To understand what went down in the Middle\nEast these past months, it helps to first understand how the Middle East became\nthe place it is today. A major side note, however, this article goes over\naround 3,000 years of some of the most complicated political and social history\nin the world. This is a gross overgeneralization that merely serves to somewhat\nexplain the relationships between the players in the conflict with Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Middle East was once the cradle of which civilization\nwas born. It was labeled the Fertile Crescent and it harbored some of the\nworld\u2019s first major civilizations, the Persian Empire for example, which created\nmuch of the basis for academic disciplines still studied today, not to mention their\nfairly progressive and tolerant religion. But after a while, external conflict\nbegan to arise. At the turn of the millennia, the Romans entered the playing\nfield, as did the Chinese, and eventually the Middle Eastern civilizations were\njust pawns in larger fights. But after a while, and around the turn of the tenth\ncentury, the Islamic caliphates started to come about. Civilizations such as\nthe Ottoman Empire, as well as others, brought peace to the region, and\ncompared to their European neighbors, much prosperity and wealth. But then the\nEuropeans caught up. The Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English began to\nexpand their efforts outside the European continent. And in that campaign, they\nwere led to the steadily declining Muslim Empires in the Middle East. This puts\nus around the turn of the 20th Century, wherein the European powers utilized their\nimperialist powers to exert influence and break up an already politically complicated\nregion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then World War One broke out. This war was\nmainly fought in Europe, though because Europe had strong influence in Arabic\ncountries, they were dragged in as well. More importantly, this war signaled\nthe end of the Ottoman Empire, which caused a power vacuum in the region that\nvarious ethnic groups filled. They fought each other, and fought the Europeans.\nThen World War Two broke out, and this one was a lot bigger. The African\ntheatre saw the Middle East see direct conflict as the Axis and Allied powers fought\neach other, while simultaneously gaining spheres of influence because of major\noil exports. The second World War saw the onset of the United States\u2019 influence\nin the region, as the U.S. was a major player in that war, they got to reap the\nrewards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the war ended in 1945, the United\nStates and United Kingdom recognized of the creation of Israel and Palestine,\nwhich has been a point of issue and conflict to this day. This, as well as\nother U.S. actions, further destabilized an already reeling area of people who\nwanted nothing more than to move on and prosper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the conflict with Iran, however, we want\nto look at the turn of the 20th Century again, wherein Iran had a largely\npeaceful revolution, which forced the ruling family at the time, the Shah, to\ncreate a constitutional parliamentary system, which lasted about a decade,\nuntil a military commander seized control of the country. He carried in a heavy\nmodernization program; modeled after the one in Turkey around the same time.\nThough Iran was not as successful as Turkey in their efforts; they were poorer,\nand they had less access to positive European influence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But in World War Two, the Allied Powers\nthought Iran would favor the Germans, and in an effort to prevent this, they\noccupied the country and forced the military commander turned monarch to\nabdicate the throne in favor of his son, Mohammad\nReza Pahlavi, who would side with the Allies. The son, and new monarch,\nwas not a forceful ruler, and he oversaw the country\u2019s massive modernization\nand industrialization efforts fueled by the collective help of the United\nStates and United Kingdom. There were some attempts to remove the monarchy, but\nwith the wealth and prosperity the country was experiencing, it was hard to\nfind support for such an action. It was a great time for Iran, and people in\nthe country lived similar lives to those of West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Though the modern amenities Iranians were\nparticipating in upset more traditional religious leaders, which was emblematic\nof a growing divide between different interpretations of Islam: Sunni and Shia,\nwhich still exists today. And in 1978, a violent revolution took place and the\nIslamic Republic was founded. Based on core Islamic traditional principles, it\nseemed as if the new regime took the country backwards in time. Rights were not\njust threatened, but abolished in some cases, especially for women. Then, Iraq,\nin order to destroy the Islamic Republic, invaded Iran in 1980. Iran, in\nresponse, captured the American embassy, which sparked the Iran Hostage Crisis,\nlater solved with President Reagan\u2019s arms deal with Iran in exchange for the\nhostages, which actually succeeded, but later was scandalized due to the\ndirecting of the profits made of the deal to Nicaraguan rebels. And Iran, after\nbrutal war with Iraq, began to fiend over nuclear weapons to keep them safe\nfrom future conflict. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And\never since the Sep. 11 attacks on the United States, Iran has been increasingly\nunder watch and military action as the country furthers into political debate\nand turmoil. And probably most importantly, Iran and the region are massively\nimportant to the world\u2019s oil supply, as Iran alone exports around $30 billion\nworth of crude oil a year. But their attempts at nuclearization create an\ninteresting dynamic for countries in need of oil: condemn their violent\nrhetoric and attempts to create nuclear weapons but stay friendly enough to\nmeet oil needs. Yet in 2015, a multilateral and multinational nuclear determent\ndeal was struck to prohibit Iran from continuing too far in their attempts at\nnuclear weapons; and in 2018, the U.S pulled out of that deal, which, in part\nwith their very complicated history, and an even more complicated political\nclimate, set up the conflict seen over the past few months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
To understand what went down in the Middle East these past months, it helps to first understand how the Middle East became the place it is today. A major side note, however, this article goes over around 3,000 years…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pgc_meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/ME-BW-G.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90,"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/90"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}