You can trace all their problems back to the 1979 Islamic revolution. If they would have simply kept the Shah as the ruler and stayed a client state to Britain, they wouldn't need to fund any of these militants, and would probably be a friend to western countries.
Its been 46 years, there have been opportunities for peace along the way if they wanted it. It would have required compromises though.
Iran's not war not peace policy is an expensive one, both directly and indirectly (e.g. turning them into a parriah state). In the end it seems like its also been largely ineffective. Instead of keeping them out of war, proxies like Hamas ended up drawing them into one, and it ended up being a pretty one sided war not in their favour. Although i suppose prior to that point it was yielding geopolitical gains.
Iran in 1970s certainty wasn't a British client state, that's a dumb fucking claim. If anything they were a US client, not a British one. And even the claim that they were an US client is pretty weak. They were a pretty strong regional power back then and while they were clearly allied with the US, they had their own politics and strategies.
Analysis that looks at countries like Iran simply as tools of Superpowers is reductive Cold War area analysis that has gigantic blind spots.
So what you’re saying is if they stayed quiet and supplicant to the British while they drained their oil resources while the extreme elites made all the money, everything would be okay? The Islamic revolution was a populist revolution, supported by the vast majority of the country because their lives were shit.
This is an out of date take. Not long after the fracking boom that began in the mid 2000's, The US is now by far the world's largest oil producer. We used to produce less oil than Saudi Arabia, now we produce 66% more. We produce 4x the oil that Iran does. Oil is just not the same geopolitical force that it was in the 80's to 2010.
Pretty weak argument. Norway has been an oil producer for a long time and recent issues have nothing to do with oil and applies to everybody working with the US.
People focus to much on oil in international relation, its a factor but by far not the only one.
