Blast heard across multiple cities – reports
Blasts have been heard across multiple cities, including the capital Tehran and Isfahan in central Iran.Reuters reports there are long queues at gas stations in the capital, as many are trying to leave. An unnamed Iranian official who spoke to the agency said several ministries in southern Tehran have been targeted.
Do those Americans offshore join in. Or not?
I’d have preferred that this didn’t happen.
I hope things work out.
Agreed BB, but it’s very difficult (impossible?) to not fight someone whose whole culture is dedicated to fighting everyone who isn’t them.
The problem with the ropers is that they “will never stop, until (that’s enough of Kyle Reese. Ed).
The region is pre-industrial, so it’s a lot like Europe pre-industrial, with everyone kicking the shit out of each other for land. Only instead of good places to grow food, oil. You have the Arab League (which sorta includes Israel) vs Iran. And it’s not all one-sided. The Iran-Iraq war was started by Iraq.
The only thing to do with the region is contain it. Blow up nuclear weapons sites, buy the oil.
. . . AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, kick the Muslims out. Iran used to be a nice place with good people.
When? Under the Shah when it was also mostly Muslim and he was torturing his opponents? These have never been nice places.
It wouldn’t matter if it was Muslims, Jews or Christians in these places. Or Asians, Africans or Europeans. The economics of the country make them barbaric (like medieval Christians, or all that stuff in the Old Testament about Jews enslaving people).
And this idea of bombing a country, as if they’re all oppressed? Remember how Afghanistan and Iraq were going to play out? It would be all liberal democracy. Nope. Turned out, the Afghanis were OK with the Taliban. After democratic elections, they overran the place. Why did African countries get gifted democracies and turn to dictators, and why did that change? Why can’t Russia seem to sustain democracy? Why is Venezuela dictatorship to dictatorship but its neighbours aren’t?
The Iranians I know (including some family members by marriage) are very much not pro-Taliban or the Ayatollahs – this may well be distorted by most of them living in the West. All of the family have managed to get out before this kicked off, thankfully.
Same here. My impression of Iranians over here is that they cannot wait to see the moolahs kicked out.
Question is, if the moolahs are kicked out, will they return to Iran … as why shouldn’t they?
There is a difference between Persians & Iranians. Persians are inheritors of a great culture. Iranians are goatfuckers from the boonies. Current rulers, goatfucker.
I know some nice Iranians here. Same thing. You move out to a different sort of place and people respond to incentives.
I went to Iran in the 70s to join friends who were returning on the hippy trail. Travelled with them back to England. Tehran was very westernised then – women in glamorous Western clothes & the people were friendly. Same in Isfahan, and the Islamic architecture there is amazing. We came back through Qom, to see what it was like -Chador City! We didn’t stop…
Was he torturing his opponents according to reliable reports? Or was it more Gruniad/communist lies?
There’s an awful lot of crap from that time that hasn’t been looked at, just accepted.
I assume he did because that’s the rational thing to do in a non-industrialised country. The wealth and power is in the land, which is owned by the King/Shah/dictator and his pals. So other people will want to come and take it from you by force. You need to make sure that they can’t, which involves defences, espionage, torture and murder.
Like when our economy was that, Elizabeth I had men torture people who wanted the crown. The Spanish tortured protestants during the inquisition as they were threats, Saddam tortured people, and I’m pretty sure that Putin does too.
I’m not saying he was a bad man for doing it. I’m saying that’s how non-industrialised places are. If you don’t do it, you’re probably going to get fucked over by the guy next door.
I won’t be shedding any tears over the mad mullahs if this is curtains for them, and if they really were close to a bomb the Septics may be doing the world a favour, but my mind turns to the legions of young Islamists who have broken in to western countries. Most of them sunni, no doubt, but that issue can be put to one side at times like this.
I think they have started…
It looks like since you wrote this, yes.
Let’s hope Sir Keith Spanner and Lord Hermeroid have refused use of UK assets and that Trump will therefore veto the Chagos deal
I’d rather they allowed the use of UK assets and the Chagos deal was vetoed.
In some ways the Iranian regime views us as a bigger enemy than the USA because of our history in the region so we’ll always be high on their target list.
I have seen it suggested that the recent part of the UK-US Chagos spat is (was) distraction theatre to help confuse the Iranians. The Russians and Chinese (therefore Iran) will have been seeing what’s on and going through Diego Garcia, so the only option really was to sow some doubt as to whether it would end up getting used.
I was assuming that starmer denying UK airbases to the US operation was to shore up the labour vote with the mohammedans in the by-election.
Not a bad assumption. Didn’t work for him, though.
There is also a British couple in jail in Tehran supposedly for spying. That might have weighed, but normally govts don’t care about that when the chips are down.
I’ve seen a claim that Mauritius also has a veto, and used it. SURELY the US wouldn’t just do it anyway?
One presumes the Brit commentariat who were last week complaining about the US not intervening will now be criticising the US for intervening
I’d like to know whether the UK MSM is intentionally downplaying the possibility of Reza Pahlavi having a role in the aftermath of regime channge. A lot of Iranians seem to want him to be involved, as something they can coalesce around rather than the fragmentation we’ve seen elsewhere. I suggest the MSM position is government prompted. Why? Do they have an institutional memory of wanting to get rid of the Shah? They welcomed the Ayatollahs 47 years ago.
“They welcomed the Ayatollahs 47 years ago.”
Did they? Or did most of them see all the shouting by the fanatics and think “I’m not standing in front of that bus without some support.”
Smart timing on the opening salvo. Overall it’s getting close to full moon, whereas previous major adventures have started in darker skies. Kicking off in daylight when the air defence had begun to relax after pulling an all-nighter (assisted by Ramadan fasting).
Yesterday evening I saw an indicator that convinced me it was going to start last night. So I kept an eye on FlightRadar and the skies stayed full of commercial planes past 3am. Went to bed assuming it would start tonight instead. Surprised and amused at the daylight operations – indicator valid afterall.
Also interesting is the complete integration of US and Israeli assets (lots of US aircraft on Israeli bases). This is entirely a joint operation. No pretense to save the blushes of Arab client states. This should also drag out the Cuntish Union onto our streets; the left-Islam alliance will be uppity so keep your wits about you.
And I hope you’ve been keeping your tanks topped up like wot I said.
Petriiill?
‘This should also drag out the Cuntish Union onto our streets’
There’s going to be a Downing Street protest at 15:30 today. Hope someone’s given the Met a free hand to crack heads!
Yes, but only of anyone opposing the Islamic State.
Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens join the Cuntish Alliance.
Also interesting is the complete integration of US and Israeli assets
F-35’s complicated systems integration and stealth surprise package coming into its own. Now do that on a cheaper, more agile airframe that gets rid of the ridiculous lift fan and doesn’t require 1,650 barrels of congressional pork suppliers and we’re laughing.
Btw AI might be a way of defeating stealth, they’re not invisible to radar but small enough to hide in the noise. AI loves pattern recognition and multiple data sources, might be trained on radar data to spot stealth planes in real time?
I was reading something about multiple frequency radar and that using that with computing power might work. But no-one really knows. Stealth, latest version radar, it’s all super secret on all sides.
Gen McMaster, on the recent Goodfellows podcast, said he’d heard stories of Chinese cargo plans landing in Iran and that it they could be supplying air defence systems. If so it’s a good way for China to test them prior to any Taiwan invasion and also for the US to see how well they perform and develop strategies to defeat them.
Would the Chinese want to expose their super secret systems at this stage, assumimg they have developed them and its not PR vapour ware?
I doubt China is lending that much help. They buy oil from Iran, but if there’s regime change, they just buy from the new regime.
Indeed, it’s just as likely China was evacuating the I’ll gotten gains of the regime.
If the new regime is US aligned the CCP can only buy if it behaves itself.
That’s only on the b version. It doesn’t seem any more ridiculous than the swivelling engine nozzle. Both are needed for the STOVL capability. Is that what you consider ridiculous?
Trump is urging those fleeing to ‘take back your country, this is your chance’ – they can’t hear you Donald, they are getting out of Dodge!
If this is true or even partly true:
https://x.com/shanaka86/status/2027725563251847510?
then it might be over quite quickly.
Have you noticed that Trump is taking more effective action against Russia’s allies than Sleepy Joe Biden did?
But my brainwashed lib friends will still insist Orange Man is a Putin puppet, somehow.
Venezuela was an outpost of Russian influence, not anymore. Iran is more important to Russia, they’re a major supplier and potential customer for the Russian war industry. Putin should take the deal before Darth Trump alters the terms of the deal.
And then what? This is like all those “senior commanders” in the Taliban we kept bumping off.
Well, it turned out to be true. The old git is room temp.
It’s possible an ever increasingly rump regime will continue to plop out new junior leaders as fast as they are killed.
It’s also possible the regular Iranian forces will slaughter the weakened IRGC.
It’ll be different from Afghanistan because it isn’t Afghanistan.
And also like the leaders of hizbollah, with a new one needed every few hours. Haven’t heard much from them recently…
It may make a difference that it’s all the senior commanders. And their deputies.
So there’s now only the ones who weren’t important enough to be in that room left alive.
There’s a designated chain of succession for the US command, and it goes a long way down. There won’t be one for Iran because they’re not that organized, and Dear Leader didn’t have enough of a grasp on power to be sure it would be followed this far out.
This had to be done before the towelheads acquired working nukes, because their mythology obliges them to use them. Regime change in Iran isn’t optional if you want to avoid a nuclear conflict in the Middle East, or even elsewhere. It’s been left to the last minute and I hope it works.