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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.
The Sunnis are useless though, they don't know how to fight or do anything correctly. Only Pakistan and Turkey are decent, the Arab world doesn't have a clue. They're either rich and get Koreans, Europeans or Americans to run their oilfields and just about all demanding aspects of their economies, or they're poor and even weaker. They don't actually make weapons, oil infrastructure or manufactured goods like Iran does, they're not real military-industrial powers.
The US shot their load. Those JASSMs and interceptors were supposed to be for China and cannot be quickly replaced. The Arabs can't do shit to Iran. If the US Navy doesn't dare to enter the straits of Hormuz, if the US ground forces don't feel like they can do anything significant against Iran, then the Saudis and assorted riff-raff are just going to have to do as Iran says.
Iranian regional and global power is greater than its ever been. Iran used to be opposed by Iraq (who needed the support of both Cold War superpowers just to contend with Iran). Now Iran practically runs Iraq thanks to an incredibly dumb US invasion. This current incredibly dumb war might now give them effective control over the bulk of the Oily Lands.
The regional balance of power is not proportionate to population at all. There is a reason why both Cold War superpowers were helping Saddam's Iraq, they feared Iranian hegemony in the Oily Lands for good reason.
Exactly how does not being able to defend your own territory give you control over someone else's?
The Arabs can't fight, Iran can. Saudi Arabia and UAE are much more vulnerable targets than Iran. They are much more reliant on food imports, desalination and oil exports, so they're already structurally weaker. But they're much less capable at improvising and showing resilience. The UAE version of warfighting is buying insanely expensive American weapons and making slick propaganda videos, not actually achieving strategic goals. Nobody has even see the UAE navy, they're totally useless and know it.
'Not being able to defend your territory from US bombing' does not preclude countries clearly defeating the US. South Vietnam and Afghanistan come to mind.
Bombing is not achieving US strategic goals. If bombing was effective, why has the US stopped bombing Iran before their main goals (regime change and reopening the straits of Hormuz) were met? Why is Trump now going on about Iranian oilfields scarring, why is blockade the new strategy? Because bombing has failed. It's a Star Wars brained, Top Gun strategy 'let's blow this thing and go home'. That's not how the real world works. The Iranians prepared for bombing, they expected bombing and planned around it.
I think the recent historical record shows the Iranians can't fight any better than the Arabs. See the Iran/Iraq war. They too are a patrimonial clan-based society that can't coordinate at a national level. They also have a divided military, which has advantages for dispersion but disadvantages for coordination. They do have certain advantages in a separate ethnic identity similar to Turkey and Egypt. Iran is a more cohesive society than most arab nations, but this doesn't really translate to military capability. They've done well with unconventional guerrilla warfare using Sunni catspaws, but in a straight up shooting war they've not won shit in several hundred years.
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