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Comment by bawolff | Hacker News Reader

> And I do want to stress that. There is a frequent mistake, often from folks who deal in economics, to assume that countries will give up on wars when the economics turn bad. But countries are often very willing to throw good money after bad even on distant wars of choice.

On the other hand isn't this how the russian revolution happened? An economic crisis due to a prolonged war leading to a revolution? While i wouldn't bet money on it, it seems at least possible that something similar could happen to Iran.

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I would not wager money on a revolution coming from this war, either. But if a revolution does come as a result of the war, it seems at least as likely to be in the United States as in Iran.

I think a revolution caused by this war is more likely in countries like Egypt. The Arab Spring was triggered by a rise in food prices after all.

There is zero shot that a revolution is happening in United States.

Trump could literally go on TV and r*e a kid on stage in 4k, and most people would go to work and be like "damn what weird times are we living in"

If shit gets bad enough economically to where there are food shortages and such, you will see US split before any revolution happens.

Actually, there are lots of revolutions in Europe after WWI, but keep in mind that in this case the populations were blaming their governments for starting or participating in an unnecessary war with monumental casualties. In this case, the Iran government has two useful scapegoats and any casualties could be easily ascribed to the idiots bombing girl schools and not to the idiots sending millions to their deaths under artillery fire.

While possible they could scapegoat this, hasn't the rallying cry for Iranian protests prior to this been "Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, my life for Iran" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neither_Gaza_nor_Lebanon,_My_L... - i think we are already at the place of the population blaming the government for its foreign policy consequences, at least in some segments.

While I agree that a revolution in Iran is not impossible, I rather doubt that whoever comes next will be western friendly and moderate; after the indscriminate military action of the past few weeks they are probably more likely to get ayatollah'd again.

> I rather doubt that whoever comes next will be western friendly and moderate

The Iranian people(not the Islamic Regime which is despised by the vast majority of the people in Iran) tend to be very western friendly and tend to be much more secular than most populations in the region.

> the indscriminate military action of the past few weeks they are probably more likely to get ayatollah'd again.

The Iranian people are well aware that the airstrikes are not at all indiscriminate but are targeting the Regime(there are plenty of videos coming out of Iran of people filming and cheering as airstrikes hit Regime targets), indiscriminate military action would be what the Islamic Regime did when they killed tens of thousands of civilian protesters by firing automatic weapons into crowds of people. The Iranian people understand what is happening.

>On the other hand isn't this how the russian revolution happened?

It happened because Russian empire (and German empire) lacked state security apparatus adequate to the threat. It was fixed by most authoritarian states after that, so e.g. Soviet Union survived for 70 years despite many popular uprisings, which happened almost the whole time of its existence. It went down only when elites in Moscow destroyed it from within.

Are we talking about Iran or US?

> While i wouldn't bet money on it, it seems at least possible that something similar could happen to the USA.

Fixed that for you.

Y'all mostly couldn't even be bothered to show up to vote. A population that is too lazy to vote (in a system where your vote does matter) is definitely too lazy to have a revolution.

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