Frankly, if you hadn't lost faith in those already...

Do you have similar presence, vulnerability, and defiance in spite of it? Or are you casting stones from a position of comfort while doing, comparatively, nothing?

"Our actions are guided by medical ethics and the principles of impartiality, independence, and neutrality." - They are obviously not impartial nor neutral and this is just one example. Don't give them money unless they actually start acting as their mission statement states.

So yes, I do feel sorry for those who died. But make no mistake - whatever the result, their death will be in vain. Whoever ends up taking the reins in Iran will be as corrupt and as bad as the mullahs. It’s just that they will acquiesce to US priorities.

Every authoritarian regime does this, and some legitimate non-totalitarian governments do too.

Short of an unignorable mass attack on the homeland, America has a proven track record of turning the other cheek.

This writer has developed a model of the situation

But frankly, Iran as it stands today is structurally similar to pre-1976 PRC, and requires an Iranian "Deng Xiaoping", but the only reason Deng even got as far as he did was because the Sino-Soviet Split made the PRC an attractive partner against the USSR and because it took someone with the stature of Mao to host a "Nixon in China" moment, which made partnering with America politically palatable.

The key economic and political institutions in Iran (Army, IRGC, Bonyads) would need to be incentivized to flip to being pro-EU and pro-America in order to sustain the semblance of democracy and secularism because frankly, Russia, China, India, portions of the Gulf, and much of ASEAN is fine working with Iran as it stands today because it is a critical regional power.

Turkiye, the UAE, Qatar, KSA, and Pakistan are probably the best regional players to push a gradual re-opening of Iran.

https://x.com/RZimmt/status/2017587629424849161

https://x.com/Omid_M/status/2017365676634075527

Then it turned out to be bluster, there /was/ damage.[0]

It's /really/ hard to get good independent coverage of most politically charged events (The fog of war, etc)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_strikes_on_Al_Udeid_Ai...

To summon is the correct word in this case. The fantasy meaning comes from thee power politics between one that summons (usually: a king) and the one being summoned (usually the serf).

https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/12/1166481

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_...

In the real world it generally means to order, with the implication that there are consequences to failing to appear, and the consequences in this case are clear from the juxtaposition of wanting to shut up exiled journalists and summoning their families.

In mythology it typically implies incantations etc. forces the entity to appear.

There's nothing soft about that wording. If anything "to summon" is often used to imply a level of disdain and lack of legitimate basis that is not implicit in "to order"

It’s a blatant translation of Islamic Regime propaganda websites.

see KhabarOnline, IRIB, etc.

When it comes to politically charged events (especially wars) both sides tend to only release articles that make themselves look brilliant, and the others as shite, and it's really REALLY hard to get an accurate picture of what's happening on the ground.

Purely yelling that everyone else is producing a "rag" isn't really helpful either, for the same reasons.