Are people still rejoicing about Iran?

Are you able to explain it to me fully then please? Many thanks.

It all makes perfect sense to me 🤷‍♀️

Your condescending tone doesn't bother me - other people liked the same comment so I conclude it's just personal opinion whether it makes sense or not.

@RedTagAlan whilst I mostly agree with the bringing them in from the cold idea and the sanctions on nuclear stuff I'm sure I read they were still playing silly buggers with the teams checking their nuclear arsenal? And now we have 60 % enriched so the point is are they even trustworthy ?

Whether he is more hard line than his Dad is not very relevant seeing as he could be dead and his messages being written by someone else for all we know.

Plus the anti US anti Israel sentiment was high enough already for the IRGC to be a proscribed organisation by the EU & many other countries. Whether they hate them a bit more is neither here nor there since they already wished death to the US and to Israel.

I agree. I understand that he is more hard line than his father and that all the assassinations have only served to harden the Iranian's resolve and the anti US sentiment. That would only increase if the current Khamenei were assassinated too.
There is no need for him to confirm that he is alive simply to satisfy random Westerners. It would put him at great risk so he has clearly decided to stay 'underground'.

There was plenty of rejoicing when the war started. It was very well discussed on MN and many other places.

I think if Mojtaba Khamenei ends up dying it will only serve to harden support for anti-american cause. I'd guess the chances of him being replaced by someone hard-line would be relatively high.

If they could also agree to stop killing their own people, but somehow I doubt that’s going to happen…
As for the new supreme leader, personally I never thought he would magically reappear after 40 days of mourning.
He’s been “issuing statements”, but who knows if he’s even alive still.

And as has been pointed out multiple times earlier on this thread, there was no rejoicing when the war started. Most of us will be happy when a ceasefire deal is agreed, especially if the IRGC are forced to stop enriching their uranium, because 60% was getting scary given that percentage was way beyond the enrichment levels needed for non military purposes. It would be good too if they would agree to stop funding their terrorist proxies like Hamas & Hezbollah.

If I were the Khamenei I would be proving I was alive and not in a coma, given all the rumours. He wouldn’t need to parade around in public to do that.

Does anyone seriously think he is in charge? Some leader huh 🤔

So things have gone from bad to worse and no one seems to be rejoicing about the war the US and Israel decided to start on 28th Feb.
If you were Ali Khamenei, would you be parading around in public?

The 40 days is over now so it wasn’t that. Still no sign of him … is he in a coma or severely disfigured because he’s certainly not in a fit state to be seen or we would be seeing him by now.

Anyway, glad I didn’t need to eat my hat as I don’t actually own one.

@Bringemout

Re the missile v interceptors thing above. When you say, quote, "You don’t need THAAD for drones, those can just be shot down.", have a look at this article.

Patriot interceptor likely behind Bahrain blast blamed on Iran, analysis shows | The Times of Israel

It appears they are using patriot for drones, not just shooting them down with whatever. So that can be added to the numbers calculation I posted above.

You can also find many articles such as this, from a couple of years ago.

Lockheed Martin to Produce 650 PAC-3 Patriot Missiles Annually – Global Defense Corp

That's 650 patriot interceptors made per year, with details for expansion and so on.

So when the analysts pull all this data together, the sums are easy to do. They are not just making stuff up, as Trump endlessly does.

People do understand it. It may be convenient for them to look the other way or keep quiet. US is a huge power.

Or.. it was before Trump put his foot on it. There are a number of things happening around the world on the back of Iran war. The "allies" are not following and their words are being tougher by the minute. Greenland is deffended from the US (who could ever imagine that? If they had and have a full military permission to do whatever around Greenland! But here we are). Canada is pursuing a trade war with US and meeting with a huge number of other countries. Switzerland has halted the sale of weapons to US. Spain has denied use of their bases. India has not allowed US to use their ports.
The list is larger, I am sure I have missed some bits.

I agree with you.
This is really key imo:
'But how many will accept their land been taken by US? That is a different question. A very very different question.'

As far as I can see, although many Iranians hate the regime, they hate the thought of the US taking over even more. In fact, there are crowds of Iranians protesting against the US and pro regime at present, despite the bombings.
The chances of a 'good outcome' for normal Iranians in Iran when the US decides to invade is extremely close to zero. As I said, the motives of the US have never been to help the citizens of whichever is the latest country they want to overthrow/attack/interfere with. It is about resouces, $$$ and the dollar status. See recent removal of Maduro to commandeer the oil facilities. See deals being done in the ME by Trump's SIL, Kushner under the guise of 'negotiations'. See deals being done in Ukraine. Given the history of US invasions, etc, it is surprising the so many people still don't seem to understand this.

Good question. But something you said is rather important.

"It’s not as if building a weapon has been easy for Iran."

You said it. And do you have evidence they have been ? I mean real evidence. Not the incoherent ravings of a madman in the WH.

Yes I think MAD deters all other countries who have nuclear weapons from using them. As seen by the fact they haven’t.

The reason there’s a solid list of countries who think Iran will use them shows they are the outlier and no one wants to risk it.

And going by the just sell them a weapon approach, what has stopped them so far? It’s not as if building a weapon has been easy for Iran. If you are convinced someone will just sell them one why haven’t they?

I agree Trump is facing a decision he wants to escape from.
He has been told what each previous president has been told about land invasion of Iran. He has to decide whether to get in or not. He knows the cost. And, obviously, other nations are staying away from it. "Poor Trump"! They are punishing him for being a better leader than them! I am sure that is what he thinks. Well, actually he keeps saying how lucky the world is that he is POTUS because he is willing to pursue this war
He is crazy enough to still take US marines into Iran. We shall see. There are a few days to go till they make it there
We do know many Iranians reject this regime. But how many will accept their land been taken by US? That is a different question. A very very different question.
Plus the financial effects of a long conflict will hit him hard.

If US calls it a day now, the picture is not that great either. The Iranian government is exactly the very same one they had before this, but bruised and full of even more hate.

Not an odd take at all.

Here is a Sky news article on it from the 3rd of March.

Iran's attacks are being repelled - but the numbers suggest there could soon be a problem | World News | Sky News

And we are starting to see ballistic missiles being get through And note the photo of the shahad drones in that article. Russia makes these as well now. And yes, small payload, but small arms fire wont do it. These have been using up the patriot interceptors. Ukraine has been developing anti drone drones to deal with these.

Dubai shot down 340 Ballistics. So thats 340 interceptors used. South Koreas stock of THAAD was being moved out a week or more ago.

And yup. There is plenty of oil. But oils are not the same. Each type has a specific refinery design. One oil supply can't just be swapped to another easily.

The US does import Gulf oil for example.

The conversation around this really echoes Venezuela, mumsnet was full of fury at Trump whilst Venezuelans were celebrating. One poor Venezuelan came on to mumsnet to explain that the majority were really happy to see maduro gone but managed to get lectured by mumsnetters telling them what a terrible person Trump is (I don’t disagree with that) and how they should be very unhappy about the whole thing.

I am very sceptical of the idea that most Iranians support the regime, why a complete Internet blackout? Why the level of repression? If Iranians supported the government they would be on-line telling the americans and Israelis to fuck off. If you were the regime you would be happy with that, pretty much everything I saw on-line was protesters publishing video of street executions of protesters, body bags and crying families and the IRCG threatening citizens.

Removing an authoritarian regime is always painful, saying you shouldn’t do it because people will die in the short term seems a bit mad. May as well have said the west shouldn’t have fought Isis because of civilian casualties, people would still be being burned alive in cages in Iraq and Syria if there hadn’t been intervention.

I think the point is that given how the IRCG has behaved towards neighbours who had not allowed strikes from their own countries it is a regime which should never be able to hold anyone hostage with nukes. Their behaviour has just confirmed they cannot be allowed to stay. They destabilise the levant, iraq, syria and Yemen and now they are an explicit threat to the GCC.

Odd take, they really aren’t, do you have any idea how many missiles they have launched at gulf countries and how many have hit? It looks awful when you see a building on fore but actually the gulf has done a very good job. They’ve shot over 340 ballistic missiles and an insane amount of drones at dubai for example. You don’t need THAAD for drones, those can just be shot down. They are basically an extreme annoyance at this level rather than existential for their neighbours. Even the missile that hit Israel, it was bad but not war ending. Eroding THAAD supply is only useful if you have unlimited ballistic missiles and launchers. Which they don’t.

Energy prices are going up, thats not the same thing as no oil or gas.

I can't make sense of your logic here.

Why would the DPRK selling Iran a nuke be at odds with their own behavior ? What behavior ?

Why would the DPRK selling a Nuke bring destruction to the DPRK ?

And why is my point another reason to question having the IRGC in place?

The whole point of MAD is that it is supposed to prevent total destruction.

Going by memory here so happy to be corrected. Think back to Reagan and star wars. The USSR objected because they said it changed the terms of MAD. Because if the US could intercept Soviet Missiles in space, then it would put the US in a potential situation where it could attack first and destroy an incoming soviet reply. So it changed the balance of power such that MAD might not apply.

And FFWD to today with the Patriot and THAAD systems. This has also changed the balance of power. It has meant that ballistic and cruise missiles can be considered ineffective when used against the folk with interceptors. And I would argue that has contributed this war kicking off. Because Trump and Netanyahu appear to consider themselves invincible, because they have the power.

But the weak point with interceptors is numbers. And Iran (PRC also) developed a doctrine of having loads of missiles. Have more missiles than the other side have interceptors. And at the moment, with Iranian missiles getting through Israels Iron dome, and Trump now hyper panicking, that doctrine appears to be effective.

But ICBMs are different. Because physics. To get the range they need to go high into space. And space is big, re-entry speed is about Mach 15, so MAD still applies. ICBMs can't really be defended against.

For sure one could argue that a nuke could be fired on a normal ballistic or cruise the 1000 miles or so at Israel. But given that each warhead can take decades to make, the chance of one missile getting through against THADD would be low. And yes, they could fire loads of missiles to use up the interceptors and THEN fire their nuke.... BUT...

would MAD still not apply ?

That is, if Iran did use a nuke, then it would be replied to with nukes.

It's a flawed system for sure, and I don't want to see nuke proliferation, and Iran should not have them.

But for me, the way to prevent them getting a nuke is not to flatten the place, and say you will keep flattening them... just in case. At some point people need to talk again.

Pakistan has Nukes, India, DPRK, PRC, Russia too, and the thing that stops them using them is MAD. And it can also be said that MAD prevents large scale conventional wars.

But if Iran faces the prospect of a large conventional war every few years against nations who are not willing to talk to them, and who rip up existing non nuke deals , does that not actually incentivize them to get nukes, by any means possible ?

After all, they see DPRK, Russia and Pakistan, pretty much untouchable because of MAD. So are they not more likely to want join that club if a US election can result in an unstable genius in the WH, who is escalating a war he started to try flatten them anyway ?

MAD has worked so far. And yes, Iran should not get nukes. Nobody else should get them. But goodness me, Trump is doing a good job of making people want to have them.

If Iran did buy a nuke from the DPRK, would that not instantly put them into that club ?

'Are people still rejoicing (about the war) in Iran'. They seem to have gone very quiet including those who were rejoicing about the war on here.
It's obvious to most people that this war has already been a disaster in every way. It is also obvious that the US has absolutely no interest in helping Iranian civilians, having already murdered thousands of them and destroyed their homes and citites, polluted their air, hit a desalination plan, murdered 160 school girls, hit numberous hospitals. The list goes on.
Trump is clearly a man in full blown panic who has lost his head entirely. Each new TS post says the opposite of the one before it. He is desperate not to send in US troops in an attempt to unblock the S of H because he knows that the casualty numbers would be huge and he has his mid terms to think about. Instead, he is trying to bully the Europeans, China, Japan, Iran and making all sorts of threats that are not going to work.