RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quillette.com/2024/01/04/why-iran-is-the-key-to-peace-in-the-middle-east/

Prior to the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran and Israel had developed strategic and economic ties, driven in part by Israel’s “periphery doctrine”—a policy of seeking alliances with non-Arab states. The relationship between the two countries was mutually beneficial; Iran was a major importer of Israeli arms, and, in return, provided Israel with oil. For the three decades preceding the revolution, these amicable relations persisted. Israel even had a diplomatic mission in Tehran. 

The Iranian Revolution changed all that. Under the new theocratic regime, Iran labeled the United States the “Great Satan” and saw Israel as the “Little Satan.” The mullahs aligned themselves firmly with the Palestinian cause and against Israel. This shift was marked by calls for solidarity with the Palestinian people, the establishment of Quds (Jerusalem) Day, and the creation of the Quds Force, an elite unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), whose ultimate goal is one day to capture Jerusalem. 

The Islamic Republic’s apparent commitment to the Palestinian cause was, in reality, a strategic move designed to bolster its revolutionary credentials among Arabs and across the Sunni world and further its efforts to its Islamic Revolution beyond Iran’s borders—a task rendered more difficult by the fact that Iranians are non-Arab and are Shia, rather than Sunni, Muslims.

Iran’s ambitions in this regard were hampered by Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel in 1979 (and later by Jordan’s in 1994.) Tensions between Iran and Israel increased after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, with the aim of attacking Palestinian Liberation Organization targets, following the PLO’s attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador to London.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/islamic-revolutionary-guards-commander-threatens-to-shut-down-mediterranean/

Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, an Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander, has recently been crowing about how the Islamic Republic of Iran had managed to disrupt traffic in the Persian Gulf, and now it is doing the same in the Red Sea. Full of braggadocio, he threatens that now the Islamic Republic will close off the entire Mediterranean Sea, and keep it closed until Israel halts its war in Gaza.

The Arabs call the Mediterranean El-Bahr el-Abiadh el-Moutawwassit, “la mer blanche du milieu” in French, and “the white sea in the middle [of the world]” in English. In the time of the Barbary Pirates, Muslim corsairs from North Africa would attack ships of the Christian powers throughout the Mediterranean, seizing the ships and enslaving their Christian seamen. Payment of a large ransom could sometimes, but not always, obtain the freeing both of the sailors and of the ships. Such attacks came to an end when the seamen of the young American Republic made war, successfully, on those they called the Barbary Pirates, and thereby put paid to those attacks on Christian ships by Muslim privateers. The Iranians ought to remember that history; it did not end well for the Muslims.

More on the threats of the Iranian boaster Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi can be found here: “Iran threatens Mediterranean closure over Gaza, without saying how,” i24News, December 23, 2023:

Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen has over the past month attacked merchant vessels sailing through the Red Sea as the group threatens to hit any Israel-linked ship. The series of incidents led some shipping companies to switch routes.