This is the exact same nonsense that Netanyahu said to the US Congress in 2002, when he insisted we invade Iraq. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_PDpwL8kuY

And what is the "Islamic threat", exactly? Why would attacking Iran end that threat, when the perpetrators of 9/11, for example, were mostly Saudis?

Entirely rational, given their desire for sovereignty and avoiding getting bombed to oblivion.

> Iran has stated it would like to destroy the US and Israel.

The linguistic nuance of the slogan "Death to America" has been articulated and clarified over a decade ago.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/irans-ayatollah-ali-khame...

https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/what-does-death-america-r...

>Israel is an outpost of Western democracy and our ally.

The former is a meaningless characteristic when said democracy commits a genocide and runs an apartheid state (hard to deny with the recent capital punishment law exclusively for Palestinian prisoners). Hardly model behavior for anyone else in the region to emulate. The latter is meaningless since this ally only ever drags us into problems, almost all of which are of its own making.

> Cooperation between Israel and its neighbors would be a great asset to the world economy.

It's easier to cooperate with your neighbors when you stop squatting on their territory, or stop massacring them.

>but it is not mysterious why we might care.

I think "people who care" should volunteer to serve in the IDF, and leave the rest of America out of it. Kinda like the various low-friction pipelines for people to go fight/die for Ukraine without committing US Service Members to such a wasteful endeavor.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/gamaan-iran-polling-regime-cha...

How do you square this with the absolutely massive pro-government rallies that we've seen all across Iran for the entire duration of the conflict? Millions of Iranians opposed to the regime, in a country of 90 million+, might still be a fringe minority.

If you asked some American expat their thoughts on MAGA, and they responded "China should bomb MAGA rallies so we can be free from the Republican party, my whole family in the US agrees".....that person would be considered a fringe lunatic, even if Trump's regime has record-low approval like it does now (and rightly deserves, I hope he is impeached and jailed).

What news are YOU reading?

https://time.com/article/2026/03/18/tulsi-gabbard-iran-nucle...

"As a result of Operation Midnight Hammer, Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was obliterated. There has been no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability. The entrances to the underground facilities that were bombed have been buried and shuttered with cement," Gabard wrote in an opening statement ahead of the hearing.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/headlines/2026/03/19/ken...

Joe Kent, who made big news when he stepped down on Tuesday as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said in an interview with Tucker Carlson on Wednesday that intelligence assessments did not show Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States or was close to developing a nuclear weapon, undercutting central justifications for the military action.

>You aren't calling for prosecution of the perpetrators of Oct 7. That is already shows your colors.

The world did not start on October 7th, and it's completely disingenuous to suggest otherwise, which shows YOUR colors. I could equally state " all responsibility lies with the perpetrators of the Nakhba".

>Anyway, the number of killed you cite comes directly from Hamas (its Ministry of Health stated those numbers to UN). Hamas is a terrorist org, and can't be trusted at all.

If the number can't be trusted, why is the IDF acknowledging it?

https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-believes-70000-gazans-kill...

> There is no evidence that Israel killed civilians in any meaningful numbers, and that the killings were criminal and not legitimate collateral.

If this is your position no further discussion is needed. There is nothing meaningful to be gained from engaging with you. I don't know if you guys realize how insane you appear to every other human being on the planet when you try to gaslight us into thinking the piles of evidence of dead women and children either doesn't exist or is somehow accidental.

My professor from my graduate program and his family are all Iranian. It's no surprise that they anti-regime: his wife's uncles were generals in the Shah's army, and were "disappeared" during the Revolution. They've been living in Japan for ~40 years. Hardly indicative of the opinion of the "man on the street" in Tehran, Isfahan, or Mashhad.

Do you have some solid sources on the ground to the contrary?

To complicate adversary targeting priorities. If you have to shift your pre-planned bombing sorties away from, say, local Basij HQ buildings, it takes pressure off of the Iranian government. Assigning aircraft to find/fix/target/track/engage "underwater drone launch points" is probably like searching for a needle in a haystack given the size of Iran's coastline.

This is considered the most "pro-Russian" sub-Reddit, so it balances the Anglosphere deluge of pro-Ukrainian material pretty well. The most important poster is u/HeyHeyHayden, who's content is so important another user built a site to archive it: https://old.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/1pfjpx...

Hayden mostly compiles battlefield progress from Suriyak Maps (reputable Russian mapper) and AMK_Mapping (reputable pro-Ukrainian mapper). I think you can find both of them on Twitter.

On Youtube, I recommend WillyOAM (Australian infantryman turned journalist), MarkTakacs (Hungarian infantry officer who makes tactical analysis vids), Daniel Davis Deep Dive (retired US Army LtColonel, Desert Storm vet), and HistoryLegends (meme-heavy but generally well-researched battlefield progress vids).

Israel's regime has killed twice that many in Gaza. Shouldn't they be prioritized for "punishment"?

I grew up with the mid 80s to mid 90s kits, mostly castles and pirate ships, a few space sets. I think it's a very different experience compared to the nightmares I read about building the Mould King Eclipse-class Star Destroyer ( https://www.reddit.com/r/lepin/comments/1pdfx5y/mould_king_e... ). The concept of "bad luck with construction" is foreign to me, because most of the kits I remember building as a child were comparatively simple.

I'm working on this house with my 5yo daughter now: ( https://ja.aliexpress.com/item/1005006068361257.html ). Costs ~$20, we work on it about 30-45 minutes several times a week, so it takes months to finish. If she tears it apart 6 months from now to build something from her imagination, mission accomplished.

I hear people rave about this Cyberpunk-style kit, maybe this is closer to what you expect? https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/_a_a4b2bvISsP6pyjkSxLw (Chinese language review) I plan to buy it at some point....for myself, not for my kids!

For what I spent buying JUST ( https://www.brickeconomy.com/set/60229-1/lego-city-space-roc... ) last year for my daughter,

I've since bought her a 3-floor hospital, a firehouse, a pink villa with pool, and about 2 dozen doctor and engineer minifigs for the same ~$120 outlay. Only disappointment is the legs on the Chinese minifigs, they are difficult to seat properly on studs because the legs are at a slight angle (almost like manspreading).

I have to stop myself from going on a spending spree on AliExpress, I might order an entire Age of Sail LEGO navy.

2. There's a lot of domestic political/information suppression in Ukraine but I consider this somewhat normal for a nation in a pretty existential conflict.

3. The Ukrainian military is 70-80% conscripts, increasingly of the "forcibly mobilized" variety (look up "TCC busification" for examples), with almost all military-age males banned from leaving the country. Dudes are getting beaten up, stuffed into vans, and sent to trenches to eat Russian artillery and FABs (air-to-ground bombs)....against their will. I think that definitely counts as suppression.

No. There's a number of reasons for this. #1 is Israel's policy of "strategic ambiguity" and #2 is that it might be illegal to even mention it in Israel. Israel prosecuted a whistleblower nuclear scientist for leaking state secrets, for example.

> And who have they blackmailed with the nukes?

The US, for one:

"Similarly, in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, IDF was again outnumbered by the invading Arab armies. Then Israeli PM Golda Meir authorized a nuclear alert and ordered that nuclear warheads be readied for launch from missiles and aircraft. The Israeli ambassador to the US, Simcha Dinitz, met with Henry Kissinger to inform President Nixon of “Very serious conclusions” if the US did not airlift arms supplies to the IDF. Nixon complied with this demand due to the threat of the use of nuclear forces. This was the first successful use of the Samson option as a threat and tantamount to nuclear blackmail."

from: https://thesvi.org/deconstructing-israels-samson-option/

I also recommend: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/wait-why-is-israel-allow...

The Samson Option enables Israel to blackmail the entire Middle East, and do so silently. Turkey or Egypt can't afford for Hezbollah to overrun Israel, because Ankara and Cairo might get nuked, even if they had nothing to do with contributing to Israel's existential crisis. It basically forces the whole neighborhood to keep each other in check out of sheer self-preservation. Credit given where credit due, it's a smart approach on Israel's part.