Yeah, bombing Iran has nothing to do whatsoever with human rights. It's all about Israel's interest and whoever else shares it. If we cared about human rights and couped governments for that, we'd be all up in the Gulf's ass, Israel's (because of Gaza, West Bank), among others. Even if that was the goal, history informs us that the chances of a government that's better for human rights is less likely than a worse one. Some Zionist acquaintances took a week of glorifying Israel's "victory" in Iran, before turning around to shit on Gulf countries and China for their human rights abuses. I'm so done with this shit..

the salute focus on the 1991-95 ethnic war in Croatia, in which he fought using the American firearm, after the country declared independence from the former Yugoslavia.

Ah the old reliable anti-communist gotta fascist rule.

That's pretty horrific. The working population is important to maintaining Ukraine's ability to fight. It probably factors in Russia's intent to finish the war instead of agreeing to a ceasefire.

The US has been the biggest long term enemy to the working populations of the world since the end of the WWII, including its own. Throw a pin on the map, and you're likely to hit a place that's been affected by a war started or fought by the US, or a place where the US has had a hand in destroying worker power in order to for American business to extract resources and labour for cheap, or a sanctioned place where working people are made to suffer in order to overthrow their government, or a combination thereof.

If this information is true and the Chinese officials weren't bullshitting, then leaking this doesn't sound like a good move on the European official end.

Doesn't their economy have a way bigger production capacity than Russia's? Why would they want to replicate Russia's? China seems much more successful at manufacturing at scale.

A tragic story that should be added to piles of child tragedy in Palestine as well as the other affected countries from these conflicts. Speaking of Palestine, I can't see it mentioned at all on the front page of rferl.org.

Perhaps they don't really want a regime change, or at least not an orderly, prosperous one. Perhaps getting the Islamic Republic to dig its heels would prevent improvement of relationships with the world, lifting of sanctions and economic growth that would create more resources for military strengthening. Perhaps having the ambiguous big bad Muslims in power makes it easy to manufacture consent for arbitrary bombings, both domestically in Israel and abroad. Perhaps keeping this enemy keeps people in Israel motivated to comply with the right wing policies of some fractions.

I doubt it. They've gone hard nationalist and seem to be ready to sacrifice for the things they imagine they have to do.

Putin really shat the bed with the special military operation, didn't he. By expending so many people and resources in Ukraine, he lost the ability to plausibly support his allies in the Middle East against attacks from Israel and the US. Had he not entered Ukraine, I don't think Israel would have struck Iran like they did.

Yeah, I don't know why people think Israel would tolerate a democratic country that threatens their military dominance. An unsanctioned, democratic Iran with 90M people would undoubtedly develop more weapons and be able to sustain a much more significant armed conflict than the Islamic Republic. Such a country becoming a serious threat to Israel would be only a matter of electing the "wrong" government. Why wouldn't they preemptively hit just like they did now?

The market seems to be betting that it's not happening.

It begs questions that have only bad answers.

Jesus fucking Christ

100%. I'm Canadian and I'd really like to have some nukes right now.

Horrifying. Is there any obvious solution being discussed in your circles?

Not nearly enough. If they hadn't destroyed some portion of Iran's ballistic missiles, it could have been much worse and really deter future FA. Now I'm not sure if the FO would be enough to do that.

Which on the whole I think is a good thing since we've seen that significant instability often affects most of us.

a near 50% increase in three months.

This makes sense. I recall thinking after Israel's previous attack and dismantling Hezbollah that if I were the Ayatollah, I'd now be going full speed towards a nuclear weapon test, as that's the only thing that can secure my regime's survival and by extension the stability of the country (in whatever state it exists). After the last attack, that pressure is that much higher.

Bibi told the Iranian people to rise up against their government, and I...agreed with him?

Well, consider how similar regime changes have gone in recent history. Instability, failed states, mass terrorist organization. It's not impossible to get a better outcome if Iran's regime is overthrown, but odds aren't on their side. And then you have the actions of Bibi when this sort of thing happened in Syria - taking territory, bombing them, despite their pleadings for peace. None of this is good for getting a stable democratic governance as societies under threat go authoritarian to be able to act more quickly and efficiently in order to protect themselves. So while on the surface you might agree with Bibi, if you think about what that actually means, Bibi might want something else than that. Another failed state they can bomb if they feel any threat without repercussions because "terrorism" could be a lesser threat than a democratic economic and inevitably military power with much larger population that can wipe Israel if attacked.