Most of Europe east of the Elbe has personal experience with Russian imperial rule, and 90%+ people will tell you "never again". The rest are mostly traitors hoping for jobs under a new occupation regime.

Calling what happens in Ukraine an "ethnic conflict" is like calling the genocide and deportation of American Indians "a heated dispute over lucrative real property" or calling the Atlantic slave trade "movement of affordable workforce". It is a freaking war of conquest motivated by sense of entitlement of a rotten empire which hasn't yet fully understood that its heyday is long gone and now is learning the hard way.

The German imperial madness took two massive military defeats to dissipate. Let us hope that the Russian imperial madness will finally suffer the same fate in front of our eyes. At this point of history, having New Tatarstan there instead of Russia would bring Eastern Europe a lot more peace and prosperity. We could call the new entity a Silicon Horde.

That's one of the lines people spew as if it is a tautology without actually thinking about its accuracy. Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, need more examples?

Iranians right now also tend to disagree with you too...

A counter-argument could be that sanctions, when overused[0], weaken that very point by reducing this interdependence.

[0] This is not an opinion on whether or not they are currently overused.

Panama

That's just wishful thinking on your part. Every iranian i speak to curses their regime and praise trump and netanyahu. Their level of support for the people bombing their country is incredible.

EDIT: To provide more context: Let's say that "John" is arrested for having had "illegal internet access" (not even owning a starlink). Even if he has a trial, the prosecutor can, and will, argue that he could have used his a secure channel to collaborate with the Mossad and CIA. If they find any unfavorable social media posts on his phone (and believe me, they will) they will say that he has endangered the national security by encouraging unrest and violent protests. This would then amount to waging war against God and death penalty.

If his phone is so clean that they don't find anything, it must be the fact that he is an agent, a mercenary. They will torture him until he confesses to having collaborated with Mossad. They will then air a forced confession on TV.

John might get lucky and have a caring family member from IRGC. In that case you might be right, he will only receive a prison sentence. If he had had a higher ranking IRGC family member he could even go further and start selling his starlink VPN for around $5 / GB. It's not even a hypothetical situation, I had to buy one of these (and it indeed was a starlink connection) four weeks ago ...

[1] https://x.com/indypersian/status/2050088043118211341

"Iran Prepares Death Penalty Law for Starlink Internet Use"

https://iranwire.com/en/news/145471-iran-prepares-death-pena...

Isn't it fascinating how people who were horrified over the situation in Gaza are unable to muster a similar level of outrage when the ayatollas killed more people in 2 days then Israel managed in 2 years?

  > Look what Israel is doing in Gaza

    22,000-25,000 Hamas fighters
    11,000 natural deaths
    4,000 internal fighting amongst Gazans
    1,000 reporting errors

Not to mention, that that 54% to 60% also includes the fighters for Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for Palestine Liberation, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Popular Resistance Committee, Mujahideen Brigades. None of those are civilians. So it's far more likely that the civilian death toll in Gaza was well under 50% - that's 1/9 the amount of civilians dying per combatant than seen in any other war.

Makes sense for any normal person.

Trump is still a 100% unreliable witness to almost anything, more so in recent years as he's cognitively wobbling all over the clock.

Again, I'm not opposed to your thesis here, just pointing out Trump's words count for nothing; he's a frequent traveller on the path of "admissions against interest" - arming rebels, shooting people in Times Square, war crimes on the open seas, staring directly into the sun .. he's down for all of that and it seemingly slides right off.

> The commander of the Einsatzkommando reported two days later:

> > The difficulties resulting from such a large scale action—in particular concerning the seizure—were overcome in Kiev by requesting the Jewish population through wall posters to move. Although only a participation of approximately 5,000 to 6,000 Jews had been expected at first, more than 30,000 Jews arrived who, until the very moment of their execution, still believed in their resettlement, thanks to an extremely clever organization.

"no prepared specialized infrastructure, just bussing them to a ravine and shooting them" ... yet "extremely clever organization", a special order posted 3 days prior, which the victims followed. How do you envision such a scenario playing out in Iran?

And why not simply show the evidence? Whoever makes the claim, unless they're lying, is basing the claim on something. So where is it?

Chinese government don't care about small percent of population accessing open internet.

You might also have to consider the propaganda campaigns the US could run against an Iranian population with web access. If the population isn't more discontent now than it already was, "secretly" replacing commercial ad placements on western websites with US propaganda when the requests come from Iranian sources could make them discontent or inflame them further, which is bad for the Iranian government.

Remember when Ukraine used the Russian cellular internet to operate drones that destroyed numerous Russian heavy bomber aircraft? That’s what the US/Israel would logically be expected to do if there were wide open internet access in Iran.

This is obvious game theory playing out militarily, people only see political suppression but warfare is a totally different ballgame.

If China were waging large scale war on the US I’d expect the exact same countermeasures to happen.