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Comment by gizajob | Hacker News Reader

I can’t be an apologist for what’s going on but the Iranians seemed capable of killing tens of thousands of their own citizens in order to quash an uprising against the regime only weeks before the current events.

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We should have little sympathy for them, but ill thought out war will do nothing to improve things for those citizens. Far more likely the opposite.

This seems to be a fairly well thought out war that's already killed many Iranian leaders, including:

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – Supreme Leader

Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi – Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces

Major General Mohammad Pakpour – Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC

Brigadier General Aziz Nasirzadeh – Minister of Defense

Mohammad Shirazi – Head of Supreme Leader’s military office

Ali Larijani – Senior national security chief

Esmaeil Khatib – Minister of Intelligence

Gholamreza Rezaian – Iranian police intelligence commander

Gholamreza Soleimani – Basij paramilitary commander

Saleh Asadi – Head of military intelligence at Khatam‑al Anbiya

Has there been any other war in which one side so quickly killed the leadership of the other side?

Listing a kill count doesn't amount to evidence that the war has been well thought out, it only tells us the US and Israel are good at assassinations.

It is clear the initial aim was to decapitate the leadership and expect capitulation of some form or another to follow. This obviously hasn't happened, and so the fallout grows by the day.

Many of these leaders decided to not hide underground but to become martyrs.

It is really not an accomplishment to murder someone in their own house when they have not been hiding.

Khamenei was already very old.

His security begged him to evacuate but he asked them if they can evacuate all Iranians. If they can't why should he get special treatment?

He knew he could serve his country best by becoming a martyr.

Meanwhile Israeli leader Netanyahu is so afraid to come out of his hole that people are wondering if he is still alive.

> really not an accomplishment to murder someone in their own house when they have not been hiding

A win is a win. Irrespective of whether the enemy’s fuckup put it on a silver platter for you.

> He knew he could serve his country best by becoming a martyr

And taking down his inner circle with him. Brilliant man.

The way this war is shown to us (West) is very loopsided - Iran was never going to be able to stop the bombing and they knew it. But they still retain most of their ability to blow up anything they want around their country, which is most of oil and gas fields in the Middle East, and this time they actually proved it.

We like to think we're winning, but are we ? Iran leadership is supposedly decimated, missile capabilities destroyed etc. And yet, when Israel attacked their gas field, they immediately wiped out 17% of Qatari gas productions capacities which will take 5 years to rebuild and they could have wiped out everything. Seems their leadership structure is doing just fine.

As for all the killed - what did we actually achieve ? Replace Khamenei with his son - a guy who had all of his family blown up to pieces by US / Israeli ? That should do wonders to Iran's future relationship with those countries.

>ability to blow up anything they want around their country

Only places that falsely believed to be immune due to being of same blood, like Qatar.

>Replace Khamenei with his son - a guy who had all of his family blown up to pieces by US / Israeli

Rumor has it son was also blown up, just not completely (supposedly disfigured with leg missing) and is most likely hiding in Moscow.

> tens of thousands of their own citizens

Any credible source for this?

1. Western media is not credible because West treats Iran as enemy

2. Iranian media is not credible because they obviously want to hide facts when they're negative

Now my question is, why are you spreading unverifiable information as something credible and building your facts on top of it?

> Any credible source for this?

For tens of thousands? No. That’s the upper end of estimates. For the brutality? Yes. Wikipedia is a good start.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce9mzn7k722o

> Iran has executed three men accused of killing police officers during anti-government protests in January,

As I said, West considers Iran as enemy, used words by BBC reflects this clearly.

1. "accused of" - we don't know, but lets say they're "accusing" them

2. if true, then they have killed the "police officers" (seems many?) so what do you expect from Iran?

Not sure how credible but iranintl.com has

>36,500 killed in 400 cities... Our Editorial Board has now obtained more detailed information provided by the IRGC Intelligence Organization to the Supreme National Security Council.

they are an Iranian opposition outfit funded but the Saudis. (https://www.iranintl.com/en/202601255198)

iranintl, yah that's an instant rejection.

There are zero verified sources of any mass killings by the Iranian government. In fact all evidence points to Mossad agents committing the mass killings of Iranian government officials as caught on video, including the wrestler that was just executed for killing a police officer with a machete, on video.

Any links to the on video bit? Most stuff on the internet seems to say he didn't do anything except protest.

There have been hundreds of thousands of Palestinians brutally murdered by Israel, yet the US has not intervened in Israel yet.

The Iranian government is bad, and yes, it should be toppled, eventually, by its own people.

This doesn't change the fact that Iran is the aggressed party in an invasion of an incredibly aggressive US-Israel axis that seem to revel in death.

You can hate the Iranian murderous regime, and also understand that it is fighting against another evil, murderous regime.

> The Iranian government is bad, and yes, it should be toppled, eventually, by its own people.

You would prefer to tell people in Iran who oppose the regime to take up arms (which they don't have) and fight IRGC soldiers with better training and more resources?

Best case, if they did, Iran would end up in a situation like Syria. Would that be an improvement?

More likely, it would simply be a massacre.

What I can tell you is that no matter how much I hate the government of my country, I would hate a lot more the foreign country that is destroying civilian infrastructure and murdering my people.

Let's not pretend that the US and Israel regimes have the best interest of the Iranian people in mind. They want murder.

I really can't say how this is being received in or out of Iran, but I remember after the initial strikes there was widespread footage of Iranian exiles celebrating, even on anti-Trump media.

Edit: and even people celebrating in Iran itself, which seems incredibly brave.

"videos posted on social media showed joy and defiance elsewhere, with people cheering as a statue was toppled in the city of Dehloran in Ilam province, dancing in the streets of Karaj city, near Tehran in Alborz province, and celebrating in the streets of Izeh in Khuzestan province. In the town of Galleh Dar in southern Iran, people knocked down a monument commemorating Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic in 1979, a video on social media showed."

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/polarised-ira...

Even The Guardian, as anti-Trump as a source can be, reported that "videos shared widely on social media also showed people celebrating, dancing, honking car horns and setting off fireworks as news of the leader’s death broke."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/01/celebration-or...

I bet that in Russia they also have media showing that people in Uraike are celebrating their liberation, etc.

I am very skeptical of war propaganda. You would do well to be skeptical of it too.

Seriously. WWII propaganda from multiple countries being compared side by side need to be part of everyone’s high school curriculum.

Yeah, but then again the United States has also killed protestors with federal invasions of its cities. As well as slaughtered children with a targeted missle strike on a school.

Thousands, not tens of thousands. Which is bad enough so it seems silly to lie about this but whoever can make up the biggest number seems to favored by the Western narrative.

And let us not act like the decades of sanction were not designed to do exactly this. Sanctions mean you create as much hardships as possible for the people in hope they topple their government. They nearly never work but here we are.

> Contrary to popular belief, economic sanctions are ineffective in fulfilling their objectives. Historical observations from Russia to Cuba and Iran reveal that the more sanctions are designed to pressure the ruling class, the harder ordinary citizens are hit. Leaders often perceive sanctions as a means to enhance nationalism, portraying the United States and its allies as hostile. In many instances, such actions have only strengthened their hold on power while stifling dissent internally.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yljdgwppzo

As for the protests, the truth is also that these were not peaceful protests. Mossads agents had been arming people and instructing them to riot. Hundreds of police offers have been murdered and mosques have been burned down. Mossad agents have been instructed to fire at protestors to increase the death toll.

Yes, there has been valid criticism and unhappiness with the government. But most of these people had been protesting for economic reasons. They didn't want to see their country invaded.

Today many of the people that had protested in January are joining the mass demonstrations in favor of the Islamic Republic. The war has united the Iranians.

>Mossad agents have been instructed to fire at protestors to increase the death toll.

Source?

The state TV. It’s impossible they lie.

> Hundreds of people died when security forces sought to crush the demonstrations, along with dozens of members of the police and Basij militia. Iranian intelligence operatives internally concluded that some of the violence was being encouraged and facilitated by Israeli operatives, according to the sources. “Foreign actors linked to Israeli intelligence services had, over time, established contact—through various social media platforms and under diverse cover identities—with a significant number of Iranian citizens, particularly young people,” the Iranian intelligence official alleged. These Israeli handlers, he said, “encouraged and incentivized the performance of specific tasks through a combination of financial and non-financial rewards, as well as the provision of material support, including small arms and other equipment.”

> “Foreign actors are arming the protesters in Iran with live firearms, which is the reason for the hundreds of regime personnel killed,” wrote Tamir Morag, the diplomatic correspondent for Israel’s Channel 14, during the uprising. “Everyone is free to guess who is behind it.” Morag and his network are well known for their close ties to Netanyahu.

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/iran-ministry-of-intelligence...

You also find the some information in a Israeli Newspaper:

> On December 29, what is dubbed the Mossad X/Twitter account in Farsi encouraged Iranians to protest against the Iranian regime, telling them that it is literally physically with them at the demonstrations.

> “Go out together into the streets. The time has come,” the Mossad wrote. “We are with you,” it added. “Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field.” [...]

> Foreign actors had armed Iranians to help them fight against the regime’s forces being used to crack down on and oppress protesters, Channel 14’s Tamir Morag reported Tuesday. Iran’s foreign minister retweeted the report for his own agenda.

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-883524