The Arab world has been lured in – through a pragmatic, utilitarian approach over decades. The US established a system of dependency across the Gulf states, built upon military bases, arms deals, F-15 fighter jets, defence treaties, Nvidia chips, data centres, and investment flows through figures such as Jared Kushner, whose fund now manages billions of dollars from Gulf sovereign wealth funds.
In return for all this, only one thing was asked of the Arab states: normalise relations with Israel, while the Palestinian question is quietly buried.
Some complied. The Abraham Accords were portrayed as peace treaties, yet they were nothing of the sort. Rather, they were pragmatic arrangements through which Arab states received American military hardware, digital technologies, and diplomatic coverwhile Israel obtained its most cherished objective: Arab acquiescence to the erasure of Palestinian sovereignty.
Whenever a genuine Arab leader attempted to chart an independent path, based on Arab solidarity and resistance to external domination, the US moved to remove him. This pattern has repeated across the region for 70 years. The intense pressures faced by Egypt under Nasser stand as one clear example.
As for Iran, it is not the natural enemy of the Gulf states. This rivalry was deliberately fuelled as part of a “divide and rule” strategy serving American and Israeli interests. The US needs the Gulf to remain anxious about Iran so that it continues purchasing American weapons, hosting military bases, and aligning with Israel.
When the Saudi foreign minister met the Iranian president in Doha and declared his intention to “turn the page on disputes with Iran forever,” he was articulating the only sensible strategic vision for the region – a vision that has now been set on fire.
Today, America’s Gulf partners are discovering the truth behind Henry Kissinger’s famous remark: “To be an enemy of the US is dangerous, but to be its friend is fatal.”
Despite all their efforts, they now find themselves under bombardment, while their ambitions of becoming safe havens for global wealth, trade, and tourism are evaporating amid the flames of a regional war.
Moving the Arab world forward requires breaking with the structure of dependency on the US and Israel, a structure that took decades to build.
The time has come for the world to say a firm “no” to Israeli expansionism and the relentless beating of war drums. Today, everyone is paying the price as the global economic catastrophe unfolds in the wake of the Israeli-American assault.
American military bases must leave. They are not shields protecting their host countries; rather, they are magnets that attract missiles and destruction.
Arab states must build close working relationships with all major powers – China, India, Russia, Türkiye, the European Union, and the African Union – instead of remaining trapped within the exclusive orbit of the US.
Indeed, Muslim countries, through the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, should begin direct and urgent talks with the BRICS nations.
The Abraham Accords must also be terminated, and diplomatic relations with Israel severed until a sovereign Palestinian state is accepted as a member of the United Nations. Only then can normalisation proceed. Normalisation without a Palestinian state is not peace; it is complicity in Israel’s wars of dominance.
Most urgently, Iran and the Gulf states, as Muslim-majority nations, must work together to find a diplomatic solution to the current crisis. The US should step back, and Israel must stop the bombing. Every missile exchanged between Muslim countries is simply a victory for the project of “Greater Israel.”
Benjamin Netanyahu himself has said that this is his 40-year dream, yet it is the nightmare of the entire world.
The question remains: Will the Arab world continue drifting through this nightmare in heedlessness, or will it awaken to answer the timeless call shared by the three Abrahamic religions – that peace in the Middle East can only stand upon the foundation of justice, not upon American or Israeli domination?
[by Jeffrey Sachs, Sybil Fares in Aljazeera]
Compiled and translated by Faizul Haque