> Iran can absorb more pain than the US, but even that has a deadline.

It doesn't. This is the western mentality, thinking you are dealing with sane people.

I'm from Iran (now living in the West), there's a famous Shia motto: "Every day is Ashura, every land is Karbala".

Around 30% of the population are die hard IRGC supporters, another 10% are neutral and the rest don't like the regime.

The problem is that, the war has caused a major rally around the flag effect.

The IRGC has more support than ever now. It's a battle for the Iran now against United States, attempting to destroy people's homes.

I'm not a fan of IRGC. My 20 year old cousin was captured and tortured in Evin prison for 6 months during the Mahsa uprising in 2022 [3]. You can't imagine how much I hate them, but I love Iran more. If I was there, I would be fighting the Americans right now.

Iranians are not going give up, right now, you will have to kill all 90M of us to "win".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashura

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karbala

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahsa_Amini_protests

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mgfist 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> It doesn't. This is the western mentality, thinking you are dealing with sane people.

I'm not talking about sanity. I understand that the IRGC is greater than the sum of the parts and that no individual life matters.

I'm talking about the oil wells. The IRGC may not care about human life, but you need money to stay in power. Money that will disappear the longer you can't sell your oil and the more oils you have to cap.

> The problem is that, the war has caused a major rally around the flag effect.

I don't believe you. Do you have proof? Iran is pretty damn closed off from the rest of the world so I have a hard time believing that you have some great insider knowledge about this.

> I'm not a fan of IRGC. My 20 year old cousin was captured and tortured in Evin prison for 6 months during the Mahsa uprising in 2022 [3]. You can't imagine how much I hate them, but I love Iran more. If I was there, I would be fighting the Americans right now.

I don't believe you. I'd believe you saying that you'd be against America, but not that you'd be fighting them. If that were true, why are you not traveling to Iran to join the IRGC right now?

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dh2022 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Re: "I'm talking about the oil wells. The IRGC may not care about human life, but you need money to stay in power." US stopped bombing Iranian oil infrastructure after Iran responded by bombing and taking out a bunch of Qatar's LNG infrastructure for a good 3-5 years [0]. So this problem at least is solved for IRGC.

Re: "I don't believe you. Do you have proof?" - you come off as un-necessary rude and aggressive. You are assuming GP lies - and that is not a good attitude. You could re-phrase your question in a way to make people engage with you.

Re: "If that were true, why are you not traveling to Iran to join the IRGC right now?" Do you understand that Iranians living in the US have different choices than Iranians living in Iran?

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/19/iran-attack-qatar-lng-capaci...

	▲	mgfist 17 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Re: "I'm talking about the oil wells. The IRGC may not care about human life, but you need money to stay in power." US stopped bombing Iranian oil infrastructure after Iran responded by bombing and taking out a bunch of Qatar's LNG infrastructure for a good 3-5 years [0]. So this problem at least is solved for IRGC. It's not. The problem, which I already wrote in my original comment, is with oil storage. When oil flows, it needs to go somewhere. Before it would go on tankers and be sold to China (and a few others). Now, it goes into storage. But storage is not unlimited. And when storage runs out, the oil wells will need to be capped. If they stay capped for more than a few weeks, those wells become insanely expensive to reactivate, and might not be something the IRGC will be able to do. This is the clock that's ticking. > Re: "I don't believe you. Do you have proof?" - you come off as un-necessary rude and aggressive. You are assuming GP lies - and that is not a good attitude. You could re-phrase your question in a way to make people engage with you. You made statements about what Iranians think. I want some proof, given that the internet is off in Iran and I have seen no reporting around the thoughts of the Iranian people.

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watwut 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I don't believe you. Do you have proof? Iran is pretty damn closed off from the rest of the world so I have a hard time believing that you have some great insider knowledge about this.

They are not entirely closed off. Apparently there is a communication going on around closures, because I have seen fairly inside Iran info in French media (about executions, about people leaving Teheran etc etc). They are more guarded and dont do strong statements as OP. It is not possible to establish general what people in general think under current conditions. The executions are still going on, no one will randomly admit they are against irgc. But, they are fairly consistent with what he said.

The other consistent thing I heard in interviews (this time by British media) is that Iran is very nationalistic. Even people who hate regime are proud of Iran itself. That makes them more prone toward rally around the flag.

And unfortunately, America made it clear it wants to harm average Iranian. Plus its idea of regime change is to keep regime intact and change head (see Venezuela), so there is no one who would had actual reason to want America win.

	▲	mgfist 12 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> And unfortunately, America made it clear it wants to harm average Iranian. By and large this is not true. The US and Israel have hit Iran tens of thousands of times, and have never hit a pure civilian target on purpose. They've hit dual use targets, and accidentally hit civilian targets, but not ones on purpose. They could flatten Tehran if they wanted to hit civilians. > Plus its idea of regime change is to keep regime intact and change head (see Venezuela), so there is no one who would had actual reason to want America win. You're not entirely wrong here, and I've seen frustration from the US side that Mojtaba Khamenei is MIA (or dead).

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StilesCrisis 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> there's a famous Shia motto: "Every day is Ashura, every land is Karbala".

The shared cultural context is so low that as an American, I have absolutely no idea what this means. If I had to guess, "zealotry" or "patriotism"?

	▲	KabukiOrigin 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Great cultural-disconnect observation. It's more specific than that. Fighting for your survival against an unjust and immoral oppressor who wants to force you to do things you do not want.

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programjames 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

	▲	deletedie 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The opening salvo being a double-tap of a little girl's elementary school might have something to do with it; in an instant we created and became a greater and more insane evil than the IRGC.