Because of the fairly harsh anti-US rhetoric circulated by the Iranian government to its citizens since the revolution (itself because of our previous support of the Shah and current support of Israel) for purposes of maintaining power, it's easy to say "Look, Iran hates America."
The Shia / Sunni distinction is largely lost on the average American.
And just as a personal note, almost every Iranian I've met in the US has been an awesome person. They've got a fascinating history and culture.
Also relevant: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiM...
Non-representative sample, self-selected according to dominant migration obstacle (e.g. financial or educational).
Yeah because most of the ones here are the kids of the high-level government officials from before the revolution.
But I think the defiance is why the US elite hates Iran. They successfully kicked out a US-backed leader, humiliated Carter's rescue plan, fought off a US-backed Iraqi invasion, defied the US over nuclear proliferation. Refusing to follow US orders enrages the US.
Ironically there has been extensive on-the-ground cooperation between the US and Iran while fighting ISIS in eastern Syria.
Could you possible share a source for this?
Kind of ironic when you consider the leaders of a country using patriotism for their personal gain. It’s so weird seeing all the flag toting, national anthem singing population in the US tow the line when they can’t even be bothered to learn their country’s history or participate in the civic process and hold its leaders accountable.
Americans in general aren't well educated about the ME and the ethnic and religious differences there -- even the past 17 years of war there haven't tipped the education system to give them better knowledge about it.
Yeah -- agree, most Americans simply aren't able to identify the differences between the ME countries.
SA is a marriage of convenience, nobody likes them even though we have a somewhat tenuous alliance.
I think people are talking past each other here because "Sunni vs. Shia" is a distinction that has great meaning to those on the inside of that religious or regional context, but means absolutely nothing to most on the outside - especially but not only those in the US.
Imagine that there was a wave of Buddhist terrorism. Would people in mostly-Christian or mostly-Muslim countries notice or care about mahayana vs. hinayana (vs. other)? Big nope. If they made any distinctions at all, those would be on the basis of country/region or skin color or just about anything besides doctrinal differences. More likely they'd just tar all Buddhists with the same brush. Do people in Iran pay attention to factional differences in the US, or are we all "Americans"?
So it is with US vs. Iran. Sunni vs. Shia might well be important, might be highly visible to you, but to at least one half of the people making geopolitical decisions it's just not part of the equation. Maybe that's a good reason not to have the ecclesiastical and secular authorities so intertwined, as it makes such confusion almost inevitable (cf. Israel vs. Judaism).
They also from time to time threaten oil supplies and threaten Europe with restarting their missile programme. They’ve been quite nettlesome.
However, with more energy independence the present US administration seems to be disengaging from the ME, in contrast to the last two admins,
As does the USA. So?
But unfortunately with the weapons they’re willing to use against each other it may be hard to just sit on the sidelines.
Any case OP was painting them as being “innocent”.
Someone's got to keep selling them those weapons, right?
Trump's "muslim ban" nations includes Iran: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13780
Active US involvement in the war in Yemen continues. The only difference of having Trump in power is that the news is full of his twitter remarks and news about prosecution of his accomplices, rather than what's actually happening elsewhere.
It isn't a "oh you're a Muslim/Iranian/Cuban/resident of Kiev, banned!" thing it's a "Oh, you could cost us millions and millions of dollars in legal trouble, exposure of our other customer's data, etc, sorry but we have to sever ties with you immediately to reduce our risk to very serious government investigation and litigation".
Given Slack also uses encryption at rest and in transit, there may be a LEGAL REQUIREMENT not to allow users with ties to Iran to use the product under CFR title 15 chapter VII, subchapter C.
> Shi'ite Iran certainly has human rights issues, but as far as terrorism is concerned the majority of them are orchestrated by Sunni groups
It doesn't matter what religious sect has perpetrated acts, the current government is reliably documented to a laundry list of terrorist attacks, cyber attacks, imprisoning/lashing/executing members of the gay community, at least 15 assassinations on foreign soil (US, FR, DE, CH, SE etc), a recent president was a staunch holocaust denier and the government even sponsored an anti-holocaust conference.
We impose sanctions, embargoes etc on COUNTRIES not religious sects. We hold COUNTRIES responsible for war crimes and genocides, not specific religious sects. The current government of Iran in this instance has a history of doing bad things for its entire existence, as such the U.S. government has decided they are both a threat to nation and worthy of sanctions for various reasons. I suspect the powers that be at Slack simply are trying to minimize risk to the company and other customers by eliminating users that have shown a connection to IPs geographically connected to the nation of Iran.
See:
- 15 CFR chapter VII, subchapter C.
- 31 CFR Part 560 and Appendix A to Chapter V
- Public Law 115–44 (the CAATSA)