> Siding with a dictatorial regime

Right, Iran used to have a parliament with Mossadegh as prime minister, what happened there? Oh yaa, Mossadegh wanted Iranian oil for Iranians, so the US and UK overthrew Mossadegh, with the help of conservative mullahs, and installed a dictatorship. Then SAVAK with CIA help spent decades slaughtering the secular opposition.

> that’s murdered 100s of their own people

There are armed Balochi and Kurdish separatists shooting at the Iranian army right now, no doubt with clandestine Israeli and US support. Incidentally the Kurds had their own state at the end of WWII, until the US and UK made them dissolve into Iran.

Also aside from the bombings, the Basij have been fired on from the ground and have fired back. Who is arming the people shooting at the Basij is unknown, but some signs point to Israel.

> and aided terrorist organizations

The Arabs in southern Lebanon and the Gaza strip have lived there a long time. Over the past century Zionist Jews from around the world have been invading their land, shooting, bombing, starving them. If they fight back the epithet terrorist is applied to them, and if these brave men fighting for their people are assigned the word, it gives it a great esteem.

What about the dictatorial regime that's bombing schools, falsely imprisoned tens of thousands, murdered far more than 100s, openly admitting to international war crimes?

I watched "One Battle After Another" and it shows how deranged people are. I don't think its a new thing, I just think in any stable society, people who don't thrive eventually find a way to destroy the society in the hope whatever comes next will serve them better. In a society where hard work and intelligent gives you an advantage, it stands to reason that lazy, stupid people will need to play differently in order to win.

I can't wait to read wikipedia in 30 years.

Check out the history behind this and how the US has treated Iran because of their Oil for almost a hundred years now. This is 100% on the west in my opinion. We've been abusing these people for the longest time.

I think it's possible to have a grown-up discussion about the production value, cultural relevance, and effectiveness of propaganda without "siding" with the videos' sponsors. This appears to be an uncomfortable case of bad people speaking at least some truth--to the point where it's resonating.

I agree with you on principle, but you're oversimplifying things if you think that opposition to the United States or Israel is all about a single person.

Churchill and Eisenhower beg to disagree. When everyone is bad, you focus on restraining the most powerful actor first.

There was an interview with a historian and he said an interesting thing about the ancient Sparta: "Everything we know about Sparta we know from its enemies".

Today’s world is messed up. Look at EU leaders rubbing shoulders with Syrian president/ex-terrorist.

Cue dozens of comments doing exactly that...

Which one? If you mean Iran, "100s of" seems like a weird understatement.

i really can't tell which side you're talking about

Who is siding with Iran?

The number is well in the thousands/tens of thousands, and we have no way of knowing precisely because, well, it's a dictatorial regime.

A regime driven by a weird religious cult and murdering their own citizens is battling a regime which is driven by a weird religious cult and is murdering their own citizens.

I think in this situation it is okay to cheer on both sides.

Trump just yesterday admitted to arming anti-Iranian insurrectionists. So Iran did not "murder 100s of their own people", they fought off a CIA armed coup.

I appreciate that this statement accurately describes all three regimes primarily involved without naming one.

You mean like siding with the dictatorial regime that provided material support to the 9/11 hijackers, 15/19 of whom were nationals of that country? And then we wanted to question 3 menders of the royal family who were implicated they all mysteriously fell out of windows, died in a car accident or otherwise died?

Another national was a renowned arms dealer linked to both Robert Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein. And then that arms dealer’s nephew was chopped up in a foreign embassy and taken away in pieces?

They murdered thousands of our citizens let alone theirs.

What leg do we have to stand on here exactly?

There's an implicit tolerance of authoritarian regimes so long as the price is right. This is nothing new.

So instead we must side with another regime that slaughtered 72'000 innocent civilians of another country, most of whom were women and children?

That one is so good.

people were worried about deepfakes with AI but instead the propaganda is doing pretty well, and arguably better, when it's not a deepfake but instead silly, catchy, youthful, and is playing up existing beliefs. The invasion is deeply unpopular in the US, and these videos only serve to amp that up.

Care to share the link?

That Hegseth one is an extraordinary piece of media. It's dense with Hegseth and Epstein lore, the song is catchy, the visuals are a significant cut above the normal AI slop aesthetic.

If this is Iranian state backed propaganda (which seems very likely) it's light years ahead of those White House videos with footage of bombs mixed in with clips from action movies.

Because it wasn’t planned that far. The administration probably thought it would go like Venezuela. A Middle East historian would have told you Iran has building for all our war for decades because it trusts none of its neighbors.

A second problem is that the US knew for a while that we were weak at asymmetric warfare but we didn’t fix it. There was a war game in 2002 (the Millennium Challenge, which was actually set in the Strait of Hormuz) that, though the red team did very much cheat, it did hint at a major weakness that wasn’t resolved.

There are US defense companies today that actually specialize in that but they weren’t given the same attention (but boy are they now).