"Why Attack Iran?" - Timothy Snyder

[sop]

"How do understand the war with Iran? We must get away from the propaganda and ask why this might be happening, in light of the facts that we do know."

"These facts suggest two interpretive frameworks: a foreign war as a mechanism to destroy democracy at home; and a foreign war as an element of personal corruption by the president of the United States."

"From the United States, the most plausible angle of view is domestic politics, not foreign policy. Wars are a tool of undermining and undoing democracies. Given that we have multiple examples of this from both modern and ancient democracy, and given the behavior of Trump and his allies in general, this must be an interpretive method for these attacks."

"The relationship between foreign war and domestic authoritarianism can take two basic forms: 1) we must all rally because there is a war and everyone who oppose the war is a traitor; 2) we must hold elections under specific conditions favorable to the party in power. This is utterly predictable and should be easy to halt and indeed to reverse."

"The American propaganda about our foreign policy motivations is impossible to believe as such. But it does lead us, indirectly, to the second possible interpretive framework: personal corruption."

Continued at link:

https://snyder.substack.com/p/why-attack-iran