Comment by Unicironic
15 hours ago
It's disheartening to hear people talk about this in terms of won and lost. Is that how you think of these events? I think of them in terms of sadness and horror. The US threatened to obliterate a country and people, because gas was getting a little expensive. If winning and losing is the way you are framing this, instead of thinking about the humans that these actions affect, then we all have lost.
It is possible to deplore the human cost, while also looking at the reasons why such conflicts occur, and what the goals of those involved are.
That doesn’t align with the perspective of actual Iranians I know.
There are news reports of Iranian expats and opponents within Iranian who are disappointed with the ceasefire. They wanted trump to go further and destroy the regime.
That aligns with conversations I’ve had with Iranians friends in the US and family members within Iran who want the regime destroyed so there is a chance of removing the Islamic theocracy that governs the country currently.
My general impression is many people want the regime destroyed, which seems clear from talking to people but also just all the protests. I haven't asked but I'm skeptical they are for things like attacking of every bridge, railroad, and power plant (which are important civilian infrastructure). The threat was specifically that their "whole civilization will die tonight"
I will tell you exactly what my Iranian wife said when I asked her about people congregating on the bridges after Trump said he’ll bomb them: she said (paraphrasing) “bomb them, they’re all regime supporters”.
The country is basically on the verge of civil war. The reason it’s not is because the anti-regime forces are disorganized with no clear leader, have no weapons, and rely on internet to organize.
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I have friends in the US that want the US government destroyed, there are people in the southern US that think the south won the civil war. Who cares?
Every government in all of human history has had its detractors and supporters, more detractors probably exist in expatriated communities, their existence does not really prove anything.
I’m not sure what your point is. Are you suggesting that anti-regime Iranians are a minority?
I’m not sure if we have good statistics on this. So everyone may have a different perspective.
All I can say is this: I’m married to an Iranian woman, and through her I’ve met many Iranian expats, and I’ve talked to her family members within Iran.
I think you’ll find that Iranian expats are pretty unanimously against the regime. That’s millions of Iranians. My in-laws who lives in Tehran are anti-regime, along with every single person on my wife’s side of the family: aunts, uncles, cousins. Everybody.
Thousands of protesters were killed opposing the regime. And that’s just the latest protest.
This is a regime that will kill women who don’t cover their hair correctly. Dancing and singing in the street is illegal.
Don’t be concerned on behalf of the regime. This is a just war supported by Iranians. You are on the right side of history to kill people who hang protestors and force little girls to cover every part of their body.
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the No Kings movement doesnt seem to care about Ayatollahs
I’ve never seen an example when foreign news really reported what people think on the ground. Especially because people on the ground usually lie. For example in Hungary, the voters of the current “opposition” prime minister candidate would tell you that they vote for him because they want democracy. Yet, they haven’t cared about that for more than a decade. Even when the real reason: inflation was obvious that it would be enormous after the election in 2022, before the previous election. The same with the US, news across the pond doesn’t explain why people vote for Trump, I had to go to the US several times to figure that out.
Those people didnt lose faith in the US after it bombed a preschool? At one point you have to wonder if this is good versus evil or evil versus evil
I will respond to your comment honestly. I have literally talked about this topic with actual Iranians.
The Iranians I’ve spoken to feel that the ends will justify the means.
They believe that people will die either way, protesters are dying right now. So if they can destroy the regime, then it will be worth it.
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I have a serious problem with calling 100+ schoolgirls who - at best - got instantly dismembered by a bomb and didnt suffer (too much) and at worst were crushed to death or bled out from shrapnel wounds "evil"
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> They wanted trump to go further and destroy the regime.
It would require a large scale ground operation which is off the table. A few more weeks of air strikes would not have destroyed the regime anyway but a few more weeks of asymmetric strikes (when Iran strikes its neighbors because it can do little about the US/Israel) would have destroyed gulf oil infrastructure inflicting lasting economic pain on the whole world.
Was one of them BBC, who quoted one Iranian resident as saying they were ok with the US nuking Iran, and then quietly removing that bit from the quotes with no note that the article was edited?
Destroying infrastructure and making live hell for normal people does not remove the regime. When will people learn that air-wars don't magically change governments?
Also, the Iranians you likely hear, are not representative. I don't think most people who depend on energy and water don't want that infrastructure destroyed.
> There are news reports of Iranian expats and opponents within Iranian who are disappointed with the ceasefire. They wanted trump to go further and destroy the regime.
And how he would do that, exactly?
Good question. From the conversations that I’ve had with Iranians, it’s unclear. The regime is too embedded. There’s no easy answer. Killing Mojtaba would be a good start.
Anti-regime Iranians are basically holding onto any sliver of hope that they can regain their country.
Of course, it’s all very unlikely, but I can’t help sympathizing with them. I think their cause is just. I think a non-theocratic Iran that could rejoin the global economy is a dream worth fighting for.
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> They wanted trump to go further and destroy the regime.
Did they also want Trump to destroy the whole civilization and have the country back to stone age like he claimed he would do?
> There are news reports of Iranian expats and opponents within Iranian who are disappointed with the ceasefire. They wanted trump to go further and destroy the regime.
That's the diaspora's luxury. They don't have to endure the pain of the conflict or sanctions, and they always end up being the biggest hardliners for that reason.
Don't know why this is downvoted, people must forget that the weeks leading up the war, Iran was pulling the plug on the internet and shooting regime protestors in the street.
It seems Trump and Israel expected an internal revolution once the bombing started, but it doesn't seem that manifested.
> There are news reports of Iranian expats and opponents within Iranian who are disappointed with the ceasefire. They wanted trump to go further and destroy the regime.
Most of them realized their mistake:
https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2026/04/01/...
Iranians hoping that war and death will save them are chasing a gruesome mirage. The US has successfully liberated exactly one country by regime change since 1945: Panama in 1989. Every other intervention has either supported a rebellion (secession) instead of a revolution, or it has ended in failure (Afghanistan, Vietnam, Somalia) or a prolonged civil war (Iraq, Libya, Yemen). Anyone hoping for such a fate to befall their own country is morally compromised.
Calling Iranians who are against their current government “morally compromised” is real reprehensible for someone sitting in an armchair. Hoping foreign power can help overthrow the domestic lord is nothing new. That’s literally how the U.S. gained its independence with French military assistance.
And to your point, US interventions saved South Korea, Kuwait, Grenada, Bosnia, in addition to Panama. The legacy of Vietnam is complicated with the country rejecting communism, becoming capitalistic, and embracing the U.S. in recent years. This is in stark contrast to countries like North Korea. We don’t know how Iraq and Venezuela will turn out in the current timeline either.
Even more problematic though, is the fact that many of the US interventions happened in countries at the brink of free fall. These are failed states who are more likely to experience turmoils with or without the U.S.. Yes, civil wars can be worse than dictatorship. But that’s one of many possible outcomes. Avoiding all changes due to the fear of the worst potential outcome is weirdly privileged view. Kurds in Iraq can attest to this. Iraq has become much better for them nowadays because the Saddam era was pure hell. They were desperate and any alternative was thought to be better.
However, I don’t think intervention in Iran necessarily serves the US interest to begin with. So sure, I agree with you that the U.S. really shouldn’t waste more time in Iran.
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Looks like an interesting article, but it’s paywalled. Would love to read it. Do you have a different link or can you summarize it?
From my conversations with Iranians, they know regime change is a long shot. But what are they to do?
Anti-regime Iranians literally feel like that their country was hijacked by an Islamic theocracy. 40+ years of status quo has done nothing to change that.
So yes, they enjoy seeing the regime being bombed. Do they really expect a revolution? Maybe the tiniest sliver of hope in their heart believes in it. But that’s better than nothing.
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Your perspectives of Iranians seems to be too biased, given also that you have partner from Iran and confess that you "only" talk to their inlaws and friends.
The Iranian diaspora is more divided on the matter than you think [1], and given your background, you're probably in the bubble of the diaspora that wouldn't mind sending threatening messages to anyone not being completely aligned with anti regime stance.
It's like someone marrying a deep south confederate flag waving MAGA American, moving there, and judging from talking to their friends and their hate for everything not MAGA, conclude that every American is like this. Or same scenario but California and liberals.
[1] https://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/on-unity-fragmentation-i...
I’ve never sent threatening messages to people, and would never do that, so I’m not sure what that’s in reference to?
I’ve responded to this idea of bias in other threads.
I’m open to the idea that I’m perhaps biased by my wife, her friends, and my in-laws.
I’ll admit that it may be a little hard for me to accept that given that I’ve been to so many Iranian celebrations, and met so many different people, and heard the same perspectives again and again. I feel that what I’ve conveyed on hacker news in my comments does reflect truly the conversations I’ve had.
Most importantly, my goal in making these comments is to surface what actual Iranians are thinking.
Many Iranians in the US are afraid to speak out because they have family in Iran, or they’re here in the US on a visa. They fear that if they speak up, they’ll never be able to go home and see their family again.
As a US citizen, who is connected with the Iranian community, I feel it’s my duty to surface these conversations I’ve had.
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Source please. How to get informed opinion on what the actual iran people feel.
It seems from new media the support for khameni family has increased after the leader was killed.
My wife is Iranian, so I’m connected with a large Iranian expat community, and all my in-laws are in Tehran.
The best recommendation I can give you is to connect with your local Iranian community
I’m not sure where you live, but every major city has one. You will experience great food and great parties and great dancing.
Iranian expats love to dance because dancing and singing in public is illegal in Iran. So they do it as a big middle finger to the Islamic republic.
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> then we all have lost.
Yes, we have lost sound leadership and stability. Pakistan has brokered the cease-fire in a war started by the US for no good reason. The current US administration was supposed to be non-interventionist.
It is hard to watch the grim spectacle of the US fallen to the point of simultaneously making despicable threats to destroy another country and sending love and best wishes at election-time to Hungary's anti-EU, pro-Russian Orban.
It's a messy situation but it basically kicked off when the Iranian people had mass protests and the government started shooting them whereupon Trump tweeted “Iranian Patriots, keep protesting – take over your institutions!!! … help is on its way" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/13/trump-promises...
Not much about gas getting expensive there. I think the recent threats were mostly hyperbole for negotiating purposes.
In a war, usually both sides lose.
> The US threatened to obliterate a country and people
So the same thing Iran has been chating for decades
> > The US threatened to obliterate a country and people > So the same thing Iran has been chating for decades
That indicates that the US has become more like Iran than Iran has become like the US.
Coincidentally the US is also increasingly authoritarian and theocratic, also like Iran and its regional neighbors (both friends and foes).
It's a win.
The largest military the world has ever known was recklessly used towards a foe against decades of internal warning not to go there. People on both sides who didn't ask for this war paid with their lives.
High gas prices might have been a great cause for it ending, but the win for the world is that a escalation towards WWIII was averted, and that even idiotic leaders have learned that the world is a complex system and there's no such thing as a far away war anymore.
I actually think it is important to talk about winning and losing, more so when the overwhelmingly stronger party loses.
> even idiotic leaders have learned
Call me a cynic, but if you are dumb enough to start the war in the first place you are too dumb to learn any lesson.
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> It's disheartening to hear people talk about this in terms of won and lost. Is that how you think of these events? I think of them in terms of sadness and horror
Its because you're such a better person than them, wow, incredible. Nobody else knows what war is.
> The US threatened to obliterate a country and people, because gas was getting a little expensive.
That’s not the reason. The US is an occupied government.
Occupied by who exactly? We elected this government, we get what we deserve.
One third of the voters sat the 2024 election out. To those voters, there was no daylight between either of the 2 candidates.
And to give an example of the viability of third party candidates... I used to live in Colorado. To get onto the ballot as a Presidential candidate as a minor party candidate (aka neither D nor R candidate) one needs to get 10 people to swear to be Electoral College voters (if that candidate wins). Many times, those third party candidates get less than 10 votes in the entire state of Colorado.
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