breppp

Can an Iranian citizen effectively vote for the Supreme Leader?

> And, given that the us initiated this current round of hostilities

My guess is Article 5 could be invoked as this is an attack on an uninvolved NATO member. I wouldn't count on it though for other reasons

> Countries or governments facing elimination aren’t the most rational actors.

Even in a partially rational logic this is hard to explain. Qatar and Oman were their close friends but attacking might make sense because exerting pressure on the US might be more important, and that relationship is based on fear anyway.

Turkey is quite capable on its own and given this might end with Iran still standing, this is not (another) enemy they want to make

Worse yet, it was reported the US and Israel are planning to prop Kurdish forces in Iran, of which Turkey are fearful of any instance of national ambitions. So, in essence they could have been on Iran's side.

Hard for me to figure out a strategy here

that's false

Take the language issue with the BBC, which is hardly for this war

In any case a contrarian opinion might be that Iran promised to yield on negotiations following the previous war as mentioned here:

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-asks-gulf-ara...

And Iran instead opted for their years old tactic of stalling the negotiations

I don't see the large difference between a civilian port, a civilian oil facility or a civilian aluminum factory vs a hotel on the topic of whether the Iranians are capable of targeting a civilian data center, however, assuming you are curious, here goes

Finding these take time so I am sorry if this is going to be the last of these sources I'll paste, for example Bahrain luxury apartments building being hit:

https://edition.cnn.com/world/video/bahrain-iran-drone-strik...

US warning that high rise buildings in Bahrain are being targeted by Iranians drones:

https://x.com/TravelGov/status/2027843430987010446

refineries, gas fields - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/saudi-aramco-shuts-r...

dubai airport, residential buildings, hotels, ports - https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/several-loud-blast...

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/03/01/i...

Bahrain - https://bh.usembassy.gov/security-alert-update-5-u-s-embassy...

You can google for other targets in Qatar, Oman, Jordan, Iraq, Cyprus and Kuwait

Can't say how taking over Iraq for economic reasons helps the Palestinians but sure

> How evil of them to do that. They should have known only the United States of America has the divine right to invade countries and extract their resources

Yes, OP was already saying Iran is free to act because the US is an imperial power. I was merely stating that he is conveniently ignoring Iran's imperialist behavior

> doesn't seem it was the case in this instance

To me it absolutely looks like the case in here, what are the chances three availability zones across two different countries have been attacked?

That's incorrect, there have been multiple hotels being attacked and recently oil facilities in SA

Citizen armies? You haven't talked to a Lebanese lately haven't you?

Yes, they both show the UK had an interest in not participating or reducing their participation.

This is probably military strategy 101 not to push your enemies together when they are having a rift

I am talking about the Islamic Republic setting up local mercenary forces in order to extract resources from the local government in Iraq and Lebanon.

That's called Imperialism and was common among european powers in the 19th century

What's your view on the Republic's imperial aggression against Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen?

It seems this was not the case, but this has all changed now for sure

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj98egkl7l1o https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/20/what-are-chago...

Your link actually says they were contributing to the defense not the attack

> The US-Israeli strikes were launched after negotiations to limit Iran's nuclear programme ended without a deal. The UK did not participate.

> The general strategy makes a lot of sense for a desperate regime

The issue is that they are also attacking their closest friends in the region, as opposed to the other gulf nations which were merely pressuring the US not to attack due to fear.

They have thrown the stone in the metaphorical glass house towards the oil facilities very early in the conflict.

I think this is more an issue of mismanagement rather than strategy. They probably do have a very acute command and control issue due to the strikes.

It's also a good preview of how Iran with nuclear weapons would play out

I guess the US marines are also operating the Saudi oil facility and French base on their time off

Their actual current explanation is that they can't control their armed forces

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-888422

How does Iran communication describe the attacking of Saudi ARAMCO oil facilities and hotels in Bahrain and Dubai?

That's not how the EU views it,

https://x.com/vonderleyen/status/2028357886355570992

This comes after attacking US, French bases and civilian infrastructure in Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE as well as their close friends and mediators in Qatar and Oman

I can only see the US insistence on many bad foreign decisions in the name of democracy done in the Middle East by multiple administrations, that without much knowledge of the situation in East Asia, I venture to guess it is not a coincidence that US allies turned into democracies

I also am not sure about Indonesia as an example of a US ally, I don't think it is similar to the other two

Effectively both SK and Taiwan were completely dependent on US for defense, I doubt this had no bearing

Two great examples of countries where US pressure had effectively transformed from dictatorships to democracies

Jordan political system is much older than Iran, as well as the Saudis and others. Iran theocracy is a new phenomena in the Middle East, ushering the implementation era of political Islam, later continued by ISIS, Hamas and the milder Qatar and current Turkey

sometimes you just have to try Islamism before you decide you don't like it

That's certainly how their own propaganda portrays them, however if you see the amount of corruption in that effective kleptostate, you'd understand they care much about life

it's quite common that autocratic states have periods of instability due to wars of succession. That's why many devolve into Monarchy like the Kim or Assad dynasties. That's why one of the possible successors was Khamenai's son

If you know the history of the Iraq War you would know a lot of the reasons it went bad was Iranian involvement

> If that was true, obviously they would have built one buy now. Being one year away from building would be non-urgency inducing.

Reread your parent comment, the concept of a threshold nuclear state is that they are constantly a month away, for years. That's the entire point, being effectively a nuclear state without holding a nuclear weapon

> Didn't we have one of those a few years ago? I wonder what happened to it /s

Yes, although it had merit it was far worse than what can be signed now, especially the sunset clause was problematic

> Seriously, though: how can Iran both be so powerful we must avoid it becoming a blackmail state, and so weak and feckless it's not a threat to anyone?

that's the nature of nuclear weapons, your conventional force can be abysmal (pretty much NK situation vs US) and yet you can create epic destruction

> And didn't we already attack them to stop them from getting nuclear capabilities?

Yes, the thing here is the long term goal of signing a deal, whose main goal is removing the existing highly enriched uranium from Iran and restricting their ability to redevelop nuclear capabilities. Essentially this is the part where "Diplomacy is the continuation of war by other means" (to highly paraphrase), because the alternative to a deal is maintenance attacks such as these every two years