I got you. Some Russian decision-makers are ready to take them. Another would rather sell them to China.
Why is the West pretending Iran is winning the war against Israel, the US?
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toomuchtime_
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The current regime has already been destroyed. It's military is too weak to even contain raging protests across its cities and it has been forced to call in Iraqi militia to try to put down the protests. With the supreme leader still in a coma, it is unclear if the regime even has a unified leadership at this point.
First of all, it's not military job to contain protests. Second, there are no significant protests anymore.
Iran is a democratic state, it's all about system, not personalities.
toomuchtime_
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AI Overview
As of April 2026, widespread anti-government protests in Iran, sparked by severe economic hardship and a currency collapse, have resulted in major city demonstrations and street strikes. Protesters, including bazaar merchants, are demanding an end to the regime, facing severe repression, including Internet blackouts and executions of activists. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Key Details on the 2025–2026 Protests
- Causes: The protests were triggered by the Iranian rial dropping to a record low of 1.45 million per US dollar, a 40% loss of value following the Iran-Israel war, compounded by high inflation.
- Unrest Scale: Demonstrations began with bazaar merchants, specifically in central Tehran, before spreading, marking some of the most serious challenges to the government since the 1979 revolution.
- Government Response: Security forces have intensified crackdowns, including executing individuals with alleged ties to opposition groups and enacting internet restrictions.
- International Reaction: Global attention has focused on the escalating violence, with reports of protesters holding rallies worldwide. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Current Situation
Protests continue against the backdrop of an economic crisis, with people reporting that life has become unbearable. The regime has responded by blaming foreign influence and continuing to execute those it calls "enemies of the state". [1, 2, 3]
AI Overview
Iran is a theocratic republic with hybrid, limited democratic elements, often described as an electoral autocracy or religious theocracy. While it holds regular elections for president and parliament, the unelected Guardian Council disqualifies candidates, and the Supreme Leader holds ultimate authority, restricting genuine democratic competition and civil liberties. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
Key details regarding Iran's political structure include:
- Supreme Leader: The highest authority, not elected by direct popular vote, but by the Assembly of Experts.
- Guardian Council: An unelected body that vets all candidates and laws, heavily influencing election outcomes.
- Electoral System: Features regular voting with high turnout, but with heavily vetted candidates.
- Global Ranking: Ranked among the bottom 25% globally in democratic performance. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Independent thinker
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It's just more TDS. Trump could bring peace on Earth and they'd still find a way to attack him.
Why is the West pretending Iran is winning the war against Israel, the US?
Despite Iran's military collapse, Western analysts continue to push a false narrative of victory. The facts don't align with the rhetoric surrounding the conflict.7 Apr 2026 ~~ By Nadim Koteich
Why is the West pretending Iran is winning the war against Israel, the US? | The Jerusalem Post
Despite Iran's military collapse, Western analysts continue to push a false narrative of victory. The facts don't align with the rhetoric surrounding the conflict.www.jpost.com
Let us be precise about what is happening here. A war is being fought in the Middle East. Another war is being fought in the pages of newspapers, on the panels of cable networks, and in the faculty lounges of institutions that have confused sophistication with a reflex. The second war has a declared winner: Iran. It just has nothing to do with what is actually happening in the first one.
The claim, repeated with the solemnity of established fact, is made by smart and credentialed people, who know and want you to know they know. However, they are wrong. Not subtly wrong. Not wrong in ways that require careful qualification. They are wrong in the way that requires ignoring ninety percent of Iran's missile capacity destroyed in week one, a navy that no longer exists, a Supreme Leader killed in the opening hours of the campaign, and a proxy network that is fracturing from Lebanon to Yemen.
Wrong in the way that requires looking at the Gulf states, which are doubling down on the relation with the US and Israel, and concluding somehow that Iran has outmaneuvered everyone.
This is not an analysis. So, what is it?
Start with the cultural reflex that makes it possible. There is a tradition in Western intellectual life, old and deeply rooted, that assigns moral value to resistance independent of what the resistance actually represents. The weaker party defying the stronger carries a charge, almost aesthetic in nature, that bypasses any serious accounting of the defiant party's actual character. Content is irrelevant. Posture is everything.
So the theocracy that massacred thousands of its own citizens in January, that has bled Lebanon dry through Hezbollah, that has sustained proxy wars across four countries at its own people's expense, gets cast as a proud country holding the line against imperial aggression. Few, in this context, question what the country actually does to the people living inside it. The template does not require that question. Power versus resistance. Empire versus defiance. The weaker party is always the more sympathetic one, and sympathy, in this world, travels quickly into presumed strategic vindication.
~Snip~
The liberal international order has two problems with this war. The first is structural. America is the last Western democracy that still believes military force is a legitimate instrument of order, not a confession of civilizational failure. Europe settled that question in its own mind decades ago and built an entire political identity around the settlement. American willingness to remain the enforcer was tolerable when it meant keeping Soviet tanks out of Bonn. It is intolerable now because it validates a vision of the world, one where power and deterrence are the actual foundations of stability, that the European liberal project has spent fifty years attempting to replace with institutions, dialogue, and the softly spoken authority of multilateral consensus. A successful American military campaign does not just win a war. It wins an argument they thought they had closed, and it wins it twice. Because Ukraine already cracked every institution built to make war obsolete on the European continent, proving decorative the moment Russia invaded. The entire post-Cold War security architecture, gone in seventy-two hours.
The second problem is simpler and more raw. If America did it, it must be wrong. Not as a conclusion, but as a premise. American power is suspect by definition, its exercise presumptively illegitimate, its victories either temporary, tainted, or both. This is not a position that arrives after examining the evidence. It is the lens through which the evidence is examined, which means no evidence can ever change it. That is not a political view. It is a religion with better footnotes.
And then there is Trump. A Trump failure ratifies everything the liberal order has argued since 2016, whereas a Trump success is an ideological catastrophe. Because it means the man they identified as the singular threat to civilized governance managed to accomplish something consequential and real in the one domain where their own preferred approach produced the JCPOA, the engagement doctrine, and two decades of elaborately reasoned accommodation with a revolutionary theocracy that never moderated and never intended to.
They cannot let that be visible. So the goalposts move. Every civilian casualty becomes evidence of strategic bankruptcy. Every Iranian missile that gets through becomes proof of resilience. Every European condemnation becomes a harbinger of American isolation. The war must be failing because the alternative, a world in which this worked, is a world that does not fit the story they have been telling.
There is a test for this. Ask any of them directly: what would American victory look like to you? If the answer keeps changing, if every benchmark met produces a new benchmark, if success in their telling is always just out of reach, you are not in the presence of an analyst. You are in the presence of someone who decided the verdict before the trial began and is now selecting evidence accordingly.
The facts are not difficult. The enemy's supreme leader is dead. His navy is at the bottom of the Gulf. His missile arsenal is a fraction of what it was. His neighbors are not mourning. They are urging Washington to finish the job.
That is not a war Iran is winning. Saying otherwise is not sophistication. It is not moral complexity. It is a political project dressed in the language of seriousness, executed by people who know exactly what they are doing and are counting on the rest of us not to notice.
Commentary:
Good question for Democrats, the Media and their goat copulating IRGC 5th columnists and Tehran Tiffanys.
If the goal of the United States is to overthrow the mullahs and effect regime change, then Iran does appear to be winning.
This is ridiculous. If Iran is winning, then Japan was “winning” right up until the Emperor surrendered. Germany was winning until Hitler offed himself and Lee was winning until…
The media is playing for the other team. It is no longer the Fourth Estate; it has grown into the Fifth Column and a direct threat to National Security.
Who can forget the Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, Geraldo Rivera, Peter Arnett, Lester Holt and the rest of the blame America first media screaming the preferred media talking point of the day for the Afghan war - constant weeks of repeated coordinated messaging of “quagmire, quagmire, quagmire, quagmire, quagmire , quagmire , quagmire ,quagmire followed by a croaking. “We won”. “Whenever you hear the media coordinated talking point campaign you can be certain the people are being played, bluffed, baffled and bullshitted.
The news media and their fellow traveler Democrats talking points this time are "War Crime" and "Escalation".
Democrats are men and women that enslave others.
There have been slave owners since the beginning of time. If you control education and information, what will your population develop into?
Cooperative slaves.
Who dominates in Education and media? Democrats and their Marxist Socialist friends
Who dominates in productive industry? God fearing men.
I’m not always sure the military is a productive industry,
But their oath (and mine) ended with “So help me God.”
Personally. I believe there's no such thing as an Atheist in a war, and surely we are at war.
Rawley
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Wow. You judge winning on how many are killed? Dat's frucked up.
Doc7505
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<~~~~~~~~~~>
The object is not to kill the population, but to destroy the Iranian military, their capability to build a nuclear device, manufacture missiles and drones.
Presently Iran has lost its Navy, Airforce and the IRGC is being decimated piece by piece.
By blowing up the bridges and generator centers this restricts the transportation, transfer of missiles and war materiel, and reduce or stop production of drones and missiles.
The Sage of Main Street
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The Newsies Are the Noose
YoursTruly
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Trump's the big door prize, huh?
YoursTruly
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From 56 sources: ( I don't support Trump. Especially for this war) But I do support the truth. Regardless.
It's always a good idea, with the way news outlets are now days, to double & triple check info before posting.
Yes, the information in that TikTok video is false or at least highly misleading and unsubstantiated.
The creator, TJ Williams-Hauger (a Baptist pastor, activist, and content creator critical of Trump and the U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran), appears to be pushing a narrative that U.S. allies (especially European ones) are secretly undermining Trump by cutting deals with Iran. This doesn't align with credible reporting on the ongoing 2025–2026 U.S.-Iran conflict and ceasefire.
What the video likely claims (based on context)
Videos from this account often frame the Iran situation as Trump/Netanyahu aggression, with allies or others "betraying" the U.S. effort through backchannel favoritism toward Iran. Without direct transcript access, the core implication from your question matches common claims in such content: allies making covert economic, nuclear, or sanctions-evasion deals with Iran "behind Trump's back" during or after the Hormuz crisis.
Why it's not accurate
- Allies' actual stance: European countries (UK, France, Germany/E3, Italy, etc.) and Asian allies (Japan, South Korea, India) have refused military support for Trump's/I srael's campaign and reopening the Strait of Hormuz by force. They cited lack of consultation, preference for diplomacy, legal concerns, and domestic opposition. Trump publicly blasted them for this—calling them "cowards," telling them to "go get your own oil," threatening NATO reevaluation/tariffs/troop shifts, and criticizing specific actions (e.g., France restricting overflights). This is open friction, not secret pro-Iran plotting.
- No secret deals reported: There are zero mainstream reports of new bilateral trade pacts, nuclear cooperation, or major sanctions-busting deals by U.S. allies with Iran. Europe's pre-existing E3 diplomatic track on Iran's nuclear program is transparent and limited (they've even threatened "snapback" UN sanctions if no deal emerges). Post-ceasefire (announced ~April 7–8, 2026), Europe has offered public help clearing mines/escorting ships in the strait—but with caveats ("not a blank cheque") due to fears of paying cleanup costs or new Iranian tolls, not cozying up to Tehran.
- Asian allies' actions: Japan, South Korea, and India (heavy oil importers) focused on diplomacy for safe passage, releasing reserves, energy swaps among themselves, and emergency measures. Some engaged Iran directly for shipping assurances amid the crisis, but this was pragmatic damage control—not new "deals" favoring Iran over the U.S. The U.S. even temporarily eased sanctions on stranded Iranian oil to help allies like India/Japan avoid worse shortages (countering flows to China). No covert favoritism.
- Who actually buys Iranian oil? Primarily China (via shadow fleet, often in yuan) and some evasion networks—not U.S. allies in any coordinated, new way. Trump has targeted that fleet.
- Current context: Negotiations are direct between the U.S. and Iran (mediated partly by Pakistan), with Trump announcing a two-week ceasefire for talks on a longer deal, sanctions relief, etc. Allies are sidelined or frustrated by the chaos, not secretly negotiating against Trump. Gulf states have leaned anti-Iran.
This creator's content often reflects strong anti-Trump/anti-Israel activism (e.g., articles calling strikes "evil" and urging protests). TikTok videos in polarized topics frequently amplify unverified or exaggerated claims for engagement. Mainstream outlets (BBC, Reuters, AP, Politico, NYT) show allied reluctance as public disagreement over strategy and burden-sharing—not clandestine betrayal.
In summary, the video distorts real tensions (allies not backing the war militarily, pushing diplomacy) into a false conspiracy of secret pro-Iran deals. The "behind Trump's back" angle doesn't hold—Trump is leading the current talks, and allied actions have been overt. Events are fluid (ceasefire is fragile), but as of now, no evidence supports the claim. For fast-moving stories like this, cross-check with multiple established sources rather than single social videos.
candycorn
Diamond Member
Good response.
C'mon. AI just made you a compilation of the common English-speaking propaganda.
In the real world government controls population as much as it can, limited, mostly, by technological limits. And US government has much more gadgets to control US population than Iranian one.
toomuchtime_
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Do you wake up this stupid in the morning or do you have to work at it? Google's AI sorted and compiled all reports in all languages about current protests in Iranian cities and issued this report.
The government of Iran has failed its people, just as the Assad government in Syria had, and these protest are exactly like the Syrian protests that led to the fall of the Assad Regime.
AI Overview
As of early 2026, Iran is experiencing a severe water and electricity crisis in its major cities, described by experts as a state of "water bankruptcy" and "system failure". The crisis, which includes, chronic water shortages and rolling blackouts, is driven by a combination of five consecutive years of drought, climate change, and long-term mismanagement. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Water Scarcity and "Day Zero" Risks [1]
- Tehran Crisis: The capital, with over 10 million residents, has faced severe shortages, with primary reservoirs sinking to critically low levels, sometimes as low as 8–10% capacity. In late 2025 and early 2026, the government warned of "water day zero," where water supply systems would stop functioning, necessitating potential evacuation.
- System Failure: Many of Iran’s dams have run dry or are at minimal capacity, forcing water cuts in major cities including Tehran and Mashhad.
- Drivers: The crisis is driven by excessive groundwater extraction, inefficient agricultural practices (using 90% of water), and failure to maintain infrastructure, leading to massive leaks. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
- Energy-Water Nexus: The water crisis is exacerbated by electricity shortages, as power is required for pumping groundwater and powering desalination plants.
- Systemic Power Cuts: In late 2024 and through early 2026, Iran experienced major power cuts in cities, including Tehran, partly due to a lack of fuel (gas/diesel) for thermal power plants.
- Infrastructure Attacks: In early 2026, military conflicts involved strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure, including power stations, worsening the existing electricity deficit and threatening the power supply to residential areas. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
- Social Unrest: The inability to supply basic services has fueled widespread public protests against the government's handling of resources.
- Quality of Life: Residents in major cities regularly face hours-long power outages, water cuts (sometimes for up to 48 hours), and high pollution levels.
- Policy Response: The government has engaged in cloud seeding and, in some cases, considered re-locating the capital due to the dire situation. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
The Iranian government's only response to these crises is to slaughter the protestors, just as Assad's only response to Syria's resource crisis was to slaughter Syrian protestors.
Meathead
Diamond Member
Strange what a groomed skank believes.
Godboy
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Explain how we didnt win in Iraq, or Venezuela. We seem to be completely dominating Iran. We literally win EVERY modern war. Just because you dont like a particular war, doesnt mean we didnt win.In modern war, there are no "winners."
Godboy
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Why the f*** would we need to give Iran billions of dollars? We are straight up trouncing them, and even if we were worried about Europes oil prices from the Strait of Hormuz being closed, we could easily just pay their extra costs with the billions your dumb ass thinks we sent to Iran.
You suck at this stuff.
Meathead
Diamond Member
Fate indeed would call for you to be "Groomed Skank", or maybe just "Dingbat".
At what expense, and lives lost, and for what purpose for America?
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