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Posted on 06/28/2025 9:58:55 PM PDT by Cronos
Last week, when bombs were falling over Iran, I saw a post on social media that posed a harrowing question to Iranians: Would you rather have a stranger kill your abusive father, or have him continue to live and abuse your family?
...On one side is the moral value of liberation from the Islamic Republic. For some of the most seasoned dissidents — those who have endured imprisonment, torture and exile — the Israeli strikes carry a dangerous, fragile hope. They see the death of a high-ranking Revolutionary Guards commander not as a casualty of war, but as a righteous, if small, step toward salvation from an oppressive regime. From this perspective, any action that weakens the architects of their suffering is a necessary catalyst for the long-awaited collapse of the Islamic Republic, a moral imperative overriding all other considerations.
On the other side is the moral value of self-determination. Many Iranians, who share the same dream of a free Iran, cannot accept its potential birth through foreign invasion. ... Stoking this dilemma has been a cornerstone of the Islamic Republic’s propaganda. The regime has relentlessly hammered home a single threat: without its rule, Iran will shatter like Syria and be divided by its enemies. This argument intentionally transforms the desire for liberation into a gamble with national survival, amplifying the moral paralysis that serves its hold on power.
...Observers should not mistake Iranians’ moral paralysis as proof that we are simply passive observers of the crisis gripping our country. — we need a psychological shift, not a political one. It requires seeing the fierce passion for a competing moral value not as intractable disagreement, but as its own expression of our desperate love for the free Iran so many of us yearn to see.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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They basically need the assirance that the government is gone.
They need a leader.
I lived in Eastern Europe for a couple of years. I could never figure out why these people were willing to live in tyranny for hundreds of years. There are many complex historical and phycological reasons for this.
The Israelis actually knew the intimate details, their exact apartment locations, as well as the daily habits of the key players in the mullahs' administration. The Israelis were intimately familiar with the state of nuclear bomb preparation and were fully knowledgeable of the best avenue of attack for the bumper buster bombs: down the ventilation shafts.
Surely, there was very little worthy of knowing that the Israelis did not know.
Perhaps (repeat: perhaps) the great tragedy of this war is that the Israelis might very well have been possessed of accurate information concerning the likelihood of an internal Iranian rebellion decapitating the regime itself. Did that assessment conclude that continued bombing by Israel against critical targets might just set such a revolution in motion?
One notes that the Israelis bombed the prison where political prisoners were held. Was that to release revolutionaries who were jailed for their opposition to the regime? Could the Israelis have stimulated into action the general resentment against the regime by, for example, bombing the electrical grid, water source, etc.?
Did the Israelis advise this administration that there was a good chance of revolution brought about solely by bombing, propaganda, arming the revolutionaries and by publicly expressed support by the President of the United States?
Did President Trump receive such an assessment? Why did he dismiss it? Why didn't he permit the Israelis to try to effect such a revolution without deploying any troops on the ground, either Israeli or American? After all, the Iranian regime was prostrate and without serious means of resisting Iranian bombing, to effect reprisals against America, or, perhaps, to defend itself against an aroused people.
Shall we ever know if a priceless opportunity was squandered?
I'm there with you. When I didn't see us arming the people, I knew nothing was going to happen.
Expect round two.
“ Observers should not mistake Iranians’ moral paralysis as proof that we are simply passive observers of the crisis gripping our country.”
There’s no “moral paralysis” except for the same kind found in Russia under Stalin and China under Mao. That kind of moral challenge pits life, even though fearful and oppressed, against imprisonment, torture, and execution. Sort of a Sophie’s Choice at this time.
The fear, traumatized and coalition of the unwilling (France, U.K., Germany and the rest of the E.U.) in the West once again has failed to FOLLOW THROUGH.
Israel paved the way for destroying a lot of critical sites, controlled Iranian airspace (which, in itself is pretty incredible) and degrading their Nuclear centers.
Trump, of course wham bam thank you ma’amed them and then walked away. “Regime change” is what was required now, not in 5 years time. Yes, the Iranian people should rise up but what is happening now is exactly what they feared - reprisals, round ups and murder. This was their fear all along and now it is killing them...again.
The West should have decimated their ports, oil exports, trade & industry, infrastructure and decapitate ALL of the leadership. Then the Iranian people would have been desperate to make their move.
Half-assed attacks will now put us back in the exact same place we were in one month ago. Iran will regroup, recoup and rebuild their Nuclear/Missile capabilities and then we will have to deal with a smarter regime.
Ceasefires are what the West loves but the enemies of the West know how to convert losses to a theoretical “victory”. The Arabs have this down to a fine art. The Persians are no that learning curve now.
Let the Mossad kill him.
We would be doing him a favor since any Shi-ite that dies as a martyr in the battle against infidels automatically goes to the Allahic Heaven to live a lavish afterlife with huge feasting and 72 virgins who renew there virginity every day, according to the religion.
The alternative is to let Ruhollah Khomeini die naturally, thereby relegating him to hell for buggering boys for half his life.
Do the right thing here !
Most people are not aware of how ubiquitous and smothering the surveillance and oppression are in cities like Tehran. It is routine for you to see people stopped and questioned, their phones confiscated and searched - randomly, to sew terror and hopelessness. It breeds a sense of utter futility against the Islamic dictatorship. You can’t just “arm” people and expect something to happen. It won’t.
bttt
We put up with Clinton, Obama, Biden-Autopen. Our ancestors would be shocked to learn that Americans, citizens of the mightiest nation on earth, and also it’s Senate and House, as well as its intelligence agencies, military and s3cret service, didn’t lift a finger while the office of the President was occupied by an impostor or impostors with unelected control of an automated pen.
...
Look what Illinois and California are putting up with. Americans living in safe havens for terrorists, illegals, criminals, and kleptocrats because they are more afraid of the unknown.
People put up with anything and everything so long as compromise gets their family a false or temporary sense of security.
The more so
It’s the Devil you know verses the one you don’t, which may very well not even exist. No one wants to be the first to find out, especially after the earlier uprising ended in the regime brutally murdering so many.
If they truly wanted freedom, they’d have acted. So,
******
Freedom isn’t free.
Sort of a Sophie’s Choice at this time.
*********
Since last time the Persians rose up against their oppressors, the oppressors chopped them with axes and then did worse, it is going to take a lot.
Our ancestors would be shocked to learn that Americans, citizens of the mightiest nation on earth, and also it’s Senate and House, as well as its intelligence agencies, military and s3cret service, didn’t lift a finger while the office of the President was occupied by an impostor or impostors with unelected control of an automated pen.
*******
Amen. US and its people did NOTHING when a PRETENDER was INSTALLED, an ELECTION was STOLEN.
“Observers should not mistake Iranians’ moral paralysis as proof that we are simply passive observers of the crisis gripping our country. And for Iranians, acknowledging this shared agony is the only path forward — we need a psychological shift, not a political one. It requires seeing the fierce passion for a competing moral value not as intractable disagreement, but as its own expression of our desperate love for the free Iran so many of us yearn to see.”
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WTH is the author trying to say in this stilted paragraph?
Who has a desperate love for a free Iran?
What a confused and confusing diatribe.
The Iranians have a fierce love for a free Iran.
all of the Iranians have a deep sense of pride for their ancient pre Islamic civilization and empire, “We had the greatest empire!”
Amen. US and its people did NOTHING when a PRETENDER was INSTALLED, an ELECTION was STOLEN.
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When anyone even hinted this, the media propaganda machine derided him/her and tried to deplatform them. And the January 6 gulags, Ray Epps, pipe bomber, scallows builders, Butler, golf course plots, etc.
I am far more concerned about a free America than a free Iran.
The Iranians have a fierce love for a free Iran.
all of the Iranians have a deep sense of pride for their ancient pre Islamic civilization and empire, “We had the greatest empire!”
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Ok, so the author is an Iranian who lives in this country. That makes sense.
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