Strangler was more or less evil than Jack the Ripper. Americans, Jews, anyone else who mostly feels aligned with Israel will tend to judge Iran more harshly, because the US and Israel find themselves on the same side of the geopolitical divide as Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is the philosophical godfather of modern day radical Islam, but since the shah fell in the '70s, they've had nothing on Iran in terms of promoting it worldwide. SA walks this line between legit trading and security partner on the world stage, and provider of comfort for the restive extremists in their country, because the royal family would rather they terrorize others than them. Iran openly calls themselves the Islamic Republic. One is a wolf in sheep's clothing (which does a poor job of hiding the wolf), and the other is just a wolf.

Just like when in the '80s we thought of Iraq as the good guys in their war against Iran, Saudi Arabia will be our "friend" until it isn't. Unfortunately, this has been one of the Trump admin's biggest FP failures IMO. Trumpistan doesn't do morals and values, whether talking about murdering journalists or Nazis marching in Cville. Thus, Trump's reaction to SA's state sponsored murder was mostly "man, who taught that guy how to engineer a cover up!!" Effectively, we tolerate SA's awfulness. We don't have that complication with Iran.

I suspect Iran is responsible for these attacks in the Strait, but we should be careful not to be maneuvered into a war that really serves SA's interests more than ours. One gets the feeling Trump thinks he found a great formula with NK, which is to threaten to destroy and then develop a bromance with brutal dictators. But Iran is not NK.

[Post edited by hoolstoptheheels at 06/16/2019 11:46AM]