As a grey-zone war tactic, i feel like it doesnt super make a lot of sense for iran. France isn't super involved, so its more likely to draw them in then make them think the costs of supporting USA is unacceptable.
On the other hand, not much of Iran's strategy has made much long term sense and more has felt like desperation from a gov that is out of options and wants to go down swinging, so i suppose this fits with that.
> I know people like conspiracy theories, but nothing about this suggests false flag.
I am not saying it is, just interesting to analyze who it would have been if it was. Does it benefit Iran to attack France? I guess? Maybe just a target of opportunity. US freezers are just too damn locked down(!). Or does it benefit someone else to make it look like Iran did it, kind of a thing...
Well you were betting it was Russia, and I kinda expected that as well. But then, yeah, probably Russia would want to boast that they did it as a threat or show of force not make it look like their semi-allies (Iranians) did it.
Mostly i'd just say - false flags are extremely high risk. You don't do something like that just to get france a little bit upset with Iran. If you are going to go for a false flag, you do something extreme as that is the only way for the expected pay off to counterbalance the severe risk.
The most important part of a false flag is to have media support pushing the false narrative before any alternative narratives have a chance, and Iran definitely doesn't have that. The uncertainty about who was attacking and these late revelations make it even less likely to be a false flag, IMO. Everybody was expecting this to be the Russians.
Russia would benefit if Europe started acting aggressively towards Iran (getting distracted from supporting Ukraine) and they are certainly not beyond false flag operations. Thinking about it their military is using literal false flag operations all the time to dupe their own leadership.
Russia has conducted a false flag operation to start a war, killing hundreds of people in the process (only the operation itself, the rest of course killed many more).
If it really is Iran, the best reasoning I can think of is that it's like a demonstration of their offensive hacking capabilities to the US. It lets them show that they can use computer hacking to disrupt commercial operations and cause economic losses. If you look at it from that way, it makes sense that they went after Europe. Going after the US could cause an escalation in the war, so instead they go after European countries which will not do anything in response. The freezer controllers that were hacked are also made by Danfoss, a European company. I have no knowledge whatsoever of the commercial freezer market, but if being European means that Danfoss has a higher market share in Europe compared to the US, it lets them pull off this demonstration without burning a more valuable exploit.
This has been Iran's strategy throughout the entire war. Them attacking France isn't any less rational than attacking, say, Qtar, or blockading non-US ships bound for non-US countries transiting the straight of Hormuz. They can't really fight back against the US directly, so instead they lash out indiscriminately against anyone or anything that's even remotely friendly to the US.
France has been the most bellicose in rhetoric among European states, and they've given assistance to the Saudis in their conflict with Yemen. Given that Iran seems to view all these conflicts as different parts of a broader geopolitical and regional struggle, choosing to target France makes some sense. In the context of France's current political troubles it makes less sense to meddle and invite backlash, but perhaps they think that they will have the sympathy of the protesters and large immigrant community in France.
List of countries Iran has attacked: Israel, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Azerbeidjan, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Greece, Oman, Syria, Azerbaijan, Turkey and of course US forces.
Of course, they targeted civilians in all of the above countries.
And if you include attacks on ships, the list goes all the way from China to Paraguay and has dozens of entries. Essentially all civilian as well, meaning their attacks against actual military ships were a minority of their attacks.
Of those, perhaps Israel and maybe Qatar can be considered defensive actions. And perhaps the attack on Greece was accidental (really aiming for a US ship in the Mediterranean)
If you made a full list of everything Iran has the physical ability to hit and compared to the list they did hit, the only missing countries would be Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan and Armenia.
I must say, it also seems to me unlikely in the extreme the French immigrant community, or anywhere in Europe, would significantly be on Iran's side. First, they're largely economic migrants, suffering due to Iran's actions. Second, they're largely from countries Iran attacked. Third, they're Sunni, not exactly Iran's traditional allies. Fourth: they're not making any money of Iran.
So ... maybe it's just me but I don't think rhetoric is the problem here.
This comment makes it seem as if all these other countries were just standing around peacefully and Iran decided to attack them for no reason. The majority of those countries host US bases, many of which were used to stage attacks on Iran, and all of which are fair targets in a war started by the US (and Israel). It's also extremely puzzling, to say the least, why you would say that "perhaps" their attacks on Israel could be considered defensive, when Israel is one of the two that started this last war.
Exactly. France also has very few migrants from the countries 'Iran attacked': they're largely from North African and Francophone African countries. A lot of inconsistencies and half facts in that comment.
> Of those, perhaps Israel and maybe Qatar can be considered defensive actions.
The regime started a proxy war against Israel decades ago, financing Hisbollah and eventually also Hamas, both with the official goal of destroying Israel.
Before the regime came into power, Iran had good relations to Israel.
So no, there's nothing 'defensive' when it comes to Iran's actions.
> Of course, they targeted civilians in all of the above countries.
I haven't dug into it deeply, but I was under the impression that most of the Iranian targets were US bases and US-owned oil fields/energy infrastructure, with relatively few domestic civilian interests harmed. Am I mistaken?
I doubt the public in any country cares much about Iran's blockade, given that the US has "counter-blockaded" and claimed ownership and control of the stait. Iran was attacked first, then sneak attacked during negotiations, and has maintained a coherent and consistent policy during negotiations. Common people are sympathetic and view them as the underdog.
> Third, they're Sunni, not exactly Iran's traditional allies.
Muslims are far less divided than Western policy-makers imagine IMO, most have solidarity WRT Palestine and broader Middle Eastern geopolitics regardless of sectarian affiliation. Iran has been mostly successful in tying their struggle to the issue of Israel/Palestine, especially with the recently-interested younger people in western countries who have less reflexive reaction against Iran.
Modelling Iran as a monolith seems to lead to errors more than it simplifies analysis. It's absolutely possible that nine parts of their mosaic [1] didn't want to open a new front and one went YOLO.
France is pushing for a two state solution in Israel. So it was dumb to attack it to begin with. I don't know what they are trying to accomplish. Legitimize the recent US and Israeli attacks against Iran? The Iranian leadership probably doesn't want peace in Israel because if that ever happens, they cannot further instrumentalize the Palestinians and Lebanese muslims against Israel.
I don't think Iran particularly cares about the two state solution or Palestinians in general. They want to be the regional power of the middle east, which means they need to destabilize their rivials (Israel and Saudi Arabia) hence they fund their enemies.
It is no different than what America and the USSR were doing during the cold war just on a smaller scale. Playing cold war games is tricky though because its easy to over extend or let your proxies drag you into a conflicts you don't want. This is what happened to Iran and thus the cold war turned hot.
Iran's beef with Israel is not because they care about the Sunni Palestinians or Palestinian land rights or something like that. They certainly don't want peace, they want Israel wiped off the face of the earth as a religious goal in itself, and for being the only non-Islamic country in the Middle East. Any concern expressed by Iran for Palestinians is purely for propaganda purposes: It's easier for Westerners to sympathize with than saying they'd like to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews simply for existing.
There are about 9,100 Iranian Jews remaining in Iran, versus 320,000 Iranian Jews in the world more or less[0] who had all their property stolen, were attacked and forced to flee Persia, where they had lived for the past 2,000 years or so. The number under 10k remaining is very specific because it is so small. They are treated as second class citizens. They are not allowed any sort of real religious freedom, have even fewer rights than their oppressed Muslim neighbors (although in fairness, no citizen of Iran under the dictatorship has any civil rights). The other 300,000 Iranian Jews now live in Israel and America, where they were forced to flee to. The Jews remaining in Iran are (mis)treated as curiosities kept for propaganda purposes.
The Iranian theocratic regime regularly hosts conferences of "Jews" who come to deny the holocaust and to say that Israel is an illegitimate country. If the remaining Jews in Iran beg to differ, they will be routinely executed.
Israel's bombing of an adjacent building which accidentally damaged one of the remaining synagogues in Iran was likely without thought, but if someone in Tel Aviv actually did think about it they probably signed off on it as a favor to the remaining Iranian Jews, to establish that they weren't helping Israel.
Would you want to be a Jew in Iran? I think it would be about the same as being Sioux in South Dakota in the 1890s.
How ironic to be bombed by the reservation you forced people onto, and to lose air superiority to it, so you can't even prevent those Iranian Jews from flying laps over Tehran. How sweetly ironic that you spent 47 years obsessing over hating the people you forced onto that reservation, wishing to destroy them, instead of improving your own country and your own people with all of that western oil money.
Maybe building an entire dictatorship on a "minute of hate", or having a national holiday devoted to calling for the murder of another ethnic group who you already expelled, is not actually a viable social or economic strategy.
Meanwhile, members of the Iranian dictatorship are free to live in Paris and send their daughters to college anywhere they want. Perhaps a few of them should flee, while the option is available.
The Jews who fled to Israel don't have anywhere else to flee, they are the ones living on the "Indian Reservation". So maybe if the Iranian government is so interested in removing the "colonialists" of Israel, it should offer back in exchange all of the property it stole from the Jews who lived there before 1979.
> Them attacking France isn't any less rational than attacking, say, Qtar, or blockading non-US ships bound for non-US countries transiting the straight of Hormuz
It does make sense if you think about it for longer than 5s - it's about U.S. allies putting pressure on the U.S. to end the war. This whole propaganda about Iran being irrational is so dumb it's embarrassing.
The US is threatening to wipe out Iran's civilization, the EU is very tepid about the whole thing at best. Really sad to see, but not surprising. There's zero consistency or principle involved.
Yes, attacking uninvolved third parties seems like a great way to pressure them to end the war, if by "end the war" you mean joining it on the other side and helping finish you off.
Traditionally that has been how countries tend to respond to military attacks on their soil. Iran's only saving grace seems to be that they're too ineffectual to pose any actual, serious threat to countries like France.
I don't personally think it's a great move by them by any means, but I think it's shallow to not try and understand how they may see it, as a bit more complicated than 'attacking uninvolved third parties', especially given these things seems to be happening across the EU[2], so it's likely not specifically about France.
This also seems to have happened at US bases[3].
It's rather likely their attempt to show that they can 'reach' further than conventional means would suggest.
> Iran's strategy is what caused the GOP their worst electoral disaster in living memory.
I think that is only a win if you have an extremely american centric perspective of this conflict.
So they did that. Then what? Do you really think that is going to translate into anything significant on the battle field? It might have some marginal benefits but it probably won't matter in the big picture for Iran.
So they should sit around and let the US and Israel 'destroy Iranian civilization' I guess? Is that your suggestion?
They're weaker than the countries attacking them. So causing inconvenience so that pressure will be put on the US to end the war by countries the US might listen to.
Is that strategy going to work? Not sure. But does it have a chance of working? Maybe.
> So they should sit around and let the US and Israel 'destroy Iranian civilization' I guess? Is that your suggestion?
I'm just saying it isn't going to win them the war. The president broadly controls what the us military does. He doesn't need congress or the senate.
You seem to be mixing up "wanting to win" with "actually winning". Of course Iran wants to win this conflict, but that doesn't mean they are actually winning.
> They're weaker than the countries attacking them.
Yes, getting into conflicts from a position of weakness is generally a bad plan. Succesful countries plan for this sort of thing well before the conflict starts which results in the conflict not happening in the first place.
Iran had strategies in place for this, but they ended up backfiring.
>Is that strategy going to work? Not sure. But does it have a chance of working? Maybe.
Imposing costs on your opponent is a tried and true strategy that almost certainly could work. However Iran actually has to impose real costs instead of just propaganda wins. It seems like they were doing this best earlier in the war and now have run out of steam.
> Imposing costs on your opponent is a tried and true strategy that almost certainly could work. However Iran actually has to impose real costs instead of just propaganda wins.
The price of oil, US midterm results, Gulf countries scrambling, that certainly doesn't look like they haven't imposed real costs.
> Yes, getting into conflicts from a position of weakness is generally a bad plan. Succesful countries plan for this sort of thing well before the conflict starts which results in the conflict not happening in the first place.
If by 'getting into conflicts' you mean 'getting invaded by the US and Israel' then sure. That just seems to be saying 'don't get invaded, sucker' which, while sound advice doesn't actually work out if someone's intent on invading you.
The Iranians are not trying to 'win' as such, but rather impose enough cost on the attackers that continuing the war no longer makes sense for them.
The truth is, you're not seemingly saying much of anything besides 'Iran bad'.
> That just seems to be saying 'don't get invaded, sucker' which, while sound advice doesn't actually work out if someone's intent on invading you.
Israel and USA have been intent on invading Iran for decades. But they didn't. Then suddenly they did. That didn't just happen randomly. Iran took a bunch of foreign policy risks that backfired spectacularly making them vulnerable to invasion. If they made different decisions, or if they just got luckier, they wouldn't have been in a vulnerable position and this wouldn't have happened.
In many ways, the art of war starts long before the battles start. The things Iran could have done differently to affect the outcome of this war would probably have to have been done back then. It is a bit too late for them now.
> The Iranians are not trying to 'win' as such, but rather impose enough cost on the attackers that continuing the war no longer makes sense for them.
Yes, that is how all wars where the sides aren't evenly matched work.
But all they have to show for it is slightly higher prices at the pump, and its unclear they will even be able to maintain that going forward. It isn't looking good for them.
> The truth is, you're not seemingly saying much of anything besides 'Iran bad'.
I'm just saying they are losing and don't seem to have good prospects going forward. If by bad, you mean in the sense of their strategic position - then yes, iran's strategic position is very bad.
> Israel and USA have been intent on invading Iran for decades. But they didn't. Then suddenly they did.
There is a war between the US/Israel and Iran, but there has not been an invasion. Attacks from a distance are not invasions. Contrast with the Russia-Ukraine war, where there actually has been an invasion.
If that's really the theory behind attacking France, then the Iranian regime is completely unmoored from reality. The last time the US listened to France was never.
America does tend to take geopolitical slights fairly personally relative to other countries.
Not to mention one of the limiting factors for america in this war is public opinion. I'm sure they would love some way to sell it to the american public.
Discrimination is a fallacious argument, if this is indeed an Iranian action, since Iran has been the target of a great number of indiscriminate attacks from the NATO bloc, including cyber attacks on its own food systems, also.
If it were a lash, it would not be necessarily targeting specific infrastructure, no?
Indiscriminately - I suppose you mean "not attacking only military targets" - well I don't mean it from ethical stance, but rather the nature of tit for tat warfare, which is what this is.
> I suppose you mean "not attacking only military targets"
I don't. I think it is extremely clear in context that that is not what was meant
I mean, i also do think they are doing that too, and it seems like most experts agree that their use of cluster munitions over populated counts as indiscriminate in the sense of international law, but that is not the sense of indiscriminate that was being used in the comments above.
France headlines Operation Aspides, the Euro navy in Gulf of Aden vs Houthis. They are very involved, directly blunting Iran + Houthi trying to impose cost on west via control / attack on commercial shipping. Hence they get targeted, it's just Iran establishing mutual deterrence, you fuck around in our backyard, we fuck around in your infra and extract economic costs. Meanwhile their infra is basically gone, the amount of damage Iran can inflict vs receive via grayzone at this point is asymmetrical.
Iran russia and china and nk are all working for the same efforts as far as destabilizing the west and ideally turning back the clock on the whole citizens have rights thing that western citizens have been so uppity about and influencing the world with since the 1400's, barring that goal, settling on shitting up the place enough to put an end to western lead global order and returning to an age of regional powers with absolute authority in their spheres of influence. I dont think the attack needs to make sense, the statue of liberty stands in new york harbor, we are the same entity to them, they are at war with us.
Let’s not go down the liberty rhetoric. They could claim on their end they are all about self determination against colonialist practices (and with Russia excepted the others have a historical excuse to claim this.) It is obviously a broad power play, we are all wise to want our part to be on the winning side for rational reasons, but moralising a punch fest is not adding anything more than illusions. After all, our western governments are abundantly adopting the authoritarian aspects of population control from these countries, maybe that’s our next problem maybe it’s our current one.
Russia going, nudge nudge shame about those freezers, maybe if you stopped giving aid to ukraine those freezeers will stop breaking, is a strategy that maybe could work with little downside because what is france going to do? double sanction russia?
But for iran, there is not a lot of room for france to move to be more pro iran that isnt high cost, but lots of low cost ways to be more anti iran, so it seems like a bad strat.
Does it even matter? If you expose a vulnerable software to the open internet, it's gonna get hacked, and it doesn't matter if it's a script-kiddy from Russia, UK, or a North Korean spy. This was an ethically disclosed vulnerability, patched months before the incident in question. Update your stuff!
Is that surprising? Iran's has now declared they'll fire rockets on European cities the next time anything happens to them, under various circumstances.
They have also proven with the rocket attempt on Diego Garcia to be able to hit 3800km away, which would put every European capital except Madrid, Dublin and Lissabon in range of Iran's rockets (and maybe nukes). And it's not technically confirmed that's their maximum range. Even London is (just barely) in range.
(of course emphasizing the usual, namely that anything that happens is Europe's fault, without specifying, of course, what they mean by that. Even on the base issue it's not clear: obviously US uses European bases to supply it's middle eastern ones. Is that a "rocketable" offence? Plus: if Europe makes things difficult for the US, does anyone seriously believe that lowers the risk of an attack?)
Europe is once again under constant threat of rocket and nuke attacks. The "end of history" has been canceled.
this is impossible.
Iran simply does not have the excess capacity to perform sophisticated cyber stunts while ther country is under attack and it will be all hands on deck trying to gain intelliegence on impending and ongoing attacks.
this is the most clumsy fake news ever, by a government facing country wide protests about there horrible economic conditions brought on by the various wars bieng pushed by governments in the west.
Of course it is possible, it is not as if Iran - a nation of around 90 million people - can't spare a few hacker types to break in to Danfoss (et. al.) to wreak havoc on (real or imagined) opponent's economies. This doesn't mean France is right in claiming Iran is behind it nor does it mean they're wrong, it just means Iran could pull something like this off if they wanted to. Hell, any group of motivated individuals with the required knowledge could pull this off.
except, currently Iran is very carefully doleing out web access and will be very activly recruiting hackers for FAR more relevant activities, which could then make this some sort of random 'interview' test, like task a crew to fuck up Macrons favorite cheese provider and things got out of hand.
but the timing of the hissy fit of trying to turn the whole thing into an international incident, reeks of political desperation and just how generaly unprepared europe is for our brave new interconected world.
Iran is about the least likely candidate. If they're proposing Iran as a cover than that would make it the US/Israel. Both have a pretty well documented history of false flag attacks.
According to the article the attack came from an Iranian IP address. Well ...
Suppose it wasn't a false flag operation. Why would Iran threaten the EU when the EU was skeptical about the war early this year and suffers from it due to lack of Qatari LNG?
The logical step would be to do diplomatic outreach to the EU.
Now the EU has a casus belli (more like supporting the war rather than participating). It all sounds like the EU is selling the war to its population, but maybe Iran is really that stupid.
Russia has demonstrated that they can conduct so-called "hybrid warfare" as long as it doesn't lead to serious injury or death and the response will be meager. But it still creates pain for those targeted nations.
Iran could be seeing that this approach, rather than more blatant attacks, is a useful way to create problems for the US's allies with a lower risk of elevating those US allies to direct enemies. The intention would be to get the US allies to put pressure on the US (in particular) to back out of the US/Israel war on Iran.
> Russia has demonstrated that they can conduct so-called "hybrid warfare" as long as it doesn't lead to serious injury or death and the response will be meager
At a certain point, it stops being "hybrid warfare" and starts being "obnoxious prank".
Russia's deployed (small amounts of) WMDs offensively and has blown up/set fire to some military infrastructure on NATO soil. I'd call these things "hybrid warfare".
Making a grocery store file a claim with their insurance for unrefrigerated food is more along the lines of "dick move".
Yeah, that's what we do to draw people into wars: we set their supermarket freezers to defrost and make the stocking crew stay half-a-shift longer. Then we vote the guy who dragged our own country into the war into lame duck status.
You've traced the very substance and nature of our ridiculously circuitous plan to get the EU to attack Iran. Can we get your thoughts on the Zapruder film while you're here? Maybe you can bring some fresh perspective to that.
Oh wait wait wait wait... Wasn't it Russia? There were so, so many comments here calling this a 4D move by Putin with absolutely no proof whatsoever, which definitely weren't astroturfed, oh no siree. What will the European people do without a single enemy to hate? We need them laser-focused on one thing to blame our troubles on. Otherwise we may start looking at Brussels.
tl;dr - about more than election hacking, the possibility that the US military is behind various hacks and influence operations by faking being Russia/Iran/NK
Russia, maybe, NK doubtful and Iran ? I do not think Iran is that stupid since in general many EU Countries are not that thrilled about Israel. But to me, it will be hard to know got 100% for sure.
>This included "the use of Farsi and IP addresses traced back to devices located in Iran"
I guess they were caught then. I heard of software that can hide or change these things called "IP addresses", but I guess using it is way too hard for organizations with plenty of resources :
The US and Israel have deeply penetrated Iran's network. I would not be surprised they are proxying through there to paint a picture that Iran is attacking them as well... to try to stem the tide of Israel's falling public support across the globe.
While I believe that Russia might have serious hacking capability, then Iran much less so, but accusing NK is laughable to be honest. America with Israel though? They pwn Europe completely.
NK just pulled off the biggest crypto robbery ever. But its not all about hacking, influence operations are significant too. Ask Jensen.
The accusation here is that the US is doing the bad things while pretending to be other APTs. As an American, I would not be surprised in the slightest if this turned out to be true, very double agent-esce and inline with the hubris, especially under this administration.
I have no idea what tf Iran's leadership is doing.
Israel/Palestine is not their battle anyways; just ignore it and move on! Make peace with Israel, stop supporting Hamas/Hezbollah and just focus on your own problems. What does Iran have to gain from fighting with Israel? It can't be that they hate all Jews, when Iran is one of the few Muslim countries with any Jews left [1].
Just drop it guys, and learn to live in peace. There's a lot more to this world than continuously fighting with each other.
I think a lot of geopolitics makes more sense if you treat the ethnic divides as "excuses" and instead look at what the parties hope to achieve in terms of power and dominance.
Too many people fall on the confusion between justifications, explanations, and excuses. In particular, it can be hard to find what moves something from one to the other of those terms for a lot of people. It often blurs between perspectives, agreed enemies, agreed allies, and inclusion or omission of extra details.
Totally fair. I mainly meant my point as calling out the obfuscations I typically see to confuse people. Even in situations that don't seem like they should be used.
They do have things to gain - credibility with the Arab and Sunni Muslim world for fighting against Israel and perhaps defeating it and excuse to operate their proxies and allies. Not to mention they are true believers, and even if they weren't, it doesn't have to be fully rational from your perspective; just from their own.
As for the Jews in Iran, there used to be 150,000 Jews in Iran before the revolution today there are ~9,000. Furthermore IRGC are very much the ideological inheritors of the type of folks who did the Allahdad (God's Justice) Massacre in Mashhad in 1839.
They can't gain credibility with the Sunni world; Sunni Arabs are pretty close to their mortal enemies --- not in some dumb religious way, but in a modern geopolitical sense --- and that conflict is far more salient than Israel/Iran.
Iran trying to gain favor with the Sunni Arab world is somewhere in the same ballpark as Russia trying to gain favor with ethnic Ukrainians.
But Iran are Shia! They don't seek Sunni approval; they've been at each other's throats since the beginning!
All of this seems to so insane to me. This region has lots of wealth (dino juice just coming out of the ground), and they're frittering it all away on buying more and more weapons and destroying each other.
Both they don't want Israel to be too powerful and at the same time, the war is a good way to keep tight control on their population and kill any rebellion. You ensure that western ideas would not go into the head of the population by enjoying peace and seeing how it is going well in free neighbor countries, it give you a common enemy that you can accuse of everything.
huh.
I was betting on it being russia.
As a grey-zone war tactic, i feel like it doesnt super make a lot of sense for iran. France isn't super involved, so its more likely to draw them in then make them think the costs of supporting USA is unacceptable.
On the other hand, not much of Iran's strategy has made much long term sense and more has felt like desperation from a gov that is out of options and wants to go down swinging, so i suppose this fits with that.
Then next level would be to think if this were also a false-flag attack who would have wanted to look like Iran did it.
This would be a terrible false flag. I know people like conspiracy theories, but nothing about this suggests false flag.
> I know people like conspiracy theories, but nothing about this suggests false flag.
I am not saying it is, just interesting to analyze who it would have been if it was. Does it benefit Iran to attack France? I guess? Maybe just a target of opportunity. US freezers are just too damn locked down(!). Or does it benefit someone else to make it look like Iran did it, kind of a thing...
Well you were betting it was Russia, and I kinda expected that as well. But then, yeah, probably Russia would want to boast that they did it as a threat or show of force not make it look like their semi-allies (Iranians) did it.
Mostly i'd just say - false flags are extremely high risk. You don't do something like that just to get france a little bit upset with Iran. If you are going to go for a false flag, you do something extreme as that is the only way for the expected pay off to counterbalance the severe risk.
The most important part of a false flag is to have media support pushing the false narrative before any alternative narratives have a chance, and Iran definitely doesn't have that. The uncertainty about who was attacking and these late revelations make it even less likely to be a false flag, IMO. Everybody was expecting this to be the Russians.
Russia would benefit if Europe started acting aggressively towards Iran (getting distracted from supporting Ukraine) and they are certainly not beyond false flag operations. Thinking about it their military is using literal false flag operations all the time to dupe their own leadership.
Russia has conducted a false flag operation to start a war, killing hundreds of people in the process (only the operation itself, the rest of course killed many more).
If it really is Iran, the best reasoning I can think of is that it's like a demonstration of their offensive hacking capabilities to the US. It lets them show that they can use computer hacking to disrupt commercial operations and cause economic losses. If you look at it from that way, it makes sense that they went after Europe. Going after the US could cause an escalation in the war, so instead they go after European countries which will not do anything in response. The freezer controllers that were hacked are also made by Danfoss, a European company. I have no knowledge whatsoever of the commercial freezer market, but if being European means that Danfoss has a higher market share in Europe compared to the US, it lets them pull off this demonstration without burning a more valuable exploit.
This has been Iran's strategy throughout the entire war. Them attacking France isn't any less rational than attacking, say, Qtar, or blockading non-US ships bound for non-US countries transiting the straight of Hormuz. They can't really fight back against the US directly, so instead they lash out indiscriminately against anyone or anything that's even remotely friendly to the US.
France has been the most bellicose in rhetoric among European states, and they've given assistance to the Saudis in their conflict with Yemen. Given that Iran seems to view all these conflicts as different parts of a broader geopolitical and regional struggle, choosing to target France makes some sense. In the context of France's current political troubles it makes less sense to meddle and invite backlash, but perhaps they think that they will have the sympathy of the protesters and large immigrant community in France.
List of countries Iran has attacked: Israel, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Azerbeidjan, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Greece, Oman, Syria, Azerbaijan, Turkey and of course US forces.
Of course, they targeted civilians in all of the above countries.
And if you include attacks on ships, the list goes all the way from China to Paraguay and has dozens of entries. Essentially all civilian as well, meaning their attacks against actual military ships were a minority of their attacks.
Of those, perhaps Israel and maybe Qatar can be considered defensive actions. And perhaps the attack on Greece was accidental (really aiming for a US ship in the Mediterranean)
If you made a full list of everything Iran has the physical ability to hit and compared to the list they did hit, the only missing countries would be Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan and Armenia.
I must say, it also seems to me unlikely in the extreme the French immigrant community, or anywhere in Europe, would significantly be on Iran's side. First, they're largely economic migrants, suffering due to Iran's actions. Second, they're largely from countries Iran attacked. Third, they're Sunni, not exactly Iran's traditional allies. Fourth: they're not making any money of Iran.
So ... maybe it's just me but I don't think rhetoric is the problem here.
This comment makes it seem as if all these other countries were just standing around peacefully and Iran decided to attack them for no reason. The majority of those countries host US bases, many of which were used to stage attacks on Iran, and all of which are fair targets in a war started by the US (and Israel). It's also extremely puzzling, to say the least, why you would say that "perhaps" their attacks on Israel could be considered defensive, when Israel is one of the two that started this last war.
Exactly. France also has very few migrants from the countries 'Iran attacked': they're largely from North African and Francophone African countries. A lot of inconsistencies and half facts in that comment.
> Of those, perhaps Israel and maybe Qatar can be considered defensive actions.
The regime started a proxy war against Israel decades ago, financing Hisbollah and eventually also Hamas, both with the official goal of destroying Israel.
Before the regime came into power, Iran had good relations to Israel.
So no, there's nothing 'defensive' when it comes to Iran's actions.
> Of course, they targeted civilians in all of the above countries.
I haven't dug into it deeply, but I was under the impression that most of the Iranian targets were US bases and US-owned oil fields/energy infrastructure, with relatively few domestic civilian interests harmed. Am I mistaken?
I doubt the public in any country cares much about Iran's blockade, given that the US has "counter-blockaded" and claimed ownership and control of the stait. Iran was attacked first, then sneak attacked during negotiations, and has maintained a coherent and consistent policy during negotiations. Common people are sympathetic and view them as the underdog.
> Third, they're Sunni, not exactly Iran's traditional allies.
Muslims are far less divided than Western policy-makers imagine IMO, most have solidarity WRT Palestine and broader Middle Eastern geopolitics regardless of sectarian affiliation. Iran has been mostly successful in tying their struggle to the issue of Israel/Palestine, especially with the recently-interested younger people in western countries who have less reflexive reaction against Iran.
The US started to host US military personnel in civilian hotels after Iran targeted US bases and they weren't safe to stay there.
So, in essence, the US used the civilians as human shields.
> This has been Iran's strategy
Modelling Iran as a monolith seems to lead to errors more than it simplifies analysis. It's absolutely possible that nine parts of their mosaic [1] didn't want to open a new front and one went YOLO.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_defence_strategy
France is pushing for a two state solution in Israel. So it was dumb to attack it to begin with. I don't know what they are trying to accomplish. Legitimize the recent US and Israeli attacks against Iran? The Iranian leadership probably doesn't want peace in Israel because if that ever happens, they cannot further instrumentalize the Palestinians and Lebanese muslims against Israel.
I don't think Iran particularly cares about the two state solution or Palestinians in general. They want to be the regional power of the middle east, which means they need to destabilize their rivials (Israel and Saudi Arabia) hence they fund their enemies.
It is no different than what America and the USSR were doing during the cold war just on a smaller scale. Playing cold war games is tricky though because its easy to over extend or let your proxies drag you into a conflicts you don't want. This is what happened to Iran and thus the cold war turned hot.
Iran's beef with Israel is not because they care about the Sunni Palestinians or Palestinian land rights or something like that. They certainly don't want peace, they want Israel wiped off the face of the earth as a religious goal in itself, and for being the only non-Islamic country in the Middle East. Any concern expressed by Iran for Palestinians is purely for propaganda purposes: It's easier for Westerners to sympathize with than saying they'd like to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews simply for existing.
There are jews in Iran, which israel bombed their places of worship.
There are about 9,100 Iranian Jews remaining in Iran, versus 320,000 Iranian Jews in the world more or less[0] who had all their property stolen, were attacked and forced to flee Persia, where they had lived for the past 2,000 years or so. The number under 10k remaining is very specific because it is so small. They are treated as second class citizens. They are not allowed any sort of real religious freedom, have even fewer rights than their oppressed Muslim neighbors (although in fairness, no citizen of Iran under the dictatorship has any civil rights). The other 300,000 Iranian Jews now live in Israel and America, where they were forced to flee to. The Jews remaining in Iran are (mis)treated as curiosities kept for propaganda purposes.
The Iranian theocratic regime regularly hosts conferences of "Jews" who come to deny the holocaust and to say that Israel is an illegitimate country. If the remaining Jews in Iran beg to differ, they will be routinely executed.
Israel's bombing of an adjacent building which accidentally damaged one of the remaining synagogues in Iran was likely without thought, but if someone in Tel Aviv actually did think about it they probably signed off on it as a favor to the remaining Iranian Jews, to establish that they weren't helping Israel.
Would you want to be a Jew in Iran? I think it would be about the same as being Sioux in South Dakota in the 1890s.
How ironic to be bombed by the reservation you forced people onto, and to lose air superiority to it, so you can't even prevent those Iranian Jews from flying laps over Tehran. How sweetly ironic that you spent 47 years obsessing over hating the people you forced onto that reservation, wishing to destroy them, instead of improving your own country and your own people with all of that western oil money.
Maybe building an entire dictatorship on a "minute of hate", or having a national holiday devoted to calling for the murder of another ethnic group who you already expelled, is not actually a viable social or economic strategy.
Meanwhile, members of the Iranian dictatorship are free to live in Paris and send their daughters to college anywhere they want. Perhaps a few of them should flee, while the option is available.
The Jews who fled to Israel don't have anywhere else to flee, they are the ones living on the "Indian Reservation". So maybe if the Iranian government is so interested in removing the "colonialists" of Israel, it should offer back in exchange all of the property it stole from the Jews who lived there before 1979.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Jews
> Them attacking France isn't any less rational than attacking, say, Qtar, or blockading non-US ships bound for non-US countries transiting the straight of Hormuz
It does make sense if you think about it for longer than 5s - it's about U.S. allies putting pressure on the U.S. to end the war. This whole propaganda about Iran being irrational is so dumb it's embarrassing.
The US is threatening to wipe out Iran's civilization, the EU is very tepid about the whole thing at best. Really sad to see, but not surprising. There's zero consistency or principle involved.
Yes, attacking uninvolved third parties seems like a great way to pressure them to end the war, if by "end the war" you mean joining it on the other side and helping finish you off.
Traditionally that has been how countries tend to respond to military attacks on their soil. Iran's only saving grace seems to be that they're too ineffectual to pose any actual, serious threat to countries like France.
I don't personally think it's a great move by them by any means, but I think it's shallow to not try and understand how they may see it, as a bit more complicated than 'attacking uninvolved third parties', especially given these things seems to be happening across the EU[2], so it's likely not specifically about France.
This also seems to have happened at US bases[3].
It's rather likely their attempt to show that they can 'reach' further than conventional means would suggest.
1 - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/28/uk-france-germ...
2 - https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/temperature...
3 - https://www.food-safety.com/articles/11974-refrigerator-malf...
Iran's strategy is what caused the GOP their worst electoral disaster in living memory.
It's also why the US is highly reluctant to return to high-tempo combat.
> Iran's strategy is what caused the GOP their worst electoral disaster in living memory.
I think that is only a win if you have an extremely american centric perspective of this conflict.
So they did that. Then what? Do you really think that is going to translate into anything significant on the battle field? It might have some marginal benefits but it probably won't matter in the big picture for Iran.
So they should sit around and let the US and Israel 'destroy Iranian civilization' I guess? Is that your suggestion?
They're weaker than the countries attacking them. So causing inconvenience so that pressure will be put on the US to end the war by countries the US might listen to.
Is that strategy going to work? Not sure. But does it have a chance of working? Maybe.
> So they should sit around and let the US and Israel 'destroy Iranian civilization' I guess? Is that your suggestion?
I'm just saying it isn't going to win them the war. The president broadly controls what the us military does. He doesn't need congress or the senate.
You seem to be mixing up "wanting to win" with "actually winning". Of course Iran wants to win this conflict, but that doesn't mean they are actually winning.
> They're weaker than the countries attacking them.
Yes, getting into conflicts from a position of weakness is generally a bad plan. Succesful countries plan for this sort of thing well before the conflict starts which results in the conflict not happening in the first place.
Iran had strategies in place for this, but they ended up backfiring.
>Is that strategy going to work? Not sure. But does it have a chance of working? Maybe.
Imposing costs on your opponent is a tried and true strategy that almost certainly could work. However Iran actually has to impose real costs instead of just propaganda wins. It seems like they were doing this best earlier in the war and now have run out of steam.
> Imposing costs on your opponent is a tried and true strategy that almost certainly could work. However Iran actually has to impose real costs instead of just propaganda wins.
The price of oil, US midterm results, Gulf countries scrambling, that certainly doesn't look like they haven't imposed real costs.
> Yes, getting into conflicts from a position of weakness is generally a bad plan. Succesful countries plan for this sort of thing well before the conflict starts which results in the conflict not happening in the first place.
If by 'getting into conflicts' you mean 'getting invaded by the US and Israel' then sure. That just seems to be saying 'don't get invaded, sucker' which, while sound advice doesn't actually work out if someone's intent on invading you.
The Iranians are not trying to 'win' as such, but rather impose enough cost on the attackers that continuing the war no longer makes sense for them.
The truth is, you're not seemingly saying much of anything besides 'Iran bad'.
> That just seems to be saying 'don't get invaded, sucker' which, while sound advice doesn't actually work out if someone's intent on invading you.
Israel and USA have been intent on invading Iran for decades. But they didn't. Then suddenly they did. That didn't just happen randomly. Iran took a bunch of foreign policy risks that backfired spectacularly making them vulnerable to invasion. If they made different decisions, or if they just got luckier, they wouldn't have been in a vulnerable position and this wouldn't have happened.
In many ways, the art of war starts long before the battles start. The things Iran could have done differently to affect the outcome of this war would probably have to have been done back then. It is a bit too late for them now.
> The Iranians are not trying to 'win' as such, but rather impose enough cost on the attackers that continuing the war no longer makes sense for them.
Yes, that is how all wars where the sides aren't evenly matched work.
But all they have to show for it is slightly higher prices at the pump, and its unclear they will even be able to maintain that going forward. It isn't looking good for them.
> The truth is, you're not seemingly saying much of anything besides 'Iran bad'.
I'm just saying they are losing and don't seem to have good prospects going forward. If by bad, you mean in the sense of their strategic position - then yes, iran's strategic position is very bad.
> Israel and USA have been intent on invading Iran for decades. But they didn't. Then suddenly they did.
There is a war between the US/Israel and Iran, but there has not been an invasion. Attacks from a distance are not invasions. Contrast with the Russia-Ukraine war, where there actually has been an invasion.
>> countries the US might listen to
If that's really the theory behind attacking France, then the Iranian regime is completely unmoored from reality. The last time the US listened to France was never.
I don't think attacking France did anything to help that cause. Certainly we know from experience what attacking America would have done for them.
I don't think turning off American Supermarket Refrigeration would cause the US to escalate.
You want to talk about things that might spark an actual US land invasion of Iran? Seems up there.
Why? So far it doesn't seem to be causing much escalation in France, why would it be different for the US?
America does tend to take geopolitical slights fairly personally relative to other countries.
Not to mention one of the limiting factors for america in this war is public opinion. I'm sure they would love some way to sell it to the american public.
Our responses to state-sponsored attacks on our soil are perhaps best characterized as "unhinged".
>lash out indiscriminately
Discrimination is a fallacious argument, if this is indeed an Iranian action, since Iran has been the target of a great number of indiscriminate attacks from the NATO bloc, including cyber attacks on its own food systems, also.
>Iran's strategy
I'm curious how you learn of Iran's strategy?
"lash out indiscriminately" is a criticism of their strategy. Not an argument over if it is ethical or who deserves what.
Going all, two wrongs make a right, misses the point. We aren't debating who is right but if iran's actions are likely to lead to them winning.
If it were a lash, it would not be necessarily targeting specific infrastructure, no?
Indiscriminately - I suppose you mean "not attacking only military targets" - well I don't mean it from ethical stance, but rather the nature of tit for tat warfare, which is what this is.
>winning
Yeah, lost me there.
> I suppose you mean "not attacking only military targets"
I don't. I think it is extremely clear in context that that is not what was meant
I mean, i also do think they are doing that too, and it seems like most experts agree that their use of cluster munitions over populated counts as indiscriminate in the sense of international law, but that is not the sense of indiscriminate that was being used in the comments above.
> doesnt super make a lot of sense for iran
It makes complete sense.
France headlines Operation Aspides, the Euro navy in Gulf of Aden vs Houthis. They are very involved, directly blunting Iran + Houthi trying to impose cost on west via control / attack on commercial shipping. Hence they get targeted, it's just Iran establishing mutual deterrence, you fuck around in our backyard, we fuck around in your infra and extract economic costs. Meanwhile their infra is basically gone, the amount of damage Iran can inflict vs receive via grayzone at this point is asymmetrical.
Iran russia and china and nk are all working for the same efforts as far as destabilizing the west and ideally turning back the clock on the whole citizens have rights thing that western citizens have been so uppity about and influencing the world with since the 1400's, barring that goal, settling on shitting up the place enough to put an end to western lead global order and returning to an age of regional powers with absolute authority in their spheres of influence. I dont think the attack needs to make sense, the statue of liberty stands in new york harbor, we are the same entity to them, they are at war with us.
Let’s not go down the liberty rhetoric. They could claim on their end they are all about self determination against colonialist practices (and with Russia excepted the others have a historical excuse to claim this.) It is obviously a broad power play, we are all wise to want our part to be on the winning side for rational reasons, but moralising a punch fest is not adding anything more than illusions. After all, our western governments are abundantly adopting the authoritarian aspects of population control from these countries, maybe that’s our next problem maybe it’s our current one.
I was guessing North Korea. But then again, I'm in the states and I think we're required to blame everything on North Korea these days.
Considering the help Iran is getting from Russia I am honestly not that surprised.
i mostly meant from a motive perspective.
Russia going, nudge nudge shame about those freezers, maybe if you stopped giving aid to ukraine those freezeers will stop breaking, is a strategy that maybe could work with little downside because what is france going to do? double sanction russia?
But for iran, there is not a lot of room for france to move to be more pro iran that isnt high cost, but lots of low cost ways to be more anti iran, so it seems like a bad strat.
They are allies and I guess Russia could've suggested they do it, or at least knew about it and didn't care.
Reuters French officials suspect Iran is behind refrigerator hacks, sources say (3 points, 3 hours ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50427517
BBC France accuses Iran of supermarket fridge hacking (7 points, 2 hours ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50428440
gouv.fr French CERT and Foreign Ministry Now Attributing Fridge Attacks to Iran (2 points, 2 hours ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50428719
CNN France blames Iran for 'unprecedented' supermarket fridge cyberattack (7 points, 1 hour ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50429252
Does it even matter? If you expose a vulnerable software to the open internet, it's gonna get hacked, and it doesn't matter if it's a script-kiddy from Russia, UK, or a North Korean spy. This was an ethically disclosed vulnerability, patched months before the incident in question. Update your stuff!
Yes finding attribution is and will always be important.
As is updating your vulns.
Is that surprising? Iran's has now declared they'll fire rockets on European cities the next time anything happens to them, under various circumstances.
They have also proven with the rocket attempt on Diego Garcia to be able to hit 3800km away, which would put every European capital except Madrid, Dublin and Lissabon in range of Iran's rockets (and maybe nukes). And it's not technically confirmed that's their maximum range. Even London is (just barely) in range.
https://www.euronews.com/2026/11/04/iranian-mp-tells-euronew...
(of course emphasizing the usual, namely that anything that happens is Europe's fault, without specifying, of course, what they mean by that. Even on the base issue it's not clear: obviously US uses European bases to supply it's middle eastern ones. Is that a "rocketable" offence? Plus: if Europe makes things difficult for the US, does anyone seriously believe that lowers the risk of an attack?)
Europe is once again under constant threat of rocket and nuke attacks. The "end of history" has been canceled.
This will get a lot worse before it gets better.
No? They’ve said they’ll attack US bases in European countries if those bases are being used as launching points of attacking Iran.
this is impossible. Iran simply does not have the excess capacity to perform sophisticated cyber stunts while ther country is under attack and it will be all hands on deck trying to gain intelliegence on impending and ongoing attacks. this is the most clumsy fake news ever, by a government facing country wide protests about there horrible economic conditions brought on by the various wars bieng pushed by governments in the west.
Huh? Ukraine is an active cyber threat for Russia, and Ukraine's situation is far more dire than Iran's.
Of course it is possible, it is not as if Iran - a nation of around 90 million people - can't spare a few hacker types to break in to Danfoss (et. al.) to wreak havoc on (real or imagined) opponent's economies. This doesn't mean France is right in claiming Iran is behind it nor does it mean they're wrong, it just means Iran could pull something like this off if they wanted to. Hell, any group of motivated individuals with the required knowledge could pull this off.
except, currently Iran is very carefully doleing out web access and will be very activly recruiting hackers for FAR more relevant activities, which could then make this some sort of random 'interview' test, like task a crew to fuck up Macrons favorite cheese provider and things got out of hand. but the timing of the hissy fit of trying to turn the whole thing into an international incident, reeks of political desperation and just how generaly unprepared europe is for our brave new interconected world.
Iran is about the least likely candidate. If they're proposing Iran as a cover than that would make it the US/Israel. Both have a pretty well documented history of false flag attacks.
According to the article the attack came from an Iranian IP address. Well ...
Suppose it wasn't a false flag operation. Why would Iran threaten the EU when the EU was skeptical about the war early this year and suffers from it due to lack of Qatari LNG?
The logical step would be to do diplomatic outreach to the EU.
Now the EU has a casus belli (more like supporting the war rather than participating). It all sounds like the EU is selling the war to its population, but maybe Iran is really that stupid.
Russia has demonstrated that they can conduct so-called "hybrid warfare" as long as it doesn't lead to serious injury or death and the response will be meager. But it still creates pain for those targeted nations.
Iran could be seeing that this approach, rather than more blatant attacks, is a useful way to create problems for the US's allies with a lower risk of elevating those US allies to direct enemies. The intention would be to get the US allies to put pressure on the US (in particular) to back out of the US/Israel war on Iran.
> Russia has demonstrated that they can conduct so-called "hybrid warfare" as long as it doesn't lead to serious injury or death and the response will be meager
At a certain point, it stops being "hybrid warfare" and starts being "obnoxious prank".
Russia's deployed (small amounts of) WMDs offensively and has blown up/set fire to some military infrastructure on NATO soil. I'd call these things "hybrid warfare".
Making a grocery store file a claim with their insurance for unrefrigerated food is more along the lines of "dick move".
They're not that stupid, and it's another lie.
We cannot rule out the fanatics running the US had this done to get the EU into the war. More to come, I'm sure.
Yeah, that's what we do to draw people into wars: we set their supermarket freezers to defrost and make the stocking crew stay half-a-shift longer. Then we vote the guy who dragged our own country into the war into lame duck status.
You've traced the very substance and nature of our ridiculously circuitous plan to get the EU to attack Iran. Can we get your thoughts on the Zapruder film while you're here? Maybe you can bring some fresh perspective to that.
So it was Israel then…
You can be very sure that they won't accuse Israel.
Russia or Israel...
[dead]
"They used Farsi", and "the IP is in the house with you now" are really, really weak bits of evidence.
I hope there will be a full exposé of the actual evidence. "Trust the authorities, bro" just doesn't cut it any more.
Oh wait wait wait wait... Wasn't it Russia? There were so, so many comments here calling this a 4D move by Putin with absolutely no proof whatsoever, which definitely weren't astroturfed, oh no siree. What will the European people do without a single enemy to hate? We need them laser-focused on one thing to blame our troubles on. Otherwise we may start looking at Brussels.
unless we learn this is true... https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/how-the-military-will-hack...
tl;dr - about more than election hacking, the possibility that the US military is behind various hacks and influence operations by faking being Russia/Iran/NK
Ken is not a credible journalist. Probably not the worst, but he's closer to e.g. Glenn Greenwald than a pure fact-finder.
Russia, maybe, NK doubtful and Iran ? I do not think Iran is that stupid since in general many EU Countries are not that thrilled about Israel. But to me, it will be hard to know got 100% for sure.
>This included "the use of Farsi and IP addresses traced back to devices located in Iran"
I guess they were caught then. I heard of software that can hide or change these things called "IP addresses", but I guess using it is way too hard for organizations with plenty of resources :
> I guess they were caught then.
The US and Israel have deeply penetrated Iran's network. I would not be surprised they are proxying through there to paint a picture that Iran is attacking them as well... to try to stem the tide of Israel's falling public support across the globe.
While I believe that Russia might have serious hacking capability, then Iran much less so, but accusing NK is laughable to be honest. America with Israel though? They pwn Europe completely.
NK just pulled off the biggest crypto robbery ever. But its not all about hacking, influence operations are significant too. Ask Jensen.
The accusation here is that the US is doing the bad things while pretending to be other APTs. As an American, I would not be surprised in the slightest if this turned out to be true, very double agent-esce and inline with the hubris, especially under this administration.
I have no idea what tf Iran's leadership is doing.
Israel/Palestine is not their battle anyways; just ignore it and move on! Make peace with Israel, stop supporting Hamas/Hezbollah and just focus on your own problems. What does Iran have to gain from fighting with Israel? It can't be that they hate all Jews, when Iran is one of the few Muslim countries with any Jews left [1].
Just drop it guys, and learn to live in peace. There's a lot more to this world than continuously fighting with each other.
/rant
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Jews
I think a lot of geopolitics makes more sense if you treat the ethnic divides as "excuses" and instead look at what the parties hope to achieve in terms of power and dominance.
Too many people fall on the confusion between justifications, explanations, and excuses. In particular, it can be hard to find what moves something from one to the other of those terms for a lot of people. It often blurs between perspectives, agreed enemies, agreed allies, and inclusion or omission of extra details.
I think the story is especially clear in Iran, though.
Totally fair. I mainly meant my point as calling out the obfuscations I typically see to confuse people. Even in situations that don't seem like they should be used.
They do have things to gain - credibility with the Arab and Sunni Muslim world for fighting against Israel and perhaps defeating it and excuse to operate their proxies and allies. Not to mention they are true believers, and even if they weren't, it doesn't have to be fully rational from your perspective; just from their own.
As for the Jews in Iran, there used to be 150,000 Jews in Iran before the revolution today there are ~9,000. Furthermore IRGC are very much the ideological inheritors of the type of folks who did the Allahdad (God's Justice) Massacre in Mashhad in 1839.
They can't gain credibility with the Sunni world; Sunni Arabs are pretty close to their mortal enemies --- not in some dumb religious way, but in a modern geopolitical sense --- and that conflict is far more salient than Israel/Iran.
Iran trying to gain favor with the Sunni Arab world is somewhere in the same ballpark as Russia trying to gain favor with ethnic Ukrainians.
But Iran are Shia! They don't seek Sunni approval; they've been at each other's throats since the beginning!
All of this seems to so insane to me. This region has lots of wealth (dino juice just coming out of the ground), and they're frittering it all away on buying more and more weapons and destroying each other.
Like the USA, Israel and Russia? All China need do is watch...
Both they don't want Israel to be too powerful and at the same time, the war is a good way to keep tight control on their population and kill any rebellion. You ensure that western ideas would not go into the head of the population by enjoying peace and seeing how it is going well in free neighbor countries, it give you a common enemy that you can accuse of everything.
The existence of a Jewish state in the region also undermines the theological basis of an Islamic republic.
How?