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2026-04-07 Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Iran rejects ceasefire proposal, President Trump Threatens To 'Take Out Entire Country Of Iran' Tomorrow Night, Demands 'Free Traffic Of Oil' In Hormuz; Minister calls for youth to be human shields at power plants
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Posted by Besoeker 2026-04-07 02:31|| E-Mail|| Front Page|| [1880 views ]  Top
 File under: Govt of Iran 

1 Say nothing more, just do it !
Posted by Besoeker 2026-04-07 02:38||   2026-04-07 02:38|| Front Page Top

2 
Posted by Grom the Affective 2026-04-07 02:40||   2026-04-07 02:40|| Front Page Top

3 Enough talk indeed!
Posted by Whiskey Mike 2026-04-07 04:02||   2026-04-07 04:02|| Front Page Top

4 Mods, please clean up the mess I made. Thank you.
Posted by Whiskey Mike 2026-04-07 04:04||   2026-04-07 04:04|| Front Page Top

5 Done. :-)
Posted by trailing wife 2026-04-07 04:22||   2026-04-07 04:22|| Front Page Top

6 "Trump was asked if his plans to blow up civilian bridges and power plants in Iran would constitute war crimes, and said they would not "because they [Iran] killed 45,000 people in the last month."

Absurd reasoning. Taking out ALL power plants (what about the nuclear ones) would kill millions.

Even if nuclear power plants aren't hit directly, leaving the country without electricity (for a long time) would mean nuclear plants could no longer be cooled and would blow up.

It's about time that cooler heads prevailed.
Posted by European Conservative 2026-04-07 05:37||   2026-04-07 05:37|| Front Page Top

7 #6 The degree of hypocrisy is staggering.
Posted by Grom the Affective 2026-04-07 07:41||   2026-04-07 07:41|| Front Page Top

8 Oh noes! They are going to use human shields who volunteer (at the point of a gun, no doubt) to protect their power plants!

Let it rip. Shut them down
Posted by Frank G 2026-04-07 07:44||   2026-04-07 07:44|| Front Page Top

9 /\ It's about time that cooler heads prevailed.

"Cooler heads" have prevailed since 4 Nov 1979. The situation has only grown worse, much worse in fact.
Posted by Besoeker 2026-04-07 07:46||   2026-04-07 07:46|| Front Page Top

10 Appeasement, the standard European response which has worked so WELL in the past.
Posted by Chantry 2026-04-07 08:10||   2026-04-07 08:10|| Front Page Top

11 Let's hope Alireza Rahimi gets added to the list of dead Iranian fanatics in short order.
Posted by Chantry 2026-04-07 08:12||   2026-04-07 08:12|| Front Page Top

12 It's almost as if Iranian Mullahs can't be reasoned with.
Posted by Megabyses 2026-04-07 08:51||   2026-04-07 08:51|| Front Page Top

13 Who needs Europe?
We pay to defend them and absorb $200 billion in annual trade deficits
Posted by Grom the Affective 2026-04-07 09:00||   2026-04-07 09:00|| Front Page Top

14 "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again." (Donald Trump on Truth Social)

No comment.

Posted by European Conservative 2026-04-07 09:14||   2026-04-07 09:14|| Front Page Top

15 Some civilizations deserve to die. Nazi fucking Germany for example. That doesn't mean the people get wiped out. Germany still exists. Nazi Germany does not. And Europe no longer exists, you've been colonized by the muslims you used to fight off. Europe is dead. Only Europistan remains.
Posted by Silentbrick 2026-04-07 09:40||   2026-04-07 09:40|| Front Page Top

16 Taking out ALL power plants (what about the nuclear ones) would kill millions.

In game theory, this is called a threat. To work, threats must be both credible and unpleasant.

Even if nuclear power plants aren't hit directly, leaving the country without electricity (for a long time) would mean nuclear plants could no longer be cooled and would blow up.

Blowing up a nuke plant would certainly kill it, but you can get a mission kill with a whole lot less mess and effort by simply disconnecting it from the power grid.

Also, it is possible to shut down a nuclear reactor either slowly or in emergency scram mode using the same mechanism that allows control of the reaction rate. Over here, nuke plants have diesel-powered emergency backup generators. Without fuel, these will not run forever, but they do give you time for a controlled shutdown.
Posted by SteveS 2026-04-07 09:47||   2026-04-07 09:47|| Front Page Top

17 @silentbrick
Nazi Germany wasn't a civilization.
Posted by European Conservative 2026-04-07 10:06||   2026-04-07 10:06|| Front Page Top

18 @Steve S.
Even shut-down nuclear reactors need cooling.
And no electricity (for many years to come) would mean a total breakdown of society in these days. That also means a new giant refugee crisis.
Posted by European Conservative 2026-04-07 10:16||   2026-04-07 10:16|| Front Page Top

19 Basically what we did to Germany by 1945. Somehow the world didn't implode in the pre-electrical times.
Posted by Procopius2k 2026-04-07 10:57||   2026-04-07 10:57|| Front Page Top

20 This is nice.
So many players today!.
Posted by Skidmark 2026-04-07 11:05||   2026-04-07 11:05|| Front Page Top

21 And no electricity (for many years to come) would mean a total breakdown of society in these days. That also means a new giant refugee crisis.

Yeah, it would be a big mess. Quite inconvenient. And that is the other side of a credible threat: it has to be both unpleasant for the threatened *and* something you would not normally do as a matter of course. There has to be a cost to you to make it believable. As satisfying as it might be to bomb the mullahs back to the Stone Age, it would take a lot of ordinance and we would lose a bunch of people. Best avoided if possible.

Remember this is a negotiation over whether Iran will have nuclear weapons. The position of the United States is no way in hell will that happen. That is the goal.

Totally off-topic: EC, I think you mentioned your company has some technology on the Artemis mission. Did we ever hear what that was?

Posted by SteveS 2026-04-07 11:27||   2026-04-07 11:27|| Front Page Top

22 That also means a new giant refugee crisis.

As will the evacuation of Tehran when the water runs out, which we were told was imminent
Posted by Frank G 2026-04-07 11:50||   2026-04-07 11:50|| Front Page Top

23 Bad News, Guys: The New York Times Says We Lost the War — and Iran Is Now a ‘Major World Power’
Posted by Grom the Affective 2026-04-07 12:20||   2026-04-07 12:20|| Front Page Top

24 Iran ends peace talks as women and children form HUMAN SHIELDS at energy sites after Trump threatened the 'whole civilization will die tonight'

Iran is officially led by Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, appointed Supreme Leader after his father Ali Khamenei was killed in US-Israel strikes on February 28 - but he is unconscious and 'unable to be involved in any decision-making,' a fresh intelligence memo states, raising urgent questions over who is actually running Tehran.
Posted by Skidmark 2026-04-07 12:33||   2026-04-07 12:33|| Front Page Top

25 @SteveS
No, you didn't, Steve...
Posted by European Conservative 2026-04-07 12:46||   2026-04-07 12:46|| Front Page Top

26 Totally off-topic: EC, I think you mentioned your company has some technology on the Artemis mission. Did we ever hear what that was?

Poss toileteers are in denial.
Posted by Skidmark 2026-04-07 12:49||   2026-04-07 12:49|| Front Page Top

27 Striking civilian infrastructure that causes disproportionate civilian harm is a war crime under the UCMJ. They have classes in this. Anyone who follows orders to commit war crimes is a war criminal. "I was only following orders" is no excuse: the Nuremberg Principle.
We caught a war criminal from the 1990s Bosnian unpleasantness recently.
Posted by Ometch Untervehr3098 2026-04-07 13:03||   2026-04-07 13:03|| Front Page Top

28 "Iran’s army responded defiantly to Trump Monday night, saying the US president’s "arrogant rhetoric" on the war was not hindering the country’s soldiers."
If it's not hindering the IRGC thugs, why is Iran importing thugs from Iraq & Afghanistan?
Posted by Chantry 2026-04-07 13:05||   2026-04-07 13:05|| Front Page Top

29 ^ Less scruples about killing Iranian civilians?
Posted by Frank G 2026-04-07 13:10||   2026-04-07 13:10|| Front Page Top

30 We could literally wipe Iran
Of the map in a week

You wanna know the difference?
With Afganistan and Iraq?

Soldiers werent allowed to engage
And shoot unless shot upon
They werent allowed to do shit
Because MUH warcrimes!

They spend 2 decades trying to build
Some pathetic worldview and culture
The population never would do
While they spend trillions on infrastructure
And pointless endless pit investing
In that shithole

And it all fell apart 2 weeks
After they left

20 years of pathetic bullshit

That is why you go all in
Shoot on sight
And exterminate them to the last one
Of the cancer regime

They wont be able to ellect another
Ayatollah if all of his people are dead
Posted by Ometch Untervehr3098 2026-04-07 13:48||   2026-04-07 13:48|| Front Page Top

31 As an aside: I read this yesterday, and found it usefully describes my experiences conversing with various nationalities — I never had to manage anyone except a couple of wonderful Czech and Polish au pair girls, so I can’t speak to the management side of things beyond those observations Mr. Wife shared. But the section about Israelis nailed a problem I’ve been having recently with Mr. Wife, even though I am only half-Israeli and never lived there.

How to Work in a Well-Managed American Firm
A Direct Guide for International Professionals

This isn't my usual territory. I write about institutions, incentives, and the gap between how systems present themselves and how they actually work. But this document came out of a conversation that kept pulling on a thread I've been sitting on for forty years — working in tech across enough organizations, countries, and hiring pipelines to notice patterns that polite professional culture doesn't name directly. I'm not an HR consultant. I'm not a DEI practitioner. I'm someone who has hired, managed, promoted, and occasionally fired people across most of the cultures described here, and watched the same failure modes play out with enough repetition to be confident they're real. Take it or leave it. It's the guide I wish someone had handed people before they walked in the door.

Posted by trailing wife 2026-04-07 13:49||   2026-04-07 13:49|| Front Page Top

32 ^ That's very interesting, tw. I could only offer a few anecdotes. In a galaxy far far away I was working with a Japanese company that had loaned a good bit of money to American company. After a while the American company filed a Chapter 11, which in context meant that the Japanese company would recover pennies on the dollar. The Japanese were genuinely shocked that their American counterpart would not repay the loan, no matter how many times I explained that this was a day ending in a Y in America. I think they expected the American CEO to commit seppuku.
Posted by Matt 2026-04-07 14:19||   2026-04-07 14:19|| Front Page Top

33 Nits make lice. War is hell. Two quotes from a general who knew how to win wars.
Posted by Regular joe 2026-04-07 14:33||   2026-04-07 14:33|| Front Page Top

34 Civilian shields/hostages surround power plants, clearly meant as a deterrent and PR tactic - but how about the transformer farms and the power line pylons - single point of failure isn't just the site itself, but also how it delivers product.
Posted by NoMoreBS 2026-04-07 14:45||   2026-04-07 14:45|| Front Page Top

35 ^^And that will make it just as dark, but not for as many years. I like it!
Posted by Bobby 2026-04-07 14:59||   2026-04-07 14:59|| Front Page Top

36 #27 here is the punitive articles of the UCMJ, which one(s) are you referring to?
Posted by Procopius2k 2026-04-07 15:15||   2026-04-07 15:15|| Front Page Top

37 How about an EMP?
Posted by Matt 2026-04-07 16:44||   2026-04-07 16:44|| Front Page Top

38 Anyone who refuses orders in wartime goes to the stockade.

892. ARTICLE 92. Failure to Obey Order or Regulation
Any person subject to this chapter who–

(1) violates or fails to obey any general order or regulation; (2) having knowledge of any other lawful order issued by any member of the armed forces, which it is his duty to obey, fails to obey the order; or (3) is derelict in the performance of his duties;

shall be punished as a court-martial may dire
Posted by Ometch Untervehr3098 2026-04-07 17:29||   2026-04-07 17:29|| Front Page Top

39 Anyone who refuses orders in wartime goes to the stockade.

There is always a high cost for those who choose principle over going along to get along. One chooses principle for the betterment of society, not for personal gain or convenience, accepting that the process will be a part of the punishment because the price in soul stuff is too high if one doesn’t.

The people who sheltered my mother and grandparents from the Nazis risked not only their own freedom but the very lives of all associated with them, and they did so for total strangers. When I asked one of them in 2010 why she had done it, she looked at me in total incomprehension. “How could I not?” was her only answer.
Posted by trailing wife 2026-04-07 17:52||   2026-04-07 17:52|| Front Page Top

40 Buzz a couple throw-away drones over "The Martyrs" and see how enthusiastic they are for their Mullah/IRGC Overlords
Posted by Frank G 2026-04-07 17:58||   2026-04-07 17:58|| Front Page Top

41 Classic thread
Posted by badanov 2026-04-07 18:16||   2026-04-07 18:16|| Front Page Top

42 #38 you stipulate "Striking civilian infrastructure that causes disproportionate civilian harm is a war crime under the UCMJ."

You failed to cite what punitive article that was said war crime. You flappingly call it a war crime without citation.
We bombed the blazes out of German and Japanese infrastructure. It was not a war crime.
Posted by Procopius2k 2026-04-07 18:34||   2026-04-07 18:34|| Front Page Top

43 *head fake*
Two week pause. Stock markets tomorrow = tumescent
Posted by Frank G 2026-04-07 18:43||   2026-04-07 18:43|| Front Page Top

44 Probably about time to quote good old Talleyrand: "Worse than a crime, a mistake."

A few thoughts:

The destruction of German cities did not make the Nazis go away. Au contraire. Only the complete occupation of Germany could do it.

The destruction of ALL (not some= power plants in Iran would mean absolute disaster and misery not for the mullahs, but for the population that is supposed to be liberated. We'll see a sharp rise in terrorist acts and millions of refugees.

A mortally wounded Iran could still take the whole region with it. And if that happens, the whole world economy.

Qusquis agis prudenter agas et respice finem.
Posted by European Conservative 2026-04-07 18:47||   2026-04-07 18:47|| Front Page Top

45 Whiners said the same thing about the bombing of Dresden. The German people did not rise up and overthrow their government and thus deserved what they got.
Likewise with the firebombing of dozens of Japanese cities.
Finally, we had to use nuclear weapons. Even then they wouldn't quit! A second bomb on Nagasaki finally convinced them and they surrendered.
How many nukes will Iran absorb before they see reason? bets are being taken in the prediction markets right now.
Posted by Cretle Fleregum5456 2026-04-07 18:53||   2026-04-07 18:53|| Front Page Top

46 Rising up against a brutal but efficient dictatorship is very difficult.

The Wall fell in 1989 because the East German government showed weakness and fear, unlike the Chinese government a few months before.

That's why the Cuban regime didn't fall in 1989. They maintained brutal control. The mullahs also do. They have nowhere to go.
Posted by European Conservative 2026-04-07 19:05||   2026-04-07 19:05|| Front Page Top

47 According to unreliable sources, Netflix is planning a series based on the book/movie "The Bridges at Toko-Ri". Working title is "War Crimes at Toko-Ri"
Posted by SteveS 2026-04-07 19:27||   2026-04-07 19:27|| Front Page Top

48 The problem is insufficient force.
If we have to use nuclear weapons then that's what we'll reluctantly do.
Someone suggested using neutron bombs which kill people but leave infrastructure intact. That sounds like a good compromise.
Posted by Cretle Fleregum5456 2026-04-07 19:33||   2026-04-07 19:33|| Front Page Top

49 ^
1) Nuke weapons are unnecessary. It's going fine;
2) My (deceased) Uncle who worked at Lawrence Livermore said "All nukes are neutron bombs, depending on yield and desire"
Posted by Frank G 2026-04-07 19:36||   2026-04-07 19:36|| Front Page Top

50 The destruction of German cities did not make the Nazis go away.

Production of war related materials dropped. The summer of '44 with the allied landing and the Soviet offensive in the east saw the inability to cover both. Army Group Center was destroyed lacking the means to maneuver out of the Soviet offensive.
Posted by Procopius2k 2026-04-07 20:29||   2026-04-07 20:29|| Front Page Top

51 I always wondered why Nagasaki was chosen for the second bomb. I found out the other day while watching history videos that Nagasaki was the home of Christianity in Japan. It was an extra little "fuck you" to those genocidal monsters.
Posted by Ometch Untervehr3098 2026-04-07 20:29||   2026-04-07 20:29|| Front Page Top

52 "A civilization, extinguished, survives." New Fukushima 50 tagline?
Posted by Slomomble Glomoting5645 2026-04-07 20:35||   2026-04-07 20:35|| Front Page Top

23:11 Slomomble Glomoting5645
21:54 Cretle Fleregum5456
21:50 SteveS
21:06 Skidmark
20:35 Slomomble Glomoting5645
20:29 Ometch Untervehr3098
20:29 Procopius2k
20:11 Frank G
20:08 SteveS
20:02 Cesare
19:53 Knuckles Grundy
19:39 Chantry
19:36 Frank G
19:33 Frank G
19:33 Cretle Fleregum5456
19:27 SteveS
19:26 Knuckles Grundy
19:05 European Conservative
19:03 Frank G
18:53 Cretle Fleregum5456
18:47 trailing wife
18:47 European Conservative
18:45 Clem+Elmish4239
18:43 Frank G
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