Anonymous wrote:Why are more troops being sent to the ME after Trump just claimed the war is "over"?

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Anonymous wrote:he Arab Word is Watching a Different War:

Three reasons why it has been difficult to understand the Arab position:

1 - The first is the Arab relationship with Iran. From the vantage point of Brussels or London, Iran presents itself as a resistance movement with a grievance against American hegemony and Israeli occupation, and this presentation maps comfortably onto familiar Western anticolonial frameworks.
What it does not map onto is the lived experience of Arab populations in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, and across the Gulf. In those countries, Iran's presence meant Hezbollah holding the Lebanese state hostage to Tehran's decisions, thirty-five armed factions in Iraq drawing salaries from Iranian funds channeled through the Iraqi national treasury, and Houthi commanders answering to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps while firing on Arab civilians from Yemeni soil. Freedom is not the word any serious Arab observer would use for what Iran brought.

Indeed, the Arab world's quarrel with Iran runs far deeper than American bases or Israeli airstrikes. What drives it is the systematic subversion of Arab sovereignty by a foreign power that uses the language of Islamic solidarity as cover for an imperial project conducted through proxies.

2 - The second dimension is the proxy question itself, where Western analysis fails most comprehensively. Iran goes far beyond supporting armed groups. Parallel state structures get built inside Arab countries, financial systems get captured, and political figures get installed who owe their existence and survival entirely to Tehran. The Iranians who have administered this project understand it as the export of a revolution, but what Arab populations have experienced is closer to a colonial occupation conducted through intermediaries, and as of now, they’re not mourning the Islamic Republic. But Westerners treat these proxy networks as instruments of legitimate resistance rather than as mechanisms of subjugation, they endorse an imperial project while believing themselves to be opposing one, and as a matter of fact, make themselves the legitimizing force behind Iran’s war against the Arab world.

3- The third dimension is the most counterintuitive for a Western audience, and it is the one most consequential for how the current war is understood and misunderstood. For Arab nationalists, including secular nationalists and even those with deep reservations about Israeli policy, Iran represents a greater and more immediate threat than Israel does.

This is a position that Western media are structurally ill-equipped to render intelligible, because Western discourse on the Middle East has been organized for decades around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the primary axis of regional injustice.

The result is that when Western governments and Western publics take strong positions against Israel’s actions against Iran’s operations, they believe themselves to be standing with the Arab world. In reality, they are advancing a position that the Arab world does not share and has not asked for, while ignoring the threat that Arab governments and Arab populations actually live with.

The rhetorical use of Israel as a perpetual alibi for Iranian aggression has been one of the Islamic Republic’s most durable tools, and Western opinion has served as the unwitting amplifier of that tool across the entire duration of the Islamic Republic’s existence.

Excellent analysis. (which in no way justifies Israeli conduct but explains how the US left has been thoroughly duped and even willingly led into it through the exploitation of antisemitic tropes.)

This is not analysis. It is propaganda. Anyone who has a basic understanding of the ME would strongly disagree with this sh#t. The problem is Israel.

If you can't define the words shia and sunni without looking, your ignorant opinion isn't interesting.

Dp. I’m a Sunni and I have theological issues with twelver Shiism.

I agree with the PP that the post was propaganda and that Israel is the problem.

DP here and as someone very well aware of the Sunni vs Shia debate in that region, the post was propaganda and completely absolved Israel of causing havoc in the Middle East. Israel is just frustrated it can no longer play the Sunni vs Shia card and that the people in the Middle
East are moving past the theological differences and emphasizing the need for cooperation.

That post didn’t absolve Israel of anything. It just pointed out a basic fact that everyone whose mind is not totally clouded by anti-semitism and/or TikTok foreign affairs influencers understands … that Iran is broadly hated in the ME.

So is Israel. At the moment, Iran is a more rational actor (I can't believe I am typing that) who is not in the middle of committing genocide, so why should anyone put the interests of Israel above their own, or that of Iran, for that matter.?

Iran has been the rational actor for years. They only respond to Israel’s and US’s aggression. You know how many proxies both Israel and US arm and let loose on Iran?

Apparently, you two geniuses are able to selectively "forget" the thousands of Iranian citizens who were recently murdered by the regime. Oh, and the three men who were hanged but had committed no crime. But yes - so rational, so moral.

You mean where Trump openly-admitted they sent weapons to protesters and that Mossad/israel admits to having agitators on the ground?

Can your stupid a$$ explain how it is that over a two year period and using the equivalent of 6 Nukes in Gaza which is far smaller than Iran, Israel killed "70,000," but Iran --from the ground in like two days---killed 40, 000? Explain how your brain processes such absolute rot.

Always amusing how Zionists suddenly pretend to be concerned about human life when they love slaughtering Palestinians and Lebanese to the tune of hundreds of thousands along with bombing Iranians and their civilian infrastructure . They are ethnosupremicists where all other lives are beneath them.

My absolute favorite Zionists/defenders of slaughter in the Middle East as a whole, are the ones who want to cheapen the lives of every Palestinian, Iranian, Lebanese, IRAQI, etc., by being extra racist (Bill Maher) and try to justify the slaughter by telling you "They all want to throw gay people off of the roof," so it's perfectly fine to kill all of the "savages."

Now imagine we did that to Jews who were killed during the Holocaust. How are we to know there weren't rapists, homophobes, pedophiles, wife beaters, thieves, etc.? Are we just to assume every single one was a precious unicorn? See how that sounds? That's how repugnant Zionism has always been.

Wow, you have zero self-awareness. The same argument could be made for the Palestinians you're always going on about, or really, any Muslim anywhere. You seem to want people to believe that they're all "precious unicorns," that Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. simply don't exist - or if they do, they're the good guys!! It's comical the way you excuse their atrocities, along with those of the Iranian regime and expect people to sympathize with each and every one of them, to include the TERRORISTS.

You can hate on Israel all you want, but don't you dare expect anyone to have sympathy for the Islamic extremists you choose to champion. And Bill Maher? He is SPOT ON. It is you and your unhinged pro-Iranian stooges who are truly repugnant.

Bill Maher doesn't debate anyone on the issue. LOL, you think a panel of like Van Jones and Batya Unger or whatever her name is, is a "debate" on the Middle East? Do you not notice he purposely created an echo chamber going on years now and refuses to debate ANYONE on the Pro-Palestine side? Not. One. Not even a Muslim to debate. In YEARS. Because he knows he'll have his racist, rabid Zionist a$$ handed to him if he actually had to debate history. You're seriously not bright at all. Of course you think he's right, because having read the rest of the nonsense you wrote, you couldn't be more perfect an example of his avg viewer. You're dense.

Zionists have been defending the wholesale slaughter of PALESTINIANS and others in the ME including babies for generations by way of dehumanization. YOU stupidly said "the same argument..." No, hon. There has never been that argument. THAT'S THE POINT. Israelis get "KILLED," while Palestinians "DIE"...that has been the coverage in America for generations. Israel is covered as if it always "defending itself." That is how the ME has always been covered. You guys can't even handle that Iranians have been negotiating and went even beyond what the *US* asked for, but Israel being belligerent and violent, would not have it. My God, even a literal Zionist J Adam Boehler who is buddies w/ Kushner was sent to negotiate w/ Hamas and said they were normal, reasonable guys and he was immediately removed and Jake Tapper wouldn't have it. The mere notion of listening to someone be honest about those who Israel/Zionists deems "savages," simply cannot happen! Propaganda about "savages mass raping and beheading" MUST be seared into the minds of the brainwashed masses, but we have to ignore that Israelis literally protest for the right to rape and it's literally govt policy TO rape (since *before* Oct 7)...because you view the world like you're watching "Birth of a Nation."

That you tried to use my argument back at me, made no sense. The starting point is that in actuality, Middle Eastern ppl are the ones who've been dehumanized. You deal in analogies to avoid reality. I use analogies to *confirm* the reality. What exactly do you think you even said back to me?

And it's so stupid when you guys have to personally "attack" me, because you know it's so easy to just own your asses that you have to deflect to such childish BS about me being in Tehran or unhinged. FYI, it's more boring than offensive because I wish at least one of you could actually debate, but you can't. How can you? You're still brainwashed and delusional when it comes to who started all of the problems in the last 100 years in the ME.

You guys are done and can't see it. You're destroying free speech everywhere. France is now considering 5 years in prison for criticizing Israel....but that's not "unhinged," right? The ZJ in the French Parliament proposing ARREST for ppl criticizing a foreign state committing genocide and attacking every country around it, is totally not "unhinged." LOL

This word salad is a beautiful example of why you are referred to as unhinged. Because you are. You berate others for "being dense," or "seriously not bright at all," which is hilarious coming from you. You claim Bill Maher refuses to debate a Muslim - but here you are shouting down anyone who attempts to debate with you, constantly invoking "Zionists" as if anyone who disagrees with you must be a Zionist.

You don't debate. You shout at and insult people so that you're always the loudest mouth in the room. I can only imagine what you must be like IRL and I truly pity anyone who has to live with you. You speak of being others being "brainwashed," yet you refuse to see how utterly and completely you've been indoctrinated in your own cesspool of propaganda.

You have monopolized every.single.thread dealing with the middle east by spreading your toxic garbage all over this site. Every one of your posts is completely recognizable because you vomit up the same incendiary terms and phrases and insult anyone who dares to call you out.

I seriously hope you one day get the help you so desperately need, because you won't find it in your addiction to propaganda-filled social media. Your mind is truly sick and you need therapy, yesterday.

All of this garbage you wrote to say nothing and to counter nothing. You compare me to Bill Maher as if I have the platform he does? I'm not the one who rejects debate. I embrace it. You can't explain why he refuses to debate anyone who is Palestinian, Arab or Muslim and say to their faces what he has said for years to pathetic losers like you who cheer on his little bubble w/ no pushback. You can't explain why someone obsessed w/ vilifying Muslims and blindly defending Israel, refuses to have a serious debate on his views regarding something he hasn't STFU about for years. He basically gave a HJ to Bibi when he was on a few years back. Normal ppl know why he won't, while dense ppl like you, refuse to accept why he won't. You defend the indefensible, like him. A level of evil unseen in the modern age. You're wasting your time trying to personally attack me, because most of the world is repulsed by you, not me.

I didn't have to read the rest. It was obvious from the get-go, you were going to continue your cowardice and only deflect to personally attacking me. And my "word salad" is only complicated to someone who still thinks israel hasn't been monstrous for 80 years ("it's just Bibi!"). It's the only state where its people/govts/leaders tell you outright that even children are the enemy. A society where they protest for the right to rape and turn the rapists into celebrities. Again, you never respond. You insist upon deflecting.

I won't respond again (lame cheers from the cowards who can't defend Israel w/ facts). Why bother? I'm dealing w/ dinosaurs like you who laughably think Bill Maher isn't a warped, racist, supremacist lunatic to ppl w/ reading comprehension and even the most basic human decency. I'm sure you also think Douglas Murray and Sam Harris are profound and well-informed. LOL.

Between the two of us, no one is thinking you're the rational, sane one, the moment they know what you *still* defend.

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Anonymous wrote:Why are more troops being sent to the ME after Trump just claimed the war is "over"?

The US and Israel ran out of munitions and had the failed mission in the dessert. One more week of the ceasefire and they will attack during negotiations like always. The US has stripped all equipment, radars, inceptors, etc from US units and given them to Israel. The US is now defenseless in Europe, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Hawaii. Etc. We are a sitting duck.

Once Israel and the US beg for another ceasefire Iran must demand both the US and Israel give up their nuclear weapons, missile programs and proxies in the region. It is such a reasonable request.

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Iran did not lay mines. The strait was closed by insurance premiums risk. 10-15 ships a day use the strait.

This.

It’s actually pretty easy to monitor the traffic live on Marinetraffic.com

Reports say Iran did haphazardly deploy mines in the strait during the early days of the war, and is now struggling to find and remove them.

Seriously no credible reports say this. Seems like you are pushing propaganda. 150-200 ships have passed through the strait since the “war” started. Why haven’t they hit any mines? It’s a very narrow shipping channel.

Just stop.

DP. Someone is certainly pushing propaganda here and that someone is YOU. Why are you lying and trying to discredit reputable sources?

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Anonymous wrote:he Arab Word is Watching a Different War:

Three reasons why it has been difficult to understand the Arab position:

1 - The first is the Arab relationship with Iran. From the vantage point of Brussels or London, Iran presents itself as a resistance movement with a grievance against American hegemony and Israeli occupation, and this presentation maps comfortably onto familiar Western anticolonial frameworks.
What it does not map onto is the lived experience of Arab populations in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, and across the Gulf. In those countries, Iran's presence meant Hezbollah holding the Lebanese state hostage to Tehran's decisions, thirty-five armed factions in Iraq drawing salaries from Iranian funds channeled through the Iraqi national treasury, and Houthi commanders answering to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps while firing on Arab civilians from Yemeni soil. Freedom is not the word any serious Arab observer would use for what Iran brought.

Indeed, the Arab world's quarrel with Iran runs far deeper than American bases or Israeli airstrikes. What drives it is the systematic subversion of Arab sovereignty by a foreign power that uses the language of Islamic solidarity as cover for an imperial project conducted through proxies.

2 - The second dimension is the proxy question itself, where Western analysis fails most comprehensively. Iran goes far beyond supporting armed groups. Parallel state structures get built inside Arab countries, financial systems get captured, and political figures get installed who owe their existence and survival entirely to Tehran. The Iranians who have administered this project understand it as the export of a revolution, but what Arab populations have experienced is closer to a colonial occupation conducted through intermediaries, and as of now, they’re not mourning the Islamic Republic. But Westerners treat these proxy networks as instruments of legitimate resistance rather than as mechanisms of subjugation, they endorse an imperial project while believing themselves to be opposing one, and as a matter of fact, make themselves the legitimizing force behind Iran’s war against the Arab world.

3- The third dimension is the most counterintuitive for a Western audience, and it is the one most consequential for how the current war is understood and misunderstood. For Arab nationalists, including secular nationalists and even those with deep reservations about Israeli policy, Iran represents a greater and more immediate threat than Israel does.

This is a position that Western media are structurally ill-equipped to render intelligible, because Western discourse on the Middle East has been organized for decades around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the primary axis of regional injustice.

The result is that when Western governments and Western publics take strong positions against Israel’s actions against Iran’s operations, they believe themselves to be standing with the Arab world. In reality, they are advancing a position that the Arab world does not share and has not asked for, while ignoring the threat that Arab governments and Arab populations actually live with.

The rhetorical use of Israel as a perpetual alibi for Iranian aggression has been one of the Islamic Republic’s most durable tools, and Western opinion has served as the unwitting amplifier of that tool across the entire duration of the Islamic Republic’s existence.

Excellent analysis. (which in no way justifies Israeli conduct but explains how the US left has been thoroughly duped and even willingly led into it through the exploitation of antisemitic tropes.)

This is not analysis. It is propaganda. Anyone who has a basic understanding of the ME would strongly disagree with this sh#t. The problem is Israel.

If you can't define the words shia and sunni without looking, your ignorant opinion isn't interesting.

Dp. I’m a Sunni and I have theological issues with twelver Shiism.

I agree with the PP that the post was propaganda and that Israel is the problem.

DP here and as someone very well aware of the Sunni vs Shia debate in that region, the post was propaganda and completely absolved Israel of causing havoc in the Middle East. Israel is just frustrated it can no longer play the Sunni vs Shia card and that the people in the Middle
East are moving past the theological differences and emphasizing the need for cooperation.

That post didn’t absolve Israel of anything. It just pointed out a basic fact that everyone whose mind is not totally clouded by anti-semitism and/or TikTok foreign affairs influencers understands … that Iran is broadly hated in the ME.

So is Israel. At the moment, Iran is a more rational actor (I can't believe I am typing that) who is not in the middle of committing genocide, so why should anyone put the interests of Israel above their own, or that of Iran, for that matter.?

Iran has been the rational actor for years. They only respond to Israel’s and US’s aggression. You know how many proxies both Israel and US arm and let loose on Iran?

Apparently, you two geniuses are able to selectively "forget" the thousands of Iranian citizens who were recently murdered by the regime. Oh, and the three men who were hanged but had committed no crime. But yes - so rational, so moral.

You mean where Trump openly-admitted they sent weapons to protesters and that Mossad/israel admits to having agitators on the ground?

Can your stupid a$$ explain how it is that over a two year period and using the equivalent of 6 Nukes in Gaza which is far smaller than Iran, Israel killed "70,000," but Iran --from the ground in like two days---killed 40, 000? Explain how your brain processes such absolute rot.

Always amusing how Zionists suddenly pretend to be concerned about human life when they love slaughtering Palestinians and Lebanese to the tune of hundreds of thousands along with bombing Iranians and their civilian infrastructure . They are ethnosupremicists where all other lives are beneath them.

My absolute favorite Zionists/defenders of slaughter in the Middle East as a whole, are the ones who want to cheapen the lives of every Palestinian, Iranian, Lebanese, IRAQI, etc., by being extra racist (Bill Maher) and try to justify the slaughter by telling you "They all want to throw gay people off of the roof," so it's perfectly fine to kill all of the "savages."

Now imagine we did that to Jews who were killed during the Holocaust. How are we to know there weren't rapists, homophobes, pedophiles, wife beaters, thieves, etc.? Are we just to assume every single one was a precious unicorn? See how that sounds? That's how repugnant Zionism has always been.

Wow, you have zero self-awareness. The same argument could be made for the Palestinians you're always going on about, or really, any Muslim anywhere. You seem to want people to believe that they're all "precious unicorns," that Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. simply don't exist - or if they do, they're the good guys!! It's comical the way you excuse their atrocities, along with those of the Iranian regime and expect people to sympathize with each and every one of them, to include the TERRORISTS.

You can hate on Israel all you want, but don't you dare expect anyone to have sympathy for the Islamic extremists you choose to champion. And Bill Maher? He is SPOT ON. It is you and your unhinged pro-Iranian stooges who are truly repugnant.

Bill Maher doesn't debate anyone on the issue. LOL, you think a panel of like Van Jones and Batya Unger or whatever her name is, is a "debate" on the Middle East? Do you not notice he purposely created an echo chamber going on years now and refuses to debate ANYONE on the Pro-Palestine side? Not. One. Not even a Muslim to debate. In YEARS. Because he knows he'll have his racist, rabid Zionist a$$ handed to him if he actually had to debate history. You're seriously not bright at all. Of course you think he's right, because having read the rest of the nonsense you wrote, you couldn't be more perfect an example of his avg viewer. You're dense.

Zionists have been defending the wholesale slaughter of PALESTINIANS and others in the ME including babies for generations by way of dehumanization. YOU stupidly said "the same argument..." No, hon. There has never been that argument. THAT'S THE POINT. Israelis get "KILLED," while Palestinians "DIE"...that has been the coverage in America for generations. Israel is covered as if it always "defending itself." That is how the ME has always been covered. You guys can't even handle that Iranians have been negotiating and went even beyond what the *US* asked for, but Israel being belligerent and violent, would not have it. My God, even a literal Zionist J Adam Boehler who is buddies w/ Kushner was sent to negotiate w/ Hamas and said they were normal, reasonable guys and he was immediately removed and Jake Tapper wouldn't have it. The mere notion of listening to someone be honest about those who Israel/Zionists deems "savages," simply cannot happen! Propaganda about "savages mass raping and beheading" MUST be seared into the minds of the brainwashed masses, but we have to ignore that Israelis literally protest for the right to rape and it's literally govt policy TO rape (since *before* Oct 7)...because you view the world like you're watching "Birth of a Nation."

That you tried to use my argument back at me, made no sense. The starting point is that in actuality, Middle Eastern ppl are the ones who've been dehumanized. You deal in analogies to avoid reality. I use analogies to *confirm* the reality. What exactly do you think you even said back to me?

And it's so stupid when you guys have to personally "attack" me, because you know it's so easy to just own your asses that you have to deflect to such childish BS about me being in Tehran or unhinged. FYI, it's more boring than offensive because I wish at least one of you could actually debate, but you can't. How can you? You're still brainwashed and delusional when it comes to who started all of the problems in the last 100 years in the ME.

You guys are done and can't see it. You're destroying free speech everywhere. France is now considering 5 years in prison for criticizing Israel....but that's not "unhinged," right? The ZJ in the French Parliament proposing ARREST for ppl criticizing a foreign state committing genocide and attacking every country around it, is totally not "unhinged." LOL

This word salad is a beautiful example of why you are referred to as unhinged. Because you are. You berate others for "being dense," or "seriously not bright at all," which is hilarious coming from you. You claim Bill Maher refuses to debate a Muslim - but here you are shouting down anyone who attempts to debate with you, constantly invoking "Zionists" as if anyone who disagrees with you must be a Zionist.

You don't debate. You shout at and insult people so that you're always the loudest mouth in the room. I can only imagine what you must be like IRL and I truly pity anyone who has to live with you. You speak of being others being "brainwashed," yet you refuse to see how utterly and completely you've been indoctrinated in your own cesspool of propaganda.

You have monopolized every.single.thread dealing with the middle east by spreading your toxic garbage all over this site. Every one of your posts is completely recognizable because you vomit up the same incendiary terms and phrases and insult anyone who dares to call you out.

I seriously hope you one day get the help you so desperately need, because you won't find it in your addiction to propaganda-filled social media. Your mind is truly sick and you need therapy, yesterday.

The MQ-9 Reaper, a staple for the U.S. since the turn of the 21st century, has remained a go-to asset for the military, even as recently as the war with Iran.

But over the last few years, the U.S. has lost at least 35 Reaper drones — at least 16 were downed over Iran, 7 were shot by the Houthis in Yemen in Spring 2025, and 12 from other aircraft accidents recorded by the Air Force.

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Anonymous wrote:What is this Zionist propaganda stuff taking over every thread?
It’s tiresome.
Get your own thread.

Right. DCUM should only ever have Iranian and Russian propaganda.

You forgot about Palestinian, Venezuelan, Cuba, North Korean... and Canadian... smh

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Anonymous wrote:Iran says $270bn war loss must be compensated, as fresh talks with US loom
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/15/iran-says-270bn-war-loss-must-be-compensated-as-fresh-talks-with-us-loom

Iran has demanded that it receive compensation for the destruction caused by the United States and Israel’s attacks, as the country remains defiant and regional powers continue their attempts to mediate an end to the conflict.

Tehran’s envoy to the United Nations said on Tuesday that five regional countries must pay compensation, based on his accusation that their territories were used for launching attacks on Iran.

Iran has also raised the idea of compensation for damages to come through a Strait of Hormuz protocol, which would include a tax on ships passing through the waterway.

An early estimate indicates that Iran has suffered about $270bn in direct and indirect damages since the start of the US-Israel war on February 28, Iranian government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said during an interview with Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency, published on Tuesday.

She did not provide further information, such as a breakdown of the damages, but said the issue of compensation was discussed in last week’s negotiations between Tehran and Washington in Pakistan, and will be raised in any potential future talks with the US and mediators.

Extensive damage dealt to Iran’s critical infrastructure, after oil and gas facilities, petrochemical companies, steel plants, and aluminium factories were repeatedly targeted

Bridges, ports and railway networks, universities and research centres, and several power plants and water desalination plants were also directly hit, while a large number of hospitals, schools and civilian homes were damaged or destroyed.

Totally agree. I hate Trump for spending our tax dollars on this. He needs to be dragged into Geneva for war crimes, HE can pay the reparations.

Musk can help with his billions since he got this idiot elected and aided and abetted in the destruction of the US.

Remember when Elon Musk served as an unelected, unconfirmed government official who promised to cut $2 trillion dollars of waste but instead cost taxpayers $21 billion? And in between those things probably stole all our data?

Sorry I know that’s off topic, but I thought we might want to pause here and remember the old days.

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Anonymous wrote:Iran says $270bn war loss must be compensated, as fresh talks with US loom
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/15/iran-says-270bn-war-loss-must-be-compensated-as-fresh-talks-with-us-loom

Iran has demanded that it receive compensation for the destruction caused by the United States and Israel’s attacks, as the country remains defiant and regional powers continue their attempts to mediate an end to the conflict.

Tehran’s envoy to the United Nations said on Tuesday that five regional countries must pay compensation, based on his accusation that their territories were used for launching attacks on Iran.

Iran has also raised the idea of compensation for damages to come through a Strait of Hormuz protocol, which would include a tax on ships passing through the waterway.

An early estimate indicates that Iran has suffered about $270bn in direct and indirect damages since the start of the US-Israel war on February 28, Iranian government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said during an interview with Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency, published on Tuesday.

She did not provide further information, such as a breakdown of the damages, but said the issue of compensation was discussed in last week’s negotiations between Tehran and Washington in Pakistan, and will be raised in any potential future talks with the US and mediators.

Extensive damage dealt to Iran’s critical infrastructure, after oil and gas facilities, petrochemical companies, steel plants, and aluminium factories were repeatedly targeted

Bridges, ports and railway networks, universities and research centres, and several power plants and water desalination plants were also directly hit, while a large number of hospitals, schools and civilian homes were damaged or destroyed.

Totally agree. I hate Trump for spending our tax dollars on this. He needs to be dragged into Geneva for war crimes, HE can pay the reparations.

Musk can help with his billions since he got this idiot elected and aided and abetted in the destruction of the US.

Anonymous wrote:This was about enriching big oil. They are making $$$ hand over fist as a result of this war, on the backs of the little people who are suffering high gas and food prices. I'm sure big oil is thanking Trump. MAGA /s

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/15/big-oil-huge-war-windfall-consumers

Anonymous wrote:Why are more troops being sent to the ME after Trump just claimed the war is "over"?

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Anonymous wrote:he Arab Word is Watching a Different War:

Three reasons why it has been difficult to understand the Arab position:

1 - The first is the Arab relationship with Iran. From the vantage point of Brussels or London, Iran presents itself as a resistance movement with a grievance against American hegemony and Israeli occupation, and this presentation maps comfortably onto familiar Western anticolonial frameworks.
What it does not map onto is the lived experience of Arab populations in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, and across the Gulf. In those countries, Iran's presence meant Hezbollah holding the Lebanese state hostage to Tehran's decisions, thirty-five armed factions in Iraq drawing salaries from Iranian funds channeled through the Iraqi national treasury, and Houthi commanders answering to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps while firing on Arab civilians from Yemeni soil. Freedom is not the word any serious Arab observer would use for what Iran brought.

Indeed, the Arab world's quarrel with Iran runs far deeper than American bases or Israeli airstrikes. What drives it is the systematic subversion of Arab sovereignty by a foreign power that uses the language of Islamic solidarity as cover for an imperial project conducted through proxies.

2 - The second dimension is the proxy question itself, where Western analysis fails most comprehensively. Iran goes far beyond supporting armed groups. Parallel state structures get built inside Arab countries, financial systems get captured, and political figures get installed who owe their existence and survival entirely to Tehran. The Iranians who have administered this project understand it as the export of a revolution, but what Arab populations have experienced is closer to a colonial occupation conducted through intermediaries, and as of now, they’re not mourning the Islamic Republic. But Westerners treat these proxy networks as instruments of legitimate resistance rather than as mechanisms of subjugation, they endorse an imperial project while believing themselves to be opposing one, and as a matter of fact, make themselves the legitimizing force behind Iran’s war against the Arab world.

3- The third dimension is the most counterintuitive for a Western audience, and it is the one most consequential for how the current war is understood and misunderstood. For Arab nationalists, including secular nationalists and even those with deep reservations about Israeli policy, Iran represents a greater and more immediate threat than Israel does.

This is a position that Western media are structurally ill-equipped to render intelligible, because Western discourse on the Middle East has been organized for decades around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the primary axis of regional injustice.

The result is that when Western governments and Western publics take strong positions against Israel’s actions against Iran’s operations, they believe themselves to be standing with the Arab world. In reality, they are advancing a position that the Arab world does not share and has not asked for, while ignoring the threat that Arab governments and Arab populations actually live with.

The rhetorical use of Israel as a perpetual alibi for Iranian aggression has been one of the Islamic Republic’s most durable tools, and Western opinion has served as the unwitting amplifier of that tool across the entire duration of the Islamic Republic’s existence.

Excellent analysis. (which in no way justifies Israeli conduct but explains how the US left has been thoroughly duped and even willingly led into it through the exploitation of antisemitic tropes.)

This is not analysis. It is propaganda. Anyone who has a basic understanding of the ME would strongly disagree with this sh#t. The problem is Israel.

If you can't define the words shia and sunni without looking, your ignorant opinion isn't interesting.

Dp. I’m a Sunni and I have theological issues with twelver Shiism.

I agree with the PP that the post was propaganda and that Israel is the problem.

DP here and as someone very well aware of the Sunni vs Shia debate in that region, the post was propaganda and completely absolved Israel of causing havoc in the Middle East. Israel is just frustrated it can no longer play the Sunni vs Shia card and that the people in the Middle
East are moving past the theological differences and emphasizing the need for cooperation.

That post didn’t absolve Israel of anything. It just pointed out a basic fact that everyone whose mind is not totally clouded by anti-semitism and/or TikTok foreign affairs influencers understands … that Iran is broadly hated in the ME.

So is Israel. At the moment, Iran is a more rational actor (I can't believe I am typing that) who is not in the middle of committing genocide, so why should anyone put the interests of Israel above their own, or that of Iran, for that matter.?

Iran has been the rational actor for years. They only respond to Israel’s and US’s aggression. You know how many proxies both Israel and US arm and let loose on Iran?

Apparently, you two geniuses are able to selectively "forget" the thousands of Iranian citizens who were recently murdered by the regime. Oh, and the three men who were hanged but had committed no crime. But yes - so rational, so moral.

You mean where Trump openly-admitted they sent weapons to protesters and that Mossad/israel admits to having agitators on the ground?

Can your stupid a$$ explain how it is that over a two year period and using the equivalent of 6 Nukes in Gaza which is far smaller than Iran, Israel killed "70,000," but Iran --from the ground in like two days---killed 40, 000? Explain how your brain processes such absolute rot.

Always amusing how Zionists suddenly pretend to be concerned about human life when they love slaughtering Palestinians and Lebanese to the tune of hundreds of thousands along with bombing Iranians and their civilian infrastructure . They are ethnosupremicists where all other lives are beneath them.

My absolute favorite Zionists/defenders of slaughter in the Middle East as a whole, are the ones who want to cheapen the lives of every Palestinian, Iranian, Lebanese, IRAQI, etc., by being extra racist (Bill Maher) and try to justify the slaughter by telling you "They all want to throw gay people off of the roof," so it's perfectly fine to kill all of the "savages."

Now imagine we did that to Jews who were killed during the Holocaust. How are we to know there weren't rapists, homophobes, pedophiles, wife beaters, thieves, etc.? Are we just to assume every single one was a precious unicorn? See how that sounds? That's how repugnant Zionism has always been.

Wow, you have zero self-awareness. The same argument could be made for the Palestinians you're always going on about, or really, any Muslim anywhere. You seem to want people to believe that they're all "precious unicorns," that Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. simply don't exist - or if they do, they're the good guys!! It's comical the way you excuse their atrocities, along with those of the Iranian regime and expect people to sympathize with each and every one of them, to include the TERRORISTS.

You can hate on Israel all you want, but don't you dare expect anyone to have sympathy for the Islamic extremists you choose to champion. And Bill Maher? He is SPOT ON. It is you and your unhinged pro-Iranian stooges who are truly repugnant.

Bill Maher doesn't debate anyone on the issue. LOL, you think a panel of like Van Jones and Batya Unger or whatever her name is, is a "debate" on the Middle East? Do you not notice he purposely created an echo chamber going on years now and refuses to debate ANYONE on the Pro-Palestine side? Not. One. Not even a Muslim to debate. In YEARS. Because he knows he'll have his racist, rabid Zionist a$$ handed to him if he actually had to debate history. You're seriously not bright at all. Of course you think he's right, because having read the rest of the nonsense you wrote, you couldn't be more perfect an example of his avg viewer. You're dense.

Zionists have been defending the wholesale slaughter of PALESTINIANS and others in the ME including babies for generations by way of dehumanization. YOU stupidly said "the same argument..." No, hon. There has never been that argument. THAT'S THE POINT. Israelis get "KILLED," while Palestinians "DIE"...that has been the coverage in America for generations. Israel is covered as if it always "defending itself." That is how the ME has always been covered. You guys can't even handle that Iranians have been negotiating and went even beyond what the *US* asked for, but Israel being belligerent and violent, would not have it. My God, even a literal Zionist J Adam Boehler who is buddies w/ Kushner was sent to negotiate w/ Hamas and said they were normal, reasonable guys and he was immediately removed and Jake Tapper wouldn't have it. The mere notion of listening to someone be honest about those who Israel/Zionists deems "savages," simply cannot happen! Propaganda about "savages mass raping and beheading" MUST be seared into the minds of the brainwashed masses, but we have to ignore that Israelis literally protest for the right to rape and it's literally govt policy TO rape (since *before* Oct 7)...because you view the world like you're watching "Birth of a Nation."

That you tried to use my argument back at me, made no sense. The starting point is that in actuality, Middle Eastern ppl are the ones who've been dehumanized. You deal in analogies to avoid reality. I use analogies to *confirm* the reality. What exactly do you think you even said back to me?

And it's so stupid when you guys have to personally "attack" me, because you know it's so easy to just own your asses that you have to deflect to such childish BS about me being in Tehran or unhinged. FYI, it's more boring than offensive because I wish at least one of you could actually debate, but you can't. How can you? You're still brainwashed and delusional when it comes to who started all of the problems in the last 100 years in the ME.

You guys are done and can't see it. You're destroying free speech everywhere. France is now considering 5 years in prison for criticizing Israel....but that's not "unhinged," right? The ZJ in the French Parliament proposing ARREST for ppl criticizing a foreign state committing genocide and attacking every country around it, is totally not "unhinged." LOL

This word salad is a beautiful example of why you are referred to as unhinged. Because you are. You berate others for "being dense," or "seriously not bright at all," which is hilarious coming from you. You claim Bill Maher refuses to debate a Muslim - but here you are shouting down anyone who attempts to debate with you, constantly invoking "Zionists" as if anyone who disagrees with you must be a Zionist.

You don't debate. You shout at and insult people so that you're always the loudest mouth in the room. I can only imagine what you must be like IRL and I truly pity anyone who has to live with you. You speak of being others being "brainwashed," yet you refuse to see how utterly and completely you've been indoctrinated in your own cesspool of propaganda.

You have monopolized every.single.thread dealing with the middle east by spreading your toxic garbage all over this site. Every one of your posts is completely recognizable because you vomit up the same incendiary terms and phrases and insult anyone who dares to call you out.

I seriously hope you one day get the help you so desperately need, because you won't find it in your addiction to propaganda-filled social media. Your mind is truly sick and you need therapy, yesterday.

DP. Might want yo look in the mirror and give the same speech. Who the hell supports Bill Maher?

Um, a lot of people. Normal people with common sense. So, not you or your crowd.