Iranian War Is Not The Same As Iraq

[HappyFace2025]

Some people seem to think the current war equates to the one in Iraq in the 2000s. It manifestly is not the same.
While Saddam treated Iraqis appallingly as the Islamic Republic has done to Iranians, Iran has been exporting terror throughout the Middle East via its proxies Hamas, Hezbollah and Houtis, as well as elsewhere including the UK, where 20 terrorist attacks were foiled last year (announced yesterday.)

Hardline islamists and khomeinists are the same bunch
MEK is some batshit islamo communist outfit that would have zero chance of grabbing power in a country rioting because they’ve had enough of religious facists
Moarchist - I’m not sure what that means, even Pahlavi has said he doesn’t want to be the supreme leader or iran - he wants to lead a democratic transition (alongside the reformers and moderates I assume).

So thats

1. religious nuts (ircg members, basji, mullahs etc etc)
2. communist religious nuts
3. normal people (none of which seem to want a GCC style emir including the bloke who’s supposed to do it)

The regular army is probably split between those people, some have been executed for not firing on protesters. I don’t think it’s going to turn into pakistan or egypt. The reason Israel had so much access is because enough people in key positions gave it to them, the IRCG itself is probably riddled with people who don’t like it, or who will turn on a dime if it’s in their own interest.

I remember a story told by Ahmadinejad about a unit they set up to hunt mossad, it turned out the guy they hired was mossad and the people he recruited were mossad too. It was very funny but also very instructive.

The big problem is the religious nuts have all the guns tbh. Hopefully usa and Israel will tip that scale.

As Bringmeout is trying to emphasise- Iran is not the same as Afghanistan, or Iraq. They are a massive, educated country with a long long history and structured civilisation that far predates Islam. They have many ethnic groups and are not Arabs, or affiliated to the Arab world.
Id be extremely surprised if, after all they have been through, any fundamentalist Muslim regime would be able to remain or take over.
And at the end of the day, the people have made it extremely clear that they want change, aside from the obvious benefits to the West of cutting off the head that feeds terror cells.
War is awful, but bloody revolution is happening anyway, in the streets of Iran. In order to try and build that into something positive for the people, first the Islamic Regime must be destroyed.

Yes i mentioned that myself as a threat, but today is not necessarily the day for that fight, kurds aren’t stupid, their primary enemy is the IRCG. Balochis also tend not to like other peoples armies telling them what to do. Thats fine, they fight the IRCG today. Both groups may decide to take areas and clear it of IRCG. But thats not a threat to the world is it? Anyone attacking the IRCG at this point benefits the bulk of Iranians.

We also don’t know if Iranian kurds and balochis would be separatists (I know I said this is a risk), you see that with the kurds in Syria, turkey and Iraq, they often don’t agree with each other. Druze don’t much seem to care if they are Israeli or Lebanese, I think they really mind being Syrian at the moment though.

But today is today and the enemy for all these groups is clear.

Far more Iraqis died and lost education and health and all those things we would all agree are good to be able to access post the Iraq war than they did under Saddam Hussein and it came to light that the Iraqis did not have super weapons that could take out cities in Europe or anywhere else, so I can see why people are a little dubious about the bombing of Iran because they might in the future develop such weapons and the murder of its leaders.

Yes this. Pp equate them due to the location but there are differences within the people.

Thank you. I doubt whether many people even realise that Iran is not Arab.

No normal person would imagine the US forces would deliberately target a school in Iran. Nothing to be gained but bad publicity.

They seem to be the ones largely getting the bad publicity for it anyway despite none of us actually knowing how that school came to be bombed.

I feel like people are using children's deaths for political advantage which is pretty sick. Whether the US, Israel or Iran are responsible, I wouldn't go so far as to suggest that any of them would have done it on purpose.

Apparently the Guardian (!) has a verified report. You know, the Hamas supporting Guardian.

It’s been verified by the Guarduan. The school was hit by a US or Israeli strike. The reason it’s hard to tell which immediately is because Israel uses US weapons/missiles.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/mar/02/civilian-deaths-in-iran-pass-200-amid-fear-of-bombs-and-regime-clampdown

How normal are you? You’ve been imagining that Iran had enough uranium for 11 nuclear bombs based on hearsay from Witkoff of all people.
60% enriched uranium can’t be used on a nuclear bomb, you need it to be 90% enriched and we destroyed all the centrifuges and executed over a dozen nuclear scientists last summer.

Yet some people are blaming the US, some people are blaming Israel (some are even blaming Iran though I find that unlikely).

What surprises me is that people feel it's ok to blame one particular country when actually we don't know which one is responsible (and imply it was deliberate which sounds batshit crazy). Even if we accept the Guardian report as 100% correct, we still don't know if Israel or the US was responsible so it seems strange to me when people do choose to blame one particular country.

I think I'm pretty normal @FiatLuxAdAstra but maybe everyone thinks they are! The point about the 60% enriched uranium is that it could be raised to weapons-grade (90%) within about a week to 10 days.

In addition to this, Iranian officials argued in negotiations that they had the 'inalienable right' to enrich nuclear fuel, so were nowhere near agreeing to stop doing it. Iran think they have the right to develop nuclear weapons but most other countries don't think they are stable enough when religious extremists were in charge who thought nothing of killing their own citizens including children.

This sums things up perfectly.

No normal person would imagine the US forces would deliberately target a school in Iran.
That's precisely what I was insinuating. The use of the word deliberate is deliberate. They didn't deny it, that statement basically just said they wouldn't do it deliberately so does that suggest it was an horrendous mistake? If so own the mistake, admit it and apologise for it to the families of the children killed

I feel like people are using children's deaths for political advantage which is pretty sick
No it's not what people are doing, people are trying to find out how it came to pass that a school was bombed which killed over 150 children. Trying to move people on from that without finding out what the hell happened, is pretty sick tbh

We will have to agree to disagree @Boolabus on whether or not people are attempting to use children's deaths for political advantage.

No one is trying to move people on from finding out what actually did happen, I'm sure we all want to know and in particular the families involved deserve to know what happened. I just don't find it helpful that people with no real knowledge about what happened - like us on MN - would come up with their own theories about who to blame or how it happened.

Yes, and we have learnt many times that when you try and destroy them with military power they just spring up again in another form.

Yep an apology does it, your children are dead, say Sorry, all forgiven.

Anyone who thinks the Israelis wouldn't target a school on the basis a Cleric teaches there, hasn't been looking at Gaza.

If it was a US bomb, i'd like to think it was a genuine mistake.

All we will get from this is further bloodshed, inflation (Analysts suggest July's price cap will be around £500 higher than now) more terrorism, a gleeful Putin.

‘We have learnt’. What is it you’d like the Iranian people to do?

Which they didn’t in fact have did they? It was never proven definitively. They did have alot of oil though. And so do Iran…..weird that

For sake of clarity, the Guardian is confirming that an explosion happened at the school. What is not yet known is whether this was a US bomb, misfired Iranian missile/ drone or a falling Iranian SAM.

But this isn't about making life better for the Iranian people - the US have stated this clearly.

Nothing.

None of this is about the Iranian people.

Nothing changes for them.

If the Iranian people want things to change then they need to form a group to challenge leadership, but interestingly enough there is seemingly not the appetite for it.

Yes people talk about wanting things to change, but no-one is stepping up to make that happen. No-one who isn’t some radical nutjob anyway.

The dancing in the streets was purely performative. It was a momentary symbol of hope. But there were equally as many people, women included, sobbing in the streets as well.

And now that’s all over they’re stockpiling in preparation for an extended war.

But hey, who cares as long as the non existent weapons are destroyed. You know? The ones which were apparently destroyed last year? Or have people forgotten that bit?

@ThereAreOnlyShadesOfGrey
So the 30,000 who died plus those injured, tortured and imprisoned who fought without guns or any other arms, 'don't have the appetite'. Shame on you.

People want the change, but the problem is that there’s no leadership to bring it about.

Whether we like it or not there’s more support for the regime than against it.

Otherwise it would absolutely be possible to have overthrown it, and especially now that there is no current leader you’d expect someone to be standing up and saying that they’ll be challenging the leadership. But there isn’t.

Until now there’s been rioting, but no actual led opposition. No plan. And that’s the only way anything will change.

No country outside another can bring about change. It can only come from within, and in order to do that there have to be groups with the will to do it, and the courage to fail.

Have you read at all what happens to people who have tried?

That’s not really an answer. Decades of brutality and oppression. What can they do?