This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Just to add to @coffee_enjoyer's comment, it's disingenuous to suggest that Israel actually starting both wars does not constitute Israel starting the war with Iran. You simply have the ground truth that both wars started with Israel launching surprise attacks on Iran.
It's more disingenuous to suggest coarse propaganda slogans constitutes a start of a war. And by that standard, you would also have to consider the Jewish religion itself, which is an esoteric war-cry against its enemies including Iran. Jews to this day publicly celebrate Purim, the mass slaughter of Persian civilians on the basis of a "pre-emptive strike" dubiously similar to the narrative Israel is using to justify its own surprise attacks and aggressive war on Iran. Passover is publicly celebrated, which is the celebration of a mass slaughter of the first born sons of the Gentiles in Egypt. Israeli society has identified its war on Iran as a holy war on Aamalek, and that's not a new association.
The Jewish Synagogue, although slightly more esoteric than "Death to Israel", is a much more profound and esoteric war-cry than Iran's slogans, and a more indispensable raison d’etre for the entire religion itself which is why we have Israel in the first place causing so much war in the region. The religion is a war cry.
Quite awhile back, you argued that none of Israel's enemies in the region could defeat it even without US help. I countered that they wouldn't need to militarily defeat Israel, they would just need to cause enough insecurity and instability to threaten the colonial project. Not only has that proven more true than ever, but I think this war given the enormous investment by the US military shows that Israel could not have fought Iran without US help. And in fact a Iran/Hezbolahh/Houthis scenario against Israel with US neutrality very well may have resulted in the actual military defeat of Israel.
And that's the real reason for this war, going back to the "New Strategy for Securing the Realm." There was a balance of power between Iran and Israel, which is good for the US but bad highly threatening for Israel. Israel is starting this war to disrupt the balance of power, so they are hegemonic in the region.
To say Israel didn't start the wars is disingenuous in every respect.
This war and Israel itself would not exist without its religion. The Jewish religion has brought that region to this exact point, it is a religious hostility.
I would say it would be disingenuous if one were to ignore (1) Iran's threats to wipe Israel off the map; (2) it's incessant proxy attacks against Israel; and (3) it's decision to enrich Uranium in deep underground bunkers.
I think that @2rafa asked a key question: If the 1979 revolution had not taken place in Iran, would Israel and Iran be fighting each other right now? It seems pretty clear that the answer is "no." And if the answer is "no," what changed?
Here's another question to ask: What was the very first significant act of military hostility by Israel towards Iran since 1947?
That is not at all a clear answer given that Israel has been hostile to relatively secular regimes like Nasser, Hussein, Gaddafi, and Assad. Why would the Shah in this counterfactual not be included in that list of Israel's enemies? If it were like Syria, Israel would leverage fundamentalist elements in Iran to destabilize the regime and undermine the Shah like it did in Syria.
Because Israel is a threat to Iran. Israel has spent decades overtly planning for a war with Iran and petitioning the United States to attack Iran. Keep in mind Israel supported Iran during the Iran-Iraq war to provide a counterweight to Iraq. Then they take out Iraq by subverting the US foreign policy apparatus and overtly agitate for US to wage war on Iran. They take out Gaddafi (who was actually attempting to cooperate with demands placed on him), Assad, and by all accounts Iran is the crowned jewel of this policy strategy. Do you stop to think maybe that Iranian rhetoric is downstream from Israel's openly admitted foreign policy objectives and actions in pursuing highly destructive regime change throughout the region?
Rallying the country against Israel is fundamentally necessary for the survival of the regime because of Israel's own political strategy.
Syria's new leader was affiliated with al-Qaeda and ISIS! So why is his ascension over Assad considered such a huge win by Israel and US if this is ultimately about combatting religious extremism in favor of secular leadership? Doesn't that blow the entire "it was the Islamic Revolution's fault" theory out of the water? Israel WANTS an ISIS affiliate to lead Syria instead of Assad. How does this reality correspond to your impression here when it perfectly fits mine?
Edit: It's actually funnier the more you think about. Syria had Israel leveraging radical Islamist groups against the relatively secular Assad regime. Iran had Israel leveraging relatively secular monarchists against the Islamist regime. The only common denominator is Israel's objective to destabilize and destroy its rivals, it's not about fighting Islamism.
Well do you agree that before 1979, Israel and Iran were not hostile to each other? If so, what changed in 1979?
In that case, it should be pretty easy to answer my question:
What was the very first significant act of military hostility by Israel towards Iran since 1947?
When did this overt planning and petitioning start? What month and year?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
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.
More options
Context Copy link
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?
So the Jews create their colony in the middle of the Muslim world on the basis of superstitious, cult nonsense, and now Muslim religious hostility is cited as the justification for Israel launching these surprise attacks on its neighbors and conquering their territory and displacing the Muslims and destabilizing the region and most likely world economy. The raison d'etre for Israel is far more religious in nature than the Islamic regime in Iran.
The regimes of Assad and Saddam Hussein were not marked by rote Islamic fanaticism towards Israel, yet they were targeted by Israel for the exact same reasons I suggested. In Sryia the new regime is more Islamic than the Assad, accomplished with the support of Israel. A colonial project does not survive given a balance of power with enemies who are surrounding you. It results in colonists leaving. The US colonial project did not thrive on the basis of a balance of power with the Indians, nor the Spanish colonial project.
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. That is the 100x greater threat to Israel than Islamic fundamentalism- Israel's policy does not reduce to Muslim hostility, it's about making Israel the regional hegemon to secure its colonial project.
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.
Not necessarily a state but an Alliance, Iraqi militias are cooperating with Iran and inflicting huge damage on US assets in Iraq for example.
The point was that secular cooperation among Arabs (with Persians potentially at the helm) is what actually keeps Israeli planners up at night, sectarian fundamentalist slogans are what they point to as a pretext and they actually benefit from it and exploit it. Israel is not pursuing the policy it is because of "Death to Israel" chants, it's doing so for the reasons laid out in the Clean Break Memo, which directly plans on using sectarian fundamentalism to destabilize hostile and relatively secular regimes like Syria to prevent that type of cooperation.
In the counterfactual with the Shah, it would depend on whether he were more of an Assad figure or King of Jordan figure. But it doesn't reduce to the Islamic Revolution.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link