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hackerknew 17 hours ago

You’d be surprised, but the people of Iran have been waiting for this moment for years. There are 80 million people who want the end of the regime.

Whether this fulfills that goal, we will see, but anything that weakens the regime is good for the Iranian people.

mullingitover 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Oh! I remember this one. The next part goes, “They’re going to greet us as liberators and give our troops flowers.”

And then twenty years from now everyone will say they were always against it.

Kye 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It was true in some cases, but it was more "thank you, now please leave." Almost a direct quote from one report from an embedded reporter I'd cite directly if it weren't near impossible to find things online from that far back.

spacecadet 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The problem is the timeline... MIC takes over and it becomes about building, selling, and dropping bombs instead of rebuilding and GTFO.

During Iraq the US military deployed some insanely creative strategies with the deployment of concrete- yet nothing meaningful was actually built for the people of Iraq...

recroad 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You hear and read about it, but it’s still surreal to see the effects of propaganda in real life. I’m glad I’m old enough to have seen this show before live.

gattilorenz 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Even those who want a regime change tend to dislike getting bombs on their heads.

And if anything, the last 20 years taught us that revolutions imposed from the outside never work

hackerknew 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Not on their heads. On the weapons and heads of the regime. The regime is not the Iranian people.

InsideOutSanta 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Nothing is more effective at unifying a country than being attacked by a foreign power. This is how Bush secured a second term and how Giuliani became America's Mayor, two individuals who were previously disrespected and/or hated by a majority of their constituents.

jokowueu 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Iraq flash backs , they were sure very happy to greet their liberators , it's amazing to see propaganda's effects working in action

dimator 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

how does this do anything except strengthen the resolve of those thugs in power? even those against the regime will want retribution for an attack on their home land.

regime change has never worked, not with actual boots on the ground, let alone targeted air strikes.

dlahoda 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

yugoslavia?

xoac 13 hours ago | parent [-]

The bombing campaign united the people against the new enemy: “the west”, and arguably gave Milosevic some more time to rule. I survived this, trust me that even if your regime is shit, people don’t want to be bombed and will unite against the aggressor. This is in part because even if the aggressor claims that they are “bombing the regime” they are usually in fact bombing the country’s infrastructure, industry, urban areas etc.

throwaway447573 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't see Hitler and Mussolini's grandsons ruling Germany and Italy.

icepush 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Believe it or not, Mussolini's granddaughter is a fairly influential former politician within Italy

portaouflop 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Anecdotally Mussolini’s granddaughter has been a member of both houses of the Italian Parliament as well as the European Parliament.

UncleMeat 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Germany was split in half for 45 years. The Marshall Plan was the largest economic development operation in history. Meanwhile, the GOP has decided that the entire concept of foreign economic aid is bad because a theater somewhere was too woke.

Regime change and nation building worked so well in Afghanistan and Iraq. Onward to more death and suffering, I guess.

nomat 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

how much did it cost to rebuild germany? and how many trillions did we flush down the drain attempting to put together a functioning government in iraq and afghanistan?

where is DOGE when you actually need them?

spacecadet 14 hours ago | parent [-]

Are they not there DOGE-ing as we speak?! lol.

fifilura 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I believe you that the regime is hated.

But can you define what "this moment" is that they have been waiting for?

I don't think "this moment" helps them along the way. It is rather a reason for more internal repression.

hackerknew 7 hours ago | parent [-]

The moment is that the regime is severely weakened and is struggling to deal with an external war, with very few weapons left. Many heads of their military were eliminated and they are scrambling to put the pieces back together.

Couple that with a population of at least 80 million people who hate the regime and only didn’t fight back because the regime had physical power over them.

vasco 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How many Iranians do you know that told you that?

hn_throw2025 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

https://news.sky.com/story/iraniansstandwithisrael-iran-bans...

vasco 14 hours ago | parent [-]

Do you know those people in the article and if they are Iranian?

adastra22 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Literally every Iranian I know, which is quite a few. The regime is NOT liked.

vasco 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Waiting for this (to be bombed out if existence) and "don't like the regime" are very different things.

throwaway97894 13 hours ago | parent [-]

Indeed, judging by the No King protests, some strong action is in order if we follow this pathetic way of thinking.

hajile 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is the big problem. Most of the people who would want a different government enough to take action took the only action they could and left the country.

This also accounts for the bias in people you meet as the ones who like Iran tend to continue living there.

15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]
[deleted]
dreghgh 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I live in a major world city with considerable immigrant populations from many parts of the world, and saw some of the pro-Palestine demonstrations yesterday.

There were numerous groups of Iranians protesting against Israel's actions and in support of the Palestinians. These are Iranians living abroad so can be expected statistically to be less supportive of the current government than the average Iranian resident.

The counter-protest, mainly of pro-Israel demonstrators, this time also had Iranians, demonstrating against the current regime (and broadly in support of Israel). All the Iranian flags in this very small group were the Shah-era design with the lion.

The visibly Iranian groups in the pro-Palestinian demo vastly outnumbered the counter protest. They seemed quite ideologically diverse. There were some people holding pictures of the ayatollah with the words 'No Surrender'. But there were also groups with the sign "don't bomb us and claim it's for women's rights" (can't remember exact wording). Groups including women with headscarves, other groups with only bare headed women. As well as the current official flag with the swords, I saw people holding the lion flag, and others with the neutral tricolour without emblem. So at least some of the people present were anti the current regime, but supported the Palestinians in the current conflict.

Obviously a very selective sampling for many reasons, but far from what you might expect if almost all Iranians were united against their current government.

hackerknew 7 hours ago | parent [-]

People living outside Iran participating in these protests have no idea what they are doing.

On the reddit NewIran sub, they were mocking a picture of somebody at one of those rally’s holding a giant IRGC flag… upside-down.

I wouldn’t use numbers of “useful idiots” showing up at rallies as a way of demonstrating internal support for the Iranian regime.

Surveys suggest around 70-80% are anti-regime, which makes sense considering the regime’s history of hangings and imprisonment for minor offenses. The people of Iran want the regime to end.

stuckkeys 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There is some truth to that, but if it was that important for them to overthrow the regime…why not do it internally but instead they wait for someone to bomb them? 80mill is not a small number. You are saying 87% asked for this lol.

tsimionescu 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Imagine a terrorist attack against the Trump admin in the following weeks, and someone coming in to say "you'd be surprised, but the people of the USA have been waiting for this moment for months. There are 100 million people who want an end to Trump".

People never, ever, under any circumstances, want to be attacked and bombed by another country. Not even the biggest dissidents rotting in regime jails would welcome this. Not even a little bit.

simgt 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Even most children or partners of abusive people feel defensive when an outsider intervenes. Nevermind getting your country bombed by strangers. Spending days reading news that hide people behind symbols make some forget that we're dealing with human relationship.

hackerknew 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You write this because you don’t understand what people in Iran have been dealing with for the past 45 years.

It is one thing to not like the political leadership, but another thing if the government oppresses the population.

Those of us in America are privileged that we can’t fathom what that means.

tsimionescu 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not an American, and live in country that was under an even more authoritarian regime until fairly recently. While I was born just as the regime was ending, I know plenty from my parents about how they felt. And I stand by what I said: even under the worse circumstances, no one ever desires to be bombarded.

Ray20 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>People never, ever, under any circumstances, want to be attacked and bombed by another country.

Depends on the effectiveness of the bombing.

fastball 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If the attack was specifically targeting the US to encourage the downfall of Trump, I am sure there are millions of Americans that would be celebrating. Spend some time on Bluesky – they'd love it over there if the attacks didn't literally hit them. They can't seem to see much further than that.

autobodie 14 hours ago | parent [-]

Such bombs would necessarily need to fall in American cities, so the scenario you describe is not possible.

fastball 14 hours ago | parent [-]

Which part is impossible?

vFunct 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Please don't promote war. Ain't no one going to overthrow the Iranian government now that we attacked them. The US and Israel just screwed up everything there. Thanks.

bobxmax 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's nonsense. This is what westerners like to tell themselves because all they read is western media coverage of Iran.

No, 80 million people don't want to end the regime. Westerners can't fathom the fact that not everyone wants to live in a democratic free-for-all.... so clearly anyone who doesn't deserves bombing.

Pathetic. Imperialism is encoded in the DNA of Americans at this point.

breppp 12 hours ago | parent [-]

It's a bit more complex than that, you have a country with two decades of mass demonstrations that were brutally suppressed and a new generation that no longer sees itself as religious while living in a theocracy.

they do have a massive popular support issue over there

bobxmax 6 hours ago | parent [-]

None of what you said is true. They still enjoy large amounts of popularity - are you forgetting the entire country virtually coming to demonstrate when we slaughtered their commander a few years ago?

breppp 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Not sure, how "nothing of what i said is true"

I didn't say there are no supporters, but there is an asymmetry between supporters and protestors. Supporters are being brought by buses, are often members of the Basij or other government functions and generally have incentives to do so. Protestors however risk extremely painful death and torture.

There is support for the regime, usually outside of large cities, but there's a reason there were large protests in almost every single year since 2016

for some reading you can take a look at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/reader/read-online/234eb6fd-85...

There's over 40% of responders that do not claim their religion is Shia, but rather Atheist, Humanist, etc. That's more than the people that define themselves as Shia, in a Shia theocracy. This also correlates with skepticism of government media and rejection of Hijab

bobxmax 26 minutes ago | parent [-]

The same GAMAAN org that in 2020 found 33% of Iran were Shia, and in 2022 reported that number was now 56%?

Religiosity surveys in the middle east are largely bunk. Actual boots on the ground reality is very different. In the 2000s much was made about the rapid secularization of the Arab world. ... in reality, the exact opposite has happened with the youth.

Hikikomori 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

US didn't like it the last time the Iranian people got their regime change.

anticodon 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Whether this fulfills that goal, we will see, but anything that weakens the regime is good for the Iranian people.

Oh, enough to look at Libya, Syria, Iraq, to see what happens next:

1. Lots of infrastructure would be destroyed. It's the first thing NATO does in any invasion: bomb powerplants, water treatment plants, airports, hospitals, business centers (remember, that Iraq invasion started with destroying Baghdad business center, it was shown in all Western media). Infrastructure is super-expensive to rebuild, many countries in the world have no resources to build decent infrastructure.

2. At least several millions of Iranians would die. It's obvious. Somebody's moms and dads, somebody's children. The bombs do not choose. And we all know that West is indifferent to the deaths of non-Western non-white population (remember, e.g. killings and war crimes in Afghanistan).

3. In the end the country will end up in half-feudal anarchistic ruins (like Libya) or with "democratic" puppet government. Any outcome will allow selling Iran oil and gas to the West for the price of water, further lowering living standards of Iran.

I fail to see a single benefit for anyone living in Iran.

chgs 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

pjpyao 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

k4rli 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

deepsun 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I know a similar precedent from Belarus, an Eastern European country. The population is way smaller, and their main problem is Moscow in the east, but it's the same sentiment -- please bomb us as we cannot throw out this regime ourselves, yes.

Internet used to joke about US "freedom bombs", but it's taken quite seriously and positively there.

brabel 16 hours ago | parent [-]

My wife is from Belarus and I have been there many times. What you say in so ridiculous it’s hard to even respond with a serious answer. Just want to point out that they suffered the most under Nazis and would do anything to prevent being in another war.

tazjin 15 hours ago | parent [-]

US-aligned IT specialists are uniquely propagandized (they're one of the main targets of Western propaganda for good reason - they have outsized influence!), so don't expect many reality-compatible takes on this website.

FpUser 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I personally friends with many IT people and their families from Belarus (the company I used to work for brought whole bunch to Canada). Not a single one wants their country freedom bombed.

spacecadet 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Tech is MIC.