It’s sad, because it sure seems like the Iranians would make far better allies for us.
But of course, how many UK and American citizens know the history of Iran, our role in overthrowing the democratically elected Mossadegh, who rightfully wanted to nationalize their oil (the obvious source of the Occidents umbrage too...) and our installation of the repressive Shah Pahlavi regime that led to the Iranian revolution of 1979 that initially featured students and workers and such, but later turned into a purge, as most revolutions do, in which the powerful theocrats basically seized the nation, and thus bringing us into the modern era and the detente with Iran that still makes no sense.
Contrast this with the constant support of the various Hashemite kings directly since Trans-Jordan and Syria-Palestina were handed over... basically we set up satrapies in the wake of seizing the Ottoman empire and not being able to manage it ourselves...
Iran is also home to many historical sites - if politics were different, it would likely be a popular tourist destination.
15 of the 19 hijackers who blew up a city block were citizens of our ally, Saudi Barbaria. When the King was confronted over the attacks, he blamed the Israeli Mossad. Iran has never touched American soil, ever. So calling Iran the biggest sponsor of terrorism is gaslighting at best.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism#Funding_factor
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deobandi#Presence
>Estimates of Saudi spending on religious causes abroad include "upward of $100 billion";[318] between $2 and 3 billion per year since 1975 (compared to the annual Soviet propaganda budget of $1 billion/year);[319] and "at least $87 billion" from 1987–2007.[320]
Whenever the US issues a statement on Iran, it is best to just assume it's total agenda-driven bullshit.
Otherwise you are right - Iran is the natueal ally in the region. And it was such until 1979.
That’s what I don’t understand. The Iranian government is a bunch of oppressive fuckheads and stands for many things we oppose... but that’s even more the case with Saudi Arabia, so we treat like kings.
In all honesty, the US has given Iran plenty of reasons for relations to be somewhat frosty.
In more recent times, Trump has been rather vocal against Iran with his trademark agressive Twitter 'pish' - so there's plenty of name calling on both sides, and hardly justifies the current state of affairs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian_textbook_controv...
The Iranian government is a police state controlled by a bunch of fanatical fascists, who are one of the most successful terrorism exporting states ever. Just recently they were caught attempting to kill people in Belgium and France. And those are just the recent catches.
Once Iran consolidates power in the areas they're operating in (Yemen, Iraq, Syria), the next obvious target is Saudi Arabia.
Here, a source for the murder plot:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46043404
> a police state controlled by a bunch of fanatical fascists
This is a country that regularly reaffirms its Fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie. In 2016 they even increased the bounty for his murder.
Iraq, libya, afghanistan, vietnam, laos, cambodia, korea, all based on lies which corporate media sold to us. That's only the tip of the iceberg too.
I am skeptical, and so should everyone else. If we aren't skeptical, we'll be going "why the heck did we do this?" in 8 years.
>This is a country that regularly reaffirms its Fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie. In 2016 they even increased the bounty for his murder.
Saudi Arabia just killed a journalist with no reprocussions, is bombing the absolute shit out of Yemen (civilians!) using US weapons and intelligence. Democracy Now! had an episode this week about Israeli, US, & Saudi targeted assassination programs.
It's easy to see that the corporate media is selling this potential war. How do you trust it?
In my opinion, the rest of the world should be stopping US, Israel, and Saudi from continuing their global terrorism programs and ending imperialism.
You are not alone. There are many of us in the West who tire of the duplicity and arrogance of our governments actions around the world - those of us who have taken the time to actually educate ourselves about the statistics of the Wests' Coalition War Machine find ourselves nearly overwhelmed, daily, with disdain at what we so-called enlightened civilians are allowing our governments to do around the world, in our name.
Just the fact that nobody knows what's going on in Yemen at the moment (imperialist war machine out of control), but can easily name the Kardashians, is disheartening enough.
But if you ever meet refugees from countries victimised by America's illegal, heinous wars, its another thing entirely. If you don't get angry about what our war machines are doing, you're simply on the wrong side this time around.
This time, we are the bad guys.