Werthead, on 18 June 2025 - 05:55 PM, said:
Israel is not engaging with the internal opposition, who could possibly take over the whole country in an interim government situation, but they are engaging with the Kurds, the Khuzestani Arabs, the Iranian Azerbaijanis, and the Sistan/Baluchestan separatist movement, which advocates for the formation of a breakaway country called Balochistan (which also claims parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, for maximum potential shitstormery). These breakaway groups could simply tear the country apart, leaving rump Iran in the middle to fall into utter chaos. There is no guarantee that a post-Ayatollah Iran will be more liberal/democratic/friendly. There is a nontrivial chance that even more extremist hardliner elements could take over, perhaps with some intervention from the Taliban in Afghanistan. Iran could become Syria write large, with 90 million people seeking to flee, and with many of them with families in the diaspora, many countries could be faced with a refugee crisis to make the previous ones look modest in comparison.
America has relocated tankers and F-35s from its base at Lakenheath in the UK to the Middle East, and some rumours that B-2s have landed at Diego Garcia.
... but since Israel is almost certainly going to be extremely unpopular in Iran, could it be better for the internal opposition if they
don't seem to be engaging with Israel---at least in terms of what's public knowledge? And even if they were secretly coordinating with Israel, they'd want to appear maximally independent of Israel. OTOH if Israel's engagement with would-be separatist ethnic groups is substantial enough to help them cause chaos---in a bid to further weaken the current Iranian regime, or a violent extremist regime thereafter---then yes, it could be a major disaster. Some experts are speculating that Israel may be aiming more for regime
collapse... and not caring much about the consequences outside of Israel. If the regime collapses, the US will almost certainly have to intervene on the ground---at least to deal with the nuclear material.