Hamas, The Houthis, Hezbollah, Iran, And ISIS-K

Hamas and the Houthis have provoked the responses that they predictably received with wide popular support for their actions.

The decision of Hamas to conduct the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel still had strong majority support among Gazans months after the attack when the devastating consequences of that decision were clear. 

Likewise, the Houthi attacks on shipping and U.S. warships in the Red Sea are a boost to Houthi political support and legitimacy in the parts of Southern Yemen which it controls that is home to 70% of the population of Yemen, despite the fact that the insurgency it has waged there has led to a catastrophic humanitarian disaster there.

Every bit of Israeli and Western military response in Gaza and against the Houthis was deliberately provoked and had broad popular support. In both places, large majorities actively wanted to inflict harm on the U.S. and to obliterate Israel entirely. And, Gaza also continues to keep 100 or so Israeli hostages and has done nothing to surrender.

So, in both cases, while there is clearly significant suffering and plenty of people in each place, like children did nothing to deserve it, neither population is very sympathetic. Each of them brought what they are experiencing upon themselves through deliberate provocation and evil conduct. 

Iran's Role

Of course, Iran is to blame too, for giving them firepower and intelligence that they otherwise would have lacked, and for egging them on behind the scenes. Iran has played a similar role in providing capabilities for and egging on Hezbollah which has waged war on Israel for Lebanon for decades, and Shiite Islamic militias in Iraq and Syria.

Iran's role in world affairs is complicated. 

The war in Yemen is a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia to a great extent, yet the two countries recently reached a Chinese brokered peace accord. China is also looking to strengthen its ties to the Houthis as a way to exempt its own merchants from Houthi piracy. China has previously joined naval coalitions against Somalian pirates in the same region. On the other hand, China is lukewarm toward Russia since it can't alienate its Western trading partners too badly, and has pulled back a majority of of expatriates and economic investments in Africa in the last five years or so, after having spent years trying to build economic and political influence in Africa and across the second and third worlds.

Iran is a key military supplier and source of military technology for both Russia and North Korea as a result of the military industrial capabilities it was forced to develop for itself after decades of Western sanctions. It probably has a few nuclear weapons, has proven it has long range missile capabilities, and its naval might in the Persian Gulf is rivaled upon plausible U.S. naval adversaries only by Russia, China, and North Korea. Iran has also not refrained from using its military capabilities on occasion and has designs on making Shiite majority Iraq into one of its client states.

Yet, Iran reached a treaty, from which Trump promptly withdrew, with the U.S. during President Obama's administration. Its democracy, while flawed and subject to a theoretic veto, is more of a real democracy than most of the Middle East and West Asia. While Iran presented itself to the world as a Shiite theocracy, it actually have considerable religious diversity and is almost as far along the path towards secularism as places like the U.S. and Ireland in terms of grass roots belief, even though the waning religious conservatives have the upper hand in terms of political power. Iran would be a natural place for an Islamic analog to the modernizing Protestant Reformation in Europe to emerge under the right circumstances. Iran has oil wealth, but unlike many other reasonably developed Islamic countries, also has a substantial commercial and manufacturing sector, leaving it in circumstances that have more in common with Turkey and Egypt, than with Saudi Arabia and UAE and Brunei which are dominated by oil wealth, or Yemen and Afghanistan which have little more than subsistence farming interrupted by long periods of civil war.

Israel's Overkill

Israel's response in Gaza has probably been overkill although it is also completely understandable. Hamas and kindred Islamist movements in Gaza, the West Bank, and across the Middle East have been trying to exterminate Israel and to wipe Jews from the face of the Earth almost since its inception in 1948. When Israel gave Gaza more autonomy and withdrew from direct supervision of the region, the Palestinians put Hamas in charge and Israel got terrorist bombings, endless rocket attacks, and the October 7 massacre in return.

President Biden treads the difficult path of not adding aid and comfort to those who would destroy Israel, while simultaneously trying to mitigate humanitarian suffering in Gaza. And, contrary to the views of many on the left, Israel is not just an American puppet that is compelled to do the bidding of an American President in response to an existential threat to it and its people.

About ISIS-K

As an aside, the terrorist attacked recently carried out at a concert in Moscow that killed about 144 people and seriously injured at least 100 more was the work of four Tajik terrorists affiliated with ISIS-K. ISIS-K is one of the main opponents of the Taliban in Afghanistan, although they obviously have no problem with the idea of an Islamist theocracy. 

ISIS-K stands for Islamic State - Khorasan, a reference to the 7th and 8th century CE kingdom in what is now Islamic Central Asia that included "western Afghanistan, northeastern Iran, the eastern halves of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, western Tajikistan, and portions of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan." The region was first united under the pre-Islamic Sasanian Persian empire, and then became part of the first two Sunni Islamic Caliphates:

First established in the 6th century as one of four administrative (military) divisions by the Sasanian Empire, the scope of the region has varied considerably during its nearly 1,500-year history. Initially, the Khorasan division of the Sasanian Empire covered the northeastern military gains of the empire. . . .With the rise of the Umayyad Caliphate, the designation was inherited and likewise stretched as far as their military gains in the east, starting off with the military installations at Nishapur and Merv, slowly expanding eastwards into Tokharistan and Sogdia. Under the Caliphs, Khorasan was the name of one of the three political zones under their dominion (the other two being Eraq-e Arab "Arabic Iraq" and Eraq-e Ajam "Non-Arabic Iraq or Persian Iraq"). Under the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates, Khorasan was divided into four major sections or quarters (rub′), each section based on a single major city: Nishapur, Merv, Herat and Balkh.

The Abbasid Caliphate gots its start in Khorasan around 750 CE, was a high water mark of the Islamic empire in a golden age which lasted more than five centuries until 1258 CE, and persisted in some form for more than two and a half centuries after that, until the 1517 CE when the Ottoman Empire replaced them. The Ottomans, in turn, were the most powerful Islamic country in the world and expanded well into the Balkans, for centuries, but then faded in a long, slow decline, until it fell, roughly the end of World War I, when the current politics of the Middle East began when the colonial powers that won in World War I drew the boundaries of the modern Middle Eastern states and picked the rulers for those countries.

The Abbasid Caliphate or Abbasid Empire (/əˈbæsɪd/ or /ˈæbəsɪd/; Arabic: الْخِلَافَة الْعَبَّاسِيَّة, romanized: al-Khilāfa al-ʿAbbāsiyya) was the third caliphate to succeed the Islamic prophet Muhammad. It was founded by a dynasty descended from Muhammad's uncle, Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib (566–653 CE), from whom the dynasty takes its name. They ruled as caliphs for most of the caliphate from their capital in Baghdad in modern-day Iraq, after having overthrown the Umayyad Caliphate in the Abbasid Revolution of 750 CE (132 AH). The Abbasid Revolution had its origins and first successes in the easterly region of Khorasan, far from the bases of Umayyad power in Syria and Iraq. The Abbasid Caliphate first centered its government in Kufa, modern-day Iraq, but in 762 the caliph Al-Mansur founded the city of Baghdad, near the ancient Babylonian capital city of Babylon and Persian city of Ctesiphon. Baghdad became the center of science, culture, and invention in what became known as the Golden Age of Islam. This, in addition to housing several key academic institutions, including the House of Wisdom, as well as a multiethnic and multi-religious environment, garnered it an international reputation as the "Centre of Learning".

The Abbasid period was marked by dependence on Persian bureaucrats (such as the Barmakid family) for governing the territories as well as an increasing inclusion of non-Arab Muslims in the ummah (Muslim community). Persian customs were broadly adopted by the ruling elite, and they began patronage of artists and scholars. Since much support for the Abbasids came from Persian converts, it was natural for the Abbasids to take over much of the Persian tradition of government. Despite this initial cooperation, the Abbasids of the late 8th century had alienated both non-Arab mawali (clients) and Persian bureaucrats.

The political power of the caliphs was limited with the rise of the Iranian Buyids and the Seljuq Turks, who captured Baghdad in 945 and 1055, respectively. Although Abbasid leadership over the vast Islamic empire was gradually reduced to a ceremonial religious function in much of the caliphate, the dynasty retained control of its Mesopotamian domain during the rule of Caliph al-Muqtafi and extended into Iran during the reign of Caliph al-Nasir. The Abbasids' age of cultural revival and fruition ended in 1258 with the sack of Baghdad by the Mongols under Hulagu Khan and the execution of al-Musta'sim. The Abbasid line of rulers, and Muslim culture in general, re-centred themselves in the Mamluk capital of Cairo in 1261. Though lacking in political power (with the brief exception of Caliph al-Musta'in of Cairo), the dynasty continued to claim religious authority until a few years after the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517, with the last Abbasid caliph being Al-Mutawakkil III.

And, as an aside, who were the Sasanians? 

The Sasanian Empire or Sassanid Empire, also known as the Second Persian Empire or Neo-Persian Empire, was the last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th to 8th centuries. Named after the House of Sasan, it endured for over four centuries, from 224 to 651, making it the second longest-lived Persian imperial dynasty after the Arsacids of the Parthian Empire.