“We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region.” -- from emails leaked from the office of Hillary Clinton, who was US Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013.
The Iranian people overthrew the shah who ruled for ~38 years and whom the US supported, and seemed to choose theocracy. (I say "seemed" because I'm sure there are two sides to the story. From the little reading I've done, it seems there was significant support for the theocracy.) They now hold elections, though I don't know how free of meddling they are. So they've gone from a US-supported dictatorship, a feeling much of the Middle East and Latin Americas knows, to a partially democratic theocracy.
Negative attitudes towards homosexuality are common across the Middle East; they're not unique to Iran. Neither are negative attitudes towards Israel.
I don't know enough about Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran supposedly building nuclear weapons to comment, so I won't.
For those interested, I highly recommend reading Robert Fisk's "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East"[0]. The author was in Iran during the revolution which overthrew the Shah and offers a fascinating perspective into the Iranian people. The rest of the book is proving to be amazing too!
I can also highly recommend Fisks books (I have The Great War on the shelf and refer to it often), but I would also like to add Robert Baers books, he was a CIA case officer who speaks farsi and is pretty knowledgeable about things. I think it is also highly worth reading up on the original coup that installed the Shah in the first place, it was essentially the first coup the British used their newly trained (everyone knows the OSS became the CIA, but who did the OSS learn from? The Brits) American orgs as a proxy in an overthrow.
Which is one of the reasons moves like this by the UK are interesting; much of the current American sentiment towards Iran was shaped by the Chatham House group in the first place.
Also I sat down and actually read all the IAEA reports in 2010 or so and besides the mossad planted laptop fiasco, all indications were that Iran was not seeking weaponization or even virtual breakout mode, and I have yet to see any good evidence to the contrary other than claims of "secret evidence".
The second is pretty much false. Iran has never tried to build nuclear weapons. Iran has been and always was perfectly in accordance with international law.
If you want to sanction Iran for the reason giving in your first line, then you must sanction literally every single ally the US has in the Middle East.
Please stop claiming that this is some moral position that the US holds.
Pretty good evidence there that Iran wants to destroy Israel. Even if they're not trying to build nukes, which is a stretch, they can't be trusted with nuclear power.
I agree that it is not the only homophobic non-democracy in the Middle East. The sooner no-one needs oil and we can stop dealing with those countries, the better.
The Iranian population is far less against Israel then in Arab countries. Iran was long allied with Israel even after the Revolution.
Iran has shown again and again that they can be trusted as they have join the global communities process from early on and are not the best monitored country. Israel has shown that they can not be trusted with Nuclear power, they have not even signed the NPT.
Iran government might want to destroy Israel, but Israel government would like to destroy Iran as well. They are both regional powers.
They also want to wipe Israel from the map and are trying to build nuclear weapons.
We need more sanctions, not less.