Tensions in the Middle East

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

There was a vast amount of hope in Syria, Iraq and Libya in the beginning, the sad truth is some countries that were stitched together from disparate ethnic and religious groups by my ancestors in the 19th and 20th century can only be held together by brutal force, no matter how happy many Iranians are now I fear several years of anarchic civil war will just end up with some other flavour of bastard in charge

I hear what you're saying about Syria and Iraq. But Iran was never conquered or colonized by the West, and has a cohesive culture going back over 2,000 years. It has ethnic and religious minorities, but virtually every country on the planet does.

Brazil is a former colony, has dozens of language and ethnic groups, and it's not wracked by endless civil war. Religious fanaticism is an accelerant of political violence in the Middle East, and Islamic fundamentalism and the 1,400 year old schism between #####e and Sunni can't be laid at the feet of the West.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

I hear what you're saying about Syria and Iraq. But Iran was never conquered or colonized by the West, and has a cohesive culture going back over 2,000 years. It has ethnic and religious minorities, but virtually every country on the planet does.

Brazil is a former colony, has dozens of language and ethnic groups, and it's not wracked by endless civil war. Religious fanaticism is an accelerant of political violence in the Middle East, and Islamic fundamentalism and the 1,400 year old schism between #####e and Sunni can't be laid at the feet of the West.

Some who study history might disagree with you.

Let’s be clear: divisions existed beforehand, but colonialism and European greed created a revolving-door situation, leading to the degradation of societies’ ability to resist, while allowing colonial powers to capture more and more natural resources and markets at fire-sale prices.


Religion was deployed as an imperial instrument to motivate and stimulate interventionist policies, and to expand colonial economic and political footprints around the globe.


Anyone who looks at the Global South without understanding colonial divide-and-rule policies, and the weaponisation of religious, cultural, linguistic and ethnic differences to maximise control and domination, misses the crucial factors that fomented and maintained conflicts over a long period.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinio...ion-ablaze-how

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Some who study history might disagree with you.



https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinio...ion-ablaze-how

Posting opinion pieces by anti-Semites?

[Doctorfever]

Originally Posted by Looch City

This war has turned into propaganda and misinformation war. It is truly weird.

I have family members posting videos saying "God bless Trump, god bless Netanyahu" and videos of blasts in Tehran saying this is the sound of freedom.

I try to look at it from both sides but it's so incredibly difficult. If my family and I were in Tehran with bombs dropping on our neighborhoods, would we be glad because the regime is being bombed and it just so happens to be in our neighborhood?

Honestly don't know how to feel anymore. It all feels fake, heavily influenced by bots and social media craze.

It’s crazy how much propaganda there is. It seems to be just as important to project information (or misinformation) than it is to actually be winning on the battlefields.

I’m glad that you are trying to look at things with an open mind (or, this is just another one or your posts that isn’t genuine). I hope not. It isn’t the thread for those types of posts.

Anyways, it appears that you have a vested interest with family members involved, so I hope that they are doing ok under the circumstances.

[Manhattanboy]

Israel sending drones into Turkey and other countries is one of the more ridiculous conspiracies.

Of course not as ridiculous as Tucker Carlson’s latest take that Chabad intends to divert Iranian missiles into the Dome of the Rock. He and Candace Owens should just hook up already.

[activeStick]

The attack on the school to kill children was in fact not from Iran. Shocking, I know!!

https://twitter.com/user/status/2029664938604605646

[TrentCrimmIndependent]

By how reactive Leavitt and others were about answering the school bombing questions and that air strike map, you knew it came from the US.

Yup, you're the bad guys. But try as you might to deny it.

The noem firing today makes more sense with the PR torpedo they're taking.

[FlamesAddiction]

If it was a misfired Iranian missile that also just happened to land right next to military facilities, that would have been a huge coincidence.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Some who study history might disagree with you.



https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinio...ion-ablaze-how

Let's not forget that the US and other Western powers funded and supported political Islam and armed extremist Islamist groups since at least the Cold war era, all the way up to 9/11 and in some cases even after that.

Those groups would likely never have become as powerful on their own.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Some who study history might disagree with you.



https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinio...ion-ablaze-how

I'm aware some historians are in the 'everything wrong with the world is the fault of Western imperalism' camp. But I read more broadly.

You're a funny cat, Fuzz. Your loathing of Christians conservatives is icendiary. But when it comes to non-Christian religious fanatics, you grope around for political explanations to excuse their violence and oppression. You don't grant Muslim zealots the same agency you grant Christian zealots.

[Fuzz]

It seems kind of silly to just ignore the roll of the US alone in the region, even without going back further. They were arming both sides to the tits at various times in the past 50 years. All for oil. The US is still working on bombing the F-14's they sold to Iran in the 70's. Well, bombing the paintings of them. It's not believed any are still in flyable condition(the physical ones, not the decoy paintings).

Iran has revealed that the U.S. military has been bombing F-14 fighter jet paintings during its airstrikes, mistakenly believing they were real aircraft. According to Iranian sources, prior to the start of the conflict, the country's fighter jets had been moved to underground shelters for safety.

Spoiler!

Link

https://wanaen.com/wp-content/upload...aintings-2.mp4

[Johnny Makarov]

Trump just told CNN that on a scale of 1-10 of how the war is going, he is giving it a 12 or 15! Lol. Turnip math!

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

It seems kind of silly to just ignore the roll of the US alone in the region, even without going back further. They were arming both sides to the tits at various times in the past 50 years. All for oil. The US is still working on bombing the F-14's they sold to Iran in the 70's. Well, bombing the paintings of them. It's not believed any are still in flyable condition(the physical ones, not the decoy paintings).

Spoiler!

Link

https://wanaen.com/wp-content/upload...aintings-2.mp4

This is what happens when you purge intelligent free thinkers in the military and replace them with yes men/women.

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Some who study history might disagree with you.



https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinio...ion-ablaze-how

Where the heck do you find this thrash? There's nothing historically relevant here.

Surrender to global market forces, and join the pleasure tours in the Red Sea, Halloween festivals en route to Mecca, hedonistic escapes in the Gulf, and decadent resorts in Egypt’s Taba.

The West will provide colonial perfumes to make your rot smell like roses, as you sell your society to the western corporate machine, privatise national resources

Real history lesson.

https://www.cfr.org/photo-essay/sunni-shia-divide


I'll take over someone using "sushi theory", "Imperial intervention" in a rant against the west as if Shia-Sunni divide was fabricated. Colonial perfumes...like wtf.

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Spoiler!

Link

https://wanaen.com/wp-content/upload...aintings-2.mp4

We are now in the business of reposting state media propaganda as truth? The same state media that brands the January protests as terrorist attacks from zionist interference?

https://wanaen.com/protests-hijacked...ave-many-dead/

https://wanaen.com/the-cost-of-the-l...anian-history/

What the heck are you doing? What's your angle? For someone so hellbent on misinformation, what the heck are you doing here, even following this stuff? Just so you can have a gotcha about Trump and the US or something? Like seriously.

https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-...-jets-11624882

Do better. Post your post in the misinformation thread and have it locked at this point and never post fake thrash like this again.

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

This is what happens when you purge intelligent free thinkers in the military and replace them with yes men/women.

Apparently intelligent free thinkers don't exist here too. Since you've been duped by misinformation (from a regime state media no less) and believed it versus questioning the validity.

Seriously folks. WTF

[Fuzz]

The F-14 point was that it is another symbol of the US picking sides and arming conflict. OK, so the video was from less than a year ago. Sorry I didn't fact check it. It doesn't change the reality that you have to have pretty big blinders on to ignore how the west has used the divide to exploit and access resources. You can rant on and on about the source of that opinion piece, and sure, the content is emotionally driven. But there are no shortage of others who have written similar things for which you can google yourself. And, you know, there is the evidence all around us, like right now.

[Fuzz]

And the "real history" you provide agrees with this stance.

Violence between Islam’s sects has been rare historically, with most of the deadly sectarian attacks directed by clerics or political leaders rather than erupting spontaneously. Extremist groups, many of which are fostered by states, are the chief actors in sectarian killings today.

Conflict and chaos have played a role in the reversion to basic sectarian identity. In Iraq, for instance, remnants of Hussein’s Ba’athist regime, as well as militants whose organization would eventually become the self-proclaimed Islamic State, employed Sunni rhetoric to mount a resistance to the rise of Shia power. Sunni fundamentalists, many inspired by al-Qaeda’s call to fight Americans, flocked to Iraq from Muslim-majority countries, attacking coalition forces and many Shia civilians. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who founded al-Qaeda’s franchise in Iraq, evoked ancient anti-Shia fatwas, or religious rulings, to spark a civil war in hopes that the Shia majority would eventually capitulate in the face of Sunni extremist violence. Iraq’s foremost Shia religious authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has been a voice for sectarian restraint in Iraq, and the country’s Shia community absorbed thousands of deaths before fighting back with their own militias. But, during the U.S. occupation of Iraq and, more recently, offensives against the Islamic State, Shia paramilitaries have been accused of possible war crimes.

But sure, just ignore the roll of the west here.

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

The F-14 point was that it is another symbol of the US picking sides and arming conflict. OK, so the video was from less than a year ago. Sorry I didn't fact check it. It doesn't change the reality that you have to have pretty big blinders on to ignore how the west has used the divide to exploit and access resources. You can rant on and on about the source of that opinion piece, and sure, the content is emotionally driven. But there are no shortage of others who have written similar things for which you can google yourself. And, you know, there is the evidence all around us, like right now.

Your claim: Well, bombing the paintings of them.

Doubling down that you used a deliberately fake propaganda video and story about the US bombing paintings of F-14s, and quoted it directly from a state run media propaganda source of all places?

Where or how did you find it? You don't just stumble upon this level of misinformation without deliberate effort.

Likewise, there are plenty of real history articles about the region discussing the realities without heavily subjective ranting, yet you chose...that? Notwithstanding that it's written by someone with a clear antisemitic stance.

You could have owned up to it.

[Fuzz]

OK, the article was the first Google result. No, I didn't look up the author. But I did find some of his points about western intervention accurate. I still haven't heard anyone actually go after the points, so I suspect they stand?


The F-14 thing was me curious if they still had active aircraft. I read a few articles that generally concluded they probably don't. In that search was the video, at at that point I just thought it was a funny representation of the entire circle of the US providing those aircraft to Iran, to ultimately be bombing them in 2026. My mistake, it was Israel in 2025. It's still funny. The gist of the circle is still there. The minor detail doesn't really change 50 years of history.

[Firebot]

Also...picking and shifting sides happens all the time.

Canada has picked sides. Countries are moving resources to protect middle east interests. India sides with Russia, Iran is providing arms to Russia.

Geopolitics and worries of Iran shifting to the Soviet Union for aid gave birth the Iran-Contra deal. And F-14s were provided when Iran was an ally to the US before the Islamic revolution.

Soviets was armed significantly by the US during WWII, and a few years later NATO is formed to combat the USSR.

All of a sudden we are now best friends with both China and India with change of a PM.

All of a sudden we are thinking of not buying F-35s.

I don't see any irony in Iran having F-14s. There are always sides to conflicts, allies and adversaries.