1987–Now: Iran, Israel, & the U.S. Killed Millions of Civilians in Fits of Anunnaki Inculcated Domination Dementia
By Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D. (Anthropology, UCLA)
See the many studies on Iran/Persia at www.enkispeaks.com, and watch the video below for more on Iran.
The dominator seeks control—even through destruction; The cooperator seeks survival—through restraint. When these systems collide at scale, the outcomes are escalation, accelerating escalation, intensifying narratives, and costs borne by civilians. Whether framed as strategy, destiny, or belief, the consequences are real, immediate, and irreversible. History does not end in abstraction; it ends in lived experience.
Oslo Accords of 1993
The 1993 Oslo Accords opened a path to peace between Israel and Iran, but Iran chose proxy war instead. The Accords created a framework for Palestinian self-rule through negotiation with the Palestinian Authority. For a moment, diplomacy appeared to offer a way to peace. But Iran, emerging from the Iran–Iraq War, had already decided to avoid any direct wars and instead built influence through terrorist networks, starting with Hamas.
1987–1993: Hamas Emerged from the First Intifada
Iran did not create Hamas. It arose inside Palestine during the First Intifada. But once the PLO entered negotiations with Israel, Iran increasingly treated Hamas as the more useful force—militant, uncompromising, and positioned outside the Oslo framework.
Hamas, though Sunni in origin, became a key partner in Iran’s Shiite-led regional network—not through shared theology, but through shared enemies and converging strategic aims. Over the next fourteen years, that alignment helped transform Gaza from a testing ground for negotiated peace into a separate political and military arena.
The First Intifada was a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, beginning in 1987 and lasting until the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. Youth protests, civil disobedience, and grassroots mobilization initially drove the uprising. It evolved into organized resistance led by factions such as Hamas and the PLO.
The Israeli response involved military crackdowns, curfews, and administrative detentions. The Israelis killed over 1,000 Palestinians, who killed 200 Israelis. The Intifada altered international perception of the conflict and led to the recognition of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) as a negotiating entity, setting the stage for the 1993 Oslo Accords.
Israeli Oppression Triggered Palestinian Intifadas
Twenty years of Israeli military occupation after the 1967 Six-Day War left the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip under Israeli control, where Palestinians lived under martial law with restricted movement, land expropriations, home demolitions, and frequent arrests.
By 1987, over 1.5 million Palestinians lived in the occupied territories.
The Israeli settler population grew to 60,000 in the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinians suffered high unemployment, poor infrastructure, and limited access to farmland and water. Many Palestinians worked as day laborers in Israel with no job security.
The spark that ignited the Intifada was an Israeli military vehicle crashing and killing four Palestinians. Palestinians spread the rumor that the Israelis deliberately rammed the Palestinians. Israel forced the Palestine Authority (PA) to govern from exile and instead organized itself into student unions, local charities, religious factions, and neighborhood committees.
In December, 1987, a spin-off of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood criticized the secular PA and called for armed resistance in reaction to the deadly vehicle crash.
Unlike the PA, Hamas was Islamist rather than secular nationalist, rooted in mosques and social networks, and adamant that Palestinians must reject permanent Peace with Israel.
When an existing leadership loses legitimacy, new movements arise from below — often more ideological and more absolute–and in Israeli-occupied Palestine, Hamas was that movement. The Iran-Hamas cooperation worked because the two had Israel and the U.S. as their shared enemies. Hamas and Iran set their sectarian differences aside to pose their common enemies.
