NationStates Jolt Archive

I keep hearing about Iran and Hamas being connected, in regards to this new battle going on in Gaza. I have read stories (most are kind of laughable at best) about how Iran and Hamas both want to Crucify Christians and Jews, among other things. Something got me though tonight. I saw a story about how students in Iran wanting to volunteer to be suicide bombers in Israel to help out Hamas. This is a bit confusing to me since:

1) Most students in Iran are not hardcore religious fanatics. They also have a general hate for their president, whom supposedly they are petitioning.

2) Hamas is Sunni. Iran is Shia. If these students are hardcore Muslims, they would not be wanting to help Hamas, considering the 1400 year old feud between Sunni and Shia Muslims.

Anyone want to go in on a conspiracy with me to say that this whole ordeal is a way for Israel to attack Iran, because they can some how magically pin Iran to Hamas? I find it hard for their to be a legitmate connection. Its about as believable as Saddam Hussein's supposed connections with Al-Qaeda.

Well. I think it's more reassuring for people who know nothing about Iran to imagine it as an evil land full of evil people plotting evil things evilly.

Well. I think it's more reassuring for people who know nothing about Iran to imagine it as an evil land full of evil people plotting evil things evilly.

I hear they eat babies there, straight from the womb. They are even more evil than the liberals out on the West Coast. :eek:


;)

if israel wants to attack iran, it wont bother with a proxy.

Well. I think it's more reassuring for people who know nothing about Iran to imagine it as an evil land full of evil people plotting evil things evilly.
Evil, you say?
http://logo.cafepress.com/2/1221917.6257882.jpg

I hear they eat babies there, straight from the womb. They are even more evil than the liberals out on the West Coast. :eek:


;)

Yes, at least in California we have the common decency to wait until after the baby is born before consuming it and drinking its blood in the name of the dark lords of homosexuality, Karl Marx and Satan.

Not all Iranians are shia.
Not all Iranians are sensible.
Not all Iranians have brains.

Not all Iranians are shia.
Not all Iranians are sensible.
Not all Iranians have brains.

Right.

Now when most people are saying "Iran" is behind Hamas they are speaking of the government. It would be like people saying the "US" is evil because it invaded Iraq. Now does that mean everyone in America? Surely not. I think most can figure out that a government may or may not have the full support of its public. Just the same as saying Hamas represents all Palestinians. Clearly not the case.

Also Zilam you have to understand the old saying "An enemy of my enemy is my friend." Sometimes politics make strange bedfellows.

From my understanding of the Shia-Sunni divide is that Shia consider themselves and Sunni's Muslims. Sunni's consider themselves Muslims and Shia not.

2) Hamas is Sunni. Iran is Shia. If these students are hardcore Muslims, they would not be wanting to help Hamas, considering the 1400 year old feud between Sunni and Shia Muslims.

Well, Hamas certainly seems to support Iran (http://english.aljazeera.net/archive/2005/12/2008410111928749358.html) against Israel...

Hamas leadership admits the connection:
The Hamas commander, however, confirmed for the first time that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has been training its men in Tehran for more than two years and is currently honing the skills of 150 fighters.

The details he gave suggested that, if anything, Shin Bet has underestimated the extent of Iran’s influence on Hamas’s increasingly sophisticated tactics and weaponry.
Speaking on the record but withholding his identity as a target of Israeli forces, the commander, who has a sparse moustache and oiled black hair, said Hamas had been sending fighters to Iran for training in both field tactics and weapons technology since Israeli troops pulled out of the Gaza strip of Palestinian territory in 2005. Others go to Syria for more basic training.

“We have sent seven ‘courses’ of our fighters to Iran,” he said. “During each course, the group receives training that he will use to increase our capacity to fight.”

The most promising members of each group stay longer for an advanced course and return as trainers themselves, he said.

So far, 150 members of Qassam have passed through training in Tehran, where they study for between 45 days and six months at a closed military base under the command of the elite Revolutionary Guard force.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3512014.ece

Lately, the Sunni/Shia divide has been at least temporarily bridged from time to time for the sake of organizing attacks against western parties. We saw this in Iraq. It's what finally earned George Bush the title of "The Uniter" that he so wanted.

However, although I have never heard that Iran would not support Hamas, I always thought Hezbollah in Lebanon were Iran's puppets, not Hamas. I was not aware that Iran gave any more of a shit about the Palestinians than the other Arab nations did.

There are always silly billies in any student community.

Lately, the Sunni/Shia divide has been at least temporarily bridged from time to time for the sake of organizing attacks against western parties. We saw this in Iraq. It's what finally earned George Bush the title of "The Uniter" that he so wanted.

However, although I have never heard that Iran would not support Hamas, I always thought Hezbollah in Lebanon were Iran's puppets, not Hamas. I was not aware that Iran gave any more of a shit about the Palestinians than the other Arab nations did.

no one gives a shit about the palestinians. at least none of the national leaders do. the man on the street does because its all part of how the arab leaders do business--blame israel, make sure its never resolved, and keep the public focused away from how shitty their own governments are. (and of course because anyone with a heart feels for the palestinian people)

so they support hamas because hamas will fight a proxy war for them.

Lately, the Sunni/Shia divide has been at least temporarily bridged from time to time for the sake of organizing attacks against western parties. We saw this in Iraq. It's what finally earned George Bush the title of "The Uniter" that he so wanted.

However, although I have never heard that Iran would not support Hamas, I always thought Hezbollah in Lebanon were Iran's puppets, not Hamas. I was not aware that Iran gave any more of a shit about the Palestinians than the other Arab nations did.

Iran isn't even an Arab country.

Hamas leadership admits the connection:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3512014.ece

That's worth the read, but rather falls short of "Hamas leadership admits the connection."

Given that the source is anonymous, the journalist could give some more details of what steps she took to determine his rank and role as an Hamas commander. Descriptions of his facial hair say no more than "I met this source in person."

I find it rather peculiar, since Hamas in general strongly deny receiving support from Iran, that in the course of an interview a "senior commander" doesn't just do that, unequivocally, but drops Syria in it as well.

I know journalist have to write something. And I understand that Gaza is a dangerous place to go asking questions. But there is a further step which any journalist has to take before publishing anonymous assertions, and that is to seek comment on the assertions by others who ARE prepared to give their names.

For all we know, the journalist was approached by an Israeli agent with a oiled mustache, claiming to be a Hamas commander.

Some details not previously published, which only an active Hamas militant would know, would have gone a long long way.

Iran isn't even an Arab country.

*yawn*

Well. I think it's more reassuring for people who know nothing about Iran to imagine it as an evil land full of evil people plotting evil things evilly.

The United States has grown rather used to having a constant boogeyman. Without the Soviet Union, we have to grasp at straws, it seems.

It's almost enough to make me wish the Soviets would pull an "Ahah! That vas vhat ve vanted you to think!" and return just so people'll shut up about Iran.

if israel wants to attack iran, it wont bother with a proxy.

Why ?


http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13965

The Politics of the Gaza Massacre
Forget Hamas – it's all about the home front
~ Justin Raimondo

[...]
Speaking of Obama, the real focal point of the Israeli assault isn't Gaza – it's Washington, D.C. The whole point of this exercise in futility – which will not create a single iota of security for Israel, will not topple Hamas, and will not prove any more successful than the second Lebanese war – is to set the terms by which the Israelis will deal with the incoming U.S. president. Before he even gets a chance to appoint his Middle East team, his special envoys and advisers, the Israelis will have sabotaged the peace effort they can clearly see coming – and put the Americans on notice that whatever "change" is in the air will have to be to Israel's advantage. In short, the Gaza massacre is a preemptive strike against the prospect of American intervention on the Palestinians' behalf, or, at least, a more evenhanded policy framework.

I won't bother answering the "talking points" of Israel's powerful lobby in the U.S. – the Palestinians are terrorists, they deserved what they got, those missile barrages fired in recent weeks (in which not a single Israeli was killed) were ample provocation, etc. The whole world knows that none of these have anything to do with the latest Israeli military action.

The entire operation is, instead, part and parcel of a long-standing concerted campaign by the Israeli government to further marginalize and drive out the remnants of the Palestinian people who still cling tenaciously to what's left of their land. It is a policy of military and economic warfare, aimed at making life impossible for the Palestinian helots.

As the new Sparta of the Middle East runs roughshod over the laws of morality and basic human decency, Israel's amen corner in the U.S. is going into overdrive in an effort to prettify one of the ugliest incidents in a decade of unmitigated cruelty and brutality. All the familiar "progressive" voices – with certain sterling exceptions – are suddenly stilled: we hear nothing from our Democratic politicians, those fabled agents of "change," except expressions of support for Israel's war crimes. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declares that Israel has "the right to defend itself," without deigning to inform us as to whether the Palestinians have the same right. Given her record as AIPAC's most reliable congressional ally, who can always be counted on to echo the Israel-first party line, one assumes not. Powerful foreign affairs committee chair Howard Berman concurs, as does our about-to-be-sworn-in chief executive.

Appearing on Face the Nation, Obama's chief adviser, David Axelrod, averred that "we have only one president at a time" – a consideration that hasn't stopped the world's most famous community organizer from publicly organizing the biggest raid on the U.S. Treasury in American history. In any case, as the Huffington Post put it, Axelrod "did reaffirm Obama's commitment to the 'special relationship between the United States and Israel' in a way that suggested general sympathy for the Jewish state's actions."

For all those hysterical ultra-Zionists in both Israel and the U.S. who thought Obama's election would be disastrous to the Zionist project, and their own efforts to expand it beyond its historic borders, let this be an object lesson in the danger of jumping to unwarranted conclusions. If they'd listened before they jumped – or paid attention to what they read on Antiwar.com – they would have realized how utterly misplaced their paranoia would turn out to be. Obama has been in the Israel Lobby's back pocket from the beginning, as his speech to AIPAC – a masterstroke of groveling – made all too clear.

Like all U.S. presidents since Bush the Elder, this one is committed to maintaining and elaborating on our Israel-centric Middle East policy, of which the Iraq war was only the most dramatic chapter. Obama may have opposed that particular war, but he will do nothing to reverse its consequences, the most dramatic of which appears to be the unleashing of the Israeli military machine on the region. First it was Lebanon, followed by the buzzing of Syrian airspace and the bombing of an alleged "nuclear facility" that turned out to be an ordinary weapons dump. Now we have the end of "disengagement" in Gaza and the opening up of a new front in Israel's relentless war of expansion.

It is a war that has been financed by U.S. tax dollars and fought with American weapons, with the active collaboration and support of our government. We have paid for the radical expansion of the Israeli "settlements" by armed bands of ultra-nationalist fanatics, Israel's version of the Taliban. Indeed, Israeli opinion is moving rapidly in the radicals' direction, and the victory of Benjamin Netanyahu and the far-right Likud Party in the upcoming election is virtually assured – with even more extreme elements waiting in the wings for their moment.

[...]

The Israelis – and the U.S. – rail against Hamas as a gang of terrorists, yet most of the governments of the region started out as "terrorist" gangs. Two were called the Irgun and the Haganah, the revolutionary movements that carried out attacks on civilians, including the British as well as the Arabs, in their battle to establish the state of Israel. Hamas will do no more, and no less, in their bid to establish a Palestinian state.

[...]

Having given birth to the monster of Hamas, the mutant offspring of occupation and dispossession, the Israelis will be forgiven if they refuse to acknowledge the family resemblance. Yet it is unmistakable. Both Israel and Hamas-stan are the spawn of religious and ethnic exclusivism and messianism, their leaders fanatics armed with state power. There are differences, of course, a major one being that one side is funded to the tune of $3 billion a year and supported unconditionally by Washington, while the Palestinians – shot at by their fellow Arabs as they try to cross the border into Egypt – stand pretty much alone.

This latest bloody chapter in the tragic history of the region is being written because all the main protagonists benefit: the Israelis, Hamas, and radicals of all stripes, especially those groups aligned with al-Qaeda. As in the case of the Iraq war, bin Laden's narrative of an Israeli-Crusader invasion intent on stamping out Islam is seemingly verified as blood flows freely in the streets of Gaza.

The Israeli rampage is not in our interests, and the longer it continues the more it threatens the already tenuous position of U.S. troops in Iraq, endangering them by inflaming the local populace, which is vehemently pro-Palestinian. The Israeli blitz is sending shockwaves through the region that could upset several apple-carts of U.S. construction, including the regime in Egypt, the pro-U.S. Jordanian monarchy, and especially our rambunctious Iraqi protectorate, where anti-U.S. sentiment is not so quietly building.

Quite naturally, the Israelis care not a fig for any of this. That's what's so "special" about the much-vaunted "special relationship" between Israel and the U.S., in which Uncle Sam plays the part of the henpecked husband who always gives in to the demands of his battle-ax of a wife, no matter how extravagant or unreasonable.

If American interests in the region are to be served, then this unhealthy relationship has to change. Yet it won't change until and unless the political power of the Israel Lobby is broken on the home front. If it takes the prospect of World War III to bring us to that point, it will be far too high a price to pay – yet one that seems increasingly unavoidable.

Why ?


http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13965

The Politics of the Gaza Massacre
Forget Hamas – it's all about the home front
~ Justin Raimondo

[...]
Speaking of Obama, the real focal point of the Israeli assault isn't Gaza – it's Washington, D.C. The whole point of this exercise in futility – which will not create a single iota of security for Israel, will not topple Hamas, and will not prove any more successful than the second Lebanese war – is to set the terms by which the Israelis will deal with the incoming U.S. president. Before he even gets a chance to appoint his Middle East team, his special envoys and advisers, the Israelis will have sabotaged the peace effort they can clearly see coming – and put the Americans on notice that whatever "change" is in the air will have to be to Israel's advantage. In short, the Gaza massacre is a preemptive strike against the prospect of American intervention on the Palestinians' behalf, or, at least, a more evenhanded policy framework.

I won't bother answering the "talking points" of Israel's powerful lobby in the U.S. – the Palestinians are terrorists, they deserved what they got, those missile barrages fired in recent weeks (in which not a single Israeli was killed) were ample provocation, etc. The whole world knows that none of these have anything to do with the latest Israeli military action.

The entire operation is, instead, part and parcel of a long-standing concerted campaign by the Israeli government to further marginalize and drive out the remnants of the Palestinian people who still cling tenaciously to what's left of their land. It is a policy of military and economic warfare, aimed at making life impossible for the Palestinian helots.

As the new Sparta of the Middle East runs roughshod over the laws of morality and basic human decency, Israel's amen corner in the U.S. is going into overdrive in an effort to prettify one of the ugliest incidents in a decade of unmitigated cruelty and brutality. All the familiar "progressive" voices – with certain sterling exceptions – are suddenly stilled: we hear nothing from our Democratic politicians, those fabled agents of "change," except expressions of support for Israel's war crimes. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declares that Israel has "the right to defend itself," without deigning to inform us as to whether the Palestinians have the same right. Given her record as AIPAC's most reliable congressional ally, who can always be counted on to echo the Israel-first party line, one assumes not. Powerful foreign affairs committee chair Howard Berman concurs, as does our about-to-be-sworn-in chief executive.

Appearing on Face the Nation, Obama's chief adviser, David Axelrod, averred that "we have only one president at a time" – a consideration that hasn't stopped the world's most famous community organizer from publicly organizing the biggest raid on the U.S. Treasury in American history. In any case, as the Huffington Post put it, Axelrod "did reaffirm Obama's commitment to the 'special relationship between the United States and Israel' in a way that suggested general sympathy for the Jewish state's actions."

For all those hysterical ultra-Zionists in both Israel and the U.S. who thought Obama's election would be disastrous to the Zionist project, and their own efforts to expand it beyond its historic borders, let this be an object lesson in the danger of jumping to unwarranted conclusions. If they'd listened before they jumped – or paid attention to what they read on Antiwar.com – they would have realized how utterly misplaced their paranoia would turn out to be. Obama has been in the Israel Lobby's back pocket from the beginning, as his speech to AIPAC – a masterstroke of groveling – made all too clear.

Like all U.S. presidents since Bush the Elder, this one is committed to maintaining and elaborating on our Israel-centric Middle East policy, of which the Iraq war was only the most dramatic chapter. Obama may have opposed that particular war, but he will do nothing to reverse its consequences, the most dramatic of which appears to be the unleashing of the Israeli military machine on the region. First it was Lebanon, followed by the buzzing of Syrian airspace and the bombing of an alleged "nuclear facility" that turned out to be an ordinary weapons dump. Now we have the end of "disengagement" in Gaza and the opening up of a new front in Israel's relentless war of expansion.

It is a war that has been financed by U.S. tax dollars and fought with American weapons, with the active collaboration and support of our government. We have paid for the radical expansion of the Israeli "settlements" by armed bands of ultra-nationalist fanatics, Israel's version of the Taliban. Indeed, Israeli opinion is moving rapidly in the radicals' direction, and the victory of Benjamin Netanyahu and the far-right Likud Party in the upcoming election is virtually assured – with even more extreme elements waiting in the wings for their moment.

[...]

The Israelis – and the U.S. – rail against Hamas as a gang of terrorists, yet most of the governments of the region started out as "terrorist" gangs. Two were called the Irgun and the Haganah, the revolutionary movements that carried out attacks on civilians, including the British as well as the Arabs, in their battle to establish the state of Israel. Hamas will do no more, and no less, in their bid to establish a Palestinian state.

[...]

Having given birth to the monster of Hamas, the mutant offspring of occupation and dispossession, the Israelis will be forgiven if they refuse to acknowledge the family resemblance. Yet it is unmistakable. Both Israel and Hamas-stan are the spawn of religious and ethnic exclusivism and messianism, their leaders fanatics armed with state power. There are differences, of course, a major one being that one side is funded to the tune of $3 billion a year and supported unconditionally by Washington, while the Palestinians – shot at by their fellow Arabs as they try to cross the border into Egypt – stand pretty much alone.

This latest bloody chapter in the tragic history of the region is being written because all the main protagonists benefit: the Israelis, Hamas, and radicals of all stripes, especially those groups aligned with al-Qaeda. As in the case of the Iraq war, bin Laden's narrative of an Israeli-Crusader invasion intent on stamping out Islam is seemingly verified as blood flows freely in the streets of Gaza.

The Israeli rampage is not in our interests, and the longer it continues the more it threatens the already tenuous position of U.S. troops in Iraq, endangering them by inflaming the local populace, which is vehemently pro-Palestinian. The Israeli blitz is sending shockwaves through the region that could upset several apple-carts of U.S. construction, including the regime in Egypt, the pro-U.S. Jordanian monarchy, and especially our rambunctious Iraqi protectorate, where anti-U.S. sentiment is not so quietly building.

Quite naturally, the Israelis care not a fig for any of this. That's what's so "special" about the much-vaunted "special relationship" between Israel and the U.S., in which Uncle Sam plays the part of the henpecked husband who always gives in to the demands of his battle-ax of a wife, no matter how extravagant or unreasonable.

If American interests in the region are to be served, then this unhealthy relationship has to change. Yet it won't change until and unless the political power of the Israel Lobby is broken on the home front. If it takes the prospect of World War III to bring us to that point, it will be far too high a price to pay – yet one that seems increasingly unavoidable.
how bout you summarize your point. im not going to read someone else's opinion without some reason to.

how bout you summarize your point.
"I'm a leftie tool whose opinions on this matter have nothing to do with the topic actually being discussed, but everything to do with white guilt"

"I'm a leftie tool whose opinions on this matter have nothing to do with the topic actually being discussed, but everything to do with white guilt"
i never would have guessed that that was the point!

thanks.

As the US state department says:

Iran maintained a high-profile role in encouraging anti-Israeli terrorist activity -- rhetorically, operationally, and financially. Supreme Leader Khamenei and President Ahmadi-Nejad praised Palestinian terrorist operations, and Iran provided Lebanese Hizballah and Palestinian terrorist groups -- notably HAMAS, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command -- with extensive funding, training, and weapons.
http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2005/64337.htm

I don't see much reason to doubt that Iran supports Hamas. It's the amount and type of support that's debatable.

As the US state department says:


http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2005/64337.htm

I don't see much reason to doubt that Iran supports Hamas. It's the amount and type of support that's debatable.

Basic Economic theory applied to hatred. Iran hates Israel more than Iran hates Hammas for being Sunni so Iran hates who it hates best.

*yawn*

Why does that merit a *yawn*?

Iran may be a majority Muslim country, but it clearly isn't an Arab country; it's a Persian country where most of the people speak Persian.

Surely it doesn't need to be pointed out that just as not all Muslims are Arabs, not all Arabs are Muslims. A significant portion of the Palestinian population is Christian (hard to quantify, but estimates seem to vary between 10-15% of the population currently resident in the Occupied Territories; the figure used to be higher).

The point was germane to the original post where the objection was raised since it further emphasises that any support Hamas and Iran may choose to give each other isn't based on either shared religion (Sunni/Shia) or shared ethnicity (Arab/Persian), but rather on a marriage of political convenience based on a shared antipathy towards Israel.

I find it hard for their to be a legitmate connection. Its about as believable as Saddam Hussein's supposed connections with Al-Qaeda.

America no longer states that Saddam Hussein is working with Al-Qaeda. They dropped that accusation after invading the country.
Was. my bad was. He's dead now.

Why does that merit a *yawn*?

Iran may be a majority Muslim country, but it clearly isn't an Arab country; it's a Persian country where most of the people speak Persian.

Surely it doesn't need to be pointed out that just as not all Muslims are Arabs, not all Arabs are Muslims. A significant portion of the Palestinian population is Christian (hard to quantify, but estimates seem to vary between 10-15% of the population currently resident in the Occupied Territories; the figure used to be higher).

The point was germane to the original post where the objection was raised since it further emphasises that any support Hamas and Iran may choose to give each other isn't based on either shared religion (Sunni/Shia) or shared ethnicity (Arab/Persian), but rather on a marriage of political convenience based on a shared antipathy towards Israel.

Thank you. I would've said it, but I thought I'd be wasting my time with people who shout "same difference" on everything that doesn't fit their view of the world.

Thank you. I would've said it, but I thought I'd be wasting my time with people who shout "same difference" on everything that doesn't fit their view of the world.

That would be me, would it? :rolleyes:

Why does that merit a *yawn*?

Because it was pedantic, and while true did not address the substance of the post it replied to.


Iran may be a majority Muslim country, but it clearly isn't an Arab country; it's a Persian country where most of the people speak Persian.

Surely it doesn't need to be pointed out that just as not all Muslims are Arabs, not all Arabs are Muslims. A significant portion of the Palestinian population is Christian (hard to quantify, but estimates seem to vary between 10-15% of the population currently resident in the Occupied Territories; the figure used to be higher).

It doesn't need to be pointed out to me, nor very likely to Muravyets.

The reason I responded with a *yawn* was that, by the use of the word "even" Ad Nihilo claims to be refuting this post, when in fact addressing a one word mistake in it:

Lately, the Sunni/Shia divide has been at least temporarily bridged from time to time for the sake of organizing attacks against western parties. We saw this in Iraq. It's what finally earned George Bush the title of "The Uniter" that he so wanted.

However, although I have never heard that Iran would not support Hamas, I always thought Hezbollah in Lebanon were Iran's puppets, not Hamas. I was not aware that Iran gave any more of a shit about the Palestinians than the other Arab nations did.



The point was germane to the original post where the objection was raised since it further emphasises that any support Hamas and Iran may choose to give each other isn't based on either shared religion (Sunni/Shia) or shared ethnicity (Arab/Persian), but rather on a marriage of political convenience based on a shared antipathy towards Israel.

That answers the OP very nicely. It doesn't seem particularly divergent from what Muravyets said, either.

Let me put it my way: a common enemy makes strange bedfellows.

And I agree also with Ashmoria, in that Iran and many Arab nations keep alive a hatred of Israel to deflect attention from their own poor governments, rather than any national interest which is genuinely threatened by Israel.

Now I return my attention to Ad Nihilo, in the probably vain hope that they will spare the time to put your opinion in their own words, since apparently they "would have said it."

What's the confusion?

Ever since Khomeini's days, Iran is claiming to be the "real saviors of Islam" by demonstrating support for muslim causes in the area regardless of the aggrieved party being sunni or shia. Being a minority, they cannot excommunicate the sunnis and then claim to be the real muslims. They have to co-opt and convert others to their ideology. Hence, they will support sunni muslim causes hoping that the sunnis will then convert or sympathize with them.

Support to sunni Palestinians and sunni Hamas is along those lines. Iran is not even hostile with Pakistan, a rabid sunni country whose domestic sectarian groups and proxies in Afg killed thousands of shias in Afg and Pak.