In addition to waging continuous offensive militia operations, it’s been cultivating a conventional and nuclear offensive option which it most definitely would use if it had it, because again, the IRGC’s reason for existence is to “resist” Israel and the US, by which they mean obliterate those nations. What Trump recently has been saying about Iran is exactly what Iran has been saying for decades about the US and Israel.
One of those militias went all Leroy Jenkins in 2023 and prematurely initiated the current hot war, which Iran is losing. In frustration, Iran has embarked on a terror campaign of bombing neutral neighbors to punish them for … friendly diplomacy with the US I guess, and bombing civilians in Israel. And annexing an international waterway.
What Trump and folks on this board don’t seem to realize is that war with Iran is more like fighting a bunch of lawyers. You hurt them kinetically and they make you feel like you hurt yourself, get all confused. They slaughter 35k of their own people and shut off the Internet; the US mixes up the boundaries of an IRGC naval base in a much more constrained horror and the UN starts strutting around.
Narratives do matter for winning wars and between Trump derangement syndrome and the IRGC’s natural cleverness at permanent victimhood, it’s the narrative that’s at risk in a war between great nations that, unfortunately, sadly has been perfectly inevitable for decades.
Then of course they had to deal with Irak who invaded them using US weapons and intel. Including use of sarin gas, thanks to US intel.
The argument about democracy in Iran is hypocritical given that neither Trump or Israelis care about it at all. They just want weak client States.
The Iranians didn't wake up hating the USA one day and a little techouva would be healthy if we want this conflict to end.