The U.S. has long needed a bully in the area to prevent the Middle East from being too unified, so the west can get relatively inexpensive access to its oil.
Is there any evidence to directly prove this claim? This sounds like a made up justification to validate your own opinions. The Middle East isn’t divided by the US, it’s divided by its own history of imperialism, colonization, oppression and violence based on religious and ethnic lines accross the centuries. There’s really no incentive for the US keep the Middle East divided, not to mention that oil producing countries are already united through OPEC.
Besides, why would the US need a bully when it’s directly allied with Gulf states? Not only that but those states are also allied with Israel. Who exactly is bullying who? The only agreed upon bully in the region is Iran, it’s actually the uniting factor between the Gulf states and the Israelis. Not to mention that the US doesn’t need a bully because it’s more than capable of doing what it wants.
The state of play right now is that the U.S. actually produces enough petroleum for its own needs, but our western allies do not, and supplying them with enough oil will raise the cost to an unacceptable level/a level where they’ll have to channel money to the Middle East (which hates the U.S. for its meddling, or to Russia, which also hates the U.S.)
You understand that it’s not only American allies that rely on Middle Eastern oil, right? China, India, Southeast Asia, and so on all rely on Middle Eastern oil and they all have a vested interest in keeping it flowing. If anything, the US is incentivized to sell its own oil since it’s a net exporter.
In about 10-15 years, technology and renewables will advance to a point where oil demand is going to have decreased to the point where the U.S. can supply all of its needs and those of its western allies without jacking the price up.
Again, is there any source that backs up this prediction?
But it will mean that the U.S. will cut funding to Israel, and more or less stop coming to their defense.
This idea that Israel only exists due to US funding is a myth. Israel won all its major wars by itself and it has one of the world’s largest and most resilient economies. US aid, which is almost entirely in the form of loans or weapons contracts, account for less than 1% of Israel’s GDP.
Israel’s plan is to push out every non-Jew, using Zionism as an excuse for awful statecraft, and they’re going to push their borders to easily defensible geographic areas.
20% of Israel’s citizens aren’t Jewish. Also do you even know what Zionism is?
Because if they don’t, everyone they’ve been bullying for the past hundred years (yes, this started before the declaration of statehood), is going to wipe them from the map - potentially leading to them launching the nukes they keep pretending they don’t have, so they don’t have to undergo international monitoring.
This is historically illiterate point of view. First of all, Israel isn’t the bully in this conflict, especially before statehood. If you look at the actual history, you’ll how muslims in the region collaborated with the Nazis to help eradicate the Jews during WWII or how the Arab world rejected the 1947 UN peace plan and invaded Israel with the intention to destroy it or again in 1967 during the six day war or again in 1973 Yom Kippur war or the 1920 Nebi Musa riots against Jews in Jerusalem or the 1921 Jaffa riots or the Jaffa deportations by the Ottomans in 1917 or the 1929 riots and massacres (including the Hebron Massacre which destroyed the ancient community there) or the insane number of Palestinian terrorist groups and their attacks on civilians. The number is comically large that there are entire databases dedicated just recording all of them:
https://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/terrisraelsum.html
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/comprehensive-listing-of-terrorism-victims-in-israel
Hell, even Wikipedia can’t fit all of them in a single article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Terrorist_incidents_in_Israel_by_year
Ffs, the Palestinian leadership at the time, which is arguably the foundation of the modern Palestinian national identity, literally cooperated with the Nazis to a comical degree. The leader at the time, Amin al-Husseini, and his administration literally flew out to Germany and personally met with Hitler. There they both expressed praise and support for each other, and declared desire for cooperation to reach their mutual goals of defeating the British and genociding the Jews. Amin al-Husseini directly told Hitler that Jews shouldn’t get a national home, that they were natural allies in their fight against the Jews, and that Fascism is a righteous ideology. Hitler was so impressed that he called him the most important leader in the Middle East and an Aryan because he was white, blone, and had blue eyes. The thing is that muslims at home celebrated the new ties with the axis powers and cooperation between went through the roof. The Palestinian identity was quite literally founded on antisemitism.
Do I need to keep going? I hope not. Keep in mind, this is all history. You can look all of this up yourself to verify.
we may see a full scale war against Israel before their aims are achieved.
We have already seen this play out at least three times. All of these wars were coalition wars provoked by the muslim Arabs seeking the full destruction of Israel, and every time Israel won.
That’s my take on it, anyway. They won’t stop because they don’t think they can stop, due to how horrible they’ve been.
What a bad take. The reason they’re still fighting is because they’re still being attacked.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 1 week ago
Reminds of the accounts of people who owned enslaved people being afraid to let them go because of how they thought once freed they would turn around and slaughter their former “masters” because how could they not.
Except that didn’t happen.
Monument@lemmy.sdf.org 1 week ago
A bunch of folks without many rights, property, education, or jobs in a country where they are basically hostages is quite different than Iran.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 1 week ago
It is, you’re right. It’s kind of a poor comparaison now that I see it spelled out