I think you may not have the proper perception of Iranian people.
While yes, the country exists under a strict religious orthodoxy, they have a higher literacy rate than the United States as well as free public school and post secondary education.
One of my best friends is Iranian and he’s got a lot of friends and family in the Iranian diaspora in Canada and the USA. I always ask him what he thinks and he’s very hawkish.
He wants the regime there to collapse and says he and everyone he talks too keep shouting at the TV “get the Ayatollah, forget everyone else!” I’m not sure why they don’t, other than
, signed by President Ronald Reagan on December 4, 1981, explicitly prohibits U.S. government employees from engaging in or conspiring to engage in assassination.
World leaders I guess have a kind of gentlemen’s agreement to not go after each other specifically. I suppose Saddam was an exception, although he was never assassinated, he had a trial and was hanged. Though I believe the CIA tried to have him killed in the 1990s.
They seem to believe that once the top leadership falls the whole regime will collapse. I am skeptical but it’s interesting he thinks that. I don't want to speak for the diaspora as I have only talked to this one single person but he says “if your country was taken over by an authoritarian theocratic dictatorship you would want it to go at any cost.” I don’t know. I am not in that situation.
He admits the Iranian regime hasn’t really pursued nuclear weapons, and that the Obama deal would have helped prevent them from getting nukes. He also agrees Israel is a terrorist rogue state, committing genocide while sitting on a pile of nuclear bombs.
Nevertheless, he wants the regime to be destroyed so his family can go home - and by any means, including invasion or mass bombing. Anything outside nuclear war.
I have been thinking about how I would feel if my homeland fell to some bible thumbing prosperity gospel freaks, and what I would be willing to see happen to restore parliamentary democracy. It reminds me a lot of 1984, when O’Brien asks Winston “would you throw acid in the face of a child to kill big brother” and the response is an unequivocal “yes”…