Tehran is a very large city of 10 million people, and the metropolitan area of Tehran includes 16 million people. By comparison, New York City has 8.3 million people. By all accounts, Tehran is a beautiful city:
Iran never "kicked out" Jews, and Tehran has a pampered Jewish community with more historic temples than non-Shia muslim faiths. Jews have lived in Tehran since the founding of the Second Temple. Not surprisingly, most Jews in Iran are anti-Zionist. Judaism is a protected religion in Iran.
(Bahai is not protected, Iranians are suspicious of Bahai because many spies have been Bahai. Bahai leaders are often aligned with Israel and many Bahai live there. But it looks like Iranians take this too far and it has become religious persecution.)
Many reports (and a few of my own personal experiences) suggest Iranians are the most hospitable people on earth. For example, an American traveler posted this story:
I lived and traveled in Iran for months. In Tehran I lived with the family of a retired bank worker who saw me looking for housing. I roomed with his son for months, ate all my meals with them, and they never accepted any money. Once I was sick and throwing up and they all came into the bathroom and the dad stroked my head while I barfed and told me “Aybi nadare” (no shame, it’s ok). I traveled around most of the country by plane, train, bus, shared taxi, etc. Eventually I stopped booking hotels because I’d always meet people on the train, bus etc who’d insist I stay with them. The family of Iran/Iraq war vets from Yazd who took me to Taft for bbq in the mountains. The taxi driver from Rasht who made a bed for me on the floor of his tiny apartment because all the hotels were full. The only time a police officer talked to me was once to make sure I was ok. I never felt in any danger day or night. The land of Iran is as incredibly diverse as its people. There are mountainous rain forests and desert salt flats. I met among the most liberal and most conservative people there, and everything in between. Everyone was so kind it makes me cry with shame.
Yesterday western media reported that Iran struck a hospital in Beersheba. The hospital is well known for treating IDF fighting in nearby Gaza.* Left generally unreported (and actually hard to find online) is that Israel previously hit a hospital in Iran.
(*Iran also makes claims, more credible than similar Israeli ones which have
been proven false on endless occasions before, the the Beersheba hospital
was above some military base. It seems interesting to me that Beersheba is only 42km from Dimona.)
The war between Israel and Iran was started by Israel, which had no legal reason to launch attacks against Iran. Iran is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and has continued to follow a Fatah against making nuclear weapons, but meanwhile enriching uranium as high as NPT allows. No one has ever proven that Iran has a nuclear weapons program (what they have is a nuclear enrichment program).
Israel is NOT a signatory to NPT, has illegally helped other countries acquire nuclear materials, and has a significant number of nuclear weapons made possible by thefts of material from USA (most famously from NUMEC to which LBJ turned a blind eye, and which in general JFK had been trying to prevent).
For no good reason, Trump abrogated the JCA during his first term. JCA gave Iran sanctions relief in exchange for not developing nuclear weapons. The US intelligence community still believes that Iran has not developed nuclear weapons. But Trump broke the agreement in his first term and put sanctions back on Iran. In negotiations for a new agreement, US has been pressing Iran to give up all missile development. It seems that it's not really about nukes, US wants Iran and its proxies to be completely defenseless. Most people I know think Iran has more rights to nukes than Israel, and wish they'd hurry up and build them. I've generally believed Iran was following the wisest course.
Iran has fought back against Israeli aggression very conservatively, tit-for-tat, avoiding escalation, hoping to minimize US involvement. It is easy to determine the side that is ethically better. Israel has recently bombed many middle east countries and has been conducting a genocide in Gaza and pogroms in the West Bank against Palestinians. That proxies of Iran have been resisting Israel is to their ethical credit and our ethical debt.
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