In fairness, Iran has also been conducting its campaign with missiles and the Shahed drones. The Iran-Israel war has killed a lot of people who are neither Iranian nor Israeli but happen to live in Palestine or Lebanon.
That would be true if they were keeping the native population there alive. We know they were importing presumably loyal people from deep Russia. What happened to original occupants? You can guess.
Trump has avoided a ground invasion up to this point for this exact reason, even trying to take one of outerlying islands would have heavy casualties due to drone warfare. There's speculation that the mess over the weekend was the result of a SOF mission gone wrong.
> the US has lost what, <20 people by now, in over a month? Putin loses >20 people per hour of his war
Not sure why you're being downvoted. Russia's economy and military have been flogged by their war in a way America's has not. Moreover, we have midterms this year and a Presidential election in 2. Moscow has no similar 'fuck it' exit option.
> Russia’s economy and military have been flogged for years to get to the current point. The US is just on month two
Russia's military power has been vastly diminished by its war. If America committed to a ground invasion and then stuck with it through the next President, yes, we'd probably see similar degradation of American martial ability over years.
> two powers have wildly different militaries and strategies. Comparing body counts is never gonna be a super helpful metric by itself
Agree. But it does point to the extent to which one system will go to reduce loss of life.
The American people are already getting flogged when they buy fuel and groceries. The longer this war continues the worse it will get. Nonetheless, the American people themselves are mostly safe at home, the precedent for Iran launching any sort of attacks against the American homeland is basically nonexistent. Even sending terror cells, you'd think Iran would be on this for how often their western critics accuse them of funding terrorism, but in America? Crickets. This war is bullshit.
Look at the body exchange ratios. Russia exchanges 20+ bodies for each received from The Ukraine. X and Telegram channels are full of videos of freshly dug graves in The Ukraine.
Mediazona (a BBC propaganda arm) tracks obituaries in Russia and even a blatantly biased outlet is unable to prove such assertions like 20 people per hour.
Edit: since Hypocrisy News is rate limiting me I can't reply to the redditor asking for a source:
Article says "Russia is likely handing over more bodies than it receives since its troops have captured more Ukrainian bodies than vice versa, since they have been on the offensive for most of the war."
That could be bullshit. But it holds water as a hypothesis. If Ukraine were suffering 20:1 casualty ratios against itself on the field, Russia would have won already. There are no weapons that can overcome a small belligerent losing more bodies than the larger one.
Maybe it's simply because Ukrainians aren't killing Russians within territory they control, so they don't have as many bodies to exchange. Looking at body exchanges to determine the number of dead people on either side seems just...like a weird metric?
It seems to hover around 30k dead a month recently, so 1000 people a day, divided by 24, that's actually ~41 people an hour.
But you know, even if we assume these numbers are wildly innacurate and only half those given...that's still 20 per hour?
>>X and Telegram channels are full of videos of freshly dug graves in The Ukraine.
No doubt, but what does that have to do with anything.
>>Edit: since Hypocrisy News is rate limiting me I can't reply to the redditor asking for a source:
So on one hand you call BBC a highly biased source, and then you link an article from it? So which one is it? Is it biased, or is it the source of your information?
...anyway... Seriously bros, this is a war where one side is making wildly inflammatory, specific and credible threats against the civilian infrastructure of the other and this is a response to that, hardly even a response in kind. If they strike these assets it will cause financial burden for rich people, not plunge millions of civilians into darkness as the POTUS is credibly threatening to do.
Iranian attacks on US soil: Fuck all! So why is America fighting Iran? Insane ziofascist cultists picking fights on the other side of the planet to provoke the Apocalypse so they can all be raptured to paradise. (Translation: boomers are getting old and they want to see burning flesh one more time before they die.)
> In a Truth Social post on March 30, Trump warned that the U.S. would obliterate "all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet 'touched.'"
Iran was having a water crisis before all this, to the extent of considering relocating the capital city away from Tehran's current location. Bombing Iranian water infrastructure will kill a lot of civilians, just as similar things happened in the Yemeni civil war (which Iran is a participant in). It's disheartening how much the prospect of mass murder is met with a shrug.
> AFAIK there is no exemption that says it is OK to commit war crimes if the other side does.
Of course not, but I still think the expectation that someone doesn't commit war crimes against you disappears relatively quickly when you're openly and proudly admitting you'll open to violating the rules of war and saying international humanitarian law doesn't matter.
> Wasn’t that in response to Trump posting that he’d hit theirs?
It's Iran. They haven't been following international law since 1979. That isn't an excuse to commit war crimes against them. But Iran really doesn't have any legs to stand on when it comes to complaining about targeting civilian infrastructure–they and their proxies have been doing this for decades.
>They haven't been following international law since 1979.
History doesn't start in 1979. Why not go back to 1953? Overthrowing another country's elected government is no more conscionable under international law.
Sort of? I don't think that's really how war crimes work. Unless we're objectively in eye-for-an-eye territory, in which case we're not really talking about international law anymore. (To be clear, I think everyone talking about international law in this conflict is posturing. We've been collectively setting new norms for years, and between Russia, China and America, the rules seem to have inched closer to total war.)
Iran's targeting strategy has been a capability restrained tit for tat, for the most part. This is true except for attacks on other gulf states right after US-Israel decapitation strike.
My personal opinion is that, it's because with the previous political and cultural trends, West had (maybe still has) actually quite high chances of collapsing and falling in the long term due to its own indecisiveness, lots of words mixed a lack of actions against coordinated and targeted efforts of Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Belarus, Cuba, China, Syria and North Korea.
I remember national state TV in Russia talking about "we are ready to nuke United States if needed" in 2014 [1].
So, domestically, government made sure people believe that the West is the mortal enemy and we were are already at some kind of cold war since Crimea annexation, it's just West didn't notice, seems like.
Then, there were also artifical immigration crisis at EU borders created by Russia and Belarus.
And many other various hybrid and asymmetrical attacks.
So, USA recognized the danger and started dismantling the problem piece by piece, to ensure a long term peace and safety of its people. Could it be better organized and coordinated with allies? Probably, yes, but the meaning stays.
> Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Belarus, Cuba, China, Syria and North Korea.
Putting these all in the same list conflates very different situations.
- Big actual threat with body count: Russia.
- Russian proxies: Syria (very lethal, but mostly within Syria, not a "threat to the west", complicated by Daesh and AQ)
- Nasty autocracy but stable cold war: NK
- Autocracy, but largely minding their own business and with no real capability to threaten: Cuba, Venezuela
- Major trading partner: China
> USA recognized the danger and started dismantling the problem piece by piece
Trump era has systematically downplayed the threat from Russia. And let's not forget how many members of Trump campaign staff were jailed due to Russian influence.
If the west collapses it will be because of its internal problems. Inefficiency, bad government, inequality.
I think you are right that the West is complacent about its enemies because it cannot really shake the belief in its superiority that came from winning the cold war and dominating the world in the decades after, I just do not think that is the biggest threat.
> So, USA recognized the danger and started dismantling the problem piece by piece, to ensure a long term peace and safety of its people. Could it be better organized and coordinated with allies? Probably, yes, but the meaning stays.
By becoming part of the problem? Trump threatening to invade Greenland was a wake-up call for Europe. Actively supporting forces that want to tear down democracy in Europe isn’t particularly helpful either.
If we become like China and Russia then why is our civilization in any way better?
Iranian proxies are responsible for well over 1,000 American deaths since 1979, and there were dozens of foiled plots on American soil and hundreds of individual militia attacks in Iraq and Syria, directed by Iran.
For reference, how many times has the US interfered with Iran's government and how many people in Iran has the US killed since 1979? That's the only way to get a fair view of this discussion. Just wondering if all this happened in a vacuum or, god forbid, Iran maybe has some reason to dislike the US.
this was a reply to people saying "Iran is not attacking the US". It is of course convenient to bend this discussion into a different direction, but this was a reply to blind propaganda that sees only one side as responsible for bad things.
[To the downvoter, downvoting is not going to change the historical facts]
It was the US that upended Iranian parliamentary democracy with a military coup, sponsored chemical weapons attacks on Irani population (through its proxy Iraq). This killed some 30k to 50k by way of chemical attacks alone. Credible sources estimate 100K killed by these chemical weapons attacks alone.
US shot down their passenger jet. US has imposed crippling sanctions that have decimated the economic well being of the country compared to what it could have been.
Iran Air Flight 655 was an international scheduled passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai via Bandar Abbas that was shot down on 3 July 1988 by two surface-to-air missiles fired by USS Vincennes, a United States Navy warship. The missiles hit the Iran Air aircraft, an Airbus A300, while it was flying its usual route over Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf, shortly after the flight departed its stopover location, Bandar Abbas International Airport. All 290 people on board were killed. No apologies yet.
Talking about Iranian proxies alone is one-sided if you don't consider what US-Israel proxies have been doing to them. US Israel have inflicted 10 to 100X more Irani deaths than what Iran has done in retaliation.
You are either ignorant or deliberately underplaying that. Most likely the latter.
Only westerners can be bad actors or at all in historic events racism of the charts? It takes two to tango and iran is dancing its heart out.. and could have had the most peacefull life, if its religion would not involve destroying all "unbelievers" in the middle east - first and foremost aimed at israel.
The us is the peace guarantor for maritime trade in the region. Its the protector of several oil powers. When the hoothi shoot on ships, they hit the us.
America never invaded Greenland. Nevertheless, we're facing blowback because we threatened it.
Iran has been chanting "death to America" for decades. That isn't casus belli. Not by a long shot. But pretending Iran hasn't been playing the part of belligerent for years is rewriting history.
30K to 50K Iranians killed by chemical weapons attacks by US proxy, Iraq. Credible sources estimate 100K killed and 30K-50K is a conservative lowball estimate.
This is an active unhealed wound in Iran. Families of the dead still grieve those killed in cemeteries and graves that are there in almost all their major cities.
Iran has every reason to not like the US which has been destabilising and killing and crippling them economically for several decades.
Iran Air Flight 655 was an international scheduled passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai via Bandar Abbas that was shot down on 3 July 1988 by two surface-to-air missiles fired by USS Vincennes, a United States Navy warship. The missiles hit the Iran Air aircraft, an Airbus A300, while it was flying its usual route over Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf, shortly after the flight departed its stopover location, Bandar Abbas International Airport. All 290 people on board were killed.
Blame is a weird word for geopolitics. I think Iran fucked up hitting those targets pre-emptively. Someone at home had to show their hard-liner boss that they were just as hard-line as he is. So they did something macho. The consequences be damned.
The mirroring of dysfunction on each side of this war is uncanny.
Can't believe the top comment in this thread is defending Iran by saying they only target wealthy people. The insane astroturfing of the web and TikTokification of the brain has impacted Hacker News.
Still, the fact that the US can kill people without any cost because they send drones to do it doesn't sit well with me at all.
Not sure why you're being downvoted. Russia's economy and military have been flogged by their war in a way America's has not. Moreover, we have midterms this year and a Presidential election in 2. Moscow has no similar 'fuck it' exit option.
The two powers have wildly different militaries and strategies. Comparing body counts is never gonna be a super helpful metric by itself.
Russia's military power has been vastly diminished by its war. If America committed to a ground invasion and then stuck with it through the next President, yes, we'd probably see similar degradation of American martial ability over years.
> two powers have wildly different militaries and strategies. Comparing body counts is never gonna be a super helpful metric by itself
Agree. But it does point to the extent to which one system will go to reduce loss of life.
No, we're not. It's bad. But it's nothing compared to Russia.
Look at the body exchange ratios. Russia exchanges 20+ bodies for each received from The Ukraine. X and Telegram channels are full of videos of freshly dug graves in The Ukraine.
Mediazona (a BBC propaganda arm) tracks obituaries in Russia and even a blatantly biased outlet is unable to prove such assertions like 20 people per hour.
Edit: since Hypocrisy News is rate limiting me I can't reply to the redditor asking for a source:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg7ed4rp7x5o
Source?
1000 Ukrainians for 38 Russians. Such exchanges with similarly lopsided ratios happen every couple weeks.
That could be bullshit. But it holds water as a hypothesis. If Ukraine were suffering 20:1 casualty ratios against itself on the field, Russia would have won already. There are no weapons that can overcome a small belligerent losing more bodies than the larger one.
The fact you use this term makes it quite clear which side you’re speaking for.
It's just Ukraine. Unless you're doing this on purpose.
>>and even a blatantly biased outlet is unable to prove such assertions like 20 people per hour
https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-grinding-war-ukraine
It seems to hover around 30k dead a month recently, so 1000 people a day, divided by 24, that's actually ~41 people an hour.
But you know, even if we assume these numbers are wildly innacurate and only half those given...that's still 20 per hour?
>>X and Telegram channels are full of videos of freshly dug graves in The Ukraine.
No doubt, but what does that have to do with anything.
>>Edit: since Hypocrisy News is rate limiting me I can't reply to the redditor asking for a source:
So on one hand you call BBC a highly biased source, and then you link an article from it? So which one is it? Is it biased, or is it the source of your information?
...anyway... Seriously bros, this is a war where one side is making wildly inflammatory, specific and credible threats against the civilian infrastructure of the other and this is a response to that, hardly even a response in kind. If they strike these assets it will cause financial burden for rich people, not plunge millions of civilians into darkness as the POTUS is credibly threatening to do.
Iranian attacks on US soil: Fuck all! So why is America fighting Iran? Insane ziofascist cultists picking fights on the other side of the planet to provoke the Apocalypse so they can all be raptured to paradise. (Translation: boomers are getting old and they want to see burning flesh one more time before they die.)
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-hegseth-and...
> In a Truth Social post on March 30, Trump warned that the U.S. would obliterate "all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet 'touched.'"
AFAIK there is no exemption that says it is OK to commit war crimes if the other side does.
If attacking power plants and oil production is a war crime, then Russia, Ukraine, and many other countries are guilty of it.
Of course not, but I still think the expectation that someone doesn't commit war crimes against you disappears relatively quickly when you're openly and proudly admitting you'll open to violating the rules of war and saying international humanitarian law doesn't matter.
It's Iran. They haven't been following international law since 1979. That isn't an excuse to commit war crimes against them. But Iran really doesn't have any legs to stand on when it comes to complaining about targeting civilian infrastructure–they and their proxies have been doing this for decades.
History doesn't start in 1979. Why not go back to 1953? Overthrowing another country's elected government is no more conscionable under international law.
Nobody said you can't. I don't think the point is undermined. Neither the U.S. nor Iran have shown any consistent affection for international law.
Sort of? I don't think that's really how war crimes work. Unless we're objectively in eye-for-an-eye territory, in which case we're not really talking about international law anymore. (To be clear, I think everyone talking about international law in this conflict is posturing. We've been collectively setting new norms for years, and between Russia, China and America, the rules seem to have inched closer to total war.)
Iran's targeting strategy has been a capability restrained tit for tat, for the most part. This is true except for attacks on other gulf states right after US-Israel decapitation strike.
I remember national state TV in Russia talking about "we are ready to nuke United States if needed" in 2014 [1].
So, domestically, government made sure people believe that the West is the mortal enemy and we were are already at some kind of cold war since Crimea annexation, it's just West didn't notice, seems like.
Then, there were also artifical immigration crisis at EU borders created by Russia and Belarus.
And many other various hybrid and asymmetrical attacks.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA9mVLomYo8
So, USA recognized the danger and started dismantling the problem piece by piece, to ensure a long term peace and safety of its people. Could it be better organized and coordinated with allies? Probably, yes, but the meaning stays.
Putting these all in the same list conflates very different situations.
> USA recognized the danger and started dismantling the problem piece by pieceTrump era has systematically downplayed the threat from Russia. And let's not forget how many members of Trump campaign staff were jailed due to Russian influence.
I think you are right that the West is complacent about its enemies because it cannot really shake the belief in its superiority that came from winning the cold war and dominating the world in the decades after, I just do not think that is the biggest threat.
By becoming part of the problem? Trump threatening to invade Greenland was a wake-up call for Europe. Actively supporting forces that want to tear down democracy in Europe isn’t particularly helpful either.
If we become like China and Russia then why is our civilization in any way better?
Iran is not passive - iran is active, a wannabe us (lets call it micro-satan) - that wants to do what russia did along its borders.
Iran doesn't use any of these to attack America. You seem to be confusing Israel for America, a common problem in American politics.
It was the US that upended Iranian parliamentary democracy with a military coup, sponsored chemical weapons attacks on Irani population (through its proxy Iraq). This killed some 30k to 50k by way of chemical attacks alone. Credible sources estimate 100K killed by these chemical weapons attacks alone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_chemical_attacks_against...
US shot down their passenger jet. US has imposed crippling sanctions that have decimated the economic well being of the country compared to what it could have been.
Iran Air Flight 655 was an international scheduled passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai via Bandar Abbas that was shot down on 3 July 1988 by two surface-to-air missiles fired by USS Vincennes, a United States Navy warship. The missiles hit the Iran Air aircraft, an Airbus A300, while it was flying its usual route over Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf, shortly after the flight departed its stopover location, Bandar Abbas International Airport. All 290 people on board were killed. No apologies yet.
Talking about Iranian proxies alone is one-sided if you don't consider what US-Israel proxies have been doing to them. US Israel have inflicted 10 to 100X more Irani deaths than what Iran has done in retaliation.
You are either ignorant or deliberately underplaying that. Most likely the latter.
America never invaded Greenland. Nevertheless, we're facing blowback because we threatened it.
Iran has been chanting "death to America" for decades. That isn't casus belli. Not by a long shot. But pretending Iran hasn't been playing the part of belligerent for years is rewriting history.
1983 Apr - Beirut, Lebanon — 17 Americans killed (U.S. Embassy bombing)
1983 Oct - Beirut, Lebanon — 241 U.S. military killed (Marine barracks bombing)
1984 Mar - Beirut, Lebanon — 1 American killed (CIA chief Buckley kidnapped, later killed)
1985 Jun - Beirut, Lebanon — 1 American killed (TWA Flight 847 hijacking)
1989 Jul - Lebanon — 1 American killed (Col. Higgins murdered)
1995 Apr - Gaza Strip — 1 American killed (car bomb)
1995 Aug - Jerusalem, Israel — 1 American killed, 100+ wounded (bus bombing)
1996 Feb - Jerusalem, Israel — 3 Americans killed, 3 wounded (bus bombing)
1996 Mar - Tel Aviv, Israel — 2 Americans killed (shopping center bombing)
1996 May - West Bank — 1 American killed, 1 wounded
1996 Jun - Khobar, Saudi Arabia — 19 Americans killed, ~500 wounded (Khobar Towers)
1997 Sep - Jerusalem, Israel — 1 American killed, 7 wounded (mall bombing)
1998 Aug - Nairobi/Dar es Salaam — 12 Americans killed, thousands wounded (embassy bombings)
2001 Sep - New York/Washington D.C. — Iran facilitated transit of hijackers (2,977 total killed)
2002 Jan - West Bank — 1 American killed
2002 Jul - Jerusalem, Israel — 5 Americans killed (Hebrew University bombing)
2003 Aug - Jerusalem, Israel — 5 Americans killed (bus bombing)
2003 Oct - Gaza Strip — 3 Americans killed (diplomatic convoy bombing)
2003-2011 - Iraq — 603 U.S. troops killed (Iranian-backed militia IED/EFP campaign)
2011 - Washington D.C. — 0 casualties (assassination plot on Saudi ambassador foiled)
2019 Jun - Strait of Hormuz — 0 casualties (U.S. Global Hawk drone shot down)
2019 Sep - Saudi Arabia — 0 American casualties (Abqaiq oil facility drone strike)
2019 Dec - Baghdad, Iraq — 0 casualties (U.S. Embassy stormed)
2020 Jan - Ain al-Assad, Iraq — 100+ U.S. troops with traumatic brain injuries (ballistic missile strike)
2021-2022 - Iraq/Syria — ongoing U.S. base attacks by Iranian-backed militias
2023 Oct-Nov - Iraq/Syria — 60+ attacks in Iraq, 90+ in Syria; scores of U.S. troops wounded
2024 Jan 28 - Tower 22, Jordan — 3 Americans killed, 34+ wounded (drone strike)
2024 - Red Sea/Yemen — ongoing Houthi drone/missile attacks on U.S. naval assets
2024 Nov - United States — 0 casualties (Trump assassination plot foiled)
This is an active unhealed wound in Iran. Families of the dead still grieve those killed in cemeteries and graves that are there in almost all their major cities.
Iran has every reason to not like the US which has been destabilising and killing and crippling them economically for several decades.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_chemical_attacks_against...
Iran Air Flight 655 was an international scheduled passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai via Bandar Abbas that was shot down on 3 July 1988 by two surface-to-air missiles fired by USS Vincennes, a United States Navy warship. The missiles hit the Iran Air aircraft, an Airbus A300, while it was flying its usual route over Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf, shortly after the flight departed its stopover location, Bandar Abbas International Airport. All 290 people on board were killed.
No apologies have been forthcoming.
Sounds like a thing a state would not want to do to their neighbor out of the blue.
The 47th war criminal in chief Trump and his Secretary of War(crimes) is making threats on TV and social media.
I would love to see the terrorist regime of Iran collapse but in this scenario, sorry, the US is completely in the wrong.
Blame is a weird word for geopolitics. I think Iran fucked up hitting those targets pre-emptively. Someone at home had to show their hard-liner boss that they were just as hard-line as he is. So they did something macho. The consequences be damned.
The mirroring of dysfunction on each side of this war is uncanny.