Iran has the right to defend itself.
Who is Iran?
The tiny minority of people with guns to everyone's heads?
The entity acting right now is a small ruling clique presenting themselves as 'Iran'.
A regime loses legitimacy to act when they don't have internal legitimacy - or does not act with legitimacy either.
Iran is supporting massive conflicts in Yemen, and is building non-defensive weapons capabilities.
That does not make US or Israel automatically 'the good guys' as they have their own lack of legitimacy problems.
US president started a war without Congressional approval, against wishes of allies. Unclear objectives, zero popular support.
Israel illegally colonizes West Bank, kills civilians etc.
It's all shades of grey, but there are lighter and darker shades.
And to make more complicated, lighter and darker given context as well.
Yes, I am sure the patients in this hospital were holding guns to Trump's head. https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2026/3/2/baby-and-p...
And while we're speaking of people that hold guns to everyone's heads, there is one country that is waging war all over the world. It's govt also executed people in broad daylight for the crimes of taking their kid to school and helping a person beaten up by the administration's goons. Would you entertain the idea of similar airstrikes against the head of that country?
> Iran is supporting massive conflicts in Yemen, and is building non-defensive weapons capabilities.
You know who else is supporting that massive conflict in Yemen? The United States of America. https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/06/04/yemen-us-strikes-on-port...
> It's all shades of grey, but there are lighter and darker shades.
I'm guessing they correlate 100% with the shade of the skin of the people involved.
You'll have to do better than calling people racist for no apparent reason.
If there is one tiny, little barely a sliver of a silver-lining out of all of this Trump insanity, is that we don't hear a lot of people getting called racist for being disagreeable anymore, there are real issues to deal with.
Isn't that Iran? Remember the mass killings of the protestors? 36000 intentional deaths (Iran) vs 50 possibly accidental deaths (USA) [0]. Even if the deaths in the US were mediated by a burning hatred with the fire of a thousand suns that could still only amount to a few thousand death equivalents in a country where more than three hundred million people live (USA) vs 93 million in Iran.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deaths_in_ICE_detentio...
We see ICE being evil in front of us, we don't see the actions of the Iranian regime, our 'daily ire' is reserved for the Orange Menace, so it badly distorts our rhetoric.
I don't think anyone should care about the Iranian regime - other than it might get worse, or unstable, or create a regional conflict that will just create more problems for everyone.
They have every right to resist this criminal assault.
I really don't see where North Korea comes into it. My initial post was actually echoing what we hear in the UK every time Israel assaults its neighbours.
"A sovereign state"
Sovereign by who's terms?
A gang of people hold another group of people hostage, we have to respect their supposed sovereignty?
And the sovereignty of the majority of the people who reject the regime and who are murdered, tortured?
We're just going to respect a group of thugs claim to control national sovereignty?
The point being - the regimes lack of legitimacy aggravates their claim to 'sovereignty'.
"They have every right to resist this criminal assault."
They probably don't (lack of legitimacy) - and - this really isn't a situation of 'rights' anyhow, this is a break down in order, it's just about power.
And of course - 'rights' - the rights of their citizens murdered and tortured, how do that integrate into this question?
There are international laws here, but there is also legitimacy.
If we could be certain (and we almost could) that literally the vast majority of people in Iran, do not believe in the legitimacy of their own government ...
... then it's ridiculous to talk about 'a sovereign state' or 'a leader' has been killed.
There is a 'Theocratic Feudal Clan' holding power in the country, and they were attacked.
Israel is a very odd state, but with similar lack of legitimacy - except that Iran has made directly claims to the total destruction of the state, and Israel's internal crimes notwithstanding, they have a practical right to defend themselves.
The assault was ordered by a semi-Feudal Lord of 'House Trump' - as US citizens don't support this war, neither was the Executive given consent by Congress.
'Sovereignty' is mostly rhetorical term in a context were legitimacy is not applied.
This is a war being fought where none of the citizens approve of any of it, the claims on all sides are aggrandized.
This conflict is probably best understood like those in Europe before Napoleon and national armies etc..
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj98egkl7l1o https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/20/what-are-chago...
This is probably military strategy 101 not to push your enemies together when they are having a rift
> The US-Israeli strikes were launched after negotiations to limit Iran's nuclear programme ended without a deal. The UK did not participate.
That's called Imperialism and was common among european powers in the 19th century
How evil of them to do that. They should have known only the United States of America has the divine right to invade countries and extract their resources. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4grxzxjjd8o
> That's called Imperialism and was common among european powers in the 19th century
Fortunately, the USA does not want to revive such practices, as they indicated in this speech: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/marco-rubio-munich-t...
Yes, OP was already saying Iran is free to act because the US is an imperial power. I was merely stating that he is conveniently ignoring Iran's imperialist behavior
The negotiations didn't end without a deal, they were ongoing but not finalized. The next session of the negotiations was scheduled for Monday. And then, Israel and US simply attacked on Saturday.
It is very important to use precise language so as to not downplay the illegal aggression against Iran.
In any case a contrarian opinion might be that Iran promised to yield on negotiations following the previous war as mentioned here:
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-asks-gulf-ara...
And Iran instead opted for their years old tactic of stalling the negotiations
Hideous double-speak in this article.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/mar/01/uk-to-allow...
We're already seen those "defensive strikes" wipe out a school. This is an unprovoked, reckless, criminal attack, the perpetrators of which should be sent to the Hague.