[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

 the broken, on 08 January 2026 - 11:04 PM, said:

I feel like there are some relevant differences between Iran and the US.

'One person killed' v 'opened fire on crowd', for instance.

Trump wanted to have protesters shot in the legs during the George Floyd protests.

https://www.axios.co...ence-presidency

I expect that's most likely going to become at least a de facto policy. Granted, the fact that they're still bothering to try to claim "self-defense" as a justification, despite clear slow-motion video evidence to the contrary from the New York Times and the Washington Post, instead of simply saying they can shoot protesters in the face for being protesters, is... something at least. He hasn't gone full Putin yet, at least in terms of his administration's justifications, however flimsy.

https://www.bloomber...iefing-americas

Back on the topic of Iran... here's an interesting take:

https://www.donotpan...ar-edges-closer

The author points that one major issue with Trump trying to "vassalize" Iran (and extort and take control over their oil reserves) as he's "vassalizing" Venezuela would be that China gets 15% of their oil from Iran, much more than what they had been getting from Venezuela---though China had also been investing substantially in Venezuelan oil production, and Chinese diplomats met with Maduro just hours before he was abducted, and were still there during the abduction.

https://www.yahoo.co...-185529692.html

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 08 January 2026 - 11:21 PM

[the broken]

And yet, here we are, five years later, and it didn't happen, while in Iran something like 40 people are known to be killed in the last few days.

[Werthead]

Heavy clashes between protesters and regime forces in Shiraz. In Heravi District, Tehran the crowd might be larger than any we've seen to date, and security forces seem to have declined to try to contain them. Very large crowds in Mashhad today.

The regime cut the power in Punak District, Tehran but the demonstrators used flashlights and phone lights to illuminate the area instead. The Ashrafi Esfahani intersection is the nexus for protests in this area. Drones were spotted overhead. Farahzadi Square has been occupied after security forces apparently refused to fire on them.

In Lorestan Province, there are reports of armed clashes between the IRGC and Kurdish forces.

A transportation strike in Tehran, but the regime bussed in replacements to keep the transport system operating.

Some of the regime forces helping crack down on the demonstrations have been chanting Hezbollah slogans, suggesting that Iran is finding disdainful employment for its former allies driven out of Lebanon.

Currency exchange operations in Tehran seem to have ceased and cash machines have stopped working.

A large contingent of American aircraft relocated from the continental US to the UK a few weeks ago have departed and landed in Al-Udeid Airbase in Qatar, and airbases in Saudi Arabia. MQ-4C drones are overflying the Straits of Hormuz but that seems pretty standard. Some claims that two carrier groups could be dispatched to the Middle East seem premature. If the US wants to hit regime targets in Iran, it can do so with forces already in-theatre, or in conjunction with the Israelis. Iranians seem mixed on US strikes due to many key regime targets being in built-up urban areas, making civilian casualties probable (and 100% don't want the Israelis involved).

At least one government building in Tehran is on fire, possibly the tax administration building.

Absolutely huge numbers marching along Valiasr Street, one of Tehran's main thoroughfares and (huh) "the longest street in the Middle East."

Iranians in London tore down the Islamic Republic flag from the Iranian Embassy and replaced it with the Lion-and-Sun flag instead, the flag of the pre-Ayatollah regime. The Iranian Embassy in London is famous as the site of a 1980 hostage crisis.

Lindsey Graham has apparently said that "help is on the way." Whether that strikes horror or hope into Iranian hearts is another matter. The WSJ is saying that the US military has already agreed what government targets to hit and when, and the death toll is basically past what Trump considered reasonable.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 10 January 2026 - 11:46 PM

[Mentalist]

Unless the protesters can seize armories and defend themselves, I'm not expecting a positive outcome.

We've seen this in play out in Belarus, and in Georgia. If the regime is unwilling to budge, no amount of peaceful protesters in the streets sway them. And if IRGC and their foreign auxiliaries are willing to gun down protesters en masse, then you won't change the regime without organized resistance.

[Werthead]

The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group has been redeployed from the South China Sea to the Middle East.

The UK has advised against all travel to Israel.

Multiple airlines are rerouting flights away from Iranian airspace.

[Mentalist]

I fail to see how airstrikes make the Iranian regime relent.

Hate to be a downer on this, but I just don't see how this is supposed to work constructively.

[Werthead]

The US has sent 15 F-15Es from RAF Lakenheath in the UK to Jordan, joining a growing number of aircraft redeployed from across the region. There are around 35 F-15s in Jordan, whilst the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group has cleared the Straits of Malacca and is now in the Indian Ocean, heading towards the Persian Gulf, though its precise staging area remains to be determined.

At current speed, the Lincoln air wing will be able to support operations over Iran in 4-6 days, depending on what range and loitering time they are aiming for.

Israel is apparently still scrambling to prepare for incoming fire. There's a lot of unease there as they have not been able to fully restock their interceptors from last summer's exchange of fire, and there's some rumours of wrangling over whether to stay out of a US strike and only respond to any fire directed at Israel, or to join the US to ensure the first strike is so massive Iran's ability to respond is correspondingly limited (Israel did destroy a substantial number of Iranian ballistic missiles on the ground last time). Netanyahu may use the excuse of his anger over the composition of the "Nobel-Worthy Trump Best Boy Board for Peace in Gaza or Whatever" to try to stay out of it.

At the moment the chances of a US strike on Iran at the end of this week and over the weekend looks pretty high.

[Abyss]

Here's an interesting twist being thrown around... paraphrasing.... 'The Iranian government supports Hamas. The protestors are trying to overthrow the Iranian government. If you support the Iranian protestors, you are working against Hamas and Palestinians, and supporting Israel.'

...it's an empty argument in a practical sense, because the nuance/details are lost on most, and whomever ends up in power in Iran will inevitably either resume support of Hamas or else some near-enough to be identical replacement, but the positional knots some commentators are twisting themselves into has been fascinating.

[Werthead]

A whole bunch of Hamas forces kicked out of Lebanon are right in Iran with the security forces now. The entwinement between Hamas and the Iranian state is extraordinarily strong.

If the regime was to fall, Hamas along with it, and the replacement Iranian regime returned to the perspective of the pre-Revolution state (not a given at all), then the relationship would be utterly different. Shia Persian Iran is not an Arab state and is historically somewhat wary of the Sunni Arab states to its west and across the Gulf. It was an informal ally of Israel (and the first Muslim-majority country after Turkey to recognise it) until the 1979 Revolution, and afterwards Iranian intelligence officials would denounce the existence of Israel in one moment and then provide information to Israel the next to help weaken their mutual foe, Iraq and Saddam Hussein: some persistent claims that Iranian intelligence may have helped Israel decide to bomb the Iraqi nuclear programme in 1981 (how the wheel turns).

The Iranian people are not in love with Israel, especially the current government, but they are not as ideologically opposed to Israel's existence in their souls in the same way as many Sunni Arab states, and as the thawing with various Sunni Arab nations over decades has shown (even Saudi Arabia was preparing to recognise Israel before October 2023), even that's not as deep-seated as people think.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Quote

Trump was asked what his response was to [...] taunts and threats issued by Iranian leadership aimed at [him].

"[...] if anything ever happens, the whole country's going to get blown up," Trump responded.

[...] "But I have very firm instructions," he continued. "Anything happens, they're gonna wipe 'em off the face of this Earth."

Trump Threatens to Blow Up 'Whole Country' in Wild Warning - The Daily Beast

Threatening to blow up everything and murder everyone isn't likely to make the Iranian populace more open to US military assistance...

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

I should add: especially since US military airstrikes against regime targets would almost certainly result in violent retaliation against the US, which seems to be exactly what Trump is pledging to respond to by "blowing up" the entire country. So basically: if the US military comes to help you directly, they'll kill you.

Perhaps Trump is also trying to signal to other nations that he's willing to commit mass murder of civilians and mass destruction of infrastructure.

I'd guess some of Trump's Zionist supporters will enjoy the way he's echoing the Iranian regime's past threats to destroy Israel.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: Today, 01:09 PM