Maghrebi.org

As a writer of occasional satire, when I saw Abdulrahman al-Rashed’s “Can the Gulf unite against Iran aggression?” I wondered whether the author was joking. The notion of the perpetually bickering Gulf nations uniting on anything is amusing, while the claim that Iran is the one committing aggression is a grimly hilarious if somewhat tasteless thing to publish in the middle of ongoing funerals in Tehran for the martyred Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his daughter, son-in-law, granddaughter, grandson, daughter-in-law, all murdered by Israel and the US with the help of their Gulf vassals.

But Mr. al-Rashed inadvertently illuminates an important point: The Gulf nations are facing an existential threat and would be well advised to unite in service to their own interests. But they ought to unite behind a pro-Iran policy, not an anti-Iran one. Iran can easily render any or all of the Gulf States uninhabitable by destroying their power and water infrastructure. Given their complicity in Israeli-American terrorism and aggression against Iran, there are probably some Iranians who wouldn’t mind doing that.

The Gulf States need to recognize that their hosting of US bases and Israeli assets makes them complicit in the war crimes of February 28, 2026 and June 13, 2025. They need to accept responsibility for their complicity not only in aggression—the supreme war crime—but also in the genocides of Gaza and Lebanon, against which Iran and every real Muslim on Earth has been struggling for more than 1000 days. They need to repent for these crimes while there is still time to atone for them: “And repentance is not for those who go on doing evil deeds, until when death comes to one of them, he says: Surely now I repent; nor (for) those who die while they are unbelievers. These are they for whom We have prepared a painful chastisement.” (Qur’an 4:18).

Uniting in repentance could serve the Gulf States well in this life as well as in the next. As vassals of the Zionist usury empire that has strangled the former United States of America, the Gulf sheikhs have been forced to pay exorbitant sums for the privilege of being occupied and looted. Iran’s victory over the Zionist-American dajjal offers the Gulf a golden opportunity to break the chains of their oppressors and join the ranks of free nations.

Mr. al-Rashed claims that “Iranian aggressions have…reduced disagreements among Gulf group members.” Perhaps, but not in the direction he suggests. All of the Gulf nations except Bahrain and Kuwait are currently cooperating with Iran, which is why those two nations are still being hit by Iranian missiles and facing the likelihood regime change: Bahrain’s brutal and unrepresentative al-Khalifa regime is not long for this world, while Kuwait faces the prospect of being reabsorbed into Iraq.

Such epochal changes are possible because US is in wholesale retreat from the Middle East as it pivots to East Asia to face its most serious challenger, China. Washington can no longer afford to squander its increasingly limited resources protecting the Genocidal Zionist Entity or pretending to protect the Gulf.

Iran’s now-permanent control of the Strait of Hormuz, and its rocket force that could depopulate the Gulf states, have turned the page on the region. The globally-hated Israelis and their American golem are a remnant of the past. America’s regional bases are devastated, Turkey, Pakistan, and Egypt are working with Iran to build a new regional security architecture for the region, and Saudi Arabia, the leading Gulf power, appears to be cooperating.

The Gulf nations need to recognize that Iran was right in foreseeing, and working for, a post-US-empire, post-Israel world. America’s petrodollar-scam empire now only commands 15% of global GDP while the technological and military cutting edge is in China, the world’s biggest economic power. And Israel, a genocidal settler colony propped up by treasonous “American” billionaire oligarchs, has annihilated its own legitimacy during the 1000 days of Gaza genocide.

The US is collapsing in social putrefaction and economic corruption, exemplified by Trump, whose mad venality recalls Caligula’s. “Israel” is drowning in the blood of tens of thousands of martyred children. And Europe, still a Zio-American vassal, stagnates economically while courting nuclear destruction from Russia.

The future is rising in East Asia, where China is the biggest single pole of the multipolar world. The Gulf States, and the rest of the Global South, would be well advised to avoid becoming collateral damage in this epochal geopolitical shift. By joining Iran and other regional nations in a security arrangement that expels the US and explicitly designates “Israel” as the mortal enemy of Arabs, Muslims, and all humanity, the Gulf Nations can bet on the right horse and get ahead of the change instead of being crushed beneath it.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Maghrebi.org. Dr. Kevin Barrett (Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison 2004) is an American Muslim writer, editor, radio host and TV commentator. He has authored or edited eight books and published hundreds of articles. Since leaving the University of Wisconsin in 2006 he has been exploring issues and perspectives that are banned from mainstream US outlets.

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