My analysis is worth little which is why I’ve been paying attention to the analyses of those who have paid attention. I haven’t found any serious analysis by any of them that consider this as Iranians having now gained their freedom. A transition to a moderate democratic government is typically rated as a very low probability outcome. Almost all outcomes rated by them as less unlikely will be bad for them.
But realistically I highly doubt the outcomes for Iranian citizens is high on the concerns list here for those in charge of these decisions.
So to other impacts?
Iran has been a big supplier of drones and more to Russia, their friend.
What impact does this potentially have on how proceeds?
The German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports the death too:
Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been killed in an air strike in Tehran. According to the state news agency Ilna, the 69-year-old politician was at his home in the east of the capital with bodyguards at the time of the attack.
Ahmadinejad led Iran from 2005 to 2013. At the beginning, he was considered the favourite of the ruling Shiite clergy as well as the hardliners and conservatives in parliament. Towards the end of his term in office, criticism of his policies grew. His hard line on nuclear policy triggered international sanctions that plunged the country into a severe economic crisis.
Iran was internationally isolated because of its military threats against Israel and its denial of the Holocaust. His supporters increasingly turned away from him, and even among hardliners he was controversial at the end of his term in office.
During his presidency, Ahmadinejad relied heavily on the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). In return, he secured them profits from privatisations and control over strategic economic sectors.
Although Ahmadinejad was considered the protégé of the now-deceased Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, towards the end of his presidency and beyond, he developed into an unpredictable opposition figure within the system.
His attempt to expand the powers of the elected president vis-à-vis the clergy – particularly through the open conflict over the Ministry of Intelligence in 2011 – led to a break with the Supreme Leader. In the years that followed, he was politically marginalised; the Guardian Council excluded him from the presidential elections in 2017, 2021 and 2024.
Thinking about orwellian twists it is interesting to learn that Iran has a Ministry of Intelligence. I’ll keep the jokes to myself.
That there are people with more credibility than “an Iranian-Canadian demonstrating in Richmond Hill, Ont” who don’t think that Iranians “are gaining their freedom.” Not all of the naysayers are “someone who started paying attention when Iran entered the news cycle.”
It sounds to me like there wasn’t some organized group that was ready to “overthrow the regime” in January.
So far I don’t see any difference between the cheerleaders for the supposed success of these attacks vs the early cheerleaders of the Iraq war. Can anyone point to a difference in substantive fact?
Not quite fact, but I think that in Iraq there was actual belief that replacement of the regime with a stable democracy was going occur. Boots on the ground to see it through.
This is even more cynical. All that matters is further degradation of Iran’s power. I don’t think there is any expectation of regime change. Or nation building. Just nation breaking. And Trump feeling that he can be a bigger Imperialist than Putin.
The CIA article is about who will replace Khamenei within the structure current regime. Who on Earth was saying that strikes would lead to the Ayatollah regime selecting a moderate, freedom loving leader? Did anyone make that argument?
You keep arguing that there is an amorphous “they” who is ready to stand in succession to the current regime. The CIA assessed the outcome of an attack, and one of the outcomes they predicted was that the current regime would remain, with new hardliners taking over. In other words, this campaign won’t change the regime (my guess is it included the caveat, *without committing tens of thousands of ground forces, and a commitment of several years” - which itself is likely myopic)
This whole thing started because you said that people who criticized a Canadian- Iranian’s assessment that Iranians were “gaining their freedom” were naive, in that they had just now started to pay attention to events in the country.
It is possible that this lobbing of missiles and drones does not result in regime change in Iran. And it’s certainly not clear if Trump has the stomach for a ground invasion.
So any sense of triumph at this time has to be tempered with some concern about the chaos that has been unleashed.
I was away from media for the weekend and I’m trying to catch up. Please forgive me if this has been asked up-thread.
Has the administration offered any legal justification for the actions in Iran? Anything at all like, “pursuant to such-and-such USC paragraph X, the President took action in Iran?” Or even a tenuous argument of exercise of Constitutional powers inherent in the Presidency?
I need to know before I send out my utterly futile letters to my Senators (Tillis and Budd ).
Bush 43 was a lot more concerned about maintaining good relations with allies, and Turkey has always opposed anyone meddling in their Kurdish issues.
Trump doesn’t care about any of that, and Turkey is getting less and less reliable as an ally. Trump might see the Kurds as toy soldiers who will do some of the hard stuff for him. He may see them as someone to use and dump. He may see them as a cudgel to threaten Turkey with - i.e. “fall in line unless you want to see an independent Kurdistan on your border.”
Someone might say, “President Trump, if you do this controversial, unorthodox thing, it may anger Turkey and weaken NATO” which we all know will be throwing gasoline on the fire of Trump’s narcissistic, contrarian ego.
There’s any number of ill-advised reasons Trump might try to put the Kurds in play. Like everything else in this situation, none of it can be predicted.
There were quite literally millions of Iranians protesting the Regime last month, and many of them were chanting slogans centered around Reza Pahlavi. I get that you want an active and visible opposition leader within the country, and yeah, that would be very helpful, which is why the current regime would execute anyone like that.
Right, that is in fact the only claim the article makes.
Do you realize how little information that actually is?
What other outcomes did they assess? Did they assess the likelihood of each outcome? Is this particular outcome one they found most likely? Least likey?
The statements made in the article would be equally true if the CIA found it 99.999% likely that the end result is a hardliner or 0.001% likely.
And I stand by that, I’m sure the Canadian-Iranian guy knows far more about the conflict.
Again I can find no expert analysis that claim replacement of this regime with one less oppressive is at all likely. Can you provide some?
And does anyone in Israel care about that? Prolonged civil war, a different repressive autocracy too weak to be of existential threat to Israel … that threat is the only thing that matters from that perspective.
Yes, of course. Many Israelis are Iranian Jews with strong ties to the Iran that was.
Israel would love to have a democratic, liberal ally on the region. Even from a purely Machiavellian national security perspective that would be more beneficial than a weak but hostile regime or a neutral one.
But most individual Israelis don’t view things from a purely Machiavellian national security perspective, and there’s quite a bit of sympathy for the Iranian people.
By the way, I don’t want to discount this. From the reporting I’ve seen, a lot of Iranians are overjoyed over the death of the Ayatollah. And I’m among those who really like the Iranian people, and know that they are open to a progressive democratic society.
I’m just too dumb to understand how a bunch of citizens, who otherwise have jobs and lives, are supposed to coalesce - Voltron-style - into a functioning government. Especially if the country isn’t going to be invaded by ground forces (something that may not be logistically feasible: Iraq had a population of about 25 million people in 2003; Iran has about 90 million).
And my biggest concern is that the current American/Israeli administrations haven’t sufficiently planed for the future, either. At least not to a serious degree.
ETA: I can’t read the crown prince’s editorial. Does he have any specific plans?
And by all accounts, hundreds killed in Iran, along with three US servicemen (and five more seriously wounded) as the self-proclaimed Greatest President in History™ continues to wage peace. Meanwhile global oil shipments are being disrupted.
).
Meanwhile global oil shipments are being disrupted.