News article about this: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/02/28/iranian-girls-school-decimated-us-israeli-strike/88919223007/
EDIT: adding some pics:
this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2026
1081 points (99.0% liked)
Memes
54765 readers
1886 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The Iranians' biggest mistake here were to be weak. Ever since 2020 when Trump first attacked them, they failed to achieve any meaningful retaliation, and they have successively failed to achieve any till today.
Seeing that Iran did nothing but a face saving strike when the US took down Solemeni, the Israelis went ahead with striking their consulate in 2024. Seeing yet another weak response, they went for all out strikes on their facilities in 2025. Yet again no retort from Iran. Well, guess what? Now they're rampaging all over the bloody country.
The Americans' assessment of Iran was clear. Iran would not establish any form of deterrence because it clings to the delusions of having a negotiated settlement being ratified, which the Americans themselves never had any intention of signing.
Had the IRGC and Hizbullah replied in a tit-for-tat each time to punish American and Israeli assets in the region for their illegal and insane actions, clear deterrence would have been established and Iran's red lines would have been backed with some credibility. The Americans would not have been so keen to act with such impunity. But again, because of the Ayatollah's futile hope to keep the door open for future negotiations, they've sabotaged their own position as well as their nuclear program. And the result now is that both the IRGC and Hzb have been split apart and are being destroyed one at a time.
Ironically, the Ayatollah's half-hearted policy towards American aggression is what probably cost him his life and those of his immediate family today.
Trump is essentially a shark in the water (no disrespect meant towards sharks). If it smells blood, it will pounce on its prey, no questions asked. But if its prey is willing to struggle, it will move on to another already injured target.
The biggest mistake to make against this kind of adversary is to show weakness. But Iran could not understand that.
Don’t act like you understand sharks, that’s such human ignorance, you don’t know what’s going on in the mind of a shark, don’t speak for us-THEM! Don’t speak for them. Sharks aren’t comparable to that human swine, he could never breach like a majestic god from the almighty wakes of the sea, much less split a seal in twain with his paltry, finite, and weak breakable human teeth. His species has accomplished nothing and will crumble like all the others that came before! Sharks were there before you and they will be there when the memory of humans crumbles to dust and fades to nothing like tears in the rain!
Apologies, your Majesty. A Great White is indeed a formidable creature. Trump is nothing like that, although he is trying too hard to be...
You are comparing Trump to a shark smelling blood in the water, this is an interesting choice by yourself. You talk about America attacking Iran because they are "weak" but you never seem to question why America is attacking Iran, a country of 90 million people on the other side of the world. Why is the real question here, why is America spending billions of dollars, American lives and American international credibility to attack Iran, a country that has never attacked the USA or any other nation in the middle east unprovoked?
Why did America attack Iraq back in the early 2000s? At the time 70% of Americans mistakenly thought it was because Iraq was involved in 9/11. We now know from declassified documents that the main reason the USA attacked Iraq was they thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or "WMDs". This information came from Israeli secret intelligence and we now know this intelligence was bogus. What we are seeing here is the Americans being led by the nose once again by the Israelis into another expensive regime change forever war.
I and many others believe this is down to the weakness of the character of the American leadership, that they are so easily manipulated once again by their Israeli "allies". The same allies that attacked the USS Liberty and spit on American Christians in Tel Aviv. Why do Israelis have free health care and the Americans do not? The USA is subservient to the Israelis to such a degree the only logical explanation to any rational thinker is that Israel must have something on the current American leadership. This will be known as the Epstein war. P
Reasons for the invasion matter of course, but they matter for different people. The American people deserve to know why their treasury is being expended on a war half across the world instead of being used to improve life at home. Or exactly what improvements they reap in terms of security by fighting this war, if their administration is going to tell them that Iran is two weeks from getting the bomb for the last decade anyway.
But these reasons are irrelevant for Iran. Trump could be attacking Iran because he legitimately feels threatened; or for its oil; or to distract the public, or maybe simply because he wants to build a Trump Tower&Casino in Persepolis. The point is that, whatever the insane reasons the United States have for their attack, Iran CANNOT prevent them from acting upon them. Nor can it change the minds of those in charge of writing American foreign policy; no more than the Zulus could change the reasons for why the British Empire attacked them, for example.
What Iran CAN do is set clear consequences for attacks on its sovereignty. "You strike our Consulate. Fine." Two days later Hzb retaliates on a diplomatic mission of the Epstein Coalition. "You kill our officials. Okay" A week later an American military contractor happens to "disappear". And so on. This is tit-for-tat retaliation.
Reasons for war are for the American people to debate on. And I agree with the idea that with such baseless reasons, it really does show the corruption of the leadership that started this war, as well as of those who do nothing to prevent it. But for Iran, it isn't about determining whether the reasons of their attacker are good or bad. It is about making the likelihood of an attack go from possible to impossible, without significant casualties. And Iran has blundered massively on the latter.
I understand the concept of tit for tat retaliation, the problem is American foreign policy for these instances is tit for tat tat. America makes sure its retaliatory responses are overwhelming making a tit for tat deterrence useless against them, this is the advantage of having the largest stick in the world. This is also why America's rivals engage in asymmetric warfare with layers of plausible deniability.
This also assumes Iran is dealing with a rational actor acting logically, there is no evidence Trump is one in this case. This strike has no logical beneficial outcome for the American people, it will be interesting to see if Congress allows America to continue. Trumps reasons for doing Netenyahus bidding to the detriment of the American people is certainly a choice that we can all speculate on.
I disagree with your comparing Iran Vs US to the Brits Vs the Zulu's. It is almost as if you have slept through the last 110 years of insurgency warfare and how effective it can be. Iran is a huge country with a population of 90 million. The USA can bomb with impunity sure but Iran has more people than Afghanistan and Iraq combined with greater military capabilities. Boots on the ground will be needed, you can't win a war with stand off munitions alone. America was entirely unsuccessful with their previous two attempts at regime change by force this century, why would they do better against a bigger and better armed country? Look at the bunch of clowns in charge in America currently, I would not trust them to mind my plants for a week away let alone regime change in Iran.
Not sure what is the point you're trying to argue here. You assume that US escalation is so overwhelming which makes deterrence useless against them; at the same time you correctly point out that US intervention usually fails when they deploy on the ground, let alone how this would go in a country like Iran. So clearly, American escalation reaches a limit when they have have to actually put boots on the ground, if we keep to the realm of conventional action. My point is, if it has to come to this anyway, Iran should have been more assertive with its retaliation and NP to try and prevent the war altogether.
In very few cases is the leader of a state solely responsible for the military actions of said state. A significant portion of his personnel; generals, the MIC, Israeli advisors, economists would have to support or at least assent to this war for it to go ahead. Could they all be crazy? It's possible. But once again, they will have to fight with the options they have, and these options are limited. Iran could have limited them further, but chose not to. And it's unlikely that Trump started this war solely because Israel has "something" on him, because then he'd have to make this case in front of all these people, and it just wouldn't make sense.
The point about the Zulus was to point out the nature of imperialism; the strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must. Ultimately, the reason wars are launched is that because they believe that they can be won. I speculate that the whole rationale on the American side goes something like this: that they can decapitate the regime, bomb relentlessly, let protesters fill the power vacuum, and finally overthrow the Islamic Republic (the Israelis probably have a more eschatological reason). This is a fantasy. The Nazis tried to do the same with Britain, the British eventually retaliated all the same.
The American war machine is essentially a glorified, very expensive police force (much like their actual police depts). It can do overwhelming force, but it isn't going to win a war of (military or economic) attrition. It can't do much for protecting its allies in the GCC, not even its own bases in the region. The likely ending to all this is that the US, just like with Afghanistan, will announce that it "accomplished all its objectives", pack up, and leave. Iran complains, but eventually does nothing like by the past. This just puts the Iranians back to square one, where they were in 2020. I'll guess we'll see if they actually learnt from their mistakes.
This is not the point where US intervention fails. The boots on the ground do their job quite well initially. Where the US fails is long term, they have no long term strategy for these nations they defeat beyond sitting around with their thumbs up their arses for several expensive decades while their opponents simply wait them out.
In terms of retaliation, I still do not believe Iran can do enough to deter the US and the US policy of overwhelming retaliation would just lead to their own destruction by following this path.
In terms of your might is right point on imperialism I would again refer you back to the last century and a bit where all of the great empires collapsed one by one, starting with the Ottoman's, followed by the Germans, British, French and Russian. This was the century of the insurgent, TE Lawrence, Michael Collins, Vo Nguyen Giap amongst others.
The USA is one case where the president is actually Commander in Chief of the armed forces. Provided the order is not illegal, the army have to follow the order of their superior. Trump and the republican party have been going down the state capture route a long time now and there is no one left who will say no to him, as we have seen since he has come to office. Even if someone was brave enough to dissent the would be removed from their position without much thought.
To me it looks like Trump is going to get America dragged into another expensive forever war that with their current debt levels they cannot afford. The attempted decapitation looks like it will not lead to a quick end as Iran entrenches. The American people should rightly be asking the question of why are we striking Iran when Iran has not now or ever posed a real threat to the USA. This is Trump's war, he never even asked for congressional approval. If he's going to bankrupt the American people he should at least have a damn good explanation of why. We are all scratching our heads trying to figure this out.