Paul T. Levin

Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei killed, senior Israeli official says Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who turned the country into a powerful anti-U.S. force and extended its military influence across the Middle East while crushing repeated domestic unrest, was killed in Israeli and U.S. strikes, a senior Israeli official told Reuters on Saturday.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei killed, senior Israeli official says reut.rs/4rLPrBs

You can have this policy or the maximalist policy that you will depose the regime. You probably cannot have both of them at once.

So much peace.

God, I hope he’ll be safe. His face is fully visible.

Again, it is hard to know how representative these clips are, but there are clearly many in 🇮🇷 who are hoping that these strikes will get rid of the regime. Swedish Radio JUST broadcast this interview with someone in 🇮🇷. Also again, acknowledging this doesn’t mean you have to support illegal strikes.

Då var det dessutom VPK som hade hemliga kopplingar till Moskva. Idag är det ytterkantshögern.

Lite så här reagerar jag varje gång jag hör Centerledare tala om att man inte vill samarbeta med ytterkantspartier varken till höger eller vänster. Under Kalla Kriget kanske det var en rimlig hållning, men det systematiska hotet mot demokratin i världen idag kommer inte från vänsterpartier.

Or this, with subtitles for those of us who don’t understand Farsi.

Definitely. And we can go back to the Iraq war before that one and what befell the Kurds who heeded Bush The Elder’s call in 1991 to rise up. The Trump strategy of throwing some bombs and encouraging people to revolt is deeply irresponsible, regardless of what happens.

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This may give too much credit to Trump’s ability to formulate plans (outside of how he can squeeze people on money), but otherwise it is probably broadly accurate.

That’s probably the right assessment.

But reality is messy. I think these strikes are a bad idea, but I‘m also struck by how several videos from Iran appear to show people who are positively giddy about the strikes against the regime. See the video of people literally dancing in the streets in the above post and clips like this.

If you are this different on the two cases, you are neither coherently rules based, peace oriented, nor against rogue states.

Maybe. I find that hard to tell. But I was specifically writing about oppositional forces.

The world is usually more complex than we would like it to be.

So that skeet was seemingly interpreted by some as supportive of regime change. It was not. My personal view is that the U.S.-Israel strikes are ill advised and poorly thought through, carry great risks, and are almost certainly illegal.

Most likely not! The Kurds maybe, but I think that these strikes are ill advised and poorly thought through, apart from being illegal.

You are tragically illustrating my original point.

No.

No, my network is admittedly very small but it is not biased at all towards critics of the government. Just regular people who told me, for example, of a neighbor who threw himself off the roof out of sheer desperation with life.

Neither am I Sinem, but I still have some contacts in Tehran. And the people dancing in the streets in the video were not exile Iranians. Though I presume that where it was shot does make a difference.
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Sure, but I also speak to people still in Iran who, even before the recent massacres of tens of thousands of demonstrators, told me about desperate economic circumstances & repression. Iran is a diverse country with many groups who hate the regime.

One of the reasons many people get the Middle East (and other regions) wrong is that it becomes a canvas upon which we project our own domestic political divisions and interests. That is a problem on both the Right and the Left. The region needs to be understood on its own terms.

For those of us who are critical of these strikes, it simultaneously behooves us to appreciate that they are popular among oppositional forces in Iran. My exile Iranian acquaintances were upset that Trump didn’t follow through last time. They do want regime change.

To many regional players, a destabilized Iran will be a concern, and even though many welcome Iran’s weakening, they are now primarily concerned about Israel as an unchecked and increasingly unhinged regional hegemon. (UAE is the exception.)

The US inability or unwillingness to protect Qatar from the strike by Israel last year left a deep scar. If Iran’s neighbors are now punished for hosting U.S. bases, that, too, will impact their diplomatic calculations going forward.+

Obviously, one of the things that US allies and partners in the region fear most immediately are Iranian retaliatory strikes.+

A new series of explosions in the capital of Qatar.

Hur gick det för studenterna på tentan?