For my entire life, I believed in the values of the West, the enlightenment, democracy and human rights, and I feel so disappointed right now.
Well that doesn’t mean anything — this is pretty much all of the military infrastructure on Kharg.
I wished Europe grew a spine. The attempts by the UK (and other governments in Europe) of trying to politically disengage themselves from the Israel/US special operation in Iran, and yet facilitating it, feels untenable.
One of the most damaging consequences of the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear agreement was the collapse of the political camp in Iran that supported engagement with the West.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, was never an enthusiastic supporter of the deal. In contrast, President Hassan Rouhani consistently advocated for it and ultimately managed—despite resistance from hardline factions, to persuade Khamenei to allow the agreement to move forward.
Even at the time, opponents of the deal within Iran warned that the United States would eventually abandon the agreement and betray Iran.
The success of the nuclear negotiations became Rouhani’s most important political achievement. Riding on that success, he won reelection in 2017, defeating Ebrahim Raisi and benefiting from widespread public hopes in Iran for gradual change in the country’s relationship with the world and for economic improvement.
The Trump administration’s withdrawal from the agreement severely undermined the political standing of Iran’s moderate and pragmatic camp. It validated the arguments of hardliners who had long claimed that the United States could not be trusted, weakening those in Iran who advocated engagement with the West.
Today, as Iran faces heightened security pressures and the possibility of war, the environment in which leadership emerges is very different. Rather than leaders shaped by diplomacy and engagement with the international community, the political system is increasingly likely to elevate figures rooted in the security establishment and confrontation with the West.
Had the nuclear agreement remained in place, the pool of viable leadership candidates in Iran might have looked very different.
#iran
Children across the world DIED and are DYING STILL because men like this were reckless, dumb, and drunk on power.
Israel are murdering faculty, again.
Yes, tragic and heartbreaking. But you don't have to be a defender of the Iranian regime to not blatantly lie.
The school was struck in the opening minutes of the war. Saturday is a school day in Iran, as Friday is the Muslim Sabbath. School starts at 7:30 am, and the first bombs and missiles began falling around 10am local time.
So children were in classes and the regime had no warning or even expectation that the war was imminent. (All schools closed immediately after.) The government was even planning to send a technical team to Vienna on the following Monday to continue nuclear talks.
It is now clear that the attack on the school wasn't even an accident of war; it was a mistake, yes, but not collateral damage. It was a deliberate strike because of faulty information and planning.
To suggest that the tragic and heartbreaking death of schoolgirls was the result of Iran placing them in harms way, or using them as human shields, is despicable.
I've been wondering whether the ongoing Iran clusterfuck is not partly a consequence of the backlash against woke, and the rejection of 'empathy' as a weak, effeminate, or suicidal trait. Empathy is not just being 'nice', it is also being able to understand our enemies' emotions, motives and perspectives, and acting accordingly.
I was in a 2 hour briefing today on the Iran War. All the briefings are closed, because Trump can't defend this war in public.
I obviously can't disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are.
1/ Here's what I can share:
R to @BallouxFrancois: Point in case. It pains me that I agree with Araghchi. In addition to the firehose of falsehood corroding the West's democracies, it is also self-defeating.
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R to @BallouxFrancois: It remains that this constant firehose of falsehood is eroding our democratic institution. Without, a modicum of respect for objective facts and the truth, democracy eventually dies.
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R to @BallouxFrancois: Obviously, a major difference with totalitarian regimes, such as Iran or Russia is that we are free to call out and challenge any claim we believe to be false - I don't worry about getting a knock on the door by the police for this thread.
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R to @BallouxFrancois: Morality and legitimacy of the Iran war aside, I find it unsettling that our (i.e., the West's) propaganda is more deceitful, misleading, and full of blatant lies than that of the Iranian regime.
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R to @BallouxFrancois: The recent accidental bombing of the Minat school on the first day of the war by the US is illustrative of the 'firehose of falsehood' level of propaganda we're drowning under. It would make Russian propagandists proud.
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R to @BallouxFrancois: It remains that this constant firehose of falsehood is eroding our democratic institution. Without, a modicum of respect for objective facts and the truth, democracy eventually dies.
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R to @BallouxFrancois: Obviously, a major difference with totalitarian regimes, such as Iran or Russia is that we are free to call out and challenge any claim we believe to be false - I don't worry about getting a knock on the door by the police for this thread.
3/
Morality and legitimacy of the Iran war aside, I find it unsettling that our (i.e., the West's) propaganda is more deceitful, misleading, and full of blatant lies than that of the Iranian regime.
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R to @BallouxFrancois: The recent accidental bombing of the Minat school on the first day of the war by the US is illustrative of the 'firehose of falsehood' level of propaganda we're drowning under. It would make Russian propagandists proud.
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“Based on what Jared Kushner told me, I thought Iran would attack us.”
Not his intelligence agencies. His fucking son-in-law.
Video credit ~ @PamphletsY
Alright I'm going to go through why it was the Americans who bombed the girl's school talking point by talking point and with more important notes because when I made this post below I was not aware of all the narratives already going around. This is the last I will speak on this because I think people are too emotionally investigated to act in good faith.
First and most notably: The girl's school in Minab was bombed at 10:45am. This is an hour after attacks began in Iran. This would mean that the attack was part of the initial wave of strikes and came before the Iranian response could take place. This is because the guys who were meant to give orders to retaliate were dead.
Secondly: We know Minab was hit by the Americans at the outbreak of the war. It was displayed in their own graphic during General Dan Caine's press conference (see the NYT link at the bottom of the post)
Thirdly: The video that everyone is seeing is part of a 7 missile strike package. The reason someone is filming the area and smoke is already present is because the missile on screen is not the first missile. The missile on screen is also not the missile that hit the school, rather a building in the middle of the military compound that the school was right next to.
Fourthly: It is not a Kh-55. Iran does not operate Kh-55s. They operate copies of Kh-55s which are ground launched and are visually distinct from TLAMs due to them having a large turbojet mounted below the frame of the missile. In the first image, you can see a Russian Kh-55 on approach. Note the thick block of pixels in the aft of the missile. That's the turbojet. It is not visible in the shared video from Minab.
Fifthly: The Iranians have barely used cruise missiles during this war. The UAE, which is directly across the Strait of Hormuz from Minab, has only detected 8 cruise missile launches, all of which have been intercepted, as of 6 March. This is compared to 205 ballistic missiles and 1,184 drones. This is the weakest argument but we simply haven't seen cruise missiles deployed.
Talking point: The angle of attack is too steep! No it's not. Look at the angle on this video and refer to the second picture to compare. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/A9GZc-CjAME
Talking point: Why were they filming?? Because the attack was already underway as mentioned earlier.
Talking point: The explosion is too weak! This is correct. Though that doesn't mean that the missile was not a Tomahawk. Tomahawks have experienced multiple failures over the past 3 months. Mostly with dud warheads. See picture three for an example from Syria just yesterday. My initial incorrect thought was that we were seeing a bunker buster. No. It's likely just a failure to detonate.
Talking point: The Iranians have provided no debris to prove that it was a Tomahawk! This argument I find the most compelling. However, just as this post was being written the Iranians posted pictures of Tomahawk debris. See the next post for imagery. It is up to you to believe them.
Conclusion: This was a US strike.
This strike took place at the beginning of the war as part of the Tomahawk strike package to hit Iranian military targets in the first hour of the war. It took place before the Iranians could launch a military response and the hit on the girls' school was likely the result of an American intelligence failure, which labeled the school as a military target due to the close proximity to the military base.
I am a random person on the internet. You do not need to believe me. However, Western media have assessed that it was a US strike and drawn similar conclusions. See: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg548lyjnyo
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2026/03/08/video-shows-us-tomahawk-missile-strike-next-to-girls-school-in-iran/
https://www.npr.org/2026/03/08/nx-s1-5739395/iran-school-airstrike-tomahawk-missile-trump
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/08/world/middleeast/iran-minab-school-strike.html
The denial of the U.S. Tomahawk strike on the girl’s school in Minab is really weak and frankly embarrassing.
Please give this literally any thought at all. The Iranians DO NOT OPERATE Kh-55s. They purchased them a quarter century ago so they could reverse engineer them!
The Kh-55 is AIR LAUNCHED from BOMBERS. Aircraft that the IRIAF DO NOT OPERATE.
The strike took place right next to an IRGC compound on the first day of the attack when U.S. forces launched dozens of TLAMs into Iran.
The claim that GPS jamming will redirect missiles to land perfectly on your own base is total garbage. That is not how GPS jamming works. The base was hit 7 times as satellite footage published by NPR shows.
Responsibility must be accepted.
R to @BallouxFrancois: I must admit I'm a bit confused. I consider double-taps to be incredibly evil, even more so actually than killing hundreds of schoolgirls out of sheer stupidity and incompetence. I just hope the US doesn't do double-taps.
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R to @BallouxFrancois: Oddly enough, some senior journalists seem to believe 'double taps' are part of standard US targeting doctrine.
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R to @BallouxFrancois: The Russians and the IDF are infamous for their double-tap strikes. The US has also been accused of doing double-taps in the past, but not systematically so.
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R to @BallouxFrancois: That's a bit sad but then within Hegseth's Department of War doctrine, it is probably OK to break a few kiddy eggs when making a 'bad dude omelette. Anyway, I have no doubt the US may eventually (in 20 or 30 years) come up with a nice apology, which sort it all out.
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R to @BallouxFrancois: Now, this is all wonderful, but the issue that perturbs me is that the strike was apparently a double-tap (i.e. including a secondary strike intended to take out first responders).
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yqqyly9n0o
R to @BallouxFrancois: Fair enough, shit happens, and with the wonderful latest 'maximum lethality non-politically' correct doctrine endorsed by the US, and some haphazard AI targeting, it doesn't come as a major surprise that a school got bombed.
2/
There is little doubt now that it was the US which was responsible for the strike on the Minab school that killed ~160 kids on the first day of the Iran 'special operation'.
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The world is grey, and it is often meaningful to engage with different viewpoints. Then, at other times, like here, facing propaganda so blunt, so unsophisticated and idiotic, it just feels insulting ...
A break from the horrors of the world.
We've got four kittens, Sniffy, Pookiedook (already reserved), Tiny and Werewolf. They are all different character-wise, but all are equally adorable, litter-trained, and socialised.
Israelis can be weird. They sent special forces into Lebanon to retrieve the remains of a dude who died 40 years ago, and this against the wishes of his widow. They randomly killed scores of civilians in the process and failed to find any bone, and yet they are bragging about it.
To me, this is possibly the most lazy, tired and tiring genre of tweets.
People are generally protesting actions enacted by their own, or closely allied, government. The hope is that by protesting they may influence their government's policies.
This is generally naive as it hardly ever has any impact but it is an expression of peoples' rights and belief in the democratic process, and as such it should be respected and protected.
If Brits believe they are trapped in an abusive relationship with the US, I would recommend they try to find better allies, e.g. France.
Disclaimer: I'm neither British nor French.
It increasingly looks like the envisioned future for Iran by the US/Israel might be a number of poor, weak, dysfunctional, balkanised statelets ...
Whether the UK/US 'special relation' is a real thing is debatable. It remains intriguing how dismissive Trump is of the UK - especially so, since The UK is one of the few governments in Western Europe vaguely supportive of his Iran 'special operation'.