Even if true, it's legally incorrect, btw. There are 2 kinds of warcrimes: Rome treaty (the only legal definition) and Geneva convention. The Rome treaty allows countries to opt-out of the treaty, and then nothing on their territory qualifies as a war crime. Iran has opted out of the Rome treaty, and so when it comes to international law, nothing that happens on Iranian soil is a war crime.
And we all know WHY islamists want it that way. But of course they will confuse matters as propaganda ...
Second, "colloquial" definition of a war crime are Geneva convention violations. And ignoring that EVERY attack Iran executed in the 2 days was a warcrime in that definition. Every last one. They didn't even try to go after military targets for days. But ignoring that.
What warcrimes do, in the sense of the Geneva convention, is that they are justifications for the UNSC to intervene, should it want to. Well, Russia, China and France have just declared that the UNSC does not follow the reasoning that these are warcrimes. Not because they don't believe Geneva convention violations aren't heinous crimes (of course Iran has violated it constantly for 50+ years with constant heinous crimes), but that these states don't see any reason to act.
> Second, "colloquial" definition of a war crime are Geneva convention violations.
The other "colloquial" definition of a war crime is "things we prosecuted the Nazis for at Nuremberg".
One side here is playing "world's police", so this "but those people (that we've painted as fundamentalist extremist terrorists) are committing war crimes so why shouldn't we get to, too?" isn't exactly the fine upstanding argument that you seem to think it is, just as it's not when the IDF responds to children throwing rocks at main battle tanks with live ammunition and turning off the power to a country for three days.
I find it absolutely incredible anyone would choose to use such arguments to defend Iran's islamist regime. Why?Unfortunately every conflict has 2 sides. This is what the side you're defending does:
(man it's difficult to get a list of links into hacker news) (also: stolen from a reddit summary)
Recently, Iran has lowered the entry age into the Iranian military to 12, and they have a long and storied history of using child soldiers in the Iran/Iraq war as suicide bombers - and sending them into minefields tied together with rope to prevent escape, so they could be human minesweepers for tanks and adult soldiers [1].
550,000+ child soldiers were used in the Iran/Iraq war, with over 36,000 as young as NINE years old being killed. Martyrdom is taught in Iranian schools to this day [2].
UNICEF reports 1/5 of ALL marriages in Iran are child marriages. They can legally marry 13 year old girls, and can marry any age with the father’s permission; it’s likely higher than 1/5 as in rural regions it’s common for marriages to not be reported [3].
They just slaughtered 30,000+ civilian protestors in January who were demonstrating against a literal terrorist puppet state who has committed some of the worst human rights atrocities in the world in the span of their 50 year history [4].
Ayatollah Khomeini (Iran’s Supreme Leader) stated virgin women are to be raped prior to their executions (largely for minor acts) so they don’t die a virgin, and justified it through his interpretation of his religion [5].
Here’s Iranian Parliament chanting “Death to America”, which they do constantly [6].
They are directly funding and arming internationally recognized terror groups [7]. Based on Intelligence estimates, Iran-funded terrorist groups have been responsible for thousands of deaths, including hundreds of American personnel, since the 1979 revolution. Major casualties are attributed to Iran-backed proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Gaza, and various Shiite militias in Iraq [8].
And are visibly, via satellite, enriching uranium past 60% which is only used for acquiring nuclear weapons [9].
This is far from a complete list. We're not even discussing that iranian clergy are literally pimping underage girls for sex, which sharia is perfectly fine with (and also happens in other muslim states, including sunni ones) as long as what we'd call the pimp is an imam.
> I find it absolutely incredible anyone would choose to use such arguments to defend Iran's islamist regime. Why?Unfortunately every conflict has 2 sides. This is what the side you're defending
Pump the brakes and do not put words into my mouth.
There is not one statement in anything I've said here that defends Iran's islamist regime.
Because I don't.
Stop getting yourself all bent out of shape that side professing a moral/ethical superiority might be held to standards that befit that supposed superiority.
"According to witness accounts verified by satellite-based analyses, the school was triple tapped by three distinct strikes."
War crime isn't just a legal definition, just like the world was genocide-free before WW2. And by your reasoning it's totally fine to genocide people as long as no treaty/law prevents it. Of course it isn't.
Most people would agree to say that bombing a school or a dessalination plant is a war crime, whatever the convention was signed before. Schoolchildren are not responsible for the IRGC's actions.
If you trust wikipedia without checking the talk page, and frankly in anything remotely involving Israel, you've lost the plot. Sorry but it just isn't remotely neutral on more and more subjects.
And this is the old trick: judging one side by absolutist morals, and then claiming SOME portion of the other side was innocent. Obviously, this is a fallacy and not a reasonable way to judge the morals of an action.
In reality, of course, nearly everyone the Iranian government attacks is totally innocent, and that's 100% intentional on their part. From toddlers in Argentina to Metro goers in Brussels. In Brussels, in an Iranian organized terror attack the guy put 5 bullets in a baby in a child carriage, waiting to shoot the mother (she survived, by the way) until she collapsed to the ground. THAT is who is being targeted here. That was not an accident.
That's one side, and the other side ... makes mistakes.
Clearly, the moral problem here is a mistake by the other side. Clearly THAT's the problem that needs to be solved.
Removing an evil actor requires, frankly, evil actions. Any real moral system will allow for that. Have you ever been to Dresden? What happened there is far worse than even Hiroshima. There's a shelter you can visit there, with a book like in Lord of the rings. It is open to a partially burnt page with the text that people were panicking when the wind drew fire into the shelter during the bombing. People caught on fire, put it out in panic, and it would immediately catch on fire again. Then those people collapsed. The text ... ends there, with spilled ink. There are 2 child carriages in that basement.
This action is considered morally justified, even by the survivors at the time, despite the fact that it didn't even achieve it's military objectives (the factories it targeted weren't destroyed, the city center was, and the aircraft factories, the main target, had stopped producing for lack of inputs months before the attack started)
Both historically and in moral source texts you will find people give enormous moral leeway to actions meant to save others. To remove an evil actor. That is even the case when they cause incredible damage.
And you whataboutism is childish, on top of the basic fact that the school bombing happened in the first days of the war, after a stupid and sadistic decapitation strike that destroyed any chance of negotiated settlement.
It's not the US' job to punish the IRGC for their crimes, and now that they started this idiotic war, the situation in Iran is even worse than when it started, including for the population. Which is yet another complete, objective failure and a proof that bombing populations don't lead to regime change.
> That's one side, and the other side ... makes mistakes.
This is a widely biased interpretation absolving an army whose chief has declared "no quarters" (=war crime) and conducts double-tap strikes on civilian infrastructure. And who bombed Dresden, Gaza, Vietnam or Cambodia? Why was it wrong then, but now it's cool?
The BBC article in no shape, way, or form supports your statement that the school was "triple tapped".
The article was written by an Iranian, but let's just for a moment assume that they're not monumentally biased and instead let's look at the pictures and the text.
The picture in the BBC article clearly shows one impact point in the middle of the school building, and also one each in the surrounding IRGC buildings.
What "eyewitnesses" would have observed from some distance away would have been a series of explosions. Six to eight bombs, all dropped in rapid succession, likely from two to four planes.
Double-tapping (or triple tapping) involves a long delay between the initial hit and the follow-up hit. The idea being to also kill the emergency services personel that turn up... half an hour later.
The article carefully misquotes the locals who witnessed a series of explosions to suggest that this was a series of attacks on the school itself, but fails to scrape together the evidence to sell this narrative:
"suggesting it was hit more than once" -- but not proving. Actually, not showing that at all, since the picture clearly shows one hit on the building!
"around the Shajareh Tayebeh primary school" -- but not in the school.
"the area was "struck by multiple" -- the area around the school is an IRGC base, not "more school".
"Two damaged buildings" -- and then they admit one is the IRGC building leaving... one school building that was hit, once.
"difficult to independently verify" -- here the BBC admits to repeating IRGC propaganda without even bother to check the picture they put in their own article that obviously contradicts their biased narrative.
"speculation about what the intended target" -- what speculation? It was the IRGC base! It was a former IRGC building! Nobody in their right mind would "speculate" about this. This is a brazen lie.
"may have been used"
"who may have been operating"
etc...
I could keep on going, but why bother? This BBC article is total garbage, packed with deceptive language, weasel words, and "just asking questions".
The real, factually true heinous act here is the sloppiness of the US administration in keeping up with the changing status of IRGC targets. They got lazy, killed a 168 students and teachers, which is horrific.
We can blame them for their hubris. We can blame them for starting the war in the first place. We can lay the blame at their feet for any number of things.
But please don't repeat a made-up story of unbelievable, cartoonish evil. It's obvious that the US administration didn't set out to on-purpose kill school children! It's obvious that they didn't "double tap" the school building! It's obvious that they thought that they were hitting an IRGC building and it turned out not to be so. They made a mistake, but a mistake surrounded by deliberate war. Be angry at them starting this unnecessary war, which they did on purpose.
Why is it so hard to accept the basic fact that Iran - and Palestine (and China, and Russia, and Cuba, and ...) do not allow free press or free communication? That means with rare exceptions (unless someone is willing to risk their life for it) you ONLY have access to propaganda.
In any society that doesn't allow free press:
ANY television broadcast = government propaganda
Red Cross/Crescent = disguised government propaganda (Hamas/Iran's islamist regime)
ANY internet message = disguised government propaganda
ANY story published in the BBC with sources from that country = disguised government propaganda
ANY information delivered by anyone who wasn't risking their lives = disguised government propaganda
ANY information delivered by a foreign journalist "invited" into the country (ie. CNN in this conflict) = government propaganda (like "embedded journalists" in US army)
You do not have ANY information from within Iran except propaganda and very rare, very incomplete viewpoints (slowly) anonymously smuggled out. That's it. Yes, this means you generally just do not know. Not even if "the Red Cross/Crescent" says so, because they cannot risk saying anything but the government's viewpoint.
I get that this is very hard to understand for someone living in the US or Europe but that's how it is.
This was the case in the cold war with all the communist regimes. This is currently the case with Russia. With Cuba. With China. And, of course, with Iran. There is no information BUT propaganda from both sides. Nothing but that.
And sorry to point out the obvious, but given the choice between the US army and Iran's mullahs ... even Trump beats the islamist mullahs in reliability and credibility. Yes this is choosing the best option between Syfilis and Gonorrhea. But Trump wins that contest. Easily. Hands down.
Finding websites, or even 100-year old books that obviously lie about Israel is not exactly hard. Here's one you might not know about (look at the author, yes, it's really him): https://www.thehenryford.org/collections/explore/artifact/48... (now this one is a rant, still far above average though)
And the BBC. Ahh the BBC. They used to actually have journalists, and ... well, clearly, they've decided that actually having journalists around the world is not that relevant to producing news anymore. The quality of their work is dropping like a stone year over year. Also, when it comes to reporting about the UK, they've obviously switched to just being a propaganda outlet. Even the historical articles about the poverty in Manchester, which is certainly not improving, can hardly be found on the BBC anymore. And there are no new articles made about it. And reporting on Scottish independence movements or Northern Ireland ... they've started just outright denying anything like that exists. BBC was great, up to about 20 years ago. Now it's barely more authoritative than any other news outlet. You know, the ones that almost exclusively just repeat press releases. You want to know what a government has to say about an event? BBC is your friend. You want to know the sentiment on the ground in an event? BBC doesn't even try to collect that anymore, and when it is presented to them, they refuse to report it. And they've "become political", on a great many different subjects.
There's other things on wikipedia where what we'd consider evil is winning more and more over time. The Armenian genocide, for example, where ever more attention is going to denying it ever happened. And the many genocides that happened at the end of the Ottoman empire at muslim hands, of which the Armenian genocide is merely the biggest example, have already lost the fight on wikipedia. Or the whitewashing of the extremely bloody and, frankly, disgusting early muslim history. Muslim slavery is getting erased, especially what young female slaves ... islam's involvement in the holocaust (ie. the involvement of muslim clergy in creating Nazi SS extermination squads in the balkan. It's still there ... you just won't find it linked anywhere). Or the downplaying of aspects of communism (such as the fact that socialist theory is rabidly, even violently, even murderously, anti-immigrant). Or ... every year the list extends further and further.
> This is a widely biased interpretation ...
What do you hope to achieve by doubling down on the totally one sided view of the situation? Iran's government is evil, massacres everyone it can, brutally tortures and executes children, sells underage girls for sex (perfectly legal in sharia as long as the pimp claims to be an imam) and deserves everything that's happening to it 100x over.
The link provided comes from the BBC. Wikipedia simply acts as an aggregator on certain topics, which is convenient to share in such debates.
Your ad hominem against the BBC is laughable, please provide a list of correct media sources then. And don't try to debate the content of course!
> Iran evil
The US and Israel have no goal to change that, so the population will in the end have a destroyed infrastructure, and a hardliner regime even more brutal than ever. Mission accomplished!
Even if you believe in the most absurd conspiracy theories you could still accurately classify US efforts as "trying to change Iran's behavior to the world for the better". So this is entirely, 100%, false.
And, yes, we all hope for more, which may or may not happen.
Ah yes, US efforts along with their actions against Venezuela, Lybia, Cambodia, Syria, Vietnam, Irak or North Korea. It totally worked, and those countries were much better than before the bombing!
When you think about it, every country between Pakistan and the mediterranean sea was bombed by the US in the last 30 years. How did it end up?
At some point the people in power very well know what's happening. Bombing schools, bridges, universities and hospitals don't create better regimes.
They just prove that hardliners of the IRGC were right from the start. Moderates have nothing to show, since the Trump admin never wanted to negociate. Yet another massive US self-own.
And I don't see why it is a conspiracy theory. Trump showed with Venezuela that he didn't care at all about democracy. And Israelis don't either. You are the one absorbing the blatant propaganda lies of the Trump administration.
... and then, of course, we switch moral fallacies. The supposed superiority of doing nothing. Hope you never need an ambulance, because of course, clearly, according to your reasoning the moral action would be to let you die.
And btw: your motivation, obviously that you want Iran hardliners to win inside Iran, is showing. Carefully placing the blame for the actions of the hardliners with the US. Needless to say, that is not a moral position at all.
There's many problems. First: every agent with agency is of course responsible for their own actions. Which means Iran's regime, islamists and islamic clergy are despicable monsters because of what they did.
That there is a reason they did what they did does not explain their actions in any moral sense. It makes it worse, of course. It means that they're indeed fully responsible for their actions, that they're not insane, made a choice, and their choice shows them to be truly despicable, immoral and disgusting human beings.
You are conflating "doing something" with "doing something useful".
The US could have chosen not to kill the supreme leader (who was the only one able to drive a change), a large part of the moderates in the government and negociators.
It could have chosen to send other people than crooked incompetent real estate managers to negotiate with Iranians about complex nuclear issues.
It could have chosen to propose an acceptable plan to Iranians that allowed room for negotiation, not just a blanket capitulation and surrender.
Your view of foreign policy is immature, similar to a child trying to wash the dishes and breaking them as he does. When the parents arrive, he cries and says "but I'm trying to help!".
And I don't like the IRGC but I also would prefer to avoid the humanitarian and refugee crisis and civil war in a 90M pop country. Which will happen after the US "liberates" them by bombing civilian infrastructure such as water treatment or electricity plants. Did they ever say "thank you"?
Because I know that others will pick up the pieces after the US and Israeli meatheads in power will come back home. Just like it happened in Irak, Syria, and Lybia.
All of those are choices the US government DID make, and Iran threw into their face before we switched to this. Which of course changes whose view of foreign policy is immature, but who cares? This is just a discussion forum.
Iran, the US and many other countries had a perfectly working deal under the JCPOA, until Trump, pressed by the Israelis, exited it. Which led to the current situations as Iranians weren't forced to limit their uranium enrichment.
Even if true, it's legally incorrect, btw. There are 2 kinds of warcrimes: Rome treaty (the only legal definition) and Geneva convention. The Rome treaty allows countries to opt-out of the treaty, and then nothing on their territory qualifies as a war crime. Iran has opted out of the Rome treaty, and so when it comes to international law, nothing that happens on Iranian soil is a war crime.
And we all know WHY islamists want it that way. But of course they will confuse matters as propaganda ...
Second, "colloquial" definition of a war crime are Geneva convention violations. And ignoring that EVERY attack Iran executed in the 2 days was a warcrime in that definition. Every last one. They didn't even try to go after military targets for days. But ignoring that.
What warcrimes do, in the sense of the Geneva convention, is that they are justifications for the UNSC to intervene, should it want to. Well, Russia, China and France have just declared that the UNSC does not follow the reasoning that these are warcrimes. Not because they don't believe Geneva convention violations aren't heinous crimes (of course Iran has violated it constantly for 50+ years with constant heinous crimes), but that these states don't see any reason to act.