19 comments

  • athrowaway3z 1 hour ago
    I have to wonder how much of this is driven by Israel accounting for the risk of less favorable US relationship in the future.

    Pre-emptive violence; not even justified with a narrative of escalating threat.

    Bleak for anybody who knows their history.

    • seydor 59 minutes ago
      The US has moved half of its navy in the region, and there are doubts about its support?
      • dragonwriter 43 minutes ago
        “In the future” is not “now”.

        Neither the current administration nor Israel are particularly popular with the US public today, and those are correlated in that Israel has particularly lost support from Democrats and Independents in the US, suggesting that a change in power (legislative or executive, and especially both) in the US government could very easily spell much less favorable US policy toward Israel.

      • replooda 43 minutes ago
        "Let's do it now, when they'd still move half their navy there for us, rather than in the future, when they might not."
        • seydor 35 minutes ago
          More like "The US has arrived as we asked, and the same will happen in the future every time"
          • replooda 25 minutes ago
            Even assuming that would always hold for the USA as such, America isn't necessarily a fixture in Semitic eschatology.
    • e40 1 hour ago
      And it happened on a Friday night. Best time of the week for the least news impact.
    • weatherlite 1 hour ago
      It was Trump or his immediate environmetn who asked Israeli to attack Iran first (better optics); Israel would have never done this without American approval. Did Israel want this to happen though ? Yes. But so did the Americans. I guess the negotiations went badly.
    • epsters 57 minutes ago
      More specifically, seems to be driven by Netanyahu's political accounting. Starting a potential major war going into mid-terms is pretty inconvenient for Trump who could be looking at impeachment over Epstein. But Netanyahu is facing trial and October-7 investigation commissions more imminently and can't wait that long. Netanyahu trumps Trump, evidently.
    • assaddayinh 49 minutes ago
      [dead]
  • riffraff 1 hour ago
    well, they were one week away from a nuke, as usual.
    • flyinglizard 1 hour ago
      The concept of nuclear brinkmanship is part of accepted WMD doctrine. A country can maintain a fixed short interval away from weaponization for decades. It is widely accepted that Iran does have a military nuclear program; the amount of material enriched, the enrichment level achieved and the hardening of the involved facilities are an open testament to that (there are many other intelligence signals that we are not privy to).
    • throwawa1 1 hour ago
      since 1992!
      • wafflemaker 1 hour ago
        There's an Israeli newspaper from 1984 saying it's a month away. Definitely more than a month passed between '84 and '92.

        Btw. They ARE not that far away from the bomb, after they enriched uranium as a consequence of Trump (in his first term) cancelling the Obama treaty.

        But they ARE a theocracy and Ajatollah Chamenei released an order (fatwa) forbidding Iran from obtaining and using an a-bomb. The new religious leader might change the religious law tho. I mean the one that comes after Chamenei becomes a martyr.

        Funny how, knowing just a little bit more, it all really looks like nonsense created for illiterate, just to take their attention off of Epstein Pedophile Scandal.

        • throwawa1 1 hour ago
          After Epstein my support of Israel is 0. nil. None.
  • drivebyhooting 1 hour ago
    Please, can the administration do something useful for America instead of… whatever this is?

    Can we follow the age old adage WWJD?

    What would (Xi) Jinping do?

    • anonnon 1 hour ago
      > What would (Xi) Jinping do?

      Make himself dictator for life and purge his party of dissenters?

      • Freedom2 10 minutes ago
        Luckily that can never happen in America.
      • karmakurtisaani 1 hour ago
        But also expand through trade and renewables, rather than war and oil.

        Much nuance, wow.

      • drivebyhooting 1 hour ago
        Yes and then what? Bankrupt his empire by getting into global wars? Yeah sure.
  • Acrobatic_Road 1 hour ago
    Reddit is devastated.
    • givemeethekeys 1 hour ago
      As should you, if you are either American, Israeli or Iranian.

      Every bullet is money that could have been spent at home on better things for all three countries.

      • Acrobatic_Road 36 minutes ago
        If my options are this or more Total Boomer Luxury Communism (which they are), then bombs away.
        • tastyface 33 minutes ago
          Clearly, you should go back to Reddit (and stay there).
  • HNisCIS 1 hour ago
    Currently an absolute shit load of C17s landing in Germany after leaving the PG region. I guess we know which country finally caved and let the US use them for whatever fresh conquest this is.
    • fjfaase 4 minutes ago
      Germany is one of the most pro-Israel countries and known for using excessive police voilance against pro-Palestina protestors and strongly denies that there is a genocide going on in Gaza.
  • anonnon 48 minutes ago
    Can any Iran simps explain why the regime couldn't just agree to zero enrichment and cease its weekly ritual of organized mobs chanting:

    > DEATH TO AMERICA

    in the streets like blood-thirsty lunatics, something for which there was no equivalent in the US even after 9/11 (mobs chanting "Death to Muslims/Islam"), let alone doing so with governmental encouragement as happens in Iran?

    Do they not realize how many Americans aren't pro-Israel and aren't invested enough in the Middle East and its politics, proxy wars, and human rights abuses to want the US to support Israel in military action against Iran, except for their nuclear ambitions, and regularly professed eternal hatred for our country?

    • citrin_ru 25 minutes ago
      No one dares to attack North Korea because they have nukes. Ayatollahs surely want the same but didn’t have enough time/resources.

      Current stance on negotiations is a miscalculation IMHO, they likely wanted for negotiations to drag on for a long time.

    • dismalaf 25 minutes ago
      Horseshoe theory and Russia-Iran axis. It's nonsensical but you've got those from the far left and right defending Iran thanks to Russian sponsored propaganda. The same kind that had them defending Hamas, Hezbollah and Maduro.
    • bigyabai 41 minutes ago
      We don't have many details regarding the negotiations, but early reports suggest that Iran agreed to the "no high-enrichment" line. It was the proxy support and MRBM standoff weaponry that caused the talks to collapse (allegedly).

      https://www.thejournal.ie/iran-agrees-in-breakthrough-talks-...

    • beeflet 43 minutes ago
      I think iran wants nuclear weapons to ensure its survival against israel
      • citrin_ru 17 minutes ago
        The current Iranian regime has destruction of Israel as one of their main goals. Not the other way around. I’m sure if Iran will have less threatening leadership Isreal will not bother them.
      • anonnon 32 minutes ago
        So we're supposed to

        >justtrustmebro

        That they'll never, in some capacity, attempt use them against the country they weekly collectively chant death to?

        • beeflet 29 minutes ago
          The iranians would say the same thing about the USA/israel. The israelis share that dogmatism with them.

          perhaps we could negotiate a peace deal in which israel and iran both agree to give up nuclear weapons and allow for IAEA inspections

  • kome 1 hour ago
    shameful for the west, and a tragedy. leave iran alone. defending the mullahs wasn't exactly on my bingo card, but here we are...

    please, can somebody in the US or Israel have an "are we the baddies" epiphany?

    • znpy 1 hour ago
      I pinged an iranian colleague and he’s literally partying over this.

      Iranian people have been struggling under a dictatorship for decades.

      Unironically, the US might become a beacon of freedom again.

      Let’s see how this unfolds.

      • faust201 1 hour ago
        Ask your colleague if his family is still there... May be not.

        or ask another colleague whose family is still there. Would be different answer.

        • znpy 25 minutes ago
          Valid point but then again:

          1. Not everybody lives in the direct nearing of the bombing/conflict hotspot

          2. They weren’t doing that great before anyway (because, you know, the islamic totalitarian theocratic dictatorship)

          3. They haven’t been doing great at all lately (because, you know, protests and turmoil and the violent repression from the aforementioned islamic totalitarian theocratic dictatorship)

          • faust201 12 minutes ago
            Was this the answer from your other colleague?
      • Freedom2 9 minutes ago
        Agreed. I had an Iranian colleague also reach out who was ecstatic about this news. The hacker in me is curious to see how it all unfolds, as well as to see all the curious discussion that arises on this forum.
    • dismalaf 1 hour ago
      https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jan/27/i...

      > defending the mullahs wasn't exactly on my bingo card, but here we are...

      Propaganda is a hell of a drug.

      • m90 1 hour ago
        So how do the recurring airstrikes help the protesters?
        • dismalaf 1 hour ago
          It's the biggest military buildup since 2003. Kinda looks like they plan on overthrowing the regime. Which would be amazing for world peace considering Iran is building drones for Russia and supporting Hezbollah and Hamas. But we'll see...
          • JasonADrury 1 hour ago
            > considering Iran is building drones for Russia

            Not a meaningful supplier anymore, Russia just took the designs and onshored the manufacturing.

          • dragonwriter 40 minutes ago
            > It's the biggest military buildup since 2003. Kinda looks like they plan on overthrowing the regime. Which would be amazing for world peace

            Almost as amazing for world peace as when the US overthrew Saddam Hussein's regime and gave birth to the Islamic State.

          • tastyface 42 minutes ago
            Because historically, we have a fantastic record when it comes to regime change.
            • dismalaf 39 minutes ago
              Japan and Germany turned out great.
              • suzzer99 30 minutes ago
                And a whole lot of fail ever since.
              • tastyface 35 minutes ago
                Yeah -- it only took a world war, massive global alliances, and tens of millions of deaths. Also, I’m not sure how political and military competence from about a century ago has any relevance to today.
          • bigyabai 1 hour ago
            Russia is building Shahed derivatives themselves, Iran is not a significant supplier of anything besides the design.
        • mschuster91 1 hour ago
          Easy: decapitate the leadership of the military, IRGC, Basij and let the revolution stand a chance.
          • JasonADrury 1 hour ago
            Except not, the Iranian revolutionary system is very much designed around the desire to be able to rapidly replace people. The list of targets for a decapitation strike might just be way too long to be feasible.
      • epsters 1 hour ago
        > 30,000 in 2 days - half the 2-year death toll of Gaza ; With no artillery , air-strikes or heavy weapons, without million-man armies facing off in pitched battles, without health system collapsing with 100s of thousands of injuries in 48 hours, photos or satellite imagery of mass graves and bodies littering the streets

        Propaganda is a hell of a drug.

        • dismalaf 1 hour ago
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Hutus_in_the_Firs...

          Lots of genocides have been carried out with primitive weapons, even recently. Remember, the protesters in Iran were mostly unarmed...

          • epsters 34 minutes ago
            A lot of them were armed as well based on the death toll for security forces. Again where is the evidence for all this. The Iranian government published the names and details for the 3000-odd death-toll they claimed. The 30,000 number is from diaspora, citing 'anonymous health and government officials' - Who all seem to be linked to Pahlavi, Israel and US-backed sources all trying to manufacture a case for the war they are now waging. If the real number is > 10x then giving names should be very easy for CIA and Mossad.

            All this is just a excuse, when this whole war is about Israel's national security interest and hegemonic ambitions. The "negotiations" were entirely over the Nuclear program, ballistic program and proxy forces - The protestors, human rights, democracy none of it were even mentioned. Netanyahu didn't visit the White House 6 times over the last year to advocate for the protestors.

    • ReptileMan 54 minutes ago
      Killing people that blind women for refusing to wear headscarf is always a good deed.

      It may be infeasible to do it, or bad idea because of geopolitical or similar reasons, but no - in Iran's regime case - we are not the baddies.

  • epsters 1 hour ago
    Trump launching bunker-busters on his midterm chances. Which depending on how bad it goes, potentially means impeachment and prison. Whatever it is the Israelis have on him, it must be good.

    Works out great for Netanyahu though as is customary. He can be PM for a while longer and stave off his own impending trial and imprisonment. If this goes well for Israel, he might even get that pardon that Trump campaigned for tirelessly.

    • weatherlite 1 hour ago
      I don't see Trump in prison, that's just not in his DNA.
      • deaux 1 hour ago
        He'd definitely off himself in a bunker, in line with his great idol.
        • padjo 1 hour ago
          Not a chance. He hasn't even got the strength in his convictions to do that. Trump is just an opportunist, he'd go down like Jerry Lundegard at the end of Fargo.
  • johnbarron 1 hour ago
    At this moment, dont know what looks more terrifying. This war the US just got itself into, or the contents of the unreleased Epstein files...
    • popalchemist 1 hour ago
      They must be commensurate, because one is meant to drown out the other.
  • api 1 hour ago
    What a gift to the deeply unpopular Iranian regime. Nothing galvanizes support for whatever-you-have more than an external threat.

    Think about it. If someone actually bombed or invaded the continental US you'd have woke libs cheering for Donald Trump.

    The Iranian regime may fall, but it'll be like Iraq. We'll get something like ISIS out of it, or worse, and the place will be a complete basketcase of civil war for 25+ years. Or we'll be there for 25 years in another "forever war." Bravo.

    • flyinglizard 1 hour ago
      One of the main reasons Iraq is like Iraq is the Iranian meddling and their proxy organizations which operate in Iraq with impunity. The Iraqi government is entirely subservient to the Iranians.

      As the recent wave of protests in Iran came after the 12 days where Iranian regime was dealt a massive blow, I think your analysis is wrong. Iranians consider this an opportunity. Also, the scale of violence unleashed on the Iranian public by the regime is staggering; it’s not about the regime being simply “unpopular”.

    • Acrobatic_Road 1 hour ago
      Do you have any better ideas or is it your position that evil dictators get to rule forever?
      • api 12 minutes ago
        The Iranian people overthrow their government and establish what they want?

        My point is that an outside force coming in will help the current regime and/or the ideas behind it. Even if the current regime falls, democratic or pro-Western ideas in Iran will be seen as aligned with the invading force and rejected by many people who might otherwise be open to them.

        Is there anyone who likes being invaded by a foreign power, ever?

      • wafflemaker 1 hour ago
        >Do you have any better ideas or is it your position that evil dictators get to rule forever?

        If president Trump doesn't declare martial law, start a civil war, military coup or change the constitution of the USA, he will stop ruling in 3 years. We can wait that long.

      • beeflet 1 hour ago
        how about a negotiating a peace deal between the Israel and Iran wherein they both agree to give up nuclear weapons and allow for IAEA inspections
      • HNisCIS 1 hour ago
        Things were starting to come undone naturally then we decided to 3rd party the whole thing

        Do you think the people fighting ICE in the streets of Minneapolis would welcome a joint Chinese+North Korean decapitation strike on Washington and cruise missiles flying over Portland?

    • mint5 1 hour ago
      >“Think about it. If someone actually bombed or invaded the continental US you'd have woke libs cheering for Donald Trump”

      I think this is a scenario Steven miller fantasizes about while playing with action figures but that’s the closest it gets to being real.

      Sure derogatory terms for liberals, as you term the left, would support the armed forces if China invaded hawaii but expecting them to also support Trump is fantasy. Like supporting America and supporting Donald Trump are entirely different matters and usually divergent.

    • seattle_spring 1 hour ago
      > Think about it. If someone actually bombed or invaded the continental US you'd have woke libs cheering for Donald Trump.

      Huh? If anything, he'd try to put blame on "Antifa" and "the radical left."

    • anonnon 1 hour ago
      > Think about it. If someone actually bombed or invaded the continental US you'd have woke libs cheering for Donald Trump.

      Judging by how they responded to the assassination attempt(s) on Trump and the assassination of Charlie Kirk, I don't really believe that.

      • api 13 minutes ago
        You're mistaking attention bait on social media for majority opinion. Almost nobody IRL sympathized with Kirk's shooter or wants to see people shot.

        Social media is brain poison.

      • beeflet 36 minutes ago
        most liberals do not support the assassination of politicians. after the guy got killed, there was a massive search on social media where right wingers were looking for anyone who mocked him, and they got like a handful of people.
  • belter 1 hour ago
    [dead]
  • veryemartguy 1 hour ago
    [flagged]
  • throwawa1 1 hour ago
    [flagged]
  • JasonADrury 1 hour ago
    [flagged]
    • HNisCIS 1 hour ago
      Their entire raison d'être is "We unite because we're being attacked". If there's no attack there's no purpose [to receive US money].
      • veryemartguy 1 hour ago
        If Israel doesn’t fulfill its quota of killing Palestinian children then who will!!!???
    • simmerup 1 hour ago
      You're literally trying to excuse genocide. ‘Every last man, woman and child’.

      Keep the mask off

      • JasonADrury 1 hour ago
        Excuse it? No, I'll excuse people wishing it. Certainly any attack on Israeli civilians is despicable and generally counterproductive.
        • popalchemist 1 hour ago
          Ah, yes, the old totally relatable universal human emotion of genocidal bloodlust.

          Right. You've exposed yourself as a horrible human.

          • JasonADrury 1 hour ago
            If you ask people in Palestine living under brutal Israeli aggression for decades, you will find that most of them share that emotion of genocidal bloodlust.

            If you ask people in Israel about Palestinians, you'll find that a huge chunk of them share that emotion of genocidal bloodlust.

            It's an extremely human reaction. Something hurts you, doesn't really matter what it is. You'll want to get rid of it.

            • popalchemist 53 minutes ago
              I think you're universalizing your own lack of character.

              Most people do not extrapolate from "this person hurt me" to "I want to eradicate every man woman and child of that person's ethnic group."

              You're insane.

              • JasonADrury 48 minutes ago
                What you're proposing would absolutely be insane, we're in complete agreement about that.

                However, it's an absurd misrepresentation of my position, and the fact that you have to resort to it proves the futility of your position.

                It's not "this person hurt me", it's "this group of people hurt me".

    • weatherlite 1 hour ago
      But thank god for good people like you doing their best to de-escalate things
      • JasonADrury 1 hour ago
        At this point a good solution for de-escalation would be the voluntary relocation of Israeli citizens, as has been proposed by the Israeli government for citizens of other nations.

        Given that Israelis are by far the least liked group in the region, why shouldn't they be the ones relocating? Instead of say, the Palestinians?

        • weatherlite 1 hour ago
          OK, I"m down. Please write your congress member about this, there's around 10 millions of us so it's gonna be quite an operation.
          • JasonADrury 1 hour ago
            Pretty sure Trump would be more than glad to deliver you to the promised land of Florida, or something. It's probably enough to just write the US embassy and ask them to arrange Aliyah to Palm Beach.
            • weatherlite 1 hour ago
              Nope, its not enough to write the US embassy they wouldn't hand me over a visa definitely not anything permanent (which seems to be your idea right ? you're talking about permanently 'relocating' the Israelis). Any other ideas ?
              • JasonADrury 1 hour ago
                I literally just asked ChatGPT and it says very explicitly that Mike Huckabee will fly you to the US on his personal jet and hand you a green card if you just show him that you've been circumcised and promise to do a little proselytizing.
                • weatherlite 57 minutes ago
                  Ah that's great news especially since your mom prefers circumcised! Though she has become less picky as she's aged.
                  • JasonADrury 45 minutes ago
                    She did marry a jew who eventually fathered me, so yeah. I would at least assume it wasn't a problem for her.

                    The reality is that jews elsewhere on the planet also have to pay the price for what you guys do.

  • veryemartguy 1 hour ago
    [flagged]
    • weatherlite 1 hour ago
      Are you currently in Israel or Iran ? Something tells me you're not in any immediate danger from this.
      • JasonADrury 1 hour ago
        He might be a member of the US military?
        • weatherlite 1 hour ago
          I find it quite unlikely in the midst of what the U.S military needs to do now a soldier would take the time to vent on HN. But sure, if that is the case I guess he earned the right to vent; still slim (borderline zero) chances of him dying even if he is U.S military.
          • JasonADrury 1 hour ago
            People who were actively told that they wouldn't be deployed ended up being deployed in very recent history, they could be sitting at home reasonably worried about that.

            Perhaps they're a national guardsman, for example?

  • ywhsrbsgn 1 hour ago
    [flagged]
    • noku 21 minutes ago
      "Zogslave?"

      I've noticed that people online love to say that antizionism isn't antisemitism, but they themselves can't seem to tell the difference.

      • ywhsrbsgn 11 minutes ago
        It stands for Zionist Occupied Government. Explain to me again how it's antisemitic to be mad that the Israeli government has footage of the US president raping children, and how Netanyahu is using it as blackmail to force an invasion of Iran that 80% of Americans are opposed to.
    • JasonADrury 53 minutes ago
      >I'm donating to Thomas Massie to put an end to this foreign commandeering of our government.

      Surely it's more important to donate to others like Massie, no?

      • ywhsrbsgn 45 minutes ago
        There are surprisingly few US politicians and that aren't totally subservient to Israel. Also, Massie has largely been leading the charge on the Epstein files.
  • ReptileMan 1 hour ago
    Seems that they are behaving intelligently - pummeling the IRGC. If the IRGC fails the public will probably have a bit of small talk with the regime officials and functionaries while the regular army and police will probably look vague amused from the sides.
    • johnbarron 1 hour ago
      >> Seems that they are behaving intelligently

      You seem to have missed the little detail the US is now at war.

      There was a deal with Iran, but Trump throw it away because was closed by Obama and Israel did not like it...

    • veryemartguy 1 hour ago
      [flagged]
  • seydor 1 hour ago
    Thankfully the stock market is closed
    • pear01 1 hour ago
      Speaking of markets... Polymarket was trading yes on this happening at quite interesting odds, "yes" was trading at around 30¢ or better over the next few days just a few hours ago...

      I was quite surprised to see it that low... and also to find it is inaccessible for trading if a US national. Just looking at the platform it seems predominantly US driven so I gather many people are willfully attempting to breach the ToS (and probably lie to the IRS) when using it...

    • throwawa1 1 hour ago
      Nothing more important than dow 50,000
    • rvz 1 hour ago
      That always happens before an expected event or attack on another country.