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.
challenging the established western-led order.
Why should the order be western led?
The middle east has been warring for millennia. You can’t stop them
Don’t make the mistake of confusing a moment in history with a “natural” affinity for wars. Humans period have been at war from millenia, not just Middle East humans. There’s nothing in their genomes that makes them more belligerent than other peoples around the world.
Don’t believe me? Look up the grand total of years of peace time in the US since it was created. Look at the death toll of both world wars. Look at the history of Europe, or that of precolombian America, of China…
Now, if the West, Russia and friends could stop meddling with their affairs…
Are you denying that there seems to be a particular concentration of conflict in the middle East?
The only reason why the US, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran can keep fueling warlords to continue their proxy wars is because they’re already at each other’s throats. Some tribal warfare that’s been around since the bloody middle ages.
Russia and America pulling back their assets is not going to miraculously create piece.
I’m denying the racist point of view that there’s something in people from the region that cause wars, or that it’s something that will just be there forever because “it is what it is”. Effects have causes you need to understand if you’re going to speak about it.
What is in the people of that region has nothing to do with race. It’s religion.
Of religion gets educated out of that population I’m 100% certain they’ll function like anyone else.
It’s a moment in history, not an inviolable truth, which is what the comment I’m replying to implies. The West went through the same horrors closely enough in time that some people are still alive to tell the story. And the US has no lesson to teach people in the middle East. In less than 300 years of history, they’ve been at peace for less than 20 years. And they’ve been in 100+ conflicts according to Wikipedia. Other imperial powers in the West and elsewhere have comparable track records.
The region would be more stable if it wasn’t for imperialists. They made the bed for various extremist groups, and the middle East is paying the price.
The situation is comparable to someone lighting a fire and saying that the house was always on fire.
You get downvoted out of emotional reaction but you’re right. It’s silly how many young people think this is all new or even fixable. You could eliminate every Jewish person from the middle east and Gaza and the people left will just start killing each other instead. It’s always been tribal in the middle east and it hasn’t changed in 2024. One tribe gains power and oppresses the rest, rinse and repeat.
This tacit racism and ahistorical bigotry gets upvoted. Just awful. Western meddling and Zionism is the cause.
This is such a wildly naive and orientalist view of the Middle East. If you actually studied the modern history of the region you would know that since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire western powers have ceaselessly meddled in the affairs of the people there.
They’ve supported coups in order to overthrow democratic governments. They funded right wing jihadis including the precursors to and allies of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. They’ve enabled war crimes left and right. They even invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and continues to bomb the whole region with an extensive and secretive drone program. Even now the west continues to defend authoritarian and genocidal regimes like Saudi Arabia or Israel as long as they serve their western interests regardless of their destabilizing effect.
The reality is you have no idea what a Middle East would look like without western intervention. To pretend that you do only reveals your complete ignorance and racist arrogance.
Sure let’s look at other places where the ‘meddling western powers’ have leftand peace broke out.
Oh hang on…
