Category Archives: Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy

“A State within a State”: Hezbollah as a Bulwark against the Atlanticist-Zionist-Gulf State Axis Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy • Tags:

By Keith Preston

Introduction

            Hezbollah is one of the most unique political organizations in the world and has the distinction of having forced the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to withdraw from southern Lebanon on two separate occasions. The first of these was in 2000, ending Israel’s 18-year occupation of the region. The second was during the 2006 Lebanon War following a renewed assault on Lebanon by the IDF. Hezbollah is also considered to be a model “fourth generation warfare” organization by theorists of generational warfare, such as William S. Lind. Fourth generation warfare theory argues that the nature of war has been transformed since the end of World War Two. Because of the invention of nuclear weapons, international warfare between states has largely become cost prohibitive. Consequently, the waging of war has become a matter of conflict between states and non-state actors primarily.

Non-state actors may include any organization that engages in armed conflict outside of the state system, such as guerrillas, insurgents, or terrorists. However, non-state actors also include organizations that provide functions usually considered to be the prerogative of states (such as the provision of social services, education, public infrastructure, or public security), or focal points of public loyalty other than states, such as movements, causes, religions, ideologies, or gangs. Fourth generation warfare theory indicates that many people around the world are transferring their primary loyalties away from traditional national patriotisms toward fourth generation forces of many kinds. For example, rather than considering themselves to be a patriotic citizen of their nation, a person may first consider themselves to be a loyal Muslim, socialist, or devotee of animal welfare. Hezbollah is considered by fourth generation warfare theorists to be the most sophisticated fourth generation model because of its ability to provide traditional state functions on a significant scale, and Hezbollah’s having superseded the Lebanese military as the “national defense” force of Lebanon.

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American elite divided over US-China economic ties Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations

Press TV. Listen here.

The American elite are divided over what the economic relationship between the United States and China should be like, says a political analyst.

Keith Preston made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Saturday when asked about President Donald Trump’s furious reaction after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell had warned the trade war with China was a risk to the US economy.

In a furious flurry of tweets on Friday, Trump attacked the Powell’s stewardship of the world’s biggest economy.

“As usual, the Fed did NOTHING! It is incredible that they can ‘speak’ without knowing or asking what I am doing, which will be announced shortly,” Trump wrote on Twitter.

“We have a very strong dollar and a very weak Fed. I will work ‘brilliantly’ with both, and the US will do great,” he added.

“My only question is, who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?”

Preston said, “There is a split within the American elite, within the American economic and political elite over the question of what the economic relationship between the United States and China ought to be.”

“It’s clear that the Trump administration represents a vein of the American elite that do view China as a primary enemy and wish to take a more hawkish position towards China when it comes to things like tariffs and trade and those kinds of issues, economic relationships and also military relationships as well.” 

“On the other hand, there are other sections that the American elite that are very concerned about maintaining a trade relationship that currently exists between the United States and China, they do not want anything to disrupt that,” he added.

Trump lashed out at China on Friday, vowing a quick response to China’s announcement of new tariffs and ordering US companies to leave the country.

The attack came after China announced earlier on Friday it would impose new tariffs on US soybeans, lobsters, peanut butter and other imports worth $75 billion in retaliation for Washington’s latest round of punitive duties that take effect in two rounds, September 1 and December 15.

The United States will raise existing tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese imports to 30 percent from 25 percent, beginning on October 1, Trump said on Twitter Friday.

PressTV-US to hike existing, planned tariffs on Chinese imports

PressTV-US to hike existing, planned tariffs on Chinese importsPresident Trump says the US will hike tariff rates on most imports from China in retaliation for Beijing’s new duties on American goods.

He added that the duties on another $300 billion in Chinese products, set to take effect on September 1, will be increased by 5 percent, reaching 15 percent.

Who’s Afraid of Tulsi Gabbard? Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Electoralism/Democratism • Tags: ,

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

Elections are different for anarchists. We’ve already made our peace with the basic fact that representative democracy is a sham even when it’s not rigged by moneyed oligarchs. So when we do actually take part in the process, it’s usually for purposes of propaganda and/or Machiavellian strategy. One thing Trump was right about is the influence of the deep state, though it’s hardly the shadowy coalition of dope smoking lesbian Bolsheviks the Alex Jones-set imagines them to be (I wish.) Rather, they’re more of a loose coalition of rich old white men who travel back and forth between unelected positions in the federal government and the numerous industrial complexes of the Fortune 500. At the risk of sounding like a member of the tinfoil hat brigade, these are the people who really run this country. Elections, especially at the presidential level, are largely just theater, a glorified reality TV show designed to feed the masses the illusion of living in a democratic society beneath the steel boot of a rapidly decomposing empire.

I personally subscribe to the Murray Rothbard philosophy on elections, which basically goes that since the state is defined by it’s monopoly on the use of force, the best we the people can do when we’re not loading rifles is to support the most antiwar candidate available. To me, this school of thought is made doubly relevant by the fact that theoretically the only thing the president has direct authority over is the armed forces. To say that this philosophy has brought me to some strange places is an understatement. I have personally changed political parties no fewer than three times and counting. And I’ve found myself openly backing everyone from Jurassic goldbugs like Ron Paul to New Age hippie vaxxers like Jill Stein (who’s 2016 campaign sticker continues to haunt Hillaryites from the bumper of my Ford Taurus.)

The DNC’s bottomless clown car of milquetoast morons doesn’t exactly provide a lot of options for the Rothbardian voter. Most of the candidates seem to come from the Oprah School of social democracy, chumming debt besodden millennials with the promise of an endless procession of free shit, payed through taxing super-villains without offering to cut a single missile. The only solidly antiwar candidate was 89 year old former senator Mike Gravel, but since Mike has called it quits after essentially being banned from Cable TV and screwed out of his rightful place in the latest debates, that only leaves contrarian powder-keg, Tulsi Gabbard.

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Israeli Lobby behind Senate Failure to Overturn Saudi Arms Sale Veto 1

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy • Tags: ,

My recent interview with Tasnim.

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The US Senate failed in its latest bid to block the controversial sale of $8.1bn worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia due to the influence of the powerful Israeli lobby in the United States, an American political analyst said.

“…Saudi Arabia and the UAE are also allies of Israel, which is extraordinarily powerful in the United States as well. The (US) President has a very close relationship with Israel, and the Israel lobby essentially controls much of the US Congress. The American petroleum industry and other US business interests also maintain massive holdings in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. For these reasons, the President vetoed the resolutions, and the resolutions did not receive enough support in the Senate to override the veto,” Keith Preston, the chief editor and director of attackthesystem.com, told Tasnim.

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Pompeo has ‘ulterior motives’ in expressing desire to travel to Iran 2

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy • Tags: ,

Press TV. Listen here.

It is clear that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has “ulterior motives” in expressing his desire to travel to Iran and be interviewed by Iranian news media, according to American political analyst Keith Preston.

On Thursday, July 25, Pompeo said he was willing to go to Iran for talks amid tensions between Tehran and Washington.

Asked if he would be willing to go to Tehran, Pompeo said in an interview with Bloomberg TV, “Sure. If that’s the call, I’d happily go there… I would welcome the chance to speak directly to the Iranian people.”

Some independent observers have said that Pompeo is actually not very interested in speaking with the Iranian people, but actually is concerned by the way Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is presenting Iran’s case on the American media to the US public.

They say Pompeo wants to counter Zarif by pushing the idea of travelling to Tehran and speaking to the Iranian media which has suffered several restrictions in the United States. Washington has also pressured social media giants to block Iranian media channels on YouTube and Google.

Preston said that Pompeo “thinks it’s an opportunity to score some propaganda points.”

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I’m a Little Bit Ilhan, and I’m a Little Bit Tucker Too 2

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right • Tags: , ,

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

As something of a radical contrarian, I often feel like my life is comprised largely of coming out of an endless procession of closets, often without even realizing I’m stepping through the doorway. What? You didn’t know I was a pro-life feminist? You’ve never heard of a libertarian socialist? I genuinely can’t keep up with all the peccadillos you partisan pussies find indigestible. All in all, with this experience of casually shocking boring people, it’s little wonder I took to being queer like a fish in a frying pan.

But some closet doors are heavier than others and at this hybrid moment of Republicrat hysteria, they don’t get much heavier than the simple fact that I have a great deal of respect for both Ilhan Omar and Tucker Carlson, which is a bit like being a unicorn that everyone hates for a different reason. How could this be possible? Well, for one thing, I’ve long held a soft spot in my bleeding heart for both shocking people and, well, shocking-people. As a kid, I couldn’t seem to decide whether I wanted to be Mother Teresa or Marilyn Manson when I grew up. But more than any idiosyncratic character flaw, my respect for these two highly demonized figures stems from the fact that I am and will always be an anti-imperialist above all else. And regardless of their many many flaws both Ilhan and Tucker have been fairly consistent advocates for world peace.

I never expected to like Tucker Carlson and, for the most part, I still don’t. His demonization of immigrants and trans people like myself is nothing short of revolting. But like most paleocons, with Mr. Carlson you take the good with the disgusting. Regardless of how you or I may feel about the bastard’s social cluelessness, you have to be pathologically apoplectic to deny his post-partisan devotion to anti-interventionism. Where Tucker’s beloved pseudo-isolationist Caesar, Donald Trump, has faltered, Carlson has remained courageously resolute.

Since taking the prime time slot of pandering grope-a-holic Bill O’Reilly, Tucker Carlson has delivered some of the most breathlessly eloquent prose in defense of peace that this country has seen since MSDNC had Phil Donahue fired for speaking out against the war in Iraq, often going against the very president he rebuilt his career on defending in the process, and it’s effect appears to be profound. Donald Trump seems to have only reversed his decision to commit mass murder in Iran after a brief phone call with his favorite Fox News host. With an impetuously impressionable man-child in the Oval Office, this xenophobic, binarist dick may have literally saved lives by sticking to his guns on America’s existential need to drop hers. Hate the fucker for who he is, but game recognizes game, and Tucker is looking pretty damn familiar to this tranny peacenik. Crucify me for being big enough admit it.

Perhaps the only thing more enjoyable than seeing a neocon network hijacked by a modern-day Charles Lindbergh has been watching mighty little Ilhan make those same pigfucking giants sweat. While, as an anarchist, I may find Mrs. Omar’s pseudo-socialist, big-government-solves-everything approach to domestic policy nauseatingly tiresome, she has proven herself to be the Lower House’s most doggedly consistent critic of empire since Ron Paul.

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The Condition of the World Economy 1

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Economics/Class Relations

A very good discussion of the world economy by two Marxist-Leninists. I agree with virtually everything they say except for, of course, their interpretation of the role of Communism in the industrial development of the Eastern world.

The Communist revolutions that took place in the East and the Global South in the 20th century were simply a continuation of the bourgeois revolutions of the 18th and 19th century. In every case, these revolutions (from America and France in 1776 and 1789 to Cuba and Cambodia in 1959 and 1975) were rooted in the left-wing of the middle class as revolutions almost
always are. The West is experiencing a bloodless revolution of that kind at present (what the right-wing calls “cultural Marxism’).

Industrial development of communist countries was always made possible by Western capital. An agrarian society can’t experience industrial development by practicing economic autarky. Russia tried that with “war communism” during the Russian Civil and it failed. Hence, Lenin developed the New Economic Policy and began importing industrial technology from Western capitalists.

China attempted a similar approach during the Great Leap Forward only to experience famine and mass starvation. It was the Dengist reforms of the late 70s/early 80s that allowed China to develop on its present mercantilist/national- capitalist model, which is basically the same model used by the Asian Tigers as well as the European nations during the Industrial Revolution.

Even the Khmer Rouge understood they needed the support of Western capital. The purpose of the “killing fields” was to produce as much of an agricultural surplus as possible to sell on the world market in order to be able to import industrial equipment and technology. The Khmer Rouge goal was the achievement of industrialization by the year 2000. After they were dislodged by Vietnam in 1979, they changed their ideology from Maoism to “liberal capitalism” and formed an alliance with the CIA against the Vietnamese.

Nukes For Peace? Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy • Tags:

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

Surrounded by trigger happy Tonkinesque gunboats and drowning in debt, the Islamic Republic of Iran has made the risky decision to play the last card left in their deck; to defy the P5+1 Deal in order to save the P5+1 Deal. It’s a hell of a gambit but it already has those pussies in the EU clamoring for new talks with the embattled nation. Under the circumstances, I would argue that Iran’s decision to enrich Uranium past the amount allowed in the deal but still far short of anything potentially lethal isn’t just tactically savvy, it’s the right thing to do.

Iran offered Europe and the US everything but a weekly colonoscopy with that deal and we’ve given them jack shit in return for their patience. While Trump shredded the agreement in a reckless Israel-friendly hissy fit, Europe has sheepishly reneged on their promises to stand up to Orange-Man-Bad and ease their own sanctions. Their indecision isn’t just an embarrassing display of geostrategic cowardice that would gag Charles de Gaulle like a gimp, it’s a brazen violation of the very deal they claim to remain committed to. In this dire situation, for Iran to continue to sit on their hands, would be a betrayal of both international diplomacy and their long suffering citizenry who these values are supposed to protect.

But this move also begs a bigger and rather uncomfortable question for peaceniks like me. Could Nukes be good for peace? Just typing those words feels blasphemous on my fingertips, but history speaks for itself. Iraq and Libya both forfeited their own nuclear weapons programs for the sake of self-preservation and both ended up brutally mugged for their efforts by the world’s preeminent nuclear superpower. Further more, international law on this regard, is little more than a sick fucking joke. Iran has been hounded for decades by an illegally nuclear armed Israel and the only nation to ever use one of those goddamn things while even the intelligence agencies of these very rogue states admits that this program is a total fiction. Meanwhile, India and Pakistan continue their own flagrantly illegal arms race while being bathed in buckets of western aid. And evil Iran should what, be the last boy-scout while they get ransacked? It clearly doesn’t make any fucking difference whether they actually have the bombs or not, so why not arm up?

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There Is No Such Thing As A Moderate Mainstream Centrist 1

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right

Caitlin Johnstone on why it is the “centrists” who are the real extremists.

By Caitlin Johnstone

Medium

I just watched two mainstream political videos back-to-back from what is conventionally referred to as America’s political “center”, and just by coincidence they happened to completely contradict each other. The first was a Bill Maher segment in which he barely even attempted to tell any jokes, spending the time instead explaining to his viewers why the Republican Party is “the party of Putin.” The second video was a recent CNN interview with Congressman Ed Royce, Chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, who proclaimed that the US needs to be “more aggressive” toward Russia “across the board”, and described his party’s unified efforts to help escalate that aggression.

Royce is a Republican.

I have never recommended that anyone watch a Bill Maher video before, and I don’t expect that I ever will again, but this segment was really extraordinary in the shrillness and seriousness with which Maher advanced his ridiculous argument that the Republican Party loves Russia. I recommend taking a look at it and just noting the near absence of actual jokes and the few pity laughs the audience gives him.

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Democratic criticism of Trump-Kim meeting show deep division in US Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy • Tags: , ,

Press TV. Listen here.

US Democrats’ widespread criticism of President Donald Trump’s recent meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is indicative of a deep division in Washington, where political interests shape the foreign policy, says an American political analyst.

Democratic presidential hopefuls and lawmakers launched a direct attack on Trump over his spur-of-the-moment decision to meet Kim at the Demilitarized Zone separating South Korea from the North on Sunday.

They also objected to Trump’s move in crossing the border into South Korea as the first ever American president.

A spokesman for leading Democratic candidate and former vice president Joe Biden, blasted Trump for “coddling” Kim “at the expense of American national security and interests.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who enjoys the second strongest following among the aspirants, said the president was “squandering American influence on photo ops and exchanging love letters” with Kim.

Senator Bernie Sanders, almost next in popularity to Warren, said the move had “weakened the State Department.”

Keith Preston, director of Attackthesystem.com, said Democrats were looking to “weaponize” the meeting and use it to their own advantage.

“Foreign policy has simply become an issue that political parties are using to weaponize against each other,” he told Press TV on Monday.

“The Democratic Party politicians are simply trying to attack Donald Trump and it wouldn’t matter what he did,” the Virginia-based analyst argued.

PressTV-Democrats lay into Trump after Kim meeting

PressTV-Democrats lay into Trump after Kim meetingDemocratic presidential hopefuls and lawmakers have launched a direct attack on President Trump over his decision to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Preston noted that it was always a positive development when two leaders decided to sit down and peacefully resolve their differences.

This is specially important for North Korea and the U,  as they both came within inches of nuclear war over Washington’s objections to Pyongyang’s nuclear tests and ballistic missiles programs.

During the DMZ meeting, which was their third, Trump and Kim agreed to resume talks after the collapse of the last meeting in Vietnam earlier this year.

“It is interesting that the Democrats are attacking the peace process simply for the purpose of scoring some political points,” Preston said.

“That actually reflects the kind of divisions that go on in our society at the present time” he continued, adding that the Democratic response to Trump’s meeting was “just another episode of partisan politics shaping foreign policy.”

Godspeed Justin Raimondo, You Brilliant Son of a Bitch Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy • Tags: ,

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

The son of a bitch promised he wasn’t gonna go. That’s what goes through my grief wrenched mind tonight, as I learn that Justin Raimondo, easily the greatest writer of the Paleoconservative Movement and total unapologetic son of a bitch to the bitter end, has passed after a white knuckle brawl with lung cancer, at 67. He can’t be dead. Their has to be a catch. He was so certain that he could kick that bastard disease back to hell where it belonged that he made you believe it too. Justin Raimondo, America’s own Yukio Mishima, an abominable twin-fisted fag who punch mountains just for the exercise between cigarettes is dead? No. No fucking way. Not possible.

To those of you who don’t know Justin and his work, I have no words to give you. There is simply no way to possibly describe to the uninitiated how massive he was to the Antiwar Movement. But I grew up, a pissed off anti-imperialist queer in my own right, enthralled by the Old Testament grade power of his sublime diction. It made little difference that he was a Buchananite isolationist and that I was a lefty-Yippie-anarcho-punk. He was radical. His enemies were my enemies, Kristol, Horowitz, Hitchens, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and he cut them down mercilessly like a shogun vigilante who’s katana thirsted only for the blood of chickenhawks. I had never seen somebody so antiwar be so cruel and it was fucking beautiful. He was brilliant, cunning, merciless, and he was on our side. Those neocon pussies didn’t stand a chance. He was our secret weapon, an action movie style wringer for the Peace Movement and he and Eric Garris’ antiwar.com remains the finest viable resource in any die hard peacenik’s arsenal.


This isn’t to say that the old bastard couldn’t piss me off. He could make my blood boil like bacon grease, especially when he became a seemingly unshakable defender of our current foul Caesar and refused to admit that the revolution had gone sour after the Donald began racking up war crimes like the politician Justin assured us he wasn’t. I raged over this hypocrisy, not because I hated Justin but because I loved him so goddamn much that I couldn’t bare to see some slick corporate welfare queen make a fool of my sensei, simply because he wanted so badly to believe that this orange bulldozer could pave the way for the antiwar revolution that we both ached for.

But it’s important, for me as much as anybody else if not more so, to remember that Justin came from the Murray Rothbard school of anti-imperialism. With every position he took, right or wrong, he put peace first, no matter how much it hurt, whether this meant endorsing Che or the SDS or Nader or Trump. Justin could care less about Trump the candidate. What he saw was an opportunity for Trump the movement. He saw barns full of Southern Baptist crackers chanting America First and he saw an opportunity to push anti-imperialism into the mainstream zeitgeist. I still, quite violently, disagree with this M.O.. Frankly it smacks of the kind of ends-justify-the-means style tyranny that turned me off of Leninism. But, much like Lenin, Justin was a complicated beast who sometimes let his bleeding heart drown out his enormous brains. And even for this mortal sin, I can’t help but to love the old bastard a friend of mine once aptly described as the gay Sicilian Archie Bunker.

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Trump threats against Iran are in line with his playbook 1

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy • Tags: ,

Press TV. Listen here.

US President Donald Trump’s threats against Iran are in line with his playbook and should not be taken seriously, says an American political analyst in Virginia.

“The comments that Donald Trump has made recently, as well as the particular policies that he has threatening to impose are fairly in character with both Donald Trump’s personality and, as well as the general policies that the American government has followed,” said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com.

“Donald Trump is prone to a lot of blustery rhetoric but rarely does he ever follow through on anything of that type,” Preston told Press TV on Tuesday.

“We can remember that he was at one point threatening the North Koreans in a similar way and then he actually turned around and did an about face on North Korea and he could very easily do that with Iran,” he added.

Trump threatened Iran on Tuesday with “obliteration” if the country launches any attack on American forces in the Middle East region.

In a Twitter rant railing against the Islamic Republic, Trump said, “Iran’s very ignorant and insulting statement, put out today, only shows that they do not understand reality.”

PressTV-Trump threatens Iran with ‘obliteration’

PressTV-Trump threatens Iran with ‘obliteration’Trump has said has threatened Iran with “obliteration” if the country launches any attack on American forces.

Tensions have been running high between the US and Iran since Trump’s decision in May last year to abandon the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions on Tehran as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign aimed at forcing it to renegotiate a new deal that addresses its ballistic missile program and regional influence as well.

The US has also sent warships, bombers and additional troops to the region in the wake of suspicious tanker attacks in the Sea of Oman, which it has blamed on Iran without providing evidence.

Despite repeating threats and baseless accusations against Tehran, Washington has also been calling for negotiations.

Tehran has time and again asserted that it does not seek war with the US, yet stands ready to defend its interests in the region.

Tucker: US came within minutes of war with Iran Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy • Tags: ,

Tucker Carlson nails it. It’s interesting how he’s the most popular commentator on FOX which is otherwise Neocon Central. I’m sure Murdoch is regretting ever giving him a job there. But now he’s gotten too popular for the network to fire him without giving the game away. Paleocons and paleolibertarians are by far the best sector of the US right-wing.

Why “the System” is Vilifying Iran Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy • Tags:

The Atlanticist-Zionist-Wahhabist axis regards Iran as the primary obstacle to its imperialist ambitions in the Middle East and Central Asia.

To break it down more precisely, it’s a geopolitical rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and between the kinds of Sunni fundamentalism that originate from Saudi Arabia and northern Egypt (Wahhabism, Salafism, Qubtism) and the Shia. For obvious reasons, the Shia throughout the region are aligned with Iran, but so are plenty of Sunni (particularly in Palestine and Syria) who reject Sunni fundamentalism of the kind being exported by the Gulf States, or who regard Saudia Arabia or (in the case of Hamas, for example) Israel as a greater enemy. Iran is Shia but their leader has called for unity among Shia and Sunni, and the Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian minorities in Iran are tolerated and even have seats in parliament (and there are women parliamentarians as well). Plenty of Christians, Alawites, Druze, and others who see Wahhabism, Salafism, Qubtism, etc as the primary threat are also tactically aligned with Iran. Everybody in the Middle East hates the Saudis, even their own allies in the Gulf. The Saudis threatened to invade Qatar a few years ago. The UAE is jealous of its more powerful big brother. The Omanis are Ibadi Muslims who are aligned with the GCC out of geopolitical necessity.

This article from Foreign Affairs (not exactly a pro-Iranian publication) from a couple years ago explains this pretty well:

“Arab elites, grappling with the consequences of an eroding Arab state system, poor governance, and the delegitimization of authoritarian states following the 2011 Arab Spring, enabled Iran and its partners, including Russia, to build a new regional political and security architecture from the ground up. With the support of Tehran as the undisputed center of the axis, Shiite armed movements in Iraq and across the axis of resistance have created a transnational, multiethnic, and cross-confessional political and security network that has made the axis more muscular and effective than ever before.”

Israel is tacitly aligned with Saudi Arabia because they both regard Iran and Syria as their primary geopolitical rivals. The Americans and the British simply want to create network of colonies and client states in the region. As Neal de los Huecos in a thread on my other page, these are the de facto goals of US foreign policy regarding in the region”

“1) Pull support from Hezbollah and let Israel take over Southern Iran, 2) Pull support from the Syrian Druze and let Israel take over Syria, 3) Pull support from the Houthis and let Saudi take over Yemen. 4) Quit all alliances with the Shia Iraqi Govt and let Iraq be the colony it was meant to be. 5) Arrest the Mullahs and bring in the “exiled-to-Los Angeles” National Council of Iran to reinstate the Pahlavi Dynasty.”

Whatever one thinks of Iran, the Iranians are the primary bulwarks against all of the above.