Sunsun Girly on X - "Why are we in a war with Iran? Explain it to me like I’m a 5 year old."
Joe Redden | The Older Millennial on X - "Iran sign treaty. Iran repeatedly break treaty. Iran finance the attack and murder of US civilians and military every single year. US used to have bitch President. US no longer have bitch President. US warn Iran to stop fucking around. Iran keep fucking around. Now Iran finding out."
gravy on X - "Hillary Clinton in 2008: "I want the Iranians to know that if l am president, we will attack Iran…We would be able to totally obliterate them.”"
Iran using children in security roles in war, reports and witnesses say - "The death of an 11-year-old Iranian boy reportedly in an air strike while manning a security checkpoint alongside his father in Tehran has thrown focus on a new initiative to recruit children into the security services. Alireza Jafari's mother Sadaf Monfared told the municipality-run newspaper Hamshahri that the pair had been helping Basij volunteer militia patrols and checkpoints to "maintain the security of Tehran and its people" when they were killed on 11 March. Last week, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) official in Tehran told the IRGC-affiliated Fars News Agency that the organisation would enrol "volunteers" aged 12 and above. Eyewitnesses have told the BBC they have seen children, including some armed, in security roles in the capital and other cities. Foreign-based human rights organisations have also reported Alireza's death. The Kurdish group Hengaw said he was a "fifth-grade student" who was killed while present at a checkpoint in Tehran... She quoted her son as saying: "Mum, either we win this war or we become martyrs. God willing, we will win, but I would like to become a martyr."... In a report on the recruitment campaign, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it was a "grave violation of children's rights and a war crime when the children are under 15". "There is no excuse for a military recruitment drive that targets children to sign up, much less 12-year-olds," said Bill Van Esveld of HRW. "What this boils down to is that Iranian authorities are apparently willing to risk children's lives for some extra manpower." Pegah Banihashemi, an expert in constitutional law and human rights at the University of Chicago Law School, told the BBC: "Under international law, the use of children in security or military roles is tightly constrained and, in many contexts, unlawful." She also said that their deployment "introduces broader risks to society: untrained minors operating under pressure, often with limited command structure and insufficient understanding of force, can unintentionally escalate violence and endanger civilians"."
Time to blame Israel for killing children, like in Palestine
Of course, the majority of the people who pretend to care about "international law" are silent on this, just as they don't care about Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz
Meme - "Iran did do this. Hit Weizmann Institute less than a year ago. The coverage, outrage, rhetoric, and reactions were very muted globally."
"Just imagine the coverage, the outrage, the rhetoric and the reactions if Iran had done this to Israel. This world is so hypocritical."
Helyeh Doutaghi @Helyeh_Doutaghi: "Today was one of the most horrifying days of my life as an academic. Walking through Iran University of Science and Technology, a top-ranked public University in Iran, I was struck by the devastation. Only last month, this campus was alive with students, busting between Show more"
BRICS News on X - "JUST IN: 🇬🇧🇮🇷 United Kingdom says Iran is holding the world economy "hostage.""
IYANDAIBADAN1 on X - "Iran managed US sanctions for 47 years. World can't manage with Iran's sanctions for 2 weeks. #Copied"
To terrorism supporters, physically attacking civilians counts as "sanctions"
Stephen McIntyre on X - "US put military cordon in international waters on Venezuela to overthrow its government; is currently interdicting fuel shipments to Cuba in international waters and has been sanctioning Russian trade for years. So by what moral principle can US object to Iran threatening "global commerce" in Strait of Hormuz? Pot, meet kettle."
Left wingers love comparing apples to oranges. Considering attacking civilians to be "sanctions" aside, and granting that the Cuba situation is more ambiguous, the US is not alone where Venezuela is concerned: the EU, Canada, Mexico, Panama and Switzerland also applied sanctions against specific Venezuelan government entities and individuals associated with the administration of Nicolás Maduro. The US's sanctions apply to persons and property under US jurisdiction, or those using the US. But to left wingers, this is the same as Iran attacking third party nations
Of course, left wingers promote sanctions on Israel, but they are hypocrites, after all.
Gad Saad on X - "Hamas Agency: Nearly 13 million kids have been killed by the Zionist regime over the past three days.
[TikTok bros regurgitate this figure on all podcasts.]
Authenticated sources from Iran: Between 30,000-40,000 protesters have been killed by the Iranian regime in a few days.
[TikTok bros: Like, that's just your opinion, man. Where are the bodies?]"
El-Sayed calls recording after supreme leader's death 'a distraction' - "Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed says a private recording of him saying he didn't want to comment on the killing of Iran's supreme leader at least in part because "there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad," may have been obtained illegally by a conservative news website and is a "distraction" to his campaign... Dearborn and the surrounding area in southeast Michigan has one of the highest concentrations of Muslims and Arab Americans in the country and has been a hotbed of resistance to the United States' support of Israel during its offensive against Hamas in Gaza following the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023. Muslim leaders have also called on Trump to end the war with Iran, even as the death of Khamenei was seen as the end of what had been a long, brutal regime... El-Sayed, who is the son of Egyptian immigrants, is widely seen as the most progressive candidate in the race and has the endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a former presidential candidate, among others... El-Sayed took criticism for announcing a pair of campus rallies with Hasan Piker, an Internet influencer who has made comments in the past that his critics have denounced as antisemitic. Piker says he is not antisemitic but is willing to criticize Israeli policies; El-Sayed said his campaign "is about unlocking the system for people who’ve felt locked out of our politics.""
Talking about dual loyalty is racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic, and you need to shoot the messenger
Is it a good thing to unlock the system for those who cheer the country's enemies?
The West’s defeatist elites are making seven deadly errors - "What is wrong with the West’s expert class? Do they really believe, as they keep telling us, that the war against Iran is a disaster, the end of days, the final humiliation for Donald Trump? Such defeatism, such catastrophism are not warranted. It is far too soon to conclude how this war will end, regardless of what Iranian propagandists and other appeasers would have us believe. I can count seven principal errors clouding “expert” judgments in the West. The first is the European establishment’s inability to accept the scale of Iran’s defeats since the Oct 7, 2023 pogroms against Israel, one of the greatest military miscalculations in modern history... The second myth is that Trump is somehow struggling because he supposedly failed to plan for the obvious. In fact, many US assumptions were either right or too pessimistic. It proved remarkably easy to kill Ali Khamenei. Iran failed to overwhelm US and Israeli defence systems. Critics warned that stockpiles of allied interceptors would run out almost immediately; that was false. The Gulf states turned out to be more resilient than anticipated; instead of turning to China or hoisting the white flag, they shot down missiles, and the Saudis and UAE are moving closer to Washington. US combat losses have been smaller than expected... The third problem is Europe’s inherent defeatism. Writing in Foreign Affairs in 1969, Henry Kissinger argued that “the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win.” This point, sensible in the context of Vietnam, has been universalised to the point of stupidity. Many in the West now claim that anything short of a total destruction of the Iranian regime signifies victory for the IRGC, and defeat for America, parroting the ayatollahs’ line. Such absurd premises would rule out any Western power ever winning a war again, barring a World War II-style total victory. In the real world, America and Israel will have succeeded if they severely degrade Iran’s nuclear, missile and military capacities and reopen the Straits of Hormuz. Regime change would be a triumph, but isn’t necessary for victory (and could happen later). The fourth fallacy is caused by critics’ pathological hatred of Trump, a flawed man who is doing the right thing on Iran. His enemies are deploying every argument, however contradictory. Those who dismiss the President as a populist criticise him for pursuing an unpopular policy. If America kills an Iranian leader, we are told it will strengthen the regime; if some survive, that also confirms America’s weakness. Whatever the US does is wrong. Iran’s (remaining) leaders are depicted as brilliant strategists, while it is assumed that Trump is an imbecile. Iran’s extreme negotiating positions are naively taken to mean that the regime must be winning, rather than as a bluff. It was widely agreed that we should all sacrifice for Ukraine, another war I support. The fifth error of judgment in the West is to argue that the reverse is true over Iran: no financial cost to the public, however trivial, is deemed worth it to remove the regime. Why is it fine for the public to pay taxes to fund greater benefits, or higher prices for net zero, but not to fight a vile terror regime? The sixth error is explained by the virulent spread of anti-Semitism among Western elites. Over the last few years, much “analysis” of Israel has appeared, however unknowingly, to imbibe the grotesque lies of the Blood Libel (Norwich, 1144, child killers), the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Russia, 1903, Netanyahu controls Trump via an international Jewish conspiracy) and the Soviet Ministry for Propaganda’s anti-Zionist campaign of delegitimisation (USSR, 1960s-70s, Israel is a racist, apartheid, “settler-colonialist” state). The Saudis were among those pushing for Trump to attack Iran, and are now desperate for him to finish the job. Yet nobody blames them for “controlling” Trump (even though Gulf states bankroll the US economy, unlike Israel); instead, the critics obsess about the Jewish state. Trump, a longstanding Iran hawk – he told The Guardian in 1988 about “doing a number on Kharg Island” – is portrayed simultaneously as a bullying dictator who refuses to listen to wiser heads, and also as a puppet, a simpleton duped by Netanyahu. The Israelis wanted the war, but the US president is in charge. He pushed the button, and, when he decides to stop, Israel will fall into line. Last, why does the bien-pensant Left not care about the human rights of the oppressed Iranian people? Why do they sound almost gleeful that the regime hasn’t fallen? And why do many Right-wingers – who oppose extremism in the UK – refuse to get involved to chop off the head of the Islamist snake? This is our war, too. The fact that we cannot see it, that we are convinced that it must fail, is a terrible indictment of our moral degeneration."
CAMERA on X - "A new CAMERA analysis found @bbc , @cnn , @nbc and @nytimes used the phrase "war crime" 32 times in the first three weeks of the U.S./Israel-Iran war. 88% of those applications were directed solely toward the actions of the United States and/or Israel. Zero were directed solely toward the actions of the Islamic Republic of Iran. "The disproportionate application of the phrase stands in contrast with reality," writes @dmlitman . "Of the over 400 ballistic missiles fired at Israel, it is estimated that half of them were cluster munitions which drop dozens of submunitions over a wide radius of five miles. As of Mar. 22, at least two dozen of these missiles have hit populated areas, 'with over 100 separate impact sites.' While cluster munitions are not universally banned, using them to target populated areas almost certainly constitutes a war crime.""
Iran war news: Trump distracting from Epstein files: Kinew - "Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew is accusing U.S. President Donald Trump of fuelling the war in Iran to distract from the millions of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, also referred to as the “Epstein files,” saying the conflict is driving up gas prices for Canadians."
No surprise, it's the NDP!
Jasmin Laine on X - "You know what’s crazy? A Canadian Premier went on CTV News today, and confidently said ‘President Trump launched the war to distract from the Epstein documents’ He repeated a conspiracy theory almost word-for-word… one that’s been traced back to Iranian propaganda networks. Not once, not accidentally—but with confidence, pride, and a smile on his face. The exact same narrative and same framing. When do we start asking why our leaders are echoing foreign influence campaigns?"
Opinion | In Israel, wartime reality doesn’t match what you see on the internet - The Washington Post - "We are living through the first alt-war: a conflict in which the war fought online and the war fought in reality have diverged so completely that they might as well be happening on different planets. It’s not that people lack information, it’s more that they are constructing an entirely different alternate reality — one that confirms what they already believe. Most mornings, my phone is full of panicked messages. A friend in Pittsburgh. A colleague in Central Asia. A relative in New York. They have all seen the videos of intense missile barrages ravaging Tel Aviv. One video sent to me featured what were ostensibly Israelis marching in droves, on foot across what appeared to be the Judaean mountains escaping the country as it collapsed behind them. The videos I’ve been sent are all fake. They are either generated by artificial intelligence or simply old footage from somewhere else. I know, because I am here. The first night of the war was the most frightening. A missile struck about a quarter of a mile from our apartment. The noise shook our building. One person was killed — a woman who did not reach a shelter in time. That tragic event lodged the importance of the shelters in the mind of my children like no lecture of mine ever could. But after that first night, my kids saw that life continued. In shelters across Tel Aviv, I have found myself alongside Muslims, Jews, Christians and recent arrivals. The furious debate consuming the American internet feels distant in these spaces. People are mostly tired but hopeful that a better future is on the horizon. What worries me more than the fake videos are the people who cannot fathom that this war is going well for the United States, for Israel and maybe even for the long-suffering people of Iran. The strategic picture is more favorable than the online narrative suggests. Iranian options are narrowing to outcomes that all leave Israel better positioned than before, whether that is regime change in Tehran, a negotiated arrangement under American pressure or a ceasefire along the lines of the Houthi deal. Markets know this even when pundits refuse to acknowledge it. Kobby Barda, a political analyst at Holon Institute of Technology, pointed me to what he considers the most telling indicator: Israel’s stock market surged when the fighting began and has remained near all-time highs. “Markets don’t lie,” he told me. “They price in everything and right now they’re telling you Israel comes out of this stronger.” You would not know any of this from Washington. Two weeks into the war, I watch otherwise reasonable analysts sprint to catastrophe. Former officials, thinktank scholars, credentialed professionals who are supposed to know how to read a conflict. Within days they had written the obituary: quagmire, overreach, disaster. And that narrative has continued unabated. The liberal internationalist left and the isolationist right — two camps that have agreed on almost nothing for decades — have suddenly found themselves in lockstep, racing to declare the war a failure before it had barely begun. This is the new blob: not the old foreign-policy establishment that the term originally described but a new amalgamation that has arrived at the same conclusion from opposite directions. Together they are the most powerful engine of the alt-war. I asked Golan Shahar, a prominent clinical psychologist at Ben-Gurion University and self-described liberal turned centrist, to help me understand. Why do otherwise intelligent people send me AI-generated videos and refuse to believe my firsthand account? “They don’t want this to work,” he said. “They want it to fail.” Analysts in the U.S., he explained, “cannot have it that Trump and Bibi are the ones defending the West.” People send me these videos because they need me to confirm what they need to be true. This is the defining feature of the alt-war. It is not that people lack information, but that the success of the war conflicts with their priors and so they have constructed an alternative war: one in which Tel Aviv is burning, Washington never heard of the Strait of Hormuz before last week and the whole enterprise is doomed. Because that is the only version they can psychologically accept. The new blob has found its common cause not in a policy position but in a psychological need. That need is feeding an alternative reality more vivid and viral than anything the enemy could produce."
Amjad Taha أمجد طه on X - "The UAE stands as a strong partner of the United States. No ceasefire with the Islamic regime in Iran. Not now. You don’t negotiate with terror. You end it. The UAE stands firm. Zero space for terrorists. Germany, Britain, Spain's governments say they want a diplomatic solution with this terrorist regime. Fine. Let it be your neighbour. Take its leadership, as you did with the Muslim Brotherhood. Give them citizenship. They are all yours. If you want the rubbish, take it but don’t ask us to accept it or live with it. It stinks. You can have it. Live with it alone. This Saturday will not pass quietly. It will be marked. It will be remembered."
Two Days Over Iran - "China sold Iran its latest CM-302 supersonic anti-ship missiles. They didn’t work. When Iranian forces launched them at U.S. Navy warships, the missiles either missed outright or were intercepted before they could reach their targets. The much-touted Chinese HQ-9 and sophisticate Russian air-defense systems guarding Iranian bases proved equally ineffective. Most Iranian aircraft—including helicopters—were destroyed on the ground before they ever became a factor in the fight. Those that managed to take off did not last long. Pilots flying American-designed F-35s and upgraded F-16s quickly dispatched them, recording the first air-to-air victories of the conflict and demonstrating once again that Western aircraft, training, and integrated command systems remain far ahead of what America’s adversaries can field. Within roughly forty-eight hours, the United States and Israel had effectively established control of Iranian airspace. In modern warfare, that development is decisive. Once a military loses control of the sky, it loses the ability to move forces safely, defend infrastructure, or protect command networks. Air superiority allows the victor to dismantle an opponent methodically—striking missile sites, radar installations, supply depots, and bases with increasing precision and diminishing risk. Reports from the region suggest exactly that pattern. As American and Israeli sorties increased, Iranian responses became more sporadic and disorganized, and the regime’s ability to project military power began eroding almost immediately. The geopolitical consequences were immediate. Chinese probing flights around Taiwan—which had been occurring with increasing frequency in recent months—reportedly halted. Beijing had grown comfortable testing the limits of American patience, probing Taiwan’s air defense zone almost daily in an effort to normalize pressure. The spectacle of a regional military infrastructure being dismantled in a matter of days appears to have altered that calculation. Deterrence, long dismissed by some analysts as an outdated Cold War concept, turns out to work quite well when it is backed by credible demonstrations of capability. Elsewhere, the psychological effects are already visible. Even media outlets rarely inclined toward pro-American narratives have begun describing the shift in countries aligned with authoritarian regimes. NPR correspondent Eyder Peralta recently described the atmosphere in Venezuela—now that Nicolás Maduro sits in an American jail—as “surreal,” reporting that ordinary citizens say it feels as though a great weight has been lifted from their lives. Cuba may soon face a similar reckoning. The regime in Havana has long depended on outside resources and political patronage to sustain itself. Without those supports, the structural weaknesses of the system become much harder to conceal. Iran’s weakening position carries broader implications because Tehran occupies a key role in the informal alignment between Russia and China. Iranian military cooperation and energy exports have given Moscow strategic flexibility while providing Beijing with a reliable partner in the Middle East. A diminished Iran complicates that arrangement and forces both powers to reconsider the durability of the regimes on which they have relied. Strategic shocks rarely remain confined to one region. They ripple outward, reshaping calculations in places as distant as Ukraine and the South China Sea. These developments raise an uncomfortable question: how many crises might have been avoided if the credibility of American power had been demonstrated earlier? For three decades after the first Gulf War, American military policy often emphasized restraint, incremental escalation, and restrictive rules of engagement designed to minimize political risk. In Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. forces frequently operated under conditions that prevented them from exploiting their overwhelming advantages to achieve decisive outcomes. Wars became prolonged, objectives blurred, and deterrence weakened. Our adversaries did not necessarily grow stronger, but they did grow more confident that the United States lacked the will to finish what it started. What appears different now is not simply the quality of American weapons or training—both of which remain unmatched—but the clarity of leadership. When a president signals that commitments will be enforced and military commanders are given authority to prosecute operations decisively, the strategic environment changes quickly. Allies gain confidence. Adversaries reassess their assumptions. The tempo of events accelerates... History offers a useful comparison. Rome did not dominate the Mediterranean world because it endlessly negotiated with its rivals. It achieved dominance because the effectiveness of its legions was widely understood. Roman soldiers combined discipline, engineering skill, logistical sophistication, and tactical innovation in ways their adversaries could rarely match. The resulting Pax Romana was not simply diplomacy; it was the product of a widely accepted reality that resistance to Roman power was futile... For adversaries accustomed to assuming that Washington lacked the will to act decisively, the message is unmistakable. No rival—whether Russia, China, or North Korea—can safely assume that American commitments are empty... the most remarkable reaction may be the panic now visible among American Democrats at the prospect that the United States could be both dominant and good at the same time."
'You should leave quickly': Journalist warned by worshippers of Sydney mosque celebrating slain terror leader Ayatollah Khamenei - "A Sky News reporter has been warned to leave a Sydney mosque by worshippers refusing to answer questions on the US-Israeli strikes on Iran... five Australian mosques this week held mourning ceremonies for the slain terror leader... Statements by the mosque said the slain Ayatollah "embodied everything we want in a leader"... Co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry Alex Ryvchin said any mosque honouring Khamenei should be subject to criminal investigation. “The fact that Khamenei’s forces coordinated at least two terrorist attacks in Australia makes this public adulation for him all the more concerning,” he said."
Proof that they're peaceful and well-integrated, and that the Islamophobic reporter needs to be ashamed of himself
Kaja Kallas on X - "The decision by Israeli police to bar Jerusalem’s Latin Patriarch from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Palm Sunday constitutes a violation of religious freedom and long-standing protections governing holy sites. Freedom of worship in Jerusalem must be fully guaranteed, without exception, for all faiths. Jerusalem’s multi-religious character must be protected."
Eitan Fischberger on X - "Dear Madam VP of the European Commission, I find your concern about Christians curious. In the nearly 17 years since creating your X account, you have not once tweeted about any church — until today. To make matters even more odd, you have never tweeted about Christians at all. So why the sudden concern over a minor incident involving Christians in a distant country — one with warm relations with the Christian community — an incident already being addressed by local authorities, who have committed to ensuring it won't happen again? What, exactly, are you trying to achieve here?"
Clearly in a war where synagogues are also closed and churches with access to bomb shelters can hold services for up to 50 people, this is proof of Israeli persecution of Christians
