To suggest that the “field is confused” might understate the reality. However, distilled to structural themes, it might look a little bit like this:
1. Kingdom of God — >Sunni-Shiite rivalry : Saudi-Iranian rivalry
2. Contemporary Governance –> The Despotic vs The Democratic
3. Political and Social Psychology and Topology –> Extremists vs Moderates
Official Iranian hatred of the “Zionist entity” has has maintained a flow of war making machinery and materiel to Hamas from well before present hostilities. IDF interdicted at least one shipment and one may be sure analysts are reverse engineering back to sources the arming of Hamas.
How the above suggested themes are arranged in any given mind and heart seems to me as invisible a matter as it may be personal, and in the field as much account for mistrust and paranoia as related attitudes remain inaccessible to detection except out in battle space where the same becomes quite clear as to who has embraced what cause and with what attitude.
Addendum: As Regards Iran
As appears to happen with “Islamist-style” Islamic overlay, the society that existed prior to onset becomes suffocated and hidden (to greater or lesser extent). Despite the onslaughts of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Iran, so _____ frequently points out, retains many facets of its pre-revolutionary modernity, and what the Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei have done is dealt themselves their own kingdom (see “Reuters, Khamenei, wealth” on that) with themselves at the center of its universe.
As long as the dictator can keep the engines of wealth in his state operating and pursue his dream of himself unmindful of the suffering he causes, that’s all that matters. Iranians may have a problem with this — the modern are the competing interest — but not the Ayatollah, not any more than Baghdaddi or Putin or Assad. They’re very different in their ambitions, but they are of the same personality, and that may be what bonds them albeit along the Shiite axis, loosely speaking.
While oil plays a mighty role in these politics, it may be much less important than the protection of the immense (and fragile) ego of the despot.
The weight of American interest in Israel’s survival probably should not be credited too greatly to the evangelical Christian community: all of the open democracies feature a majority culture, but they are all democracies in function as well as spirit, and Israel stands with them.
Brotherhood-style “democracy” as exhibited in Egypt and perhaps illustrated by Erdogan’s work in Turkey, is inherently anti-democratic and despotic primarily because the intellectual, political, and social machinery exploited is itself kleptocratic or piratical.
Human language programming and scripting get into this right about here: how is one to navigate so confused a world? Adhering to instructions might seem a good idea, but when the same promote such as Baghdaddi the Butcher to star power, one might well question the validity of those charts as well as the functioning of that most perverted “moral compass”.
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