Iran vows to “pursue and kill” Netanyahu
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards vowed on Sunday to target ‘Israeli’ Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the war with ‘Israel’ and the United States continues. “If this child-killing criminal is alive, we will continue to pursue and kill him with full force,” said the Guards on their website Sepah News.
Even if your super neutral about this:
Israel killed their head of state, so wouldn’t this be fair game?
Is anyone claiming that this isn’t a reasonable stance for them to take?
Like, plenty of people I’m sure don’t want them to succeed, but I don’t think anyone is a shocked Pikachu that they want to.
Iran hasn’t been historically shy about calling for people’s deaths, and as you say, their head of state was just killed. Of course they want to retaliate. That is the natural and expected thing for them to want.
It may or may not be a good thing if they’re able to succeed, depending on your perspective. But I don’t think anyone thinks it would be an “unfair” thing of them to do.
I didn’t say that, for one. For two, I have no idea what “Stephen Universe reasons” means.
In general, I don’t cheer for escalation in the Middle East. I think bombing Iran was bad. I think bombing Israel would also be bad. I can agree that Netanyahu is bad without championing for more bombs.
The ideal would be that he is removed from office and tried for war crimes. Not that we have a continuing and escalating war.
I think bombing Israel would also be bad.
Why?
Bombings are always the result of failure. Violence is the final refuge of the incompetent. Sometimes necessary certainly, but never correct with appropriate foresight.
And revenge being the reason behind any action is foolish. It’s like making the focus of prison punishment instead of rehabilitation. When you drop bombs, it should be with particular policy goals in mind.
I also think that it would be preferable if things in the Middle East got calmer, not more escalated. If I had the choice between less violence there and more, I will certainly chose the less.
So, we then have to define what we mean by “bombing Israel.” Wanton bombing I can see no argument for that isn’t simply punitive, which is clearly bad under the aforementioned criteria.
There may be an argument for a targeted strike to just target Netanyahu. You have to ask yourself what the goals and effects of such a strike would be. I think it is unlikely to greatly change Israel’s posture. Netanyahu is unpopular domestically, as is this war, but the nation of Israel has a history of rallying around martyrs that would probably overwhelm any gains by having Netanyahu out of the picture. This would also likely lead towards an even greater retaliatory strike against Iran (which, again, would also be bad.)
So what’s the benefit of bombing Israel other than “it makes me feel good to hurt a bad guy”? Why is it actually good?
I didn’t say violence was always wrong. I said it was always the result of failure. There are of course plenty of times when violence is justified.
But let’s not lose sight of the fact that the country that was bombed literally murdered forty thousand protesters in the past month. To put that in perspective, the total number of protesters deaths in Minneapolis is under ten, and that’s a hugely tragic situation. And the leaders who ordered those forty thousand people murdered are the ones who were just blown up in that bomb strike.
And I’m still saying the bombing in Iran was a bad thing.
If the goal was regime change (which is a noble pursuit here in the same way it would be a noble pursuit to work to unseat Netanyahu), Iran was already well on its way to that, and there are dozens of things the US could have done to push for that without escalating to a full scale kinetic war. The bombing, if anything, is regressive to those goals.
And to your final point, yes, there comes a time when a situation has deteriorated to the point that there is some actor that is an existential threat to one or more people groups and the only mechanism to stop them is violence. There’s an argument that literally either side of this conflict represents one of those existential threats. But I’m unconvinced that any have progressed past the point of intervention via non-violent means.
Which is why I asked earlier “why is it a good idea to bomb Israel,” as so far the best answer I’ve gotten is “because Israel is bad,” which isn’t a reason. If that’s the standard, I’ve got a list of about 20 countries to give you that were gonna have to bomb as well. If it’s “we need to bomb countries that are conducting genocide,” then there’s a list of about half that we need to be actively bombing.
Genocide is bad and needs to be stopped. That goes without saying, obviously. But the answer isn’t just “have the US bomb every country that’s perpetrating a genocide.” It turns out that that will often do more harm than good, and sometimes there are more effective “non-bomb” solutions that will do much more in the long run. Even if “bombing the bad people makes the lizard brain feel good.”
But let’s not lose sight of the fact that the country that was bombed literally murdered forty thousand protesters in the past month.
Ah ok: you’re a Zionist who was just pretending to do the “both sides thing”
Acknowledging that Iran killed forty thousand protesters makes me a Zionist? I’m not sure I follow.
Are you saying that Iran didn’t kill forty thousand protesters? Are you saying it’s not a big enough deal to even be worth mentioning?
If all you’re saying is that them killing forty thousand protesters wasn’t a sufficient justification for bombing them, I agree with you and literally said that in the next sentence.
So what about saying that makes me a Zionist? Which, to be clear, I am not.
Acknowledging that Iran killed forty thousand protesters makes me a Zionist? I’m not sure I follow.
It took months for Israel to kill 40,000 Palestinians when they were bombing Gaza, how can you believe that Iran could pull that off in days? Israel wasn’t able to hide what they did either because Palestinians have phones, so where’s the video evidence coming out of Iran? They disposed of 40,000 bodies and we can’t see it from satellite images or phones? It’s nonsense.
If you swallow the Zionist propaganda that Iran is somehow even more bloodthirsty than Israel, you’re a Zionist.
Iran likely killed somewhere between Iran’s official count of 3,000 people and the HRANA count of 7,000, a lot of them rioters that were armed by CIA/Mossad and were shooting cops and burning down government buildings. There were certainly unarmed people who were also shot, but the situation on the ground was chaotic and it’s hard to distinguish armed targets during a riot.
The “protests” were the original US/Israeli plan to overthrow the government, and they failed. This war is the backup plan.
Okay, doing a deeper dive, I’d say the minimum is around ten thousand, with a max around thirty-five. The official Iranian government number is around three thousand, and HRANA reported around seven thousand, but both were in the form of lists of names, and it seems there was minimal overlap between the two, so the lists are likely additive. And that also assumes they were able to identify every person killed. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_massacres
But short of the forty thousand initially stated for sure. I was quoting a number heard not researched. Though, even if you take the the three thousand number as gospel, that’s still an insane number of your own citizens to have killed. Compare again to the sub-10 number of protesters killed in Minneapolis.
Also, Israel killed around seven thousand in December of 2023, so no, I don’t think that it’d be terribly hard to accomplish disposing of the bodies of forty thousand people logistically. I don’t recall seeing giant piles of Palestinian corpses on satellite feeds or anything. And Israel hasn’t taken steps to lock down citizen communication with the outside world.
But this isn’t a bloodthirsty-ness dick measuring contest. Both sides have a distinct indifference to human life that’s unconscionable. And your defense that “it’s okay Iran murdered those people because they were rioters and looters and most of them were actually paid militants,” has some real “Donald Trump takes on the George Floyd protests” energy.
The Iranian people have had a growing discontent against their government for decades. I just read a book of interviews with Iranian citizens from around 2005, and they were pretty fed up with their government then, and the abuses have only gotten worse. Iran has been on the precipice of a revolution for a long time. I think it’s unnecessarily conspiratorial to lay it all at the feet of the US.
Compare again to the sub-10 number of protesters killed in Minneapolis.
There weren’t hostile enemy nations arming the protesters in Minneapolis, and they weren’t hunting down cops and soldiers. 209 government-affiliated military and non-military personnel were killed during the riots. The situations are not so easily comparable.
This wasn’t protest, it was attempted color revolution. Was Iran supposed to let them overthrow the government?
I think it’s unnecessarily conspiratorial to lay it all at the feet of the US.
We know Mossad was involved, because they openly admitted it. Mossad’s official Farsi X (Twitter) account posted: “We are with you. Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field.” Mossad Director David Barnea’s gave a statement following the June 2025 strikes, warning that Israel “will continue to be there [in Iran], as we have been there.” Mike Pompao came out to say; “Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them." We also know they helped distribute satellite internet connections for Starlink to evade media blackouts, and operated social media channels to help coordinate the riots.
CIA is less obvious, they actually have OpSec and know not to brag that they have agents in the streets. It’s hard to believe that the CIA left Israel on its own to conduct this operation, though. Also, the rioters got their guns from somewhere.
Two hundred and nine police being killed vs the unrealistic minimum three thousand of citizens that were gunned down may not paint the “they were just defending themselves” picture you think it does.
I don’t doubt that Mossad was there for meeting unrest. That’s kind of what they do. But they don’t have mind control. The vast majority of those involved were discontented citizens. You could argue that that discontent was exacerbated by outside forces, but the approval ratings of the Iranian government are in the toilet internally. That discontent was already there.
And to be clear, January 6th was also a mob of armed, foreign instigated insurrectionists storming the seat of government in which police were killed. Did the police mow down swaths of citizens then? You can, in fact, subdue an angry mob without pumping it full of automatic gunfire.
Well, the official number from the Iranian government is a little over three thousand. Is that an acceptable number of your own citizens to mow down during a protest?
If so, where is the cutoff where you have mowed down enough of your own citizens where it’s unacceptable?
If not, why does it even matter, as we both agree they wontonly killed an unacceptable number of their own citizens, whether than number is three thousand or forty thousand?
I didn’t say we did. I, in fact, agreed we didn’t. I asked what the numbers would have to be in order for them to not be a moral tragedy, and you responded that “it doesn’t matter because we don’t have the numbers.”
I already agreed we didn’t have the numbers. We can estimate, but that we don’t have them is certainly a fact. I’m agreeing with you.
So, my question was, absent any sure numbers, what would be an acceptable number of your own citizens to mow down at a protest? And then, do you think it likely that number was exceeded?
You’re using rational arguments against the irrational. For some, it’s “muslims good jews bad”, and no amount of facts will dissuade them from their fundamental belief.
Once you’re called a “zionist” or a “nazi”, that’s it, civil discourse is over. “Justified Iran vs. Genocidal Israel” is the deepest they can delve into the subject.
Which is fine, they can do what they want. Just realize their limitations.
Watch, I’ll be called a zionist in about 5 minutes, so let me be clear… I despise them all, I think they’re all vile, and I refuse to argue about who wins the “Bestest Fundie Fuckwits” trophy after counting corpses.
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