The Israel and Iran conflict

The background…

The West has been at war with Iran since Thermopylae 480 BC. This war gave the West an opportunity to make money through the military industrial and to weaken two potential adversaries at the same time. Saddam Hussain was a secularist whom other Arab nations could look up to, with it own independent military which was unacceptable. Who is Saddam Hussain you may ask? Saddam Hussain was an Iraqi politician and revolutionary who served as the president of Iraq from 1979 until his overthrow in 2003 during the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Fun fact - he actually studied Law at Cairo Law School but later dropped out. Some love him and some hate him but there's no disputing that during his ruling, his dictatorships and authoritarian regimes brought stability - at least temporarily. But if that stability is was dependant on repression and the rule/whims/worship of one leader with no accountability, which fall apart after a while. A lot of people still in Iraq and a lot of Jordanians see Saddam as a hero figure, very often having his portrait on cars and so on. As I was told by one Jordanian, they believe that Saddam could do much better for the Middle East if only the rest of the Arab countries were willing to help him with his cause. After all he is the Arab Napoleon, gifted and brave patriot who got very unlucky and died defeated. Saddam was the first to attack and humiliate Israel and this is THE origin of emotional attachment to him in the Arab world. The way Saddam purged his political opponents on live TV while smoking a cigar is the most gangster thing I have ever seen. He also understood that combating theocratic sentiments was very important which I believe is key. In fact when he was being executed he recited the Shahada, not once, but twice. His last word was “Muhammad”. So what does Saddam have to do with Iran? The Iran-Iraq War dragged on in a stalemate until 1988, when both countries accepted a cease-fire that ended the war. Despite the large foreign debt with which Iraq found itself saddled by war’s end. For example, a lot of that debt was owned by Kuwait, so after that war, instead of repaying the debt owned to Kuwait, Saddam decided to use his army to just conquer Kuwait and cancel it by getting a hold of their oil reserves, treasury etc to get out of the financial blackhole Iraq found itself in. This was a not approved by the Saudis and the US. There is a lot of history behind this all which is why I am trying not to write about all the issues going on at the same time. But Saddam saw Iran's government as weak and decided to annex the oil rich parts of the nation. Iraq was also somewhat unstable under the dictator in this era, so starting a war was a good way to not only boost Saddam's popularity but also to assert control over the region. Foreign naval forces including the US had to step in the stabilise the region. The CIA helped Saddam commit war crimes by helping him attain chemical weapons that he used against Iranian civilians and Kurds in Iraq and his illegal full-scale invasion of Iran was supported by the US and the EU. No-one was going to stop him and that was his superpower.

The Iran and Israel war situation is existential and we are trapped between two collapsing structures: one internal, one external. On one hand, we face a deeply dysfunctional government, led by the Supreme Leader and the Islamic Republic’s unelected institutions. Decades of economic mismanagement, suppression of dissent, and brutal ideological control have alienated multiple generations. No one believes in reform anymore because every attempt has either been co-opted or crushed. But here's the paradox: We are also terrified of regime collapse because we've watched the aftermath of Western intervention in countries like Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan. Each was promised freedom; each descended into chaos, civil war, or foreign occupation. So of course Iran are not going to , trust the USA or Israel because they know how imperial powers treat ‘liberated’ nations in the Middle East. Freedom, in their language, often means vacuum, fire, and permanent instability. Right now, many Iranians live with three truths at once: 1) The Islamic Republic is morally and politically bankrupt. 2) The alternatives offered by foreign actors are not liberation—they’re collapse. 3) A bad government is survivable. Iran are not silent because they agree. They are cautious because they’ve learned too well what happens when superpowers decide to "help." In a sentence: Iran is a nation held hostage by its own regime, but haunted by the fate of its neighbours. They are stuck in a house they hate, surrounded by fires they fear more.

In my opinion, Israel needed to divert the world’s attention from the fact that they are currently rapping up a decades long campaign to destroy the Palestinians and they would rather take a few missiles than risk the world finally saying enough.

Zionism (the nationalist movement for a Jewish state) and Pan-Arabism (a nationalist movement for Arab state independence) began in Europe, around the end of the 19th century when most of the Middle East region was under the Ottoman Empire. The empire was established in around 1299 and controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa for over six centuries. Iran/Persia was the other great empire/nation going back into history also known as the also known as the Achaemenid Empire. Persia and Turkey essentially wrestled for control over the Middle East region over centuries.

At the end of world war 1, the Ottoman empire lost their holdings having been on the losing side after allying with the Germans. Britain and France divided what is today most of North Africa and the Middle East. This is the period when the infamous Sykes-Picot agreement and the various state lines of modern Middle East were established. Britain, in particular, had the Palestinian Mandate which encompasses what is now modern Israel, Jordan and the West Bank. The Palestinian Mandate is essentially aimed to establish a Jewish national home while also ensuring the rights and well-being of the existing Arab population.

So the French and British decided to establish various nation states in the Middle East while a Pan Arabic movement was surging broadly encompassing Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Trans-Jordan (the region situated to the east of the Jordan River, encompassing much of present-day Jordan - nothing to do with pronouns!), Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. Meanwhile the British had also desired to form a Jewish enclave/nation to satisfy the agreement (Balfour declaration) with the Zionists. The big problem is Turkey and Iran (the historical regional powers and non-Arab) never really bought into this. The bigger problem is the personalities of the various Arab state leaders meant that pretty much all of them wanted to lead the formation of a Pan-Arab state. And the biggest problem is that the formation of the Jewish state was rejected by all the Arab states.

Iran was mostly uncertain about Israel in the 1948-1953 (Iran's Mossadegh era). Under Shah Pahlavi (post 1953) Iran was fairly close to the "West" since they helped remove Mossadegh from power (this came back to bite them) and therefore was friendly to Israel. Would Iranian people have been vastly better off of Mosaddegh was around longer and the west never overthrown him? Yes most likely so. This lasted until 1979 (Shia) Islamic Revolution in Iran. From then on, Iran was super hostile to Israel (not the least because it was very hostile to the US for helping bring the Shah into power).

By 1980 the Pan-Arabism movement had largely stalled. However Saddam Hussein brought on the Iran-Iraq war (1980-89) by invading Iran. He was the leader of Iraq and most of his government were Sunni Muslims, though their government was officially secular. However, most Iraqis were Shia (and had been so since the 16th century) and the new Shia leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, was calling on Iraqi Shias to overthrow Hussein and his government, which they did not appreciate. Israel was deathly afraid of Saddam and what he would do and so stopping Saddam was paramount, and if “that meant going along with the request for arms by the Iranians, and that could prevent an Iraqi victory, so be it,” asserted David Kimche, former head of the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

Iran in 1982 meanwhile, starts funding (Shia Muslim) groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon to oppose Israel. So the area has a really complex mix of ethnic (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabs, Persians), intra religious/sectarian (Jewish, Coptic, Christian, Shia, Sunni, Wahabbis etc), tribal/monarchic (Omani, Saudi, Kuwaiti...), ideological/political (Socialist, Monarchies, Democracies, Theocracies) and nationalistic conflicts. 

Why US and Israel get along…

The US gains a lot from Israel. The intelligence they provide behind the scenes alone is probably worth hundred times the cost. On top of that, they are a stable, democratic powerhouse and the ONLY stable, democratic powerhouse in the region. Israel has improved their relationships with some Muslim countries like Egypt and Saudi-Arabia over the last years. It is overall just a good ally. On top of that Israel is completely dependant on the west. They cannot switch sides or anything. They have American equipment and American training. Also, many of the Israeli Jews are dual American citizens so technically there are a lot of Americans living in Israel at any given time. There are actually slightly more Jewish people living in the US than Israel, the two highest populations in the world. Several hundred thousand of them travel back and forth regularly.

A tale as old as time

Iran funds groups that oppose Israel on religious/political grounds (Hamas a Sunni group), some groups (Houthis, Hezbollah - Shia) on sectarian/ethnic grounds, and for national security/sectarian grounds (in Iraq, Syria). Israel goes around killing and destroying these various Iran-funded groups and also significant figures in Iran. The most visible is attacking Hamas in Gaza as a response to the October attacks and the bombing and killing of Iranian military coordinator in an Iranian embassy in Damascus (Syria). The counter response was Iran firing missiles at Israel and the counter-counter response was apparently an attack in Iran conducted by Israel. Iran and Israel are at war now and this war has diverted attention from Gaza and the massacres happening there which leaves Gaza as still suffering.