The thing is Iran has long promised their max range was 2k Km and so defensive only. This shows that was a lie.

How is it? So far they seem to be trying to hit actual non-civilian targets. Missing with the rockets on intended targets is a different matter.

And yes, hitting offices with American financial institutions or hotels with American soldiers in them is fine.

They’re at war. The US and Israel are bombing everything anyway.

Strategically, Diego Garcia is a forward operating base for irreplaceable B-52 and B-2 bombers. Placing them at risk on the ground seems like a reckless call, more likely the US pulls those resources back to the US.

I’m not rooting for Iran, but since the US has who they have making the calls, Iran has obvious strategic cards to play - escalation benefits them.

There is probably a hardline faction within Iran that still thinks it gains from further bombing and forced isolation.

maybe they aren't as worried about that as they should be. maybe america isn't as worried about that as it should be.

but, what are you saying? it would be weird for iran to act in a way that might provoke escalation? you mean in the totally unprovoked war israel/america launched against them?

I don't know which country you're from, but in most countries, "our troops may get bombed if we join this war" is a very strong public argument against joining the war.

Just look at Trump's latest attempt to enlist his "allies" into sending warships to the Strait of Hormuz, and what a resounding success it was.

Not really. Because no one in Europe wants to bomb Iran into oblivion, if for no other reason but the fact that the Europeans (and Turkey) would face another massive refugee crisis.

The only people wanting to continue this war are the U.S. and Israel (and maybe Saudi Arabia?) and even Trump is clearly looking for an off ramp.

This is most likely a way for Iran to tell Europe to do what they can to end this otherwise they will drag Europe into this mess as well.

I thought the US president said they didn't expect a number of things that happened.

It also expected a quick intervention, 2 weeks max.

> The downplaying of Iran’s capabilities is a weird kind of racism IMHO.

Agreed, but it’s not at all surprising to me. Propaganda means that people will project fictitious motives and capabilities on their opponents, even if they are internally inconsistent (e.g. Iran must be attacked because they will threaten the USA mainland vs Iran’s missiles are very inaccurate and barely hit anything).

>Iranians have been categorized as “brown” so people lump them together with Somalians and Afghans.

Even from a racist perspective that's completely wrong; Iranians are white, the name "Iran" literally means "Land of the Aryans".

Probably by the Sea Viper system from a destroyer parked in the Dover Strait. Now, the UK probably doesn't have enough interceptors or destroyers carrying them to be confident they'll be able to stop a proper all out attack, but that seems to be a common problem with every Western country right now with a peacetime military budget in an increasingly unpeaceful time.

A missile would need to fly all the way over Europe before reaching London. It would be noticed, jets would be scrambled and it would be shot. Just like what happened here.

> it's all about managing upwards

That might not work with the current administration. Which probably a/the problem.

Mandy Rice-Davies Applies.

Anyone thinking they can talk their way into controlling Iran, a fundamentalist fanatic country with a very loud and visible doctrine literally calling to destroy the west, is delusional. The western "avoid conflict at all cost" approach is extremely detrimental.

The question is do they have a launcher that fits in a shipping container...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RejrrkrRShM

> Iran hasn't attacked Turkmenistan yet

The fact that we have to pick out a single neighbour they haven’t attacked sort of lands the point.

> only attacked countries that host US bases, correct?

No. Azerbaijan hosts no U.S. bases. Also, the Gulf hosts U.S. bases in part to protect against Iran. Blowing up hotels while missing American warships underlines why Iran is a shit neighbor.

I don't think the article you linked disagrees with what I've quoted from the BBC, does it? Aircraft being present at the airbase isn't the same as aircraft launching for an attack from the airbase.

What photos? And what reason would Starmer have to lie about it?

Yeah, that would be nice. I'm worried this will continue to escalate.

They just don't need to be convinced of anything. It's not like normal people have a say in this, just a few leaders doing what they want. A few fake news stories saying that there's so much support.

This is simply not true. I'm Iranian and I wish it were but IRGC has more support than you think. There is at least 30-40% of the population who support it and within those, more than half will gladly die for the regime.

My home country has more than 90M people and 40% of that equates for millions of supporters.

From the outside, you are only hearing the diaspora talking points, which don't realistically represent Iran. Many of them have grievances with the regime, or have been exiled after the Shah.

Iran is a complex country and it's hard for outsiders to grasp it, mainly because the censorship happening on both sides.

I personally think this war was a major mistake, no Iranian is going to cheer for US or Israel after watching their children being killed by them. The west was doing a good job exporting liberal ideas to Iran slowly over the past 3 decades. Some of those were starting to drip into the country, but this war undid all that effort.

Most Iranians do not want the IRGC gone, that's US/Israeli propaganda. Thousands of people have been marching in support of the IRGC. Common sense would also tell you that Iranians aren't going to support the people bombing their schools.

The IRGC has more support in Iran than the Republicans do in the United States, just to give you one datapoint to contemplate.

> Iran will be better as a whole if the IRGC is all dead

Which is an impossibility. We're talking about a military force of more than a million religiously fervent men that have martyrdom as a core tenet of their religion. They are not going anywhere, and assasinating their leaders and bombing their bases will not make them easier to enforce anything on.

You are absolutely deluded if you think the removal of the IRGC will result in any improvement in the situation of the Iranian people. The US and Israel want to bomb he place into a lawless wasteland, even if a secular democracy was to arise it would make no difference.

Many people that protested against the government in January are now marching in support of the Islamic Republic and demand that the imperialists are punished. Most of them have protested for economic reasons, they don't want to see their country destroyed and their children murdered by bombs.

Iran is more united than ever because of the imperialist war. That is what you get when you turn state leaders into martyrs.

Well, if US takes down their democracy and downs their domestic passenger jets, fight a proxy war with chemical weapons through Saddam Hussein that alone kills 20~30 thousand, no country is going to respond to that with flowers in their hair.

In Iran's defence, in spite of being attacked repeatedly with chemical weapons, not once have they retaliated with chemical weapons. This is in line with their beliefs which was formalized into a fatwa by the late Khamenei against nuclear weapons.

I would call that taking a pretty principled stand at a time when it would have been very tempting to redefine them.

Funnily enough, they are still a bit salty about the US and UK overthrowing their government in 1953, because that government started asking questions about how much oil the UK was stealing.

You'll be surprised to hear about what they have been chanting in the streets of Tel Aviv for decades. This cycle of violence can't be resolved by more violence. By starting this war for no reason, Israel and the US will only succeed in further radicalizing the Iranian people against them.

Iran is financially supporting both Hamas and Hezbollah so it has a degree of influence on these groups but it does not mean that they them.

Oct 7th was planned by Hamas, specifically Hamas in Gaza.

It is obvious that neither Iran nor Hezbollah knew about the date or they would have coordinated their attacks. In fact Iran did not seem very happy about October 7th because they didn't want the escalation.

Israel has been fighting a proxy war with much of the world since Zionism was conceived. I value Iran's assistance in this matter. They were however attacked first by the US and Israel. That's not debatable.

Fortunately the West would never stoop so low.

Let's not pretend that too happened in a vacuum.

The US started all this with the 1953 coup in Iran, and Israel was from its inception an extremely aggressive and expansionist country.

When was the last time the NATO navy do anything anyway? They’d just be sitting ducks and probably not even know which directions to point what pointless weapons they have.

This seems to be a fairly well thought out war that's already killed many Iranian leaders, including:

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – Supreme Leader

Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi – Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces

Major General Mohammad Pakpour – Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC

Brigadier General Aziz Nasirzadeh – Minister of Defense

Mohammad Shirazi – Head of Supreme Leader’s military office

Ali Larijani – Senior national security chief

Esmaeil Khatib – Minister of Intelligence

Gholamreza Rezaian – Iranian police intelligence commander

Gholamreza Soleimani – Basij paramilitary commander

Saleh Asadi – Head of military intelligence at Khatam‑al Anbiya

Has there been any other war in which one side so quickly killed the leadership of the other side?

Not sure how credible but iranintl.com has

>36,500 killed in 400 cities... Our Editorial Board has now obtained more detailed information provided by the IRGC Intelligence Organization to the Supreme National Security Council.

they are an Iranian opposition outfit funded but the Saudis. (https://www.iranintl.com/en/202601255198)

> Any credible source for this?

For tens of thousands? No. That’s the upper end of estimates. For the brutality? Yes. Wikipedia is a good start.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce9mzn7k722o

>Mossad agents have been instructed to fire at protestors to increase the death toll.

Source?

"Mossads agents had been arming people and instructing them to riot. "

This feels far too much like Iranian government propaganda to be plausible.

> The Iranian government is bad, and yes, it should be toppled, eventually, by its own people.

You would prefer to tell people in Iran who oppose the regime to take up arms (which they don't have) and fight IRGC soldiers with better training and more resources?

Best case, if they did, Iran would end up in a situation like Syria. Would that be an improvement?

More likely, it would simply be a massacre.

This is just completely false. There are multiple countries capable of killing their own by those numbers. All of them are equally disgusting, and should all be held accountable.

Thanks for correction. I looked up the news and could find reporting that some fragments of a missile did hit kindergarten. Thankfully no kids were there.

I'd edit my previous comment but I can't.

Doesn't Isreal have a ban on reporting of strikes inside their borders?

The internal conflict over corruption, water issues and handling of the protesters had a decent chance to cause meaningful changes in government. Starting a war and attacking their civilians put those chances to bed.

Strategically, it makes no sense to corner and threaten people. Murdering their own citizens shows the degree to which they'll go to preserve their power. If anything, that's a reason to slowly bleed them instead of cornering and escalating.

The evil of your enemy does not excuse your own strategic stupidity or cruelty.

And that gives US people the right to go there and murder a few thousand extra people?

How does that compare with putting hundreds of thousands of people into cages for arbitrary reasons, I wonder. Or depositing them in random countries to be killed because they are e.g. homosexual.

Considering theyre now doing airstrikes, there was 100% pre-invasion action that included agitating these protests. Like they're literally bombing them now but we think we werent already doing CIA activity there 6 months ago? Im not saying civilians love the government they probably hate it but... its complicated, what if the person rallying and pushing 1000 people was actually a deep cover agent

Before I get downvoted to hell Im not conding anything or taking any side, just pointing out an obvious deduction

You're being disingenuous - the "protestor" was caught on camera literally hacking a policeman to pieces. He murdered a policeman, and will now be executed.

Allegedly, according to the same political factions that aggressively bombed Iran just weeks later.

> some civilians have been injured when Iran attacked the hotels where US agents were stationed

Surely the US are using civilians as human shields?

The mullahs and IRGC are not famous for their compassion or kind-heartedness.

They are infamous for fulminating against liberals, plotting to kill enemies, torturing and hanging dissidents from cranes, persecuting minorities and women, funding terror cells, and fleecing their citizens to enrich themselves.

Many of the comments here suffer from a misguided refusal to be impressed by the regime's reputation, as though anyone the American establishment criticises must automatically be righteous.

HN need community notes BAD.

> hit a school

Already has in Azerbaijan [0] and attempted in Israel [1].

Most reporting is hyper-regional and somewhat kept under wraps (eg. Qatar and UAE are actively prosecuting leakers who are using Reddit, and have even taken control of Qatar's subreddit [2]) or reported on in regional languages.

I've found the information control in this conflict to be much more strategic/professional in comparison to what was is seen in Ukraine and Russia.

[0] - https://www.euronews.com/2026/03/06/aliyev-vows-attacks-on-a...

[1] - https://www.jns.org/news/israel-news/iranian-cluster-bomb-hi...

[2] - https://www.reddit.com/r/qatar/comments/1rt2fth/timeout/

How is China getting that oil without problem? Something like 90% of it when through Kharg island which is now rubble.

> We deserve it for looking the other way while Israel has been mass murdering Palestinians for more than two years now.

The sad part is how the genocide in Gaza could have been prevented:

Imagine an alternate history, in which successive precedencies didn't turn a blind eye to Iran, imagine a decade ago (regardless of democrat or republican administration) that they decided to do what they are doing today in Iran. Iran wouldn't have had the funds and resources to sponsor Hamas and Hezbollah. The populations in Gaza and Lebanon wouldn't have been sandwiched between the projected powers of Israel and Iran. Their power structures could have been legitimate democracies etc. In that world there wouldn't have been a reason for Israel to attack and invade, and even if they did in this alternate history, the rest of the world would have strongly condemned it to the point of military intervention on behalf of Gaza / Lebanon.

Always take not how a faction has risen to power initially. In the case of Iran's regime it was hostage taking. A faction will very often resort to the same tactics and methods it used during its initial ascent to power, a form of survivorship bias.

If the West hadn't let the situation of Iran rot indefinitely for decades (they even systematically rewarded the regime's behavior by systematically giving in to the hostage politics it conducted, in my opinion they should have just drawn a line and said: return these hostages unconditionally or we treat this as hiding behind a human shield).

What about the people who will die because they cannot afford the higher prices that will come from a disruption in gas supply?

It really should make you want the Totalitarian Shia Theocracy running Iran to collapse.

I agree with you, mostly. My read is that Twelver Shi’ism is not a unified hierarchy, and a marja’s fatwa normally binds that marja’s own followers rather than all Shi’a, so your institutional point is broadly right.[1][2] It is too strong, though, to say the anti-nuclear position was simply “invented for PR”: Khamenei did publicly describe it as a real fatwa.[3] At the same time, Iran’s enrichment posture _does_ fit the description of a threshold state, with large stocks of uranium enriched to 60%, so it is fair to say the ruling also had strategic and diplomatic value.[4]

The parts I would soften are the specific claim about Sistani having a significant following inside the IRGC, which MIGHT be true but is much harder to substantiate publicly (although, maybe you have some behind-the-scenes knowledge?), and the certainty of motive. Still, your last sentence is basically right: these rulings are not _immutable_. After Ali Khamenei’s death, Iran’s foreign minister said (quoting the Reuters article), “fatwas depend on the Islamic jurist issuing them,” and added he was “not yet in a position to judge the jurisprudential or political views of Mojtaba Khamenei…” This reinforces the point that doctrine can shift if the leadership chooses.[5]

[1] Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Twelver Shi’ah.”

[2] Al-Islam.org, “Question 49: Difference between hukm and fatwa.” [3] Leader.ir, “Ayatollah Khamenei in the Eid al-Fitr congregational prayers” and “Leader’s remarks on anti-Iran sanctions and Yemen aggressions by Saudi Arabia.”

[4] Arms Control Association, “The Status of Iran’s Nuclear Program,” and ACA analysis citing the IAEA’s 440.9 kg figure.

[5] Reuters, “Iran says nuclear doctrine unlikely to change, Hormuz Strait needs new protocol” (March 18, 2026).

Maraaji' is the pluralized version in Arabic, but nothing wrong with saying marjas. Marji would be most wrong though.

Your in-depth knowledge of completely random things never ceases to amaze me.

> But there are several other marja (marjas? marji?)

Wikipedia has romanized: [singular] marji'; plural marāji'.

I don't know but I can certainly blame them for oppressing and murdering their own citizens.

After being caught developing nuclear weapons for real numerous times, now it is really for real?

> Maybe don't murder the religious leader that made the rulings.

Are you saying that politicians should be immune if they also serve a religious role?

There is a difference between not doing something and being unable to do something. Clearly there were able but only showed it now and their previous claim was BS (again, assuming those missiles did fly "far").

No-one believes that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons, either... or that they wouldn't if they had developed the capability.

Ayatollah Khomeini admitted that he had lied about plans to make Iran democratic.

This practice is known as taqqiya. It’s ok to lie if you’re deceiving the enemy.

Do the missiles Iran has been raining down on other countries for decades not count as WMDs?

Never get involved in a land war in Asia but only slightly less well-known is never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

I wrote "flatten", not "invade".

That's ridiculous, but Europe has no reason to intervene in this craze. If attacked, things would change. Europe has participated in previous wars like Irak or Afghanistan, why wouldn't we be able to act now?

It should be noted that Iran has publicly stated that the attacks on Turkey were false-flag attacks launched by Israel.

Attacking as in a couple of rockets heading US bases which were intercepted. Of course nothing would happen, why would Turkey (or other European countries) join this pointless war?

Whoever is in charge doesn't matter, I can guarantee you they're not in a more favorable mood than 4 weeks ago. They also killed one of only rational diplomatic Iranian officials, during active negociations, if you want to make it clear negociating with the US is useless that's exactly what you'd do

That is actually one of my indicators - I found significantly higher flagging and mutual acrimony about West Asian affairs during non-US hours versus US hours irrespective of bias.

What will be interesting is what happens on HN tomorrow - Sunday is the equivalent of Monday in MENA.

Additionally, tne fact it took hours for this to get flagged is worrisome for me. I have also noticed increased usage of HackerSmacker.

HN needs a hard ban on politics and much stricter off-topic controls to reduce the risk of misuse of HN. It will make HN significantly harder to use and for diamonds in the rough to arise, but will help ensure good faith discourse amongst users

Also, this isn't meant to be a slight at the HN moderating team - they are doing commendable work, but there is a deluge that is very difficult to manage (so I can only imagine how much hard work they are putting into moderating already).

True, Kim Jong Un is actually pretty chill, just likes testing some nukes towards Japan as a hobby. Are people genuinely retarded? Or is it the severe Israel bias?

According to postwar foreign policy clearly that’s true:

Look at Libya and Ukraine for your most direct examples - give away your nukes, get invaded. South Africa is an odd example that proves the rule: they simply bend the knee to the west.

Nuclear deterrents and mutual assured destruction has been the key driver in preventing large scale conflict in the “postwar period.”

Everyone knows Israel has nukes it’s just a matter of when they can get enough public support to use them

Why do you think Iran wanted to have nukes?

It's the only way to not get raped by the US whenever their supreme leader decides it's war time

i believe the parent comment was being sarcastic

Iran did the same before the conflict in response to prior Israeli attacks - the two drone waves they sent that were intercepted were both demonstrations of capability, not actual attacks.

Unfortunately I’m not sure their current audience is gonna pick up the implied threat.

Yep. This action wasn't intended for the average HNer or Redditor to pontificate about.

Those who they wanted to send a message to got the message, and it's a significant message up the escalation chain.

Additionally, the fact that this is being very publicly disclosed and discussed in British media in a manner that RAF Akhrioti wasn't is also a massive signal.