The IRGC is 125k-150k people. Many of them are pot committed to the current government, because the IRGC has done... unforgivable things that a new government would be likely to punish.
Venezuela is also run by the same security apparatus and government as it was before. We didn't attempt to turn over the entire government.
You... simply cannot take the numbers from one war and blindly apply them to a totally different one. The comparison isn't apt for a number of reasons.
First, Russians are generally on the offensive, which means pushing into Ukrainian controlled territory.
Often, they are pushing into defensive lines that have had years of fortification.
Second, there are a lot more Russians in Ukraine. To kill 125k people, you have to find 125k people. It's a lot easier to find a Russian in Ukraine that it will be to find an IRGC soldier in Iran if there's an invasion and guerilla operations in response.
In Iraq after the conventional military phase, the US killed ~26k insurgents over the course of a decade (and also captured ~120k).
Iran is bigger than Iraq, has far more people than Iraq, and has much bigger logistical burdens for an invasion.
I could believe that the US Military is quite capable of running some small scale targeted operations within Iran successfully. We can probably pull off operations to do things like attempt to seize and secure uranium stockpiles if we know where they are (though such an operation could also go catastrophically badly, too).
I think the US Military could invade Iran and topple the regime, but it would be an enormous lift, and I think there's almost no chance we would have the political will to sustain the costs and casualties that a total invasion would entail.
thats in a scenario with soldiers pushing into no mans land under permanent drone control. Israel demonstrates much lower stats when enemy hides underground. I would imagine having no boots on the ground will lower the numbers further.
Maduro was such a bad leader that his prime minister sold him to the US.
Which means now Venezuela is still a chavist regime, but not under US embargo anymore. This will improve their economy a great deal, and if the regime doesn't capture all the profits for itself, will also improve the QOL of all Venezuelians, hopefully.
Now Venezuela still has bad government, but without any embargoes imposed by us. This will likely improve the quality of life of the residents now that we don’t try to screw up their economy. Just hoping that the dastardly bad government doesn’t pocket the difference introduced by the better economy from us not screwing up their economy.
Venezuela wasn’t a regime change war it was a US-backed palace coup that left the entire regime except for the guy at its head in place in exchange for a narrow set of policy favors to the US.
It has little in common with Iran, which is more like the 2003 Iraq war (but, so far, without committing ground troops, but there is no way to maintain that with Trump’s stated goal of “unconditional surrender”; that’s going to require a ground forces occupation at a minimum, and probably a ground forces invasion to acheive it) than it is like the recent intervention in Venezuela.
Even if they are not particular fond of the regime that is in the process of being destroyed, the Iranian people are likely to resist that, just as occurred in Iraq (with the most significant resistance there coming from forces that were opposed to Saddam’s regime and which had been actively suppressed by it while it was in power.)
Iran can survive the war without regime change, they have infinite Ayatollahs, america just needs to chill out with the "bomb children and commit war crimes and being lead by the great satan and pedophiles" stuff.
However, it is a war, and Trump has declared the only acceptable end is unconditional surrender and Trump himself having a say in the new leadership, so it is a regime change war (but, yes, completely unnecessarily so.)
The US (following Israel’s lead) offensively invaded another country. Nothing Iran could have said about America would make it look more like the Great Satan than what it has done itself.
But chill out, Americans say. We only demand that the Ayatollah (or any other Ayatollah) doesn’t exist/are dead. Why do you have to be so, like unchill about it?
When and how should we start counting? 1953 coup, supporting of repressive regime, naval bombardment of Lebanon, supporting Iraq in Iran-Iraq war, downing of a civilian airliner, are all grievances Iran has against USA. US should disengage from that part of the world, it only brings more chaos as misery.
America has been destroying Iranian property for decades too, that's hardly a new thing eg Stuxnet. I was asking when has Iran dropped bombs on American schools or the American landmass.
Why should the U.S. wait for Iran to develop the capability to attack on U.S. soil? Surely it’s attack on a U.S. embassy is sufficient to prove the country’s motivations?
We don't yet know who did that and that happened only after Amerisarel's unprovoked invasion and war of aggression on Iran while in the middle of duping them about taking part in peaceful negotiations. Its a perfectly fine military action in the middle of a war. It didn't happen before Amerisrael assaulted Iran.
I'd worry more about the belligerent psychotic middle eastern country that has estimated 200 nukes but still refuses to acknowledge their existence or allow any inspections. A country with nukes that lies about them and jailed the person who exposed the nuclear program is an existential threat to the entire earth. Iran is nothing in comparison.
edit: I see there was an older event after reading 'seanmcdirmid' s comment, however not knowing anything of it, I won't comment on that.
Iran's biggest threat to the US is that it adds slightly more manufacturing capacity to make Chinese weapon designs.
> Surely it’s attack on a U.S. embassy is sufficient to prove the country’s motivations?
Which happened 40+ years ago and all of the fatalities were from a helicopter crash in a failed rescue attempt. Yes, it sucked, but no, this is not why Trump decided to humor Netanyahu with the current invasion.
It’s a lot harder to find decent evidence on the prevalence of religious belief in Iran, obviously, but I’d be willing to believe anything in the 70-90% range based on the commentary below. (Obviously this source is biased, but they at least cite their references adequately.) Large confidence intervals evince a lack of confidence.
So yeah, it seems reasonable to claim that white Republicans are roughly as religious as Iranians overall.
This probably underestimates religious belief of those aligned with the government, however, since we can’t segment them out by political affiliation and the opposition is likely more secular in proportion.
The republican party in the 2010s had a similar percentage of non-religious people as the democratic party in the 1990s: https://religionunplugged.com/news/2023/11/6/the-religious-c.... The percentage of republicans who never go to church in 2022 is similar to where democrats were at in 2008. With both parties seeing a shift towards non-religiosity during the Trump era.
Obviously Democrats in the 1990s weren’t theocrats. Maybe your point is that it’s not about religious attendance per se that makes for a theocracy, but the content of the religious beliefs?
My point was determining if the claim in the comment I responded to was reasonable or not based on the limited, weak evidence I could find on my lunch break.
MAGA is just 1990s liberalism. Progressives are the ones experiencing a religious awakening, complete with all sorts of taboos and unfalsifiable shibboleths.
MAGA is modern Nazism and Christian Nationalism, it was bread out of the Conservative and Republican party of the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s, and has been fully embraced by and has enveloped by both.
Rejecting hate, racism, indoctrination, and cultism is not "experiencing a religious awakening" it's quite the opposite.
Bill Clinton passed sweeping laws to curb illegal immigration, including the ban on using federal dollars to support illegal immigrants: https://scholars.org/brief/how-americas-1996-immigration-act.... Progressives meantime took positions that were fringe in the 1990s, like cultural relativism, and redefined that as “rejecting hate.”
Progressives have elevated cultural relativism to a core religious principle. They can’t even articulate why it’s desirable for immigrants to “assimilate,” because in their world view it must be taken as axiomatic that America wouldn’t be substantively less successful if it was culturally more like Guatemala or India.
Maybe they can't articulate a desirable reason for immigrants to you about why they need to "assimilate" because you're using the word to mean something else. You speak about bs like cultural relativism and fringe beliefs and then immediately turn around and try to use rhetorical and symbolic dogwhistles. For you and the MAGA cultist "assimilation" is more about cultural domination and conformation and forced civic integration. People grounded in reality and history embrace multiculturalism, bi-lingualism and only care about assimilation in terms of understanding laws and civic institutions. The progressive view would be one that helps and embraces immigrants and enables them to identify with the american national identity. I care more about whether or not someone believes they are part of and a citizen of the united states of america, whether they believe they have a vested interest in it and it's peoples. I do not care any more or less about an immigrants culture, beliefs, rituals or habits any more than any segment of the population (other than maybe from a curiosity standpoint in some cases).
> embrace multiculturalism, bi-lingualism and only care about assimilation in terms of understanding laws and civic institutions... I do not care any more or less about an immigrants culture, beliefs, rituals or habits any more than any segment of the population
You could put that in a dictionary as the definition for "cultural relativism." I mean, you just referred to "forced civic integration" like that's a bad thing! That's not Clinton Democrats believed in the 1990s. They believed in the "melting pot," which meant cultural homogenization. More specifically, it meant immigrants adopting Anglo-American culture, like German immigrants.
But progressives rejected the "melting pot," and now think we have a "salad bowl." This fight over the "salad bowl" is completely different than what the fight was about in the 1990s. Bill Clinton wasn't a cultural relativist--he never talked about a "salad bowl" multi-cultural America.
> embrace multiculturalism, bi-lingualism and only care about assimilation in terms of understanding laws and civic institutions... I do not care any more or less about an immigrants culture, beliefs, rituals or habits any more than any segment of the population
That’s almost exactly what Bill Clinton advocated
> Can we be one America respecting, even celebrating, our differences, but embracing even more what we have in common? …Can we define what it means to be an American …in terms of our primary allegiance to the values America stands for and values we really live by?
> And more than ever, we understand the benefits of our racial, linguistic, and cultural diversity in a global society
> When young people sit side by side with people of many different backgrounds, they do learn something that they can take out into the world. And they will be more effective citizens.
> we must demand responsibility from every American. Our strength as a society depends upon both—upon people taking responsibility for themselves and their families, teaching their children good values, working hard and obeying the law, and giving back to those around us… No responsibility is more fundamental than obeying the law.
Additionally, Clinton may not have used the “salad bowl” metaphor, but frequently used metaphors like “mosaic” and “tapestry woven from different colored threads”.
