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isiscarry t1_iuekb45 wrote

Reply to comment by cousin_basil in Gunmen attack major Shiite holy site in Iran, killing 15 by marketrent

This happens a lot in Iran its just not covered in western media as much.

For example the US used the general they droned a few years back as an intelligence expert wrt AQ back in the 00’s because he was considered a global expert on combatting them.

A lot of Americans are so poorly informed due to our poor media that they do not even understand that Iran is AQ/ISIS’s #1 enemy let alone WHY….

It was hilarious during the height of ISIS to watch WaPo print endless articles about “the biggest victims with ISIS are other muslims!” without any further extrapolation. The best was all the articles about “Iranian backed militias” without any further comment as to why Iranian volunteers were so willing to go fight ISIS in the first place…

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ucd_pete t1_iufnhd8 wrote

> For example the US used the general they droned a few years back as an intelligence expert wrt AQ back in the 00’s because he was considered a global expert on combatting them.

And that same general was instrumental in defeating ISIS. Once ISIS was gone, the US didn't want Iran-Iraq relations to get too close so they clipped him.

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Zozorrr t1_iuhposn wrote

He was also instrumental in murdering thousands of Iranian (and Iraqi) citizens. It’s no coincidence that the current protests have gone much further than previous ones where Soleimani still ran the murderous IRGC

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ucd_pete t1_iuhrryj wrote

> He was also instrumental in murdering thousands of Iranian (and Iraqi) citizens.

Yeah but that's not why he was assassinated

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hawkwings t1_iugeiww wrote

When Obama ran for reelection, he bragged about killing Osama bin Laden. Trump wanted to do the same thing when he ran for reelection, so he killed somebody. I don't think that he cared that much one way or the other about General Soleimani. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia may have been OK with him killing a Shiite.

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Teantis t1_iuhbmld wrote

Israel and SA were way more than ok with Soleimani being killed and not because he was just a shiite. he was one of the most critical Iranian leaders in terms of organizing their actions beyond Iran's borders and Iran is both Israel and SA's number one regional rival. He was widely cited before his death as Iran's architect of its regional power

SA and Israel considered assassinating him way before the US did: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/11/world/middleeast/saudi-iran-assassinations-mohammed-bin-salman.html

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mcs_987654321 t1_iuf82ww wrote

Oh, no doubt.

Some of that is just down to people having limited bandwidth - I follow intl news relatively closely, from a wide range of sources, and know that I’m still only getting a tiny fraction of the most important news events of a given day/week.

The other bit is that there are a bunch of regions in the world where outsiders barely have a fighting chance at understanding the nuances and undercurrents at play, especially if we don’t speak the native language (and is a super bummer for Iran, bc Farsi is just so pretty) - Iran is definitely one of those places. You can know the about the shia/Sunni divide, the centuries of colonial fuckery in the region (driven by all kinds of shifting geopolitical reasons), the contributing factors behind the rise of IS/AQ/Daesh/whatever…and still barely scrape the surface in terms of being able to understand some of the motivations behind current events.

That said: yeah, most media sucks and a good chunk of people are so stunningly uncurious that they wouldn’t even be able to find Iran on a map.

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