35 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Article in today’s FT says sentiment on the street in Iran is one of national solidarity against outside aggression (they have 627 dead thanks to Israel’s attacks), not one of rising up against the regime. They are particularly incensed by outside aggressors telling them what to do about their own politics, apparently.

Well, well, what a surprise, eh, who could have predicted that? - apart from just about anyone with an ounce of feeling for history.

So this operation has probably set back the cause of the moderates and modernisers.

This is what happens when the Dunning-Kruger demographic get hold of the reins.

22 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

This is what happens when the Dunning-Kruger demographic get hold of the reins.

It's what would be expected in any country with a sense of national identity.

In Iran's case their c.20th experience was of the US and the UK meddling in their politics to remove their popular leader Mossadegh and replace him with the puppet Shah Pahlavi. Such things leave a scar in collective national memory, just as American meddling in the Mexican Revolution has given that country a lasting distrust of the US.

A CNN report on the military briefing given to US lawmakers on Thursday by the JCS chair Gen. Dan Caine says the US military did not even attempt to use bunker-buster bombs on the Isfahan site, because the storage facility was buried too deep underground for the GBU-57 weapons to be effective.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/27/politics/bunker-buster-bomb-isfahan-iran

The Isfahan site which was one of 4 Iranian nuclear sites hit by the US last weekend was attacked with Tomahawk cruise missiles instead, which only destroyed buildings on the surface.

US officials believe Isfahan’s underground structures house nearly 60% of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, which Iran would need in order to ever produce a nuclear weapon.

What this means is that Iran most likely still has access to most of the 408Kg of highly enriched Uranium it possessed prior to the attack - about enough to make six Hiroshima size (15 Kiloton) atomic weapons.

Republican lawmakers emerged from the classified briefings on Thursday acknowledging that the US military strikes may not have eliminated all of Iran’s nuclear materials. But they argued that doing so was not part of the military’s mission.There is enriched uranium in the facilities that moves around, but that was not the intent or the mission,” Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas told CNN. “My understanding is most of it’s still there.”

So what exactly was the point ?

7 hours ago, exchemist said:

It's what would be expected in any country with a sense of national identity.

In Iran's case their c.20th experience was of the US and the UK meddling in their politics to remove their popular leader Mossadegh and replace him with the puppet Shah Pahlavi. Such things leave a scar in collective national memory, just as American meddling in the Mexican Revolution has given that country a lasting distrust of the US.

Actually the UK had set up a constitutional monarchy/parliamentary democracy with the Shah as the monarch and all of the financial benefits from the oil industry going to the UK government as taxes with very little for Iran. A democratic government was elected that put forward legislation to nationalize the oil industry and the Shah approved that legislation so the UK were upset and embargoed Iran. Somehow the US became involved and while they were initially on Iran's side the CIA eventually co opted a powerful general and induced the Shah to sign a document that replaced the PM/government with a compliant one without having another election.

The author of this article doesn't seem to understand how a constitutional monarchy/parliamentary democracy actually works so it isn't very surprising that he makes the same mistakes that the US made in the 1950's.