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Comment by zmmmmm | Hacker News Reader

I think the real threat is that if you tip the Iranian conflict over into asymmetrical warfare, then nobody can stop it - ever. It seems to be almost the intent with the US and Israel especially announcing explicit intent to keep removing anybody who attempts to form a system of government.

So you'll have a permanently aggrieved population with nothing to lose saturated with know-how and materials for building missiles and drones who will just keep taking pot shots at ships and possibly commercial airliners. They don't have to "close" the straight - just make it hazardous enough that it becomes permanently very risky to sail through there. They can go dormant for 3 months and then send 30 drones at a single ship.

I'm not sure who in the strategic planning decided that no system of government for 90 million people was a good idea, but it seems quite insane to me.

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> if you tip the Iranian conflict over into asymmetrical warfare, then nobody can stop it - ever

It's already asymmetytrical. And it could last as long as the current regime is in power. When the power structure will fall money will stop flowing too.

Huthies in Yemen look undistructable because they are supported (with moneny and weapons) by Iran. Who will bank-roll IRGC fighters when the government will collapse? China in theory culd but they depend on oil so will not contriube to prologed closing of the strait.

There seems to be the idea that if you remove the regime a normal country will rise from the ashes. It is more likely that Iran will disintegrate and spiral into a civil war.

It's definitely a risk but a country in a civil war likely will be focused on internal problems and pose less of a threat to neighbors.

Nothing unites a group like a common enemy. If it does fall apart into civil war, expect past and random terrorism for years

Yeah basically like isis all over again :(

YOU are the regime. Only an american can pretend not to understand that the riots were orgsnized by US and Israel precisely to justify war on "regime killing its own people".. fighting agsinst people armed by US and Israel, but this piece is omitted in the free western media.

And still, also the people pretending to not understand, do know what is going on.

Do you think the riots were simply for a little more freedom?

The bazaars / markets were completely closed in January because Iran’s inflation made importing goods impossibly affordable.

While the riots align with US interests, they also align with the interests of lots of Iranian people.

I kmow there is a wide discontent in Iran. But I am quite sure that had the people known what this would be used as a pretext for, they would use more judgement. They just forgot for a moment that regardless of what ayatollahs tell about internal affairs, what they tell about the west is quite true.

Putting "regime killing its own people" in quotes precludes you from any sort of moral judgement.

To quote Sahar Delijani: “Imagine what a dictator must do to its own people for them to greet missiles like salvation. Imagine the wound. Imagine the fury. Imagine the streets slick with blood.”"

Either you are not in good faith, or you are truly deluded about what is going on.

> YOU are the regime. Only an american can pretend not to understand that the riots were orgsnized by US and Israel precisely to justify war on "regime killing its own people".. fighting agsinst people armed by US and Israel, but this piece is omitted in the free western media.

The US and Israel is no way forced Iran's regime to mass murder their own people. The US/Israel aren't even using the regime mass murdering their own people as the main justification for going to war either way, the nuclear program, ballistic missiles and general security issues are the main justifications they seem to be using. The protests were probably just a trigger event that opened up an opportunity to finally take action against Iran that was likely going to happen in the near future regardless.

> And still, also the people pretending to not understand, do know what is going on.

Most Iranians want the regime gone, not everything is a conspiracy.

If you supply weapons and means of communication to people inside a country, who then go and kill policemen and soldiers, what do you think will happen? What do you think the US/Israeli secret services "thought"? Why do you insist on justifying what is by itself is an obvious crime?

It is incredible how you simply cannot understand 2+2=4.

"Most Iranians want the regime gone" - not at all, what they want is to live in better economical conditions, which are so bad not because of their government, but because of yours. And whatever they thought about their, now gone, government, in no way implies they would prefer the Pehlevi, or whatever other US puppet governing them. Even before the war.

> means of communication to people inside a country

Wow, now you're even attempting to justifying Islamic regime internet blackouts.

> who then go and kill policemen and soldiers, what do you think will happen?

So because a few policeman and soldiers go killed you think that justifies firing automatic weapons into crowds of civilian protesters?

> not at all, what they want is to live in better economical conditions, which are so bad not because of their government, but because of yours.

You seem to be entirely unfamiliar with the Islamic regime in Iran if you think they aren't the primary reason the economy is where it is right now.

> And whatever they thought about their, now gone, government, in no way implies they would prefer the Pehlevi, or whatever other US puppet governing them. Even before the war.

With how bad the Islamic regime is at this point I think most would say just about anything is better.

Which regime, the one protecting a felon implicates in the massive money scandals and global child sex trafficking ring?

> I think the real threat is that if you tip the Iranian conflict over into asymmetrical warfare

We're there already. We've been there. There's nothing symmetrical about this war.

Israel is basically unscathed in this war despite Iran launching barrages of missiles and drones. They were already fighting Israel asymmetrically by supporting Hamas and Hezbollah. They knew they could never fight a fair war against the US and Israel.

In fairness to the Trump administration, they did have several acceptable candidates in mind for a transitional government.

They just accidentally killed them all.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/world/middleeast/iranian-...

In fairness i don't really believe them, i don't think anyone in the Iranian line of succession would've worked with the US.

Actually it was the other party in the war that killed them all

And they happen to have a different set of interests, which they may choose to follow over shared interests.

> In fairness to the Trump administration

Probably, Iranians also had several accepted candidates in mind to lead the US, but they didn't attack because they had some opinions about foreign government

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/iranian-intelligence-agent-co...

What I find interesting is that Trump officials says Trump was the target here, but the guy was arrested in July of 2024 - which is when Biden was still in office.

Sure. Just like Trump was an informant for the FBI on Epstein island.

I don't believe it's impossible Donald Trump spoke against his friends to the feds. I think it's likely.

It was a convenient misunderstanding about a call to the Palm Beach Sheriff. The FBI has a recording of the call, but probably ambiently from the Sheriff’s side. It’s a small ray of innocence for a guy like Trump. And he forgot all about it until by luck it was in the Epstein files.

This has always been the US way of doing things, going back to at least WWII: Get to Berlin, kill Hitler if required, and after that, uh, yeah, we'll get back to you on that. This is why things mostly kept going under continuous carpet bombing but fell apart completely once the bombing stopped and the administration was decapitated with noting to replace it.

The US then repeated the mistake in Iraq, take a population of 45 million, with most males having military training and a large percentage of the population dependent on government jobs and/or handouts, then remove the government. Who could possibly have predicted what would happen next?

And now they're doing it again in Iran.

Your example of failed US nation-building is postwar Germany??

Is anybody giving credit to the US for post-war germany? Hilarious example nonetheless. I think the US gets more credit for nation building the case of Japan. South Korea. Phillippines is a questionable success story. But yeah, south america and the middle east have consistently been a mess.

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