The Arab Word is Watching a Different War:
Three reasons why it has been difficult to understand the Arab position:
The first is the Arab relationship with Iran. From the vantage point of Brussels or London, Iran presents itself as a resistance movement with a grievance against American hegemony and Israeli occupation, and this presentation maps comfortably onto familiar Western anticolonial frameworks.
What it does not map onto is the lived experience of Arab populations in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, and across the Gulf. In those countries, Iran's presence meant Hezbollah holding the Lebanese state hostage to Tehran's decisions, thirty-five armed factions in Iraq drawing salaries from Iranian funds channeled through the Iraqi national treasury, and Houthi commanders answering to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps while firing on Arab civilians from Yemeni soil. Freedom is not the word any serious Arab observer would use for what Iran brought.
Indeed, the Arab world's quarrel with Iran runs far deeper than American bases or Israeli airstrikes. What drives it is the systematic subversion of Arab sovereignty by a foreign power that uses the language of Islamic solidarity as cover for an imperial project conducted through proxies.
The second dimension is the proxy question itself, where Western analysis fails most comprehensively. Iran goes far beyond supporting armed groups. Parallel state structures get built inside Arab countries, financial systems get captured, and political figures get installed who owe their existence and survival entirely to Tehran.
The Iranians who have administered this project understand it as the export of a revolution, but what Arab populations have experienced is closer to a colonial occupation conducted through intermediaries, and as of now, they’re not mourning the Islamic Republic.
When Westerners treat these proxy networks as instruments of legitimate resistance rather than as mechanisms of subjugation, they endorse an imperial project while believing themselves to be opposing one, and as a matter of fact, make themselves the legitimizing force behind Iran’s war against the Arab world.
The third dimension is the most counterintuitive for a Western audience, and it is the one most consequential for how the current war is understood and misunderstood. For Arab nationalists, including secular nationalists and even those with deep reservations about Israeli policy, Iran represents a greater and more immediate threat than Israel does.
This is a position that Western media are structurally ill-equipped to render intelligible, because Western discourse on the Middle East has been organized for decades around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the primary axis of regional injustice.
The result is that when Western governments and Western publics take strong positions against Israel’s actions against Iran’s operations, they believe themselves to be standing with the Arab world. In reality, they are advancing a position that the Arab world does not share and has not asked for, while ignoring the threat that Arab governments and Arab populations actually live with.
The rhetorical use of Israel as a perpetual alibi for Iranian aggression has been one of the Islamic Republic’s most durable tools, and Western opinion has served as the unwitting amplifier of that tool across the entire duration of the Islamic Republic’s existence.
https://t.co/32dwric9G6
@GreenTyler27 You grub. Unable to buy his home BECAUSE OF THE TAX RULES THAT PUT INVESTORS AHEAD OF FIRST HOME BUYERS. Honestly, a disgraceful video edit and an outright deceitful tweet.
@DentrinosN50184@FinancialReview They removed the incentive for investors to outbid first homebuyers on EXISTING dwellings. If you bothered to read the detail you’d understand the incentive to invest in new builds remains which, perhaps, would have prevented you from posting this foolish comment.
@Ryandally08@keithmarlowau This is deplorable. You’re asserting intent without evidence, reducing migrants to political tools, and implying elections are being manipulated. That’s not analysis—it’s bad faith. It degrades public debate and undermines trust in our democracy. Do better.
@Stockrocker_ASX Lazy tweet. Implies productivity issues are wholly union related when productivity had been poor long before they came back on the Pilbara scene.
During talks between U.S. and Iranian delegations in Pakistan, the topic of Ukraine unexpectedly came up.
While discussing U.S. guarantees in the event that Iran halts uranium enrichment and abandons the development of nuclear weapons, the Iranian side asked how the United States is fulfilling the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which it pledged to respect and protect Ukraine’s sovereignty.
The U.S. delegation left the question unanswered.
@Rory_Johnston the Larak corridor is 5nm wide, ~20m deep at the narrows. Fully laden VLCCs out of Basra draft 20-22m and IRGC vetting limits throughput to maybe 6-10 ships/day? 3mb/d needs ~15-20 VLCCs daily. So is this diplomatically huge, physically hollow?
@AdHaque110@MichaelPascoe01 Worth noting: 3 weeks before this strike, Kharazi told CNN on camera there was “no room for diplomacy” and Iran was ready for a long war. He was the Supreme Leader’s active foreign policy adviser — not a peace broker.
https://t.co/70Pq2bIRgC**
Iran is ready for a long war with the US and only economic pain will end it, the foreign policy advisor of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Kamal Kharazi tells me in an exclusive interview. He also says he currently sees no room for diplomacy. @CNN@cnni@claudiaotto
@alisterberkeley@PinguCapital And what was he supposed to say? Was he supposed to incite a panic by dropping truth bombs on a topic on which Australia has no control? Think about it .
@FinancialReview How much Ad revenue has the Fin raked in from the property industry? Will the Fin atone for its role in actively cheering the price bubble on over the years? I won’t hold my breath.
@rocinante2d@realKunalAShah I hope they just blow Karg Island up. Then when you can’t make payroll, your Basij militia will abandon you and you’ll hang at the hands of the Iranian people 👌