The present conflict in the Middle East is Iran's proxies against Israel. This goes very far back into history and, to understand it, we have to understand that history.
This is actually the third stage in the conflict. The first stage was Arab nations, led by Egypt, against Israel. This was resolved by Jimmy Carter bringing Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin together. The second stage was non-state organizations against Israel. This was resolved by Bill Clinton bringing Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin together.
In Iran's long history it has had four separate empires. The first was the Achaemenid Empire. This is probably the best-known of the four because it is the one that is prominent in the Bible. The Persians were vassals of the Medes, but they overthrew the Medes so that the two were still together but now the Persians were in control.
The Babylonians, with the help of the Medes, had conquered, and supplanted, the Assyrians as the dominant empire. The Assyrians had conquered Israel, after it had split into the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Following a rebellion the Assyrians had taken the ten tribes of Israel into permanent exile, where they became known as the "Ten Lost Tribes".
The Babylonians then conquered Judah and, after it had rebelled, destroyed the Jews' Temple and took them into exile. But the Jews were not slaves and many ended up doing quite well in Babylon.
Conflict began between Babylon and Persia. While a drunken royal party was going on within the walls of Babylon, Persian engineers managed to partially dam the Euphrates River, which flowed through the city, so that Persian warriors were able to get inside the walls of Babylon.
The Persians were relatively magnanimous to the people that they ruled, nothing like the Babylonians and Assyrians that came before them. Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild the Temple, if they wanted to. Many Jews were successful in Babylon and chose to stay. The ones who stayed played a prominent role in Jewish history during the long Diaspora when the Temple was again destroyed and the Jews again forced into exile, this time by the Romans. They wrote what is known as the Babylonian Talmud, and continued to live in what is now Iraq until modern times.
The Jews who returned to their homeland rebuilt the Temple. Although by most accounts this Second Temple wasn't as glorious as the First Temple. The Second Temple is sometimes called the Temple of Zerubbabel. This is because Zerubbabel was in line to be king but, of course, there was no king because the country was ruled by the Persians.
So the dominant empire in the Middle East during the latter half of the Sixth Century B.C. was the Persians. In 525 B.C. they conquered Egypt, which had once been a great power. This first Persian Empire, the Achaemenid, is looked upon favorably in the Old Testament because it freed the Jews to return home and rebuild their Temple. The Persians were eventually defeated by Alexander and gave way to the Hellenistic Era.
The second Persian Empire, at the time of the Romans, was the Parthians. This empire did not rule the Middle East around Israel, which was ruled by the Romans, but formed the eastern boundary of the Roman Empire.
Iran was ultimately conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate, the first Caliphate of the new religion of Islam. But about half of it's history, including the first three empires, were from before the coming of Islam. The third Iranian empire, which supplanted the Parthians, was the Sasanian Empire. This long-lasting empire once again included the Levant, the east coast of the Mediterranean including Israel. It also gained what is now Yemen, on the far side of the Arabian Peninsula.
All through these empires, beginning with Cyrus and after Iran became Moslem, it was still under the same throne. The throne would be occupied by numerous different dynasties but would end up lasting for 2500 years. A much later Islamic Iranian empire was the Safavids. The Safavids Empire didn't include the area around Israel. The monarchy would finally be overthrown in the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
So now Iran is the same country but, with the 1979 Islamic Revolution, has changed direction. We could say that Iran today is the inverse of Imperial Iran, and this explains it's role in the Middle East.
An interesting example of how history repeats itself is the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, in 1979. The embassy compound was surrounded by a wall. But remember how Persia's most famous battle of ancient times was it's warriors getting inside the walls of Babylon. Getting inside that wall, to seize the embassy compound, provided the perfect opportunity to reenact history.
Persia liberated the Jews by conquering Babylon, and facilitated their rebuilding of the Temple. So the Iran of today, ever since the Islamic Revolution, has to be the inverse of this. The Revolutionary Guard has a special unit whose objective is to someday liberate Jerusalem from the Jews. Over the years since 1979 the Iranian Government has made it clear that a high priority is to see Israel eliminated.
Iran's proxies on the Levant, Hamas and Hezbollah, are in what was part of Iran's first and third pre-Islamic empires. The other proxy, the Houthis in Yemen, are in what was part of the third empire, the Sasanian Empire.
Meanwhile, America fits into this scenario. We saw in the compound posting "America And The Modern World Explained By Way Of Paris" that America's Republican Party is the continuation of the French Bourbon Dynasty. The French royals had been America's first allies and helped it gain independence. But a few years afterward they were overthrown and guillotined in the French Revolution.
The Shah of Iran, the final ruler of Imperial Iran that was overthrown in 1979, was an ally of both the U.S. and Israel. His overthrow, the Iranian Revolution, was very much a reenactment of the French Revolution. So now America is pulled by the forces of history into taking the role of the first Iranian empire, the Achaemenid, and supporting Israel, although this isn't the only reason that America supports Israel.
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