- The Houthis reportedly said they would avoid attacking Chinese ships off the coast of Yemen.
- But the Iran-backed rebels fired multiple missiles at a Beijing-owned tanker on Saturday.
- Last week, a US general warned lawmakers about deepening ties between Iran, China, and Russia.
The Houthis said they would refrain from attacking Chinese ships off the coast of Yemen, but this past weekend, the Iran-backed rebels did exactly what they said they wouldn’t.
Early Saturday morning local time, the Houthis fired four anti-ship ballistic missiles toward the M/V Huang Pu, a Chinese-owned oil tanker, as the ship was transiting the Red Sea, according to US Central Command, or CENTCOM.
Guess all those women showing their hair in Iran will just need to get put to death because America is bad. Sorry, ladies!
I literally acknowledged that a stronger Iran is bad for Iranians, But on the other hand you look the US’s nonsense in Yemen and Palestine and the idea that weaker Iran = good for the region loses a lot of merit. Also America has supported two genocides over the course of less than 10 years, so yes America bad,
Yemen wouldn’t even be an issue if Iran didn’t fund a proxy army there. No Islamic Republic of Iran would also mean the US doesn’t have much reason to grant Israel near limitless support as there would no longer be a geopolitical foe to the US in the region.
Then the US can just continue its imperialism and destabilization of the region. The US doesn’t want the Middle Easts to unite and become a force on the international stage, so any attempt to make that happen will immediately create a new geopolitical foe. A Middle East ruled by functional governments who actually care about their people is directly opposed to US interests. The idea that if Iran just goes away the region will usher in a Pax Americana closely resembles “If oppressed group X stops resisting they’ll get off lightly” and is deeply flawed for exactly the same reason; America doesn’t want a Middle East capable of standing up to the US. See also: That one democratically-elected Pakistani the US just removed recently.
The US isn’t opposed to Iran because Iran is ruled by bad freedom hating people (I mean it is, but this has nothing to do with that); the US considers Iran a geopolitical foe because Iran is the one country in the Middle East actually willing to stand up to the US.
The shit Tankies say. haha
I’m… Not a tankie. At all. You don’t need to be a tankie to see that the US has been the single greatest cause of destruction in the Middle East (edit: post-colonization). You just need to know some history, or just be Middle Eastern.
You say so much without saying anything. It’s quite impressive. It’s like talking to some neutered version of ChatGPT
I’m not sure the US is or should be concerned with the Middle East uniting, all you have to do is look at all of recorded history in the middle east to see that’s not realistic. As for Pakistan, which isn’t even in the Middle East:
“Hey we’re not happy with what your PM is doing and if it continues don’t expect support from us.” Is somehow the US doing regime change?
Oh the horror. A sovereign nation is allowed to pick which countries they want to partner or support! The way tankies have twisted that cable leak with Khan is enough to give anyone a stroke.
That depends on your definition of the Middle East. Pakistan is sometimes included.
What? The middle East has been united for most of its history since the Rashidun Caliphate. It was also reasonably united against the US in the 70s, causing the oil crisis. United doesn’t have to mean one country.
I mean look at Cuba and none other than Iran itself. “Don’t expect support from us” is putting it lightly; we’ve what the US does to governments it doesn’t like. The US put pressure on the Pakistani military to remove the democratically elected PM and install one friendly to US interests, that’s two steps removed from a coup.
The same Rashidun Caliphate that ended with Ali getting assassinated and his son abdicating after an assassination attempt? Replaced by the Umayyad caliphate that then quickly ran into the second Muslim civil war? I wouldn’t characterize calphates borne of wars of conquest to be a symbol of unity rather than what they are, empires not dissimilar to the US empire you’re arguing against. I just don’t see the US putting as much weight on shaping the middle east over time as oil becomes less and less relevant, although I admit I may be overly optimistic about the timeframe of weaning off of fossil fuels.
Admittedly the Rashidun Caliphates should’ve really gotten their stuff together when it came to succession, but these were all wars of succession, not wars of secession. The idea that the Muslim world was meant to be ruled by one Caliphate was an assumption nobody tried to challenge. That’s unity. I like to compare it with the Roman empire, and I think we can agree that the Roman empire was mostly united. Anyway that unity continued until the late Abbasid reign when the Abbasid Caliphate started disintegrating, and stayed like that for a while until it got conquered by the Ottomans who held things together until WWI. The track record isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty good.
It’s not just oil. I mean a lot of it is oil, but it’s not just oil. The Middle East is a generally resource-rich region with a shared cultural identity and tendency towards unity (pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism are very common ideologies among Middle-Eastern people).
So I ran into this some time ago and setting aside the idea of whether these divisions did cause conflict or not, I think it’s telling that only two of these don’t have any sort of large-scale international influence, with one of those being the Islamic one despite being among the top in terms of people, resources and land area.
Interesting article, thanks for sharing. I know we don’t fully agree but I appreciate the conversation!