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A really smart friend shared a page with some background info for those if us who are less aware of the history there. I'll look for it.

ETA-

For those curious about the Iranian situation, I made a one-pager to help explain the country and its components to Americans unfamiliar with the nuances of our long-standing, turbulent relationship.

1. Composition:

⦁ Acreage-wise, Iran is about 3x the size of Texas. It has a population of about 90 million (by contrast, the U.S. population is about 340 million). It's population skews older, with 77% being over 15.

⦁ Ethnically, Iran is majority-Persian. This is interesting, because most of the rest of the Middle East is majority-Arab. Also: religiously, Iran is majority-Shia Muslim. This is likewise interesting, because the rest of the Middle East is majority-Sunni Muslim. So if you're paying attention, you've noted that Iran is not like other Middle Eastern states, like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, etc.; consequently, most Arab countries don't like Iran much, and consider it an annoyance. (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42008809)

⦁ Economically, Iran isn't doing great. Years of U.S.-supported sanctions have crippled their economy, which wasn't particularly diverse to begin with (oil and some agriculture, mostly). A significant portion of Iranians work for the government, due to the absence of other job opportunities.

2. History: Though the history of regional Iran is centuries old, an appropriate place to start regarding the current conflict is the 1970s.

⦁ The U.S. was propping up the Shah (basically dictator) of Iran in the early 1970s, because he was progressive (by Middle Eastern standards - for instance: allowing women to drive), oil-rich, and western-friendly. This Shaw was also, however, pretty brutal to his own people. (https://www.britannica.com/event/Iranian-Revolution). Yeah, yeah, I know: We've all seen Argo.

⦁ Because the Shah was both brutal and western-friendly, a hardline Islamic cleric successfully led a Revolution against him in 1979. Upon succeeding, the cleric ousted the Shah and seized the U.S. embassy, reforming the government into an Islamic theocracy (over which he became the Supreme Leader). The U.S. imposed sanctions, and we and Iran have been at odds ever since.

⦁ Fearful that the U.S. would someday attack Iran (and hating our support of their enemy, Israel), the Iranians intensified a nuclear weapons program in the 1980s, making significant advances in the early 2000s. (We'll come back to this.)

3. Government: Iran is one of the few true theocracies in the world, meaning that religious authority (theoretically) is the basis for all of their policies. (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/tehran/inside/govt.html)

⦁ 3 Branches: Iran actually has a constitution with a president, legislature, and supreme court. They also have national elections. However, despite those overlaps with the U.S. system, their theocratic nature adds a few political institutions that make it distinct from our own.

⦁ Supreme Leader: The Supreme Leader is basically like a much more political pope. He is the unquestioned head of state in Iran. He doesn't often bother himself with the day-to-day running of, say, Iran's bureaucracy...but he can intervene at any time to bend policy to his whim with no checks and balances whatsoever. (Iran is only on its second Supreme Leader, but he's 86, so expect their third anytime now.)

⦁ Guardian Council: This organization basically acts as a filter for policies that are not "Muslim enough" to suit Iran. At any point, they can throw out laws passed by the legislature (or candidates running for office) if they decide them to be impure. And if the Guardian Council can't suppress contrarian desires of the people efficiently enough (as in, say, the Green Movement of 2009), then Iran will send in the...

⦁ Military: Iran's military is large, but outdated. Problematically for the U.S. and Israel, the Iranian government has cultivated strong connections with militia groups like Hezbollah and the Houthis. Which at last lead us to the...

4. Status Quo between Iran and the U.S.:

⦁ Let's address the nuclear side first. In 2015 -when the Obama administration realized that Iran was on the cusp of nuclear weaponry- they gave Iran enormous concessions in order to get them to cut off the program. This caused quite a bit of disagreement in the U.S....but also in Iran, where it took an extremely begrudging anti-nuclear religious edict from the Supreme Leader to get anti-U.S. Iranian officials to back the deal. So when President Trump backed out of said agreement, Iranians felt particularly burned; they saw it as proof that the U.S. always intended to make war on them, and thus that nukes were more necessary to their survival than ever.

⦁ Now let's talk Israel (who also, for the record, does not want Iran to have nukes; they've used spec ops to sabotage Iran's ambitions for decades). Iran has opposed Israel's existence and growing power since the 1979 Revolution, but it's support for Palestinians in the Gaza strip really ramped up in the early 2000s. The Supreme Leader perceives Iran as the champion of Muslims oppressed by western forces (and Gaza-based Muslims certainly seem to fall into that bracket in his estimation). Consequently, Iran has backed Hamas both logistically and militarily; they even expressed support for the the organization after their October 7 attacks on Israel -though they denied assisting in said attacks.

⦁ So...if we look at the following facts in summation, is it any great shock that war seems likely?

1. The current Iranian regime was founded -in large part- in opposition to U.S. ambitions in the region...including the seizure of a U.S. embassy as an originating action. (1979)

2. The U.S. has vigorously backed economic and military action that has reduced Iranian power. (1980-2000s)

3. The Iranians have used proxy militants to attack both the U.S. and Israelis for decades. (1990s-2000s)

4. The Iranian state actively supports violently resisting Israel in Gaza as a religious imperative. (2006-present)

5. The U.S. made a nuclear deal with Iran...and then immediately backed out of it (2015-2018)

6. The prevailing sentiment of both the Israeli and U.S. heads of state is vocally anti-Iranian...and specifically anti-nuclear...and other Middle Eastern states are unlikely to rally to Iran's side. (2024-present)

Conclusion: Well, there it is. I'm sure we could fill several Wikipedia articles with the things I didn't say, but recognize that I was trying to keep this sufficiently concise as to be accessible. Like all of you, I hope for a peaceful resolution to these crises...but given the entrenched positions of all parties involved...well, it's better to be informed than uninformed, right?