> We deserve it for looking the other way while Israel has been mass murdering Palestinians for more than two years now.

The sad part is how the genocide in Gaza could have been prevented:

Imagine an alternate history, in which successive precedencies didn't turn a blind eye to Iran, imagine a decade ago (regardless of democrat or republican administration) that they decided to do what they are doing today in Iran. Iran wouldn't have had the funds and resources to sponsor Hamas and Hezbollah. The populations in Gaza and Lebanon wouldn't have been sandwiched between the projected powers of Israel and Iran. Their power structures could have been legitimate democracies etc. In that world there wouldn't have been a reason for Israel to attack and invade, and even if they did in this alternate history, the rest of the world would have strongly condemned it to the point of military intervention on behalf of Gaza / Lebanon.

Always take not how a faction has risen to power initially. In the case of Iran's regime it was hostage taking. A faction will very often resort to the same tactics and methods it used during its initial ascent to power, a form of survivorship bias.

If the West hadn't let the situation of Iran rot indefinitely for decades (they even systematically rewarded the regime's behavior by systematically giving in to the hostage politics it conducted, in my opinion they should have just drawn a line and said: return these hostages unconditionally or we treat this as hiding behind a human shield).

The genocide against the Palestinians has not started after October 7th though but long before the Islamic Republic of Iran even existed. In the Nakba of 1948 as much al 750k Palestinians lost their homes.

Hezbollah came to be as a resistance group against the invasion of Lebanon by Israel.

The reason both Hamas and Hezbollah exists is because Israel.

There can not be peace in the region as long as Israel exists. They are a settler colonial state build and sustaining itself by the dead bodies and suffering of the Palestinians.

> the rest of the world would have strongly condemned it to the point of military intervention on behalf of Gaza / Lebanon.

That is completely delusional.

I Iran had fallen ten years ago, there would be no Palestinians anymore. No one would have stopped Israel from killing them. Israel would have annexed South Lebanon, part of Syria, Egypt and so on and created Greater Israel.