alt Hacker NewsI feel like I may be insulting your intelligence with how obvious this is, but the Israeli government has had turning Iran into a failed state as an open policy objective since the 1980s. Given that Israeli interests have achieved this end in basically every non-monarchy in the region, I think this is a credible threat. Israel has a highly aggressive and influential lobby in the United States, which has posed debilitating sanctions on Iran for many years now. I’m not saying the religious leadership in Iran are the good guys, but the siege mentality is hardly irrational.
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What's been Iran's official policy objective? Who is the 'little satan' they call for the death of?
And siege mentality. Right. Like how instead of funding water works Iran surrounded Israel by funding Hamas, Hezbollah, and militias in Iraq.
I think that's an overly simplistic and false view of Israeli-Iranian relations since 1979.
Israel had tried to help Islamist Iran negotiate with the US through the Contra debacle, shared intelligence with Iran against Iraq (failed reactor bombing) and outright sold weapons to Iran to support them against Iraq.
There was a naive belief in Israel that the daily "Death to Israel" chants are just rhetoric like in the arab countries it used to deal with, and Iran can be a quiet ally like before 1979
At the same time Iran fought Israel through their mercenaries in Lebanon up to the point where all of Iran's resources were consumed by the failed attempt to encircle Israel, which has collapsed completely in the last two years