A job worth getting done

As readers have probably gathered from my posts, recent weeks have been an intense time for me.  The Middle East is what I know best, and especially how the Iranian people have suffered (for two generations now) under that ghastly regime, how it has suffocated the potential of that nation.  Now at last there is some real hope.  Whatever damage the military campaign is causing is nothing compared to the misery and suffering that would result from the theocracy staying in power.  And the military campaign will eventually end, one way or another, whereas allowing the theocracy to remain in power would just mean more and more murder and torture and rape and horror and hopelessness for decades or generations more, with no end in sight.

That's the only thing that matters -- whether the Iranians can get rid of this regime or not.  I don't care at all about the US domestic political aspects of this and have hardly bothered even reading about them.  That's why I've mostly been relying on news sources based in the Middle East itself, which focus on the situation on the ground over there instead of blathering on about what Trump says or what people are saying about him.

Trump is certainly not the person whom I would have chosen to supervise the US part of the campaign, but our military below the Hegseth level is still performing superbly as it has traditionally done.  And -- fortunately, from a political standpoint -- it still seems to be Israel that is acting as the senior partner.  I know a lot of people don't like Netanyahu (I'm not a fan, really), but he does have a track record of getting things done, and is certainly far more competent than Trump at choosing the right means to accomplish a goal and sticking with his plans until they reach fruition.  And he's been talking for years about the huge gulf between the Iranian people and the regime, and how Iran is a potential ally to Israel and the West once the theocracy is gone.  The Israelis understand Iran.  They can't afford not to.

Israel cannot, and the US will not, actually conquer and occupy a country two and a half times the size of Texas with a population of over ninety million.  The goal is to do so much damage to the apparatus of repression that the Iranian people themselves can overthrow the theocracy.  They showed in January that they were willing to fight for freedom.  The Israeli-US role is to create the conditions for them to succeed.

There are signs that the theocracy is running scared.  Since the campaign began, it has carried out a new wave of mass arrests and escalated its threats against the people.  Here is the abuse meted out to two nurses whose only crime was to have treated wounded protesters, as part of their regular jobs at a hospital, during the regime's mass murder of protesters in January.  The regime's thugs had specifically ordered hospital staff not to help wounded people.  It has always been well known that rape and torture of detainees is part of the theocracy's standard treatment of dissidents.  This is part of what will just go on and on with no end in sight, if the regime is not overthrown.

But the campaign is having its effects.  In addition to the growing disruption of the regime's communications which I linked earlier, the banking system is increasingly unable to function.  Israeli drones are destroying the checkpoints which the Basij (regime militia) uses to control the cities.  Iranians are still managing to communicate with each other and the outside world, to a limited extent, despite the regime's efforts to prevent it.  According to Israeli intelligence, the theocracy is only just beginning to realize how badly its capabilities have been damaged -- and the military campaign will continue for at least several more weeks.

"Top security official" Ali Lārijāni is calling upon other Islamic states, which the theocracy has been in conflict with for years, to rally to its side in the name of Islamic unity.  Good luck with that.  The Arab states of the Gulf are at the forefront of pressing the US not to falter until the threat posed by the theocracy is neutralized.

[Update:  One hour after I posted this, it came out that Israel has killed the head of the Basij and possibly also Lārijāni, who was believed to be the actual new head of the regime since the death of Khāmenei.  Things are moving fast.]

Bizarrely, the theocracy is threatening to attack Ukraine on the grounds that it is providing drone technology to help defend countries Iran is firing missiles at.  I've seen no sign that it is actually attacking Ukraine or can spare the weapons to do so.

Perhaps even more bizarrely, there's a report that US intelligence has some evidence that Mojtabā Khāmenei, the new supreme leader, is gay.  This would be a startling case of hypocrisy for a regime which not only imposes, but actually carries out, the death penalty for homosexuality.

We will soon be hearing -- have already been hearing -- from the most twisted and ugly and morally depraved elements within the US.  The types who view this conflict as just one more opportunity for petty domestic political point-scoring.  The ones who would happily leave the theocracy in power in Iran, at a staggering cost in human suffering, if they fear its fall might be perceived as a "win" for Trump.  The vile Israel-haters of the far left and far right have already oozed forth with their Der Stürmer conspiratardia about evil Jewish manipulation of the US.  Don't listen to them.  This is a job worth getting done.