The Middle East

Really? MSM memes more or less have made me think Iran in particular is a total shit hole.

IF YOU FUCKERS HAD JUST LISTENED TO LAWRENCE INSTEAD OF ASSASSINATING HIM NONE OF THIS WOULD'VE HAPPENED

Elaborate

it really isn't
Shiism in general is a lot laxer about dress codes, and Iran has had a vibrant culture for centuries. Check out Persian language films, they win awards pretty often

>Le iran is secular meme
Step out of downtown Tehran or cosmopolitan areas of large cities. The theocracy wasn't built on no public support.

unironically when muslims took over it

I didn't say they're secular, but it's not like Saudi Arabia

Do actual sane people believe that

This even if the Ayatollah didn't hijack the revolution the socialists were going to make him a Shia "pope" and turn the city of Rayy into a Vatican for him.

Saudi Arabia is strange, because it has a stable government, a lot of obscenely rich people and even some middle class, but also a large number of really poor people. Not to mention the lack of rights for a lot of groups. It's too bad the Saudis are Wahhabi wackos, feels like that's what's really holding the country back from being better.

Only thing that's holding the country together. The Al-Saud family came up with it in the 1700's while ruling over their first country

And they boast about how many female grad students they have...while said female students require a chaperon and have to be veiled in public.

>I know nothing about byzantine-sassanian-umayyad empires the post

>people will still defend saudi after knowing this

All fedora/pol/int memes aside, when the climate began to change, when the population was decimated by plague and deurbanization, and gradual soil degradation from thousands of years of intensive farming.

The Middle East was in decline since the Roman era, and it's only been making the best of things for a century or so before it collapses again for another century.

In the end there's only so much you can do when it rains less and less every few years, when the forests and flood plains turn to sand, and your population density just keeps plummeting.

Its the same in Shiraz.
And Mashhad.
And most other places that aren't super fucking rural, dude.

>President Johnson: Now, our judgment is we oughtn’t to do it. Our judgment is we oughtn’t to let this little king [King Hussein] go down the river. He’s got a million-and-a-half people, and he only controls a third of them—two- thirds [are] against him. But he is the only voice that will stand up there. And if you want to turn him over and have a complete Soviet bloc, why, we’ll just have to—and we’ll get out of the arms business. We just . . .And we think . . . We’ll have to get out of supplying Jordan with money. And we think when we do that, it will cause pressure to really be—when that story comes out—it will be on the whole $100 million that goes to Jordan, and to Israel, too. But we’ll fight that when we come to it. We’ll deprive Jordan of their aid. We’ll tell them, “No more aid, no more munitions. No more nothing. We’re not going to get into manufacturing munitions,” and so on and so forth. If that’s what they [the Israelis] think. We think it would be better to give them [Jordan] as little as possible, and control it. And all of our defense people think it would be.But I’m not prepared to take on the New York Times and Mike Feldman and everybody else.
>[Feinberg chuckles.]
>President Johnson: I’m going to let them make the decision. And if they—but it’s got to be in or out. If we go in, [then] of course, we’ve got to be of some help to Israel. If we get out, then we just got to say, “Well, we’re not taking part. We’re not going to supply arms to one side or the other. We’re just not going to be in here to sell a lot of munitions. The only reason I’m helping Jordan is on account of Israel. Now, if Israel doesn’t—if Israel considers them their enemy, and not of help, then we just wasted 600 million [dollars, in military aid to Jordan].
Recorded conversation between President Johnson and Democratic National Committee Chair (and ardent Zionist) Abe Feinberg regarding the sale of arms to the Jordanians

How bad is crime in the M.E non ALLAHU AKBAR related crime?

Dont give me rape statistics since rape isnt even a crime in the M.E, give them robberies, home invasions, larcony, and murder.

Abe Feinberg was a major Democratic fundraiser, Feinberg made his money as chairman of a New York-based apparel manufacturer, Kayser-Roth Corporation, and then as chairman of American Bank and Trust Company; he made his political mark as president of Americans for Haganah. Feinberg’s extensive contacts in Israel positioned him as a confidante of Chaim Weizmann; he chaired both the Development Corporation for Israel and the Weizmann Institute of Science. Johnson rarely overruled his senior advisors directly, at least if a less confrontational option existed. In 1965, the President used the presence of Eddie Weisl and Abe Feinberg to help prevent Bundy, Rusk, and Ball from reconsidering the decision to supply Israel with tanks. In 1967, the President turned to Arthur Goldberg to implement his “desire to do everything we can to help the Israelis.” Rather than rejecting outright McNamara’s proposal, Johnson provided the Defense Secretary’s recommendations to Goldberg—fully expecting the UN ambassador to oppose them. Goldberg fulfilled his role, terming McNamara’s position “unnecessarily harsh on Israel,” and urging a compromise of the United States selling 100 APC’s to Israel. At a May 23 lunch meeting with Rusk, McNamara, Rostow, and DCI Richard Helms, the President indicated that he had accepted Goldberg’s idea. The United States also provided Israel with sales and credit grants of Hawk and tank spare parts. Feinberg, Goldberg, and Weisl had a firm grasp on Johnson's Middle East policy, continuously steering toward Israeli interests.

No the Ottomans beat them back pretty easily several times.

The Middle East ended in 1924 with the death of the last Ottoman Caliph.

This is accurate desu

It's always been wrong. The current wars are nothing new.

when the english promised them all one thing...the french another...then they both double crossed everybody then dumped the mess on everyone else when they realized it was hitting the fan.

YOU COULD HAVE LISTENED
I WAS RIGHT
I WAS ALWAYS RIGHT

13th century
Genghis Khan Sacks Baghdad

c. 570 AD – 632 AD

Collapse of the Ottoman Empire + Brits/French setting up borders.

That is a shit example. Once the oil runs out, they're going to be living like the bedouin in Yemen, which is essentially what they were 100 years ago. They're hillbillies at heart. They just won a lottery and got rich for a brief period of time. They're squandering their resources and will return to their rags soon enough. They are not civilisations.

This. Leftists and /pol/tards have deluded themselves into thinking Iran is some secular paradise and the EVIL zionists are out to besmirch them!

Poverty, women in full hijabs like it's taliban afghanistan, and shariah patrols are what you find outside of the wealthy areas of Tehran

>run out
They have shitloads of oil, more than Iran even. It will take centuries for that to happen and by then they're secured enough through their investment in infastructure and economy (which isn't based entirely on oil either).

>centuries

They've got decades.

google.ca/amp/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN0ZL1X6

And even if they did have centuries, that means nothing because you're running on the assumption that oil will remain the world's major source of energy hundreds of years from now. Making ANY kind of prediction that far into the future is laughable, of course. Oil prices are falling and it's relevance is already on the wane. I've worked for two years in Riyadh and 12 years across the middle east and I can tell you that Saudi Arabia and the Arab cultures more generally will not be able to sufficiently diversify their economies in the next two generations such that they will be able to survive in a post-oil world. They are simply too lazy, feckless, disorganized and spoiled - and this is especially true of the leadership. They are in deep shit and they know it, but there is nothing they can do at this point to save themselves.

Sumer

it's all downhill from there

Long-Long term? It's the cradle of civilization and has been fought over since the dawn of man
Long Term: Islam
Not-so-long term: United Kingdom uniting arab tribes to fight against the t*rks
Short term: Saudi Arabia
Even short term: US hyper interventionism

Europe had planned to dismantle Ottomon empire for a long time. When they finally did collapse, Europe redrew the map to create a dysfunctional area. The british, the americans, the russians, the french, etc all empires of the time took to recreating the middle east.

/thread

It's somewhat democratic, very stable, rather safe and not a complete shithole, unlike some other places. Of course the revolution had popular support and I am not deluding myself that Iran is paradise, but at least it has 3000 years of culture behind it and less radical version of Islam.

UK and France randomly dividing the region. Then UK decided to support fucking WAHHABISTS in order to dismantle the Ottoman Empire.

Go away, kafir.

The above two + islamic extremism.

Also Iran isn't so bad and I really don't want them get bombed too.

Pretty low since you in the more muslim countries you get your hand cut off for thefts.

the mongols ruin everything

including ME

Climate change is set to fuck over the MENA area and make it uninhabitable in the next 100 years anyway

Niqabs aren't a part of Shiism you tard

Iran is probably the best place to live in the Middle East

Muhammad fucked it up, but then things started to stabilize and then the Mongols fucked it up even worse and it never recovered.

>this level of ZOG shilling

Yes, it's actually worse

Name one country that follows a more radical version of Islam than Iran except for Saudi Arabia

Those are afghans on your pic

Iran is better than KSA in basically every aspect

In Iran woman are only required to wear a headscarf, Finklestein.

t. faisal ibn muhammad bin abd al-saud

all of the gulf states

>fucking straight lines

Yemen.
Oman.
Syria.
Iraq.
Almost all of the Arab Gulf countries for that matter, Abdullah.

Oman is actually pretty chill

Also gonna add Taliban era Afghanistan and Pakistan are also batshit insane.

>I've worked for two years in Riyadh and 12 years across the middle east and I can tell you that Saudi Arabia and the Arab cultures more generally will not be able to sufficiently diversify their economies in the next two generations such that they will be able to survive in a post-oil world. They are simply too lazy, feckless, disorganized and spoiled - and this is especially true of the leadership.
This. Have worked there t0o. The average Saudi does nothing. Difficult work is done by Western expats, menial work by African and Asian expats.The Saudi's just collect baksheesh and pretend. They are fucked when the oil runs out.
In a hundred years Saudi will be a cautionary tale of how not to organise a country.

Except for Yemen none of those countries follow a more radical version of Islam than Iran.
>Oman is kinda chill
>Syria under the government where most of the population lives there's active night club and gay scene, alcohol etc
>Iraq excluding ISIS areas, more liberal than Iran, not as liberal as Syria though
>Gulf countries, excluding Saudi Arabia all have pretty open laws to sustain the number large expats and tourists.

The people are far more radical than the government.
In Iran it's the other way around

How so? None of the Gulf states except for Saudi Arabia have a religious police, unlike Iran, none of the Gulf states (including Saudi Arabia) are ruled by a clergy, unlike Iran, none of the Gulf states except for Saudi Arabia force women to wear hijabs, unlike Iran, none of the Gulf states (including Saudi Arabia) have a religious militia, unlike Iran, none of the Gulf states (including Saudi Arabia) are in confrontation with the West, unlike Iran, should I go on?

Name one

Excluding Tehran and Isfahan and the number of "seculars" drops considerably.

>Qatar
>UAE
just cause they use ~special legalese~ to hide their radicalism doesn't mean they aren't funding terrorist groups on a level far greater than Iran.

>this meme again

>Have an actual economy that isn't based entirely on oil
>quality cultural output
>women don't have to wear niqabs

Name one terrorist group that is funded by UAE

Every wahhabist mosque

Funding radicals doesn't exactly make them radical though, the US under Obama supported Al Qaeda and ISIS-tier groups in Syria, what does say for the US?

Are you denying that there is far more religious violence in the Arab states than in Iran?

>Funding radicals doesn't exactly make them radical though
t. abdulaziz bin wahhab al-saud/schlomo finklestien

You still don't see Iranian nationals blowing themselves up like you do with Arab expats

Are you retarded? UAE follows the Ash'ari creed and the Maliki school, not the Athari creed and the Hanbali school like the Wahhabis. Plus, the vast majority of Wahhabis oppose terrorism

Islam that led to a culture that suppressed, and perhaps now more than ever, useful institutions.

No. But that's because Iran is more religiously homogeneous than most Arab countries, not because Iranians are less "radical" than Arabs

They oppose terrorism but it's undeniable that wahhabism is fertile ground for terrorism. And the UAE still sends a lot of money to the rebel groups in Syria with a notoriously loose hand

Iranians in other societies tend to commit terrorist attacks far less than Arabs.

Great refutation. Unlike the groups they support the Gulf states have alcohol for sale, nightclubs, open beaches.

I'm not advocate for the Gulf, they're very hypocritical in foreign policy.
What does blowing yourself up have to do with secular and Islamist ideology? Suicide bombing is a military tactic, take Syria for example there are Jihadi groups that practice suicide bombing and there are groups that don't, ideologically they're the same they just don't practice the same military strategy.
The UAE doesn't really involve themselves in Syria it's mostly Turkey-Qatar-Saudi Arabia

>And the UAE still sends a lot of money to the rebel groups in Syria with a notoriously loose hand

I think you are confusing UAE with Qatar, UAE has provided no help for any of the Syrian rebel groups and have only intervened in the Syrian Civil War against ISIS

>the Gulf states have alcohol for sale, nightclubs, open beaches
that's entirely for show for the Westerners that buy their oil
>What does blowing yourself up have to do with secular and Islamist ideology
well when you blow yourself up as a mujihad fighting a holy war that probably means it's religiously motivated. It's an example of the religious extremism that is much less common in Shiism

You're conflating their motivations for war to military strategy. Hezbollah in Lebanon and and Dawa in Iraq both are Shia organisations led by Iran and when they were both fairly new they practiced suicide bombing because they didn't have accurate weaponry in their arsenal, however today these groups have moved away from such actions yet retain their Islamist motivations.

I mean in western countries. I can't name the last time a Shi'ite blew himself up in the West

Western countries aren't bombing Shi'ites, when they were Hezbollah in the 80s they blew themselves up a couple of times. Same with Al Qaeda, we don't really bomb them in Syria and Yemen anymore so they don't attack the West.

The sunnis still commit terrorist attacks at an incredibly higher rate.

Have you ever thought that Sunnis commit more terrorist attacks than Shias because there are more Sunnis than Shias?

Also,
>Not funding ISIS and actually doing something of a net positive by trying to keep Syria stable by keeping Assad in power

That would be valid if they commuted attacks at the same rate, but it's obvious that that's untrue

>he unironically thinks that Saudi Arabia funds ISIS

Consider suicide

Proofs?

independent.co.uk/voices/hillary-clinton-wikileaks-email-isis-saudi-arabia-qatar-us-allies-funding-barack-obama-knew-all-a7362071.html

Or if you lean to the left:
salon.com/2016/10/11/leaked-hillary-clinton-emails-show-u-s-allies-saudi-arabia-and-qatar-supported-isis/

How about you kill yourself, Mohammed ibn-Goatfukr al-Saud

It's in civilizational retirement. It wants the younguns to take over