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There might tension between USA and Iran, but depending on the situation countries can make up quickly. Vietnam normalized relations quite quickly, right after a brutal war that left most of their country in ruins and millions dead. But in this case for better or for worse, the US is fanning the flames of antagonism against Iran. The fact is that the US is constantly messing around with Iran's business, far far more than the Iran is able to mess with US business.
Iran has no blood feud with the US. Their people and culture have no multi generational conflict with the US. If the US just let Iran do whatever it wants, which to be fair includes many quite terrible things, then I really think that they would be willing to forget past injustices and not bother trying to mess with a country halfway around the world.
Iran certainly has a blood feud with the US. The people of Iran as a whole may or may not (depends on just how bad the Shah was, and how much they blame the US for that), but the current leadership (as a class) does. They encourage chants of "Death to America". They refer to the US as the Great Satan. When someone tells you in no uncertain terms that they are your enemy, it makes sense to believe them.
It is true that if Iran were to just do whatever it wants, they likely would mess with the Little Satan (Israel) first. I don't know if the Ayatollahs are even crazier than the Kims, and would nuke Haifa and Tel Aviv as soon as they got the bombs. But it's definitely a possibility.
Why? It makes about as much sense to me as believing any other political slogan.
Because not only are those slogans backed by authoritative position statements from senior members of the Iranian state, they are backed by decades of observed actions, including state sponsorship of terrorism and proxy-militia attacks on American civilian, military, and diplomatic efforts in other countries.
'You should not believe any given political slogan' is not the same as 'you should not believe any political slogan.' Many political slogans are, in fact, generally accurate indicators of policy direction. Nybbler made the appropriate calibration from taking a statement to the directionional.
I agree that comparing the slogans to observed actions is a good way to gauge whether or not the statements carry weight. But do the observed actions of Iran indicate a burning irreconcilable hatred, or standard-issue hostility, the likes of which various states have entered into, and exited from, countless times throughout history?
Setting aside that both degrees are the likes of which various states have entered into, and exited from, countless times throughout history-
-and that distinction is largely irrelevant when you working within a single leadership generation, which Iran still is for the founding revolutionary leadership class whose personal vendettas still apply even if their successors in a few generations change their mind and shift category-
-either would suffice for what Nybbler said.
This is the position Nybbler made that you quoted to dispute-
-and no part of this position on the nature of animosity, which makes it a distinction without a difference. Whether the Iranians elites have a 'burning, irreconcilable hatred' or not doesn't challenge the premise.
If someone with 'standard-issue hostility,' where 'standard' includes decades of terrorism in foreign countries against US institutions and directly supporting attacks on US forces when the US and Iran are not at war, is telling you in no uncertain terms that they are your enemy, it (still) makes sense to believe them.
I'm pretty sure we can find many historical examples beginning / ending hostilities within the same generation.
I thought the question they were discussing was whether or not Iran has a blood feud with the US? Maybe I misunderstood something, but how would you describe the concept if not a 'burning, irreconcilable hatred'?
I mean, yes, all those things are quite typical of states currently engaged in hostilities, and yes "hostilities" implies they are currently your enemies. "Blood feud", on the other hand, would imply that the hostilities cannot be ended by means of rational persuasion, and will continue to re-flare no matter how conciliatory one of the sides is.
I'm not even necessarily denying the idea that such a blood feud exists, I just don't know if the statements from the Iranian government, no matter how deranged, are a good argument for it's existence.
I'm also pretty sure you can admit that Iran specifically is already in its second, leaning into third, generation of participants.
If you want to go by senior leaders, they already are in the second senior leader generation and are well staged for a hardliner to lead the third. If you want to go by major institutional leaders, the late Soleimani of the IRGC was around 20 during the revolution and 60 when he died as the head of the IRGC, which is to say that most of the revolutionary paramilitary types are being done by younger men of post-revolution generations. The Iranian Revolution is about 46 years old, which is to say a child born after the 'new' Iran has had time to grow under up, be properly educated, fight, have kids, and for those kids to have been properly educated and in their fighting / parenting years as well. The Iranian theocracy absolutely has a revolutionary veteran ingroup for people who were involved in the revolution from the start, but the age of the average iranian- 34- means that most of the actual feuding-execution has been conducted by considerably younger people for a generation or two already.
When we look at historical examples of participants ending a feud in any generation, the proponents for ending it are generally not both declaring themselves an enemy while continuing to conduct routine hostilities to their end-of-life years. Almost as importantly, their key pillars of support tend not to gained their privileges with joining in on the feud, and don't stand to lose substantial influence and wealth if they let the feud go away.
Iran is the sort of structure you'd expect to see continue on a conflict across leadership generations. Both the autocrat-level senior leader selection processes and the state-within-the-state role and incentives of the IRGC support continuing the conflict. The senior leaders select for, and remove on a basis of a lack of, commitment to the Cause. Even the nominally elected representatives are pre-screened at the candidate selection level, and the non-elected power centers are even more deliberately managed.
This selection structure is in turn enforced by an institution that would lose its perks and privileges if the hostilities were to end. The IRGC is both a revolutionary-enforcer private army, but also a state-within-a-state whose privileges are justified by defending the revolution and executing the feud by, yes, bringing death to Americans. (And others.) This is the 'worst' of three worlds in terms of 'ending hostilities within the same generation'- selection for revolutionary fervor, material incentive for continuing, but also the prospect of punishment if a non-revolutionary successor took over. Then the IRGC would get fewer perks, and possibly more prison sentences for those things like domestic detentions and torture of political dissidents opposed to the revolution.
if we want to characterize Iran's leadership structure, they'd be closer to historical analogs of Imperial Japan- where being insufficiently hardline could get someone assassinated or the government functionally self-couped- rather than, say, Gaddafi in Libya, who happily engaged in European terrorism before trying to reconcile later. Japan notably continued its feuding until its government was forcibly resolved, and Gaddafi's feud was not as over as he might have thought when the European successor-governments saw an opportunity to strike back at him with US support.
They were, but your question was not that question.
You quoted the section about believing someone who declares themselves an enemy, as opposed to Nybbler's characterization of a blood feud. Your response questioned why to believe a self-declaration of enemyship by comparing it to any other political slogan, as opposed to any other kind of conflict. Your basis of argument specifically ignorred the sort of validating actions (that would give slogans credibility) that is the understood background context of the US-Iranian feud.
I wouldn't.
Partly because even irreconciliable feuds can be reconciled, because 'irreconciliable' is a judgement of the involved people's character, not an objective fact of nature. People's characters change with time and context, such that things that were impossible for them at one point are imminently possible at another. Reconciliation is usually by the descendants (future generations) rather than the initiators (the current Iranian leadership generation), and the more degrees of separation the better. I do not recognize / subscribe to a fundamental distinction between an irreconcilable geopolitical and a feud that could eventually ends, for the same reason I do not hold the same for any other 'unending' human relationship. There are no unending human relationships, because there are no unending and unchanging humans to have them. There are no permanent geopolitical conflicts, because the people having the conflicts change out.
The other part is I don't think 'blood feud' is a coherent enough concept to be meaningfully definable. I would certainly recognize as a metaphor for multi-generational hostility. I would also recognize it as a metaphor for hostility-on-general principle. But because 'blood feud' is so nebulous, it is also non-falsifiable. If your concept of blood feud is [A] and Nybbler's is [B], and Phailoor's is [C], Nybbler is not wrong for not being aligned with [A], or even in asserting [B] when rejecting [C].
Given that Nybbler's argument uses blood feud in the way Phailoor was using it- namely as Phailoor's short-hand for a conflict that is (as he put it) mostly a response to the US and which would end if the US stopped acting- and that Nybbler's point was far more about 'believe what they say' than 'there is a blood feud specifically because they say there is'- I also wouldn't read into blood feud as any sort of specific concept by either of them.
I'll be happy to admit that. What I have trouble admitting is that the US was just minding it's business all this time, and became target of all this hatred while being completely innocent of any wrongdoing, or that they made much of an effort to normalize relations (there was Obama, but his deal got cancelled).
That does not strike me as much different from how things are done in the west. Every public service throughout the western world, including intelligence and the military, as well as the entire education sector that hands out the credentials to serve there, is awash in Critical Theory. They send workers to mandatory courses where they get up to speed with the latest doctrines, and boot out anyone that objects. Trump may have tried to clean up the house, but there's only so much you can do in less than half a year, and even if he did it's beside the point. While I'm somewhat skeptical that people who go through periodic 2-minute-hate sessions about racist-sexist-homophobic-patriarchies are going to have a particularly rational approach to the world in general, the bigger issue is the water we swim in - the wisdom and legitmacy of western liberalism - no one who disbelieves it is getting hired for these jobs.
That is an argument I can accept, indeed sometimes an external threat helps to keep the population in line, and gives the regime it's purpose and legitimacy. Is it really as bad as you say? Sadly, I don't know and am not aware of a source of information that would let me confirm or deny this.
It was asked it the context of the other question. I understood "the Iranian regime keeps saying 'death to America'" as a supporting argument for why they do indeed have a blood feud, so I questioned the premise of the argument.
For brevity!
Correct, because Nybbler's argument was about their words, not their actions (as for the actions, I don't think they justify calling the conflict a "blood feud", rather than any other run-of-the mill conflict, but this is more a response to you then to him).
That's kinda true, but only in the way that feel-good statements like "nothing is impossible" are true. There are actual blood feuds, in history, and perhaps even now. Tribal hatreds so strong that even if you force the two sides to the negotiating table, they'll be right back at each other's throats the moment you turn your back to them.
Again, no. History is full of conflicts that were ended by the very same people who initiated them. Sometimes it's a stalemate and the sides get tired of fighting, sometimes one side decides to cut losses, and the other the juice ain't worth the squeeze, and these conflicts don't necessarily result in lasting grudges.
I never got a response from Nybbler in what he understood by the term. If the contention here is that Iran would remain irrationally hostile no matter how conciliatory the US was, or that they would be rationally hostile in order to maintain the legitimacy among their population, that's something that can be discussed, but needs a different argument than "believe what they say".
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