>>63881426
I feel like sign tapping the Adam Smith quote, but people lose sight of how wars begin when you please but end when the war pleases. They resort to vatnik style bombastic promises of power and violence as a resolution to the issue - even though that failed in Vietnam, failed in Afghanistan, failed in Iraq. What is particularly telling is nobody, from armchair experts here to leddit to news media to the son of the Zodiac Killer has any fucking thought as to the religious/ethnic divisions in Iran and how they might play into a day after. It's a bit like the ra-ra-lets-go-burgers shit we pulled in 2002-2003 and going
>A shia? A kurd? What like the cheese?
>>63881851
I don't disagree that the regime has a credibility issue, but to contextualize things apply this thinking reflectively back on us: Does all that wall-to-wall coverage of protests, be it no kings or fenatyl floyd, suggest that the overwhelming majority of Americans supported those movements? Or were they just vocal and photogenic? It's something you'd want to be sure of rather than just wishful thinking. Again back to my no ethnography question: Do we have an idea of how loyalties lie among the various groups? Is the regime stronger in certain areas than others? Like Kandahar was the epicenter of the Taliban and a really nasty position to hold, so waht's the equivalent in Iran? Who are the likely notables who would form warlords/factions in a collapse? Whose the Dostum Khans or Masoouds we can support versus the Haqqani network equivalents in Iran? How might the Taliban take advantage of the instability in Eastern Iran? Or ISIS? Will de-IRGC-ification be a problem like de-baathification?
Nobody brings that shit up. It's just mindless sloganeering of "Everything'll go right and we'll have nothing to worry about", or "It's all impossible a disaster we can't do it just give up"