Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices
apnews.comI find the wordsmithery on Meta's statement the most interesting:
“We do not track your *PRECISE* location, we don’t keep logs of who everyone is messaging and we do not track the *PERSONAL* messages people are sending one another," it added. “We do not provide *BULK* information to any government.”
If you read around their points, it sounds like they track general location, log group messages, and provide specific information on request to a government.
Meta can also just lie about it. If they were secretly granting backdoor root access to some NSA spooks, like Microsoft did with PRISM or AT&T did with 641A, most likely no one would find out, so, there'd be zero actual downside to simply lying.
Usually the three letter agencies will send you a National Security Letter. If somebody sends you a NSL you're not allowed to talk about it, which makes it very difficult to even tell if the NSL is legal or not because it's very difficult to retain legal counsel with these kinds of matters, and secret courts don't have a whole lot of accountability either.
I would just assume that usually the three letter agencies have insiders and everything else is just parallel construction theater.
They usually just do a mea culpa:
Camera: https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/blog/hotforsecurity/facebo...
Audio: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41424016
Conversations: https://www.vice.com/en/article/facebook-said-it-wasnt-liste...
Mass surveillance: https://thehill.com/video/facebook-spying-on-users-new-repor...
Across the web: https://www.wired.com/story/ways-facebook-tracks-you-limit-i...
Beacon: https://www.wired.com/2007/12/facebook-ceo-apologizes-lets-u...
Apps: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analy...
People who aren't even on facebook: https://www.vox.com/2018/4/20/17254312/facebook-shadow-profi...
Others do it too, e.g. Amazon: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-10/is-anyone...
But Facebook has always been on a whole other level
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/17/facebook-...
I will never understand how anyone in their right mind can use any product owned by Meta…
Because the entire rest of society has wrapped itself around Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram. It is easy to be a free software purist until you need to know if your child's school has a snow day. Websites and mailing lists are dead. I cannot be involved in my child's school or any of the informal social networks around the parents and teachers without using Meta's platforms. I cannot volunteer at a non-profit I care deeply about without using Meta's platforms, because that's what they have to coordinate.
Are you going to suggest to me that I should force them onto Signal and a pile of other DIY platforms? I dare you. Look a burned out parent in their bloodshot eyes first.
I live in a mostly rural part of Norway, and I have had a very similar experience with a volunteer group I cared deeply about. I created a Facebook account solely to access two groups they used to coordinate events. Initially it worked, but over time, Facebook’s algorithms stopped showing me new posts at the top. Since I was not an active user, I missed important messages and caused real frustration, both for others and for myself. Trying to explain why I was not seeing the content was more awkward than simply saying, “Sorry, I am not on Facebook.”
Eventually, I decided to step away. This was partly because I was not willing to engage more deeply just to make the platform work properly, and partly because of personal circumstances, such as having twins. After deleting my account, I noticed a significant reduction in stress.
These days, my children’s kindergarten uses a dedicated app to communicate with parents, and their sports club uses another (Spond, which seems fairly common in Norway). However, when I try to connect more informally with other parents, the conversation almost always leads back to Facebook, Messenger, or "insta". Even when people express understanding or sympathy for my choice to avoid those platforms, exchanging phone numbers or using alternatives rarely leads to real communication. It feels as if, socially, I cease to exist if I am not part of those groups.
So no, I would not suggest trying to push others onto Signal or similar platforms. I relate to your experience completely. Although we may have made different choices, the underlying challenge is the same: wanting to participate meaningfully, but finding that the tools we're expected to use often come with a cost we are not willing to pay.
No, it's because people don't care.
I have three kids. Sure it's not easy, buying used local things is basically impossible, but it's not terribly hard. You just work around it
Nobody can be forced to use these apps. If you don't want, they will find some other way, I personally only respond to email.
Then you’ll be excluded from a lot of groups and social activities without even knowing. That might be an acceptable trade off for you but it's a trade off nonetheless.
I'm not in high school to be afraid of being "excluded" from some social activities.
And that’s fine, just pointing out that if you were part of a sports club, parents group, whatever, you’re relying on someone keeping you in the loop and making your life harder if you want to be part of it. I don’t judge, I just don’t see why you think it’s immature to want to have a social life.
There are parts of the world that run on WhatsApp. In Brazil it is impossible to live a normal life without it, as absolutely everything from shopping to parking to healthcare is managed through WhatsApp specifically.
I have same situation and:
- tell parents and teachers I can be reached at xxx-xxx-xxxx if they need anything
- absolutely never had meta-requirement to volunteer. if I did I would 100% know my time there is better spent elsewhere
I am not going to suggest you anything except to tell you that you can live a beautiful live outside of the meta-world. it is super easy
"I am not going to suggest you anything except to tell you that you can live a beautiful live outside of the meta-world. it is super easy"
Great it is super easy for you, but why do you think your individual experience is valid for other people (who might be thousands of km away in a very different setting)?
it may not be but I’ve also heard this excuse a million times before. and whatever the situation is meta products can be avoided. we just have a tendency to give into “hey, we have WhateverSupApp group, why don’t you just install garbage on your phone to be a member of this cool group… thanks, but no thanks :)
Not Meta, but I bump into IRL things that require a Google account all the time, and they won't even negotiate. Get a Google account or get out.
“thanks, I am out” is the way to reply to that situation
Because super vast majority of the population doesn't care. You can just look at the leaks from the last decade and its outcomes. Every company that deals with socials also know that people only care about their privacy within their own small circle. As in, they only care about privacy within their own small bubbles.
Imagine a small local non-profit with 5000 likes on their page. They might be trying their darnedest to improve their newsletter numbers, but they still need to be on Facebook.
Imagine that times a billion.
meta has made everyone believe that only through their platform can you grow your non-profits and whatnots. and they are obviously great at this, everyone bought that shit. you can organically grow (especially small) non-profits without fucking meta apps.
Easily.
The alternatives are also probably up to the same sketchy shit, so your choices are to be a hermit, or accept that your services will spy on you.
If you want to participate in society, you have to either trust a very large list of untrustworthy people... Or acknowledge that they are untrustworthy, and mitigate accordingly. Part of that mitigation is accepting the possibility that if the Mossad want to murder you by blowing up your toaster, nobody's going to stop them.
> Part of that mitigation is accepting the possibility that if the Mossad want to murder you by blowing up your toaster, nobody's going to stop them.
People are not accepting that possibility, they are assuming it will not happen to them and that they are not a target of interest.
Change that assumption and attitudes toward privacy also change.
don’t use any alternatives. I have been off social media for years now and my life and health and relationships and career and … have improved so much I cannot put it in words. even if one says “well that’s crazy, I must get my dopamine through an “app” on my phone meta is on another level of insanity to even consider infesting your life and especially your loved one’s life
Checking out of society or any number of other activities you don't feel a huge need for may work for you. You are not everyone and what works for you may not be appropriate for any other individual or group of individuals.
> I have been off social media for years now and my life and health and relationships and career and … have improved so much I cannot put it in words.
It sounds like you personally had a problem. Congratulations I suppose on solving it. However, I have no such issues. My life, health and relationships are all already where I want them to be, and are not impacted by occasional interaction with others through technology as luckily, I have had no such struggles with self control or moderation.
My relationships would be impacted on the other hand if I was to throw a big toddler tantrum about using whatsapp for two weeks whilst i'm overseas with my employer and twenty other people. So i'm probably not going to do that.
Sure, I can also avoid putting chemicals on my body by washing my hair with apple cider vinegar and baking soda, and I can also churn my own butter by hand, and if mom wants to hear from me, she can cross an international border and drive for five hours, with her travels being logged by countless security and traffic cameras, gas station payment processors, and no less than two governments, so that she can converse with me in person in my RF-shielded, copper-lined[1] Faraday-cage basement.
There's social media use and there's social media use. Hacker News, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, EMail, and my phone's SMS systems all serve dramatically different purposes, and all of them are a varied mix of pros and cons and risks.
---
[1] Any Arcanist worth his salt knows that copper has no name, and thus cannot be turned against you.
Hyperbole much? The only social network I use is HN. As a matter of fact last week I was chaperoning a middle school parade. The other chaperones wanted to make a WhatsApp chat group t0 keep in touch during the parade - which I rejected as a matter of principle; so we did a phone chat group. I do not wash my hair with vinegar or do any of the other nonsense you mentioned.
this is too funny how you mind believes social media is “advancement in society” of any kind… don’t blame you though, you are with the majority (and you know what they say when you are… :) )
I believe nothing of the sort about social (or mass) media.
I do, however, believe that you aren't engaging with what I'm saying, or recognizing some very obvious logical holes in your arguments. Your argument seems to be one of dogma, not one of reason.
huh? let me quote one of the commenters here and see if you recognize the words
Sure, I can also avoid putting chemicals on my body by washing my hair with apple cider vinegar and baking soda, and I can also churn my own butter by hand…
Could you read the rest of the words in that post?
There are a lot more of them, and they are kind of integral to its meaning.
c’mon mate, the first sentence is the most important sentence to reel me in :)
jokes aside, I did read your entire post and I don’t disagree with a single word you wrote. I still don’t understand why anyone in their right mind would install a Meta-owned application on their PHONE. Lots of people overall and number on this thread go with “hey, the GOVERNMENT is already spying on you so why don’t I also let one of the most evil corporations in the history of mankind access to all my everything too… I don’t expect privacy in general, it is 2025 after all and we are talking on HN but these silly “plate reader excuses” are really too much… like saying “well the government can obviously break into my home whenever they want (in 2025 without a warrant as well) so why don’t I leave the door wide open, if government can enter why would I care if someone else does :)
Can confim: baking soda and vinagur work great for hair washing.
Signal lagged so far in polish and features that getting friends and family to use it was doa. So I can choose to communicate with friends and family on the apps they use, or I make it very difficult for them to communicate with me.
That ends with them mostly not communicating with me, not with them switching apps.
don’t your friends and family have phone numbers? I have right now 12 active groups on my text messages. why on earth do you need “app”??! I am lost …
Group messaging via sms is terrible. So is photo sharing.
all these are easy excuses… you are here on HN, probably some dope SWE doing amazing shit, I am sure you are more than capable of solving any “picture sharing” problem that is an issue with SMS.
I am not capable of solving shitty downscaled image sharing; flakiness with mms message receipt (esp photos) both on tmobile and verizon; and even worse downscaled video sharing. Because those cannot be addressed by anyone but the telcos.
Nor the inability to add people to groups. sms doesn't have groups; it has pools of numbers. And it works terribly when, eg, one of you is traveling or living outside the US.
You send the photo via mms. When there's that one great shot you really want to save, ask them to email it to you. This isn't nearly as hard as you make it out to be.
really? what are you missing, emojis by Kim Kardashian for $19.99 per month?
> I have right now 12 active groups on my text messages.
You're definitely in a minority. Most people send and receive zero non-MFA related SMS.
You're using a telephone to call and message people?
If you think that your phone provider isn't spying on you, I would like to cut you into an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity in some Louisiana waterfront property.
All I need is your phone number, mother's maiden name, ...
sure, NSA might be :) but not Meta…
And China. And likely lots of other nations.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/chinese-hackers-stole-...
got no problems with China, their entire existence is not predicated on selling shit to people and fucking with our youth.
Signal can’t be trusted
I agree, I think you should just go with tried&true trusted apps made by guy who could not get laid in high school and is trying to compensate for that by fucking with you and all your loved ones that install his shitware on their phones :)
I was around for a lot of these. In none of these cases did Meta lie. They are all either fake or honest mistakes that Meta never lied about.
For the second one in particular, Meta never listened to anyone's mic. I would know, I worked on this stuff there at that time.
Interesting, you say Facebook didn’t listen to anyone’s audio, yet they themselves admit their contractors routinely did: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/13/facebook-...
They even paid them to do transcribe chats: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-13/facebook-...
And this is just the publicly known stuff. So perhaps you weren’t privy to everything?
So Facebook (not Meta at the time) just “forgot” to turn off the camera after they were done with it? Sounds reasonable… except wait, they were actively re-activating it while you were scrolling, and until iOS 14 users were none-the-wiser. If it was an honest mistake, do you think FB testers would have not caught it during the MONTHS between iOS 14 developer preview and release? And yet, for this one I do think it was probably a bug about when to activate the camera.
https://medium.com/macoclock/apples-ios-14-catches-facebook-...
Actually not even that. What happened was we added a mechanism to preload the camera to reduce startup time. And it was not gathering any data
You're confusing the audio calls with secretly listening to microphone, which never happened
Are you doing one of those 'a lie requires intention, and we can't know their internal state of mind, so we can't know if something is a lie unless they tell us' things?
Do you consider misrepresentation a lie?
If there's a lawsuit which determines that Meta misrepresented something, do you consider that a lie, even if Meta says it was merely on honest mistake made in good faith?
If the European Commission "fines Facebook €110 million for providing misleading information about WhatsApp takeover" and that "contrary to Facebook's statements in the 2014 merger review process, the technical possibility of automatically matching Facebook and WhatsApp users' identities already existed in 2014, and that Facebook staff were aware of such a possibility" then that statement was not actually a lie, right, because no one at Facebook said they lied, correct?
Can you give an example of any company which has lied, but where the company officials have never agreed with that conclusion?
There is a long history in the US of companies having to pay a fine but never accepting responsibility. https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/paying-a-fine-bu...
I don't think they misrepresented anything. The European Commission is wrong on the facts. Technology improved in unpredictable ways.
Large public companies do not lie very often because it's incredibly easily for lies to be discovered, and the penalties are high. There are many examples where the popular narrative is the the company lied, but when you look at details it becomes clear that no lying occurred.
For example, David Rainey probably did not actually lie about the extent of the BP oil spill even though most people still believe he did. He was acquitted by a jury who had access to far more information, and more time to think about it, than anyone else.
> like Microsoft did with PRISM or AT&T did with 641A, most likely no one would find out
People did find out.
Only because a select few people had the balls to blow the whistle.
Imagine if Snowden decided to just do his work and move on? How much longer would it have taken for these facts to be revealed to the public?
Also people found out and nothing happened?
So literally no downside to putting a backdoor and lying about it
Even after we found out, nobody cared...
Lots of people cared.
Just like lots of people want universal healthcare, a clean environment, an arms embargo on Israel, affordable housing and education, etc.
It can hard to believe these are majority views sometimes, but that's what you get when the entire media landscape is owned by like 10 people.
But we knew!
He literally did his work. He worked two jobs.
You can go decompose the binary and check (or monitor network activity). WhatsApp has been audited for implementing E2E encryption and consistently passed.
E2E encryption does not protect against any of this. Whatsapp can still decrypt messages locally and feed back information to meta.
TBF, no-one's as-yet found a Meta binary doing this.
you mean things like having a localhost server running on android service to bypass tracking restrictions and run all of your stuff illegally?
Well, yes, they have been found to bypass tracking restrictions, most recently using Local Mess (https://localmess.github.io/), but they haven't been found exfiltrating WhatsApp private keys or messages in plaintext. And people are looking for this specifically.
Meta lies about all kinds of other things. No reason not to now - they seem to have paid very little penalty so far for getting caught.
Is there any evidence Meta has ever intentionally lied about anything? Like do you have any examples?
From https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-whatsapp-merger-europea...
The European Commission has found that Facebook provided “misleading information” about its 2014 takeover of WhatsApp following an investigation into the deal.
The commission’s complaint relates specifically to the sharing of user data between Facebook and WhatsApp. In a submission to the EU made in August 2014, Facebook said it would not be possible to create a reliable automated system for matching users. In August 2016, WhatsApp announced that it would be linking WhatsApp user phone numbers with Facebook user identities.
I recommend "Careless People" by Sarah Wynn-Something
Read that book in two days. Wild stuff. Of course I don't absolve Sarah Wynn for of her responsibility that is Facebook and it's completely maliciously run company. She is also complicit I don't care how many "I was trying to do the right thing! Whaa!" she sprinkled throughout the book.
The fact that they successfully got the book removed from sale for a while speaks volumes. They not only lie they are encouraged to.
We care about your privacy
The best lies are corporate lies. And those lies are said plainly, calmly, and with a sense not of conviction but rather it it's not a serious claim because it was always a true statement ... just repeating it now.
They are also uttered on TV, in public talks and to a far lesser extent in court. Court is a formal process. Outside it's not. There's a big difference.
“Discounts upto 50%” - shopper finds out one product (that nobody wants) out of 1000 has a discount of 50%, everything else has like 5%.
But the statement itself is technically not a lie, they did say “upto”, lol. That is how corporate speak works
There is some dish detergent that advertises it cleans dishes up to 100% clean. I guess they figure showing “100%” is all that is needed and the dumb public won’t question it further. It’s still an insulting ad.
Ha. This is why the best lawyers in the world work for these people. Over drinks, when I brought up some of the blatant dark patterns in the ad market, someone who worked at one of the biggest companies in the world responded to me bluntly: "yeah, sure, but have we ever lost a case in court over click fraud? No, we have not."
Correct. The best liers like the best bullies are really good at assessing risk. They're honest in close when they sense they're butt is not on the line.
Dark patterns aren't lies though...
And you're not even talking about Meta
I would classify their "oops we reset your privacy settings accidentally again" as a lie. Granted this was a common occurrence in the 2000's, and not so much the last 15 years.
The privacy settings also did not obviously do what their wording suggested - accidental over-sharing was their goal, and the wording was carefully crafted to deceive and confuse. Is that lying? It's a technical argument, and not really relevant - they are shady AF and always have been.
Just to be a bit more clear, this was a while ago. The answer in gp was to the question: "hey, I am not an ads guy, but my friend asked me to look at his account, and he had no geo restriction set. Why did 60% of his clicks for 'barn wedding venue east tennesse' come from Malaysia? Why would so many people from there see that, and click on in it?"
The bragging wasn't about their lawyers' ability in court, it was about their lawyers' ability to draft Terms and Conditions such that they could not be caught in a lie.
And yes, not Meta in this story, but come on.
Congrats on living under a fucking rock. How can you be so oblivion to such an obvious thing? The question should be, when have they ever not lied?
Does web-to-app tracking through localhost on Android that is illegal under GDPR count?
Did they intentionally lie about it? Parent post didn't claim Meta has never broken a law.
Lying by ommission is still lying.
It’s not secret anymore, it’s FAA702 (aka PRISM), and you can bet they are complying with FISA orders.
Meta does lie. They lie about e2e.
Except we dont live in a stasi regime. What the nsa/fbi/cia can get a subpoena for from the courts is well documented in law. So there is no question that meta does provide individual messages. You guys have got to quit living in this fantasy land of big bad g-men just because you like feeling the flutter in your stomach
Palantir, Meta and OpenAI just had executives commissioned as lieutenant colonels in the US armed forces. They are defacto extensions of the US government now.
It is rather shocking seeing how rapidly the US is shifting from all of its historic norms. Trump sees the US as a "store" where he dictates the terms, he directly has control over US Steel after the Nippon Steel "takeover" -- straight out of the communist central control dictums -- and now US major corporations are embedded in the US military.
It is insane. This is stuff people accused China of for time eternal but apparently it was taken as a good lesson to learn from.
But absolutely no one outside the US -- whether enemies or allies -- should trust anything from US corporations now. The country has fallen.
It’s not lying if a corporation strictly follows the dictates of a national security letter.
“They told me to lie” does not make it any less a lie.
"'specific information request to government" == fully automated requests for literally everything all the time.
I think group messages would still be considered personal. It would only be messages you send to a business or in a group with a business that wouldn't be personal.
They're under the CLOUD Act, doesn't matter what their policies say.
Aren’t groups end-end encrypted still, with key exchange on joining groups?
Does the WhatsApp program generate and store/mange the private keys? If so, it would be possible for the program to send private keys on request, effectively backdooring the endpoint. Such an arrangement would allow Meta to put its hand on it heart and truthfully say it is end-to-end encrypted (on the network), whilst still providing a way around it.
Yes, but users can compare fingerprints (sure, most probably don't, but it's definitely a deterrence against MITMing all conversations by default), receive warnings whenever fingerprints change etc.
There's also supposedly a key transparency service deployed (similar to Certificate Transparency), but I haven't looked into that in detail.
Sharing private keys gets around all that.
That would require explicit code to do so, which would probably be extremely hard to explain away.
Are people publicly archiving, reverse engineering, and auditing every single version of Whatsapp?
Would you even know if you got a special copy of Whatsapp (still signed by Meta and valid) that has this explicit code?
> Are people publicly archiving, reverse engineering, and auditing every single version of Whatsapp?
Absolutely for archiving: https://androidapks.com/whatsapp-messenger/com-whatsapp/old/
Reverse engineering to some extent as well – it's an extremely popular app, and as such attracts both security researchers and bloggers that just want to get scoops on new features behind feature flags etc.
> Would you even know if you got a special copy of Whatsapp (still signed by Meta and valid) that has this explicit code?
Given the above, it's feasible – at least on Android, it's fairly easy to hash the .apk you've received and compare it to publicly know versions.
The threat of somebody finding unusual code on their phone will probably not deter targeted deploys by sophisticated/state level actors to specific users, but it goes some way towards making it implausible that everybody is running a backdoored version, potentially backdoored by Meta themselves, which is arguably the goal.
Yeah. Go review eg. okta verify apk and tell me it doesn't do anything nefarious. It's an app that basically just does a TOTP hash from some short secret for all I care/use it for. I can probably implement what it does for me in about 200-300 lines of C code without any dependencies.
The shit app has 60 MiB compressed. I was not even able to find where in the code it works with the damn secrets it uses for TOTP.
Now do WhatsApp with its zillion features.
If you mean that it's hard to explain away for the devs themselves, then people do much worse things in this world, and are able explain it to themselves just fine as something good, even.
PRISM too.
Meta works by identifying users, modelling their behavior, and then combining that data with third party sources (typically your financial activities) and then selling access to that data to third parties. Mostly for advertising.
When you use credit or debit cards your transactions and data related to it is collected and sold. When you apply for mortgages and close on a house all that information you put in there is collected and sold.
When you put your address in for the post office, when you apply for a drivers or fishing license... Your local governments collect that information and sell access to it.
Meta tries to then tie in your online and app/phone activity with your legal/financial identity it can obtain through partner data brokers.
This is Facebook's businesses model.
So, yes, this data is available to pretty much anybody that is willing to pay for it. Which includes governments.
None of this should be surprising to anybody at this point. Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc.. all of these companies will do this to greater or lesser extents nowadays since has worked out so well for Meta's bottom line.
And they are legally required to do this in most places
I don't know why you are being downvoted.
https://transparency.meta.com/reports/government-data-reques...
They can't see your messages but then can give ips or accounts that can be inferred to be related given the info meta has access to
Also take the "can't see your messages" statement with a grain of salt. Like the famous Lotus Notes backdoor [1] they might have given the government an easy(ier) way to decrypt those messages.
The backdoor in Lotus Notes (differential cryptography) wasn't a secret. It was public information. Ray Ozzie used it as a way to circumvent US encryption export laws. Today companies have to be more discrete.
[1] http://www.cypherspace.org/adam/hacks/lotus-nsa-key.html
Yep. Learning to read legal is an invaluable modern skill.
De Morgan's transformations come in handy here :^)
it's well know they track
group messages and messages (metadata),
messages to business accounts (these they can read in full as the client send to a meta owned private key),
and who forwards media to who (deduplication and cdn)
and links (thanks to previews)
and it scans and uploads your contact list in full all the time.
I mean, i would be pretty shocked if meta refused to honour american search warrants/NSL.
The real question is where they draw the line, not if they do it ever.
Unfortunately, They has no lines.
This is just a lie. I personally know somebody who worked at meta and they had a whole set of teams dedicated to building tools for governments to mass-export data based on their queries
Now I don't know the exact details of which governments had which access (was it just for warrants, which nations, what was the line between actual terrorist versus persecuting journalists), but there was absolutely bulk export and the fact that they are lying about it makes me inclined to presume the worst.
Remember Snowden outlined the Google<>US government interface:
The US agency would type in the gmail address of the subject (ie the primary key/identifier) and somewhere between the agency and Google a decision would be automatically made as to whether the owner of the account was a US person* or not.
If yes - FISA warrant was required
If no - the US agency user would have immediate access to the entire google account (think Google Take Out).
In other words, if you were not a US person there was no duty to protect data.
* = US Person is either a US citizen located anywhere in the world or anyone of any nationality who is physically in the US (current interpretation includes visa holders, visitors and even undocumented but that's shifting)
Isn't it more likely that Meta has been infiltrated by Mossad, just as they no doubt have by other intelligence services and they use these insiders to exfiltrate location data on specific targets?
Sandberg herself does teary, falsehood ridden war propaganda videos for Israel, these days.
Microsoft shared data early on with IDF to help target their users (would have to check their ToS to see if there's a clause for that there).
I doubt there's any need to hide anything inside these kinds of companies. Leaders there likely believe they're doing the right thing helping "the good cause" by supporting extrajudicial executions of people. At worst they'll have to kick out employees who'll raise their voices, like they already did many times. No biggie.
> building tools for governments to mass-export data based on their queries
While I can totally imagine that governments would mass-export data, and I don’t doubt your friends claim, I can also imagine more innocent interpretation of this work.
I once worked on a large company’s GDPR data-export project. It was a large enough company that it also had a dedicated team to handle legal requests regularly from government(s). GDPR exporting needs to work “at scale” for all accounts, without human-in-the-loop work, and without causing any load issues to running services. The same system also handled legal requests, where the legal team could get an export for a user (almost) identically to the process of a user getting their own data. The legal team had tools set up to work with warrants, subpoenas and similar (internationally) legal data requests from courts and law enforcement. It looks like a “mass export” system, because it was, but it wasn’t used in “bulk requests” from the legal system.
Yes, I can imagine a benign use of this technology, but past behavior and the PR dishonesty have given me no reason to prefer the most benign interpretation over the most profitable interpretation.
If however they said something more authentic like "We export data in all these cases, in all these countries, and it's never more than .01% of users in a given country, and it never includes freedom-of-speech crimes, and ..." or something then maybe I'd be inclined to consider that.
Re: "we don’t keep logs of who everyone is messaging"
From https://faq.whatsapp.com/444002211197967/?locale=en_US:
> In the ordinary course of providing our service, WhatsApp does not store messages once they are delivered or transaction logs of such delivered messages. Undelivered messages are deleted from our servers after 30 days. As stated in the WhatsApp Privacy Policy, we may collect, use, preserve, and share user information if we have a good-faith belief that it is reasonably necessary to (a) keep our users safe, (b) detect, investigate, and prevent illegal activity, (c) respond to legal process, or to government requests, (d) enforce our Terms and policies. This may include information about how some users interact with others on our service. We also offer end-to-end encryption for our services, which is always activated. End-to-end encryption means that messages are encrypted to protect against WhatsApp and third parties from reading them. Additional information about WhatsApp's security can be found here.
Note specifically "information about how some users interact with others on our service", which contradicts their claim they don't keep logs of which people are messaging each other.
I think rdrd just missed that piece of the fine wordsmithing - so long as there's at least one person not included in that "some users", then "we don’t keep logs of who EVERYONE is messaging" is still true.
This is the company that built a secret localhost listener on Android so that they could track users across websites even in private mode. Do not believe this for a second.
I'm much more inclined to believe they track everything in high precision and also MITM all the messages. Especially now that they are inserting ads.
> Especially now that they are inserting ads.
I'm no apologist for Facebook, none of whose services I use. But get your facts straight. They are not 'inserting ads' in your chats, as you imply. AFAIK they are adding adds to the never-used 'Updates' tab.
Annoying from an ad perspective, no doubt. Vastly different from a are-they-MITMing-your-messages perspective.
Thanks for clarifying. I don't use any Meta stuff so I only read about it.
It's like the game where you say the same sentence but emphasize a different word each time.
"WE don’t keep logs of who everyone is messaging..."
"We don't KEEP logs of everyone who is messaging..."
"We don't keep logs of EVERYONE who is messaging..."
Etc.
It's not that nefarious.
> We do not track your PRECISE location
If they log IP addresses, they can't say they don't log location at all.
> we don’t keep logs of who everyone is messaging
Seems like a pretty strong claim
> we do not track the PERSONAL messages people are sending one another
I don't know much about their business offering, but it seems likely it's not e2e encrypted or has some kind of escrow. Businesses often multiple people to be able to access an account and that is best done without e2e encryption... let alone auditing requirements.
> We do not provide BULK information to any government
Because they are subject to subpoena and search warrants. They are legally required to provided tailored information to governments.
====
All in all it's pretty much what you'd expect for Whatsapp's "e2e but otherwise conventional saas" approach. If you want better, use signal.
Aren't push notifications logged and used for getting people's data? This was in the news over a year ago: https://www.wired.com/story/apple-google-push-notification-s...
In general, all your personal information stored with Google or Apple or any other American company is subject to getting requested by a court order. If you listen to any of the True Crime podcasts, you'll always hear how google searches and cell tower location are always presented in a trial as evidence. People here always think they are so smart saying
> Actualllly you can't prove that it was me who made that search query.
> Actualllly you can't prove that it was me who had that cellphone around that cell tower. Could have been anybody. I could have been hacked.
Judges always allow those evidence and jury always views it as incriminating. What makes more sense, that some unknown hacker hacked into your account and googled something about the thing you're here for, or that you actually just googled it yourself?
I was on a jury where data like this harvested from Facebook pushed us beyond a reasonable doubt. There was just enough doubt to acquit or have a hung jury with only the physical evidence and eye witnesses. There was plenty of doubt with only the social media stuff. When you put all of it together, we reached a verdict pretty quickly.
When a CIA drone operator and their commander is behind the button, they give even less of a shit than a jury. No one will ever prosecute them.
Definitely, but they don't have to contain any (plaintext) message content for encrypted messengers.
On Android, push notifications were always processed by the receiving app, so it can just decrypt a payload directly (or download new messages from the server and decrypt these); on iOS, this isn't as reliable (e.g. swiping the app out of the app switcher used to break it in several iOS versions), but "VoIP notifications" and the newer "message decryption extension" [1] are.
The same principle applies to Web Push – I believe end-to-end encryption is even mandatory there.
[1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/...
They don't need meta's cooperation for this, they can burn one of their 0-click 0-day exploits and target everyone they need to.
Additionally the NSA has all Meta and WhatsApp servers directly tapped and can just harvest data, oops i mean 'meta data', that way. Then just pass that info to Israel when their internal systems get an alert on good intel.
> Then just pass that info to Israel when their internal systems get an alert on good intel.
And on top of that if you want make any money with company like X, you need to send your biometrics to some company in Israel. What is this Israel and surveillance capitalism? Or has this always being the case, and I am just now start to realizing it.
Wow that is next level WORD SMITHERY!!
Zuck dribbled and 3D Chessed the Law
META DATA. Literally they did say truthfully they "only" read all the Meta Data, which is actually all data of the company Meta.
> Zuck dribbled and 3D Chessed the Law
Mixed metaphors aside, you can't cheat the law by naming yourself something.
Well, you can try, but the courts take a dim view of it.
> > Zuck dribbled and 3D Chessed the Law
> Mixed metaphors aside
Zapp hit that bullseye, causing the rest of the dominoes to fall like a house of cards. Checkmate.
> we don’t keep logs of who everyone is messaging
Surely they must, how else are the messages… you know… available when you use the app?
IME, they're stored on device only. If you've ever moved phones this becomes painfully obvious unless you've setup backups to your personal Google Drive (native integration with app).
I'm not saying I believe their statement, but in principle they could be storing messages indexed by recipient and have the sender id be part of the encrypted content? Then you can drop messages in each user's inbox as they arrive, from which the user's app can read, but not have stored enough information to retroactively query "Show me everyone Alice has talked to"?
It’s a lie. Russia Ukraine war demonstrated clearly that everything you write in whatsapp, your location, any photo etc are easily accessible and monitored in real time by USA government and their three letter agencies.
"we don’t keep logs of who EVERYONE is messaging"
just selected people then?
Yep, they confirm it here: https://faq.whatsapp.com/444002211197967/?locale=en_US
"This may include information about how some users interact with others on our service."
"We don't log whom Zuck is messaging, and therefore the statement 'we don't keep logs of who[m] everyone is messaging' is mathematically true!"
That's doubly suspicious, so they can, by that statement readily hand over your imprecise other-than-personal messages at an individual level to the Israelis.
This, also “logs of who EVERYONE is messaging”
Why would anyone care what they say. Judging by their previous behavior it is safe to say that if their lips are moving - they're lying
Yes, it's lying with a tiny bit of plausible deniability.
"We" don't but these other guys with logins do.
I wonder if the people of Iraq have an intuitive understanding of just how much more useful the information Facebook does track is like we do.
This isn’t some conspiracy, it’s just CYA. They know your general location from your IP and device APIs, they don’t encrypt business messaging, and they comply with subpoenas.
Lots of largely baseless speculation here about WhatsApp MITMing end-to-end encrypted chats and other hypotheticals, when the most likely government access path is right there in the open:
WhatsApp heavily nudges users into backing up their chats to iCloud or Google Drive. These backups are, by default, unencrypted (or at least encrypted using a key known to Meta). And most users just use the defaults.
It's exactly the same story with iMessage: If "iCloud Backup" and "iMessage in the cloud" are activated (again, Apple nudges users into these by default), all received messages get uploaded to Apple using a key available to Apple, unless "Advanced Data Protection" is also enabled (decidedly not the default).
Users can deviate from these defaults (and both parties to a conversation need to, for the conversation to actually be private!), but they can already also just use Signal if sufficiently motivated.
This makes sense. Israel seems to have used WhatsApp metadata to target Palestinians in Gaza: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
> The solution to this problem, he says, is artificial intelligence. The book offers a short guide to building a “target machine,” similar in description to Lavender, based on AI and machine-learning algorithms. Included in this guide are several examples of the “hundreds and thousands” of features that can increase an individual’s rating, such as being in a Whatsapp group with a known militant, changing cell phone every few months, and changing addresses frequently.
Israel doesn't even need Whatsapp to be installed.
The IDF's Unit 8200[1] can probably hack most phones in Iran. And if not any of the private companies selling spyware software like the NSO Group[2 and 3].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSO_Group
[3] https://mepc.org/commentaries/israeli-cyber-companies-overvi...
I had a coworker from Iran and he said every single computer just runs the same cracked Windows XP version translated into Farsi. Easy to exploit
And you believed them? You think a country with almost 100 million people only have a single cracked version of Win XP to use as their OS?
The willingness for people in the US to believe absurd lies about other countries correlates with its status as an official "enemy" or "ally" of the US government. Just like how the evidentiary standard around reporting on North Korea approaches zero. Americans will believe any absurd thing without evidence, and the media will shamelessly reprint official narratives, hearsay, and endless propaganda.
No wonder they got into Natanz with stuxnet.
I recommend the documentary Zero Days from 2016 to anyone remotely interested on this.
> No wonder they got into Natanz with stuxnet.
While the PCs used to program the PLCs were running XP, the 0-day that Stuxnet exploited affected all versions of Windows, at least from 2000 onwards, including 2008 and Vista.
EDIT: to clarify, the PCs "programmed" the PLCs indirectly, in that while they ran the Siemans STEP 7 IDE to design the centrifuges' control process, the resulting PLC programs were manually transported to the PLCs via USB devices, so there were two airgaps: the XP-running PCs airgapped from the outside world, and then another airgap between the PCs and the PLCs they programmed.
This massively trivialises how sophisticated stuxnet was, there were multiple 0-days affecting all versions of actively maintained versions of Windows being weaponised by the program.
It wasn’t a bunch of known vulnerabilities affecting unpatched machines. Quite the opposite.
have-a-break:
How do you send an "invisible" SMS to other country's cellular network undetected? Especially on a mass scale...
I know about OMA DM, and FOTA update/access, and binaries certain US operators pre-install into phones/modems for remote access, etc. since I was reverse engineering this stuff. I just don't see how this would be invisible from the targetted country's cellular network operator.
It could be invisible if you send it from within the operator's network after breaking (physically) into it, and then deleting your tracks
I think that that's the excuse the current regime in Iran is using to try to prevent iranians from coordinating a coup.
By "chance" the rightful crown prince (Pahlavi dynasty), an exile, is now making a comeback on social media, saying that the current iranian regime shall fail.
There are talks online as to how the current regime is falling: and there are a lot of people who would be very happy to see those bearded men ruling by sharia law gone.
The last thing the religious cracknuts at the helm of that islamic state want are iranians themselves using the opportunity to topple up the regime.
When they say: "Delete WhatsApp to not help Israel locate you" what they really mean is "Do not share the vids of the crown prince announcing he'll give you a life without sharia punishment".
There's good reason to believe lots of western apps have back doors, if not backdoors served to countries like Iran from app stores.
Also car tech and cameras. Literally a wet dream if I worked at a three letter agency, real time surveillance of streets which is actually extremely difficult normally. Can't think of how many times I've wanted a recent picture of a street or house miles away, with 360 car cameras you can track people, see changes maybe from just minutes ago.
I don't know why these countries don't block or mandate these features are completely turned off.
> There's good reason to believe lots of western apps have back doors
A common sentiment in this thread. My gut and practical experience both tell me this is true on some level, but how do folks distinguish tinfoil hat conspiracy from legitimate speculation?
Probably because it's fairly difficult to detect. I doubt the code imports backdoor.dll.
The UK now has laws to gag domestic companies and force them to implement backdoors.
And Australia has a law forcing its citizens, around the world, to code in backdoors.
The fact that both parties were on the same side of this argument just sickens me. Same with metadata retention.
I vote thusly.
Its funny how everyone's forgotten about that law
Because it'd be gross negligence for a security agency not to collect this information?
I mean, nothing Snowden revealed was shocking to anyone in IT at the time. He just brought receipts.
>but how do folks distinguish tinfoil hat conspiracy from legitimate speculation?
Plausibility and evidence, for which there's plenty in this case.
Although it seems less likely to me that Western apps have backdoors and more likely that Western law enforcement and intelligence have free access to the data, but it's probably both.
> Plausibility and evidence, for which there's plenty in this case.
I don't know i agree. The article didn't cite any evidence, and Iran would have lots of motivation to lie here. E.g. it could be a face saving move, trying to shift blame for the war going badly from a failing military to being the fault of traitors who installed whatsapp. It could be a ploy to prevent citizens from having e2e encrypted comms, lest they plot a revolution (from what i understand Iran has blamed whatsapp for protests in the past). It might just be a desperate regime with a crumbling military that is out of options and willing to grasp at any straw no matter how slight.
Not to say that i think its impossible. Israel has certainly pulled off crazier things in the past, but right now we have zero evidence and lots of potential motives for Iran to make shit up.
> more likely that Western law enforcement and intelligence have free access to the data
This I have firsthand experience with and agree. Why invest effort when agencies can simply take what they want?
Did you read all the Snowden files?
The NSA, and it's partners, capabilities and the lengths it is willing to go to are staggering.
>but how do folks distinguish tinfoil hat conspiracy from legitimate speculation?
they don't. that's the whole point
I'm surprised reading that the Iranian's regime concerns are centered on WhatsApp sharing information with Israel. It is much more likely that WhatsApp have 0-day vulnerabilities used by the Mossad to gain the info than WhatsApp actively sharing it.
> Iran banned WhatsApp and Google Play in 2022 during mass protests against the government
So more than fearing Israel, they actually fear the public that has an encrypted communication channel that can't be tapped by their police. Explains a lot.
Or it's an issue for multiple reasons at once.
TikTok ring a bell?
They are probably concerned it would be the platform of choice to communicate during a revolution that Israel is outspokenly trying to foment.
Russian soldiers participating in SMO reported multiple times that after they exchange texts and photos with their relatives in WhatsApp, that information ends up in Ukrainian military HQs next day. With photos. And later used, for example, to harass the relatives of the soldier.
Could be some other mechanism (e.g. Google Drive or some other kind of malware), hard to be sure in the world, where since 2011 Snowden's revelations, bugs are placed my NSA and CIA everywhere, starting from hardware and firmware.
Russian soldiers chatting with their family know what precisely happens in the Ukrainian military HQ the next day? That sounds too crazy to be even remotely true, and too convenient a story ("they are harassing your family, go murder someone").
The Ukrainians had a unit that would call soldiers families and harass them.
This was back at the start of the war. Now this bullshit mind trick employs too much cannon meat best allocated on the front.
> Could be some other mechanism
if it was it would be true for telegram as well.
After arrest of Durov in France I think the same. Doesn't change the fact that any single Russian soldier is not using WhatsApp. It's considered compromised with very convincing evidence, along with some other apps (I don't remember all the names, possible to find in military news channels if you know Russian).
Can you summarize it, was Telegram compromised? Is there evidence of leaks from Russian soldiers' messages.
There were evidence of leaks of soldiers' messages from WhatsApp.
I do not know for sure if there are leaks from Telegram, but I think that Durov was pressed for enabling backdoors for CIA when he was arrested in France.
It's not like there's a registry of compromised apps in Russia that is available to public. When there were WhatsApp leaks it was widely published on Russian news channels, that's why I know about it and tell everyone to not trust WhatsApp.
But I don't closely follow every news item from the front, I know that some other apps are also considered compromised (mainly some navigation apps), but I don't know the whole list or if Telegram is being used on the front.
I guess the safest option is to not use telephone at all at war, since there are probably backdoors everywhere starting from cell modem firmware. I guess that since about middle-end of 2022 all military personnel has the same opinion and stopped using smartphones altogether or use them in flight mode with communications disabled.
> but I think that Durov was pressed for enabling backdoors for CIA when he was arrested in France.
Durov was pressed from every side from the beginning, no doubts about this. But CIA or FSB cannot demand it legally even with secret court orders. There were news that since arrest in France he started providing some info on criminals. Not sure how far did he go. But it's good to know that Whatsup is fully cooperating with governments even when they don't have to. Putting people at risk.
As for smartphones, there are so many security holes that it's impossible to secure. Many harmless applications are calling home, pictures are geo-targeted, cell towers can request info from connected phones, every update can turn OS or app into trojan. If infected it's a perfect audio and video collection device. Put together with soldiers' IDs it shows where the unit is. Add to that CIA and alike working with weakening everyone's security and getting priority access to sensitive information.
> Russian soldiers participating in SMO
Russian soldiers participating in the invasion of Ukraine. FTFY.
But don't delete signal because you might get invited to an inner circle war strategy conversation.
I’m not sure if Iran’s claim is true, but honestly, I’ve always felt uneasy about what these apps actually log. End-to-end encryption is great, but it doesn’t protect metadata.
The real issue is that we’re still guessing. Does anyone actually feel confident about any of this?
Nope. If Meta is involved they're getting their beak wet in as many ways as they can. Promoting the fact that WhatsApp has "end to end encryption" may be true, but that just means all the other good, privacy promoting, consumer-oriented things they could also be doing: they're not doing.
Anyone in Iran that can comment on this? What are citizens there thinking about WhatsApp?
Iranian here. Most Iranians use Telegram or Whatsapp, both of which are blocked right now and can only be used using VPNs (they have been blocked for years, though whatsapp was unblocked a few months ago, but it is blocked again after the Israel attack). I don't think many Iranians believe, or care about what the regime says, though there is a small minority of regime supporters that might, but they probably were not using whatsapp to begin with.
Though I must say, the regime itself seems to really believe this, for example there was some news that high-ranking officials are now banned from using electronic devices that connect to the internet like mobile phones.
Do you think it’s likely the regime will fall?
I have no idea but I sure hope so.
Will this result in bloody civil war like in Iraq and minimal dysfunctional central government after?
I’m another Iranian but I’m not actively living in Iran.
I agree with others here that regime really needs to go but I of course share your fear of what could happen to Iran once the central government is weakened. Currently there are multiple tiers of special forces keeepinf various groups in check, however once this is gone, things could get ugly.
I worry about my family living there, we have been having a hard time time reaching there since the attacks started and there is no way of telling what is going to happen next.
You may know more about this than I do, but what happened in Iraq was that the first military governor held together the same people who were under Saddam in a semi-stable arrangement, but was replaced with someone else that had instructions from Washington to conduct "De-Ba'athification," for some reason. This lead quickly to the collapse of the state due to the persecution of everyone who had any authority, and the replacement of Iraqi systems with military administration at all levels down to the villages as far as it could be maintained, which created the ten year war.
I do not think it would be to the benefit of people who live in Iran, even if they were Christian, to live through the bombings and mass destruction of the proposed war in exchange for life under US territorial administration, which has not been very good historically.
i don't get that. Saddam Hussain was a genocidal, fascist lunatic. The world is certainly a better place with him gone. Even if America didn't handle the subsequent occupation too well, i would argue (and you are free to disagree) that Iraq was still better off.
But an American occupation isn't even on the table. Nobody is interested in that. The most anyone wants at the moment is for the US to drop a MOAB on fordo and mop up the rest of Irans military from the air.
opinion like this can only come from someone who have lived a life of privilege, thousands mils away from systematic violence or hunger someone in a war torn country constantly have to face.
For an average individual going about their day, lack of political freedom is a 100x better option than lack of food or security that Iraq (or Libya or Afghanistan) went through.
>For an average individual going about their day, lack of political freedom is a 100x better option than lack of food or security
I couldn't agree with you more. I can think of at least one excellent example of this.
But in the case of Iraq there is no question in my mind that deposing saddam was the right thing to do.
If anything the person i was replying to was lecturing op, apparently an actual Iranian, about why American involvement is bad for him.
> Saddam Hussain was a genocidal, fascist lunatic.
Yes.
> The world is certainly a better place with him gone. Even if America didn't handle the subsequent occupation too well, i would argue (and you are free to disagree) that Iraq was still better off.
That is mad talk. Things have been much worse, so much worse for almost everyone in and around Iraq since that war.
ISIS for one thing, was a direct result of the perfidious actions of foreigners in Iraq.
So much chaos was created, there is no way the invasion of Iraq improved the world
It's like saying that russia is worse off after the collapse of communism and attributing that to capitalism.
It's true, because that system worked for a few generations of people. A sudden change, even for a theoretically better system, can't make things better for people. Now we can see how much worse things became. Russia is completely deranged state at the moment, much much worse than Iran.
Communism never worked. People just survived it for a few generations. Who can say what europe would look like today if the Soviet union hadn't collapsed in 1991?
Probably would have been much better under communism for the last 30 years, if you want to go by comparing China's last 30 years of growth and prosperity and comparing that to my state's last 30 years of stagnation and methlabsperity.
the way I see it is that a country is better (or richer) if US allows them to trade with rich countries, not directly built on political systems, but political systems can affect being inclusive or exclusive of the global market.
Yes it was. Living standards went down and oligarchs plundered the state.
I would expect that the end of the current Iranian regime brings about a heavily military-influenced fake democracy that structurally resembles the current government of Pakistan.
The clerics are a paper tiger. Their domestic support base has been almost fully eroded. The Islamic Revolution had proclaimed the hijab as a cause célèbre; today, Iranians generally ignore it when the government isn't looking, after decades of protest and suppression.
But the Iranian military controls a vast amount of the country's economy (by comparison to normal countries) and retains popular support as an opponent of the West. It won't go quietly, and Israel lacks the resources and the United States lacks the will to dismantle it, which anyway would be a Herculean undertaking and cost millions of innocent lives. Military dictatorships are usually pragmatic on social issues, economically protectionist, and politically repressive — making the hypothetical new Iran look more like China's ideal ally than America's.
The most likely vector of regime change is a military coup that produces a government which sues for peace. They may agree to dismantle the nuclear program, but there will be a sense of "for now", and they will cultivate alliances with an eye to protection from the West. We may then see real nuclear weapons in Iran, but with red flags and yellow stars on them, instead of the imaginary nuclear weapons that were invented to keep Bibi out of prison.
Iran played a role in Iraq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_involvement_in_the_Ira...
That bloody civil requires resources from somewhere, so a bi geopolitical power with interests in that chaos is necessary
What’s the alternative? Live under the delusional islamic theocratic dictatorship forever? If you think the islamic republic can be replaced through peaceful protests you have another thing coming, they have already killed thousands of protestors and they have no problem killing because they actually believe they are doing god’s work and the protestors are infidels that deserve to die.
I take my chances for a probable dysfunctional government rather than a definitely dysfunctional one.
If ayatollah gets nuke regime becomes forever like in North Korea. And Israel may suffer first because nuke strike is the only chance for Iran right now. Hope they don't have it and ayatollah goes to Moscow.
The thing about nukes is that they're completely useless at defending against an internal revolution
Not completely. You're more likely to get external help to prop up your regime iff you have nukes and the external forces think it's better for your regime to stay in power than have a revolutionary force control the nukes. (Of course, if the external forces would rather the revolutionary force, then it's not so helpful)
For every country that has nukes, some countries will want them in power and some will want them deposed. You can assume both forces will be operating at all times (which to be fair is also true of pre-nuclear countries)
Hostile foreign countries are however much more likely to pour resources into fomenting a revolution if you have nukes as this would avoid conventional warfare which has the potential to escalate to the point of nuclear deployment.
In the context of Iran vs. North Korea which this discussion is in reference to, Iran is very likely to fall from internal forces which overwhelmingly disapprove of the government, compared to North Korea which seemingly has overwhelming support from its people, and has been cut off from the rest of the world since before the Internet was available.
It's unlikely another country will ever be capable of instituting the same degree of isolationism that North Korea has, owing to the prevalance of internet-capable devices everywhere else in the world. And honestly I don't think the North Korean government would have survived as long as it had without this policy.
I didn't know we were short of examples of what happens when regime-change operations are conducted or when governments get toppled.
You don't need to guess as to what happens; there are examples.
Best of luck to you, sir. Thank you for sharing your perspective.
>"I take my chances for a probable dysfunctional government rather than a definitely dysfunctional one."
I hear tickets to Libya are cheap lately. You can visit and compare.
I’m hopeful for the Iranian people, thanks for your perspective.
That's sadly the goal
I suppose you're a city dweller. Do people in more rural areas share this sentiment?
the diaspora seems to overwhelmingly do so, at least.
The diaspora is a very self-filtered subset though. Say, the Russian diaspora overwhelmingly opposes the Russia's aggression in Ukraine, while the population within Russia is mostly indifferent enough, and often supports it. (Note that all the Russian troops in Ukraine are not taken by military draft, but went to war voluntarily, for a generous fee, or in exchange for release from prison.)
The Syrian diaspora overwhelmingly opposed Assad while its population seemed to support the regime... until it fell in 2024.
I wouldn't put any weight on how much the population of a autocratic country pretend to support its regime.
Did they release the conscripts from 2023? Or are you assuming they've all died by now?
It's true that new soldiers are not conscripts, but I'd assume there's still some survivors from the earlier mobilisation and as far as I know once you're in, you're in, until death, incapacity or the war ending.
as this is not war, conscripts aren't supposed to be sent to battle (there were a few cases when it did happen).
but what happens, it's that conscripts are convinced/forced to sign contracts to serve in army, and in this they are sent to face ukrainian drones.
those that were mobilized, iirc not released.
No this contradicts other stories about them committing crimes after returning from military service.
in discussion next door (got flagged) people are claiming that Iran is peace seeking nation that has amazing relationship with it's neighbors and that it amazingly geopolitically positioned and that USA should team up with current Iranian regime and dump Israel.
What's your take on it ?
everyone says they want it to fall but then you look at what happened to Libya or Syria where one is in a civil war and the other is now run by an Israel/US backed former ISIS mercenary and then you think maybe that's not the right process for a regime change.
I don't know but they have local alternatives, the iranians have a bridge protocol that federates several services:
I’m guessing there’s no encryption?
If you want actual security, don't use a phone and run your own server, likely Matrix.
Security strength is not a binary measure, there are many levels of security between "no encryption at all" to "run your own server".
Not really in the space we're discussing, i.e. usian and iranian everyday phone applications. Small private actors aren't going to pop the TLS on messages anyway, and the states involved have or can compromise the system as such.
Or endnode in Tor. Not sure it's secure enough against US which operates it.
All the major social media and messaging platforms are compromised and serve as tools for surveillance, so the Iranian government isn't wrong.
Not wrong, but Meta in particular is uniquely compliant to the wishes of state actors.
If Meta is compliant, there’s no point t believe that any other USA based corp is any better.
Iraq and Gaza was an absolute joke compared to what it would take to topple the Iranian militants, militias, and government.
Much of the terrain is similar to Afghanistan. Tribal islamic alliances are resilient against loss of central governance. There is a massive porous mountainous border to 2+ countries that conceivably will look the other way for certain islamic militants.
I know everyone wants to gobble down the campaign about complete air superiority and toppling of leaders, and that WhatsApp may be separating the regime from 52 virgins, but realize this is a propaganda campaign. This initial propaganda only serves to manufacture consent long enough to buy citizens in to blood so they can't back out. We're in the process of being tricked.
Iran has their terrorist group proxies throughout the region. I think there's some truth to this, although the actions of some truly rogue terrorist groups probably get blamed on Iran because it's been the zeitgeist for a few decades to find reasons to attack Iran.
Whatever the case, the current Iran regime hasn't given nuclear material, chemical weapons, or biological weapons to these terror groups.
If the current Iran regime is eliminated from afar, with some fly-by bombings or whatever, what happens in the chaos that follows? Nuclear material and other weapons do not poof out of existance when the government that created them falls. Which group will control the nuclear material going forward? Roll the dice to find out.
America and Friends. And by that i include russia and china, because even they care about other countries not having nukes. If/when the regime falls nobody will be able to stop them. Just look at Syria.
How will America and Friends secure the nuclear material? Boots on the ground?
just a quick raid. The first thing to collapse would be the armed forces. It would be like stealing candy from a child.
I don't think anyone is suggesting invading with boots on the ground. It would be a blood bath, as you say, and nobody seems interested in that.
I suspect what Israel is hoping for is that if they disrupt Iranian internal security enough, Iran wont be able to put down protestors. In the past there have been protests that Iran had to put down violently, so its not crazy. At the same time, hard to imagine anyone going out to protest while bombs are falling, and external threats tend to increase support for incumbants. So probably a long shot.
What they will probably settle for is blowing up their nuke stuff and missles, hoping that the economic disruption of the war is enough that its too expensive for iran to rebuild it.
Of course, nobody really knows.
No, if you disrupt the current regime, you get something more extreme akin to ISIS. You can negotiate a peace deal with Iran, but you can't negotiate a peace deal with 50+ Islamic factions each running its own territory. That would require boots of the ground; and that's what the current leadership is looking for.
The parent poster is correct. It is much easier to convince you into this if I tell you "We can solve the middle-east issues with just one click(bomb)!". That would get people in a FOMO where we have to act NOW and have this resolved quick and easy; or choose to be complacent and lose this opportunity.
Of course we don't know how this will play out since we don't have any history except for the last 50+ years or so.
> You can negotiate a peace deal with Iran, but you can't negotiate a peace deal with 50+ Islamic factions each running its own territory
50+ islamic factions are unlikely to be able to coordinate enough to produce advanced weapons. While its an unideal outcome, its not clear that it would be worse from the israeli perspective, and they are the ones dropping bombs.
> Of course we don't know how this will play out since we don't have any history except for the last 50+ years or so.
There are plenty of examples historically of coups and popular revolutions where the new gov takes over the existing state roughly in-tact. There are also many examples of what you are saying where the country decends into a civil war. If you want to use history as a guide i think you need to analyze things more closely.
And it's larger than Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Both in population and surface area
> Iraq and Gaza was an absolute joke compared to what it would take to topple the Iranian militants, militias, and government
It wouldn't be a cake walk. But America could topple the government in Tehran about as easily as it did in Baghdad or, frankly, Kabul. The problem in Iraq and Afghanistan wasn't a failure to decapitate the opposing state. It was in filling the vacuum that left.
Why are we toppling all these foreign governments and creating instability that breads terrorism in places that otherwise have nothing to do with us?
This seems so exceptionally counter productive.
> Why are we toppling all these foreign governments
I don't want to speak to the other foreign governments, and I think there is a LOT of room for healthy criticism of how the USA handles its foreign policy, past & present.
But to answer the question directly with respects to Iran, specifically: the leadership has been repeatedly chanting "Death To America" for its 45 year history and have been actively trying to develop a nuclear weapon program. It calls Israel the "Little Satan" and America the "Big Satan." A mantra often repeated: "First we come for the Saturday people, then we go for the Sunday people."
Say what you want about the USA. I'll be the first to join you in criticism of many of it's foreign policy actions, including the 1953 CIA-backed Iranian coup that arguably led to the Islamic revolution in 1979 and got us the Iran we have today. And if people want to express concern for what evils could fill the vacuum if the current regime falls... fair.
But I'm certainly not going to blame any free country for responding to an enemy state vowing to destroy it while actively trying to develop the means to do so. If there is ever any moral justification for going to war - that's it. It's defensive. That's arguably the only justification for going to war.
Feel free to disagree with me about the threat that Iran poses to the western world. Maybe it's all propaganda and overstated. You're welcome to that theory. But this is the answer to the question: "Why should the USA get involved?"
> have been actively trying to develop a nuclear weapon program
The US Director of National Intelligence testified to congress a few weeks ago that no US intelligence agency believes that Iran is developing a nuclear bomb, and that they believed Iran was at least 3 years away from having the ability to build a nuclear bomb even if they tried.
What you are saying directly contradicts what US intelligence agencies have said.
A couple sources: https://jewishinsider.com/2025/03/gabbard-iran-is-not-curren... https://www.newsweek.com/tulsi-gabbard-iran-nuclear-weapon-2...
> US Director of National Intelligence
The US Director of National Intelligence (Tulsi Gabbard) has a very public history of backing Assad and Iran during the Syrian Civil War, and any mention of the DNI without mentioning it's currently Tulsi Gabbard is clearly a bad faith discussion.
Is there a better representative of the US intelligence agencies than the Director of National Intelligence? Maybe a true Scotsman?
At this moment no. Most administrative and strategy positions for Intel and Foreign Service seats have remained unconfirmed. Maybe the head of the CIA - John Ratcliffe, an avowed Iran+China Hawk - but this administration is hard to read given how disjointed and domestic-driven decisionmaking is.
Furthermore, the DNI is at the lowest rung of the intel hierarchy on the Hill, as it is a post-9/11 invention, and faces inter-service competition from the CIA, FBI, and NSA.
> Furthermore, the DNI is at the lowest rung of the intel hierarchy on the Hill, as it is a post-9/11 invention, and faces inter-service competition from the CIA, FBI, and NSA.
The DNI is by law [0] the head of the intelligence community; the role was created to separate that function from the CIA Director (formerly, "Director of Central Intelligence"), who previously was the head of the intelligence community as well as the head of one of the major constituent agencies within that community. The CIA, FBI, and NSA or components of the intelligence community, not "competitors" with the DNI.
(And all of those are executive branch positions, so not in any hierarchy "on the Hill", which is a metonym for the Legislative branch because of the location of the Capitol complex on Capitol hill.)
[0] 50 U.S. Code § 3023(b)(1) Subject to the authority, direction, and control of the President, the Director of National Intelligence shall— (1) serve as head of the intelligence community; (2) act as the principal adviser to the President, to the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council for intelligence matters related to the national security; and (3) consistent with section 1018 of the National Security Intelligence Reform Act of 2004, oversee and direct the implementation of the National Intelligence Program. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/3023
By law sure, but in action the DNI has little-to-no staffing, and the heads of the other agencies are represented in the NSC and JCS, so the DNI tends to be an afterthought.
> which is a metonym for the Legislative branch because of the location of the Capitol complex on Capitol hill.
IK. I used to work there. It is the general denonym for working in either the Executive or Legislative.
> And all of those are executive branch positions, so not in any hierarchy "on the Hill"
Strongly disagree from personal experience. Just like any organization, resourcing gives certain groups or agencies more heft and leeway than others.
So basically the DNI says things that you disagree with, and therefore is illegitimate.
No. It's because she has been frozen out by the Trump admin for weeks now - as was seen with the fact that she was not invited to the Camp David but the other Intel heads were to discuss the Iran crisis when Netanyahu informed the admin about the then imminent strikes [0] - and the role of DNI is itself on the chopping block to be merged as part of Project 2025 (one of the few things I agree with them about - the DNI is a redundant role that was only developed during 9/11, and has been made redundant by the NSC and fusion centers).
[0] - https://www.axios.com/2025/06/10/trump-camp-david-iran-gaza-...
Explain how "backing" them has anything to do with what she said about the weapons. Dismissing her because of that is the bad faith.
Not to mention the Ayatollah has had a long standing fatwa against the procurement of nuclear weapons.
Yeah, and the ten commandments in the New Testament don't give exceptions for "death penalty" and "war"*, that doesn't stop Christians from signing up for the military or even seeing a contradiction.
* on the former, NT has an example of the crowd who want to stone someone, instead being convinced to leave; and the latter NT contains the origin of the phrase "to go the extra mile", which is about helping foreign soldiers occupying your territory and ordering you to help them (Matthew 5:41)
Just because most Christians are hypocrites that worship Mammon doesn't mean the Ayatollah is.
"Ayatollah" is more like "Bishop" in this analogy. Bishop of Rome doesn't like AI, news reports this, nothing changes.
To be frank, you are ignorant on the topic and should do more research. This isn't the Catholic Church; he is the supreme leader of Iran and the commander in chief of their military. What he says goes.
The Bishop of Rome is more commonly (but technically incorrectly) known as "the Pope".
There are thousands of Ayatollah, you mean specifically the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The Catholic Church used to be powerful, but it too has had mismatches between even ex cathedra teachings and what people actually do: see also US politics having occasional arguments about if being Catholic disqualified someone from politics because they submitted to the Bishop of Rome over the people.
And that's without the way government leaders often tell bold faced lies (and less obvious lies, too).
No idea whether that estimate is accurate but 3 years doesn't sound long for an existential risk. If a large astroid hits earth in 3 years, I better do something now. Should probably have invaded 10 years ago.
Bibi has been saying that Iran is weeks away from the bomb since the 80s.
Meanwhile, he's the only megalomaniac in the region with a Bomb.
so you think they're not trying to get a nuke?
I thought I implied that I don't care.
The obvious solution is to get Israel to give up nukes in exchange for Iran stopping its nuclear program. I think that would everyone happy except the Israelis who want to murder people without repercussion.
It's crazy to me that this is peoples take away. Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas have the explicitly stated goal to annihilate Israel and its people. But Israel is the genozidal one. They're attacking military targets in Iran. Iran is bombing urban centers. I'm sure the IDF would very much prefer to only attack military targets in Gaza as well. Unfortunately, the Hamas decided to hide them under houses.
Some of us remember the Israeli AI program to maximize civilian deaths in Gaza.
We also remember the IDF "discovering" a weapons cache stored next to... an MRI.
Some of us have seen the pictures of Gaza.
Right. You just wanna see Israel burn either way.
I doubt it, Israel has 300 nukes.
But, to be honest, I am grateful that intercepting missiles and drones is giving IDF pilots something to do other than bombing Gazans.
Just sayin'
So, is Tulsi Gabbard now considered a reliable source of intelligence ?
And that it should be no one's concern about a regime that is stretched for resources yet has over a dozen very expensive facilities working on militarizing nuclear technology that also publicly and repeatedly calls for the destruction of not just Israel but also America ?
This wasn't Tulsi saying it, but the intelligence community going back to the dubbya administration.
Some of us are old enough to remember.
In honor of W. "fool me one, shame on you. Fool me twice? Well you cant fool me twice"
I think this is quite different than Iraq. We know Iran has many sites were they are developing nuclear technology, sites that they not only do they not let inspections happen, but that are literally buried deep in the ground. We also know they are acquiring or have acquired the technology to enrich to weapons grade, and they themselves have said they will continue to enrich beyond what a civilian program needs.
In other words, this is not a civilian energy program.
Maybe they can build a bomb in 1 month, maybe three years. You may not agree whether or not action should be taken, but I do not see that agreement/disagreement based on the difference.
In any case, our "intelligence" community has lost a lot of credibility, and has been politicized for decades. I would not bet my life, let alone an entire nation, on what they have to say.
If the intelligence community is not trust worthy, then upon what are you basing the claims in your post?
There is quite a lot of info from many diverse sources. Even assuming a lot of misinformation or incorrect information, there is just too much to say there is nothing here.
Common sense also needs to take into account that Iran already does have a working civilian reactor, and its fuel is supplied by Russia. Given the state of Iran's economy, there is no rational reason for it to be spending vast sums to build so many facilities simply to supply fuel to a reactor that is already supplied by someone else. They would be far better off spending their much needed resources building additional civilian reactors.
Is Iran close to producing an actual bomb ? Don't know. Is Iran investing huge sums to produce weapons grade nuclear material ? There is quite a lot of information to indicate that this is so, and there is only one reason to do this - to produce a nuclear bomb.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_facilities_in_Iran
Long list of nuclear sites, cross referenced from many diverse sources. Assume half is misinformation, there is a lot of evidence of a wide ranging program
https://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/analysis-of-iaea...
Analysis of the many IAEI reports. I am not sure of the reputation of the authors, but I have read through similar findings from different sources.
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/12/nx-s1-5431395/iran-nuclear-en...
"Iran isn't complying with its nuclear obligations for the first time in 20 years" from an IAEI report, reported by NPR
So the intelligence community doesn't know as much as what you heard on TV?
I watch TV for entertainment, not news I read from different and often conflicting sources for information, for whatever that is worth I draw my own conclusions, for whatever they are worth, which sometimes change over time
I believe that Iran is and has been trying very hard to produce enough enriched uranium to make a bomb. I do not know how close they are to an actual bomb, but I also do not believe the technical know how is beyond them, they have smart people, funding, and a technology infrastructure to make it happen. The hard part is the enriched uranium.
I also do not believe that Iran getting close to a bomb is the real reason for Israel's current offensive. Neither do I believe that Israel "acted alone", the US is complicit. Neither do I believe that Hamas and Hezbollah acted alone, Iran is complicit. The past 20 months has always been about Israel/Iran and US/Russia/China.
You may believe differently.
i'm not going to lie, though - when i read that elsewhere this morning, the first thing i thought was "i wonder if that 'intelligence' came from chatgpt as well?" [0]
[0] https://www.thedailybeast.com/tulsi-gabbard-admits-to-asking... - forgive the crappy source, i'm not super serious about this line of discussion :)
It's been the assessment of three intelligence community going back decades.
Myself, I think they already have a bomb. Or actually don't want it for moral reasons. There is no universe where Pakistan and N. Korea have it and they're "working on it"
> It calls Israel the "Little Satan" and America the "Big Satan."
Just to add to this, I briefly worked with an Iranian and asked him if this was serious or a mistranslation*, and he confirmed that it was totally serious.
* the etymology of "satan" ultimately being Hebrew שָׂטָן (satán, “adversary, accuser”: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/שטן#Hebrew), and both Israel and the USA are definitely adversaries of Iran
We dont care about Iran having a nuke any more than we care about Pakistan's or N. Korea.
N. Korea has said mean things to us too.
The only thing we care about is Iran's resources and support for the Palestinians.
> only thing we care about is Iran's resources and support for the Palestinians
What’s with the Palestinian distortion effect?
We sanctioned Iran’s oil. And to the degree we consider the Palestinians, it’s in mostly ignoring their interests. (But still caring to learn about them more than the North Koreans’ or Pakistanis’.)
The difference is Pyongyang has behaved rationally. It doesn’t sponsor terror groups across the region. And most importantly, it’s already a nuclear power with the credibly ability to destroy an ally. (Pakistan does the terrorist thing, hence “ally from hell” and the pivot to India, but it at least does a halfway decent job of keeping its proxies from directly targeting Americans in a way Tehran has failed to do with e.g. the Houthis and its proxies in Iraq.)
Iran is none of those things. Most importantly, one of our allies it threatens initiated the attack. If Seoul or even New Delhi initiated a render-safe operation against their enemies, there is a good chance America would at least consider joining to finish the job.
Iran has behaved pretty rationally IMO.
We killed one of their top generals, unprovoked, 5 years ago. Israel bombed their embassy in Syria a year ago. Both times, they sent telegraphed, calibrated missile barrages that let them deescalate situations they didn't create.
Now we're in a third instance of them being attacked. Who's the irrational party?
(Edit: and in Iraq, we invaded their neighbor while loudly saying "youre next", their actions in Iraq were also rational and calibrated given that context. Bog us down there, deniably, smart move.)
> Iran has behaved pretty rationally IMO
Tactically, in this war with Israel, and broadly since October 7th, I agree.
Strategically, by putting themselves in a position where they're sending heavy munitions to e.g. the Houthis so they can take pot shots at U.S. warships, no. That's destabilising in a way that frankly the Kims have never been.
They were funding the Houthis for what, 10 years before the current fracas? And then the Houthis made peace pretty quickly.
Their big picture strategic posture WAS to try and have a deal with us and normalize, but we've made it clear that we won't have that. Nurturing a bunch of proxies in the region is kind of their only option if they want to have allies.
If (Russian ally) Delhi tried a decapitating strike on (US ally, ruled by US patsies) Pakistan we'd loose our shit.
Pray, when has Iran behaved irrationally? Except when trusting us, which Kissinger pointed out is really dumb.
> If (Russian ally) Delhi tried a decapitating strike on (US ally, ruled by US patsies) Pakistan we'd loose our shit
We'd be irritated if we weren't consulted, but not much more than that. India isn't a whole-hog Russian ally, they just buy weapons from Russians among others. (Increasingly, others.)
Note, for instance, how the U.S. is keeping an arms length from the ongoing Indus waters dispute. Or how the U.S. across two administrations has basically turned a blind eye to India importing Russian and Iranian oil while threatening secondary sanctions when China does the same thing.
Also, I said render-safe operation. Not a decapitating strike. The former is what Israel has so far done. Even Trump objected to the latter in Iran (so far).
> when has Iran behaved irrationally?
Continuing to arm the Houthis after they targeted U.S. warships was dumb. Hell, the entire proxy war through terrorist organisations nonsense is dumb; the proximate cause of this entire mess is Hamas and the Sinwar brothers' October 7th genius move.
None of that is a reason for America to go to war with the IRGC. But it's a good reason for treating them differently from Pyongyang and Islamabad. (Underlined, again, by the difference between a threshold nuclear state whose missile capabilities and air defences have been defanged and an actual nuclear state.)
The USA created the current Iranian regime by installing a puppet and then getting butt hurt when their puppet was ousted. A real freedom for us tyranny for you situation.
Then the USA created the Saddam regime in Iraq to fight the Iranian regime and that went great.
And now the USA is supporting Israel to terrorize the Middle East in their name and with their bombs and that’s going swimmingly too. Top job everyone.
It seems like an infinite pit we throw money and lives into only to make things worse.
what even is the point other than "the Israel lobby said so"? Creating "liberal democracies" is certainly not it or else an ISIS mercenary wouldn't have been installed in place of Bashar al asad?
US itself is not a representative democracy either.
Well there is oil there too
Well the nearly $900 billion dollars budget the US military has, has to be spent somehow.
What puppet did the US install?
They’re being dramatic. We installed the Shah [EDIT: as an autocrat] with the ‘53 coup [1]. That was our original sin.
But the Islamic Republic wasn’t an American creation. Neither was Saddam’s Iraq or the Mujahideen or Al Qaeda. We variously facilitated, opposed and ignored these elements, mostly the last. Ignoring the Soviet history in the region, together with the fact that Iranians aren’t automatons, but human beings with agency and preferences, continues this tradition of American fatalism that ignores how complicated (and independent of ourselves) these systems are.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9ta...
I like this new trend of defending American Imperialism by claiming that the other side doesn’t recognize the human beingness of the Other.
> new trend of defending American Imperialism by claiming that the other side doesn’t recognize the human beingness of the Other
It’s not defending or supporting but pointing out that not every foreign policy choice made on the planet is a result of our actions. There is a mixture of culpability, credit and thus obligation to fix things.
And I’m not going off on a humanistic arc. The criticism is in line with that of Big Man historical models, or conspiratorial ones involving all-knowing shadow governments. These models are simpler to apply than reality, which involves imperfect (and changing) actors acting through the fogs of war and history.
> But the Islamic Republic wasn’t an American creation. Neither was Saddam’s Iraq
Saddam's Iraq was, though; Saddam's rise to power in Iraq was backed actively by the US because he was seen as a useful anti-Communist, and once in power he was backed by the US government (to the point of rushing Donald Rumsfeld out as Reagan's special envoy to assure both Saddam and the world of our support for him after he used chemical weapons) in its long war of aggression against Iran in the 1980s.
Backed actively, not caused by [1]. (And then promptly abandoned by Johnson.)
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi became Shah of the Imperial State of Iran in 1941, succeeding his father after the British forced him out.
I'm unsure as to how the US installed him in 1953. He had been Shah for 11 years.
-> I'm unsure as to how the US installed him in 1953. He had been Shah for 11 years.
Operation Ajax
> Mohammad Reza Pahlavi became Shah of the Imperial State of Iran in 1941
Sorry, you’re correct. We installed him as an autocrat in ‘53.
He already had immense power prior to the coup. At best, his autocratic power was strengthened. Calling him installed by the US is a misrepresentation.
Iran was not a British-style constitutional monarchy. The Shah was not a ceremonial position. His father ruled with even more power than he did. He was just an absentee ruler for the first part of his rule until someone tried to assassinate him.
Never mind that Prime Minister Mosaddegh had dissolved parliament and had been ruling by decree for a year also acted as an autocrat. Even his own party turned against him for abuse of power.
At best, one could argue the British installed the Shah. They are, after all, the people who made him Shah in the first place.
If describing events that took place is being dramatic , then I guess so?
Imagine if someone installed a puppet king in the USA to exploit the resources of the US for their gain, would you think that would be dramatic?
As for the Islamic revolution, it was a reaction to being colonized and subjugated, and I would argue it’s still around because the only other option is being a puppet of the US.
> Imagine if someone installed a puppet king in the USA to exploit the resources of the US for their gain
Literally the colonial governors.
> it’s still around because the only other option is being a puppet of the US
Iran didn’t have to become a hardline theocracy, or a state sponsor of terror, or a nuclear pariah. The IRGC didn’t have to be corrupt and autocratic [1].
The tragedy of the present is it still doesn’t have to be. And while we contributed to the malaise that gave rise to the Islamic Republic (and continue to contribute to its geopolitical insecurity), it’s a step too far to say we caused it.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_th...
> the leadership has been repeatedly chanting "Death To America" for its 45 year history
This is a good read: https://www.mypersiancorner.com/death-to-america-explained-o...
The phrase is ugly, but it's how you say "fuck the US government" in a very melodramatic and poetic language where the most common way of calling your friend's baby cute translates to "let me martyr myself for this child."
I am not an expert in the language or the culture, so I'm willing to accept that as the truth.
Nonetheless... they've had 45 years to figure out what it sounds like to us. Those 45 years started with actual violence, and has continued with various forms of proxy conflict. So I don't think it's 100% on us to de-escalate the situation.
(That said... they had been working on that de-escalation, and we're the ones who threw that in the bin about a decade ago. So I'd say the burden has shifted substantially back in our direction.)
The reason you guys threw it in the bin is here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mossad_infiltration_of_Irani...
We withdrew because of information that was already 15 years out of date?
I'd understand if it showed that Iran was failing to live up to the JCPOA. But to withdraw based on what it had been doing back in 1999-2003, a decade before the agreement? That, I can't follow.
> I'd understand if it showed that Iran was failing to live up to the JCPOA
But it does show that, from the wiki:
According to journalist Yonah Jeremy Bob and nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis, much of the key contents were already reported in past IAEA reports. However, the trove provided more clarity about Iran's specific goals for its arsenal,[12] and it proved that Iran violated the JCPOA, which prohibited Iran from engaging in any research and development activity and required full disclosure of all of Iran's nuclear program, including documentation
> can't follow
Actually it is hard to follow! Both governments made it as if because the evidence was found, US withdrew from the pact. However, the operation to gather the evidence was launched so as to give the US a valid reason to withdraw from the pact. The cause-effect is the other way around. Of course, everyone suspected that Iran wasn't keeping up the promise with or without evidence anyways. The evidence was needed solely to give the US president a political reason to dump a deal set by his predecessor.
My only quibble with what you said is that this war was started by Iran on 10/7/23. Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, etc - these were all part of the self proclaimed "Axis of Resistance".
People may disagree on the ethics of who is the "right" side, if the war was fought "fairly" and according to the "ethics of war", but you would have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to believe that Hamas and Hezbollah and Houthis were not Iranian proxies armed and funded by Iran and acted independently from Iran's goals.
As a corollary, I do not buy into the idea that this Israel/Iran war was/is being fought (only) because of the nuclear issue. It is being fought because it is the last (hopefully) part of the larger war of Israel vs Axis of Resistance, which can only be resolved through the defeat of either Israel or Iran.
If Israel is defeated, the Muslim world can then go on to fight their Shia vs Sunni war, if Iran is defeated, Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, Iran in Iraq, and Houthis will basically go away and those nations/territories will need to determine their future, both internally and their relationships with Israel and the Muslim world.
What makes you think Israel is capable of having a decent relationship with its neighbors? They never have before. And they have no need to have a decent relationship because they have the US giving them enormous amounts of money and weapons.
I think the best way to fix Israel is to bring in refugees from an unrelated conflict, like Sudan, and once the Sudanese have a significant minority then Israeli politics won’t be ethnofascist anymore.
Israel currently has good relationship with Jordan and Egypt, and since last year, Lebanon and Syria, so all of their neighbors actually.
Did you see any of ME countries helping Iran?
> If there is ever any moral justification for going to war - that's it. It's defensive. That's arguably the only justification for going to war.
Russia considers that Ukraine being part of NATO is an existential threat to it's territorial safety. Therefore it has invaded Ukraine. Was that justified then? After all this was a defensive move that was meant to keep a buffer between Russia and NATO.
If all you need to do to justify a war is to have a defensive moral justification and because we agree that the best defense is offense, then ergo war is peace.
Listen to likes of John Mearsheimer. They see things from a crisper perspective without all this propaganda
I don't pretend this is an argument at all in towards the situation in Iran, so don't quote me as justifying action or inaction there in regards to this, but it is interesting to take note North Korea actually has dozens of real nuclear weapons and the death to America rhetoric and all we seem to do is laugh at them. Of course NK has no real ability to blow up the US, but they could likely nuke or at least obliterate a sizeable piece of ally South Korea no problem.
That's a very fair point.
I think the difference is that Iran has been actively trying to follow through with its threats and this has been demonstrated through its actions towards an American ally over the past year. This gives reason to believe that Iran's threats are both credible and, while a full-scale war between Iran and the USA might not fare well for Iran ... you don't need to demonstrate that you are capable of wiping out a population or winning a war in order to represent a credible threat. If only one of Iran's missiles manage to land in a densely populated area... people die. And that's enough to warrant a response IMO.
> this has been demonstrated through its actions towards an American ally over the past year.
And what about that ally's actions towards Iran? Like assassinating political and military figures inside the country? Which would traditionally be considered an act of war. If anything, Iran has been too passive.
> And what about that ally's actions towards Iran?
I'm going to share a personal world view. Some may find this controversial or strongly disagree with this world view and that's fine. This is my opinion, not yours.
What gives a nation-state legitimacy is how well adheres to what is, in my personal opinion, the only moral justification for having a government in the first place: the protection of individual rights.
Human beings have two fundamental ways that we can deal with each other: reason/diplomacy or force.
When reason is chosen, life flourishes. People live together peacefully and we create things, start businesses & families and build communities and thrive.
When force is chosen we get war, destruction, poverty, misery and death. We get gangs, thugs and instability.
The need for a government comes from this dichotomy. Government exists, fundamentally, to remove the element of force from civil existence.
My definition of liberty is "An environment in which all interpersonal relations are consensual."
No country, even the freest in the world today, adheres to this principle perfectly. But we can certainly say that some do it better than others. We can even say that some do it a HELL OF A LOT better than others to the point where there is no rational basis for comparison.
Therefore, the question "And what about that ally's actions towards Iran?" places Israel and Iran on equal moral footing.
I reject that wholeheartedly.
On the one hand you have a nation state that is a liberal democracy. It's not perfect, but people can live and pursue their lives there in relative peace and freedom. You can believe what you want to. Live your life as an LGBT+ individual without interference. Start a business. Own property. Have a family and pretty much do what you want with your one and only shot at this life.
On the other hand you have a religious theocracy that murders women for not covering their hair and throws LGBT+ people off of rooftops and executes people just for criticizing the government.
So, what ABOUT Israel's actions towards Iran, exactly?
To point the finger at a free country taking action against a dictatorship is to suggest that that dictatorship has rights.
It doesn't.
The entire basis for a country's right to exist is the recognition and protection of rights. You can't, on the one hand, say "I have the right to exist and to defend myself" while routinely infringing on the rights of your own citizens. You can't violate peoples' rights and then go and hide behind the concept of rights. That concept is based on the mutual recognition, respect and value for reason and diplomacy over force.
> You can't, on the one hand, say "I have the right to exist and to defend myself" while routinely infringing on the rights of your own citizens.
So you think the US doesn't have a right to exist?
> Of course NK has no real ability to blow up the US, but they could likely nuke or at least obliterate a sizeable piece of ally South Korea no problem.
They could hit any number of US bases, they also have ICBMs "estimated to be at least 15,000 km (9,300 mi), allows it to reach targets anywhere in the contiguous United States."[0]
"Kim announced a Five-Year Defense Plan that said the country would field a new nuclear-capable submarine, develop its tactical nuclear weapons, deploy multiple warheads on a single missile, and improve its ICBMs' accuracy, among other goals. The plan includes development of an ICBM with a range of 15,000 km for "preemptive and retaliatory nuclear strike," and ground-based and sea-based solid-fueled ICBMs. Some analysts predict an increase in missile testing this year in order to meet these goals by 2026." [1]
They are also working with Russia now. "Russia is increasingly supporting North Korea’s nuclear status in exchange for Pyongyang’s support to Moscow’s war against Ukraine."[2]
The threat assessment[2] says about Iran: "We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so."
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwasong-19
[1] https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF10472
[2] https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/...
North Koreans are (mostly) not subject to death cult mentality in the same way that the Iranian leadership is. Note: Iranian leadership, not the people.
The artillery aimed at Seoul was equivalent to nuclear deterrence. Before North Korea had a nuclear bomb it was widely known that any military action against it meant the complete destruction of Seoul. The artillery in place, armed, and staffed was basically equivalent to having nukes so neither the US nor anyone else could stop them from pursuing nuclear weapons.
They still needed a second strike option. Since the MIRV arrived the possibility of the whole artillery being destroyed was getting greater.
NK isn’t paying people to bomb SK every other week.
On the one hand you have a country which has nuclear weapons with a regional ally that doesn’t want to say whether it has nuclear weapons or not that has in real life couped the other country’s government. On the other hand you have the country which Israel lies about getting nuclear weapons (et tu?) very soon and that says mean things about Israel and the West. Conclusion: there is “certainly” no blame for responding (invading) that other country.
Thank you for the opportunity to engage in healthy criticism of rogue states.
I'm willing to bet that the majority of Americans can't connect the dots between the Iraq War and the creation of ISIS.
I bet. The middle east is more complicated than quantum mechanics. There are like gazillions of factions, local and foreign. You would think you can roughly group them into Israel+US, Russia, Shia, Sunni. They surely all hate each other. But there are still constantly shifting alliances. At some point Iran (Shia?) was funding ISIS (Sunni?) only to later team up with the US and Israel to fight them. Sometimes all these islamist groups have a dude who looks like the leader but it's actually the guy two levels down who is the real puppet master. And everybody is known under at least three different names all of which are Al-something. I tried to read a book on this but you become this manic investigation board meme guy.
> Iran funding ISIS
I’ll never understand the mentality of people who confidently yap about things that they don’t even have a basic understanding of. Iran didn’t fund ISIS, they are the ones who defeated it. ISIS was trying to destroy Assads government (Iranian ally), why would Iran fund them.
Seriously impressive level of ignorance and hubris on display here.
Iran did not fund ISIS.
Right, they do fund Sunni Palestinian groups, especially Hamas, but mostly they stick to Shia paramilitaries.
Because 1) America won’t allow nations near Israel to be successful, it’s too much of a threat to our greatest ally and 2) war is incredibly profitable.
> nations near Israel to be successful,
I'm guessing that doesn't include Turkey or the rich oil arab states.
Actually they're already "joking" on Israeli TV that Turkey is next, and AEI is on the case making it clear we may need to go to war to take out Turkey next.
https://x.com/clashreport/status/1935078004230865094
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/israel-iran-war-dry-run-for-a-fut...
you going to omit that erdogan been threatening israel first ?
narrator yes, he will omit that president threatens another country but will make a big deal out of host on tv show
Turkey's president has vowed to "liberate Al-Aqsa mosque" from Israel https://www.newarab.com/news/hagia-sophia-resurrection-paves...
Turkish President Erdogan did not hesitate to issue a rare threat to Israel in a party rally, speaking on the ongoing war in Gaza: 'Perhaps we will invade just like we entered Karabakh and Libya' https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/middle-east/levant-turkey/art...
Israel is stooping to Ergodan’s level, sure. But the standard should higher for Democratic countries, nuclear powers, and countries who receive enormous foreign aid from the US for “self defense.”
It was random journalist in israel joking on tv show
you are going to compare what somebody random says to what head of state (that is member of nato) says ?
A stable Iran seems to be doing a pretty good job of breeding terrorism, too though.
If we're being extremely generous, the goal of regime change would be to bring a new stability with economic prosperity and inclusion as well as more meaningful political inclusion, so as to reduce the amount of marginalized population with nothing to loose that are easy to recruit for terrorism.
Of course, when the nation building fails or is never even tried, it's pretty easy for recruiters to say "look around, they destroyed our country (with bombs or embargoes or tariffs or resource exploitation or offensive media), we have nothing to live for, and it's their fault; let's make them pay"
I don't think you can stop all terrorism, but if you want to put a dent in it, you need to give the broad population hope for prosperity, and you need to fulfill that hope on the regular.
What if we instead we were just responsible for killing all of their kids, would that work? I could see that working in the US just randomly kill a bunch of peoples kids and that would calm everything down.
You've got to be kidding me. The US actively supports and runs interference for the biggest terror state in the Middle East right now. We are also buddy buddy with another country in the Middle East that dismembered one of our journalists and provided most of the 9/11 high jackers.
IRGC is known for funding and training militant and terrier groups globally. They also call for the annihilation of the Big Satan (USA) and the Small Satan (Israel). All the while running for The Bomb. I wouldn’t call the present sutuation stable.
> known for funding and training militant and terrier groups globally
So does the US.
> They also call for the annihilation of the Big Satan (USA) and the Small Satan (Israel)
You are literally calling for the annihilation of their state here.
> All the while running for The Bomb.
Only one country has ever used nuclear weapons in war.
There is definitely a cold war going on between Israel and Iran. I'm not sure if it escalating to a hot war would be better. The 20th century Cold War had all the same things you mentioned, with both sides fighting proxy wars, calling for the annihilation of the other side, and had atomic weapons. And I think everyone agrees that the end of the cold war that we had was definitely better than nuclear Armageddon.
And I don't know if the 20th would have been better if only the US had atomic weapons. MAD might have saved millions of lives in both sides.
> So does the US.
nope.
> You are literally calling for the annihilation of their state here.
Nope, people are only calling for the unpopular regime to be replaced by a popular one.
> There is definitely a cold war going on between Israel and Iran.
Hezbollah is an actual arm of the IRGC so it's a hot war and has been for 25+ years.
Nobody is buying this bullshit anymore, we're not going down for your campaign to dupe us into "replacing a popular one" like happened in Iraq when the USA created a power vacuum and then much of it got taken over by ISIS, much of which was left to Kurdish and other local resistance groups to flush out after your deranged "nope. Nope," propaganda of lies military campaign ended.
Oh no! Mean words!
Anyway we have plenty of people here that hate the US and are far more likely to actually create a problem.
Furthermore I'd argue the deficit spending (a very large portion of which is defense) is a much more serious existential threat.
The only explanation that makes sense to me, is that there are some psychopaths in charge of American foreign policy and their thinking goes like this.
1) we want to control oil and oil prices because it’s crucial to our bank accounts. 2) if the Middle East unites we will lose control over oil 3) we must make sure they never unite 4) we need to support varying regimes to increase instability in the region. If we keep the Middle East fighting we can continue to extract oil.
Lots has changed since 50s so one would think this strategy would get updated, but it seems it has not.
(Also for the record I think this is abhorrent, but I think some people do think like this)
Because they are threats to Israel.
Can you give an example since 2003?
Afghanistan was in the middle of a semi-active civil war when the US joined the fray, and by providing large scale air support to Northern Alliance troops on the ground, the situation changed abruptly. Iraq involved multiple US divisions of troops, which took months to get into position to launch a large scale ground invasion. Libya was in the middle of a very active civil war when the US started Operation Odyssey Dawn(1).
All of those cases involved a whole lot of troops on the ground, which is something that I see as notably missing from any plans discussed so far. Outside troops invading seems like a very bad idea, because Iran's population is about that of those other three combined. Operating sufficient outside country ground troops to topple the existing government would quickly lead to friction between civilians and the outside troops, which would almost certainly quickly turn into a revolt of some kind, and fatally undermine any government they attempted to put in place. Also, it would take a very long time for sufficient US force to topple the Iranian government to arrive in the area, and then either launch a D-Day style opposed amphibious assault or operate from one of Iran's neighbors with sea access (2). But because there is no preexisting Iranian civil war, there is no local source of ground troops either.
I don't think we've ever seen a government toppled by external air-strikes alone. The general consensus from research is that being bombed makes citizens support the government more, not weaken their resolve.
1: It didn't lead to change of government, but Operation Allied Force- the NATO bombing of Serbia helped the Kosovo Liberation Army achieve their independence- again air-power supporting troops on the ground to achieve an aim, not air-power alone. What eventually toppled the government of Serbia was the Bulldozer Revolution a year later, with no outside military force involved.
2: Your choices are not going to be good ones. Iraq? Turkey through Kurdistan? Pakistan?
> All of those cases involved a whole lot of troops on the ground, which is something that I see as notably missing from any plans discussed so far
Oh absolutely. I compared it to Kabul and Baghdad (and not Libya) for a reason. There is not a mobilised resistance in Iran.
The lack of boots-on-the-ground plans is why I don’t see us teetering towards Iraq 2.0, but instead the U.S. eventually using bunker busters at Fordo and calling it a day. (To the extent we’re seeing the right recipe “liberation” rhetoric, it’s in respect of domestically deploying the military.)
^ This
There will be no nation building component. Israeli leadership has no interest, nor does American leadership. And the Gulf States, Turkiye, Russia and China lack the capacity and/or manpower.
Sadly, I feel Iran will most likely teeter into a Libya or Myanmar style Civil War with the Army, IRGC, Basij, and local police at each others throats in the heartland, and ancillary regions like Iranian Azerbaijan, Iranian Kurdistan, Khuzestan+Ilam, and significant portions of Balochistan and Khorasan becoming de facto autonomous and meddled in by regional powers.
The thing is that the population of Iran is not being bombed, except a few high-ranking military personnel. It's the nuclear facilities, air defense sites, and some electrical power facilities that have been bombed.
A number of meetings / manifestations of expatriate Iranians happened around the world, supporting the Israeli actions. The current regime earned no love from most of the population, it seems; massive anti-government protests happened in Iran for last few years, sometimes lasting for months.
If there is no civil war and no actual troops on the ground, the regime may still be unstable enough, its pillars like IRGC being paper tigers, and willing to defect. It can still fall. An example: the Soviet regime fell in 1991 within a week, basically without any war, and the USSR split into its formal constituent republics, most of which stayed peaceful since then. Another example: the Portuguese regime fell within a week in 1974, with zero shots fired.
Governments do fall to internal revolt/collapse regularly. I mean, Iran has done so within the memory of most of its senior leadership! They understand this much better than I do- Khamenei himself played a major role in toppling the Shah. Just generally that doesn't happen while being attacked by other countries air-power, which as a general rule makes populations support their governments rather than start marching in the streets against them.
Thanks to historians, we can understand things like the collapse of the USSR better (my favorite English language book- I am sadly monolingual- would be Plokhy's _The Last Empire_) and see the personal and impersonal forces that ended up tearing the country apart, and doubtless some of those are present in Iran right now. But I personally would not bet on these strikes helping to topple the existing government.
I tend to disagree. Iran was already on the verge of a succession crisis, as Khamenei only rose to power by viciously putting down Khomeini's allies after his passing, and the inter-service rivalry between the Army (leaning towards reformers like Khomeini's grandson), IRGC (autonomous), and the Basij (lead by Khamenei's son). This is the forcing function.
Iran had a very violent succession crisis in the late 80s-early 90s, but the titans of the revolution and rallying behind the flag due to the Iran-Iraq war helped ensure some base amount of unity.
There is a vacuum in Iran's elite, as most of the upper and mid-level echelons are those who solidified their fiefdoms in the 1990s.
> The thing is that the population of Iran is not being bombed, except a few high-ranking military personnel. It's the nuclear facilities, air defense sites, and some electrical power facilities that have been bombed.
this is not true. they bombed residential buildings in the capital city of the country. children have died in these bombings.
Baghdad and Kabul had nowhere near the military capabilities of the Iranians who can close shipping lanes, sink US warships and attack military bases and oil installations in the region, in addition to devastating all the major Israeli cities. In the chaos that ensues, the Chinese and Russians would move in and take advantage. The global economy would grind to a halt and America would spiral into a depression that would take at least a decade to recover from.
how the "devastating all the major israeli cities" going ? or they didn't start yet
> It was in filling the vacuum that left.
Maybe this was a question that should have been asked before these regimes were toppled but nobody bothered so here we are. Instead the US and it's allies come in with their big boots and try to give people "democracy" without thinking that maybe this is just not the right thing to do at this time. But we know better right?
As if there aren't enough problems in the US and in Europe, we need to keep involving ourselves with conflicts that mostly do not concern us. This is a conflict in the middle east and the countries of this region should be in charge of trying to find a solution to it.
America really can't afford this right now. We spent _trillions_ on the last middle east operation.
Money has never been a problem for America; it can just create it as per its needs.
When every country lining up to buy US debt they can print as much money as they wish. Lately however that buying of the US debt does not seem as attractive as it used to be.
I don't think our current administration cares what we can afford
America can ALWAYS afford war.
We can totally afford it, DOGE deleted a bazillion dollars worth of waste, so we have plenty of money to burn on another crusade in the Middle East! /s
Iraq and Afghanistan lacked friends though.
Iranian Regime has strong backing from Brics and others.
> Iranian Regime has strong backing from Brics and others
The BRICS meme from a security standpoint is hollower than the financial one.
Russia and China have no interest (the former, ability) in getting enmeshed in another Anglo-Iranian war. Most of the oil travelling through the Strait of Hormuz goes to Chinese refineries; they really don’t want this to escalate. Both would probably make the occupation phase painful for Americans. Like we did for the Soviets. And the Iranians did for us. But that’s again post-regime change, the part we’ve never figured out how to do since the Marshall Plan, and not in the toppling of the regime bit, which we’re ridiculously good at.
The evidence for the above is the current lack of military or intelligence support anyone is providing Iran.
Not true.
Chinese planes with transponders being turned off are landing in Iran with unknown Cargo on board. (Reported across the news). Iran is supplying Russia with Drones for Ukraine so strategic partner.
Russia recently lost Syria as an ally with the change in government, they will not want to lose Iran to the USA too.
If the West can back Ukraine to the level they have done, then no different for Iran's friends to do the same.
Everything you’re describing fits prolonging a guerilla conflict. That is, planning for post collapse influence.
There is really only one thing Iran would sell its soul for right now, and it’s Russian or Chinese troops announcing that they’ve stationed themselves at Fordo. (Thereby turning an attack on the regime’s nuclear ambitions into an attack on a nuclear state.)
> If the West can back Ukraine to the level they have done, then no different for Iran's friends to do the same
Excluding China, orders of magnitude of differences in capability.
They are turning off their transponders?! No way.
> They are turning off their transponders?! No way.
Maybe half a dozen transports did so after filing false papers about flying to Luxembourg. Whatever military kit is flying is in in practice inconsequential. It’s more likely shuttling something important out, or deploying surveillance equipment to get SIGINT on B-2s.
Those things didn't seem very easy.
Tribal?
LoL exactly what I thought. Persians are extremely proud of being NOT tribal, unlike their Azeri, Afghani, Turkmeni or Tajik neighbours. Most Persians consider themselves proud inheritors of the Achaemenid and Sassanid Empires.
There are in fact tribes of Turkmen, Shahsevan, Lurs, Qashqai and various Kurds in Iran.
Yes, but overall the culture is not tribal, even amongst the Azeris of Iran (who were traditionally the largest tribal group in Iran). Within Iran, they see themselves along ethnic lines.
About 10-20% of the population.
> I know everyone wants to gobble down the campaign about complete air superiority and toppling of leaders, and that WhatsApp may be separating the regime from 52 virgins, but realize this is a propaganda campaign. This initial propaganda only serves to manufacture consent long enough to buy citizens in to blood so they can't back out. We're in the process of being tricked.
Everyone wants to gobble down... I.e. here’s another invasion war but it’s our ally this time so it’s good actually. They’re gonna dezanify^W de-islamism Iran.
Source:
The Snowden leaks revealed the PRISM program, whereby major tech companies like Facebook, Apple etc all collaborate with the US government. No reason to believe that's still not in place.
FISA, Room 641A, Patriot Act.
If I told you 50 years ago, "Hey, we're going to build a worldwide surveillance network and make the people we are tracking pay for it", you would not have believed me. But that is what happened.
Cell phones.
Yes, because the sole reason someone would possess a cell phone is to be tracked, with no other legitimate reason for wanting a cell or smartphone at all. /s
While tracking is an unfortunate consequence, cell phones and smartphones have become indispensable aspects of our daily lives. We can lament their prevalence or highlight their negative impacts, but reducing cell phones to “tracking devices people pay for” is an overly simplistic view IMHO.
Hardly indispensable, it just feels that way to many.
I totally share the concern about “secure” messengers leaking plaintext not due to encryption failures, but through archives, relays or vendor-controlled exports. As someone pointed out in this thread - “There’s always an attempt to ‘secure the system’... but E2EE alone doesn’t guarantee safety.”
What really matters is modeling real world threats and minimizing risk at every point in the system. That’s where GOSPL.CHAT stands out. It was designed with context-aware security from the ground up, with critical safeguards like:
No plaintext ever accessible to intermediaries or vendors
Zero-knowledge archives, where only the end user can decrypt their data
No export features or backdoors that can be exploited
These protections mean that even if infrastructure is breached or supply chains are compromised, user data remains unreadable. GOSPL doesn’t just promise encryption — it ensures resilience in the face of real threats. That’s the level of trust we actually need.
I'd like to think that it's because WhatsApp is adding ads.
9 out of 10 dentists recommend overthrowing your oppressive regime.
I kind of suspect this is more a desperate regime on the brink of (at least military) collapse grasping at straws.
Potentially they might be worried about anti-regime activists organizing on whatsapp and want to push people to more easily monitoriable alternatives.
If iran knew meta was doing this for a long time, then it raises the question of why they are just asking people to delete it now. One would presume that such a serious opsec issue would require immediate action.
If they just figured this out right now, its a bit hard to imagine how that happened given how disruptive the bombing campaign has been.
The timing just seems really suspicious to me.
It is also about sending a message to the population (no pun intended), about uniting them against a common enemy. Dictators want people to believe that their enemy is also the enemy of the people.
The idea that Israel is trying to help the Iranian people is a falsehood. Israel is bombing residential neighborhoods. This is cynicism on the part of the Israeli government, something we should be well aware of now as they are completing the final stages of the genocide in Gaza.
Israel wants nothing more than for Iran to be free of the IRGC.
Unlike Israel's Arab neighbors, Iran didn't attempt to destroy Israel (and kill all the Jews) in 1948. Before the IRGC took over, Iran and Israel had no problems.
The IRGC has made it clear that destroying Israel is one of their primary foreign policy objectives. They have said this, and it's why they funded Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.
Israel wants a regime change, that is clear. However it’s absurd to suggest the Israeli government has benevolent intentions toward the Iranian people considering that it is bombing people living in residential areas (never mind the Israeli defense minister’s comments that the Tehran residents will pay for Iran’s counterattack on Israel).
"Israel's defense minister warned Saturday that "Tehran will burn" if Iran continues firing missiles at Israel." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-israel-retaliatory-strikes...
Don't get me wrong, Katz is a douchebag, but this was specifically a threat to retaliate in-kind of Iran continued to target arbitrary Israeli population centers.
I haven't seen any evidence of Israel targeting civilians (nuclear scientists aside), despite having complete air supremacy over Tehran. Air supremacy means Israel could carpet bomb the city if they wanted, but they don't want this. Not only would it be a horrible thing to do and of no military value, they simply don't blame the people of Iran for the IRGC's actions.
> Not only would it be a horrible thing to do and of no military value, they simply don't blame the people of Iran for the IRGC's actions.
So then it’s remarkable that it’s nevertheless occurring.
I posted this elsewhere ITT but the parent comment is now flagged so it may be difficult to find. I post it below.
> Shock, fear in Tehran after Israel bombs residential, military areas
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/13/shock-fear-in-tehra...
> Today, Iran is once again under heavy bombardment with Israeli air strikes targeting residential areas, civilian buildings, hospitals, media offices and military sites.
https://apnews.com/article/israel-iran-mideast-war-news-06-1...
> Health authorities also reported that 1,277 were wounded, without distinguishing between military officials and civilians.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-attack-iran-civili...
There are countless reports of this nature.
"without distinguishing between military officials and civilians"
Israel has air supremacy over Tehran. The facts don't support your narrative that Israel is flattening Tehran.
“Flattening” implies damage more widespread than I have described. My statement, sourced from numerous credible news organizations, which I have linked, is that Israel has attacked residential areas. As for Israel’s air superiority over Tehran (also an established fact as far as I can tell) I have no idea how you think that is supposed to be a rebuttal of anything I’ve said.
I think you could reasonably say that there is credible information that Israel has attacked targets that are near or in residential areas (at the very least they seem to have done targeted assinations of high level military officials in their homes).
However that's different than saying they are targeting residential areas themselves. That's the part that i think the other poster is objecting to. Air supperiority matters here because it means Israel has the ability to target basically anything they want (so you could assume things not targeted are by choice and not lack of ability).
If total wounded (not even killed, just wounded) of both millitary and civilians is ~1200, that kind of suggests that Israel is not targeting residential buildings in general, since just a few apartment building would likely have more casualties than that.
Not to say this is iron clad reasoning. Maybe Iran is downplaying casualties for propaganda purposes (otoh i think they would be splashing photos of destroyed residential buildings everywhere if Israel was destroying them in general, as that makes for great PR). I don't really know, but there is enough doubt here that I don't think its confirmed Israel is targeting residential areas in general.
Israel government justified its genocide of Gaza with its supposedly targeted strikes of Hamas. This narrative has lost all credibility. And we have seen with Gaza what effect “PR” has on stopping the atrocities committed there - none.
The Israeli government views non combatants affected as expendable targets with zero value. This is what we are seeing with the strikes on residential areas. It’s not that they are “flattening” Tehran in the initial stages of war, but that Israel military policy so disregards the lives of non combatants that attacks on residential areas are justified in its view.
Thus, the notion that the Iranian people are supposed to unite with the Israeli government to overthrow the “common enemy” (the Iranian government) is absurd; the Israeli war machine should be viewed as having zero regard for the Iranian people; they are expendable as long as Israeli military objectives are furthered; that is an established pattern now and that is what is evidenced by the strikes against residential areas considered against the backdrop of the atrocities in Gaza.
> This is what we are seeing with the strikes on residential areas. It’s not that they are “flattening” Tehran in the initial stages of war, but that Israel military policy so disregards the lives of non combatants that attacks on residential areas are justified in its view.
The death toll in Iran is not really consistent with that. (At least based on what has been reported so far. Admittedly there is much uncertainty)
The death toll reflects the early stages of war not the choice of targets. And we know that the targets include residential areas.
The narrative that there is a genocide in gaza has lost all credibility. The gazan population has grown since the war started, its completely ludicrous to claim a genocide while the population is literally growing. People have been making claims of genocide since Israel took over in '67, it never made any sense then and it makes even less sense today. People who make such claims should be seen for what they are: charlatans and liars looking to discredit zionists and jews everywhere.
You are replying to the alleged false narrative with a rather thin Zionist talking point of your own. The legal definition of genocide does not require total population numbers to go down. The deliberate systemic slaughter and use of starvation are enough on their own.
GHF has ramped up to distributing about 3 million meals per day now. Reportedly 58 Gazans have starved during the conflict [1], implying an FMR of something like 0.0005. Any starvation is awful, but it's nothing compared to global averages. There are actual famines (with FMR over 2) in other parts of the world, but few people seem interested in those.
There's certainly more work to be done to fix food insecurity in Gaza, but aid distribution challenges are hardly evidence of genocidal intent.
[1] https://imemc.org/article/child-dies-of-malnutrition-amid-wo...
The aid distribution “challenges” are because Israel is blocking all aid except that which comes from the GHF itself. Israel has created the conditions for starvation by destroying agriculture and blocking all aid except for four GHF aid stations. The GHF aid stations weaponize starvation by concentrating Gazans near the Egyptian border and providing a token nod to humanitarian concerns (Israel’s policy throughout this genocide) - never mind the regular shootings that take place at these stations. Prior to October 2023 there were 400 aid stations in Gaza requiring 500 truckloads of aid [1]. Today there are four GHF stations run by military contractors.
The insufficiency of these aid points is also evidenced by the people dying of starvation in this hell hole. Low numbers of people dying from starvation indicates its early stages. It takes a while for people to starve to death. Typically a population suffers malnutrition for some period before the death toll rapidly balloons. The famine deaths, far from pointing to the absence of famine, indicate we are in the early stages of mass starvation brought on by Israel’s policy.
Do not forget that the Israel government created this famine and is blocking all aid except for the aid to can weaponize. And starvation is just one of the many weapons it is using to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
[1] https://www.fcnl.org/updates/2025-06/gaza-humanitarian-found...
It's not a perfect solution, but at least GHF is distributing aid directly to civilians who receive it for free, unlike the old system.
> Prior to October 2023 there were 400 aid stations in Gaza requiring 500 truckloads of aid
Why are you focused on these particular metrics? Meals or calories distributed per day seems more relevant.
> Typically a population suffers malnutrition for some period before the death toll rapidly balloons.
For how long of a period? It was 32 starvations as of 04/01/2024, and another 26 since then. Nothing in the data seems to suggest an impending spike.
> the Israel government created this famine
There is food insecurity, not a famine. FMR would need to increase by something like 4,000x to meet part of the definition of a famine.
Starvation shows every sign of worsening under this system. Rather than aiming to resolve mass starvation (manufactured by Israel’s policies in the first place), it should be seen for what it is, part of Israel government’s very consistent policy of paying humanitarian lip service and offering token humanitarian gestures while intensifying genocide.
The latest IPC snapshot from May 12 starts that while the entire population is facing acute food insecurity, 470,000 are facing catastrophic levels using the IPC classification. It alerted that under current conditions of military action and blockade a full blown famine under its classification would be occurring now, during the current period (May 11-September) [1].
At the end of May the four GHF stations were opened. However the amount of food supplied could only conceivably feed half of Gaza’s population if distributed equally [2]. Many people are already starving and need much more than 1.5 meals a day; besides, logistically this kind of food distribution is impossible for many reasons not the least of which is the mass destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure by Israel’s military.
As of the IPC report, starvation was worst in northern Gaza and in Rafah (in the south). The GHF aid stations are located in the south; in Rafah the military operations have only worsened food scarcity there.
It is quite telling that people every day attend these stations despite the horrible killings of civilians by the military contractors running them. That in itself shows the degree of starvation the Gaza people are experiencing.
[1] https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipc-country-analysis/details-map/en/...
[2] https://www.ajc.org/news/humanitarian-aid-in-gaza-whats-real...
3 million meals a day doesn't seem like a token gesture. It may not be enough, but GHF has been operating for less than a month and is still ramping up. You can criticize their implementation, but I don't see how you can deny that it's a serious effort to address food insecurity.
We've been hearing "risk of famine" almost since the start of the conflict, when the reality is 58 deaths linked to malnutrition during the conflict. Nigera has had over a million starvations in the same period, and even that isn't a famine. There's a real food insecurity problem, but we shouldn't call it something it's not.
Now you’re dismissing all food scarcity concerns, including ignoring the recent intensification of food scarcity under the blockade, because supposedly a subset of humanitarian concerns expressed earlier in the genocide were overstated. But we have strong reason to believe famine is occurring today, thanks to the IPC reports, our most thorough picture of the food scarcity situation in Gaza, which show a consistently worsening picture, now tipping into famine thanks to the blockade.
To properly evaluate the GHF system we must note:
1) Israeli policy is to provide humanitarian gestures while perpetuating genocide.
2) Israeli policy manufactured this famine in the first place.
3) The GHF system is widely seen as inadequate and inhumane among humanitarian organizations. The inadequacy is corroborated by the IPC reports as I described in my last reply to you, providing token aid in the south that does not address the mass starvation in the north or Rafah.
4) Israeli military are continuing to block all aid except for the GHF stations under the control of the war machine.
5) GHF aid stations are the sites of frequent killings of starving civilians.
6) Mass starvation is occurring (again, we know this from our most thorough picture, the IPC reports).
Thus the purpose of the four GHF stations cannot be to significantly address starvation.
You claim that the stations will ramp up enough to stop the famine that Israel policy has created. However if we soberly assess the situation we must conclude that that scenario would be utterly inconsistent with the facts we have available.
I'm not dismissing food scarcity concerns, just asking that we use accurate language to describe them. You seem to maintain that a famine is occurring or probably occurring. I pointed out that starvations would need to be something like 4,000x higher for that to be true. Is your position that starvations are under-reported by some massive factor like 4,000x? Or that we should drastically relax the threshold of what we consider a famine in order to make the Gaza situation fit?
I was using famine colloquially to mean mass starvation in a wide area. But your comment prompted me to educate myself more about the IPC classification system which depends on 1) 20% of the population face catastrophic food insecurity) 2) more than 30% of children face acute malnutrition and 3) 2 deaths per 10,000 per day (or 4 child deaths per 10,000 children per day) due starvation or malnutrition & disease.
The first two criteria are very likely met. The question is the third piece. Your position is that death rates reported from starvation are low so we have not met the third criteria.
There are a few issues with this argument.
1. it is excess mortality which constitutes famine, not deaths from starvation directly. Admittedly this metric is impossible to accurately determine in the current conditions in Gaza.
2. The starvation numbers we have are from a month ago, already out of date. Deaths in famine balloon, so we are not able to conclude that there is not famine today by IPC criteria. We do know that famine was imminent as of that report so this is a valid concern.
3. Excess mortality due to starvation numbers is what counts, and excess mortality is underreported. Reasons include such factors as poplulation displacements, or the fact that severe malnutrition comprises the immune system and as such deaths can be attributed to proximate causes (disease) rather than the distal cause of malnourishment.
4. The IPC report stated May 12 that famine is “imminent”.
An argument that IPC-defined famine may not be occurring is that the projections were for this period (May 11-September), and that imminent risk of famine may refer to any point during this period.
With all that in mind you are right at least that I should modulate my language. Mass starvation is occurring. We don’t know whether the third IPC criterion for famine is currently met. A better statement on my part would be that famine is imminent as of May 11 with a beginning expected some time between May 11-September, the famine may already be occurring, but we don’t know that the ballooning death rate has yet been triggered in this timeframe. Besides that, becoming aware of the famine (whether it has begun yet or not) won’t happen immediately considering the difficulties of gathering reliable excess mortality numbers in Gaza.
Let's not forget that Israel admitted to funding the gangs in Gaza that are looting aid
https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20250607-israel-admi...
What Israel wants is a free hand in the region and to expel or exterminate Palestinians. How many civilians in Gaza were killed in the last week? The victim card is getting real old.
Fog of war is thick right now. There is plenty of reason for iran to overstate this (to e.g. try and get a rally around the flag affect to increase regime stability). [Otoh, plenty of reason for Israel to understate. Truth is the first casualty of war]
We'll probably have to wait for the dust to settle before we have a good idea what was or wasn't bombed.
International news organizations reporting on this conflict incorporate accounts of residents and human rights organizations. It’s simply not true that the Iranian and Israeli governments are our only source of facts on this matter, or that the reports of attacks on residential areas are the result of “fog of war”.
Would they necessarily know either? There is a lot of confusion during war, especially during the opening stages.
And to be clear, im not saying this because its iran. I also would be cautious of e.g. initial reports during ukraine vs russia. It simply takes time for people to pick up the pieces and figure out what actually happened.
There are numerous reports from a variety of credible sources of attacks on residential targets. Your argument, as far as I can tell, is a vague armchair hunch.
Or, it is a country at war that was initiated unjustly by a third party that has the support of the US, and they're doing all they can to survive.
Why trust a US company when the US helped Israel attack Iran while in negotiations ?
The morality of the situation is kind of beside the point. Iran is either being truthful or they are not. That doesn't change regardless of if they are the side of good or the side of evil.
> Why trust a US company when the US helped Israel attack Iran while in negotiations ?
Potentially. However given that whatsapp/meta is just one random american company that is already banned in Iran (afaik) it seems like that would be a really random action if it was purely about retaliating against usa.
This is the real reason. The leadership has been decapitated, and those still alive are fleeing or hiding in bunkers.
This is the perfect time for an uprising.
The Kurds are already starting whatever they’ve been planning.
Thinking of all the people in Gaza that are communicating on WhatsApp while being basically defenseless against assassination or massacre by Israel unless they are a resistance fighter that's underground (in which case they use a wired internal phone network).
I mean, from a security point of view, those related to the government should use something they control. This goes for all countries.
For the population in general though and in special those who don't like the people in charge of the country, WhatsApp is a great tool. I have to worry about WhatsApp and Meta as I'm in the "west", but there's no chance in hell Meta's going to provide data on any user to the Iranian government... it's a good option for Iranians.
Delete this app that lets you organize aka "please dont overthrow us".
yeah, Israel don't need WhatsApp chats to bomb shit, this is about internal threats.
I bet North Korea would ask the same thing.
There's another country that asked its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices too. That's right, I'm talking about Venezuela, the country led by Nicolás Maduro, a dictator. This immediately raised red flags for me.
Iran being an authoritarian regime is not new.
Maybe Mark should just open up his pocketbook for Maduro and the Iatola like he did for Trump.
I’m surprised Iran has WhatsApp at all tbh.
It doesn't. It has been blocked for years. There was talk about lifting a ban in late 2024, but everyone I know there still use VPNs to use it.
Anyone have a non-captcha-looped source?
It's the Associated Press, so googling the headline will reveal hundreds of syndicates. Same for Reuters.
I wish that to happen to everybody
Most people would rather change their religion than delete WhatsApp.
Why isn't this flagged? Surely this is politics.
Politics, yes, but:
1. Politics has been getting more freedom here lately, especially if it's the first story about something new. This is, as far as I can see, the first story about this.
2. The story has an interesting technical component, about encryption, privacy, and tracking - things that a lot of HN users care about.
3. It mostly hasn't deteriorated into a flamefest.
Politics hasn't been getting more freedom here lately, though, that was my sarcastic point. Every day there's a bunch of stuff flagged off of the front page for being only tangentially related to contemporary American politics yet this gets the thumbs up. It's indicative of people trying to quell certain types of political conversation only.
Number two on your list shouldn't apply because we've seen many technical articles about Tesla, DOGE, etc flagged in the past months
3 shouldn't apply either because we lose posts every day just because they have the "potential" for flaming.
Everything is political.
Tiktok is much safer!
> WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption, meaning a service provider in the middle can’t read a message.
I wish this meme that "whatsapp is secure because it uses e2e encryption" would die.
Why does it matter if the messages are e2e encrypted if the messages are managed on the two ends of the channel by a closed source binary that does who-knows-what.
The whatsapp app itself sees the clear text message. What it does with that information... or what "metadata" it extracts to send to their servers.. who knows.
Considering how popular WhatsApp is, it's very hard to believe that there are no security researchers reverse-engineering its crypto code.
Because WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption, any backdoor must necessarily be on the client side, and all client-side code can ultimately be reverse-engineered. This makes such backdoors very tricky to implement.
With that said, while I think a "general backdoor" (one that weakens the crypto algorithms so much that all messages can ultimately be read by Meta) is super unlikely, a "vulnerability" in some image parsing library, designed and implemented by the NSA, and only used on the most interesting targets... now that's a different story.
> any backdoor must necessarily be on the client side
True, but it might be a part of an update that only hits a white-list of users, so you won't find the actual code that steals your private keys if you're on that list.
This is not allowed as far as I know, at least on iOS.
iOS apps aren't allowed to run arbitrary code that hasn't been signed by Apple. What goes in the AppStore is what runs on your device, and apps are physically incapable of writing data to executable memory. Safari / the built-in Javascript interpreter (and I guess third-party browsers in the EU) are notable exceptions here, as they need JIT.
Sure, Apple could develop special infrastructure to push fake updates to a predesignated list of targets, but at that point, you don't even need collaboration from Meta, and open source apps like Signal are just as vulnerable.
If Apple was willing to go that way, they wouldn't even need to bother with app updates. Ultimately, your messaging history has to be stored on your device in a way that your device can decrypt, and Apple could just steal that info.
I can't speak to what the situation is like on Android, but I presume similar mechanisms exist.
I think the real reason people don't take supply chain endpoint security seriously is that it too quickly regresses to distrust of the OS and hardware. At that point you abandon smartphones entirely.
> At that point you abandon smartphones entirely.
Right into my veins
Thats the paranoid answer. The much simpler answer is that you don't maintain the software on it; updates are done silently by whatever the hardware vendor decides passes their muster (or motive).
You should! They are government surveillance devices that broadcast their position at all times along with every bit of data they gather from their array of sensors: gyro, mic, camera, radio
If the messages are managed on the two ends of the channel by a closed source binary that does who-knows-what.
The meme/trope is that you can't possibly know what such an app does without the source. It just isn't true. There'd be no meaningful phone vulnerability research if it was.
You're assuming the vuln researcher has access to the backdoored binary. That's not necessarily the case.
Imagine if they pushed an update of the app out with the vuln to only some users, or users in {country} in their app release configs
Imagine if they pushed an update of the app out with the vuln to only some users, or users in {country} in their app release configs
"Imagine an arbitrarily powerful adversary operating in arbitrarily narrow, undetectable ways" is not meaningful threat modeling beside being a kind of Universal Goalpost Moving technique. It is not a 'meme' that WhatsApp is e2e encrypted if that's the form and content of your objection. The other thing is still the meme!
> "Imagine an arbitrarily powerful adversary operating in arbitrarily narrow, undetectable ways
Imagine reading the docs. It's a literal thing you can do by pushing code down to the mobile client from your server. We do this all the time for our app. I'm not sure what you're arguing.
At the very least, "closed source" has nothing to do with your objection, which is in fact about build provenance.
> Why does it matter if the messages are e2e encrypted if the messages are managed on the two ends of the channel by a closed source binary that does who-knows-what.
Would you prefer your dissident messages be read by Meta Corporation or the Islamic Republic of Iran? That's the difference.
No, there's no technical difference in the sense that neither solution can be verified to be probably secure vs. third party inspection. But in the real world the specifics of who the actors are are and the tactics they are known to employ are absolutely part of the threat model.
> Would you prefer your dissident messages be read by Meta Corporation or the Islamic Republic of Iran?
I'd prefer my messages to not be available to an actor shown to be using AI to select targets for bombing campaigns.
> read by Meta Corporation or
Neither please! Corpos can obviously sell out or be pressured into giving out info to all sorts of agencies
That's not responsive, though. The point is there are actual human beings in a war zone under a repressive regime making decisions about software. And they aren't interested in your abstract idea about "corpos" being "pressured". They want not to be snatched by the secret police. Please.
How is this "abstract"? Corporations being pressured can directly lead to being snatched by the secret police.
Can you cite the specific instance of Meta (or whoever) receiving pressure that led to an extrajudicial arrest (or whatever)? Or at least the specifics of the sharing that would enable it? Because if you're not talking about specifics your point is "abstract" by definition.
Repression in Iran is real, not abstract. It happens, the state wants to monitor internet use to enable it, and the linked article is very specific about them wanting to disallow Meta's product.
This is no surprise. I raised the flag last year on Whatsapp being used as part of the genocide in Gaza [1] following the +972 article [2] on Lavender.
This was an opportunity for Meta to signal that it wasn't in support of its technologies being used this way, to do top-to-bottom public audit of how this came to be and to prevent it from ever happening again.
Instead, Meta had an incredibly scummy response [3]. They said that "WhatsApp has no backdoors". A "backdoor" and a vulnerability are different, and Meta at the time knew [4] that it had a vulnerability which could have been used in that exact situation (since all Gazan telecoms are surveilled by Israel).
Given Meta's senior leadership is pro-Israel, with their CISO being former Israeli intelligence, and with them massively putting their thumb on the scales to shut down pro-Palestinian activism [5][6][7][8] (including shutting down dissent of it internally [9]).
Now, Meta is aligning with the US military [10], and with the Trump administration [11] which is trying to support a war against Iran that Israel started.
Literally any country which is not US/West aligned should be actively moving their citizenry off Meta.
[1] https://blog.paulbiggar.com/meta-and-lavender/ [2] https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ [3] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240418-israel-using-meta... [4] https://theintercept.com/2024/05/22/whatsapp-security-vulner... [5] https://7amleh.org/storage/meta/Erased%20and%20Suppressed%20... [6] https://theintercept.com/2024/10/21/instagram-israel-palesti... [7] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c786wlxz4jgo [8] https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/report-a... [9] https://7amleh.org/storage/Advocacy%20Reports/Delete%20the%2... [10] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/us-army-tech-executives/ [11] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8j9e1x9z2xo
It's interesting how the narrative about Iran is changing, WhatsApp?!, i thought they were still living in the middle age under a totalitarian dictatorship and with no access to technology whatsoever /s
"Asks" instead of banning? yet the US wants to ban TikTok
Israel will be US/UK's scapegoat, they'll pretend they are the good guy while they force Israel into a war nobody wants
Now they're asking instead of demanding lol
Which means one thing: The people will absolutely keep using WhatsApp, as they hate their gov.
Sounds like a psyop article designed to make you feel like wanting to keep WhatsApp yourself. xD
You kind of lose that desire after they start hinting that you can get droned because you’re using whatsapp..
More like a broken clock being right twice a day.
All of this to avoid saying "We'd be fine with you existing within your pre-1967 borders."
Do you see an out for Khamenei et al? They can’t credibly dismantle their nuclear deterrent and expect to keep their heads. Israel and America cannot accept it, particularly now that its conventional defences have been shown ineffective.
The classic approach, airlifting the Ayatollah to a dacha in Moscow while the IRGC saves face and plots a forever path to new elections, falls apart when you consider how Iran’s internal security and geopolitical alignment would need to be sculpted in a way that would satisfy the great powers. (Iranian crude fuels China’s refineries.)
> They can’t credibly dismantle their nuclear deterrent
Mainly because they don’t have one and never had one. Hard to dismantle something you don’t have. Even harder to do so credibly.
They had programs to obtain a nuclear deterrent. They can dismantle those programs. But they never had the actual nuclear deterrent itself.
They’re sure refining a lot of material for a country that doesn’t have any plans for putting any of it in a nuclear or radiological weapon.
That's the program you are talking about, not the deterrent.
You are mixing up "working on opening a bakery" with "having bread". They are related, but not the same.
Sure, I mean that Khamenei can’t come out and say he’s shutting down enrichment, letting in the IAEA, actually do it and expect to stay in charge.
> Do you see an out for Khamenei et al? They can’t credibly dismantle their nuclear deterrent and expect to keep their heads. Israel and America cannot accept it, particularly now that its conventional defences have been shown ineffective
Honestly, I don’t think the American people have the stomach for another Middle Eastern war, and Israel has shown in the past that if you recognize their right to exist in some form, they’ll leave you the hell alone - see Egypt, Jordan, etc.
So if he pulled back from those two rivalries, I doubt that hurts him much. I’d see it as riskier because of internal power struggles and possibly from regional rivals, but who knows.
Guy’s in his mid 80s and there’s a decent chance Mossad knows exactly where he is. He’s got one foot on a banana peel and the other foot in the grave regardless.
> don’t think the American people have the stomach for another Middle Eastern war
We don’t. That’s why the only plausible escalation here is we bomb stuff and go home.
> if he pulled back from those two rivalries, I doubt that hurts him much
Hmm, I wonder if this could work together with IAEA denuclearisation. Possibly with Chinese help. They, too, have an interest in Iran remaining deradicalised and flowing.
> the American people have the stomach for another Middle Eastern war,
Sure they do. It's another faraway TV war. Trump is just pretending like he s hesitating to ease his fundamentalist MAGA base into it.
But the Democrats/liberals also don't want a war, especially one that vaguely supports Israel. Very few people in America are anything less than strongly opposed, just a few Iran hawks.
We re about to find out in the following days
> We re about to find out in the following days
No, we're not. Not wanting war isn't the same as being willing to sacrifice your livelihood to stop it.
Find out what? I mean, I'm not sure whether Americans support war has much bearing on whether it happens.
> Sure they do. It's another faraway TV war. Trump is just pretending like he s hesitating to ease his fundamentalist MAGA base into it
Nobody wants war. We've re-labelled military maneuver with words that aren't spelled W-A-R. Because, in a perverse way, both "preëmptive strike" and "genocide" are less loaded--emotionally and historically--than war.
But it's still war. War means you die. War means everything you love will die. The things you spent a lifetime building, from paintings to companies to relationships with neighbors and children and pets. They will all die. War means the entropy we ought to have bequeathed to our successors gets spun up to-day.
Then it's over. New generation. Nobody remembers. The drums start beating again. Almost as if by design. Pulses of competition, if one had to be generous.
If there is a single adjuvant to reviving these martial tones, it's the notion that this time is different. That everyone, this time, is just pretending to want to kill each other. That the consent is manufactured. It's not. It's real. We're singing it together.
I'm not sure why we should be 'fine' with people existing in their pre-1967 borders. I'm not advocating any military action, but the idea that we should just shrug while a great classical civilization's entire history and archaeology are being held hostage by iconoclastic religious zealots is not something any humanitarian should just shrug at.
It’s a reference to borders that do not include Gaza, the Golan Heights, or the West Bank.
It’s likely that any two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis would roughly look like how things were before the Six-Day War.
However, I’m getting more at the fact that Iran is unwilling to accept a two-state solution because necessarily, one of those two states would be Israel.
The 1967 borders don't include Gaza or the West Bank, though?
Israel isn't giving up the Golan Heights for basically any reason, and the Druze living there don't really seem to want to be part of any other country either.
so, gaza is going back to egypt and everybody is locked there behind fence. and west bank is annexed by jordan ?
sounds good
Gaza and West Bank as Palestinian territory. That means that Israel would have to retreat to its 1967 borders.
There was no "Palestinian territory" in the 1967 map. Gaza was part of Egypt, the West Bank was part of Jordan.
But neither Egypt nor Jordan want anything to do with them now because of the internal instability it would inevitably result in.
Regardless of other borders, Israel would retreat back to its 1967 borders. That is what they are saying.
They won't. The 1967 borders were broken by a war Israel did not start, but still won anyway. And Palestinians have refused any agreement on where the border should reside since then, which resulted in the current limbo situation. From Israel's perspective, if people wanted to keep the 1967 borders, they shouldn't have tried to invade (again) in 1973. Why would they go back to the terms of an agreement that was already violated.
at 1967 west bank was annexed by jordan and all Palestinians had jordanian citizenship and Gaza strip was part of Egypt, surrounded by barbered wire with military issued permits to enter or exit it.
this is what 1967 borders are. feel free to check maps, wiki, etc. There are no palestinian territory on map at 1967 borders
WhatsApp is already banned in Iran. It's difficult to see this as anything but another attempt by them to gain control over private communications involving their own people.
To me, the most interesting thing about this conflict is the side-choosing of the other nations, because that reveals what kind of games they're playing.
The article mentions the ban was lifted late last year:
"It banned WhatsApp and Google Play in 2022 during mass protests against the government over the death of a woman held by the country’s morality police. That ban was lifted late last year. ( https://apnews.com/article/iran-social-media-whatsapp-google... ) "
> the most interesting thing about this conflict is the side-choosing of the other nations
Could you elaborate on that? Is anyone behaving out of the totally expected?
Russia and China totally expected, they don't help much. Except for Turkey NATO on Israel's side, not surprising. Iraq open sky used for airstrikes. Muslim 'allies' probably help refueling Israelis planes. The rest of the world doesn't care much.