I wish I didn’t have to say more about the Middle East. But anyway….
Years ago I saw a minor traffic accident in Manhattan. One driver jumped out of his car yelling “You Iranian.” He had no idea where the other driver was from, but Iran was the villain of the day.
Today you hear people claiming that Iran was responsible for Hamas’ attack on Israel. Everyone needs a boogeyman. But Hamas didn’t need anyone to authorize their brutal behavior. From Hamas’ point of view, the worst thing that could happen was peace between Israel and other Arab states that would make a Palestinian homeland almost impossible. So Hamas had every reason to disrupt it. The Abraham Accords involved rapprochement without taking account of the Palestinians’ plight. War and assassination had been used before to disrupt rapprochement between Israel and the Arab states. So Hamas was motivated to act. Given its guerilla tactics, it needed little from Iran, and certainly no puppet master pulling strings.
The war in Gaza and Israel is about Palestine, not Iran. Hamas’ attack was unconscionable, un-Islamic, terrorism. Condemnations of Hamas are obviously useless – they used their cruelty to show off and scare. So we talk about Israel because there is an argument there about what to do and its politics can reflect it.
As a matter of cause and effect, Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians had helped create conditions in which Hamas’ terrorism could affect the Middle East. The idea that our friends, or ourselves, can make no mistake is just blind idiocy.
It’s still unclear how Iran will take advantage of the war but it’s important to understand that Iran feels surrounded by Turkey and the Arab states. Hamas is based in Sunni Islam. Iran created and supports Shia Hezbollah in Lebanon. But beyond the religious split, Iran and the Arabs are generally hostile to and look down upon each other. Iran feels isolated and uses the Palestinian issue to give it entry to its surrounding Middle Eastern neighbors. As often said, they need to be more Palestinian than the Palestinians to keep doors open to its neighbors.
Demagogues convinced many Americans that no good can come out of dealing with Iran. But the nuclear deal with the US and other European countries was very popular among the Persian people. It offered an opening to world trade that could have made their lives much better, plus admiration and affection for the US lingers despite major conflict between us. The mullahs didn’t like the deal but they understood that the people did, which put a lot of pressure on them to keep a workable relationship with this country.
Until an ignorant dilettante in the White House canceled it. Surrounded by unfriendly Arab states and with US trade cut off, Iran went looking for powerful friends and settled on Russia – not because they liked Russia – Russia was a historic threat to them – but because the enemy of my enemy is my friend. That’s clearly a problem for us and for Israel. But no, Humpty Dumpty is not going back together again for a long time.
What has been unraveling the Middle East has been the unwillingness of segments of Israeli and Palestinian politics to follow the ethical injunctions of their own faiths.
For too many of us, the solution seems to be to keep the history of other countries out of the schools and prevent Americans from gaining a realistic understanding of the world. But ignorance doesn’t solve problems.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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