Any charge you level against Iran is 10 times applicable to the US and its allies.
Let's go through the list:
- Autocratic theocracy: There is no Western autocratic theocracy. The closest equivalent ally would be Saudi Arabia, which I would be the last person to defend nor want as an ally.
- Tortures and murders their own population: Again, only Saudi Arabia. As awful at it is, Iran still executes many times more people than even the Saudis.
- Supporting and directing terrorists: Nope. You can point at CIA actions from the past, but if we go back in time, Iran is going to look even worse by comparison.
- Selling arms to Russia: When Russia looked like it was opening up to the West, the West was trading with it, including arms. Can't see how this is comparable to the situation now.
- Hurting trade: Obviously not a thing the West is interested in. The free flow of goods is one of the hallmarks of the Western world.
- Conducting information warfare: RFA and similar Cold War era efforts that are somehow still holding out are almost quaint compared to the massive troll farms countries like Iran are doing.
So no, your attempt at whataboutism, which you tried even though I said no matter what the USA has done, none of it justifies Iran being a menace, falls flat on its face.
The evil deeds of the west have largely given us the problems we have in the middle east today.
Colonialism has created many of the issues this region has today, yes, and the second Gulf War - which I protested in the streets against, by the way - is a more recent example of detrimental Western involvement, as is the installation of the Shah in Iran a few decades earlier. However, blaming most or all of the issues the Middle East has on Western powers is in a way infantilizing, robbing the people and their governments in this region of their agency, which they clearly have and which was clearly the main force since the 1940s that shaped this part of the world. You cannot understate the massive impact the pan-Arabic movement had for example - or more recently, the Arab Spring.
Can you explain to me the differences between Saudi Arabia and Iran, that makes the former a friend and ally to the US, deserving of our high tech weaponry and political support on the world stage, while the other is a villain deserving of annihilation?
Saudi Arabia managed, through intense diplomatic efforts since WW2, to enamor itself with the West. They offered two things: Oil and a strategic partnership. The West was willing to overlook that it's an autocratic hellhole, Saudi Arabia was willing to pinch their noses whenever said West dared to make the most benign attempts at encouraging a more open and tolerant society. There is no denying however that patience is running out just as much as oil is, but since Saudi Arabia is a more than willing counterweight to Iran, which fundamentally threatens it through centuries-old religious animosity and its entirely different style of autocratic governance.
Iran set itself up, through their own will, as an opponent of the West. The Islamic Revolution was not just a revolution against the Western-backed Shah, but also one against the West and its ideals itself. Saudi Arabia isn't a fan of Western ideals either, but it managed to toe the line just well enough to never anger it to the point that the economic and military alliance was endangered. Iran could have easily played the same game, but decided to stubbornly and arrogantly push against a foe that is ultimately far more powerful and could, if enough political will accumulated, annihilate it - never the other way around though, which is why Iran is still trying to get its nuclear weapons program off the ground, as both a deterrent and a potential first strike weapon.
Iran isn’t worse than the US or its allies
It is. Just going by the aforementioned number of executions, it is.
it just stands in the way of US interests. Those interests which, by the way, are not the fairytales called “democracy” or “human rights”
Don't put words in my mouth. The most important value to the West after ensuring its own security and that of its allies is the free flow of goods and people. Iran endangers both. They are endangering the close ally Israel through Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, they are endangering the far less close, but still important ally Saudi Arabia and they are hurting global trade, which impacts everyone, even you. A nation like Iran can only push so many buttons before something happens in response. This bombing campaign is a warning. It tells them both that America knows exactly what its gaggle of proxies are up to and where they are and it's an unspoken warning that these precise strikes hitting those plausibly deniable groups could just as easily hit official Iranian assets, which would hurt far more.