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Comment by YZF

20 hours ago

How can you say this with a straight face?

It bombarded all its neighbors. What is that if not an escalation against non-aggressors? Not to mention the closing of the straits which is an escalation against many other parties.

28 comments

YZF

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deminature  20 hours ago

Its neighbors are hosting US bases which were used to launch attacks on Iran. Bahrain in particular hosted the largest US radar station in the region which was being used as the control centre to coordinate the attack on Iran [1]. These countries were absolutely not 'non-aggressors'.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cddq7j48p35o

  • ericmay  20 hours ago

    Doesn’t excuse bombing actual civilian targets, apartment complexes, &c, nor does it excuse executing peaceful domestic protestors - all of which this Iranian government has done.

    Maybe if they, idk, stopped funding Hamas, Hezbollah, and Yemen rebels stopped trying to get a nuke, stopped stockpiling missiles for no reason and stopped chanting death to America we wouldn’t be here.

    • acdha  20 hours ago

      The Iranian government is terrible, but that doesn’t mean that the U.S. relationship with the gulf states isn’t worse off than in February. The United States made our alignment with Israel hard to ignore and was significantly unable to protect allied countries while drawing fire onto them. It’s entirely possible for both sides to lose a war and I’d bet we’re going to see enough of a shift away from us, likely to China, to solidly count this as a loss.

      8 replies →

    • deminature  20 hours ago

      Nobody is taking the side of the IRGC here, it's an awful regime that should fall in a just world. But it's inevitable they will retaliate against their neighbors, if their neighbors are complicit in attacking them. Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait are not innocent, they picked a side and are paying for it.

      6 replies →

    • lostlogin  13 hours ago

      > Doesn’t excuse bombing actual civilian targets, apartment complexes, &c, nor does it excuse executing peaceful domestic protestors

      Reading just this far and it could be either the US or Iran you’re talking about. It almost makes you think…

  • YZF  20 hours ago

    I would still call countries that host a radar station non-aggressors as they were not active participants. Either way Iran was pretty selective in terms of its "aggressor" definition. It didn't attack Syria or Iraq despite those countries contributing their air space. It didn't really attack Turkey other than like 3 rockets that were shot down.

    Clearly this was not about attacking someone that's attacking you or military assets. This was about leverage. Attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure of countries that are assumed to have some lever over the US to force it to stop while at the same time are too weak or too afraid to defend themselves (which is why you did not see the same scale of attacks e.g. against Turkey despite it also hosting the US). It's a tactic. It's also a war crime.