When the United States built up one of its largest armadas in the Middle East last month, Iran warned that U.S. bases in the region would be legitimate targets if it were attacked.
Since then, Gulf states hosting U.S. bases have been targeted by Iran’s retaliatory attacks after America and Israel bombed Iran unprovoked and assassinated its head of state. Saudi Arabia reportedly accused America of “abandoning” it and rerouting anti-air defences from the Gulf states to Israel. Despite this, Arab countries swiftly moved to criticize Iran – not America or Israel – with a Bahrain-sponsored U.N. resolution condemning Iran alone.
“This type of attitude is precisely the attitude of a thoroughly subjugated people during the colonial era,” Khaled Abou El Fadl, the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law, tells Analyst News. The legal scholar, whose work focuses on human rights and Islamic law, says it’s crucial that Muslim states avoid conflict with Iran and pressure the United States to cease its attacks. Otherwise, he argues, they risk being further subjugated.
“The Israelis are already talking about how they need to destroy Turkey next. And some Israeli commentators are saying, ‘We need to move against Pakistan, because Pakistan has a nuclear weapon.’”
El Fadl tells Analyst News that Arab nations may even be asked to bear the cost of the war by America and Israel, but with the tide of American support for Israel turning, Arab nations may have an opportunity to thwart Israel’s goals of regional hegemony. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
We’ve heard so many differing justifications by the U.S. for its war with Iran. What do you think the real motives are?
Everything that has been said [by Trump] is pretty much nonsense. Ultimately, the truth came out in Netanyahu’s statement when he said that he had been dreaming of this for 40 years, and that is the truth. After 9/11, there has been a clear bend in Israeli policy, where Israel imagined itself to be the hegemon of the region – to completely subordinate and render thoroughly submissive every regime in the Middle East.
And they have done so with remarkable, deliberate effectiveness. They have co-opted and neutralized a country like Egypt, [and done] the same with Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Syria. Wherever you look, you clearly see a deliberate policy that has resulted in what the Israelis used to openly say for many years: that Arabs should surrender, that Arabs have been defeated.
Wherever you look, you clearly see a deliberate policy that has resulted in what the Israelis used to openly say for many years: that Arabs should surrender, that Arabs have been defeated.
It is really Iran that is the core from which resistance ideology emits. So they are imagining that if they can defeat Iran now, they would like to see a regime come to Iran that — like Jordan, like Egypt, like Syria, like Saudi Arabia — would basically hoodwink itself and pretend that Israel wants cooperation and the well-being of other countries, which is blatantly untrue, because everyone can see what Israel is doing as a hegemon.
The hope was that Iran would, whether through regime change or being bombarded back to the Dark Ages, be raising the white flag and accepting the dictation of terms.
The Gulf states are now caught up in this war, and Iran is being condemned for targeting U.S. bases on their territory. What was the purpose of these bases?
They are not there for show. They play a direct role in the assault on Iran. Any strategist will tell you, we have to target where the enemy is coming from. These bases are actually used in every sense of the word to wage this war of aggression against Iran. So it is very disingenuous to say that Iran can defend itself without attacking these bases.
These bases were built upon the request of the United States. [The Gulf states] thought that the presence of a base would protect them against Iran, because they’ve allowed themselves to become quite paranoid about Iran’s intentions. And the thinking was that if Arab rulers confronted a rebellion of sorts, American forces would act as rapid-deployment or rapid-interference forces to ensure they stayed in power.
And this is why Trump says you have to pay because we are protecting you. Without us, you wouldn’t stay in power. So it was this irresponsible colonial logic, that we need the colonial master to keep us safe. We cannot be safe without our colonial master.
You’re talking psychology, you’re talking old politics, you’re talking financial corruption. Because at the same time, ‘we’re going to build a place in your country, and we’re going to have this incestuous, corrupt relationship where you invest your oil profits in the stock market in the United States and most of the wealth of your country is not is is beyond the reach of your own people.’ So the ruling family basically treats the income of your country as a personal bank account, but you do so through the good offices of the United States. So there is a great deal of corruption.
The Arab states have been condemning Iran instead of America and Israel for starting this war. Why do they keep defending the United States?
We pretend to be deeply offended if the Persian does anything that seems to threaten our sovereignty. But when it comes to the white man and when it comes to the Israeli, we have no sovereignty. The white man and the Israelis can use our airspace to do anything they want.
In fact, as we saw [in] Jordan in the past, when we see someone attacking the white man or the Israelis, we shoot the missiles down. This type of attitude is precisely the attitude of a thoroughly subjugated people during the colonial era. The white man is the hero. The white man is supreme. The white man can do no wrong. The white man is always seen as ethical and moral, while those who are not part of the white man’s paradigm are seen through the eyes of the white man: as primitive, as backwards, as cunning, as ignorant and so on.
[If the 160 schoolgirls who were killed] were Israelis, I assure you 100%, you would have had Saudi intellectuals, Emirati intellectuals, Bahraini intellectuals, come out on TV and talk ad nauseum about how it is wrong to kill Israeli civilians, how these are innocent, how this is against the ethics of Islam, how this is against the laws of Islam, and on and on and on.
But their reaction when these children are Iranian or Sudanese or Palestinians or Libyans, is to hardly notice.
How did this era of the colonization of Muslim countries begin?
From the 1960s to the 1980s, you still had some sense of dignity and some sense of pride in sovereignty and in the ideas of self-determination, in the notion of equally sovereign states, in the idea that we are free of colonialism.
In the ‘90s and the 2000s onwards, there was a major shift where we saw colonialism re-enter the lives of an entire region of the Middle East. I actually see the Arab Spring as a revolt, although it wasn’t articulated, but the people on the streets knew very well that Muslim countries are being recolonized everywhere. In Egypt, for instance, there was a full awareness that the Egyptian military has become an agent of Israel, that the Egyptian military basically gets its commands from Israel. And the Egyptian masses hated [Hosni] Mubarak because they knew that Mubarak was always acting in favor of Israel, even against Egyptian interests.
There were many examples. The Egyptian military is never directed at actual external threats. It was always directed inwards towards Egypt. So you had the Arab Spring, and we all know how that ended. The media didn’t want to focus on it, but it was, in part, a rebellion against recolonization, the hegemony of the foreigner over the affairs of Muslim states — and it failed, because these proxy rulers reasserted their dominance.
And so when you hear complaints about Iran, it’s serially disingenuous, because any person who is dialled into the realities of the region knows very well that you only complain because you get the green light from your master — the white man, the colonizer.
I don’t take any of these voices [complaining about Iran] seriously. Get anyone who has the courage to appear on Arab media and actually say the truth that these are bases taking hostile action against Iran, that when Iran strikes these bases, Iran is striking against the origins of hostile actions and see what happens to them. They would be arrested immediately and disappear.
I know a lot of Kuwaitis, Saudis and even Emiratis who actually absolutely resent the presence of American bases, and who are actually jubilant about the fact that the American bases are being struck. But they would not dare express it, because they know what will happen to them.
There’s a lot of talk about America’s economy suffering due to this war. It’s estimated to be costing the U.S. almost $1 billion a day. Will Arab states be made to foot the bill?
This is exactly what Trump is thinking, because he, Kushner and a lot of his elite class have gotten accustomed to committing very costly mistakes, and then they dip their hands in the pool of Arab states and recoup the cost. Israel destroys, and then they go to the Arab states and say, “Pay for Israel’s destruction.” Israel destroys Lebanon, and the Americans go and say, “Pay for Israel’s aggression.” And the Arab states have been in the remarkably undignified and thoroughly subjugated position of constantly saying, “OK, yes, sir, we will pay for Israel’s adventurism and Israel’s aggression.”
This time, I think Trump might discover that even his Arab allies cannot cover the cost of the losses. Countries like the Emirates have been basically supplying an open bank account for American and Israeli adventurism and basically paying without question, but this time, the cost for these states is very heavy.
The Israelis knew that they could manipulate [Trump], and they’ve been manipulating the United States for decades, getting the United States to do whatever Israel wants at great cost to the United States. When people look back at this period 100 years from now, they’re going to write about how this superpower deteriorated because of its reliance on a constantly poisonous ally: Israel.
The United States cannot afford this war. The United States basically prints money to cover the cost of its adventurism, and that has consequences. At a time when you have a real threat to the American dollar as a reserve currency and as basically the currency for conducting business around the world, you are increasing the unreliability of the dollar by saying, “We are a warring country. It’s much safer to invest in currencies other than the dollar.”
“Countries like the Emirates have been basically supplying an open bank account for American and Israeli adventurism … but this time, the cost for these states is very heavy.”
When people told Trump that the price of gas is going up, he said, “Oh, it’s OK. It’s temporary, and it will go down again,” because that’s precisely how he was briefed. He is actually being honest about what he heard. Any intelligent person, any educated person, knows that such a response is highly irresponsible.
Most Americans now sympathize with Palestinians over Israelis. Many of Trump’s allies are blaming Israel for dragging the U.S. into another war. Does this mark a significant shift in American-Israeli relations?
There is more open criticism of Israel and a greater shift in public opinion than I’ve ever seen in the United States before. I never imagined that there would be so many people critical of Israel openly. So I think what Israel relies on, and what they hope will continue to work, is cold cash. The fact that American supporters of Israel are very generous with their money, and they spend a great deal of money to have undue influence on American politics.
If I were a Zionist, I would worry, because how far can you keep pushing a populace, basically telling them your representatives are in our pockets because we’re wealthy and you’re not? How far can you keep doing this before they turn on you, and, for instance, pass laws that cripple your ability to buy politicians or change justices on the U.S. Supreme Court or on federal courts to severely restrict the ability of these lobby groups?
You can never know at what point people get tired of this. They’re so fed up with the sense of degradation and humiliation, and just absolute frustration at the fact that their politicians serve a foreign country.
There are suggestions that Israel is also attacking Arab states or planning false flag attacks to pit Muslims countries and Iran against one another. How likely is this?
It doesn’t at all surprise me because if people would read the diaries of ex-Israeli intelligence, books that are written by people who have served in the Mossad or in the Shin Bet, they very openly admit that false flag operations were part of Israeli policy all along.
Israel openly admitted that in the first strike on Iran, they had agents living in Iran everywhere, speaking Persian, integrating and assimilating as Persians in every sense of the word, and with an instant notice, they were striking targets.
I can even name names of religious leaders in Egypt, for instance, that are so singularly focused on hostility to the Shia — even saying openly in Friday Sermons that the Shia are a far greater threat to us than the Zionists, that Iran is much worse than Israel. I’ve heard it with my own two ears, and I am absolutely sure that these people are either agents of the Egyptian government, agents of the American government or agents of the Israeli government.
If I were Israeli, I would need these Muslims to turn on one another. I need them to be busy fighting one another through any means possible, rather than focus on me, my land grabs, or my nuclear weapons. I would need them distracted. Considering our long engagement with Israeli intelligence and deception, why do we continue being surprised by it?
How do you see this current war with Iran ending?
With the Arab states, although I have no trust in any of these regimes, they should go out of their way to avoid any type of conflict with Iran and to accept that the only way forward is to help Iran pressure the West, particularly the United States and Israel, to end hostilities by saying the economic consequences are disastrous for all of us.
[They should say] that it’s not Iran that started this war, it is not Iran that committed acts of aggression, and we do want a world where the U.N. Charter continues to matter. We do recognize that Iran is exercising its right to self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter, and the United States committed an illegal use of force under Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. That’s what I would hope Arab states do for their own well-being.
If they create a world where today it’s Iran’s turn … at one point it was Afghanistan’s turn, then Iraq’s turn, Syria’s turn, Gaza’s turn. Even as we speak, the Israelis are already talking about how they need to destroy Turkey next. And some Israeli commentators are saying, “We need to move against Pakistan, because Pakistan has a nuclear weapon.”
They have to understand that if you don’t have the logic of international law to protect you, you are not rulers over real countries. You are just sovereign over a regime — nothing more than a regime — and no one will take the sovereignty of your country seriously.
