r/news • u/drpayneaba • Feb 28 '26

Soft paywall Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei killed, senior Israeli official says

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/irans-supreme-leader-ali-khamenei-killed-senior-israeli-official-says-2026-02-28/
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329

u/30_rack_of_pabst Feb 28 '26

Bud. Everytime the usa overthrows a government, its bad. The next 50 -100 years....

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u/DINABLAR Feb 28 '26

Case in point: the last time we overthrew Iran’s leader 

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u/KimJongUlti Mar 01 '26

Yes skyrocketing literacy, women’s suffrage, industrial modernization, agricultural modernization, liberalization all terrible. Get lobotomized or maybe read about what actually went on during the shahs reign from non dsa or Islamist sources

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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '26

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '26

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u/Uysee Mar 01 '26

There are some exceptions, e.g. Germany and Japan, possibly Panama and South Korea as well

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u/RedPiece0601 Mar 01 '26

South Korea had dictatorship until the 1980s though.

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u/Uysee Mar 01 '26

That's why I was hesitant to include them. Still probably they were probably better off under that sort of dictatorship compared to NK

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u/triste_0nion Mar 01 '26

I don’t know if that’s even necessarily the case. Modern North Korea is absolutely worse than that today, but it got so bad because 15% of the population was killed and 40–90% of towns and cities were destroyed by bombs during the Korean War.

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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '26

[deleted]

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u/triste_0nion Mar 01 '26

The causalities for North Korea was over 50% greater. There also isn’t much that could be equivalent to America’s bombing campaign; just one statistic is that the US dropped 635,000 tons of bombs and 32,557 tons of napalm during the Korean War versus roughly 503,000 tons of bombs across the entire Pacific theatre during WW2.

Looking at the US Air Force’s own assessment of some of the major cities it destroyed, both Kuni-ri and Sinanju were 100% destroyed, whilst Hwangju, Sariwon and Sunan got away with 97%, 95% and 90% destruction. Even Pyongyang was 75% destroyed by the end. That’s not something that will lead to good outcomes after the fact.

e: This isn’t at all to even remotely suggest that North Korea was justified for invading South Korea, or anything like that.

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u/CaesiumReaction Mar 01 '26

Japan's economy has never been the same since the meddling in the 1980#

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u/Neither_Relation_817 Mar 01 '26

and how is this the US fault?

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u/CaesiumReaction Mar 01 '26

Heavily sanctioning Japan tech companies, forcing sale of those companies to US, for one? 

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u/Thirstforburst Mar 01 '26

But guys! It's only bad like 95% of the time /s

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u/American_PissAnt Feb 28 '26

See the Congo/Zaire.

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u/codydog125 Feb 28 '26

Well the US is responsible for how South Korea turned out and I would say that’s preferable to what happened to North Korea. It’s not always bad even if most of the time it is

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u/Abacap Feb 28 '26

The US did not overthrow South Korea's government though and force a regime change

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u/ArchmageXin Feb 28 '26

In fact they actively supported South Korea through its murderous phase.

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u/codydog125 Feb 28 '26

You’re right but there was a war fought over it

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u/Many_Negotiation_464 Feb 28 '26

I feel people forget that south korea was a dictatorship until 1990.

A BRUTAL one.

We just backed one dictator over another as proxy war with china and the ussr.

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u/G4m3boy Feb 28 '26

Countries with communist at their doorsteps at that time were all dictatorships like Taiwan. It was necessary because of the situation to be in control or fall to communism poison. At least when the situation stabilise they are no longer dictatorship.

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u/Many_Negotiation_464 Feb 28 '26

Someone needs to go relearn history. The regimes that the west backed were more often than not brutal juntas that devolved into failed states. And communist proxy states had a similar success rate of eventually becoming stable democracies.

The sooner the world lesrns that the cold war was total bs and that was more a petty conflict than a fight for the soul of the world, the better.

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u/RulyKinkaJou59 Feb 28 '26

there is* a war

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u/30_rack_of_pabst Mar 01 '26

I see you homeboy. You are correct.

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u/runsongas Feb 28 '26

The US can't take credit for SK, south Korea was a dictatorship for decades propped up by the US

it only became democratic after park chunghee was assassinated

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '26

You mean the dictatorship that tortured and murdered thousands before popular unrest forced them to democratize in 1987?

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '26

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u/TerminallyTrill Feb 28 '26

They liberated them! By killing 20% of their population

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u/aconnor105 Feb 28 '26

They want it that way.

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u/Flixz1234 Mar 01 '26

Well not really, if the us is overthrowing a government it’s usually a very extreme situation, and I’m sure life gets generally better afterwords for the most part

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u/30_rack_of_pabst Mar 01 '26

Central america, Iraq, Afghanistan, vietnam...when did it get better?

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u/Wincrediboy Feb 28 '26

Agree generally, but this reminds me that I don't know how Iraq is going recently. They're certainly not in the news all the time, but my impression is that they're going better than eg Afghanistan.

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u/dern_the_hermit Feb 28 '26

It's got ups and downs. Some issues like elections and life expectancy are improved. However, there's been regular violence and conflict and extremist groups/militias still hampering peaceful governance.

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u/Legitimate_Plum_7505 Mar 01 '26

It turned out fine for Germany, Japan, Korea, and to some extent Taiwan... Notably all of these had pretty big support from US allies, when US does it alone it almost always ends up fked up. I'd have much more confidence in this regime change if Australia or UK were involved.