[34679]

>Oil

If we want their oil, we can buy it like reasonable people do. What you're referring to is armed robbery.

>Iran is the principle destabilising element in the middle east

Is this a joke? The country that has not started any wars in its 300 year existence is not the "destabilizing element". That would be the country that has attacked Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran this year alone.

[amluto]

This is a strange comparison. Iran funds the Houthis, for example, who commit plenty of acts of war. And if you’re talking about starting wars, it’s worth noting that the present war in Gaza was started by Hamas. (I’m making no statement about whether the actions of either side or justified — I’m just pointing out that, in the present shooting war, the first shots were fired by Hamas, not Israel.)

[34679]

You ignore decades of aggression and occupation in Gaza, along with the 4 other countries Israel has decided to launch wars against this year. "But Hamas" is not a convincing argument.

[amluto]

I’m not ignoring anything. The situation in Gaza and elsewhere has been horrible for decades. Israel has imposed various forms of nastiness on Gaza, and I imagine that Israel’s government and many of its people saw some of that nastiness (heavy handed restrictions on imports to Gaza for example) as necessary, since Hamas quite regularly converted whatever materials they could into weapons to fire across the border into Israel. Meanwhile, I imagine that Hamas, and many of the people of Gaza, saw that as necessary because Israel treated them poorly. It was a catch-22. Meanwhile, Iran most definitely interfered heavily from the sidelines, and I imagine that Iran’s government had reasons that seemed valid to them.

The situation was and remains unstable, and the factors that made it unstable were did not come from just one place. And you don’t have to look hard to find acts of war initiated by multiple different parties in the area.

I think that claiming that any one country “decided to launch wars” against multiple other parties ignores a whole lot of complexity.

[FridayoLeary]

You misunderstood me. I was talking about oil from the other gulf states. About 25 percent of the global oil supply goes through the straight of Hormuz. If iran were to disrupt that it would be disastrous for obvious reasons.

It's logical for the West to work to prevent that from being a possibility.

Iran/persia is far older then 300 years old. But again you somehow missed the point. I was talking about the current 40 year old regime, which while not having directly started any wars, have since the beginning declared their intentions to do so against America and Israel.

Really you are being deliberately obtuse.

[34679]

>I was talking about the current 40 year old regime

Oh, and how did it come to power?