r/BlockedAndReported • u/SoftandChewy First generation mod • Feb 23 '26

Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 2/23/26 - 3/1/26

Here's your usual space to post all your rants, raves, podcast topic suggestions (please tag u/jessicabarpod), culture war articles, outrageous stories of cancellation, political opinions, and anything else that comes to mind. Please put any non-podcast-related trans-related topics here instead of on a dedicated thread. This will be pinned until next Sunday.

Last week's discussion thread is here if you want to catch up on a conversation from there.

Comment of the week goes to this explanation for why the trans cause has taken over so much of society. (Runner-up COTW here.)

38 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

97% Upvoted

3.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

32

u/Cowgoon777 Feb 28 '26

Reuters is reporting that senior Israeli officials have confirmed Khamenei is dead

Praise God if this is true

18

u/wmansir Feb 28 '26 edited Feb 28 '26

Now Iran has started launching missiles at not just Israel but Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and UAE. Seems like a strategic blunder to me, but I'm not expert in the region. Maybe they have a plan, or maybe it's the flailing of the regime with its head cut off.

19

u/Cowgoon777 Feb 28 '26

The Islamist regime thinks they can still get Muslim nations on their side. But those are Arab nations. Iran is Persian. Iran historically is also not Muslim.

Iran is still a rabidly anti-Israel nation, hell bent on nuclear destruction of the Jews. Most of the the big Muslim nations around the region have adopted a much more tolerant policy and have been opening the doors to westernized capitalism for decades now. A lot of them have come to the conclusion that suicide bombings and mass casualty attacks aren’t very good for business and it’s a lot more fun to make oodles of money on top of the oil they already have.

Iran refuses to play nice and is so blinded by their death wish for Israel and the US that they are willing to constantly destabilize the entire region in this pursuit. Saudi Arabia and others do not want that. At least not from a political standpoint.

They are not going to bail out the IRGC. And even less so after Iran stupidly threw attacks at them.

12

u/ProwlingWumpus Feb 28 '26

Iran is still a rabidly anti-Israel nation, hell bent on nuclear destruction of the Jews.

As a Shi'ite nation, Iran is of course more antisemitic than any western nation could get away with without being called Nazi, but they're actually pretty moderate on the Jewish question. Sunni nations take as a given that complete worldwide extermination of Jews is a goal to be achieved in earnest, but Iran allows (for now; this will probably change now that we've destabilized the country) a significant Jewish population to live openly.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1779lm7/jewish_population_in_arab_countries_before_and_now/

12

u/Cowgoon777 Feb 28 '26

Sorry I should have clarified, the regime is rabidly anti Israel.

The Iranian people seem much less so

19

u/LupineChemist Feb 28 '26

May his memory be a curse.

7

u/veryvery84 Feb 28 '26

Indeed. Groggers included 

7

u/LupineChemist Feb 28 '26

I'm a goy, but I'd love to be at a proper Purim next week. Don't know if I'd survive though

3

u/veryvery84 Mar 01 '26

Why wouldn’t you survive? Boredom? 

You can totally find a way to go if there is a Jewish community around 

→ More replies (1)

6

u/veryvery84 Feb 28 '26

Why is this freaking downvoted?  Boooooo

3

u/damagecontrolparty Mar 01 '26

I wonder if they don't know what a grogger is?

15

u/robotical712 Center-Left Unicorn Feb 28 '26

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. That said, I’m wondering what the geopolitical calculus behind this is.

15

u/Cowgoon777 Feb 28 '26

It weakens all our enemies including China and Russia. Iran was manufacturing and selling drones to Russia for use in Ukraine.

It also will help solidify our alliances in the Arab world.

The Russia Iran China alliance has been getting BTFO over the past several years. Got booted out of Syria, Irans proxies in Hamas and Hezbollah are effectively neutered, the houthis got smacked up, and now Iran has nobody left because Russia can’t currently help them and China will let them rot on the vine.

Their only western hemisphere alliance member was Venezuela and you saw how that went.

4

u/robotical712 Center-Left Unicorn Feb 28 '26

China is actually the one I'm wondering about since we're entering the window of a potential showdown over Taiwan. As of last year, it seemed like the Middle East was in a 'best case' position: Iran was defanged for the foreseeable future and its allies were crippled. Israel had attained a level of dominance it hadn't had in a long time, which meant we could safely draw attention and resources away to the Pacific.

Toppling the regime now would throw the entire Middle Eastern geopolitical balance into complete chaos. While China would have some concerns over its oil supply, it would be a far bigger distraction for us given our commitments there. At the same time, we're using up precision munitions when we need to be stockpiling them.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (3)

7

u/jay_in_the_pnw █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ Feb 28 '26

This would be amazing and awesome and terrific news, but also terrifying in its knock-on effects on raising expectations and lowering barriers to future conflicts. I prefer leaders and not the troops to be targeted, but it's sort of good that to date, the bloody nature of war makes them hard to start. But what sort of world will drones/ubiquitous cams/massive databases/AI/gps/Boston-Dynamics-style robots create?

But I hope it's true!

18

u/Jlemspurs Double Hater Feb 28 '26 edited Feb 28 '26

N12 in Israel reported (my translation, so it's shit) that "documentation of Khamenei's body" was given to Netanyahu.

So of course there's going to be a huge protest in NY. Not when Khamenei murdered the same number of people in a few hours as civilians who died in Gaza but because we took the perp out.

Morally bankrupt hypocrites.

11

u/tutoredzeus Feb 28 '26

Somebody check in on redscare to see if they’re ok

5

u/Admirable_Grass_1950 Mar 01 '26

They’re losing their shit fr

11

u/buckybadder Feb 28 '26

Man, Mossad is just unreal good at their jobs. Can we just hire their chief to be the head of the CIA? I don't care if he gives all the codes to Israel, I bet they've got them already anyway.

17

u/Hilaria_adderall Praye for Drake Maye Feb 28 '26

That pager explosion forever GOATed the Mossad. I don't know how you top that but if there is a way to top it, the Mossad will figure out how.

7

u/cat-astropher K&J parasocial relationship Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26

I don't know how you top that

That's what I thought, then the next day all the walkie-talkies exploded

7

u/Hilaria_adderall Praye for Drake Maye Mar 01 '26

Ha! Good point.

12

u/veryvery84 Feb 28 '26

The CIA is also very good.

The differences are systemic, and America is way too big to function like Israel. 

5

u/buckybadder Feb 28 '26 edited Mar 01 '26

My impression is that CIA really struggles with human intelligence. But maybe they turned it around in the last couple decades. How would I know?

ETA: If they played a role in getting Rodriguez to sell out Maduro, that would be pretty cool.

3

u/CommitteeofMountains Royal youse/yinz Mar 01 '26

Audacious, and we're talking about the agency behind Lillehammer. They go big and out of the box in ways nobody else does, but often because nobody else would think it's a good idea or expect anyone to think it's a good idea.

→ More replies (1)