There's plenty to criticize about Iran and I personally hate its backward, theocratic regime. It's holding back a wonderful people with one of the oldest and greatest civilizations the world's ever known, and more History in their pinkie than the US and many other countries in the world could ever dream of. The sooner the Iranians get rid of them, the better.
Yet I'm still not really onboard with this common, oversimplified western rhetoric used to paint Iran as the pantomime villain in the region who wakes up every day with only one thought in mind "Whose day I'm gonna ruin today?". It fits a bit too nicely with the widespread racist propaganda (not directed at you) of the brown savages who only want to blow shit up. Just because. After all, that's who they are and what they do.
The reality is that Iran has been under siege and an unprecedented embargo since 1979, the Islamic Revolution being ironically a direct consequence of the West's meddling, particularly the US and the UK. The US purposefully let the Shah they put in place be overthrown, when he ceased to be useful. Iran went from trustworthy ally to the worst thing since Hitler the moment it stopped aligning with the US views on the region.
Saddam Hussein was encouraged and massively backed by the West and US, before they offed him when he outstayed his welcome and threatened their interests in the region, to launch and wage its war against Iran. Even the Soviet Union was part of it. There's been constant assassinations campaigns in Iran supported by the West and mostly carried out by Israel. Nobody in the West found it problematic now, did they?
For decades, especially the last 20 years, the West and Israel basically made a mockery of international laws, legalized extra-judicial murder as a way of solving problems and called it a win. We're currently seeing its paroxysm in Lebanon, with an awful lot of self-righteous cretins, some of them in this very thread, cheering on.
The fact that Iran is majoritarily Shiite automatically makes it an enemy for the Sunni regimes in the region. Particularly Saudi Arabia and its prehistoric theocracy which always likes to posture as the guardian and defender of Islam (as if). SA always had Iran in its crosshairs and considered it as its nemesis in the region, for both strategic and ideological reasons. The animosity between the two kinda went down a bit, thanks to China's recent mediation, but it's fragile and doesn't serve the US or Israel's interests at all. Bin Salman will also definitely stab Iran in the back at the first opportunity.
Then you have Israel, and I don't need to remind you of the love affair between the two.
By the way, Israel sold Iran military equipment during the Iran-Iraq war. I'm certain that you're aware of it, but ain't that hilarious?
So all in all, Iran has been in a fight for survival on all fronts for 45 years, against overwhelming odds. It must do so without any capacity to project any of its vastly inferior military power due to international sanctions. Without the spider web in the region it patiently wove in the last four decades, indeed using sectarian divisions in the region, Iran would've been toast, just like Iraq, Syria or Lybia. It's still not out of the woods, only acquiring nukes will get it to the safe zone. Banking on a shitload of missiles and distributing them to its proxies, was in retrospect the only way to go, given the amount of its declared, powerful enemies and since it doesn't have any Navy or Air Force one can decently speak of.
The Syrian Civil War is a direct byproduct of the US invasion of Iraq which gave birth to ISIS. The latter is part of the uprising against the Syrian regime, alongside many other extremist Salafi groups, like
Al Nusra whose wounded militants were treated by Israel.
Bashar Al Assad just doesn't belong to the good dictators the US usually supports and protects. He turned to Iran and Russia, which makes it a reason good enough to get rid of him. That's why the US, and more importantly Israel, wanted and still want him gone. Does that make him a good guy? Hell no, and the resentment most of the Syrian population harbors against him and Iran's interference is completely justified.
I fully understand what you're saying, but Iran couldn't afford that when its own existence is at stake, and the rest of the Arab countries in the region have agreed to always disagree. The sectarian divides are thousands of years old and have been fuelled for centuries by major powers who have every interest in keeping it that way. Solely pinning the blame on Iran is just ideologically narrow-minded and wilfully ignoring the local dynamics that have been at play for decades, if not centuries.
That's not something Iran can solve on its own. Certainly not when its house is besieged and constantly at risk of burning. Furthermore, there never was any chance for Iran to wear the savior's mantle, as Shia followers largely remain a minority among muslims and are generally frowned upon. Currently that role could only realistically go to Turkey but Erdoğan is a backward blowhard.
The only chance for the muslim world to become what it aspires to be is to go past its internal divisions and find a modern interpretation of a religion in desperate need of one. Then completely leave it out of politics and put it where any religion belongs to, a strictly personal matter. Atatürk once showed the way, a pity he's never really been emulated since. The closest example ironically being Reza Shah.
The first thing towards mending the situation in the Middle-East would be for the West to treat Iran and Israel as normal countries and fecking get the US out of there. The US is the equivalent of locusts and a plague in the region. Nothing will change as long as these leeches are hanging around there.
