And the reason it’s “difficult to determine”

Well yes, but also because I speak a different language and I’m from a different culture and I have a limited amount of bandwidth to devote to foreigners while my own country is such a dumpster fire.

If it’s what the people of Iran want, then it’s no one else’s business to decide.

Fair enough though it’s difficult to determine what the people of Iran want being from a different country and culture half way around the world. Hope they figure it out and make it work.

All these people saying “they want to reinstitute the shah” are basically just making a strawman

From what I’ve seen, it’s Iranians in the streets but I’ll fully admit I’m far away and I’ve seen little.

If the exports weren’t mostly products made with components and raw materials that were imported, you’re thinking would be sound if we were considering the issue in isolation

This is exactly where the US is weakest and where we’ll be hurt the most. If the value of the dollar drops significantly and/or the market for Treasury Bonds collapses, the US is FUCKED.

I doubt it. The US has very little power to foment anything there. Mossad has assets in Iran but limited assets that they use sparingly. This was almost certainly an organic grassroots revolution. Now, I’d for sure agree that Mossad and the US are doing anything in their power to move things along.

Good for them that they want to overthrow their oppressors but depressing they want to replace them with new oppressors in the form of a Shah.

If Europe grows a back bone and actually starts a full on Trade War with the US, I wouldn’t be surprised if China joined in. I could see them carefully timing their action to maximize damage.

Weeeeeelll, the Nazis had illegally taken out a bunch of loans and hidden that fact with financial trickery. That’s how they managed to pay for rearmament. All those loans were coming due, the Nazis couldn’t pay and didn’t want to admit what they’d done so yeah, they invaded Poland. I mean, it wasn’t purely distraction, they also hoped to seize gold and foreign currency in Polish possession but distraction was a huge part of it.

Sounds like Canadians are living in denial. If Trump thinks he can get away with it (and he’s got a huge ego) he’ll absolutely try.

At this point, the Epstein files are the distraction. Trump is going full Fascist both at home and abroad.

Praxis is a start-up that is looking to build a technologically advanced freedom city that’s described as an “internet-native nation” and could hold up to 10,000 people. Backed by PayPal’s Peter Thiel, Altman, and even the Winklevoss twins, potential Praxis locations have been scouted in the Mediterranean and Greenland.

It sounds like they’re trying to be the bad guys in a Young Adult fiction novel.

He’s not suggesting other countries save our own country, he’s suggesting they stand up for themselves and impose consequences on the regime in a way we haven’t been willing to. And it wouldn’t really take fighting. Dumping treasury bonds and ending use of the dollar in trade and as a reserve currency would be devastating. The US is 40 trillion in debt with a huge trade deficit. We’re deeply vulnerable.

How is that pertinent to whether or not the US had the capacity to best NK militarily in the 90s?

We do business and perform politics with many authoritarians

And that’s exactly why the world can’t have nice things.

The key difference, for those unfamiliar with Asia or history, is that South Korea is a cohesive modern nation with a competent military and a strong sense of national identity that feel genuine friendship with the US (for now at least). All things that weren’t true about South Vietnam.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative

Americans still associate China with shit quality merchandise while glossing over that that merchandise is made shit quality because American Importers selected that level of quality and completely ignoring that they make I Phones and other High quality tech.

The thing about bootlickers is that they love licking boot. As long as we’re winning and not losing, they’ll obediently fall in line. If things turn to shit, like it did in Iraq & Afghanistan, they’ll pretend they were always against it.