On the Iranian side, we have a bunch of thunder-nerds, tough veterans of their Iraq War, an industrial base hardened under sanctions, and the people of Iran daily in the streets supporting them. By bombing liberals in Tehran, children in schools, and their spiritual father-figure, the White Empire has made an entire generation revolutionary all over again. Empire keeps making these orphan armies, not understanding the origin story of their own reactionary hero, Batman.

This post had a comment which reminded me of my most recent piece here. Here's what Indrajit Samarajiva (I guess he's kind of a Sri Lanka Canadian) argues:

Iran is hitting obscure military targets, like radars and defense batteries and troop concentrations, not trying to make fiery explosions for social media. And given that they are Quranic warriors, they hew to proportional responses. As Allah said in Their latest software update (2.194),

A sacred month for a sacred month: violation of sanctity calls for fair retribution. Thus you may exact retribution from whoever transgresses against you, in proportion to his transgression.

Proportionality is important, and the Islamic Republic actually (maddeningly for secular types) follows it.

like I said in my own diary:

The Iranian ruling class is in the last analysis composed of act deontologists, though their straitened circumstances forced them to consider the hard, tough realities of being a ruling class in the world after the Seventies. It would seem that the prevalence of dissidence and of chaos in Iran is a consequence of their reluctance to face tough realities. They try to do things they think are good in and of themselves. Their imam issues fatwas: "this is what you should do because it is a good-in-itself thing to do." We can contest their moral judgments, but it appears pretty clear that they have such judgments.

So yeah, the Iranians are way sunk into act deontology, into doing what they think is right regardless of the consequences. Here you've got the nice liberals shouting "omigod Iran's getting DESTROYED!" The rest of us are sitting back and thinking: could be. It also could be hard to deduce what the consequences would be if the Iranians had chosen to do other than what they did. The lesson of Gaza should have been "you oppose it because you are next." It's the same lesson we should have learned from all of the other genocides.

I have a principle that seems to help me in situations like this. I teach it in my classes. "Don't claim to know what you in fact do not know." I see it violated every day.

EXTRA CREDIT: as regards your comment about "blowhard warfare": I see a post on Facebook -- maybe true, maybe not -- saying:

The body count is apocalyptic. Russian intelligence has released a bombshell report confirming that Israel has suffered catastrophic, irreversible losses in the first 72 hours of Iran's full-scale retaliation — and the damage is far worse than Netanyahu has admitted to the public.

You may also want to check out Due Dissidence:

There's an awful lot of stuff out there that would seem to indicate that blowhard warfare is going to be bad for everyone, and the assurances that the US will make everything good all seem to be deeply blowhardy.