For the United States, the government doesn't have the capability to extricate Israel from its political system, but the feds can create blowback for Israel which makes them less capable to influence the US in the future while achieving other strategic aims in the region. US war planners know plenty about blow back and I think this is being done on purpose. I am terrified for innocent Israelis, Iranians and Gulf state residents that have been led into this. Most of the states and peoples in the Middle East who have been destroyed used to be allies with the US. That isn't on accident.

I read the source he listed and it doesn't say any of that

If you spend a moment to verify the info that is the fact check.

No one can do the thinking for you.

This is the second time in 2 weeks I’ve seen a comment like this on HN. 37 years old. Been on here 16 years. Incredibly odd to me. Just announce “can someone else tell me if this is true?”

Are you asking someone to fact check publicly available information for you ? Even NYT reported this

Ah yeah, well I didn’t know it was that high!

But I’m responding to the rescue mission comment, which, since Vietnam, have overwhelmingly employed helicopters (Huey’s then, Black Hawks today). But machinery aside, the larger point is that air operations will likely go worse here than they did in Vietnam, unfortunately for both sides.

That A-10’s can’t suppress manpads

>>How many people outside of the admin and the dwindling hardcore trump base actually thought this was a good idea?

> Apparently 37.7% of Americans,

These are the same thing. The MAGA base is fracturing and the polls are showing that with the very number you are using as a retort.

I would question to what extent repeating propaganda, qualifies as debate.

Even if you do say that it qualifies, it doesn't qualify as productive debate.

There is really no productive debate to be had here. Even if you think that Iran needed to be bombed, it took absurd incompetence to start doing so before planning how to handle asymmetric warfare against drones in an affordable way.

I also think there was an initial “euphoria” (I guess) during the initial days of the campaign.

People I know (even Iranian expats) were excited to see the regime get hammered and there was hope for possibility of change (and also a little bloodlust)… but I think as the war drags on and the US is exposed to be in an un-winnable mess, sentiment will continue to sour.

This has already started to happen in Nate Silver’s post you linked.

Your first link says 28% support it, so somewhere between 28 and 37%. I do wonder how many of those people could find Iran on a map, though I suppose you could ask the same about the people who are against it.

75 million using the YouGov number and just under 100 million using the Nate Silver average. (I think you must have used the more Trump-favorable number AND included children in your computation, which is not reasonable.)

Also worth noting that Nate Silver's measure has been declining for almost 3 weeks, the majority of the duration of the invasion.

Before the invasion, a University of Mariland poll says 55 million and a YouTov poll says 71 million support. These are useful numbers because we know there's a rally around the flag effect that distorts thinking during a conflict.

https://criticalissues.umd.edu/feature/do-americans-favor-at... https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/54158-few-americans-suppor...

20-25% of Americans would support Trump pulling his pants down and taking a shit on the floor in the oval office on live TV. These people's opinions shouldn't be taken into account or respected in these discussions.

> seems to fall some along common political lines though

While true, I think it's more correct to say that the determining factor is which television news media people most readily consume.

This is what bringing democracy looks like?! The regime is more entrenched than ever and our commander in chief keeps threatening to commit war crimes on a massive scale. If he follows through on what he says he will do and obliterates all the civilian infrastructure in the country it will kill mass numbers of innocent people and turn millions of survivors into impoverished refugees.

As bad as the regime is, and it's very bad, what we're doing is even worse for most Iranians and the odds a democratic government arises from the ashes of our bombing campaign is incredibly unlikely.

As a person who believes in democracy, don't you think it should be the US Congress the one declaring war?

> As a person who believes in democracy, I'm pretty on board with it.

As others have stated. This war will not bring democracy. Bombing Iranians have united them with the regime.

Also, US and Israel do not want a democracy in Iran. Israel would prefer a non-functioning place like Palestine or a mostly non-functional place like Lebanon that they can easily control.

Yes, bombing schools, universities and dessalination plants is a sure way to have more democracy in a country. Especially double taps where you kill the rescuers.

The US have so many examples where they did so and worked!

Would you say you fall into the hardcore trump base category?

>"As a person who believes in democracy"

Is this a new spelling of fuck whatever semblance of international laws we have and big dicks do as they please?

Bringing democracy and freedom to the world by bombing school children. God bless America!

If this is a troll it is masterful. If it's an honest opinion I would invite you to check your skull for unexpected holes where your brain may have fallen out.

What do you think the odds are that this war results in more democracy?

Literally none of the fighting countries want Iran to be democratic. Neither USA nor Israel nor Iran. Israel dont want the country functional and would prevent democracy. USA idea of regime change is to keep regime, change head for someone who pays extortion money. And if Iranian leadership wanted democracy they would have one. Not sure if you noticed, but American admin loves dictators and insults democracies

So ,WTF are you talking about here.

Also, bombing city with that double tap tactic during protests ensures you kill protesters.

It's an airplane. It is as susceptible to doors not being bolted on as much as a civilian flight. Maybe actually a higher chance of some benign mechanical issue as it is well known that air crews are often overworked with little to no sleep with the high tempo of sorties in these types of missions. Lots of historical examples of US military aircraft crashing from mechanical issues and not being shot down

My comment was re: stating it as fact which is misleading. Beliefs or guesses are not facts.

Military airplanes do crash, there are lots of crashes every year: https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2025/11/military-aircraft...

At war there's a lot more pressure on ground and air crews that can lead to more mistakes. Also the mission would be flown closer to the limits vs. training.

So... We don't know? If your question is whether that's a good guess/greater than zero probability then sure. Is it a certainty? No. The Iranians will claim they shot it down. The Americans may or may not admit and if they deny then people will say they're lying.