The thing to understand is that we have spent centuries (arguably millenia…) fucking up The Middle East as it were. A reductive, kind of insanely offensive, summary is “it is Africa but with oil”. Colonizers basically just drew up random maps with no eye towards the tribes in the region or their relationships/grievances, let things boil over, and then drew new maps that were somehow even worse.
All of which has resulted in many of thsoe regimes being… really really horrible. Like, folk forget that iran were imprisoning and murdering protesters by the thousands before fuckface got involved. Similar to how people (rightfully) fixate on israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people but actively ignore neighboring countries basically doing the “No. Stop. Don’t do that…” meme because… they hate Palestinians too.
Up until “recent” history (ass pulling, but I would say the past 20 years or so?), israel was, shockingly, a stabilizing effect. Everyone else hated them (or profited from saying they did) and it kept conflicts between the other nations to a minimum because israel would be ready to exploit it. In “recent” years though, israel (mostly netanyahu) have basically realized they need to always be at war to maintain domestic power and will do whatever it takes to provoke said wars.
Short term? Maybe?
The thing to understand is that we have spent centuries (arguably millenia…) fucking up The Middle East as it were. A reductive, kind of insanely offensive, summary is “it is Africa but with oil”. Colonizers basically just drew up random maps with no eye towards the tribes in the region or their relationships/grievances, let things boil over, and then drew new maps that were somehow even worse.
All of which has resulted in many of thsoe regimes being… really really horrible. Like, folk forget that iran were imprisoning and murdering protesters by the thousands before fuckface got involved. Similar to how people (rightfully) fixate on israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people but actively ignore neighboring countries basically doing the “No. Stop. Don’t do that…” meme because… they hate Palestinians too.
Up until “recent” history (ass pulling, but I would say the past 20 years or so?), israel was, shockingly, a stabilizing effect. Everyone else hated them (or profited from saying they did) and it kept conflicts between the other nations to a minimum because israel would be ready to exploit it. In “recent” years though, israel (mostly netanyahu) have basically realized they need to always be at war to maintain domestic power and will do whatever it takes to provoke said wars.