Will Iran regime fall, or just another umpteenth fail of protesters? (rerun hobbies)

[Magical Realist]

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[C C]

Average day in the ME. This will take people’s minds of some unpopular issues facing US govt for awhile. Today will there be protests and for what? US aggression(anti-war), anti-Israel, anti-Iran, pro Iran, pro & anti Trump? List goes on.

In contrast to Venezuela, if the government of Iran can't be effectively ended and replaced with a better one, then I don't know what the point of this is. It seems to be a lot of fury looking for a reason after initiating the process, and maybe the only one that's there after the dust settles really is just distraction.

Tehran has a water crisis, but that probably can't be exploited without severely harming the citizens (more than the state). Trump called for "Iranians to overthrow their government", but that's as totally impotent an expectation as it has ever been -- exactly the same futility as calling for Russians to toss Putin in the early days of the Ukraine invasion, or the Chinese and North Koreans doing squat over three-quarters of a century. It's nothing more than an obligatory vocal tic that should finally be put out of its misery.

[Yazata]

Just got up after 4 hours sleep

Loud boom and a large fire outside a major hotel in Dubai. The fire appears to be burning cars in the street outside the hotel and not the structure itself. Might be a car bomb, might be one of those Shahed style attack drones, or it might have been falling debris. Not a missile from the looks of it. Update: there's video showing a drone diving at the hotel.

A terminal at the international airport in Kuwait appears to have been hit by something. The US embassy in Kuwait is advising Americans there to shelter in place.

Meanwhile in Israel, sirens continue to sound. Iranian missile attacks have increased in numbers and are becoming more difficult for the Israelis to intercept. There are reports of missile impacts in Israel, but no damage assessments as of yet.

Video from Tehran shows selected buildings totally obliterated and large craters in the ground where they once stood, suggesting that air strikes were trying to hit underground bunkers below the buildings. Most of the city is unscathed though, the attacks are clearly precisely targeted at government buildings.

There's lots of unconfirmed talk in Israel that the Supreme Leader is believed dead, although the Iranians say that he is in a safe location outside Tehran.

[Magical Realist]

Word is that they blew up a girl's school in Iran killing around 85 kids. This is the often overlooked price of military action--the collateral damage that thru some weird arithmetic is counted as an acceptable toll for just blowing things up willy nilly. We always glorify war while ignoring the real world tragedies it unleashes on innocent victims. War as a mere abstraction or message--never as the ugly reality it really is.

[Yazata]

The Israelis say that their entire air force was involved in the initial attacks, which seem to have concentrated on hitting missile launchers in western Iran. They say that it was the largest air attack in Israeli air force history. Presumably they were assisted by American aerial refueling aircraft since the Israeli air refueling capacity is severely limited. And presumably they made use of American satellite targeting data to locate the launchers.

Oil tankers trying to get out of the Persian gulf report that they have been warned that the Strait of Hormuz is closed to marine traffic.

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In contrast to Venezuela, if the government of Iran can't be effectively ended and replaced with a better one, then I don't know what the point of this is.

I think that the primary goal is to:

1. Stop Iran's nuclear weapons program. The 12-Day War last summer put a big dent in it, but the Iranians have been trying to revive it.

2. Stop Iran's ballistic missile program. Initially hit the actual deployed launchers out in the field ready to fire. Then work back, hitting the support infrastructure and the factories that build the missiles and the research and development efforts developing longer range missiles and ICBMs.

3. Stop Iran's supporting proxies all over the Middle East destabilizing friendly countries.

While 4., forcing regime change in Iran would be the ideal goal, it will be hard to achieve without occupying all of Iran (a large country) with ground troops. And that would be contrary to Trump's foreign policy which states that it isn't America's job to remake the world in our own image. Just because there are problems somewhere in the world, it doesn't automatically become the United States' responsibility to fix it. Our responsibility is simply to protect our own and our allies' interests.

Replacing the Iranian government is the task of the Iranians themselves.

What we can do is weaken the Iranian regime and hopefully loosen its grip. Start at the top with top commanders in Tehran, then work down the organizational chart, hitting command, control and communications at all levels. Do whatever we can to weaken the IRGC by hitting their bases, armories and whatever. It will be very hard to eliminate the regime's Basij thug enforcers though, since they are deeply embedded in the population. The Iranian people will have to turn on them en-masse, which could turn out to be very bloody.

[Yazata]

Multiple sources in Iran are saying that Supreme Leader Khamenei is dead. Israeli PM Netanyahu just said that the Israelis are hearing that as well. Assuming that it's really true, expectation is that the IRGC will take over control. Or attempt to, communications are probably pretty much down throughout the Iranian government right now and a lot of the IRGC leadership is probably dead or in hiding, afraid to do anything that might make their locations known.

While the Iranians are firing off missiles and drones at everybody and everything, it seems rather uncoordinated at the moment. I'm speculating that missile and drone units are acting on their own initiative based on the last orders they received.

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Satellite photo of a ship on fire at the Iranian naval base at Konarak.

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The internet has gone down throughout Iran. Unclear if we did that to them, or whether they shut it down themselves.

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Multiple sources in Iran are saying that Supreme Leader Khamenei is dead. Israeli PM Netanyahu just said that the Israelis are hearing that as well.

And a "senior US official" says that US intelligence agrees. Khamenei was reportedly in a high level meeting with 5-10 other top Iranian leaders when the location was hit. It's believed that all of them are dead.

Fox News' Jennifer Griffin is reporting that's why the attack on Iran began in daylight instead of at night. Intelligence was received that Khamenei and his leadership circle were all gathered together in a meeting at a known location, and that was such a good target of opportunity that missiles were fired at the location of the meeting and the timing of the whole attack operation had to be moved up accordingly.

[Yazata]

Israel is saying that "more than 40 senior Iranian security and regime figures" are dead in total as a result of multiple strikes. 40 is a lot. It's basically a decapitation of the Iranian government. Those who aren't dead are probably in hiding, afraid to do anything that might reveal their locations. It helps explain why Iran's response seems so disorganized.

Disorganized, but not impotent. Tel Aviv is currently experiencing a large scale ballistic missile attack and one or more of them weren't intercepted and hit whatever they were aiming at. Israel isn't revealing what was hit for security reasons, which suggests that it might have been a relatively high value target.

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Site of the Iranian ballistic missile impact in Tel Aviv

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[Syne]

Word is that they blew up a girl's school in Iran killing around 85 kids. This is the often overlooked price of military action--the collateral damage that thru some weird arithmetic is counted as an acceptable toll for just blowing things up willy nilly. We always glorify war while ignoring the real world tragedies it unleashes on innocent victims. War as a mere abstraction or message--never as the ugly reality it really is.

Only according to "Iran's judiciary." Are you really going to buy Iran propaganda the same way you did Gazan propaganda?

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Israel is saying that "more than 40 senior Iranian security and regime figures" are dead in total as a result of multiple strikes. 40 is a lot. It's basically a decapitation of the Iranian government. Those who aren't dead are probably in hiding, afraid to do anything that might reveal their locations. It helps explain why Iran's response seems so disorganized.

Hopefully it gives the Iranian civilians an opening at some point.

[C C]

Israel is saying that "more than 40 senior Iranian security and regime figures" are dead in total as a result of multiple strikes. 40 is a lot. It's basically a decapitation of the Iranian government. Those who aren't dead are probably in hiding, afraid to do anything that might reveal their locations. It helps explain why Iran's response seems so disorganized. [...]

That's the Venezuelan standard. Actually bring the government down, though there's still the iffy, risky matter of what takes its place.

[Magical Realist]

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