I don’t think we should be assassinating scientists. But Tehran has been no angel [1]. Which is sad, since their people are one of the more peaceful in the region, judging from the limited polling we have.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state-sponsored_ter...
Neither have been its main nemesis, the Saudis, Israelis and the U.S.
I find this kind of isolated statement doesn't help to explain anything, but paint the Iranians as irrational. I have 1000 problems with their form of government, but I don't think they are irrational.
One of these is not like the others:
Israel for all its warts has been quite consistent in leaving alone those who doesn't mess with them. Of course it makes competely sense given how they are consistently outnumbered in every way but quality, but still.
They also have a long history of peaceful sharing of civilian technology etc etc.
Technically that's true of the Iranians too. You can't credibly say that Israel or the U.S. hasn't been 'messing with them' for ages, can you?
Iran is suspected to fund and ship rockets that are used against Israel. I won't say it is confirmed but it will be no bif surprise if the rumors are confirmed.
Iran officials often speak about eradicating Israel. The opposite never happens.
Israel is not known to operate any milits in or around Iran, they are not suspected of shipping rockets to Irans neighbors and they are not known to talk enthusiastically about flattening Iran or killing its inhabitants.
I think we can agree that it is a poorly kept secret that they are probably behind a number of assassinations, industrial espionage and possibly sabotage but the difference is still enormous.
Both Israel and the United States extensively fund political parties around the world, some of which have military wings.
> Israel is not known to operate any milits in or around Iran,
There is a long history of Israeli-funded paramilitaries in the region, I know someone who worked in one. They also funded militias in Syria.
> they are not suspected of shipping rockets to Irans neighbors
The US does that for them.
> hey are not known to talk enthusiastically about flattening Iran or killing its inhabitants.
Hamas offered Israel a ceasefire and Netanyahu responded by going on camera and ripping up the offer.
Like armenians?
I agree. OP said the Iranians have been virtuous. My point is nobody is virtuous in these sorts of conflicts.
Washington has the original sin of supporting an authoritarian against the Iranian people. But we have supported bad leaders in lots of places, from Cuba and Korea to Vietnam, that didn’t start menacing their neighbours and sponsoring terrorists.
I'd argue Cuba suffered worse sanctions than Iran and yeah, their government is much more humane than Iran's.
1. Assasination of Jacob Israël de Haan (1924), a Dutch-Jewish diplomat, for attempting to make a peace deal with the Emir of Mecca - his plan was a Palestinian state in a Jordanian federation, the Zionists would drop the Balfour declaration and any claim to a state in exchange for unrestricted immigration. He was assassinated when leaving a synagogue by Avraham Tehomi (who admitted to it much later), on the orders of Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, who later became the 2nd President of Israel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Isra%C3%ABl_de_Haan
2. King David Hotel Bombing (1946) where right-wing Zionist terrorists attacked a British HQ located within the hotel killing 91 and injuring 46. The leader of the perpetrators, Manachem Begin became the Prime Minister of Israel in 1977
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing
3. USS Liberty (1967) where Israel deliberately attacked an American Cargo Vessel killing 34 without any repurcussions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident
4. Deir Yassin Massacre (1948) where 110 villagers were slaughtered, some members of the perpetrators were at a later time, absorbed into the IDF, one even became PM of Israel
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre
5. Document [1] from IDF archives (1948) which after translation states:
"In the villages lying between Nahraiya and Tarshiha there are no foreign troops for the time being.The villages are armed and ready for action[2]. Your orders are to occupy, kill the men[3], destroy and burn down the villages of Kabri, Umm al-Faraj and al-Nahr."
[1]https://i.redd.it/e8q5ore6vi231.jpg [2] Ilan Pappe notes that the villagers had no proper arms, only for hunting purposes and people who served in the police; without Arab troops that were absent they stood no chance [2] In April 1948, the Intelligence of the Hagana defined men as anyone above the age of 10
6. Palestinian Exodus "Nakba" (1948) was an expulsion of 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their Homeland during the war and establishment of Israel in May 1948, these includes testimonies of massacres, rape and looting:
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-how-is...
7. Assassination of Folke Bernadotte, (1948) UN Mediator for Palestinian Refugees by Israel's Zionist Paramilitary Group, Lehi. The killing was approved by the three-man 'center' of Lehi, one of which, after the assassination, became 7th Prime Minister of Israel (Yitzhak Shamir). No one was convicted for the assassination:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folke_Bernadotte#Assassinati...
These are just some of many incidents.
Are we talking about the same Iran?
Because the Iran I know funds Hezbollah. It's not a well kept secret either.
> while the US and its allies (Israel and Saudi Arabia) have been waging constant war. (Israel vs. Palestine and Jordan / Saudi Arabia against Yemen).
Are we talking about the same Israel?
Because for all their warts the Israelis are extremely restrictive and has been for a couple of decades even in the face of constant missile attacks, tunnel digging etc etc.
Even before that they have given away massive areas for peace agreements - and kept their part of the deal.
I agree Palestinians are in a rough spot, but lets not forget an almost equal amount of Israelis/Jews were chased from their homes at the same time, and lets not forget that Israeli officials tried to get the locals to stay (because they were afraid to get carpet bombed if they were alone, but still.)
Have you ever considered researching what Hezbollah is and is not? Or its origin and history?
> Are we talking about the same Israel?
It seems we are not! I think searching "occupied territory of Palestine" would shed some light on what we are talking about.
I feel extremely sorry for the poor Palestinian people but I place the blame mostly where I think it fairly and squarely belongs: on the thoroughly botched UN.
Also note that just because media keep repeating the Palestinian myth doesn't mean it is true. The has never been a Palestinian country before 1948 when Israel was created.
It was always part of Syria, Iraq, Egypt or something else.
There were people who lived in a place and they were kicked out of their homes by the UN mandate.
I don't think whether Palestine had been incorporated into the Western westphalian system is really relevant to the moral claims at hand.
In the same way as Jews were kicked out of their homes all the way to Iraq. The difference being that Israel took care of the Jews while the Arabs used their Palestinian brothers as pawns in an international chess game.
> I don't think whether Palestine had been incorporated into the Western westphalian system is really relevant to the moral claims at hand.
Good point. I've already pointed out my opinion about UN above and it seems we aren't too far apart on certain points.
I don't get the point here. Whether it was named Palestinian or not, it doesn't change the fact that Israel occupied those territories! We are talking about land, not names.
Well, in those books that you read, was it mentioned why Hezbollah was created and what it is doing now? Would you say they are terrorists but Israeli government is not? And what would you say if someone acts directly in a terror operation or via proxies? Does it matter?
The point is that kind of like in Pakistan/India UN decided to split the area in two ethnic areas.
In the middle east 70% was given to the Arabs and 30% to the Jews.
(Well kept secret: While the international community keep asking for a state for the Palestinian people it has existed since the start. It is called Jordan and was created on 70% of the land that was considered for the Jewish national home.)
Again: I'm not here to defend UNs actions, only (parts of) what Israel has done afterwards.
> Would you say they are terrorists but Israeli government is not?
That is absolutely my opinion yes.
The Israeli government is a democratic government. Hezbollah was a terrorist organization last I heard.
(Actually I looked it up right now. Here is what Wikimedia says:
> Either the entire organization or just its military wing has been designated a terrorist organization by at least 21 countries, by the European Union and since 2017 by most member states of the Arab League, with the exception of Iraq and Lebanon, where Hezbollah is the most powerful political party.)
Ok, I needed to hear those! So the books didn't teach you much.
>I do not know whether a foreign government authorized or carried out the the murder of Fakhrizadeh. Such an act of state-sponsored terrorism would be a flagrant violation of international law & encourage more governments to carry out lethal attacks against foreign officials.
https://twitter.com/JohnBrennan/status/1332400793559949312?s...
Your beloved democracy can be terrorist too. We have good reasons to believe Israel was behind the attack. Even if not in this case, there are a dozen more.
> It was always part of Syria, Iraq, Egypt or something else.
Syria (1946) and Iraq (1933) were also never distinct sovereign countries until decolonialization of British and French Mandatory territories in the 20th Century, either, and neither ever included Palestine.
Anyway, I want to steer clear of the "which country is more evil?" question because it's so very unlikely to yield productive discourse (we can use enumeration fallacy to support whichever position we like even if we agree on core values).
Having looked quite deeply into this, Iran does not currently have, nor peruses such a program. Meanwhile Israel not only does have a nuclear program, but refuses to sign any treaties regulating it.
> Is that evidence fabricated, and if so how do we know that?
It is generally up to the party offering evidence to prove its authenticity, not the other way around.
1 - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/netanyahu-s-info-iran-n...
Has it ever occurred to you the Iranians might be interested in such a weapon because Israel already has one?
This is not without precedent. We know for example that Pakistan developed its nukes to deter India when they demonstrated they have nuclear weapons.
> it plausibly deters Iran from advancing (and thus using) its nuclear weapons program
As for Iranian intentions; they’ve been quite clear and consistent that they want to wipe out Israel, and I take them at their word about their motives. It seems unrealistic to me that they want nukes for purely defensive purposes (unrelated to their broader desire to wipe Israel off the map), i.e., they think (absent a nuclear Iran) Israel would without provocation initiate a nuclear attack on Iran. It seems obvious to me that Iran wants nuclear weapons as part of its broader desire to eradicate Israel, albeit probably not to launch nukes at Israel directly but rather to derisk a nuclear counterattack. In either case, a nuclear Iran brings us considerably closer to a violent humanitarian crisis.
There are plenty of assumptions here tho. Because I am not sure such an act "can save lifes", or in fact, it keeps reinforcing the hegemony of US, IL and SA in killing systematically and waging wars in the region... My point is: is murdering a top scientist/politician useful to save "tens or hundreds of thousands of lives" or is this facilitating the killing "tens or hundreds of thousands of lives" in Palestine, Yemen, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and destabilizing the region?
I'm also assuming that the US, IL, and SA are pretty interested in regional stability if only because stability favors their own interests.
You have a few implicit assumptions of your own:
1. Keeping Iran in check "destabalizes the region" (and the corollary, that Iran's objective is stability in the region)
How can you believe this in light of Iran's pretty explicit intent to wipe out Israel? Are Iranian officials merely posturing benignly?
2. The US, IL, SA objective is "systematically killing tens or hundreds of thousands of lives and waging wars in the region" (and not to stabilize the region)
Of course, these countries aren't "systematically killing" anyone. You can criticize them for their actions, but they haven't been "systematically killing" anybody, nor expressed interest in the same.
3. There is a dichotomy between Iran killing tens or hundreds of thousands and the US/IL/SA killing tens or hundreds of thousands (i.e., if we prevent Iran from killing tens or hundreds of thousands then we implicitly allow its adversaries to kill tens or hundreds of thousands)
Of course, there is no such dichotomy. Thwarting Iran's nuclear program and stabilizing the region are two sides of the same coin.
A completely stable and peaceful region is very much NOT in the interest of Israeli right-wing politicians (currently in power) hell-bent on expanding illegal settlements. Israel is the only modern nation in the world without a fixed border. This can only be maintained by denying Palestine statehood, and the only moral way to do that is by selling this image of "our savage, uncivilized neighbors will destroy us if we grant them statehood. We're in an extraordinary circumstance, so that's why we're taking the extraordinary measure of denying millions of people their human rights for 70 years."
Btw, 2014 Gaza war killed 5 Israeli civilians vs around 1500 Palestinian civilians (UN). It amazes me how Israel still manages to play the victim card in the western world.
Of course there were fewer Israeli casualties. Israel took the fight to Hamas for the express purpose of protecting Israeli lives. Safeguarding their own citizenry is the primary objective of any nation’s military, and Israel did that by fighting Hamas on their home turf (as opposed to inviting Hamas to fight inside Israel).
I guess it was an honest mistake on your part, though there are too many people out there with "all Palestinian are terrorist" belief.
the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.
From Iran's perspective this is terrorism. From the US/Israel's that is probably not simply because I believe that there's probably a lawful mechanism for these governments to carry out this sort of action on foreign soil. For them it's "raison d'Etat".
* Israel isn't subject to Iranian jurisdiction, so it can't be "illegal", at least not meaningfully. In other words, if we don't account for jurisdiction then any international conflict could be considered "terrorism", which doesn't pass a common sense test.
* The Oxford definition stipulates "and intimidation", not "or intimidation". There's no indication that the aggressor's intent was to intimidate (rather, if they wanted to intimidate, they would have attacked the target's family or otherwise not been so surgical).
It's always a question of perspective.
Regarding your second point, there is obviously a part of intimidation in doing something like that. It's even mentioned explicitly off the record in the article:
"But some American officials argued that the death of Mr. Fakhrizadeh, the latest in a string of such mysterious killings of Iran’s top nuclear scientists, would send a chilling message to the country’s other top scientists working on that program: If we can get him, we can get you, too."
'Terrorism' is a term always used against others, the bad guys. We are the good guys we never do that. Some people have bought this line so much that it's difficult to accept that everyone does terrorism to a varying degree, at least certainly from the perspective of those on the receiving end.
What kind of logic is that? By then logic is it legal for Russian mercenaries to break into your house?
It's illegal in the same way 9/11 was illegal - purposefully targetting civillians is a breach of international law, and, of laws and customs of war. It is not onyl about laws of the host country where attack happens.
The argument that he was warking on a military project could apply if there was an official declaration of war, but that isn't the case.
The nature of sovereignty is that sovereign jurisdiction has only those territorial limits that the sovereign chooses; extraterritorial jurisdiction in law is common as is it's practical exercise.
More to the point, Israeli agents acting on Iranian territory are subject to Iranian jurisdiction without extraterritorial jurisdiction entering the picture.
> any international conflict could be considered "terrorism"
The proper crime is “aggression”, and, yes, almost every international conflict involves that on at least one side. (You can construct artificial scenarios where there is a plausible argument that both sides are exercising legitimate response to an apparent imminent threat, but they don't tend to arise in reality.)
> But some American officials argued that the death of Mr. Fakhrizadeh, the latest in a string of such mysterious killings of Iran’s top nuclear scientists, would send a chilling message to the country’s other top scientists working on that program: If we can get him, we can get you, too.
But, I know that during the Arab spring the Iranian revolutionary guard killed their own people. That removed all of my doubt, the Iranian government is bad. Anyone that would kill their own people are capable of much worse. They had no due process, no investigation, just killing in the streets. It didn't take the opinion of a news anchor for me to reach that conclusion, I saw it with my eyes.
1 - https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20201117/12384545723/gover...
Every country has killed its own people. The United States isn't morally bankrupt for winning the civil war.
1- https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2020-11-11/un-age...
2- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Persian_Gulf_crisis
3- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/21/russia-iran-...
That's deeply shameful. I wonder why isn’t there a “are we the baddies?” moment in the west…