1) US, the illegal invader actively destabilizing the region for two straight decades+.
2) ISIS, the brutal Islamist neo-Caliphate birthed from the destabilization brought by (1).
3) KSA, currently bombing Yemeni civilian infrastructure into the largest humanitarian crisis in the world using weapons and support from (1).
4) Israel, the apartheid nuclear ethnostate that has abused a captive population for generations with the support and protection of (1).
The problem with the first is that the US never came up with a good exit strategy, so we are just kind of lingering over there now. It's not even clear what our objective was from the start (it's all sorta all over the place). There has been an appetite to get the US out, but when Obama got us out, ISIS took charge in the region and Obama had to send troops back in.
Supporting Israel can be done through money and arm sales, so you don't really need forces over there.
Oil has become less of an issue since the US went through. Its fracking boom and generated an oil surplus.
It's definitely a careful balance, while many people don't want to be there, if the US does not have troops there, it could become a breeding ground for anti-American organizations that then want to attack the US. It's a hard problem.
To your question, it's a matter of emphasis. You have a fundamentally greater moral imperative to criticize your own government (I assume you're not Iranian living in Iran) and its dealings/shortcomings simply because you can, in principle, actually have some relatively significant impact on its actions. So no, there is no need to ignore the conduct of the Iranian government, but if you place emphasis on it disproportional to what you actually have influence over, your moral priorities are fundamentally misplaced.
Really we’re in the endgame of fossil fuels, and arguably control of access to those resources that was the main reason that the US was so heavily involved in that region for decades. But with the green revolution needed and pragmatically quite close in reach, the US needs to fundamentally rethink its involvement.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2021-05-21/com...
