Yes. I have the same questions.
In Venezuela, yes, there is a likelihood that better people will come to power. Not a guarantee but a likelihood. What Venezuela needs to give up for that to happen is its system of economic relations. What Iran needs to give up is its religion. People attach much more strongly to religion, so it’s a very different proposition in comparison with Venezuela.
I’ve been mostly offline since Friday, yet I’ve seen several videos of supposedly Iranian women wiggling their butts to signal joy over the impending fall of the ayatollah regime. It doesn’t matter if the videos are fake. They point to what we all know. It’s about bombing Iranians out of burqas and into butt-wiggling. Even if they are all super enthusiastic about that (which of course they aren’t), tomorrow the consequences of the butt-wiggling philosophy are going to hit, and then what? Who’s going to be responsible?
Look at how Russians feel about the implantation of capitalism, which they embraced at first and weren’t bombed into. Look at how livid they now are about it. In Iran, we are messing with something much deeper.
I’m not seeing many reasons to be happy about any of it, to be honest.
Clarissa's Blog 
From an Israeli military expert:
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“What Iran needs”
Having talked to a few Iranians irl and following what I can… I think it would have been wonderful if Iranians had been able to overthrow the mullahs who are, by all accounts widely loathed (this opinion is not the result of seeing a meme or anything it’s one of the political stories I’ve been following for years)..
I think the country has huge potential but has been hamstringed by a stupid oligarchy.
That said, this type of overthrowing the government for them…. never works so we’re back to why do such a dumb thing…
And I still haven’t heard of any credible story about why Iran has it out with Israel… Anyone want to say something that makes sense cause again, it looked a lot like ritualistic public threats not backed by much directly.
I would like to wish Israel well but they lie non-stop with no shame whatsoever and never own up to making mistakes or abusing the US’s generosity.
Acting like an ally rather than constantly making unreasonable demands would be a nice start…
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When I say it people have a problem!
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“I still haven’t heard of any credible story about why Iran has it out with Israel”
Iran is a natural regional power and they saw themselves as filling the power vacuum that would follow Israel’s collapse. Also, compared to Sunni Islam, Shia Islam emphasizes that this is an unjust world, has been ever since Muhammad’s son-in-law Ali lost the succession to the Umayyads. They combined Shiite revolutionism with thirdworldist anti-imperialism. Khomeini installed the PLO in the building that used to house Israel’s embassy in Iran… You are not the first person to suggest that “Death to Israel” is just a “ritualistic threat”; I remember an Arab blog comment, I think from the late 2000s, saying that Iranians will stomp on an Israeli flag, but it’s the Arabs who were actually fighting Israel and America, in Lebanon and Iraq.
Once Saddam Hussein was out of the picture, I’d say the Iranian strategy consisted of building up resistance forces all around the region, using lessons learned by Hezbollah, while making lots of missiles, and deniably placing themselves within reach of a nuclear weapon should they decide to make one. You could say they aimed to be more like Japan than North Korea. North Korea outright withdrew from the NNPT and openly tested nukes. Japan only has a civilian nuclear program, but they are proverbially “one turn of the screwdriver” away from having a nuke if they ever want one. I believe Iran’s ideal was to be in a similar position, while also working within the anti-proliferation system (IAEA inspections, etc) and asserting that WMDs are doctrinally forbidden for them (Khamenei’s invisible fatwa against nukes).
I think the main military purpose of an Iranian nuke is deterring Israel and America. But they could also see how the nuclear umbrella of the neighbor Pakistan, emboldened them in sponsoring jihadis in India and even, as now know, sheltering Bin Laden himself. Israel obviously understood all this and that’s why Netanyahu was always in international forums claiming that Iran was just about to finish making a nuke. The truth was more subtle, but it’s not like Iran wanted enriched uranium just for science and medicine. Proximity to nuclear weapons capability offered a kind of parity with Israel, and was one more tool in their military and diplomatic arsenal. They weren’t keen on direct conflict with Israel, they aimed more to be the untouchable sponsor of forces closer up like Syria and Hezbollah. It just so happened that October 7 caused Israel to go to war, not just against Hamas, but against the entire axis of resistance that Suleimani and the IRGC had built up.
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Thank you, very interesting. I didn’t know any of this.
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“they aimed more to be the untouchable”
To be clear, after the US tried to pretend the Budapest Memorandum was never a thing and slow walked aid to Ukraine… wanting a nuke is absolutely rational.
Sluggish western response to russian aggression means that nukes and only nukes count.
So…. what did anyone expect to happen?
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Yes. The policy of nuclear non-proliferation is dead because what kind of a moron doesn’t want their own nuke after seeing this?
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This is funny.
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” bombing Iranians”
FYI only:
Okay, no one else has mentioned this and I don’t know how much of these ideas you’ve encountered so I’ll spill them here. There are arguments that this isn’t about Israel/Iran at all but about China. There are two camps of ideas….
New Cold War: Velina Tchakarova (Bulgarian) a few months before the russian invasion she predicted the first couple of months pretty accurately… Her idea is that the world is headed for a new Cold War between the “dragonbear” (stupid name, yes) which is china and russia vs the US and a lot of US actions are about getting countries to shit or get off the pot (pick a side). The main targets here are India and the EU both of which are flaky… India has long been a russian ally and the EU is still in denial about what’s going on. War with Iran is about impressing upon wavering countries that the US is the horse to bet on (while German Chancellor Merz is unduly impressed by remote control robot toys in China…. hopeless.)
New Hot War: Here the idea is that China is preparing not just to invade Taiwain but also to go war with the US to become a hemispheric hegemon. War with Iran not just hurts supplies but demonstrates ability to use direct military force. The big flaw here is that Xi has been systematically destroying the PLA for a few years now possibly wanting to put it under his direct control (the kind of cosmically stupid idea that dictators routinely get).
https://x.com/RsnblAssurance/status/2027761351842554184
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Does any reasonable person really believe that the world would be a better place if only the theocratic madmen in Tehran had nuclear weapons? Because that was the future if we didn’t act.
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I thought we already acted back in the summer. And achieved a decisive victory destroying Iran’s nuclear capability.
This is “we’ve always been at war with Oceania” type of stuff.
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” thought we already acted back in the summer. And achieved a decisive victory”
You’re not supposed to remember that…. everything in the media is telling you to not remember that. And what do you do? You remember that!
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There’s this new talking point that “we’ve been at war with Iran for 47 years” and people are repeating it like dummies. One would think that we would have noticed if we had been at war this entire time. It’s such a joke.
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