And not to negotiate with the US in good faith.
The Houthis are still "threatening" to do things today after already being decimated and Hezbollah's strength more than halved.
I don't support any of these creeps but if any of them were minimally rational, they would have all gone to total war with Israel and the US the minute they realized what Hamas was doing on October 7th. They look even more naive than Europeans at this point.
It made sense for iran to try to negotiate with the US because the alternative was a war they had no chance to win. Arguably it also made sense for them to not come to an agreement because USA wanted concessesions the Iranian regime probably couldn't do while still staying in power given how weak they are domestically.
> I don't support any of these creeps but if any of them were minimally rational, they would have all gone to total war with Israel and the US the minute they realized what Hamas was doing on October 7th.
Israel's ability to divide and conqour its enemies here has been pretty impressive.
They have no chance of winning no matter what. At least inflict some damage on your enemy while you die like Hamas chose (although I disagree with the fact that they chose that for a lot of innocent people too.)
The US isn't ever going to leave anyone, let alone Iran, alone. The options are a) fight and cease to exist and b) don't fight and cease to exist.
Oh boy, I see we learned nothing from Afghanistan. The US will eventually leave you alone, There will be a power vacuum, and the local warlord will rise to that opportunity.
The "military operations" don't end in decisive vistory. They end with death and destruction for the young men sent into battle, and more enemies in the surrounding areas.
My country and my Government, sent people from my generation down there to die. My countrymen died in that war, and the only thing we got out of it was more enemies in the region. The Afghan is still getting persecuted for styling their beard wrong, and the Afghan woman is still getting opressed. We have nothing to show for that sacrifice.
I see no reason to believe the same thing isn't going to happen in Iran.
The US keeps coming back is what I'm saying. The US was kicked out of Iran in 1953. That's what all this is about. They will do the same to Afghanistan eventually. That's what I meant by time didn't stop. The Taliban isn't safe by any means. It's just a temporary reprieve.
As far as i understand, the US propped up an unpopular governmet that many of the locals did not like (there were rumours about turning a blind eye to moral impropriety because it was politically expediant).
The thing about democracy is its not really democracy when forced from the outside.
From what I've read it's not that simple. The American system was more well liked in the cities than the alternatives. Outside the big cities, which is most of Afghanistan, the government really didn't matter much. They were still dominated by local malitias, "elders", and gangs.
To add insult to injury, the US led effort to build up an internal defense force in the country found that the only people willing to fight for the country were the very same people who had fought for the Taliban only years before.
The question left unsaid of course is if all of these problems could have been solved by a more competent actor. I would argue they couldn't have, that you can't bring peace through war, but reasonable minds can disagree.
Ultimately? If the people who are going to kill you were elected into power by those "innocent people", why would you not lash out at them too? Some twisted sense of morality or taking the high road?
I was speaking of the Gazans who originally elected Hamas to protect them but where Hamas eventually decided to sacrifice masses of them to achieve some of their goals. They knew what would happen and did it anyway, without the people's consent.
As it is now, I agree and Hamas is about the only group in Gaza that has any weaponry, so they can continue to oppress.
Well i think this is true in the present moment, i think its also important to recognize that we got to this point by a series of decisions that Iran made. They boxed themselves into this corner via long term strategic blunders.
E.g. if they threatened US & israeli interests less (i.e. did not support proxy groups), US and Israel probably wouldnt find it worth it to go this far. Alternatively if they paid more attention to the home front and kept their people happy, there would be less pressure for them to not lose face during negotiations which might allow them to make concessions they cant currently.
The world in which America is a military superpower.
> if any of them were minimally rational, they would have all gone to total war with Israel and the US
They have been. They've been getting levelled. If the U.S. can staunch the flow of arms to the Houthis, they'll become irrelevant, too.
No, you missed my point. Iran dies no matter what happens. Better go down after eliminating Israel, taking out a huge % of the world's oil supply and banging up some Americans. Instead they were extremely restrained, squandering their capacities.
> They have been. They've been getting levelled. If the U.S. can staunch the flow of arms to the Houthis, they'll become irrelevant, too.
Incorrect.
One, they tried. They don’t have the capability. Two, that means more Iranians die. Cultures that choose pointless vengeance over pragmatic survival tend to get weeded out.
> Incorrect
Which part, why and based on whom?
No, they didn't, not at the peak of their power. They waited until many of their tools were hit and THEN responded. Everything they've done is unfortunately in self-defense after their capabilities have been extremely degraded. They sat around and waited for Israel to strike first every time.
> Two, that means more Iranians die. Cultures that choose pointless vengeance over pragmatic survival tend to get weeded out.
Again, you're missing the point. They are going to be weeded out no matter what.
In part. Khamenei also pointlessly spent down Hezbollah supporting Hamas instead of writing the latter off and saving his firepower. If Hezbollah had maintained its massive-launch capability, instead of drip feeding rockets into interceptors as a messaging exercise, maybe this would have gone differently.
More broadly, if Iran ran itself without a C-list vengeance plot at its core and focused on its massive resources, it could have developed economically and geopolitically.
They understand that a defensive war is not the same as an offensive war. Besides, going on the offensive isn’t something they - as a regional power - have the firepower or diplomatic “street cred” for.
They are already painted as a so-called irrational actor. Doing something reckless will only prove their detractors right.
The other part to this is keeping the negotiation door open. The idea is to demonstrate to other state actors that they are cool headed & rational - even in wartime conditions.
Which is why they're sending missiles and drone strikes on the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar.
Hezbollah did. They did it before and they were predicted by all analysts to be able to do it again, which is why Israel took the route they did with the espionage, assassinations and terrorism instead of confronting them on the battlefields.
The Houthis also are doing that right now.
But that's hard to grok without corroborating evidence. Like maybe an analogous social dynamic where the American mainstream maintains a hostile posture towards a particular ethnic group, stereotyping them as violent and irrational and criminals and parasites, and doing things to them that have triggered sustained, armed uprisings in other times and places, but who, in fact, have historically and in-aggregate been steadfast in a commitment to non-violent resistance, integration, and endurance of oppression.
Safe to say that this is the first time America's ever encountered that kind of thing, though, so I guess that we can be somewhat forgiven for not recognizing it.
If you have been following Iran over the past two years (and even before), you would know that this is empirically true and not just a hypothetical. American propag- sorry, media does its job well.
Better to play the long game, corrupt them from within and wait for them to destroy themselves.
Iran decided to play stupid games and found out.
Not sure it affects the outcome.