To answer your question, it would depend on the political objectives of the Shah. The threat of Pan-Arabism is actually what Israel has been trying to nip in the bud for all these years, preventing the political alliance of actually more secular leaders like Assad, Hussein, Nasser, and since the fall of Iraq Iran is the greatest threat of providing a basis for greater political unity and cooperation among Arabs.
Iran is hostile to pan-Arabism, its people aren’t Arabs, and a pan-Arabist state that incorporated Assad, Hussein and Nasser’s states would become (regardless of who was in charge of Iran) a huge threat to Iran militarily and civilizationally. Israel didn’t bring war to a region that was beset with countless sectarian and ethnic divides long before it was founded.
2rafa
22hr ago
Rodriguez just made the erstwhile chief of the revolutionary secret police and notorious user of torture against regime enemies one of her top people and defense minister a few days ago.
2rafa
23hr ago
Quite awhile back, you argued that none of Israel's enemies in the region could defeat it even without US help.
I will try to find my old comment, so you might be right, but I think what I said is that Israel’s destruction would not be inevitable in that event, or another statement that was maybe at least a little more cautious than what you imply. I’ve been pretty negative about Israel’s long-term prospects here for a while.
2rafa
23hr ago
This is a response to a generic argument but not the specific one. Iran and Israel were not historic enemies. Historically, Jews were sometime treated poorly in Persia and sometimes well, but that was true in many places. Israel doesn’t have any territorial claims on Iran. Even the most fantastical, maximalist Zionist claims disavowed even by most religious zionists end in Western Iraq, nowhere near Iran, and would require conquering other nations to reach. Israel and Iran had a coldly neutral or allied relationship for most of the Cold War.
It is disingenuous to pretend that what changed was not the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which brought to power in Iran a theocratic government let by a clerical leadership that considered the destruction of Israel its central and absolute foreign policy goal (not the only goal, of course, it also sought to export the revolution to Iraq and Sunni states, but the central goal, yes). This government was not threatened by Israel, which has neither the population nor any economic or political reason, independently, to rule over an Iran that is not hostile toward it. Iranians have no ethnic and scant religious relations (other than those they imagine themselves) with the Palestinians, Sunni Arabs who have themselves fought wars against them for centuries (millennia, Iran being Muslim because the Gulf Arab conquerors destroyed the Persian Sassanids, of course) and today - Hamas fighters fighting against Assad in Syria for example.
The sole reason for Israeli hostility toward Iran for the last 45 years has been the revolutionary mission of the Islamic Republic, which seeks to destroy it. Or ask yourself a simple question - if the Islamic Revolution had never occurred, do you think Israel would care to fight a war against Iran?
2rafa
23hr ago
…written almost 20 years after the Islamic Revolution, and 12 years after Hezbollah officially joined an alliance with Iran, receiving funding toward its mission of destroying Israel, which had been enshrined as a central goal of the Islamic Revolution from nearly the beginning. Israel didn’t start the hostility with revolutionary Iran.
2rafa
1d ago
“Apparently” they didn’t want Kushner and Witkoff because they were involved in the earlier “bad faith” negotiations and asked for Vance instead.
2rafa
1d ago
I agree, it’s disingenuous when people suggest Israel started the conflict with Iran. A core objective of the Islamic revolution is the destruction of the “Zionist entity”, not partially but wholly and absolutely, a raison d’etre of the modern Iranian state is Israel’s destruction, even at colossal political and economic cost (as we’ve seen). Since the neutering of Iraq in 2003 and Saddam’s replacement with a quasi democratic largely Shia government, no foreign power or group realistically wants to annex major parts of Iranian territory (other than perhaps the Kurds, but nobody else including Turkey would want that, and it won’t happen).
Israel’s hostility to Iran isn’t ethnic or national or irredentist or religious, like the hostility to the Palestinians. Iran is far away and Israel doesn’t claim any of it. It’s solely downstream from the Islamic revolution.
2rafa
1d ago
East Jerusalem has much more religious significance than most of Southern Lebanon. Arguably even Syria has more. All Israel has ever wanted in Southern Lebanon is some kind of Maronite ethnostate, but the reality is that Lebanese Christian elites are low tfr, far too comfortable and all have foreign passports and so don’t care to fight and die for their homeland really. This was the reality in the civil war and is the problem today. The Shias are poor and have nowhere to go.
This would be good for Americans in America, because we will not be top dog forever; in a century or two we may find ourselves in Iran’s place with a more powerful China attempting to oppress us and conquer us.
Whatever the Chinese decide is or isn’t in their interest in a century’s time, I have absolutely no doubt that it will not be determined by the comparative empathy level of American foreign policy in the early 21st century.
Yes, this war has not gone well for America, but that was hardly unexpected, there’s a reason no previous American president was dumb enough to do this, including HW and Jr. Disarming Hezbollah is equally flawed, Shias in Lebanon are loyal to it and will reform and rebuild it in whatever guise, whatever the case, and the country is too divided by sectarianism to stop them. I hesitate to say it’s over for Israel, it’s faced poor odds before, but the future certainly isn’t bright for it.
2rafa
1d ago
This was unnecessarily rude and a ban was deserved. Twitter is a cesspool and you shouldn’t let the zero standards of basic politeness common there change your writing.
2rafa
2d ago
It’s actually less likely than you think. Even with the cost of insurance, the journey itself could still be profitable. But consider the risk of an attack - legal cases with the crew and negative press attention for “getting workers killed” (even if they volunteered) aside, the biggest risk is that you lose a ship you can’t replace just at a time when shipping rates might rise overall. New specialized tankers or other specialized cargo ships take a long time to make, you can’t just buy a new one off the shelf. So even if the insurance pays, you’re out a lot of revenue. All these things factor in.
2rafa
3d ago
Since 2016 but really 2022-ish second campaign planning there was a noticeable shift by many MAGA-adjacent conservative women to a kind of Miami Latina inspired look with some Hooters Texas bimbo characteristics. Search ‘Kristi Noem before and after’ for the archetypal example.
The look is a combination between the ‘global Latina belt’ look common from Mexico to Lebanon to arguably in a way even corners of SEA, and which is therefore somewhat racially ambiguous and aspects of drag makeup that were reintroduced to the female population as a result of RPDR. It was probably first popularized in the West by the Kardashians in the very early 2010s, but took another decade to make its way to the conservative influencer circuit (as late as 2019, Fox News blondes still had a very different style).
2rafa
4d ago
So Trump chickened out and said he’s making a deal, then Iran came out and said they’re not making a deal, then Trump clarified and said that actually it was Witkoff and Kushner, implicitly speaking to some third parties, who were relaying messages to Iran.
The markets are wobbly but I think this is the clearest sign possible that a unilateral Trump retreat is the most likely next step. If Iran keeps the strait closed or - more likely - extracts a hefty toll from anyone who wants to ship through it, that is something Trump can and will blame on others. He can say “we pounded them and killed the supreme leader” and that will be enough for the base. Gas prices can remain elevated but will trend downward over time.
@ me if this is all a feint in advance of a US invasion but I doubt it.
This is why…New York is the happiest place in the country?
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