Iran summons families of exiled journalists to halt their activities
iranintl.com
iranintl.com
To summon is the correct word in this case. The fantasy meaning comes from thee power politics between one that summons (usually: a king) and the one being summoned (usually the serf).
As such, current understanding is closely aligned to the etymological meaning.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/12/1166481
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_...
In the real world it generally means to order, with the implication that there are consequences to failing to appear, and the consequences in this case are clear from the juxtaposition of wanting to shut up exiled journalists and summoning their families.
In mythology it typically implies incantations etc. forces the entity to appear.
There's nothing soft about that wording. If anything "to summon" is often used to imply a level of disdain and lack of legitimate basis that is not implicit in "to order"
Maduro imprisoned and sentenced to maximum time (30 years) the son in law of the president elect Edmundo Gonzalez in the stolen 2024 election, simply to pressure Edmundo to stop denouncing the election sham.
It’s Sippenhaft.
Well yes. The question is how many more would have had to die to get it. This question doesn’t have an easy answer. To the extent there are wrong ones, it’s anyone claiming confidence.
I have no sympathy for the Japanese who killed tens of millions of people in their WW2 atrocities, and the two bombs killed orders of magnitude fewer of their people. I also see no reason to pretend that there weren't obvious alternatives to USA dropping nukes on their cities if we are to believe that the objective was merely getting Japan to surrender (an objective most difficult to believe). No need for pretense -- they wanted to demonstrate their new weapons, AND they wanted to kill a lot of Japanese.
There is a reason it took bombing both Hiroshima and Nagasaki to cause surrender. And if you telegraph that you’re going to bomb a remote place and the bomb fails, you’ve undermined your weapon’s credibility in unique ways.
I’m not saying you’re wrong. Just that your confidence is wrong. What you’re talking about was contemporaneously and continues to be historically debated.
I'm no historian but this point doesn't sound very noteworthy unless it was the leadership who wanted that surrender. It took two bombs to make them surrender; they didn't surrender after the first.
Edit: actually this is much more nuanced than I think either of us make it sound. Japan did send out "peace feelers", but they were more like "we want peace but we don't accept your terms." The Japanese required that the US allow retention of the emperor, no occupation, self-conducted war crime trials, and even possibly keeping some of their conquered territory. The US wanted an unconditional surrender.
Furthermore they could have only destroyed only one city if Hiroshima had been an at sea demonstration instead, maybe even destroy zero cities.
After which Japan surrendered.
This logic is like arguing 99% of a drug doesn’t do anything because the bug is only eradicated by the last effective molecule.
> they could have only destroyed only one city if Hiroshima had been an at sea demonstration instead, maybe even destroy zero cities
This was considered. The bombs’ unreliability (and cost) made it a non-starter.
Given the immediate response to Hiroshima was disbelief, surely an at-sea demonstration would have been even less convincing than the observable absence of a city?
Even once the Japanese government confirmed that Hiroshima had indeed been destroyed by a nuclear weapon, part of the reason Nagasaki followed Hiroshima was that the Japanese forces estimated the US couldn't have built more than one or two more (they were correct, they just hadn't internalised what losing an entire city meant).
Even after Nagasaki, there were some who attempted a coup to prevent surrender: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident
It doesn’t. Maybe there is a Delcy Rodriguez in the IRGC. I’m doubtful. If there isn’t, we have the option of creating a power vacuum or quarantining the problem.
I’m arguing for the latter. The Azeri-majority northnorth to Azerbaijan; the Turkic areas to its west to Turkey [1]. Balochistani southeast to Pakistan. Arab southwest to Iraq. Hell, if you’re ambitious, find a way to give Bandar Abbas to the Emiratis and secure the Strait of Hormuz.
[1]: I won't be surprised if regime change will be coming for Erdogan not too far from now, after Iran is done.
[2]: If US really wants to shit on the region like that, there are various cards they could have played much easier: unleash groups like MEK/Kurds and start a civil war. So far, it does appear Israel/US behavior, like the way they conducted the 12 day war, is to keep Iran intact and does not mess with the balance of power in the region as much as possible.
This is strongly contested.
> we can easily find someone who is able and willing from the army or even an IRGC figure who would eagerly jump on the opportunity
This is not the history of nation building.
> Even among the minorities--let alone the majority--you specified, it is not clear that separation is the predominant preference
They have insurgencies for a reason. Many of these groups were also promised some level of self governance, promises which have been trotted back.
> why would United States prefer to hand over such important region to arguably as bad or worse governing bodies like Pakistan, Taliban, or Iraq, and questionable partners like Turkey
Never said Taliban. We have influence over Iraq. And even Pakistan isn’t really fucking with American interests that much, and giving them Balochistan might help them with their anti-terror mission. (It would also piss off India. So maybe skip that, too.)
> to keep Iran intact and does not mess with the balance of power in the region as much as possible
I’m not suggesting this is currently U.S. strategy. I’m saying there are advantages to it over trying to do the Shah again. Namely, it shatters a regional problem more evenly and protects choke points around the Caspian and Strait of Hormuz.
Sure if you watch #AyatollahBBC or Democrat media who created the beast in the first place under Carter.
--
The rest I will just let you wait and see... There may be some success on the Kurdish/Azeri separationist fronts, but there is less than zero chance Pakistan and Iraq could take over the rest of the country.
The majority of Iranians hate Pakistan and Arabs. The whole undercurrent of the protest is a nationalist movement to kick Islam and Arab culture out. You take a province here a province there; what to do with the rest?
Non-English language assessments from countries in Europe or Asia that haven’t been calling theirq shots wrong in the Middle East for two generations.
I’m not saying we can conclude the Shah is unpopular. Just that we only have quality evidence that he is narrowly popular, and at that moreso abroad and in English-language press.
> You take a province here a province there; what to do with the rest?
Let them have their mullahs. (Or not.) Taliban has been fine from a regional-security perspective. So, increasingly, is Syria.
Frankly, if you hadn't lost faith in those already...
Do you have similar presence, vulnerability, and defiance in spite of it? Or are you casting stones from a position of comfort while doing, comparatively, nothing?
From the source: “While we are not authorized to carry out activities beyond the scope of our projects — which focus on marginalized communities in Iran — we continue to offer medical support to hospitals.”
https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/what-we-do/where-we-wo...
It seems that they are present physically but don’t have proper authorization for activities beyond the scope…
Compare it with their missions elsewhere (i.e. Gaza, which I’m not against btw):
“In Palestine, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) provides humanitarian assistance to people affected by violence and displacement, and has scaled up activities to assist people affected by Israel’s war and siege on Gaza.”
Why the difference?
Do you get the point of the original comment now?
What exactly is complicated about this? It is very simple: Different governments allow them different access. This access is often precarious and dependent on not pissing off the government in control over whichever area they operate in. This is the same problem every humanitarian organisation operating in the field has to deal with.
I think you’re getting closer to the point I’m trying to make here.
What is it you think is complicated about this? Just tell us instead of beating around the bush.
"Our actions are guided by medical ethics and the principles of impartiality, independence, and neutrality." - They are obviously not impartial nor neutral and this is just one example. Don't give them money unless they actually start acting as their mission statement states.
So yes, I do feel sorry for those who died. But make no mistake - whatever the result, their death will be in vain. Whoever ends up taking the reins in Iran will be as corrupt and as bad as the mullahs. It’s just that they will acquiesce to US priorities.
https://kagi.com/search?q=msf+statement
https://www.msf.org/msf-statement-sharing-staff-information-...
This looks maximally stupid given the American hardware in the region. But there may be internecine angles I’m missing. (Which factions benefit from American air strikes?)
Short of an unignorable mass attack on the homeland, America has a proven track record of turning the other cheek.
No one should be. But only idiots, today, are not fearful of the largest and most-comprehensive war machine in human history.
> America’s response has been essentially non-existent
Are we starting the clock after the Israeli campaigns that established air superiority over all of Iran?
Yep, that’ll show them.
This writer has developed a model of the situation
But frankly, Iran as it stands today is structurally similar to pre-1976 PRC, and requires an Iranian "Deng Xiaoping", but the only reason Deng even got as far as he did was because the Sino-Soviet Split made the PRC an attractive partner against the USSR and because it took someone with the stature of Mao to host a "Nixon in China" moment, which made partnering with America politically palatable.
The key economic and political institutions in Iran (Army, IRGC, Bonyads) would need to be incentivized to flip to being pro-EU and pro-America in order to sustain the semblance of democracy and secularism because frankly, Russia, China, India, portions of the Gulf, and much of ASEAN is fine working with Iran as it stands today because it is a critical regional power.
Turkiye, the UAE, Qatar, KSA, and Pakistan are probably the best regional players to push a gradual re-opening of Iran.
Then it turned out to be bluster, there /was/ damage.[0]
It's /really/ hard to get good independent coverage of most politically charged events (The fog of war, etc)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_strikes_on_Al_Udeid_Ai...
[1]: https://www.mintpressnews.com/iran-international-saudi-funde...
It’s a blatant translation of Islamic Regime propaganda websites.
see KhabarOnline, IRIB, etc.
When it comes to politically charged events (especially wars) both sides tend to only release articles that make themselves look brilliant, and the others as shite, and it's really REALLY hard to get an accurate picture of what's happening on the ground.
Purely yelling that everyone else is producing a "rag" isn't really helpful either, for the same reasons.
TL;DR iranintl is a rag (if you are a worker!) because it's by and for the Saudi aristocracy. But if you are a powerful aristocrat, then I'd say its an adequate news website.
/me shrugs
This is government blackmail upon threat of death of any family they could find.
Or go to a few judges to try to get journalists imprisoned and when the judges say no that's not legal, they'll go to grand jury and just lie instead
Oh wait that's US not Iran, the tyrannical "lite" government
Sorry but we're going to need a more credible source than a propaganda site.
I think we should always default to skepticism no matter our priors, even if that ends up being wrong, its not a fruitless position compared to the alternative.
Every authoritarian regime does this, and some legitimate non-totalitarian governments do too.
What I’m saying is that a lot of people are extremely interested in seeing Iran fall and that Western media paid by Saudi Arabia has exactly zero credibility. So get better sources, that’s all.