Comment by oa335

There's a very narrow and vanishing window of opportunity left to end-up with anything other than a total disaster, and even in that case I'm not holding my breath for the quality of life for the next 5 years. In the long-term, it's harder to predict than either side wants to admit.

If you need a hint, just take a look at what this regime did in Syria (600k dead and 12 years of internal war), in Gaza and Palestine (75k dead), in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and more. Most recently, this January in Iran with 40k dead. You see mullahs' footprints everywhere there is a humanitarian disaster, and I'm not optimistic about the future of Iran, in either case. These are not the kind of people that let go easily, they have a cataclysmic view of the world. They (literally) gave a "Passport to Heaven" to their fighters (Assad supporters) in Syria, and those very same fighters are chanting pro-regime songs (if you can even call it that) every night at every square and major street in the city.

As an Iranian, we saw these [death] figures as an abstract concept prior to these recent events. We (the ordinary citizens) heard about Yemen and the massacre in Syria, we "sympathized," and that was it. It wasn't until this January that it finally hit me, that 40k people dying is like 15 Tienanmen squares happening at once, or 5 times the D-Day battles casualties. And it's chilling to think about what the future will look like, knowing that this is only the beginning and we are choosing between "terrible" and "much worse."