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I'm studying Iranian history this year and am looking for any pointers on texts. Currently still on ancient history, but will work up to modern. If anyone has book suggestions, I'd appreciate it!
That said, I read a few general histories early to get a sort of overview, including the Amanat one. I'd guess at this point my grasp of the general lines of Iranian history exceed pretty much everyone who hasn't studied the place seriously. And I'm mystified as to exactly why the Iranian government became the primary opponent of Israel and the US in the region.
Iran doesn't border Israel. In fact, they don't border any countries that border Israel. Persian people ethnically are not particularly in conflict with jews. Historically, Judaism is rather positive on Persia relative to Rome or Assyria, or any of the other mideast empires that owned the place successively. Neither is there much in the way of religious conflict, because the Iranians are Shia, and the countries that surround Israel are mostly Sunni. Shiism, as a minority faith for most of its history, is less militaristic and more tolerant generally than Sunnism (on the scale of tolerance that is muslim society).
Early in the conflict, it was the Sunnis, both Arab and Egyptian, who funded and manipulated the Palestinian cause. Iran had decent relations with Israel, which grew closer during the time of the Shah.
As best I can make out, this positive international relationship shifted the other way prior to the revolution. In very broad terms, the elites of Iranian society were pretty jew-friendly and largely remain so. The middle class and lower classes are wildly anti-semitic as most middle-eastern nations are, in the Iranian case because they blame much of the abuses of the Shah's regime on Israel and the jews. There was a fair bit of intelligence sharing and cross-training between the Israelis and the Shah's Iran, but of course this was conspiracized into the entire regime being a puppet of Zionists.
When the Iranian revolution succeeded, this view became the dominant one. Immediately as part of their efforts to export their revolution to the world, they began funding the only Shia they could find near Israel, what became Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Over time, the long arc of US/Israeli diplomacy and pressure was slowly bringing the Sunni arab nations around. They didn't like it, but the fact is none of them want the Palestinians and they've been cynically using the issue to keep their people riled up at the joos for a century. The non-arabs, Egypt made a deal with Israel in the seventies. Jordan and Syria made de-facto but not fully de jure deals. Israel and Saudi Arabia, the home of Mecca and Medina, were in talks to regularize relations when the Oct. 7 attack was launched. Those talks were scotched for a few years, but have since been concluded.
The Americans were able to choke off most of the funding for Palestinian terrorism coming from the oil-rich Sunni states. Iran (and the UN) stepped in to fill the void, and began funding Sunni groups like Hamas. Iran was able to install a friendly government in Iraq after the US did them the favor of clearing out the Sunnis, and controlled the most effective fighting forces in the Iraqi Army. Ten years ago the Iranians had their fingers everywhere, propping up Assad in Syria with Hezbollah, running ISIS out of Iraq (yeah, that wasn't us), keeping Hamas relevant and armed.
The US under Trump and Biden have been willing to legitimize Sunni terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban, who now run Syria and Afghanistan (again). In my view, we've essentially delegated to the Turks, Saudis and Egyptians, on the condition that everyone play nice with Israel and keep the oil running. There is no more "Iranian Crescent" of influence. Iran just bombed every country in the middle east with a Shia population in their response to the US and Israel playing trampoline on their government and infrastructure. Hezbollah is in rough shape after losing in Syria and the Israelis doing Mossad shit. Hamas is in bad shape after the last war.
So how did it come to this? Why did the Iranian government choose to so directly antagonize the US and Israel, both previous allies (with a lot of dirty politics)? Is it really so simple that the conspiracy theories of a revolutionary pack of morons in 1979 drove them to fight their only geopolitical friends in the region? Are they really going to be the last holdouts for Sunni muslim supremacy in the Levant?
I have to be missing something, because this is one of those things that makes me wonder if countries really are controlled by a cabal of their enemies.
And the Taliban never would have spent 20 years in the wilderness (or Pakistan, anyway) if they hadn't chosen to antagonize the United States (when it was at its least tolerant) in the first place. The terrorist-to-statesman pipeline is an old and honorable one, achieved mostly through winning, as Paul Revere, Samuel Chase, and John Hancock could tell you.
If Iran had settled down into being an ordinary dictatorship after the revolution, they'd probably have relations with the US no worse than e.g. Vietnam does today. I don't know why they chose to stick with the whole "Death to America, Death to Israel" thing -- my guess would be their religious fanaticism is absolutely genuine -- but that's what led to today's situation.
I agree, which is why it is strange
No doubt mostly true, but so is the Saudis, the Jordanians, the Lebanese etc. And they have more national interest at stake. The Shia are not more religiously extreme than the Sunni, much the opposite. It is Sunnis who invented and funded 99% of what we think of as "muslim terrorism". It is the Sunnis who funded and produced the anti-semitic propaganda taught to schoolchildren all over the middle east. Iran got on this "terrorism" thing late and most of the terrorists they fund are Sunnis.
So why is it easier for them to climb down than it is the Iranians? Weird, right?
Saudi Arabia is a monarchy, and monarchies in todays world are very, very good at avoiding moronic foreign policy positions. The one thing every monarchy in the world has in common is being a firm US ally, because that is the intelligent move in today's world.
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