Ted

The approach vector [green] and an approximate trajectory [blue] of an aircraft [the second one] that had been doing a bombing run at the time of the 2023-10-17 Al-Ahli hospital explosion. 3 red pins - geolocated explosions, green pins - candidates for other 11 airstrikes.

@Ex_muzzi @History__Speaks @arash_tehran substack.com/home/post/p-19…

@Ex_muzzi @History__Speaks @arash_tehran Trump is just putting out bullshit, as usual. Read and gain enlightenment. no01.substack.com/p/march-19-21-…

I spoke to about a dozen Iranians to see what they think about the war. Here is what I found.

@Ex_muzzi @History__Speaks @arash_tehran The first US bomber with JDAM bombs has been spotted leaving UK base towards ME just a couple of days ago.

@Ex_muzzi @History__Speaks @arash_tehran I'll just ignore whatever Trump says until I see some actual changes. On "completely bombing out" - US is using stand-off weapons as far as I'm aware. Those are limited in number and cost a lot.

@History__Speaks @nytimes @hasanthehun "the “5 star hotel” is one of the few hotels the us gov allows americans to legally stay in" x.com/hasanthehun/st…

This is Newsmax-level slop, @nytimes. I'm sure @hasanthehun - being a human being - is selfish, and prefers comfortable hotels to ramshackle Havana hostels. Who cares? The issue is whether US policy on Cuba is justified. It is not. It is fantastically cruel chauvinism.

@Huvaxsh @History__Speaks @arash_tehran What would be your guess on a percentage of Iranian population who would want to have a civil war to dispose of IR? [let's assume one that is 4 times shorter than the Syrian civil war, so a bit more than 3 years]?

@Huvaxsh @History__Speaks @arash_tehran And after it became clear that US/Israel are not interested in helping Iranians with gaining a liberal democracy [or whatever enlightened constitutional monarchy], and weeks of bombing campaign - I find it hard to believe that more than 5% would continue to approve the US bombing

@Ex_muzzi @History__Speaks @arash_tehran Yes, I do not have a way, and neither do you. What if 10% wanted US intervention ~"bomb us", and most of those do not want it anymore [gained awareness that US/Israel have neither ability or intent to do a regime change in direction of liberal democracy or something like that]?

@TedNoNumbers @History__Speaks @arash_tehran You have no way of telling. Unless we conduct a survey inside iran to find out. But if most of the Iranians hate the regime then a lot of them did welcomed US strikes. Even if 20-30 % ppl support it, that’s a substantial percentage of population

@Huvaxsh @History__Speaks @arash_tehran vehemently as in "please Israel/US, bomb us until things improve"? Arash's sample appears to be mostly "please bomb us" initially, and who had second thoughts after weeks of bombing. One can be anti-IR and be against Israel/US bombing Iran.

@TedNoNumbers @History__Speaks @arash_tehran This isn’t That far off from reality 6-7/10 in real life are vehemently anti-IR. 2/4 of “pro-IR” also don’t like IR but support it depending on the context since it is Iran nonetheless. 2/4 of pro-IR are people who are genuine believers in the IR

@Ex_muzzi @History__Speaks @arash_tehran Do not mix up Iranians in Iran who are against IR, and Iranians who are against IR and approve of Israel/US bombing Iran. One group is large [possibly/likely a majority of Iranian population, like 50-70%], the other is small.

@History__Speaks @TedNoNumbers @arash_tehran Iran has a very high percentage of young ppl. As I said, 44 percent are below 30. They are more open to westernisation and don’t relate ideologically with the Islamic revolution

@History__Speaks @TheAtlantic @arash_tehran And only "some are losing faith in America".

This headline from @TheAtlantic is misleading. As @arash_tehran writes in the article, "Most of the people I talked to have soured on the conflict." This headline could however easily be read as 'Don't leave us with Mojtaba!,' i.e. a call to continue the war. Another interesting point is that most of Azizi's contacts quoted in the article initially supported the war before turning on it. I question how representative they are of the general population: I think writers like Azizi who offer these descriptions of Iranian viewpoints should provide more information like region, class, etc. (While of course protecting confidentiality.) What's most important however is that even Azizi's contacts in Iran are now mostly against this war.

@History__Speaks @arash_tehran Those in the "US/Israel, please bomb Iran" group were without a doubt a minority, I just have no idea if it was 5% or 20%. And I expect that most of them now have calibrated their views.

@History__Speaks @arash_tehran "Most are terrified, and some are losing faith in America."

@History__Speaks @arash_tehran I guess members of general public in US / EU, after reading this article, would have an impression that an overwhelming majority of Iranians wanted Israel and US to bomb Iran, and that some of them have second thoughts now.

@TedNoNumbers @arash_tehran It's like if I interviewed Egyptian contacts for an article. You'd get (among the Muslims) much higher rates of secularism and much lower rates of sympathy for the MB than is representative of Egypt as a whole.

@History__Speaks @arash_tehran Clearly unrepresentative, 10 or 11 of anti-IR, and one pro-IR.

Serious question. Who are these Iranians? I'm certainly not asking for names or questioning whether they're real. What you're describing - Iranians who initially supported the war and are turning on it - is a real phenomenon, consistent with a range of other reporting. But I do wonder whether they are representative of Iranians, or instead unrepresentative and drawn from certain portions of the population (class, region, etc).

Judge rules that 17-year-old Walid Ahmad likely starved to death in Israeli military detention, but closes the case anyway. Israel never charged him with a crime and still holds his body. Here’s how he died, as reported by his cellmate, 16-year-old American Mohammed Ibrahim:

@mandymonster13 @DoctorLemma youtube.com/watch?v=c17xyd…

In 1928, a Finnish man named Eino Kettunen wrote a folk song about a girl who sneaks out to dance all night. Decades later in 1995, a quartet named Loituma recorded an a cappella version of the track. It was largely forgotten by the mainstream. Then in 2006, an anonymous user took a tiny vocal loop from that recording and uploaded it to a Russian blogging website. They paired the audio with a simple flash animation of the character Orihime Inoue from the anime Bleach endlessly spinning a leek. The viral explosion was so intense that it forced the disbanded folk quartet to reunite. A 1928 acoustic folk song accidentally became a massive club hit and ringtone sensation, dominating European music charts nearly eighty years after it was written.

Don't mean to put Jean on blast, but I want to address a specific comment he made on Israeli settlements in Lebanon, since it represents a view shared by a segment of the Leb population: "There was never any attempt to establish settlements in the South before". The truth is more complicated. Yes, Israel never built any settlements in Lebanon when they occupied parts of it pre-2000, but it's not because they didn't have any ambitions to; they did early on after the June 1982 invasion, but one of the key reasons why Israel never succeeded in formally establishing settlements in South Lebanon (akin to those in the West Bank and the Golan), despite its long occupation, is because of fierce Lebanese armed resistance to its presence (by Jammoul and a number of Shia armed groups, including what later became Hizballah), which first forced them to retreat to the "Southern Security Strip" by 1985, and then forced them to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000, given the casualties they incurred and the long term cost of maintaining the occupation. It's not well-known (or well remembered) that the far-right Tehiya party (strongly connected with the Gush Emunim messianic settler movement) joined the Begin government on July 22 1982 (right after the invasion of Lebanon), with Tehiya's Yuval Ne'eman becoming a member of Begin's cabinet. A month prior, Ne'eman laid out his views on Southern Lebanon in an article in the Jerusalem Post. His conclusion was that "Israel will have an opportunity of reaching a stage of socio-economic development in the nearby region which, geographically and historically, is an integral part of Eretz Israel. Israel could possibly even reach an agreement on border rectification" [see comment section for source]. Meanwhile Gush Emunim was literally running paid advertisements in Maariv (widely read back then), about colonization of the South [see comment section for source]. Contemporaneous secret reports from the US State Departement and the National Intelligence Council also indicate Washington's suspicions that Israel planned on building settlements in Lebanon. For example, in a Washington Post article from Nov 27 1982, Jack Anderson [see comment section for source] reveals that: "Secret reports shown to my associates Dale Van Atta and Ron McCrae indicate why the White House is disturbed. One secret state department report, for example, had this to say on September 15, as the Israeli invasion of West Beirut was proceeding apace: "there is a danger that Israel's logistical operations will evolve into permanent administrative agencies". In other words, the suspicion is that Israel is in the process of building a military civilian government for Israeli occupied Lebanon. The same pattern of Israeli infiltration that has been seen in the West Bank territories seems to be evolving in Lebanon. The ultra-nationalist extremist group Gush Emunim, is planning to put Israeli settlements in Southern Lebanon, according to US reports". Another secret report from July 7 1983 [see comment section for source], declassified in 2007, from Charles Waterman, Vice Chairman of the US National Intelligence Council, to Stephen Bosworth, Director of Policy Planning for the State Department, reveals that: "Some ultra Zionists will push for annexing the South. Already some members of the Tehiya party have argued that the 1949 armistice line is artificial and does not represent the historic northern border of Palestine. Other ultra-nationalists have spoken about ancient Hebrew ties to Southern Lebanon. While these groups are clearly now on the extreme fringes of the Israeli body politic the past experience of changing Israeli attitudes toward the West Bank, Gaza, Golan and even Sinai indicates that a long occupation develops ideological justifications". So the truth is much more nuanced than "there was never any attempt to establish settlements in the South before". There were certainly ambitions to do exactly that, but they never materialized, in no small part because of Lebanese armed resistance.

@dlLambo Why not quote the source? The thread contains more info on every strike. x.com/_BvdM/status/2…

The IDF has now destroyed 7 bridges over the Litani river. Blatant war crimes to seize a massive chunk of Lebanon. And the world is talking about empty ambulances in high questionable circumstances... When will they be stopped - they're destroying the world.