If you just let the simulation fall apart under its inherent instability, the thanklessly maintained project is often one of the last things to fall. That seems poetically correct.

Is it working, though? You have to hold an incredibly low opinion of the intelligence of the leadership of the rest of Middle East to think they won't realize it's not exactly what it is. The few indicators I've seen suggest they're not falling for it. They might not like the US or Israel, but Iran was nobody's favorite country either.

Edit: for instance: https://x.com/kuwaittimesnews/status/2028445060556095866 They seem to be putting the blame in the right place.

It's not about intelligence, it's about strategy. Iran is bombing US assets in these countries and now that the US defenses are running thin, they're pulling back to Israel and leaving these countries out to dry. So not only is Iran effectively destroying the Israel/US defensive line and early warning systems, they're leaving the other Middle Eastern countries without defense and at the mercy of Iran. This seems to be pretty effective so far.

Those articles are both out of date.

Yes, they both show the UK had an interest in not participating or reducing their participation.

This is probably military strategy 101 not to push your enemies together when they are having a rift

They're really determined to prove that they're the bad guys after all, huh?

LOL they were attacked first. The bad guys in this story are Israel and their puppets the USA.

Maybe if we don't count the tens of thousands of Iranian rockets, missiles and drones that they had their proxies launch.

And the proxies? Either directly created or supported at inception by Israel. Or emerged as a response to Israel aggression.

I would love to know which Iranian proxy Israel "directly created". You might be confusing Hamas with Ahmed Yassin's previous charity, which ran schools, mosques and clubs. Even that charity was not "directly created" by Israel, Israel merely allowed them to operate.

Because AFAIK details are murky and debated - that’s why I said “created or supported”.

Just like current Iran situation is due to UK and USA “playing country building” 50-70 years ago.

At Israel, clearly demonstrating that they are the good guys.

After all? As if funding proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq that undermine the state government’s sovereignty was not enough

Well yeah, but they still had a chance to play the victim after the US/Israel strikes (especially if some of the reports about how the negotiations went down are true). Lots of people are still primed to listen to it. But they're not interested in making it easy for their apologists, I guess.

Ok thanks, I agree

Hard to compete with bombing female elementary schools.

Assuming that happened, I guarantee it was a targeting error. The US and Israel have no actual reason to target children, seeing how they have plenty of useful military targets and want (or at least need) the Iranian people's support for regime change.

For what it's worth, Iran has claimed their strikes on Oman were mistake, and I believe that too, since Oman seems to have genuinely been trying to help them. Just Oman though. They apparently feel fine about all the other strikes on bystander nations.

Israel regularly bombs schools and murders children, it was their signature operation in Gaza.

Israel makes a point of bombing schools. They always have.

Last I checked this was never confirmed to have actually happened.

Again, this information only comes from Iran's state owned media. This is NOT confirmed.

that link confirms nothing and reiterates the point that an investigation is ongoing.

"Characteristic", no doubt.

You're acting like people are rational. It's just about power. Appearing strong appeals to the apes inside the humans. And no one is more in touch with his inner ape than Trump.

No it doesn't. No military power, however overpowered compared to its opponents, will ever say no to an even more unfair beatdown.

I don't think they can accomplish their goal even with that. I will be very surprised by regime change.

Iran was likely going to do that themselves by the massive inflation they caused through reckless financial policies such as Venezuelan style price controls. Russia is managed to weather sanctions decently, Iran's economic leadership is far more incompetent despite being a petrol state. Even in Tehran they can't get enough water because of the failure of infrastructure and planning (despite plenty of money being available for certain failed regional military projects).

There was a study showing almost every revolution happened not because of ideology but over the price of bread.

> There was a study showing almost every revolution happened not because of ideology but over the price of bread.

His name was Marx. ;)

Yeah. We'll see. Under what conditions will you consider yourself right or wrong? My prediction is after killing a few more heads of state, disabling some more striking capability that they'll back off under pressure from the Arab states. Trump will declare it as a victory regardless of what happens and everyone will forget about it. Iran will eventually rebuild itself as it just did, but this time it will take longer (Trump even said that himself, contradicting himself earlier).

Even if Trump doesn't care, Israel is very motivated to make regime change happen. They want to be permanently rid of Iran's nuclear threat, its funding of terrorist groups, all of it. Honestly I think Trump or at least his administration is on a similar page, and if not the Israelis can clearly be pretty persuasive.

No, my worry is whether it will be a regime change that benefits the Iranian people or some kind of sick puppet state. But of course:

> Trump will declare it as a victory regardless of what happens

...This goes without saying.

Edit: worth noting the Arab states tend to hate Iran as well, and Iran has already sprinkled some ballistic missiles on them just in this war. They're not going to speak up for Iran unless they think the escalation is getting too dangerous for themselves.

> Even if Trump doesn't care, Israel is very motivated to make regime change happen.

It doesn't matter. There are zero cases in history of successful regime change by air only. Iran, of all countries, has an extremely robust succession plan and at a last resort the IRGC itself will take over.

> Iran has already sprinkled some ballistic missiles on them just in this war

I can see you're not following this too seriously.

You didn't give objective criteria for how to judge whether you're right or wrong yet.

You should follow more seriously which usernames you're talking to. But as far as objective criteria, if a regime change happens I don't expect it to be subtle or debatable. Seeing the IRGC disbanded would be a pretty solid signal, though.

Obviously it's not going to be done 100% from the air. The Iranian people will have to play a big role. I just hope they manage to seize initiative from Trump and Netanyahu as far as how their government is run.

I do note that we've strayed a bit from the thesis of "Iran is so powerful Israel and the US have to gang up on it". :D

> You should follow more seriously which usernames you're talking to.

Eh, shit happens.

Sure. Anyway, did you have a factual critique of my statement about Iran throwing ballistic missiles around the Middle East, or did you just find my tone insufficiently serious?

You get much fewer points for standing up to the admin when it has damaged your wallet.

I wonder how long it will take in Ukraine.

Actually at the rate we're going, there will still be active minefield defenses for most of our lifespans.

Poland withdrew from the Ottawa Convention last month, with the aim of being able to lay anti-personnel mines along its eastern border.

Whether it does or not is an open-question, and while I understand it of course, the idea we're increasing the use of mines is a sad day. They're so indiscriminate and will no doubt cause injuries far into the future.

No one is going to build minefields, too populated area, too many wild animals. It's mostly about automatic mining - https://www.hsw.pl/produkty/pojazd-minowania-narzutowego-bao...

> The BAOBAB-K Mine Laying Vehicle allows the laying of minefields of various sizes, mine densities, and self-clearance times.

The self-clearing is interesting and I hindsight auch an obvious thing to implement.

There's no border wall, just a typical bike road next to a small fence. So no, unless Poland is planning to blow up their own civilians, they won't mine their own country lol.

My wife’s part of the Family has a house with view of the border to Belarusia. It used to be a small fence just in front of a wood, but that’s long past. It’s truly a wall now.

Placing landmines systematically during peacetime by a stable government-ran military should at least make clearing mines easier, and minefields better marked for locals. So, it's not completely indiscriminate. If it decreases war-related life loss (both direct and indirect), it's net positive

I seen estimates that are much more pessimistic.

https://www.osw.waw.pl/pl/publikacje/komentarze-osw/2023-11-... mentions optimistic estimate of 70 years, and other statistics give estimated cleanup time of 740 years.

And in months since then more mines were placed.

> of a sauropod