This reads less like analysis and more like another attempt to excuse every actor hostile to Israel, including past takes that come dangerously close to cheering on Hamas and Hezbollah. You can criticize Israel without romanticizing terrorist proxies or pretending Iran’s regime is some restrained negotiating partner. The Islamic Republic is a brutal, murderous regime that has spent decades exporting terror, crushing its own people, and hiding behind proxies. “Iran/Turkey will wipe the floor with Israel” is not strategy; it’s fan fiction.
War isn’t a bar fight. Its capabilities, alliances, geography, escalation risk, and consequences.
And while you’re romanticizing Iran as some restrained regional actor, people like Masih Alinejad are living proof of what that regime actually is. She survived the Islamic Republic, escaped to the West, and still had Iranian-backed operatives allegedly trying to kidnap or murder her on American soil. That’s not “restraint.” That’s transnational terrorism.
So spare me the “Iran just wants peace” routine. The same regime that funds and enables proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah also hunts women, journalists, dissidents, and human-rights activists for the crime of telling the truth.
If your analysis keeps finding excuses for that regime, maybe it isn’t analysis.