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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   1657 thread views

Transnational Thursday for January 18, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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I thought that the framing of this as "Iran attacking Syria" by Western media was somewhere between misleading and downright manipulative, considering that the Syrian government is still facing an insurrection backed by a myriad of internal separatists and outside interests and not in control of its entire territory, the attacks were targeted at one of those insurrectionist factions, and if anything Iran is now geopolitically on the same team as the Syrian government (via Russia). This is like framing the Battle of Manila as the US attacking the Philippines, or the landing at Incheon as the US invading South Korea.

Somewhat fair on the framing, but all this is true of the attacks on Pakistan and Iraq as well. Ex: Pakistan is also an Iranian ally, is also facing an insurrection backed by internal separatists who are a common enemy of Iran, are also not in control of all their territory, and the Iranian attacks were only against that insurgent group - but Pakistan still very much interpreted it as an attack and responded in kind. Iraq is Iran's closest ally, with pro-Iranian militias embedded throughout politics and security affairs - and is now reporting them to the UN Security Council, so it's not unreasonable to suggest these attacks violate even the normal fuzzy bounds of Iran's historical relationship with its allies.

The particular branch of ISIS that launched the terrorist attack on Iran, ISIS-K, also isn't based out of Syria but Afghanistan, so it's not quite as simple as a direct retaliation either.

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