The country is basically on the verge of civil war. The reason it’s not is because the anti-regime forces are disorganized with no clear leader, have no weapons, and rely on internet to organize.
Even those regime supporters are civilians. This is literally advocating for a war crime.
The point of my comment was to give a first-hand conversation with an actual Iranian.
You can react to it any way you want, but the point of my comment was to show how some Iranians are actually thinking. And yes, many Iranians want regime change and they see the supporters of the regime as the enemy.
The regime hangs protestors by the way.
A casual conversation is not to be held to the rigour of legal or legislative opinion. But perspectives, like other sorts of opinions, are not all equal in value.
Some opinions are just noise and there is no value in "hearing all the perspectives" from sources that have no interest in even trying to think things through.
The worst opinions are calls to violence -- that lead to actual violence in some cases -- from people who incur zero risk from their extremism.
Idle statements about bombarding civilians, flattening countries, committing war crimes, "sending countries back into the Stone Age where they belong", are examples of arm-chair blather from people of whom the best we can say is that they have never lived under bombardment nor served in a time of conflict in any capacity whatsoever.
I quoted an actual conversation i had with an Iranian where they said essentially “go ahead and bomb the bridges”. That got flagged for some reason.
I’m simply trying to surface conversations I’ve had with Iranians. So often these Internet conversations occur in a bubble.
My point? I guess there’s this idea that Iranians are disgusted with Trump’s comment today. That hasn’t been my experience at all. My wife is Iranian. I’m connected to a large Iranian expat community. They are very pro Trump because of the war. The initial reaction I saw was disappointment with the ceasefire. They want continued pressure on the regime, and they feel that a cease-fire works against that.
Indeed, the entitlement complex is probably why so many of them (in the iranian diaspora) were happy to rally behind an actual monarch.
All military experts agree that bombing a country isn't going to trigger a regime change, and it hasn't so far after weeks of intense bombing. So the answer should be, keep bombing more things and target civilians?
Besides, the Iranian expat community is also a bubble, maybe not representative of the ones who are actually bombed.
But even so, I think the response you’ll get from most anti-regime Iranians is “go for it, if it may let us get our country back”.
Iranians who wants the regime overthrown are very conflicted right now. They see their country being destroyed, but they also hate the regime and want a revolution.
They literally feel that their country was hijacked by an Islamic theocracy. They want that destroyed, so they’re thankful that Trump is attacking it.
How far should Trump go? I just saw news reports that Iranian expats and anti-regime Iranians were disappointed with the cease-fire. That aligns with the initial reaction from my family and the Iranian expats that I know.
So it’s a complicated answer… Do Iranians want all their infrastructure destroyed? If it would guarantee the regime was defeated I think most would say yes.
As someone from and in a thirdworld country, these expats can be even more arrogant and psychopathic than the imperialists they live under
My mother-in-law is the most anti-regime person I’ve met.
My impression is that Iran is much closer to a civil war than Russia is. It’s very polarized.
You have to put yourself in the mindset of someone against the regime. They feel that their country was hijacked by an islamic theocracy.
This is a regime that forces little girls to cover their body. Dancing and singing in public is illegal. Protesters are hanged.
My wife was sent home from school as a kid because her headband didn’t properly cover her forehead. At the age of 30 my wife still has trouble wearing shorts because she is self-conscious about showing her legs.
This is the kind of mental trauma that women have to recover from after leaving Iran. And I’ve only skimmed the surface.
There is zero sympathy from the anti-regime side for those who support the theocracy.