…or Isreal could have decided not to attack the consulate.
That’s utter nonsense. Isreal attacks when it wants to attack. It never respects any ceasefire in the region in the last few years. From cellphone bombs to sending in hit squads disguised as hospital staff: they are not the good faith actors here.
What ceasefires has Israel broken that hadn’t been broken by the other party first? I know for a fact that Israel has never broken a peace agreement, neither with Egypt nor with Jordan.
ISTM, that the question of the anti-Israel rhetoric on one hand and the alliances with and material support for proxy enemies on the part of the IRI on the other, would largely antecede the current situation. As in, the confrontation and mutual aggressions were already there before and have gone hot before, too. Just that now it’s got to where it seemed to be leading to all along. Once more litigating fault over who did what in THIS current war phase, however, seems to me to be one late data point that’s more about effect than cause.
Pretty much all of them? Israel is notorious for considering it a “ceasefire” when when the other side stops shooting, even if they never stop at all.
As far as I can tell they consider themselves to have complete license to do as they please, and that they need no more justification than wanting to do something for it to be inherently good and any opposition to it deserving of death.
Seriously? An attack on an embassy, anywhere in the world, is a big deal, and would almost certainly be considered an act of war by almost any country.
Have forces of a nation-state attack any US embassy, and see what happens to them.
…examples below. More can be provided if that isn’t enough.
So no: Iran can’t just end this conflict. Because either the United States or Isreal might kick it all off again on a whim with another bombing or targeted assasination.
I imagine that Israel would claim that in each of those cases, the other party broke it first.
Trying to get to the bottom of “who started it” in the Middle East is a fool’s errand, since all sides involved trace the origins of the conflicts (correctly or not) to prehistory.
…it isn’t a “fools errand.”
In the case of Lebanon, it’s reporting directly from UN experts and in the second case we literally have over a thousand Palestinians deaths compared to only two Israeli deaths (which Hamas denies was caused by them). This isn’t confusing at all.
This “we don’t know who started it” thing shouldn’t work at all any more. Of course the party accused of breaking the ceasefire is going to claim they didn’t start it. That doesn’t mean they are telling the truth. “Israel claims…” isn’t a statement of fact, and we should stop treating it as such.
But I’ll betcha that in each of those cases there was an actual act of violence by someone that they were responding to, and that Israel can at least semi-plausibly say was perpetrated by a member of the group that they were retaliating against. While the other group will of course say that that someone was completely unconnected to them.
EDIT: Which is not to say that Israel can’t be blamed for such acts, just that the argument for the blame needs to be more nuanced. “Such-and-such attack, purported in response to such-and-such action, was a disproportionate response to that action”.
Actually 1917 is a reasonable starting point. In that year, during world war one, Britain made a deal with the locals to start the Arab revolt against the Ottoman empire. At about the same time, they made a deal with France to split the territory with France. In addition, we have the Balfour declaration, a concept to send some victims of prejudice, the Jewish diaspora, back where they came from.
A lack of ground rules and enforcement for the wave of settlers triggered a xenophobic response among the established residents in the 1920’s. The situation has been spiraling ever since then.
…I would take that bet.
I would win that bet.
Because we are talking about real people here. We know who died. When they died. How they died. We can look any of them up.
In the case of Lebanon we are talking about an illegal annexation under international law and the locals have a right to defend themselves. In the case of Gaza I’d ask you for specifics. For example, this month:
We have an Isreali drone strike that killed seven outside a grocery store. A schoolteacher shot while she was teaching. 283 women and children killed since the “ceasefire” began. Six children this month alone.
Now: where are these “acts of violence”? Show me. Because Isreal isn’t even making those claims. They barely make any comment at all. In the very few times they do, it’s in cases like this:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/two-children-killed-in-gaza-strike-were-brothers-aged-8-and-11-palestinians-say/
So in one of the very few cases where Israel actually makes a claim that they were responding to “an actual act of violence” it was the case of an 11 year old and an 8 year old boy that were “acting suspiciously” so they engaged the air-force to take them out.
That’s the reality on the ground.
And I personally find the fact that they chose this, out of all the other killings they’ve done since the ceasefire began, to make a statement on to be indicative of something.
So bringing it back to Iran: a country that was Pearl Harbor-ed and had the equivalent of the Pope and the House of Representatives slaughtered, that had been infiltrated to the degree that Israel was launching drones from inside the country, have every reason to not treat anything Israel or America says in good faith. They have every reason to hate.
I’m not suggesting “hate” is a good thing. But for every bit of hateful rhetoric you hear out of Iran, you hear the most incredibly hateful stuff coming from people like the current minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, from the president of the United States of America; and from people like Randy Fine. Every time you hear about what Iran’s “proxies” are up to we find out that Israel has committed yet another act that is illegal under international law, like the cellphone bombings or disguising themselves as doctors and nurses or killing scientists and their families while they sleep.
The only difference is we celebrate things like the cellphone bombings and killing scientists in their sleep. That’s something I can’t reconcile. And when the OP is basically asking, “Why are they like this?” I’m constantly asking myself, “Why are we like this?”
And the truth is we aren’t any different at all. There are horrible people all over the world. There are people hopelessly indoctrinated. These horrible people are also in charge. It’s just that some of these horrible people are “on our side,” so we do our best to pretend that this isn’t the case.
What’s the utility to Iran’s regime of practical, all-out as opposed to rhetorical enmity towards Israel?
Since when have religious and ethnic fanaticism been grounded in logic?
Having an “other” to hate and mobilize against has long been a successful means of staying in power - for awhile, anyway.
And once in a while you need to be seen “doing something about it.” And if it leads to them deciding to take the initiative to “do something about it”, same effect though more painful, perhaps, for you.
Is that really the case though? Or is it really necessary to be doing something direct? Americans seem to have a lasting emnity towards USSR even without direct conflict.
Is it accurate to say that the conflict between Iran and Israel has greatly intensified since the Second Gulf War after Saddam Hussein’s regime collapsed?