Conjuring Adolf Hitler and the narrative of German guilt

"Conjuring Hitler" by Guido Giacomo Preparata is a difficult, but interesting read (excerpt with the content of "Conjuring Hitler"). Mr Preparata does follow a lead on understanding the Nazis that a number of economists uncovered. The problem during reading much of the book is that the author has chosen a compelling story over more grounded analyses that puts things in place at the conclusion of the book. This is no slight conspiracy narrative as it might seem before reaching the final verdicts.

The German narrative on guilt from the Nazi-era is heavily shaped by finding a comfortable solution in forming a specific narrative of guilt and excuse. I know few humans, who would not shape their feelings of guilt likewise, even more so if you consider the massive media impact of bad Nazi-portrayal film imports that are very entertaining. Kudos in this part to "Inglorious Bastards" by Quentin Tarantino for waging a battle on the Nazi-film concepts and to German! actor Bruno Ganz in "Der Untergang"/"Downfall" for highlighting the human being Adolf Hitler, who ruthlessly shaped himself into an impersonification.

Hitler and the NSDAP
There's little that is not known about Hitler and the NSDAP, like "Woyzeck" by Georg Büchner, the compilation can make a difference in perception.
The NSDAP was a movement that wanted to be a party and the jobless Reichswehr snitch Adolf Hitler did see the opportunity to become someone if he joined them. He was not the only person to gain influence in this heterogeneous agglomeration with political and other goals. Much like the state of the state, this party was not united by one clear-cut ideology. Hitler created both, the final Nazi ideology and the unification of the state under one official ideology. In both cases, he had to bring ideas expressed by him into the mindset of others, lots of others. This task was helped by money, science and technology. From earliest times this was a massive field test of all kinds of manipulation techniques the new science of psychology had without any bonds. Amassing humans and exposing them to an expression of ideas was just one of the ways to garner acceptance from people, who would be rather unconvinced individually. The speech patterns were part of a show at human gatherings and consequently lose their appeal out of context. All this required money, lots of money and the NSDAP was intent on winning big one time and having elections never afterwards. They gambled and their opponents tried to conduct a war of attrition by holding successive elections. When NSDAP votes went down, they were integrated into the Reichs government, although it was a legal somersault to make the stateless manipulator Hitler a German citizen. During all this time Hitler not only defeated his opponents by better capability at psychological warfare against the Strasser brothers, but via his connections to big industry to finance the rise of the NSDAP. It's not known how stable this NSDAP would have been as an elected party because the votes were specifically accumulated to end all voting and all accountability. As usual people vote for a party, but not necessarily share all their goals with them, rather they want to push goals that are important to them.

Money money money
As soon as the NSDAP was in power, they went about to organize a giant burglary. It started with all kinds of Germans they wanted disowned and dead and was meant to end with similar measures applied to the Eastern Europeans. The benefits should be invested into arms and armour that would make it impossible to take away the loot and make the Anglo-Saxon sea powers negotiate peace with the new über-power of Eurasia.
It started with all kinds of Germans. Despite much research and theorizing, the Aryan-type research could not explain to the population a convincing and verifiable way to tell Jews apart from Aryans. Due to this obvious failure of the whole science, the big yellow stickers were needed. Even today, someone with similar intent has no other solution available. Jewish identity was established by ancestry of Jewish confession with no idea about ancient conversions to Judaism. It didn't matter, it was not about "genetic purity", it was a religious war against fellow Germans. The goal was to get money to finance armaments which should bring in more money by taking away possessions outside of Germany.
The awful lot of money gained through the Aryanization served as benefits for the propertied unaffected Germans to keep quiet about the strange Mefo-bills that financed a massive armament push with an impressive backing on paper that was thin air in reality.
One can see the pretty exhaustive thought control from arts to introducing the "Volksempfänger" radio for propaganda as one big push to keep the immoral nature of the government hidden within plain sight by reality denial. The reality denial was constructed around material gains and social control.

Central Europe and Central Africa - not far apart
It will be easier to understand the Reich and their deeds if you look at the Rwanda genocide, the strategically important mineral Coltan and the resulting Congo Wars that have been ravaging for decades. These are human errors repeated again and again with a very similar blueprint of greed trumping moral feelings in an environment of indoctrinated righteousness with soldering and violence as economic chances to better one's life at the expense of others.
It's a failure of being capable to improve as part of a cooperating human network. Role models do have quite an impact by developed countries showing high levels of consumption. But visiting these places shows the astonished foreigner that they have less inclination towards extreme forms of visible conspicious consumption such as mobile electronics, cars and clothing in order to be something with disregard for own their well-being in the living space for example. Expressed social stratification by show-off consumption patterns becomes less significant, the more the cooperation value of a human network goes up and the more people do contribute of their income to collective efforts (grudgingly wherever you go, but to differing degrees of becoming illegal at certain levels).

To be continued.

Judgement of Paris, a German painting from 1939

NS-Kunst und Kultur is an informative German homepage (in German) about the different arts in the Third Reich. They use Ivo Saliger's painting "Judgement of Paris" to highlight the Nazis' ideal of painting female human bodies. This image of Saliger really got me going, with some background knowledge, you notice a timeless message. The digital copy of the image under discussion is from http://www.dhm.de/lemo/objekte/pict/98005505/index.html

http://schikelgruber.net/saliger.html provides a good overview on the biography of Ivo Saliger and some of his works. This man was capable of creating art and their statement on this image neatly sums it up:
"The breathtakingly absurd Judgement
of Paris (1939), which shows Paris as
a Hitler Youth in shorts, choosing
between three strapping specimens of
Aryan womanhood."

The depicted Paris looks astonishingly like Josef Goebbels. The very propaganda minister, who decided on the future of German artists. The depicted women are not Greek Goddesses competing for beauty and bribing a mortal human in order to gain an unfair advantage. They are typification of Aryan womanhood sexually offering themselves to the propaganda minister. Josef Goebbels liked his job, there were lots of wannabe (film-)starlets, who tried to sleep with him in order to gain promotion.
Today, the ever-adapting Josef Goebbels would probably also have a satisfying job, perhaps even in the media&arts business.

War chariots: human relays and car-borne infantry

It is a widespread perception that the so-called battle taxis were war chariots used to transport one heavily armed warrior to the fight and retrieve him again with the same vehicle. The warrior was not necessarily the owner of this device, but selected by the owner. Queen Boudicca's revolt or the Trojan war are memorable stories with such chariots that seem to differ from Egyptian ranged combat use of chariots.

I see no compelling reason in the ancient sources to negate the option of using such a chariot to drive in sequence more than one warrior to a battle scene. A tandem of two warriors would work much better than one due to an optional delivery of a replacement to protect the retrieval of a tired, endangered or wounded warrior. There is neither any convincing support in the primary sources for such a common sense approach.
Switching chariot warriors might have been common in various chariot fighting systems. These men performed demanding physical tasks, including ranged combat. If performing at their utmost, they would tire sooner than the horses, rendering a very expensive technical system much less effective without comparatively cheap human relays.

The difference between riding and chariotry, both known since the early days of horse domestication, is the better capability of pulling a load on wheels than carrying one on the back.Chariots give heavier loads or better endurance per horse with a technology intense solution. Many communities mastered the step from donkey cart to horse chariot with much communality of parts. The position for riding on horseback is different from the one taken above the hindquarters of a donkey, but the donkey seat is still depicted on Assyrian reliefs. The horse was probably seen as a war donkey that had quite extraordinary fodder requirements and was no economic solution for anything except warfare and fast transport.

Heavily armoured combatants with more training and increased mobility by riding/pulling animals were often used to reinforce lighter armoured infantry formations as required. Anglo-Saxon huscarls are such an example. The chariot is one means to cover such distances. Density of heavily armoured men necessary and available per area of combat would influence the degree of benefits provided by a fast transport. The effort spent on the vehicle can be used to increase the number of heavily armoured warriors instead.
Owning a chariot and equipping outstanding warriors seems like a typical approach of highlighting prestige by an aristocracy. A war fighting system can be entrenched not only in cost calculations, but in political system calculations of visible euergetism for a community.
That is certainly not the only option to use such troops, but it offers a heterodox view to reread the maryannu-stories, Iliad and the Irish sagas.

The chariot was dropped from the inventory in favour of heavy cavalry that was more versatile and less expensive. The reports of riders dismounting for combat should not be overemphasized. There is a tradition of recognizing specific military advantages throughout the ages. Mounted men could again and again find themselves in a more perilous position on horseback than on foot.

Switching sides (Left or right handed or something else? Part 2)

In "Left- or right handed or something else?", I highlighted the problem of finding skills and their lateralization in order to know how to use them.
Switching hands is concerned with the problems of people who have forever irreplaceable lost a limb, more specifically the hand with or without the whole arm, and now have to adjust.
Person with some degree of cross-laterality can confirm that using an object with both limbs enables them to have a kind of skill flow that feels to enable a very complete cooperation of skills lateralized on different sides. They may still feel more comfortable with specific stances that require a certain laterality to perform more within one skill field and are less capable if switching these positions. Ice hockey has left and right sided sticks with corresponding advantages in wing positions with players often being suited more for one or the other side. The skill flow can nevertheless be utilized by mentally using the non-existent limb in an imagined auxiliary grip to enhance performance.
This can result in mental stress if the condition of a forever irreplaceable lost a limb is not given. Humans can handle stress, drummers can temporarily switch their dominant hand, but an overdose of mental stress can induce critical system failures in every human.

What happens to skills that are not used on that side?
It seems to depend.
Very unequal capability of eyes to provide the brain with usable images can lead to a loss of function by the eye that does provide information of limited to no use in comparison to the better eye. The loss of function goes along with a grab of ocular dominance on all kinds of skill by the over performing eye. In order to maintain bi-ocular sight, temporary eye patches that reduce visual recognition ability of the better eye get prescribed.
Persons who were forced/convinced to use their non-preferred hand for writing, and often for every other possible task, can use their original preference under new settings or when they figured out their own mental construct for acting like that. There are claims that they do have some kinds of confusion problem due to this set up.
I presume, the difference is what the brain decides to do about these situations. The reported confusions can be attempts to tackle issues in a way the biological brain still sees as opportune that a cultural adaption of the mind tries to overrule.

Laterality - asymmetry for organization and its effect on the ability to switch
A perfectly symmetric human looks perfect and - scary. One of the first art lessons.
Humans with malnutrition tend to have more tendency for asymmetry.
A high degree of symmetry is perceived as attractive.
Current left-handers have more symmetric arms than right-handers.

Lateralization is the development of sidedness, mammals and other animals have all degrees of asymmetry spreed over all features of their bodies. For humans, this asymmetry gets always most pronounced by a stronger development of the right side and there is hardly any measurably more pronounced development on the left side. Situs inversus is the rare case of the opposite. There is a correlation between left lateralization and symmetry and right lateralization and asymmetry. The lateralization program itself seems to be an organization function that gives different symmetry or asymmetry values to everything throughout body and brain. These differences do not necessarily lead to any kind of cross-dominance.
They are presumably helpful for organizing self-perception. The skills that are derived from these kinds of asymmetries are not located somewhere left or right or in between. Under the influence of the lateralization program, the pronunciation of features is pulled from the default setting on the extreme left to the right with accompanying increase in asymmetry. In the default setting left with its high degree of symmetry, the skill values for the right side are less likely to reach a level that makes use of a range of specific skills impossible.
All kinds of cultures have been able to reach very low levels of reported left-handers, none has been able to achieve similar low levels of right-handers.Prior left hand dominance provides an adaptive advantage if being compelled to switch.

Left- or right handed or something else?

Let's start with the things we don't know:
We have no idea how many left handed people there would "naturally" be in a population as no scientist is able to make a claim to have discovered a population that is not under some cultural influence on handedness with differing and evolving numbers.
Current handedness "tests" produce the statistics of the culturally influenced numbers of left- and right-handers. Often this numbers are equated with something biological for further research.

There's one profession that is knowledgeable about getting the use of left and right hand in accordance with disposition. - drummers
Drummers know a lot about using the correct lead hand when drumming, because violating that rule gives everyone, except the lucky few true ambidexters, a considerable headache and mental exhaustion.
The dominant drumming hand is not necessarily the most comfortable writing hand.
There are drummers who feel comfortable using different lead hands for different kinds of beating techniques like forehand and backhand beats or with big instead of small drumsticks.
Laterally cross-dominant is the term used for this configuration. A lot of people know that they are to some degree cross dominant because they know a specific ability that is better developed on their non-dominant arm or hand. Often they find out just after having the other one temporarily immobilized. Cross-dominance has not yet been understood as there are people around who jump for height with one leg and for width with another.
Baseball is one of the few sports with attention to cross-dominance that provides advantages.

A number of people commonly list this incomplete list of specific lateraly superior skills for their arm or hand: Testing can be a lot about internal perception of better capabilities.

strength
endurance
throwing (speedy muscle contraction)
3-dimensional control
finger motoric control

Other than the hand or arm, everything has lateral dominance with no correlation being established between the lateralization of one kind of organ and another.
There's a simple test on some kinds of ocular dominance:
Point with your finger at a target with both eyes open. Afterwards you close each eye in succession and check for which eye the finger is closer aligned to the target. Next step is checking with targets at different distances.

It's normal for all children to have a phase when they try to figure out their constitution of specific skill lateralization. A long phase of such testing is often referred to as "insecure handedness" (the organ under most cultural pressure for conformity). It is possible to solve the same task with recourse to different kinds of skills that can be developed on one side or another. Cooperation between attributes on the same side is usually quicker to learn. It is not known to what degree concepts like being left- or right handed can influence a person on understanding themselves and reduce the employment of attributes situated on the non-namesake laterality. Generally, writing from left to right looks better when done with the right hand, but it helps to learn a few tricks from Arabic calligraphy that has a lot of right handed artists writing from right to left. There are two different writing styles of left-handers, over- and underliner. Both develop natural with rather different calligraphic looks. They can depend on different unknown combinations of opportune skill sets.
Knowing a configuration of skill lateralization does not determine the laterality employed because well-known skills can often be used to solve the same task under different mental approaches. For this reason cross-laterality is often listed among ambidexterity with consequent scrutiny because obvious differences in capability could be detected.That did not fit the definition of ambidexterity as developed from ancient sources.
Ambidexterity was one of the educational goals of Renaissance men. The enforced approach of teaching absolute skill equality of both hands irrespective of any disposition seems to have been retarding for mental development of children.

"I was left handed and was forced to become right handed" is a frequently reappearing topic throughout the world. Often it will result in surprising difficulties to use the old envisioned natural hand. In order to not use a hand, that would be preferred because of an inherent skill set initially considered suitable, you need a mental construct that helps to learn a different approach with corresponding other existing skills. The task has mentally been connected with a specific skill set approach and the formerly more convenient approach of skills is not activated. With the capability to figure out and activate specific skills flexibility in approach can be obtained.

An inherent skill set considered suitable should be remembered when a child starts writing as there might be a misunderstanding about this new kind of task.

Oxymoron of secular Israel's problem with Palestinians

A look at Jewish history reminds everyone of the not insignificant effect of conversions to Judaism. An out-of Israel narrative for all Jews is an oxymoron, just like a secular state fighting for the Holy Land. 
Many Ashkenazim can track ancestors to the Chazars, who claimed to be lost Central Asian Jews with some of their tribes refinding their true religion. 
Sephardim, despite the Early Muslim jihad, can track ancestors to Jewish kingdoms like the Himyarites, who converted in order to find a third way between Ethiopian Christian and Persian Zoroastrian pressure for compliance. 
There are Ethiopian Jews who struggle sometimes for full recognition.
But what do you make of the remaining Bani Israel of Central Asia that have a similar claim like the old Chazar Ashkenazim and are almost exclusively composed of Muslim Afghans, including Taliban? 
The Chazars tracked their ancestry to these Jews and Islamic literature and Pashtu oral tradition establish similar claims. Can people of Jewish descent and Muslim faith, who feel persecuted, settle in Israel that is a secular state for all Jews? 
What happens with the property rights of a Jew in Israel who decides that the old contract with God has been diluted over time and needs reform? 

It's very hard to justify the ongoing land grab of settlers protected by secular Israel from "Palestinians" if you recognize their part of genetic Jewish ancestry that makes them mumarim. The ancestors of the modern Palestinians opted for an improved version of the same old contract with God that both, Christianity and Islam, claim. The story of Israel being devoid of Jews after the wars with the Romans is not supported by literary evidence that mentions Jews in Israel throughout the ages. It's a relict of 19th century historiography.
There were immigrants intermarrying with current Palestinians and conversions to Judaism worldwide. Hopefully, no one goes for a pure blood test in Israel for establishing claims of landowning über- and disowned under-race, but doing it on a confessional basis in a secular state is no less strange. 
Keeping a boiling conflict helps to entrench in front lines without thinking too much about things other than these front lines. The Palestinians defined themselves as Arabs(a lot of people do since the Muslim conquest) and were hostile to the massive inflow of Jewish Ashkenazim immigrants, predominantly from Europe. These were not Sephardim Jews, who shared a common culture with the Arabs.

Arab is in most cases a cultural identification and not connected to being Sunni-Muslim. There are various Christian, including Coptic, and Shia, including Druze, Ismaeli or Bahrani, Arabs. All of them are minority beliefs within the larger Arab community. 
Self-recognition of Arabian identity started with conversions to Judaism of Semitic tribes on the Arabian peninsula in order to form one identity beyond tribal bonds. The Early Muslim jihad established the Muslim ummah (community of all Muslims) as competing identity concept, eliminating Judaism's prominent role on the peninsula. The intertwined Muslim and Arab identity within the ummah was not accepted east of Mesopotamia. Early caliphs specifically referred to Persians(then predominantly Sunni) and Arabs being equals within the Muslim community. 
Sephardim are the cultural catalyst of Arabian identity perception. Nationhood is a European concept since Napoleonic times that secular Pan-Arabs tried to bring into post-colonization politics with various attempts at uniting states (the Arab League is a leftover). Most Arab-designated countries are tribes with flags that own a territory called nation and have very sharp distinctions of tribal claims to spoils from natural resources and taxes.

The conflict in Palestine started with hostility by local Middle Easterners against massive European Ashkenazim immigration. These Ashkenazim wanted to create a state according to their ideas on a land that now happened to be Palestine and not Uganda (PR failure of Jewganda). The Jewish plight and self-defence is as understandable as the Palestinian resistance to one of the last colonization enterprises and the Middle Eastern sympathies with them. Sephardim Jews migrate to Israel not only for economic reasons. Tolerance for different  interpretations of Islam can be a rare good in their former residences, even more so for al kitab, (Islamic legal term for "people of the book", coined for Jews and Christians, who have an acceptable religion, unlike heathen pagans).

The Lebanese were to some level able to reconcile on discovering their common Phoenician ancestors, because they could scientifically counter the fairy tales of who was a Phoenician descendant and who was not.

Seeing Palestinians as people with as ancient Jewish roots as other Israelis, makes the continuation of hostilities utmost difficult and will be hard to counter with any evidence that stands up to scientific scrutiny. It's a jump in mindsets and I believe both sides to be too entrenched in comfortable stereotypes. 
But one step makes the whole conflict a nonsense idea.

Annotated reading on the problems of secular Jewish identity, religion and conversion of religion.
Messianic Judaism in the USA  shows that the dividing lines between the Abrahamic religions are not as clear cut as often thought.
Religious conversions in Israel are news. The fact of being news highlights the bond of confession with problems.

Warfare and ritual

Introduction
Wesley Clark decided to speak out about the current US engineered government swaps since 9/11 (Wesley Clark on 9/11 policy coup). It's part of a tradition of professional soldiers speaking plainly about the dissatisfaction with what they are used for. "War is a racket" by Smedley Butler is an older reproach, highlighting that he "might have given Al Capone a few tips".
"Weapon systems and political stability" is a dated and unfinished manuscript by the economist Carroll Quigley. It contains lots of nuggets of ideas and insights. The aforementioned soldiers act with an idealism that is at odds with reality.
This idealism comes from a system of concepts that legitimize extreme inter human violence by putting it into ritual frameworks. Different societies and political movements do not share exactly the same ritual frameworks, but usually achieve some common rituals in order to have limited conflicts. An inability to find a common ritual leads to an open bottom spiral of violence that in theory can only be solved by completely killing one side.

The American way of occupation
The American way of war has been to shower occupied lands with money as a herbicide against insurgents rising against benefactors and "swimming among the population like fish in water" (Mao). Sometimes shower heads are missing or the supply gets too diluted and manipulated for the desired effect. This makes the USA a force of good as they convincingly try to help other people, unlike previous empires who took without spending. The lands conquered in recent times, since 9/11, all contain vast riches of natural resources and US companies do often, but not exclusively, directly profit from the exploitation of these resources. Their profits stand in no relation to the expenditure by the American state and thus taxpayers. Even as a giant Ponzi scheme for private enrichment exploiting a lobby-able state, it makes a very poor show in comparison to straightforward embezzlement practised by different elites.

Sea and land power
It starts to make more sense if you take a classic sea power point of view. A sea power controls the sea lines of communication that in human history have always been used to transfer the greatest quantity of goods over the greatest distance with other methods being insignificant in weight per distance statistics of overall transports. A land power by contrast controls the places where certain goods are produced and usually depends on sea powers to allow transport and trade. A sea power is capable of influencing the water transport network and only through participation in a network of mutual exchange can people with differing advantages maximise the profits from their output. A sea power traditionally provided a large tonnage of transport vessels, but is not required to because in the essence it's about controlling the flow of goods, not providing it. From a sea powers point of view, the quest for power is about control of available opportunities for themselves and against their enemies. For this task they can from time to time muster their assets to divert the stream of goods as required. The US is extending influence on the flow goods landwards in some places with the intent of improving their ability to manipulate the global flow of goods. Benefits don't derive from occupied lands, but from the economic paybacks of network control paid in totally different places another time. A land power can transfer over land  many humans to violently convince or kill others. Over sea the transport of goods has always been optimal, but in slotting through humans it provides a bottleneck. Going over sea required to achieve a mutual agreement, while moving continental could be less enticed for an understanding. As outlined above, the rituals of warfare serve as enabler of understandings to limit violence. You can consider the current US as an example of a sea power mentality that needs mutual rituals for their conflicts.

Denial of rituals and enforced ritual
I outlined the effect of denial of ritual on violence above. Genocides are an example of such a case of not achieving a mutual ritual, not due to a lack of understanding, but pretended deafness and cunning.
The Japanese attack against Pearl Harbour is an often cited example of a clash of different ritual concepts. The US operated according to the Western system that consider such an act most dishonorable as the ritual dance of weapons needs an official introduction for all participants to get ready in their costumes. The Japanese had their own tradition that considers declarations of warfare as a great folly because it gives an enemy time to get dressed for the show and perform with less embarrassment. Japan tried during this war to further exploit a denial of common ground rituals such as surrender and was faced with weapons of indiscriminate mass-murder like firestorms and nuclear bombs, until they agreed to a show of Western rituals to finish the Japanese instrument of surrender. No guerrilla insurrection followed, even Unit 731 handed over their gruesome data and Japan was recreated as a state according to US views.
The Taliban of Afghanistan by contrast have not yet signed any such instrument or participated in a similar show. In Iraq this went well with the Baath party's grip on power fading away and being replaced by different alignments. In the tribal society of Afghanistan the US opposition is entrenched in the majority, not the minority tribe, of Pashtus and it does not appear like things will follow a similar route.
Despite this lack of mutual recognition, there's neither an indiscriminate mass-slaughter of these people. A solution to ritual denial is partial ritual recognition by a group that has insider knowledge on the population base of opponents. This is often called a puppet regime because they do have to comply to a foreign power. It's important for their credentials and effectiveness to show a tolerable level of resistance. Like most people in power, they can use that force to settle private scores and gain benefits with hubris leading to scorn and separation from the population with corresponding loss of insider knowledge and effectiveness at population control. The mindset makes the difference. Humans can readjust their worldview and memory if given a convincing chance to do so and every society has a mechanism for transporting guilt on someone in order to stabilize the order of the rest. The game is about creating scapegoats and in a civil war it's hard not to be guilty if you're allied with the creators of this mischief by their invasion.
Germany and Japan had the advantage of falling into their own cultural guilt trap from which they could be rescued by the foreign invasions. Instead of civil war, social ostracism was exercised within these societies on some scapegoats, who could not convincingly claim to have been innocent or coerced. These were the ones who had brought the perils of war and occupation upon the others.

Why?
The why of the rituals seems clear, it limits violence by reaching some common ground of understanding and acting together instead of mutilating and killing each other.
Why is there warfare? As per above it results from an extreme unwillingness to cooperate with each other. Non-cooperation is understandable as a denial of perceived unfair exploitation, but also as a claim to status, benefits and as attempted coercion.
After the latest episodes of very bloody warfare all over the world, the former major powers have changed their ministries of military affairs into defence ministries in order to secure moral grounds. This moral ground has extended the necessary amount of rituals for a legitimate declaration of warfare. There was yet no major master of ceremonies, who totally failed at creating these necessities, unlike many minor players at war. The moral ground is often only a stimulus package derived from the right performance of pre-war rituals for getting into war frenzy.
The Chinese are not wrong that this is a rigged international system and are reluctant to participate. Voilà, you have a human conflict that includes billions of people.Would they create something that is not rigged?

There are many reasons for fighting or not fighting a war. Real reasons can be justified, pretending wrong reasons can serve better. It's all very obvious in everyday conflicts.
Have you ever met someone who never had any conflict?

Iran's theoretical nukes threaten Israel

Iranian nuclear goals:

Iran wants theoretical nuclear capability in accordance with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty that gives them the right to be capable to develop nuclear weapons and strike back with such in case they or an ally face a nuclear first strike. Since Israel does have nuclear weapons, a full scale conventional attack by non-nuclear backed forces was pointless due to having zero chances of success against a last ditch Israeli nuclear first strike capability against anything from civilian to military targets. Iran develops a nuclear knowledge umbrella that serves as a minimum deterrence second strike capability. From underneath that umbrella Israel can again be threatened with full scale conventional wars they can possibly lose.
Other countries with theoretical nuclear capability are South Africa, that disarmed their nukes, or Italy and Germany, who participated in the now French nuclear weapon program (and were cheated from the having the result), or Brazil and Turkey that voluntary decided to cease their nuclear weapon efforts.
None of them proclaims their legal second strike right nor uses it as a political tool. This assumed Iranian mindset has to do with nuclear ambiguity, a policy of deterrence or "area denial" by minor powers who feel threatened by major powers. Apartheid South Africa was and North Korea(it's unknown whether they have more than then the tested nuclear device) and Israel(their official policy) are examples of this policy. Iran under the Shah was a staunch US ally with oilfields next to the Soviet Union and had a similar program as the Islamic Iranian Republic today. It was aimed at nuclear ambiguity in order to deter the Soviet Red Army that Iran could never have defeated in a conventional battle. It served as a recognizable status symbol, despite not equalling the nuclear partnership level with known deploy able bombs, but allowed for considerable indigenous efforts and pride at achieving something.
The Islamic Revolution brought Islam to the forefront and with Islam came ethics that make a first strike use of possible nukes impossible to justify. That's the major difference between the ongoing Iranian nuclear program since the days of the Shah.The next step was to drop any ongoing drive for a nuclear bomb altogether, according to the official CIA information on that issue. That's sensible, because it diverted scarce resources from other fields of widening nuclear knowledge. A theoretical nuclear power, like Japan, never committed to any research on nuclear explosions that are just maximized neutron flux in fission material within a short time frame amplified in energy emission by surrounding fusion material. Engineering the neutron flux is the bread and butter of running nuclear reactors. You can be capable of building some kind of nuclear bomb, not the most refined and efficient kind, without that much research. Explosive effects of all nuclear weapons pale in comparison to their nuclear fall out area. Mutually Assured Destruction is not about blowing each other to pieces ("duck and cover" works for some people), but salting the earth with radioactive poison.

The Iranian nuclear program's effects:
Iran is on the long list of countries that are "Soviet leftovers" and "need a new US-friendly government" "before the next challenging superpower rises". 9/11 served as an initial excuse for starting this whole series of operations that was knowable long before. Z. Brzeziński is one of the guys bragging about this "secret plan", just like he brags about his complicated Afghanistan trap for the Soviets, but this time prior to events and I don't think he's the mastermind on this one. Our media somehow fails to mention that we have all the time been moving from one country on the publicly known list to the next with another enticing pretext (former NATO SACEUR Wesley Clark neatly sums it up) during the Bush(ridiculed for "lack of intellect") and Obama(a Nobel peace prize recipient) presidencies. The nuclear story is just one such excuse, but much better than the Iraqi WMD or fighting al-Qaeda for over a decade in the Hindu Kush.

The nuclear research story helps Iran at the moment to foster an internal defensive alliance of the population, while at the same time giving them the option to go for a know-how threshold that could force Israel to acknowledge a different strategic environment. For Iranians there’s obvious information that seems verifiable and counter factual to the Iranian nuclear bomb project, like diminishing stocks of enriched material due to transfers to medical facilities in Tehran. This does help to widen the perceived injustice induced stabilization against intruding outsiders. The longer this story goes with high tension claims, the more boring it will become. Like every repeated story, it can reach an infinite threshold of boredom, while real-life effects due to sanctions remain obvious. After a long time of strong mutual support, dissension can grow in Iran due to perceived misuse of such a support by current leaders for other ends.That can cause a backlash of public opinion change proportional to the perceived moral support previously provided and the willingness to endure hardships for this stance.

Conquering Iran:

The current legal-nuclear-ambitions-derived-unfair-sanctions-story serves as a rallying point for Iranians to support their government and face these sanctions. They could do forever if they feel everyone is sharing equal in misery. The economic favours and influence displayed by Middle Eastern elites and mighty guardian institutions will run counter to meritocratic aspirations for chances of a boom of educated youths, even more so under duress that highlights existing inequality with scarcity. It’s not clear how long a narrative of being compelled under duress will carry on, but the ends of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact are showcases of narrative conviction failure. 
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard are the loyal supporters of the political system, who use that position in power for economic gains, not unlike Russian siloviks or Chinese princelings. This phenomena of power derived from a mixed clout of state and commercial enterprise control by a class of system servants is nothing new under the sun. It does not necessarily lead to any kind of public outrage. There are societies with historic roots and traditional procedures with mutual recognition for this very kind of system. Song-dynasty China is an example of the high industrial productivity and quality of life such a system can achieve. However, the reasons for the Song military defeats by the northern tribes, such as the Mongols, are an ongoing debate.
Iran has some real major political compensation option for achieving an envisioned level of nuclear proficiency. That entices them to continue down that road for as long as it takes to have their theoretical nuclear capability umbrella recognized. Going down this road is the best option to unify and quell dissent that made some headlines after the last Iranian presidential elections. It’s like giving viagra to an old man; he can become addicted to fulfilling his dreams and risks death due to his constitution being unable to cope with the other effects.

Iran will commit to their best option of violence for coercing invasive foreigners to accept the integrity of their current political system. They follow an ethic code of current Shia (sometimes mortal enemies of Sunni) interpretations of Islamic military jurisprudence that excludes nuclear first strikes. Pakistan is the non-hostile neighbouring Sunni non-secular Muslim country with nuclear weapons. They have no idea how these weapons fit with their Muslim ethics, but they give great status and satisfaction. If you deny Iran a convincing ability to fight a decisive military engagement to their liking, they will look for other options of defiance.

As long as Iran believes in their chance of defending their political system with their military hardware, they will be enthusiastic about following down that road. The more they believe, the better such a believe can be crushed without creating an attitude of defiance that makes occupation a more costly adventure than Afghanistan. War is a ritual as will be outlined below in another post.
It’s another masterpiece of the smokescreens used in such high level power games. Nevertheless, as the previous regime change shows, there are negligible chances of ending the Iranian nuclear program that has always been an integral part of Iranian ambitions. The realistic option is recognition of Iranian theoretical nuclear capability in exchange for not making it a dagger against Israel. That's similar to convincing Pakistan to abstain from using their nukes as a political lever in the Persian Gulf and beyond.
The Western public should, through the news exposure, recognize current Iranian governments as mad would-be-killers who want a bomb, because no sane person is that enamoured with nuclear reactors. This gives green light to any future measures necessary for regime change and is a case in point on how the Iranians can be convicted of thought crimes that are less hard to find than Iraqi WMD.

Regional politics:

The Sunni Gulf-States are against any Iranian power and prestige gains which could unhinge the current financial benefits for the ruling Sunni tribal nepotism from the oilfields that lie beneath the habitat of a majority population of subdued Shia tribes. Shia and Sunni are two Islamic interpretations that have been frequently at war since the foundation of that religion, with Iran being the major champion of Shia faith. Arab states have frequently been called "tribes with flags", highlighting the tribal hierarchy of power with top dog tribes getting more and better services, money and weapons than less government affiliated tribes that are the usual troubleshooters in rebellions. How should an economy work, other than with labour imports, if the best educated men are constantly obsessed with crushing the hopes of the least educated?
Real Arab nations are Tunisia (tracking themselves back to Carthage), Egypt (with millennia of nationhood) and Morocco (for centuries the kingdom/s of resistance against foreign Muslim domination and Christian conquest). Iran is predominantly not Arabian (their Shia-Arabs also live on their oil fields)  and somewhere in the middle between tribes and nations with an ethnically diverse landscape.

Israeli Sephardi speak all Arabic dialects as native languages and are an important piece of projecting power through knowledge for the US-SIGINT backed diplomacy. Without Israel, this capability to interfere with some level of understanding in major oil regions of the world would vanish. 

Looking closer at Israel:

It’s unlikely that within some decades any Near Eastern force could conventionally defeat the Israeli military and occupy their land, although an alliance of Iran, Iraq, Syria, de facto independent Hezbollah-land, Egypt and Hamas-land Gaza could theoretically launch a giant invasion that would be a tad more threatening than the last time, when Saudi Arabia participated instead of Iran. 
An improved ability of the ongoing harassing warfare with conventional forces can cause fatigue while Israeli influence in the Middle East can be curtailed by a viable counterweight through nuclear prestige that helps to bandwagon interests (all other nuclear ambitions were forcibly shut down or Americanized).Hezbollah is an Iranian sponsored borderline phenomenon between regular and irregular forces that follows this path of endemic violence.

Israeli demographics of non-military servicing, violence enticing (not all of them) Haredi Jews, who are granted a substituted life and strongly want to shape Judaism (not all of them, but as usual these are vocal), are one of the moral erosion factors under such tension. Due to the structure of the Israeli political system, their Shas party has yet always been part of any government to protect these privileges. Their numbers at the polls rise and their welfare grant is a compromise for Israel’s strange definition of a constitutional secular state centred on a religion.