Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
RiverStone | on: US and Iran agree to provisional ceasefire
I was responding to a comment about bombing bridges.

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.

mrbombastic | parent | next
You often find expat communities have the exact opposite viewpoint as those that remain, part of the reason they are expats. See cuban expats, nicaraguan expats, not to say they are wrong but they are not a monolith representing all of a civilization. Presumably those standing around the bridges don’t want them bombed.
RiverStone | root | parent | next
I’m just giving my personal experience as a data point.

All my in-laws are in Tehran: aunts, uncles, cousins. Everybody is anti-regime.

It’s hard for us to understand in the west. Speaking out against the regime is not possible.

These people who congregated on the bridges were phoned up by the regime as a marketing stunt. Perhaps they were family members or friends of the IRGC. Perhaps they were forced to go, because you can’t say no to the regime. They hang protesters.

I saw someone in another thread compare it to the USSR. Or maybe North Korea.

I’m not saying that there aren’t regime supporters, there definitely are. But you have to be very suspect whenever you see videos of “grassroots” supporters of the regime and remember that opposition voices are not allowed.

pydry | root | parent
They're often from the families of the privileged or elites under the old, america friendly regime.

Indeed, the entitlement complex is probably why so many of them (in the iranian diaspora) were happy to rally behind an actual monarch.

This is not a normal thing to do for somebody who has supposedly adopted western values.

yodsanklai | parent | next
It's not because you've found an Iranian that wants their country destroyed that this is the right thing to do.

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.

jamaliki | parent | next
Iranian expat communities have these radical views because they won't have to live with the consequences.
senordevnyc | parent
Uh no, your wife said to bomb the civilians on the bridges, because they're regime supporters. Clearly advocating for a war crime, so who gives a shit that she's an Iranian expat? No wonder it was flagged.
loading story #47693245