It's not all about preventing the creation of nuclear weapons. It's also about making sure the common person in $SANCTIONED_COUNTRY feels the pain. User UncleEntity says it better than I could in a comment that is buried a few levels:
Making life more difficult for ordinary Iranians isn't going to change anything as long as the army and revolutionary guard stay loyal to the criminals in power.
Right, just like the people of Afghanistan must have hated so much the Taliban, with their cruel and tyrannic grip on power... just waiting for a saviour like the Americans to bring them up to the modern age...
Well, we all know that's a load of bullshit now. The very moment the Americans left, without resistance of any kind, the Taliban is back. This happens again and again, in country after country, but people still seem to forget (or not even be aware of anything happening) and think everyone in the world wants to be like them, and when those in faraway places are not behaving like themselves it must be because they're being forcibly coerced by some maleficent dictator or some other imaginary villain.
Things are not black and white. Sure, some people in Iran would love a more West-friendly regime, but almost certainly, most would be horrified if their government suddenly started implementing laws to guarantee freedom of speech, legalize abort, separate state and religion, allow same-sex marriage and sex change operations, and a whole lot of stuff that's only preached by the West and is not at all accepted as good by most of the other cultures in the world... can't people just accept that not everyone thinks the same or want to be the same as themselves?? That goes against the Western's own modern values of being accepting of differences and not trying to submit other cultures to our own values and believes.
That said, Iran has a political structure that owes little to no obedience to the will of the people, with a non-elected supreme leader and guardian council (half of which are appointed by the supreme leader) who have the final say in all political decisions, so the actions of Iran should not be mistaken as the will of the people, even in the loose sense that representative democracies are.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/25/world/middleeast/iran-rap...
Btw, HN, that young man's life can be saved. [deleted incorrect info.] PLEASE CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVE!
As my beloved homeland is, imo, under effective coercive occupation of Islamist ideologues (there is not a even hint of godliness in that regime) it is preferred that you refer to the regime by its name IRI and not cast calumny on the beauty that is IRAN.
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/irans-revolutionary-guards
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/irans-revolutionar...
I find that difficult to believe because, if that were the case, at some point, specially because of all the reasons you mentioned, the people would just get over it and kick the current Government out of office for good?! It may be bloody, but if the people really want it, it's not unreasonable to assume, IMHO, that the military would be onboard with it?? Once the military is on board, there's nothing the politicians and cleric can do to stop it as in a revolution, the only thing that matters is physical power.
Putin claims the US already pays mercenary forces from the U.S, UKraine, and elsewhere already. He also makes the claim that “talk about Russia using a nuke is just U.S. propaganda” from the government to gather consent from the general population to raise taxes.
This is exactly it - otherwise the populace can just ignore their government's foreign policy decisions. There's consequences for being a bad actor on the global stage... and today that means no more Minecraft, of all things.
Perhaps the OP can write a letter to their representative and pressure them to work on easing sanctions...
I think it's difficult for most Iranians to not be aware of their government's decisions and actions around the globe...
Besides - what alternative would you propose? Just pretend everything is ok and business as usual? Bomb their government instead of using sanctions?
Concretely, the Reddit user is clearly aware of why this is happening and is blaming the USA government, not his.
Given our administration's current views on Iran, and the Obama administration's similar views, it would have been trivial for Iran to be welcomed back into the international community.
Yet... they once again chose the opposite. So, today, that means no more Minecraft. Perhaps one day the population of Iran will have had enough of their government and make changes.
People in power remain in power by keeping the population under control. If the population is indifferent to consequences of the power-class' decisions, then everything can keep rolling along as-is. When the population is impacted negatively by the power-class' decisions - then civil unrest happens. With enough of that, the power-class loses power...
This[1] video does a decent job of highlighting the careful balancing act that's required to remain in power... it also highlights the difficulties of changing the status-quo even for a benevolent dictator that desires to remain a dictator - ie. they have to appease all of the powers-that-be under them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahsa_Amini_protests
> otherwise the populace can just ignore their government's foreign policy decisions
It's a murderous regime. It's not a government that you can write letters to and vote away.
There's so much historical precedent for this working. If a consortium of Western militaries show up and say "join us fighting against your government or when we win you'll be killed/exiled as a traitor" the population will flip immediately.
It's not as if we don't do this already, we just quietly orchestrate violent revolutions and install people loyal to the west. This method would at least be more honest about it.
Perhaps that's what the countries wish would happen - but there's dictatorships all around the world that don't enjoy the pointy end of the international community's proverbial sanction stick.
Iran simply has to stop being an international nuisance and people would happily return to doing business there.
In the past decade, we've had two US Administrations that desperately sought to warm relations with Iran. Ball is/was in Iran's court, and so far they keep forcing people to punish them...
The interests might at times be veiled under a discourse of "rights" or "democracy" or whatever and at times this discourse might even be valid, however the underlying reasoning for it rarely lies there as the kings and his friends are free to do whatever they please.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Buenos_Aires_Israeli_emba...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_assassinations
i.e. the terrorism should be condemned but the state sponsor of the terrorism has clean hands.
I'd argue just the opposite, the state sponsor of terrorism is actually worse than a state that takes action itself and doesn't delegate it to a 3rd party.
b) consulates are not military bases, so unclear why there was a meeting of Iranian Revolutionary Guard in that building if it was a consulate as you said.
c) It wasn't in Iranian territory
d) Iran is trying to build Syria as a base to attack Israel
e) Israel hasn't fired 300+ ballistic and cruise missiles in the Syria attack. The scale of the Iranian attack is absolutely enormous.
But yeah otherwise sure - total symmetry.