’antisemitic’ Iran

One of the things that I fail to understand about your political theory, Sawtul, 

Uncle, our Prophetius descends upon his peasants, with a package of some predictions, never with any political theory.

Both these statements are false:

Iran is building a 30 Billion dollar cultural and recreation
centre for its Jewish people.
That's just silly. 30 billion? Iran hasn't used that much money to run the
entire Persian Army for the last four years.

Israel has murdered hundreds of thousands of Lebanese
and Palestinians


As an Israeli I have a lot to answer for but in all our wars combined there
hasn't been (thank God) 100.000 casualties

Casualties in Arab-Israeli Wars

Israeli War of Independence 1948-1949      

-----------Combat Forces------- losses
Egypt-------300,000------------ 2,000
(Trans)Jordan -60,000-------------1,000
Syria--------300,000-------------1,000
Israel--------60 000-------------6,373


The Sinai Campaign of 1956
Britain----------2000---------------2 0
Egypt--------300,000-------------3,000
France----------1,000---------------1 0
Israel--------175,000---------------231

The Six Day War1967      
Egypt--------400,000------------10,000
Iraq---------250,000------------- 2,000
Israel--------200,000---------------776
Jordan--------60,000--------------5,000
Syria---------300,000--------------1,000

Yom Kippur War 1973      
Egypt---------400,000--------------5,000
Iraq-----------400,000--------------5,000
Israel--------- 200,000 --------------2,688
Jordan ---------60,000 --------------1,000
Syria----------350,000--------------8,000

Among others my sources are: Jane's weekly. As you may or may not
know The English are famous for being anti-Zionist as well as anti-
Semitic

Edited by Daniel Dworsky

Exactly the point I was making.
100,000 people lost over 30 years is bad enough.

To say that 100,000 same people were murdered by Israel is what I took
issue with. It's ridiculous

Regarding your above post, Sawtul, I have read plenty of your entries and I still don�t have a very clear answer to my question.

 

Let me take another approach.  I am interested.  Would you say that you agree, disagree or remain neutral with the following somewhat lengthy excerpt from Vali Nasr�s book, The Shia Revival?

 

�What Iran�s revolution had failed to do, the Shia revival in post-Saddam Iraq was set to achieve.  The challenge that the Shia revival poses to the Sunni Arab domination of the Middle East and to the Sunni conception of political identity and authority is not substantially different from the threat that Khomeini posed.  Iran�s revolution also sought to break the hegemonic control of the Sunni Arab establishment.  The only difference is that last time around the Shias were the more radical and anti-American force, and now the reverse seems to be true.

 

The same constellation of regional forces that resisted Khomeini�s challenge will probably resist this one.  Although the context and ideologies at play are different now, the national interests at stake are the same.  The battle lines in Iraq today are essentially the same as the ones during the Iran-Iraq war; they have merely moved some two hundred miles to the west.  They will likely rest on the line �more or less running through Baghdad, among other places- that separates the predominantly Shia from the predominantly Sunni regions of Iraq.

 

Iran�s strategy in this conflict is the same as it was in the 1980s: to focus attention on anti-American and anti-Israeli issues, appropriate popular Islamic and Arab slogans, and avoid discussion of sectarian differences.  This strategy worked for Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Sadrists, inspired by Hezbollah, tried to implement it in Iraq as well.  The Saudi and Jordanian strategy too will be the same as it was in the 1980s: to contain Iran by focusing on sectarian issues and rallying the Sunnis.  Hence, while Iran complains about the U.S. and British �occupation� of Iraq, the Jordanian and Saudi monarchies lament sectarianism, the Shia revival, and growing Iranian influence in Iraq.  During a visit to the United States in September 2005, a frustrated and uncharacteristically blunt Prince Saud al-Faysal, Saudi Arabia�s foreign minister and the son of King Faysal, told his American audience that the potential for disintegration of Iraq was real and that that would �bring other countries in the region into the conflict.�  Leaving little doubt as to who Saudi Arabia considered to be its greatest rival in that conflict, he chided the United States, saying that �we [Saudi Arabia and the U.S.] fought a war together to keep Iran out of Iraq after Iraq was driven out of Kuwait.  Now we are handing the whole country over to Iran without reason.�  The princes refrain would soon become the mantra for leaders from Lebanon to Bahrain: warning of growing Iranian influence to gain international support for resisting Shia empowerment.

 

By seeking to rouse sectarian conflict, Sunni extremists are filling more or less the same role that the alliance between Iraq�s Sunni-led Ba�thist regime, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Kuwait performed during the Iran-Iraq war, which was to prevent Shia Iran from becoming a regional power.  In this sense, the violent Sunni extremists are also serving the national interests of those countries.  Although ruling regimes in Riyadh, Amman, and Kuwait stand opposed to Sunni extremism and support the US.-led war on terror their interests in Iraq are aligned with the insurgency and its goal of wrecking a new, Shia-led Iraqi state.�

 

 

Serv

 

Ref:  Nasr, Vali, The Shia Revival, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2006, ISBN-13: 978-0-393-06211-3, pp. 241-242