Iranian banks' SSL certificates are being revoked due to OFAC sanctions
digiato.global
digiato.global
Another example of why maximalist political hostility can be counterproductive. Leave an olive branch in sight, and you may work towards a mutually beneficial resolution, like the previous Iran nuclear deals. If push your opponent into a corner, then don't get upset when they jump over the wall into the wild where you can't catch them anymore. See also Chinese chips and AI.
For what?
Iran is a republic. It became a republic in 1979 on a national referendum. Before that it was a monarchy. That monarchy used to be limited since 1941, but in 1953 it was restored as a result of an overthrow backed by US and Britain. The cause of that was that the civil government tried to nationalize oil companies. The last monarch is in exile but, apparently, hopes to return to power if the US wins.
The West is a fantastic liar and a tremendous used car salesman. There's a short story by Mark Twain how he tried to run for a governor. Satirical, but truthful. Yet somehow the West managed to sell the idea that a regular shitshow of this kind is a pinnacle of state development, that states who do not run it are, of course, oppressors and oppressed, and that any means against them are thus justified.
I also believe many of our current "allies" in the region should face similar sanctions in case you are wondering.
Interesting take, coming from a nation that has caused:
- 210,296 violent civilian deaths in IRAQ
- 500,000 civilians killed om Japan
- 70,000 civilians killed in Vietnam
- 46,000 civilians killed in Afghanistan
- 3,000 civilians killed in IRAN
- Threatened to exterminate Persians civilization, blown up bridges, killed children and destroyed civilian infrastructure
I think United States should be sanctioned.
Iran threatens that all the time "Death to America" so if they don't like someone saying it back to them maybe they should stop?
If you want to make these kinds of body count claims, well for starters Iran killed over 30,000 of its own people recently (who knows maybe they've killed tens of thousands more over the years).
Iran also made the Iraq war worse by funding insurgents, which opposed the US and the government of Iraq (which is doing much better now as a country than it was under Saddam anyway) so they are partially responsible for some of those deaths.
But let's continue with this logic. While we're at it why don't we sanction China? Common estimates suggest 10s of millions dead from the Great Leap Forward (no it's not any different when you kill your own people, arguably much worse). Dramatic repression in places like Hong Kong, and continuing to threaten democratic Taiwan.
Why aren't you clamoring to sanction China if you're going to bring up Japan and Vietnam? Well that's because your logic is unsound, never mind the continued hyper-focus on being critical of the United States only. Maybe all of these deaths are actually on the hands of Europeans who partitioned these gulf states in the first place. Why was France in Vietnam? Why was the UN in Korea?
But you can take a step back and ask, well, what's the guiding framework here?
Is it arbitrarily picking certain time periods to make a point? Why do we go back to "Japan" and World War II when Japan started the war and was massacring and colonizing people throughout east Asia?
Why wasn't Germany mentioned in the body count? Dresden is a popular one that comes to mind.
Why do we only focus on lives lost? Maybe America saved 10,000,000 Chinese from Japanese occupation so on balance we're saving lives?
Now you know why they shout death to America. Would you also like to know that al qaeda didn't just hate american "freedom"?
If you want the Iranian people to engage in a forever war against the West, this is the kind of attitude you must hold.
“Some arbitrary injustice done by dead people forever justifies us to do whatever we want” isn’t a viable political or culturally progressive route to go down. Vietnam got over it. Why can’t Iran? Do they need a nuclear bomb to get over it? Will they stop hanging gay people, helping Russia, and providing militia support to destabilize Arab countries once they get what they want (whatever that is)? What date or specific thing do they need?
Can anyone say?
Of course not. Because totalitarian regimes always have to obsess over past injustices, perceived or real, to drum up support for the regime so that it can continue to hold power against the best interests of their people. It masks their own failures, like Tehran running out of water because their government spent all their money bombing innocent people.
People often ask these questions as if they're unanswerable or as if any answer would essentially be arbitrary.
What you need to do is look at contemporary global systems of inequality and consider their roots. For this it would seem British imperialism is often a sensible place to go to, in this case almost certainly.
We're not talking about global systems or inequality which have innumerable reasons, but talking about Iran and their specific bad behavior and how authoritarian governments point to random historical injustices to justify their own repression.
The UK was spoken of in the particular because of its long and violent history in Iran. We could point to any number of things like Anglo-Persian oil, the 1941 occupation or the 1953 which was previously mentioned.
Countries like Portugal and the Netherlands simply don't have that history in the Iranian context. Of course if we were speaking about somewhere like Indonesia then we would foreground other colonial powers.
There is also of course much that should be said about broader colonial history but the question above was why do we bring up British wrongdoing rather than ancient Persian history.
> but talking about Iran and their specific bad behavior
"Bad behaviour" is your terminology. We're talking about why they have sanctions imposed on them.
> and how authoritarian governments point to random historical injustices to justify their own repression.
No-one else was talking about this but you, and it feels like it was only raised in an attempt to undermine genuine concerns about legacy issues.
> Countries like Portugal and the Netherlands simply don't have that history ...
Totally fair! But then you (or whoever made the point) can't drag in the US and Vietnam war or World War II into this and drum up some random body count and try to use that as a main point, nor can you bring up "global systems of inequality" and simultaneously try to limit additional discussion around an Iran context when we start talking about, well, global inequality and how other countries are huge contributors to that.
> "Bad behaviour" is your terminology. We're talking about why they have sanctions imposed on them.
I'm not following the distinction here. The reasons sanctions are imposed on them is because of their bad behavior. They're killing people in the region, trying to build nuclear weapons which we won't tolerate, and have been building up this capability to hold global oil supply hostage less they have some concessions that they want.
> No-one else was talking about this but you, and it feels like it was only raised in an attempt to undermine genuine concerns about legacy issues.
We're not speaking about historical facts for the sake of historical facts. You and others are speaking about why Iran is justified in some action, so it's fair to point out how those facts are weaponized.
Since you are doing that, it's fair game to also explain how those past injustices (which themselves are complicated and nuanced in ways that nobody here is discussing) are used by Iran and other authoritarian regimes to create external enemies to maintain power. This is extremely well understood.
> Vietnam got over it. Why can’t Iran?
Vietnam hasn't been sanctioned for decades following the war. Why can't the US and Israel get over the Shah being overthrown?
We've tried but then they fund all these militias and kill lots of people and keep trying to build nuclear bombs. What if they stop doing those things?
> You are trying to use events from antiquity to dilute or excuse events done within living timeframes. You realize lots of Iranians lived during the Iran-Iraq war, yes? You know the US supported Saddam as he was gassing them, yes? These are things people who still live experienced.
By that logic Iran should thank us for getting rid of Saddam. Do you remember (or are you even aware) of things like the Atoms for Peace program? Why does/did Iran have F-14 fighter jets? Arab nations also supported Iraq during the war. You are over-simplifying and cherry-picking while ignoring the fact that international relations is a lot more complicated than "country did X, therefore enemies for all time". USS Cole, Lebanon, it's not like Iran is innocent. And before you go and say well what about 1953, well then you can just keep going back to some other slight or injustice. If you want to live in a world of forever wars, by my guest. I think we should give peace a chance but that requires Iran to stop certain activities that simply do not serve anyone but a tiny minority of theocrats and despots.
> I hope that provides some insight as to why Iran hates the US.
Iran and the Iranian people don't hate the US and we don't hate them. Iran's autocratic government hates us and they can't pursue a path of peace because authoritarian regimes need external enemies to direct popular anger against to cover up for their own shortcomings. It's a common playbook that we're all well aware of.
No we didn't. Well, we tried the JCPOA eventually, but that got nuked by Trump.
> By that logic Iran should thank us for getting rid of Saddam.
Yeah, thanks for killing the guy you used to gas and slaughter our people. All water under the bridge now, even though you provided that support for him to gas and kill us.
> Atoms for Peace program
How is this relevant?
> Why does/did Iran have F-14 fighter jets?
They seized them when they overthrew the Shah.
> I think we should give peace a chance
Then the US should show some good faith and release frozen funds and lift sanctions. To expect Iran to weaken themselves when the west has shown perfidy time and time again is, frankly, ridiculous. The war going on now has only made that more impossible.
> Iran and the Iranian people don't hate the US and we don't hate them.
They may not hate the average American, but they hate our ruling class. And I assure you, our ruling class hates them all. They are racist fascists, it's what they do. You are naive if you think people like Rubio or Trump give two shits about Iranians. They want to destabilize a regional power and exploit natural resources. The best way to do that would be to throw Iran into chaos so no one faction controls power. It would be another Iraq situation and millions of Iranians would die.
Yes we did try. We shouldn't have needed a JCPOA, Iran should just not have pursued nuclear weapons. Atoms for Peace program, for example. Why did/does Iran have F-14s? Iran had the JCPOA and was still funding militants who were going around and killing people. Package deal.
> They seized them when they overthrew the Shah.
When did they overthrow the Shah?
> Then the US should show some good faith and release frozen funds and lift sanctions. To expect Iran to weaken themselves when the west has shown perfidy time and time again is, frankly, ridiculous. The war going on now has only made that more impossible.
We can do that once Iran commits to dismantling their nuclear weapons program among other things.
> They may not hate the average American, but they hate our ruling class. And I assure you, our ruling class hates them all. They are racist fascists, it's what they do. You are naive if you think people like Rubio or Trump give two shits about Iranians. They want to destabilize a regional power and exploit natural resources. The best way to do that would be to throw Iran into chaos so no one faction controls power. It would be another Iraq situation and millions of Iranians would die.
If you want to argue this point of view, then I would just argue that we don't hate Iran's people but we hate their ruling class. They're all murderous theocrats and they don't give two shits about peace they only want to destabilize the Middle East so they can export their mafia control over oil to enrich themselves. They want to destabilize the region so that they can exert power, enslave people, rape women, and murder at will.
Where does this get us? Forever war. Is that what you want? If so, maintain this perspective.
> It would be another Iraq situation and millions of Iranians would die.
Millions of Iraqis didn't die. Though many thousands did because of Iran. Iraq is a lot better off now than it was in 2002 before the war. They have a functioning parliament, for example.
Are you trying to say that the AfP program and the F14 sale were the attempts to try? You realize those were done prior to the Islamic revolution, right? What attempts outside of the JCPOA have been tried during the rule of the current government?
> When did they overthrow the Shah?
You might want to do some basic research before you speak on a topic. The shah was overthrown in 79. After Atoms for Peace, after the F14s were delivered (79 of 80, the last not delivered because of the revolution).
> We can do that once Iran commits to dismantling their nuclear weapons program among other things.
They did when they committed to the JCPOA. Then the US backed out. Perfidy, same as the negotiations during this war.
> If you want to argue this point of view, then I would just argue that we don't hate Iran's people but we hate their ruling class.
Yes, I said that. Our ruling class and their cronies hate them because they are dirty savage muslims who embarrassed the US multiple times.
> They're all murderous
People adapt to the environments they are in. The US forces violence on these people, they are violent in return. Tit for tat.
> theocrats
Our Secretary of (losing) War has Deus Vult tattooed on him and is in an insane catholic fascist offshoot. They have referenced this war on Iran as being a religious crusade many times. Our ruling class is largely zionist and support them because of end time prophecies.
> and they don't give two shits about peace they only want to destabilize the Middle East so they can export their mafia control over oil to enrich themselves.
The only thing they are destabilizing is the US imperialism in the ME and the various fascist Arab rulers that support it. "Mafia control over oil" doesn't even make sense. States are entitled to control over territory and waterways near them. If you don't want them to assert their control don't start a fucking war.
> They want to destabilize the region so that they can exert power, enslave people, rape women, and murder at will.
Ah yes, there it is. Mask off chauvinism. Not that it was hard to tell to begin with. Funny, of course, coming from a citizen of the nation who still has slavery, exports death globally, and runs torture black sites (not to mention supports the Israelis who rape people with dogs).
> Where does this get us? Forever war. Is that what you want? If so, maintain this perspective.
The US can surrender and admit defeat. Food for thought.
> Millions of Iraqis didn't die. Though many thousands did because of Iran. Iraq is a lot better off now than it was in 2002 before the war. They have a functioning parliament, for example.
Please read, I said millions of Iranians. Nearly a million people died from the GWOT, and that was before genocide was deemed normal and kosher. The suffering will be greater.
Anyway, it's clear you think Iran should have no sovereignty or free will and should just acquiesce to any and all US demands. Not much else to be said here.
> You might want to do some basic research before you speak on a topic. The shah was overthrown in 79. After Atoms for Peace, after the F14s were delivered (79 of 80, the last not delivered because of the revolution).
What happened in 1953?
I'd encourage you to develop an understanding of the timeline of events before commenting further.
> They did when they committed to the JCPOA. Then the US backed out. Perfidy, same as the negotiations during this war.
That's partly because Iran was arguably not adhering to the JCPOA and even so they were still killing people in the region and undertaking other nefarious actions which called in to question adherence to the JCPOA. But all of that is pointless because we shouldn't have to have a special snowflake agreement with Iran to not build nuclear weapons. They can just not build them and then there's no need for this like pretty much every other country.
> Yes, I said that. Our ruling class and their cronies hate them because they are dirty savage muslims who embarrassed the US multiple times.
Ok then they're just at fault too and they weren't following the JCP
> People adapt to the environments they are in. The US forces violence on these people, they are violent in return. Tit for tat.
Iran forces violence on people in the region including the US so tit for tat again.
> Our Secretary of (losing) War has Deus Vult tattooed on him and is in an insane catholic fascist offshoot. They have referenced this war on Iran as being a religious crusade many times. Our ruling class is largely zionist and support them because of end time prophecies.
Ok then we should just pursue this holy war given both countries are intent and believe it is a holy war. Whatever.
> The only thing they are destabilizing is the US imperialism in the ME and the various fascist Arab rulers that support it.
No Iran's fascist and theocratic regime is actively attacking most other countries in the Middle East and destabilizing it. Everyone else is being peaceful.
> "Mafia control over oil" doesn't even make sense.
Sure it does. The profits flow to the IRGC.
> States are entitled to control over territory and waterways near them. If you don't want them to assert their control don't start a fucking war.
This just sounds like complaining. It's like if Iran doesn't want to get bombed stop building nuclear weapons. Ok.
> Ah yes, there it is. Mask off chauvinism. Not that it was hard to tell to begin with. Funny, of course, coming from a citizen of the nation who still has slavery, exports death globally, and runs torture black sites (not to mention supports the Israelis who rape people with dogs).
We don't have slavery so that's wrong. We don't export death globally.
> and runs torture black sites (not to mention supports the Israelis who rape people with dogs).
Well they deserve it then.
> The US can surrender and admit defeat. Food for thought.
Nah
> Please read, I said millions of Iranians. Nearly a million people died from the GWOT, and that was before genocide was deemed normal and kosher. The suffering will be greater.
I did read what you wrote. First Million != millions. Second Iran killed a lot of those people. Finally was no Genocide nor would millions of Iranians die. Iran does murder its own people though. Iraq is much better off now than it was, and the Iraqis themselves will tell you that since they can now that they have a functioning parliament and no longer live under the yoke of a despot like Iran does today.
> Anyway, it's clear you think Iran should have no sovereignty or free will and should just acquiesce to any and all US demands. Not much else to be said here.
No that's your own invention that has no basis in reality. Iran is a sovereign nation but being a sovereign nation doesn't entitle you to do whatever you want without repercussions. The Iranian people will do much better if they remove the despots who rule them. I'm cheering for them, despite you and your sycophantic behavior toward the IRGC.
Clearly nothing else needs to be said here.
Anyway, enjoy not being able to buy gas in a few weeks.
haha ok - exactly how many weeks? That way I can come back and tell you that you were wrong. :)
I'm rich and drive an EV anyway so I don't really care.
> Your argument is incoherent at this point.
No it's not.
> You think Iran should just bend over after the US attacked them, and if they don't they are morally wrong. Thinking that the Iranian government should fight to maintain its sovereignty means supporting an endless war. But the US not surrendering is a-okay.
The key difference here is that the US has no real care in the region besides making sure the oil continues to flow since that's important to the global economy. Iran is the only country in the region that is disrupting that for their own benefit. If they stop trying to build a nuclear weapon and stop funding militias which violate the sovereignty of other countries, nobody would be here. The way you know this is true is because other countries don't try to build nuclear weapons or fund militias which destabilize lots of other countries (perhaps outside of Africa) and so there is no conflict.
"The Arabs did this! Israel did this! USA did this!" No - that's just a tool used by autocratic regimes to mask their own failures as they steal money and stuff. This is well known and understood.
Notice how it's everyone's fault but little ole' Iran? Poor Iran, if only they didn't take all the money they had and give it to militias for the US and Israel to use as target practice Tehran would have running water and inflation wouldn't be turning their currency into toilet paper. Oh well, I guess you can chant death to America and have nuclear weapons facilities bombed if that's what you want. Whatever.
> Iranians deserve no agency according to you.
I'd prefer they have agency by removing their theocratic government who is murdering protestors and attacking everyone in the region.
But with sovereignty comes responsibility, and Iran cannot simultaneously have what they have today and then deny others their rights. My recommendation to their government is that they stop trying to build a nuclear weapon, stop their weapons programs, stop murdering innocent civilians in their country and elsewhere, and work with the United States and others to get their country back on its feat and leave the IRGC to rot in prison cells.
No I don't care about usernames. You can respond to the points and debate them or you can toss around ad hominem attacks and I'll just parrot them back to you. Up to you.
Have you ever thought to pause and wonder why they say that?
Suppose you discovered that a UK oil company on your soil had been robbing you blind, and so you decided to nationalise your oil industry. In response to this, the UK and the US overthrew your government and installed a puppet regime. In this situation, I’m sure you would form a highly unfavourable view of the United States.
Yes I have, it's because authoritarian regimes need eternal, external enemies to mask their own failures as they pilfer the country. You talk about Iran being robbed blind, nobody forced them to spend all of their oil revenue funding militants in other countries that kill people while Tehran runs out of water and their people suffer.
You seem to have this Euro-centric view that countries like Iran aren't responsible for their behavior or that they must be innocent because of some activities going on 70+ years ago (never mind, well, general history +- 30 or more years) but given that there are only a select few countries who are experiencing such circumstances (Iran, North Korea, Cuba) while most countries are just getting along peacefully, it makes more sense to understand that these countries are simply by virtue of their repressive governments the ones who are the actual problem. Iran can stop trying to build nuclear weapons and funding militants and then their problems will be solved.
The world doesn't have to tolerate bad behavior now just because of alleged American or British bad behavior in the past. If you want to argue that Iran gets to be forever mad about 1953, then maybe the US gets to be mad at Canada for 1812?
Also, Iran isn't as bad as you make it sound. Broadly, it's an okay-ish country.
It would likely have become a liberal country by now if not for the sanctions... Their leadership's lifestyles certainly don't suggest that they want to be living in a country dominated by religion – even if they maintain that for the masses still.
Being under attack makes people more conservative on average.
My guess would be because you're bringing in some prior baggage and over-indexing on Trump and not looking at the broader history and geopolitical situation. For example, Trump wasn't even president in 2023 when Iran launched an attack on Israel via it's proxies and later launched ballistic missiles at Israel. Now that's not absolving Israel of any wrongdoing or anything, but attacking them was never going to solve the problems in Palestine and it only pushed forward predictable responses. Diplomacy and international pressure are the only real options there, but once Iran attacked Israel you sort of lose that leverage as being peaceful.
To your point about Iran becoming a liberal country if not for the sanctions, I don't see evidence for that. The west really tried and while I think it's stupid we did the JCPOA only to find Iran was still behaving poorly, funding militants to destabilize countries like Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and more, never mind arguably still pursuing a nuclear weapon (remember they enriched uranium to 40% - 60%) under the JCPOA, again not that we should need a special snowflake agreement with Iran they can just not do these bad things.
Liberal, democratic protestors even prior to the US attacking were killed. Over 30,000 of them. The sanctions that are there are there for a reason, and unfortunately there doesn't appear to be much evidence that Iran was liberalizing.
> Being under attack makes people more conservative on average.
Maybe but what does that matter? You can be conservative, which means respecting traditions and having different views without being hostile since quite literally billions of people around the planet in many countries do that every day. Also being conservative isn't a bad thing by definition despite what arrogant liberals think (which is itself a self-inflicted wound and has led to many setbacks toward their own goals).
I'm liberal about some things, conservative about others and don't particularly align with either camp but I do reject these sorts of narratives.
They definitely should. Sick of the double standards. And the "USA can do no wrong but this tech in others' hands will be bad" takes.
reddit.com/r/2020PoliceBrutality
reddit.com/r/PoliceBrutality
Oh yeah sorry this is "wHaTaBoUtIsM" so it makes our shit okay
we eat eggs from the little end and they eat from the big end.
Unfortunately, USA has never applied any sanctions equally against countries with equivalent human rights violations, which proves that "human rights violations" have never been the true reason for those sanctions, but only a cover story.
When I was young and I was listening the US propaganda emitted through "Voice of America", I actually believed a good part of it. Unfortunately, history has proven that practically none of it was true and many listeners like myself were too naive if they believed any of it.
Moreover, the so-called "sanctions" of USA are not true sanctions. True sanctions would identify a precise behavior of the sanctioned country that is the cause of the sanctions and USA would promise that the sanctions would be terminated whenever the sanctioned country would stop those actions. Those would be true "sanctions" because they would have a chance to alter the behavior of the sanctioned countries.
As it is now, no sanctioned country would change anything in what they do, even when they are "sanctioned", because they know very well that the official reasons for the sanctions are not the true reasons and whatever they do about "human rights violations" and the like will not influence in any way whether the sanctions will be terminated or not.
Many of the official reasons for various US sanctions are so ridiculous that I wonder how the US politicians are able to utter them with a straight face.
For instance, there are many Chinese companies which are sanctioned because they might provide services or products for the Chinese Army or for the Chinese government.
??? Of course they do that. Any US company that makes anything of value will also provide services or products to the US military and government. The same will do any company in any country for their military and government.
In reality, the sanctioned Chinese companies have always been those which make consumer products that provided too much competition for US companies, like those that make DRAM modules and SSDs, so we have to thank the US sanctions for the huge price increases that have stolen money from people all over the world.
Regarding "sponsorship of extremism abroad", that is also questionable. Iran has supported various organizations which want to fight against Israel, but Israel has remained at war since its creation and the reason why they are still at war and they have never made peace with their enemies is because this was the wish of the Israeli government, who prefers to be at war than at peace.
There have existed opportunities of peace for Israel, but whenever there were chances for peace the forces within Israel that are against peace have prevented it, e.g. by the murder of the prime-minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 or by the sabotage of the prime-minister Ehud Barak by Ariel Sharon and Likud in 2000.
As long as Israel will not implement an acceptable closure for the events from its creation and for their consequences, there will be people willing to fight against it, and because Israel has a crushing military superiority, the only form of fight are the "terrorist" actions. The existence of the "terrorists" is a choice made by Israel, more precisely by certain elites from Israel, for whom the continuous state of never-ending war has been extremely profitable.
I have worked for many years in Israel and more than 90% of the people that I encountered there were very nice people, but I have also seen some very bad people, who of course, like in any country, were concentrated in the government and in the management of companies, so they had much more influence than the majority.
I pitied a lot my Israeli co-workers, because they were exploited to a degree that would not be possible in most countries. Only USA might come close with its "employment at will", which gives disproportionate power to the employer.
In Israel, employees have to work much harder than in most other countries and nobody could protest against that, because that would be considered as unpatriotic, i.e. the priority for everybody is to work as hard as possible, to maintain the technological and military superiority of Israel, for fear that otherwise their neighbors would come and cut their throats. This kind of work discipline is of course very desirable for the owners of the companies, so for them it is good that Israel is permanently at war and under the menace of "terrorist" attacks.
The term "terrorist" is just an euphemism for enemies with which Israel is at war and with which it desires no peace. Moreover, even if there have been a lot of more or less innocent Israeli victims (but all have chosen willingly to be part of a military conflict), Israel has always succeeded to kill a much greater number of "terrorists" or persons related to them or persons who just happened to be close to them. Israel does not want to make any concessions for peace, because it reckons that peace will be obtained eventually, over the dead bodies of all enemies, but there is no hurry for that, because war is good for the economy.
In these circumstances, applying "sanctions" against countries who "support terrorists" has no legal basis, but it is just joining the conflict between Israel and its enemies, as an ally of Israel.
Of course any sovereign country may do this, but they should present it as what it is, i.e. as taking sides in a conflict, and not as something which has any legal or ethical reasons.
More countries turning away from the United States/Europe for good, this is another one of those cases of winning or without firing a shot.
Iran is much like Israel as a country... Their territory isn't safe, and so they maintain a forward defense strategy that keeps enemies from directly reaching their borders where they are vulnerable.
It's more a result of the international order being primitive, and there being a lack of intelligent leadership on the global level that can establish trust.
Plus, one has to be realistic about the sheer amount of harm the US has caused internationally – and even on Americans in the past (chemical weapon tests? the outrageous number of people in prison?).
Pretending that Iran is somehow especially evil is childish.
It's more that that's also a "human government".
Unfortunately for them, they're not ruled by super geniuses...
Even if you don't care about how Iran treats its own population, you should care about how it treats others because one day it might be you.
Iran's ideology is expansionalist. They want to export their ideas far and wide. While also physically suppressing their opponents.
Since the emergence of two global superpowers after WW2, most armed conflicts were, essentially, between those two. Directly or indirectly. If the two could find a peaceful solution, the world at large had a good day. And for a while it seemed like we might be left with just one superpower, and so no conflicts at all. Only policing.
The whole "multipolar" spiel you might hear from powers that challenge this policing is what is going to result in a long and bloody struggle for world domination. It won't be like the world wars we remember, where most of the world had to choose one of the two sides. It will be a quagmire of more local conflicts with very volatile alliances and a lot more casualties overall. More like Italian city states.
It's necessary to police Iran and similar bad countries because if their challenge of the power monopoly succeeds, the world will be hurled into anarchy equipped with very deadly weapons...
As always, the question for the declining hegemon is whether a new order can arise peacefully or not. The UK managed to go peacefully in the end, but only after two brutal and deadly world wars sapped them of their remaining strength. Still, their acquiescence allowed them to retain an outsized seat at the table.
China doesn’t seem interested in becoming a unipolar hegemon, at least based on public statements and openly published policy/position papers, so perhaps they have learned that it’s bad to be the hegemon from watching both the UK and the US take it on the chin. Rather than the Yuan becoming the default international currency, it’s possible that Keynes’s Bancor (or something like it) may finally replace the notion of a singular reserve currency, which always fails in predictable ways.
The false “norm” of peace and quiet in Western suburbs will finally be ending, that’s all. We may even have our own Yugoslav moment, although I hope that’s not the case.
Oh, and I have an anecdote, somewhat relevant to the situation.
So, my grandma lived through the Nazi occupation of the Western Ukraine. She died in the early 90s, so, the events I'm describing must've happened some time between the Chernobyl disaster and the fall of the Soviet Union. I was an elementary school student and had a very simple picture of the Great Patriotic War: Nazis were bad, we were all around good, and we showed them...
One day she took me to the local farmers' market. On our way there we had to come by a liquor store, and there was, prostrated on the ground alcoholic who must've fallen asleep waiting for the store to open.
Holding her nose, my grandma uttered "had Germans been here, this would never have happened!"
Her admiration for Nazis came to me as a bit of a shock, but I made this mental trick, explaining it away by describing my grandma as "strict and law-abiding" and didn't think much of the incident until much, much later. Eventually, by talking to others who lived through the occupation and trying to understand what was so attractive about the Nazis that a lot of people welcomed them with open arms, I realized that the Nazis, beside the bad things they are known for today, leaned heavily into upholding law and order. In a Doctor Doom sort of way, but still. A lot of people were willing to give away their freedoms in exchange for the very "radical" law enforcement... And this is the aspect that doesn't get a lot of attention when the Nazis are mentioned in the history class...
So, there's a part of me that wants law and order at any cost, be it the US bombing the shit out of some country (it could be my country, if necessary! although, understandably, I'd rather it be some other country, better yet none at all). Just so that, by and large, there'd be peace and stability... On the other hand: fairness and all that... :)
There is only one country in the Middle East with an aggressive expansionist mentality, and it’s not Iran.
And what’s with the superpower commentary, you neglected to connect it to Iran and are you saying Russia is bigger than China?
I don't understand the question about Russia vs China: bigger in what sense? Geographically, it surely is, but that's not likely what you were going for.
To comment on expansionism: there are several ideologies in the region that seek to establish some sort of a "center of gravity" to attach more territory / resources to it. Islamic Revolutionary Guards is one of them, it's been "copied" by others s.a. various Hezballah organizations in different countries or Ansarallah. If eg. Hezballah wins in Lebanon, they will become a sort of a copy of Iran. Think like Warsaw Pact countries were "copies" of the Soviet Union.
Another such ideology / force is Muslim Brotherhood. Broadly, any Al-Qaeda affiliates belong there. This is a more popular / organic Arab thing as opposed to Islamic Guards, who are a foreign influence. They, however, lack a "center of gravity", but, potentially, they can take over Egypt as the current government is unpopular, while Muslim Brotherhood is. Eventually, there might be a popular revolt that will topple the current military government and then it's very likely that Egypt will try to expand its influence over the Middle East by violent means.
And there's a list of failures / non-threats, s.a. BAAS (Arab Communists, essentially): they used to be popular during the Cold War but now nobody cares about them. Wahhabi ideology that was propped by Saudis for a while, but now it's basically forgotten. Western liberal news like to mention "Greater Israel": this idea is about as popular in Israel as Scientology is in the US. It does exist in some form in the very fringe part of Israeli society, but it has zero chance of having a popular support. It makes the news domestically mostly because of how unrealistic and out of touch it is. It has about as much influence on Israeli foreign policy as Scientology does in the US.
I keep hearing from consumers of Islamofascist narratives about the “aggressive expansionism” of Israel. Can you tell me by how many square miles Israel expanded control over in total in the past 50 years?
We can wholeheartedly disagree with the US's war on Iran without pretending Iran is a 'good' international actor. It's a rogue state and has been for decades.
besides that its quite likely they will have intercepted most key exchanges since thats still a problem and pretty easy to see happening if you say, tap the backbone -_-.
US and few other have really futuristic capabilities here. its hard to imagine snowden was 14 years of secret innovation ago... it has only gotten much worse friend.
I'm not sure that isolating Iran in particular has much of an effect because countries don't want to be in Russia's orbit, China's orbit is Only Good for China, and so aside from a European-only/led system the best option would still be the current state/system.
The best solution to all of these problems is for Iran to just behave like pretty much all other countries, but in lieu of that and in lieu of us having a desire to really go to war in Iran, we're just going to have to take actions like this because we can't have this regime opposed to us and western values and pursuing nuclear weapons (prior to, during, and after JCPOA) but then enjoying the benefits of the American-led financial system.
If Iran, China, North Korea, and Russia want to get together and create their own crappy Intranet that nobody uses, well, more power to them. Hope they have fun.
> If push your opponent into a corner, then don't get upset when they jump over the wall into the wild where you can't catch them anymore. See also Chinese chips and AI.
I think this is a gross mischaracterization of the evolution of these arrangements. There's a lot of nuance here, but the United States helped get China into the WTO based on the premise that they'd liberalize and then what happened? State-directed investment, banning of competitor products, subsidized over-capacity to deindustrialize other countries, artificially cheap currency to boost exports. Russia? They were part of the The NATO-Russia Founding Act and then decided they'd rather do war and stuff. Iran? Won't stop pursuing nuclear weapons for no reason (among other things), so now their economy is going to tank. So it's really the opposite. Even when you think about the JCPOA, let's say it wasn't torn up. Why was/is Iran still funding militant groups that are destabilizing other countries in the region? The west, not just the US mind you, did its damned best to include these specific countries into the western rules-based order, allowed gross injustices and breaches of good conduct, and still tried only to now itself be backed into a corner (Iran, Russia invading Ukraine, Chinese economic destruction) and has to finally respond.
As a civilization, and yes that includes folks in the EU even if you are mad at the current president, we need to stop assuming we're the problem or we're the bad guys by default and start holding other countries to account.
BRICS begs to dffer.
BRICS = Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa.
Why would that matter?
TL;DR the world is leaving the premises where the US unilaterally decides which population should starve.
> TL;DR the world is leaving the premises where the US unilaterally decides which population should starve.
They're not. The US doesn't unilaterally decide to starve a population. Dream on.
I remember your handle, ericmay, because you have been showing up in almost every thread about the tariffs or Iran and following this logic. Something Must Be Done, therefore Anything That Is Being Done Is Good. How dare you question if the Thing Being Done is actually against our interests? Do you not feel the warm fuzzy feeling of Something Being Done?
It's a frankly childish view of politics where virtue is all you need no matter the outcome. Time to grow up.
Depending on who you are, Western CAs can come with some availability problems, but thanks to certificate transparency, you don't even have to trust the CA if you mostly care about security. Take a wild guess as to whether an Iranian CA will support that...
The main problem with sanctions is that it's the wrong people on the receiving end. Russian oligarchs and military businessmen have exactly zero problems managing their money, while ordinary people who flew russia into the EU - they face unsurmountable piles of unsolvable problems due to sanctions.
The only thing that would work is bribing the Iranian military (perhaps the non-IRGC part) like they did in Syria. Exile Iranians of course won't fight but they rather talk and demand that others fight.
Israel’s neighbors Jordan and Egypt have made peace with Israel and have had no issues since then.
You may have been misled by anti-Israel propaganda.
The governments may have, but I can assure you the average citizen of those countries haven't, as they still have morals and haven't got US funding to buy their morals.
The UN Human Rights Council just confirmed US blockade against Cuba violates human rights and international law, citing Article 33 of Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits collective punishment.[2]
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-1...
Like freezing Russian assets and breaking faith internationally... Gotta know what is not actually worth doing.
They need some Alexander Hamilton like people to teach them the basics that only through establishing trust and predictability can the US be strong and have access to international money at scale.
... The lack of talent among these people is disturbing.
But then, Team Trump is really a bunch of rebels. They have no respect for the US Government or how it functions.
The Democrats recently don't either.
They're basically going to just give up the advantages the US gained after WW2.
It is clearly bad if the whole of Iran gets their own CA infrastructure which the NSA can't as easily spy on.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24085559 (citations)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49225112 (citations)
(sysadmin/network admin/devops/infra engineer a lifetime ago, mostly familiar with what bootstrapping this looks like)
Sure, but that will require more than 20 people, 5 million USD and the sole will of the Iranian government.
Finaly one that acknowledges...
As just one example, you can take a guess as to whether such a CA will support certificate transparency...
I guess you could say a loss is a loss ...
If it doesn't cost the US anything and is strategically in their favor (via weakening an opponent), I really don't see why they couldn't have.
On top of that, it'll make others find alternatives quickly, as has already been happening with e.g. payments and other critical infrastructures. What an incredible waste of soft power built over decades.
How's the support for X.509 "Name Constraints" these days:
* https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5280#section-4.2.1....
Would restricting it to only dot-ir domains be a mitigation?
The main technical way I know of doing this would be by putting TLS public keys in DNS (DANE, RFC 6698), but then you have to make sure that DNS packets are not fiddled with, so you need to bring in DNSSEC.
It would be great to have a widely-recognizable pseudodomain out there where the names were key hashes. It would actually graft really easily into DNSSEC. The zone format doesn't have to change at all; you just declare that if the KSK hash matches the domain label under this specific TLD, you don't need to check upstream of that. Then you add a P2P protocol for getting the actual data, and start slowly pushing that protocol down the resolver tree to incrementally decentralize everything.
What would you suggest as an alternative? TOFU?
I could see that for local applications (e.g. making mDNS/.local and private IP certs TOFU capable by default would be amazing, and maybe even for some explicit hobbyist public TLDs?), but I don’t think I’d love it for my bank or email provider.
I think some servers do not send a copy of the root certificate to the client. In this case, what I described above might already be possible even if that feature has not already been added to existing implementations, as long as it does not require the installed certificate to be self-signed.
There is no reason to give money to US middlemen for everything you do.
The whole of the EU should do this, too. I stopped using Internet banking after my bank moved from SMS Tan to hardware Tan generator (one of which didn't work) to forced mobile app. No thanks.
Also, they stopped capitalizing the "i" in "internet" some time ago. Wake up from the year 2000 already.
People in many South American countries should be highly motivated to use crypto because fiat is usually damn shit.
I was motivated because cash machines were extremely crappy for a tourist (when you could find an ATM that even had any money in its cassettes). Argentina was a USD8 withdrawal fee plus the super shitty official exchange rate and half the time you could only withdraw maybe USD30 maximum so you maybe needed to do multiple transactions. I also had NZD bank fees and poor exchange rates from my own NZ bank added.
It was a total shitshow trying to use crypto. I would honestly have been better wandering around with gold in my pockets.
Crypto was high risk: dangerously unsafe. Also mostly unavailable unless you were really lucky. Complex. Massively taxed for recipients if they used anything that officially supported crypto. Arbolitos (street money changers) would take a 10-15% cut and it always felt super effing dodgy (felt like a risk of getting kidnapped).
I can't recommend it. There was no way to learn how to do crypto transactions safely, even though I have conversational Spanish.
Scary as all fuck. My kind of holiday, but I couldn't recommend anyone take those risks unless they're as stupid an idiot as me.
I'm mostly relaxed about countries taking advantage of me (or other tourists), but South America was so OTT that I mostly wouldn't go back. That said, I loved Brazil even though I can't speak a word of Portuguese. That's the only place I would make an effort to return to from my 3 months travelling in South America.
And you should never allow anyone to take advantage of you or any tourist. It is never acceptable, and it happens because of relaxed dotards who don't fight or prevent it. As a tourist, being taken advantage in dollars is what I consider scary.
I assume if you live in say Argentina, then you really have little other choice.
But they don't have the knowledge to be safe, even though they strongly understand the need for security. I prefer not to advise other people to perform risky actions.
> you should never allow anyone to take advantage of you or any tourist
And you should never tell other people what to do.
I am actually pretty okay with being generous and paying "too much". I've traveled to places where I'm relatively a fucking rich bastard. I don't see that I should be a selfish arsehole towards people that earn cents compared to me.
I hate foreign governments ripping me off because I know the money isn't going towards anything useful.
But I attempt to be thoughtfully generous towards individuals.
Although I avoid tipping culture (as a New Zealander it feels prostitutionally sleazy to me).
I remember some Germans telling me I was ruining it for other tourists by not haggling enough. Fuck those tight wankers.
Tipping culture is a distortion of what tipping should be. Tipping should be a reward for "unexpectedly extraordinary" service - this by definition is a rare occurrence.
The government doesn't ask me when it prints money to pay the interest on its debt. It applies this inflation tax regardless of how much income tax one pays, which compounds hugely over the years. It is in this way the biggest scammer, and I believe I already declared my lack of support for scammers.
I dislike scammers, and when travelling I practice my skills at recognising them. I'm okay at avoiding getting targeted (using a variety of techniques).
If scammers are feeding their families, and relatively rich tourists are sufficiently incautious, then I don't have huge sympathy for the tourists. The rules of the street are everywhere in the world.
I don't support drug users in my home town either.
Of course I've run into many selfish arsehole scammers including ones with their police on thier side.
Options against bent cops in foreign countries are more limited.
But yes, my government always wants to increase taxation, and they are rather deceptive about everything.
But I pay my taxes and I'm mostly okay with what it is used for. Without our social and legal infrastructure, I wouldn't have got anything.
weak src: me, a citizen from a country with high inflation rates
As for transaction confirmation times, there are cryptocurrencies in common use that confirm nearly immediately. The lack of your knowledge shows.
www.pagoefectivo.la
You select 'pay in cash' in the online checkout, walk to your neighborhood convenience mart, and they scan a QR code (or you give them a code if you don't have a smartphone) linked to your checkout session. It rings up the total, and you pay the clerk in cash. Once you hand over the cash and the clerk hits confirm in their POS system, the online store is notified instantly that you have paid, and your order moves directly into processing or shipping.
Post office is also used for things like utility payments. You can pay them online, or write down the invoice id, the recipient, and pay with cash at the post office. I'm not sure how it works from the recipient perspective: i.e. how would you register your business with the post office, but, the existence of some such payments implies it should be possible.
NB. Also, technically, these services while physically provided in the post office are sometimes referred to as being provide by "postal bank". I'm not sure why it's called a bank though, since it doesn't provide key banking services s.a. loans or check-in accounts... Maybe it's just a "historic" name.
Accounting cash is extremely complicated and whether you like it or not, you will be forced to do an online transaction at some point.
Are you going to be wiring money across the country to buy stuff?
Instead of going back we should stop centralizing everything.
We are centralizing the internet with Cloudfare. We are centralizing mobile compute with Android/Apple
I don't want to be dependent on any of those platforms to access my bank
This is highly country specific. In many countries, (at least domestic) ATM withdrawals are still free.
> you massively increase your risk of getting hit by identity theft via compromised ATM.
What exactly does a compromised ATM do in terms of identity theft that a POS terminal can't do? Both can read your card, which today is not a big problem anymore, and certainly not yours or your bank's.
https://crt.sh/?id=22899279066 (Revoked: privilegeWithdrawn)
There is the problem of TLS and X.509 being used with centralized authorities like this, even though it is not inherent to TLS nor to X.509 (although they were designed to be used in this way). In some circumstances, you can get a copy of the certificate (which might be self-signed) from somewhere else and then check that it matches in this circumstances. In other circumstances there are other things that can be done (e.g. TOFU, which has a different set of problems, but also has advantages in a different set of circumstances). What the security requirements are will depend on the circumstances, which can also depend on the user's intentions; they should not have to depend on a centralized authority.
(There is the issue that a single X.509 certificate cannot have multiple issuers, though. There is also the issue that X.509 certificates cannot contain unsigned extensions (they could be added after the signature, but an implementation might check for additional fields after the signature and reject a certificate that has any). Although an alternative schema can be made (I have done so), it would not work with the existing protocols.)
If I'm an entity such as a bank, I should be able to sign my own certificate and provide the public keys to my clients which then can use it to both encrypt communications and to make sure you are talking with the entity you want to talk to. Am I missing anything?
How does this part happen? How does the client know that the entity providing them with that public key is who they claim to be?
All caches are just functionally useless layers..., so that's that.
You can give out the same claim over DNS directly without any extra third party involvement in the form of CA.
The role CAs play is to be a trusted identity verifier so we don't have to have millions of people driving around to do key exchanges in person.
I think the idea of a CA is good but it should be distributed somehow
CAs are quite distributed already. You probably have a couple dozen or even a hundred different root CAs installed right now, and you can install whatever ones you like if necessary.
It won't do for all circumstances (as some other comments mention), but when it is possible, it would be a good idea.
[1] Note that every civilised country should be a problem for Israel- but Iran is the only one that actually dares opposing it.
So it would be fine if they were against any other country engaged in genocide, but not against Israel because it's Jewish? Is that your defense of Israel?
> We want to live like ordinary people in the U.S., Europe, and Israel, and be allied with them
You want to be allied with a genocidal state and the country that has forced you into poverty for the last decades?
In the same year:
Iran killed at-least 5000 civilian protesters.
Russia killed around 1,800 Ukrainian civilians.
5000 were killed in Sudan. 3000 in Haiti.
You are fine will all that (or will deny it), because you only care when the Jews are involved.
I feel like not being able to use US CAs is just a cheap excuse to enact what they've wanted for a while. Same in Russia.
Their answer? They're now asking users to install root certs from the Russian ministry of communications. So it can now MITM all the encrypted traffic in Russia.
It's not that hard to find a CA in a more aligned regime.
Rolling your own MITM CA as a replacement just looks like something that was waiting for an excuse.
Another win for the US.
Trump is intentionally playing into Chinese, Russian Noth Korean, Iranian hands
They must be impeached/removed regardless of intent
Nobody voted for this