The totalitarian governments of today are smarter than the totalitarian governments of yesterday. They focus on keeping all practical control while doing just enough for the people that they're afraid to fight back.
I don't get from this part why forcing someone to fight them is more ethical than it was ever.
Oh bullshit. This has nothing to do with race and you know it.
Despite its name, it doesn't have to do anything with race (historically it did, though). It was just an idea that the more civilized countries (usually the speaker's country and all these he considered civilized) had a moral obligation to uplift poor, ignorant savages who can't possibly decide for themselves. Usually it was used as a pretext to conquer them and turn their lands into a colony.
I don't see many differences here, except of lacking the race qualifier. Stupid Iranians are somewhat slow in making a proper decision, so USA has to bitchslap them until they comply. But hey, at least this time they get to do the dirty job themself.
There's enough for them that revolting openly isn't worth it, but not enough to be a free society. That's just how the theocracy wants it, too. An outside force is needed to throw off the balance.
If there is not enough of them to have a meaningful revolt, how could you even hope that they would somehow form a free country, instead of slipping into another dictatorship? To do that, you need the people to believe in the idea that their voice means something and they have the right to decide about themselves. You are not sending that message by destroying their country until they are so destitute they have no other choice. Why to even care about who's in power? It's clearly obvious that it's the foreign empire who gets to decide first.
Then you aren't listening to me at all, because the whole idea is that they know what's good for them and will reach out and take it once knocked out of the malaise of "acceptable but bad" that modern dictatorships employ by an outside force, that being these sanctions.
If your life suddenly becomes worse because a foreign country imposed sanctions on you, why would you even blame your government for that?
Edit:
Yes, yes, terrible actions in the past. Only more reason to start doing things like this for the sake of the future. Hell, the US is responsible for Iran's current state, so that's only more reason to start trying to fix it.
I missed this one and I probably shouldn't have. It really looks like a pathological marriage, where the abusive spouse just won't sign divorce papers because of course his family needs him! They can't survive without his help despite the fact he is the source of most of their problems. And seriously, Iranians, why did you make us hit you?