By Abdul Masih —
After Israel routed Egypt and Syria after their surprise attack in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Arab nations punished the West with an oil embargo that sent gas prices rocketing, creating gas lines, panic and recession. But it’s not 1973 anymore.
Iran is longing for that good old Islamic unity.
After the U.S. and Israel struck 3,000 times in more than a month, Iran finds itself increasingly isolated from its Muslim brothers of the Gulf States.
Many allowed the U.S. to use its sovereign land to attack Iran. In response, Iran lashed out with missile and drone barrages at nearly everyone: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Azerbaijan, even Turkey and above all else the United Arab Emirates. Iran was punishing them for cooperating the the Great Satan and the Small Satan.
While tusseling goes on, the Arab partners have largely stayed alligned with the U.S. Extraordinarily, the UAE broke from a policy of desecalation and retaliated against Iran’s Lavan Island refinery facilities on April 7.
Finally, one Arab state showed some guts. While deescalation has its merits, sometimes you just have to stand up to a bully and let him know there’s a price to pay for pushing people around.
Refusing to be intimidated by the regional bully, UAE sent sorties of French-made Mirage fighter jets to bombard Lavan Island. Saudi Arabia and Qatar still remain too chicken to put in check the bad boy, but they haven’t broke ranks with their economic partner the United States.
Of course, Turkey — with its own aspirations of re-establishing itself as area leader and the Ottoman caliphate — tried to breathe new life into the old, dead trope of Israeli colonialism: “Israeli expansionism… remains the number one challenge to stability, security in our region,” demagogued Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan. “What the Gulf is going through should not lead to losing focus on Gaza.” (Yes, even after getting hit with Iranian missiles, Turkey sided with Iran. SMH.)
This is what Iran wants: to bully its local cohorts into siding with Iran.
The problem with this strategy (other than everybody naturally hates a bully) is that Iran is Shi’ite and all the other Muslim nations are Sunni, a historically huge and violent rift in Islamic believers. Saudi Arabia and its fellow Gulf States are more afraid of Iran’s ambitions to dominate Islam than they are of Israel.
