustrates a related point: Hiroshima and Nagasaki had stiff competition. WWII was devastating, to cities and civilians all over the map. More people died in the conventional bombing of Tokyo than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. I think the atomic bombs represented some 2 weeks worth of casualties in a war that lasted 300.
No sir that's not a school we're proposing to bomb, it's a complex containing both a school and a vehicle maintenance facility. So it's mixed, meaning there's valid logistical reasons to attack it. Yes, hundreds of children will perish in the attack, but the action will also provide us with legitimate benefits. Just try not to think about the former and focus on the latter. I'm sure no one in the future will judge us too harshly for the decision.
So an automatic cheat code to win any and all conflicts is simply to put strategic assets in schools?
You'd be surprised how many people's "morality" boils down to that.
Is that what the Japanese were doing? (Bit of a pointless diversion though because this is a nuclear bomb we're talking about here. Not exactly a surgical strike.)
Yes and no. They were doing that, but AFAIK they did so because it was deemed more efficient, not to use people as human shields. Also, at the time, there was no such thing as a surgical strike.
poor kids... they had a new toy couldn't resist trying it out
Also little boats coming out to drop more mines.
That was only Q1! So much winning left!
Well done, but kind of annoying that winning and losing the game both lead to the same clip.
Well done!
I don’t quite agree with making fun of the situation that’s deadly serious to many innocent people. Yet I’m sure the intentions of the author were good.
Hoping for peace.
Comedy and satire is a long-established method of political critique, and is often the only or last available way. It's not making fun of the situation, rather pointing out the pain & sufferring in the face of absurdity.
I don’t see it as making fun of the situation per se, rather the people responsible for it.
I don't really agree with rooting against the USA just because you don't like the president. An Islamist Iran with nukes is a scary proposition. I'm glad someone is finally doing something about it rather than sending palettes of cash on an jet to radical Muslims.
The way you describe the alternative option seems not very good faith.
Obama actually did this in 2016.
https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/03/politics/us-sends-plane-iran-...
> Washington CNN — The Obama administration secretly arranged a plane delivery of $400 million in cash on the same day Iran released four American prisoners and formally implemented the nuclear deal, US officials confirmed Wednesday.
Secretly-ish - it was announced publicly 7 months prior (Jan 2016) and it was the first instalment of a legal settlement, not just some random or ransom payment.
Obviously Republicans decried it with bad faith bullshit because reality and sanity don't matter to them.
"reality and sanity"? The reality is the US gave them cash to improve their living standards and enrich their country, not their uranium.
With that money they chose to massacre their own people and fund terrorism across the region.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_massacres
Again, it was legally owed money, a decades-old arbitration claim from some arms deal.
Now we're spending a multiple of that literally every day for this war. And screwing the global economy in the process. Is this a better deal?
> With that money[...]
Delivered in August 2016.
> ...they chose to massacre their own people...
In 2025-26 according to your link.
I dunno, that's a big chronological gap to bridge for implying a causal relationship to work.
Account created 52 days ago and working over time ever since to defend trump and the regime. No submissions. Color me skeptical.
Skeptical of what, exactly?
While the optics of this may look bad, the same thing happens after armed conflict too; the US has spent boatloads of money in Afghanistan on top of all the military costs, and we're basically in the same situation as before.
Hmmm… $400M and we got a nuclear deal?
We're looking at 5x that this time around (so far) and no deal in sight. Not sure this admin is doing the smart thing.
And the bad faith keeps on rolling. We get it, you're a MAGA true believer, it's not like you're being subtle. But besides trying to troll the good people at HN, what is your point?
Was I not clear?
"I'm glad someone is finally doing something about it rather than sending palettes of cash on an jet to radical Muslims."
Point is you can mock Trump with your minesweeper game and jeer from the sidelines, but it's a better policy than sending bad guys money.
Yeah war in the middle east is great policy, very popular and definitely what he campaigned on.
The corruption and incompetence are both unprecedented, but you keep doing your dance!
> palettes of cash on an jet to radical Muslims.
You mean the US bipartisan strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Is there any plan to do this differently to those expensive failures?
> is there any plan to do this differently to those expensive failures?
Why are you asking me? You can listen to the secretary of war (a veteran of those wars) and the president describe their strategy themselves. They are extremely transparent.
I don’t think I mentioned USA nor took a side.
Much winning such wow.
Every player action needs to be followed by a drone animation randomly crashing into the remaining tiles.
Click with both buttons to open all when cell is surrounded with right number of flags is not working or missing, which slows the game a lot.
How do I chord with a MacBook trackpad?
Great
The smiley button does not seem to be doing anything.
Good to see minesweeper is still existing today.
As for "winning" - Trump will say everything, from A to the opposite Z. It is the flood-the-zone-with-shit strategy, as explained in the 1980s by Yuri:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9apDnRRSOCk
So, rather than evaluate what Trump says, one has to evaluate what is happening.
What I see right now is the USA committing more and more to the invasion. Ground troops will come next; first as "limited range", lateron as Vietnam 2.0. Trump is kind of like Lyndon B. Johnson now, just that the country is Iran rather than Vietnam.
At some point, he'll release the Epstein Files to distract from losing the Iran war.
It's a piece about showing the detachment from war and you are arguing like idiots again. "Look how easy it is," you say. "Even a child could do it. Let me show you." And just two minutes later, there you are: huffing and puffing, bickering like you’re back on the schoolyard. The irony is almost as staggering as your ignorance.
This is symptom of the misunderstanding among people that somehow more people being knowledgeable about politics will bring about a change. "Pen is mightier than sword" was probably written by a person who only wielded pen. It's a collective psyops inflicted by people on themselves, belonging to an era where it made sense. In today's world, it doesn't matter. Bring missles to a sword / knife fight. Only true power is respected.
> "Pen is mightier than sword"
You completely misunderstood that. Take into account that you see the swords failing all around you whilst one nation effectively messed up the rest of the world through propaganda and maybe you'll begin to understand the true meaning of that sentence.
Information, used well or abused well, is more powerful than any other weapon of war.
Pen / writing represents bits. Sword represents atoms. We already know atoms > bits. Nation states by their monopoly on violence through judicial system have abused that power. You can do hairsplitting analysis all day long but real people suffer because powerful people want something else. Petrodollar is a perfect example of physical force enforcing rules that benefit the country who ensured that system comes into existence and has maintained that through intermediate violence.
"Information, used well or abused well, is more powerful than any other weapon of war."
Indeed, because people with the swords will decide on that information who to slain or who to defend. If you do it right, you don't need to fight the enemy soldiers, but they will fight for you.
> In today's world, it doesn't matter. Bring missles to a sword / knife fight. Only true power is respected.
How much did missiles and a trillion dollar military budget help against Russia in 2016?
In today’s world it’s “thousand internet trolls on a payroll mightier than missiles”.
First, conclusion is confounding respect and fear. No one is going to kill a person they respect while they slip or as soon as a window of doability occurs. Fear can bring surface level compliance to orders, but it doesn't provide much respect.
Playing by the book of fear uncertainty and doubt is going to foster hate, distrust and suspicion/paranoia.
This sort of ridiculous reductionism has never been true. Do you seriously think all the conflicts we experience have never been there before?
"Only true power is respected"—what’s this even supposed to mean? Right now, the American military is shooting with all its mighty glory on Iran, yet loosing the war, money, and yes, respect from the rest of the world. Well, except for Putin maybe, who is unilaterally benefiting from this disaster.
This little incel power fantasy of rule by force you guys are cooking up there is complete and utter bollocks.
Mearsheimer and Rand... between those two a lot of damage is being done to the psyche of impressionable people. They're all just looking for excuses to act out their inner toddler believing themselves to be in the possession of profound insights. Lesswrong probably also deserves a mention.
Cool man, can you please just pass the blunt.
Listen to Netanyahu speech where he said Evil can win over Good through sheer power.
Totally. After reading your poorly worded screed on geopolitical ethics, which itself was a random and inane response to a comment mocking that exact type of behavior. Too rich.
I will now go listen to the words of a bloodthirsty fascist. Thank you for the advice.
Why do think I support Netanyahu? The fact that he choose that example says more about his ideals and psyche. I am merely pointing out the fallacy that a better informed populace doesn't immediately translate to good policies.
Wonderful! Now make another app that lets you pick which children are ok to kill
Trump is trying to prompt the Straight like it’s ChatGPT.
So is the message here that demining the strait of Hormuz will be fairly easy?
I was expecting some curve balls at the end with undecidable constellations but it was all quite straightforward.
Someone leaked this to POTUS and he based his whole strategy on it!
What strategy?
Getting rich, maintaining power, and staying in office.
There are undecidable situations in Minesweeper.
Hello folks. Some times I am afraid we are going to a place where there is only destruction and death.
No once can stop it alone But it can be stopped
How about you make an app about "winning" that involves flying a cargo plane loaded with so much cash to Iranian Islamists that it struggles to stay aloft. Because that was the strategy before Trump and it led to terror tunnels, terror proxies, and weapons grade nuclear enrichment.
Edit: For the record this actually happened 10 years ago under Obama.
https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/03/politics/us-sends-plane-iran-...
> Washington CNN — The Obama administration secretly arranged a plane delivery of $400 million in cash on the same day Iran released four American prisoners and formally implemented the nuclear deal, US officials confirmed Wednesday.
Listen, you have posted a lot, are very passionate here about this Obama thing. You have multiple times said "how about make an app that...". Why don't you make the app? I for one would love to play a game where you are Obama the money smuggler or whatever, it sounds kind of awesome.
Yea.. having fun with war..
Most American post I have seen here since ages.