I agree to all that you said, that is a bulk of my personal view as well. As Americans this is the logical view I can think of.
And yet...
There is also a globalist view. How do you think an Iranian who is getting bombed is thinking right now or though at the time of March bombing or even earlier during the January massacre, where the regime killed 3000+ of their own citizens (the current Iranian casualty remains lower than that). The lives lost shouldn't be about numbers. A single life lost in a war is too many!
And yet...
I encourage you to listen to that podcast. It list voices from Iranians in Iran.
The protests and killings in January haunted some of the voice memos we got, even as people try to continue living, going about their normal routines. Amin is in his 20s. He's a professional bodybuilder in Tehran. He joined the protests. One of his friends was shot and killed while protesting, Mehdi Zatparvar. He was a well-known champion bodybuilder.
Anushirvan is a doctor in the north of Iran. He's young, in his mid 20s. He spent January treating hundreds of wounded protesters, some of them shot with military-grade weapons, sometimes at close distance, sometimes in the head. And while he was treating people, plainclothes security agents roamed the hospital. So if someone needed an X-ray, Anushirvan and his colleagues would personally escort them to radiology so they wouldn't be detained. They showed people how to leave out the back door of the hospital.
Iran is a deeply divided country, just like ours right now. These are voices of common people....
One of my patients was an 11-year-old girl coming in with a chief complaint of extreme headache in front of her head. It was nothing too serious. I asked if she's undergone any stress recently, kind of an obvious question these days, but she was a child. I asked the parents if she had any access to any of the news of the war, and they confirmed it, which sounds like very poor parenting to me.
So after making sure the hospital was stabilized, me and two of my friends went to the park near the hospital to smoke cigarettes. I had never smoked any cigarettes up until, like, two months ago. My very first cigarette was upon hearing the news, the confirmation of Khamenei being killed. And I'm really glad I waited that long because now every time I do it, I'm reminded of that night, as it was one of the best nights of my life.
I've seen charlatans actually denying the January massacre, in which dozens of thousands of people were killed, and whitewashing the Islamic Republic all the way through, just because they disagree with this war, or Trump, or the US foreign policy as a whole, outright denying the January massacre and saying there is no evidence for that, the massacre which I saw happen and the evidence I collected.
I can go on and on........but I prefer if you listen to their voices in that podcast.
Everyone is preparing themselves for the moment that President Trump and Bibi declare that the situation is such that people can come out. They will flood to regime to take them over. And they all expect to have a new life after this regime.
I don't know about you, but I have seen some of these people, earlier, now. In Kurdistan, in Basra, in Houston. They are even willing to die from an American bomb, if you can convince them that it will lead to the destruction of the regime.
It's so stupid of them obviously, because no one can convince them that Americans are not fighting their war, they are fighting a different one, with different goal. There is no way I can convince these people, as they see the bombing as hope!
PS: On a different note:
RE: Ceasefire on "Life Support"