“Quick primer for the uninitiated who are going to hear a bunch of bilge from the military industrial complex and its media thralls over the next few days about how Iran is an irrational suicide state with an inexplicable grudge against America:
In 1953 the US government helped the British government overthrow the democratically-elected, secular Iranian government and empower a dictator (because the Brits wanted Iranian oil), laying the foundation for the eventual ousting of that dictator and the plunging of Iran into decades of authoritarian theocracy and global pariah status. It was called Operation Ajax, look it up.
When that revolution came in 1979, revolutionaries besieged the US embassy, believing (correctly, but who's counting?) that the US government was an enemy of the Iranian people. They took American hostages, and the "hostage crisis" lasted more than a year. American warmongers on both sides of the aisle have wanted to carpet bomb Iran ever since.
For most of the 1980s, Iran and Iraq were engaged in a brutal war in which more than a million people were killed. The US assisted Saddam Hussein in launching chemical weapons attacks against Iran that killed tens of thousands, and Uncle Sam even shot down an Iranian airliner full of civilians (Iran Air 655, if you're curious).
On several occasions after 9/11, the Iranian government made diplomatic overtures to the US to settle outstanding hostilities and chart a path to peace. In exchange, they wanted a seat at the table regarding the futures of Afghanistan and, later, Iraq. Their overtures were rebuffed at every turn.
The neoconservatives (including the Bush crew and interventionist Democrats like Hillary Clinton) have been nurturing a special hatred for Iran since 1979. They've never stopped seething over the hostage crisis, they've never accepted the complete failure of US intervention in Iran, and the Israeli ethno-state has its hooks sunk deep in their worldview.
Obama did a good job (and you know that's hard for me to say about him) keeping the wolves at bay and arriving at an arrangement that at least had a chance of fostering peace. But the Dems' nomination of warmonger Hillary Clinton and the ascent of Trump all but guaranteed we'd be headed toward a flashpoint. And unfortunately Obama did a really *bad* job establishing a precedent that the the President can start a war any time he wants without bothering to ask Congress.
There is no reason for the US and Iran to be enemies. The Iranian people are not my enemy. Iranian people have endured generations of torment at the hands of the imperialist powers, all because their ancient civilization happened to have oil the Brits wanted underneath it. Iran's hostility to the US is not irrational, it's the end result of decades of pointless aggression and antagonism toward the Iranian people by the US government that has already resulted in untold thousands of deaths.
There is generational change happening in Iran, and generational opposition to its authoritarian government. There is a legitimate chance at peace if the warmongers can just be kept down long enough for the people harboring these old hatreds to age out. The only thing that is going to ruin it is if some criminally moronic thug in charge of the most powerful military on earth decides to start a war because his feelings are hurt. And here we are.”
