> Israel’s security doctrine isn’t a meditation retreat.

"Security doctrine" is quite a euphemism for aggressive territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing, which is tightly wrapped in religious rhetoric.

On the contrary, you're mistaking the means with the ends. Yes the regimes and their leaders think about oil corridors and regional proxies. Yes probably a chunk of the apparatchiks don't believe in the spiel and just care about enriching themselves off of corruption and so forth.

But religion, and not pure materialism, is absolutely at the center of the motivation of these people, the leaders and the population alike. It's not just, as you say, a sham that the leaders use to control and mobilise the masses. Religious fanaticism is at the source of the actions and the very existence of the Islamic Republic. Just as religious fanaticism is at the heart of the worst excesses of Zionism and the at-worst-genocidal, at-best-apartheid policies of Israel. It's not just materialism! It's not just prosaic greed! These people are moved by a holy fervour.

Like, this is the central mistake of Marxism, for all its merits in analysing the "capitalist mode of production", it is absolutely false that material conditions and class struggle are the engine of history.

> Religion is the language leaders use.

Yeah. Because people believe in in and leaders take advantage. DUH. Its not so peaceful religion all the way.

That was very well said. Thank you.

IMHO you're still making it too complicated; knives out GOT, titans of industry..

Sure, but it's even simpler.. The Ayatollah Regime funds regional terrorism. It destabilizes the region, gets people killed, and holds back progress.

Also, they are always seemingly always almost done building a nuke.. Which frankly nobody wants(not even them because they know they'd be obliterated the instant the world thought they actually had one or were about to for-reals have one).

They are BAD FOR BUSINESS both private AND PUBLIC.

As long as the rest of the region was developing eventually their number would be up. The recent uprising and massacre was the signal their number is up. Time to go, honestly signed all their neighbors.