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Comment by ty6853 | Hacker News Reader

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> It's not clear to me why the USA would join forces with Israel instead of Iran. Iran arguably is better geopolitically positioned and an alliance with Iran would buy the US much more of the ME

Sure, the U.S can also join forces with Russia and dump Ukraine . Why not ?

One thing is for certain, it's not because the US is a reliable ally nor because they have strong morals in international policy.

America has a history of anti-Muslim rhetoric. Before September 11th, it was a part of the country but not part of the core American identity. Since then it has become a defining characteristic of our politics.

Maybe this is because of all the "death to America", "Big Satan" rhetoric in Iran ? Relations with Iran were good until the Ayatollas came into power.

Back in the days when a UK | US installed puppet government extracted oil for the west with little regard for the locals?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

Some might say the US laid the ground work for an extreme swing to the Ayatollas by delibrately overthrowing a democratically elected government.

> with little regard for the locals?

Yeah, the current regime has so much regard for the locals ... Whatever the U.S did wrong, perhaps it has, things are 100x worse now.

Of course it was wrong and no wonder things are 100x worse (if that) as a result.

None of the post WWII fat thumb on the scale messing with proto democracies for fear of losing resources or ears to communism worked out well.

> Of course it was wrong and no wonder things are 100x worse (if that) as a result.

OR you could say the pro U.S phase of Iran kept things alright (relatively to after the Islamic revoltion) until it was over and we have the freak show we have today. It is true that the Shaa was a corrupt dictator , but it is not clear to me that the U.S should have disengaged from him. Qatar, Saudi Arabaia, Egypt and Jordan are all different kinds of dictatorships that are relatively pro Western and that the U.S engages with (sometimes even by supporting the regime financially/militarily as with Egypt and Jordan). All in all, pro U.S/West Arab governments are in much better shape than Iran is today.

Yeah, there has been very little effort to de-escalate or reconcile by either side.

The Iran nuclear deal was a good faith and somewhat effective attempt to de-escalate.

America voted for less de-escalation and more threats and rule by fear and war, which is funny since they repeatedly insisted they were voting for "No more wars" by voting for the guy that very clearly wanted to go to war with Iran.

The deal Trump has been offering the last few months, which Iran has rejected, is pretty much similar to the previous one. So you could say Trump shouldn't have pulled out of the Obama deal, that may be true, but you could also say Iran should have taken this deal instead of trying to drag negotiations forever. It's clear to all intelligence orgs out there no country with a civilian only nuclear program enriches Uranium to the level Iran has.

everybody in the neighborhood hates the guts of the iran. iran was major sponsor of terrorism in the middle east for past 40 years and blackmails entire middle east

this is what you call "better geopolitically positioned" ?

Yeah, I don't live in a slice of the multiverse where Iran is trustworthy in any sense. I'm no fan of Israel's government, but Iran is ground zero for terrorism training worldwide.

based on the downvotes looks like you and downvoters live in a different universes

Or they see the use of 'terrorism' in this context as the dogwhistle it is.

I never learned to whistle. I did learn to read https://www.state.gov/reports/country-reports-on-terrorism-2...

(and if you are going to reply to it, please, explanation how all of those organization are not terrorist organizations)

Did you read about how the IDF arms settlers and escorts them into the West Bank, where they harass residents? How about how they arbitrarily arrest and detain Palestinians and torture them without cause? Does this qualify as terrorism or is the US designation all that matters to you? If so, I wonder if you regard the US' documented sponsorship of AQ affiliates as an indication that their heuristic may be flawed. Cute deflection, though.

The same logic could be applied to Russia and China

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