The Trump administration has put Iran “on notice” over its testing of ballistic missiles. Of course, aggressive posturing against Iran is a great American pastime that all administrations have participated in for decades.

Going after Iran is also low-hanging fruit in terms of domestic politics. As little as the American public knows about the histories of Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, or other places where the US has intervened, it knows even less about the modern history of Iran (other that the ’79-’81 embassy takeover and hostage crisis).

So it’s easy for American political leaders to tell the public that each and every test of an Iranian defensive system is some act of naked aggression signalling plans for regional domination. But what of the most formative event in recent Iranian history? What actually drives Iranian thinking?

The below segment of an April 2016 speech by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif provides the answer:

https://twitter.com/Hamosh84/status/827294459498987520