If Iran’s newly elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian, was hoping for a honeymoon period after his inauguration last week, he must be sadly disappointed. Less than 12 hours after Pezeshkian was sworn in, an explosion, reportedly caused by a remotely controlled bomb, shook an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) compound in central Tehran. The target: Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, an honoured guest at the inauguration, and one of the Middle East’s most wanted. The bomb under the bed killed Haniyeh instantly. Honeymoon over.
The Haniyeh assassination, attributed to Israel and not denied in Jerusalem, has scrambled all those hopes. Pezeshkian finds himself in the eye of an international storm that analysts warn could lead to all-out war, engulfing the Middle East.
Infuriated by an audacious attack that humiliated him, his country and its elite armed forces, Khamenei – Iran’s ultimate authority – is said to have ordered preparations for direct military retaliation against Israel. Avenging Haniyeh’s death was “our duty”, Khamenei said. Pezeshkian had no choice but to meekly go along. Now the world waits to see what Iran will do. So much for a fresh start.
Iran’s next step may be decisive in determining whether the Middle East plunges into chaos. Its pivotal position should come as no surprise. Its gradual emergence as the region’s pre-eminent power has accelerated in the wake of 7 October. Iran’s anti-Israeli, anti-American “axis of resistance”, embracing militant Islamist groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and ever more openly backed by China and Russia, is now a big force challenging the established western-led order.
Fucking religious nutjobs…
If you look at it through a geopolitics lens, it makes a lot more sense.
When you see how the geopolitics are fueled directly by multiple clashing religious groups vying for the same land (which is so important because muh ancient texts) it makes even more sense.
Not denying that religion plays a role, but seeing this as sectarian violence doesn’t have as much explanatory power as a struggle between competing nationalisms. Simply put, for the vast majority of the people involved, nationalism explains a lot more. And note also of course that nationalism is extremely effective in incorporating and weaponizing religion to its narrative. And the fuel of nationalism is geopolitics.
What would you say is the defining factor for those competing nationalisms?
How many of the borders in this area were dictated by the religious populations?
There isn’t separation of church and state in this place.
Look, my frame of reference is the Balkans, that I know most intimately. There was a time when Greek and Turkish was defined on the basis of religion. You might have been a Turkish speaking Christian in Anatolia or a Greek speaking Muslim in Crete, and you were classified as a Greek and a Turk respectively and forced to migrate accordingly (treaty of Lausanne). In a different part of the Ottoman Empire, in Macedonia, if you sided with the Patriarch of Constantinople you were a Greek, if you sided with the Exarch of Sofia, a Bulgarian. Similarly, ninety years later, a Catholic was declared a Croat, an orthodox a Serb, a Muslim a Bosniac. Look closely and you will see the same story play out in the Caucasus and the East. The genocides of the Armenians, the Pontic Greeks, and the Assyrians by the Ottomans were not motivated by religion but by “national security”.
Religion was used to define who makes up the nations. In the Ottoman Empire, the millet system literally conflated the two ideas. But make no mistake, the Ustashe were not massacring the Serbs because of the Filioque; the Turks did not invade Cyprus in 1974 as part of some Jihad; the Greeks did not invade Anatolia in the 1920s for religious reasons; the Yugoslav wars were not sectarian violence. Religion was not the driver, it was the fuel.
In Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, religion plays a very similar role. Even the sectarian civil wars in Lebanon were mostly about who gets to control what it means to be Lebanese and who gets the upper hand, not about theological differences. Israel was founded by secular Jews as an explicitly national project. Even now, in its interactions with the CUFI crazies, it’s clear to see that the Israelis are willing to put religion aside in the service of the national interest.
Are there people who are primarily driven by religious fanaticism? Of course. But they are treated as weird by the majority. Think for example how almost everyone banded against Daesh.
Why can’t it be both?
The Middle East has been a powder keg for a long time, so it would only make sense that nationalistic and sectarian causes would intermingle.
When I say “holy land” the three biggest religions (by population and death-toll alike) all point to the same slice of desert.
Some lines on a map the British made have a lot less to do with the jihads than the 2000 year old traditions and beliefs (like people outside your religious tenet are dirty subhumans that must be culled)
I didn’t design my house, but I live in it now. Seems like an apt analogy for ya to chew on.
no, only since WW1 due to French and British designs, and since WW2 due to US and Israel
indigenous vs. people from Ukraine and Poland
Why did the Greeks, Persians and Romans want it when they were pagan? and the Egyptians long before them.
Trade routes, natural resource, strategic location, …
this is more than that
How about taking about the elephant in the room that is British + French colonialism plus the establishment of a genocidal apartheid settler colony along with US driven regime changes through funding terrorist groups or just outright invasions?
It’s so damn lazy to blame all of this on religion.
Both empires dissolved decades ago. The situation in Israel would have gone the way of South Africa or Hong Kong, if it weren’t for American mysticism propping it up.
You mean American evangelicals? Yeah I mean that’s true, but I interpreted OPs comment in a way that they think the conflict between Israel and everyone else would simply be about Jews vs Muslims and I think that’s a very catchy Reddit type of comment but it’s very far from reality.
There was a somewhat peaceful coexistence of all kinds of religions before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire (let’s not get into the genocides the Ottoman Empire committed here). There have been pan-Arab nationalist movements in the 19th century to separate from the Ottoman Empire that the British undermined, see e.g. their meddling in Egypt. There have been local Arab nationalist movements that have been undermined, most prominently the Palestinian one.
Jews were in general safer in the Middle East than in Europe (I hope I don’t have to explain this). Especially in Palestine there have always been Muslims, Christians, and Jews. In Lebanon there were and still are many Christians. In Syria there are many ethnic and religious minorities. In Iraq there has been a coexistence between Shia and Sunni people. Iran wasn’t a very religious country.
The suppression of nationalist movements during the Ottoman period, the arbitrary borders that the British and French drew after they left their colonies, the installment of monarchies loyal to their interests and the creation of Israel all fueled conflicts. After the creation of the apartheid settler colony Israel, the Americans led regime changes in
all with the goal to prevent disloyal governments from forming, or even worse regimes that would take away their rights to extracting resources for free. These regime changes usually led to the establishment of brutal military dictatorships and to resistance groups forming. This is when the religious nut jobs finally entered the stage. They were either fighting the Americans (Iran) or armed by the Americans (Saudi Arabia, Taliban anyone?). And since the post WW2 period sectarian violence emerged because who would have guessed that destabilizing an entire region just to keep its influence down would fuel conflicts between people.
Maybe now you see why it’s such a typical snappy Reddit comment to blame it on religion but it’s in fact a pretty stupid take.
Btw for sources, regarding arab nationalism there’s „10 myths about Israel“ by Ilan Pappe and regarding regime changes there’s an extensive Wikipedia article on all American led regime changes.
I’d add on that Muslims and Jews got along especially well historically. There wasn’t much competition between the two for anything, and they agreed on dietary laws and similar. The Nakba more-or-less set the entire problem in motion there.
Islam was the more progressive religion for a long time, or at least you can argue it was. Islamophobia is mostly a separate issue, but it’s worth mentioning. Religions gets used to justify whatever the influential were planning to do anyway, and all three Abrahamic religions have questionable stuff in their holy books.