The crying Gulf emirs and their European handkerchiefs

The current diplomatic spectacle offers a display of rare cynicism. As Iran suffers massive strikes targeting not only its nuclear and then military capabilities, but now its vital infrastructure, refineries and ports, a strange melody rises from the Gulf capitals. Between quiet condemnations and calls for “de-escalation”, these monarchies play the card of flouted innocence. However, behind this smokescreen, the technical and military reality belies their supposed neutrality: these States are not spectators, but essential cogs in the war machine which strikes their neighbor.

The fiction of air neutrality

To reassure their public opinion and avoid reprisals, the Gulf countries loudly declare that they prohibit the use of their airspace for direct strikes against Iran. This argument is a technical deception. In modern warfare, aggression is not limited to the passage of planes in an air corridor. By hosting US bases that serve as operational springboards, these countries provide the invisible infrastructure without which the attack would be impossible. These bases are war management nodes: they operate electromagnetic jamming, degradation of enemy GPS signals and guidance of missiles and aircraft. Allowing these bases to operate is, in fact, signing the authorization to attack.

The argument of the sovereignty of these States is all the more pathetic since they, in reality, have no right to control what happens within the perimeter of American bases. Local personnel have no way of verifying whether an interceptor missile is being fired to protect the host territory or to intercept projectiles aimed at Israel, while coordinating air movements that will bombard Iranian soil. Furthermore, their radars and aircraft were delivered to them restricted, including the Saudi electronic reconnaissance AWACS, and only after receiving Israeli approval.

These installations are, in the final analysis, enclaves of aggression which have transformed the Gulf countries into active shields for the Israeli ally. By agreeing to be centers of surveillance and communication on behalf of Washington, these monarchies have constituted themselves de facto accomplices, losing all legitimacy in playing the “holy fools” when the conflict flares up.

The insignificant friend and the European tissue holders

Added to this picture is the equally dishonorable role of the European powers, symbolized to the point of caricature by a French diplomacy whose insignificance is matched only by hypocrisy. President Macron, in a rhetorical pirouette of which he is a master, declared the attack “contrary to international law” while affirming that Iran had provoked it by its “destabilizing actions”. Could we not, following this same logic, invoke the “destabilizing” actions that France has been carrying out in the Maghreb, the Sahel and Africa in general, for decades, to justify a war against it?

These European “handkerchief readyers” rush to the bedside of the Gulf whiners, firmly condemning the Iranian reactions while remaining strangely voiceless in the face of the blatant, massive and unjustified aggression carried out by the United States and their “damned soul” Israel. This “double standard” completely discredits Western words: we cannot cloak ourselves in international law while tolerating the aggression of a sovereign State and the current attempt at its economic asphyxiation through the destruction of its vital infrastructures.

Conclusion: a realpolitik of cowardice

The awakening will be brutal for the Gulf countries. By betting on American protection which is, in reality, only an attack platform, they have transformed their territories into legitimate targets.

The attack on Qatar by Israel last September against senior Hamas officials, including Khalil al-Hayya and, moreover, the entire Palestinian negotiating team for a cessation of hostilities in Gaza, was carried out with the full knowledge of the United States, which amply proves this point: it demonstrates the inanity of the “protection” offered, even though Qatar hosts on its soil the Al-Udeid base, the largest American military installation in the entire country. region and makes it the nerve center of CENTCOM.

From their current groans, history will remember neither their so-called “neutrality”, nor their status as victims, but their role as a rear base in an unprecedented regional destabilization enterprise. Between the cynicism of the aggressors and the duplicity of the hosts, the truth on the ground is clear: the Gulf is no longer a space of peace, but an advanced command post of the “Department of War”, the new name of the Pentagon under the Trump administration.