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You mean the de facto dictatorship that was installed by an MI6 and CIA-instigated coup in 1953 and widely unpopular because, among other things, it used secret police to brutally suppress political dissent?
Iran investing 2-3% of its GDP (tens of billions per year) into funding a proxy-war against a country 2,000km away, that you had friendly relations with for decades, and has no desire for conflict with you, is an utterly insane foreign policy.
To demonstrate the insanity of this: this is the equivalent of the United States spending $750 billion every year a war with Costa Rica.
https://theconversation.com/iran-protests-2026-our-surveys-s...
I never mentioned a Western-backed dictatorship, the Shah, or any conditions about Israel recognition. You invented that.
My argument is simple: 60%+ of Iranians want regime change. 69% want the government to stop funding foreign proxy wars. The regime has a 12% approval rating. Iranians want something else. I cited polling data showing what Iranians want themselves. You can read the links I provided. The policies of the current regime are deeply unpopular.
I believe that spending 2-3% of GDP (tens of billions of dollars per year) fighting an adversary 2,000km away that you had friendly relations with for decades & has no desire for conflict with you is an utterly insane foreign policy. This money is much better spent invested into the Iranian people. Building infrastructure, investing in the Iranian people, and building the Iranian economy.
I did not advocate for a Western-backed dictatorship. The false choice you're presenting (Islamic republic vs Western puppet state) isn't the one Iranians are making. Iranians are not asking for a Western-backed dictatorship. Iranians are saying "stop spending our money blowing up the Middle East and end this pointless forever war with Israel". Iranians want a different foreign policy.
You also accused me of not caring about Iranians, while also defending a regime that 88% of Iranians disapprove of. That's a strange way to show you care about Iranians.
I think that your post could certainly have been read that way. Like, the regime of the Shah was also hated by lots of Iranians (hence the revolution). Leaving out that context is somewhat misleading.
I agree with you that lots of Iranians want change (and I'd love to see it for them), but bombing people is rarely an effective strategy for removing regimes you don't like (has it ever worked? Maybe Serbia I suppose).
It would be great if Israel/US/Iran all had friendly relations, but the most recent war is likely to make that much less likely, unfortunately.
You stated:
> Iran's leadership changed post-1979...
The pre-1979 leadership was the Shah, who was effectively a Western-backed dictator. You conveniently ignore this fact. Why don't you want to acknowledge it?
Your statement, "Iran's leadership changed post-1979...", also conveniently glosses over the fact that there was a revolution that overthrew this Western-backed dictatorship. The leadership just didn't passively change.
> My argument is simple: 60%+ of Iranians want regime change. 69% want the government to stop funding foreign proxy wars. The regime has a 12% approval rating. Iranians want something else. I cited polling data showing what Iranians want themselves. You can read the links I provided. The policies of the current regime are deeply unpopular.
I would point out that polling reliably in Iran is, for obvious reasons, very difficult but even if we accept for argument's sake the notion that the majority of Iranians want something other than the current regime, which seems entirely logical, that doesn't actually tell us what they want to replace it with.
Your own source (GAMAAN) has stated:
"The demand for a democratic government is widespread among Iranians, though at the same time, a notable portion of society shows an inclination toward individual authoritarianism. No political or civil figure currently enjoys majority support in society. Each political cluster represents only a portion (between 5% to 35%) of the population, and no single opposition force is capable of representing the full diversity present within the country."
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202508212335
The implication of this is that Iranians don't hold a singular view of what a replacement to the Islamic Republic should look like. There is no guarantee that whatever comes next would be significantly "better" and many reasons to believe that if the Islamic Republic falls under certain circumstances, it could lead to a very precarious situation for Iranians, the region and the world.
> I did not advocate for a Western-backed dictatorship. The false choice you're presenting (Islamic republic vs Western puppet state) isn't the one Iranians are making. Iranians are not asking for a Western-backed dictatorship. Iranians are saying "stop spending our money blowing up the Middle East and end this pointless forever war with Israel". Iranians want a different foreign policy.
The problem is that you haven't articulated a specific, realistic vision for what would come next. I might be wrong but the just of your comments seems to suggest that you believe the US and Israeli war against Iran will led to something good when there's scant evidence of that.
Ironically, on the other side of the equation, a majority of Americans have been asking their government for more than two decades to stop spending their money blowing up the Middle East.
The US (and Israel) launched this war against Iran and it's deeply unpopular with the majority of Americans.
If you think it's "utterly insane" for Iran to spend 2-3% of its GDP (tens of billions of dollars a year) on its military spending, surely you must think it's "utterly insane" that the US spends a similar percentage of its much, much larger GDP (amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars a year) on its military every year. Us military spending is more than double China's, and China is the country with the next highest level of military spending in the world. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are homeless, and millions more struggle to afford basic necessities like healthcare and housing.
> You also accused me of not caring about Iranians, while also defending a regime that 88% of Iranians disapprove of. That's a strange way to show you care about Iranians.
It's completely disingenuous to suggest that anything in my comment defended the Iranian regime. I don't know if you care about Iranians or not, but if you do, you surely would be very concerned that the person claiming he wants to liberate them has threatened to destroy "every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran" (a war crime) and end their "whole civilization" (genocide).
You want the Iranian government to build infrastructure, invest in its people and build the economy. That sounds good. But I fail to see how the US and Israel destroying Iran's infrastructure, killing innocent civilians and suffocating the Iranian economy is going to lead to that.
Assigning blame to only one side is meaningless when both sides go tit-for-tat for decades. Both Israel and Lebanon are complicit in this mess.
There were many reasons for the Arab League, which Lebanon was part of, to attack a country taking over Palestine.
After the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, Israel and Iran maintained close ties. Iran was the second Muslim-majority country to recognize Israel as a sovereign state after Turkey. Israel viewed Iran as a natural ally as a non-Arab power on the edge of the Arab world, in accordance with David Ben Gurion's concept of an alliance of the periphery. Israel had a permanent delegation in Tehran which served as a de facto embassy, before Ambassadors were exchanged in the late 1970s.
After the Six-Day War, Iran supplied Israel with a significant portion of its oil needs and Iranian oil was shipped to European markets via the joint Israeli-Iranian Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline. Trade between the countries was brisk, with Israeli construction firms and engineers active in Iran. El Al, the Israeli national airline, operated direct flights between Tel Aviv and Tehran. Iranian-Israeli military links and projects were kept secret, but they are believed to have been wide-ranging, for example the joint military project Project Flower (1977–79), an Iranian-Israeli attempt to develop a new missile.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Israel_relations
The tens of billions of dollars Iran invests into fighting Israel are (in my opinion) much better spent investing into developing the Iranian people and economy. Spending billions of dollars funding proxy wars, fighting a pointless forever war against Israel, pursuing nuclear weapons, and firing drones and missiles at your neighbors is a foolish foreign policy. Iran is asking for trouble.
If Iran had a different foreign policy, this current conflict would never have happened. Iran's situation was entirely avoidable.
[0] https://gamaan.org/2025/11/05/12-day-war-survey-english/
That's my point. Iran did, and it did not work out for them so why would they try again?
> Polling of Iranians citizens show 69% of people
67% of people believe Trump is doing a bad job; 56% believe the US shouldn't be in this war; 63% believe the US should stop supporting Israel. They're all roughly the same % as your quote, does that mean the US should change foreign policy?
> Iran's situation was entirely avoidable
Sure, by not dropping bombs on them while negotiation with them?