Are you referring to "Mohsen Fakhrizadeh"? I mean, yes, technically he's not a soldier, but I don't think just calling him "an Iranian civilian" gives the whole context - "he was regarded as the chief of Iran's nuclear program." per Wikipedia.

> My original point was that Iran has not invaded Israel or even prematurely attacked or postured against it, the way Russia and China have done to the territories they wish to invade.

Umm.. that's just false. Even leaving aside the current "round", Iran has been funding terrorists and militias to attack Israel for 50 years. Iran funded Hamas, and to some extent directs Hamas, which invaded Israel and killed a thousand citizens while shooting rockets at Israel. And that's just in the last 6 months. Hamas has been shooting rockets at Israel since 2007.

Hezbollah is a powerful armed group that has semi-taken-over Lebanon, and is parked on Israel's border (illegally against UN ceasefire resolutions, btw) and has shot rockets at Israel and had wars with Israel multiple times.

And this goes way back. Iran famously bombed the Israeli embassy and a Jewish center in Argentina way back in the 90s [1].

As for "not posturing" against Israel - let me just pull a few quotes from the Wikipedia article called "calls for the destruction of Israel" [2] (as if the fact that such an article exists about a country makes any kind of sense in this world):

"Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, stated in 2000 that “the cancerous tumor called Israel must be uprooted from the region”, and in 2001 that “the perpetual subject of Iran is the elimination of Israel from the region"

"In 2013 he labeled Israel a country "doomed to failure and annihilation," deeming it an "illegitimate regime" led by "untouchable rabid dogs" who "cannot be called human beings." He later outlined a nine-point plan for Israel's elimination in 2014.[22]"

""Our dear Imam (Khomeini) ordered that this Jerusalem occupying regime must be erased from the page of time," and that Iran would “wipe Israel off the map” [...] In 2006, he said: "Israel heading towards annihilation”, and in another statement, "The Zionist regime will be wiped out, and humanity will be liberated”."

Are you really sticking by your assertion that Iran is somehow not a threat to Israel, hasn't "invaded or postured against Israel", and that it's the opposite?

> You even agree here that the US should essentially have carte blanche to destroy Iran because... it's a religious dictatorship (seriously that's all)???

Let's be clear, I'm talking about the Iranian regime here, not the people of Iran. But no, I don't think morally the US or Israel has carte blanche just because they're a religious regime. I think they have carte blanche because to take out the regime because that regime has explicitly, multiple times, claimed that it will wipe Israel off the map.

> Iran's actions against Israel are defensive ones against a bloodthirsty enemy who seems to have a very poor reason to want to destroy it.

If you think Israel is bloodthirsty with regards to Iran, and not just worried about itself, then you're just ignoring all available evidence to the contrary. Even with all of the above evidence aside, when Israel was founded, all the Arab states were its enemies and attacked it multiple times. The so-called "bloodthirsty" Israel now has peace agreements with many of them and is well on its way to have peace with many others, including recent announcements of a possible opening of diplomatic relations with the most populous Muslim country in the world.

And all of these old enemies of Israel are united in fearing Iran and in making defensive pacts against Iran.

Are they all just bloodthirsy countries who have somehow misunderstood that Iran is only interested in defending against Israel? Is Israel somehow only bloodthirsty when it comes to Iran, because... why exactly? (Note that relations between Iran and Israel went from peaceful to this after the regime change of the 1970s, not before.)

Lastly, if you're somehow not convinced by actual history, or the behavior of all other countries in the region, including ones that used to be historic enemies of Israel... if all of that is somehow not convincing about the current regime, why not just listen to the Iranian people? They've been railing against the regime for years and will back up the terrible burden the regime has placed on their daily lives, and also the fact that it's trying to drag Iran into war with Israel that none of the Iranian people even want (nor do Israelis!).

[1]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/world/middleeast/argentin...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calls_for_the_destruction_of_I....