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Notes -
The missile from Iran directly is interesting and would be a serious escalation if the result of a change in official policy. Of course it might not be official policy. One of the problems with pushing propaganda so heavily to buttress the alleged moral authority of your government is that your men are liable to believe it.
Sure, many Iranians seem opposed to their government’s policy on Hamas and the Houthis, but the IRGC is the best-funded and most loyal-to-the-revolution part of the Iranian state apparatus; it’s also more religious, I’ve heard that quite a few more senior commanders are committed Shia scholars of the Ayatollah’s theory. It’s possible this was a rogue action by a particularly zealous commander.
But in a sense it is an issue, it’s difficult when you build credibility on an issue for decades and then, when that issue finally comes to a head, you do nothing (and indeed resolutely deny you knew your proxy was on the attack). The Houthis, Hamas, even Hezbollah are funded in substantial part by the Iranian state, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their own firm religious beliefs that can conflict with the often more pragmatic preferences of the Iranian elite.
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