Redactornalysis of the motives of different anti-Israel groups

I'm too lazy to look up photos and think of clever captions so imagine this is a chapter book like you're in the 3rd grade.

There's been so much breathless speculation by journos (forgive me for using profanity) who are desperately hoping that the war in Gaza will draw in the whole region. We know Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran are the bad guys. So it's confusing to them why the bad guys aren't all fighting together. It's like if Wonder Woman was attacked by the Joker but Loki and Thanos just sat back and watched. Don't they know they're the bad guys?

Actual experts who are paid to understand, not to hype, seem pretty united in saying the opposite. After listening to them and combining it with my autism-powered memory of the region, I'll summarize the different groups and their motives and interactions with each other.

Hamas

Background

Founded originally as a chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas is very much a Sunni organization. So why are they on the bad guys' team? The whole Sunni/Shia thing is a fault line, but fault lines often aren't active, especially when it's politically convenient. Hamas will never have the natural affinity with Iran that Hezbollah does. It even was briefly turned against Iran during the Syrian Civil War. But as long as they have converging interests there is no sectarian reason why they can't be allies. (It helps that there are no Shi'a Palestinians to complicate things.)

Hamas' Muslim Brotherhood origins give it some affinity with governments that have a similar ties like Erdogan's party in Turkey and the royal family in Qatar. But they're not besties, they just have each other's phone numbers and send Christmas cards. Hamas is very close to the actual legit Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and many Egyptians are absolutely incensed at their role in supporting the brief oppressive MB regime during the "Arab Spring".

Before Hamas there was Fatah, led by Yasser Arafat. Fatah ended up getting more moderate and more corrupt, entering the peace process. They now run the West Bank as a protectorate of Israel. Hamas is the edgier, more fanatical and crazy and religious alternative that emerged during the first Intifada in the late 1980s. Hamas and Fatah hate each other and many have been killed over this. But the dynamics between the two are complex, like an incredibly dysfunctional family that's still a family.

Israel has often tacitly supported Hamas against Fatah. The idea is that if the crazier Palestinians win then they will look bad and Americans won't pressure Israel to make peace. Netanyahu had been learning into this hard recently.

Relations with Iran

Iran is the main ally of Hamas. Why? Think about it, do you want to be Hamas' friend? Do you want to be Ayatollah Khamenei's friend? They're like the kids who were too weird to sit at the goth table in high school so they're stuck with each other.

Iran has been estimated to give an entire $100 million/year to them (personally my guess is it's gotta be more). That's a pittance but it's stuff like ATGMs that you can't just pick up on Ali Baba. Also the Revolutionary Guards give vital training.

At the end of the day though, you can give someone weapons but that doesn't give you control of them. Every country that has given weapons to anyone in the Middle East eventually gets told to go blow themselves and their "client" does whatever they want.

Motives

Everyone except me dances around hinting at this but I'm apparently the only person who will say this bluntly in English:

The entire history of Palestine since 1948 has been betrayal by Arabs. One by one each country makes a deal with Israel to frick them over. Saudi Arabia is the last functioning country that even pretends to be on their side. If the Saudi-Israel deal is made, that is the end of the Palestinian nation. They will become stateless refugees at best, "resttled" at worst. So there's nothing to lose and the last longshot is to win a victory so Arabs believe resistance against Israel is possible.

Hezbollah

Background

You could write a book about the origins of Hezbollah. Suffice it to say here that they were Lebanese Shi'a who either were fanatics inspired by the Islamic Revolution in Iran (the core group) or turned to it because of the Israeli occupation. The leadership has personal ties to the Iranian regime, like the old geezers studied together in Najaf. Many of the old-school Hezbos (Mughniya especially) seem to have been taking orders direct from Iran.

It also incorporates lots of people who were basically forced into it because the Israelis blew up their house, tried to draft them into their puppet army, or tortured them. Many Christians were what we used to call "fellow travelers" in boomer times, although way less now than when they were actually liberating the country.

Relations with Iran

This is much different than Hamas. Certain people say that Jewish Americans in the government have "divided loyalties". If they could only see how much Hezbos put the "Axis of Resistance" ahead of their own country.

Hezbollah is much more dependent on Iran than Hamas. Shrill r-slurs on tv scream that they're a "terrorist organization". Not really. They're a conglomerate with a terrorism subsidiary. They run hospitals and provide basic services to the Shi'a in Lebanon, who the rest of the country have always just shit on. They get way more in weapons than Hamas because it can be flown into Damascus and just picked up with a truck.

Having said all that, in the last 20 years I can't think of a single time that Hezbollah attacked Israel because Iran asked them to. They did send lots of troops to fight in the Syrian Civil War but stopping Turkey/al-Qaeda was in their interest too. Again this kind of aid is a one way street.

Motives

Hezbollah is in real trouble right now. The whole country has been reduced to extreme poverty because basically all the politicians stuffed cash into briefcases and ran away. Right around when that massive explosion blew up Beirut because the politicians were too lazy to prevent it.

The whole population is absolutely fricking livid at the whole ruling class. Hezbollah isn't a major player directly in the corruption but everyone knows that they protect the gangsters. Nothing will get better as long as they can have their own private army. You liberated us from the Israelis. That was great. So why don't you accept victory and go home?

So Hezbollah has been trying to reach some kind of compromise with Saudi Arabia, etc. to return everything to the status quo and end this crisis before a popular revolution. They're in really deep shit and the last thing they wanted was a big surprise.

Iran

Background

The Iranian regime comes from Ayatollah Khomeini, who Old Man Redactor most eloquently described as "the best argument for colon cancer". He somehow mesmerized both ends of the horseshoe, commies and tradmuslim larpers, to join together and wipe out anyone sane and then turn on each other. Then the Iran-Iraq War, which I can't even get into without raging at these chickenhawk f-slurs.

Suffice it to say, the Iranian regime has been so dishonest and intransigent in the past that nobody trusts them. But being massive fricking buttholes doesn't mean you're responsible for everything. These are still the same sick bastards from the 1980s but they've been relatively quiet since then.

Motives

Apparently the government really wants to murder teenage girls over fashion. When the economy tanked, the government instigated culture war bullshit as a distraction. Things have gotten dramatically worse there in the last decade. The economy is destroyed. There are about 58 billion women who have engineering degrees but can't get a job or find housing so they can get married, but some f-slur can harrass them on the street and say God told him to do it.

The regime is in survival mode. It's lasted this long off the blood of the martyrs who fought Iraq. But people who remember that are dying off. So they really are serious about the rapprochement with Saudi Arabia. The last thing they want is a bunch of fricking Arabs starting some huge war on their own initiative, but what can you do?