Don’t see a lot of news on this and no thread so far. If you missed it, here is a BBC article on the attack. Basically, IS claims to have attacked several targets in Iran, including its parliament building and the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini, killing at least 12. The Iranians in what is probably an unsurprising turn of events are officially (so far) blaming this on a plot between the US and Saudi, but I assume that unofficially they know who it actually was, especially since IS has shown video from one of their fighters during the attack.
At any rate, what do you think the ramifications of this will be? I’m sure this has a lot to do with Iran’s actions in Syria (Russia has also been targeted by IS for its actions in the past), but also because of the Shia/Sunni divide as well. I guess AQ and various other groups have either tried or at least talked about similar attacks into Iran in the past, but this is the first successful one afaik, and will probably provide a boost to IS in the short term for having pulled it off. What do you think will happen next?
It’s not too much of a stretch to connect ISIS to Saudi Arabia. One brand of murderous slaver Wahhabist terrorism-exporting assholes is indistinguishable in any important way from the other if you ask me. (But Mosier, Saudi Arabia is our murderous slaver Wahhabist terrorism-exporting assholes!)
Nothing. Iran and SA are rivals now to the exact same degree they were last week, and it’s not exactly like there’s much Iran could do to change America’s opinion of them. Everyone hates everyone in exactly the same way they did before.
All very reasonable assumptions. In a perfect world, this would be something that helps bring about more cooperation between Iran and America. But America isn’t actually interested in defeating ISIS, and there are probably more than a few fat cats in Washington wondering now whether ISIS is really all that bad after all.
You can’t speak of Saudi Arabia as if it was a monolith. You have two different factions at work: the Saudi government and the Wahhabi religious movement. And they do not love each other (although they often publicly say they do).
The Saudis are the royal regime that rules the country. They want to hold on to power. They funnel oil money to the Wahhabis with the understanding that the Wahhabis will support the Saudi regime.
The Wahhabis are a religious movement. They think Arabia would be a better place if they were running the country instead of the Saudis.
So far, the Saudis have stayed on top by not showing any signs of weakness and paying off the Wahhabis. But the more money they give to the Wahhabis, the stronger the Wahhabis get and that increases the danger of a Wahhabi uprising. On the other hand, cutting back on financial aid to the Wahhabis would also increase the danger of a Wahhabi uprising. So the safe middle path is really narrow.
At some point the situation is going to snap. Either the Wahhabis will attempt to overthrow the Saudis or the Saudis will decide the Wahhabis have gotten too dangerous and will try to disband them.
The unfortunately is not a situation with good guys and bad guys. It’s one group of bad guys and a different group of bad guys. Think of the Saudis as the Nazi Party and the Wahhabis as the SS. They both supposedly are working together for the good of Germany/Arabia. The Nazis/Saudis want the SS/Wahhabis to be strong so it can support the regime - but they don’t want it to be so strong that it tries to replace the regime.
If you want an excellent background article on Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism:
**
You Can’t Understand ISIS If You Don’t Know the History of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia**
Part 1
Part 2
The biggest concern now is that Saudi Arabia pulled out all the stops to massage Donald Trump’s ego, and it seems to have worked. Now he’s their biggest fan, and that means the Saudis think they can do whatever they want, and Trump will back them.
A really good book on the subject is The Siege of Mecca: The 1979 Uprising at Islam’s Holiest Shrine by Yaroslav Trofimov. It’s about the Wahhabi extremists who seized the Grand Mosque in an attempt to start a religious uprising and overthrow the Saudi. But troops and police remained loyal to the government and were willing to shoot the Wahhabis. That’s presumably something the Wahhabis still keep in mind. Although the Saudi presumably wonder if what was true in 1979 is still true four decades later.
The book does a nice job in going beyond the incident itself and showing the background tensions between political and religious authorities in Saudi Arabia.
My thoughts on the matter (including pulling in the issue of Qatar):
Traditionally, the US has been ready to step in to stop anyone in the Middle East from crossing anyone else’s border. This has allowed for a status quo to persist in the region, where everyone just uses terrorists and other means to throw stones at one another, without it being too overt who is doing what to whom.
ISIS doesn’t really care about any of that. They want to expand and take over everything, regardless of whether it’s Sunni or Shia.
The Saudis probably have gotten used to the status quo and haven’t really been thinking too hard about physical expansion. Iran has mostly been working on maintaining a strong defense, ala North Korea, for fear of getting their ass kicked by all the more powerful people who hate them.
Trump, on his trip, basically said that he’d rather see a fight to the finish than terrorism - where terrorism probably kills fewer people by far than a war would and allows everything to stay as it is, while giving opposing sides a way to make it look like they’re still doing something about the religious stuff. He indicated that so long as the Saudis are likely to be the ultimate winners, he probably wouldn’t intervene if a fight broke out.
He didn’t actually say that, but he came close enough to it that ISIS probably thinks that they can cause the Saudis and Iran to get into a fight, and ISIS will be able to use the general mayhem to grow.
How likely that is, I honestly don’t know. But I’m probably more worried about a great war in the Middle East breaking out (even beyond ISIS) than I was about Trump starting something with North Korea.
A point which is thoroughly contradicted by the actual events in Syria and Iraq.
As far as the OP goes, nothing different than what has happened before will happen next. Paranoics might have a new set of conspiracy theories to work with, but in reality, ISIS is still losing territory to Kurds, the Syrian government, the Iraqi government and to the FSA. Mosul is all but gone and Raqqa is surrounded. The remaining steps to defeating ISIS will be in the hands of individual countries’ law enforcement agencies.
Trump has already said something stupid so our relations with Iran will remain steady.
The world understands that what that actually means is that, the following week, President Hatstand will hold the opposite view, with equal conviction.
Basically, the world has discounted the USA and is holding adult conversations elsewhere. Leave him on Twitter.
p.s. how is that US “armada” last seen heading to Korea by way of Australia?
There is a lot of truth to the idea that “terrorism is a tactic of the weak”. And, as the weaker Da-esh gets, the more we can expect this sort of thing all around the world. Ironically, we’re fighting them over there so that they will fight us over here. And that applies equally to Iran. Welcome to the club!
[QUOTE=Mosier]
It’s not too much of a stretch to connect ISIS to Saudi Arabia.
[/QUOTE]
:dubious: They all look alike? Do you have any evidence, outside of Iran’s accusations, linking the Saudi government to ISIS?
Um, no. You don’t seem to be able to differentiate between the Saudi government and a fanatical religious group that comes from Saudi. None of the ‘murderous slaver Wahhabist terrorism-exporting assholes’ are ours. It would be like saying that some fanatical religious group in the US (and we have several) were the UK’s because they are allied with the US.
[QUOTE=Okrahoma]
No ramifications. Iran cannot possibly become more antagonistic to IS.
[/QUOTE]
Why? The two have already been fighting in Syria after all, so I think they are already antagonistic to each other. And IS has zero love for the Iranian government or theocracy.
Why? The two have already been fighting in Syria after all, so I think they are already antagonistic to each other. And IS has zero love for the Iranian government or theocracy.
[/QUOTE]
Apart from beefing up security around a few key government buildings and such, the Iranians won’t change much of anything. And certainly nothing in terms of their foreign policy, which is already as aggressively anti-ISIS as can be.
I’d say this is mostly about ISIS shutting up their doubters in the wider world of jihadism, who for the longest time had been claiming that “sure, you guys are striking at Europe, you’re striking at the U.S. - but you’re not striking at what is arguably our biggest enemy, namely Iran.”
A strong defence is certainly important for the Iranians. But unlike North Korea, which is indeed all about defence, Iran is also very actively pursuing its goals in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and beyond. They’re trying to expand their influence, not isolate themselves from the world.
The two have already been fighting in Syria after all, so I think they are already antagonistic to each other. And IS has zero love for the Iranian government or theocracy.