Attributes that distinguish WW3 from previous world wars were IIRC: Contained conflagration, short targeted exchanges, probability of contamination low, material possibility of nuclear escalation. Case in point: North Korea developed nukes without being invaded, and now that they have nukes, other countries are watching and seeing that NK won't be invaded. What lesson do those other countries draw? And what of a world in which many potential belligerents hold nukes? Hiroshima weeps.
I'd like to add an important attribute here: The revolution will be live-streamed, more-or-less. And essentially none of us will know the truth, even the reasons. I predict this fact will not distress many people, such is the state of humanity.
So to the 7 or so decades of stability we and our ancestors enjoyed, here's looking at you, going down me. But Brettonwoods serves the present the least of any time since its creation. Case in point, w.r.t. eastern Africa, the geopolitical bounds of those ~4 countries seems likely meld to a degree. If we are indeed heading into WW3, I expect the world map to be redrawn afterwards, and the only lessons learned is how to win better in future.
And if we are, while disgruntled old geriatrics go at each others throats via their youthful proxies, I greatly prefer the nukes rust in peace.
Reminds me of Blaise Pascal's quote: 'All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room.' Aspiration, you gotta take care man, it just might kill ya.
"tout le malheur des hommes vient d’une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre." -- "All the woe of man comes from one single thing only: not knowing how to remain at rest, in a room"
In the same text, he follows with:
"Le roi est environné de gens qui ne pensent qu’à divertir le roi, et à l’empêcher de penser à lui. Car il est malheureux, tout roi qu’il est, s’il y pense."
"The king is surrounded by people who think only of amusing the king and preventing him from thinking about himself. For he is unhappy, though he be king, if he thinks about it."
You're missing the commonalities, what defined world wars: the full might of industrial economies being dedicated to military campaigns.
World War II's theatres' were incoherent–the Axis interests in e.g. China and the Pacific had basically zero stragegic overlap with Europe and North Africa. (The only parties having to consider a unified theatre being the USSR and USA.) But the entire economic surplus of Europe, Asia and North America was basically dedicated to (or extracted towards) making things that were reasonably expected to be destroyed within the year.
I'm less concerned about nuclear escalation than about biological escalation.
It's quite hard to destroy the human world with nukes: you can only blow up big chunks of it, maybe take out enough power plants and supply chains to drop us into a multi-decade or multi-century dark age, or maybe cause a nuclear winter, although the actual risk of that is unclear.
Whereas a year into a major war a kid in his/her basement can release something that is functionally the end of the human species.
We currently have no real safeguards against this. If we ever have descendants, they'll think we were insane during this time period and they'll be right.
Ah but this is where modern technology comes in! Social media, Tiktoks, video games, porn...
That's describing something that's not a world war, though. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is already far worse than what you're describing as WW3. (setting aside nuclear escalation)
old men's*
US's military power is too strong. Russia is in such a bad shape that it can't even win Ukraine. China never goes to any war; their equipments suck as we saw in the Venezuela occurrence.
Nobody is going to help Iran. China and Russia only see Iran as the enemy of my enemy. Other than that, Chineses and Russians are likely disgusted by Iran's culture e.g. how they treat women. It would be like wtf why are we helping people like this?
The world will continue being policed by US and Europe.
This one always interested me. I assume they were given a lot of the tech from China, and China probably told diplomats that if NK is invaded China might get involved.
I'm not supportive of these strikes. Iranians created this government, and if they want to topple it they'll have to be the ones to do it, without foreign intervention.
As for North Korea: I think the situation is not solely about North Korea itself but China. China is kind of acting as protective proxy here. I don't see North Korea as primary problem to the USA, but to South Korea and Japan. Both really should get nukes. Taiwan too, though mainland China would probably invade when it thinks Taiwan is about to have nukes; then again China already committed to invasion - this is the whole point of having a dictator like Xi in charge now.
The situation Russia is in is interesting, because even though they are stronger than Ukraine, Ukraine managed to stop or delay Russia, which is a huge feat, even with support. As Putin does not want to stop, and Trump is supporting him (agent Krasnov theory applies), I think this has escalation potential. Putin is killing civilians in Ukraine daily - I think he does that because he already committed to further escalation against all Europeans. So Europeans need a nuclear arsenal, but european politicians are totally lame - see Merz "we will never have nukes". Basically he wants to be abused by Putin here.
No way this many rich powerful people would go down without destroying at least half of the world.
Maybe not in the details, but the general geopolitical "axes" (USA/the "West" vs China/Russia/BRICS/"Global South"/etc) have become increasingly obvious in the last years. And so far, most of the recent conflicts fit pretty neatly into that pattern.
Of course there are more things running in parallel, like the general shift to the right, Trump in the US, the specific situation with Israel/Palestine, the emergence of AI, etc.
But I don't see why any of this needs any other "grand secret cause" to explain the current conflicts.
I disagree with you on this. The revolution will never be live-streamed because the ability to do so is gated by the same people whom the revolution seeks to overthrow.
What's being live-streamed is the evolution of the status-quo towards growing hostility, violence, wars, and indeed - fascism.
I'm a little disappointed that the internet and social media had little impact on universal disclosure about geopolitical matters. My sense is that governments updated their playbooks to both defend against them (e.g. minimize leaking) and leverage them (e.g. bury inconvenient information with propaganda). By comparison, I'm more hopeful about cellphones and bodycams generally reducing excessive police violence and discrimination (emphasis on "reduce").
prediction: the nuclear threat will look quaint compared with disposable million-drone swarms on land and in the air, targeting anything remotely interesting via onboard AI.
I have been reading on the topic of shunyata or emptiness in Mahayana Buddhism, and have been uncomfortably observing just how much of the artifacts we take to be real and substantial in the world are just "made up". They don't have an inherent reality of their own except what we attribute to them. And yet, made up stories can have very real consequences in terms human suffering.
It ought to be possible to cut through the layers of reifications and simply defuse much of the strife in the world. And yet, we continue to inflict misery on each other unnecessarily.
Tehran isn’t calculating missile ranges based on sutras. Washington doesn’t position carrier groups because of metaphysics. Israel’s security doctrine isn’t a meditation retreat.
Spiritual narratives make clean moral theater for the public. They mobilize bodies. They sanctify retaliation. But the machinery underneath runs on leverage and deterrence, not theology.
Wake up to the real world.
Calling it primarily religious violence feels tidy and tragic in a philosophical way. It’s harder, and more uncomfortable, to admit that it’s strategic violence dressed in symbols people recognize.
Shunyata is a beautiful lens for seeing through ego. It doesn’t dissolve geopolitics.
Chimps generally agree war is bad and horrific. But some smart, opportunistic and hard-working chimps can create situations that make war possible. Even though the war will only bring losses to most chimps on both sides.
Can you provide an example of this in 2026?
It seems a little tenable with the ayatollah and Iran. But even here you don’t hear much talk of this being a war in the name of religion anymore. Nowhere near a few years ago and certainly nothing like 9/11 and the Taliban.
And I hear nobody in Israel or America talking that way. Just a war defending people against attackers at the gates.
"Since opposed principles, or ideologies, are irreconcilable, wars fought over principle will be wars of mutual annihilation. But wars fought for simple greed will be far less destructive, because the aggressor will be careful not to destroy what he is fighting to capture. Reasonable–that is, human–men will always be capable of compromise, but men who have dehumanized themselves by becoming the blind worshipers of an idea or an ideal are fanatics whose devotion to abstractions makes them the enemies of life."
The fallacy of reification is treating something emergent as a thing-unto-itself rather than a process or interaction born from constituents at a lower stratum. A reified thing can be recognized and changed for this reason. A mental concept needs only a change of mind to mutate, or to be destroyed.
Religion may well prove to be a reification that is destroyed once it is recognized as such. But I do believe that you cannot reduce that which is real and not real to only those things that have physical antecedents at lower strata, as we see emergent phenomena in the physical world as well.
Shunyata means everything is empty. Empty of what? Empty of inherent, independent existence. That means everything is connected -- not only connected, but mostly illusory, sitting on top of a reality that cannot be understood in terms of objects, processes, distinctions, or boundaries between objects. Sometimes, this connection takes on strange forms.
For example: The horrible reality of war was a direct cause for your compassionate unease. I.e. war acted as a cause for compassion. This is strange. How do we reconcile this disturbing relationship, where a compassionate response is directly the child of war? In other words, horrific war has given rise to compassion, and this is a causal relationship, in the same way that a child arises from a mother. So, violence and love can arise from each other? What? Are they not supposed to be opposites?
The next step is a bit more provocative. Shunyata seems to imply that, since everything lacks inherent and independence existence, then suffering is not a part of the human condition. Instead, it is a mental construct. It isn't that the suffering of humanity does not exist; it's that it is constructed by the mind.
Deleuze and Guattari offers an interesting viewpoint on this. There are various intensities that do arise naturally. Injury, for example, is an intensity. But, suffering itself is not "really-real" unless we reify the intensities as suffering. And eliminating suffering partially involves the non-reification of intensities into suffering.
Obviously, easier said than done.
Anyway I'll leave it there. It's probably quite easy to destroy my points here, so I would appreciate it if people steelmanned my comment instead of strawmanning it. Shunyata is a genuinely useful discussion from a mental health and human flourishing standpoint. And has some very interesting and rigorous logic behind it. (see Mulamadhyamakakarika by Nagarjuna)
(Wrong) Knife fight: a fight between people about knives
(Right) Knife fight: a fight between people using knives
What a time to be alive, again! And please, downvote me, comment that US is fighting for some country’s civilians freedom. It’s fun too.
No one lives up to their ideals on a day-to-day basis:
This just isn't true. Religion is never the reason for these conflicts. It's the excuse. It's how that conflict is sold to the rest of the world. It's how civilians are manipulated into dying in a conflict.
The source of these conflicts is always material. Always.
Reagan's Secretary of State, General Alexander Haig once said [1]:
> Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier, and is located in a critical region for American national security.
In 1986, then Senator and future president Joe Biden said [2]:
> [Israel] is the best $3 billion ivnestment we make. Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to an invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region.
Much of US Middle East polciy was aimed to sabotaging and undermining Pan-Arab Nationalism (particularly under then Egyptian President Nasser) [3].
Nothing about any of this has anything to do with faith. In this case it's about oil.
Whatever crimes you think Iran might've done, I'll stack up the US crimes against Iran and it won't even be close, including:
1. Iran was a liberal democracy that the US deposed in 1953 at the behest of the British because BP didn't want to have to pay higher royalties, ultimately leading Mossadegh wanting to "nationalize" their own oil;
2. In 1978, then US-puppet Saddam Hussein expelled Khomenei from Iraq. This was about the time the US realized that Iran was likely lost. it is believed that the reason for this was that a fundamentalist regime was preferred to a Communist one (which was otherwise the likely outcome) as the US didn't want Iran to fall into the Soviet sphere of influence. So all this pearl-clutching about the current regime rings hollow when you realize the US helped created it;
3. As punishment for the Revolution, the US supplied weapons to Iraq and fueled the Iran-Iraq war for almost a decade that killed over a million people; and
4. Crippling economic sanctions, which is a fancy way of saying "starving people and denying them medical care", for daring not to be a US puppet.
If you point me to any conflict you think is based on faith, I'll show you the material interests behind it.
[2]: https://www.c-span.org/clip/senate-highlight/user-clip-joe-b...
[3]: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v12...
Including for the U.S. and Israel?
The US and Israel are involved. The only way it’s going to turn out is maximally lethal to all those not involved at all.
See… basically any military operation participated in by those nations in recent history.
We got a couple strikes and already managed to hit an elementary school. Nothing I’ve seen in Gaza or Iraq leads me to believe this will be any different.
That would be ideal but unfortunately not likely. Nobody will like this comment but US ships are sitting ducks. They have minimal ammo per the pentagon and no oilers. No oilers and low ammo means no prolonged conflict. Only two of the ships are nuclear powered not counting submarines. Most of Iran's military and weapons are deep underground in a massive series of underground cities and tunnels. The US would require boots on the ground if they manage to breach the tunnel openings under the mountains. Should that fail the only viable targets are civilians and that won't win favor with anyone or accomplish anything.
Iranian military could just wait it out if they wanted and then smoke Israel with supersonic missiles when the US leaves. Then we find out if Israel does have the nukes for the Samson option and that would result in the destruction of Israel. Iran's military could survive a nuclear strike but would have to clean up the fallout and I am not sure they could. Anyone not underground would likely get Acute Radiation Sickness and Cancer.
On a positive note if the US can manage to get into the tunnels and send in enough munitions to start detonating the missile stockpile a chain reaction could crack all the concrete and collapse the tunnels. Satellite could detect which tunnel they try to evac from. They have less than 5 days to accomplish the chain reaction assuming this is the plan. From the videos I have seen the missiles are literally lined up like a double-strand fuse.
“Israel strikes two schools in Iran, killing more than 80 people”
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2026/2/28/israel-strikes-...
Welp, better luck next time
But their goal is targeted and precise attacks, that effectively destroy targets based on specific, and high quality intelligence.
The other part is that defense against missiles is significantly harder and more expensive than sending missiles. Iran, while relatively poor, has dedicated a significant part of its economy for missile development and production.
It gives us a regional coalition partner. That's never a bad thing, regardless of circumstances.
No, support will never falther.
How exactly attacking Iran make their country great? Murdered million children in Iraq and now they started their terrorism in Iran.
Yes, the USA and Israel are putting an end to a 47 year war of Iran vs. Everyone. There will be casualties on every side, that is war. Iran made the middle east into a giant PVP server. That is coming to an end.
Congrats America!
https://apnews.com/live/us-israel-strikes-iran-khamenei-03-0...
Without some confirmation, everything is propaganda, isn't it? Jeez... there is no greater force that that to have one's bias confirmed, is there. That is going to destroy us.
How is the Epstein Regime going to survive this politically? How is the Senate (Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, etc.) going to survive this politically?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/feb/27/pakistan-...
It would benefit the entire world to see Iran integrated and engaged internationally.
Furthermore if Reza Pahlavi does manage to integrate into the society, he will most certainly use his business and political ties here in the US to westernize the society. He's said as much. Some of the more well known Iranian-American business leaders here in the US (CEO of Uber, CEO of intuit, founder of eBay for example) I'm sure would contribute to work towards this also.
There will be push-back from rural areas (just like anywhere else) and the regime will not go away overnight, but the possibility does exist for this outcome. I think the biggest roadblock would be America and Israel intentionally preventing this outcome for the reasons that suit them geopolitically.
EDIT: should have mentioned that after decades of widely known voter manipulation and more or less "mock" elections, Iranians would be happy to finally participate in actual democratic processes where their votes and voices matter
You can hope that (and I can hope that), but the powers that are driving this military action completely do not care about this outcome. Which makes it exceedingly difficult for me to think this will happen.
I know the US proxies keep blabbering about 'regime change', but there's zero intentionality behind the political work to do that. My guess is balkanization, which won't really go how the US/Israel wants it to go
The Taliban ruling Afghanistan and an unstable coalition in Iraq.
You know how much we spent? $5.8 to $8 trillion.
If by that you mean that Iran will become a toothless vassal state of the U.S.-Americans, then God forbid.
Even accepting this, how exactly are these peaceful, western friendly civilians going to withstand a war better than their country's army?
It's very depressing to see this playbook credulously trotted out yet again. When has this worked?
If he pulls off a regime change, even a Delcy-style swaparoo, he'll get it, and arguably not undeservedly. It will ultimately come down to Iran's capacity to inflict casualties on American forces.
He wasn’t even smart enough to leave America open to attack, manufacture a pretext, and rally people around the flag like 9/11
Heck, there was even a better case in Korea & Vietnam. Even Venezuela. What’s the case this is America’s problem?
I'm interested in what makes empires tick, what their basis of power is.
Spain in the colonial era was propped up by looting silver from Central and South America, for example.
The British Empire is what many (including me) like to call the "drug dealer empire". First tobacco then later opium. Any claims that we didn't know about the health risks of tobacco are complete BS (eg [3]).
Circling back to your point, the US is what I like to call the "arms dealer empire". WW1 and WW2 massively enriched the United States. NATO is essentially a protection racket for Europe and the price is, you guessed it, buying arms from the United States.
And the next Budget has proposed increasing "defense" spending from an already eye-popping $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion [4]. Where does that money go? Arms, weapons programs, defense contractors, the ultra-wealthy.
War is good for business even though it's unpopular.
[1]: https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/54158-few-americans-suppor...
[2]: https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/
[3]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15198996/
[4]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-proposes-massive...
Congress will not let him have a third term regardless of what he says or thinks.
Trump can literally do all the things that the epstein files accuse him of doing, right on camera in front of everyone, and Americans will still vote for him all because he isn't a "woke" black woman.
I think they don’t have an argument because technically the missile can be de-activated up until the last seconds before it reaches its intended target
Still it feels surreal to argue about these things , bomb dropping on humans and other humans attacking each other for the privilege to have their bet honored on when said bombs dropped on the other side of the world
I guess people in intelligence communities had these sort of bets going on ever since WW2 and Vietnam , but still it’s uncanny to see it widespread to potentially the whole population of the internet
You can get an edge here by moving your ass somewhere where you can see the planes take off, maybe a team with people at multiple locations - boats near the aircraft carrier, near military bases in Israel, ...
>White House officials believe ‘the politics are a lot better’ if Israel strikes Iran first
>As the administration mulls military action in Iran, officials argue it’d be best if Israel makes the first move.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/25/white-house-politic...
Trump: "The lives of American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties - that often happens in war."
Another republican president starting a war in the middle east, once again sacrificing American lives.
"In order to get elected Barack Obama will start a war with Iran"
—Donald Trump, Nov 29, 2011
"Barack Obama will attack Iran to get re-elected."
—Trump, Jan 17, 2012
"Now that Obama's poll numbers are in tailspin watch for him to launch a strike on Libya or Iran. He is desperate."
—Trump, Oct 9, 2012
What even is the plan here if the air assault fails? Boots on the ground? In Iran?
After this, Israel, being the only nuclear power in the region and having massive funding from the American taxpayer, will dominate the entire region. This has always been the goal.
Who say US is not regime? It is the world largest regime in the world, with bidders in every country to do their bidding, mass surveillance including their own country men. People blame only Russia, China, Iran etc when US have been doing the same for years.
Other than nukes that would be the only option if they can blast the doors to the underground military cities. They will have to do it fast as the ships will not sustain combat for more than 5 days with their current ammo per the pentagon.
The Iraqi government was a lot more stable.
What exactly do you imagine will replace the Iranian government that is worse?
What is the goal, to overthrow the regime, so success would mean a change of government?
(sorry, I haven't followed)
Besides, after this the collective west has no moral high-ground anymore, the global south will resent us more than ever. If other countries go to aggressive wars, our condemnation is worthless.
Trump is completely compromised and it was probably the powers that be who told them that this is how it is going to be.
But liberals will be quick to tell them they don't know best, better to just keep the oppressive ayatollah in power.
Trump is a coward. He knows that boots on the ground will mean massive losses.
The only way he does that is if someone convinces him that they can go in and out very quickly.
Unlike Venezuela I doubt there are people in the right place to oust Khamenei.
Sounds like a good idea
The most salient lesson of the post-Cold War era: Get nukes or die trying.
A nation's relationship to other states, up to and especially including superpowers, is completely different once it's in the nuclear club. Pakistan can host bin Laden for years and still enjoy US military funding. North Korea can literally fire missiles over South Korea and Japan and get a strongly-worded letter of condemnation, along with a generous increase in foreign aid. We can know, for a fact, that the 2003 Iraq War coalition didn't actually believe their own WMD propaganda. If they thought that Saddam could vaporize the invasion force in a final act of defiance, he'd still be in power today. Putin knows perfectly well that NATO isn't going to invade Russia, so he can strip every last soldier from the Baltic borders and throw them into the Ukrainian meat grinder.
Aside from deterring attack, it also discourages powerful outside actors from fomenting revolutions. The worry becomes who gets the nukes if the central government falls.
Iran's assumption seems to have been that by permanently remaining n steps away from having nukes (n varying according to the current political and diplomatic climate), you get all the benefits of being a nuclear-armed state without the blowback of going straight for them. But no, you need to have the actual weapons in your arsenal, ready to use at a moment's notice.
My advice for rulers, especially ones on the outs with major geopolitical powers: Pour one out for Gaddafi, then hire a few hundred Chinese scientists and engineers and get nuked up ASAP.
Just need one flight from Pyongyang. Why suggest involving a major power given that you’ve just laid out the strategic need for nuclear weapons to deter interference from… major powers? Your post lacks coherency.
nuclear enrichment is extraordinarily expensive and really not all that great of a deterrent when you have them. just look at fairly recent tussels between india, pakistan and china. Russia was invaded and didnt nuke ukraine.
One of the recommended solutions was to bring tactical nuclear weapons back into the dialectic of deterrence extended to allied territories, so as to give US decision makers a range of options between Armageddon and defeat without a war. Global deterrence was ‘restored’ by creating additional rungs on the ladder of escalation, which were supposed to enable a sub-apocalyptic deterrence dialogue — before one major adversary or the other felt its key interests were threatened and resorted to extreme measures. Many theorists in the 1970s took this logic further, in particular Colin Gray in a 1979 article, now back in fashion, titled ‘Nuclear Strategy: the case for a theory of victory’.
...
In 2018 Admiral Pierre Vandier, now chief of staff of the French navy, offered a precise definition of this shift to the new strategic era, which has begun with Russia’s invasion: ‘A number of indicators suggest that we are entering a new era, a Third Nuclear Age, following the first, defined by mutual deterrence between the two superpowers, and the second, which raised hopes of a total and definitive elimination of nuclear weapons after the cold war’" [1].
I think the chances we see a tactial nuclear exchange in our lifetimes has gone from distant to almost certain.
1. According to the US and Israel, Iran has been a week away from having nuclear weapons for at least 34 years [1];
2. It's quite clear Iran could've developed nuclear weapons but chose not to. I actually think was a mistake. The real lesson from the so-called War on Terror was that only nuclear weapons will preserve your regime (ie Norht Korea);
3. Israel is a nuclear power. It's widely believed that Israel first obtained weapons grade Uranium by stealing it from the US in the 1960s [2];
4. In a just world, people would hang for what we did to Iran in 1953, 1978-79, the Iran-Iraq War and sanctions (which are a sanitized way of saying "we're starving you"); and
5. The current round of demands include Iran dismantling its ballistic missile program. This is because the 12 day war was a strategic and military disaster for the US and Israel.
Israel has a multi-layered missile defence shield. People usually talk about Iron Dome but that's just for shooting down small rockets. Separate layers exist for long-range and ballistic missiles (eg David's Sling, Arrow-2, Arrow-3). In recent times the US has complemented these with the ship-borne THAAD system.
Even with all this protection, Iran responded to the unprovoked attacks of the 12-day war by sending just enough ballistic missiles to overwhelm the defences, basically saying "if we have to, we can hit Israel".
Many suspect that the real reason the US negotiated an end to the 12 day war was because both Israel and the US were running cirtically low on the munitions for THAAD and Israel's missile defence shield. You can't just quickly make more either. Reportedly that will take over a year to get replacements.
Thing is, pretty much all of this missile defence technology is about to become obsolete once hypersonic missiles become more widespread, which is going to happen pretty soon. I suspect that's a big part of why the US and Israel are now trying so desperately to topple the regime and turn Iran into a fail-state like Somalia or Yemen.
I'm not normally one to encourage nuclear proliferation but when it's the only thing the US will listen to, what choice do countries have?
[1]: https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2025/6/18/the-history-of-n...
[2]: https://thebulletin.org/2014/04/did-israel-steal-bomb-grade-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_weapons_of_mass_des...
I say "public case" specifically here, I don't buy that justification but it is still the one being used.
Calling for the people to rise up. You can't bomb your way into regime change. Are we supplying arms to groups?
Is there a plan beyond pointless death and regional chaos the president would like to share?
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.
probably not, outside of making more revenue for raytheon
To be fair that's been the case for decades. Trump's hardly new in this.
I don't support it but there's blanket approval from Congress from the AUMF.
Not in the sense of "I don't ideologically agree with our decision to do this," but in the sense of, "I do not see how this accomplishes any ideological or practical goal."
What are they trying for? Regime change in Iran? No more Iranian nuclear program? There barely was one before. Keeping Israel safe? It's been an open secret for years that Iran is not a real threat to Israel, because any action it took against Israel would be existential for Iran and its leadership.
A US president who vocally and repeatedly promised he would not start new conflicts keeps starting them, and there's not even a reason. It's infuriating. I have my partisan opinions, but that should not be a partisan statement! It's just disturbing!
Iran has negotiated like no one will ever attack it, and that was a correct assumption for decades
However, due to Iran's overly aggressive use of questionably rational proxies, Hamas has dragged it into a regional conflict where it lost most of its proxies power.
After the last war, it also is no longer a threshold state, so the only leverage they had left was ballistic missiles, which were also handled quite reasonably by Israeli air defense.
In this situation it is a fair request by the US to sign a nuclear deal that heavily restricts Iran's ability to enrich as well as ICBM, trigger with existing uranium stockpiles removed.
As Iran due to ideological reasons refused, and IMO had miscalculated this will be a win-win, as losing will quell the protests, the only thing really left is the metaphorical stick
Possibly wishful thinking, but that’s the only way I can make it make sense in my head.
I believe the calculation is this is Israel’s last best window of opportunity to leverage the declining American empire with a compromised asset in the White House. The time to strike is now, since in 10 years US military power and US political will in support of Israel will likely be diminished.
What are the strikes even against?
Do they seriously think that after Iran shot all the street revolutionaries, another group will come forward and collapse the government?
Are they treating Iran as Big Serbia? It's a very different situation!
Or is this just for the Posting?
Wesley Clark: "We're going to take out 7 countries in 5 years":
Seems like it. I can't imagine what else they might try for.
I suppose USA might think some shock and awe will result in iran making concessions at the bargaining table, but that seems unrealistic to me.
> No more Iranian nuclear program? There barely was one before.
That seems very debatable.
> Keeping Israel safe? It's been an open secret for years that Iran is not a real threat to Israel, because any action it took against Israel would be existential for Iran and its leadership.
Well they did take action against israel (you could say they were indirectly responsible for oct 7). Now they are facing said existential threat.
---
Ultimately though. Iran has been a major threat to both israeli and US interests, largely by funding proxy groups that take violent action against those interests. That's your motive for a war.
Iran is currently weak, facing multiple internal and eexternal crisises.
A war is happening because there is a limited window where iran is weak but the window potentially won't remain. That's the reason behind a lot of wars in history.
Decoupling from China while taking out China’s allies is the overarching foreign policy.
It's bound to be incredibly successful at accomplishing that goal.
Similarly, wars against Iraq and Afghanistan were very successful in diverting attention away from 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers being from Saudi Arabia, and later on from the funding provided to one or more of the hijackers by Saudi officials. With a certain Ms. Maxwell being asked to join the investigatory committee on the event in question.
Some people here might not be American or were too young to remember the lead up to the Iraq War, but it was transparently bullshit. Many people knew this. But if you dared say that, supporters would actively ruin your life. The Dixie Chicks were one of the most popular music acts in the US at the time, a country band that broke out of country and was getting huge appeal across the US. They dared to say they opposed the war. Their careers never returned.
Now with social media that isn't completely locked down, some voice of opposition can slip through and assure people that, yes, this is crazy. No, we don't need to blow the shit out of towns across the world. But these social media sites are all owned by government-aligned mega billionaires. They're rolling out AI that can comment and act very, very human and endorse everything the government does. They can auto-police opinions and spit out thousands of arguments and messages of harassment against them in seconds. Soon they'll be autoblocking any sense of disagreement.
It's at that point they can say that this is done to defend America. This is done to defend freedom. This desert country that's too screwed up to even manage its own internal affairs is somehow so dangerous that it's going to destroy the whole world with nukes it doesn't even have so we must destroy them all now. Dear leader always has your interests at heart. And you'll have no info to point to saying otherwise. Everyone who dares question it will be mocked, ridiculed, fired. Even if this administration fails, the tools are being built and laid out for the next, and I really don't know how humanity will overcome it. And I hate that I can't have optimism in this situation.
This discussion is one where it's worth looking at commenters' histories. Many have several pages where the bulk of their posts are defending Israel, saying war with Iran is necessary, and various related things. It's kind of spooky
How do you know?
Spend down my savings and assets till I have almost nothing to exit tax, exit, and then start working again.
I don't want to fund the bombing of strangers I have no quarrel with.
I can't think of a better use of US military power in the world than to take out this terrible regime and let the Iranians do the rest. This isn't Iraq or Venezuela. People saying that we can't bomb our way into regime change apparently didn't follow the protests and massacres very closely a couple months ago. Iranians were begging for help so that they could topple the regime.
Israel did not mass bomb civilians, and Iranian agents did not commit sabotage against infrastructure on US soil.
I hope this pattern persists.
A hand full of determined Ukrainians managed to blow up North Stream, some people plunged part of Berlin into darkness for 2 weeks.
Power and data cables as well as pipelines are as vulnerable in the US, as they are here. Maybe even more so.
A regime that truly feared for its existence, might decide to escalate, since there is nothing to loose.
* the weapons can annihilate the world and extinguish civilization in a few hours
* a massive asymmetry between the enemies in any metric is evident
* the strikes and battles are surprisingly of small scale, targeted and not decisive
Why on earth isn't the diplomacy used to solve the status after an imminent warning to make Iran an extension of Indian ocean with weapons of mass destruction?
One of the (many) pretexts for the war, at least from Trump seems to be that Iran 'interfered' in US elections. From the Washington post
'President Donald Trump shared an article about Iran seeking to interfere in U.S. elections on his Truth Social account a couple of hours after U.S. strikes began in Iran early Saturday.
“Iran tried to interfere in 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump, and now faces renewed war with United States,” the post read, with a link to a piece from Just the News, a conservative website from which Trump frequently shares articles. Shortly after, the president posted another article from the site, albeit unrelated to Iran; it was about the Fulton County, Georgia, prosecutor Fani T. Willis.'
Does the US even have a functioning Congress left? Who will even believe such a preposterous lie? Even the most die hard MAGA supporter will find it hard to believe this fabrication.
It's like Trump doesn't feel the need to even maintain the fig leaf of a causus belli. He must truly feel that he is now the king of the United States to be so emboldened.
Iran could have been contained and Obama was right on his approach. We don't know the details of the strikes, but I hope it doesn't go into a full blown war, but this will be another Iraq like disaster, and american people are getting tired of doing the bidding of Isreal, a country that is already mirred into doing a genocide. This war is already unpopular in pools. Iran's regime is terrible to its people, but this has the potential to be another disaster where countless of people could die.
For more than four decades, the Islamic Republic has been one of the primary state sponsors of terror. Hezbollah is not an organic Lebanese movement — it is an Iranian creation. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are sustained by Iranian money and weapons. The Houthis’ missile and drone capabilities exist because Tehran supplied and trained them. Shi’a militias in Iraq killed hundreds of Americans with Iranian-provided EFPs. Today, Iranian Shahed drones are striking Ukrainian apartment buildings.
This is not passive instability. It is deliberate, systematic export of violence as state policy.
At the same time, the regime has consistently pursued a nuclear capability while publicly calling for the destruction of Israel and “death to America.” Even if one assumes deterrence logic would hold, a nuclear umbrella for Iran would dramatically increase its freedom to escalate proxy warfare across the region.
The downstream geopolitical effects are not hypothetical. Without Iranian drone and missile transfers, Russia’s ability to sustain certain strike campaigns in Ukraine would be materially degraded. Without heavily discounted Iranian oil shipments, China’s energy calculus shifts, particularly under sanctions pressure. Without Tehran’s funding pipelines, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis become far more constrained actors rather than semi-state militaries.
There is also precedent for preventive action against nuclear programs. Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq’s Osirak reactor (Operation Opera) was widely condemned at the time; decades later, most analysts agree it delayed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions. Likewise, Israel’s 2007 strike on Syria’s Al-Kibar reactor (Operation Orchard) prevented the Assad regime from developing a covert nuclear capability. Both operations were controversial in the moment and regarded as stabilizing in retrospect.
Preventing a hostile regime from acquiring nuclear capability has historically proven wiser than managing it after the fact.
Yes, regime change carries risk. So does allowing the world’s most aggressive revolutionary theocracy to entrench itself indefinitely while arming proxies from Beirut to Sana’a to Moscow. The status quo is not stable. It is violent by design.
If a regime that funds terrorism on three continents, arms Russia during a European war, and openly seeks nuclear weapons is dismantled, history is unlikely to judge that harshly.
It will likely judge it as overdue.
Does anybody can trust andnegotiate with USA?
I’ve always felt the US won trust and respect with these characteristics. It looks like we are now shifting strategy and I wonder where this will lead to.
Pre-emptive violence; not even justified with a narrative of escalating threat.
Bleak for anybody who knows their history.
I knew it was foolish, but I really was somewhat hopeful that the American regime’s stated doctrinal shift was true and they really were going to fuck right off from the world stage, even just a little. Naturally, we suffer the opposite.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/iran-nears-deal-buy-supe...
Also, the US News media silence on this is noteworthy.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=reuters+cm-302+missile&ia=w...
It hurts my heart to see Americans destroying them (and the thousands of lifes).
Wow.
What a headline. Anybody else have this on their election day bingo card?
Midterms should be a blood bath though, right? Right? (insert Anakin meme).
1. https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/trump-rolls-the-dice-o...
people in the Middle East will literally starve
and china will run out of fuel - though they've gone mostly electric
Iran has sophisticated influence operations and will likely flood social media with disinformation designed to deepen political divisions and erode trust in institutions.
This advice serves even if you don’t believe the above. Be deeply skeptical of all viral content in the coming days and weeks, especially anything designed to change your opinions, or provoke outrage/fear. Verify before sharing. Expect deepfakes. Stick to primary sources when possible.
Israel and the US have already shown their cards in Syria. It is not peace they are after, it is regional domination.
However, looking at how the US president has abused power, silenced those who are against the draft dodging crybaby and his league of human trafficking millionaires, I feel this is yet another try to move focus from US domestic probs to something else. I see no honesty or greater reason for this attack or justification for it. While I'm no fan of Iran's autocratic regime, US is slipping towards into being one, as well.
US president has now active war operations in Venezuela, soon lightning the Cuba situation on fire as well, not to forget planning to take Greenland and Canada, too.
That's honestly not bad for the president of peace. Nobel committee should take a look at nominating this guy for a peace prize
I'm baffled at the lack of calls to boycott the Fifa world cup in US.
And at the double standards applied to Russians and Israelis in their wars of aggression.
I guess Israel can play the "October 7th" card at least which was an insane horror.
On the one hand, Trump is awful for the USA, and the world.
On the other hand, there is a possibility that the freedom-wanting citizens of Iran finally have a slight chance of achieving their goal.
The chance of something truly positive happening seems low. However, as someone who has, for years, watched what happens in Iran via the lens of https://old.reddit.com/r/newiran, I am allowing myself the slightest amount of hope. Iranian people deserve it.
Of course, there is a large chance of this blowing up into something really bad for everyone.
edit: This Ukrainian is currently live streaming with OSINT, and his takes align with many of my actual realist thoughts:
Trump said in the State of the Union [0]:
> in just over the past couple of months with the protests they've killed at least 32000 protestors
And just moments ago Trump says 'tens of thousands' [1]
Is this confirmed or conjecture?
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l-iErpskb8&t=1h21m20s
[1] https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/2027651077865157033
Is that the same program that was totally obliterated in June 2025 according to Trump?
"Obliterated like nobody’s ever seen before"?
And just days ago it was discovered that documents involving FBI investigations into allegations by one or more victims against Epstein and Trump were not released by the DOJ.[2]
I trust Trump still has time to testify to Congress about his connections to Epstein like others have been doing.
Meanwhile yesterday:
>>>the U.S. designated Iran as a “state sponsor of wrongful detention” and demanded that the country release any Americans in its detention.[3]
You just can't make this shit up.
1: https://www.axios.com/2026/02/10/trump-epstein-files-jamie-r...
2. https://www.npr.org/2026/02/24/nx-s1-5723968/epstein-files-t...
3. https://au.news.yahoo.com/us-designates-iran-state-sponsor-0...
Nor do I even know how to begin to grasp the enablement displayed by Europe as a whole. People constantly cite China’s “human rights abuses” (which seem to pale in comparison to all this) and rightly so, but continue to enable this blood thirsty and power hungry tag team to indulge in flagrant abuses of international law and general morality.
This is a sad day for level headed and empathetic humans across the globe. At which point do we accept that WW3 began quite a while ago? Because it sure as shit did.
Edit: fully expect this to be downvoted to oblivion but it’s my truth.
I had added it to my `motd`; it would give me a chuckle every time I logged in.
One of the cookies I recall:
A nuclear war can ruin your whole day. [1]
And that's what I think of when I see this absurd new war.
- David LLoyd George, c.1916
The first wars were fought between tribes and then later between kingddoms for power/minor differences and trying to increase influence and alliances. Religion and race and many other discriminating factors are used for both sides to get support of the people, the people who are actually gonna carry the rifle and risk their lives and lose it, this drives the next war to redeem the losses of the first one, to take revenge.
This then creates a community which dislikes the other community and now we are here.
We do not like to be robbed of an enemy; we want someone to have when we suffer. … If so-and-so’s wickedness is the sole cause of our misery, let us punish so-and-so and we shall be happy. The supreme example of this kind of political thought was the Treaty of Versailles. Yet most people are only seeking some new scapegoat to replace the Germans.
- Bertrand Russel in Skeptical Essays.
Humanity has had a history written with bloodshed but the problem right now seems to me that we don't know how to write future, we lack a vision for other prospects, it seems to me that we jump into the newest Hype on the block and its all so wishy-washy. Contrary to people saying its a western issue, I think its an whole world issue, its just that the west is particularly impacted by it.
Has there been a desensitization in things in recent years?
I know of atleast one leader (King Kaniska) who fought for land (Modern day Orrisa) and won and then saw the bloodshed and screams on the ground and decided to not repeat it and I think he spent later of his life trying to promote peace.
I am sure that there must be other leaders in the history of past as well but perhaps its the problem of history as well which can sometimes glorify wars.
I think the biggest problem right now is being noise. We have created machines so large that humans have lost dignity and are treated unfairly at scale in terms of Renting places at scale owned by shell companies who'd rather have it empty than give you affordable housing. Prices seem to be increasing and I don't think modern social media helps in giving people dignity quite the opposite at times and it's very likely someone is reading this who may have contributed to making the machine.
With this being a political thread, I see comments from both sides[0], I don't think I have too much to add politically to the discussion but perhaps I just wanted to treat out that its best we treat each other with dignity in this thread and in general because I do believe that's the only thing we can do which can bring change. It's gonna be extremely hard for people to treat others with dignity while taking sides which talk about wars killing people, but I don't know what else to say. Iranian censorship for its people but I am not sure if the current idea of America brings me thinking of liberation. One can wish for pure democracies in such regions but its gonna be extremely hard and even grass-roots movements of these can be shut down by intrusive forces whether foreign or govt itself and given that the region is extremely shaky relying on oil which can be extracted from ground leading to a less dependence on people themselves for Iranian govt.s being the reason why they can be so censoring. They have shown enough power to fight massive protests but as I said earlier, the current picture of America don't exactly give me the idea of bringing pure democracy in the region either.
My prayers to the Iranian people who are stuck between a rock and tough spot.
(there are no sides, its a circle, a circle of people who start wars and the people who fight wars)
Without having to wait for the history books to do their thing.
The thing is, as sudden as this seems to the general public, this is something that takes months of planning. Having served in the Navy for eight years, I know that this kind of thing doesn't necessarily happen overnight. That doesn't mean it _couldn't_. The US military certainly does have the ability to plan a strike very quickly.
But, most likely, this was planned behind closed doors. Based on the reports, I bet this was probably planned shortly after Trump took office. It just so happens that it's a good distraction from the Epstein files.
I hate the direction this country's government is taking. It sucks. I just want to leave at some point. I don't want my family to grow up here anymore.
[T]he War Department will not be distracted by democracy building interventionism, undefined wars, regime change, climate change, woke moralizing and feckless nation building.
- Pete Hegseth, December 6, 2025[1]
Works out great for Netanyahu though as is customary. He can be PM for a while longer and stave off his own impending trial and imprisonment. If this goes well for Israel, he might even get that pardon that Trump campaigned for tirelessly.
Think about it. If someone actually bombed or invaded the continental US you'd have woke libs cheering for Donald Trump.
The Iranian regime may fall, but it'll be like Iraq. We'll get something like ISIS out of it, or worse, and the place will be a complete basketcase of civil war for 25+ years. Or we'll be there for 25 years in another "forever war." Bravo.
My theory is that Israel has dirt (Epstein files maybe) on Trump and holds him by the balls. The second idea is that this is an obfuscation campaign to have the public opinion forget about Epstein, the state of the real economy, the falling approval rates, or all of the above.
So we're going to war with Iran based on election fraud conspiracies from MAGA?
0: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1161475725227...
> "Epstein files: DOJ withheld documents about claim Trump sexually abused minor"
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/24/epstein-trump-doj-garcia.htm...
Will it even make a single newspaper or talk show this weekend?
I lots of relatively new accounts coming with what seems to me extreme, but altogether pop-culture acceptable opinions
And that's certainly the deathbed of any hopes to a mullah regime change. They will come out stronger than before.
Can we follow the age old adage WWJD?
What would (Xi) Jinping do?
Israel attacked Iran
Israel attacked Lebanon
Israel oppressed and kidnapped Palestinians
World is getting destroyed by couple hundred Israeli and US maniacs, by the way, all of whom are connected via Epstein
> DEATH TO AMERICA
in the streets like blood-thirsty lunatics, something for which there was no equivalent in the US even after 9/11 (mobs chanting "Death to Muslims/Islam"), let alone doing so with governmental encouragement as happens in Iran?
Do they not realize how many Americans aren't pro-Israel and aren't invested enough in the Middle East and its politics, proxy wars, and human rights abuses to want the US to support Israel in military action against Iran, except for their nuclear ambitions, and regularly professed eternal hatred for our country?
If you see a sudden uptick in protests in a country the US/isreal see as an enemy, you can bet its probably just the step in the playbook preceding military action
Israel and the US: You serious?
Iran: Yes.
...
Iran, after being bombed to a slightly earlier point of the Stone Age than they've spent the past ~50 years: We are working hard trying to find the guy responsible for this.
FAFO, as they say. Meanwhile, literally the entire Middle East and the rest of the world besides Russia will be happy to see these clowns gone. Bon voyage.
please, can somebody in the US or Israel have an "are we the baddies" epiphany?
And Iran? Every single time it’s just performance art. I’m already sick of watching it.
Besides, Iran has been heavily sanctioned and blocked by the U.S. and Israel for so many years that its impact on the global economy is basically zero. So what the hell is there to dump over?
Oil prices? Venezuela’s situation has already been dealt with. The U.S. can produce its own oil, Canada still has plenty of oil, and Russia is still selling at bargain-bin prices. Iran and the surrounding major oil-producing countries are barely even moving in sync, and there’s basically no real incentive for anything major to happen to oil. So why the hell would the market drop?
As for all this fearmongering, I’d say go harder. Seriously, make it as apocalyptic as possible, so my gold can moon, I can pick up cheap Taiwan stocks, and short crypto, so I can completely clean out all the people panicking in fear.
I'd think they emit slightly more than a cow's fart.
PotUS told Iran "Don't shoot the protestors or else." Iran shot the protestors.
Iran chose to FAFO; "Or else" has now arrived.
I don't like Trump and based on past bad experiences I'm not sure it's wise for the US to start a war in the Middle East.
I feel sorry for the civilians caught in the middle, e.g. the ~50 Iranian schoolkids that ate a wayward bomb. People can legitimately criticize the US and Israel for that mistake, but if they do they need to also criticize Iran ~200 times harder for killing tens of thousands of protestors on purpose.
I don't agree with people who think this war is illegitimate or Iran isn't the bad guy here.
Maybe it's a good thing that Anthropic will no longer be associated with the US government's attacks in another six months.
Will not one of you try to steelman this decision? Or do you truly, fully believe the entire US government and intelligence complex, supported by roughly 50% of your compatriots, are warmongering baboons?
Iran has been the grown up in the room for well over a decade at this stage and it didn't matter one bit. You cannot appease Israel or the US because that don't want to be appeased, they want to bomb Iran into a lawless wasteland. They could have switched to a secular liberal democracy and it'd make no difference.