guerrilla

> There was a study showing almost every revolution happened not because of ideology but over the price of bread.

His name was Marx. ;)

Yeah. We'll see. Under what conditions will you consider yourself right or wrong? My prediction is after killing a few more heads of state, disabling some more striking capability that they'll back off under pressure from the Arab states. Trump will declare it as a victory regardless of what happens and everyone will forget about it. Iran will eventually rebuild itself as it just did, but this time it will take longer (Trump even said that himself, contradicting himself earlier).

You are right to be skeptical. Khomeini died and now Khamenei is supreme leader. He too will have a successor if he dies (or is dead as Isreal clamed a moment ago). Iran has spent the last few weeks picking out successors four deep for each office. It's been the main news besides the "negotiations".

Stop it. You're not helping. This kind of thing is really counterproductive. Welcome your comrade with open arm. Give him time to warm up. Don't be an absolutist.

Obviously. They would have kidnapped or assassinated leadership many decades ago otherwise. They have tried and failed many times. They're talking about trying to break the state though, which isn't something the US tried in Vz. This'll be much harder.

I don't think they can accomplish their goal even with that. I will be very surprised by regime change.

You're moving the goalpost now. This started with US imperialism in 1953. Iran wouldn't do what the US wanted, so they installed a puppet, like they always do all over the world.

It seems you needed more than half a day because you needed to go back further than 40 years.

> Houthi and Huzb do not have the organized armies to wage long-term war where they conquer territories.

Hezbollah did. They did it before and they were predicted by all analysts to be able to do it again, which is why Israel took the route they did with the espionage, assassinations and terrorism instead of confronting them on the battlefields.

The Houthis also are doing that right now.

> The world in which America is a military superpower.

No, you missed my point. Iran dies no matter what happens. Better go down after eliminating Israel, taking out a huge % of the world's oil supply and banging up some Americans. Instead they were extremely restrained, squandering their capacities.

> They have been. They've been getting levelled. If the U.S. can staunch the flow of arms to the Houthis, they'll become irrelevant, too.

Incorrect.

Yeah, my understanding as well. Seems more like a cult that the US got too excited about.

Well, Iraq is not that simple because Iran has also invested a lot in Iraq with various Shia forces. Right now Iraq is trying not to get involved. That's been their news all day. Maybe that is a sign that the Iranian investment is paying off, or just that the Iraqis are tired as fuck especially after the first Iran-Iraq invasion and then them being fucked by the US.

The US hasn't left Afghanistan alone. They were driven out of the country by force. They are still attacking it in multiple different ways and will continue to do so until they are defeated. Time did not end when the US was kicked out. They aren't just going to give up their goals.

I don't know what you're talking about. It sounds like you might be saying Israelis who elected Likud (and the supporting parties) are not innocent. If that's what you mean, then I agree, but that wasn't what I was referring to.

I was speaking of the Gazans who originally elected Hamas to protect them but where Hamas eventually decided to sacrifice masses of them to achieve some of their goals. They knew what would happen and did it anyway, without the people's consent.

> It made sense for iran to try to negotiate with the US because the alternative was a war they had no chance to win.

They have no chance of winning no matter what. At least inflict some damage on your enemy while you die like Hamas chose (although I disagree with the fact that they chose that for a lot of innocent people too.)

The US isn't ever going to leave anyone, let alone Iran, alone. The options are a) fight and cease to exist and b) don't fight and cease to exist.

> Are we supplying arms to groups?

Yes. The US supports the monarchy, the Kurds and MeK. The CIA was revealed to have armed MeK (despite designation) and my guess is that they do with the Kurds too. The CIA also talks to the Balochi groups as well although I don't know how organized or armed they are.

Needless to say, "regime change" would in reality mean civil war like Syria or collapse like Libya.

> It gives us a regional coalition partner. That's never a bad thing, regardless of circumstances.

You missed the point. The fact that it requires two of them to gang up on Iran says something about how capable Iran is in defending itself.

I don't understand Iran, Hezbollah's and the Houthis' patience with the US actually. It's absolutely shocking. After the US betrayed ALL of it's own fucking allies, in what world does it make sense to negotiate with them?

The Houthis are still "threatening" to do things today after already being decimated and Hezbollah's strength more than halved.

I don't support any of these creeps but if any of them were minimally rational, they would have all gone to total war with Israel and the US the minute they realized what Hamas was doing on October 7th. They look even more naive than Europeans at this point.

What does it matter? There won't be any consequences for it. He can just do this now and then later the supreme court or congress will say something that also won't matter. The trade war wasn't legal, was struck down, yet is still happening.

You seem to have forgotten that the US attacked Iran first, which made this regime even possible in the first place.

This sounds exactly like one of those birds-eye technocratic moves which inevitably destroys the system it tries to fix because of a failure to properly understand it, which nobody really can since it grew organically for actual reasons. Classic nerd overconfidence.

Yeah, I agree with you both. Lesser evils do exist. At least there's some pretense of democracy and not just spy on everyone without limit without telling anyone. If it wasn't for Snowden, it'd still just be us "conspiracy theorists". (Anyone remember the 90s?)

There is no "good will" argument being made here. The state doesn't care about good, it cares about it's own survival. Being independent from foreign interference in the software they use and having deep insight into what residents within the territory of that state are talking about are critical to that mission. It has nothing to do with morals. It is a machine.

Nope. The key sentence was at the end of the letter. At least we know one person who didn't read it. ;)

> This is symbolism

I don't think so. It's more complicated than that. The state is not a monolith. Different heads are doing different things and it's a enormous bureaucracy. The divisions pumping out Android will eventually catch up to what's going on and the vulnerability they're exposing themselves to. These things take time. It doesn't all happen at once. People (who are not very technical, barely knowing what a computer is) need to understand what's going on and that can take a while. Let's just hope they figure it out before it matters.

Fair enough. I think I cracked the case though: they probably have someone who isn't "them" read the letters though, a third party like another law firm or some contractor that offers that service specifically.

> catch-22

That's not really a catch-22. It's just a contradiction.

That's interesting. It could be. Maybe some day we'll find out.

That's not a counterpoint to what I said.

Whataboutism.

The evidence that their numbers were accurate was just presented to you in this very thread.