Iran in direct attack on Israel

[Swiss Peter]

Well there are plenty of them. Only 30% are Shia muslims. The biggest minority, but the dominant block.

https://theconversation.com/irans-se...beliefs-145253

At the moment it is calm, because the reversal of Trump's sanctions by Biden allows tens of billions of oil revenues to come in. They can feed their population, provide for the military, pay their IRG well, and pay to fund Hamas, Houthis and Hezbollah, whilst showcasing their nuclear programme on television. It's a pretty good ride for many in the country when they can trade on global oil markets, so the leadership, its military and Iranian Revolutionary Guard provide well funded power for the leadership.

Hopefully, Biden will now see sense, and act on his threat to put back in place the same sanctions, or hopefully even harder. If that were to happen there will be discontent from the 70% non-Shias. Cast your mind back to just two years ago when sanctions were in place:

1. Nuclear programme in trouble
2. Hamas, Houthis and Hezbollah non-existent.
3. Collapsed economy with riots everywhere and mass starvation
4. Negligible power exercised in middle east

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63154987

So from a Western perspective what we hope strategically, to avoid direct war, is all of that to re-occur and collapse from the inside and civil war to occur. But this time the Chinese are behind the scenes and have agreed oil deals with Iran (and same whilst influencing Iraq). So that will provide a financial buffer if US / Western sanctions kick in, even tough the Chinese will not pay anywhere near market rates for oil. Some money is better that very little, so I have a feeling that all we can hope for is reduced / slower nuclear programme, and funding of proxies to dry up (Hamas, Houthis, Hezbollah).

If forced to choose where to spend reduced oil revenues from sanctions, Iran being the cute strategic lot they are, and advised militarily by the even more strategic Chinese, they will de-prioritise military / religious expansion, spend the reduced Chinese oil revenues on a more defensive strategy of protecting their people and borders, and the IRG will retract back inside Iran to defend the leadership. This will allow them to buy time and live to fight another day, sit out US elections and see what happens. The Iranians are the wise ones in the Middle East. They know when to attack and defend that is for sure, and have been wired this way for many centuries. They will not overreach if they cannot afford it.

So it's all on the sanctions. If they are the same or harder than Trump's then Iran will quieten down and become defensive. If the sanctions are poor or not executed, expect on and off hostilities to continue.

Must admit that I didn't realise that such a small proportion of the Iranian population are Shia Muslims. Are you sure that is right?

[jon1959]

Must admit that I didn't realise that such a small proportion of the Iranian population are Shia Muslims. Are you sure that is right?

Looks very wrong according to this:

A 2020 survey by the World Values Survey found that 96.6% of Iranians believe in Islam. According to the CIA World Factbook, around 90–95% of Iranian Muslims associate themselves with the Shia branch of Islam, the official state religion, and about 5–10% with the Sunni and Sufi branches of Islam. According to the 2011 Iranian census, 99.98% of Iranians believe in Islam, while the rest of the population believe in other officially recognized minority religions: Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Iran